Pat Novak, For Hire — 1946

A stranger's thousand dollars lands in Novak's bank account, and the woman waiting at his door wants him to lift a playing card off a passenger on a docking ship.

A man is run down in the street outside Novak's office and spends his last breath handing over two envelopes -- one of cash, one to be delivered to a stranger.

Lee Underwood will pay Novak to deliver one sentence to a man named Dixie Gillian: Adrian says be gone by noon tomorrow. It is a generous fee for sixty minutes of work, and a poor one for what the gun he was told was empty turns out to do.