Costume Not Included

by Matthew Hughes

  Mayor Greeley's hand was trembling as he set down his glass. "I was invited to that game," he said. "Hadn't been for Gladys and her thing about the symphony, I might've been there."

  Chief Hoople was a square-faced man with a jutting jaw and hair like combed-back steel wool. "We got two questions to answer," he said. "Who did it, and how?"

  "I got a third," said the district attorney, a smoothly polished man who wore rimless spectacles. "How are we going to handle it?"

  "We're going to downplay it," Hanshaw said.

  "How do you downplay naked hookers performing sex acts in the middle of Civic Plaza?" the mayor wanted to know.

  "Drugs," said the commissioner. "Hypnotic drugs, roofies, or whatever it's called. They didn't know what they were doing."

  The DA blinked behind his lenses. "That could work. They're the victims. So, no charges," – he blinked again – "so no names." He nodded, thinking. "But we need to get the raw footage from the TV crew."

  "Get on the phone," said Hanshaw. "Call that weasel who cleans up messes for you."

  "I can't," said the DA. "He was in the game." He took out a cell phone. "I'll get somebody on it. We'll tell the media it's a blackmail scam." He punched buttons on his phone and spoke into it: "Wake up and listen."

  The chief of police reached for the Scotch and poured himself another drink. "We're back to how and why."

  "What about who?" said the mayor.

  "I think we know that," said the chief. He looked over his shoulder. "Denby, step over here and tell us about this kook."

  The lieutenant had been leaning against a wall. The cops who had collected him from home had filled him in on the night's events, and he'd been thinking about it ever since. He stepped over to the desk. "We don't know who he is or what his game is," he told the four seated men. "We thought we had a lead on him, this kid who was supposed to be his buddy, but it was a dead end."

  "Did you squeeze him?" said the chief.

  "Couldn't," said the lieutenant. "W.T. Paxton sent over his private lawyer."

  Hanshaw's eyebrows went up. "The kid was connected to Paxton?"

  "Works for him. And maybe he's the daughter's boyfriend." Denby's brow wrinkled. "It all got kinda vague."

  The mayor was looking thoughtful. "It isn't…" – he thought some more – "it isn't Paxton? He was looking at a run for governor. The boys and I were going to back him. I set him up with Nat Blowdell."

  The district attorney shook his smooth head. "No, not Paxton. He's out of it. His girl's sick, some kind of mental breakdown. And he looks as if he caught it off her."

  "What's happened to Blowdell, by the way?" said Mayor Greeley. "Haven't seen him since–"

  "Never mind!" the commissioner snapped. "Let's deal with this craziness." He pointed a finger at Denby. "What have you got on this freak in the mask and tights?"

  "Not a lot," said the lieutenant. "There was that thing with the stolen car export crew and the one with dopesters and all the money. Since then, he hasn't been making a splash. We think he's interrupted a few muggings, and maybe he was the one stopped a teenage shoplifting ring. But he didn't call us in on it."

  "Why not?"

  "His first two outings, he called us to come collect the crooks. Then we tried to bust him, and he stopped calling."

  "Find him," said the Commissioner. "Get him in here. We need to talk."

  In an unlit corner of the room, Chesney said to Xaphan, "Now?"

  The demon watched the men around the desk, its huge eyes narrowing as it drew on its cigar. "I don't think so," it said. "I don't think they're gonna slap ya on the back and give ya the keys to the city."

  It had been Chesney's plan to let the police discover the racketeers and arrest them, then to step forward and take credit for bringing the malefactors to justice. He had been waiting, cloaked by his demon's powers, for the right moment to make his presence known.

  Commissioner Hanshaw was saying to the district attorney, "Get a statement out, pronto. The drugs thing. And tell the TV that if they run any pictures without that pixie whatsit–"

  "Pixelation," said one of his aides from behind him.

  "Whatever, just so nobody's face shows up on TV." Hanshaw turned to Chief Hoople. "Make sure your booking sergeant loses all the paperwork on this. Prints, mug shots, the works – I want it all delivered to my office in the next fifteen minutes."

  "What about me?" said the mayor. "What do I do?"

  "Just look concerned and tell anybody who asks that you've got complete confidence in us to get to the bottom of this."

  "Right," said Greeley.

  "And you," Hanshaw pointed at Lieutenant Denby again, "you get to the real bottom of this. From now on, it's your only assignment. Whatever it takes."

  "Yes, sir," said the lieutenant.

  "Do a good job," said the chief of police, "and there's a captaincy in it."

  "Huh," said Denby, though only to himself as he turned away, "how about that?"

  The meeting was breaking up. "This," said Chesney to his assistant "hasn't worked the way I wanted it to."

  "This crimefightin' can be a tricky racket," said the demon. "We maybe need to work on it some more."

  "Remember me?"

  Chesney looked up from the statistical analysis he was reviewing. His office door was open and leaning against the jamb was Lieutenant Denby. "Yes," he said, "I do."

