Excerpt from my latest book called Cajun Eyes...

 Chapter 1

The Stakeout

  I hate this part of my job. A long stakeout that promises to last all night was never my idea of fun, cher. But it goes with the territory. And you get used to it. In the old days, I would sit here in my non-descript beige piece of junk car reading the paper and eating junk food to stay awake. And coffee. Lots of coffee. Not what they call coffee over there at them fancy Starbucks coffee houses, no. But the kind of thick Cajun coffee that’s strong enough to melt one of them sissy stirrers they give you at the coffee shops. The coffee like my momma always used to make is what I’m talking about. But these days I take my coffee black, and the junk food is out. I’m off the carbs and all that sugar. I can’t say I’m completely over the cravings though, and I would shoot a fool for a donut right now if one was crazy enough to sashay by me with a Krispy Kreme in his hand.

  I’ve lost about fifty pounds so far on my new diet. My doctor is very happy. And I guess you might say I’m beginning to appreciate the way the women have started noticing me again like they used to a few years back. And my ride now is a brand-new Chevy Camaro – black as midnight. Black interior. Hell, even the license plate’s black like my coffee. Right now, the plate’s I’m displaying shows only a number. But when I’m not on a case, I slap on my vanity plates with my name on them – CHANCEY. That’s me, Chance C. Bouchard, private investigator.  My friends all call me Chancey, but my family calls me CC. I’m six foot two inches tall, weigh in right at two hundred pounds, brown hair, and eyes. Some women find me attractive, but usually only after they get to know me better. Otherwise, I don’t really stand out in a crowd.

   I grew up in Gonzales, La. My folks still live in St. Armant; a little town in Ascension Parish about halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But I just hung my nameplate on my brand-new office door on Bluebonnet Blvd in Baton Rouge. 

  Things have been going good for me lately. Solve a couple of high profile murder cases and suddenly I’m a popular guy. Most of my clients are loaded these days. Ha, it wasn’t very long ago that I didn’t even have an office. I drove around in my beat-up air pollution device handing out business cards at diners and shopping malls trying to drum up work. Now my phone hardly ever stops ringing. I had to hire a secretary just to answer it for me. The last case I was on, paid for my new car with enough left over for the down payment on the office. If I nabbed the guy I was looking for right now, I might even be able to afford to put some nice furniture in there. At the moment, there was only Elaine’s desk and the phone system in the reception area and a fake potted plant in the corner by the window. My phone was sitting on the floor in my empty office.

  I poured me another big cup out of my thermos and breathed the deep aroma while I put the lid back on the bottle. The first sip was a real eye-opener. I felt the drowsiness leave almost instantly. That was a good thing. I looked out the window and saw that the upstairs apartment across the street was still dark. Still no one home. I had been watching this place for three days now. I wasn’t in the best part of town so going to sleep was not an option. My hubcaps would be gone the moment I stopped paying attention, and that was just for starters. The hookers had started to wave and flirt when they walked past after the first night. But they knew better than to stop and proposition me now. Most of them probably thought I was some kind of drug dealer, but I was in someone else’s territory and that might mean trouble later on. So, they steered clear.

  A couple of them were former ladies of the night who had plowed their trade in New Orleans before the storm. And they had recognized me from when I was on the force patrolling the streets. So, they may have put the word out on me. I didn’t care as long as they all left me alone. I left the force after Katrina. Things happened I didn’t agree with and, when I reported it to Internal Affairs, some of the other officers took offense, to say the least. A few had started making my life miserable. It got to the point where I thought my own partner might shoot me in the back when we were on a raid or chasing bad guys down a dark alley. So I quit.

  The private eye gig had been an idea thrown at me from a girlfriend while she was packing her bags after my income had dwindled to not more than a bar tab. I decided it wasn’t a bad idea and got my license soon afterward. The bar tabs had to stop. The diet changed and living under an overpass seemed likely for a while there if things didn’t pick up. Baby steps got me here.

  I was well into a good book, so I only glanced up now and again to make sure nothing had changed. The light from my Kindle Fire was pretty bright so I held it down in my lap. Not that it made that much difference. My car windows were tinted so dark that not much light would shine through them anyway. But I did have the glass on my side rolled down just a bit. Even though it was in the middle of winter, it wasn’t very cold outside. With the windows up, it tended to get a bit stuffy in here, and the windows fogged up.

  The guy I was looking for was in some very serious trouble. The police wanted him in a bad way, and I doubted they would be in any kind of mood to read him his Miranda rights when they caught up with him. He was more likely to get a bullet to the head as soon as he was spotted and have it go down as an unfortunate incident of being shot while resisting arrest. He had gotten drunk about a week ago, got in his car anyway, and ran down a police officer who was directing traffic around a construction site. The cop was in ICU, and the Docs weren’t sure if he would make it or not....