Synopsis/Details
In 1932 Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, a woman known only as Miss Rea flees a police chase after her gangster husband Scarface Kilpatrick's getaway goes violently wrong, escaping on a freight train clutching a mysterious wrapped object. Revealed to be an undercover Pinkerton agent, she had spent months infiltrating Scarface's criminal empire — and winning his genuine love — in pursuit of the stolen Irish Crown Jewels, which Scarface had lifted from Dublin Castle with his father years earlier.
In the present-day town of Destiny, twelve-year-old reporter Nicky Reed is piecing together this same history for his local paper, intrigued by his mechanic friend Mike Gonzovich's prized 1932 Cadillac — the very car Fat Louis died in that fateful night. Nicky's investigation takes a sharp turn when a fast-talking, crossword-solving Alexandrine parakeet named Plato mysteriously appears in his office, sent by the enchantress Ariel de la Mer and guided there by Hugin and Munin, the ravens of Odin. Nicky soon falls in with Ramesh, a turban-wearing paranormal investigator, and Maya, a gifted Métis girl with a talent for calming wild creatures — and together the three begin to sense that the old gangster mystery and Plato's arrival are anything but unrelated.
Complications mount when a hulking, suspiciously overdressed "plumber" named Xenon Pinkerton begins surveilling the town, breaking into Kismet restaurant and attempting to bug Plato's birdcage. He reveals himself as an Interpol agent demanding Plato's surrender within 24 hours — dangling a cold Pinkerton case file as a bribe. Meanwhile, a Texas millionaire named Tex Von Reifen phones Nicky with suspicious interest in Mike's Cadillac, a black helicopter appears on the horizon, and Ramesh becomes increasingly convinced that Men in Black and ancient flying machines called Vimanas are all part of the same puzzle. The part ends with Hugin and Munin arriving through a runic portal in the middle of Kismet, samosas in beak, as Nicky scribbles furiously and Ramesh hits the floor.
