Loose Ends

by Amos Gunner

CHAPTER 13: DALE

  Dear Ravella, don’t you know when contention and occasion meet, by Jove, I'll play the hunter for thy life with all my force, pursuit and policy? I said as much yesterday whilst I trailed him.

  So, it’s over. And here we are. Your visages betray anxiety. Don’t be nervous. I’m not.

  However, I must observe my perspective from this side of the table simply doesn’t appear correct, as if the world had abruptly discombobulated and I must adjust. For once, I’m unsure how best to express myself. Oh, I spent last evening perusing Shakespeare and a thick thesaurus. Locution won’t be troublesome. No, what consternates me is the inquisition techniques I’ve mastered on that side of the table won’t be of any use on this side. What to do with my hands, for example? My index finger oughtn’t point, correct? Well, then, what to do with this demonstrative appendage? I cannot point, yet, as a moral principal, I cannot adopt the defensive posture appropriate for those who normally occupy this seat and conceal my hand. That would be an affront to my innocence.

  Hm. Little matter. I have concluded--this instant I believe--the actions I took yesterday defend themselves rather articulately without buttressing from today’s appropriate gesticulations nor obfuscation from any gestures which may be unbecoming my position. As for my specific verbiage, I shan’t use the knowing, ironic language of the offense, nor the antagonistic nor apologetic words of the defense. I’ll simply tell about yesterday in the same manner an adult tells a child about the three little pigs or the three big bears or what have you. Yes, I’ll simply describe.

  Problem, Blake? Exasperated in advance, before I’ve yet commenced? Look, I can give you the rough and ready abridged version, but ultimately that will simply prompt you to beg me to release the expurgated sections. But perhaps that’s not your problem, Blake? Perhaps compacted into that sigh were your tired and useless complaints against my florid oratory style? But this is being recorded, correct? I therefore offer no apologies for caring for posterity. Besides, my precise word choices may implicitly illuminate vital corners in the story--a subtext of inferences if you will. Do pay attention.

  Purple? Hardly. A light lilac, I’ll allow. However, it is to my eternal regret I never learned Latin. How ironic a dead tongue often prods our living language to new heights. Oh, I can throw out a de facto or sub rosa, but these are trifles. Not a day passes I don’t bemoan this linguistic gap in my education, and at this very moment, although your view is obstructed from verification, word of honor, I am kicking myself under the table.

  Did I say I’d speak simply? Well, now we’ve stumbled upon a case of relativity. My spoken text may strike your ears as ornate, yet it may strike, say Emmanuel Kant’s, as obtuse. C’est la vie, it would seem. C’est la vie.

  So. I’m here to discuss yesterday. Fine. To add my dollops to the canvass, as it were. Well. It seems if any school most resembles the Big Picture, I suggest it is the pointillists whom come closest. See, even when one possesses all the dots, a step back is required for the totality of meaning to emerge. Not a perfect metaphor, I grant you, but please find me one which is. They all fail under the slightest of rational scrutiny, no? Yet, in its own special way, the literal fails as well. Why else would man have found it necessary to invent the supplement of metaphor in the first place, if the literal were as hale and healthy as we often pretend it to be?

  Let’s continue. Take my hand as I take two steps back. From Friday to Wednesday.

  By the way, as an aside, before I begin, my mentor believed when standing at a post facto--ah, there’s our ancient friend--vantage, there’s no such creature as an irrelevant detail, no irrelevant dot. Understand, that the Romans sacked Carthage in second century B.C. perhaps wasn’t the crucial morsel of evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial. However, if this fateful battle did have occasion to arise during a cross examination and if I had been in any way involved in said case, I would have insisted the clash be thoroughly discussed before determining its ultimate relevance to the subject at hand. This credo has been entitled: “keeping on the safe side.” I am saying, I’ll reward your patience with something better than virtue. I’ve thought a great deal as to what I shall say today, and I guarantee you each turn in my tale is not without purpose, and we must resist the desire to pledge fidelity to a straight line. Euclid, I believe, was correct to state the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Nonetheless, we are not traveling. We are pursuing, and a discursive itinerary best behooves our present undertaking.

