288 - Doubles Anonymous

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“Jalen Rutherford woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

No hooch last night, just a Dame, dancing around in that gravy can of his. He can't shake the thought of her. She's a looker to be sure, but she's trouble, and everyone knows it. But what woman isn't trouble, Jalen thinks. Actually, a whole host of gals are pretty bounce people, he corrects himself.

In fact, his new boss, the tech, the gum shoe, the sneaky possum, you know, the private investigator, Dana Cardinal. He's got a mind like a steel trap that's caught its dinner tonight, a dinner made of clues. Speak of the big boss woman, Jalen checks the clock. He's late. Dana will be waiting, and you don't want to keep DC waiting.

But his mind feels like it's at the bottom of a well like that cute little girl from the ring. His mind feels like he had a whole night of heel juice and hanky panky, but he only gets to do the time, not the crimes. Still, his gray matter riggles under the weight of that troublesome game, Elana.

He can't shake the thought of her. But he can't be thinking of dolls and birds right now, he's got a murder to solve. His own. Dana Cardinals on the horn with another DC, Diane Craten, a data cruncher, a numbers junkie, a spreadsheet splaner.

Diane Craten's the kind of tough broad you go to when you don't know your rows from

your columns, your sorts from your filters, your elbow from your piehole, and Diane's always

here to help a friend with a spreadsheet, whether it's taxes, or evidence for murder. Dana thinks Diane and checks her watch, 9 a.m. as the crow flies, Jalen's late. Dana will have to start without him. She picks up her laptop and sits outside under the warm smile of the spring sun. The golden light holds her like a gentle father who is scared to hurt the baby.

Dana sleeps well these days, she's good at what she does. She is loving friends, a healthy diet, a nice house, and several adorable ferrets. You know, nickel bezels, snake tears, long mice. They're not only great guide animals, but they spook away the plug, uglies, and ruffians. In the buttery warmth of a spring morning, Dana remembers her last session with

doubles anonymous. It's group therapy, but for people who killed their doubles. Their double gangers, their Twinkies, their dooses. But in Dana's case, she doesn't know if she's the real Dana cardinal, or the double.

She may never know who off to, with that stapler.

Dana had invited Jalen to join her at the next doubles anonymous meeting.

his original, some other hatchet man danced that jig first.

“Dana texts Jalen asking where he is, but she's not worried.”

It's a sunny day, and she might put on the old feedback for some yogurt and berries. Jalen's doing figure eights around his bed sit. That sort of sap oversleaps and then can't find his satchel. He feels like a sucker, a mouth breather, a fool, but he's found his gear and he's about to take a hike.

That's when the pounding begins. The knocking on the door echoes in his aching noggin. He peeps through the Venetians and his heart skips, like a stone on clear water, like

a quarter-note in a rag, like a hot scotch tournament, it was Alana, the Dame, the dish,

the doll-faced troublemaker. Alana was a no-good-neck, and he didn't want to open that door, but he had no other way out of this roach motel, besides she knew he was there. Like a turkey, he left his jelopy parked right in front, might as well put up a neon sign that said, "Don'ts Incorporate it, open for business."

He cracks the door and silver-light slaps him across the face, like it's threatening an 18th-century duel. Why are you running? She says her voice all "base" and breath, like a cello on a windy day. Why are you chasing?

He snars back, his voice breathless and scratched, like an old shoe on wet concrete. Talk to me, Jalen. She implores, "I'm not who you think I am," he says firmly, finding his lungs at last. Thankfully they were where he last left them. "I'm not who you think I am either," she says, stepping into his dark and studio apartment

and pulling the door shut behind her. Dana Cardinal cracks open the spreadsheet, the grist grid, the tic-tac toeboard. Her eyes scammed the numbers and the numbers make as much sense as a Jackson Pollock painting that fell into a paper shredder. She's not just trying to solve the murder of the original Jalen Brotherford.

She's trying to crack the case of the locked library murder of one Marcus Bancden, aka Billions with a B, aka Erica, aka Moneybag Cherub. How do you kill an angel?

“How do you kill someone in a locked room when they were the only one with the key?”

And it was locked from the inside, and why? She's got the wear and the when for this cardinal sin but not the how. She might though be close to the who and the why. Harrison Kip, the archaeologist, the ditch digger, the mummy wrestler while he started a little congregation, a communion, a cult, if we're being honest.

He's also started a radio show, the twilight gospel hour, and two moons back, old professor Kip all but put the bracelets on and signed his own arrest warrant. He admitted that Marcus Bancden had promised a large donation to Kip's religious goons,

but that cabbage never made the soup.

Kip was burnt about the double cross, steaming like iron on cotton. He was enough to make a man murder an angel, so Dana had a who, Harrison Kip, but why?

“Money madness, and how, yes, that's the $64,000 question, isn't it?”

