Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator (20 page)

“Act casual,” Anoop says, which is always bad advice. The only way you can act casual is when you feel casual. It’s pretty impossible to fake it. You’re like, “Hey, I’m casual,” and you start doing stuff like whistling or jingling your keys, which really aren’t casual gestures. “Let’s just pretend we’re two guys walking down the street,” Anoop says.

“Um, we
are
just two guys walking down the street,” I say.

“No we’re not! We’re two guys on the trail of a killer, only he doesn’t know that we’re after him, so keep it cool.”

“How long do we keep following him? Until he—” I don’t finish my sentence because Jacques stops quickly. Anoop and I put on the brakes and both pretend to be looking at a rather nondescript building. Jacques is just picking up a piece of garbage to toss in a nearby trash can, however, and then he quickly resumes walking.

“Did he see us?” I whisper.

“Better question: What kind of New Yorker picks up random sidewalk garbage?” Anoop asks.

“Seriously,” I say.

Then Jacques stops again, this time to hand a tissue to a lady sneezing on the corner. “He is the weirdest New Yorker ever.”

“Not to mention a pretty polite murderer,” Anoop says.

We continue our surveillance as he continues to walk. We stay just a few paces behind him. He stops suddenly again. I assume it’s because he hears the cry of a far-off dog that needs his help. He’s the nicest man in New York. He’s like Superman without the tights. But instead, he turns on his heel and stares right at me. I try to look away, to stare at a building, to pretend to hail a cab, to do something, anything! But it’s too late.

“Hello, Mr. Langman,” he says. “I’m Mr. Langman.”

My heart is pounding in my chest. I can hear the blood rushing through my body. My mouth goes suddenly dry. My bladder feels suddenly full. Being scared does some strange things to you, biologically speaking. Seriously: God or Darwin or whoever is to blame for the human body—what is up with that? Why does getting scared make you have to pee? Couldn’t I have a shell like a
turtle? Or wings like a bird? Anything to get out of here with dry pants and a still-beating heart.

“Eh … oh … eh,” is all I can stammer and for once Anoop isn’t any better.

“Eee … eee … oh,” he says. We’re awesome. Anoop just keeps looking back and forth between the two Langmans staring at each other on this busy street, at a loss for words for presumably the first time ever.

“Do you care to explain why you’re stalking me?” Jacques asks. This makes me angry enough that my voice returns.

“Oh, that’s rich,” I say. “You break into my house, you come to my town to try to kill me, you murder Toby Weingarten!”

On the street, a few heads turn. Even in New York, yelling about murder gets people to turn their heads. No one actually stops what they’re doing. No one turns off their cell phones. No one bats an eye. No, nothing like that. But they turn their heads, which seems to mean this is a pretty big deal. Jacques doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he laughs.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t laugh. I’m sorry that Toby Weingarten got murdered, whoever that is, but I assure you that I had nothing to do with it.”

“And I guess that you didn’t break into my house either,” I say. “I guess you didn’t climb the tree outside my house, leap onto the roof, and break into the attic to swipe the sunken treasure that is mine!”

At this, Jacques laughs again. And really I can’t blame him this time. It does sound ridiculous. Plus, I’m sort of yelling. Yelling about sunken treasure. It gets the attention of a large policeman walking by. This is exactly what I wanted—the police to take
Jacques into custody—but somehow it doesn’t seem right. Plus, I think about the knife Anoop is smuggling. What if the cop pats us down and
we
get arrested? My heart starts to pound. I take a deep breath.

“Everything okay here, boys?” the policeman asks. He’s asking in that calm way cops have, but his powerful arms and fists look ready for action.

“Yes, Officer,” Jacques says. “There just seems to be a little misunderstanding between me and my brother here.” Man, it feels weird to hear him call me his
brother
. The cop sighs. Family problems, he must be thinking. Weird thought. I’m totally having a family problem with Jacques.

“A misunderstanding that could all be cleared up if Jacques here would simply allow us to compare his prints against the exemplar,” Anoop says. “And if we see some unusual double-loop whorls, then you, sir, must arrest this man.” He takes his fingerprinting kit out of his backpack and holds it high over his head like a boxer hoisting the championship belt. Seriously, Anoop? Seriously? You’re quiet for the first time in your entire life and then you end the silence with that?

The cop shakes his head. “What’s that, now?” he says. It’s a fair question.

