alt.sherlock.holmes

by Gini Koch

  “Good, but...?”

  Sherlock chuckled. “Follow me now. Collin was being held prisoner in his own home. However, none of these people could write a screenplay—it’s not something you can learn overnight. So, they had to keep him actually alive and working. He, being smarter than all of them, was sending in terrible scripts. Remember that Andy Pfeiffer told us that the scripts were getting progressively worse, and that wasn’t what anyone expected to happen.”

  “So, no one catches on, though, because they were all defensive, and Collin is trying harder and harder to get someone to pay attention.”

  “Yes, Watson. He finally realizes that the others are only skimming his scripts, and he also realizes that they’re going to have to kill him. So he does a complete rewrite, where he tells the story of what’s really going on—his story. Names changed ever so slightly. So the hero is in a car accident that kills his best friend, then hero and the ingénue fall in love due to shared grieving and such. The hero’s so-called friends discover this, rape and kill the girl, and take the hero hostage.”

  Straude nodded. “It’s very clear. The details of the young woman’s murder match exactly with what we have on the cold case.”

  “So,” Sherlock continued, “Cliff gets this new script and he finally realizes what’s going on. But he needs to be sure before he starts making accusations. He’s made an appointment to meet with another writer—one with a good reputation, who is also an expert on writing styles. Cliff wants to know if this is really Collin writing or not.”

  “Only, he never meets with that writer.”

  “Correct. He met with Lester, who kidnapped him. However, the script wasn’t in Cliff’s possession.”

  “Because Irene had told Andy Pfeiffer to steal it.”

  “In a way. She’d done a switch on the scripts and Cliff had an older version. She’d hidden the new script, then put it into the box of papers Joey was printing out for us. The rest you know.”

  “Not really. Who tossed Dawn’s dressing room?”

  “George, searching for the script, since The Woman had told him she’d hidden it there.”

  “Was there a real better writer?”

  “There always is, but in this case, they were never in the loop. The rest of the gang handled the impersonation.”

  “Did they really think they could get away with it?”

  Straude barked a short laugh. “They were getting away with it. Without Sherlock they would have gotten away with it. They were right—we have more than enough to convict Pfeiffer. But now, with what Miss Adler and Mister Parker will give us, we should have enough to prove conspiracy. Plus we have them on kidnapping Mister Camden.”

  “Some of them,” Sherlock said. “I can guarantee that Odessa’s going to worm out of that one for sure.”

  “Probably,” Straude agreed with a sigh.

  “Who killed Dawn?”

  “None of them are copping to that,” Straude said. “But it’s a safe bet that it was Benning. Anything else, Sherlock?”

  “No. You know where we are. I think it’s time I got Watson home and into his own bed.”

  We got into the Aston Martin and Sherlock drove off slowly. The streets were fairly empty so we could have gone at a brisk clip. Only she didn’t.

  “What is it?” I asked her finally when we came to a stoplight.

  She sighed. “The Woman’s going to get off. She’s quite bright, but then again, I already knew that.”

  “She was being coerced.”

  “It certainly looks that way.” Sherlock wasn’t looking at me.

  “What am I missing? Besides everything? You saw Avery in Collin’s photo, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did, even though he was hazy. I was prepared to find him, of course.”

  “Why so?”

  “Him encouraging and assisting with Pfeiffer’s theft was out of character. Meaning he had an ulterior motive. But Pfeiffer never said Andy was getting a cut. Plus he’d gone to Ohio State, and it was far too coincidental—in an industry as small as Pfeiffer rightly said this one is—that he didn’t know Collin as well as George.”

  “George drove Irene’s limo, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. And all of them are in photographs with her at the Gala for Everything. Establishing alibis for Collin’s murder.”

  We started off again. She still hadn’t looked over at me. “Seriously, Sherlock, what am I missing?”

  “The scene they were supposed to be filming—the one that hadn’t changed in any iteration—you remember that?”

