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You been waiting long? Yeah, my girl’s in Miami for her honeymoon. Sorry about the mess, she usually dusts the place regularly. There’s not much else for her to do. Typing my reports. Answering the phone, on the rare occasions when it rings. Bugging me to hunt up more clients. Flirty banter.
She’s a good kid. Might have married her myself if it wouldn’t have messed up this whole “His Girl Friday” dynamic we’ve got going. “I’m not going to be just another floozy for you, Jim,” she tells me. “You wouldn’t respect me after that.”
She’s not wrong, either. That’s dames for you.
But you didn’t come here to listen to me crack wise. No one walks through that door unless they’re in a world of trouble. So tell me: blackmail? Wife stepping out on you? Crooked business partner? That’s usually what brings someone into this office. Brother, I tell you I have seen it all.
Not sure I’m tracking you here.
The Deep State … Hunter’s laptop … Marxist prosecutors …
Yeah, I read the papers. Mostly just the race times out at Belmont. Do I look like a guy who sits around the bar at the Astoria talking politics with the uptown crowd?
You dug yourself into this one, brother. You could have just straight paid off that twist out of your own pocket, but you had to try some cockamamie scheme of getting your lawyer to do it and then paying him back through some phony agreement. You rich people make these things so complicated. Then you get jammed up by someone like District Attorney Bragg and you come wailing to me with your hat in your hand.
Oh, I’ve gotten in Bragg’s way a time or two myself. Usually when he can’t admit a case has him stumped. There was that Park Avenue chippy last year that slipped peanuts into her allergic mom’s smoothie so she could inherit the family fortune. There was the businessman from Altoona in town for a day who some squeegee guy stabbed through the heart with a wiper blade. I had to put that guy down. Maybe I bent a few laws to do it, but nothing Bragg could make stick.
Yeah, sorry about the shouting. I know it’s not the best trait for a P.I. But I’m genetically incapable of speaking at a normal human volume. Seriously. I had my DNA sequenced and found out I lack the gene that controls vocal modulation.
I had no idea there was a gene for that either. But it does run in my family. My father yelled all the time, even when he wasn’t using his fists on us. He’d sit in that easy chair in Champaign County, Ohio, with his jar of liquor he brewed in my mama’s washtub and he’d look at us with his one good eye — he lost his other eye when Mama stabbed it with a pickle fork — and he’d yell about how he had nothing growing up on his daddy’s farm, and weren’t we just the most ungrateful brats you’ve ever seen, and hey Jimmy wipe that sneer off your face before I use your noggin as a bowling ball at my next League Night…
I thought he was really deaf. Turns out he could hear fine, it was the volume control on his internal radio that was out of whack. I couldn’t wait to join the Army and get out of there and never look back.
So could I investigate Bragg? I could. Don’t think I’ll find much. Not every man has secrets, that’s a cliché. Some men run straighter than the train to Montauk.
The entire federal government? Seems like kind of a wide net to cast. I’m just a down-at-the-heels P.I., not the Pinkertons. I’ve got Velma, if her head’s not still in the clouds when she gets back from Miami. I’ve got Rufus, he runs numbers for King Pappy up in Harlem, and sometimes I throw him two bits to help with some legwork. Mostly it’s just me. The feds may not like me, I may have been a pain in their side here and there, but J. Edgar still has me outmanned.
Bias at social media companies? Listen, you want someone who can peep through a few keyholes, you call me. You want someone who can follow a cheating wife or find your daughter who’s gone to seed in some Village flop, I’m your man. But some hippies with a vague business plan and a stack of energy drinks isn’t my usual bag, unless they’re running a blackmail scheme.
Joe Biden? The president? What do you have on him? Dead girl? Live boy?
No, I think the feds probably have his kid’s laptop locked up tighter than Greta Garbo. I could ask around, see if I can shake it loose. Might have to grease a few palms. And from what I read in the papers, there’s not much on it besides business emails and porn. You sure you want to hire me for that? Might wind up being more embarrassing to you for talking about it like it’s the Rosenbergs’ notebook than it is for Joe Biden.
Well okay, it’s your dime.
Normally a hundred dollars a day. Plus expenses. But for you, I’ll need a retainer in cash ahead of time.
No, I don’t think that’s highway robbery. You’re welcome to run up the street and see if the Pinkertons will give you a better deal.
Wonkette also accepts retainers, and we’ll put them to better use than Jim Jordan.
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