Dig Gillespie and the Great Big Thing

You get used to being followed in my line of work. I'm sorry. That was rude. The name’s Dig. Dig Gillespie. Pleased to make yours and all that. I’m a gumshoe. A shamus. I follow people for a living, and that’s how I know when someone is on my tail. At least, that’s how things usually go. This was a unique situation. 

The night was dark. Dark like the inside of a Tootsie Pop. Dark like the hallway outside your apartment when you drop your key and you can’t find your lighter and the super’s too cheap to fix the bulb. The streets were wet and shining in the way you think is romantic when you’re in love, but just dangerously slick if you have a broken heart. Nobody lonely cares for glistening and glittering against the gutter grit.

I was on my way back to the office when I realized I wasn’t alone.

Years ago, before I even hung out my shingle, I knew that not every case would have a happy ending. What’s happy in gun-for-hire parlance, anyway? I understood most of my assignments probably would end people’s relationships. When a dame comes into your office asking you to do a little digging, chances are she’s already got dirt under those shiny red fingernails.

But I was copacetic with that. What was important to me was not the quality of the soil but the roots I pulled up. I was into finding the answers. I didn’t care if I ripped into the garden while doing so.

Looking back, I can see how naive I was. Never thought that the tulips I trampled would be my own. Nobody ever does, sweetheart. Nobody every does.

On this moonless night, however, I would walk a few steps, hear the pitter-patter of footfalls behind me. Stop. The steps would stop. I took refuge in an alley, and nothing. Nobody came after me. Nobody paid me any notice. Then I’d walk a little more, hear those steps, pause. They’d stop, too.

Dig, I said to myself. You’re losing it, man.

I’ve known private dicks who have gone round the bend. It can happen to the best of us. Look through enough keyholes, and you end up seeing things you wish you hadn’t. I learned that the best way to break someone’s world into tiny pieces was to be clean, clear, and concise. Here’s the evidence in a crisp envelope. Do with it what you will.

The truth is that I had never thought I’d wind up in my own case.

I pride myself on being aware of my surroundings. But I’d decided to take a break from my standard gig. That’s because a dangerous femme had hired me to see if her boyfriend was cheating. You probably know the type. A blonde you could see through. Lipstick out to there. Legs you could wrap around your waist and have room for more. She’d come to my office in tears, certain her man had been two-timing her with a floozy. Her words not mine. I would have used worse.

Turns out, she was right. He had been. With my girlfriend Ginny.

Yeah, this hardboiled dame in a blue-suede suit was right on the money. Didn’t take me long to find the cold-hard evidence that my better half was in fact not that much better and perhaps more like a third than a half. The breakup had left me looking into the bottom of a bottle of scotch more nights than not. Except I don’t drink. So it had been a bottle of Snapple. Which doesn’t do much to take the edge off. Although each bottle does come with a nifty fact inside the lid.

Something my ex had never thought much of. She’d never understood them. I’d said they weren’t riddles. They were facts.

Walk, I went. Walking soothed my troubled soul. Walking was getting me into better shape. My trench coat started to fit better. I had to put another hole in my belt. And then those footsteps. I couldn’t really figure it out. It actually sounded like more than one set. Was I losing my mind? Losing my edge? Losing my religion?

Ginny had been a ray of sunshine in my dark-lit world. When I’d come home from a long day of learning about other people’s secret dirt, the type that bleach doesn’t remove, she’d pour me a glass of punch and ask me to share my sorrows.

It had been how we met. 

I’d gone into a bar for a nice cold one. She’d hit me with a mango lemonade. And it had been love from the first sip through that red-and-white straw.

But that love had been one-sided.

The man I’d been tailing had been a delivery guy. He had bulging arm muscles and a mustache that turned up at the edges. He was one of those guys who knows how to wink. One of those guys with a chin dimple you could swim in.

He’d been unloading boxes of fruit drinks in the alley behind the bar, when out had come Ginny and into his arms. I’d had a difficult time not screaming. I could imagine the fall out. Instead, I took pictures of the evidence, went back to my client, and then went home and packed.

All I left for her was a Snapple cap on the coffee table.

“An avocado is a large fruit.”

Let her work that one out.

I’d moved into my office. It wasn’t much to write home about: an alcove with a little cot and a tiny fridge and a hot plate. But it was mine. Still I was lonely. So I started walking. The rhyme of my footfalls soothed me. Then I noticed I wasn’t truly alone.

Was it some disgruntled husband? My mind scanned my mental Rolodex of cases. Could it be the dude with one arm? The hunk with one eye? The behemoth with two left feet?

I decided to face my follower like a man. 

Dig, I said. You got this. 

I ducked behind an apple tree, and the footfalls stopped. I tiptoed behind a wishing well, then scurried along a fence, and then I poked my head around the corner.

That’s when I was attacked.

The impact knocked me over.

And suddenly my face was all wet.

It was a large black lab. No collar. Little on the thin side. He licked me all over and then waited for me to stand up. I started to walk again, and this time he was at my side. We came to my building, and he raced up the stairs with me as if he knew I kept the key under the mat. I had a little leftover meatloaf, and he didn’t complain at all about eating it chilled. In fact, he licked the plate.

We went to the vet the next day, and there was no chip in his ear. I put up signs around the neighborhood and nobody claimed him. I bought him a leash and some toys, and he started to go with me on my jobs. He was as quiet as I am. He had already proven to me that he knew how to blend in. 

According to one of the facts inside the lid of my favorite drink, Snoopy is the most common dog name beginning with “S.”

But I named him Snapple.

I hired a man to write “Dig and Partner” on my door in gold leaf. No case too cold. No clue too obscure. No nose too moist. No tail too waggy.

Not every detective story has a happily ever after.

But this one does.