My Trenchcoat Period

This came in the mail today:


It’s an Ellery Queen comic book from 1961. I bought it the other day on eBay. It reminded me that I never told you about my short-lived career as a private detective.

I’ve always loved detective stories. As a kid, I was fascinated by Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators. I wanted to be like them, to be able to spot clues and pull together all the pieces of a puzzle while everyone else stood around scratching their heads. I wasn’t very good at clue-spotting, but I was convinced it was a talent that I would develop with experience.

So one day when I was about eleven, I decided to become a private investigator. Oh, I knew there were schools you could attend to study crime detecting methods. I just wasn’t patient enough to wait until I was an adult. After all, Frank and Joe Hardy weren’t much older than me, right? Of course, their dad was a cop. Mine worked in a steel mill. Maybe they had an advantage there. But my dad had given me a very useful too: the legendary Justice stubbornness.

I was going to be a P.I. right now.

I figured every good gumshoe had business cards. I took typing paper and drew business cards on them, as professionally as I could muster. If I recall correctly, they read something like this:

Mark Justice
Private Detective
No Case Too Big Or Too Small

Imagine that in an eleven-year-old’s scrawl, along with my phone number, and you have a idea of the caliber of private dick my neighborhood was dealing with.

(By the way, some who know me won’t be surprised to find out I was a dick at an early age. But that’s another column altogether.)

Once I had my business cards, I passed them out on my street. I remember receiving a lot of patronizing smiles and pats on the head from the grownups. I didn’t want their compliments, dammit. I wanted a case.

Let me digress at this point to tell you about the Hot Girls. These were the three sisters that lived a few houses down the road. The oldest girl was already out of high school, so she wasn’t around much. The youngest daughter was only a couple of years older than me and didn’t really show up on my radar.

But the middle girl....

Oh mama. Middle Girl made me feel the same way Batgirl did when I saw her in TV, like everything in my head was all squishy.

Middle Girl was probably a junior or senior in high school at the time, way out of my league. Of course I was too young and naive to even have a league. That didn’t stop the other guys in the ‘hood and me from hanging around Middle Girl as much as possible.

When she sunbathed. When she washed her car. When she did anything.

Since she was a goddess, Middle Girl naturally had a lot of boyfriends. And in the summer of my P.I. career, she had one particular guy. We’ll call him Charley, mainly because I don’t remember his name.

On the day I passed out my shamus business cards, I must’ve given one to Charley, because several days later the phone rang at the house and Mom handed it to me with a funny look. “Somebody wants to speak to ‘Mark Justice, Private Detective’,” she said. I recognized the look. It said what have you gone and done now?

But I didn’t have time for that kid stuff. This was business.

“Hello?”

A voice I barely recognized said, “Is this the private detective?”

“Yes," I said, my voice crackling with a combination of nerves and puberty.

“This is Charley, Middle Girl’s boyfriend. I need to hire you.”

This was it. My first case.

“First, I need you to tell me if her car is in the driveway,” Charley said.

“Just a minute.” I put the phone down and crept out the kitchen door. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible by strolling down the driveway to check the mail box. Of course, my eagle eyes missed nothing. Her car was there.

I went back in and reported to Charley. He didn’t sound very happy.

“Okay,” he said. “Were there any other cars there? Like one you didn’t recognize?”

I had to go back out and check. Son of a gun, there was a little sports car parked in the street. My eagle eyes had somehow missed it. And Middle Girl was getting into the car with some guy.

I had to tell Charley. He was my client and deserved nothing less than the truth.

When I told him the bad news, he sounded a little sad, but he thanked me anyway and promised to pay me.

Pay me? Holy crap. I was so caught up in the excitement of my first case, I forgot about my fee.

The next day Charley was back at Middle Girl’s house, trying to win her back. I don’t think it worked out very well for him.

But as he drove slowly up the street after the break up, he stopped by my house and thanked me again.

He also gave me fifty cents.

I was a paid professional. I was a private detective.

I never saw Charley again, though I still kept an eye on Middle Girl. I think this was more for me than for him.

And I never got another case.

Still, for one shining moment, I was a P.I.

Pee Eye, baby.

So pardon me if I get misty-eyed when I see a Hardy Boys book at the flea market or I buy an Ellery Queen comic on eBay.

I’m just reliving my Glory Days, toots.