Chapter 1 by Ken Bingham
Chapter 2 by Kathleen Volk Miller
Chapter 3 by Fred Siegel
Chapter 4 by Paula Marantz Cohen
Chapter 5 by Scott Stein
Chapter 6 by Dan Driscoll
Chapter 7 by Scott Warnock
Chapter 8 by Robert Anthony Watts

Somebody’s been pulling my chain.  And he knew exactly how to tug it. Hard.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Barnes & Noble’s on Walnut, across from Rittenhouse Square.  Willy stood a few feet to the side.  By this time, he stopped calling me Schnoz and I started calling him by his first name.  He looked dazed and tired.  His mouth was slightly open in a dumb-looking way.  His hands were shoved into his coat pockets. But even dazed and tired, Willy checked out every pretty woman who walked past us. Willy the Watcher we used to call him.  He couldn’t help it.

It was 5:31 p.m.   People walked past us with that extra spring in their step — along with exhaustion in their face — that told you that it was the end of the workday.  Lunchtime, the pace was slower.  But now they were headed home to husband, wife, kids, maybe a stop-off at the grocery store.  I chewed hard on a piece of nicotine gum.  Otherwise, I would have lit up — after a decade off.  Hell, I wanted to join in the procession to head home myself, to the little place in South Philly.  I wanted nothing more than to step into my yard, shoot the shit with my neighbors if they were out, and step inside, grab a Heineken, flip through the mail and ease into my chair in front of the 36 incher.  It was an old one, one with one of those fat backs, but hell, I didn’t need plasma and all that fancy stuff.

If I were lucky, it would be a night when TNT was running back-to-back episodes of Law & Order and if I were luckier still, they’d show one of the early episodes with Jerry Orbach as Detective Lenny Briscoe.  In all of TV, Orbach was the one true fucker who acted the way cops really act.  And Lenny wouldn’t get caught up in literary bullshit.

Willy’s Nextel cackled.  It was Helen from dispatch.  They must have held her over to coordinate things. They always wanted Helen on the mic when the shit hit the fan.  Willy brought the Nextel to his ear, but that didn’t stop his head from locking onto a fast-walking brunette taking long steps in pumps and a cashmere coat.

“No listing for Tyler Updike in Philadelphia,” Helen said.  “Checking the suburbs. .. Search in progress for Ginny Updike … Captain is a block away.”

Willy placed his phone back into his coat pocket and shot a look in my direction. He walked a few steps and stood in front of me.  His face was red from the cold.  His gelled, combed-back hair was still in place. I felt the sting of the cold against my ears.

“You OK Joe?”

“Feel like I’m in a dream,” I said. “And I want to wake up and realize I’m in my King-sized Sealy.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment.   I reached in my pocket and got a piece of nicotine gum.

***

Captain Jimmy Papadakis sat behind the wheel of the Brown Ford.  The car was no better than the one Willy and I drove.  The Captain’s window was open and his left arm hung out to flip the ash of a cigarette on the ground.  We were parked across from Barnes & Noble’s, in an illegal parking zone.  The higher-ups were all on this, and the Captain wanted to talk to me and Willy (me really) so he could answer their questions.

The Captain sat behind the driver’s wheel.  His assistant, a detective named Lou Block, sat in the passenger seat.  He had a yellow writing pad on his lap. Willy and I sat in the rear. I sat behind the captain.

I reached for another piece of nicotine and took another deep breath.  It made some sense they would assign Captain Jimmy to run this.  His brother, Constantine Papadakis, was the president of Drexel.  I didn’t know Taki, as the Drexel folks called him.  But he had turned Drexel around, everyone said.  Had basically saved the place from going under.  What I knew was that his brother was a cop’s cop.

The Captain looked into his rearview mirror and locked onto my eyes.  “I got good people workin’ the Steel case, 80-year-old lady in Society Hil.  And I got my best searching for Ginny Updike.” He took a long drag off the cigarette and turned his head to blow a huge plume of smoke out the window.  He turned his gaze back to the rearview mirror and caught me.  “What I need is how this shit all connects.”

