(GUY NOIR THEME & SONG)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions ---Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME UP AND OUT)
GK: It was one of those heartbreaking days in early October when the color of the leaves on the trees reminds you that your youth is far in the past and that winter is just around the corner. I was sitting at my desk, looking at a bunch of phone messages from the late 70s, when -
(SFX: PHONE RINGS, PICK UP)
GK: Yeah. Guy Noir here.
TK (ON PHONE): Is this Guy Noir Pies?
GK: No, it's Guy Noir, P.I.
TK: Oh. I thought it was pies.
GK: P.I.
TK: I'm looking for a huckleberry pie.
GK: I'm a private investigator.
TK: How about Boston Cream?
GK: I'm a detective. Okay?
TK: Well, how about you go track down a pie for me?
GK: I don't do that.
TK: How about strudel?
(SFX: GUY SLAMS DOWN THE PHONE)
GK: Thirty years ago I was slipping down the back streets looking for the pink Mercedes of the Lady of the Camillias and now here I am getting calls about pastry - (PHONE RING AND PICK UP) Yeah, who is it?
TK (ON PHONE): Banana cream. I'm willing to pay. How about ten bucks? Delivered. (HANG UP)
GK: I could see it was gonna be one of those days, so I closed up shop and headed on over to the Five Spot.
(MUSIC BRIDGE, DOOR OPENS, JINGLES)
TR: Hey, Guy. How's it going?
GK: Terrible, Jimmy.
TR: Business slow?
GK: Business is invisible, Jimmy. (HE WALKS TO A STOOL AND SITS) The rest of the country is in a boom, and I'm in a vacuum. What you been up to this summer, Jimmy?
TR: Me? Oh, I bartended on a cruise. Round the world. Took three months. It was sponsored by A.A. All I did was stand and pour coffee and listen to guys tell me about how rich and meaningful their lives are.
GK: Lucky you. I sat and marinated in the bitter juices of defeat, Jimmy.
TR: Sorry to hear it. What can I do for you, Guy?
GK: Bring me something tall and cool with lots of gin in it.
SS: That would be me. (SAXOPHONE, LOW AND BREATHY)
GK: I turned around, and saw her standing there. A sultry beauty in a sweater so tight, she looked like she was poured into it and forgot to say "when." She slithered down onto the stool next to me. She was a woman who knew how to slither.
SS: Guy Noir?
GK: That's me.
SS: I hear you're.....a purveyor of fine pies.
GK: Just a private eye, ma'am.
SS: Somebody said they got a pie from you.
GK: Somebody said wrong. What can I do for you, ma'am?
SS: I need help.
GK: Not with those legs you don't.
SS: I'm looking for a tall nondescript woman -- brunette, average height, weight, mid-forties, alto, moderate Republican, Lutheran.
GK: You're describing Delphine Johnson.
SS: You know about her?
GK: Delphine Johnson. She was an English major and she went into criminal life because she's completely nondescript.
SS: I've seen her six times and I can't remember a thing about her appearance.
GK: All anyone knows about her is that she went bad in graduate school and she's been involved in the illicit term paper trade. What you doing getting tangled up with a no-good like her, sister?
SS: It's a long story, Mr. Noir.
GK: Tell me what happened. From the very beginning.
SS: Okay. I was born on December 13th, in a small town in Ohio. My dad was a rural mail carrier. His name was Norman. My mom was a housewife. Her name was Gladys. I was the fourth child. The others were Mary Ellen, Dale, Tommy - we called him Scooter - and them me, and we had a cat named Snowball and a dog -
GK: Okay, don't start from the beginning. Start with today.
SS: Okay. Today I went shopping. I needed some pantyhose.
GK: Not from where I'm sitting you don't.
SS: I use a particular kind of pantyhose, Mr. Noir. You see, I'm an undercover detective.
GK: You know, I thought so! Something about the perfume -
SS: Here's my badge.
GK: She reached down into her sweater and pulled out her ID. Sergeant Don Schuett!
TR (SQUARE-JAWED HE-MAN): That's right, Mr. Noir.
GK: Boy, what a disguise. When you go undercover, Sergeant Schuett, you go undercover.
TR: In the fight against crime, Mr. Noir, there's can be no half-measures.
GK: I fell for you like a souffle in an earthquake. I was just about to ask you for a date.
TR: Don't feel bad, Mr. Noir. Happens all the time. I was once on a detail guarding the President of the United States-
GK: I don't want to hear about it.
TR: It wasn't him. It was somebody else.
