The Detective and The Fool Chapter 1 (First Draft)

The Con

The con began when the man stepped into the fortune teller's tent. It was a cone shaped tarp with smoking incense and little silver bells hanging from the ceiling. Madame Rosary Zarkov was a lanky woman, all crooked and cock-eyed, someone who had fallen into the enfolding wings of her stereotypes. People saw her and believed that she was shifty and strange and, most importantly, foreign.People believed that she came from some far off, unnamed country, which made the idea that she had some mystical power that couldn’t be explained, when in actual fact, she was born in Auckland, a mere five hours drive from the ferry terminal that allowed access in and out of Desterton.When it came to fortune telling, there was a process. In all honesty, Rosary didn’t know if there were people out there that had what her great aunt called “the gift,” all she really knew was that she didn’t, but she still needed to make money.The art of conning someone was a lot easier than one would normally suspect, as long as you played to their strengths and not your own. What did they want to believe? That was what you had to ask yourself. Once you understood that, the rest was easy. A newspaper sat on the eclectic table that she kept, with a headline that read LOCAL UNIVERSITY STUDENT DIES FROM APPARENT DRUG OVERDOSE.Through the tarp walls, she heard the screams and cheers of the people wandering the carnival. She looked into a small, silver mirror and smeared charcoal across her eyelids. She pulled her hair low over her face, the myriad of rings that weighed down her knuckles like birds on a wire clinking together. She grinned. She looked enigmatic enough.

And then the tent flap opened. Through years of practice, she took the man in like she was reading a novel. Everything was written out for her clearly. He was of average height, back straight and shoulders set. Normally the posture meant a person filled with confidence, but there was something about this that was different. He was uncomfortable. He reminded her of an actor on stage who hadn’t practiced his role enough, but had been shunted onto the stage regardless. His left eye even had a slight twitch to it.He wore an old coat. The threads on the buttons were loose and one of them was missing. It awkwardly fit him. His eyes were downcast, and there, on his ring finger, was a wedding ring which he tugged at restlessly like he was trying to rip a thorn from his skin. His face looked tired and sallow, the bags under his eyes almost as dark as the charcoal under hers.He almost seemed like he was about to back out. Rosary stepped forward, hands out, bangles and rings jingling like little trinkets on a Christmas tree.“No, no sir, please, please, stay stay, you have something on your mind, no?” She kept her voice vaguely Eastern European, never committing to one specific accent.“Er…uh…yes. I…I believe that I do.”“If you would be so kind as to take a seat,” she gestured to a little wooden chair with a plump cushion in it. The man nodded and sat.Rosary’s eyes pinged down to his ringer finger with green eyed greed. Then they flicked back up. “I sense a loss, a deep loss in your life,” she crooned.The man nodded with a speed and stiffness that almost seemed painful, “yes, yes that’s right.”He had a very slight British accent. It was sloppy, like he was trying his best to repress it. “Would you like to know your future or your past?”“Future, please,” he said. With hands that snapped like a cobra, she snatched his right hand across the table.“I can do a palm reading. For a price, of course.”“Yes, yes, of course. Um. Do you do…tarot?”Her eyes practically glowed, “I do sir, I do,” from the depths of her robes, she produced a well thumbed deck of tarot cards.He looked down, grateful to have his hand back to tug at his ring.“Please sir, there is a process to this kind of thing. Take the deck in your hands please.”The man did as she said. The incense floated through the air and framed everything in a subtle, fever dream type haze. “Now, close your grip around it, hold it tightly, and think about the exact thing that you would like to know about.”The man closed his eyes and sandwiched the deck tightly between his palms. She waited a few moments, leaned back and rang a bell. Then she said, “you may open your eyes and hand me back the cards.”Again, he did as he was told, with efficient obedience. “Let us begin,” under the table, there was a pedal that was linked to the hidden lights in the tent. She pushed gently down with her foot and the lights began to dim as she shuffled. Cards dropped and scattered across the table like so many dried, falling leaves. “Okay, let us see what the cards have in store for you…”She flipped the first card over and began to yap. Rosary sometimes pictured her mind like it was a motor. She greased it constantly with Sudoku, word problems and crosswords, anything to keep her brain active, even subconsciously.She fed the man a couple of vague predictions about his future, and about his wife and how she would one day want him back (she had tested the waters for his wife passing, but he had looked oddly at her for that one). The main thing that she ended up telling him was that he needed to improve himself first, and that fate would take care of the rest.Her customer nodded and looked inquisitive and smiled at all the right times. But there was something that was slightly…odd about him. There were the obligatory thank yous at the end. He stood up, digging his hand into his pocket. His eyes fell onto the newspaper on the table and his head tilted to the side.“Sad, that one,” he said.Rosary frowned for a second, “well…yes. Yes it is.”“So young too,” he said.“Fate is a harsh mistress.”He looked at Rosary. His eyes were brighter now, and there was a touch of curiosity that was so new it wasn’t out of the wrapping plastic yet.“Did you ever meet her? Tabitha, I think her name was.”Rosary shrugged, “maybe. Maybe not,” then she cocked an eyebrow, “why do you ask?”“No reason…it just felt like you would know, of course with all the people that come and visit you whenever the fair comes around.”“Do I know you?” She asked, “because I do not know your face.”“That would be difficult, wouldn’t it?” The man said, “to know every single face that has passed through this tent. It would be nothing short of an impossible task. Nobody would have a memory like that.”“Well, I do sir, I do indeed, and I do not know your face.”He shrugged, turning to go, and then he stopped, tilting his head to the side. He turned back, “that’s odd then, isn’t it?”“What is?”“You know that you haven’t seen my face. But you don’t know if you’ve seen hers.”The difficulty with having a job like Rosary’s was that you needed to try and keep people happy so that they would come back. But she was finding this guy difficult. She gave him one last chance before she would start to shove him out.“I don’t think this is appropriate,” Rosary said.“I understand,” he said, “the guilt, I get it.”“Guilt?”“Yes, the guilt. Whatever it was that you told her, you clearly don’t want to talk about it. Guilt. I understand, trust me.”Rosary’s face went dark as coal. Her eyes glowed with fury.“I didn’t do anything to that girl. Alright, she came with a friend of hers about a month ago, if you must know, I told her her fortune and what of it? I have nothing to feel guilt over. Now get out.”

