That big, raw-handed man was nobody's idea of a detective. His long-chinned jutting jaw, ever-so-slightly concave in the sides like a squeezed horse-shoe, led him from point to point through every case on a path that had less to do with investigation than with blind hunch, bluff, and gall - barely mitigated by a certain honeyed insouciance. Yet as often as he plunged in without a prayer's worth of evidence or probable cause, there was no denying his improbable knack for accusing the right person, and his talent for bulling that person into the wrong place and wrong time, a tight and inconvenient corner where he could break them down at his leisure with always a convenient witness at hand, to witness the big reveal. This is the story of how he got that way.
Little Johnny Creuss, they used to call him. But the "little" was somebody's idea of a funny joke. Even then at the age of oh, say, two months old, he was a big little man, a happy big baby, and his feet were like hams. Big hams with little piggy toes! Aw, look at de little hams. Aw, look at de little hams! Those aren't little hams, those are big hams! Those aren't little hams, those are big hams.
Anyway, I guess he got kicked around in school a little, fell in with a tough crowd, fell out with the tough crowd and had to forge his way right straight through and against them, won the pissing contest, lost interest in the academic questions, dropped out, learned some vital survival skills in a series of weird jobs ("weird," not to say "odd"), noticed with a dull shock of awareness that he was a grown-up now and had better get down to some business, failed at it, fell accidentally into the shamus game trying to help out a no-good dame he knew and in the process, discovered a lucky streak that hasn't quit on him since.
Aw, look it the dimples he's still got. Aw look it the dimples he's still got!
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