GK: I still don't want to hear about it. Tell me about Delphine Johnson. What's she up to lately?
TR: Delphine? She's involved in a major operation to smuggle in college term papers from Mexico.
GK: I see.
TR: American college students on vacation in Cancun, kidnapped by term-paper cartels, locked up in sweatshop factories, forced to crank out essays for sale up north. It's an ugly business.
GK: Where's Delphine in this?
TR: I don't know. I made an appointment to meet her at the Paradise Hotel on Exchange Street. She told me to meet her in the Shakespeare room, but there isn't one.
GK: Shakespeare Room, eh? Maybe she meant Room 4A - "My kingdom for a horse" - or "To be or not to be." (MUSICAL BRIDGE)
GK (NARRATING): We went to the Paradise Hotel and we broke into 2B - (TR EFFORT, CRUNCH OF WOOD, SS & TK CRIES OF ALARM) - and it was only a couple of librarians in town for a convention - so we went up to 4A - (TR EFFORT, CRUNCH OF WOOD) - and there she was. Delphine Johnson.
SS: It is I.
GK: English major, aren't you?
SS: I am. Yes.
TR: The fruit motif in T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" Caught ya red-handed, Delphine. Finally.
SS: Since when are term papers against the law, copper.
TR: They're not. But selling a hundred of them for a hundred bucks apiece is.
SS: Oh yeah? I'd like to see you make it stick. You put me in front of a jury and ask your witnesses to point me out in the courtroom and they won't remember which one I am.
GK: She is fairly nondescript, Sergeant. Brunette, average height, weight, brown eyes, a pleasant face, alto, Lutheran - she could be anybody.
SS: I am anybody. I am you, I am him, I am everyone!
TR: Stop talking literary, Delphine. You're going in and this time. We're going to throw the book at you and it's going to be Moby Dick.
SS: Moby Dick! How did you know that's the book that turned me toward crime.
GK: Really?
SS: Right in the middle? that long passage where Melville describes the sea? and he goes on for about fifteen-thousand words about different kinds of whitecaps?
GK: I never read that.
SS: Nobody does. Everybody skips it.
TR: What about it?
SS: It includes a long passage about how to use a computer to get into savings accounts.
GK: But Melville was writing in the mid-nineteenth century.
SS: That's how great an artist he was.
TR: Too bad he didn't tell you how to avoid capture, ma'am.
SS: It's no big problem, copper - (MUSIC)
GK: And just then, she reached for her hair and pulled and her whole face peeled off (RUBBER PEELING) and underneath - (SFX DOLPHIN) -
TR: A dolphin!
GK: She was a fish?
TR: Fooled me.
GK: Usually, with dolphins, you figure there'd be drips on the floor, underarm stains, plankton on the breath - this one, nothing. (DOLPHIN CHUCKLES)
TR: They're smart, dolphins.
GK: Evidently so. Smart enough to major in English anyway.
TR: Okay, move it fella. (DOLPHIN) It's gonna be the zoo for you. Life in the tank. (DOLPHIN) (MUSIC BRIDGE)
GK: We dropped the dolphin off at the zoo and went back to the Five Spot.
TR (JIMMY): Hiya, Guy. Hi there, Sergeant.
GK: Buy you a drink, Sergeant?
TR (SERGEANT): Sure. - Where's your ladies room?
TR (JIMMY): Right back that way.
TR (SERGEANT): Thanks. (FOOTSTEPS)
TR (JIMMY): What can I get you, Guy?
GK: I don't know. I just saw a woman turn into a dolphin. Maybe I oughta get tall and cool with lots of gin in it, Jimmy.
TR (JIMMY): Coming right up. (HE POURS AND STIRS) Don't mean to analyze your appearance, Guy, but you've got a herring sticking out of your hanky pocket -
GK: Oh. So I do. Thanks. (SMALL FLOPPING FISH) Here. Give him a drink, too, Jimmy.
TR (JIMMY): Okay.
(HIGH HEELS APPROACH)
SS: Hi.
GK: That was a pretty quick change, wasn't it?
SS: Well, after all these years, you learn how to do it.
GK: I guess so. Something to drink?
SS: No, thanks. I'm on duty.
GK: I don't usually say this to men, but - you're very beautiful, you know that.
SS: Thank you very much.
GK: When you get off duty, you want to - have dinner?
SS: Sure. Love to.
GK: You be careful out there. (THEME UP)
SS: I will. See you later.
GK: Bye.
TR: A dark night in the city that keeps its secrets, where one guy is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions. Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(MUSIC OUT)
(c) 1998 by Garrison Keillor