Chapter 2

The problem with trying to make dreams come true is that, in what passes for reality, you have to compromise. Real life is full of concerns, about which dreams never care. In dreams, the only currency that needs to be spent is imagination. Real life requires cold hard cash, and New York City is ravenous for it.

Even after selling off everything I owned, I still had to decide whether or not I wanted an apartment, or an office. Having both wasn't even close to my means. I chose to live in my office.

Despite that Hobson's choice, the only space I could afford was on the third floor of a four story walk up. Big compromise there. I always envisioned my dream office on the first floor ... large window in the front, my name on display for all to see. Now I was reduced to hoping potential clients would be so desperate for help that they'd walk up three flights of narrow stairs. Over and above that, once they made it to my floor, I further hoped they'd choose to use my services and not impulsively opt for those of the psychic who had a business opposite mine. Sad to say, she did have a better sign on her door.

I mean, if you were desperate (and you had to be if you had trudged up those steps), would you open the door to Nick Stone, PI written in bold black letters on frosted glass, or be drawn by the glitzy sign of Seer Lena: "All Your Answers Are Here" in glowing blue and green neon lights? I laughed when I first saw that sign, but over the next year I watched, dumbfounded, as possible client after client stopped in the foyer between our two businesses looking perplexed, and chose her door over mine.

Damn it all. Here I was, a reliable source of facts and truth, and they still went for mysticism and carnival tricks. To say I was jealous of her booming business is an understatement. You'd be pissed off too, if all you could afford to eat for months on end were Ramen Noodles.

That first year really tested my resolve. How important was this dream of mine? Was it more important than eating? I stuck it out, and after a while I started getting a trickle of business, but it was still a hell of a lot less than Lena's clientele. Lena. Yeah. It may sound strange, but I didn't actually meet Lena until my third year in New York, even though our offices were less than twenty paces apart.

She was kind of a shut-in. So far as I could tell, she never left the office in which she lived. She had friends that would bring her food and whatever else she asked for, in exchange for a free reading or two, so she had little reason to ever leave, I guess.

Come to think of it, the only time I ever saw her outside of her room was the day I found her dead on the floor of my office ... but I'm getting ahead of myself. I was talking about dreams, not nightmares ... they came much later.

Where was I? Oh yeah ... that first year. As I was saying, that first year nearly broke me. I contemplated running back to Dover and reclaiming my old job just about every time I went to sleep with a growling stomach. It was tough, and it was disheartening, but I stuck it out.

Since I wasn't getting work on a regular basis, I had days and weeks of odd bits of free time to kill. I took advantage of it when I could. In the process, I got to know the city pretty well. For one thing, I quickly found the bars in which the local cops drank away their pain. I made friends at the coroner's offices. I even got to know some of the city's low-lifes. The gangs, the dealers, the pimps and the prostitutes; you never know when they might come in handy. I also made friends with some of the homeless individuals around town. I call them 'my secret weapon'. Society turns a blind eye to them.

They are invisible. No one sees them as a threat, so they're great sources of information. If you know how to talk to them, you can find out about all kinds of dirty little secrets. The homeless are witnesses to the things many think are hidden, because like our trash, they have been thrown away.

Hotel doormen are also great to have on your side. For the right amount of "tip", they'll let you know whose where, and when they come or go.

Pretty much anyone in the hospitality business can be a good source of information. People tend to think that they can carry on conversations around staff like they're not even there. Well, guess what, they are there, and they are listening to every single word that anyone says. Remember that the next time you go to leave a ten percent tip. Anything less than eighteen and your conversation is for sale to the next highest bidder.

By the end of my first year I had lost fifteen pounds, but gained a contact list full of reliable sources. Better than that, I made enough friends by buying cops drinks that business began to pick up. I had been averaging about one case every two months or so, but my new reputation around New York bumped that up to one a month. Still not much, but hey, at least I could sometimes afford real food.

The majority of my cases back then involved infidelity. I hate those cases almost as much as unemployment. They're all the same, and they never turn out for the good. I know a number of detectives who get a perverted thrill peeping on unfaithful husbands and wives. They love spending long hours photographing or filming their indiscretions, being sure to capture every lurid detail for their clients.

I'm not one of them. I've been on the other side of that coin. Believe me, there is nothing 'good' about knowing that the person you love is fucking someone else.

Every time I've had to tell someone the truth about their partner, it brought back memories of my own failed marriage. All the old wounds opened up. I felt their anger, rage, and sadness. I knew what they were going through.

