My moniker is Dr. Madison Muttnick, and I’m a bone breaker, an orthopedic surgeon. Hammett called doctors croakers, and you may have heard of me that way. The Shore Press fingered me in banner headlines as the hit man of two hospital paper pushers, the VP of the Medical Staff & the CEO of the hospital.
The township’s lead dick and I wouldn’t drink from the same bottle unless someone pointed a rod at both of us. He had a hate for me, so all his flat-footed lackeys worked overtime gunning for me in the executives’ deep-six case. Of course, he had it coffee and cake easy making me good for those jobs because my blood stained the first victim’s shirt and the second died in a locked room with only yours truly as an audience. Someone got the frame right, but me bumping a cat off, that’s the bunk if you know me. I ain’t a button man. Both stiffs merited euthanasia, but I would have shot them with my Colt. The way I crank it, and as my pappy Monte would say, “a man looks you in the eye when he does you.”
So I had to be a snooper in my behalf to prove how bum the rap was and how legit and on the level I was. During the time I was bailed out of the can, the FBI copped me for a chinwag. They had concerns about laundering money at AC and funneling it to the mob, the Brunos building the hospital annex. Somehow, the suits tied that imaginary cabbage to the two deaths, construction payoffs, and me. Might have been that bogus letter that wound up delivered to my heap’s glove compartment. It even had a fakeloo cancellation mark over the stamp. The boys know how to paint a picture and frame you in it.
‘Bout the money, I invested my lettuce in the bangtails at Monmouth, Freehold and AC, but that’s my business, not the G-men’s. My bankroll grows from picking the right equines, no fixes, no games, just brains. The Feds wanted to introduce me to the clowns from The Infernal Rob-from-You Sir-Cuss (the IRS) as motivation toward helping them with investigating their construction problems. Hell, the last thing I built was a dog flophouse for Bubs, my whoodle (Wheaton Terrier-Poodle mixed bred). They thought they had the bulge, but I knew they were buncoing me. So nuts to them, Washington’s known for wooden teeth. They can’t put the bite on me.
Ain’t that a bitch?
All this malarkey because my pappy ran a clip joint for the boys on the East side, Madison Ave. That’s where the name comes from. Sometimes he’d moonlight permanently removing somebody his boss needed out of the way. He used me to keep his accounts, because I have this categorical memory, nothing escapes my trap once it’s inside. I went to Vietnam and med school to get away from that. But the gumshoes can’t dope out, that I’m clean. They’d rather take it easy as pie with the guilt by association thing.
While proving I didn’t blow down the two executives, persons unknown twice select me for an all-expense paid visit to the big sleep. Don’t get me wrong; clipping the two execs did the community a service. It improved the atmosphere as to aroma and the lay of the land. I didn’t wack the paper-pushers. I ain’t getting the rope dance or the electric cure for the deed I didn’t do. The only capital I want to bump gums about is my cabbage for bangtail investments.
In the meantime, the head doc of the ER has a one-car accident the evening after he and I chinned. I thought the flash feud between him and me would put me on the hook for that as well. Didn’t do that one either.
It turns out the whole ride was for biscuits, because justice gives me the gate and the DA agrees I’m innocent. The Shore Press forgets to print that. So the world is not wise that I am on the level and right. The oversight puts the screws to me; everyone knows from nothing that I’m innocent.
So I have to go public to wise everyone up that I’m a right gee.
Help me tell my story. Get your friends to read my blog. The beginning of my tale (the first three chapters) will be posted one at a time. It’s murder writing it out for you guys. After that we’ll see whose hangin’ with the croaker. Maybe I can publish a book.
TheMadMutt.
