I've got a second-floor office in Irvine. It's only a few years after the war with the Japs, and there ain't a P.I. left in Irvine that's better than me, but that don't mean business is steady down here. I've got too much time on my hands, kid, and too much whiskey in my desk drawers.

Then this dame walks in. Says she's stopped in from Riverside, but I can tell right away the broad's from Newport Beach. She's got shoreline written all over her. Beachfront property, I'd say. The kind of class babes just don't have in the inland empire. Classy, this babe.

She's got her hair up and her sunglasses on, and I can see she's hiding something. Tears. Maybe she's lost someone or something, or maybe her man's the abusive type...that's for me to find out, is all I know. I'll hear it soon enough.

She starts in with her story, about how her husband's in the real estate game, and her father's a bigtime mover and shaker, a real player. But this dame knows too much about her husband's business, I can tell. Taxes, liens, eminent domain...knows a bit too much about real estate in general. It's clear she's the brains in the enterprise. The father's just the moneyman, and the husband...the husband? What's his role? And why's she crying like this?

I hand the babe a tissue. She dabs her eyes, starts in on her ex-husband. Says he’s on a boat. Something about someone’s sister. She’s bawling again, I can’t understand what she’s saying. She wants my help, she says. Needs to find her ex-husband, but she doesn’t know where he is. Her daughter won’t speak to her, she’s crying, unless she can get this ex-husband to come back to town.

Retrieving a lost love? No big deal, I can handle that. No, she says – he’s no lost love. She’s fine with her husband and his money. This is about her daughter. The broad is taking deep breaths now, trying to tell me about her daughter. The kid sounds like a real rebel. Hellcat with a flask. Bringing punk girls home just to shock mom. I try to be sympathetic, but this sounds like a job for a shrink.

Now she’s getting defensive. I’m the one to help her, she says, not some mental magician. The back story doesn’t matter, does it? She wants to bring back her ex, this Jimmy character, so that crazy daughter of hers will straighten up her act and she can go back to watching her husband’s money. She's glaring at me, now, but she opens up her pocketbook and takes out this wedding photo from years gone by. Coolidge administration, I'd say. That'd make the daughter older than I thought, and this dame...let's just say looks can be deceiving, but age never lies.

And there's a problem. This Jimmy guy...I recognize him. Of course. The dame's trying to read my face, so I whip out my P.I. cards and play poker with her. The boat, the money...I should have put two and two together when the broad came in through the door. Then again, that's why I'm working out of Irvine and not up there in Hollywood with all the other, better, private dicks.

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. I took him out last weekend under a pier in Long Beach. He'd gotten rough when I confronted him on some outdated loans my client had needed collected, and I'd had no choice but to gun him down. It hadn't been easy, either, and I'm not normally that cold-blooded – I mean, I work in Irvine. But I'd had no choice. And I sure as hell hadn't known he was a family man.

I shake my head. This daughter, there ain't no helping her now.

Actually, I've never seen The O.C.; I'm sure it's pretty good.

The O.C. airs Thursdays at 8PM EST on FOX.

Earlier: O.C.-centric entries, wherein Raymond Chandler ravages Mickey Spillane in a shed out back. Intense.