At midnight, his weary eyelids barely resisting sleep, Baron had an epiphany, a bright flash of enlightenment that reminded him of all the reasons he had come to love detective work in the first place, and why he was foolish to even think of walking away from it.
Typically, it came to him in a daydream.
“Face it, Baron, your days as a detective are over,” said Daphne, the woman at the employment agency.
“You have no clients, no money, and from what you just told me, your girlfriend just ran off with your ex-partner to begin a new agency of their own. Now on the bright side, there’s a new shoe store opening at the mall next month. They’re bound to be hiring. And there’s another ad in today’s paper for newspaper carriers. Do you have a reliable car?”
Baron ignored the question. He was too depressed to consider selling shoes, but at the same time, he knew he had to make a living somehow.
“I know it’s hard to let go of a dream,” said Daphne, looking sympathetic. “You know, when I was a little girl, I wanted so badly to be a ballerina. I begged and I pleaded with my parents to sign me up in as many dance classes as I could take, and I practiced every day. In the summer, I’d start every morning with pirouettes on the deck in our backyard. It was such a beautiful time. Then, when I turned sixteen, I —”
“Excuse me,” said Baron. “What time is it?”
She checked her watch. “It’s ten seventeen.”
“What time was my appointment today?”
“Ten o’clock.”
Baron smiled at her and rose up from his chair. “Then it took you exactly seventeen minutes to get me off my sorry behind and back in the game again.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t ever try to convince someone that it’s okay to give up on their dreams. So what if my best friend and business partner just ran off with my girl — if the sun shone every day we’d never know the sweet taste of rain. I’m a detective. That’s all I am today and that’s all I’ll ever be because that’s all I want to be. Too bad for you that you didn’t get to become a ballerina. Life is too short to quit what you love. Thirty years from now I won’t be able to do what I’m doing, even if I’m still here to do it. I’m sorry, lady. I shouldn’t have taken up your time. I don’t belong here. I belong on the streets, in the alleys. I belong out there where my dream is. And if you ask me, you do too.”
Baron turned to leave. He took two strides and then stopped and whirled around. Daphne had cried out his name as she unpinned the name badge from her blouse and tossed it in the garbage bin. “I was born to dance, and dancing is what I’ll do,” she said as she threw herself into his arms.
Around them, the rest of the workers at the agency stood and cheered.
The dream made Baron sit up straight in his bed with his eyes wide open and his heart pumping wildly with excitement. The meaning of the dream was clear to him and very simple — detectives don’t quit when the heat gets turned up, they get to work. They use their suffering to make them better detectives.
He realized that this was it, right in front of him — his chance to finally become what he had always dreamed of being: a real detective with miseries and sorrows and a past that made him angry and bitter.
“Yes!” he shouted out loud, punching his fist into the air. “Yes!”
He ran into Myles the next morning at school.
“Hey,” he said. He was feeling tough. Not sick-tough, like with a cold or a headache, but tough-tough, like the detectives he admired. The guys who would never, ever give up.
“Hey,” said Myles. “How’d it go yesterday at Tucker’s house?”
“Peachy.”
“Peachy?” said Myles.
“Best case I’ve ever been on.”
“Really?” said Myles. “How was Wilson?”
“She was great. Awesome. I’m looking forward to working with the two of you for a long, long time.” He smiled. “For ever and ever, till death do us part.”
Myles gave him a curious look. “Are you okay?”
“Never been better. Why?”
“You’re acting weird.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. Really weird.”
“I’d say I’m acting like a guy who’s just discovered something.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You bet.”
“And what is that?”
Baron started to very slowly nod his head. Then he started to shake it back and forth. Then he stopped and started nodding again. “I’ll save it until tonight.”
“Why?” said Myles.
“Because I want to.”
“Then Wilson’ll hear it.”
“So be it,” said Baron, with a shrug. “You’d probably tell her anyway, right? Over ice cream at her house or a glass of Moira’s iced tea at the coffee shop?”
Again, Myles looked at Baron as if the two boys had never met before. “Are you sure you didn’t fall on your head yesterday?”
“I’m sure you wish I had.”
“What?”
“I’m sure you two probably wish for a lot of things, starting with me submitting my letter of resignation so the two of you can work together without interruption.”
Myles studied his friend’s face for a clue to his behavior.
“Baron, what are you talking about?”
“I think you know,” said Baron.
“You think I know what?”
“Exactly what you just said.”
“What did I just say?”
“You asked me what I was talking about.”
“Okay.”
“And I think you know what I’ve been talking about.”
“Why would I ask what have you been talking about if I knew what you’ve been talking about?”
“Because you don’t want to admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“You know.”
Myles hesitated, and then he shook his head and began to make his way to his next class. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said as he left.
