Once again, Decoder Ring Theater presents another page from the casebook of that Master of Mystery,

that's Sultan of Sleothing, Martin Bracknell's immortal detective, Black Jack Justice,

starring Christopher Mott as Jack and Andrea Lyons as Trixie Dixon, girl detective.

The name's Dixon. Trixie Dixon, girl detective.

They say that one often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Or I assume that they say that anyway. The only place I've really heard that particular chestnut is on a small slip of paper

at the heart of my fortune cookie from Jimmy Wong's, but it seemed a little too thoughtful

to be an entirely original product of the cookie industry. It does, however, have the most

important trait of the very best proverbs. It doesn't really mean much of anything in particular, and whatever you do, and whatever the

result might happen to be, the cookie in question can look at you smugly and say, see, I told

you so.

Sometimes, though, even the most half-bake of Bon Mutz can seem eerily prophetic, and I suppose

Jimmy Wong's cookie was due.

The Surly one and I have been working one of those cases that just seems to get away from you.

It had started off as a little peeping tom work on behalf of little Joe DeMarco,

who had the usual 31 flavors of sneaking suspicion about his wife, Big Joe DeMarco.

Before you ask, her name was Josephine, and she was a foot taller than her husband and built

like a brick outhouse, as they say.

But when the question, who watches the watchers, is answered by the phrase,

disgruntled dirty cops with no sense of humor, it's usually bad times for your local

PI.

And so it was.

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