“Five years.” The man thought to himself, sitting in his office. Running his hand over the calendar sitting on his desk, Joseph Stockton shakes his head in lament. “Five years today, since I turned in my badge and my service revolver, and told the Commissioner that I wouldn’t work another day in that precinct.” His mind continues to race, that snowy day in December of the year 1922 coming back to him. He had worked for the 15th in New York City, Pride of Hell’s Kitchen, since he returned from the trenches over eleven years ago. Tonight was to be a night of nostalgia it seems, and so, Stockton poured himself another glass, he had grown to love bourbon after his<span style="font-style: italic">return</span>from the Argonne Forest. As he raises the glass to his lips, he lifts his legs up, propping them on his desk, he closes his eyes, and the scenery changes.<br/><br/><br/>The first flashback, as it typically would be, was a cold Monday morning, in a wooded area in France. The Armistice had been called, the “Great War” was over, at least in the mind of the world. Despite the pageantry of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, Lance Corporal Stockton wouldn’t see American soil again until February of the following year. His next flashback, May of 1919. He had returned to the very tenement building he had been born in, where his mother had died while he was overseas. He had decided to be a police officer, wanting to make the world a better place, to ease his conscious about his actions during the Great War. However, as time marched on, it seemed more and more people were being killed, a black market for booze had been created, and it seemed as if the gangsters were determined to kill each other in the name of a dollar and a few more square feet of turf. Then, the corruption had started to fester within the police force itself, cops staging crime scenes, accepting bribes. And that is why, three days before Christmas in the year 1922, he quit. After a couple of years of toiling and saving, Stockton had earned his PI license, spending most of 1926 and 1927 watching the decade pass by, getting by on cases of ‘Jack Shot Jill over Bill’, never leaving his office other than to eat, sneak into a speakeasy, or to have his one suit and trench coat cleaned at the Chinese Laundry. And that, is why this man, Joseph Stockton, is sitting in his office, three days before Christmas, in the year 1927, apathetically drinking and staring out the window.<br/><br/><br/>The next morning, his secretary, Miss Beaumont, an elderly spinster, walks into the office as per usual. Morning light shines through the blinds, hitting him directly in his eyes. The man springs from his chair, his head heavy from overconsumption of alcohol the night before. He asks his secretary for coffee, needing to awaken himself. Sure, the cases hadn’t been coming as much, but, he had to do something, closing shop is no option. Moving his hand to the lighter on the table, he pulls out a cigarette, lighting it. As he inhales on the cancer stick, the phone rings, Stockton’s world is about to change.