The Awful Truth About the Herbert Quarry Affair

by Marco Ocram

Under my powerful hypnotic influence, Como recounted his memories in the manner of Scott Grisham…

  Portly, middle-aged Harry Rex Horgan—a fearless litigator with a brutal work schedule, a brutal drink problem, and three brutal exwives—is conducting a brutal crossexamination of the defendant—the renowned Professor Sushing, a dignified elderly personage accused of libeling famous author Herbert Quarry. The case is being heard by Judge Miriam Oldenshaw in the ceremonial court in Clarkesville, a town many miles away from Kindle County.

  Harry Rex inclined his head doubtfully at the defendant. 'So, Professor, if I understand you correctly, you are asking us to believe that in dismissing my client's books as...' Harry read from a paper in his hand...’formulaic, overpadded, cliché ridden junk that no self-respecting person should be seen dead reading,’ you are expressing a genuinely held belief.’

  'Correct,’ answered the Professor from the witness box.

  'And we can take it, therefore, you are not a fan of my client's work?'

  'Correct.'

  Harry Rex raised a manila envelope from which he extracted a glossy nine-by-seven print of what seemed to be a luxuriously appointed bathroom. The area around the toilet was strewn with books. He held the photograph in front of him and addressed the defendant.

  'Professor, do you recognize the subject of this photograph?'

  The Professor shifted uneasily in the witness box. 'I do.'

  'Would you please tell us what it shows?'

  The Professor cleared his throat. 'It shows one of the bathrooms in my Central Park apartment.'

  'One of the bathrooms?' Harry's eyebrows were raised, as was the incredulous tone of his voice. 'Is it just one of the bathrooms in the apartment?'

  The Professor ignored the question and stared across the crowded courtroom with a look of regal defiance.

  Harry Rex appeared to change tack. 'Who is Eva Hauptmann?'

  The Professor sighed. No, make that the Professor sighed wearily. 'You must be more precise. Eva Hauptmann is a common name. There must be thousands of Eva Hauptmanns.'

  'More precisely, then, who is the Eva Hauptmann who, according to the United States Revenue Service, is employed by your charitable research foundation at a Central Park address that also happens to be your New York residence?'

  'A cleaner, a char.'

  'I see. And how long has this 'char' been working for the Sushing family?'

  'Some time.'

  'Some time.' Harry Rex echoed. 'If it please the court, Eva Hauptmann has been a cleaner for the Sushing family since 1946.'

  'Objection!' The leader of the Professor's team of hotshot lawyers—twenty-thousand-dollar-a-day boys from Manhattan—had leapt to his feet.

  'Overruled,' barked Judge Oldenshaw. 'However, counsel had better get to his point.'

  Harry Rex bowed his thanks to the Judge, then turned to the defendant. 'I have here a deposition from Eva Hauptmann, an Argentinian member of the domestic staff at your Central Park apartment. In it, she states the bathroom appearing in this photograph is your own personal bathroom, and I quote: reserved exclusively for the Herr Professor's private use. Is that correct, or has a woman who has been a servant of your family for more than seventy years not yet had an opportunity to assess your habits?'

  Harry Rex bowed again, this time to acknowledge the chuckles from the packed courtroom.

  'It is correct,' admitted the witness.

  'Thank you. So, if the bathroom in question is reserved for the Herr Professor's own private use, then presumably the well-thumbed paperbacks strewn all around the toilet are the Herr Professor's own private reading matter. Correct?'

  'Objection. Prosecution is leading the witness'. The Professor's lawyer made the point wearily. Going through the motions for the sake of form. He could guess what was coming.

  'Overruled,' barked the Judge, ‘but counsel will refrain from leading the witness.’

  'Apologies your Honor, it was the slip of a humble country lawyer who is out of his depth against these city experts.' Harry Rex raised another chuckle from the jury. He returned to the cross.

  'Professor Sushing, do you know what chained pixel interpolation means?'

  'I should—I invented it.'

  'Then perhaps you could summarize it for the benefit of the court.'

