My Detective

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “No, no,” Jamieson said. “Sit and have a coffee. You must be wiped out; I know I am. Would you like an aspirin? I’ve got a killer hangover. Do you like LA? I’m still adjusting. I’d love to see your work sometime. Would you like a croissant? I can make eggs.”

  “Are you sure there was nothing else?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice sharpening. “Nothing happened.” A rigid smile. “Sit for a minute and have something.”

  He didn’t mean any of it. He was as empathetic as Scandinavian stone. I didn’t know what to do. I had coffee, a croissant, and a few aspirin. I didn’t flee. Why was that, Sam? Why didn’t I run out of that place? A flaw in instinct, perhaps. Curiosity? I think I thought that if I stayed long enough, he’d confess to something. But as he kept talking, his version became mine. I hate that. The trick he played, the trick played on all women. The arrogance, the smugness of it. Yes, I still remember that smug face sipping coffee. I’m glad he’s dead. I celebrate it. I do. But I don’t like going back to that night. I feel smaller, less sure, a murky pool of things inside. You’ll notice if (when) we meet. Jamieson and I talked a bit longer, and he asked me something I’ll never forget.

  “When did you know you were tall?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The moment you realized you were different. Special.”

  “You mean, for a girl. They always said, ‘You’re tall for a girl.’ I hated that growing up.”

  “You are tall for a girl. I don’t mean that, though. I mean the first time you saw yourself and said, ‘This is me.’”

  “I don’t know. One time, I caught myself in a store window I was walking past with friends. I saw how I stood out, towered over them. It’s strange to see yourself like that. It doesn’t seem you. For an instant, you’re a stranger to yourself.”

  “Do you see yourself as an architect?”

  “I am an architect.”

  “I wonder, because I don’t think …”

  His phone rang then. He answered it, spoke a few clipped words, and hung up. He turned back to me, and I asked him what he meant by his architect remark. He shook his head and said, “Nothing important.” I wanted to press him, but he told me he had to hurry to an appointment. I put on my clothes from the night before. They had been neatly draped over a chair, but they had that air about them: wrinkles; scents of smoke, drink, and sweat—clothes to slink home in and wash a thousand times. He didn’t offer to drive me home. Can you imagine? Not even an offer. I called a cab and was off.

  Time passed. That phrase has always seemed romantic to me. Like something from a novel in another land, a piece of a life not your own anymore. Do you know what I mean? There was nothing romantic about it, though. Rage and depression filled the spaces once taken up by the truth I didn’t know; they became my little demons. My gargoyles. I kept trying to piece that night together, to find shreds in my mind and sew them into a picture. I’d close my eyes and will myself back there, but only shadows—even less, just wisps and voices, indiscernible words in my ears. I had thought about going to the police, but it was too late. And besides, what did I know for sure? Nothing.

  When I got home from Jamieson’s that morning, I stripped and checked myself. A few red marks on my shoulder, but no bruising. A scratch on my thigh. Nothing on my breasts, my hips spotless, no blotches on my stomach, my bottom smooth, but a slight ache beneath. I reached into myself, felt the damp inner walls, but no trace of him—none my fingers could detect, anyway. I held a mirror between my legs. I cried when I did this, embarrassed at this naked person in a bathroom, a pathetic soul searching for clues to a sin she created. Isn’t that what we’ve been taught? I was sore to the touch. But no stings of pain. It has been that way before, on occasion. Wouldn’t it have hurt? Wouldn’t there have been some obvious signs if what happened, happened? Mind and body could not agree on this.

