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"Boss, there's some guy here to see you." I was slumped down in the rattiest chair in the seediest office in the seediest building in the seediest area of Cincinnati, staring glumly at the sparse furniture and decaying walls. "Tell him to beat feet, Moe. It's over; we're getting evicted next week." A small piece of tape was curling up from the middle of the cheap name plate on my desk, revealing three letters I preferred to keep covered - you can't be taken seriously as a PI with a name like "Maxine Guffin", but "Max" sounds passably tough. I reached out and smoothed down the tape, thinking for the thousandth time that I needed to fire the imbecile who'd ordered the name plate, said imbecile being me. Moe frowned and scratched his head as if he was struggling to understand, which was almost certainly the case. He plowed ahead, "Says he's an old friend of yours. Says his name's Ian Noulha." "Never heard of him. Tell him I retired. No, wait - tell him I died." A rakish figure - tall, lean, whippet-quick - brushed past Moe and plopped down in the office's second-rattiest, and only other, chair. "Hello, Max. It is Max Guffin, right?" |
I slouched and glared at him from under the brim of my trilby. "Seems like something an 'old friend' would know." He grinned an unnaturally white grin, which stopped well short of his eyes. "Old friend, new friend" he gave a sardonic shrug "What's the difference? I need your help. Surely you'd never turn your back on a friend in need?" Now I was certain we'd never met before. "Sorry, I'm retired. No, wait - I'm dead." I reached for the nearest of the mostly-empty bottles cluttering the room. "You need my help, I need a drink. And six months back rent, so it looks like neither of us is getting what we wa-" He'd pulled out a fat wad of bills and dropped half the stack on my desk, right in front of the INE-covering tape, which had started to curl again. "Half now, half when you find the man who took the Oman Steel Calf from me." "Took the what now?" He pulled a sheet of paper from some inner pocket of his almost-stylish jacket. "Never mind, here's what I need you to do ..." |
Will Maxine be able to find the Oman Steel Calf?
Will she figure out what Noulha is up to, save her PI practice, and bring the thief to justice?