1947. San Francisco. Brumous as always, street lamps casting keen light on slicked pavement. Swaddled in a encompassing night, the yells of derelicts caught by the marine air lilt over the town. A town of crepuscular dark, a town of mystery. Every flatfoot in this town will do backflips for a couple of sawbucks. That’s why they need me, Floyd Mursby, professional gumshoe. Because of this, there’s always business as a PI.
Out of all the storied PI’s in town, nobody quite got to the level of Edward G., he cracked cases like walnuts, this man was a legend. One time, after a professional friendship was formed at a c***tail party in a swank Nob Hill loft, he bumped a case my way. A case that involved a doll, one by the name of Myra McEnna, sultry as they come, cigarette-holder held gingerly, a taffeta cap at a rakish angle on her head. She was in my office the next day, and she explained to me a lurid story, one involving her husband's death. Her husband had died in a locked room, no windows around, no exit and entry wound but a smoking gun with one chamber expended nearby. I stroked my chin and immediately knew it must have been her. I have the best hunches, hunches like a damn camel. If I was a camel, I’d have a million damn hunches. I turned her in immediately and she was gassed in San Quentin. I later learned that it was the husbands chiropodist who gave him strychnine after he wanted to break off their tryst. No mater though, from a subjective perspective, everybody is guilty in some regard. What does it matter if they’re not guilty for one particular transgression?
I walked on through downtown, awash with the miasma of human stink. I am the point of light in this dark, dark world. I am the divine adjudicator, the Jupiter Conservator of a pointless world. I’m hardboiled, much like an egg, which is also hardboiled. With this, I say so long. So long.