The Third Pig Detective Agency: The Complete Casebook. Bob Burke
to resolve this particular dilemma, I heard a noise behind me. I’d like to say I spun snappily around, fists ready for another fight, but I’d be lying. If I had to spin around it would probably have taken me the rest of the morning to do so.
‘Hey Mr Pig,’ said a boy’s voice. ‘Why are you covered in beans?’
I eventually managed to look around very slowly and very carefully. A boy of about nine, keeping a very safe distance away, was looking at me with interest. Presumably he didn’t get to see a pig in a suit covered with garbage every day. He was dressed in faded jeans, sneakers and a white T-shirt with Hubbard’s Cubbard (Grimmtown’s latest music phenomenon) emblazoned loudly across the front.
‘I fell,’ I said, keeping it simple.
‘So how did you get that black eye?’ he asked. Great: a small nosey boy.
‘Fell against those boxes there.’ I pointed to the pile of flat cardboard that had been boxes before I fell on them.
‘And the cut lip?’ A small, nosey, perceptive boy.
‘Banged off the wall.’
‘And how did your clothes get torn?’ Now he was becoming irritating on top of being small, nosey and perceptive.
‘Look,’ I said in exasperation. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school or out begging or something?’
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘I don’t go to school on Saturdays.’
In my defence, I can only say that my deductive powers were still impaired as a result of the previous night’s incident, otherwise, of course, I’d have worked that out in a matter of seconds. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
He finally decided I was fairly harmless – or at least wasn’t in a position to do him any real harm – and asked if I needed help. As his chances of carrying me were about the same as Dumbo falling out of the sky on us, I asked him to find a payphone and call Gloria.
‘Tell her Harry needs a cab,’ I groaned, throwing some coins and my business card at him. ‘There should be a phone box out on the street somewhere.’
He looked at the card with great interest. ‘Wow, a detective. How cool is that?’
‘At the moment, not very,’ I replied. ‘Just make the call and I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘You mean I can work for you; be your informant or something?’
‘No. I mean I’ll give you ten bucks.’
His face dropped. ‘But I hear all kinds of cool stuff. I could be really useful, specially with my contacts.’
‘Look kid,’ I said with as much patience as I could muster (which wasn’t really a lot), ‘if I need to know who stole the Queen of Heart’s tarts I’ll contact you, OK. Now can you just make the call? Please.’
He trudged down the alleyway to the street and I tried to clean up my clothes. Apart from used magic beans there were a number of wet newspapers, a variety of vegetables, an old bedspring and spaghetti on various parts of my person. I wasn’t sure if I was removing them or smearing them in. When I was finished I certainly didn’t smell any better and my suit would never be worn again thanks to the many non-removable stains it now sported. Moving very carefully and very painfully I made my way back towards the street, one aching step at a time.
To my surprise, the kid had made the call and a cab was waiting at the kerb for me. When the driver saw my condition (or smelled my condition, to be more accurate), he was understandably reluctant to let me into his cab. After looking in the back of it I didn’t see how I could have made conditions there any worse as the back seat and floor were covered with candy wrappers, old newspapers, apple cores, melted chocolate and various strange and unsavoury-looking stains. If I hadn’t known better I’d have assumed the cab had spent the night in the same pile of garbage as I had. When I pointed this out to the driver – and waved a twenty under his nose – he not-so-graciously consented to take me back to the office. As I was getting into the cab I reached into my pocket, drew out a ten-dollar note and handed it to the kid.
‘Here kid,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help. By the way, what’s your name?’
‘Jack,’ he replied, examining the note for authenticity. ‘Jack Horner.’
‘Well, Jack Horner, maybe I’ll see you around.’
‘Count on it Mister.’ He turned and walked back down the alleyway.
The cab pulled away and made its way back to my office. I wasn’t in the mood for chat so after the cab driver had covered the usual in-taxi topics (weather, sport, vacations, weather again and traffic) without a hint of a response from me, he wisely chose to drive the rest of the journey in silence. At least I gave him a tip when we got to the office: I told him where he could find a good car cleaning service. He didn’t seem too impressed as he drove off.
As I entered my office, Gloria tried (none too successfully) not to laugh.
‘I shouldn’t ask,’ she giggled, ‘but what happened to you? You look like you slept in garbage.’
I was about to point out how accurate she was and then decided not to give her the satisfaction. I have my pride, you know. With what was left of my dignity I slimed my way into my office. Within a matter of minutes I was clean, well, cleaner at any rate, sartorially more elegant and, more importantly, smelling a lot less like rotten vegetables. That kind of thing can have a negative effect on clients and this was a client I didn’t want to affect negatively, especially on my first day. I opened the top drawer of my desk and took out a spare phone. I had a running supply of spares; cell phones tended to have a limited life expectancy in my pockets. In fact, I suspected that the phone company had a special factory just making phones for me, such was the rate I went through them.
Gloria was still smirking when I came back out.
‘That’s a bit better, but not much,’ she said. If anything, her smirk had gotten wider.
‘Thanks for the beauty tips,’ I replied. ‘Maybe you should take it up professionally. You’re obviously wasted in this job.’
‘Now, now, I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well, try harder.’ I headed for the door and walked down to where my car was parked. Sliding into the driver’s seat I gave myself a last once-over in the mirror.
‘Presentable,’ I murmured. ‘Not at my best, but I should pass muster. At least they won’t know that I spent the night sleeping in an alleyway.’
I started the car and drove uptown to see how the other half lived. Nestling in the foothills on the north side of town, Frog Prince Heights – possibly Grimmtown’s most exclusive residential area – was home to the richest, most famous and probably most downright crooked of our citizens. Most of the very large and tasteless mansions had their own security service and enough electronic surveillance to make even the most paranoid of residents comfortable in their beds at night. As was the case with all residential areas of this type, the higher up the hills you went, the bigger the estates got. To my total lack of surprise, my client’s home (if a word like home could do justice to the palace I drove up to) was right at the top of the hill overlooking the entire town.
‘Master of all he surveys, no doubt,’ I said, as I pulled up at the very large, very imposing and very closed gates that were embedded in even larger and more imposing walls. Just to the left of the gates was a small speaker underneath which was a bright red button. Pressing the button, I waited for a response. As I sat there, I imagined that very hidden, very small, very expensive and very-high-resolution cameras were even now trained on me, watching my every move. I didn’t have to wait too long.
‘Yes,’ crackled a voice from the speaker.
‘Harry Pigg. I have an appointment.’
‘Just one moment.’
A please would have been