The shock, the disbelief, the loneliness of knowing that the life you thought you had was nothing but a lie. It was, and still is, devastating. That sort of thing sucks all the hope from you. It kills the dreamer inside.

Time after time I relived my own pain while consoling a client. Eventually the pain took its toll, and I sought refuge in a bottle. I and Jack Daniels began a long relationship. Jack was always there to ease my mind. Jack wouldn't keep me up at night wondering if I would ever find someone to love again. Jack was my friend, and Jack would never leave me for someone else. So long as I had enough money to buy his black labeled bottle, he was there for me.

Before I knew it, another year had passed. You see, Jack can be a sneaky bastard. One minute he has all of the answers to your problems, the next he's causing more problems than you had before you met him. In the beginning I had rules with Jack, like not drinking during a case. But he changed the rules behind my back. Soon, it was no drinking during office hours, then no drinking during office hours except at lunch. Before I knew it, there were no rules.

Cases started taking much longer, too long to make a dime. My work was backing up, and then I started to lose what few clients I had. One day, I woke up with a pounding headache. Nothing different there, but while stumbling around in search of my old friend, I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror.

Death has a face. It's one that I've seen too many times to count. On that day, Death looked me right in the eyes with my own reflection. That was the first time Death ever looked back at me.

Tired, drawn, gaunt, sickly, with sunken eyes and cracked lips, he glared at me. Death in my family had gone by the moniker of cancer, heart attack, or heroin ... but on that day, Death visited me as Jack Daniels. My friend was trying to kill me, and like most people with an addiction, I was the last to know it.

I've saved many people in my life, rescuing them before Death could steal them away for good but, saving my own life was the toughest battle I have ever fought. For the first time I had an inkling of what my sister had been going through with her heroin addiction. It's not easy. It's not as simple as getting rid of the implements of your own destruction. It calls to you. It wants you to come back. You dream about it. It tells you lies. Jack started talking to me.

It was in the midst of my self-imposed recovery that I was offered the case that changed the way I see the world. I often wonder about it, now. If I hadn't been in that state of mind, would I have still accepted it?

Lena called it a 'crossroads', one of many that I had come to in my life. It was a decision point that set me on the path that I am on right now. Whether it was right or wrong, she said, didn't matter. All that mattered was that I chose. It is in the choosing that we all have power, the power that emanates from exercising free will. Fate makes the map, but we navigate the roads on that map by means of our own choices.

If my life were a movie, this is the part I always envisioned in black and white. It fits, matching how the old Hollywood masters always shot high drama.

Scene one opens in a tight close-up of a half-full rocks glass. One of the three chunks of ice clinks against the side of the glass before settling once again. Drops of condensation slide down the outside of the glass, dripping onto the polished wood surface below. The camera pulls back slowly to reveal a large desk with me seated behind it, my feet propped up on one corner, taking a long draw off a cigarette as I casually survey my establishment. The camera gradually widens focus to reveal a dark, smoky office. The streetlights cast horizontal shadows on the walls through the window blinds. The volume increases, catching the sound of an antique typewriter hammering away, an old radio softly playing big band music, and rain spattering the window. Cut abruptly to the door leading outside my office as a flash of lightning illuminates the silhouette of a woman standing outside.

Fade, and cut to a tight shot in low light. My office door from the outside, the frosted glass adorned with my name. A slender hand with painted nails reaches for the brass doorknob.

Cut back to the interior of my office, a low and close shot of the opposite side of the door. The handle turns, slowly the door opens, and you see the mystery woman from the waist down, long legs encased in black stockings, high heels clicking nervously on the hardwood floor. As the woman hesitantly walks inside, shaking her umbrella and shedding her dripping raincoat, the camera slowly pans upward. Little can be seen of the woman in the semi-darkness, as she looks uncertainly over her shoulder at the neon sign across the hallway.

Zap! There's a long lightning flash punctuated with a loud thunderclap which momentarily reveals a beautiful blonde bomb shell, or maybe even a mysterious raven-haired vixen coming to me for help.

None of that happened. That was the dream, the fantasy of what a life changing case would be like. I guess I did see one too many film noir flicks than was good for me.

No, the reality of the situation was much different. It was the middle of the day, a perfect mid-May spring day. I couldn't afford a secretary, and even if I could have, they would have refused to work with an old manual typewriter. I had a radio, but the brick buildings surrounding my office prevented it from receiving any kind of a signal other than squelching static. I had a desk, but at that moment I was busy getting sick in my bathroom. Too many hours sober for my dependent body to handle, I suppose.

Damned if there wasn't a woman, and she definitely needed my help, but she was a far cry from what anyone would call a bombshell or a vixen.