“I can see that you eat a lot of baloney,” I said.
“What?” she asked.
“And you eat it while sitting in a chair,” I said. “The stains on the lap of your dress are the kind made by greasy meats. You’ve dropped baloney in your lap many times. The dress was washed many times, but washing doesn’t completely remove the oil stains. I’ve seen meat stains before and I remember how they look. I count twenty-one meat stains and your breath smells like baloney. Because all your stains are exactly the same diameter, they are probably all caused by the exact same kind of sliced meat. So, I can guess that you eat a lot of baloney, sitting in a chair, and drop it in your lap.”
Her eyes opened wide and she silently stared at me.
“I can recognize the amazement on your face,” I said. “Does that mean I’m right? Usually, if I’m wrong, people don’t look amazed like that. I must be right. Now do you see what kind of skills of perception I have? I could be a great detective.”
Mrs. Levi hid her face in her hands and moved quickly to the door. I was puzzled why she was leaving so suddenly. I had been speaking of baloney, so I thought perhaps my talk of greasy meats had made her hungry and she was going to eat.
“Enjoy your baloney!” I said.
Her eyes opened wider and her mouth opened. Tears formed in her eyes and she ran from my room.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, but she was gone.
I stood there trying to understand what had happened. I can memorize details better than anyone else, but I sometimes have trouble interpreting the emotions of others.
“Was she surprised?” I asked myself. I walked into the hallway and looked at the door at the end of the hall. It had a red “24” written on it. This was where Mrs. Levi lived.
“Or was that embarrassment?” I asked.
I can only recognize emotions by experience. I learned what amazement and embarrassment look like, but they’re similar.
“I always confuse those two emotions,” I said.
Looking around, I felt a thrill to realize this was all mine. I had rented the whole floor of this building, except for Mrs. Levi’s room at the end of the hall. This was where I would create my private detective business.
I looked fearfully at the door where Ernie had entered and exited from. I eyed it for a moment, apprehensively, hoping he was really gone. I ran into my room and locked myself inside.
“Why did he yell at me?” I asked myself. “Did I misinterpret his emotions, too? Or did I not understand an expression?”
I thought of Mrs. Levi, sitting in her room and crying from embarrassment, and it made me feel horrible. I felt guilty for embarrassing her and stupid for not knowing these social boundaries and these expressions that everyone else knew.
“God! I hate it!” I said, throwing my keys down on the floor, in frustration. “I don’t even understand it! What’s so embarrassing about eating baloney?”
I sighed and sat down on a box, to think of numbers and relax my mind. Number sequences are clear and predictable. They have patterns, and recognizing patterns is what my mind is best at. I can recognize patterns better than anyone I know. That’s why math relaxes me. It’s a stable, comforting world where I can have confidence in myself.
A gust of wind blew through a nearby window and I heard a car horn. The sound of someone yelling in the street below gave me a headache. I shut the window and lowered the blinds to keep the noisy, confusing world away from me.
“Oh, I hate it!” I said, holding my head in my hands.
I felt overwhelmed. What if Mrs. Levi was right? Maybe this job is too difficult for someone like me? I sat on a box and thought about some of the things I have difficulties with.
“I sometimes have problems with idioms…” I said to myself. “I can’t always interpret other people’s emotions. But I have a great ability to see details. I have a powerful visual memory and I’m an expert at recognizing patterns. Those things will help me to be a great detective, won’t they? Oh, I wish my granddad was still alive! He always supported me and gave me confidence when I doubted myself. He always reminded me to never give up and believe in myself. Granddad believed in me.”
I looked at the window in fear, knowing how much noise was out there. In addition to my other difficulties, I am also sensitive to certain sounds, like traffic. They distract me and sometimes they’re actually painful to my ears. I’m capable of great concentration, but I’m easily distracted by sudden noises or anything unexpected. Such things are very disturbing to me. I need everything to be neat, predictable and in perfect symmetrical order or I can become very tense.
“Maybe this messy room is making me feel bad,” I said.
I looked at the disorganized mess of boxes around me and longed to organize my room in exactly the same way I had organized my room back home in Heartville. My room in Heartville had always been orderly and comforting; everything in its place, like a mathematical equation. I walked to a wall mirror I’d taken from home. I picked it up and moved to a nearby nail. I lifted up the mirror and hung it on the wall.
I could see myself in the yellow light of the ceiling lamp: my shaggy blond hair; my long face; my big cheek-bones; my big, blue eyes looking back at me from the mirror glass; my lanky arms and legs; my body—thin and frail, like a young tree. I didn’t look like Slam Bradley. Slam was big and strong; I was thin and frail-looking. Also, Slam always had a look of confidence in his eyes. My eyes looked timid and uncertain.
“Can I really succeed as a detective?” I asked.
I looked at the comic book Mrs. Levi had removed.
“Number 4, ‘The Hollywood Murders,’” I said. “This is in the wrong place. I knew Mrs. Levi would put them out of order.”
I took them out, one by one, and propped them up on the shelving, displaying the cover of each one of them. I had every issue of the Slam Bradley series. Every comic was an original copy and in perfect condition. I stood and looked at them, proud of my collection and comforted to see them in order.
