Where Fortune Lies

by James Short

  “According to our investigation, Mr. Seles visited you twenty-seven times,” he said with the voice of a disapproving parent.

  “That’s not true.” Harriet’s instinct was to lie, lie, lie, working on the proven theory that any half-decent lawyer could always square lies with the truth later on.

  “Don’t worry; I’ll treat you as a confidential source.” The scrubbed skin of his face asked to be raked by her fingernails.

  “Do you expect me to trust you?”

  “You can trust me because I don’t want Mrs. Seles to feel any more pain than she is experiencing at the moment, which would surely happen if she became aware of your relationship with her husband.”

  “What a bunch of crap. She’s probably already trying to calculate how much the insurance will pay her if he turns up dead.”

  “No, she’s trying to figure out how to get through the next hour without going crazy.”

  In the end, he pried out of her the information that Mr. Seles had always dreamed about sailing around the world. Middleton thanked her. A day later, Mr. Seles was found inside a stolen sailboat, foundering in choppy seas, two hundred miles off the coast, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Middleton never brought up her name at the inquest. Mrs. Seles was allowed to draw her own self-protective conclusions about her husband’s death without having to factor in five-hundred-dollar biweekly visits to a prostitute.

  As a result, Harriet had a vague sense that she owed Detective R. T. Middleton. He could have arrested Harriet, chased her out of town, or demanded favors in return for allowing her to practice her profession, but he did nothing. Harriet hated owing. That’s what pimps did—make you owe them. Seven more times, he had visited her asking for similar information, and each time, she felt this indefinable debt increase. What would he do to the naked girl? Make her in his indefinable way owe him—that’s what he would do.

  “R.T. Middleton,” the voice repeated.

  Harriet looked down the street. The girl had disappeared. That might cause a problem for Detective Middleton, but Harriet would help track her down.

  “R.T. Middleton. Who’s this?”

  Just before she replied, Harriet asked herself whether she wasn’t overreacting because last month had been slow. Was she playing fair? A stupid question. Since when was life about playing fair?

  Detections and Deductions

  Detective Robert Thornton Middleton stood just above the opening of the drainage pipe, his long jaw set; his dark blue eyes fixed on the sludgy water seeping into the entrance. In one hand, he held the dress he had disentangled from the crumpled latticework, with the other he scratched his chin.

  Situations like this one weren’t uncommon in a town where college students made up half the visitors during Spring break. Obviously, the culprits were youthful paramours attempting to sneak into or out of their hotel rooms by way of the trellis. Their little romantic adventure turned into a nightmare when the trellis collapsed. Middleton felt sorry for the girl who now was shivering half-naked in a dank drainage pipe. The boy, if he were decent, would be undergoing an almost equal sense of mortification. It was hard to conceive an unluckier ending to their little tryst. After exhorting the curious hotel guests to go back to their rooms, he had returned to the pipe and shouted to the girl that he would leave the dress on a dry rock next to the entrance, so she could exit with modesty.

  The girl must have heard him, although there was no reply. Middleton went back to the lawn, told the smaller crowd that this was none of their business and settled down to wait for the culprits to appear.

  With time on his hands, Middleton decided to eliminate one other farfetched possibility. There was a certain skilled burglar who made a career out of robbing guests at the luxury hotels in Solvidado. This job was too sloppy, too noisy to be his. Yet Middleton was a man intrigued by patterns, and in addition to the location of the incident at Hotel Madeleine, there were other elements of the modus operandi that coincided.

  First, the hour was right. This burglar favored the hours just after sunset when he could reasonably expect a lot of guests to be out of their rooms for dinner. This, of course, was after he had already cased the hotel and chosen which room to burgle. Second, the phase of the moon. This burglar always struck on moonless nights, apparently using the extra darkness to cover his escape. Third, the use of the trellis. Since the thief preferred moonless nights, Middleton theorized that the burglar entered and exited the rooms via the balconies. And lastly, the storm drain. All of these pipes should have had gratings to prevent children and small animals from wandering in. Middleton suspected that the reason this storm drain lacked a grating was that it served as one of his burglar’s prepared escape routes.

