Week 12 - Homework Assignment

Update - I'm still having issues with the gaming addiction, but I'm slowly getting it under control. I'm also back on the detective story, and making substantial progress. I'll be busy this weekend with paid work, but I'll have a couple of days off before the first of two April assignments comes in. I've found if I go straight to the writing first thing in the morning I can get it out of the way, even if I'm typing on the laptop. Longhand is for when I really get stuck.

I was going to post the first chapter of the detective book on my Reading Room page, but for some reason Blogger won't let me add a new post, and it's been so long I've forgotten how to access Edit to make changes. It could be the page is now "static" and I can't add anything to it. So screw that. Here's my first chapter, where I tried to make use of narrative hooks and chapter-ending cliffhangers, which we discussed in passing last week. The two flash scenes that inspired this novel were posted on the October 8, 2022 entry, if you want to do a comparison. The one character's complaints about retcons not only made it into the book, it ended up being a clue. That's the fun of being a pantser: surprises at every turn.

Oh, the picture? That's the novel version of what became Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It's the only book I can think of that mine is similar to. Maybe Inkheart, but I only saw the movie version of that, and it didn't have detectives in it. I tend to think of mine as a Twilight Zone episode, with bits of humor thrown in. I still haven't decided what genre I want it to be yet.

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Chapter 1

Rain hit the pavement with a sound like a million despondent souls shattering into shards of eternal gloom. The city bore it all with steely stoicism. It had been raining just long enough for humanity to forget there’d ever been a sun in the sky, that hope was an actual thing. I tipped the bottle of Scotch up to my lips and downed a swig of liquid motivation. Alcohol. Buoys the soul.

That’s how your average hard-boiled private eye story opens, with frills and variations according to the author’s skills. It’s all BS, of course. Here in the real world the sun was out, cars were honking in the street, and it was a coffee mug, not a bottle, I held to my lips. I never drink during business hours, unless it involves caffeine. I hardly ever drink, period. Having grown up with an alcoholic dad, I never developed a taste for it.

As far as the hard-boiled aspect goes, I was feeling more scrambled at the moment, as I was dealing with the paperwork for a couple of recent cases. I hate paperwork, hence the caffeine.

Couldn’t be helped, though. I needed to get paid. And drum up some extra work. The jobs I had in front of me were standard background checks—simple and quick, but not lucrative. After self-employment taxes, I’d be lucky if I could buy fresh coffee, never mind a bottle of Scotch. I don’t know how the private dicks in those old pulpy novels got by.

Hell, I do know. They were fictional characters. They could afford to sit in their squalid offices with their feet up on their desks, drowning their boredom in whiskey. I had bills to pay.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Rollin Stone. Go ahead, laugh. I’ll wait. Let’s just get it out of the way right now. I’m thirty-two, former Army intelligence, former researcher and leg man for a midsized detective agency, now making a living of sorts as a private investigator in the grande dame of American history, the city of Philadelphia. My specialty is finding missing persons, tracking down runaway wives and teens, and running background checks on potential corporate hires. I carry a gun, but it’s mostly for self-defense. Considering the places my quarry hides out, I’m more likely to run afoul of drunks, junkies, and homeless folks with mental health issues. Not once have I ever shot it out with a hit man or been hauled in front of a mob boss by a pair of baboonish thugs. If you were hoping for a Spenser or Philip Marlow, sorry to disappoint.

Although…I wouldn’t  mind having a curvy, long-legged blonde in a blood-red dress with a slit up to here and a neckline plunging right down to there sashay into my office. Especially today. I don’t know why, but this morning I woke up and got socked in the head with memories of Ellise. I’d found and lost her two years ago, but for some reason it had decided to hit me all over again just now. Hence my sudden obsession with mind-numbing paperwork. Sometimes tedium can work better than booze, but I was starting to think neither could help me.