  I dressed the morning after—such an ominous phrase, a sobering quiet after a storm—and went to work. I had just started at John’s firm and had a design of a boutique hotel I wanted to impress him with. I was young. I wanted no sidetracks, no rail leading me away from my sketches and where I saw myself destined. I folded it all into my work. Time passed. Oh, yes. In drips. Jamieson never called. I never called him or Gallagher or Jensen. I think I was scared to know, and as days went by, I pushed it all further from me. I’d see Jamieson and Gallagher at architecture events. Once, we passed on Manhattan Beach. I was running. They were tanned, carrying surfboards. Even with a tan and the sun on him, Gallagher was a beady man, but Jamieson was strong, as if shaped by the elements and the sea. That seems overstated, I know, but he was like a fine building. We spoke for a minute, about what, I don’t know. I was too nervous. We said goodbye, and I sensed a snicker behind their lips. I looked back and saw Jamieson lean over and whisper in Gallagher’s ear. They laughed. I remember thinking in that moment how you feel when you discover that back in elementary school, the other kids were making fun of your shoes behind your back, but you never knew until years later, and you feel embarrassed for the little unaware self you were. And you hate the ones who laughed while you weren’t looking. I never saw Jensen with them. I’d heard they had drifted apart. I think it was because of that night with me, but I can’t be sure. Jensen was the reluctant one. You can see it in the video. How he stands at the edges, naked, unsteady, drunk, Gallagher and Jamieson slapping him on the back, pulling him, urging him toward the woman in the mask. Me. If you look closely, slow the video down, you can see disgust and fear on Jensen’s face—just for an instant, but it’s there, a boy not wanting to do man things. I played that part over and over as if, in Jensen, there was a redeemable story from that night. But no.

  The video. I discovered it a couple of years ago, the night before I took those pills and Isabella and John held me in my Victorian in Angelino Heights. What a comfort they were, sitting with me on the stripped floors, a single lamp in the window. They didn’t know, but a few days earlier, I had decided to hack Gallagher’s computer. It came quite logically when I think of it now, but back then I was never sure what to do. I knew that those men had done something. I had to know what. It was breaking me. You must understand, Sam, I’m not crazy. I’m not my sweet, demented mother. Part of her, yes, but the larger part, they brought.

  Years went by, but it never left me. At least, that’s how it felt, revisiting me at unexpected times, barging in like a rabid dog, even when I went to the shrink, took his pills, felt numbness spread from my fingertips to my heart. I had to act. The way it seethes, Sam, you wouldn’t believe—this deep-down, bubbling thing you carry, trying to escape it, like running in from the rain, but the rain is inside you. The rain is you. Why Gallagher’s computer? Good question. He was vain, more so than Jamieson, and that’s saying something. He wrote a blog for his firm’s website, filled it with his designs, pictures, architectural asides, random bullshit, as if everything he did should be enshrined. A man like that leaves a trail. He keeps things, an elaborate mosaic of self. Am I right? So I did what I do. It was a tough hack, much harder than yours, Sam—you really do need a better firewall—but after a few hours I was in like a jinni. I rummaged around. Bank accounts, investments, emails from mentors, love letters from Miranda, his wife. Also downloaded stories from architectural magazines and a diary, but one strictly about work: meeting times, design tweaks, cost overruns—quite detailed. Boring. In all that data, in all those megabytes, no self-reflection, no questions of afterlife and philosophies, no “What does it all mean?” Nothing deeper than artifice. That’s why Gallagher would never have been great. He was too narrow a man.

  I came to a folder marked “Contrapasso.” I knew that word but couldn’t place it. I plugged it into Google, and, yes, Sam, the meaning appeared: the condemned souls in Dante’s Inferno, you know, the ones whose eternal punishment is never to escape their most grievous sin. Those guilty of lust, for instance, are blown about in the underworld by vi
olent winds that never allow their flesh any repose. The flesh they indulged so much in life becomes their endless torment. A kind of poetic justice. Was Gallagher being clever? I stared at the folder and remembered a long-ago English class and reading of that guided journey through the nine circles of hell. You remember those English books, Sam, the ones with the sketches of pain? Contrapasso. Something in me stirred. Click. What Gallagher lacked in self-reflection, he made up for in porn. Files of it. All kinds. But mostly gross amateur pictures and videos filmed in cheap hotel rooms and apartments by fat men with inexpensive cameras. There were pictures of Miranda too. In the shower. I don’t think she knew. Pretty, wet, ginger hair down her back, a scrim of mist. She had the gaze of the unaware. As if he had sneaked in on his own wife. I felt I was violating her just by looking. I clicked away from her and scrolled and scrolled until I spotted a file marked “Night at the Opera.” I stared at those words for a long time. I thought, Let it be; don’t go behind there.

