Chapter 2

"My word" Philip said as he took one last sip of coffee before putting his cup to one side. "That certainly could have gone worse"

"Could also have gone better" Max countered irritably. He was not proud of his first solo attempt at crime fighting despite what excuses he could make for himself.

"Max, you handling those "teens" as you referred to them or the situation in general in a slightly better way is excusable. You possibly killing those lads would have been… well… despite patient confidentiality, I would have felt obliged to inform the authorities of such an act." Philip gave another of his relaxed grins as he laid back on his seat. "Thankfully that is not required. And honestly I am impressed Max"

Max, still half way through his own coffee, looked up in annoyance. "Impressed? If that's sarcasm, I think I should warn you people have lost fingers for less offensive comments aimed at me"

Philip didn't seem fazed by the comment, which just annoyed Max even more. He had been trying to get a rise out of the doctor since he entered his office but nothing he said seemed to bother him.

"No, I am being completely serious Max" Philip replied "And no, not because of how you acted that day"

Max sighed as silence descended, guess it was for him to fill it with the obvious question "Ok, how are you impressed?"

"Because you told me" Philip said simply, arms making a wide gesture to mark how important this was.

Max was just getting an acidic reply ready when he really thought about Philips comment. He had blurted out the whole story. Mentioning every embarrassing act since his picked up the phone was strange enough, but he also went into detail on his thoughts and (urgh) his feelings as well. That honestly did surprising him.

"Huh… and that's a good thing?"

"Yes" Doctor Philips replied, nodding eagerly as he stood up. "Yes it very much is. I can promise you Max we are unlikely to get anywhere with this session or any others you wish to take unless you feel comfortable being completely open."

Max mused on this as Philips took his cup and poured himself another serving of coffee from the press. "This is honestly a good start to things. Though if I was to comment on your story Max, I would like to ask about your feelings at the end."

"Hmm?" Max said through a mouth full of coffee.

"When you said you're not really a detective. I want to know if that feeling is still with you, now"

Max considered this, still not feeling odd to go into something so personal. Finally he swallowed his coffee and replied "Do you mean, do I feel like I'm not cut out for crime fighting after that one job?"

Philip nodded.

"No… no I don't think so." This seemed to make Philip relax slightly but Max continued "It took four more requests to come in to make me sure I'm not cut out for it"

This didn't seem to be what Philip expected. But Max was in a sharing moos now, apparently, and the feeling Max wasn't cut out for detective work had been slowly building over the last few weeks.

Philip then looked at his watch and back at Max "You technically only have 5 more minutes for our session, but I'm going to ignore that. For the moment, I think it best you continue with these other jobs you've taken." And with that Philip sat back down and looked at Max attentively.

Max just shrugged. "There really isn't a big story behind each one Doc. The next one I had came three days later. Again some lady phoned up… Mary I think her name was. Well she wanted to hire me to find her missing husband."

Max picked up his coffee and with one final swig, downed the contents and let out a sigh. As he passed the cup to Philip to refill it, he continued "She was dead set that he had been killed by the giant monster that rampaged through the city just recently. So I looked. As it turned out there were no reported dead during Sam's rampage" Max cringed a little as he referenced his friend so casually during the time he was not really Sam.

"But despite that, there was no end to the rubble or debris where Sam had knocked over buildings and such. Thought maybe he was buried or something. Spent three days straight just randomly going to each site where Sam had made a particularly big mess and just stared at it, wondering how the hell I was supposed to looked through all that rubble."

Philip retook his seat as he handed Max his refilled cup. "So you were unable to find him?"

"Oh no, I found him. At the city morgue on the 3rd day I spent wasting my time staring at rocks. Turned out he had been killed in a bar fight a couple days earlier. Only found out about it when the client told me my services were no longer required. Max said bitterly.

Philip, obviously trying to find a bright side said "Well, you couldn't have known that -"

"If I had asked Mary where her husband frequently visited outside of home, I would have been told he spent almost of his time outside of work at one specific bar where he was known to get into fights. I should have asked that. And asked where he worked, and if he had any enemies and…. Well anything. I didn't question her at all about her Husband, except what his name was and what he looked like."

Max slumped in his seat as he finished, feeling more drained then when he spoke about the teenagers. With that case, he could excuse himself for having a rather bad day. The next case though? He knew as soon as the client phoned him and told what had actually happened to her husband that he had made some pretty basic mistakes.

Philip just sat back in his own seat, not making any comment on Max's short story. Instead he just asked "And the other cases?"

Max again just shrugged. "Oh let's see. The second one was a guy asking if I could find his Mercedes. I won't go into details but let's just say his Mercedes was found and subsequently lost again, permanently"

Philip, confused asked "How do you mean?"

Max, taking a sip of his coffee just said "I found it in Hell's kitchen… and I then lost it in the Hudson"

Philip burst into laughter at that, though quickly stifled it. "(snigger) sorry. Go on"

Max ignore this continued "Third was a client asking me to find out who threw a petrol bomb into his home"

This made Philip perk up. "And did you find the culprit"

"Nope. Wasn't any. The client was trying to trying to run an insurance scam. Hired me to make his story of arson more credible. Again, I spent half a week wasting my time on non-existent leads before some investigator from the insurance agency contacted me, out of pity, to tell me my client had been arrested."

Max shook his head, trying to shake away the grow embarrassment from he got from remembering those cases. All of them in their own way had been a failure for Max.

"And then there's the forth one… not much to really say on that. Only got it today"

"You took a case today? One that's still on-going?" Philip asked, interest growing. When Max nodded he continued, "Ok, let's start from the beginning. Go over the day from the beginning."

"Alright, though there isn't much to this one." Max said. "Ok, well the day started the usual way for me"

"and how do your days usually start?" Philip asked

"In the afternoon" Max answered with a grin.