The Single Twin

by Sean Little

  Duff arched an eyebrow. He mouthed a word. Gun?

  Abe squinted at him with a look which plainly conveyed, Are you stupid? Neither of them carried. They were both licensed to carry, but neither of them ever carried. Their guns were locked in a safe in Duff’s closet, buried under his pile of clothes.

  “Well, then I guess we go in and say hello.” Duff kicked the door hard blasting it inward. It cracked back against the wall, rebounded, and slammed closed in their faces. There was a long pause. Duff reached out and grabbed the doorknob. “I’ll, uh, I guess I’ll get this.”

  Duff and Abe walked into their office. The only light came from the single green-shaded banker’s lamp on Abe’s desk. In the guest chair in front of Abe’s desk, illuminated in the glow of the lamp, was a woman. She was a lighter-skinned African American with her sleek black hair pulled back in a tight bun. She did not turn to face them. She acknowledged them with a simple word. “Gentlemen.” Her voice was firm and confident.

  Duff and Abe walked to their respective desk chairs. Duff collapsed into his heavily. Abe remained standing. He smiled pleasantly. “Hello. I’m Abe Allard. This is my partner, C.S. Duffy.”

  Duff gave the woman a polite wave. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out an inert Cold-Pak. He popped the activator bubble inside of it and shook it a few times before slapping the plastic pouch on his mouth. “How can we help you tonight? I hope you didn’t steal any of my video games. GameStop really won’t give you more than a few bucks for them, if you’re thinking of trying to trade them in. I’d give you more than that to leave them here.”

  The woman was very calm, very cool. She projected a heavy air of confidence. She stared at them, her eyes moving from Abe, to Duff, and then back to Abe. She was dressed in a dark blue blazer and a dark blue skirt ending just above her knee. She sat with one knee over the other. She was angled in the seat, cocked so her right elbow was resting on the top of the chair back, her left elbow on the armrest.

  “I asked around about you two. I’m told you’re the real dicks.”

  Abe grimaced. “We can be a little crude but calling us names is a little harsh.”

  “No, she’s right,” said Duff. “We’re assholes. Well, I’m an asshole. You’re a sad sack which is like asshole-light which in many ways is worse than being a standard asshole.”

  Abe flopped into his own chair. “I’ll concede your point, I guess.”

  The woman was unflappable. “I meant you’re the real deal detectives, the ones the cops call when they’re stumped. You solved that murder up in Green Bay last year, those two teenaged girls at the park.”

  “We did. Got lucky there,” said Abe. “The murderer used an old, very unique knife with a distinct cut to it. We were able to trace the blade.”

  “I looked you up.” The woman affixed her gaze on Abe. “You’re Aberforth Allard. You graduated in two-and-a-half years at the top of your class at Northwestern with a degree in Pre-Law and Criminal Psychology. You got a Juris Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in an equally criminally short amount of time, and then you passed the bar exams in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. You’re licensed to practice law in four states. You’re a super-genius, aren’t you?”

  Abe blushed. He did not like being reminded of his education. When you compared it to the life he ended up living, it seemed like a whole lot of hot air and student debt for unremarkable results. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Why didn’t you hang out a shingle? You were clearly more than qualified to be a lawyer.”

  “Technically, he is a lawyer. He passed the bar. He has a license to try cases.” Duff opened his mouth and flexed his jaw. “He just doesn’t practice.”

  “Thanks, Duff.” Abe twiddled his fingers at his partner. He turned back to the woman. “I tried to be a lawyer. I gave it a shot. I have a bit of a problem with assertion. I’m not good at it. The courtrooms, the motions, the briefs—the legal profession, it wasn’t for me.”

  The woman turned her attention to Duff. “You are Clive Staples Duffy—”

  Duff cut her off sharply. “C.S., please. Call me Clive and I’m liable to throw a stapler at your head.”

  “It’s a unique name.”

  “My dad was a C.S. Lewis fan. Had a dog and a cat growing up: Aslan and Wormwood.”

  “You don’t like the name Clive?”

