Dick Buckle: Dipshit Detective

Chapter One: A Dick, A Dame, and Also Another Dame is There, As Well

It was a hot summer day, and the air conditioning in Detective Dick Buckle’s office was on the fritz. So was the ceiling fan. The lights didn’t seem to want to turn on either. That last one was fine, though. Detective Buckle could just open the blinds and get some light in the room. Kind of threw off the dingy private detective aesthetic he was going for, but he’d manage. Somehow.

Dick Buckle was average in just about every sense of the word. Average height, average build, average penis (he’d measured). He had a roundish face with the beginnings of a double chin and a five o’clock shadow that was approaching midnight. Chestnut hair that had begun to go grey was worn loosely combed under the fedora he wore both indoors and out. The detective’s bushy eyebrows were set above a snub nose, and his face wore a near-permanent expression of detached bemusement. His semi-permanent smirk always made him seem like he knew more than he let on, which should have been to Buckle’s advantage, but as most people quickly found out, the detective actually knew very little.

Buckle fanned himself with a case folder. He’d long since loosened his tie and undone his top few buttons. He didn’t know why he’d expected that to help — he’d chosen to wear a three piece suit today, after all.

People had always told Buckle to dress for the job he wanted. At first, he’d tried that, but when he’d started making inquiries about getting ahold of one of the sharp getups those Soviet military bigwigs were always wearing, all he’d gotten for his trouble was a phone call from something called the CIA. So he went back to suits. Heavy, itchy, boiling suits.

Buckle sighed. Fanning motion or no, this case folder wasn’t helping to cool him down, even though it involved a murder where the victim had been found frozen to death in a meat locker. Ten years on and it remained unsolved. Talk about a cold case. Buckle kept hoping someone would ask him what the file was so he could drop that zinger on them. So far, no luck. The detective dropped the file onto his cluttered desk and pushed the button on the intercom for his secretary, Janine. It was directly connected to the office’s phone line, so at least that was still working despite the lack of electricity, in case you were wondering.

Janine had come onboard a couple of years after Detective Buckle had opened the business in nineteen forty-something or other. She wore glasses and was shorter than the detective by a head, with pale skin offset by the fiery red hair which she always wore up. She had sharp features that made her look constantly angry with the detective, although the fact that she was usually (justifiably) angry with the detective for something he’d done didn’t help matters.

Permanent scowl aside, Janine looked a little plain if you asked Buckle. I don’t know why you would, but that’s your choice, I suppose. Either way, what the detective thought Janine lacked in looks, she made up for in brains. This was rare in a dame, Buckle annoyingly and sexistly told anyone who’d listen. Yet, even the great Detective Dick Buckle had to admit Janine had been a real help around the office, and even if she hadn’t been, no one could say “Janine” wasn’t the perfect name for a secretary. He couldn’t believe he’d never heard of another secretary named Janine, not even in the movies or anything!

When he hired her, Janine’s first great idea had been to rename the business to “Dick Buckle: Private Investigator”. Before that, the place had just been listed as “DICK!”. Buckle had thought it was pretty succinct; his name was a slang term for a detective after all. But then again, before the name change, he’d been forced to turn away a not-insignificant number of extremely disappointed and confused potential clients, so maybe Janine had a point.

“Janine? Any word on the electrical repairs?” Buckle asked. “I’m sweating like a ham in here.”

The intercom crackled to life. “Open your window then,” said a curt voice from the other end of the line. “Because like I told you last week, and again this morning, there’s nothing wrong with the air conditioning, or the lights. Stavros isn’t going to fix anything, because there’s nothing to fix! You just haven’t paid the electric bill in two months. Or me, for that matter. Dickhead.”

“Just Dick, please Janine, we’ve worked together for years now, no need to stand on formality with my middle name,” Dick Ed Buckle waved a hand dismissively.

“I’ll show you formality, you–” Buckle pushed a button and cut Janine off mid-tirade.

“Thanks Janine. What about the mail? Did we get the new issue of Highlights yet?” Buckle loved the Riddles section.

“-ucker. If I don’t get paid this week, you won’t have a secretary, much less a–”

“Okay, well, buzz me if anything happens, then,” Buckle clicked the intercom off. Good old Janine. He leaned back in his chair, kicked his feet up on the desk, and smiled. He had a good feeling about today.

*****

A sudden hammering at the office door startled Buckle awake.

“Whuzhappening?” Buckle asked, groggily.

