The Single Twin

by Sean Little

  “And I’ll bet there was a one-armed man out there too, Dr. Kimball,” said Betts.

  “Lotta brothers with scars out there, man,” said Gates. “Thirty-five years is a long time, too. If that guy was in his mid-twenties, conservatively, then he’s approaching sixty now, if not over it. What’s the average life span of black males in America?”

  “Latest data says about sixty-nine years,” said Duff. “Almost five years less than white guys, and ten years less than all women.”

  “So, what are the odds your guy is even alive anymore? What are the odds he’s alive and we can find him?” Gates put her hands on her hips defensively. “I’m thinking this case is a dead duck.”

  “Slim odds, I know.” Abe was doing the math in his head. “Almost infinitesimal, really. However, when you’re closing in on a case like this, odds tend to increase.”

  “I’d lay a hundred bucks the guy with the scar is connected to your homicide in the alley,” said Duff.

  Betts snorted. “Loser bet. How could you ever prove it?”

  “Well, we’d have to find the guy with the scar and tie him to the homicide, obviously.”

  “Good luck with either. We got nothing on the dead guy. No hair, fibers, or hints. No nothing. As far as we know, it’s a random act.”

  “We could get a D.N.A. test. Or even a blood test.” Abe knew convincing a judge on sketchy hunches wouldn’t work, but sometimes the results of blood tests were available.

  “Sometimes blood types are available out there.” Duff gestured at his neck. “Dog tags from the military have blood types on them.” Duff paused. “Military dog tags,” he repeated. “Mindy Jefferson’s dog tags are in her apartment.”

  “So?” Gates raised an eyebrow.

  “If we can get Marcus Stevens’s blood type, we can see if he and Mindy were siblings.”

  “You can see if they have the same blood type,” said Betts. “There are only eight blood types, Duff. You literally have like a twelve-percent chance of matching blood types.”

  “Well, kudos on you for the math, Betts, but it’s not exactly correct,” said Duff.

  “Some blood types are more prevalent than others,” said Abe. “O-positive or A-positive are found in about sixty-percent of the population, give or take. Meanwhile, AB-negative is in less than one percent of the population. The other types all weigh in somewhere at less than ten percent. A rare blood type would lend a lot of credence to our theory.”

  “And if it’s O-pos, you got nothing,” said Gates.

  “Less than nothing,” said Betts. “Fifty-percent of African Americans have O-positive blood. You could save yourselves the time: flip a coin right here, right now. If it’s heads, they’re related; tails, they’re not.”

  Abe hated to admit it, but Betts was right. “We only got a theory, I know. A wild, silly theory, but it works.”

  “How many convictions you get out of theories that work without evidence to support them?”

  Duff stood abruptly. “I’m taking back my peas-and-carrots comment, Betts.”

  “My heart breaks.” Betts flipped Duff the finger.

  Duff pretended to be pained by Betts’s gesture. “I know we got bupkis. I’m just trying to figure out how we find a thirty-five-year-old baby corpse or proof of something that probably doesn’t really have proof anymore.”

  “You could just call up the senator’s office and ask if Marcus is really his son,” said Gates.

  Duff snorted. “Sure. That’s a great way to end up on an F.B.I. watch list.”

  “C’mon Duffer.” Abe cajoled his partner. “You think with all we’ve done we’re not already on a watch list?”

  “I suppose that’s true enough. I don’t really feel in the mood to get the Secret Service’s fickle finger of fate up the bum when they slam us to the ground and take us to Gitmo.” Duff moved his index finger in a snake-like dance.

  “Be the most action you’ve seen in a while,” said Betts. “Fellas, I’d like to help you. This whole case is too weird and too esoteric. Plus, it’s thirty-five-years-old. In the meantime, I got sixteen-year-old kids gunning each other down over iPhone deals gone wrong. Things where I have a lot of evidence and things which happened last night take precedence over fantastical things where I got no evidence and not even the report of a crime occurring in the first place!”

