The journalist hunched over his battered Remington typewriter. It was late, too late, but he had a report to file and it was unlike any report he'd ever filed before. After a second slug of whisky it still made little sense. It was supposed to be a straight up diary piece supplied by readers of the newspaper's daily Chatterbox column. But the readers seemed to have had other ideas.
Someone had been playing LA Noire. Too much.
The hack grasped the report. "What the heck am I going to do with this?" he thought.
He took another slug.
This is what he read...
31/05/11
Report by operatives codenamed Sam and Brian.
He drained the glass of bourbon and slammed it down on the desk with a bang, instantly opening the drawer and taking out the bottle to pour another.
"None of this makes any god damn sense Sam!" Brian cried, gesturing angrily towards the brown file in front of his partner, the file marked with the badge of the police department, the file that had been thrust under his office door earlier that day.
The street lights glared through the blinds, casting dark bands of shadow across the tiny cluttered office, with its faded pictures from his days still in the force and the peeling black letters spelling out "B. Adenhart- Private Eye" on the frosted glass panel of the door.
Sam reached for the file and turned to the first page, reading aloud: "Case 31459: Missing Chatterbox….last seen: 30th of May…unconfirmed rumours of whereabouts…no suspects to date"
"Talk on the streets is of television cabinets, something called NP (possibly a new drug?) a Doctor Wu. Some Soccer game over in Europe and a 'Tamzin Outhwaite effect.' Nothing pertaining to the case"
Brian took another large gulp of his drink, before reaching over his colleague and turning to a page of witness statements, "nobody ever sees anything in this god damn town!"
The phone rang, which was strange – the phone never rang. He brushed aside the detritus to uncover it. "Hello?…" Sam watched as Brian listened silently for a minute before slamming the receiver down. Excitedly reaching for his hat and coat, he said, "Get the car, we've got someone to see… bring the file!"
Racing through the streets in the battered Chrysler not wasting a second, Sam slumped in the passenger seat. "Sso…where are we going?" The private eye turned to his partner, a glint in his eye, "the last person to see it before it went missing, the newspaper vendor, Keith."
Tearing round the last corner before the street where Keith hawked his wares the car almost crashed into an expensive-looking Cadillac. As the two cars passed, the drivers caught each other's eyes, a smile cracked on the other driver's face before they speed away in opposite directions
"…that wasn't…" Adenhart said to himself "…it can't be… he's dead…"
He pulled up to the little pile of newspapers but lKeith was nowhere to be seen…
"Listen!" sam whispered. "There's something coming from that alley"
The two men took out their guns and crept forwards. But any danger had long since passed and the only person in the alley was Keith, slumped against the brick wall, blood everywhere.
"Damn it! Too late" Sam said as they rant over to help the young lad.
Fading in and out of consciousness Keith was talking gibberish.
"…Political punch ups….nhhh….Tim's abusive dad…."
Adenhart grabbed the boy and tried to shake some sense into him.
"Who did this to you Keith?"
No reply. Just more nonsense
"Knock Knock jokes… Necrophilia… koala destruction… Rusty on Dinner date…."
Finally, silence. Adenhart let go of the youngster's lapel and he slumped back against the wall.
"He's gone…"
But Keith's lips moved, whispering the two words the PI didn't want to hear; the name of the man who flashed that evil smile from the speeding car earlier.
"Charles…. Arthur"
Witness statement of the day
"The gravitas of a wood unit"
Lazybones. Subject unknown.
01/06/11
The week was strange and getting stranger. There was no Monday, Tuesday was the same as last Friday and then from nothing I awoke to a fresh box. It seemed too clean, too perfect. I was already into this too deep with no signs of getting out, my instincts be damned, I had to find out what was going on.
My first call was to investigate some complaints regarding the Olympic ticketing system. Killerbee was happy to go on the record:
"Could a more shambolic system of allocating tickets for a major sporting event have been devised if they'd tried?"
I'm not sure who he was complaining at; there wasn't much ire to raise amongst the rest of the community. A resigned sense of expectancy. Local (alleged) mob boss HereComesTreble put the matter to rest:
"Pret a Manger is the official sandwich provider of the London Olympics, which says it all really."
The corporate talk was giving me a thirst. I swung by a local haunt for some afternoon refreshment. There was a guy in there, he hadn't been around much lately. Lazybones I think they call him. In the haze of the bar he announced:
"Bought myself a frying pan last week. I don't know if I mentioned this. Do you think I have become more boring?"
I declined to answer. Soon others joined in though. Frying pan discussion. Sizes, cooking techniques and Jamie Oliver. I just wanted some peace and quiet. SuperSmashin got involved:
"You all need to aspire to live a one pan life. It's the Lazybones method and I endorse it."
Conversation turned to woks. I reconsidered my choices; that unfinished paperwork was suddenly looking more appealing. Then this broad appeared, peering through the darkened entrance. It was Herself. There was a murmuring at the bar. She's got some nerve, I thought. Caused a ruckus in here end of last year. But she wasn't here for trouble. When she left, eyes turned to Tim in the corner, he glanced up, unperturbed:
" You know that novelty pizza cutter you wanted? It's mine now. And you can forget about visiting the cat."