How, indeed. Marcus was no dummy, no nincompoop, no goose, the richer you are, the better they want you. Bancden knew it, and Kip knew it too. Kip's a schemer, but he's a tad dim.

She can't imagine how he would break into vanstance fort knocks. Dana turns on the kettle. Jalen's twenty minutes late, and no text, no call, no blip bleep, or bloop from that infernal little black rectangle in her hand. She's not worried.

Not yet. Jalen leans to Elana's ear. She smells fresh as a daffodil, crisp as a coroned and revely. She smells like the gal he wants new, the good girl he loved, the one on the other side, the land of the doubles, that Elana, he adored.

He'd have taken a slug for her, a back to the bean, he'd have walked in front of a

You're right, Jalen says, "You're not who I think you are.

I love you, or a girl like you, but she was from the other side of the tracks at different place, and ethereal plain of existence." You catching what I'm throwing, I'm not the same girl, Elana pleads, but give me a day, an hour, a little kiss even, and you'll forget her completely. No, Jalen pulls away.

My Elana was kind, she was patient, she was a model in more ways than one. And you, Elana, excels into his collar, "You are true to your woman. You're nothing like the Jalen I knew before. He was rotten, a rat, a wag, and overcooked duck." Jalen looked surprised.

Had he never considered that his double might not have been on the up and up, he did

you wrong? He asks, but he already knows the answer. He ripped up my heart and stomped it out like a cigarette. Elana pulls him close and says, "I'm glad that sorry lug is dead." Dana makes herself another cup of Joe, she takes her time with it.

She likes the fancy pants pour over style. No black sludge stuck to a stained craft. No, DC takes her beans lightly roasted, pale as a polar bear who just saw a ghost.

While the Java bruise, she mulls over some letters that were found in the original Jalen's

files, letters between Vanston and Kip. She couldn't understand, Marcus Vanston was completely enamored with Kip and his mob of red, robed thugs.

“Why would Vanston suddenly revoke the green-backcy promise?”

And more so, why would the angel of one god want to donate so much money to the church of a different god altogether? Why? The good folks down at Temple Beff's Shalom raised money last year for our lady of the shambling orphan?

It was after the church ran out of gruel and tattered smocks for all the grind stained factory urchins. It's not uncommon for different religions to help each other in time of need. Dana thinks, but his Harrison Kip's religion, really a religion, or is it a cult? Kip said on his radio show they can't take donations directly, and according to Jalen's

spread sheets, Marcus Vanston's gift was supposed to go through the community college, where Kip had the archaeology department. And Rika, Haza, Hot Dam, she's onto something, there it is, in sell M78, Vanston's millions going to the college archaeology department. That dough wasn't meant to help students understand history or culture, it was meant to

“get laundered by Kip, but why didn't the college ever get the bread?”

When her phone buzzes, a text, a missive, a message from Diane Crayton. Dana doesn't know it, but she feels it deep in her sin, that Diane has found something, something big. Jalen's studies Elana's face, her mug, her gruel, its stone, concrete, serious as a root canal.

He broke my heart, she says, "But worse, he broke my mind." I couldn't control my rage when I found out he had double crust me with that "fluency" from Pine Cliff, that girls, a nothing, a whisp, a see-through. Everyone in Pine Cliff is a literal ghost, Elana adds while leaning into Jalen. Could he have seen in a chick he can't even touch?

What are you saying Elana, Jalen asks cautiously, "Did you kill my double?"

“She pulls him close, their lips only an inch apart and says, "What is it matter?”

You're here now." She kisses him, he kisses her back, the lover stand silhouetteed against the open window, the light growing brighter in the mid-morning sky, but they were in too deep to care about

Living through feelings, but nothing material, touching their hands, wishing they

be warm. Years they spent looking for each other, once a few more dreaming farther along, covered

in ashes and and some tape around the phone, that was left from their fairy tale.

“But I believe that they got their heart dance, and I believe that they just serve more”

than just sadness, the people who dreamed of this year. There were eating junk food from the comfort of them, and in a good time, underneath their covers, scratching, knowing that they're skinned on blue walls, feeling trapped inside no way out. They looked up, warning is your sky, so they got the flaked pint in hands, curled up,

so they looked up, so they looked up, so they looked up, so they looked up, so they looked

“up, so they got their heart dance, and I believe that they just serve more than just sadness,”

the people who dreamed, but I believe that they managed to break out, and I believe that they'd die, I believe that they brought the chains, they brought the people of the people of the people who dreamed of this year.

“There were eating junk food from the comfort of them, and in a good time, but I believe that”

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It's night, and Jalen sits in a circle of chairs with a bunch of no names, Randows, schmucks. After the day he had he wants out of here, he wants to run to Alana, he wants to run away from Alana, he doesn't know what he wants, but he knows what he doesn't want, he doesn't want to be at a meeting for doubles anonymous, but he missed work today with Dana, and

he's feeling pretty low, he owes her this.

