No Way Out

Now I may be just a humble gumshoe but I'm pretty fly on my feet for a guy who sits with his feet up on the desk all day, but you know I'm not just tooting my own horn here.

I gave the slip to that slithery succubus that tried to corner in my own office and was just patting myself on the proverbial back when it all went a long way downhill.

Two more succubi waiting in the hall between me and sweet fresh air. Had to be the gals from the beauty parlour at the end of the row, Daisy and Rosalind, sweet as you'll ever meet, only too keen to pass on any juicy titbits of gossip some client had let slip, little titbits that had in the past given me some hefty leverage with city hall and the precinct. But it looked like that source of information had just dried up faster than spit on a hotplate.

No one ever accused me of being the brightest barnacle on the hull, not even back on the force, and all those years of rotgut whiskey hadn't done me no favours either but even I could tell from the muffled cries filtering out through the thick masks clamped tight to their pretty faces that they hadn't been taken willingly, still some of those old detecting skills survived all the years of hard bitten cynicism and from the heaving chests and grinding hips I could tell these dames weren't feeling no pain and I knew that sweet, sweet torment could be one heck of a motivator.

Still they were between me and my date with beautiful freedom which painted me into a dilemma, one of my own making. I'm as hard-boiled as they come, if a man challenges me to a fair fight I'll shoot him in the belly right there and then, if I got no gun then I'm a low down dirty streetfighter, I know every dirty trick in the book and I ain't afraid to use them to come out on top. But I ain't ever hit a dame and I wasn't going to start today.

That left the fire escape. The broken fire escape. Which meant I'd have to go up, up to the roof and leap across to the top of the book repository, well I was no stranger to desperate nighttime pursuits across the skyline of this rotten city, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, letting the adrenaline and whatever gods watch over down on their luck hard boiled private dicks get me across. A strategy which hadn't failed me yet, just as well, they'd have caught me otherwise, so fire escape it is, to the roof and exit stage left .....

.....

more muffled cries. Behind me.  Lynn and Sarah, the gal on the front desk and the flower seller, of course they were, dumb, Lazlo, dumb, if they've reached this floor to get the beauty gals of course they already got everyone else on the floors below, and only blindingly obvious to everyone except you that they'd come up the stairs then onto the fire escape above where it broke ....... the succubus has worked her way free from under my tipped over desk, a cunning ploy that one but one that was only supposed to buy me some precious time not keep her trapped indefinitely ..... and Elise the dentists assistant, oh Elise, all slick and slithery as all the rest now, standing in the doorway opposite mine like a broken promise. Surrounded.

Is this it? Can this truly be the end of Lazlo Woodbine P.I.? The greatest P.I. that ever lived brought low by dames ...... story of my life ......