A Day In The Life of Detective Nick Weaver

Some say I write very good detective noir satire. Others say I write passable detective noir satire. And then there are the others who wish I would simply break my fingers and take up chicken farming.

With apologies to Nick.

A Day In The Life of Detective Nick Weaver

by Alan Loewen

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Nick Weaver sat at his desk, his feet up on the blotter, his pavement-worn patent leather shoes dangerously close to knocking a rum bottle off onto the floor. Around his fedora, pulled low to shade his eyes, cigarette smoke lazily made its way to the fly-spotted ceiling where a slow ceiling fan mixed the tendrils into the general haziness that filled the room.

True, the cigarette was an e-cigarette and the rum bottle was filled with tepid black coffee, but a man who made his living as a private detective had to keep up appearances.

There was a tentative knock on the door.

Nick tipped his fedora up and saw a silhouette on the glass office door, all curves and all woman which meant all trouble. “Come on in,” he said.

The door opened and she stood in the doorway, long, subtly curled red hair accentuating a perfect face. Large green eyes stood out amidst a perfect complexion marked only by a splash of freckles across a pert nose. She wore dangerously high stiletto shoes and all was barely covered with a little black dress with emphasis on the words little, black, and dress.

“Come on in, sister,” Nick said with a growl. “The meter started ticking when you opened the door.”

“Oh, Mr. Weaver,” she said, breathlessly, “I so need your help.”

Her first step into the room sent her careening against the door jamb where physics threw her against a bookcase followed by a glorious cascade of first edition Mickey Spillanes, Rex Stouts, Erle Stanley Gardners and cheap Alan Loewens, and then she immediately hit the overstuffed chair Nick had placed across his desk for clients. With an ungraceful forward roll, she flipped over the back of the chair, head over heels and finally sprawled out of breath into the chair itself.

Nick nodded to himself. “While you catch your breath, I will tell you why you are here. Seeing how you just destroyed my office, how you are squinting at me like a mobster in an interrogation room, and that when you fell, I saw you were wearing intimates marked Tuesday when today is Friday, I can see you have come to me to find your lost glasses.”

She held her clutch purse to her bosom as she panted for breath. “Oh, Mr. Weaver!” she gasped. “Craigslist was right. You’re amazing. That’s exactly why I’ve come.”

With controlled ease, Nick swung his legs off the desktop, stood up and walked over to where his new client sat. Taking her clutch purse, he opened it, dug around, and took out a heavy pair of black-framed glasses and gently put them on her face.

The woman squealed with delight, hugging her glasses to her face, bouncing her little feet up and down like a toddler seeing a store Santa Claus for the first time. “This is wonderful!” she squealed. “I can see. Oh, what can I do to repay you?”

Nick shrugged. “Going rate is 60 greenbacks an hour. For as long as you’ve been here, that’s three dollars.”

“Oh,” the woman said, “but Mr. Weaver, I’m so grateful. Just three dollars? I … I would do anything out of gratitude. Anything!”

Normally, Nick would have thrown her out, but her large, green eyes, made abnormally huge by her thick Coke bottle bottom glasses reminded him of those infamous 1960’s paintings of over-sized, doe-eyed children his own sainted mother loved and collected.

“Anything?” he asked.

The woman furiously nodded her head up down. “Anything!” she insisted.

Nick turned and pulled a card from his pocket. “Okay. Here’s the address of my house. Be there at three. You can wash my windows.”