Jon Mally-Private Dick (5)the Blackmailed Beauty

+*John Malloy-Private Dick*+ (5)
(The Blackmailed Beauty)
                  +Love after Lust+

I know the P.I. handbook says no noodling your client, but the author never met Lana  Rogers!

"Are you leaving now?" she called from my bedroom, all sweetness and sunshine. I figured she must have had a swell time last night, too.

"Yeah," I called back, as I finished putting a windsor in my black tie. "I'm gonna ask that dirty cop's old lady a few leading questions about that crooked flatfoot, after he toddles off to bust kids for smoking in public!"

Yesterday, I'd bumped gums with a fellow -detective I used to work with on the force, before Pearl Harbor prompted me to inlist as a pilot in the Army Air Core.

 I already had a pilot's license, so they made me a bomber jockey in '42. The 82nd Airborne was where a hung my hat until Germany surrendered. After I cashed out, I hung up my shamus shingle in L.A..

Anyway, my pal had become a captain in my old precenct, but he still was good for some Intel, from time to time. He clued me as to where Withers hid his ugly keister from the outside world.

 I take a gander in the living room  mirror hanging on my dindgy, tan wall. I was freshly shaved, and my thirty-two year old tanned features didn't look none too bad, if I do say so, myself.  At six-one and a hundred           and seventy pounds, I think I'm still in pretty good shape. My dad is full-blooded Irish, and Mom is half Cherokee, so I came out with blue eyes and a natural tan. It's worked for me, so far.

I haven't been thrown out of the sack since I got caught with my married high school math teacher. I didn't really blame her husband for that action, but since he was the local beat cop, I got a lot of traffic tickets for a couple of years after that.

"I won't be here when you get back, Darling," she called. "I'm going to an audition at the R.K O. studio!"

There it was ...that word that gets a lot of formally-happy palookas in the wedding chapel, with a ring in his pocket, and one in his beezer....
Darling!
 
" No problamo!" I yelled back. " I'll give you jingle on the ameche when I get some dope on that dope!"

As I'm waltzing out the door, I hear, "You were wonderful last night,  John!"

" Yeah," I answer, "I know!"

I closed the door behind me, reminding myself not to be so damned wonderful from now on.