The thief was dead. His corpse spread out on the floor in a pool of blood, burger in hand. His name was Spaghetti Eddy, a two bit food thief from the upper east side. Poor kid didn’t even know what it was like to be in love, let alone work a hard days work. He’s was hooked on burgers but today it caught up with him. The police couldn’t tell me a thing. No weapon. No suspect. No motive. Just a burger and a dead man.

The parking lot of the Fry Guys was empty, everyone left after the pigs showed up. I don’t blame them, but this is my job, I scavenge the night. I solve the crimes they can’t. And today it was the death of Spaghetti Eddy.

I interviewed the staff. The only thing out of the ordinary was the drive thru girl on shift today stopped being able to understand anything near the beginning of her shift. Apparently everyone just started sounding like tornado sirens. I asked her when it happened and if she remembered who ordered when it started, but she shouted at me that I sounded like a tornado siren and that she can’t understand me. There was my only lead gone. Management knew nothing and I knew I had to go chase down spaghetti eddy’s associates. I’d get to the bottom of this if it killed me. Which it might, seeing as it already killed spaghetti eddy. The cool breeze of impending global environmental catastrophe blew against my face as I opened the door to my modified imported AE86, tofu tax and all.

I pulled up to the privatized public housing, The PPH, unit two miles south of Fry Guys, passing three other Fry Guys on the way, stopping by to get a burger and fries. It’s hard to investigate on an empty stomach.

I took the elevator up to the 20th floor of the PPH, the public accommodations floor where the laundry and vending machines are, a little lobby area for community events and for anyone who needs a burger from the 20th floor Fry Guys.

This was where all the deals went down. The hits. The jobs. The drugs. The fries. Whatever you needed. I saw Potato Paul giving a speech about economic inequality and walked over. He was using big words to describe complicated things to stupid people in a semicircle. I grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall. I asked him what happened to Spaghetti Sammy and he corrected me that his name was Spaghetti Eddy, that Spaghetti Sammy was Spaghetti Eddy’s uncle and that it always got confusing when the two of them were around but that it was okay that now, since Spaghetti Eddy was dead, there will be less confusion overall. I asked him what he knew about spaghetti eddy’s death and he told me he knew the answers but that it would ruin the mystery, and that there hadn’t been enough characters introduced yet to have a quality group of suspects and that the whole methodology so far is like a guy who never read a mystery detective novel trying to satirize something he doesn’t know. But that for the sake of the plot I should go to the docks at midnight and ask for Salami Sally. I told him I don’t get my rocks off that way, he said she’s not a prostitute and that it’s rude to judge someone based off their government assigned name and not their character, which, he said, isn’t much because no one gets fleshed out enough to make the reader give a shit.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I told him to shut the fuck up and threw him to the ground. I guess I was going to the docks. I always liked boats. Boats are at the docks, sometimes. Sometimes the boats leave the docks. Some leave into the ocean and some leave onto land. It’s strange but it’s not good for a boat to always be in the water. Deterioration over time. Devaluation. Boats need to be cleaned from time to time. It’s not like airplanes are always in the air. It’s stupid to think boats are always in the water. Well, most boats. I don’t know about big boats. If you know about how they clean and maintain boats too big to land, I’d like to know.

Anyway I went to the docks. There were boats. Like I said. I like boats. My dead wife liked boats too. Not as much as me, but still. Sometimes I thought she liked boats only because I liked boats, but in reality she really like the design of boats. She would build boat models and talk about the history of battle ships. We were different but we were in love. And then she died. Whenever I see a boat I remember her and I being on a boat.

When I got out of my car, at the docks, near the boats, at midnight, I looked around. It was dark, because it was midnight. That’s when the sun isn’t out, so it’s dark. I saw Salami Sally. She was dressed in fishnets with one breast hanging out and a belt made of glow sticks.

I thought about what Potato Paul said and I tried not to judge Salami Sally by the way she dressed or what her name was. She walked up to me and offered sexual gratification in exchange for currency and I told her I wasn’t going to make the assessment that she was a prostitute, to which she said she was glad because she couldn’t deal with that kind of blatant judgement of character right now because her last 30 minute boyfriend really roughed her up in exchange for currency.

I asked her about Zucchini Lenny and she said what and I said I meant Spaghetti Eddy and she said oh and I said he’s dead and she said she knew and I said how and she said he called her right before he died and said he was in the process of eating his last burger and she knew what that meant. I told her he didn’t get to eat that burger and she said that the burger he ate before that one would have been his last burger. I said yeah, but what does that have to do with anything and she said it’s the key to the whole thing. I offered her some hush money but she said she wasn’t a sex worker and that she was offended I would even think of doing that and either I need to pay her to be by 30 minute girlfriend or I needed to leave.

I got back to my office/studio apartment and looked over the photos of the crime scene and it was at that point I saw it. The murderers note, written into the bun of the burger Spaghetti Eddy was holding. Too bad their handwriting was atrocious. Now I was really out of leads, unless of course, I can decode this bun.

I called my friend, Sesame Bun Raymond, he was a bun handwriting specialist. I got his voicemail and left a long and rambling message explaining everything that has happened on this case so far. I got a text message from him saying he was currently driving and he couldn’t talk but in case of emergency reply emergency. I decided to go to bed. It was late and I knew I could crack this case wide open tomorrow. But for now, Mr. Sandman was calling my name.