Excerpt: Dirk Maverick and the Sky Pirates of Atlantis

CHAPTER 1
The Hissing Tapper

Dirk Maverick should have remembered his friend Manny’s advice - always go to the bathroom before you go to sleep, because if you get woken up in the middle of the night by some kind of excitement, you don’t want to be constantly thinking about how much you need to pee.

Dirk and Manny knew a surprising amount about getting woken up in the middle of the night by some kind of excitement. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising, given their occupations - Manny, a Private Investigator, and Dirk, a former Private Investigator. They used to be partners until Dirk decided that he wanted to go into a different business. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite figured out what business that was yet, which meant some people thought he was still in the Private Investigator business.

Which leads back to Dirk, waking up in the middle of the night, constantly thinking about how much he needed to pee.

“Excuse me, Mr. Maverick,” hissed a voice from outside his office, accompanied by an annoying tapping noise. Dirk knew his clientele - his ex-clientele, he had to remind himself - and he knew that hissers always had something to hide, and tappers always wanted to have it hidden quickly. “Mr. Maverick?”

Dirk had no interest in working for someone who couldn’t even read the sign on his door (it read, in very big and visible letters, “No longer doing private investigations; for all of your private investigation needs, please see Manny at 212 Rough House Blvd.”), so he lay back in his bed, hoping that the tapping hisser would go away. As if on command, the noise stopped; Dirk relaxed, and sank further into his bed.

“Mr. Maverick, please!” The tapping resumed, even more furiously than before. It looked as though this was one persistent hissing tapper that wasn’t going away on his own.

Dirk reluctantly got up and answered the door, after doing a little bit with his hair and rumpled shirt to make himself a little more presentable.

“What do you want?” he growled at the tapping hisser. He was a short man, perhaps a little bit pudgy, but not overweight. He was wearing a suit that may have been nice at one point, but that had clearly gone through a lot in the past twenty four hours. It appeared as though it (and he along with it) had been soaking wet at least once, caught on fire more than that, and perhaps even tossed down a mountainside, although that last part seemed a bit implausible. He held a bowler hat in both hands, revealing the mop of stringy, unwashed dirty blonde hair he had underneath.

His face was the most noticeable part of all, with cheeks so fat they seemed to nearly be falling off of his face. His forehead, too, bulged outward in an unusual way, while his chin seemed to hang very low, as if it realized how little the rest of the face was trying and so it decided not to try either. Overall, it gave the appearance of someone who had been stung in the face by bees repeatedly - which in fact, he had, but that had little to do with his appearance.

"Are you," said the man, with a shrill voice that Dirk had already decided annoyed him, "Dirk Maverick, Private Investigator?"