Lee Hacklyn 1970s Private Investigator in Anti-Social Studies: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

New York City.  1974.

 

Love For Humanity, a private company that provides social work for the needy,

hires Lee to investigate the murder of three social workers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: Sep 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223221753

Book preview

NEW YORK CITY.  1974.

CHAPTER ONE

There they are.  Predictable as ever.

Stay here.  Does the phone work?

She checked and gave me a thumbs-up.

I liked that.

People with positive attitudes in the New York City of the 1970s was scarcer than a mint condition copy of Action Comics number one.

Her name was Helen Vinton, she had short, grey hair, a charismatic smile and she radiated authority at sixty-five.

She was the principal of John Glenn Middle School.

We were standing next to a phone booth on a street corner.

There was a convenience store across the street.

Gigi’s General Goods.

Why buy a carton of milk for a dollar when you can get one for twice the amount?

Better check the expiration date, first—just kidding.

I once, once, mind you, bought a box of Cracker Jack at a convenience store and when I opened it, the secret toy surprise was a live worm.

As for me and Mrs. Vinton, the object of our attention and scrutiny was a red Gran Torino, complete with white racing stripe, just like the Starsky and Hutch-mobile.

It was parked in a small lot next to the store.

I heard the school bell ring.  Three pm.

There is no happier group of human beings in this world than a group of kids after the last school bell of the day.

I remember the feeling well.

I was only twenty-four, but I was already beginning to feel the finiteness of time; and my mortality.

We do what we can, while we’re here.

And if we can smile along the way, so much the better."

Mrs. Vinton touched my arm and said, Please, no violence.

That’s not up to me.  That’s up to them.

I rolled the dice and jaywalked across the street.

A truck driver nearly ended my corporeal existence, flipped me the universal salute for peace and love, the middle-finger and yelled, Watch where you’re going, you piece of fuck!

There goes the next Dalai Lama.

The driver of television’s most popular car—at the time, anyway—had a tattoo of a dragon on his face, a rare look for the 70s.

His ballcap said, Fuck cops, and he sported a groovy, handlebar moustache.

He and the guy in the passenger