Gumshoe Gauntlet

Arnie Mitchel had seen enough. He couldn’t allow it to go further. He couldn’t allow points to climb higher, unless they were his own. But AMM, a storied gumshoe, a legendary dick, no longer held a snub-nosed revolver with a steady hand. He no longer blew smoke rings, adroit and precise. He had hung up his fedora, his trench coat dry, no longer dripping with rain. He summited Mount Gumshoe of the arcade mountains. He was the first, and he didn’t look back to see if anyone might follow.

Arnie’s future relied on his past, which was golden, but under threat. He remained the best, for now, but it was only a matter of time before he was ousted. Arnie was the original gumshoe great. It was his identity: a man who mashed buttons better the next. Without that, he would be reduced from gumshoe to gum at the bottom of a shoe. He would be second best. His name would avalanche down the mountain, one A and two Ms, plummeting the slope of the top-ten, down to a valley cloaked in mist as thick as cigarette smoke, hidden by a veil of mediocrity.

In his time running the gauntlet, dodging bullets in the mean streets and dark alleys, Arnie Mitchel had learned a thing or two about a thing or two. He knew how to rally the troops, coerce the corrupt, bribe the baddies. He made a call, spread the word, set dogs on an upstart detective who thought he’d waltz into town and clean the streets in a day. Everyone knows: it doesn’t work like that. To get to the top, you go through Arnie Mitchel. If you climb too high, eventually, you fall. Even Icarus fell back down to earth. So who in the hell is CAD, anyways?

Cad
/kad/

noun

a man who behaves with shameless disregard.
“the cad waltzed in like he owned the joint”
 
Similar: Scoundrel. Good-for-nothing. Fraudster. SOB.

Arnie put away his dictionary --the one with a snub-nosed revolver placed in the skillfully excavated pages. He ascertained what he had already assumed. He knew exactly who, and what, CAD was. His true initials were there in the pages.