— a short story by Jim Guigli, appearing in Rock and a Hard Place Magazine Issue 7

This week my guest is Jim Guigli. I’ll let him explain!

Looking for Mishka — Why?

by Jim Guigli

My short story, Looking for Mishka, is now available in Issue 7 of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine.

This story, like most of my fiction, is about private Detective Bart Lasiter.  After he had enough time serving the Berkeley, California PD, Bart moved north to open a tiny office in Old Town Sacramento.

While plotting a Bart Lasiter novel, I faced a research problem.  In my respectful parody of the Marlowe/Lew Archer genre, Under the Black Flag, an important question about the laws and legal codes directing California private investigators stumped me and my inexperienced private detective.

In helping a wealthy Lake Tahoe woman deliver ransom to the kidnappers of her husband, what were Bart’s legal obligations?  His client didn’t want police involvement.  Was Bart required to notify law enforcement?

I couldn’t find a straightforward answer, even after a lot of online research and consulting both a working private investigator and a San Jose PD detective.  My solution was to have Bart remain as unsure as his author:

Did he have to report it?  He wasn’t sure.  He’d never had a kidnapping case before, except for Mrs. Tereshkova’s cat.

I continued with the novel, but Mrs. Tereshkova’s cat needed a life.  In time I invented the back story that became Looking for Mishka.

Another cat, Aggie/Agamemnon, appears in this story.  This guy was real, our pet, until he died last year at 18.  The Bart Lasiter stories featuring Aggie describe him as he was in life — except for drinking whiskey.

I hope you enjoy Looking for Mishka and Rock and a Hard Place Magazine.