  I got up from the computer, walked around, made tea. But the words taunted and dared. Should one know the mystery, or let it go? My hand paused. But then it moved on its own. Click. My heart dropped. There I was. Naked on a couch, passed out, propped up, legs spread, head drooping, mussed hair, wearing a Venetian mask: red lips, ornate eyes, a face speckled with cheap jewels, as if you were at a long-ago palace ball. Inscrutable, erotic, a sly disguise. The mask is timeless, is it not? Looking at you, betraying nothing. You wonder. Who’s behind the mask? You never find out. I am never unmasked in the video. I pretended it wasn’t me. No face, no identity. It could have been anyone. That would be a lie, though. It was me. We know ourselves, don’t we? Our markings, invisible or not, rise up like mirrors and expose us.

  A disguise cannot hide our essence. I have learned this. But to anyone watching—like you, Sam—I am a mystery. My stripped body a thing of clues. Pink, red, areola. Yes, I am vulgar, but look, Sam, is there any other way to be? Look. Stare. See me. Splayed. The camera on me, stealing me bit by bit. I won’t be vulgar if (when) we meet. I’ll be a lady. I am refined, but not in what you see before you. No, they turned me into something else. Jamieson whispered in my ear, grabbed my breasts, and laughed. A cackle. Not human. Can you imagine seeing yourself like that? Looking back through time and there you are, alive in a man’s laptop, like nothing, like a million other women, faceless, reduced to flesh. It’s you, but it’s not you. How can it be?

  I sat stunned, watching. I cried. The tears wouldn’t stop. I kept watching, drawn to it, thinking it a trick, an illusion. It was not. In a way, I was vindicated, all those years believing that something had happened. Something did happen. But my vindication became my disgrace. The opera my attackers were playing—Mozart’s Così fan tutte, a story of deception, love, and heartbreak—grew louder. I can be indifferent to Mozart, but Così is tender and beautiful and did not go at all with what was happening to me. You saw. First, Jamieson picks me up, folds me over the couch. I am so lifeless as to be dead. Jamieson pushes, the music filling the room, Gallagher standing a breath away, watching, a sneer even in his strange pleasure. Jamieson finishes. Is that what we should call it? He and Gallagher lift me to a table, lay me on my back. My mask is fixed; through all of it, my expression is the same. Gallagher begins while Jamieson pulls my arms over my head and holds them. As if I were a spear or some sad, trapped marsh bird. Don’t you think that’s how it looks, Sam? The image. He laughs and kisses my mask. Jamieson slaps him on the shoulder, laughing too, but scolding: “Be careful. That’s an antique.”

  I lie there. My skin reddens, or is that just the light? They sip wine and examine me. You can feel their eyes, can’t you? The delight and hate in them. What makes eyes shine so? They call for Jensen. He’s not in the picture but suddenly appears. They taunt and tease him. He says he doesn’t want to, that he’s had too much to drink—the sound of a voice looking for escape. Jamieson allows him none. That was startling, wasn’t it? The way Jamieson changed, Gallagher too, grabbing Jensen …

  I’m so embarrassed, Sam. All my hiding places gone. I am scoured in light. To be before you like that. Who I became is what they made, at least for a little longer. Do you understand? I have discovered the place of hate, somewhere inside me, with its own little heart. Why go on with the video? You’ve seen it all. I don’t want to watch anymore. I’m tired. Still so much to do. I’m reading your diary now. You finished typing just moments ago. It’s almost as if we were together. You mentioned me for the first time. I am words in your laptop. No name. “The girl in the mask.” That’s what you wrote. I can tell you care. I knew you would. I like this line best: “There was a beauty in her they didn’t take.” Thank you for seeing that. To watch the video and be able to write that, well, Sam, what can I say? You understand. There is a clue in the video. Very subtle. When we meet, perhaps I’ll point it out, or maybe you’ll see for yourself.

  Oh, one more thing. Don’t worry about Jensen. I know where he is. So close, I can touch him.

