Chapter 8. It was 6 o'clock in the morning, and I was ready to hand square jaw his big, ugly hat.

I'm not entirely sure what he expected when he left me his business card, but I had the barretta in my bag now and was through playing games.

His exit from the office of Samuel Berker was pretty slick. I was willing to give him that on points. But then he had to go

and lose the lightning round by leaving me his address like a stupid kid showing off. What kind of a name was

Jack Justice anyway? How seriously was I supposed to take this guy? I get it that it would be tough

for a fella to get a start as a private eye with a name like Emil Meeker or something, but do you really have to go 180 degrees in the opposite direction

with the pseudonym? I wondered about the list of names he had rejected. Hunky McMahon? Lance

Strongchin? I was keeping a low profile in the window of a coffee shop on the other side

of Lake Street.

The coffee was uniquely terrible and seemed to have been boiling for a couple of days until it was all roughly the texture of that skin you sometimes find on a bowl of soup.

It was bad, all right, but it was still too quiet on the streets to be waiting openly.

I had been up to the palatial offices of justice investigations already, just on the off chance that the genius dropped my camera bag off before retiring for the night.

The elevator had a sign posted on it that read, out of order, which did not look all that new.

Some helpful wag had thoughtfully added the note again in pencil, so it looked like the office was essentially

in a walk-up.

The lock had been tougher than I expected, but still didn't present that much of a challenge.

Inside, there were two desks, two chairs, two of everything that might suggest there were two

detectives on the job.

The moniker on the door showed no sign of a partner unless there were two Emil Meekers, each taking turns at being Jack Justice.

Seemed unlikely, but if this bozo was doing well enough to afford a secretary, I was prepared to quit the business on principles.

But it was not the case. One desk was mostly empty, and the stuff piled on top of it seemed to have been placed there from the other side,

as if it had become the catch-all spot for anything that the great detective didn't really want to put away just now.

...