CHAPTER 8
Tony and Gregory, strolling up Tinker St. towards ‘House of Romany,’ stopped to get a bite to eat from a ‘Paco y Maco Taco’ truck parked near the Village Green. From where they stood they could hear music playing from the park. The two Seattleites stopped to sit on a bench across the street from Karen Carpenter’s shoppe to finish their lunch.
“Whatever you do,” Gregory advised his neighbor, “try not to have hard feelings against me; I’m as much of a victim as you. I really am sorry for what happened. I’d like to make it up to you some kind of way, so if there’s anything you need, whatever it is, don’t hesitate to let me know.”
“I’m still taking all this in, man,” Tony said. “Heaven…wow. So, it really does exist.”
“Why’d you give Prince grief like that?” the PI asked.
“You see what’s been going on back on Earth,” Tony complained. “Racism is off the hook; homophobia is off the hook. I know it’s not fair for stars like Prince, but when you’re in the public eye like that, you have everyone’s attention, don’t you think you should lend your voice to promote peace?”
“Yeah,” Gregory agreed, “but you attacked him just now.”
“Sorry,” the young musician apologized. “I feel really strongly about these things. LGBTQ kids get bullied and harassed to the point of suicide, so I guess I take it seriously.”
“Well,” Gregory asserted, “try not to make any enemies while you’re here. You are going to be in Heaven for a while.”
Tony lowered his head. “Yeah, I know.”
“Can I ask you who you left behind?”
“My mother and my two older sisters, a couple of cousins, some nieces and nephews.”
“Were you in school?”
“I was,” Tony answered, “but I dropped out. My mother was having some financial problems so I got a job at Home Depot to help her out.”
“Your name is Lopez,” Gregory acknowledged, “but you look like you have some Asian in you.”
“My father’s Mexican, from Juarez. My mother’s Korean.”
“How’d they meet?”
“Boeing, Everett,” the youngster answered, chomping his Mexican meal.
“Where’s Lopez, Sr. now?”
“Back over the border, I think,” Tony shrugged. “We haven’t heard from him in years. Last time I saw him I was in middle school. So, you’re a private eye? That’s what you said?”
“Yeah,” Gregory answered, shrugging. “Pays the bills.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s not like the movies, if that’s what you mean,” the PI attested. “It’s kinda boring, really. We investigate fraud for insurance companies, locate missing people, stuff like that. Once in a while we do surveillance, you know, look for the cheaters. But that’s rare.”
“That actually sounds cool,” Tony nodded. “My mother thinks I’m wasting my time playing music. I was actually headed to an audition that day. They were looking for people for a musical called ‘Fear of Flying.’ I figured I’d give it a shot.”
“What do you play? Where’d you learn to play?”
“Sax and guitar. My dad taught me the guitar. The sax I picked up myself from high school because nobody else wanted to play it. My dad really was just a sperm donator, but I did get a few things from him before he bounced, like guitar lessons. He was semi-pro but he was good. Used to play in a Rock en Español band called ‘Bragas Rojas’ – Red Panties.”
“Oh, yeah? I’ve seen them twice.”
Tony’s eyes beamed brightly. “You have?”
“Nah, just playing,” the detective admitted. “Nice name, though.”
“What about you?”
“Can’t even whistle.”
“No,” the budding musician clarified. “I mean, what’d you leave behind?”
“A lot of broken hearts and my sister; that’s about it. My folks were murdered so I became a cop. It was fun while it lasted.”
“What happened?”
“The bottle happened,” the PI cursed. “I don’t have any regrets, just gotta learn to slow down. I loved the libations but they never returned the favor. You’d better get across the street before Karen disappears again because it’s almost lunch time. If you want, we could reconnect after I get back from the police station; go get a bite to eat or something.”
“Sounds good.”
When Gregory waded into the police station a few minutes later, he wasn’t expecting the building to look brand new, but he also wasn’t expecting it to look turn-of-the-century ancient, either. To his surprise, almost everything was made of wood – the floors, the staircase to the 2nd floor, the handrails along the staircase, the doors to the bathroom on his left, the long counter in front of him, and the office door to his right. Behind the polished front counter, intricately-carved oaken double doors were ajar, allowing him to see the interior of the courtroom even though most of the lights were off. The chairs there, he noticed, were wooden, as were the wheeled ones in the front lobby. To top it off, the aroma of the building smelled stale as if it hadn’t been aired out in decades. The skinny, bald, sharp-eared sergeant, dressed in a gray long-sleeved, ankle-length Kandora tunic decorated with a badge and metal ID plate, was behind the counter writing in a ledger. Gregory approached him.
“Afternoon, Nosferatu,” he began. “I was told they wanted to see me here? My name’s Gregory Angelicus.”
The sergeant pointed to his name tag. “It’s Drasovya, and you go in there,” he uttered with literal droll, pointing to the room with the wooden door to his left.
