She walked into my life like any other client--one leg at a time. I wasn't looking for a job that day. In fact, the only case I wanted said Schlitz, twenty-four times. But I hadn't had job in a month of Mondays, and I had bill collectors climbing up parts of my anatomy not designed for easy access, a stack of final notices so high they made their own shade, and a pile of accounts receivable notes and IOUs that looked like Everest.

And then there was Motli, Motli Fuell, my trusted secretary. She had her own stack of notices, and she was as faithful a gal Friday as a gumshoe could want. Okay, so she dressed badly, with a penchant for mixing purple and green, and her choice of hats left a lot to be desired. If you couldn't tell she was coming a block away from the tinkling of her costume jewelry, her klaxon-like voice would clue you in. But she'd been with me for years and she counted me to do right by her every other Friday. Except that lately, Fridays kept getting farther and farther apart. That happens sometimes in my business.

The name's Diamond. Ace Diamond. I'm a private eye. I work the low-rent cases in the low-rent parts of town. So when SHE walked into my office that day my alarm bells should have gone off like a car alarm at midnight. She was the kind of girl who could make the naked city blush. She was cream silk and lace, wandering into the burlap district -- she didn't belong in this part of town and the town knew it.

For a week Motli had been hounding me to take what was left of our meager savings and invest it. In stocks! Yeah, like my piddling little nest egg was gonna hatch and grow wings. I didn't know what Motli knew about stocks or where she'd learned it, and as she sat beside my desk day after day, howling at me in the shedded-tin voice of hers while she read various finanical reports to me, she was starting to get on my nerves. Numbers. Always with the number. Big numbers, small numbers. Pages of numbers.

I needed a drink. A number of drinks. Ha ha.

"Now Ace," she said, "we've already gone over the first two major financial statements from this company. Let's move onto the third, shall we?"

"Motli, honey, shut up before I shoot you in the head," I said.

"If you do that, who'll make your coffee just the way you like it? C'mon now, Acey, you can do this. I went over it yesterday. After the income statement and balance sheet, what is the third major financial statement included in company SEC filings?"

Quick, give old Ace a hand here. What IS that third major financial statement?

1) Management Growth Sheet

2) Statement of Cash Flow

3) Revenue Margin Statement

4) Short Interest Sheet

The answer is 2) Statement of Cash Flow

Statement of Cash Flow (CSF) is the statement that actually tells the reader exactly how much cash the company received or spent and where. The statement acts as sort of an intermediary between the income statement and the balance sheet, to explain the changes in the levels of cash. Wondering if a company is cash flow positive? Wondering how much a company is reinvesting in plant and property? This is the place to look.

Since the income statement is affected by "old money" spent in the past, SCF gives a more realistic picture of the financial health of a company. It is a more complicated statement to understand than the vanilla profit statement... but understanding it will give the investor much more knowledge to decipher exactly how a company is performing.

It all seemed innocent enough. Then SHE showed up... and the trouble began.

Tomorrow: Ace Diamond, Episode 2
Evelyn

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