The Devil and the Detective (7 page)

13

I
woke up, fully clothed, on my couch. My doorbell buzzed loud and hurt my head. My mouth was dry and tasted bitter so I grabbed the glass beside the couch and took a big sip and then spat warm whisky on my floor. The buzzing didn't stop. ‘I'm coming!' I yelled. Still, the buzzing continued. I stood up and went and opened the door. O'Meara and another detective stood there, still, and I said, ‘
Benvenuto
. I was just dreaming about you.'

‘Don't play cute, asshole,' said O'Meara, and they pushed their way into my apartment.

‘Why are you here?' I said.

‘You tell me,' said O'Meara.

‘I was sleeping. I have no idea.'

‘Where is she?'

‘Who?'

‘Who the fuck do you think?'

‘Elaine.'

‘Good guess.'

‘I have no idea.'

‘Yes you do.'

‘No, really, I have no idea. I woke up and she was gone. I called you.'

‘In her bed.'

‘What?'

‘You woke up in her bed.'

‘No.'

‘You said you woke up and she was gone.'

‘Yes.'

‘So you're saying you were sleeping in a guest room and woke up and then went and checked in on her and she was gone.'

‘Yes.'

‘You're full of shit. You're a piece of shit.'

‘Fuck you,' I said, and the other detective punched me in the stomach. I fell to my knees.

O'Meara said, ‘Where is she?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Cuff him and let's take him in.'

Sitting in the back of an unmarked car, I tried to reason with O'Meara. I said, ‘How could I have possibly killed her, disposed of the body and returned to call the police? The officer out front didn't see me leave.'

‘He didn't see Elaine leave, either,' O'Meara added.

Still, though, I think he was taking my point. Why would I want to murder my client? Why would I want to hurt her, in any way, shape or form?

‘I was duped, too. I'm as interested in solving the case as the police,' I said, and O'Meara made some disparaging remarks about my abilities as a detective. Then we stopped talking and his lackey drove us to the station in silence. We passed familiar buildings and I became lost in the rambling, nonsensical, relentless thoughts of someone who's nervous and exhausted. Nothing was coming together.

Then I said, ‘She gave us the slip, O'Meara. She's disappeared. I don't know why but that's what's happened.'

O'Meara scoffed and said, ‘Thanks, Rick, for your in-depth analysis of the case.'

I stared at the backs of their heads. My goddamn gaolers, I thought, two stupid assholes. They knew I had nothing to do with Elaine's disappearance, but O'Meara was keeping me captive out of spite; he resented me for innumerable reasons, all having to do with his deep sense of inadequacy, I thought. He was trying to teach me a lesson for sleeping with my client, I thought, a woman he would've killed to sleep with, given the chance, which he never would be that is to say, be given the chance despite being a
real police detective
. I had to say something, as we drove on pointlessly in silence.

‘O'Meara, instead of wasting your time with me, you should be trying to figure out what's happened to Elaine. She's probably being held hostage right now being abused and you're wasting time fucking with me. It's ridiculous. Let's just find her!' I said and kicked the back of his seat.

‘Pull over,' said O'Meara to his peon.

14

M
y downstairs neighbour knocked on my door to complain about my pacing, so I apologized. He thought I had people over. Nevertheless, moments after he left, I was back to pacing, though I removed my shoes. After pulling over to the roadside, O'Meara chewed me out and told me he'd let me go if I'd stayed away from the case. I agreed to his terms. Of course, it's ridiculous to think I'd stay away from the case – he knew that and I knew that – but I'd definitely try and keep my distance from him, I thought. I stood on the side of the highway trying to hail a cab but there were none. Eventually, I hitchhiked. Back at my apartment, I was upset and I paced. Somehow, I needed to see Elaine again. There was so much to discuss, but then again I wondered if she was even alive. She must be, I thought. There's no way a third party got past the officer outside and into the house, up the staircase, and stole Elaine away from the bed I was sleeping in, holding her in my arms, without making a single sound. It was an impossibility; therefore, Elaine left of her own volition. She knowingly escaped, I thought, for that was the only explanation that made sense. Why? I wondered. Well, first off, because her husband was murdered, so perhaps she feared for her own life, too, and wanted to make a getaway; however, perhaps she was involved in the murder and wanted to get away before I or the police discovered her involvement. The latter explanation, of course, made the most sense. Still, I didn't want to admit it. I didn't want to think that Elaine, this beautiful, funny and tender woman, could be involved in a murder, especially the murder of her own husband, who, presumably, I thought, she once loved. Murdering someone you once loved, however, I thought, makes more sense than murdering a total stranger. Nevertheless, I didn't want to believe she'd done it, or was involved in any way. By now, I thought, while pacing the long hallway of my apartment, she's probably fled the country, fled to São Paulo or Buenos Aires or who the hell knows where, with the money she's been stockpiling over the years, the years she was married to Gerald, after they met at the ski resort in the small town out west.

