Fiction

I don't write fiction.

But if I did I would write a story about a hard boiled detective  living in my little Western New York town.

He would drink lukewarm coffee at the the diner and throw back Gennys with the local color at Barber's Tap Room. He would know, though, that if he needed info for a case that he could usually find it at C&S Saloon.

 He'd walk the banks of the Erie canal late at night thinking about a woman who hurt him in ways that words couldn't describe.  She would have left a sweater that smelled of Chantilly Lace in his coat closet.  He would refuse to get rid of it even when other women asked why he kept it.

He'd have a beat up old clunker of boat that he would take out on Lake Ontario to get away from it all.  The boat would be named Doll.

 He'd rent a loft apartment over a downtown gift shop and run his small time detective business out of his tiny kitchen.  He would be independently wealthy because of a family inheritance, but he wouldn't want anyone to know.  He would be proud, and since he always worked hard he would continue to work hard, money or not.

 Most people around the village would think of him as a decent but quiet sort of man.  He would chew on the end of a match when he talked on the phone because of his constant struggle to give up smoking. Most of his work would come from cuckolded spouses, but every now and then he'd get a case just a little bit more interesting, a little bit more mysterious.

He would stay out of village politics but find that politicians and police needed his services more often than they would care to admit.

He would know almost everyone but like almost no one.

He would have scars, lots of them, but he would rarely if ever talk about how he got them.  Even a few extra Gennys wouldn't squeeze it out of him.

But, alas, I don't write fiction.

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Care to give my detective a cool-as-a-cucumber-but-tough-as-nails-name?  Best entry wins a Brockport-themed prize.