An Exaggerated Murder: A Novel

by Josh Cook

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  Trike took his feet off the desk. Before he could stop them, his hands opened the drawer where cigarettes would have been if he hadn’t quit smoking. His hands found a pack of completely inadequate nicotine gum. Since the pack was in hand he popped a piece into his mouth. He was mugged by a coughing fit that almost knocked him out of his chair. The gum was lost.

  Since the drawer was open, he took out a notebook and put it on his desk. He kicked back into detecting posture. An unforeseen stiffness in his back rendered the position untenable. He snapped to standing and began circumnavigating the room.

  Philosophically, Trike did not separate the brain from the body, seeing all differentiation as superficial misunderstandings of an organic whole. Though it is obvious to most that the functioning of the mind affects the actions of the body, it is not as clear or as certain that the actions of the body, besides obvious health issues and chemically induced states, have a direct effect on the functioning of the mind. However, Trike believed in the idea enough to incorporate it into his belief structure. In practical terms, this meant Trike believed different aspects, realms, avenues, and abilities of cogitation were available or unavailable depending on the actions being concurrently taken by the body. Essentially, one thinks differently while one is pacing than one does while sitting. Furthermore, one thinks differently at all different levels of intoxication and all different levels of recovery from intoxication, as well as at all different states of exhaustion and alertness, starvation and satisfaction, pain and comfort, etc. So Trike would sit, pace, walk, drink, sleep, eat, and, for so very long, smoke, smoke, smoke, during a case, all with the express purpose of providing different perspectives from which to consider the problem.

  Many, in the course of their lives, will wish for new eyes from which to view what barriers stand before them. They believe that difference is vital to solution. They are right. And the eyes are there. And they can be created if the effort is truly undertaken.

  Trike sat down. The desk was still desk.

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  he’d paid in sweet sweet traceable credit, there is no hunchable connection between this painting and Joyce’s actual disappearance, and at this juncture it is only safe to assume that this copy is, in fact, a copy, for if it were one of the most famous thefted paintings in the world it verges on the impossible that Lola would not find traces of the personal data that would have been connected with a person capable of such an acquisition, although it would not necessarily be entirely fruitless to assume new developments in disappearing personal information, developments that Lola has yet to catch up to, but the innovation would have to be both thorough and devious, both rigorous and creative. But the question of where Joyce is now should not need a complete picture of who Joyce is to be answered, for, though the past is a strong indicator of present and future action, unless the past reveals an event, fact, or trait that definitively influences current action, it should only be treated as components of character and not pieces of evidence, which leaves us lurching back to the only thing that ever seems to make any sense in cases like these: money, the absence of money, the potential for money, the money hidden away in

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  creative locations, which, because this seems to be the buck of this bull, tangles back into the lack of personal information, because I still don’t see how someone could be making money on all of this; though it would not be impossible for the reward to be a very elaborate tax dodge, whatever would be saved in taxes was spent several times over on the information wash, unless Joyce didn’t pay for the information wash, which is possible if he were in the witness protection program, but if that were the case, Max should have at least found that fact even if he could find no more, and if that were the case, why didn’t the FBI take over investigation, or why not open up the basement just to Max and me, since we already know it’s there and already know what’s being done in there, they could even clean out the weed if they wanted, and then we wouldn’t have to extrapolate from sewer maps to see at least where he went last, or shit, why not just tell us what the exit possibilities are from the basement and let us go from there, if there even are exit possibilities from the basement, seems like Max should have been able to drag that tiny bit out of his contacts, though it could be that everyone at

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  the FBI simply has better things to do with their time than fuck around with Joyce, but that fact itself raises its own maelstrom of problems, not the least of which is the idle speculation about just how much fucking weed a dude has got to grow to get on their radar, breaking in could make some very inconvenient enemies, which would not be worth it at least at this juncture of the investigation, especially since it is likely that nearly all evidence has since eroded from that space, if there were any evidence in that space to begin with, still … something tells me Joyce wouldn’t go far, there is so much money involved and so much that needs to managed, but that isn’t necessarily a meaningful limitation, especially if he has prepared properly and/or has a sophisticated and supple communication system, OK, different angle, who could have a stake in this that I haven’t already considered, not a creditor but an ally of some kind, a business partner, a boss, or perhaps one more remove, someone who could benefit from his disappearance in an indirect but powerful way, someone who needs him to perform a task for them that can only be accomplished when he vanishes …

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  Trike stood up. Went to the window. Still window. Nothing he looked for was visible. Still, he looked with as much of his brain as he could spare. The free vodka was at home, and if he was going to have a good old-fashioned think-and-drink, it would behoove him to drink that instead of the client scotch and gin. He took a deep breath.