Stepping into the office seconds later, Gregory saw L’Da, Ba’al’figor and a woman who could pass for Salma Hayek’s sister, sitting around the desk discussing the paperwork there. The debutante, wearing a gracefully embroidered white shalmar kameez outfit with matching dupatta over her left shoulder (knee-length long sleeve tunic, pyjama-type pants and scarf) wouldn’t look out of place selling jewelry from a luxury shoppe in downtown Mumbai.
“That’s some scary sergeant y’all got there,” Gregory announced to deaf ears.
“Have a seat,” L’Da instructed him, pointing to a softly upholstered chair next to the book shelf. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”
While the trio continued their conference, the PI scanned the bookshelf, picked out a book, and thumbed through it. Then, noticing a lie detector sitting on a small table, he walked over to it, twisted a few of the buttons and tapped on its VU meter. Where’d they find this machine? he questioned himself. Benjamin Franklin’s Private Collection? Look at the finish on this thing…and these old-fashioned VU meters. There’s gotta be a little rusty metal plate in the back of it that says ‘Manufactured by the Thomas Edison Company.’ The angels, finished with impromptu conference, approached him, interrupting his reverie.
“Thanks for coming, Gregory,” L’Da said, shaking his hand. Ba’al’figor also shook his hand. When the woman shook hands with him, L’Da introduced them. “Gregory, this is J’ai Né. She’s the town prosecutor, and stop drooling – she’s an angel.”
“Nice to meet you,” Gregory said after giving a quick sharp look to L’Da.
“Nice meeting you,” the comely angel returned.
“Do you want to sit down?” L’Da asked the ex-cop.
“I’m okay,” he answered. “What’s up?”
L’Da retrieved a dossier off the desk and handed it to Gregory. The blue folder had “CLASSIFIED” stamped on its front. Opening it, the first thing he noticed was an 8x10 glossy photo of a presumably dead, black-haired woman lying prone in the grass with her right arm stretched out in the dirt in front of her. Her begs were slightly bent with both knees extended and she was wearing a grey sweatshirt, loose-fitting white pants and black, lace-up, canvas boots. Her face was visible as it was positioned to her right, and to Gregory, she even seemed beautiful.
“Amy Winehouse,” L’Da informed the PI. “She was discovered like this nearly a month ago, just off the Millstream.”
/> “Tragic,” Gregory admitted. “Why are you showing this to me?”
“This is a very, very big deal, Gregory,” J’ai Né elucidated. “It’s an unprecedented event in the history of the overworld.”
“Heaven,” L’Da clarified.
“Yes,” the female angel answered. “No one dies in Heaven. When you get here, you stay on the first circle for a few hundred years, then you work your way up to the 7th level and then, hopefully, Nirvana. Your soul is released and is now free from the cycle of life and death. Look at the next photograph.”
Complying, Gregory flipped to the 2nd photo. It was the close-up of a dime-sized red mark on the lower left quadrant of Amy’s abdomen next to a tattoo of a psychedelic rose.
J’ai Né explained it. “Tests showed that that mark was made around the time she died.”
“Looks like a burn,” the PI observed.
“Strange thing – that area where her shirt laid had no mark. Either the perp lifted her top or it was off altogether. There were no indications they were intimate, though.”
“Man, or woman?”
“We don’t know,” she answered.
“Could be a cigarette burn,” the PI guessed, “but how’d it singe her skin and not the shirt?”
“That’s just it,” she stated. “We don’t believe it was a cigarette. This kind of lesion is inconsistent with those seen from a full-thickness cigarette burn, even if the tip wasn’t glowing red hot for just one second or longer. There was also no ash or cloth residue, and the integrity of her skin remained intact. This wound is smooth as if whatever was pressed there was heated metal, like the tip of an umbrella. We’d profile shoe prints but all soles are the same or look very close to each other. The weapon was probably handheld, perhaps even with an on and off switch.”
“That kinda sounds like one of those heaters you dip in cold coffee to warm it up,” Gregory believed, “but of course, where would you plug it in? One of these trees? We know it can’t be solar powered because this was done at night. A battery powered one would need the amps from a car’s cigarette lighter, but cars don’t exist here. And even if there was one, I’m guessing there were no tire tracks.”
“That’s right,” J’ai Né said. “Even if it was a heater, what would be its point? That wouldn’t kill her. We tested her blood, sputum, hair, fingernails, internal organs, heart, clothes, everything and found nothing unusual but that mark.”
“And that’s the big problem,” Ba’al’figor interjected. “Someone found a way to end life, but because there’s been some…issues of citizens versus angels for some time, people aren’t talking. We reached out to the other heavens for help; again, no one’s coming forward. They think that we angels are responsible for her death as punishment for challenging the rules which, truthfully, she was known for. But people are giving us some slack because they know angels don’t lie.”
“Amy was very outspoken,” J’ai Né explained. “And because the underground roots run deep in the overworld, we’re reluctant to even trust the detectives from Legal Heaven. But, Gregory, as L’Da and Ba’al’figor mentioned at your orientation this morning, the higher ups are threatening a ‘stop placement’ to the entire first level of Heaven. If it goes into effect, no one else can come here. Heaven will be, essentially, closed.”
