1. I woke up with the taste of bourbon on my tongue and the smell of gunpowder on my fingers. Both happen more often than is advisable.
2. Melanie Bollingham was the kind of dame that made you pray for rain, just so she'd be stuck there high and dry with you for just a few more hours til the storm passed.
3. The old man had money, and plenty, but he didn't seem interested in parting with any of it too quickly. That's the trick to money. You have it as long as you have it.
4. The pug took a swing at me, and hard. If his haymaker had connected, I'd have been dozing in the Grand Palooka Hotel for the night. Fortunately for me, he missed and I didn't, and he got to check in under the reservation that had been made for me.
5. "Take it easy, Jimmy," I said. "I got not beef with you, and you don't want one with me. So let's all point our heaters at the ground and talk like civilized reprobates."
6. I found the girl, just where Melanie said I would. But Melanie had left out one important fact. Her sister wasn't just trouble. Her sister was dead.
7. "A most unfortunate business," the old man said as he looked out towards the ocean. "No one blames you, of course, Mr. Stone. But, you won't blame me if I don't continue to retain your services. Or see to it that no one else does either."
8. It was never about the girl. It was always about the old man's money. And I had been set up like ten wooden pins ready to be bowled over to take the fall for his murder.
9. It was one gunshot. And one second. But both felt like more.
10. "This one's going to take some doing, Stone," Sgt. Connor said. "But, I've seen you wriggle your way out of worse. Just like the snake you are."
11. In the end, it was just another night. And in the morning, there'd be the familiar taste of bourbon and smell of gunpowder to remind me I'd just been played in another game of lies.
