Dear readers,

In his spare time, his magnificence developed a new interest, and immersed himself in the genre of detective story mystery. He’s read everything he could get his hooves on. I’ve found him watching old detective series classics on the tube. Topping this, the other day I discover that he’d applied for and received his private detective license in the mail! Good grief! Now I awake to find Warty talking on the phone to potential clients!

He advised me go to the computer and get fans up to date with the services he offers, besides haute cuisine at his world famous Chez Warty. Don’t forget his love of eating, and preparing gourmet foods. So – let’s get straight to the present events in the warthog’s adventurous life. Here – let Warty tell the story, and by the way, he’s changed his moniker from Warty Lahoof to:

W. Slammer – Private Eye

A sharp ‘snap’, like someone twisting open the top of a cheap bottle of bourbon for the first time, brought me back to reality. It was me. I was holding a pint of Bottom of the Barrel corn whiskey. I knew someone without permission had been in my office while I was napping. I don’t drink whiskey.

The Gene Bertram Krupa raindrops drumming on the window behind me had lulled me to sleep after a dull day spent dreaming of delicious dames begging me to help them rite unimaginable wrongs done by the cruelest culprits. Business had been slow as the old lady with her wobbly-wheel shopping cart trying to cross the street at rush hour to a symphony of honking horns. The rain didn’t help anything, except to wash away the last layer of poop pigeons had painted on window ledges where they perched.

The one bare bulb that hung corpse-like on a frayed wire from a hole in the ceiling cast its pale 40 watt spot on the floor, giving every worn piece of overused furniture a pallid patina. Two chairs, one on each side of my beat-up wooden desk, and a faded green two-drawer filing cabinet waiting for anything to be filed in it.

She came in without knocking like the cleaning lady, but without the mop and bucket. She knew where she was and what she wanted. My name was painted in black on the only glass pane in the door.

W. Slammer – Private Eye

“Mr. Slammer… ” The words slipped between painted lips the color of three-week old red roses. “You’ve got to help me … they’ve taken everything but my … “ and she paused as though she couldn’t finish the sentence.

Maybe she’d forgotten what they, whoever they were, left behind. But I doubted that when she pointed a chrome snub-nose 38 Smith & Wesson at me and said, “If you don’t … ”

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