  So. Wednesday. My day began at...? That is correct. A point for Gerald. The rest of you offend me. As you ought to be aware of by now, I patronize Cuppa Joes nearly every a.m. before I clock in. Warning: I’m now going to elicit disappointment from some of you. I do not frequent the coffee bar to get a jump on my day’s workload. I could perform that task in any locale. No, I go there simply because they serve the best French Roast in Columbus. No other brew can caress my olfactory organ with such Gallic passion. I am aware I pound down coffee throughout the day, but I do so as it mere fuel. Cuppa Joes’ French Roast, however, is a delicacy. Further, the brew may only be fully appreciated when sipped from the distinctive ceramic mugs the management of Cuppa Joes has found fit to utilize. A chemical alchemy may explain this truth. I need to investigate further.

  Obviously, I carry my briefcase, packed full of puzzles to break. However, because I have been no doubt obsessing over said puzzles round the clock--even when I slumber--I set them aside without the least pang of guilt. I insist to my tingling conscious I am not, if fact, derelicting my duties if I divert myself by skimming the newspaper to count the printed errors within or, perhaps, leafing through the freshest New Yorker for, say, an hour.

  Wednesday morning, however, as I entered my habitual morning establishment, my attention was arrested by a painfully insipid television show playing itself out on the smallish set above the cash register. I suspect the unhealthy combination of stress and a scant four hours of sleep had weakened my immunity to cultural debris, and I neglected my reading materials in lieu of the moving images. It was a sitcom of the lowest denominator. Very stagy. The volume was turned very low, but any fool could intuit The Woman was upset with The Man for either committing an egregious faux pas or failing to perform kindly when propriety demanded he do so. Upon concluding her harangue, The Woman stormed off the set forthwith. The Man slapped his cheek--a gesture which has never been performed by any human in any culture during any time period except in front of a camera--and the screen faded. An acne commercial emerged from the black.

  Many of you know the police shows I studied during my formative years influenced my decision to join the force. I ought to clarify--I was destined to become either a policeman or an actor. The audiences who witnessed my performance in Run For Your Wife a decade past have agreed I ultimately made the prudent choice. I still insist my work schedule and other commitments precluding sufficient rehearsal time should have been taken into account when judging my thespian skills, but audiences are fickle and unforgiving creatures, and the most strenuous applause they granted me was upon my vow to never act again.

  Perhaps I am digressing.

  To pick up the thread: at some point during the commercial break, a man requested to join me. The counter where I sat I do not enjoy ownership of, so I shrugged, which I left for him to interpret in any manner he desired; he evidently desired an affirmative.

  Note my clothes, please. Admire the sharp pleats. Mind my motions, how clean and controlled they are. Mark my coiffure, how every strand has its place and dares not stray. If I expect neatness and order in the police department, then certainly I can keep my presentation above reproach. Strangers may recognize my high ethical standards before I need speak a word. This gentleman, on the other hand, seemingly hadn’t purchased a new suit in twenty years and hadn’t washed his old suit in ten. Evidence suggests this washing occurred approximately the same time he had last washed his hair. His spearmint breath was the lone detail that didn’t cause me
to recoil.

  Upon occupying the stool to my right, he ordered a cup from the lovely college senior behind the counter and introduced himself to me as Detective Evan Gruber.

  The name rang a tiny bell. Without the sleep deprivation, the bell no doubt would have rung much louder, alerting me to the fact his report from the scene at the motel was tucked in my briefcase that very moment.

  I held every confidence my serene morning was soon to be ruined. As you well know, during damn near every case, we catch flack for doing our job, as if we were the villains, as if polite manners demand Internal Affairs ought extradite itself from the province of the police department. I told him so.

  He expressed reserved yet observable amusement toward my minor rant and, upon my conclusion, swore he’d never interfere with a case involving Ravella. After this declaration, he explained he and Ravella had butted heads before, an experience which had left Gruber with a persistent sense that Ravella was as clean as Egypt after the locusts. Some hard facts would’ve been of use, he admitted, and all he carried was a suspicion.

  Yet, because I was the sole member if this essential and honorable committee who had a determination to bring down Ravella, Gruber’s useless but sincere and sympathetic opinion of that thug was mildly and temporarily assuring.

