Follow the Money
The first Jack Larson story appeared in the January 1994 issue of Kracked Mirror Mysteries.
The Pittsburgh-based private investigator works from an office in Mount Lebanon, Pa. Story
copyright 1994, William D. Cissna. An excerpt from the story appears below. The full short
story is included with the Kindle or Nook e-book (or Amazon.com paperback) that also has a
full-length Jack Larson novel, A Simple Murder:


My office boasts a great convenience. Although any windows to the outside leak like a sieve,
the center hallway and the stairwell to the downstairs door set up some kind of vacuum.
Whenever someone comes in or out down below, the resultant suck of air rattles the loosely
caulked glass on the top half of my office door. Consider it an early warning system.

And since the ancient doorbells downstairs underneath the four mailboxes don't work, the
rattle is all we get.

Fortunately, my three compatriots here on the second floor get even fewer visitors than I
do. More often than not, an incoming rattle is for me, unless it comes between 11:00 and
11:15 in the morning, in which case it's probably the mailman.

When the door glass rattled at about 3:00 on a very slow Thursday afternoon in January, I
put down the book I'd been reading and slid a window up to let in some cool, fresh air.

A very large shadow darkened the glass for a moment, followed by the bombastic entry of
the very large body that cast the shadow. The man put about 280 pounds into ramming the
door wide open, nearly shoving the doorknob into the plaster wall.

"You Larson?" the man snarled.

Suddenly, I wasn't so sure I wanted to be. "You didn't knock," I said brightly. Wrong
answer.

  The man released the doorknob, created a huge, beefy fist and transported it in
roundhouse fashion in my direction. I revised my initial take:  he wasn't a boxer. Maybe a
pro linebacker. I danced aside, resisted the temptation to slug him back and got close to the
side of his head instead.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" I yelled in his ear. That seemed to shake him up more
than the failed fisticuffs.  He took a step back and let his hands drop.

"You're Larson, right?" he asked.

"You going to try to hit me again?"

For a black man, he looked a lot like he was blushing. "Naw," he said, checking his mitts to
make sure.

"Okay. Yeah, I'm Jack Larson. Who are you?"

"Dwayne Woodrow."

I'd heard of him. No longer a pro football player, but had been, with some of the more
brilliant Steeler teams, before the spark faded. And for a little while after it had. I looked
more closely: the paunch was small, but visible. But while the shirt size fit his chest, it was a
bit too large for the upper arm muscles. He hadn't lost too much of his game trim. "Okay, so
you're Woodrow. Nice to meet you. I saw you play some great football. That doesn't explain
why you're in here swinging at me."

The man grabbed one of my wood and leather armchairs and made it look small by sitting in
it. "You been following me. Why?"
Jack Larson tales
- by Bill Cissna
To read the second
Jack Larson short
mystery, "The
Newspaper Man,"
click here.

To read the third
Jack Larson short
mystery, "Users
and Losers," click
here.