The Prisoner of Vandam Street (14 page)

T
here’s a difference between the cold sweats and the feverish chills, but you are never really able to make the distinction until you vaseline back and forth between the two of them about a hundred and seventeen times in the course of one night. One moment it felt cold enough for Jesus to piss icicles and the very next it was hot enough to pick up Hitler at the airport. If I was on the road to recovery, clearly I was taking a bit of a detour. This was enormously frustrating to me, as a detective and a person, because I felt more confidently than ever that we were very close to getting to the heart of the mystery of Tana Petrich.

I was not feeling all that well really, even as I stood in the brittle New York sunshine by the windows late the next morning. But feeling well, of course, is relative, and relative to the previous night I was feeling very well indeed. Maybe it was the sense that things were finally coming to more than a mere puppethead that was keeping me going. Sometimes that’s all that keeps you goin’, as my friend Hoover once wrote in a song. And I don’t mean to be casting asparagus upon the puppethead. It was still my best friend in the world, though I didn’t mention that to the Village Irregulars for fear they would be jealous or possibly even try to commit me to wig city. I just stood in the sunshine that there was and sipped some of Pete Myers’s English breakfast tea and smiled a little twisted, serial killer’s half-smile. At least I was ambulatory again. That was always preferable to ridin’ through the desert on a horse with no legs.

“Care for a bit of brown sugar and cream with your tea, lad?” asked Pete Myers, rather solicitously, I thought.

“No,” I said. “I’ll take it brown, like my men.”

“There’s a lad,” said Myers.

“How about taking some of this?” said Piers, holding up two bottles of Victoria Bitter. “Aussie piss beats limey tea any day.”

“Where the hell are all the Americans?” I said, looking around the loft and finding four Village Irregulars missing. All I could see was the cat sitting in her rocking chair, smiling smugly, no doubt, at the absence of Ratso.

“Let me see,” said Pete. “Brennan, who’s lived here so long he might as well be an American, is in his darkroom somewhere developing the prints he shot through the spotter scope. McGovern has a story to file for the paper. Ratso, poor lad, has trekked down to Chinatown. Methinks he’s had his fill of British cooking.”

“I believe he may have taken a scunner to the spotted dick,” said Piers.

“And Kent?” I asked.

Piers and Pete looked at each other rather conspiratorially, it seemed to me. Piers then took a mammoth slug of the VB, leaving only Pete to answer my question.

“Kent, who, by the way, seems like a very nice, loyal chap, is out pounding the pavement searching for clues for your investigation. Do you think, my lad, that it’s wise to continue pursuing this effort?”

“Does it have to be wise?” I said, somewhat taken aback. “What if it’s only the right thing to do?”

“Yes, but lad,
is
it the right thing to do? There were a number of cases that even your great British hero, Sherlock Holmes, decided at some fine point not to pursue. Possibly, we have no business meddling with these people across the street. Possibly, they’re having their marital problems like any other couple and they’ve done nothing wrong toward any of us and they’ve committed no crime.”

“The redback spider which lurks in outdoor shithouses in the bush,” said Piers, “can kill a horse in a matter of minutes and a man in much less time. The male of the species, which is invariably eaten by the female, has a long, peculiar, corkscrew-shaped penis. This may be why he is invariably eaten by the female. Shall we investigate this case next? And what do you reckon we should do about the magpie having the largest testicles for its size of any creature in the entire avian kingdom, a condition often causing it to become rather aggressive and to take powerful pecks at passing people, not to mention other magpies? Shall we investigate this aggressive behavior, mate?”

I could see now that a large number of empty bottles of VB were standing mutely on the counter. Myers looked sober as a judge and everyone else was gone and I knew the cat didn’t drink.

“And then there’s the singular case of the taipan snake,” Piers was droning on. “Yes, mate, it’s always a case of cold-blooded murder if you happen to be bitten by the taipan. You won’t have time, mate, to upgrade your software. The taipan denatures the blood, breaking it down totally and instantaneously. The taipan can kill a horse in half a second. This is a real killer, mate. Shall we tail him relentlessly throughout the Antipodes?”

At this point, I could see Myers endeavoring to encourage Piers to pull his lips together, which was no small feat when Piers was on a roll. Piers and I probably talked more than anyone else I currently knew, the difference being that Piers could talk much louder than I could. In my weakened condition I saw no possible advantage in trying to defend my pursuit of the case, so I picked up the cat from the rocker, which always irritated her, and took her back into the bedroom with me.

