Kirti played with her smartphone for a bit, and then Shirley’s own phone made a clanging noise.
Then Kirti stood up. “May I please use your bathroom?”
Shirley nodded, but didn’t look up from her phone, which she was running her fingers over like a kid with a game console.
I pointed to the dining room. “Go through there to the kitchen, then hang a left. There’s a little bathroom there you can use.”
“Thank you so much.” She headed the way I pointed.
I shook my head. “You do this a lot?”
Shirley was still staring at her phone. “Hm?”
“Help stupid people. I mean, she wants to marry a guy and she doesn’t know where he lives. Plus, she didn’t even know what you look like.”
Now Shirley looked up. “What do you mean by that?”
“When Martha came downstairs after we walked inside, Kirti asked if she was you, and then she asked if it was you when you came down. I mean, she came to see you, and you were in that ecology class together, so why didn’t she recognize you?”
“Jack, you may well have put your finger on the solution to what happened to José Hernandez.”
I blinked. “What?”
But Shirley didn’t answer me, just went back to playing with her phone. I was gonna get up and leave, but then Kirti came back in.
“Ah, Kirti,” Shirley said, “now that you’ve provided me with this information, I must ask you some questions. Who is the executor of your trust?”
“My parents, until I marry, at which point I control it.”
“As I suspected. What are your parents’ full names?”
“My mother is Nipa Kapoor, and my stepfather is Ganesh Kapoor.”
“What do they do for a living?”
“Well, my mother keeps house, of course, and my stepfather is a vice-president for Chase Bank—I’m not sure which actual office he’s in, but it’s somewhere in midtown. Anyhow, they have him travel a great deal, and I believe he goes from branch to branch for his work as well.”
Shirley started typing furiously with her thumbs on her smartphone, probably noting down all that info. “Next, would you please describe me?”
Kirti blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Tell me what I look like.”
“Uhm…” Kirti’s mouth kind of just opened and shut. “I mean, you have medium-sized hair, and—I’m sorry, I don’t understand what this has to do with finding José.”
“I’m just confirming something Jack noticed. Are you familiar with a condition known as prosopagnosia?”
“No,” Kirti said.
But I was nodding my head. “Face blindness. Basically, it means you have trouble recognizing people, even if you’ve met them before.” It was more complicated than that, but unlike Shirley, I was just as happy not to bury people in jargon and long-winded explanations.
“Oh.” Kirti sounded confused. “I do have difficulty with that—but I’m still not clear as to what any of this has to do with José.”
Shirley stood up and held her smartphone display out toward me. “Jack, this is a picture of Ganesh Kapoor.”
I looked at it. It showed a dark-skinned man with hair that had enough product in it to count as a deadly weapon. He had a sharp nose, wide brown eyes, and small ears, and was clean-shaven. Also, he was wearing a gray suit. “Okay,” I said with a shrug.
Then she swiped a finger across the display and showed it to me again. “This is José Hernandez.”
I looked at a bald guy with a thick beard. He was wearing shades, and just a sweatshirt and jeans.
And then I saw it: he had the same nose and the same ears. I shook my head.
Shirley then turned to Kirti. “Is it reasonable for me to assume that your intention is to wait until José is found and marry him?”
“Of course! Why do you think I want you to find him?”
“And until that time, your mother and stepfather are in control of your trust?”
“Yes.”
Shirley nodded. “Excellent. I will take on your case, and I promise that I will have José’s location by this time tomorrow.”
I shot Shirley a look.
Kirti’s eyes went all wide again. “You can find him that fast?”
I was more wondering why it was going to take that long, but I didn’t say anything.
“Absolutely.”
“Oh, thank you!” Kirti got up and moved toward Shirley, but she flinched.
“Please!” Shirley cried out, and it was the loudest I’d heard her say anything in the month or so I’d been living here. “Do not touch me!”
