It was me who found the body. Me who had to explain to three uniforms and then two detectives why (and for that matter, how) bitter old Ernst Bremmler had managed to seal himself airtight within three giant translucent plastic bags, and thus enclosed, to blow out his brains with the 1816 Kentland flintlock pistol, avoid any puncture of plastic, any besmirchment to his study’s Bakshaish camelhair rug in his otherwise spotless Bristol Heights home, and neatly contain every drop of his own bitter old blood.

By the time the Bristol Heights cops were satisfied with my statement and cut me loose, it was me who had choked down three Styrofoam cups of the wretched Bristol Heights Station’s House Blend, declined multiple brands of offered cigarettes (every one of which I wanted), and left the station with a matching set of aches for my back and head, the bulk of my Monday morning spent in an unpadded metal chair in a smoke-stained, fluorescent-lit, piss-yellow interrogation room.

It was me who had spent nearly all of June hunched over my keyboard, rigorously tracking the movements and whereabouts of bitter old Ernst Bremmler’s only living relative, one Niles T. Bremmler, now living as Nelly Bean, more or less gainfully employed at a strip club in Moscow with a French poodle, a heroin habit, and no wish whatsoever to reunite with her long-estranged, bitter old father. 

It was me who had arrived this very Monday morning at Bremmler’s well-manicured Bristol Heights Colonial home to deliver the hard copy of my final report—the big strokes of which I’d conveyed to him by phone late last night—and finally to get paid for it. It was me who had, at precisely 0700h, pressed Bremmler’s doorbell nigh unto a dozen times before I gained entry by slightly less-than-lawful means (the part of my statement about which the Bristol Heights detectives were slightly less-than-understanding). 

And it was me—though bitter old Ernst had been so meticulous, so thoughtful, so deliberate, and so conscientious in his preparations to depart this world and leave no stain upon it—me who got stiffed, and left the Bristol Heights Police Station that morning with nothing but my aches as compensation for nearly a month’s work.

Ernst Bremmler, 85, (formerly) of Bristol Heights, had set his affairs well in order, had thought of everything apart from one outstanding invoice to a contracted researcher, one Yankee—

(me)

—who now sat in the Five-N-Dine, sipped a coffee only slightly superior to the Bristol Heights Station’s House Blend, and seriously pondered the prospect of finding myself another line. I had no other clients. Had only now-moot plans to zero out a stack of overdue bills when bitter old Ernst would finally scribe my name on that nice, fat check with his shaky, spotted hand.

I doubted the senders of those bills would have much sympathy for the suite of sorrow and psychic ailment that had driven my client to climb inside three refrigerator-sized plastic bags with a double-layered, 8-inch square of 3/4-inch birch plywood, an antique flintlock pistol, and a roll of duct tape. He had successively taped shut each of the three layers of plastic (outermost-to-innermost), held the plywood block behind his head, the tip of the barrel behind his upper front teeth, and cashed in his earthly chips right there in his immaculate, oak-paneled study. Left the place as clean as a surgery theatre. Left a note to his attorney on his avocado green desk blotter. Left me broke.

And so it was, as I sipped the cup of consequence and munched the rye toast of affliction, that this job arrived out of nowhere, like manna from heaven, like a St. Bernard’s brandy cask in an Alpine blizzard. Given the dismal state of my finances, I accepted with all of my heart and none of my brains.