HIGH STAKES

PI Vince Reid features in the launch of an electrifying new series. He's offered a case promising easy money, but he may have gambled for much more than he bargained for - including his own life.

- WORDS by J.P. POMARE

REID (NOW)

Dusk was falling, that sad grey hour between daylight and streetlight. The blacktop hummed beneath the wheels of the Camry. I'm on my way to Paris, Illinois, where I'm visiting an old friend, Nick Lark.

Nick has known me since I was a baby. He worked with my father. He knew my mother. I've never had a mentor, but Nick's about as close as I've got to one.

Years ago when I finished up as a cop, he reached out, said someone with my skills could land on their feet as a private investigator. Nowadays, Nick is retired, but he told me he's got a job for me. Something too good to pass up, he said.

When I arrive, I turn into the long driveway. The headlights wheel out over the expanse of flat pasture, first catching the cows and their shining eyes gathered in the paddocks before passing over the low-forking white oak.

The porch light is on, and as I pull up I see the screen door open and Nick steps out onto the deck, with feet apart and hands on hips.

Nick Lark could have walked straight out of the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel.

He is famous for being completely invisible as a tail, could follow you from Seattle to Tampa, know every meal you had, how much you spent on gas and probably what songs were on the radio for the trip. And you? Well, you wouldn't notice a thing. A real gumshoe. He looks the part too, his face both jaunty and hangdog - a Midwestern Churchill minus the bowler hat, but partial to a waistcoat in his old age.

"Well, who'd have guessed we would have a bona-fide celebrity darken our door, but here we are," he says, extending his hand.

I look at him a moment, and the tension from sitting for hours in the car just disappears. When I accept his handshake, he jerks me into a hug, thumps my back. Still strong as an ox.

"Been a while," I say.

"Sure has. Come on in. May's got supper on."

"May," I say.

She hugs me.

"Good to see you, Reid."