THE ACE OF DIAMOND’S: FILE 48-A

Jack Hammer02 mins mins
Case Summary: The body showed up in a high-rise penthouse, dressed for a night out in a tux that cost more than a year’s rent in the slums. There’s no ID, no prints, and the only evidence is a single playing card—the Ace of Diamonds—left face-up on the dead man’s chest.

The Ace of Diamonds

The city was a wet, black mirror fifty stories below, smeared by the steady November rain. Up here, it was all polished glass and silence. The kind of silence that cost a man plenty, both when he was alive, and now that he was a flat line.

The air conditioning hummed, trying its best to scrub the smell of cheap ozone and spent ambition out of the penthouse. But it couldn’t touch the real stink—the stink of a secret that just expired.

The body was stretched out on a rug the color of dried port wine, beneath a chandelier that probably paid better than I did. Gilt-edged, they called him. That’s what they call everything up here: shiny, expensive, and ready to crack. His face was pale and unremarkable, framed by a high-dollar haircut that hadn’t moved an inch. He was wearing a tux. Not just a tux, but the kind of midnight wool that made every other man in the room look like they were dressed in borrowed drapes.

A copper with a dime-store badge named O’Malley was trying to look bored, running a penlight over the scene like he was checking his laundry list.

“Cleanest hit I ever saw, Hammer,” O’Malley said, spitting the words out like rusty nails. “No signs of entry, no struggle. Looks like he just decided to take a permanent nap after a good party.”

“Except the party’s still going, O’Malley,” I muttered, pulling a cigarette out and lighting it by reflex. “Guys who pay this much to live up here don’t just stop breathing. They get nudged.”

I crouched down, ignoring O’Malley’s sigh. The corpse’s hands were perfect—manicured, no sign of a struggle. But his left hand was clenched slightly, resting on his diaphragm.

And that’s when I saw it. The one thing that didn’t fit the picture-perfect scene. Resting squarely on the center of that starched white shirt, tucked just under the lapel, was a single playing card.

The Ace of Diamonds. Clean, sharp, and the only thing in the room that wasn’t bought with blood money.

This wasn’t a death; it was a delivery. A message sent C.O.D. The killer didn’t just walk out—he dropped a signature.

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