  Middleton now sent the security guard to interview the guests to see if they were missing valuables. His man was a particular thief, and the items he took—or, more accurately, the items he left—were a strong indicator of whether he had been involved. He also gave the manager the task of telephoning the concierge and day clerk to ask the question that would clinch the identity of this thief. His burglar had made the classic error of letting hubris overcome his judgment. It was only a matter of time before Detective Robert Thornton Middleton caught him, but more of that later.

  Middleton looked up at the stars, attuned his keen ears to distant sounds, and breathed in the fragrant air. His mind wandered momentarily. He had a disquieting feeling that he could glimpse the future yet not make sense of what he saw. He shook his head as if to get rid of this whimsical thought and returned to the present. The uneasy half premonition this would be a different night still remained.

  When his phone rang, Middleton shook his head again and then spotted the hotel manager emerging out a side service door and compromise his dignity by jogging towards him, his lips moving as if practicing a phrase.

  How a Necklace Caused a Career Change

  Jacinto and Philip each leaned back on a gravestone, which Philip found surprisingly comfortable. Jacinto’s soft accent seemed to give his narration an extra dimension, enabling Philip to view the events as if he were a witness—an invisible witness like a ghost.

  For Tomàs, revenge was one thing, making a living another. The nine months of recuperation and the other five months of planning, recruiting and setting up had exacted a toll on his vital spirits. Perhaps it was inevitable that a strange debilitation, a vacancy of heart now accompanied him day in and day out.

  Tomàs didn’t give up gambling; he still went around to small towns playing for small stakes at brag or bluff, but he had lost his easy way. He could no longer enter a saloon or roadhouse and with his open and friendly manner make himself into an instant pal. He could no longer divert an audience with a joke or a story. Each card game became a battle between fear and will. Frequently, Tomàs would catch himself blinking as he made his move. Worse was that, his handling of the cards was becoming sloppy—no small matter in towns too busy to wait for legal niceties such as due process. Tomàs occasionally allowed himself to lose when he sensed he was facing another Mr. K.

  White-liver coward he labeled the fat, furtive man slouching into the safety of his room.

  Is this all I can do? He asked the bloated image staring into the mirror with meager winnings in a clammy hand that barely paid his lodging and tab at the bar. However, like a man skidding down an icy slope, he couldn’t find anything to catch hold of to save himself.

  After an exhausting late-night game, Tomàs made a mistake in the hallway of his hotel. He had just spent six hours trying to act the carefree man of the world while through the fog of tobacco smoke the five other players regarded him suspiciously and grimly. He had a sense they had been cheated quite recently, so he relied wholly on his honest card-playing skills. They checked the deck several times and paid him in small change and great sums of uncashable IOUs. Tomàs’s sole desire now, as he fumbled at the door for his key, was to forget this evening and himself in sleep.

  The lock jammed when he put the
key in, or so he thought. Too tired and too irritated to wake up the clerk, he leaned his shoulder into the door and pushed. It surrendered after a slight resisting shudder. Hands clumsily unbuckling his belt, Tomàs entered, then stopped suddenly and drew in a sharp breath.

  A woman lay in his bed. She had thrown off the covers and divested herself of her nightgown in an effort to find a trace of coolness in the sultry air. Her pale body and the white sheets absorbed the luminescence of the moonlight pouring through the window, and she seemed to float like a pale island in a sea of shadow.

  Tomàs now realized he was in the wrong room. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have left. However, there on the night table shimmered a diamond necklace that could have only belonged to a woman who was or once had been the dear wife, daughter, or mistress of a very wealthy man.

  He took a step forward. A dog growled.