“See?” said Baron, with a final nod. “I knew you knew.” At the meeting, before Wilson could hand in her letter of resignation, Baron cleared the air, still feeling that he was living out a dream. “First of all, just let me say congratulations to you both. You make a lovely couple. I wish you the very best. The bad news is, I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not any day in the foreseeable future. I’m staying right here and I’m going to do the work that I love most, and if I work alone, fine. If I work with a partner, that’s fine too. But I’m going to do detective work. It’s in my blood. It’s who I am, and I’m not about to quit being myself.”
He stood up and started to pace around the shed. “But I’ll tell you something. I came this close to packing it all in last night. This close.” He held his thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart. “I was ready to say forget it. They’re in love. They don’t want me around. Leave them alone and go find something else to do with your life, which led naturally to the question, what? What else would I do? What else is there to do? I came up with exactly nothing. Not one thing. This is it for me, people. So I had to make a decision: Do I stay on, and make life uncomfortable for everyone here, or do I move on? Ironically the answer came to me from my sister. Earlier in the evening, when I was convinced that I had no option but to leave, she had said to me, ‘Baron, pain is what we feel in our heart before making the decision that is right and true.’ That is what I’m doing now. I’m making a decision that is right and true, and it is causing me pain. But I have to do it. I have to.”
He sat down. “I have to.” He shook his head. “I just —”
“May I interrupt?” It was Wilson.
“Please do,” said Myles.
“If it’s about talking me out of my decision, don’t bother,” said Baron, staring at the floor. “Nothing you say will make me change my mind. Nothing.”
“It’s not about that,” said Wilson. She had a small white envelope sitting on her lap.
“No tricks, either,” said Baron. “I’m firm on this. I may be the only one here who doesn’t know karate, but I’ll go to the mat with anyone to defend myself.”
Wilson, who had been about to submit her own resignation, abruptly changed course.
“You’ll what?” she asked.
“I’ll go to the mat with either of you,” repeated Baron, raising his eyes to hers to confirm just how serious he was.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s ready to fight,” said Myles. “It’s an expression we use. Not very often, obviously.”
“You want to fight me?” said Wilson.
Baron explained himself. “I’m not saying I want to. I’m saying I will.”
“You will fight me?” said Wilson.
“Yes, if I have to.”
Wilson shook her head, took in a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. “Wow,” she said out loud but to herself. “And I thought I was crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” said Baron. “I’m serious. You two can run off and do whatever you want. I’m not leaving. That’s all I’m saying. Last night I was ready to. I wrote a letter and everything. Then I realized that this right now is the very point I’ve been working toward my entire reading life. I daydream all the time about being a detective. About being a tough guy and a cool guy. This is my passion. This is where I live. And as of this very moment, this is who I am.”
“Now you’re starting to freak me out,” said Wilson.
“Me too,” said Myles.
“We have to sort this out because there is something really wrong here,” said Wilson. “Myles follows me to my house and listens to me talk to my dead sister. Then for some reason he tells you he wants me to become a permanent member of the agency, and out of all that, all you have to say is some jibber-jabber about your daydreams and where you live?”
There was silence in the office for a moment.
“You told her that I wanted her to become a permanent member of the agency?” said Myles.
“You have a dead sister?” said Baron.
“You didn’t say anything to him about the other night?” said Wilson.
“Yes, I did,” said Baron to Myles.
“Yes, I do,” said Wilson to Baron.
“No, I didn’t,” said Myles to Wilson.
“Well, I’m right then,” said Wilson. “We have some straightening out to do. I’ll start.”
For the next two hours there were tears, laughter, denials, apologies, much repeating of information and one seizure. The meeting ended just before ten. The Blue Whale Detetctive Agency was still intact, and Wilson had been officially invited, and subsequently welcomed, as its newest permanent member.
When Baron lay down in bed later that night, his hands behind his head on the pillow, he enjoyed a daydream that was quite different from his usual ones: This one involved someone he actually knew.
“So how does this work, exactly?”
It was Kitty, standing in the doorway of the office.
He hesitated before answering. Kitty had never visited him here before. “Sorry?”
“I come in. I sit down. I tell all. You go catch the bad guy. Is that pretty much it?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, the way people do when they feel a headache coming on.
“Why do you ask?”
Kitty entered the office, sat down and smiled at him.
Actually, she glowed. “Did you say why?”
“Yes, I did.”
“As in, why are you expressing such interest in my work as a detective after years of writing me off as a loser?”
“Sure.”
Kitty leaned forward. Her eyes grew large. “I’m writing a movie.”
Baron frowned. “I thought you were writing a song.”
“It’s grown into a musical…What can I say? The song got to be ten pages long, and Ashley and I still weren’t finished it so we thought, We have more to say than we thought we did. We should do a whole album. Then Candy, our manager, said, ‘No, wait. You should do a musical because then I could dance in it.’ So here I am. I’m writing a musical. Isn’t that awesome?”
Baron took a moment to think. “I guess so.”