  'It is an algorithmic technique for extracting detail from images through a scalar interpolation of tri-spectrum color depths, reliant upon parallel tensor processing.'

  'Or, in other words, a way of revealing hidden details in digital photographs.'

  'Crudely, yes.'

  'Is the technique reliable?'

  'Absolutely. Correctly programmed, a six-nines success rate is practically guaranteed.'

  'And by six-nines you mean a ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent success rate.'

  'Yes.'

  'In other words, the chances of the extracted detail being incorrect are roughly one in a million?'

  'Yes. Provided, as I said, the technique was correctly programmed.'

  'Indeed. And am I right in thinking, Professor, that Nassau Image Services, a commercial offshoot of your charitable research foundation, is a world leader in the application of the technique?'

  'It certainly is.' A trace of uppish pride was clear in the Professor's quick reply.

  'And the CIA, NASA, DEA, NATO, and a dozen other organizations rely upon Nassau Image Services to perform chained pixel interpolation to extract details from images?'

  'Yes.'

  'Thank you, Professor; that is most helpful. You have confirmed there is less than a million to one chance that details extracted from images by Nassau Image Services could be incorrect.'

  Harry Rex extracted a sheaf of glossy nine-by-seven prints from the manila envelope and walked to stand directly in front of the jury. He held the sheaf at arm’s length so the jury could plainly see the top print in the bundle.

  'This is an image of one of the many books surrounding the Professor's private toilet, an image magnified by Nassau Image Services using the technique of chained pixel interpolation, an image that stands a one in a million chance of being wrong—an image, ladies and gentlemen, that shows the well-thumbed book to be Fool's Epiphany by Herbert Quarry.' Harry Rex let the glossy print fall to the floor, revealing the next in the pack.

  'This image, also extracted by Nassau Image Services, also with a million to one chance of being wrong, shows another item of the Professor's personal reading matter, this time Of Love and Larceny, also by Herbert Quarry.'

  Again, Harry Rex dropped the print to show the next.

  'This is The Love Seed, another Herbert Quarry.'

  One by one, Harry Rex showed the magnified images of the books scattered around the defendant's toilet, each a Herbert Quarry, until the floor in front of the jury was carpeted with the discarded prints. He spun to face the witness.

  'By the technique you developed, through the company you own, we see the reading materials you choose are precisely the works which you said no selfrespecting person would be seen... dead...reading.' The masterly repeated emphasis on 'you,' and the pauses between the final words, gave Harry Rex's delivery the effect of huge drama, electrifying the court. Turning to Judge Oldenshaw, his face flushed with indignation, his outflung hand pointing accusingly at the defendant and his hotshot lawyers, Harry Rex...

  “And you're back in the room.”

  LESSON FOURTEEN

  ‘I heard someone say on a podcast, Herbert, that appalachians should be capitalized. Does that mean I should spell appalachians with a big a?’

  ‘I think you mean appellations, Marco.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘The Appalachians are mountains, Marco. Appellations, loosely, are names, and should take an upper-case initial letter.’

  ‘Writing is very confusing, Herbert. What if I sometimes forget to spell appellations with big letters at the start?’

  ‘You will annoy certain readers
. Your proofreader, particularly, will think you a careless idiot.’

  ‘Does that matter, Herbert?’

  YET ANOTHER CHAPTER

  In which we hear the tale of como Galahad, fries go missing, and a two-chapter gag is set up.

  Having brought Como out of his hypnotic trance, I shifted the scene to a burger bar for some much-needed sustenance. Como seemed to be eating more than his fair share of the fries—and the burgers too, now I think about it—presumably to restore his emaciating physique. I decided to divert him from his frantic ingestions by asking about his backstory.

  “How about you?” I asked. “How did Como Galahad get to become a police lieutenant?”

  “Oh, the usual way. My mother was a gifted woman with high expectations for her children. Although we lived on the wrong side of the tracks, she worked all hours to ensure we had what she thought we needed. She took us to church school and arranged for us to have extra tuition given voluntarily by rich and cultured white folk who were impressed by her dignity and noble bearing.”