The door swings open and in Dana walks, all sunshine and popsicles, that is, until she sees

Jalen. Her face turns sour, like orange milk left in a car on a hot day, I'm surprised to see you at the meeting, Jalen, Ding says, "Then she adds her eyes as stern as the back of boat, we need to talk after." Jalen can't look at her, he knows he laid an egg, gummed up the investigation by going

a wall, then the meeting starts, and Jalen forgets about his day for a bit. The gang lets him tell his story, talk about his fears, his challenges, he tells them he learned that his original self was a "louse," a "twit," and "of," and maybe his crooked as a hockey player's grin. He admits it's hard to accept that he is the double of a deadbeat.

The strangers assure him that he is different, they are not we, we are not we, is the mantra of double synonymous, and Jalen feels admired, like a bronze idol, or a snow leopard. Dana was right, Jalen thinks, "double synonymous is the bees' knees, the spiders but the hornets fedora." He thinks Dana in front of the whole meeting, but her smile looks as phony as a $3 bill

that was hand drawn while writing a bike. Jalen is over the moon, happy as a rocket, a landslide.

“He has so much to talk to Dana about, but Dana says she has something very important.”

It's about the case, I do too, Jalen exclaims. He tells Dana about Alana about how she came to him today, how she is now the top suspect in his own murder. Jalen believes she killed the original Jalen in a fit of jealousy and revenge. I mean, that Casanova had it coming.

Jalen adds, maybe not, the big sleep, but he needed a knuckle sandwich at least. Jalen loves Alana, but doesn't trust her. She's wild-eyed and unpredictable, not like the Alana he wants new. This Alana was a canyver, with more plots than a Brooklyn bone yard. Jalen was in over his head, both smitten and terrified.

Dana takes a deep breath and says calmly, "Elana is the least of your worries kid." Dana scans the rec center parking lot, they're alone. She tells Jalen what Diane found in the original Jalen's files. See, Jalen was Marcus Phanston's bookkeeper, and according to Diane, the books, Jalen kept were ringers, setups, fake aruskeys.

Dana said if this spreadsheet was a false front, then there must be a real ledger somewhere and Dana found it. It was hidden in Jalen's computer under the file name, boring old numbers who cares don't even bother looking.xls. This original Jalen was a trickster, a grifter, a con, a real shifty lizard.

This spreadsheet was for an LLC called JR Financial Services, and it proved that the donation

from Bancden never made it to the college, instead it went to this JR.

“That's right, Jalen Rutherford, Dana says, "I think your double crossed his boss, and”

was going to Launder, Vancden's move law for himself."

That's it.

Jalen's staffs may be Ilana killed the original Jalen and stole the money.

If I play my cards right, Dana interrupts, "Hold your ponies," I found one other thing. I visited the corner again to go through Jalen's belongings.

“I found just key ring with his apartment keys, a car key, and one other key.”

Dana pauses for effect, and says, "A key that fits the lock on Marcus Vancden's library." Of course, his trusted bookkeeper and assistant would have a spare key, but the room only locks from the inside, Jalen says, "Ah, but if he had a special accomplice," Dana says,

"a shapeshifter, another angel, a sentient patch of haze, even."

Jalen gasks, or a ghost, he says. Ilana had said the original Jalen was cat and round that brought from Pine Cliff, a girl with a body that won't quit, but a body you can't touch. A lady like that could walk through walls. That's the ticket, Dana exclaims, vanced and discovered the deception, confronted Jalen,

and Jalen and this immaterial girl bumped off the billionaire.

By Golly, Jalen says, "You've cracked this case, cracked you wide open boss?"

Then, another voice, "Hey, Dana, hey, Jalen." From behind a Dodge Grand Caravan in the RECCenter parking lot steps a man in Jeans, a T-shirt,

“and a baseball hat that says, "Sheref's secret, police."”

I was just hiding under this minivan, eavesdropping, says the undercover copper, and it sounds like you're really making headway on those murder cases. Dana agrees and asks if the secret police have been hitting the bricks, sucing out purps and the like, "Oh, no, not at all." The flat foot says, "Mirters are really hard to solve, but it looks like this one is getting

pretty easy. We can take it from here." What? Dana says, "A rest this man," the law man calls out, "many undercover officers emerge from beneath cars and grab Jalen Rutherford." "You're under arrest for the murder of the angel, Marcus Fantston." They tell him, "No, not me. It was my double who did it."

Jalen's double-shouts, and we don't even have proof of that, Dana pleads. "Well, you're the closest-looking thing we have to the murderer." The cops explain, as the prowl cars slither away under clinically white streetlights, Dana stands dumbfounded and alone. She knows she has to solve these murders and soon. But if it turns out, Jalen was Vance's killer and not Kip,

then the fuzz could make trouble for Jalen's double the likes of which Elana couldn't even imagine.

“And who murdered Jalen, that jealous mall Elana, that greedy breeze of an accomplice?”

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