Debro was in his apartment considering the proper punishment for Billy Prestwick. He sat in a chair with a laptop on his thighs, studying Prestwick’s Facebook page. The posts were little more than drivel, self-absorbed twinks jabbering to other self-absorbed twinks.
So gud 2CU last nite at Stallion, Billy. Where did U get cool shades? I NEED a pair like. Kisses.
Why is Life so HURTFULL? Cant Peeple be NICE? Someone send me FLOWERS.
Heading 2 Bink’s Lounge 10 minutes … any U sluts want 2 par-tay?
He opened Prestwick’s photos: Twenty-one separate albums holding a total of 312 photos. They were all basically the same: Billy Prestwick grinning in a bar, smiling on the beach, making gangster fingers on a street corner, sticking his pink tongue out at the camera, standing shirtless beside a mirror. His pretty face smiling beside a dozen different drinks.
Selfies, mostly … pictures of Prestwick that Prestwick had put on Facebook.
Look at me, they said. See how pretty I am.
On my ride eastward I was in a fog of Jeremy’s making. Any trip to see my brother ended up giving me a few answers, while generating even more questions. He was actually living in Key West. He had changed his name to reflect mine, and intertwined our fictional histories. For better or worse – as far as anyone caring to dig deep into my history was concerned – I now had a brother.
I doubted Jeremy had come to Key West to hunker down within his house, thus becoming subject to tens of thousands of eyes. All it took was one sensitive pair to see him, log into one of several law-enforcement sites, and call the local cops.
“Yeah, this is Johnny Baker … a county cop in Spitwhistle, Oklahoma. Me and the missus are here on a vacation and – you’re gonna shit – but I think I just spotted Jeremy Ridgecliff from the FBI listings. I followed him to this big-ass house. Hang on, lemme give you the address …”
And after Jeremy was hauled away, curious detectives would dig into his fictional past to see how he had pulled it off, finding his lies looped around mine.
If he went down, I followed.
I had spent almost a year with the FCLE, a dream job I hoped would carry me to the end of my career. But into the bright Florida sun had a come a shadow: my brother, using fractured logic to bind his dangerous past to mine. I had thought I was safe. In fact, I was supremely vulnerable.
I was crossing Duck Key when my phone gave the ringtone for case contacts, a four-note theme from an ancient television series called The Twilight Zone, which, given my cases, seemed appropriate.
My smartphone let me speak while driving. As could my vehicle, which said, “Call from Derek Scott” in the voice of a friendly lady.
“Answer call,” I said, then heard the connection establish.
“Detective Carson Ryder here, Mr Scott. What can I do for you?”
“Hello, D-Detective. You wuh-wanted to know how things w-went with m-my meeting with Muh-Mr Ocampo?”
I hadn’t specifically asked that Scott call me with the results of his meeting, but I figured he’d picked up on my concern for Gary when setting up the meeting and was doing me a good turn by reporting back.
“No big deal, Derek, but sure … I’d be interested in how he is. I’m concerned about what the stress might be doing to his health. How’d things go?”
“I, uh … fine. We t-talked. Sure, he’s got his troubles and all, but, uh, it was n-n-nice of him to want to see me and …”
His mild stammer verged on full-blown stuttering, which often happened with stress. I cleared my throat. “I’m getting the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me, Mr Scott.”
A sigh. “The meeting with M-Mr Ocampo w-was, um, unsettling. Maybe embarrassing.”
“Can you talk about it?”
“Uh … it’s sorta, uh …”
He was obviously uncomfortable. I checked my watch. I hadn’t planned on going into Miami, but there was time.
I said, “Sometimes these things are best discussed face to face instead of on cold little plastic devices.”
“I hate them,” he said, “phones. Always have. That doesn’t mean I don’t use them all the tuh-t-time, we have to, right? Otherwise we’d be living in 1910 and never talk to anyone who w-wasn’t in front of us.”
Even though I could talk at my steering wheel and have my voice heard in a phone a thousand miles distant, I felt the same way.
“You want me to come see you?”
“I live in B-Belle Glade, over an hour away. I’m not there, anyway. I’m in a b-bar, the Cool Melon, just a bit north of downtown, you could come here a lot faster. It’s a regular bar, buh-by the way.”
“Doesn’t make a difference, Derek. Save me a stool.”
I was there in fifteen minutes, a neighborhood pub near Miramar. Scott was at the end of the bar with a beer mug at his elbow.
“What went on with Gary?” I said as I pulled up a stool. “You said something about embarrassing?”
“Everything w-went like I expected at first. Mr Ocampo apologized several times, telling me he wasn’t like his brother, that he was s-sickened by what was happening. I told him it was fine, there was no way he could be responsible, even if the guy was a twin, Gary was a d-different person.”
“What I pretty much expected.”
“I was there maybe ten minutes, hoping maybe tuh-talking to me made him feel better. But when I got up to leave he still seemed so sad. I felt terrible for him, for all that s-seemed wrong in his life. I leaned over to g-give him a hug, kinda wondering how to do it … all that buh-bigness. And he – he …”
“What happened, Derek?”
“The p-poor man t-tried to kiss me. I wasn’t expecting it and when I p-pulled away he started crying, apologizing for how disgusting he was. I tuh-tried to tell him it was all right, p-p-perfectly natural. But it was a very emotional scene, d-difficult for both of us. I h-hope he’s all right.”
I thanked Scott and started to depart when he called my name. I turned.
“You should know …” he said, “the fuf-first moment I saw Mr Ocampo?”
“Yes?”
“I f-felt a strange shock, like recognition. I know, I’ve seen all the different pictures of the man who tried to abduct me, and I know he’s Mr Ocampo’s brother … but I felt something deeper.”
“Like a visceral resemblance between the two?”
He tapped his chest. “Something in here got scared for a split second.”
Another confirmation that Donnie couldn’t eradicate his resemblance to his brother, and maybe wasn’t even trying. I retreated to the Palace to try and puzzle it out, but fell asleep in the chair.