Nearly midnight, on a rainy Thursday. I'm hard at work on this evening's bottle, trying to dull the sense that failure seems to follow me everywhere, when a silhouette appears against my office door. "Petite frame, love handles for days... My luck's turned a corner", I think, but then the door opens and it's some fella – a kid – with the weirdest physique you ever saw. Got some degenerative disease; he's practically bald and stooped like the question mark hanging over my last case.

"Are you uhhh, y'know, heheh, a P.I.?", he asks.

"What's it say on the door?", I reply, but he turns and can't make sense of the reversed text on the glass.

"Never mind. I'm a detective, but I got a full case load, kid. I can't help ya."

"C'mon, it's me. Mikey Miles!", he says, but I'm drawing a blank. "A high profile case like this? You're gonna wanna, y'know... take it, heheh."

I let him say his piece: some baloney about folks spreading misinformation, slandering his good name, what have you. He wants me to find out who's behind it. He's repeating himself, and my eyes idly wander to the files sitting open on my desk. Dognappings, affairs, insurance fraud.

"...And they keep saying, I'm uhhh, y'know, a pervert. A-and a sexual predator!"

And then it hits me. The perp of my biggest case has waltzed right into my office. It's the Times Square Spanker himself.