  “Shhh, boy,” Tomàs said, and miraculously, the dog shushed. He approached the bed, lifted the necklace off the table and held it up to the window, so he could examine it closely. His profession required expertise in valuing precious stones. Tomàs glanced down at the woman. Earlier that day, he had seen her in the lobby. He had caught her roving eye briefly. Neither young nor old and rather stout, she was pretty enough in the face. Now as she lay with one hand under a breast and the other resting on her thigh, she seemed pure beauty and vulnerability. All of his instincts urged him to whisper to her and wake her gently, kiss her until she was no longer afraid and caress that wonderful breast. He refrained, confining his desire to an almost noiseless sigh. Patting the small dog on the head, he left with the necklace.

  The next morning, after covering forty miles with hard riding, Tomàs stopped to rest underneath an elm by a stream. It was only then he realized something else had happened. Every pore of his skin tingled; blood coursed through his veins joyfully; and the sky, trees, water, and grass seemed to belong to a newly christened paradise. He had found his calling.

  No burglary Tomàs subsequently committed was remotely like the theft of that necklace.

  Robert Thornton Middleton and the Practical Application of the Game of Chess

  “Yes, Harriet, I hear you.” Middleton ended the cellphone call.

  Singh, the manager, stopped a few feet away to give himself a moment to recover his composure, then took a step forward. “Apparently, we have two guests, a couple, who claim to have some jewelry missing. I don't know…”

  Middleton saw the couple turn the corner of the building. Anger shone bright as headlights from their faces. These were not sweet people.

  A word on R.T. Middleton. The common rumor about him was that he had never broken his New Year’s resolutions. More verifiable, perhaps, was that he was pretty darn close to being a perfect policeman. His mere presence usually imposed order and calm on a tense situation. Domestic disputes often dissolved as soon as he walked through the door. A glance of his could freeze a boisterous crowd of students in mid-rampage. Motorcycle gangs obeyed the speed limit and the noise ordinance in his vicinity. Largely, through his efforts, Solvidado had gained a reputation as a well-ordered place, inhospitable to thieves, scam artists, and the generic criminal who held a grudge against society. Middleton also strove for the same perfection as father and husband, but his commitment to excellence which served him so well in the rest of his life seemed to get in the way there.

  Middleton’s only personal indulgence was chess. He devoted himself to the study of the game of kings the last two hours of every night. Even when the evening ended late, or he worked the swing shift, Middleton tended to study a little bit more than the two hours rather than less. Chess satisfied his passion for patterns and transported him into a world where good and evil were simplified into the correct move, the better strategy and brilliant combination or the weak move, inferior strategy, and flawed combination. He had achieved a master rating. He could have passed into the ranks of international and grandmaster if he had made the game his life. So the irony was not lost on him that his hobby, which so removed him from the messy realities of police work, had yielded the first concrete clue as to the identity of his burglar.

  In order to raise funds for Solvidado High School’s marching band, Middleton gave an exhibition of simultaneous blindfolded chess. There were six opponents ranging from clueless to expert. None of them presented much of a challenge except for the sixth, Father Hornsby, a Catholic priest. Hornsby had a knack for clever combinations, but against a strong positional player such as Middleton, the outcome was never in doubt. He complimented Father Hornsby afterward. The priest didn’t reply initially, rather just regarded him with his dull fish eyes through thick lenses. He then mumbled a reply that resembled a thanks, and turned away, shuffling off, showing his balding head and a broad beam underneath his cassock.

  Middleton would have forgotten the incident had he not engaged in another match in a different setting with quite an unusual opponent. He had traveled to San Francisco to play in a tournament held in the conference rooms of a large hotel. He did fairly well, advancing his rating a few points. After having called Karen, his wife, to tell her about the success of the evening, he relaxed in a café with three other chess buddies.