  Betts lowered his voice. He gave Duff a paternal, I-believe-in-you look. “Duff, I don’t doubt you’re probably right. You’ve been right enough in the past on weird shit to earn the benefit of the doubt, but without something hard to go on I can’t help you. I’m not about to risk my pension by accusing a sitting U.S. senator of a murder and subsequent cover-up.”

  Duff paused. He broke into a Beavis-and-Butthead laugh. “You said ‘something hard.’ That means penis.”

  “Get out.” Betts pointed at the door.

  Duff and Abe moved to the door. Abe paused at the threshold. “Same rules as before: say nothing outside this office, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hundred bucks on the dude with the chin scar being the guy who offed the kid from the apartment, right?”

  “Whatever you say, Duff. Hundred bucks.”

  Duff grimaced. “Geez, I hope I win. I don’t have a hundred bucks right now.”

  Abe and Duff were directed out of the bullpen by Gates. They left without a fuss and went back to the Volvo in the parking lot. The mid-morning sun was intense. Heatwaves were rippling up from the expansive asphalt parking lot.

  Duff collapsed in a heap on the passenger side of the car. He mopped a sheen of sweat off his forehead. The Volvo was a hotbox. “Lunch?”

  “Might as well.” Abe slid into the driver’s seat. The tan faux-leather burned under his butt and legs.

  “Tacos?”

  “We could eat healthy for once.” Abe pointed at a strip-mall down the road. “That place has a self-serve salad bar.”

  “Abe, if I wanted to eat healthy, I would. I don’t want to eat healthy.”

  “You’d live longer if you did.”

  “Gee, what would I do with all the extra time? Abe, I don’t give a shit about how long I live. I’m not suicidal, but as far as I’m concerned, the sooner it happens, the better.”

  Abe didn’t argue. Sometimes, he felt the same way. He drove them back to their office.

  They got tacos at El Muro on the ground floor. They stood in the shade on the side of the building and wolfed down a pair of tacos apiece. Duff had a fruit punch Jarritos. Abe went with lime-flavored. When they finished, they tossed their trash into a garbage can and trudged up the steps to their office apartment.

  Duff shucked his shoes and pants immediately. “It’s too hot for pants.” He dropped heavily into his desk chair in his boxer-briefs, his t-shirt, and a pair of dirty socks. The right sock had a gaping hole where his toe jutted through. He needed to clip his toenails.

  Abe maintained a basic level of decorum and refrained from going sans khakis. He fanned himself with a file folder from his desk and turned on the little window-box air conditioner sitting in the window next to his desk. The window unit worked, but not well. It worked just barely well enough to make it worth turning on, but not much more than that. It could lower the temperature a degree or three, and sometimes that was enough to make a difference.

  They both sat at their desks facing the wall opposite them. Neither said anything but they were both thinking the same thing.

  Duff was the one who broached the subject, and he did so with all his usual subtlety and grace. “We gotta go to this fundraiser and piss off Stevens, don’t we?”

  “It would seem to be the best way to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible in the fastest amount of time, yes.”

  “Capital idea, old salt.” Duff’s head lolled toward Abe. “I could go do this alone, you know. Be a damn shame if your daughter has to see you get tased by the Secret Service and arrested on TV.”

  If there was going to be any sort of public breach
of protocol, Duff should be the one to handle it. Abe would freeze at the moment of action. That’s part of why he had never been able to pursue law. Too much pressure. Too much stress. Abe did not respond well to being under fire. Duff was not hampered by too much of a conscience, so he was good at things like angering people with money and power. “I’ll be right next to you but if people start swarming, I’ll play stupid.”

  “Logical. We could do the stupid reporter act.”

  “How so?”

  Duff shrugged. “It’s a dumb thing, but it’s something. We go in, act like we’re with some small journal, and I ask a question about how the senator would like to respond to rumors. We can learn a lot about him when we broach a subject like his son not being his real son.”

  “Then we can plead ignorance if he takes offense.”

  “Exactly. We just say we were reading online rumors and wanted clarification. If he gets upset, we apologize, say we meant no harm, and blend back into the crowd.”

