Finding Sonoria--opening

New story, just written today, the opening...JeffFINDING SONORIAJeff VanderMeerJohn Crake and Jim Bolger sat in Crake's living room, a single blue-green postage stamp on the old, low coffee table in front of them.Bolger was a private detective known all over Minnesota for his skill at finding people. He had a face like a pug and a build that made him look like he worked for a moving company. The jacket he wore made him seem even bigger, almost rectangular.To Crake, the slopped-on cologne smell rising from Bolger was a surprise. To Bolger, Crake looked like easy money.Crake had retired as a surveyor for the county three years ago. He'd been used to getting up at dawn and walking and driving around for hours. He had gained a little weight since his retirement, but not much, and he still wore bright plaid shirts, the kind of clothing that might distinguish him from a deer when in some of the more rural areas."You want me to what? Find a fucking country?" Bolger said.He picked up the stamp. In his hand, it looked like a strange band aide, a scrap, a nothing.Crake had to resist the urge to tell Bolger to put it down, and Bolger, noticing that hesitation, thought Strike 1. Bolger lived and died for the Twins."If it's there, I want you to find it," Crake said. Ever since a throat cancer scare, Crake's voice had been low, and sometimes, whether he wanted it to or not, it sounded menacing. His wife Grace had loved the new voice, but she'd died of breast cancer the next year. He'd had no kids with Grace, had re-started his stamp collection after she was gone.Bolger just looked at him and thought, Strike 2.But the fact was, his business had been in the crapper ever since he'd been hired by a city commissioner to spy on the man's wife. Bolger had entered into the case with gusto and delivered the news of the wife's multiple affairs with a cheerfulness that, looking back, Bolger figured he should have dialed down a bit. It wasn't so much "kill the messenger" as "kill the messenger's business."In the old days, Bolger wouldn't have been in Crake's house, drinking the guy's tap water out of a dirty glass.Crake, looking across at Bolger, thought, This is the kind of person who would blast a warning shot if I crossed his lawn."Look," Crake said, "It'll be worth your while. And if the place doesn't exist, that's not your fault."Bolger snorted. "You got that right." It was the kind of snort Crake would've expected from a sausage, if a sausage could snort."So what do you say, Mr. Bolger?""Sonoria. A country not on the map. You want it found. Okay, I'll find it for you, Mr. Surveyor. Four hundred a day plus expenses--and that's cheap."Even as he said it, Bolger knew he was willing to go as low as two hundred a day, but what kind of client had faith in someone who started out as a discount detective?