I held up the thin paperback, the Fustian Scoundrel and I leaned forward to hand it to the captain.

“Some old fuck of a student is pulling my chain,” I said.

“A student or just somebody who’s been studying you?” the Captain said.

I reached into my chest pocket and pulled out the spork.   “We haven’t said anything about this,” I told him. “Didn’t even tell Willy about it until a little while ago.”

“That’s a plastic fork,” the captain said. “What’s that got …?”

“It’s a combination of a spoon and a fork.  A spork.”

“And?”

In the book, I explained, the writer mentions that he planted a spork with a long wire of blonde hair around it at the scene of the Harry Potter burnings.

“Sounds crazy captain, I know this sounds crazy,” I said. “But my old girlfriend used to comb her hair with one of these.  And she was blonde back then.“

“So our man is messing with you. Either been studying you or is someone you have met.  Is that what you’re saying detective?”

“Yes,” I said.

The captain shook his head and mumbled a few words I couldn’t understand.

“Couldn’t make up a story like this,” the captain said, “’cause who the hell would believe you?”  He mumbled more words I didn’t get. Greek, I assumed.

Captain Jimmy laid a surprise on me.

“You ever read Don Quixote, detective?”

“No sir, I don’t think I got through that.”

“That’s a shame.  It’s a great book.  I’ve read it in Greek and English.”

“Wow, I didn’t know.”

“Lots of things you don’t know, detective.  Why would you know that?”

I nodded sheepishly.

“Book 2. Don Quixote.  The character learns that there is a book about him and his adventures.  Cervantes creates at author, by the way.  Cid Hamet Benengeli.  At one point, a man who has read the book is telling Don Quixote and Sancho Panza about it.  Sancho corrects the guy, says a story in the book, about his mule Dapple, is wrong.  The guy who has read the book. You know what he says? … He says Sancho’s account — Sancho’s sitting right in front of him, you understand? .. Guy is telling Sancho I don’t believe your story. I believe what the book says. See what I’m saying, detective?”

“I think so, sir.”

“ In part two other characters that Quixote and Sancho encounter, they too have read the book about the earlier adventures. So they act on what they’ve read.  Now what they’ve read could have been total bullshit.  Doesn’t matter.  Quixote and Sancho have to deal with all that’s been said about them.   And then it gets crazy, because sometimes the writer has gotten things right and Quixote and Sancho have remembered things wrong.  Quixote and Panza have lied to each other along the way.  So what they assume is true isn’t always true. See what I’m saying detective?”

“Sorta, sir.”

“You’re not the first person this has happened to.  The confusion about story and reality has been part of the canon since the fucking very beginning.  These young post-modern farts don’t know that.  I heard about the seminar.  They think their shit is all cute. It’s nothing.  Cervantes captured it all 400 years ago.”

The Captain lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of his window.  A gust of cold air swept through the car.  He looked at me again.  This time he turned around.

“So cut the crap detective.  Get rid of the dog face.  This shit isn’t strange.  It’s part of life.  Your mother and your girlfriends, they know everything you did? Everything you really think? Hell no they don’t.  We block out what we really know about our parents and our friends.  We act on what we pretend to know, what we hope they are sayin’. Dad’s bangin’ every woman in town, and he tells us to treat ladies with respect.  We believe that. Act on it.  Dad might even compliment us on it, even though he’s been talking complete and total bullshit.”

He leaned forward and got under my gaze.  “So you ready to do this, detective?”

“Yes.”

He turned around and resumed looking at me through the mirror.

Helen came on the radio to the captain.

“What you got for me, sweetheart?” the captain said into the mic.

“No sign of Ginny Updike at her home,” Helen said. Her usually disembodied voice somehow sounded more real, more human.  “Officers on the scene are talking to neighbors.”

The captain held the microphone to his mouth.  “Keep me in the loop Helen. I wanna know when the dogs are barkin.”

“They’re barkin, Captain,” she said.

“Bark back at them for me, Helen.”

“Don’t know if I can do that, Captain.”

The Captain placed the mic back in its holder.