  “We’ll have to look like respectable reporters,” said Abe. “That means jackets and ties.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Duff checked his phone for the time. “We have time for naps and a shower.”

  “I’ll go back to my apartment,” said Abe. “Be back here by six to get you.”

  HANGING HAPHAZARDLY IN the small closet in Duff’s bedroom was his suit. Singular. He never owned more than one ill-fitting, off-the-rack coat, and one pair of off-the-rack slacks. He owned two ties: a red one and a black one. Red for things like court trials or police interviews where he has to appear formal, black for things like funerals or weddings—events he tried very hard to never attend in the first place. He chose the red tie for the fundraiser, “power red” like all the politicians wore when they were trying to stir up some emotion. He smoothed out the outfit as best he could without actually going down the hallway to Mrs. Verkinnon's apartment and asking to borrow her iron. Sighing, he put on the suit. It was like prison togs to him.

  At no point in his life had Duff ever looked good in a suit. Fat guys don't wear suits well as a rule, despite the classic suit being the standard armor for business environments. The coats look overlarge with the shoulder-pads, and the shirts never stay tucked into the pants thanks to bulging stomachs, and the waists rarely sit correctly, usually sliding down awkwardly to the hips. Thankfully, the back of the coat hid any possible exposure off ass-crack. Whenever Duff had to wear a suit, he always looked like he'd slept in it. It could not be helped. He was like Pigpen from the old Peanuts cartoons. You could polish him up but somehow he would be disheveled five seconds later. It was as if his entire inner self was best represented as a pile of unfolded laundry.

  Abe, on the other hand, wore suits quite well. He was tall and slim, even with a hint of middle-age paunch hanging over his belt just slightly. Dunlop's Disease, Duff called it. When yer gut dun lop over yer belt, son.

  Abe went with a classic look: Navy blazer, khaki slacks, brown shoes, and a red tie with white paisley spots ringed with black. When Abe looked in the mirror wearing his good clothes, it depressed him. He saw a faded, ragged image of what might've been, what he might have become if he had been able to argue law in a court. He saw an attorney with a hawkish face who put the fear of God into the legal eagles of major corporations who were cheating and hurting the public. Alas, that man never came into being. There was only the timid, unassertive guy who used his legal mind to fix loopholes for other lawyers and hunt down missing dogs, lost rings, and find petulant teens who decided to run away from home. (Spoiler: they were almost always at some boyfriend's house, a boy the parents never even knew existed.)

  The two investigators drove to the fundraiser. As is the case so often in a major city, there was no available public parking nearby, so they had to walk six blocks. In the early evening heat, it turned both of their bald heads shiny with sweat. Not exactly a look proclaiming them to be professional. At least the venue was classy. The fundraiser was being held in a ballroom of a ritzy hotel, the Gatehouse. It was one of those places you’d be hard-pressed to find listed on Hotels.com because no one looking for a deal on a hotel room would be willing to cough up the five-hundred clams a night for it. There was a line of people wearing evening wear waiting to be processed through security. They were being dropped off in front of the building in taxis, Ubers, and limos. No sweaty pits for them! Abe and Duff joined the tail end of the line and tried to stop sweating.

  As expected, a dozen large security agents were patting down guests, running them through metal detectors and scanners, and inspecting purses for weapons. The security was supplied by a private company, as indicated by the badges on their sleeves and the generic gray-and-black of their uniforms. A pair of United States Secret Service agents oversaw the process, both of them tall, and broad-shouldered, with suit jackets that strained at the bicep when they flexed their arms. They both had the earpieces with wires running into their coats and the microphones clipped at their wrists. They were stone-faced and their eyes darted constantly. Abe thought it was a bit of overkill. Slim chance terrorists, domestic or otherwise, were crashing a private fundraiser for a single Congressional candidate. Still, he did feel pretty safe under their gaze. The Secret Service does not provide full-time protection for senators, but any time there is an event such as a fundraiser Homeland Security classified as a potential risk to a member of Congress, a Secret Service detail would be attached to the event to ensure smooth operations.