  Naturally, I was compelled to remind him--I trust “remind” is the appropriate verb--the law precludes me from discussing an ongoing investigation. Besides, honestly, an intuition was all I had at the time as well. No matter how better informed it may have been compared to Gruber’s, an intuition it nonetheless remained.

  I turned his attention to the coffee and begged for his critique. He declared it to be “fine.” “Fine?” No doubt his taste buds had an insurmountable difficulty negotiating between the spearmint and the French Roast flavors, the fight for dominance clouding his better judgment. I am being generous. He may well be a heathen.

  The Man now stood in the doorway and offered The Woman a bouquet of absurdly large and quite obviously plastic flowers. She hesitantly received the bouquet, cautiously smelled the offering, and drew upon years of acting training to indicate a titanic smile. She then kissed The Man. The final line of dialogue was given by The Man, to which the producers bequeathed upon the viewer a final canned laugh. Canned applause accompanied the credits.

  Evan Gruber asked, in a manner I could only interpret as condescending, if it was a good show. If he knew I weekly read the Sunday New York Times front page to back, completing the crossword puzzle in full, in ink, he might’ve demonstrated more respect toward me. But he didn’t know. I let it pass. And after all, the struggle of someone attempting to look down on you from below I count as one of life’s more delectable amusements.

  I said the show was far too predictable. Like the case, he suggested.

  Oh a confession. I regret to inform you, against my better judgment, I allowed my tongue to slip. I hinted the case was, in fact, far from predictable, that what I’ve heard you call “reasonable doubt” had rendered the outcome unforeseeable. That expression, by the way, particularly the “reasonable,” triggered a hardy guffaw from Gruber’s gut.

  Gruber, who’s been on the street longer than I, assured me in due time, the ruffians are unfailingly foiled, either by the law or by rival lawbreakers, and if Ravella got away this time, there’d be a final next time.

  And yet, to take one of many holes in such logic, Gruber knew and I knew there had been a last time. When was it, five years ago? Ravella shot a dealer in the dealer’s apartment? This case at the motel, it seemed, ought to have been the promised “next time.” With boundless, brainless enthusiasm, Gruber clarified: “If not that time, and not this time, then next time.”

  I made known to him the depths to which I loath waiting for justice. Know what he said? “It’s better than justice waiting for you.” Lovely.

  Meanwhile, it did not escape my attention the ad for a skin care product which had followed the sitcom’s credits had been playing an interminably long time. How mournful when I grasped it was an infomercial. The fact of the sitcom to the fiction of the ad was too jarring a contrast. No. I believe I put that right.

  Gruber and I briefly speculated on Ravella’s motive, that least important element of any crime. Women? Money? Revenge? Well, whatever prompted Ravella’s gun to go off, we were certain the cause couldn’t have been very original.

  Oh if we only knew. But we didn’t, for which we can blame the Feds, correct? But why the FBI waited until this morning to tell us Ravella had been squirming under Morrelli’s thumb is a mystery we must leave to future generations. Despite being on the record, I do not mind conjecturing as my conjectures are often prove prescient, and I hereby conjecture Morrelli was frustrated with the operation of--what was the name?--Webster for whatever transgression, and offered Ravella a means to pay back a loan Ravella had foolishly accrued. Yes, all our information is new, but I believe ensuing facts will bear me out. Not that any of this matters.

  And Adam Sutler? In for a penny, I say. After Gruber told me how despondent Sutler was at the scene, I may have responded by observing the dark cloud over Sutler hadn’t lifted by the time of his interview with me.

  “So Sutler’s innocent.” He said it. Didn’t ask. Said. And added with a sneer, “Innocent in the worst way.”

  It’s true. There was something in Sutler’s disposition that made me yearn to slap him to attention. Or, as Gruber put it in his own eloquent terms: “He needs his ass kicked.” I hope, by the way, my impression of Gruber’s brute, monotone buzz does him the injustice he deserves.

