He's packing heat. I can tell by the bulge in his jacket.  The dame with him is packing, too, but her bulges look a lot softer.

"So, what can I do for yez?" I ask. The bozo is standing behind the broad at the desk in my office.

He says, "My lady-friend Naomi here, thinks somebody's following her. So we want a gumshoe like you to check out the territory." He looks down at her. "Don't we, honey?"

Naomi glances up from her magazine at me, chewing noisily on something. "Yeah."

"Mob territory?" I ask.

Bozo's hand reaches for his bulge. "You ain't too smart, wise guy."

"Gotta know what I'm lookin' out for," I says. "Cops or creeps, y'know?"

"Gotcha," he says, his hand returning to Naomi's shoulder. "Hey, where you keep the can around here?"

"Out the door and down the hall to the left," says I.

He ain't gone a minute before Naomi plops a pink wet mess on my desktop and leans across to me. "Hey, honey," she says, "you're working for me, y'hear? The mob's taking out sonny-boy tomorrow, and you're gonna make sure I don't get hit, too. Y'know?" She hefts her bulges real good and says, "I'll make it worth your while." The pink mass gets tossed back into her mouth and she smiles big.

I hear machine-gun blasts out in the hall. The door flies open and "sonny-boy" comes staggering in, his chest full of red holes with black centers. He collapses to the floor--dead.

"Guess the mob is running early," I says. "Can I buy you a drink?"