The Other Side of the Mirror

by Lex H Jones

  “I know how this works, Dog,” Carl explained, crouching over the figure. “You go to jail, guy like you makes a name for himself. The big Pimp with the big dick, the man everyone wants to work for. You make friends, and prison becomes an easy ride for you. I didn’t want that, it’s not close to what you deserve. So I took away your—let’s call it your tactical advantage. I hear that in lockup, with all those tough guys, it’s either fuck or be fucked. What I just did leaves you with only one of those options, doesn’t it? From Big Dog to someone’s bitch. Not quite justice, but close enough that I’ll sleep happy tonight. I’ll send some blue boys round to pick you up.”

  Carl stood up and holstered his gun, then turned and walked away from the scene.

  “You gonna call me an ambulance?” Big Dog cried after him.

  “I will if I remember the number. Never had to call it myself.”

  Chapter Nine;

  Endless Cycle of Shit

  “Y ou’ve solved a case haven’t you?” Jimmy smiled as Carl walked into the apartment. Carl was surprised to find him still awake at this hour, but then Jimmy was something of a night owl himself.

  “What makes you say that?” Carl asked.

  “You have that look, like you’re somewhere close to happy because you’ve solved a problem, but not quite because there’s always another one right behind it.”

  “Case got wrapped up tonight. Guy got what he deserved, a young girl can rest in peace. Good night’s work, I guess,” Carl shrugged, taking his white bottle of pills from the kitchen cabinet and popping one into his mouth.

  “When do you eat?” Jimmy asked.

  “What the fuck kind of question is that?”

  “I just never see you eat. Coffee and pills, that’s all I see go into your mouth.”

  “Everything you say sounds fucking queer.”

  “Homophobe,” Jimmy scowled. “Seriously, I’m gonna cook you something.”

  “Don’t be cooking something just before I go to sleep, it rests heavy.”

  “Fine, then I’m making you a sandwich.”

  “Christ, it’s like living with a woman.”

  “You wish,” Jimmy scoffed as he joined Carl in the kitchen area and began preparing a sandwich. Baloney, lettuce, some cheese and wholemeal bread.

  “Since when do I have that much sandwich stuff?” Carl asked as he watched Jimmy prepare the snack.

  “Since I did some shopping for you. You were getting all ‘Mother Hubbard’ in here.”

  “Christ, Jimmy, you turned my fridge queer,” Carl sighed, glancing at the low-fat products inside the fridge.

  “There’s a great fresh produce store near here, you know. Bet you’ve walked past it a thousand times and never been in.”

  “You do the shopping, I’ll solve the cases,” Carl agreed, taking a bite from his sandwich and giving a satisfied nod.

  “It’s like we’re a married couple in the fifties.”

  Carl still had a mouth full of sandwich when the phone started to ring. Jimmy glanced at him but made no move to answer the phone. Lazy shit, Carl thought. My house so I got to answer the damn phone. After taking a moment to flip Jimmy the bird, Carl swallowed the last of the sandwich and lifted the phone to his ear.

  “Duggan, that you?” asked Detective Trent, his voice as damn miserable as ever.

  “My shift’s ending, Trent. This better be good.”

  “Oh it is, I promise. Course if you’re not interested we could always talk about the pimp motherfucker we just found with his balls blown off. Says it was a cop that did it.”

  “And does anyone at the station give a shit?”

  “What do you think, Carl?”

  “Okay, so let’s talk about the reason you called me,” Carl sighed.

  “You remember Judge White? Fat bastard with the stubby hands?”

  “The hands that were in the pockets of every drug lord on the West side you mean?”

  “The very same,” Trent replied.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I’m shocked. And I should give a damn why?”

  “Get this. He died in court, in the middle of a trial. They think he’s been poisoned.”

  “Guy like that gotta have had an endless list of enemies.”

  “Damn straight, which is why we want you on it. You’ll cut through ‘em faster than most.”

  “All right, I’ll look into it tomorrow,” Carl agreed.

  “You ain’t gonna start tonight?”