  “Yes. The one on the whiteboard, right?”

  She nodded.

  “What of it?”

  “It didn’t change in Collin’s script, either. We were introduced to the heroine by a rival trying to hang her. A female rival.”

  “That’s not enough to prove anything.”

  “No, it’s probably not. And Cliff feels that Irene was trying to save him. Meaning she’ll come out of this tied even more tightly to Andenson Productions. Glitterazzi was picked up for a full season, by the way.”

  “How? They haven’t even filmed a useable minute.”

  “Notoriety is a strong motivator. Social media has been active since Dawn’s murder, and with every new aspect of the case giving the show more coverage, they were snapped up by one of the major networks. Joey says that our fee will be doubled, and he’s giving all the cast and crew who weren’t trying to kill everyone a bonus for being good sports about being paid late.”

  “That seems awfully... fast... doesn’t it?”

  Now Sherlock looked at me. “Yes, it does.”

  “You think Andenson was in on it?”

  “I never put anything past anyone. The Woman isn’t the only one who wants to keep on moving up.”

  We were quiet again for a good few minutes. “It’s because of that James, isn’t it? That’s why you’re not satisfied with how this case has wrapped up. Your demeanor changed once she said that name.”

  “Yes. His involvement means things are far more complex than they appear.” She sighed. “But, the case is solved; Cliff’s kidnappers—and Collin and Frank’s murderers—are going to be brought to at least some kind of justice.”

  “Why do you think it was Irene and not George?”

  “Because we were told that Dawn wasn’t allowing herself to be alone with him anymore. She was, in fact, getting one of the other women to be with her. And The Woman was not around where we could see her at Dawn’s time of death. And she found the body. It all adds up. Circumstantially. There’s no evidence it was her, of course.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “When, Watson, am I ever really wrong?”

  I didn’t reply, because we both knew—never.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence through the City of Liars with the top down and the wind in our hair.

  half there/all there

  THE WORLD KNOWS Sherlock Holmes through these pages as a calculating machine, seeking justice with cold logic, but I know another side of him. A soft side, a less serious side. Playful. Actually funny, even, if you can believe it, and one of the best friends a man could ever have, if you could get past his weirdness.

  I first met Sherlock Holmes at the closing party of the first Factory, that silver box filled with pills and people, covered in tin foil, mylar, and plexiglass. He walked in, this tall, rail-thin man, white skin and black hair slicked back, cut short, like a banker or lawyer or something. Not my type, but I couldn’t stop watching. He was the opposite of hip, but people noticed when he walked in and stood in the corner, smoking cigarette after cigarette, rolling each one himself. He watched everyone watching him, and, after an hour, came over to me, offering me a roll-up.

  “It’s only tobacco. That’s all you smoke. You had enough of marihuana and opium In Country after you hurt your shoulder. You’re more involved with things that are a bit more imaginative, something that might spur you to get up and do something, aren’t you?”

&nb
sp; His voice was low, with an accent that was hard to place, his flat vowels and clipped consonants emanating effortless cool. A strange way of talking, too. Educated. Erudite, rejecting the language of the street, but also avoiding the affected language of the Factory pretenders, claiming European authenticity as a tiny bit of recognition. Style was the thing, convincing others that you were brilliant. Andy had a shotgun approach to catch whatever outstanding people happened to fall into the orbit of his ragtag collection of sexual deviants and junkies.

  I didn’t like him coming up and telling me things about myself.

  “How’d you know I was In Country? And just what do you think I’ve got for you? I don’t have anything to do with grass, or mushrooms, or any of that hippy shit.”