  Como’s face assumed a faraway look as he recalled his mother and childhood. I took the opportunity to move the bowl of fries from his encircling arms while his concentration was elsewhere.

  “My father was a drunken brute who beat my mother savagely. He beat us kids too, until I grew bigger than he. One night he came in drunk and surly and told my mother to shut her filthy mouth or he would shut it for her. As he raised his hand to strike her, I stood from the dining table, folded my napkin and grabbed his wrist. ‘You’ve struck that woman too many times already—you are not going to do it again.’ ‘Why you insolent young pup, I’ll fix your hash,’ he said, and went to hit me, but I was stronger than he, and my body hadn’t been ruined with drink and drugs, and so I dragged him into the street and beat him to a bloody pulp. All the neighbors were out on their porches watching the commotion. When my hot wrath subsided, I waited for the police to arrive; I waited to face justice. But the local sheriff turned up, a wise old man who went to the same church as my mother and who respected her noble dignity. He knew my father had bad blood—he had arrested him too many times to count. When the neighbors explained the background to the thrashing I had meted out to my father, the sheriff took me under his wing. He could tell I was a good boy, but he knew it would be easy for my life to go off the rails if I was sent to prison, so he persuaded my mother to enroll me for police college. It was tough there, as I was the only black student in a faculty staffed by white officers, and their prejudice against me was extreme, but I remembered the advice the sheriff had given me: ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’ and his unique words of wisdom kept my soul afloat in even the darkest hours. And from there…. Hey, Writer, are you asleep?”

  “No, no, just closed my eyes to concentrate.”

  “Where have all the fries gone?”

  “I didn’t see. Maybe the waitress thought we’d finished and took the bowl. Listen, why don’t we get back to the plot—do you think we should check Delgado’s whereabouts on the day of the murder? If Sushing’s theory is right, maybe she was at Herbert’s place.”

  Como reluctantly agreed, and even more reluctantly paid half the tab. He was still crabbing about the ‘missing fries’ when we got back to his desk at police HQ to look up Marcia Delgado’s address. His police computer was fitted with the latest security software—he was presented with a five-by-ten array of randomly generated photographs of houses, and asked to select, in order of preference, the five houses in which he would most like to live. An algorithm compared his choice with a prediction based on a personality profile and let him login after finding a match. Como told me the system was 99.999% reliable and funded by a local realtor. It seemed utter nonsense, but I typed it anyway, Pollock-style.

  We made a note of the address—Apartment 1007, Block D, Hacienda Apartments, Clarkesville—and headed out to find it, Como first having to close about thirty popup windows advertising real estate. I asked Como if we should ring ahead to check that Marcia was at home. He laughed.

  “You sure you wanna be a crime writer? You know frig-all about police work, that’s for sure. You wanna ring and tip her off we’re coming? Give her a chance to hide stuff, rehearse a story?” They were rhetorical questions, obviously—he answered them himself with three head-wags of contemptuous disbelief at my dumbass suggestion. “When we get there, you leave all the talking to me, right?”

  “Right.”

  The Hacienda Apartments were nothing like I’d imagined, which was a bit of a mystery given that I was responsible for inventing them. They were five identical buildings constructed without regard for taste, architectural merit, the dignity of their inhabitants, or any of the ten tenets of Feng Shui. We trudged through the communal areas, ignoring the special offers touted by the prostitutes and drug pushers, and found Apartment 1007. I was dithering about whether to say its poorly maintained door was no different from any of the others in the block, or to make it stand out in some way, when it was opened in response to Como’s knock by Jacqueline, the waitress from the coffee shop.

  “Marco Ocram! Gosh, what a surprise!” she said, ignoring Como—much to his annoyance—and looking round to see if we were being filmed for some sort of candid camera show. “Why…” she paused, utterly lost for words, as was I. “What…I mean, why are you here?”