“Turn your intercom back on,” Janine’s muffled voice shouted from the other side of the door. Presumably, she’d been the one trying to break it down. He could see her silhouette backing away through the frosted glass. Though, he supposed it could have been any number of short, angry redheads. Buckle lived his life in such a way that he did not lack for opportunities to be threatened by small, angry, women. He flipped a switch, turning the intercom back on.

“I wuddn’t sleeping,” he muttered, sleepily.

“I don’t care,” Janine’s voice, still curt, crackled through the speaker. “There’s someone here to see you.” She sounded incredulous, which Buckle found surprising. Sure it had been a few… months since his last case, but that was just how the private detective business was. You take a case, you solve it or you screw it up enormously, send the client an invoice, and wait four to twelve weeks for the next sucke — client to show up. It wasn’t glamorous, but as long as you didn’t have an expensive, high-functioning quaalude addiction or something, you could make enough to get by.

And besides, if Detective Dick Buckle was famous for anything, it was… actually, it was his expensive, high-functioning quaalude addiction. That was actually a tremendous financial drain on his personal and business expenses. But if he was famous for a second thing, and he liked to believe he was, it was always getting the job done. Sure, the job was mostly taking pictures of fellows in motel rooms with dames that weren’t their wives, but at least it was an actual, get-your-hands-dirty job, which was more than he could say for hedge fund managers.

“Did you hear what I said?” Janine’s annoyed voice snapped Buckle out of his reverie.

“I wasn’t thinking about quaaludes!” Buckle said in a cunning attempt to preempt any accusations from his secretary in front of a client.

“I told you he had a thing about quaaludes, right?” Janine asked someone in the room with her. “You sure you — Okay, okay. The lady still wants to talk to you, detective. For some reason. Should I send her in?”

A dame? Detective Dick Buckle grinned. “Send her in, Janine.” He leaned back in his chair, and promptly fell over.

Just as the detective was struggling to pick himself up, the door opened, and a woman walked into the office. She was gorgeous: tall and slender, but with curves in all the right places. She wore a blue, wide-brimmed sunhat and large sunglasses covered most of her face, but under those her skin was a deep, warm brown. Her dark lipstick played off the equally-dark hair that cascaded over her shoulders in tight curls. Despite the heat, the woman wore an expensive-looking skirt and jacket combination, and carried a clutch that Buckle was certain cost more than his last car. When she saw the detective, she smiled, revealing perfect teeth. Janine was there, too.

“Thank you, Janine. I’ll take it from here,” Detective Buckle said. Without taking her eyes off their potential client, the little secretary flipped the detective off and closed the door. Buckle didn’t notice any of it; he kept his eyes firmly on their attractive potential client, who in turn was focused entirely on Janine until she was completely out of the room.

“Well, she’s a firecracker,” the tall woman said, turning back to the detective with a knowing smile. Buckle was inclined to agree with that statement, but not in quite the same complimentary way. He opened his mouth to sexistly tell his new client that, while Janine wasn’t much in the looks department, she made up for it with her smarts and feistiness.

“AWOOOOOGA!” Buckle shouted, while simultaneously hoping that he hadn’t just shouted “awooga” at a strange woman. The confused expression that had replaced her smile suggested that he probably had.

“That’s… a new one,” she said, trepidation creeping into her voice.

“I told you he was an idiot!” Janine’s muffled voice filtered through the door again. Surely he hadn’t said it that loud.

“I’m sorry, did I say something about quaaludes?” the detective asked in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation.

“No. You shouted the word ‘awooga’ at me,” the woman replied. “Really loud and drawn out. Like a cartoon wolf. Given the tone, I’m a little surprised you weren’t also pounding on your desk. Maybe I should just go.” She turned to leave. “Your secretary said she had numbers for some other private detectives… Well, she didn’t say ‘other’, she said ‘better’, but you understand…”

Buckle leapt up from his chair. He couldn’t let her leave. Sexy dames like this were the lifeblood of the private detective industry! If nothing else, she looked like someone who could pay her bills, which meant completing this case and getting paid would put him on the road to more sweet, sweet quaaludes.

“I’ll take the case!” he said, stupidly, which, to be honest, was starting to seem like par for the course for the detective.

The woman hesitated, having backed up halfway to the door. “But I haven’t even told you what it is, yet.” She held her purse between them, almost like a shield.