I hefted my mug again and sipped air. Out of coffee. I eyeballed the pot on the hotplate on the counter. There was probably enough left for maybe half a cup. It looked as dark and sullen as a thug in handcuffs standing before a judge. Did I really just think that? Yeesh. I definitely needed to lay off the hard-boiled detective cliches.

Lacking alcohol, I made the best of things, poured the sludge into my cup and optimistically gulped it down, trying my damnedest to ignore the taste. It didn’t work, but I did feel a lot more awake now. After getting a fresh pot going, I tromped back to my desk, but before I could sit I was stopped by a knock on the office door. A possible client? I’d take it. Anything’s better than paperwork, or sad memories, or my coffee.

“Excuse me?” the possible payday said. “Are you the detective?”

“Like it says on the door,” I quipped. Even before I looked I knew I was going to be disappointed. The voice was deep but nowhere near sultry, and unmistakably male. No classy dame in a red dress and stiletto heels to drag me out of my misery. Instead…

Being a good PI often requires one to have an exceptional poker face, and I had to make mine earn its keep here. The guy wasn’t ugly, exactly, but… Holy Mother of God. I’ve seen sheepdogs with less hair. This guy was sporting a full-body rug. Head, face, chest, forearms, knuckles, feet. Which were bare, by the way. The legs were probably hairy too, but I couldn’t see them due to the baggy, size XXX sweat pants he had on. He was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt, open to reveal all the body hair carpeting what looked like rolling mounds of muscle. Once I got over my initial shock I started noticing details. The hair was coarse, like a gorilla’s, but with a reddish-brown tinge. On second look I decided he had a pretty okay set of cheekbones after all, along with a chin you could break a cinderblock on and a pair of piercing blue eyes. If there was a low forehead and a beetle brow, it was well concealed by the mop up top. He was maybe about five-seven, several inches shorter than me. He had me beat in the bulk department, too; I tend to lean toward lean. Side by side, we must have looked like Tarzan and one of the apes. I wondered if Tarzan getting too close to an ape might account for his Neanderthalish appearance.

Still, a job’s a job, and anything beats paperwork. As long as he didn’t try to pay me in bananas.

“C’mon in,” I invited. I noticed him sniffing, either me or the room. Thank God I’d started a fresh pot of coffee. “That’ll be ready in a sec,” I said. “Have a seat.”

I put my desk between us and carefully sat in the well-worn swivel chair behind it. I did not put my feet up. I wanted to be ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice in case Barney Rubble pulled out a club or something. I did clear my unfinished paperwork out of the way. The ape-man walked over—just like a regular guy, no dragging knuckles involved—and settled onto one of the two wooden, non-swiveling chairs set before my desk for clients. His butt just barely fit. He didn’t put his feet up either, which, considering his lack of footwear and the state of a lot of Philly’s sidewalks, was probably best.

“So,” I said. Such scintillating wit. “How can I help you, Mr….?”

He blinked at me and pursed thick, apish lips. “Treelore.”

“Mr. Treelore. I’m Rollin Stone. Go on, take your best shot.” He stared at me blankly. The silence started to stretch. “My name,” I invited. “No comment?”

“Stone,” he said, and nodded. “Strong. Sturdy. Powerful. A positive omen. I’ve been told you search for missing persons?”

“Yes,” I said, hoping my private-eye poker face was still as strong as my name. Because behind it, I was as puzzled as hell. “It’s my specialty.”

“Perfect,” he said, and bared a set of large, heavy and scarily healthy-looking teeth at me. “I was definitely sent to the right man. I need a person of your caliber to help me find my creator.”

Mmmmkay. “That sounds a bit outside my balliwick, Mr. Treelore.” So much for paying the bills. “Sounds more like you need a priest. We’ve got tons of churches here in Philly. Pick your favorite denomination. I think there’s even a Druidic cult that holds meetings in Fairmount Park. They may still have their web page—”

“Not that kind of creator,” my erstwhile client hastily interrupted. “I’m not looking for any deity. I’m looking for the man who created me.”