“These boys seem to think that I’m guilty of something,” Jacques says. “But I certainly am not.”

“Then let us take your prints,” I say, trying to remain calm and quiet. “That’s all I ask.”

Jacques extends his hands toward me, showing all ten fingers. It’s an odd gesture. It almost looks like he wants to give me a hug. The officer is now just sort of amused, maybe bemused.
Something in the “mused” family. Maybe it’s a slow crime day in NYC. Maybe working in Chelsea is boring. He leans against a tree and watches as Anoop takes over.

“All you have to do, Jacques,” he says, “is press your finger onto this and I’ll do the rest.” Jacques has been printed before, I think, remembering his police record. He knows exactly how this is done.

Anoop hands Jacques a white card from inside the fingerprinting kit. Jacques does as he is told—which, wait, doesn’t seem right. That isn’t something a guilty man would likely do here. What
would
he do? My head is swimming. But better not to over-think it. Just wait for the evidence, right, Mr. Zant? I don’t have to wait long. Anoop’s hands may have been shaking as much as my own, but he stays calm long enough to lift a perfect print. He takes the printout of the exemplar out from the kit. It is so easy to make a match. If only the prints match. Even before Anoop says anything, it is clear. His lips are pursed, his shoulders are slumped, and his head is hanging down as if he’s a kid who just got beat at checkers.

“No match,” he says, in a quiet voice barely audible above the thrum of traffic noise and the honking of cars. “Not even close.”

Jacques smiles. And the funny thing is, it’s not the smile of a killer. It’s a friendly smile. A brotherly smile. Was I wrong about him the whole time? “Sorry to take your time, Officer,” he says to the cop, saluting. “I think the trouble here is over.”

“Okay, boys,” the officer says, chuckling to himself and throwing us back a halfhearted salute. “Stay out of trouble.”

It’s too late for that, I think.

“I’m sorry, Guy,” Jacques says. “We really have gotten off on
the wrong foot here. Or perhaps the wrong finger?” He wiggles his fingers at me. Hilarious. Wait: that’s like the exact opposite of the joke, but still sort of the same exact joke, I made back in Forensics Squad. The game is a-finger? Before I can continue to think about whether or not the hilarious Langman sense of humor is genetic, Jacques thrusts his hand toward Anoop. His eyes are still on me. “Please introduce me to your fingerprinting friend, and please let me buy you guys a coffee. Do you drink coffee? I’m sorry, I don’t have kids. I don’t really know any young people. Do boys your age drink coffee?”

“I’m Anoop Chattopadhyay,” Anoop says. “And I would love a double-tall soy latte.”

“I’m Guy Langman,” I say. “And I’ll have a hot chocolate with extra marshmallows.”

“That’s too weird!” Jacques says. “I always order hot cocoa too. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get behind the yuppie coffee-drink thing. No offense, Anoop.” Man, this might be the weirdest thing I’ve ever thought, but I think I love Jacques Langman right now.

“Well, we can’t take too long,” Anoop mutters. “Busy day, you know …”

Jacques leads us into a small coffee shop—there are about a thousand of them in this part of the city—and orders our drinks from the counter while we find seats in the crowded shop. Anoop is whispering to me from our booth: “Dude, I think there is still some way … I mean, he could have planted the fingerprints, or something …”

“Let it go,” I say, holding up my hand and breathing a literal sigh of relief. “Jacques Langman is not our suspect. He’s my brother.” Anoop rolls his eyes.

“Don’t forget the matter of his criminal record,” he says, at the worst possible moment. Because Jacques is back within earshot, delivering our steaming mugs.

“Oh, I see you did your research,” Jacques says. “I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, well, we have a friend who is kind of a hacker. He looked you up and got the address and, yeah, well, there was also something about assault with a deadly weapon, and we thought that since you were in Berry Ridge for the funeral and then the coins went missing and this good-looking guy who looked like me from North Berry Ridge ended up dead on the golf course …” I realize I’m babbling.

“Okay,” Jacques says, softly blowing on his hot chocolate and flashing a smile so Fran-familiar it hurts. “You’re going to have to explain all that, because it doesn’t really make any sense. But I’ll go first. There are a million ways to get an ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ charge on your record. And mine is probably the dumbest of all time …”

“They all have one thing in common, though,” Anoop mutters. “The whole deadly weapon thing. Two things, really. Also the assault.”

