Lee Hacklyn 1970s Private Investigator in Rock and Roll The Dice: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

New York City. 1978,

Lee is hired to investigate the murder of Tom Wyler, lead singer of

a hard rocking band called The Dice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: Nov 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215635452

Book preview

Queens.  New York City. 1978.

CHAPTER ONE

I was jolted awake, from a dreamless sleep, by a woman’s scream.

My alarm clock mockingly informed me that it was quarter after two in the morning.

Still drunk.

As I rose and swung my legs off my bed and put my feet into my slippers, and stood, my bedroom started to turn like the Space Needle.

A dizzying combination of vertigo and gravity pulled me to the hardwood floor of my apartment bedroom.

Thunk!

Sorry, neighbors.

I landed on my elbows.

Double-owie.

Physical pain can be sobering, in more ways than one.  Another scream.  This was one was even louder than the last.

My Browning was on my nightstand.

I made sure that it was locked and loaded; then I tucked it into the waist-band of my Scooby-Doo jammy-pants, a birthday present from my sister, Ann, who likes to remind me of my arrested development.

Yeah, they looked silly, but Gosh, were they ever comfortable!

I took one step towards my bedroom door and my slippered foot landed on an empty Male Ale beer can and I did a full split, like Nadia Commaneci.

Slip sliding away, indeed. 

Yoga pays off, kids.

Were it not for my well-earned flexibility, I’d be writhing on the floor in a pile of agony and woe.

Another scream, from the same woman.  Fuck!

My nuts and bolt were intact.

I strode, shakily, oh, maybe I shouldn’t drink so much, towards my front door and undid the seven deadbolts.

Yes, I’m paranoid, but it’s not based on delusions.

It was based on the fact that are people in this city who would, if they thought they could get away with it, kill me without hesitation.

Churchill said it best.  It’s good to have enemies.  It means that you stand for something.

That’s I tend to be disdainful towards politicians.  They always seem to me like their polar opposites of heroes.

Heroes know what they stand for.  Politicians stand for whichever way the wind blows.  That’s my perception, anyway.

CHAPTER TWO

By definition, heroes are the polar opposites of politicians.

They don’t seek the approval of others.  They don’t lick their fingers and stick them in the breeze before making a decision.

If there’s a statue somewhere in the world that commemorates a committee, I’ve never heard it.

The same woman screamed again.

I was in the lobby of my Queens apartment building, shirtless, armed, my jammy pants decorated with images of Scooby and Shag; and ferociously willing myself to sober up some more, although my aching elbows were definitely a plus in this regard.

I put my ear against one suite door, then another.

Was the voice coming from the suite above me?

Door number three.  Scream.  Three really is a magic number.  What kind of magic, in this case, remained to be seen.

I tried the door.  It tasted like chicken.  That one never gets old for me.

Unlocked.

My gun raised, I charged into a living room that looked like the aftermath of a hurricane, localized in a Salvation Army.

Clothes that might have been new before D-Day were strewn about, hither and yon.

I’m not a snob.  I love the Salvation Army.  That’s where I get my office furniture.  The operative word being get, because, as far as my chairs go, they last about as long as unrefrigerated egg.

They break and I fall out of them, often while interviewing clients, as often as Dick Van Dyke trips over ottomans.

Ottomen?

Another scream.  The bedroom.

I kicked the door open. 

A naked woman—if there are any words in the English language more beautiful than those two, oh, hell, there aren’t, who am I kidding—was straddling the groin of an enormous bear-man, on the comforter of a king-sized bed.

Hairy didn’t even scratch the surface.  His toes were barely visible.

I said, Do you mind if I go get my camera?  The National Busy-Body pays big bucks for pictures of Bigfoot.

CHAPTER THREE

The woman screamed again, but this time for an entirely different and perhaps not so pleasurable reason.

She spelled it out, to allay anybody’s doubt as to