Henny and Lloyd, age mid-twenties, have completed their online course in private detecting and are now licensed PIs. They’ve found an office on Centre Street in downtown NYC, a rundown apartment each in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and set out to make their dreams of crime-fighting come true. Henny especially loves the noir 1940s crime era and dresses the part. Double-breasted suits, fedora, toothpicks replacing the more lethal cigarettes of the era. Lloyd is equally dedicated, if less flamboyant. Attaining his current situation is especially gratifying to Lloyd since he had little encouragement from his family. When he told his father he planned to become a dick, his father replied that the only way he’d become a dick was if he changed his name to Richard. Lloyd was thankful the comment wasn’t any worse. Read their first six cases as they tackle crime in New York City.
Some time passed, and our bank accounts dwindled, but on a Tuesday in November, one of Henny’s fondest wishes came true. We sat at our desks, Henny reading The Maltese Falcon for what he swore was the eighth time, me wondering why Susan hadn’t called. We’d seen each other at least once a week, and I’d phoned her each day since I’d seen her last, so I knew I’d held up my end of things.
You could sometimes fry eggs on the radiators in our office, so I’d cracked open one of the windows to relieve the desert atmosphere. Henny and I both heard them—two quick pops.
“Couldn’t be,” I chuckled. I don’t particularly like the word ‘chuckled.’ Henny would say it certainly wasn’t a word in the noir vocabulary. But, to be scrupulously accurate, I did chuckle. Henny went back to his book, and I returned to my stubborn cocoon of refusing to call Susan more than once a day. Soon, two dolorous knocks caused our heads to swivel toward our door. Henny tossed his book down and hurried to answer. He opened the door and a woman, perhaps thirty or thirty-five years old, took two steps inside the office, dropped to her knees, and stared blankly at Henny before falling forward. From the noise her head made connecting…bonk!...with our wooden floor, I knew the worst had happened.
I rushed over and knelt across from Henny, who had his thumb pressed against the woman’s neck.
“I don’t feel a pulse,” he said. “Ohhh!” Henny pointed to two small holes in the back of the woman’s heavy blue coat.
“Shot! Turn her over.”
We did. There were no holes in the front, so I bent as close to her nose as possible but detected nothing going in or coming out. I, too, tested the artery in her neck. Nothing. I tried the other side of her neck. Nothing going on there either. She appeared dead on both sides.