  The policeman eased into the room, hooked a leg around one of the extra chairs in front of the young man's desk – as a level-three actuary, Chesney rated two, besides his high-backed swivel – and pulled it out so he could sit. Throughout this operation, Denby's eyes never left Chesney's.

  "I'm glad to hear it," he said. "A lot of people have been having trouble with their memories lately. Like all those people who ended up in the middle of Civic Plaza in their underwear and couldn't account for how they got there."

  The policeman paused, then let the pause extend. Chesney was familiar with the technique – his mother had perfected it – and knew that he was now supposed to feel compelled to say something. Whatever he said, the lieutenant would try to use it against him. So he said nothing.

  The silence lasted more than ten seconds, then Denby leaned forward and said, "You on drugs?"

  "No," said Chesney. "They cloud the mind."

  "They sure clouded the minds of those people in Civic Plaza."

  Another pause. This one developed into a contest to see who would speak second. Chesney saw no reason not to let the policeman win. "How can I help you?" he said.

  Denby leaned back and gave the young man a long look. "You're a cool one, aren't you?"

  Chesney tried to recall if the term "cool" had ever been applied to him before. "I don't think so," he said. "In high school, I was considered a walking definition of 'not cool'." He let Denby look at him again for a while, then said, "You haven't answered my question."

  The policeman's dark brows drew down. "What question?"

  "How can I help you?"

  "What do you know about what happened in Civic Plaza last night?"

  "They said on the news," Chesney answered, "that some people were arrested for public indecency."

  "Did they?"

  "Yes."

  "And that's all you know?"

  "What else is there to know?"

  Denby blinked, then moved his eyes to several places around the office, as if expecting something useful to be found. Then he returned his focus to Chesney and bit the inside of his lip, squinting as if the action caused him pain. "I can't tell," he said, "if you're simple-minded or a real wise guy."

  "Why don't you just tell me how I can help you, lieutenant?"

  The policeman blew out a breath. "All right, that business in Civic Plaza…"

  "Yes?"

  "Was your friend the Actionary part of it?"

  "How would I know?"

  "He is your friend, isn't he?"

  Chesney knew this was an occasion for being careful. "We are acquainted," he said
.

  Denby's faced screwed up. "Here's the funny thing," he said. "I know that you know the guy…" He paused and seemed to be wrestling with something in his mind. "But I can't remember how I know that."

  It was another of those times, Chesney thought, when saying nothing was the best strategy.

  After a while, the other man continued. "I know I had you in. I remember that lawyer, Trelawney, showed up. But I don't remember the interview." He looked at Chesney. "How come?"

  "Didn't you take notes?"

  "That's the screwy part of it. Or I should say, another screwy part of it. I look in my notebook, there's nothing there. A couple of pages are just blank."

  "Did you tape record it?"

  "You'd think I would've, wouldn't you? But again, it seems I didn't. I say 'it seems,' because I can't remember one way or another."

  "I see," said Chesney.

  "Do you?" There was a note in Denby's voice that sounded to Chesney like emotion. His guess was that the lieutenant was frustrated. "What do you see? I mean, what, exactly?"

  "Something has happened," Chesney said, "and you can't explain it. It happens to me all the time. Like, right now, I think you're getting angry with me, but I'm not sure why." He thought he should add, "I'm not very good with feelings. They're not one of my pools of light."

  "Pools of light?"

  "Things I understand."

  Denby shook his head. "What do you remember from the interview?" he said.

  "That the lawyer told me not to say anything. So I didn't. After a while, you said I could go."

  Denby looked at him again, letting the silence grow. Finally, he said, "Huh."

  They seemed to have exhausted the topic, or wandered off it. Chesney said, "Is that what you came to see me about?"

  Denby shook himself. "No," he said. "I came to ask about your… acquaintance."

  "The Actionary?"

  "Yeah, the Actionary."

  "What would you like to know?"

  "You gonna be seeing him? Or you got a way of getting a message to him?"

  "You mean like the bat signal?"

  Chesney heard the other man sigh and suspected that he might have gone too far.

  "I don't know what the fuck I mean!" said Denby, then he seemed to work at getting his emotions under control. "Just answer the question."

  "I don't know when I'll see him next." That was true; he had no operations planned at the moment. "But I can give him a message when I do."

  "Okay." The policeman nodded, as if confirming some point. "Okay," he said again, "you tell your friend–"

  "Acquaintance." Chesney thought the distinction was important.

  "All right, you tell your ac-quain-tance to get in touch with me. We need to clear some things up."

  "All right."

  Denby stood up. "So he'll be in touch."

  "I didn't say that. I said I'll tell him what you want. But he's not likely to come see you if you're going to try to arrest him."

  "Oh, he's not?"

  "Doesn't that make sense to you?"