When he was sure that she wasn’t watching anymore, his shoulders slouched forward. In the yawning, faint shadows created by the strobing lights of the erected rollercoaster, he appeared to transform. His left eye slouched, and the color in his face slowly grew back like water paints running in reverse. He plucked the ring from his finger and tucked it into the breast pocket of his coat.

Soon the eclectic nature of the fair gave way to the silent, empty night, which hung around him like he was closed inside of a large fist. Cold night air ripped the warmth from his face and the sweat from his body. The pavement slanted upwards, twisting to the right to the center of South Desterton. Lampposts stood like tall, disillusioned geniuses with light bulbs hovering above their heads that they were too tired to acknowledge.

At the corner of the roundabout was a pub, dense with light and sound. An old apartment building stood next to it, quiet and bloodless. He scanned his keycard, the front door slid open, and the fresh, old air of the lobby washed over him. There was a wall of cubby holes that were all painted blue and made from metal. Next to this was an empty front desk, heavy and wooden with fake bronze letters on the front. There was a flight of concrete steps and an old elevator with those heavy gates in place of doors.

The gates guttered shut, the button jammed in and the elevator crawled up to the fourth floor. He opened the door to his apartment, flung off his coat and walked, shamefacedly to the kitchen, shaking his head.

Elise was there, small, ochre skin with long, sleek black hair. She was eating dumplings while flicking through a legal textbook. She glanced up, trying to keep the buzzing excitement out of her face.

“How did it go?” She asked, eyes on the textbook, voice hiding more than it showed.

Ezekiel’s eyebrows went up and down, “I’m out of practice,” he muttered, “the lead in to the question was right there in front of me, and I was aggressive and I made her feel uncomfortable. She pulled back.”

“Meaning…?”

He sighed, turning on the kettle, “meaning I got what we wanted. She gave Tabitha a reading, about a month ago, just like Doreen said, and just in case, she doesn’t actually have a gift or anything. She’s a conwoman, and a very good one.”

“Do you think she did anything?” Elise was looking at him now.

“Nah,” Ezekiel shook his head, dropping a tea bag in a mug, “doesn’t make sense, why would she be keeping a newspaper of Tabitha dying on her table after murdering her? And to what end? She what, gives a girl a reading that says that her life is in danger so that she can kill her? It doesn’t add up.”

Elise nodded, “so, what now?” there was no disguising the excitement now, “what’s our next step?”

Ezekiel sighed as he poured the boiling water in, “tomorrow, we go to her apartment. Then, we go meet the ex.”