The name’s LaFlamme. It says so on my door. I have six slugs in me. Three are from a .45, the other three are bourbon. The .45 carries a wallop, I carry a notebook. Yeah, that’s me. I’m a reporter.

The dame had an attitude but she also had a case. I need to pay the bills so I gave her an ear. Turns out she was dishing up a story of greed and murder. I could have used a steak dinner, but, hey – I’ll take what I can get. I started taking notes.

So, sometimes I fancy myself a character from a Mickey Spillane novel. Who doesn’t? But the fact is, I don’t even have a door to put my name on. And the last time I got close to a slug, I was swimming in a foul creek.

I do carry a notebook, however. Try catching me without one. You’d have a better chance of catching me without pants. I carry a notebook to weddings, funerals, barn dances and the beach. I carried a notebook on my honeymoon last week. I won’t tell you what I wrote.

I’m packing heat, all right. It’s in the form of slender pieces of lined paper bound by coils of metal. But it’s my heat all the same.

There’s simplicity when wielding a notebook. Thrust a pen and a piece of paper in front of someone and they won’t be intimidated. You jot down their name and their words and they’re completely at ease. Suddenly, you have a new best friend leaning over your shoulder and trying to read what you’re writing.

Whip out a notebook and people will tell you who they love, who they hate and who they’d like to see eaten alive by army ants. On a good day, they’ll tell you whodunnit. And how it was done.

Then there’s a camera. Lately I’ve been packing one. The newspaper provides it and I’m happy to carry it. But man, people don’t take to the lens like they take to the notebook.

Suddenly, the witness at the scene of the crime has his hands in front of his face. Others scurry for cover. The guy who was prepared to spew out some rich quote suddenly has other places to be.

The camera-shy will tell you to perform impossible bodily acts with your expensive piece of equipment. Chatty cops turn mean. Nice old ladies with colorful stories will suddenly scream profanities, scaring children and small animals.

I have a new appreciation for photographers. When I show up at the scene of mayhem, I just have to get people talking. Your average Joe doesn’t seem to mind being immortalized by the written word. They can wax poetic and spout proverbs gleaned from Reader’s Digest.

But shove a camera in his face, suddenly he’s worried about how his hair looks, what his parents will think and whether or not his boss will discover why he called in sick that day. A guy telling you about hard days on hard streets suddenly remembers he has warrants out. He doesn’t fancy his picture adorning the front page. And who can blame him?

Life is simple if you’re packing a .45 or a notebook. It’s all “he said” or “she said,” and it’s mostly open for interpretation. But, if you’re carrying a camera, you’re the devil come to steal souls. Photographs relay facts with nonnegotiable images. Who wants it? Who needs it?

I carry this new piece of equipment because I tend to keep weird hours in weird neighborhoods. It comes in handy if violence erupts while I’m out getting a sandwich downtown.

But it feels as foreign to me as a nose ring or a third arm. I’ll never claim to be a photographer. They know things about lighting and zoom lenses and pixels. I know things about clues and descriptions and profound thoughts.

If you see a snazzy photo in the paper with my name on it, you should know it was pure luck. I probably hit the right button at the right time while reaching for my pen.

Yup. I’m a word man. All I need is ink and paper. A few bold quotes to scribble, a few names to jot and I’m done. That’s my job. The camera is an ornament to be pulled out in weird moments.

Because that dame with the gams, she scares me, see? She’s got gams all the way up to the sun, see? But she scares me and small animals all the same, see?

Say … what are gams, anyway?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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