Noir Detective
From Create Your Own Story
You light your cigarette and toss the used match into the ashtray. You puff out smoke rings into the hot summer air, still and muggy even with the window open. How did you end up like this? A deadbeat dick in this crummy city?
Your mind wanders again to the war. Those were the days. You still remember storming that beach in Normandy, thinking you were invincible - that nothing would ever pull you down. Of course, life never works out like that, does it?
It wasn't till you got back home that you realized it - nobody wanted you around. There were too few jobs to fill and too many ex-servicemen to fill them. And most of them weren't riddled with shrapnel either. It wasn't long before you were down on your luck. And you would have stayed down too, if it hadn't been for old George Haverstock.
You take another puff of your cigarette. It was simply good luck that you ran across George that afternoon at the bar. He offered you a post at his P.I. firm, simply for the sake of a shared cigarette on a French beach. You took him up on his offer and before long you'd found out you were actually good at it.
It wasn't all Holmesian business. That was more George's line of work. You usually got the low jobs. The insurance frauds. The thieving employees. But at least it paid. Soon you were a partner at the firm, with a black sign painted on a door and a little office to go with it.
It is in this office that you sit, smoking, when the blonde steps in.
