The Spycatcher Caper

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

I’m proud to serve my country and can’t wait to kill some lousy Krauts and Nips and whoever else is lousy.”

Standing tall (although he was not of noteworthy height) before the Selective Service System draft board, the gumshoe wanted the board’s members to know that when duty called, as it was now loudly doing, he was all ears. He was all courage. He was all-American. He was the real thing. He was . . . And the fact that he had failed to respond to the initial three letters the board had sent was clearly due to a misunderstanding.  

The weary retired major who chaired the board cut him short. “Yes, Mr. DeWitt, you’ve shown us your good faith. And now it’s time that you show your good faith and fighting spirit to the military. As soon as you pass your physical examination, you’ll shortly be receiving orders as to where and when to report. And by the way,” the colonel smiled, “I think we can forget the little mix-up that could have sent you to prison  at Fort Leavenworth.” DeWitt thanked him, saluted nervously and needlessly, and left the room without looking back. “That was a close one,” he told himself. “I could have spent my life in a military shithole prison. Now all I got to worry about is keeping my life until this shit war ends.”

What the private eye had told the board was true. Well, mostly. Well, a little. He did hate his country’s enemies and he had been prepared to fight the war--but looking on from the sidelines. After all, every fighting man, he reasoned, needed cheerleaders to boost his morale.

The war had been raging for more than a year after Pearl Harbor when Dick DeWitt, who had been a private investigator for nearly twenty years, had received the notice from his draft board to report for a physical examination. This surprised him. Though without wife or child, he was in his early forties, too old, he figured, to sling an M-16 over his left shoulder and hunt for the nation’s enemies. The unpleasant news demanded a shot of Jack Daniel’s, and then a second and a third, after which he stumbled into bed and bid the problem good night until the morning.

Five days intervened before his scheduled physical, and DeWitt spent much of his time and thought (detractors had long snickered that he had little of the latter) working on how he could beat the system. Appearance, he reckoned, counted, and so he deprived himself of shaving, bathing, and changing underwear, arriving at the large physical examination center to the disgusted looks and disbelief of both fellow examinees and examiners. “Hey, pal, you know how bad you stink?” asked one young fellow sporting a pronounced Brooklyn accent. DeWitt made strange noises in response, not because he failed to have understood the question but due to his plan to display a speech impediment to the examiners.

“Next,” yelled a tough-looking soldier whose three stripes denoted the rank of sergeant. “Yeah, you, stinky. Haul your smelly ass over to Table 3, and be quick about it.”

DeWitt dutifully limped to Table 3 and commenced to mumble incoherently. The doctor stared and then announced to the physician at the adjoining table, “I’ve got a live one here, John. Do you want him?” John apparently did not, since he shook his head and clamped two fingers to his nostrils.

“All right, Mr. . . . He leafed through a few sheets of typewritten pages. “All right, Mr. DeWhite, I’d like for you to tell me about any maladies, conditions, or problems you may have that would keep you from the company of Uncle Sam’s forces.”

“Speak up, Mr. DeWhite, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

After thirty seconds or so of DeWitt’s mumbling, the doctor, annoyed but finding it difficult to suppress a smile, ordered the private eye to write down what he was trying to convey.

DeWitt considered shrugging his shoulders as if to indicate that he was illiterate but feared that the ploy might be pushing it too far. Instead, he scribbled a list of encumbrances that might have brought tears to the eyes of the compassionate, of whom, he hoped, the doctor sitting across the table was one. DeWitt first listed flat feet and hoped that the bedroom slippers he was wearing would provide sufficient proof. Then there was his left knee, which he claimed he had severely injured while saving a young woman from the clutches of a sex fiend. (DeWitt, in fact, had injured his knee—but not too severely—while jumping out of a second-story window to avoid the return of an unsuspecting husband.) Hemorrhoids, he added, kept him from sitting for more than a quarter of an hour. If he sat longer, he farted uncontrollably. Finally, there was the matter of the index finger, or, rather, both of them. As a private detective, he had badly injured them when a notorious jewel thief, whom he had caught in the act, viciously slammed the door of a safe on those precious digits need to fire a rifle. (In truth, the only time he had injured his index fingers came as he was trying to unhook the bra of his secretary Dotty, who fell heavily backward on him.)

Looking at the list of afflictions, the doctor said that he

 sympathized with a man who had suffered such misfortunes, but that the man still would have to undergo a physical exam. “Go to the line over there, Mr. DeWhite. And by the way,” he added as DeWitt limped away, Dr. Goldfarb will give you a special exam. He’s one of the city’s most noted urologists. No one knows a prostate better than him.”

The doctor had examined DeWitt with few comments and even less display of emotion. Not so Dr. Irving Goldfarb, who plunged right in, so to speak, and elicited a piercing yelp from his victim. “Come on now, soldier. That’s no way to act. What are you going to do when the going gets really rough? Besides, you don’t want me to do a slipshod exam on something as important as your prostate, do you?” DeWitt muttered something, but this time he was not acting.

“Good news. Your prostrate is as soft as a baby’s tushy,” Dr. Goldfarb pronounced, “now go down two tables to your right and let Dr. Grosshandler make sure you don’t have a hernia.”

DeWitt walked gingerly to his next appointment. “I don’t know if I have a hernia, Doc, but I get this sharp pain next to my nuts every time I try to lift anything that weighs more than two or three pounds. It’s really awful.”

“Well let me check you out. Drop your drawers, fellow. Hmm. No initial indication of hernia. No swelling at all. But let’s make sure.” The doctor placed his hand on the right side of DeWitt’s groin. “Okay, now cough for me.”

“I can’t, Doc. It hurts too much when I cough.”

Grosshandler stared at him. “I think we can rule out a hernia. Sometimes  the pain you describe stems not from a hernia but from a rare occlusion of certain vessels in the testicles. Here, I’m going to give them a slight twist so that your sperms can swim as nice as Esther Williams. There, that should serve to alleviate the discomfort you experience when you lift anything heavy”

Startled examiners and examinees alike looked at the fortysomething man with his trousers and shorts around his ankles. Most wondered what had caused his screams. A few may have noticed Dr. Grosshandler wink at Dr. Goldfarb and the broad smile that the latter returned.

The ordeal ended after slightly more than two hours with the promise that he would receive official notification of the exam’s results within a few days. DeWitt, his prostate and testicles still calling out “Don’t do that,” dressed, left the building, grabbed an uptown bus, settled into his apartment, thought of having a late morning Jack Daniel’s, and acted on the thought.