Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction

     A dame walked into my office. That's how it always starts. The days change, the cases change, and the dames change too, but who cares? This one had legs that went all the way up, and a hanky to dab at the tears in her eyes with. They us/ed to just wipe like mad at their tears, but nowadays with everything changing, Dames wear makeup, and to prevent smudging her light green eyeshadow all over her temples, she had to dab with her hanky. That completed, she opened her pretty / mouth and breathed the words, "You're Sam Spade, right? I got a case for you ..."
     Too bad I didn't hear her words -- I was too busy looking at her ... endowments to catch anything she said. She knew this, and sauntered up to my desk, slowly raised her hand, and slammed me in the jaw with a right hook.
     "Hello!?! My eyes are up here!!! Anyway, my husband's gone missing, and I need you to find him. There's a reward for you, but you can't let the cops know he's gone -- he dealt in sinister aspects of the carpeting industry.
     I nodded, wiping the blood trickling / down my chin. "Sorry, I've never been much on eyes. They're always telling lies and making promises the body can't back up."
     She used this to aim another punch, but I was ready this time. I deftly blocked her lame swing. /
     Then I reached over and gave her a little love tap. She kicked me between the legs, dropped a twenty dollar bill on the floor and walked off, saying, "His name's Fred... Freddy Baer ... he was last seen / working in a low-down clip joint south of Sunset. He's no-good and he passes doity money."
     "Well, must be a living... beats being a private dick ... at least in this town ... The story's I could tell you, sweetheart."
     "Now that I've paid you, can you find him?" /
     "Well," I said, wishing I was a public dick, not a private one, "I'll give it a shot."
     "No! Don't shoot him--find him," she cried.
     "That's what I meant, sweetheart," I said. "I think I'll start down at the morgue."
     "The morgue," she said.
     "Yeah," I said, a lot of my clients--uh, the people I'm finding--end up there. /
     I went down to the morgue. There he was, all wrapped up in his own carpet and tacked as well. My chance with the dame dropped like a snitch wearing cement overshoes. I took a long pull off my hip flask and reflected that there were as many dames in the world as there were drinks in the sea.