  Chapter 20

  Ortiz sits on a metal chair in Grand Central Market. It’s a little after eight in the morning, and the place is stirring to life. His scowl is aimed and cocked. He lights a cigarette, daring someone to tell him to put it out, and watches lawyers, city workers, tourists from Denmark, and a bunch of squat, hunched men, a few in cowboy hats, a few in hard hats, eating noodles and drinking Budweiser at the China Café counter. The hipsters have yet to descend. A chill blows through the big, open doors where, years ago, trucks delivered produce from the north, driving past gangbangers and homeless and fleeing before sunset. It is not the same city it was then.

  “Every time I come here, something’s different,” says Ortiz. “You know, when I was a kid, it was all Latino vendors. Cheap too, man. And there was this little guy, a Chilean if I recall, selling beer and whiskey over there in the far corner, near Broadway. It’s gone, man. Look at it. Went fancy. Neon. Grass-fed hamburgers, eleven-dollar falafels—that’s chickpeas, man. Eleven bucks for a pita full of chickpeas. Jesus. Look over there. Oysters on the half shell and white wine. What the fuck.”

  “It’s the Ren—”

  “Don’t say it. I hate that word.”

  “How about ‘rebirth,’ then,” I say, teasing him. “Rejuvenation. Reinvention. Renewal. Before it was a market, this was the Ville de Paris. Best department store in the city. No kidding. Back in the eighteen-hundreds. It’s changing back to what it was. Like in the Bible, everything has a season.” Ortiz looks at me, makes a fist, reels up his middle finger. “You look skeptical. Don’t worry. You can still get a taco for three bucks.”

  “They’ll push them out too. Just wait. Where did you come up with this Ville de whatever?”

  “It’s on the plaque outside.”

  He fidgets with his mustache, looks tired.

  “That Salvadoran’s joint’s doing well,” I say. “So is the nut seller by the watch-repair guy.”

  “Who wears a watch anymore? That guy won’t last. Something new comes; something old’s gotta die. I miss the grit and the lack of pretension. It’s gone, and for what? Bitter coffee sold by some bearded wastrel calling it Ethiopian and charging you four bucks. Christ.” He shakes his head, scratches his face. “You ever have one of those sandwiches from Egg Slut? You see the lines around that place? Bet it’s a two-hour wait to get an egg-and-cheese sandwich. And they all stand there, iPhones out, taking selfies, making a show of it. Doesn’t the world have important stuff to do? Who can stand that long in line for an egg sandwich? I’m lost.”

  “I like the beer over there,” I say, nodding to the left.

  “Never figured you for a craft guy.”

  “Every now and then, I like a hoppier taste. A bite.”

  “Jesus, you’re just like them. I thought you hung out at the place over on Fifth.”

  “The Little Easy’s my go-to.”

  “That looks sufficiently gritty. Used to be something else
. I can’t remember what. A dry cleaner’s, maybe. Had a murder there way back when I was starting out.”

  “It’s got a beat-up charm. Like Budapest.”

  “I like something a little beat-up and worn out. Real, you know. But Budapest? What’s that got to do with it? I’m assuming you mean the city, right? It’s not an apt analogy. Kind of off the wall. ’Cause ‘Little Easy’ would naturally make one think of New Orleans.”

  “First thing that came to mind.”

  “You’re weird. You do that a lot, you know. Drop in off-the-wall references. I’ve noticed. You can be an opaque fucker.”

  “You mean hard to follow?”

  “Pain in the ass, more like.”

  “I don’t see myself that way.”

  “No. You see yourself as sensitive. Smart and aloof too. You have this smart thing going.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s annoying.”

  Ortiz and I chat away about useless shit. We don’t want to talk about what we’re here to talk about. The video. I can’t stop seeing it in my head. What they did to her. I’ve seen a lot of degradation over the years, but something about her, in that mask, her body, long, flimsy, dead to the world, hands on her, moving her like a puppet, setting her in positions, and the whole time, the mask not changing expression, showing neither fear nor pain, nor anything at all. It had a knowing look to it, as if it had glimpsed centuries and deciphered secrets. Her body, her nakedness, drew you to her. You wanted to cover her, but at the same time, you couldn’t turn away. The strange loveliness of a victim. It happens from time to time. A victim of a sex crime can draw out your darker places, even as you weep for her. It makes you ashamed of what’s inside you.