Lee Hacklyn 1970s Private Investigator in Klandestine Evil: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

New York City. 1978.

 

While investigating the murder of high school teacher

Alex Worthington, Lee discovers that key members of

the Queens School Board are members of the

Ku Klux Klan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215966105

Book preview

MANHATTAN.  1978.

CHAPTER ONE

Enjoying your first catch of the day?

My body was at a forty-five degree angle, arms outstretched, my Browning, the tip of the spear, held in a two-handed grip, as the July sun turned the Big Apple into a city-wide Towering Inferno.

My forward sneaker smelled like dog shit that some rarified air-breathing kiss-the-bottom-of-my-heel-if-you-want-live dog owner didn’t make the time to pooper-scoop.

It was my lunch hour, decided by your truly, one of the benefits of running your own business, and my Ravi’s Super Spicery-made chicken tandoori was doing something that should only have been possible in a Marvel comic book:  It was getting cold.

If you’re considering living the life of a good Samaritan—are there bad ones?—good on ya, mate, but if you want to enjoy a nice meal in a restaurant, never sit by a window.

That man stole my mobile vanity!

Is that what they’re calling purses now?  Why wasn’t I informed?

After lunch, I was very keen on catching The French Connection II.

That Henry Cooke wasn’t kidding when he said, Life is what happens, when you make plans.  Something like that.

Here’s an addendum, courtesy of sage philosopher, Lee Hacklyn: 

Accept the hiccups of life in advance.  They’re part of the journeys of our lives.

And if God took them away, fixed all of our problems for us, by giving us Paradise, again, then there’d be no point to this nutty experiment, would there?

It didn’t so well the first time, did it, according to Genesis, the non-Phil Collins version.  Adam and Eve ate the apple because, whether they realized it or not, they understood at some intrinsic level, that Paradise sucks.  It robs us of purpose.

And without purpose, our lives have no meaning.

CHAPTER TWO

Three men and a woman were sitting between two dumpsters in an alley, three blocks away from where I was just about to enjoy and savor my first bite of naan bread, dipped in curry, mmm, so good, were rooting and rummaging through the victim’s...what the hell did she call it?  What does she call her shoes?  Podiatrist Recommendations?

The woman’s face was harder than any of her male counterparts.

Despite the enervating heat, they all wore fleece-lined jean jackets, beanies and black, rubber boots.

Would those protect you from stepping on a live wire? 

She spat, You a cop?  I seen your peashooter, I ain’t seen no badge.

I’m an elocution tutor.  Like Henry Higgins, from Pygmalion.  You wanna be my Eliza Doolittle?

The fattest man, hell, none of them looked particularly underfed, are there starving people in America?  And if there are, why, drug addiction and anathema to any employer, notwithstanding.  Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  The portly alley-cat said, He’s lipping you off, Penelope!

Just like that, the theme from Thunderbirds drummed through my head.

I can retain just about anything that has no value in the real world, unless you’re planning a career as a game show contestant.

Nobody lips me off!  I ain’t-no-feared o’ no peashooter!  Best you fuck off, pretty boy, before I yell rape!"

Calmly, I said, in another one of doomed-to-fail-attempts at finding a middle ground, How about this, then?  You put all of that stuff that doesn’t belong to you back into the purse, that doesn’t belong to you, hand it to me, and I’ll see that it goes back to whom it does belong to.  And you can continue to live in the outside world until your inevitable, next, I’m guessing, incarceration.

Penelope cackled like Broom Hilda and mocked me:  Whom!  This must be the fucker that wrote English!

One of the men had a red, curly beard and an honest-to-God peg-leg.

He made a guttural noise, lovely, and said, I’m Pete.

I burst out laughing and said, No shit!

Yeah, I’m Pete.  And your ass is meat.

You never can predict the nutty things that people are thinking of doing; and then actually following through.

Pete jerked off, um, yanked off his peg-leg and threw it at me.

Because I was still laughing, I allowed it to clobber my face—ouch—and I fell on my dumb-ass behind.