Kirti backed off. She looked like she’d accidentally stepped on a puppy. “I’m so sorry! But thank you ever so much!”
A few seconds later, Kirti left, and I just stared at Shirley. “Why didn’t you just tell her that her stepfather was posing as this José guy?”
“Were you not even paying attention, Jack? Every time I state the obvious, the person to whom I provide the statement asks for proof. You can’t just accept that I know that you served as a medic in Afghanistan or that Kirti works at Starbucks, I must explain it. For that reason, I prefer to provide Kirti with documentation to supplement my declaration that the man who wooed her is her own stepfather in disguise.”
“Wasn’t a bad disguise,” I said, “especially with her being face blind, but the Army part of the story doesn’t hold up.”
Shirley tilted her head. “How so?”
“If he’s that sensitive to light, the Army wouldn’t have sent him to the desert. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have taken him at all.”
“Yes, well, your assessment of Kirti’s intelligence was not altogether unfair, Jack, and I’m sure that Kapoor was counting on her not knowing such minutiae. Now then, let us commence with the verification.”
• • •
The next day, Kirti came back to the townhouse. Shirley and I had been up half the night digging stuff up online, and then I took a trip out to talk to people while she stayed home and sent emails and made some phone calls.
I gotta admit, I was enjoying this, mostly because I was really looking forward to Kapoor’s comeuppance. This asshole manipulated his own stepdaughter, and my plan was to offer to walk Kirti to the 24th Precinct myself to file charges.
When I opened the door to let Kirti in, she didn’t even say hi or anything. “Did you find him?”
“C’mon in, Kirti. Shirley’s waiting in the sitting room.”
I took her coat and hung it up on the coat rack, shaking my head at the fact that I’d just talked about a sitting room. Never in a million years did I see myself ever even being in a sitting room, much less living in a house with one.
Anyhow, we sat in the same spots we were in the previous day, except Kirti was actually on the edge of her seat.
“So where is José?”
“Before I answer that, I must ask you a question,” Shirley said. “Where is your stepfather right now?”
“He took my mother out to dinner tonight to Rosa Mexicano near Lincoln Center.”
“In that case, the answer to your question is the same: the person who asked you to marry him, who identified himself to you as José Hernandez, is currently taking your mother out to dinner at Rosa Mexicano near Lincoln Center.”
There was a quick pause, and then Kirti shook her head. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“I believe our interactions to date should have made you realize, Kirti, that I do not joke. I find humor to be confusing and imprecise and frustratingly subjective. Nonetheless, even if I were the kind of person who would joke, I’m not doing so now. The fictitious José Hernandez is, in fact, your stepfather, Ganesh Kapoor, in disguise.”
Now Kirti stood up. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You’ve hardly done any investigating or searching—it’s only been one day!”
“I actually made this particular determination yesterday before we finished talking. With Jack’s help, I’ve spent
the last twenty-four hours acquiring evidence, since I assumed that—despite the fact that you specifically came to me because of my brilliance—you would not simply accept my word.”
“This is the most absurd thing—”
I got up out of the chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Look, Kirti, I know it’s hard to accept, but hear her out, okay? Trust me, you need to listen to her.”
Kirti stared at me for a few seconds, then let out a noise like a burst pipe and sat back down, folding her arms. “Very well. Tell me your ridiculous story.”
As I also sat, Shirley shot me a look that I couldn’t figure out—maybe it was her way of saying thank you?—and then she turned her intense stare right at Kirti. “Ganesh Kapoor is a liar. He does not work for Chase, though he used to, albeit not in a position that would afford him many travel opportunities, as he was a teller at a branch located in Rockefeller Center. He was fired for cause ten months ago due to multiple—”
“You’re lying!” Kirti screamed.
Shirley stared more intently. “He was fired for cause ten months ago due to multiple sexual harassment complaints from both coworkers and customers. And I am not lying, I never lie. I find it even more irritating than humor.”
