called Mrs. Drawbridge and demanded quadruple my rate. She reluctantly agreed, and mentioned her husband was in bed, still asleep. I decided to stakeout her house and tail him. And this time, I'd be taking some sophisticated equipment.
I returned to the condo and entered my Crime Lab. It was actually an extra bedroom that I converted into a crime lab by stocking it with spy stuff and writing Crime Lab on the door. The modern private detective had to stay current with modern gadgetry, so I bought all of the latest high-tech stuff. Phone tappers. Listening devices. Infra red things. A remote control tank with a miniature video camera hooked up to the turret. Cell phone jammers. A set of brass knuckles with a microchip inside that played Pat Benatar when I socked somebody. All the essentials.
I popped the SanDisk memory card out of the tank and plugged it into my computer, to check the footage I'd recorded during my practice run. The video was a little choppy, but more than acceptable.
The first scene was of a dog in Grant Park, urinating.
Cut to the same dog, pooping.
Cut to another dog, pooping.
Cut to the first dog, eating the second dog's poop.
Cut to a third dog, trying to hump the first dog, who was still munching on the poop.
Cut to the poop, which didn't look like it warranted being eaten.
Cut to some gangbanger punk, running off with my tank.
Cut to me explaining to the cop why I fired my gun in a populated area, and then me getting arrested.
With some editing, and the right soundtrack, the footage could be the backbone of a really good documentary about urban crime, and the amusing social lives of dogs.
I opened up a fresh SanDisk card, put that in the tank, and loaded everything into in a gym bag, along with a digital camera that could shoot night-vision, a Bionic Ear listening cannon, and a little wind-up nun that shot sparks out of her eyes. Thusly equipped, I high-tailed it over to the long term garage, jumped in my stakeout car—an inconspicuous green Chevy El Camino with yellow racing stripes on the hood—and drove to Jim Drawbridge's house.
The key to any successful stakeout is three-fold: Food, tunes, and a pot to piss in. The food should consist of chips and snack cakes. Sugar and carbohydrates jack up the insulin level, which leads to a heighten sense of awareness, probably. The music should be high energy, like heavy metal, but don't include the power ballads. The piss pot can be an old milk jug or thermos. Try to avoid cellophane potato chip bags, as I've learned from experience they tend to leak.
Since I never knew when I'd have to go on a stakeout, I kept my car stocked with everything I needed. But once I found a suitable vantage point—on the street directly in front of Jim's house—I realized I was less stocked than I should have been. I was way low on sugary snacks, but had a surplus of urine in an old apple juice bottle. Unless it was, perhaps, actually apple juice. A quick sniff would tell me.
It was urine. And I needed to stop eating asparagus.
I took a moment to muse about the gratuitous amount of bodily fluids that seem to have come up in this case, and cracked open the door and dumped the piss onto the street, where it made a foamy little river down the curb and to the sewer drain.
Then I cranked up the Led Zeppelin, licked the crust out of some old Twinkie wrappers, and waited for Jim to show up.
After half an hour, the coffee needed to be set free, so I filled up half the apple juice bottle. The secret to zero splatter is aiming for the inside edge, and then squeezing dry rather than shaking.
After an hour, Mrs. Drawbridge came out of the house and knocked on my window.
“George left before you got here.”
“Do you have any snacks?”
“No.”
I noticed she had some orange powder in the corner of her unattractive mouth.
“You have cheese curls,” I said.
“No I don't.”
“Bring me the cheese curls.”
She folded her arms. “I don't have any.”
“You have Cheetos dust on your lips.”
“I was eating carrots.”
“Were they powdered carrots?”
“Maybe.”
“Bring me the goddamn Cheetos, or I'm off the case.”
She frowned and waddled off. I called after her, “And anything Hostess or Dolly Madison!”
I air guitared in perfect synchronization with Jimmy Page until the ugly wife returned with my treats. The Cheetos bag only had a few left in the bottom, and Mrs. Drawbridge's cheeks were puffed out chipmunk-style. She also brought me half a raspberry Zinger.
“You ate them,” I said, stating the obvious.
She shook her head. “Mmphmtmummuffff.”
“Don't lie. You did. You're still chewing.”
“Ummurrfumamamm.”
“Are too.”
She swallowed, and I watched the large lump slide down her throat.
“I think my husband went to his parent's house,” she said after smacking her lips.
“What am I supposed to do with half a Zinger? It's like the size of my thumb.”
“I said I think my husband went to his parent's house.”
“Who?”
“My husband. After his parents died, he refused to sell it. I'm not allowed to go over there. He's got all kinds of locks and security devices. I think he may be hiding something.”
I scarfed down the rest of the cheese curls, then washed them down with the remaining half a Zinger. It wasn't even half. Maybe a third, at best.
“I'm the detective, lady. I'll decide if he's hiding anything. Gimme the address.”
She gave it to me. It was in the neighborhood of Streeterville, less than a mile away.
“I'll call you in exactly two hours. If you don't hear from me, I want you to call Lt. Jacqueline Daniels in District 26 and tell her where I am. Tell her it's an emergency. Did you get that?”
“Yeah. Is that apple juice?”
I glanced at my pee bottle.
“Yeah. But it's warm.”
“I have ice in the house.”
“Help yourself.”
She took the piss, and I started the car and drove off. Little did I know I was about to face the darkest moment of my entire career. A moment so dark, that had I known it was coming, I would have done something else instead, like see a movie, or go to the zoo and bang on the windows in the monkey house. But I didn't know what was going to happen, because I couldn't predict the future, because if I could I would have predicted the lottery numbers and been super-rich and never would have needed the money that caused me to go to that house in Streeterville, which was the darkest moment of my entire career. So that's where I went. Unbeknownst to me.
In hindsight, I really shouldn't have gone.
Chapter 12 aka The Darkest Moment Of My Career
So I had no idea I was heading into the darkest moment of my career, but I went anyway.
Before going there, however, I stopped for red hots at Fat Louie's Red Hots on Clark and got a dog with the works. It was terrible, and I have really low standards. In my humble opinion, hot dogs shouldn't have veins. Or anything resembling a foreskin. I could barely choke the third one down.
Uncomfortably sated, I pressed onward to Phil's parent's house. The house was unassuming enough. Split- level, single family, red brick exterior. There was an oak tree out front, and a chainlink fence partitioning off the tiny backyard. I parked on the street, then took out my remote control surveillance tank. After double-checking the batteries, servos, memory card, remote sensor, camera focus, tread alignment, and wireless frequency, I gingerly