I stood, with my hands on my waist, savoring the familiar book covers. As I had always done, since childhood, I was so fascinated by the covers that, after a while, I’d imagine myself to be Slam Bradley. I felt confident and powerful, like Slam felt. Hung on a nearby coat rack was a trench coat and fedora, which I’d inherited from my granddad. He used to wear them when he did detective work. I took them and put them on.
“Now I look like Slam,” I said.
Walking to the window, I lifted the blinds and opened the window wide. I stood with my hands on my hips, and looked down at the street, with cars honking and voices yelling.
“Slam Bradley is back in New York City,” I said.
2
New York Hospitality
I ran out of my office building and across the sidewalk. I stepped into a taxicab that was waiting for me on Reade Street. I slammed the door closed and breathed a sigh of relief.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I said.
I had been brave enough to run into the noisy, busy streets. The streets were unpredictable and disturbing, but I had just experienced the streets of New York City and I had survived. The cab I had called was parked exactly where I had asked it to park. Everything was going according to my plans.
“Maybe I can do this, after all,” I said to myself.
“Maybe you can do what?” asked the cab driver. “You’re the one who ordered a cab, yeah? Where you going to, mister?”
“Take me to the bank,” I said.
“There’s a lot of banks in this town, mister,” he said.
“I meant the bank nearby,” I said. “The bank on the corner of Broadway and Reade Street. I have a map I printed from the Internet, when I was still in Heartville. It’s part of my plan to spend my first day banking and then to return home.”
“You wanna go three blocks?” he asked. “You’re three blocks from Broadway, pal! Why waste my time? Why don’t you walk there?”
“But, that’s not on my schedule,”
I said, “I haven’t written any walking into my checklist of activities for today. See my checklist here? It says ‘call a taxicab at 2:00 pm…’”
“Alright, alright!” he said.
He drove along Reade Street, cursing quietly to himself. I could see his face in the rearview mirror. I could recognize signs of annoyance on his face. His reaction confused me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong, buddy! I drive for twenty minutes to pick you up here in Manhattan and what do I get? I get a two minute fare! It’ll only take us a couple minutes. A couple bucks’ pay for a half hour’s work! That’s what’s wrong, pal.”
“You don’t like a couple bucks?” I asked.
“No, I don’t like a couple bucks,” he said. “I could’ve made fifty dollars in the time it takes to drive you around.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, if you want fifty dollars…”
I reached into my trench coat pocket and pulled out a roll of twenty dollar bills. I pulled sixty dollars from the roll.
“Here,” I said, “Is sixty dollars okay? I know you want fifty, but I don’t have any ten dollar bills. Are you happy now?”
He took the money and stared at me in silence.
“How much money you got in that roll?” he asked.
“2,940 dollars,” I said. “In this one roll, I mean. I have another nine rolls in my trench coat pockets. Each roll has 3,000 dollars in it.”
“You got 30,000 dollars in your pockets?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I have 29,940 dollars.”
“And you wanna be let off on the street in the middle of Manhattan?” he asked. “You’re gonna walk around with thirty grand?”
“Thirty what?” I asked.
“Grand!” he said. “You tellin’ me you don’t know what a grand is? It’s a thousand bucks!”
“Oh, right,” I said. “An expression. Yes, now I remember what that means. A thousand bucks. I prefer if you speak more clearly, please, mister taxi driver. I don’t like expressions.”
The cabbie looked at me as if I were from Mars.
“Are you foreign, or what?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m Trueman Bradley.”
“Yeah, sure you are, buddy,” he said. “This is your stop, here. But you’re crazy if you’re going out there with that kind of money. I suggest you go put that money in the bank!”
“That’s what I’m going to do,” I said.
We stopped on the corner of Broadway and Reade Street. I stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk. The street was full of people. I was intimidated by the crowds, but I thought about how brave Slam would be if he was in this situation. This thought made me feel courageous. I started walking across the sidewalk, towards the front door of the bank.
Before I took my first step, a bicyclist rode past me and startled me. I had expected to dodge people, not bicycles.
Unexpected events addle my mind so I panicked. I turned around to get back into the safety of the cab, but it had driven away. My confusion made me lose all my courage. I couldn’t concentrate on being like Slam Bradley while there were so many unexpected distractions around me. I suddenly noticed all the noise around me and all the chaos of the busy sidewalk.
I sat on the side of the street and tried to calm my panicked nerves. I tried to focus on a triangular number sequence. Number sequences are mathematical number progressions that proceed in a logical pattern. Because of that logic, I find it comforting to recite these number sequences to myself and the triangular number sequence was my favorite.
“1, 3, 6, 10…” I said to myself.
A vision of the perfect triangles formed in my mind, and I felt comforted by their predictability. I could see the triangle, growing bigger and bigger, in my mind’s eye. Each one of them was a flawless example of geometric symmetry. In a minute, the triangles had calmed me significantly and I opened my eyes. In front of me stood a man, dressed in a suede coat.
“36, 45, 55, 66…” I said.
