Confucius Say ~

Cracking open my fortune cookie from yet another dinner out of a box, I grimaced.  According to Confucius, not even he thought I had a chance of finding this skirt.  


"People who don't know where they are going usually wind up somewhere else."  


Apparently I needed a better lucky charm.  It had been weeks and not a peep from this deadbeat dame.  A few graveyard shifts at the Warm-up wasn’t giving me anything either.  This skirt might as well have been a ghost.  
 
I wasn’t feeling like a ghost story, at least not telling one.  I was looking forward to getting paid.


I was going to have to do a stakeout.  I hated stakeouts.  Terrible locations, limited resources and usually winding up somewhere I didn't intend to go.  


No use fighting it - it was time to pack.

The Warm-Up

He was a referral from Archer and Spade.  It was a skirt case.

There were too many cases of molls that followed some GI and ended up needing some dough and getting caught up with the wrong types.  So they threw those peeper cases to me.

This time the chick found herself working some flophouse and then making a clean sneak after a late shift.  Of course I was in.  Of course I needed to know where to start.

He dropped a napkin on my desk for the Warm-Up: a hole-in-the-wall coffee joint known to cater to Chippys and Punks.  As soon as this Joe left my office I knew he was over his head.  There was always more to the story in this business.