Detective D. Case (16 page)

          D. had
transformed into the beloved Captain Nemo from
20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
He went under and farther until it killed him, diving through the uncharted
waters previous sailors (or should he say P.I.s) could not reach. And by far these
unmapped territories came in stark colors like those beneath the tightening pressure
beneath the darkest parts of ocean bodies.

          Then D.
found two love letters, both handwritten with fountain pens from two men claiming
to be her lover, who wanted to live forever and ever while their hearts contained
her. Both were written on the same day and month but contradicting themselves so
painstakingly that D. wondered if this was a ploy, a kind of setup. He found John
Clemens II’s letter from a broken-down post office near the apartment building where
Donald’s mother used to live in. Its typeface, he noticed, was lofty and curved
like the wispy, almost air-like tongued accent of wealth. Instead of a regular address,
Clemens II decided to print his name in bold, large letters, catching the attention
of the woman he sought. Clever tricks played by clever men: he thought it well done
for a bunch of mediocre amateurs. Stealing the innocent hearts of women, he speculated,
was an appalling deed unless you were a tight prude.

          At the
beginning, D. let himself believe the yarn Clemens II tugged on like bait. He couldn’t
even categorize the letter as a form of communication; from the way Clemens II wrote
it, it sounded much more than a love letter mustered up. Snatch a copy and hand
it to the publishers as figurative poetry and, sure enough, they would gladly accept
it. Personification and hyperboles to Donald’s mother sprinkled the pages like fairy
dust. Come to think of it, Clemens II acted the role of the master magician.

          Through
the pages of Impromptu, D. logged the material he collected and analyzed from Clemens
II’s letter. According to its contents, Donald’s mother was a waitress at the French
restaurant but had quit the position for an accountancy. The proprietor had met
the woman during this time and noticed her dress, no matter how shabby it appeared
to be. He was once interested in her sister – wait, did she had a sister? Or did
she have any siblings at all for that matter? Further research and nothing came
up about the mother’s family tree. Probably for privacy, he suspected. But the letter
specified her sister as Ramona Trojan. A queer surname to be sure, so D. noted this
too. Even though Donald’s mother had been married (and miserably, he added), this
man had wanted her heart to be his. How was he supposed to do that, he didn’t know
or care. All D. desired to figure out now was how these loosely-based facts – and
the sibling, don’t forget that – added up.

          Days passed
and then Javier
entered his life. It was a letter
dated the same date, with no year of course, to Donald’s mother. Examining the paper’s
wrinkles of cotton soft and easy to rip apart, someone must have left it there for
years to pass. Without anybody noticing, D. took the letter from its place and brought
it back to the Water Home for further examination. He, too, wrote his letter as
neat as he could, but it did not compare to the mighty (and more-than-slightly arrogant)
Clemens II. The writer’s voice that spoke through the letter’s words, rattled in
uncertainty of its own feelings, like a shivering and shy first timer trying to
make the big move. The nervousness D. abided. What stopped him was the line Javier
wrote in the second paragraph: “I understand you’re divorced from your husband and
that you left your one daughter – your child for God’s sake – in the care of that
monster.” Either this man was mentally impaired at not getting the differentiation
of gender or old detective D. was getting the wrong information.

          They both
spoke in honest voices and opinions, and even though D. thought Clemens II a little
too snarky, he was wondering who was sending the wrong message?

Who
was lying?

Who
or what was deeming false cues?

Not
even tweezers could pull answers out of the tiny creases. One of these held the
liar, for sure, if he searched hard enough, but it was solving a puzzle without
any back up preparation. It was like blind men feeling the elephant but never knowing
what it was. Well, at least he could see it, unlike the men in that poem he
read about one time during his school years.

More
background evidence didn’t provide anything new – rather, they made things all the
worse. Some speculations from friends spoke about how Donald’s mother had committed
suicide from struggling too much with the hard-pounding work every day. Another
stated that they never heard of Donald McDermott, which didn’t surprise D. since
the mother probably had neglected the information when she restarted in a new place.
However, what really got him fussing about was the same person never hearing of
her son, never hearing of her having children, not one!

“She
was married, you know,” said D.

Pauline,
the person whom he interviewed, tilted her head like some confused child. “Huh.
I never knew that. Who was the man, because I can’t seem to remember?” She was eighty,
nearing ninety, when he conducted the interview. Hmm, she claimed she was eighty.

One
night, he sat at the same office desk looking through the notes he had produced
and through-and-through at the interviews he had, as well as family history, some
of it not involving the McDermotts, but Donald’s mysterious mother. She didn’t even
sound like a mother anymore, but more of a ghost haunting his pages of research
and broken family relationships. And then D. brought out the family photograph in
which Donald was now grown into an adult. His father was there, too, but in his
senior years. Behind them was the cityscape full of industrialized buildings and
the like. Cars the size of erasers raced their way to destinations if you got close
enough to see them. But something wasn’t right . . .

D.
stared intently into Adult Donald’s eyes. It was still black-and-white, so he had
no way of telling his eye color. His face was clear and smooth and he was dressed
in the finest business fashion, but Donald did not appear recognizable anymore.
He never met him, but that was the magic power of pictures. You could witness an
entire lifetime through photos and writing when put together. But back to the subject,
D. didn’t understand why Donald was so different, with all his notes and all.

