COMEDY REVIEW : The Stand-Up Detective : Gumshoe: Tommy Sledge takes the audience along as he tracks down laughter, hoots, side-splitters.

It was a quiet night, unlike most nights at the Improv, 832 Garnet Ave., Pacific Beach. The crowd was neither large nor rowdy, but it was ready for something. Anything.

Then, he walked in. Nobody was sure what he was packing, but we were about to find out. He had been walking the boulevard of broken dreams with the tipster. The tipster knows all the angles, he said.

The room was dark, but we could still see we were in for something different.

Say hello to Tommy Sledge, stand-up detective, gumshoe, flatfoot, who put on a beauty of a show, gig, performance New Year’s night.

“As I look out over the sea of empty tables, I wonder: “Who’s the big draw here tonight?’ ”

Wearing a tan corduroy jacket, brown slacks and a wide, too-loud tie topped off with the requisite gray fedora, this happy Joe pounded his dogs through the 100 palookas and dynamite dames in the crowd. He bummed “cigarettes, coffin nails, lung rockets, glow pills” and posed the hard questions.

“My name’s Tommy. . . . What’s yours?” he asked at a table close to the stage.

“I don’t have a name,” came the answer.

He turned to the rest of us: “She said it in a voice so husky it could’ve pulled a dog sled. I wanted to hear more of that voice. I didn’t care what she said.”

He moved on to another “doxy with moxie.”

“She was gorgeous. She was a symphony in red. Somewhere, there is a (miffed) Santa Claus.

. . . “What a pair of gams, legs, stems, benders, pegs, walkers, getaway sticks. They might be kickers, I backed off.”

He moved on. That’s what he does. That’s his job.

This wasn’t the easiest case. He was working a small, sensitive crowd just getting over New Year’s Eve, digesting a long day of football bowl games and definitely not looking forward to taxes.

“Here’s how I filed. I signed it and left it blank. And put a little note at the top: Some Assembly Required.”

He bummed more smokes.

“Three guesses which New Year’s resolution I’m breaking right now?” he asked no one in particular, getting no answer in particular. But that was fine with this comic. He wasn’t looking for answers. He was looking for laughs.

“Somebody had blown holes in all the Cheerios. Wasn’t hard to figure out who it was. A cereal killer. . . .

“Too bad about Kamikaze pilots. Had to do all their bragging ahead of time.”

He moved on. That was his job.

Sledge, 46, has been doing his job for 11 years, after learning comedy in an improvisational group that included a young Robin Williams.

The Los Angeles resident--who hosted the half-hour “Fast Forward Detective” on the Comedy Channel--spends about 26 weeks a year on the road, working clubs and one-night industrial shows which offer “the big green, the moola, the serious cabbage.” He likes that, he explained.

Moving quickly and confidently through his 45-minute set, Sledge constantly worked his “eyes, peepers, stare-scopes,” taking in the scene, looking for fodder. He kept one hand in his pocket while his other hand held on to a cordless microphone.

He sat at a typewriter on stage and enlisted the audience’s help in writing a cheap detective novel.

He provided the story line. The crowd provided the color. Sometimes it wasn’t much, but it was all he had to go on.

The typewriter’s constant tap, tap, tap provided the mood, the background, the moment. He read the plot’s progress aloud as he typed, nearly knocking over his “java, joe, cup of mud.”

But the story ended fine. It all added up. He found the missing heroine. The butler didn’t do it.

Yeah, this act was all right.

Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade couldn’t have handled the case any better.

A Joe could do worse than getting a load of a mug like Sledge. This flatfoot was a kick, a hoot, a blast.

Tommy Sledge will be performing at the Improv, 832 Garnet Ave., Pacific Beach, through Sunday. Opening acts are Bo Smithson and Jerry Swallow. For reservations or information, call 483-4520.