My head dropped to my chest.  If this guy had gotten to Ginny …

“Hey!” the captain said.  He looked in the mirror.  “Don’t go soft on me, Joe.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“You’re our brain. You’re her one hope.  What’s our next step?”

I was silent for a few moments.

“Let me propose a step to you, detective? Are you open to that?”

“Yes sir.”

“ How can you change up, such that you trip up this asshole? … He’s studied you. He thinks he knows you.  So you’ve got to change up.  Might be a lesson in there for you, detective.  Might be time to get outta your rut … Back to the point, he thinks he knows you. So you gotta think, what wouldn’t you normally do? How can you think that’s different than the way you normally think? What would you normally do if you thought a woman you loved was in danger because of you?”

“Can you turn the heat down, captain?” I asked. “Need a little air.”

Captain Jimmy turned off the heat.  I opened the window to half-way down.

“Close your eyes if you have to detective. I need you to be creative here.”

I closed them.

“He’s definitely going after Ginny,” I said with my eyes closed. “He says so in the book.”

“What else?”

I opened my eyes. “He would have banged Ginny, just to fuck with me, just to steal a twine of her hair.”

“What else?”

“He’d have to end it with something really special, something that’ll make him famous or feel famous.”

“We’re chasing down the publisher,” the Captain said. “See who this guy is … What else?”

“He’d come at me. That would be the grand finale.  He’d kill Ginny and maybe another Updike and then, he’d wait for me and pounce.  Killing me would be the end.”

The Captain was back on the radio to Helen.  Get officers on every Updike in Philadelphia, he told her, and call Drexel for student lists from the early 1990’s.

“Who would he do first?” the Captain asked. “Ginny or the other Updike?”

“He’d get Ginny last … and he would blame it all on me.”

Helen came on the radio.  “Captain … Somebody just used Ginny Updike’s ATM at 36^th and Chestnut, the Wawa’s.”

Captain Jimmy placed the blue light on top of the Ford and sounded the siren.  He pulled out and ran straight into a jam.  The Captain sounded the siren louder.  We inched forward.

“I hope it’s her,” said Willy.

I sat silent.  Finally, there was an open lane, and the Captain pushed hard on the pedal. By time we hit the bridge, we were doing at least 70.

There were two cruisers, lights swirling, double-parked in front of the Wawa’s.  We parked in the street and hopped out.  Even Willy was moving fast.

An officer, a young black guy, greeted the captain.

“She was in line when we got here,” the officer said. “We got here right away, and she was in line with two men.  We’ve got them in the back.”

He pointed to one of the double-parked cruisers.

I walked up the first cruiser and saw Don Riggs and Ray Brebach.  What the hell?  A skinny white officer stood outside the door.  “You can let ‘em go,” I said.

I walked to the cruiser parked further out, and in the back was Ginny.  I opened the door, and she looked pissed. She signed … I couldn’t read it, but I knew what the middle finger meant.  I closed the door.   I was never so happy to have someone give me the finger before.

The captain had his back to the street and his cell to his ear.  He flipped it shut and walked toward me.

“A Thomas Updike.  In the northeast …  pushed in front of a Septa Bus.”

“Was there a fire?”

“Nothing so far,” said the Captain.  There was a rumbled in the distance, and we looked east.  A huge cloud of black smoke rose up.  Hill Park.  The fucker had struck again at Hill Park.

The books were burned at the same place as the Steel books.  Sure enough. The Fustian Scoundrel.  Several hundred copies.  I moved through a few piles of ashes and then walked away.  I stared at the night sky.  Then it hit me, hit me hard.

It wasn’t the spork and it wasn’t Ginny.  Professor Porter was right.  I hadn’t revised my theories enough.  I was the next and final target of the Paginator, I told the Captain.  I huddled with the Captain away from the chief of detectives and the deputy commissioner.  Captain Jimmy smiled “Now you’re thinking, detective.  Or should I say Cid Hamet Bengeli?”

I opened the door to my house and led Willy and Captain Jimmy and Lou Block inside.  I was glad I had been keeping it half-way and had washed the dishes the night before.  I led them down the basement where I had tools, my lawn mower and a card table covered with boxes.  “This one,” I said.  I pointed to the box in the middle of the table.  A few days earlier, I saw the box and did a double-take. I had kept that box pushed further back towards the wall.  It was about two inches forward of where I usually kept it.  But the observation made no sense. It was a fact without a story, just a random occurrence and I had pushed it aside.