Case closed.
Late on, the bar's recent US acquisition, OpinionatedMike, stumbled in with a bone to picks with yours truly. "I've been depicted inaccurately in BestOf" he drawled. "Now I know what celebrities complain about when the media takes excerpts out of context!"
I paid him little attention. He hobbled to a seat nearly falling in his high heels and quietened down.
As the day surrendered itself to the embrace of night, I left the bar, approaching my car with much on my mind. I instructed my partner to drive me home; as he did, he backed into four passing cars, ran over an elderly lady and destroyed two lampposts. A quiet drive home. The case notes started to organise themselves in my mind, but I was a long way from solving this.
Later, I had an uneasy feeling as I slumped back on my couch, glass of whisky in hand; the sirens of the night serenaded me into a troubled night's sleep.
A feeling that the worst is yet to come.
Witness Statement of the day:
"@Flat bottomed woks: Make the woking world go round."
EnglishRed.
02/06/11
The old man kept us waiting in the steam-filled sauna he passed off as a gardenia potting shed. I wasn't going to let him get to me, and no matter how much he turned up the heat, how much he filled the room with sweltering mooks, I wasn't going to break.
Even when the paper snap on collar I wore over this two-bit thrift store suit melted into my shirt, and my eyes filled with sweat, blinding me to what was going on, I still wouldn't break.
Even with the temptation of three free downloads from the fully restored PSN store, I wasn't going to break.
What broke me was pure Bladestone, the thought of some poor schmuck, brought into this country in the bilge of a Shanghai merchant vessel, swam ashore from The Rock in the bay, his buddies - shark bait, or torn apart on the spikes down at Old King Allant point, just to smuggle this precious drug to these virgin shores. This is what broke me.
Some gook threw me to the floor, the mickey-finn turning the already upside down world of not Thursday into some horror show re-run of the day before. He knotted my Macy's tie around my bicep, slapped my wrist for a vein to pump the pure Bladestone into, and ran me through with his needle.
Having lost all concept of time, I couldn't tell you how long it was before I was seeing skeletons and dragons, leathery wasted men swinging at me with flaming swords, and angels and knights Templar on battlement walls. And then the acrid smell of swamp gas. I was falling through a fog gate, a gate of fog, golden, golden gate in the fog. This is San Francisco, this is NaN Thursday, this is just a precursor of a Dark Soul.
And then I remember nothing.
Until...
03/06/11
A tall blonde walked past my office window. I could tell she was tall as I worked on the second floor. I could tell she was blonde, because she moulted all over the swivel chair across from my desk. But these are the things you need to do when a private dick needs a secretary that will work long hours for short pay.
Speaking of those who are working for short pay and paying a little too much attention to the dame in the chair, today was full of useful tips for interviewing skills. Seems that seven hours twelve minutes a day of internet time is not seen as productive time well spent by many of this country's captains of industry.
Turned out I wasn't the only detective for hire looking to fill a blonde shaped hole in my office; Sorbicol had been interviewing some hopeful nineteen-year-olds, obviously to help him out with the extraordinary time he spent on the internet. The louse was keen to pass on the list of psychological profiling questions he had prepared. Not that he prepared them himself, he had some poor child from the HR department prepare them, plausible deniability, children, pay attention, this was the first lesson.
It seemed Sorb was not the only one seeking new flesh. While the government was trying to tell us we were in a recession, BlueAndWhiteBoy seemed to think it would be okay to make his four candidates fight to the death for the three posts. I fought in a war so men like this could run this country. I should be so proud of these two.
I was afraid for the rest of us proles, sitting on the other side of the interviewing desk was our lot.
Having debated the benefits of telling the truth in exit interviews, and the pros and cons of using Linkedin and Facebook to find dirt on your interview panel, the dame across from me opened her heart to us. She was attempting to answer that perennial interview question: "What is you greatest weakness?"
This should have been obvious for a band of social misfits who spent all day every day talking about games, that they then spent all night every night playing. And I'm not talking about healthy games, I'm talking about Blood Bowl and World of Tanks, here. Backstreet dive games, for desperate men.
This is a transcript of the witness statements.
jakelly: "I've not removed all the labels from my clothes."
Scamander: "I have a fire allergy."
RustyJames: "I'd recommend lying through your teeth."
Lazybones: "I don't do any work until mid-day."
SBY818: "I often don't get the full scale of my genius across in interviews."
SirGiggidy: "I'll drink my wages back into the till."
All interesting response, but not quite as pertinent as OpininatedMike's tips for handling interviews.: "Answer questions firmly, seriously and without hesitation."
"Wait a second Mike," I said. "I believe you've just fallen down the fail hole of all chatterbox failures and resorted to quote blog. You have been caught out quoting from the CIA Handbook for fooling polygraph machines."
But it was smart advice, and one day I figured, it might just save my life.
Mike, this drink's for you.
End game
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This week's 'Best of' was written by Smellavison, Onedaveofmany, St00 and TJVS. It was edited by Smellavision