“Ma’am, what kind of private detective would I be if I let something as inconsequential ‘what the job is’ stop me from helping a dame who clearly needs my help.” Buckle puffed out his chest, hoping it would make him seem more heroic. It just made him seem like he was holding his breath. Which he was. “Now, why don’t you sit down and tell me your name, what this is about, and whether or not you have any quaaludes on you,” Buckle wheezed, refusing to breathe out and gesturing to the chair in front of his desk.

Buckle could hardly wait. He knew her name would have to be scandalous; some barely printable, sexy double entendre. In the pictures and the adventure magazines, stunning femme fatales with double entendres for names always brought the best cases.

“My name is Martha Winifred Portholomew,” the woman said, reluctantly taking the offered seat.

“Well, obviously that’s disappointing,” Buckle said, hoping his disappointment wasn’t obvious.

“What did you say?” by some stroke of luck, Martha appeared not to have heard him.

“I said ‘obviously that’s disappointing.’” Buckle repeated, stupidly. “Your name, I mean. It’s not exactly a sexy double entendre, is it?” Buckle folded his arms, a serious look knitting itself into his brow. “Now, tell me about this case of yours,” He moved to sit on the edge of his desk in an authoritative and professorial manner, but overshot, and knocked over a tin of pens he had just organized. Buckle cursed inwardly, but Martha hadn’t seemed to notice. He was starting to hope she wasn’t particularly perceptive. Or maybe…

“Miss Portholomew,” he began. Cripes, that was a mouthful. “You wouldn’t by any chance happen to be on quaaludes right now, would you?” Buckle tried to hide the edge of desperation in his voice.

“Mrs. Portholomew,” she corrected him, her entire demeanor shifting abruptly. She’d finally gotten the measure of the detective, and understood what she was working with here. At first she’d assumed he was playing the fool, but no, he really was this stupid. “And no, I’m not on quaaludes. I’ve never been on quaaludes. The only person here who has mentioned quaaludes, aside from your lovely secretary — who was obviously trying to warn me — is you. Are the quaaludes going to keep coming up? Because frankly I’m getting tired of hearing about them, detective.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am,” Buckle responded. “But unfortunately, it’s a big part of my whole deal.”

Martha sighed, and fiddled with that expensive looking clutch. “Mr. Buckle–”

“Detective Buckle,” he said, mimicking her corrective tone.

“Fine. Detective Buckle. In the two minutes since I’ve met you, you have proven to be extremely annoying, your office is a sauna, and frankly, your secretary was right: you border on being almost criminally stupid. You’ve insulted my name, propositioned me for drugs and sex, and acted every bit the buffoon I have reason to believe you are. I’m given now to doubt both your efficacy and your discretion as a detective.”

Buckle looked up from playing with a paperclip he’d found… somewhere… while Martha had been speaking, his expression blank. Dames really could go on and on.

“But–” she began.

“No, it’s okay, you can say ass here,” he smiled.

“But,” Martha practically spat through gritted teeth. “I have a problem that desperately needs solving, and time is a matter of great concern. More importantly, I think you might be the only detective in the city who’s not already on my husband’s payroll. To be quite honest, I am out of options.”

Buckle had to admit, that was probably true. If he were on anyone’s payroll, for one thing, he’d probably have working air conditioning. Not to mention a steady supply of quaaludes.

“You weren’t my first choice. Or even my third. Frankly, I flicked back and forth through the yellow pages about a dozen times before I decided you would have to do. Did you know that older phonebooks just have you listed as ‘DICK!’?”

“Look, lady, I’ll tell you what I told all those nice young men and women–”

Martha held up a hand. “Economic, I’ll admit, if a little unclear. Anyway, here I am. And here you are. My last resort. So if you’ll allow me, detective, I’ll give you the details.”

“Does–”

“And before you say anything else,” Martha continued, “please bear in mind that if I hear the word quaaludes from you one more time, I will punch you in the mouth, walk out that door, take your poor secretary out for a nice dinner, and help her burn your office to the ground.”

Buckle considered this proposition. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to ask her if the job involved quaaludes. On the other, he didn’t particularly like the idea of his office being burned to the ground. He needed more information.

“Would I still be inside the office?” the detective asked.

“I think I’d leave that decision up to the lovely Janine,” Martha replied, coolly.

Buckle relaxed. That answered that question. Janine clearly loved her boss far too much to let him get hurt, but even so, he ultimately didn’t relish the idea of spending, like, a whole Saturday trying to find a new office space for rent, so he opted to play it cool. There was always time for drug-related questions later on.

“What do you need me to do?” Buckle asked.

Martha smiled.