D.
lived a life shoddier than bats; at least a bat can witness light but not fly
in the daylight. Things were worse now in D.’s life, because in the urban life
he lived day-by-day, he only surveyed the night, the darkness. The people of
the tall building world never spoke of or saw daylight and seemed to pretend
that they never heard it mentioned in a conversation during the various years
of their lives. Bats were nocturnal, but D. could never see day as it would
kill him if he did. Yet as he roamed the darkened streets of post-rain, he had
a not-to-lost memory in the depths of his mind. When he was alone (which
happened often), his mind took a trip to the past when D. was a child and light
was everywhere. Everybody back then called it the sun. People recently, when
asked, said that the sun was always there, nothing’s changed. It made D. wonder
all the more if he had imagined this himself, or did people truly think that
the ever-present night was day.

The
date was Friday, October 10. Everybody had forgotten the year.
The
rain had just finished its weeping, and D.’s feet were plunged in water. As he
walked, he could hear the swishing of his black business shoes and the rustling
of his pant sleeves.
Aged past sixty, D. was obviously no
longer a young man to round up criminals and stop the no-goodniks from their
disastrous deeds. His legs snapped when he attempted to run, and his mind had
lost its charm when back in the happier times he could remember minute details
of notes, recalling the most forgotten things. They call it photographic
memory. Nowadays he forgot lots of things to the point that he didn
’t
remember what floor his apartment was on. That led to embarrassing situations
which D. was grateful he could forget about instead of having it replay in his
mind until it bore the repetitive resonance of a broken or looped phonograph.
On a lesser note, the gray-almost-white hairs on his head he still resented,
but they never resisted not showing up in the mirror. No magic could fix that, so
he thought when he read some of those fantasy stories in bookstores. Tiny
sparks of magic existed where humans wished for things they’d never get.

Leisure
time, as people call it, didn
’t come many times in D.’s life.
Cafés made up a good thirty percent of the shops open, but those events
came every once in a while, usually with a friend or client in need of his
service. When D. was off work, you could find him strolling the streets with
his hands in his coat pockets. No, he wasn’t looking for anything in particular
like a case; most of what he did on those days went on in his head, where his
thoughts lay.
D. wasn
’t dwelling inside his
mind at the moment, but one sure thought settled onto the floor of his brain
where, despite his crummy-filled photographic memory, D. kept remembering.

Take
a small peek through the velvet curtain if you like. There you
’ll
see the old detective who somehow never thought of retiring (he never gave any reasons)
as a young boy with eyes so blue, you’d drown in them. The now
gray-turning-white hair was a bedhead yellow. He sat next to a woman who had an
arm over his shoulders -- his mother. She wore both a red dress that sparkled
and a heartwarming smile. A cheesecake with ten lighted candles spiked into it
was in front of them.

“
Go
ahead,” she had told him. “Make a wish.”

It
was a sunny day, he remembered. So bright was the day that the sun no longer
had its usual shape but one reminiscent of a brightly-lit white pearl. The
younger D. had mulled over the wish in his head. Back then, he had no name to
distinguish himself from others. With one huge intake of breath, the younger D.
had blown with all his might until the candles wore out their tiny flames. Gray
smoke swirled in its aftermath.

His
mother hadn
’t asked what he wished for, and she didn’t have to.
Countless times people - especially parents - egged the birthday boy/girl as to
their wish. It never failed to make D.’s hands shake with anguish. Annoying as
scratching Styrofoam, the question never made sense. Wishes were meant to be
kept in secret, right? Parents and adults shouldn’t have to ask their children
for something they have no business knowing.

Now
that he was old, there was no family left for D. As far as he could go back in
his memory, D. never knew of his father. His mother never spoke of him, and the
question of his father
’s existence still clung to the air.
Long ago D. had let go of his father’s memory -- if there ever was any -- but
it lay in the back of his mind to haunt him later on. He didn’t want that
memory to stalk him more than for a simple “Boo!”

On
his tenth birthday, D. still had no name to identify him with. Children at
school provided the wildest suggestions, most of the lot teasing or mocking
him. Back then it got under his skin, throttling him; but even now D. would
’ve
thought that if he had no name to be called, it would have bothered him
tremendously. Already his heart lived on misery, surviving day-to-day obstacles
that would sound basic to a wealthy man but would, at the same time, bring a
poor man to his knees. Because of his poor financial state, D. did not once break
down crying. He didn’t need the situation of a lack of a name to pull him down
even further.

Then
on a particular odd day that D. always thought of as a random occasion, his
mother announced that, because of his nameless identity, he
’d
be able to choose his own name for his next birthday - his eleventh. All the
sunshine and warmth the sun brought to the world - at least so D. thought -
could not make the younger D. happy. His mother who occupied so few memories in
his mind was his only love: she was the pure incarnation of a loving, caring woman.
Through the streets of the city, D. never met a sweeter woman than his mother.
The sweetness within her radiated so bright that she appeared as a goddess,
with rays of love shooting off her Venus body. If that woman told him she would
approve a new name for him to be called, he’d do it. He mulled over numerous
names that’d take too long here to mention, none of them sounding right.
Regular and normal children had their names pre-chosen, whether they liked it
or not, but at least someone did it for them. That much was expected, to say
the very least. The young D.’s mother claimed she never chose a name because
the law prevented her from doing so. Was it his father who wanted the one child
of his to remain nameless? Finally, he settled on Dean Whittaker. To this day
D. still wondered if according to his younger self, Whittaker was supposed to
be a surname or not.