  They were mulling over a game between two grandmasters, testing out variations, when suddenly they became aware of a presence hovering nearby. He was a small dark fellow, mostly Native American in his ancestry with perhaps a trace of Spanish blood. He wore an untucked plaid shirt and baggy jeans with huge dirt stains, and he exuded a strong smell of fertilizer and fresh onions. When he opened his mouth, the state of his teeth made you shudder. When he spoke, the accent was so thick that you could only speculate on the meaning of his words.

  After several efforts, the stranger managed to make himself understood that he was Ignacio from Sonora. He also was able to convey via sign language and garbled English that he was very good, “muy bueno,” at chess. He pointed to Middleton and then to himself indicating that he was challenging the police detective to a game. Middleton accepted in good humor.

  Middleton actually hoped Ignacio from Sonora would give him a run for the money. The novelty of a chess genius emerging from the ranks of migrant farm workers would prove the world still held surprises. Ignacio followed a standard book opening for ten moves. Then came an interesting attempt at a combination—clever, even commendable, yet obvious to Middleton after a minute study of the positions on the board. When the combination was thwarted, Ignacio stood up, handed Middleton a freshly picked onion from a capacious pocket and left.

  Not until he was halfway home did Middleton realize that the game he had played with Ignacio was nearly identical to the game he had played with Father Hornsby. The combination was the same Hornsby had tried however ending with a superior variation. So the next day Middleton called the diocese.

  Yes, they knew Father Hornsby. No, he wasn’t there. He visited from time to time, seeming to have an unconventional dispensation to be a wandering priest. Maybe he was even a Vatican spy, the receptionist whispered.

  Further investigation revealed that a Father Hornsby who was an enthusiast on local history occasionally left off pamphlets at the hotels of Solvidado. A severe asthmatic, he took frequent shots from an inhaler and often would have to rest awhile in the lobby to catch his breath. The front desk clerks naturally assumed that the management had ordered the pamphlets. The management naturally assumed that the front desk was indulging this quirky, likable character. After all, the pamphlets were free, and they diverted the guests for a minute or two.

  Middleton was able to match up a burglary to the very day Hornsby had arrived at Silver Suites and four others to within a few days of his appearances. He asked the diocese to call him when Father Hornsby visited again and gave instructions to the security at the hotels to detain the wayward priest the next time he left off pamphlets. Due to a change of personnel and general slipperiness, Hornsby had managed to strike once more. Middleton called the diocese. They regretted that they hadn’t seen F
ather Hornsby for several months. They did have another visiting priest, Father Perkins, not at all like Hornsby. No, he wasn’t there at the moment.

  R. T. Middleton raised his right hand to keep the manager from launching into his recital of excuses. With his other hand, Middleton held up the dress and carefully examined it. He saw what he wanted and extracted a card key from a torn pocket.

  “Can you find out whose room this belongs to?” Middleton brandished the card in front of the manager’s blinking eyes.

  “We can do that, of course, of course, but excuse me, I’m sorry, I must, I’m sorry, I mean I need to introduce to you, Frank and Elaine McBride.”

  Frank McBride positioned himself strategically next to Middleton’s right shoulder and tilted his head up to have a more direct path to his ear. Elaine did the same on his left side. Middleton barely acknowledged them with a nod to each and a slight shift of his eyes. He kept his stare fixed on the manager who seemed anxious to make his exit.

  “Did you happen to notice the priest Hornsby in your lobby, today?” Middleton asked.

  “We haven’t seen Hornsby in months.”

  “Do you have a new stock of pamphlets?”

  “He must have come by early in the morning or mailed them.”

  “Did you see anybody else come into the lobby who didn’t seem to belong?” Middleton ignored Frank McBride’s loud clearing of his throat and Elaine McBride, who was warming up her rant by repeating, “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  “Today? Well, the usual—friends of guests trying to find them, taxi drivers searching for the people who called them, pizza deliveries, the dry cleaner we contract out to, a young woman who was a cousin of a cousin of one of our housekeepers, and a lost gardener who didn’t know where the restrooms were. I could barely understand him.”