I felt my backside, wondering if the pain in my a.s.s was truly from sitting on my keys, or from something that was still up there...

I stuck my hand inside my pants, reaching down the plumber's crack...

It's a dream, it has to be a dream...

A pigeon waddled over, pecked up the ear, and ran off. My fingers crept closer...

"Mr. McGlade?"

A dream, all a dream, just a harmless dream...

And then I touched the severed end of something that shouldn't be there. Something that felt like a Pepperidge Farm County Style Breakfast Sausage Link.

"Please!" I cried out. "If there's any decency left in this cruel world, let this be a dream!"

It was a dream. I woke up in bed next to an empty bottle of tequila. Blessedly, there was no head of lettuce between my legs. And the puddle of puke on my pillow didn't contain anything resembling human flesh. I did a nose check and an a.s.s check, and they were both free and clear.

So much for drinking away the nightmares.

I rolled out of bed, padded to the can, showered, dressed in a slightly less dirty suit than yesterday, and visited the local convenience store for a coffee, Danish, and some Advil. That should have been my tip off I'd been dreaming-paying eighteen bucks for those three items. I forked over the real-life money-twenty-six bucks-then called Mrs. Drawbridge and demanded quadruple my rate. She reluctantly agreed, and mentioned her husband was in bed, still asleep. I decided to stakeout her house and tail him. And this time, I'd be taking some sophisticated equipment.

I returned to the condo and entered my Crime Lab. It was actually an extra bedroom that I converted into a crime lab by stocking it with spy stuff and writing Crime Lab on the door. The modern private detective had to stay current with modern gadgetry, so I bought all of the latest high-tech stuff. Phone tappers. Listening devices. Infra red things. A remote control tank with a miniature video camera hooked up to the turret. Cell phone jammers. A set of bra.s.s knuckles with a microchip inside that played Pat Benatar when I socked somebody. All the essentials.

I popped the SanDisk memory card out of the tank and plugged it into my computer, to check the footage I'd recorded during my practice run. The video was a little choppy, but more than acceptable.

The first scene was of a dog in Grant Park, urinating.

Cut to the same dog, p.o.o.ping.

Cut to another dog, p.o.o.ping.

Cut to the first dog, eating the second dog's p.o.o.p.

Cut to a third dog, trying to hump the first dog, who was still munching on the p.o.o.p.

Cut to the p.o.o.p, which didn't look like it warranted being eaten.

Cut to some g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger punk, running off with my tank.

Cut to me explaining to the cop why I fired my gun in a populated area, and then me getting arrested.

With some editing, and the right soundtrack, the footage could be the backbone of a really good doc.u.mentary about urban crime, and the amusing social lives of dogs.

I opened up a fresh SanDisk card, put that in the tank, and loaded everything into in a gym bag, along with a digital camera that could shoot night-vision, a Bionic Ear listening cannon, and a little wind-up nun that shot sparks out of her eyes. Thusly equipped, I high-tailed it over to the long term garage, jumped in my stakeout car-an inconspicuous green Chevy El Camino with yellow racing stripes on the hood-and drove to Jim Drawbridge's house.

The key to any successful stakeout is three-fold: Food, tunes, and a pot to p.i.s.s in. The food should consist of chips and snack cakes. Sugar and carbohydrates jack up the insulin level, which leads to a heighten sense of awareness, probably. The music should be high energy, like heavy metal, but don't include the power ballads. The p.i.s.s pot can be an old milk jug or thermos. Try to avoid cellophane potato chip bags, as I've learned from experience they tend to leak.

Since I never knew when I'd have to go on a stakeout, I kept my car stocked with everything I needed. But once I found a suitable vantage point-on the street directly in front of Jim's house-I realized I was less stocked than I should have been. I was way low on sugary snacks, but had a surplus of urine in an old apple juice bottle. Unless it was, perhaps, actually apple juice. A quick sniff would tell me.

It was urine. And I needed to stop eating asparagus.

I took a moment to muse about the gratuitous amount of bodily fluids that seem to have come up in this case, and cracked open the door and dumped the p.i.s.s onto the street, where it made a foamy little river down the curb and to the sewer drain.

Then I cranked up the Led Zeppelin, licked the crust out of some old Twinkie wrappers, and waited for Jim to show up.

After half an hour, the coffee needed to be set free, so I filled up half the apple juice bottle. The secret to zero splatter is aiming for the inside edge, and then squeezing dry rather than shaking.

After an hour, Mrs. Drawbridge came out of the house and knocked on my window.

"George left before you got here."

"Do you have any snacks?"

"No."

I noticed she had some orange powder in the corner of her unattractive mouth.

"You have cheese curls," I said.

"No I don't."

"Bring me the cheese curls."

She folded her arms. "I don't have any."

"You have Cheetos dust on your lips."

"I was eating carrots."

"Were they powdered carrots?"

"Maybe."

"Bring me the G.o.dd.a.m.n Cheetos, or I'm off the case."

She frowned and waddled off. I called after her, "And anything Hostess or Dolly Madison!"

I air guitared in perfect synchronization with Jimmy Page until the ugly wife returned with my treats. The Cheetos bag only had a few left in the bottom, and Mrs. Drawbridge's cheeks were puffed out chipmunk-style. She also brought me half a raspberry Zinger.

"You ate them," I said, stating the obvious.

She shook her head. "Mmphmtmumm.u.f.fff."

"Don't lie. You did. You're still chewing."

"Ummurrfumamamm."

"Are too."

She swallowed, and I watched the large lump slide down her throat.

"I think my husband went to his parent's house," she said after smacking her lips.