  “It’s a name for pedantic old British men. Also, it’s what my dad called me. We were not on speaking terms. He’s dead now, though. Just call me Duff.”

  The woman shifted in her chair, sitting up and leaning toward Duff. “You grew up in Milwaukee.”

  “Waukesha, but close enough to Milwaukee for government work.” Duff’s old Wisconsin accent showed through when he said Milwaukee, pronouncing it like M’wackee. His accent was largely neutral with hints of Wisconsin and Chicago in it. Certain words triggered a bit more of the old emphases.

  “Your parents were both college professors. You, yourself, were one hell of a student. You were top of your class throughout grade school and middle school, and you were cruising to a valedictory spot at your high school. I saw you had more than thirty college credits amassed by the middle of your sophomore year. Hell, I even found an old clip online of you demolishing two poor little girls on Teen Jeopardy when you were twelve. No mercy. You never even gave them a chance to answer.”

  “Alex Trebek is a helluva guy. Smells like Old Spice.”

  “Then, at some point during around you sophomore year of high school, you just stopped. Stopped everything. You dropped out and disappeared for nearly a decade. There are almost no records of where you were or what happened to you.” She paused. She studied him for a long moment. “Where did you go?”

  “Got bitten by a radioactive spider and my uncle was killed by a street thug. Had to fight crime after that. With great power comes great responsibility, you know.”

  “I’d really like to know.”

  “Get used to disappointment.”

  “You always speak in pop culture references?”

  Duff held up a hand and tilted it from side-to-side, the universal symbol for Sometimes.

  “Fair enough.” The woman leaned back in her chair. “After a decade, you pop up solving some minor cases for the Chicago P.D. Then, you two end up working as a team somehow. You break a couple of big cases, do a lot of monitoring and info-gathering work. You get a small but important reputation around town. And then almost twenty years pass to bring us to today.”

  “That was fast,” said Duff. “You never even mentioned my ballet career or Abe’s pornstar past.”

  “I didn’t really have a pornstar past.”

  “Yes, you did. They called you Flaccid Frank Pickle, remember?”

  “No one ever called me that.”

  “I just did.”

  The woman ignored Duff. “The word on the street is you fellows are a real Holmes and Watson, you can see things cops can’t.”

  “Sometimes.” Abe tried to downplay it. “And it’s not like we’re special or anything. The cops would eventually figure out the same stuff we do. We just figure it out faster.”

  “No, we’re better than them,” said Duff. “We’re not worried about policy or procedure. We get in, we throw down, we get out. We get results.”

  “Sometimes,” Abe amended.

  “A lot of the time. Most of the time, actually.”

  The woman chuckled. “I have a hard time picturing either of you ‘throwing down.’”

  “Well, ‘throw down’ is a relative term, at best.”

  “I once tried to throw a game of horseshoes,” said Abe. “Dislocated my knee.”

  The woman stood up and straightened her skirt. She shook her arms to even the sleeves of her blazer. “Tell me about me, then. What do you see with your magic eyes, Mr. Poirot?”

  Abe and Duff looked the woman up and down. Their heads tilting simultaneously. Abe cleared his throat. “Well, the most immediately obvious things are the physical cha
racteristics. You are clearly in good shape. You work out.”

  “How can you tell? Walk me through your vision.”

  Abe pointed at the woman’s waist and drifted his finger toward her knee. “Well, your waistline is obviously quite trim and toned. You watch what you eat, probably do your fair share of planks or yoga. Your quadriceps are well-defined like a sprinter. You definitely run, definitely do some squats.” He pointed at her hand. “Your wrist is not fat, and it’s not skinny or bony either. It’s got a healthy circumference, comes from lifting weights. You know your way around a gym.”

  She looked at her wrist and flexed it. “Guilty as charged. What else?”

  “You’re a spook,” said Duff.

  Abe winced. “You can’t call her that, Duff; that’s racist. You have to say African American.”

  “Not that kind of spook, dumbass. She’s C.I.A. Maybe F.B.I. I’m definitely reading Fed, though.”

  “How?” The woman eyed Duff suspiciously.

