Lee Hacklyn 1970s Private Investigator in Fracasino: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

New York City. 1975.

 

Lee is hired by Winner's Delight Casino security guard Gladys Van Pelt

to investigate the murder of her boyfriend, Dan Bannerman.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: Apr 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223402589

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Queens, New York City.  1975.  11 pm.

Her hair was long and blonde.

I know you’re not supposed to put an E on the end of blond when describing a woman, nowadays—there’s the quintessential old man word—I’m writing these memoirs in woke 2023—and I’m supposed to say they, instead of he or she—and God forbid I use the words actress or "stewardess—but I’m seventy-three now and long past caring about the thin-skinned feelings of hyper-sensitive, spoiled and entitled snowflakes who comprise the world’s whiniest and least productive human beings.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.

Her eyes were bright and blue.  The curves of her body were achingly perfect.

She lay on her side, naked, in my bed, a veritable goddess—oops, I did it again—at my age, PC means perpetually cranky; and I beheld her beautiful behind with the wonder of Dave Bowman, entering the Stargate.

My mom-made quilt was on the floor.

She was a woman many-a-man would kill for, die for and many-a-nation would go to war for.

If only I could remember her name.

It starts with an I.  I think.  Does it?

Ivy?  Irene?  I’m horny?

I got out of bed.  It was the middle of July and sweltering.

I opened my bedroom window and the smell of gasoline nearly knocked me off my bare feet and onto my buck-nude ass.

This is what you get for fucking with a man’s life, Hacklyn!

John Smith.

I guess his parents weren’t the world’s most imaginative people.

He was in his twenties, thin and a chronic pyromaniac.

We crossed paths last year after a Catholic priest hired me to investigate the torching of his church, which wasn’t far from here.

I didn’t have to do any investigating at all.

I got lucky.

That same night, I tackled Smith and made a citizen’s arrest after he tried to burn down Lou’s Booze, my local liquor store.

As far as yours truly is concerned, burning down a liquor ought to be categorized as a crime against humanity.

CHAPTER TWO

In my vision of utopia, he’d be on death row, awaiting execution.

In this often upside-down and often unjust world, he got a five-year sentence, commuted to one-year, on the condition that he see a court-appointed psychiatrist twice a week for the rest of his life.

Gosh!

That sure did the trick, didn’t it, Dear Reader?

Smith dropped his jerry-can, pulled out a book of matches, lit one, then threw it to the ground.

Fuck me!

I was still drunk and only barely able to process what was happening.

A halo of wildfire began to encircle my apartment building.

Smith scampered away, laughing like the Joker.

I ran out of my suite, still naked, to the hallway and pulled the first station switch.

Crickets.

Holy Moley!

I went back to my suite, picked up my phone and called 911.  Busy signal.

Welcome to the Big Apple of the 1970s.

Crime wasn’t just a growth industry; it was the primary industry.

I hustled into my underwear and my jeans, while What’s-Her-Face stirred and asked, Is something wrong?

You might say that.  The building’s on fire.

She laughed.  Like me, she was still drunk.  But I was sobering up fast.  A disaster that has the potential to kill hundreds of