  He gathered his things to brave the constant adventure that was his car.

  On his way out, Trike tipped his hat back at his desk. He liked to imagine his father sitting there, wishing him luck.

  A KEY IS JUST A SYMBOL OF PERMISSION

  Max walked into the living room. He shoved a pile of magazines against the wall with his foot. He shuffled food wrappers and dirty dishes around to make an open spot on the floor. He put the pile of newspapers cluttering the couch there. He cleared a bunch of empty bee
r bottles off the coffee table. He sat down. Put his feet up. Turned on college football.

  Max’s relationship with college football was rationally engaged. He never went to a bowl game, bought a fancy cable package, or called a sports radio show. Except for that one time. If Auburn, Michigan, or Rutgers were on, he’d watch from pre- to post-game, getting supplies or going to the bathroom only during commercials. If they weren’t, he’d mix in chores, reading, or a crossword puzzle.

  They weren’t. Max picked up the top paper. Scanned the headlines. At least the game gave him a chance to see a Heisman-hopeful quarterback. Max flipped to the world news section. Skimmed it during the first quarter.

  “Max!” Trike shouted from the hallway that led to his bedroom.

  “Afternoon, boss.”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Watching poor decision-making hurt Heisman chances.”

  “Why the fuck are you doing it here?”

  “Cable’s still out.”

  “So you break into my place to watch college football?”

  “I have a key.”

  Trike fact-checked the assertion in his memory. He wore poorly fitting athletic shorts, calf-length distorted white tube socks, and a threadbare D.A.R.E. T-shirt that was more bare than thread. The fact of Max’s assertion did not quite check out.

  “I’ve changed the lock three times since I gave you that key.”

  “A key is a symbol of permission.”

  Trike didn’t respond. He went to the kitchen. Came back with a carafe of coffee in one hand and a mug and six-pack in the other. He put it all on the coffee table. He found a hot plate in the debris around the couch. He set that on the table and the carafe on it. Then he plugged it into an extension cord that poked from the edge of the rug. He poured a mug full of coffee and sat down next to Max.

  “Is he really hurting his Heisman chances?” Trike asked.

  Max shrugged. “Affecting draft position.”

  “What’s your feeling about some afternoon drinking and relaxed theorizing about the case?”

  “Knew watching here had … risks.”

  “Think of it as an in-kind donation for the cable you’re stealing.”

  “You’re stealing this cable.”

  “There’s a famous amendment to the Constitution that handles awkward questions like the one implied by your wild speculation. Besides, it’d be like burning fifty grand if we do nothing about the case today.”

  Max held out his hand. Trike filled it with a beer can. Trike opened his own and leaned back into the couch.

  “So what do you think, Max?”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “General sense of the case. Nature. Essence. Soul of the problem. The nougat center.”

  Max took a healthy swig of beer.

  “I never realized eccentric billionaires were real. I’ve met billionaires who were eccentric. But they had a normal core … recognizable through the wealth.”

  “And Joyce is an eccentric billionaire?”

  “Sitting rooms. Secret passage. Mysterious money. Self-kidnapping. I don’t know. I don’t like it one bit.”

  “Once we figure out where he’s gone and why, it will all become clear.”

  Max rubbed his forehead.

  “This is different,” he said. “Different in a different way.”

  Max sipped and continued. “Working undercover in narcotics, I met some wealthy insane people. Pet kangaroos. Mansions with waterfalls. Cars with espresso machines. But there was a recognizable … core beneath the opulence. The process from poor farmer’s son to kingpin was … apparent. They could be killed any day. Their volume was off—”

  Max interrupted himself to point at the screen. “See. Didn’t read the zone coverage. Guy underneath was wide open.”

  “What about the defensive end in the lane?”

  “Tackle was on him. Never get his hands up in time.”

  “Little hard on the guy, don’t you think? Safety stepped forward like it was man on the snap,” Trike argued.

  “That is what separates Heisman hopefuls from Heisman winners.”

  “All right, I accept your argument,” Trike conceded.

  They watched the next few plays without talking. Trike poured himself a second mug of coffee.

  “So, Joyce doesn’t seem like a narco kingpin?”

  “No.”

  “So that makes him an eccentric billionaire?”

  “It makes him … unusual.”

  “Unusual is the word, Max.”

  They watched the rest of the first half without speaking. Even with a miscue or two, the quarterback and his team were coasting to victory. Trike finished the coffee and unplugged the hot plate. They each finished their first beer and got a second. When the teams ran to the locker rooms for halftime, only the fundamental doubt of existence remained.