“Your father?” Not that that was any improvement. I’d have a better chance of finding Jesus than I would Bigfoot, especially in the city. One of them, at least, may have actually existed at some point.

“I suppose he could be, in a broad sense of the word. This gets a little tricky.” Before I could loose yet another witty rejoinder, he finished, “He’s a writer.”

“Your father was a writer.”

Son of Kong sighed and rubbed his forehead with two thick, stubby fingers in a very modern human gesture. Turned out there was a beetle brow under all that hair, though it wasn’t as pronounced as I’d expected. “I’m not sure how best to put it. Maybe this will help.”

He reached under the Hawaiian shirt, dug his fingers into the tight band of his sweat pants and pulled out an object which he laid on the desk before me. I’d automatically tensed when he did the reach but relaxed again when I saw what he’d come up with: a paperback book.

And not just any paperback. This was the type of book that helped to give “pulp fiction” its moniker. Earth B.C. was plastered across the top, overshadowing a secondary title, Realm of the Troglodyte King. The cover painting showed a creature even more simian than my would-be client with its trollish mitts on a struggling redheaded co-ed type in a fur bikini that was more afterthought than garment. A second, slightly-more-human-looking brute with a long black mane and chest hair to match charged at them with club upraised, perhaps rushing to the co-ed’s defense. The background showed a bare plain and a smoking mountain, with a couple prehistoric-looking birds gliding overhead. If “lurid” had a mug shot, this would be it.

“That’s him.” My maybe-client reached across the desk and tapped his finger at the bottom of the cover. “This is the man I’m looking for.”

I tore my eyes away from the woman’s fur-clad, heaving bosom—hey, I’m as human as the next private eye, and the artist had given her one hell of a rack—and looked where Captain Caveman was pointing. Sure enough, there was a name down there, near the troll’s huge, ugly tootsies: Jack MacAron. Given the subject matter, it was probably a pseudonym. My name’s no prizewinner, but I still wouldn’t want it tied to anything like this.

“Did you try contacting the publisher?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They went out of business years ago. They had a building in Radnor, but it’s an office complex now.” He sniffed the air. “What’s that delightful smell?”

“Coffee,” I told him, though he was the first and only of my clients to call its aroma “delightful.” I got up, careful to keep the desk between myself and him. He watched me avidly, but didn’t budge. I gave my mug a quick rinse and pulled a fresh one out of the cupboard for my client. There was some powdered creamer in there too, hopefully not too petrified. The sugar was fresher; there are days, and cases, where a sugar rush to top off the caffeine came in handy. This could possibly be one of those cases. “How do you take your coffee? Black?”

He squinted at the pot. “It’s black already.”

I had my answer. Abandoning the creamer to its cupboard tomb, I poured myself a double, then filled the second mug and returned to my desk with them, along with the box of sugar cubes tucked under my arm. I set the mugs on the desk along with the box of sugar. After a second’s consideration, I shook a couple of cubes into my palm and dumped them into my java. Every little bit helps.

“How about Google?” I asked, resuming our conversation. “Did you try looking him up?”

The ape man was still sniffing his coffee. He dipped the tip of his tongue into it, and made a face. I relaxed a little. That’s the reaction I expect in regards to my coffee. “Sure you don’t want some cream or sugar?” I nodded toward the box.

He took the box. Shook it. Sniffed it. Okay, this was getting weird. Weirder.

Then a thought hit me and my own nose twitched. That whiff of phantom ashes drifting up my nostrils was the scent of a paycheck going up in smoke. Nobody, not even a Philadelphian, would dress and act like this unless they were totally wackadoo. Or cosplaying.

I had an interest in science fiction and comic books back when I was a kid. It was part of the reason I went for intelligence training and info gathering during my stint in the Army—homage to my childhood inspiration of Batman, the world’s greatest detective. My enthusiasm shifted away from such things when puberty hit, but I knew it hadn’t for a lot of others. These others read books, went to movies, held conventions, sometimes even found ways to make a living based on their childhood hobbies, then bitched about it all on the internet. It’s one of the reasons I stay off social media except when I’m tracking somebody.