D.’s
right hand on instinct picked up the photo near Ellis Island. He saw the younger
Donald that he had been first introduced to. Then, pressing the two photos together,
D. leaned back in the chair and watched. Perchance if he waited, something would
jump at him like flying fish. The eyes, he paid special attention to the eyes .
. . they always said eyes were the windows to the soul… but Donald’s eyes didn’t
have that effect on him. No windows were shown, and if there were any, they were
shut tight, the curtains pulled over in forgotten silence. Eyes of a ghost attending
all photos in existence: that was all he saw, like these people weren’t real. They,
all actors playing their parts, to make sure everyone knew their lines and how well
they could make a performance out of fictitious figures of character.

As
if fading away, the freckles of Donald McDermott dwindled off. They were wiped clean
off both his face and the face of the earth.

“How
in the hell . . . ?”

Could
it – could it be possible then – Donald is two different people? His mind crackled
like fire. Imagine if they were the same person: how did he lose the freckles, the
dots of sunshine as some people called it? Old detective D. assumed long periods
of time in the sun, but in the pictures he had been inspecting these past few weeks,
there was no daylight. No sun to be seen where these pictures were taken.

Then
they were different people, he concluded. Writing it down he began to wonder what
else could contradict this so-called case, not out of curiosity but out of suspicion.
Chief Advert left out many details of the case since the beginning. And as for Paul
gone missing for five years . . . how long
really
was it since then? It could
be less than five years, or more, or none at all. Ha! This whole case might not
even exist for all he knew! How ’bout that?

*****

Late at night, D.
had crossed the ever-dark streets of the city he lived in throughout his life. He
had been looking for some places, but most of them were closed. Too many times he
asked nearby people, still awake at this dark hour, about such locations. They did
provide answers, but by the time he got there they were closed. A woman with her
daughter told him to try again in the morning. On his way to another site, old detective
D. thought about any little girl staying awake with this darkness of the skies.

          Just to
make sure, he glanced at the sky. There were no stars.

          Down a
long block, he found his place he needed.

          He sat
in the closer row of the pews, pressing his head on the next row ahead of him. Slowly
he began to chant a prayer. Nobody heard him so he thought it fitting to say it
aloud so anyone above could listen to his pleas. Unlike children on Christmas or
adults with prayers, D. only prayed for answers to the McDermott mystery. He had
lost himself and needed someone else’s reassurance that everything was real and
he wasn’t going mad. During his prayer, he pictured God like his mother. His father
didn’t deserve the comparison.

          D. opened
his eyes. Finished, he thought.

          The room
held extreme silence, long hushed tones that hummed. He flicked his eyes to the
left. He thought he heard something. Did you hear it?

          Little
boy screaming – beating – pain released – D. scrambled his way to the location of
the beaten boy. What was going on here?

          “HEY!”
he yelled. “HEY!” But nobody heard him.

          The little
boy continued to rip out his vocal chords, tore them out bloody. It killed D.’s
remaining nerves of peace. He ran miles, the hallway seemingly getting longer as
he got faster. Once he reached the room, it was locked.

          He pounded
the door. “OPEN UP,” he said, followed by some more pounding.

          That boy
cried harder, killing not only his ears but his heart. “OPEN UP!” he demanded.

          And then,
for some reason, the door unlocked. A couple jiggles on the knob later, and old
detective D. ambushed the scene.

          Two
men in cloaks – a little boy, unclothed, clawing the crimson carpet – blood
dripping off his chin. One man beat his bruised face while the other stood
behind the boy, thrusting. 

          “What is
the meaning of this?” D. had his pistol ready.

          The cloaked
men saw the old detective. “What’re you doing here?”

          “Finding
answers,” said D. “What are you doing to this boy?”

          “Punishment
with some imagery,” said the cloaked man behind the boy. “It’s none of your business.”

          “I’m a
P.I.”

          “Who gives
a shit about P.I.?”

          D.
shot. A cold-blooded kill, sure, but the circumstances said otherwise. Both men
fell to the ground gasping for breath. The boy lay on the ground just about
dead.

          “Are you
all right?” D. turned the boy over, but it wasn’t a boy – not entirely. Plastic
face and body . . . it was some mannequin.

          And it
wasn’t a boy when you saw his face. The face belonged to the one named Paul McDermott.
His features were planted onto this, this thing. Truly something disgusting these
two men were doing, but for what?

          “Fire,”
sputtered one cloaked man, almost as if in response to his thoughts. Still, it made
little rational sense.

          A picture
was taped on the mannequin’s shirt. On it was Paul, riding an old-fashioned scooter
waving his hands at the camera. D. thought it strange if not surreal. Underneath
was writing like a caption. It said: “LITTLE PAUL, AGE 7.” How could the boy be
seven and dress up in suspenders? The clothes he had on nobody wore anymore, they
were probably from more than thirty or forty years ago.

          He went
to one of the cloaked men. “What does this mean?” Answers . . . need answers . .
.

          The man
spat out blood. “Hospital . . .”

          “Answer
me first and we’ll get you to a hospital.”

          “Paul?”
he wondered in a faint voice.

          D. nodded.

          “He died
fifty years ago. You know, they’re still trying to find him.”

          More blood
came out of mouth.

          “. . .
Please, hurry.”

          “But why,
why did they do this?”

          The man
began choking on his own air. “The fires they’ll bring . . . Water . . . remember
the Davidsons, right?”

          D. didn’t
answer as he carried him to the hospital. Like most people he had met, he died before
they got a chance to save him. You know those famous last words? Old detective D.
began thinking about it later on, but with the cloaked man in mind. It was truly
strange when you thought about it.