L.A. Success by Hans C. Freelac Read Free Book Online Page A

have to give him some time to see.
    After we finished eating, I let the dog in and turned on the TV. I wanted to wait around long enough to show my dad that he didn't have to accept another game immediately. It took another four hours for him to finish that game. He won, so he took a dollar out of the bag.
    “Okay. Now watch this. When you finish the game and you want to relax, you close the laptop like this. When you want to play again, you open it like this, and it'll be ready. So now we want to close it so we can sleep.”
    I got a couple of blankets from the closet and made him a place to sleep on the couch. I could see he was a little freaked out by the idea of sleeping in a new place.
    “I'll leave my number by the phone. If you need anything, just call it. You don't have to say anything. I'll just come right over.”
    I took the dog with me so he wouldn't bother my dad. We went back to my place and got ready for bed. I let Ballsack sleep near my feet, but at first he went crazy looking for frogs. He thought they were real, but after listening to them for thirty minutes or so, he gave up and dozed off.
     
    14
    The next day I was hanging out with my dad getting wasted when I started thinking about how cool it would be to continue being Dennis for a while. I staggered up the stairs into his room and opened up the closet. I chose some sweet detective clothes—real tough-guy stuff. I took off everything but my Arnold shirt and put on Dennis' clothes. I couldn't wear his shoes, which was too bad because he had some sweet wing tips. Anyway, with all the booze I had drunk that day, I was thinking my flip-flops looked good with the dark leather jacket and khaki cargo pants. I had a kind of fat Indiana-Jones thing going on, but with a black baseball cap instead of a fedora.
    I was admiring all this in the mirror when I heard the doorbell ring. I panicked a little and spilled some booze on Dennis' pants, but then I calmed down. No one was going to realize I was wearing Dennis' clothes anyway. Hell, they wouldn't even realize I wasn't Dennis.
    I was so lit up that I don't remember getting from Dennis' closet to the courtyard. I swung the gate open. There stood a man who kept weaving left and right. Or maybe that was me.
    “Yeah, what the hell is it?” I asked.
    The man was wearing a tan, wide-brimmed hat pulled down low. He had on a trench coat. This definitely had to be some secret Dennis stuff.
    “I'm looking for...Mr. Bates,” whispered the man.
    “He's...” I started to say and then stopped, mainly because I had to belch and was trying to hold it back, but also because I began to have an idea. Dennis Bates the private investigator didn't exist anymore, so what harm would it do to give this guy the next best thing? Maybe this would be the opportunity I had been looking for to take a little vacation from my life.
    “I mean,” I continued, “he's me. How can I help you?”
    “You...you're Dennis Bates?”
    “Yeah, that's me—the private-investigator guy.”
    “And you...live here?”
    “Yes. When I'm not out in the field,” I said. “What do you want?”
    The guy looked around behind him for a while, as if he was looking to see if he had been followed. As I watched him, I got the feeling I'd seen this guy before. I couldn't exactly place him though.
    “I need to...uh...hire you. You see...” he said and paused again to look around. He looked to be about 60 years old. He had a fine beard with a lot of gray in it. In fact, he looked a lot like that director guy, Spieldburt. “...I have a problem, and no one can know about it because my image is very important to me. It's my lover. I believe she's cheating on me.”
    “What's her name?” I asked. He squinted as he looked toward the neighbor's lawn. Then he turned toward me and leaned in close.
    “Gertie Elliot,” he said.
    It was like a bomb going off in my head. I knew that name. Those were the names of those kids in E.T. I was sure more than ever that