  I would have thought it obvious, given our recent conversation at Kelly’s, but I explained it anyway, not wishing all of us to be held up by the doziness of a minor character.

  “We were hoping to speak with your sister.”

  “But she’s not here, Mister Ocram, she’s working a shift at the family abattoir.”

  Hmmm. I gave Como a rhetorical look, one conveying the question Who’s the dumbass now, Galahad, for not phoning ahead? but he was too thick-skinned to notice. He asked Jacqueline for the address of the abattoir, before nudging me in the ribs to say we should get a move on.

  LESSON FIFTEEN

  ‘How would you define style, Herbert?’

  ‘As anyone else would, Marco—an arrangement of steps designed to allow people, but not animals, to cross a field boundary.’

  ‘No. I mean style with a y.’

  ‘Ah. Style is a distinctive way of writing. All good writers possess style.’

  ‘Should I strive to develop my own style, Herbert?’

  ‘No, you must never consciously create a style; you must let style enter you and suffuse your being, like a huge snort of coke or the touch of a... Sorry, what am I saying—please forget that, Marco.’

  ‘Can you name an author with a very distinctive style, Herbert?’

  ‘You should read Damon Runyon, for example, who wrote a series of humorous short stories written entirely in the present tense.’

  ‘OK. Dame Anne Runnion. I will look her up.’

  CHAPTER MOBIUS STRIP

  In which police time is wasted.

  “I thought we agreed you’d leave all the talking to me.”

  I’d been expecting Como’s criticism all through the walk to the car. He fired the engine and turned us round in the street.

  “But she blurted my name, Como. I could hardly stand there and ignore it. I’d have looked a dumbass.”

  Como said nothing, but his face expressed the view that since I was so obviously the world’s biggest dumbass, my concerns about being made to look a dumbass were somewhat misplaced. I gave as good as I’d got, my face expressing the view that it was easy for him to sit there, spouting visual criticisms, but I had the added burden of trying not to appear a dumbass while making everything up on the spot, and he ought to try it himself if he thought it was easy.

  We drove through the dreary Clarkesville suburbs in silence, each projecting our facial opinions, until Como changed the subject with an anticipatory frown which said we were just about to make a right-hand turn into the visitors’ car park at our destination.

  The abattoir was a state-of-the-art installation, co
nforming with all local, federal and international animal welfare regulations. A stream of trucks brought the animals intended for dispatch, reversing against ramps carpeted with the finest AstroTurf, up which the animals were tempted with potpourris of the sweetest herbs. Giant TV screens either side of the holding stalls projected stunning pictures of the lushest pastureland, while the animals were hand fed by dungareed cowherds at the peak of their profession. After slaughter, the animals were butchered with the most expensive Japanese knives, whose blades were made from recycled bullet-train rails, the metal being refolded sixty-four times to form a laminar structure with layers only three atoms thick. The prime cuts were automatically wrapped in vacuum sealed packaging, while the offals and other viscera were piped to a fast-food outlet on the opposite side of the car park.

  “Now don’t forget, leave the talking to me.”

  Como flipped his badge at the receptionist and asked to see Miss Delgado. We browsed the display cases housing the abattoir’s impressive collection of memorabilia—a golden stun gun, a ‘Best Eviscerator’ certificate, a framed photo of the foundation stone being laid by the mayoress of Clarkesville—until a figure in blood-spattered overalls and boots came out to meet us. She removed her faceguard and shook out her hair. It was Jacqueline—the waitress from the coffee bar.

  “Marco Ocram! Gosh, what a surprise!” she said, ignoring Como—much to his annoyance—and looking round to see if we were being filmed for some sort of candid camera show. “Why…” she paused, utterly lost for words, as was I. “What…I mean, why are you here?”

  The three of us stood in silence by the display cabinets. I was trying to figure out which of us was the most confused, when Como said:

  “OK. You wanna tell me what the frig’s goin’ on, Writer?”

  I wished I could.

  “But you’ve just told us to come here to see Marcia,” I said.

  “Who?” said Jacqueline.