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Page 14<br />
Felix pulled his knife out, tested its weight in his hand. The German soldier kept<br />
yelling at him, frantic now. He took a few steps forward, and he finally got a good look at<br />
that improbable bit of green in the frozen earth: a four-leaf clover.<br />
Smiling now, Felix looked back at the German, then started to run towards him. The<br />
German cried out once and then pulled the trigger. Nothing. A misfire. When Felix hit the<br />
German, he threw the man to the ground on his back, then dropped onto him, knife up.<br />
As the last German bled out behind him, Felix walked back to the four-leaf clover<br />
and carefully picked it. He had that same clover pressed and preserved and laid into a special<br />
custom Zippo lighter, and he kept it in his pocket every day without fail as a reminder of<br />
just how great his luck was.<br />
After the war, Felix decided that David was a part of his good luck, and the two of<br />
them moved West to the promised land of Los Angeles. Felix had spent much of his life<br />
devouring detective stories, and he figured if there was any business where luck would be an<br />
asset, it would be investigation. Together with David, he opened the Lucky Fortune<br />
Investigations agency. His luck extended to the people they hired for the company, including<br />
the preposterously efficient Lillian Wunderlich, their office manager, and the business grew<br />
quickly. They took over most of the fourth floor of the Taft Building, putting them right in<br />
the heart of Hollywood.<br />
When luck changes, as it must, it blows in like the Santa Anas, carrying god-knowswhat,<br />
and for Felix Fortune, his personal turn began late one night as he lay in a hospital<br />
bed, asleep and dreaming. After all, if you’re in a hospital bed, you’re probably not doing<br />
well. Felix had been brought in in the wee small hours of the morning. There weren’t even<br />
enough beds for him to get one at first. It was only after hours of laying on a gurney that<br />
someone finally came to put him into his bed. He had a fairly severe fever and he was<br />
violently sick twice in the lobby.<br />
All around Los Angeles, cards were being shuffled and a new game was beginning.<br />
Near the top of Mt. Lee, the HOLLYWOODLAND sign stood in a state of<br />
disrepair, visible for miles around because of the sky still free of smog. Anyone who<br />
happened to look up would have seen a shooting star somehow make a hard right before<br />
slamming into the third “O” in the sign, taking it out completely and leaving a smoking hole<br />
in the ground.