  The security checkpoint was only a minor hassle and they passed through quickly. Almost twenty years post-9/11 Americans had become accustomed to, even oblivious of security at events. It was just part of daily life like morning traffic or infomercials.

  Duff and Abe were then processed to the ticket checkpoint where Duff had to produce their tickets and $300 apiece for drinks.

  “That drink better come with a hooker,” Duff told the woman taking tickets.

  “What?” She was genuinely confused. The fundraiser was not the sort of event where there was casual talk of prostitutes.

  “I’m just saying, I wouldn’t pay $300 for any drink unless there was a chance someone would be going into my pants later.”

  Abe shelled out six hundred-dollar bills. “Excuse my friend, he’s never been out in public before.” He pushed his partner past the ticket-taker. “Jesus, Duff. You’ll get us tossed out of here being sexist like that. It’s a whole new era. You can’t be a perv.”

  “Wasn’t being sexist or a perv. Just stating facts.”

  “You were being anti-woman.”

  “I did no such thing! I never specified the hooker had to be a woman. I’ll take a trans hooker or even a male hooker. You’re the one with a narrow mind, Abe. Sitting there all high-and-mighty on your provincial throne of thinking all hookers have to be women. Grow up, man. Be a feminist. Be an ally. Support sex workers of all genders.”

  The duo pushed into the main ballroom of the hotel. It was as glamorous a place as either of them had ever set foot. The room was dimmed pleasantly allowing a cascade of string-lights to span down from the ceiling in long, graceful arcs and casting a pleasant, mood-setting aura. There were plenty of American flags to be seen whether upright on long poles, hanging from the ceiling, or pinned to lapels. Men wore suits. Women wore evening dresses with gauzy shawls. White-jacketed waiters with trays of sparkling wine flutes hustled effortlessly through the crowd. A string quartet was in the far corner of the ballroom quietly playing some classical pieces to provide ambiance. They played low enough to be heard but no more than that; there was an elegant restraint to their volume. Many people muddled around in groups of threes or fours. A few larger crowds pushed up toward the front of the room where the hotel had erected a small stage for the event. A podium with a Congressional seal sat on one corner. There were three seats on stage, slightly behind the podium and to the left.

  “Nice digs.” Duff swiped a champagne flute from a passing waiter and downed it in a single gulp. He i
mmediately began hacking and wiped tears from his eyes. “Someone should tell them their apple juice went bad. That’s some cheap-ass wine.”

  “I think it’s meant to be sipped and savored, not thrown back like a shot of whiskey.” Abe took the glass from Duff’s hand and gave it to a different waiter. “And don’t drink. We might need our wits about us tonight.”

  “I’m not going to drink if that’s the weak-sauce they’re serving. For a three-bill shindig, you’d think they might pony up something decent.”

  “It’s a fundraiser,” said Abe. “They can’t afford top-shelf liquor if they’re going to make a profit on the evening.”

  Duff sniffed haughtily. “Well, then I’m never coming back to one of these.”

  “I think the Democrats will be grateful.”

  They merged into various groups and pretended to act as though they belonged with the crowd. Anyone with half an eye for people could tell they did not fit in, however. Duff was vacant and scowling. Abe had a dead grimace plastered on his face trying to pass for a confident smile. They carried themselves uncomfortably. They did not know enough about local politics to add to conversations. If they did speak up, their comments were met with dead silence.

  Both Abe and Duff had issues with large crowds. Duff was constantly noting when people were actively lying, and Abe was constantly reading faces and making sociological connections he shouldn’t. In one group he could tell simply by the way a woman was bending away from her husband’s grip and making eye contact with a man in the group, she and the other man were having an affair. There was a tension in their faces when they made eye contact as plain as a windless day in Chicago. It actually angered Abe how the husband didn’t notice. Or maybe he did and didn’t care. More likely, he didn’t notice. Men could be oblivious to such things at times. If Duff noticed the connection between the woman and her lover, he did not say anything. That would be unusual for Duff. He was often the unfiltered mouthpiece first to point out when the emperor was not wearing pants.