For those of you who enjoy noir detective novels, I have included chapter one of GUMSHOE CONFUSION for your reading pleasure. This is a completed novel that is only available on my Patreon page.
To read the novel in its entirety, go to https://www.patreon.com/posts/total-chapter-81340961
Thank you, and happy reading.
Blaze McRob
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The lights from the street below send their patterns of fluorescent confusion into my office. How's a gumshoe supposed to sleep in the midst of this? Yeah, right: as if I have a choice.
My former flat belongs to some highfalutin dame now. All my belongings were confiscated and sold for non-payment of that little necessity needing to be paid, but one I wasn't able to chalk up the scratch for: rent.
Okay! Times were tough. The number of wives wanting their cheating husbands tailed had dwindled to nothing. What, like the scorned bimbos didn't need what I could offer? Pictures, times, dates: everything there for the black-robed ones to drool over as they decided how much the poor faithful ball and chains would get.
So I drowned a few sorrows with hooch I couldn't afford and dames I should have stayed away from. You know the ones. They cozy up to you in a dive they shouldn't be in, sitting on a stool next to your sorrowful butt, waiting for you to light their smokes, buy their drinks, and everything else that makes you think that maybe you still have something left to offer. Next thing you know, you're in their apartment, sharing a lot more than booze and smokes.
Sure, it feels good. It always feels good, but in the morning when you get up to leave and look at the pictures in their gilded frames, you realize you're no better than the cheating studs who think they can tap whatever they want and still keep wifey happy. Turns out: you're the one keeping her happy, playing the slap and tickle game, being used like the dog you are.
The smoke from my Chesterfield rises towards the ceiling, catching the glow of the streets below and dancing about in the changing air currents caused by the drafty windows. The office lights are off, but it doesn't matter, does it? Light from below and the ever-changing pulsing staccato from the sign on the roof a block away that can't decide if it wants to light up the sky or shoot its presence down into hell are what keep the darkness out.
I reach into my top right desk drawer and grab a bottle of Scotch. Okay, it's not the good stuff, but it's not bad straight up. Hmm. Maybe that's what kind of dog I am: a Scottish Hellhound, straight from off the moors, chasing innocent broads around. Yeah, right! There are no innocent broads. They want the same things guys want; they just don't admit it.
Tipping my fedora back and putting my feet up on my desk, I try to find a position that maybe I can get comfortable in. Fall asleep perhaps. I put out my finished smoke in the ashtray and figure maybe one more to relax me before I doze off. Halfway through and there's a knocking on my door.
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Cover art by Pexels.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright 2022 by Blaze McRob. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the author directly. Thank you for your support of the author's rights.
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