  “It’s four a.m., Trent. My shift is over, and he’s not gonna get any more dead between now and then, is he?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Then good night.”

  Carl replaced the handset and took the rest of his sandwich into the living room. He sat down in his armchair and relaxed, before switching on his old black and white television. The first channel to illuminate the screen didn’t grab his attention, so he reached for the remote and idly flicked through them before he found an old horror movie, which he decided to leave on.

  “I was surprised to discover that thing actually has a remote,” Jimmy gasped in mock amazement. “I thought it was a relic from times past when you actually had to get off your ass to change channel.”

  “It’s not that old, it’s just cheap,” Carl said defensively.

  “I’m gonna buy you a new TV. I got a little money saved, I think it’d be nice. I know how you hate being given gifts, so consider it a gift for both of us.”

  “What would be a better gift would be you shutting up whilst I watch this.”

  “Oh come, you must have seen this like a thousand times already.”

  “Yeah, well I can’t remember how it goes. Seen so many of these old ones that they all blend together.”

  “That’s because they’re all the same. Movies from back then weren’t big on originality, especially the horrors. They found a formula and flogged it to death. You can interchange the werewolf for a vampire or a mummy or a robot and get basically the same film.”

  “Better than the crap you like to watch.”

  “You don’t even know what I like to watch!” Jimmy protested.

  “It’ll be crap, whatever it is. Cooking shows or musical theatre or something,”

  “Why do you do that?” Jimmy asked, resting his head on his fist as he stared at Carl.

  “Do what?”

  “Make all the gay jokes. We both know you’re not a homophobe, so why feel the need?”

  “I like the cheap shots. If you were black I’d be going for the race stuff, and God help you if you were in a wheelchair.”

  “I think it’s because your dad hated gays so much. You get it drilled into you that it’s okay to call us names and stuff cause we’re not really people or something.”

  “My dad was okay. Didn’t hate gays like your dad did.”

  “Maybe not, but stuff like that still gets imprinted on your brain. It becomes a habit whether you know it or not.”

  “Does it offend you?” Carl asked, sounding almost thoughtful.

  “Nah, because I know you don’t mean it.”

  “Then quit with the damn psych analysis and let me watch this... fag!”

  “Oooh, haven’t heard that one in awhile,” Jimmy teased. “So what’s this new case? That’s what the call was, right?”

  “Yeah. Some fat ass judge got poisoned or something. Died in the middle of a trial. Guy had a lot of enemies.”

  “Guessing that a judge makes those anyway, right? Sends so many bad guys to prison, or worse?”

  “True, but White had more than most. He was as dirty as they come, turned a blind eye to anything for the right price. No loyalty in him either. The same guys he’d bail out one week, he’d send down the next ‘cause someone paid him more.”

  “Well I may not be the smartass detective, but I’m gonna assume that makes your job harder, right? Long list of suspects?”

  “Yeah, but you start at the closest. Friends and family
are the usual suspects when a rich guy buys the farm. They stand to gain the most. If you rule out the friends, then you move onto the enemies. That’s the way things work.”

  “God, you’re pessimistic.”

  “Welcome to the City. It’s just an endless cycle of shit. You bury one corpse and another floats down the river.”

  “Speaking of which, you going to call that woman? What was her name, Felicity? I think she’d wanna know that you found her sister’s killer.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Carl sighed, taking the card that Felicity had given him from his coat pocket.

  “You’d have completely forgotten about that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess I figure that once the bad guy’s caught, my job’s done. I don’t always think about the families. Someone else tends to take care of that stuff.”

  “That’s cold, for you to wrap it up so simply in your own head,” Jimmy remarked.

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Lot of shit has happened to you since I last saw you, huh Carl?” Jimmy said with a sad smile.

  “I don’t know beans about what’s happened to you either.”

  “Nothing interesting. Worked some clubs, broke some hearts, wore some fabulous clothes. The usual.”

  “Living the gay dream, huh?”

  “Amen to that.”

  “You think it’s too late to call her? Probably is, right?” Carl asked as he turned the card over and over in his hand.

  “She won’t be asleep. I bet she hasn’t slept properly since this started.”

