Hannibal's First Case

Monte got me watching this Veronica Mars television show, mostly because the star’s best friend reminded him of himself. I have to admit, the character reminded me of Monte too. He’s just a little older but he has the same looks, the same clothing style and the same smart mouth. Anyway, one night he came over so we could watch it together and like so often with TV, we got into a conversation about how close to reality it was. With his tennis shoes perched up on my coffee table Monte was doing most of the talking until he got to the question of age.

“The big problem with the show,” he said, dredging up a handful of popcorn out of the bowl, “is that nobody in high school goes around solving mysteries.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Now I think about it, I solved my first mystery in middle school.”

“What? I got to hear this.” Monte said. “Was it a murder?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” I told him, opening another root beer and taking a drink. “It was just a robbery. This was when I lived in Germany with my mom. We were in the stairwells in Berlin.”

“Wait. You lived on the stairs?” Monte sat up straighter and paused the TiVO.

“That’s just what they call it over there when you’re in an apartment building in quarters,” I explained. “You had to go up this narrow stairwell to get to your place. We were on the fourth floor. This one time I was coming downstairs and I saw Mrs. Whitmore crying on the stairs. She was this nice white lady who lived on the first floor. She still had her coat on, so I knew she had just come in.”

“A coat?” Monte asked. “Yeah, I guess it gets cold in Germany, huh?”

I had to smile at that. “Monte, living here all your life you don’t know what cold is. It was Christmas time, and you can bet it was well below zero outside. Anyhow, there she sat crying and her son was there too. Jimmy. He was in my class. We called him the toad.”

Monte started chuckling through a mouthful of popcorn. “The toad?”

“Well, he was an ugly kid,” I said. “Straight black hair in bangs in the front, kind of short and squat with these glasses thick as coke bottle bottoms and crooked teeth in front.”

“Yow. He must have took some crap in school.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Anyhow, his mom was in tears so I asked her why. She said she had got robbed.”

“Wow, a real robbery?” Monte was turned to face me now, like I was the TV. “What did they get?”

“She said all her good jewelry was gone. The door was kicked in while she was at work at the Exchange and Jimmy the Toad was out playing. Everybody knew our dads were in the field and that’s when these things happened.”

“In the field? What, like a farm or something?”

I sometimes forget that Monte doesn’t know anybody in the Army. “Her husband was in the same artillery unit my dad was in before we lost him in Nam. When they went on a training exercise it was called being in the field. Anyway all the dads were always having to be gone at the same time.”

“So what did you do?” Monte asked. “There was no witnesses, right?”

“Well, that’s just it. Jimmy said he saw the thief leave the apartment. He said he was coming in from playing and saw this guy come out his door. So he was at the other end of the hall, too far away to chase the guy, who went out the back door of the building.”

“Did he get a good look at the guy?”

I had to grin at that, and took time to drink some more of my soda. “Jimmy described him pretty well. Tall guy, red hair, with a thin scar under his right eye.”

“Well that would make the guy easy to spot,” Monte said. “Sounds like Jimmy gets the collar for that one.”

“You think?” I asked. “Some detective you are. Anyway, that’s when my mom came downstairs and asked what was going on. Mrs. Whitmore went through the whole story again and when she was finished I added my little bit. I told her Jimmy was lying, and he probably took the jewelry himself.”

“What? That’s cold man. Why’d you say that?”

“That’s just what Jimmy asked. I told him he couldn’t possibly have seen that kind of detail across the hall without his glasses on. So he says, `I always have my glasses on. You know I’m blind as a bat without them,” in that whiney voice I used to hate.

“Did the grownups believe you?”

“Well his mother sure wasn’t going to,” I said. “So I told him to go back outside. I’d go to his door and hold up fingers for him and he could tell everybody how many. He went out. I went down the hall to his door. I waited a couple of minutes, and then hollered for him to come back in.”

“I don’t get it,” Monte said. “Could he see your fingers?”
“Don’t really know,” I admitted. “When he came back in and his mom saw how fogged up his glasses were, she knew he couldn’t have seen a thing. So she knew he was lying about having them on and seeing a thief. When he took them off he couldn’t see much at that distance, so either way, he couldn’t have seen a scar on a guy’s face.”