Apparently there’d been some sort of mutiny in the ranks. Apparently there’d been some talking behind my back the previous night as I lay in fevered delirium, shouting salutations, I’m told, to deceased friends, and singing mournful verses of the American tune “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and the Irish tune “The Ballad of Kevin Barry.” I’m not sure which song is sadder and I didn’t recall having sung either of them, but I did know that both men were heroes and they died on different sides of the pond, both tragically alone.

“The great King Kamehameha,” I said to the cat, “was the man who conquered and united all the islands of Hawaii, except Kauai, into one great kingdom. He was a chief. He was a warrior. He was a king. And do you know what the name Kamehameha means?”

The cat, now struggling to get away from me and go into the other room, obviously did not know or care. She was never very big on island kingdoms. Too much water under the bridge of her nose.

“Kamehameha means ‘the Lonely One,’ ” I said, holding the cat firmly in my arms as if she were my last friend in the world. “Sherlock Holmes was lonely, too. So was Sergeant Pepper. All men are lonely when they find the great work they love and believe in. This case is my work. This case is my brother. This case is the very thread by which I cling to sanity and to life itself!”

Sometime during the course of my little soliloquy the cat had managed to exit the room and Brennan had managed to gain ingress. Now he looked at me with the very same pity in his eyes that I had often observed in the traffic-light eyes of the cat.

“I won’t bother you with processing details, mate, but we have very clear prints of the bloke and the treacle shot through the spotter scope. They’re clean as the nose on your face. Well, maybe not your nose, mate. But they’re brilliant, aren’t they?”

Brennan proceeded to spread the prints out across the comforter and he wasn’t wrong. They were brilliant, all right. It was the guy, all right. It was the girl, all right. And, God, if she didn’t look just like Kacey.

“Watson,” I shouted, holding the prints dramatically in the air, “these may be the pieces of the puzzle that allow us to finally break the case!”

“That’s good, mate, because I almost broke my neck comin’ up the stairs. Piers is passed out in the doorway.”

“And this,” I said, looking at the photo of the girl, “may be the piece of the puzzle that finally breaks my heart.”

L
ooking back on events, I can now see, by the pale evanescent light of the celestial jukebox, that my friends, each in his own way, were trying to help me as best they knew how. Unfortunately, friendship is a skill that few of us truly master in the course of our lifetimes. With all of the tiresome projectile preaching and ruthless religious fervor of the past centuries and the current one, we still do not appear to grasp in our narrow, scattered, selfish and single-minded minds the simple message of one of the world’s first great Jewish troublemakers, Jesus Christ.

Piers and Pete, I feel sure, were becoming convinced that humoring me along on a seemingly meritless adventure might only prolong my illness and bouts of irrationality. They probably thought that tough love might be the right approach to my problems. Brennan, I believe, was probably humoring me all the while, believing that one day I’d just snap out of it or else completely snap my wig and if it was the latter, he’d no doubt have to just keep humoring me forever. Many relationships and marriages exist in this fashion, each party determined to quietly humor the other, each party totally full of shit, each party determined to avoid at all costs the truth, each party eventually reduced to a bitter, constipated, humorless party of one. Well, I’ve always contended that friendship was overrated in the first place, while taking a Nixon in an Australian outback shithouse has always been underrated. Unless, of course, you get bit on the buttocks by a redback spider.

So much for how the three foreigners were attempting to handle the condition my condition was in. The Americans, for the most part, weren’t that much more effective in dealing with it either. Ratso, who psychologically was well aware of the deterioration occurring within the once-rational brain of his beloved Sherlock, took the Jewish approach to dealing with his grief. He ate more food and most of it seemed to be Chinatown cuisine. I’ve noticed this phenomenon before in my life, Jews eating large quantities of Chinese food whenever their little world takes an unexpected turn, but I’ve never seen Chinese walking into delicatessens when things go awry. What does this tell us about the Jews and the Chinese? Do they need Jesus in their lives? I think not. One of the beautiful things about not believing in Jesus is that you rarely, if ever, misunderstand Him.

So Ratso wasn’t much help or solace to me either, and McGovern, of course, did not realize half the time that my aberrant behaviors were being caused by malaria. He thought I was planning a trip to Bulgaria.

Then there was Kent, the true believer, the pilgrim who traveled east to help the Kinkster. Kent, like myself, understood what it meant to become involved with an investigation as tightly as the interwoven threads of life and death. Kent, like myself, knew how it felt to find yourself in the daunting position of being a mender of destinies. Kent, though mildly piqued with the Kinkster at the moment, I knew would rein in his frustrations and help bring the case to its logical conclusion. It wasn’t long, in fact, after my having reflected upon these matters that Kent returned to the loft and more than justified my confidence in him.

