Humorous Hard-Boiled Detective Book Series
Dick DeWitt Mysteries by Robert Muccigrosso
Series Excerpt
Monday was another day, another week. But for some reason I didn’t have the old Monday workday blues. Maybe it was because I had had the Sunday blues. Maybe it was because I almost never had any work to do on Mondays. And maybe, just maybe, it was because I had a good feeling about finding Mona.
I walked up the stairs to my office cheerfully whistling “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” En route I read the riot act to a vagrant who was sleeping in the stairwell. The sight of that scruffy guy nearly broke my good mood.
Dotty was ferreting through the file cabinet when I opened the door at 10:18. She was either cleaning dustballs or looking for the remains of an old sandwich that one of us might have left. As far as I could tell, it had been a long time since the cabinet had housed anything serious. “Morning, babe. Get lucky over the weekend?”
“As a matter of fact I did, although I’m not sure if that’s any of your business,” she huffed. “They were running a special on melons at the grocery store, and you know how hard it is to get good melons this time of year.”
My Gal Friday could be a bit slow, even downright stupid, if you ask me, but she had her melons, I have to say. I also have to say that they looked real swell lurking there inside her red angora sweater.
“Good for you, kid.” I took off my coat and hat, sat at my desk, put my feet up, and asked the usual: “Any messages?”
“Yeah. There was a certain Mr. Baker who called, but he didn’t leave his name.”
I almost jumped out of my chair. “Whaddya mean he didn’t leave his name? Didn’t you say the call came from a Mr. Baker?”
Dopey Dotty thought for a minute. “I guess I should have said that he didn’t leave his first name,” she giggled.
I felt like sending her down to play with the vagrant. “Did he leave a message?”
“Ah . . . yeah. He said to call him.”
That would have been fine except, of course, I hadn’t got around to finding out where or how I could reach him when he was here on Saturday. I guess Dotty might not be the only dopey one.
I was stewing in my juices while anxiously waiting for Mr. Baker to call back. Dotty watered the artificial plant, then returned to reading War and Peace. She had finished the complete works of Dickens. Meanwhile the phone remained as silent as I wish my ex-wife had been throughout most of our marriage. We didn’t have a clock on the wall, but tick, tock, tick, tock was in my brain.
I had had enough of sitting there waiting for the damn contraption to ring. Dotty was laughing hysterically, probably over the part where Napoleon invades Russia and all those soldiers get slaughtered. She was getting on my nerves.
Then it struck me, a bolt right out of the blue, or in today’s case, the gray. I didn’t know Baker’s first name, but why not look up “Baker” in the phone book and see if my man’s listed? They don’t call me Super Sleuth for nothing. (I have been called a few other names.)
“Hey, Dotty, put down that crap and go get our telephone directory. Look up ‘Baker’ and start calling each one to see if you can find our client.”
Dotty looked pissed, as only Dotty can look pissed. “Do I have to? I had my nails manicured Friday and I don’t want to spoil them,” she whined and began picking at what remained of her cuticles.
“Listen, Dotty, you’re not getting paid to just sit around and look like Harlow, you know.”
“Oh, all right. But just remember that I’m not getting paid at all these days.”
She had a point. I went back to stewing in my juices, and Dotty got out the directory. She turned the pages and continued to pick at her cuticles. At least ten minutes passed. Then she looked up with a sort of pained expression and asked, “How do you spell ‘Baker’?” There are days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, I thought.
Somehow she managed to process the information. “There are a lot of ‘Bakers,’ you know. Do I have to call all of them?”
“No,” I said, “only those with telephone numbers.”
“But they all have telephone numbers or they wouldn’t be listed. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Dotty,” I sighed. “Start with the first one and then keep phoning until you get the right one.”
“But what happens if I don’t get the right one, Mr. D?”
I gave serious thought to firing her on the spot, but a glance at her melons, platinum hair, and come-hither, gap-toothed mouth told me to cool it. But I had to get out of the place.
“I’m going to Ma’s for some hash,” I informed her. “Want me to bring you back something, or are you eating out?”
“Bring me back something from Ma’s. I’m dieting, so it should be something light. Let me think.’’
Letting her think, I feared, was going to delay my lunchtime until supper. “I know. Bring me back a tongue and limburger cheese sandwich on white bread with lots and lots of mayo. Oh, and an extra portion of french fries. But skip the dessert today because it’s fattening.” There was something seriously wrong with this dame.
Once at Ma’s, I caught Betty’s eye. She gave me her usual nasty look and sauntered over. She was still sore either about the tip she thought I had swiped or because I had left her only a nickel on Friday.
“Yeah, whatta you want today, big sport?”
“I’ll have a cuppa split pea soup and a BLT.”
She smirked. “How do you want your pee split? And what’s a BLT? Both Little Testicles?”
I wanted to split something for her, namely her lip, but settled for warning her that she’d get no tip if she continued to speak that way to me.
“Honey, if I had to depend on people like you for tips, I might as well be walking the streets.”
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