“Say what?” the man asked. “You alright? You look kinda spooked. Are you sick? Here, I’ll help you up.”
He grabbed my arm and helped me get up.
“What’re all those numbers you said?” he asked.
“A triangular number sequence,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” he asked. “Say, I’ll walk you over to where you need to be. Where you headed, buddy?”
“Why does everyone call me ‘buddy’ in this city?” I asked. “My name is Trueman Bradley.”
“Trueman?” he asked. “I’m Seth. Where you going?”
“To the bank, across the street,” I said.
“Here, I’ll walk you there,” he said. “These Broadway crowds can be a little tough to navigate for a newcomer, am I right? Don’t I know it! I lived here all my life, so I know! You look like you’re not from around here, am I right?”
“Right. I’m from Heartville, Illinois,” I said.
“Yeah, I figured that,” he said.
Seth grabbed my shoulder and led me across the street. He pushed his way through the crowds like an icebreaker through the ice-covered waters of the Arctic Sea. In ten seconds, we were walking through the doors of the bank. Seth led me to one of the teller’s queues and shook my hand.
“Alright, Trueman,” he said. “Here you are, now. How’s that for New York hospitality? It’s not true what they say, you know. We’re not a bunch of cold, faceless robots in New York, not willing to give you the time of day unless it’s to rob you.”
“I’m glad for your help, Seth,” I said.
“Forget about it,” he said. “See you later, Trueman.”
He walked out of the building and I wondered why he wanted me to forget about his help. I felt grateful to him, however, and so I obeyed his wishes. I forced myself to forget about Seth’s existence and focused on my business at the bank.
I had to deposit 27,000 dollars of my money, and keep the roll of 2,940 dollars to use for my personal expenses. I had realized, before the cab driver had told me, that 30,000 dollars was too much money to carry around in New York City. Back home it was safe, because there wasn’t much crime. But here, there were thieves on the streets. I took out my notebook and examined my checklist of today’s activities. I checked off the item on the list that read “deposit 27,000 dollars.”
A familiar smell distracted me from my thoughts. A mental image of the cab driver formed in my mind. I associated this aroma with the cab driver. I recognized the cab driver’s cologne, which smelled like lavender, anise and vanilla.
Standing behind me was a man wearing a trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat. He had sunglasses on, but I could recognize him easily. He had ten small birthmarks on his right cheek, which formed a pattern similar to the constellation Orion. With my skill at patterns and my talent for memorizing details, I had been able to notice the pattern, and its similarity to the star system Orion, a few moments after having entered the taxicab.
The likelihood of someone else having the exact same configuration of small birthmarks on their cheek was close to zero. And the likelihood of anyone using the exact same cologne was also very low. I was convinced this man was the cab driver.
When he saw me looking at him, he walked away briskly. He picked up a nearby newspaper and seemed to be reading it. But every time I turned to look at him, I saw him staring at me.
“What does he want?” I asked myself.
He seemed to be trying to disguise his identity, and was following me. I hadn’t expected someone to be following me. It wasn’t on my checklist, and I hadn’t prepared for it. Because it was unexpected, it made me nervous. I took my notebook out of my pocket and added “be followed by a cab driver” to my list of today’s activities. Adding it to my checklist helped, because now it was part of my scheduled activities; now it seemed less unexpected and troubling. But I still didn’t know what to do about this situation. My confusion was making my stomach tens
e.
The queue moved forward and soon I was in front of the teller. The teller had a security guard standing behind her, and I thought of an idea. I added “report cab driver following me to the bank security guard” to my checklist.
“Can I help you, sir?” the teller asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I have some items on my checklist that require your bank’s services. First, I need to deposit money.”
I started taking out my rolls of twenty dollar bills. I placed them in a neat line on top of the teller’s desk.
“You’re depositing all that money?” asked the teller.
“Yes,” I said. “But wait… I’m missing 5,940 dollars.”
“I think I might need my manager for this,” she said. “Not many people come in with this much money. Just a moment, sir.”
The teller walked away and I searched my pockets again. Two of my rolls were missing, totaling 5,940 dollars. They were the only two rolls that were in my side pockets. I had hidden the other rolls inside the lining of my coat.
“Thieves!” I said. “Someone stole them!”
I looked at the cab driver. He stood in the same place, peeking at me from behind his newspaper. He had been standing behind me; he was the only person who knew I had so much money in my pockets; he must have taken my money! I hastened to check off “report cab driver following me to the bank security guard” from my checklist and turned around to call for the security guard. But I was interrupted by the appearance of the teller.
“Sir,” she said, “for a cash deposit this size, we need to call the local police station.”
“What?” I asked, “Why?”
“Oh, it’s just what we normally do,” she said. “We have to check it out. Just a formality! You see, if someone deposits a lot of cash, the police think it’s money from drug deals.”
“They think my money’s from drug deals?!” I asked.
The thought that local police thought I was a drug dealer terrified me. Being arrested definitely wasn’t on the checklist of things to do today! I scratched out the items “deposit 27,000 dollars” and “report cab driver following me to the bank security guard” from my checklist and stuffed all my money into my coat.