“Okay, Inspector Clouseau,” he quipped, “let’s have a look at the photos.”

Kent sat down at my desk in the chair he lately seemed to be occupying more frequently than myself. He turned on the desk lamp, which immediately drew the presence of the cat. Even with my warm houserobe over jeans and sweatshirt and mental hospital slippers, the loft seemed cold to me and the cat. Possibly, if we’d imbibed as much alcohol as some of the others, the loft and the world might seem a bit warmer. I, unlike the cat, had been known to take a drink, but the illness appeared to have put me off the piss, as Piers might say.

“Good Lord, Mick is really talented,” said Kent. “These are the clearest photos I’ve ever seen shot under these conditions. I wish he lived in California.”

“No you don’t, mate,” said Piers, who’d finally arisen from the hallway.

“The clarity is so good,” Kent continued enthusiastically, “that I think we’ll soon have the answer to the major question that’s been bothering me.”

“Which is?” asked Piers.

“Tell him, Kink,” said Kent.

I found myself mildly flattered that Kent had passed the baton to me. It might also be a test, I realized, as to just how coherent and cogent were my current thought processes. I took a puff on the cigar I was smoking and took a crack at it gamely.

“I would say the major question that’s been bothering you is the same one that’s been bothering me,” I said, stalling for time. I took another puff on the cigar and Kent made his traditional little California waving motion with his hand in front of his face as if the smoke was just too much for him. It irritated me to see this and I temporarily lost my train of thought.

“Well, mate,” said Piers, turning toward me. “What is it that’s troubling you two blokes?”

“The thing that’s bothering me is that the girl is apparently using the identity of Tana Petrich, which I know because I saw the name on her driver’s license. It was a fact I’d evidently repressed, one which Kent brought out later during hypnosis. Then we find that someone named Tana Petrich evidently died in 1991. So the nagging question, as I see it, is whether this girl is an imposter pretending to be Tana Petrich, or is she really Tana Petrich and, for reasons we don’t as yet know, wants people to think that she’s dead.”

“Great minds think alike!” he said, jumping out of his chair to congratulate me. “That’s exactly what I would have said. Either the death claim is fraudulent or the identity is fraudulent. Both cannot be real. One of them is phony and we’re about to find out which one it is.”

“We are?” I said.

“Of course,” said Kent.

“How do you propose to do that?” I asked. A fraud perpetrated successfully for over ten years can often evade even the efforts of a major government task force.

“Easy,” said Kent. “Call Rambam.”

“Can’t,” I said. “He’s somewhere in India right now, interviewing a dead swami. Can’t even reach him on the shoe phone.”

“Shit,” said Kent. “This is the part of detective work that I hate. Rambam’s a lone wolf. He’s highly skilled in extralegal activities. I’ve now got twenty-six employees in my agency in L.A. and I have to be much more careful about how I do things. All private investigators are on both sides of the law, of course. Some are just more on both sides than others.”

“Yeah, but Rambam only does that shit for me. We’ll have to tackle the problem ourselves, Watson.”

“I’m afraid so, um, Sherlock,” said Kent. “I was hoping we could avoid having to do it ourselves. I was also hoping we could avoid this Sherlock-Watson shit.”

“You’re right on that last one, mate,” said Piers.

“Ah, Watson,” I said, “your earthy vernacular never fails to warm the coldest, most scientific soul. But I know you will not let me down at this grave moment, my dear friend. I am, as you well know, Watson, not a student of the modern technologies. I have made exhaustive studies of footprints and tobacco ashes, but this thing called the Internet, to which you’ve harnessed your very being, is beyond me, not to say beneath me. It is a fad of the moment. It shall pass and be forgotten, Watson. So-called modern technology will also pass and be forgotten. What is left, Watson, after all things impossible have been removed from the equation, will be only the possible as determined by the power of deductive reasoning. Now what do we do next, Watson?”

“Well, uh, Sherlock,” said Kent. “We will do what Rambam probably would have done but we’ll do it through the services of a second party. I will e-mail these photos to a friend who has access to these kinds of things and I will ask him to resolve the matter for us using any legal means possible. That last phrase is a sort of code, of course. It means, whatever it takes. We should have our answer very soon. Thanks to modern technology and the Internet, of course.”

“Wonderful, Watson, wonderful! And if someone asks you later how you did it, what will you say?”

“I’ll give them the same answer I always give them,” said Kent.

“Which is?” asked Piers.

“I don’t want to know,” said Kent.