“So then what happened?”
“I head over to the Podil-area drycleaners.”
“You didn’t get started on the paperwork?”
“No.”
“You decided to get your suit pressed instead?”
“That’s right. My wife’s dead, so I have to take care of these things on my own, now. And while I was there, I picked up this…”
Smith removes from the lower front pocket of his light-gray suit jacket a small piece of paper, on which is printed a sales receipt for the dry-cleaning of several “perforated performance sheets,” including a ten percent discount for “value-added customers”.
The Guinea examines the receipt as best he can, as Smith holds it between two fingers, twisting it upright to-and-fro. But the writing is large and legible enough for The Guinea to certify its contents.
“So what?”
“So, the Heavy Heeb, who had his arm wrenched behind his back by Step, who then tossed him face-first into a pool of muck – the same guy who then showed up at the flat in Podil, where he was viciously assailed again by someone completely different and yet still managed to get a lucky punch in on Step, knocking him cold to the floor – this same amazingly large Hasidic Jew runs a drycleaners in Podil, not far from where all this and other earlier unbelievable action took place.
“And?”
“And… he handles the dry-cleaning for that strip bar where the girls all dance in ‘holey’ bed linen!”
Smith is now leaning across the table, his eyes narrowed and fierce, the sales receipts held upright in his hand.
“So Dickerson didn’t knock out his partner?”
“No.”
“The Hasidic knocked out Step, laid him out on the floor, while himself being ‘viciously assailed’ by someone completely different?”
“That’s right.”
“Gotcha,” smiles The Guinea and he lunges those same sharp white teeth into a large chocolate walnut brownie recently purchased to go at the Doll House Café – for only UAH 30.
“I’m not finished,” protests the detective.
Because The Guinea’s face is stuffed with fudge and small pieces of walnut, he cannot provide verbal consent for Smith to carry on with his fact-based narration of events, but his eyes widen self-consciously as if to say: ‘Oh, sorry, go head, while I just finish chewing and swallowing my dessert.’
“During his interview as a person of interest, he, the Hasidic, claimed that he had ventured to visit Step, gone to what he believed was Step’s place of residence, without actually knocking on the door or ringing the bell, to reconcile things with the gentile, smooth over any possible inter-faith animosity – although it was Step that threw HIM into the pool of muck after wrenching his arm behind his back!”
“Ok, I’m with you.”
“And nowhere in his signed and dated testimony to local law enforcement does he mention that it was he, the large Hasidic, who first approached Step, several episodes earlier, causing a real ruckus, to include his lifting and slamming down a heavy metal table.”
“All right, I see.”
“But the bigger issue here, the sixty-nine-thousand-dollar question, the elephant in the room of whatever conviction – Orthodox, Reformed, or rightwing fundamentalist – is what all this has to do with all the SUPPOSED murders taking place at the so-called Hasidic Strip Bar… murders that Step has staked his hitherto much-soiled and sordid reputation on solving; murders which he, Step, says implicate leading members of Kyiv’s expatriate community, such as international educator Rico Soiree, as well as other admittedly less distinguished expatriates…”
“Like The Ferret.”
“Yes.”
“He’s a regular at that place, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“And so are you?”
“Yeah… so what’s your point?”
“Not much point to a strip joint, near as I can tell. You have a few drinks, watch the girls debase themselves while you hand out money, paw ‘em during a private dance…”
“And not illegal,” snaps Smith.
“Not professional either… padding the rolls of overtime pay while you while away the evening on a fictional stakeout.”
“I was surveilling The Ferret.”
“For what? The murder of a left-bank loser who’s turned out not to be dead… or punching out a poet who indulges in rape fantasy?”
“I…”
“You… still haven’t explained how you came across the receipt for the ‘perforated performance sheets,’ or do they just leave those things lying around at the order desk of that drycleaners?”
Smith flinches, almost imperceptibly, then draws the corners of his mouth into a self-assured but sardonic smile.
“Wait! Let me guess. As part of your secret-squirrel, deep-cover investigation into Podil’s seedy underworld, you picked up an informant, of the fair sex, whose identity is also undercover… under cover of a filthy sheet with holes in it, that is!”
The Guinea’s not smiling but he might as well be, or at least that’s what Smith would like to think so he can slam his fist on the table and storm out of the place in a gale of indignant outrage.
“And that little angel in white – the drycleaners uses the highest quality whitener according to their online advertisements – was no doubt unacquainted with your sadly deceased wife, Faith, her very name suggesting unquestioning loyalty to her morally unassailable spouse, a man whose dedication to his work is not limited to uncovering the facts, discovering the truth, but apparently includes the romantic rescue of poor misguided pole dancers uninhibited in their raunchy mix of sleaze and religion.”
“I didn’t kill my wife.”
“Nobody said that you did.”
“And The Ferret didn’t do it either.”
“Won’t argue with you there, either, but I am surprised that you’re so certain.”
“So who crashed the Hasidic through that door… Who was the other guy in that room?”
“The one that Dickerson shot dead?”
THIS STORYLINE WILL NOT BE CONTINUED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES…
Unsigned, Unwritten, Existing in Space Only, But Not in Time