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Detective Sgt. Dodge and his merry men from the 4th Precinct.
    My secretary, Elizabeth, looked at
me accusingly. “What have you done now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “If they want me to testify
against you, I’ll do it.”
    “You are a gem,” I said.
    I wasn’t particularly happy to see
Sgt. Dodge. No one ever was. He had a disconcerting habit of pinching your face
between his thumb and forefinger when he was talking to you, so he could be
sure you were paying attention to him. I didn’t like that approach. Nobody did.
Not even the Mayor.
    I walked over to Dodge and asked
him to what I owed the extreme pleasure?
    “Just a friendly warning from your
friendly local police department,” he said. “The friendly warning reads as
follows: Dear Friend. If you continue your current investigations, we of the
police cannot guarantee your personal safety.”
    “What’s different about that?” I
asked.
    “I didn’t say it was different. I
just said to watch out.”
    “I see. Well, thanks.”
    He let go of my face, pocketed a
couple of items that caught his fancy and left. This was two friendly warnings
I had received in one 24 hour time period. A personal best. But friendly
warnings aren’t always as friendly as they sound. That night I wrote the word
“yikes” in my diary.
    Nonetheless, I went back on the
streets to continue my investigations. It might seem stupid to you that I did
this, but probably my whole job seems stupid to you. What it comes down to is
the only way I know how to make a living in the detective business is to be
tenacious, tough, and something else that begins with T. The three T’s. If I
let people scare me off a case, word would get around and they’d scare me off
all my cases. Then they’d probably scare me out of town. Maybe all the way to
Germany. I couldn’t let them scare me that far away. It wouldn’t be good
business.
    That evening I checked out a
nightclub that was known to be frequented by criminal types, and was in fact
run by criminals. It wasn’t the most pleasant place to spend an evening; the
food and drinks were terrible, and the entertainment wasn’t much better. I
guess it’s hard to find criminals who have really mastered big band
instruments. But it was a place an investigator like myself could pick up some
leads. I hung around the bar, listening to the various furtive conversations
that were going on around me. A couple of guys near me were planning a big
heist, apparently. After awhile, they noticed I was listening in, partly because
I kept asking them to repeat things. I’ve got to quit doing that. That’s a real
tipoff.
    One of the crooks finally glared
at me. “Do you mind? We’re trying to have a private conversation.”
    “Not at all,” I said. I moved
away, but then leaned back in so my ear was actually a little closer to them
than it was before. Then I made the ear widen a little. They probably wouldn’t
have noticed, except I lost my balance a little bit there and my ear went into
one of their drinks. They picked up what was left of their drinks and went off
to a table in the corner. I didn’t bother waiting for them to invite me to join
them. I wasn’t picking up any information here anyway.
    The next day, a dead turtle was
left on my doorstep as a warning. I couldn’t figure out as a warning for what,
and I guess whoever was watching me picked up on that, because the next morning
there was another dead turtle, but this one had several sheets of paper glued
to it’s back leg. The pieces of paper contained a long footnoted explanation of
all the symbolism involved. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The turtle was
the “turtle of inquisitiveness” and the cheese smeared on it’s shell meant
something, and the little cowboy boots on its feet meant something. Everything
about this animal meant something apparently to whoever sent it. I still didn’t
get what it was all about. The next morning there was no turtle. Somebody just
shot at me from