  Carl nodded and picked up the phone, then dialled the number as he read it from the card. The line rang at the other end four times, and then a soft feminine voice answered. Carl sighed and then spoke, “Miss DuBois? Hey, it’s Detective Duggan. I, uh, I got some news for you...”

  Chapter Ten;

  Everyone Hated His Fat Ass

  J udge Gerald White was a rich man, by anyone’s estimation. He had a huge house, a luxury car, took more vacations a year than most people had in a decade, and a wife that was twenty years younger than him. He could regularly be seen in the high-class casinos, drinking expensive drinks and talking to expensive call girls. His wife knew about his nocturnal activities, of course, as had the first five women he’d married. White wasn’t the least bit ashamed of his ways, so made no effort to hide them. As far as he was concerned, his wealth was like a can of whitewash that could be liberally applied to anything that he did. His wives had always tolerated it, for fear of going back to the nothing they’d all originated from. Get treated like crap and have a fancy lifestyle or go back to the gutters. Good old-fashioned family values.

  “What makes you think it was poison?” Carl asked Dr. Glass as he looked down at the large body on the slab before him.

  “He suddenly stopped breathing, grabbed his chest and hunched over,” Glass replied, his breath leaving his mouth in a visible cloud owing to the usual cold of the morgue.

  “Well you’re the doctor here, but that sounds like a heart attack.”

  “True, and when I cut him open I’m sure that I’ll be able to confirm it,” Glass nodded.

  “Then where does the poison theory come from?”

  “Two things; firstly he had a heart attack with no real history of heart trouble. That always strikes me as suspicious. Call me paranoid if you must.”

  “Makes sense, so what’s the second reason you suspect poison?”

  “The same reason he’s been laying here on my slab for a full day and night and I haven’t so much as touched him,” Glass said with a tone of clear frustration. “His damn wife got an injunction. Don’t know what kind of fancy legal shit she pulled to block an autopsy, but with the money this fat ass left her, getting the best lawyers wouldn’t be a problem. Hell, this guy was a judge, right? She probably used some of his old friends.”

  “So she doesn’t want you to cut open the body? Sounds like she has something to hide.”

  “See? I could be a detective.”

  “That’s common sense, Glass, but you’re right. If her husband died suddenly, you’d think she’d want to know why.” Carl agreed.

  “Unless she already knows.

  “You think she poisoned him?”

  “Without knowing which poison it was—which I can’t tell until I get inside the fat prick—I can’t tell what delivery system was used. Was it injected, did he swallow it, eat it, breathe it, was it in his bathwater? Once I know that, I can narrow down who would have been able to give it to him. If it was in his food, I’d say the wife. But his wife wasn’t in court with him that day. So if it was in the water he drank at the trial, for instance, then it had to be someone else.”

  “You’re smarter than you look, Glass.”

  “Hey, I’m a doctor.”

  “Please, you can get a doctorate for turning up at the college doors these days!”

  “Yeah, well I turned up early!” Glass retorted with a smile.

  “So this injunction, it can’t last forever, right? I mean the law’s the law, they can only delay something like this, not prevent it altogether.”

  “They don’t need to prevent it altogether. Some poisons exit the body after a couple days, alive or dead, leaving no trace of themselves. Once that happens we can’t prove shit.”

  “Damn, that bitch is clever,” Carl cursed.

  “She must have hated his fat ass.”

  “Everyone hated his fat ass, but there’s a line between hating him and killing him.”

  “Evidently she chose to cross it.”

  “Why now? What changed? This guy’s always been a bastard, he must have really pissed her off,” Carl mused. “I’m gonna go talk with the wife. See what I can scare out of her. If I sweet talk her enough I might just get her to drop that injunction.”

  “Hurry it up, will you? It’s freaking me out staring at a corpse this long without cutting into it.”

  “You’re one strange sonnovabitch, Glass.”