  And by what means had Gruber formulated this impression of Sutler? After all, they spoke only once, as far as I know. Confronted with this statistic, Gruber admitted he had been poking around Sutler’s past in an attempt to, as he put it, “get a grip on the man.” Read into his word choice what you will. He insisted he had accomplished this without interfering at all with our process. Turns out, his private investigation merely amounted to a chat with two officers from Sutler’s past--one from his work in property crimes, one from Sutler’s cold cases years.

  Gruber bullet-pointed the conversations’ highlights, which he felt illuminated the stationary facts typed upon sheets of Sutler’s record, particularly since the officers he questioned were privy to Sutler’s process of forming said record.

  So, item one: Sutler had more luck than skills. The crown jewel in his cold cases file, for example, is a triple murder. Apparently, he went to re-interview a witness. The witness immediately broke down and confessed, and then handed the murder weapon to a stupefied Sutler. This was a triple murder, mind you, and we can all be proud Sutler closed the case, yet who would argue--upon learning the actual circumstances of the closing--a reasonably talented monkey couldn’t have achieved the same result? A knock was all that was required. Overwhelming guilt within the eventually convicted performed the real work. Yet with a knock, Sutler’s knuckles had gilded his record.

  But it wasn’t all triumphs, apparently. Gruber described a horrible fire that had singed Sutler’s time in property crimes. Flames engulfed a warehouse and left two dead--a case which, I’m told, engulfed Sutler. Reportedly, he was never the same. When one speculates on what he was before, this statement is downright damning.

  Coincidentally, a series of pitiable acne-ridden before photos were shamelessly displayed on the television.

  Well, whatever differences I have with Gruber--and those differences proved to be fundamental--he can occasionally detect well enough, evidenced by his accomplishment of sussing out my presence at Cuppa Joes. For further evidence--indeed, my point--look at how he had asked Sutler’s former compatriots questions I myself would have put to them. For example, why did Sutler transfer to narcotics? The how is comprehensible. With a bit of probing and a sweeping yet precise mind’s eye, the how is almost always clear. Sutler’s good record is the answer, however serendipitously that record had been written. But the why--the more aqueous, contentious, yet often
unnecessary question? Gruber was good enough to dip his bucket into this murky pool and came out with the officers’ corresponding answer: because Sutler’s goal was to save the world and he surmised he had a fair chance of accomplishing that goal in narcotics. I apologize for the inflated, heroic phrase “save the world,” but that’s from Gruber, who was quoting the officers, who had quoted Sutler, who had quoted I don’t know. A Superman comic? Where does one pick up such nonsense? Such childishness? Such fantasy?

  Now, let’s consider this raison d’etre of Sutler’s. Doing good is laudable and doing well is preferable--but saving the world? However much we may appreciate Sutler’s goal, let’s be realists and agree upon its futility. Let us then act as lay psychologists and diagnose one of many consequences for the man who takes up this heaviest of burdens. Paralysis to some degree? Like information overload leads to a numbed brain, perhaps what I’d call “benevolence overload” may shock one to a vegetive stage after the world has sufficiently demonstrated its reluctance to be saved.

  Well, Sutler’s dead. This examination may be superfluous. But Sutler’s psychological profile may contain a valuable warning, perhaps a lesson, we can incorporate into the curriculum at the academy.

  The lesson of Ravella, of course, is as old as civilization and some believe is the actual foundation of civilization itself. I’ve seen enough to sometimes entertain that sentiment.

  My ceramic mug was empty. Gruber had spilled the entirety of his meager results from his mini investigation. I had lifted the veil on our operation a tad higher than was dignified. Further, the attractive after photos on the television had not entirely cleansed my haunted memory of the ghastly before photos. Gruber gave me an enthusiastic parting slogan. “Do us proud,” I believe. Who was the “us?” The word rankled me even then, even when I was permitting of the possibility he was a fellow true believer. Hygienic concerns prevented me from shaking his hand adieu.

  I arrived at the office, where everybody now present files into my narrative. “Life is short.” A cliché, to be sure, but recent events have demonstrated the wisdom tucked into the tired phrase. So we can step over what we were all present to witness, correct? On the other hand, it might prove entertaining to compare our differing perspectives on our shared time. A fun game to earmark for the Halloween party? On to Thursday.