Some of them—more than used to be, I’m afraid sometimes—never quite make the jump from kid to grownup, even with puberty’s help. My Stone Age guest looked like he might be in his twenties. Hard to tell under all that hair. Even so, a little old for dress-up. Yet here he was, in my office, made up to look like a caveman and pretending not to know what coffee and sugar were. And he was looking for somebody. A writer whose oeuvre included books about cavemen. Maybe he was just an overenthusiastic fan. Like the one who shot John Lennon. Or Mr. Hinkley, Jodie Foster enthusiast.

I edged closer to my desk, and the drawer with my gun in it. “So,” I said, “Mister…Treelore. I’m guessing you’re not from around here. Why start your search in Philadelphia?”

“Mmphggff?” he responded around a mouthful of sugar cubes. He had another half dozen in his big simian mitt.

“The sugar’s supposed to go in the coffee,” I offered helpfully.

True to character, Mr. Treelore grunted, shrugged, and slurped down a big gulp of coffee. It must have met with his personal standards, because he smiled with all those big teeth showing again. “Much better. Rather refreshing, once you adjust to the bitterness. We’ve got something like this back where I’m from, but you have boil tree bark to get it. You had a question?” He popped several extra sugar cube chasers into his mouth.

I moved the box to my side of the desk, out of reach. “What led you to think your writer friend might be found in Philadelphia?”

“That’s the city outside, right? Well, I…I didn’t exactly come here. This is going to sound rather strange.”

“I think I can take it.”

“I certainly hope so. Last night I was home. I went to sleep. This morning I woke up here, in your Filladelfya. I was confused at first. I wasn’t the only one. You should have seen the faces on the people around me. I know I don’t exactly fit in.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’m sure. At any rate, as I sat there I began to…know things. Like remembering, but more organic. Who I am, what I am, why I needed to find this particular author.” He eyed the paperback, then the box of sugar cubes. I tensed for a lunge, but he sighed and slumped in his chair. “That’s not completely accurate. I’m not entirely sure just why I need to find the writer, only that I do. Perhaps he’ll be able to tell me why I was brought to this world.”

Oh yeah. Serious psychotic break in progress here. “I thought you said he was your father.”

“My creator. An entirely different thing. He wasn’t my father, per se. This is my father.” He pointed to the Neanderthal on the book cover. “And my mother. This is the world that I came from. I’m not really real, not as I’m sure you know it. I’m a fictional character.”

Oh-kay. Time to go for the gun.

“I know what you must be thinking. ‘He’s nuttier than a squirrel in an oak tree.’ If I may?” He reached—slowly, I’ll give him that—for the letter opener on my desk. His steady stare remained fixed to my face. I didn’t dare make a grab for the drawer. The slightest twitch was liable to set him off.

Only he didn’t try to cut me. He cut himself instead. A quick, shallow slice across the meat of his forearm. Blood welled up almost at once. Or something did. Whatever it was, it was liquid, glistening and black.  He smeared some on his fingers, then transferred some smear to one of the unfinished forms on my desk. He laid the letter opener carefully next to it. The air hovering around both form and letter opener took on the smell of a newspaper.

Captain Caveman plucked a tissue from the box on the other side of my desk and blotted his arm with it. Then he set about wiping his fingers. “Go ahead,” he invited, with a chin jab at the paper. “Check it out.”

I did, starting with the letter opener. A few streaks of black still clung to the metal. I dabbed a cautious fingertip at it. It was warm, though not blood warm. More like room-temp water. When I wiped my finger carefully along the blade, it left a dark stain on my skin.

All of a sudden I realized what the scent was. Why my finger suddenly smelled like a David Baldacci tome hot off the press, with a slight undercurrent of sweat. “This is—”

“Ink,” my mysterious client said. “Printer’s ink.”

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Hey, at least I'm writing. See you all next week.