My name is Jacob Stern. Jake is what most people call me now-a-day. The private investigation office that I set up after my disbarment from practicing law after twenty years is in the heart of downtown New Orleans, about two blocks from the Dome. I like that. I have season tickets to the Saints, with a built in parking space at the building where my office is located. The office is on the second floor. It’s modest. Nondescript actually. There is an outer room. Nicki occupies that now. An inner room with an old oak desk, standard size, four-drawer metal file cabinet, an Office Depot computer desk on rollers sitting to the right side, computer, printer and internet with my own TI.

We have one window that looks out to the wall of the fifteen-story building next to us. Both buildings were built in the ‘50’s. On the shaded half glass front door, there is no name. Only “Licensed Investigator” in one inch, blocked black letters. Under that is my Louisiana private investigator registration number.

Nicki has been with me almost a year now. I’ve been training her in the investigation business. She is a good student on internet background checks and correspondence on Freedom of Information Act data from government agencies. She also handles the telephone well, which I hate. The fact that she is bilingual doesn’t hurt, when we are doing work in Central America.

I am not sure how it all started with Nicki. I think that I’m still in a bit of shock as to how we got together. Most of my clients are law firms or shipping companies. A lawyer will have a case that needs investigation and assigns the fact-finding, both technical and non-technical, to me. If the technical is in my area of expertise I handle the fact analysis. Often, however, I retain a specialist in a given area to look at limited assignments or to double check in critical manner my opinions or fact analysis.

None of that has anything to do with how Nicki and I got together. I was working on a case for one of the local trust and estate boutique law firms and had just arrived in Rio de Janeiro in search of a witness. The witness was going to be Hispanic, gay, and I didn’t have much to go on. I’m not the sort of guy that guys would be attracted to. Hell, I’ve been around gays most of my life, and I’ve never been hit on once. I kind of feel rejected. Not really.

Anyway, I’m sitting in this hotel bar, in Rio, having just arrived. Along comes this interesting person who at first fools me. I really thought it was a woman, and so it was. That was Nicki, or sometimes “Nick” under disguise. We get to talking, and she agrees to help me find this witness in gay Ipanema. Now, I’ve done a fair amount of investigation work in Central American countries. “Help” whether it is a local investigation firm or a government agency is usually just a word to describe working the Americano over for a fee. That’s pretty much what I expected with Nicki, “Nick”. Didn’t turn out that way though. The shem was true blue and she did find the witness. Not only that, she introduced me to her little sister, Lucia. After a while, I fell in love with her. Yeah, even a guy my age can fall in love. I didn’t think it was possible either. When I lost my law license and my BMW, my wife took off. She said I was a failure and had misplaced our trust. I figured that was the end of love, if that was what it was.

To make a long story short, Lucia and I brought Nicki up to the States to UCLA, Dr. Gary J. Alter, for a sex change operation. She was always a lady, but her genitals, both male and female, were under-developed. She was only twenty-three, frustrated and going through hell. Dr. Alter successfully operated on Nicki, and after months of post-operative psychological treatment, I brought her back to New Orleans and began teaching her my trade – private eye work.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a “do-gooder”. In fact, after twenty years of law practice, several as an investigator, I’m pretty damn cynical – that includes government (all of them), religion (all of them) and people, except that once in a while people will surprise me, and I begin to think that there is a glimmer of hope for the human race.