Shills Can't Cash Chips

Начало книги

I walked across the reception room of COOL & LAM, INVESTIGATORS, opened the door of my private office. Elsie Brand, my secretary, looked up with an expression I had come to know.

“What is it, Elsie?” I asked. “Good or bad?”

“What?”

“What you wanted to tell me.”

“How did you know I had something to tell you?”

“The expression on your face.”

“Don’t I have any secrets from you?” she asked.

I smiled at her. She became flustered and said, “If you had time, Donald, to step down the hall with me, I... I wanted to show you something.”

“I have the time,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We left my office, walked across the reception room, down the hall, and Elsie led the way to the storage closets, took a key, unlocked the door of closet number eight and switched on the light.

These storage closets were in a dead windowless space in the building, and our closet had been used as a catchall for old junk that should have been thrown away. Now it had been neatly segregated into shelves, and the shelves were lined with scrapbooks.

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