  I watched his thin face while he spoke, his jawbone etched out of granite there, though long and delicate, not like the ad men. I couldn’t stop looking at him, listening to his talk. “You’ve got a shoulder wound, that’s apparent from the hitch you had leaning against the wall, but you didn’t grimace, so it’s something you’re used to. New Yorkers don’t get much sun, but you’re brown, with malaria scars. The way you move and stand shows a streetwise city upbringing. You watch other people around you, keeping an eye out for customers and the police, yet you’ve rolled your eyes at two deals, grass and heroin. So: you were in Vietnam, bored with common drugs. You’re looking to sell something. I need something to occupy my mind and time. Something beyond even the delights manufactured in this Factory.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I took the cigarette he offered and lit it. It was a strong blend, thick, pungent smoke pouring out of the end, but nice. I looked up at him.

  “It’s called Drum. It comes to me from the Netherlands—from someone who owes me a favour.”

  He smiled at me, a crooked smile that turned my guts to water. I’d have a talk with him, and find out more about this observant, smoking man who’d just walked in to my life; for more than just a conversation, as it turned out.

  We talked for a while, about what he liked. Up, but with a twist. Some psychedelic effect was useful, but nothing debilitating. I had just the thing, but back at the Chelsea Hotel. Blue beauties, I called them, stealing the name from the common black beauties, but they were as different as night and day. The chemical was amphedoxamine, but they wouldn’t just take you up, they’d make you feel good, too. I made my rounds and sold a little to those I knew would be talking to me later, and came back to this Sherlock Holmes.

  “I think I may have something right up your alley. It’s in my more... private stash. There’s just one thing, though. I need you to distract the landlady. We have a disagreement about the rent.”

  “You don’t have it, yet she insists you pay it anyway?”

  “Exactly.”

  “WHICH WAY DO you live, John?”

  I don’t know why I let him call me John. Everyone else calls me Doc, and I was qualified, though I hadn’t lifted a scalpel, a stethoscope or so much as a band-aid since the year before, since I came home with shrapnel in my shoulder. My extensive experience in treating syphilis, jungle rot, and sucking chest wounds was of no use even at Bellevue. My hands weren’t steady enough to practise any more. My licence and my knowledge of pharmacology kept me in high demand, however.

  Grass was everywhere. Cannabis, mushrooms, and chemicals cooked up by burned out long hairs, as likely to contain strychnine as not.

  The people who came to me weren’t looking to turn on or tune in; they had more specialised tastes. They craved knowledge, the power to be creators, to be active participants in life, rejecting every custom, from money to their own sexuality and even gender. They who could only fit in here in New York.

  I was a doctor, but it was good that the American Medical Society never saw my shaking hands, or the patients for whom I prescribed an increasingly esoteric variety of chemicals. Chemicals used for creativity, to give an edge, to support the frenzied, creative mind. Make something. Do something. Start something.

  The news showed college kids burning their draft cards, dropping LSD, eating mushrooms, smoking marihuana, growing their hair long and burning bras on farms, trying to get away from everything, like that was going to change anything. Not so much in our little corner of New York. Downtown, making a living in empty warehouses. Staying up all night. Creating art out of anything, from cardboard to bodies, inventing superstars out of nothing. This was our buzz, our vibe. Sex. Drugs. Experiment and creation. Create something. Anything. Lots of things. Some of it would stick. We’d change the world, or at least our little corner of it.

  “Which way, John?” Sherlock’s voice shocked me out of my reverie.

  “I live at the Chelsea, like everyone else,” I sighed.

  THE CHELSEA HOTEL. Heiresses desperately seeking disgrace with artistes. Writers and artists praying for a muse. Even in New York in 1968, you would be hard-pressed to find a more miserable hive of the desperate and demented.

  The landlady was used to people making disturbances to get guests up to the rooms against the house rules. Someone would fake a fight, or try to sell drugs, or tip over an ashtray, and the rest of the people would run past the barricade. At two-fifty a night or fifteen dollars a week, the Chelsea was cheap, collecting youthful hope, grey enterprise, madness and decrepitude, along with any kind of bottom-feeding scamster. It also had an infamously liberal attitude towards rent, which meant that nearly every resident was constantly in arrears, and could be extorted for any money, valuables, or drugs they had while no complaints could be lodged against the owners about leaking roofs, flickering electricity, or the constantly failing boiler.

