THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508040185
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
It doesn't take Nucks Nolan long to smell a rat.
He isn't what you'd call a rocket scientist, but he's been a P.I. long enough to recognize a snow job when he sees one.
In fact, when faced with a fast-talking scam artist - which is more often than not - Nucks has been known to snarl: ``I didn't just fall off a turnip truck, pal. I played a little high school ball.''
So, when the Miss Virginia pageant committee hired him to check out the new queen's credentials, things just didn't click inside his scarred old noggin.
Committee members, led by an imposing middle-age lady with graying hair, a shovel chin and a set of beady eyes, had been ushered into his dingy Atlantic Avenue office by Myrna, his secretary, one morning not long ago.
Shovel Chin handed him the pageant queen's resume and strongly suggested that he investigate the young woman's claims. This was accompanied by a lot of yammering about fraudulent entries, possible scandal and the embarrassment it would cause the great state of Virginia.
Nucks quickly accepted the assignment, mainly because he had been unemployed for the past six months and was in arrears in his rent, not to mention his electric bill and his alimony.
``That'll be 250 bucks a day, plus expenses,'' he growled, adding, ``and that's two-fifty up front.''
With 250 clams in his pocket, Nucks thumbed through the folder, observing shrewdly that the reigning beauty was only 21 years old and claimed she already had become a Nobel laureate, a brain surgeon, an Olympic gold-medal winner, a Rhodes Scholar, a concert pianist, a world-renown tap dancer and literary critic and frequent celebrity guest on the TV talk-show circuit. That was just for openers.
``Not bad for a kid four years outa high school,'' Nucks muttered to himself between puffs on his cigarette.
It was a whirlwind investigation. Duck soup, really, because Myrna did most of the work on the phone. Nucks had her dial a state university, the Nobel committee in Stockholm, the U.S. Olympic committee chairman in L.A. and a scribe on a daily newspaper in New York. The results were interesting, to say the least.
Armed with a folder full of newspaper clippings, some faxes and a pack of Camels, Nucks hopped in his rusty `84 Merc and rumbled across the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to confront the queen with the facts Myrna had just assembled for him. It was time for the queen to square the claims on her resume and it didn't take long to find out her story had more holes in it than a bullfighter's skivvies.
``It was just a teensy-weensy little mistake,'' she whimpered, batting those baby blues at Nucks. ``Just an eensy exaggeration - nobody's perfect.''
Not long after that, Shovel Chin and the rest of the pageant committee got their heads together and decided to yank the queen's crown, confiscate her new Mustang convertible, toss her out of her rent-free apartment, take back her $7,500 college scholarship and drum her out of the beauty pageant scene altogether.
The media was all over the scandal like flies on road pizza.
The deposed queen, misty-eyed now and defensive, told TV interviewers that her ``conscience was clear,'' and that if she had it all to do over again, she'd still fill out the resume the same way - well, maybe with some itsy-bitsy little changes.
``I am an honest person,'' she sniffed. ``I had the facts to support what I wrote down. Maybe I had remorse about how it all was handled.''
Nucks, who was watching the TV performance from a bar stool at an Atlantic Avenue night spot, could only smile and shake his head. by CNB