I needed rest but my mind wouldn't slow down. I thought about pouring a drink but decided it'd be better if I remained clearheaded. I lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling, thinking, thinking about everything, and I was frightened – frightened that perhaps this woman was dead or a murderer: either scenario frightening, I thought. My eyes were heavy but I didn't close them. Staring at the ceiling, I wondered whether this boyfriend was really dead, if he'd indeed killed himself, or if he'd just disappeared, only to come back and help Elaine murder Gerald, and then flee with her after a night with me. I was back up pacing. I poured myself a glass of red wine from a lousy bottle I had in the fridge. I need to find out if Adam's dead or alive, I thought. I need to find out if Adam even exists. Adam's most likely an alias, I thought, and he's probably alive, too, and with Elaine Andrews this very minute. I must accept the hellacious possibility that she's with another man right this minute, I thought, while I paced my apartment floor worried about her safety, worried about a life without her. I've been played, I thought, like a big fat sucker. I downed the rest of my wine and then poured another glass. It was horrible wine, bitter and thick with sediment, but it was all they had at the corner store the night I'd bought it, the night before Elaine Andrews called me crying, crying over her dead husband, a dead husband I'm sure she conspired to murder. O'Meara's right, I thought, I'm an idiot – Elaine's stories don't jibe. For some reason, despite my cynicism, I fell for this woman instantly, without a moment's hesitation, and now I was paying for being an idiot, I thought.

Chain-smoking, I sat at my kitchen table in the dark. I'd finished the wine and was now drinking a can of beer, which was the only alcohol I had left in the house. This made me nervous. Everything was making me nervous. I took small sips of my cold can of beer, savouring it, knowing it would soon be gone and I'd still be wide awake, thinking about Elaine, trying to make some sense of what's happened. I listened to the playback of Elaine's and my phone conversation, over and over, studying Elaine's voice, rewinding the tape when it came to the end. The cigarettes were making me cough but I knew I wouldn't stop. I sat by the window and a cold wind kept blowing in as I attempted to blow smoke out. My beer was almost done. I knew there was no way I was going to get to sleep. I'd end up sitting in the dark, smoking, cogitating over the case, listening to the tape, getting nowhere. I decided to call Darren and see if he wanted to go for some drinks.

15

‘S
hots!' said Darren and I nodded. We drank whisky and beers. ‘So what was the deal with this Gerald Andrews guy?' said Darren.

‘I'm not sure, but it looks like he was up to some shady stuff, though I'm not sure how bad it gets. Definitely questionable business deals, et cetera. He was very rich but probably not the best of men.'

‘
Honra y provecho no caben en un saco
,' said Darren.

‘Sorry?'

‘I'm sure he was an asshole.'

‘Yeah. Seems like the type, not to curse the dead or anything,' I said. ‘But he was probably bilking billions or something, I don't know. The guy was filthy rich. Do you want another beer?'

‘Definitely,' said Darren.

