Kinky Friedman The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover
As The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover kicks off one New Years Day, any Greenwich Village Irregular with sense is off somewhere warmer or more attractive than downtown Manhattan. Rambam is doing whatever he does in either Tel Aviv or Rio, Stephanie DuPont is on a helicopter skiing family holiday in St Moritz and those who haven't escaped have issues.
McGovern is preoccupied with people following him, Pete Myers is in a snit after a McGovern incident and the closer Ratso seemed to get to the family fortune (of just under $57M, as recounted in God Bless John Wayne) the further he seemed to keep his distance from his old friend the Kinkster. Not that Mr Friedman is objecting, but the apparent unwillingness to outlay the cost of a social phone call, while in character, grates.
All of which means that when an attractive female client contacts Kinky he's left to figure things out for himself, and as the plot line unfolded I gained a distinct impression that their absences weren't entirely coincidental.
Polly Price is a high level corporate lawyer based in Washington while husband Derrick works in downtown Manhattan and lives in a penthouse that, while furnished with exquisite taste, is absolutely devoid of personal memorabilia.
Careful scrutiny of Derrick Price's financial records, the sort of task that would usually be delegated to, say, Stephanie Dupont, reveals a substantial cash transaction ($150K) that needs to be investigated. Kinky enlists the help of Washington Ratso (who coincidentally referred Ms Price to the Kinkster in the first place) to check a deserted mansion allegedly housing a firm of lobbyists and harbouring a substantial deposit of Peruvian marching powder.
Winged while escaping an obvious exercise in entrapment, and having seemingly run into a brick wall on the Price case, Kinky turns his attention to McGovern and the question of Leaning Jesus, the reporter's early mentor, heading to Chicago to investigate the apparent reappearance of a man who supposedly died years ago.
In one of those coincidences that bring seemingly unrelated matters together, Leaning Jesus, who happens to have been Al Capone's personal chef, turns out to be the key to the Price case as well, and a Chicken McGovern (recipe sourced, you understand, from Leaning Jesus) provides the key to both issues.