It was the sugar daddy's wife who'd hired Jack for this tail. Just a few days earlier she'd invited him up to her East Side penthouse…

"I'VE SUSPECTED NATHAN of stepping out on me before," the wife said, "but he always denies it…" "And now?" Jack asked.

"And now I've finally made the decision. I want out of this marriage, and I need help proving his infidelity."

Jack had taken dozens of cases like this, with one exception: None of the cheating Charlies had been anywhere near as powerful as Nathan Burwell. Building a case against the District Attorney for the City of New York wouldn't be any private investigator's first choice of assignments. Jack would have preferred taking drags off a lit stick of dynamite.

"I wonder, Mrs. Burwell, how many private dicks did you try hiring before me?"

"Twelve," said the DA's wife. She lifted her porcelain cigarette holder-a favorite relic of an aging flapper-inhaled deeply, and blew a smoke ring. "You're lucky thirteen."

Jack already knew he was pretty far down the food chain, not that his office didn't have a charming view of the Third Avenue El. Maybe he was crazy for even considering taking the case, but his current list of clients had more than its share of deadbeats, his rent was coming due, and Mrs. Nathan Burwell was offering three times his usual rate. For that kind of lettuce, Jack figured even a turtle would consider sticking his neck out.

Besides, reasoned Jack, he'd never had any great affection for the DA. The man's greasy thumbprints were all over the dismissal of charges against a Fifth Avenue brat accused of sexually assaulting a young waitress in an alley during a night of carousing. "Not enough evidence," old Burwell had claimed. 'Course the young man's daddy also happened to be one of the state's biggest contributors to the DA's political party.