  “The outfit. Plain. Boring. Off the rack, not custom. You don’t have lawyer money. Lawyer would have been my first guess about you. Your fitness level says cop or military. Probably cop, although I definitely read military in your bearing. Probably ex-Navy. Maybe ex-Air Force, more computers and files than frontline fighter, so probably not Army or Marine Corps. You’re not military now, though: you have too much civilian in your style of dress and in how you were sitting when we showed up. Too casual for military. You’ve probably been out of the service for, I don’t know, let’s say five years, maybe a tad more. You have good skin, so it’s tough to call your age. Looks like mid-thirties at the extreme. You’ll have to tell me your moisturizer regiment.”

  The woman said nothing.

  Duff pointed at her shoulder. “I also caught sight of a strange line underneath your blazer when you stood. I’m betting shoulder-holster, Glock under your left arm.”

  “Doesn’t explain how you read C.I.A., though.”

  Abe cleared his throat. “The research. A regular Joe off the street doesn’t delve into our backgrounds. They don’t care. You ran some sort of intensive check. Means you’ve got access to the big databases. We know most of the cops in Chicago, so you’re not police. That only left a few options. Being a spook was the most likely to me.”

  The woman inclined her head in a sort of bow. “Very good. I was C.I.A. for almost five years. I’m not anymore, though.”

  “What are you now?” asked Abe.

  “Guess.”

  “Stripper?” Duff crossed his fingers and leaned forward hopefully.

  “Guess again, dumbass.”

  Duff shrugged. He slumped back in his chair. “Is there a point to this game? Our observations can only go so far. We’re not mind-readers.”

  “Just seeing how good you guys really are.” She smiled sweetly at Duff.

  “Alright.” Abe listed points on his fingers as he rattled them off. “Recap: You’re fit, ex-military, ex-C.I.A. If you had a military and federal career, it’s safe to assume you are college-educated, a four-year degree.” Abe appraised her with a narrowed gaze. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say the military probably bought you a master’s degree of some sort, too. They saw potential in you. That’s why you got into the C.I.A. So, if we do the math, you graduate at twenty-two, military for probably six or seven years earning an M.A. or M.S. degree somewhere in that time, C.I.A. for five—it puts you around thirty-five years old.”

  “M.S. degree. The Pentagon wouldn’t pay for her to study Humanities.” Duff kicked his feet up on his desk and laced his fingers behind his head.

  “Yeah, safe call. M.S. degree, probably in some sort of highfalutin concentration like International Terrorism or World Economy.” Abe scratched at the top of his head.

  “Anything else?” The woman did a slow turn, arms out the side. When her jacket swung open, Duff and Abe caught a glance of the pistol under her arm.

  “Your accent pegs you as mid-Atlantic. East Coast. Probably Maryland. Might be a hint of something a shade southern in there, though. Virginia, maybe?” Duff gave her another once-over. “Outside of that, I got nothing.”

  “You’re scared,” said Abe. “Well, maybe not scared, but something is concerning you. You’re projecting a façade of confidence, but you’re carrying a weapon and you came here at this time of night for a reason.”

  The woman stopped moving. Her arms dropped to her side. Her shoulder shook for a moment with a silent laugh. She sat back in the chair in front of Abe’s desk. She smiled. “You guys are good. Very good. Definitely as advertised.”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell us your name, now. Maybe we can get down to why you’re actually here and how we can help you.” Abe leaned forward onto his desk. He flipped a few pages on a yellow legal pad until he found a blank sheet. He flicked off the cap of a black BIC Cristal Stick with his thumb and poised the pen over the paper, ready to start taking notes. Duff did not move.

  “Call me Mindy.”

  Duff snorted. “If Mindy isn’t your real name, then why not be totally unoriginal and just make us call you Ishmael?”

  “If you really must know, my real name is Minerva Demeter Jefferson. If you call me Minerva or Minnie, I’m liable to throw a stapler at your head.”

  “Fair enough.” Duff smiled a toothy grin. “Kind of a mouthful of a name. You don’t look Greek.”

