You toss the cigarette butt into the overflowing ashtray and grab your hat. The pawn shops along Grant Avenue never sleep, not in this city. The first three yield nothing but suspicious glances and slammed doors. Old Man Henderson at the fourth shop—'Lucky Star Pawn & Loan'—runs a finger down his ledger with yellowed nails. 'Pearls, huh? Yeah, some kid came in yesterday. Wanted fifty bucks for a single earring. Said he fished it out the bay.'

You slide a fiver across the glass counter. 'What'd the kid look like?' Old Man Henderson pockets the bill without blinking. 'Skinny white kid, maybe eighteen. Had a tattoo here—' He taps his collarbone. 'Some kinda snake. Smelled like fish guts and bad decisions.'

The trail leads you to Pier 45, where the night crew unloads crates of Dungeness crab under floodlights. A deckhand points you toward a rusted trawler named 'Mermaid's Curse.' Inside, a shirtless kid with a serpent tattoo snores in a hammock reeking of stale beer. The missing pearl earring dangles from his pierced nipple, catching the dim bulb light like a sick joke.

You flick his forehead with your lighter. He startles awake, eyes darting to the knife under his pillow. 'Easy, junior.' You flash your P.I. license. 'That earring's evidence. Where's the other one?' The kid licks chapped lips. 'Ain't got it. Some broad paid me twenty to dive for it near Chase's Mercedes. Said it was her grandma's.'

Outside, the fog's turned to drizzle. You stare at the kid's scribbled description—'red dress, black curls, smelled like jasmine and gunpowder.' The pieces click together with cold certainty. Mrs. Chase never mentioned her sister visiting from Chicago. The sister with the gambling debts. The sister who always wore jasmine perfume.