“Kirti, I talked to the bank manager,” I said, leaning forward, “and she told me all of this.” I didn’t mention the part about how I told the woman that I was Kapoor’s doctor and that I was worried about his mental health. She was reluctant to say anything until I said that part, and then she couldn’t shut up about what an awful guy he was and what he did.
“He allowed himself to be fired so he could collect unemployment while he searched for another job, but was unsuccessful. However, not wishing to be viewed as unable to support his new family, he pretended to work, having already talked up his job as something far greater than what it truly was. At that point he realized that he had control over your trust, and would continue to do so as long as you remained single. So he became stricter regarding your dating practices, and at the same time created a simple disguise. A false beard covered his nonexistent wound that was his excuse for altering his voice, he contrived a reason to wear tinted lenses, and he removed his toupee. That would combine with your prosopagnosia to make the disguise effective. Living with you for so long made him aware of your habits and your preferences, and he played to them while pretending to be José. He kept other details vague, and also chose a very common pseudonym that would discourage attempts at an online search.”
I just nodded. Shirley had checked whitepages.com and found more than one hundred men named José Hernandez in Manhattan alone.
“His proposal was sufficiently romantic that you could not possibly have said no—and then extracted a promise from you to always be true only to him, thus decreasing the likelihood of you even finding another relationship, much less someone to marry, after his ‘disappearance,’ which was, in fact, him simply removing the disguise and becoming Ganesh Kapoor full time again. Thus he has guaranteed indefinite control of your trust, allowing him to maintain the fiction of his being a bank vice-president to the general public.”
Kirti was just shaking her head and looking away. “No, no, I don’t believe you—”
Shirley, though, was relentless. “I also was able to obtain the financial records of Ganesh Kapoor.” She pulled a first-generation iPad up off the floor and handed it to Kirti. “As you can see, he has been making weekly transfers from the bank that houses your trust to his own account.”
I shuddered again. This civilian kid had no business getting her hands on financial records. I had asked her that morning where she got it, and she had just said, “A friend of the family.” Since she didn’t lie, that was actually true, but she wouldn’t tell me anything else past that.
Kirti stood up, tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t believe you would say this about my father! Maybe I just will go to the police—it’s obvious you don’t understand a thing about what I’m going through! José loves me and I will find him!”
And then she just walked out. She probably would’ve slammed the door, but the wrought iron was too heavy for that.
Shirley was staring at the doorway to the foyer through which Kirti had just stomped out. Her mouth was hanging open, and she had a look on her face that I’d never seen before: confusion. “I don’t understand. I provided her with incontrovertible proof. The bank records alone should have done it. This makes no sense to me.”
“Actually, it’s pretty simple.”
“I doubt it.” She shook her head derisively. “If I can’t figure it out, I’m not clear as to how you might.”
I ignored the dig. “She’s in love.”
“What?” More confusion. “How can she possibly love someone who doesn’t exist?”
I sighed. “Look, Kapoor did his job way too well. Kirti’s in love with ‘José Hernandez,’ and nothing we say’s gonna change that. She won’t believe anything bad said about him.”
She looked at me like I was nuts. “And this makes sense to you?”
Chuckling, I said, “I don’t know if I’d go that far, but at the very least I can understand it.” I looked over at the doorway. “Hell, I wish I loved someone enough to be that stupid about.”
“There is nothing in this world that justifies stupidity—which you’d think would mean there’d be less of it.” She sighed. “Ah, well, it was an interesting problem at the very least. Very engaging. And you were quite helpful, Jack—I would not have known of her prosopagnosia without you, and that was the key to the problem. She would surely have recognized her own stepfather even with the false beard and dark glasses and false voice but for that. Also, your verification of his employment history was quite valuable. That required prevarication, which is not something at which I excel.”
“Wow, you’re actually admitting to sucking at something.”
