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Crime Scene Bar. Not much of a place, unless you like your drinks cheap, your seating ample, and your decor high-concept. A seamy little joint on the Lower East Side, the hangout of choice for the worst scum that you'll find this side of a Strokes show. And, like I found out when I hauled my whiskey-rotted body out of this morning's post-alcoholic stupor, the place that would be the scene of the next PubNight.
Her message came through my broadband connection like a silver bullet dipped in honey. I couldn't see her face, but I knew what she looked like--trouble. A gal who would take a drink if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.* She said her name was Cindy and I might have believed her, since we'd met many times, but I was too smart for that. And she had a job for me: to write the PubNight e-mail. I'd been down on my luck, but something about this deal rubbed me the wrong way, so I said no dice, baby, you're as shifty as smoke and I'm nobody's chump. She wondered what dice I was talking about, because there isn't any gambling at this place. So I started to get into a discussion of private eye cliches, then said screw this, I've got real work to do and I might as well just write the thing. Hell, that's life.
Keep your nose clean until then.
-Mike, the Triumvirate, and Sawyer, who Mike just remembered did the same damn thing this summer
*Plagiarism courtesy of Raymond Chandler.