  Chapter Eleven;

  Broken Heart

  C arl found himself in the West side of the city for the second time in a week, much to his dismay. His record was four visits, back when he was investigating a child-porn ring that turned out to be the work of his own commanding officer. That wasn’t a record he was particularly inclined to beat. In fact he’d be glad to never again come close to equalling it. The West side left a bad taste in your mouth, like a lump of tobacco wrapped in taffy. Seems all right to start with, and you think you might be onto something good. But the longer it’s inside you, the more you start to become aware that something just isn’t right. By the time you realise what it is the taste is there to stay, and nothing is ever going to take it away.

  His second trip over the bridge this week took him to the residential apartments on the northern edge of the city. Away from the hustle and bustle so that the rich folk could have their quiet, but close enough so that the bright lights were never out of reach. You could still leave your fancy home to get drugs or an escort or both, and be back within the hour. Depravity on tap, just the way the West-side folks liked it. The apartment building in front of which Carl stood was the most luxurious and exclusive in the city, hence the somewhat overstated name of “Diamond Heights”. Carl had barely set foot onto the red carpet which led to the door before the surly doorman accosted him.

  “I’m not sure that this is where you live, Sir,” he said, trying to be polite but his voice evidently carrying a thinly veiled threat. Whatever the words that actually came from his square jaw, the meaning was the same; you don’t look rich, so fuck off.

  “I’m here to see a friend,” Carl smiled, resisting the urge to break the big guy’s teeth.

  “You have a name for this friend?”

  “I have several, depending on the situation. If we’re being formal I call her Fei Ling White,” Carl remarked.

  “Oh, excuse me, Sir. You’re one of Mrs. White’s friends...” The doorman nodded. “I didn’t know she was expecting company s
o soon, all things considered.”

  “I don’t think she wants to be alone,” Carl shrugged, satisfied that his ploy had worked. Let the big fuck think he was ploughing the spoilt bitch. If it got him in the door then why the hell not?

  “Go on through, Sir. Shall I call upstairs for you?”

  “I’ll take care of it. She knows I’m coming,” Carl smiled, slipping the doorman a twenty as he shook hands with him. It probably wasn’t necessary, the idiot already seemed to trust Carl’s story. But the twenty bucks was the icing on the cake. A few dollars to keep his mouth shut, the same as all the tramp’s lovers probably gave. And if not, then this meant he’d like Carl the most. Either case a winner.

  Once in the hallway, Carl nodded at the desk attendant and walked straight to the elevator. He didn’t have time for small talk, and he knew that too much of it would give him away. Not just the fact that he wasn’t one of Mrs. White’s lovers, but the fact that he didn’t belong here. Period. His clothes weren’t designer labelled and didn’t cost more than some people’s cars. His after-shave wasn’t endorsed by some prick celebrity, and he wasn’t wearing any products in his hair. At first glance he could pass as someone with the “roughing it” look, perhaps his lady-friend liked that. But any prolonged time in his presence would break the ruse, and he wasn’t prepared to chance it.

  The elevator had fourteen floors to travel past before it reached the top floor where Mrs. White could be found. Carl was annoying himself trying to place the music that was coming through the hidden speakers, and eventually he resigned himself to the fact that he didn’t give a shit. At the back of the elevator was a large mirror that covered the entire wall, the sight of which caused Carl’s eyes to roll. What kind of vein jackass checks himself out in an elevator? Hookers on their way up to their clients probably. Like anyone cares how pretty your hair and makeup is. They’re gonna fuck you, not put your headshot in a photo frame on the mantle. Once your face is pressed against a pillow, who cares how nice your hair was when you walked in?

  The elevator music was interrupted by the automated speaker announcing that the elevator had reached the fifteenth floor. Carl still hadn’t figured out what song had been playing, and now he knew that it was gonna bug the crap out of him all night. With a frustrated sigh he departed the elevator and made his way to the first of the only two apartments that were on the top floor. Together they were big enough to leave no room for any other residences. Carl wouldn’t have minded this in most circumstances. People’s money was theirs to spend how they liked. If that means a home bigger than most people’s, then whose business was it? That didn’t apply to the late Judge White, though, because Carl knew too much about where his money came from. After taking a moment to straighten himself up a little, Carl knocked on the door of the apartment 202.