  “Fifteen-year-old black single mothers don’t always make the best decisions when naming their babies. My mom read a book on Greek mythology in her final trimester. She found inspiration. Thought it would make me powerful if she named me after gods.”

  “Seems we have a few things in common, Ms. Jefferson.”

  “Mindy.” She corrected Duff with a raised finger and a sharp tone. “I don’t answer to Ms. Jefferson, Minerva, or anything else. Just Mindy is fine.”

  “Why did you come here, Mindy?” Abe was busy scrawling her name. “How can Allard and Duffy Investigations help you? Seems like with your background and considerable history and contacts, you could find someone better to help you.”

  “Unless you suspect someone on the inside.” Duff leaned forward and put his arms on his desk. “That’s it, isn’t it? Someone in the C.I.A. field offices in Chicago did something, you figured it out, and you had to get out before they brought you down, too.”

  Mindy Jefferson chewed her lower lip for a moment. “I need you two to find a missing person.”

  Abe smiled encouragingly. “We have done that before. We do pretty well at finding people. Please, tell us about this missing person.”

  Mindy inhaled sharply through her nose and moved to the edge of her seat sitting ramrod straight, her hands folded on her lap. “It’s me.”

  -3-

  ABE AND DUFF exchanged a glance. Duff coughed into his fist and leaned forward on his desk. “But, you’re right here. This was the easiest case ever.”

  Abe was confused. “Maybe you should go back a little further.”

  “I wish I had the time to explain everything to you,” said Mindy. “I wish I had the energy to explain everything to you. I had come here earlier tonight hoping to catch one or both of you here. I knew Duff lived in your office. I knew Mr. Allard was recently divorced and was filling his time by working too much.”

  “Call me Abe.”

  “I had hoped you would be here before I had to go. You’re going to have to do a lot of work on your own on this one. I can’t tell you too much because I, myself, don’t know nearly enough. I’ve made some inroads, but I don’t have the time to keep searching. Not right now.”

  “Then give us the basics,” said Duff. “We’re pretty good at filling in gaps.”

  Mindy pressed her lips together. “I was raised an only child near the projects in Baltimore. I busted my ass in school while my high school dropout mom worked a secretary job at a factory to keep me fed. It was a good job considering she wasn’t really qualified for it, but she learned quickly. She kept food on the table, kept me out of th
e rough parts of the neighborhood. She was a great lady. I graduated from high school a year early and went to college on some fat scholarships, got a degree in Leadership and Ethics. Then, I joined the Navy. I went through Officer Candidate School, got my commission, and served for seven years. At some point during that service, Mom got sick. Breast cancer. She was only thirty-five. Same age I am now.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” said Abe.

  Mindy nodded at him. “Thank you. I got recalled from Chinhae in Korea because she was going south in a hurry. I made it to her sickbed in time for her to do two things: tell me about a brother I never knew I had while she was thick in her morphine haze and then die.”

  “Incredible.” Abe was scrawling notes at a breakneck pace.

  “I left the Navy shortly after her passing because the C.I.A. came calling. They offered me the shot at an advanced degree and a cushy job studying global financial activity. My Master’s degree was in Counterterrorism with a concentration in tracking how assets move through international banking.”

  “So, you’re not dumb, is what you’re telling me,” said Duff.

  “Depends on who you ask, I guess.”

  “Go on, Mindy.” Abe’s pen was stilled for the moment. “I’m assuming you’re here because of the missing brother, not the C.I.A.”

  “After she passed, I started going through my mother’s things, cleaning out her home. I found an old journal of hers from when I was a baby. In it, she wrote that she had twins, a boy and a girl. She stated that she had my brother adopted out to some fairly well-to-do couple in Illinois who were desperate for a baby, and they made it worth her time. When I got my degree and started working for the C.I.A., I applied to the field office in Chicago solely because I hoped to find my brother. I don’t have any other family, you see. My dad was never in the picture. Mom told me he was killed in a gang-related shooting when I was three. The only other relative I had was my grandmother, and she died when I was eleven. I thought having any sort of family was something worth fighting for, worth searching for.”