“You guess so? Baron, do you know how much blood, sweat and tears it takes to write an entire movie? And this isn’t going to be full of clichés either. This is going to be a real story.”
“What’s it about?”
“We don’t know that yet. We have to workshop it.”
“You have to what?”
“I don’t know. Candy’s been reading something again. I don’t understand it.”
“Well, good for you.” Baron looked down at the case he’d been reviewing before Kitty’s arrival. “Thanks for coming all the way out here to tell me about it. Is there anything else? I’ve got a ton of work to do.”
“Of course there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“I need you to tell me all about being a detective. See, I even brought a notepad.” She pulled a tiny notepad from her hip pocket, with a tiny pencil attached to it.
“Why?” said Baron.
“Because it’s very important for me to know.”
“How come?”
“So the character I’m working on in my movie is believable.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Baron…hello. I’m writing a movie. It’s going to be a blockbuster. There has to be crime in it. Good guys.
Bad guys. Cops on the take. People getting killed. A young beautiful female officer who seduces two different cops and no one knows until the end if she’s going to be the killer or the one who saves everyone.”
“I thought you said this was a musical?”
“I did say it was a musical.”
“It doesn’t sound like a musical.”
“That’s because you haven’t heard the music yet.
How can you say it doesn’t sound like a musical if you haven’t even heard the music? God. Everyone’s a critic all of a sudden. This is so difficult.”
Baron shook his head. “Okay. So what do you want to know?”
Kitty leaned back in her chair and prepared to write. “Okay. First, what drawer do you keep your whiskey in?”
“I don’t drink, Kitty.”
She smiled at him and winked. “Come on, Baron. I know you’re a sweet boy. But we all have our dark sides. Where is it?”
“Kitty, I don’t have a drawer in this office. Look around you. There’s no desk. There’s this crummy little round table and a few chairs.”
Kitty wrote in her notepad. “Okay, where’s the sexy secretary?”
Baron shook his head.
“Every detective on every tv show or movie that I’ve ever seen has a sexy secretary.” Kitty looked around the office. “So where is she? Where’s she hiding?”
“Kitty,” said Baron.
“I’m not leaving until I find her.”
Baron sighed. Then he started to think. As a detective, he’d managed to get out of every tight spot he’d ever been in. It’s what made him as good as he was, and he was very, very good. “She’s gone home for the evening,” he said.
“For real?”
“You just missed her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Trixie. I hired her after I busted her old man. Some little punk grifter who was shaking down old ladies on their way home from the grocery store. She was the one who tipped me off. She wanted to get away from him, but he wouldn’t let her leave.”
“What do you mean you busted him? What did you do?”
“I fed him a double serving of knuckle pie, that’s what I did. Then the cops came, scraped him off the sidewalk and threw him in the slammer.”
“You fought him?”
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. More like target practice with my fists. I got nothin’ but bull’s-eyes.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“Omigod.”
“Reminded me of the time a pair of toughs from the city came out here to hustle one of my clients for money they claimed she owed them. I happened to be with her at the time, reviewing some notes on the case I was working on. I asked them nicely to leave, once. Not-so-nicely a second time. Then one of them got upset and took a poke at me. I think he ended up getting out of the hospital a week earlier than his friend who came at me with a shovel. They both needed surgery.”
Kitty stared at her brother in silence. She hadn’t written a word of his story down.
“You gonna document any of this, or should I just call you the next time there’s trouble?”
Kitty’s mouth hung open. She was speechless.
“I could fill that little notepad of yours in an hour with stuff like this if you want me to. I don’t know how you’re gonna put it to song though.”
“I never knew this was what you did back here.”
“None of it happens right here, kid. The action’s out there on the street, in the alleys, on rooftops.”
“You’ve fought on a rooftop?”
“Once, I did, yes.”
“What if you fell off?”
“When I get hired to do a job, I do the job. If it means chasing some pussycat up a tree and onto a roof, I chase him up the tree and onto the roof. In this particular case, once we got up there he decided he wanted to fight. So we fought. He was twice my size, half my speed, and ten times dumber than a sack of doorknobs. He fell off after I socked him one in the jaw. I waited for the ladder.”
“Baron, you are incredible,” said Kitty, her eyes wide.
“I’m still your little brother,” he said modestly.
“I have to tell Ashley about this. She is going to die. She will absolutely die.”
“I hope she has a will. Greedy relatives make up half my caseload.”
“I’ll ask her,” said Kitty, rising quickly to leave. “Omigod, this musical is going to be so amazing.”
She left on the fly.
Baron shook his head and went back to reviewing his case.
When he woke up the next morning, he grinned as he remembered his dream. He really woudn’t put it past Kitty to write a musical.
Then he remembered his other dream, the real one about becoming the detective that he always wanted to be and not letting anything or anyone get in the way of it, and he smiled the way the cool Baron in his dreams always smiled.
For the first time ever, he actually felt like himself.