  “You must have some … thoughts,” Max said as commercials rolled.

  Trike sighed. Took a big swig of beer. Looked at the ceiling, over at the front door, into the kitchen, down at the coffee table, back to the television. Left himself dehydrated something fierce. He took another big swig.

  “I do not have some thoughts about this, Max. I have thousands of thoughts knitting themselves into a sweat-and-vomit-soaked blanket of intellectual frustration. A bog of possibilities. A swamp of equally irrational solutions. An algae slick of suspicions hiding a tangled, rotting, neutrally buoyant morass of mundane detritus, solidified toxins, dead sea life, and wild speculation drawn from the fuzzy satellite photographs of the investigation. I’m standing on a Victorian-era Central European train station, Sofia perhaps, poorly attired for the weather, on the busiest day of the century, clutching a ticket to Vienna that must be given to the worthiest traveler and every person who passes me explains why they deserve the ticket without telling me what they plan to do once they arrive, while hovering above, in the invisible gap between up and down spins, a time-traveling super alien magic cat judges me based on criteria revealed to the Judeo-Christian god of salvation and damnation engendered from myth for the sole purpose of ferrying me to my deserved final destination, and in the balance, one knows not what is at stake. On top of it all, my brain threads the thin trails of spider silk of my efforts across the problem that never build into patterns, never remain long enough to be progress, never stabilize enough to be mistaken for temporary paths through the dark-and-noise-ridden fairy-tale forest of this mystery, whose roots tangled into cells imprisoning enchanted looms weaving divergent puzzles into being that mix opposed languages into offensive pigments sprayed into impenetrable overlays over my most cherished childhood memories, all so an accountant in New Jersey, who doesn’t even pretend to love his wife anymore, can calculate the fates of the would-be great leaders of the next generation, assigning life and death by carelessly filling out ten-ninety tax forms, and tell his snooty professor cousin that getting the references never made anybody a million dollars and a million dollars will keep mattering more than the references that make having language more than just an elaborate excuse for semaphore.”

  “Jesus Christ, boss. Warn a man next time.”

  “Sorry. I got caught up in the moment.”

  “Moment? Watching college football?”

  “There’s a lot going on under the hood,” Trike said, tapping his forehead.

  “Amounting to?”

  “I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”

  “Welcome to a crowded boat,” Max said.

  “I’ve never been in this boat.”

  Max shrugged. “Buffet’s bad … music’s all right.”

  Trike stood up. Took a quick lap around the living room while guzzling beer. He emptied the can and dropped it. He grabbed another, then sat back down next to Max.

  “Here’s the plan.”

  “You and your plans.”

  “We’re going to spend the afternoon focused on football. We still haven’t settled our differences on zone blitzes in the co
llege game. Then we’ll part ways for the rest of the weekend to intensely ruminate on the evidence as it stands now, both feeling free to augment those ruminations with any research we feel is required to feed further rumination.”

  “And get a van,” Max added.

  “And get a van. On Monday, assuming Lola, as she suspected, has had to wait until then to acquire useful sewer maps, we will formally continue the investigation, incorporating insights we are sure to have over the course of the weekend, and then come up with our next steps. How’s that sound?”

  “No Notre Dame.”

  “Deal. Heartbroken, but deal.”

  “I’m in. Pass me another beer.

  “You got it, Max.”

  THE OLD-TIMER HAS HIS FIRST SAY

  Trike slammed the door of his car. The window slid down with a plastic clunk and locked the door. Even with the window open, even in the bad part of town, Trike wasn’t worried about his car being stolen. The starter was uniquely degraded and the wiring was faulty. He needed to turn the key, press up on the steering column with his knee, and step on the gas to get it started. No one would put that much effort into stealing a nice car.

  Trike sat on the trunk with his feet on the bumper. He put the key in the lock, took a deep breath, popped half a foot off the trunk, turned the key, slammed his weight down, bounced off, spun in the air with his hand still on the key, and tried to throw open the trunk. Got it on the third try. He took out two bags of groceries. Left the trunk open. Closing it was another production.

  The apartment building looked like a wino drunk on canned heat slouching next to the gutter; a hiccup away from collapsing. Most of the windows were broken. The front door was so dilapidated, Trike pushed through it with his arms full. He didn’t even look at the elevator. The concrete stairwell smelled like urine, vomit, bug bombs, and three other things too faint for Trike to identify. The Old-Timer had lived in this Section 8 apartment since his third wife divorced him and kept the house.