  It was an arrangement that worked for most of us, particularly considering the heiresses and young men with rich fathers who came to spend time in this bohemian palace, tasting our lifestyle, but running back up to Park Avenue for Sunday brunch. They kept the place going, paying their rent for the few rooms in good shape on the second and third floors in the front. The only part of the hotel that ever saw the super’s hands.

  Sherlock walked into the Chelsea Hotel and demonstrated his useful observation trick. He walked straight up to the desk.

  “I’d like to enquire about a room, please. I’d prefer monthly rates over weekly, if that’s all right? I can pay in advance.”

  The hotel manager looked up through bleary eyes, and turned to get a resident’s form, a cigarette dangling from his lip.

  “Ah. I see that you only have rooms on the top floors available, and that it’s been over a year since you’ve had your boiler inspected, and your exterminator certificate...”

  I slipped past the doorway and up the stairs, listening to his sharp, deep voice tallying everything wrong with the building. It made me smile.

  I checked the hair I pasted across the lock, and it was still in place. I opened the door and went straight to the loose floorboard under the mattress and pulled out my stash box, extracting a dozen of the blue tablets from the envelope. I didn’t know how many he wanted, but ten, I thought, should do it. Plus a couple for myself, just in case. I didn’t know what he was about, but the blues had helped my lonely existence for a night or two.

  The room was dingy, the sheets dirty, my few belongings in the place making it look bigger than the closet it was.

  SHERLOCK BROUGHT ME downtown from the Chelsea to Washington Square Park, a pale blue tablet dissolving in each of our stomachs after he interrogated me about its effects.

  “Explain to me, John, what this is exactly, and why you think it’s my sort of trip.”

  Even then, he called me John, and he was Sherlock to me, though Holmes, or even Mr. Holmes to everyone else.

  “It’s been around a while, tested by everyone. Big pharmaceutical houses. The army. Someone died after an enormous dose, twenty times or more what we’ve just taken. It’s been tested as a truth serum, a psychiatric aid, a cough suppressant, and a diet pill. It’s mildly psychedelic, but more sensual and controlled than the tabs passing for LSD you can fi
nd cooked up all around the country.”

  “Groovy.”

  The word hung off the edge of his lip and I looked at him.

  “What? I wanted to see what it felt like to say it.”

  “And?”

  “It made me feel dirty. I suspect I may have lost some brain cells.”

  I stopped and stared at him, until he looked over at me, just with his eyes, a smirk breaking out on his face. We both dissolved into laughter there in the street.

  Sherlock put his arm around my shoulders and breathed in. “This is good, John. Very good. Tell me something. The Chelsea. You like it there?”

  “To be honest? Not really. It’s not that cheap, but I can’t afford better. It’s good for me to be there for my clients. There are quite a few hangers-on with family money there, always interested in what I have. Prescriptions for amphetamines pay my way, and allow me to indulge in my experiments.”

  He put up a finger, asking me to pause, and walked past the chess players, observing their games.

  “Would you bet on one of these, John?”

  “I’m not a gambling man. I feel I’ve used up all my luck coming back from Charlie and malaria.”

  “It wouldn’t be gambling, though. Some of the best chess players in the world are here, and it is a game of pure skill. I haven’t the concentration for it, though I imagine I could do well if I put my mind to it. It’s a fascinating blend of wit and strategy. The rules are simple, and it is good training for the structure of the mind. Look here. This man will lose, despite current appearances. He’s playing well, but his opponent has the measure of him, playing a longer game with his lesser pieces. Ten moves, if I am correct, and I’m sure I am.”

  “You’re a man of great power, aren’t you, Mr. Holmes?”

  “Not so much. I see what I see, and I am compelled by a sense of logic, a desire to unscramble puzzles. I need constant stimulation. Experiences.”

  “Hey. S.C.U.M. Manifesto? Only two dollars. Might change your life.”