“The deadly weapon with which I assaulted Officer Leo Humbolt of Easton, Pennsylvania,” Jacques says, “was a beer bottle.” I look over at Anoop and see his face twisted into the same skeptical expression I feel I must be wearing. “It’s true,” Jacques says. “The year was 1984. A very political year. I was young, and maybe sort of crazy. I went to an anti–Ronald Reagan rally in Pennsylvania … Do you know who Ronald Reagan was?”

“Dude, Guy was just quoting the Monroe Doctrine,” Anoop
says. “And I got a perfect score on my SATs. I think we know who Ronald Reagan was.”

“Pardon me,” Jacques says. “I don’t know what kids know.”

“We’re not kids,” I say. It feels good to say it, though the statement is perhaps undermined by the marshmallows stuck to my lip.

Jacques pauses for a second. “It’s hard for me not to think of you that way,” he says. His voice trails off. Then he continues his story of Reagan-era cop-fighting. “Well, I was at a protest. It was a political time for a number of reasons. I was young. The cops were way out of line, I know that. I threw a beer bottle. It hit Officer Humbolt. The rest is, as they say, history.”

Is this the truth?

“Did you go to jail?” Anoop asks.

“No, he got off,” I say.

“That’s not
quite
right,” he says. “But I am impressed with your research. I refused to rat on the others at the protest, so they came up with the harshest charge they could come up with. But Dad knew a good lawyer and I ended up going to rehab.”

“Were you on drugs?”

“Um, it was the 1980s.”

“Fair enough,” I say, though I don’t quite know what that means. Was everyone high in the 1980s? That would explain a lot of the hairstyles, and quite a bit of the music.

“The true tragedy of that day was the wedge it drove between me and Dad,” Jacques says. “He was, as you probably know, quite stubborn. He wanted me to change everything about my life. Take drug tests on a regular basis. Change my major. I refused, and, well, we grew apart. Months turned into years and
eventually …” His gesture means “you.” I mean “me.”
I
happened.

We sit and sip from our mugs in silence for a moment. Well, not total silence. There is the clatter of dishes, the chatter of a thousand conversations, and the traffic noise still audible from outside. Somewhere a siren screams. There are a million things happening at once in this city, in this world, but nothing matters more than this. Nothing matters more than family.

“I’m not quite sure I understand why hitting a policeman with a beer bottle would make Dad so angry,” I say. “It seems like the kind of thing he’d do himself. And I don’t think he really cared about drugs. He definitely smoked pot—how else could he justify his wardrobe, not to mention his beard?”

Jacques laughs. His eyes twinkle. “He used to drive my mom nuts with a choice Hawaiian shirt. It had, like, guitars and boobs all over it.”

“He drove my mom nuts with that too! We still have it. I wore it the other day.”

“I have pictures!” Anoop butts in, flipping through his phone, showing Jacques the pictures of me on the day we went to the golf course. I can’t believe I thought Jacques was trying to kill me. We all laugh. I’m still feeling confused.

“But what—he wanted you to change your major? From what to what?”

“From theater,” Jacques said. “To … anything.”

“Dad hates theater?”

Anoop interrupts. “Um, Guy, sorry to interrupt again.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, not really,” Anoop sighs.

“I like him,” Jacques says.

Anoop continues. “But what Jacques means is that, if I may be so bold, Fran wasn’t cool with Jacques’s lifestyle.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I guess,” Jacques says, “the nose is hereditary, but the gaydar isn’t.”

Anoop laughs. I’m still a little confused. “It’s true,” Jacques says. “I am a gay man. My father—that is to say,
our
father—may have made peace with that at some time, but in 1984 he was not a fan.”

My heart starts to sink, like the last marshmallow to the bottom of the cup. “I’m so sorry,” I say. I’m not sure why I’m apologizing, but I don’t know what else to say. Jacques is so freaking cool. How could anyone—more important, how could
Dad
—care if he was gay or not? I feel like crying.

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” he says. “Anymore.” He smiles. “I had a lot of anger toward Dad. He had a lot of good, but also a lot of bad in him. Just like everyone, I suppose. He was large, he contained multitudes.”

“Hey, Walt Whitman!” I say. “Dad loved him.”

“You did a great job with the reading at the funeral,” Jacques says. “I was just a little jealous. Just a little.”