"What am I supposed to do with half a Zinger? It's like the size of my thumb."

"I said I think my husband went to his parent's house."

"Who?"

"My husband. After his parents died, he refused to sell it. I'm not allowed to go over there. He's got all kinds of locks and security devices. I think he may be hiding something."

I scarfed down the rest of the cheese curls, then washed them down with the remaining half a Zinger. It wasn't even half. Maybe a third, at best.

"I'm the detective, lady. I'll decide if he's hiding anything. Gimme the address."

She gave it to me. It was in the neighborhood of Streeterville, less than a mile away.

"I'll call you in exactly two hours. If you don't hear from me, I want you to call Lt. Jacqueline Daniels in District 26 and tell her where I am. Tell her it's an emergency. Did you get that?"

"Yeah. Is that apple juice?"

I glanced at my pee bottle.

"Yeah. But it's warm."

"I have ice in the house."

"Help yourself."

She took the p.i.s.s, and I started the car and drove off. Little did I know I was about to face the darkest moment of my entire career. A moment so dark, that had I known it was coming, I would have done something else instead, like see a movie, or go to the zoo and bang on the windows in the monkey house. But I didn't know what was going to happen, because I couldn't predict the future, because if I could I would have predicted the lottery numbers and been super-rich and never would have needed the money that caused me to go to that house in Streeterville, which was the darkest moment of my entire career. So that's where I went. Unbeknownst to me.

In hindsight, I really shouldn't have gone.

aka The Darkest Moment Of My Career So I had no idea I was heading into the darkest moment of my career, but I went anyway.

Before going there, however, I stopped for red hots at Fat Louie's Red Hots on Clark and got a dog with the works. It was terrible, and I have really low standards. In my humble opinion, hot dogs shouldn't have veins. Or anything resembling a foreskin. I could barely choke the third one down.

Uncomfortably sated, I pressed onward to Phil's parent's house. The house was una.s.suming enough. Split-level, single family, red brick exterior. There was an oak tree out front, and a chainlink fence part.i.tioning off the tiny backyard. I parked on the street, then took out my remote control surveillance tank. After double-checking the batteries, servos, memory card, remote sensor, camera focus, tread alignment, and wireless frequency, I gingerly set the tank down in the street and a taxi ran it over.

d.a.m.n taxi jerks. I decided to charge it to Mrs. Drawbridge's bill.

My next course of action was to figure out my next course of action. I played a little more air guitar, broke an air string, put on a new one and spent a minute air tuning it, and then decided on my approach.

I could put on my ghillie suit-a mesh shirt and pants with real and fake gra.s.s and shubbery sewn into it that I ordered from PsychoSniper.com-and then slowly belly-crawl across the lawn, traverse the fence using a carbide steel bolt cutter, inch my way into the backyard, creep up the porch in slow increments stopping often to pretend to be a potted plant, trick his surveillance system by recording a loop from his outdoor camera and feeding the playback into the main line, drill into his door frame using a cordless screwdriver to disable the burglary alarm sensor, pick the pick-proof Schlage deadbolt, and sneak inside his house using my Invisible Voyeur NightVision Goggles, which I bought at CautiousStalker.org.

Or I could knock on the front door and ask what's up.

"What's up?" I asked when the front door opened.

Since I'd seen him yesterday, Ken had gone from half a sunburned face to a full sunburned face. The smell coming from his house was real bacon, which sure beat the smell of fake bacon, which my mother used to make out of soy and library paste and brown Crayons.

"Who are you?"

"Housing inspector." I flashed him my PI badge, too fast for him to read it. "I'm here to check for gas leaks. Are you leaking any gases?"

"No. Can I see that badge again?"

"I smell something. Are you cooking in there?"

"No, I'm not."

"Is it bacon?" I smacked my lips. "I love bacon. I read somewhere that you could shave with bacon. Rub it on your face raw, and it lubricates better than shaving cream. Have you ever heard of that?"

"No."

"I tried it once. Closest shave I ever had. But I got an E. Coli infection and they had to remove eight yards of my large intestine. Can I come in?"

"No. Hey, you look kind of familiar."

I flashed an aw shucks grin. "I get that a lot. I've made a few videos. You might know my screen name, Sir Dix-A-Lot."

"I don't think that's it."

"Ever see Snow White and the Seven b.l.o.w.j.o.bs?"

"No."

"Robin Hood, Prince of a.n.a.l?"

"I don't think so."

"The Empire Strikes Scat?"

"Maybe you should come in. I may have some gases for you to check on."

I nodded, stepping into his humble abode. It was no surprise he let me in. Fast talking is one of my special skills. That and being able to swallow pills. If I had a super power, it would be the ability to swallow a whole handful of pills at once. Big pills too. None of that baby aspirin c.r.a.p for babies. I secretly hoped that one day I'd get cancer, and the doctor would prescribe me a lot of pills, and he'd tell me to s.p.a.ce them out throughout the day because there were so many, but I'd tell him no need to and grab the whole handful and swallow them up right there while he watched, amazed.

That's what I was thinking about when Phil hit me in the head with the hammer.

I awoke from a terrible dream that I was trapped in a coffin with an inhumanly large-t.e.s.t.i.c.l.ed man, to the terrible reality of being tied to a chair in some freak's bas.e.m.e.nt.

Said freak was standing over me, staring.

"You're awake," he said.

"No I'm not."

I shook my head, which caused a spike of pain. My left eye stung, and I looked down my nose and saw some dried blood on my cheek. The freak still held the hammer. He waved it in front of my face in a way I'm sure he thought was menacing, which actually was pretty menacing.