I was getting drunk and was having a hard time following Darren. I remember he said something about some girl he had a crush on and something like,
now that blah and me're blah, we're blah blah
. That's all I made out. And in the background I faintly heard
ABBA
's ‘
SOS
,' though maybe it was just in my head. We stayed out late, though not surprisingly I don't remember much. We sat on barstools. There was some sort of shouting going on. Someone was arguing with someone else. But we ordered another round of beers. The more he drank, the more hyper and animated Darren became, as I became withdrawn, heavy and tired. I was seeing double. I picked up my beer to take a swig; the bottle left a ring of water on the bar, though the ring didn't join up. Darren was saying, ‘Of the tens of thousands of days the average person lives, the majority of them are spent in a state of agitation and/or anxiety, or at least that's been my experience, in my give-or-take 9,000 or so days on Planet Earth, the only planet I know or will ever know most likely; perhaps my kids, if I have kids, or their kids, if my hypothetical children have children, will know a planet other than the one I inhabit but it's doubtful that I will and that's okay with me. You know?' he said and I nodded. I wondered whether Darren had been snorting cocaine. ‘Before wars begin more male children are born and before they end more female children are born,' he said.

‘Is that true?' I asked him.

‘Yeah,' he said, and said he read it somewhere.

‘What's happening now,' I said, ‘are there more males or females being born?'

‘In some societies more men are being born and in some societies more female children are being born – and in some species more males are being born and in some species more females are being born. So for some the end's nigh,' he said, ‘and for some it's still a ways off. But I refuse to be a prophet of the apocalypse. There are enough of them around already, too many, without a doubt. So many people make money from selling the apocalypse. They're the custodians of the status quo.'

The shouting in the bar got loud, so loud everything else went silent. Some guy yelled at some other guy, ‘
You motherfucker!
' And then he attacked the guy with a pool cue. A brawl broke out and bottles started flying, one right past Darren and me that broke the backbar mirror. ‘
Sauve qui peut!
' a man called out.

‘We better get the hell out of here,' I said to Darren and we skedaddled. As we slipped out, dodging fists and glass, it felt like we were escaping a fire, the bar roaring behind us. I thought I heard a gunshot but it was probably just a car backfiring, I thought. It looked like a few people were seriously hurt in the mêlée but we didn't stick around to find out. We staggered toward our apartments. Darren sucked on a wooden matchstick. I could've sworn I heard him say,
a something triangle-based pyramid looks like an electric vagina
, though I had no idea what that meant. He replaced the wooden matchstick he was sucking on with a cigarette and pressed his thumbnail into the sulphur head to ignite the match. He lit a cigarette for me, too, and after three drags I threw it in the wind, though it wasn't that windy, so it dropped pretty much straight to the ground. We walked by a drunken mendicant singing like a pirate –

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the Devil had done the rest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

– as if he were marooned, without recourse to a ship or the sea, reduced to a pitiable landlubber.

‘A seafaring man without the sea,' Darren said, and I told him I'd been thinking the same thing.

We talked and I slurred on about Elaine. About how I'd fallen for her. About how she gave me the slip. Darren listened politely as I made a fool of myself. I took a leak on a lamppost. I said to Darren in front of my building, ‘I hate the fact that I spent so little time with that woman and I'm going to spend so much time thinking about her, stuck on her, probably for forever, or for my short forever … She really set me up and fucked me over.'

And Darren said, ‘Don't let her, man – drop the case. Drop it like a hot potato.'

I dropped my keys several times before getting into my place. When I finally got in, I kicked off my shoes and fell face down on the couch – dead weight. Half asleep, I dreamed of Elaine. We sat at a small table at the railway-car-like bar, the one she took me to after her husband had been murdered, the one with the Xmas lights around the bar, where we drank single malts neat. She stared into my eyes. Pupils dilating, she leaned into me, palms pressed against the tabletop, she leaned across the table and whispered into my ear: ‘The word
thesaurus
looks like it should be a type of dinosaur.' She sat back down in her seat. I watched her palm prints slowly disappear from the tabletop. I didn't see anybody smoking but saw a shadow of a stalk of cigarette smoke on the wall. ‘Shake a leg,' she said. And then she told me that before her grandmother died, before her mismanaged diabetes finally killed her, she'd had her left leg amputated. She went into shock, she said, and became mute, so they gave her a shitload of Prozac or something to shock her out of her shock. For the year or so more she lived, she'd go to scratch her leg even though it wasn't there. ‘She had phantom pains,' Elaine said. And I repeated, ‘Phantom pains.' And that's all I remember.