She almost sneered. “I would never admit such a thing, particularly not in such vulgar terms. My lack of facility with lying is by choice, not ability. Lies are the source of much of what is wrong with the world—though it is hardly the only culprit in society’s failings.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so we just stood there in an awkward silence for a couple of seconds before I said, “I better get back upstairs. Got the overnight shift tonight, and I wanna grab a nap before I go.”
“Before you retire, Jack, I just wish to say that I may have been mistaken in my initial assessment of you. Perhaps, if you are amenable to the notion, you might aid me with other clients that ask for my assistance?”
“Depends.” I grinned. “Do all of them stomp out like four-year-olds?”
“Hardly. In fact, just yesterday I received a prototype for a new smartphone that isn’t actually on the market yet, which was sent in gratitude by one of my previous clients. I was going to spend the evening testing its capabilities.”
I smiled. “You do that. I’m gonna take a nap.”
“Wait,” she said testily.
“What?”
She sighed. “You haven’t answered my question, Jack. Please do so before departing.”
I remembered her comments on humor, which probably extended to sarcasm. “Yes, I’d be happy to help you out if I can.”
“Good.”
Then she turned and headed toward the kitchen without another word.
Definitely not what I was expecting. Maybe hanging out with this kid was going to be more interesting than I thought.
The Scent of Truth
BY
Jody Lynn Nye
I braced myself as the Great Investigator launched himself at me. His flapping jowls smelled of slightly old meat as he reared up and ran his broad, black nose up and down my body. I almost regretted that I had taken off my air-conditioned environment suit—Baskur left traces of saliva all over my under-robe and billowing trousers, face, arms, and even my mustache.
“You have been in Alpha Ganston recently, I perceive,” he said, through the translation charm
on the collar about his neck. “Mmm! I love the smell of Alpha Ganston!” He sniffed ardently, circling around and around my shoes on all fours.
“Yes, I know,” I said. I had been advised to immerse myself in complex odors in preparation for the meeting with Baskur. Call it a currency, if you will. I needed his assistance. No one else, I had been reliably informed, would be able to disentangle the bizarre circumstances that had been transmitted to me while I returned from my last assignment. I was lucky that I had not yet laundered the last outfit I wore on my previous visit to the well-forested tropical outpost on the second planet that circled our star. Panettiere, the fourth planet, upon which I now stood, was cooler, with a humid atmosphere that had evolved the Norridings. They communicated largely by scent, but Baskur had gained a reputation for uncovering hidden truths that was known far beyond our system.
After a time, Baskur retreated a pace or so away from me and sat down upon the broad oval floor cushion. A long, narrow, purple tongue like a snake darted out of his mouth and laved his face, so as not to lose even a particle of the scents he had just vacuumed off me. That visage, covered as it was with short, golden-brown fur, made me think irresistibly of a basset hound, but with even more intelligent eyes.
“And to what do I owe this delectable treat, middle-aged male visitor of human extraction?” he asked, as three smaller Norridings, similar in build and coloration to Baskur, brought bowls of clean water to both of us.
“My name’s Shoqan al-Hamish ibn Malik,” I said, bowing deeply over the broad krater. “There’s been a difficult situation, and I have been directed to ask you for help.”
He scratched his right ear vigorously with a rear claw. “Why not call it what it is?” he asked. “You call it murder.”
I admit that I goggled, nearly dropping the water. “How would you know that?”
“In the same way I know you to be a journalist,” he said, fixing me with those warm brown eyes. “You have never visited me before. Most of those who seek me are upset. Not only are you not upset, you had the presence of mind to bring me a form of payment in advance, odors of an interesting place. I sense that you live on Thumberlia, our chilly fifth planet, and have recently come all the way from the Oort cloud surrounding our system, yet your news concerns yet a third world in our system. Therefore you are not personally involved in the matter. You are curious, but not on your own behalf. I am intrigued. Nay, fascinated. More fascinated than I have been in some time.”
Thirteen Authors With New Takes on Sherlock Holmes Page 4
