Naked Detective - Laurence Shames - Hardcover - 1 ED

Chapter One I never meant to be a private eye. The whole thing, in fact, was my accountant's idea. A tax dodge. Half a joke. A few years ago I made some money. Made it the modern American way: by sheer dumb luck, doing work I hated, on a silly product that only made life more trivial and more annoying. I took the dough-not a lot of dough, but enough to live on for the rest of my life if I wasn't an asshole about it-and moved full-time to Key West. I'd had a funky little house there for years. Wood frame, shady porch, tiny pool that took up most of a backyard choked with thatch and bougainvillea. Vacation house. Daydreaming about that place, the time I'd eventually spend there, got me through a lot of crappy afternoons in my stupid office up in Jersey. Now I wanted to really make it home. So I told my accountant to free up some cash. "I'm renovating. Building an addition." "You're putting in an office," he informed me. "Office? Benny, I'm retired." "Bullshit you're retired. What are you, forty-six?" "Forty-seven." "Forty-seven you don't retire. Forty-seven you have a crisis and change careers." "There's no crisis, Benny. I'm putting in wine storage, a music room, and a hot tub." He raised his hands to fend off the information. "You never told me that," he said. "It's an office and it'll save you thousands. Tens of thousands. Plus your car becomes deductible." I made the mistake of keeping silent for a moment. Call me cheap. I shouldn't have even thought about it, but the idea of saving tens of thousands made me pause. "Become a realtor," Benny suggested. "Everyone down there becomes a realtor, right?" I'd dealt with realtors in my life. "I'd rather shoot myself," I said. "Shoot yourself," he muttered, then started free-associating. "Tough guy. Humphrey Bogart. Hey, call yourself a private eye." "Don't be ridiculous." He quickly fell in love with his idea. "Ya know," he said, "there's a lot of advantages. Private corporation. One employee: you. You get a gun-." "Benny, cut it out." "-get a license-" "How you get a license?" "Florida?" he said. "Probably swear you haven't murdered anybody in the last sixty, ninety days." "Benny, I don't wanna be a private eye." He paused, blinked, and looked somewhat surprised. "Schmuck! Did I say you have to be a private eye? I said we're calling you a private eye. You'll get some business cards, put a listing in the phone book-" "Commit fraud-" "What fraud? You're committing failure. Look, the government allows three years' worth of losses. By then we've depreciated the work on the house, the car lease has expired-" Well, the whole thing was preposterous-and I guess I kind of like preposterous. Having an amusing thing to say at parties, occasionally in bars. Something incongruous and intriguing. So on my tax returns, at least, I became a private eye. Pete Amsterdam, sole proprietor, doing business as Southernmost Detection, Inc. That was two and a half years ago. I have a license somewhere in a drawer, and a gun I've never fired rusting in a wall safe. Until very recently, thank God, I hadn't had a single client. Three, four times a year someone calls me up, usually on some sordid and depressing matrimonial thing. I lie and say I'm too busy; for some reason the potential client apologizes and quickly gets off the phone, like I'll charge him for my precious time. My only worry has been that the IRS might come snooping around to see if I was legit. This has been a sporadic but uncomfortable conShames, Laurence is the author of 'Naked Detective - Laurence Shames - Hardcover - 1 ED' with ISBN 9780375502538 and ISBN 037550253X.