I opened the box, and looked through the stack of old journals.  My journals dealing with the Paginator case from three years earlier … they were gone.  I hadn’t written much, but I had about 10 pages.  Really embarrassing stuff, fantasies of banging various broads to escape the pressures.  Tales of old times drinking and getting slammed at Atlantic City.  And I had written about my old habit of revisiting scenes of the burnings in the middle of the night.  I’d cycle through, starting from the latest scene and working forward. Lookin’ for something I missed, taking time alone.  I just liked re-checking things by myself.

Captain Jimmy nodded.  “You’re the man Joe. Or should I say, Mr. Cid Hamet Ben Engeli?”

It was 3 a.m. when I arrived at the Hill.  I meandered along the brick path like I usually did or as I said I did in my journals.  But I was loaded on nicotine and caffeine and I was sharp, ready.  There was a U Penn dormitory on the far end of Hill Park.  And I made my way from the southeast corner of 33^rd and Chestnut to the northeast corner of 34^th and Walnut.  The path was a diagonal line.

I wore two layers of fire-proof clothing beneath my coat. I wore fire proof boots that ran up my leg beneath my pants, also borrowed from headquarters.  I had a gas mask in one coat pocket.  A rubbery skull cap tightly covered my scalp.  On top of that was a wool winter ski cap soaked in fire retardant.

Half way down the path the smell of gasoline hit me.  I also saw what looked from a distance like a huge duffle bag.  “Cid Amet Benengeli,” I heard a voice say in my ear. “You ready to bring Don Quixote back from his adventures?”

“Ready,” I said.

I came to the bag and stood in front of it.  I doffed my hat just as I did normally—only this time I slipped a gas mask around my face.  I took off running.  I heard wire crackling behind me. The night sky lit up.  There was a wave of heat on my tail, but I ran like I hadn’t run in years.

A crew of guys came out just as I reached the dormitory.  They tore the fire clothes off me.  I was hot, but I was fine.

“Story’s over Cid Hamet.”

They caught him in front of the Penn Bookstore on 34^th between Chestnut and Walnut.  He had detonated the bag of “books” from that point.  After the fire department boys put out the blaze, I walked through the wet ashes.  Sure enough.  Copies of my journals.  There was one sheet that I could still make out.  It wasn’t my writing though.  The sheet said. “No Staples.”

After this time, I hesitated before going up to the Paginator himself.  I feared he would be a disappointment.  I didn’t think he could live up to his end of the story.

Captain Jimmy summoned me to the car.  “You got to see him, detective.  This man has been writing your story for years now.”

I got to the car and looked through the window.  The author had his head down.  He wore black and had sunglasses from what I could tell.

The Captain handed me a sheet of typed paper.  It was my typing all right, though the words weren’t mine.  In big bold letters, the sheet said,

I BURN MY BOOKS. I BURN MYSELF.

I NO LONGER INVESTIGATE MYSELF.

HERE MY STORY ENDS.

Detective Joseph Michael Schnalls. The PAGINATOR.

I stood transfixed.  This no-good … no-good what? … no good murder, no good author? … This asshole had taken over my life, had pushed me to near ruin.   And he had come so close to pinning it all on me.

Captain Jimmy gave me silly smile.

“Got to admit,” I said to the Captain.  “THAT would have been one hell of a story.”

To which Captain Jimmy said, “Better than the crap — I mean “truth” — we’ll have to explain to the media a few hours from now. “

He waved me to open the back door to finally get a look at the man who had written my story, all but the ending.

I didn’t move.  I knew that once I saw his face, I would obsess about him, his life, his face, his body. I’d toss and turn all night trying to match the face and body to the deed.  Right now, I had my own image, my own created image of him in my mind.  I didn’t want to replace it with this other one.

The Captain waited. I didn’t move.

THE END

Robert Anthony Watts is an Associate Teaching Professor of English at Drexel University. 

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