Halloween The Midnight Gourd-and-Bat Special.
The dame was a study in contradictions. Her eyes had a light in them that didn't belong in my office, and a smile wide enough to swallow a pumpkin patch whole. She slid a ten-spot across the desk, a little too clean for my line of work.
"I need you to tell me what this is," she said, her voice like wind chimes on a cold night.
I looked at the item in question. It was a contraption of cheap plastic and tinsel, with orange gourds grinning like a couple of drunks on a Saturday night and black bats with glitter on their wings. I called it The Midnight Gourd-and-Bat Special.
"It makes me feel things," she said, "things I haven't felt since I was knee-high to a grasshopper."
I lit a cigarette. Some cases, you don't take for the dough. You take them because you're a shamus, and a shamus has to know why a dame is smiling in a city full of grim faces. It was a mystery, all right, one that a bottle of bourbon and a couple of sleepless nights wouldn't solve.