He
surfaced back to the younger D.
’s eleventh birthday party. At
school kids gave out invitations clustered in balloons and streamers with glitter
vomiting rainbows and cutesy adorableness. He, instead, had a small party with
his mother, nothing more. The traditional cake and candles were present, but
still something was missing.

For
the eleventh time, the younger D. had blown out those candles, one extra candle
for the new birthday. Like always, his mother wore a pretty flower print dress
and produced tiny finger claps whenever he blew them all out, another wish
barely escaping the tip of his lips. That birthday, his mother didn
’t
finger clap after each candle. Fate decided to have her collapse.

She breathed
quick breaths. The younger D. took immediate action and rushed to her side. He
didn
’t
know what to do; her skin turned white and frail and her fingers were straining
to move. It seemed the worst of it was at her neck.

“
What...
what the...?”

In
between her words the mother tried to control her breathing.

“
Dear...dear
- what happened?”

His
mother died on his birthday. Quite a funeral it was. As the old saying goes
where he lived – and people there said it a lot – another year alive, and
another dies.

*****

A
dozen police officers crowded inside an apartment. Many of them leaned or were
forced into the walls, knocking a few belongings over along the way. Inside
this particular one, plush beds and furniture lavished the space in hues of
purple and blue. The lights weren’t on, but with their flashlights the officers
saw the polished oak desk and a shelf containing century-old books. An officer
named Lincoln tried to inspect one of the books, but the others warded him off.

“
Best
if you stay away from those,” said a man. Preston was his name, but everyone
called him Owl because he didn’t need a flashlight to see through the dark.

“
How
so?” wondered Lincoln.

“
Never
know what’s in those books. It could be dark stuff.”

Lincoln
refrained himself from laughing.
“Dark things like
what?”

“
Occult,
maybe? I dunno, but I do know to stay away from rich people’s things. Who knows
what scary things they could be hiding from the world?”

“
And
it could be nothing, contradicting your silly fears.”

“
Well,
that’s you, spot, but, ah, I wouldn’t want to be the one to, ah, find things I
shouldn’t be looking at.”

“
Bet
you twenty that what’s inside this book I’m holding isn’t what you think it
is.”

“
Twenty?
Twenty what, dollars?”

“
I
was thinking cents but…”

Owl
backed away.
“Are ya outta your mind, Lincoln? Twenty goddam
cents? You’ve gotta be one of the most insipid conmen -- no, not even!
Cheapskate, that’s more like it! A cheapskate who wouldn’t risk their…”

A
loud voice boomed above them all:
“QUIET, ALL OF YOU!”

They
all silenced.

“
Owl,”
said lead officer. Big Hands, they called it. Yes, “it,” and not him or a she,
because the lead officer acted so egoistically, very not human, that it seemed
the perfect pronoun. Behind its back they did since no one wanted to know what
would happen if they did it in front of its face.

Owl
’s
face morphed into one that belonged to a demon; that or a grouchy student on a
bad hair day waiting to take a yearbook photo. Lincoln was left with five other
officers in the living room. They went through most of the owner’s things, but
nothing made any sense.

Why
are we doing this? Lincoln thought. He decided to lie out on the couch and let
the rest do the work. Unfortunately this lasted ten seconds, even in the dark.
Damn those flashlights.

“
Lincoln?”
one of the officers asked. “What are you doing?”

“
Relaxing,”
he answered. “What else does it look like?”

“
Hmm,
what else does it look like?” the officer mocked. “Laziness? Waiting it out
until the salary comes in the mail?”

Lincoln
stood up.
“Hey, it’s not like that.”

“
Of
course it’s like that!” The whitened light of the officer’s flashlight made
Lincoln cross-eyed. “You think that if we’d all just lie down and relax, grab
some beers while we’re at it, we’d get paid? Putting work away doesn’t get you
anywhere.”

“
What’s
the big deal about this man anyway?” Lincoln wondered. “Sounds like a big joke
to me.”

Lincoln,
if you paid close attention to the budding hairs sprouting from the bottom of
his chin and the sly yet rebellious attitude he portrayed, he was the youngest
of the officers. The one officer speaking to him grabbed the back of his head
where his hair reached the tip of his neck and yanked him off couch. He wasn’t
fuming like the others when they saw him slacking, but the officer kept a poker
face.

“Look,
you think this is all easy, don’t you?”

Lincoln
shook his head.

“Don’t
play with me, Deed. You know you think so.”

He
laughed at that. “Is this some new psychology trick you read about in those
books you keep hidden in your locker? I’m not buying into it.”

“Can
you please let me talk?”

“Well,
excuse me, Idaho, but you were the one who paused for more than two seconds.
Looks like to me that you were expecting a reply.”

Officer
Idaho crossed his arms. “There’s a door right over there,” he said as he
pointed. “You can get out or you can continue investigating with the rest of us
and figure out just exactly what happened the night McDermott disappeared.”

“What’s
wrong with lying around for a while? Don’t you all get tired or something
working hours upon hours searching for something that might not even be here?
That gets frustrating, let me tell ya.”

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