  The lieutenant was getting that look again, the one Chesney was now quite sure represented frustration. "OK," Denby said, "you tell him to come see me. We'll just have a talk. Meeting of the minds."

  "You won't arrest him?"

  "No."

  "And you won't arrest me?"

  "What could I arrest you for?" said the policeman as he headed for the door.

  Chesney remembered a line he'd read in an issue of The Driver. "Mopery, with intent to gawk," he said.

  From the doorway, the lieutenant gave him a look that wasn't friendly. "Now I'm thinking maybe you are a wise guy, after all."

  "You look surprised to see me," Letitia Arnstruther said.

  "I am." Chesney's mother had never visited his home before. She came through the door now, taking off her gloves – she was the only woman Chesney knew who wore gloves in summertime – her eyes active.

  She went straight down the hall and turned left into the kitchen. A saucepan of pasta sauce was simmering on the stove, beside it a covered pot of slowly boiling water waiting for the spaghetti. The meal was also waiting for Melda McCann to return from the errand that had taken her down to the parking garage.

  Chesney thought he wouldn't mention Melda, but his mother could count the number of plates and glasses on the dining room table, visible through the kitchen's serving hatch. "You have company?" she said.

  "A friend."

  Melda's purse was still on the counter where she'd let it slide off her arm when she set down the grocery bags. "Tell me," said his mother, "that it's a female friend."

  "Mother."

  "How long have you known her? Why haven't I met her?"

  Chesney went over to the stove, took up the wooden spoon, and stirred the sauce. Melda had said it had to be stirred or it would burn.

  "Well?" said his mother.

  "I've known her a few weeks. You haven't met her because you've been" – he had been daring himself to use the term "shacked up," but chickened out when the moment came – "out of town with your new friend."

  Letitia's eyes narrowed. She looked around. "Where is she?" The pause was for effect. "In the bedroom?"

  "She left something in her car and went downstairs to get it."

  "Something? Something you're too embarrassed even to name? To think that a son of mine–"

  "A bottle of Chianti."

  His mother did not miss a beat. "Oh, so now it's wine and women. Your father's genes breed true."

  She broke off at the sound of the door opening. By the time they heard it close, Letitia had positioned herself to be the first thing to be seen by anyone walking through the kitchen doorway. She put her hands on her ample hips and her chin in an elevated position. Chesney thought that if his mother's nose had been a weapon this is how she have would looked sighting down it.

  Chesney stopped stirring the sauce and set the spoon down on its ceramic holder – another Melda-based improvement to his domestic arrangements – and put himself between his mother and the doorway, just as the word, "Sweetie!" sounded from the hallway. It would have been followed by "I'm back!" except that the young man forestalled her by saying, "We have a surprise."

  At that moment, Melda came into view, an old-style raffia-covered Chianti bottle in one hand and a corkscrew in the other. "Yes, we do!" she said, looking past Chesney. "Don't tell me. Is this Mom?"

  Letitia Arnstruther had never been called "Mom" in her life, nor ever aspired to the distinction. Chesney heard the sharp intake of breath from behind him and was raising a hand to try to warn his girlfriend of the terrors she had just unwittingly unleashed, when Melda pressed the Chianti bottle into his upraised palm and found his other hand with the corkscrew.

  "Open that, sweetie," she said, gliding around him to bear straight for the enemy. "Mom and I will have a glass of wine and start to get acquainted."

  "I don't drink," said Letitia in a tone that could have frozen steam.

  "Nothing to be embarrassed about," Melda said. "My aunt June is a recovering alcoholic, too. We're all real proud of her."

  Chesney couldn't remember ever seeing his mother's eyes grow quite so large, but Melda didn't seem to notice as she took the older woman's elbow in hand and somehow, possibly involving some hitherto undisclosed jujitsu-like power, moved Letitia Arnstruther from the kitchen out into the hall and into the dining area. Over her shoulder, his girlfriend said, "Make Mom a nice cup of tea, will you, sweetie?"

  He did as he was asked, boiling a cupful of water in the electric kettle while he opened the Chianti and poured two glasses. He had English breakfast tea bags – his mother's preferred beverage – but he didn't expect that to weigh heavily in his favor. Still, he prepared the tea the way she liked it, with a hint of lemon, and carried it and the wine on a tray to where the two women sat at the dining table.

  While engaged in his kitchen operations, he had been aware of the sound of conversation coming through the serving hatch. Ac
tually, the conversation had been onesided: Melda had done all the talking, touching on what a pleasure it was to meet Letitia, and what a naughty boy Chesney was to have told her so little about his mother, and how she looked forward to a good old-fashioned chinwag so they could get to know each other. "Because, well," Melda said, "this may turn out to be a long-running show."

  Chesney arrived to find the two sitting on opposite sides of the maplewood table, in the places that had been set for him and Melda when the evening's agenda had included only dinner, maybe some television and then the activity for which he would have gladly given up eating, TV-watching, and probably everything else he did besides crimefighting and breathing.