As for the missing jokes—well, that was a joke in itself.
“There were no jokes,” I told Geneva.
“What?”
“Sammy thinks Waldrop made that up and hired me because he thought it might get him some publicity.”
We were in Packy’s on a slow afternoon, and I had just finished explaining the various parts of the case to her.
“What kind of publicity?”
“Any kind. Waldrop apparently thought he’d be able to use the publicity to sell the book, but he got killed before he had the chance.”
“Too bad for Sammy that Waldrop hired you, huh?”
“Yeah, too bad.”
“What’s your problem, Boss?”
“I kind of liked the old guy, bad jokes and all.”
“He turned out to be a killer.”
“I know, but that doesn’t make him a bad person.”
“Is that a joke?”
“A small one.”
“A very small one.”
She got me an Icehouse, and herself a tonic water.
“What’s happening with Ray?”
“Heck’s really working hard on that one. He’s trying to plea-bargain for Ray as well as make a deal with the DA for Ray’s assistance in catching the men who killed Joy. Her killing was deliberate, while his killing of Bonetti was accidental.”
I knew Ray would try to help the cops find Olivetti, whoever he was. If they couldn’t do it, he would probably do it.
“Yeah,” she said, “he was beating him up and hit him too hard. Some accident—I know, I know, he’s your friend, but you gotta admit, if he wasn’t beating up on the guy it never would have happened.”
“I guess not, but that’s Ray’s work, Geneva.”
“Man gets out of this one he ought to look for a new line of work.”
“I guess so.”
“Hey, Marty’s coming to work today. First day back.”
“That’s great.”
“You decide what you gonna do with this place now that you big time?”
I looked around and said, “I kind of like it, thought I’d keep it a while longer.”
“About time you made that decision. You know, I got some more ideas about bringing in new customers.”
“We’ll talk about them sometime.”
“No, wait, listen to this. We start havin’ entertainment.”
“What kind of entertainment? Girls?”
“I wouldn’t work here if you hired those kinds of girls,” she said, very definitely. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of live entertainment. You know, like . . . stand-up comics?”
Afterword
Books come to you in different ways. Sometimes the character comes first, and you build a plot around them. Other times a plotline will occur to you, and you need to create a character who fits it. Still other times a title finds its way into your head. I’ve had many titles that have waited in a file for a plot and character to find them.
With the fourth, fifth and sixth Jacoby books I employed the simple device of using two word titles. (Full Contact, the second book, was coincidentally a two-word title.) Bill Pronzini had done something like this years earlier, when a string of Nameless books had one word titles. Stand-up just popped into my head one day as a good title for a hardboiled novel. But I didn’t have a plot.
How hard could a plot be for someone who’s written hundreds of books?
So when I was offered a contract by Walker & Co. for a new, sixth Jacoby novel, I grabbed the title. Now I needed to build the story. And this time—unlike the other times I’d thought about the title—the idea popped right into my head. Jacoby’s new client would be a “stand-up” comic who needs Jacoby to find his stolen joke file. But the comic shows up dead, and search for a killer begins. Alas, I had no personal joke telling experience to draw from, but I did the best I could.
Placing Jacoby in the world of show business also enabled me to send Miles to another new city that I had some personal knowledge of (like Florida in the previous book, only not to the same extent), in this case, Las Vegas.
Robert J. Randisi
About the Author
Robert J. Randisi, recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, is a publishing phenomenon. With more than five hundred novels under his belt, he shows no sign of slowing down. His latest work includes The End of Brooklyn, which Booklist in its starred review called “dark, brooding and thoroughly compelling.” The six-volume Miles Jacoby series, reissued by Perfect Crime, brings back the prize-fighter PI in novels as infused with the harmonies of New York as a Canarsie cab driver. “If [it] moved any faster you’d have to nail it down to read it,” said Elmore Leonard of the first Jacoby book. Described by Booklist as “the last of the pulp writers,” Randisi has published in the western, mystery, horror, science fiction and men’s adventure genres. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and from 1973 through 1981 was a civilian employee of the New York City Police Department, working out of the Sixty-SeventhPrecinct in Brooklyn. After forty-one years in New York, he now lives in Clarksville, Missouri, with writer Marthayn Pelegrimas in a small house overlooking the Mississippi.
Also by Robert J. Randisi
THE GUILT EDGE
232 pages. $13.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-3-0
THE BOTTOM OF EVERY BOTTLE
186 pages. $12.95. ISBN: 978-09825157-1-6
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME I (1982-1995)
336 PAGES. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-4-7
THE SHAMUS WINNERS VOLUME II (1996-2009)
282 pages. $14.95. ISBN: 978-0-9825157-6-1
Available at bookstores, Amazon, and at ww.PerfectCrimeBooks.com
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