She looked startled, then she nodded, once. "How did you know?" she said in a quavering voice. Her hands were shaking like a sapling in a cyclone.

"Easy there," I said, guiding her to a chair, "in my line of work, you can just tell. Why don't you explain yourself, miss…?"

"Twist," she said, "Honey P. Twist."

I fixed Miss Twist a Gimlet to steady her nerves as she told me her story. Seems her fiancé, S. T. Heposter, was in deep with a couple of Polack toughs, and the only way to get them off his back was to hock a piece of jewelry – the little lady’s engagement ring, worth a cool thirty-five grand. Only trouble was she’d misplaced the thing while dancing at The Golden Marmoset. She needed me to track it down pronto, before this Heposter fellow figured out it was missing or the Polacks started getting irate.

"No problem," I said. I knew the place well. Of course, if I’d known the places this case would take me, I’d have been a little less nonchalant…

"Oh, Christoph, thank you, thank you," she said. "I can call you Christoph, can’t I?"

I gave her a cool smile. "Mr. Jewdood will do for now."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1014541&forum_id=2#11948944)

I walked past the stage, throwing a wink at a bored-looking oriental gal, and into the back office. "Dean," I said, as I entered the room, "need to ask you about one of your girls..." my voice trailed off. Dean Bitterman was slumped over his desk with a knife in his back. His head was resting on his desk, I noticed, balanced on the very tip of his ratlike nose.

I took a quick look around the office, but nothing seemed out of place. As I turned to go, I noticed a scrap of paper in Bitterman's hand, which I gently tugged free. In a shaky hand, he'd written "Order of Charontes." I didn't know what the hell that meant, but I owed it to Dean B, with whom I'd shared many a rusty nail, to figure it out - and unless I missed my guess, the bastards who'd killed my pal probably had Honey's ring, as well.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1014541&forum_id=2#11949273)

so i tracked down this Vollinger. i found him in what the little colored boys who flicked me a Herald each morning used to call the "two-fist district," and when that big sasquatch of a private dick rose up on his size thirteens i wondered just what Frau Adchick had nudged me into. i'd come into his office shaken, on the rocks, and i ended up leaving with a twist . . .

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1014541&forum_id=2#11949699)

Possession by our star attraction, a dancer called Honey P. Twist. Sugar-sweet at first, and then she's poison -- that's the twist. Remember her first husband, Herr Hundertfierundsiebzig, the financier? He had a bavarian chocolate cake at the wedding, a honeymoon of eiswein and souffle, and then -- imagine his surprise -- a dose of potassium chloride in his black forest pudding. Accidents will happen, though the cops never puzzled out how that one did. Her second husband was the undertaker for her first husband. He died of a tawny port.

The other night, closing time, Dean Bitterman was telling me it looked like our girl might've found a Mr. Honey the Third. Not just another chump who'd blow $50 on two songs and an increased risk of stroke. Someone with real money and a diamond ring to win our Honey. Dean B said he had a plan. He'd tell Honey he had proof that she'd killed husbands uno and dos and a threat that he'd go to the cops unless she gave him a cut of her winnings from her next trot down the aisle. Dean asked if I wanted to help.

Did I want to help? Nah. Sounded dangerous -- and that's if Dean was right about the whole mess. So I declined. Like the man says, I only work here. I'm just the guy serving your drinks.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1014541&forum_id=2#11949979)