Lee Hacklyn 1970s Private Investigator in The Tao of Jeet Con-Do: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

 

 

New York City. 1977.

Santino De Luca, and his wife, Maria, and their three kids,

live in a beautiful condominium called Carnegie Hill Place.

Shortly after Santino announces his intention to run in the next Strata

Council meeting, he's found dead by their daughter, Lucia, in their

bathtub, filled with red paint.

NYPD investigators deemed the incident a suicide and closed the case.

But Santino's brothers, Angelo and Sal, are convinced that poor Santino

was murdered.

They hire Lee to uncover the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: May 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223177944

Book preview

NEW YORK CITY.  1977.

CHAPTER ONE

The world’s most beautiful woman, for now, stood next to me, in the lobby of the Queen’s apartment building, where I lived, clad in a tight and revealing yellow tank-top that hugged her magnificent breasts; and frayed, cut-off jeans.

She was petite, but her legs were long and tanned and her nail-polished feet were tucked into wooden sandals, adorned with plastic roses.

Her hair was long, blonde and feathered, just like Farrah-Fawcett’s; and her mouth was in a downward slope of barely contained rage.

She was carrying an empty laundry basket.

I asked her, Laundry day?

Lee Hacklyn, Pick-Up Ninja Warrior.

She huffed, Pissed off day, is more like it.  He did it again!

Godzilla destroyed Japan?  Again?  Relax.  It’s just a movie.  Godzilla’s a guy in a rubber suit, the city he steps on a model and all those people you see, running and screaming?  They’re called actors.

Are you being funny or condescending?

If you have to ask, then the second one, although I was aiming for the first.  As for the second, that’s when an inmate sky dives.

She rolled her eyes, spat a little, wiped the back of her mouth with her delicate hand—neither one of us had hit the up button yet, which I thought was a good sing—burst out laughing—Yes!—and said, God, I hate puns.

Then I guess I’m not taking you to that new play, I made finger-quotes, On Words."

She calmed down some and said, Don’t get your hopes up.  I have a boyfriend.  Well, sort of.  He fucked my sister at my birthday party last Saturday.  She’s such a slut.  Why can’t she find her own cock?

I said, Thou shalt not covet thy sister’s boyfriend.

Fucking right.

From the manager’s office, the building manager, Mrs. Kotter, yelled, This isn’t Times Square, Iona.  Watch that sassy mouth of yours!

Sorry, Mrs. Kotter!  Oh, I want to talk to you.  Will you come with me?  I’m, as you just heard, Iona.

She touched my forearm and I felt electricity run up it and across my heart.

Forearm...fore play?

The two six-packs of Male Ale in my fridge can wait.

CHAPTER TWO

I followed her, careful not to leer at her exquisite behind, to Mrs. Kotter’s office.

Mrs. Kotter was young for a mountain, her thin, white hair was in curlers and her face was covered with skin cream.

Tonight on Monster Theatre:

Revenge of The She-Creature from The Radioactive Skin Cream Jar.

She was smoking a pipe, of all things, and there was a half-empty bottle of Jack, next to her phone.

She drank from a glass that came from a Disneyland knick-knack store.

There was Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and Goofy.

Incongruous didn’t even begin to describe how that image made feel.

Like seeing Batman with a cigarette his mouth.

She was eating out of a bag of Cheese-Yowzas, otherwise known as cancel cell activators.

Speaking of which, I lit a Blue Buzzard.

There are aspect of 70s living that I miss and that’s one of them.

Iona said, "Mrs. Kotter, all my clothes were taken from the