“Wow. And this is why I’m here?” Gregory asked. “’Cause I’m a PI?”
“That, and also because you’re new,” L’Da revealed. “Haven’t had time to be, how should I say, tainted by negativity.”
“And I suppose you want me to solve this conundrum.”
“It did cross our minds,” J’ai Né admitted.
“And if I did,” Gregory suspected, “I’d be everyone’s enemy. If I was on fire no one would spare a drop of piss to put me out.”
“For one thing,” L’Da disagreed, “they don’t trust us, at least not that much, anyway. Also, everyone knows you just got here and couldn’t be embroiled in this controversy.”
“No pressure, Gregory,” the PI said, sarcastically and aloud to himself. “All you have to do is save the world. Walk in the park. You could do it. Just give it the old college try.”
“I think you’re up to the task,” J’ai Né hoped.
“You know,” the deep-thinking investigator asked, “whoever burned her, wouldn’t they have a similar mark on their own abdomen? A reciprocal wound?”
“You want us to tell 5,000 citizens to roll up their shirts? People heal quickly here; by the time we got to 1/20th of the line their wound would’ve be gone. Her lesion healed in a day, even though she was dead, because of residual capillary flow. Alive, it would’ve taken a few hours.”
The PI scratched his head in confusion. “How’d it heal if she was dead? There would’ve been no blood flowing through her.”
“L’Da,” J’ai Né requested, “can you explain that to our good detective?”
“Seepage of plasma from capillaries into small air spaces,” L’Da explained. “When circulation stops, blood trickles down into capillaries and veins because of gravity. It’s miniscule but it’s enough for a simple heal.”
Gregory nodded and pondered something for a moment. “Let me ask y’all something,” he stated. “That accident in Seattle with that flower shop robbery – did you guys engineer that?”
“We can’t interfere in earthly affairs,” Ba’al’figor declared.
Gregory studied the first photo of Amy again. “Do you have a magnifying glass?” he requested to no one in particular.
L’Da went behind the desk, opened the top drawer, retrieved a magnifying glass, and brought it over to Gregory who immediately used it to scrutinize the photo.
“What’s this?” he asked, staring through the glass. “It looks like characters.”
“What kind of characters?” Ba’al’figor asked.
The detective handed the photo and magnifying glass to the angel. “See, there?” he told the white-clad being, pointing to a spot on the photo. “That looks like letters by her fingers, like she was trying to write something.”
“How can she?” the angel asked. “She was dead already.”
“Maybe not,” the PI doubted. “The killer figured she was dead but there may have been just enough life left to scratch something in the dirt.”
“That’s highly unlikely,” Ba’al’figor suggested.
“I don’t know,” the well-schooled detective observed. “A quick loss of a lot of blood would result in an immediate death, but even with a death as severe as decapitation, a victim still has a few seconds of consciousness. This was observed frequently in French guillotine executions and also with Anne Boleyn, you know, Henry the VIII’s old lady.” He then took the photo and glass back and studied the scratches. “It almost looks like she was trying to write…
27J
…but didn’t get a chance to finish.”
“If she was alive,” Ba’al’figor noted, “that would’ve simply been a scraggly, desperate attempt to stand up.”
“Hmm,” the detective speculated. “27J. Might be an address or something.”
“Worth looking into,” J’ai Né admitted. “Could be a lead.”
“I don’t know,” the ex-cop shook his head. “That’s not much to go on. This case might be out of my league.”
“You’re short-sighting yourself,” L’Da suggested. “Take this.” Reaching into one of the drawers in the desk, he grabbed a crystal-clear case with an electronic device inside and handed it to the detective. “It’s a smart watch. It allows you to keep in contact with us as necessary.”
Gregory opened the case, looked over the device, and switched it on. The window on the watch started glowing blue then the digital version of an analog watch appeared, projecting the current time about six inches in the air. “Sure is a lot of controls on this,” he noticed.
“Make sure you read the manual,” L’Da said. “Its holographic properties are complex.”
“Thanks,” Gregory said, donning the
black-banded watch on his left wrist. “Tell me something, L’Da. What will I get if I take on this assignment?”
“Anything you want.”
“I want to go back to Earth.”
“Except that.”
“Well, there are lots of citizens to interview. How about a partner?”
Just then, Young Tony Lopez pushed opened the door to the office.
“Oh, sorry,” he apologized when he saw it was occupied. “There was nobody out in the lobby. What is this? The audition for 12 Years a Slave?”
“Kid,” Gregory told him, “you really want to learn what PI’s do?”
“Sure,” the ambitious youngster beamed.
The PI gave a knowing look to L’Da who retrieved another watch and threw it to Gregory’s new assistant to catch, which he did.
“Get on your dancing shoes,” the PI told his new partner. “We’re going hunting.”
“What?” the puzzled sleuth-in-training asked.