A Mystery to Solve

It was the Fourth of July. Start of the month and I was down to my last bucks. I had got no job offers
in over two months. I played with my small Rubik’s Cube. Solved it for the thousandth time in the
month. In the dark alley I was alone. I fished my pocket for a cigarette but found only a matchbox that
too was down to its last four matches. Down on the ground lay a few cigarette butts. I picked the
neatest looking one and lit a match to the small cigarette I had put between my lips. I dragged two
drags and threw it away. Exhaling smoke and spitting after. The dark alley had found in me its sole
inhabitant and I was trying to find in it a mystery. A puzzle. Or maybe the movies had gotten to me.
All the detectives strolled around the dark alleys. The dark alleys held a mystery of their own. Maybe
they would give me one to solve.

I was a private detective. The few of them still alive in the non-fictional world. Last few years had
been tough. No big cases come my way. Usually a month involved 2-3 cases of checking up whether
someone’s spouse was cheating. I loathed these cases and played around with the clients for a few
weeks. Asking them for money to find evidence. Yeah I am tracking the guy down. I would tell the
jealous husband. If someone had to hire a private eye to find out if their woman was cheating on them
then indeed their woman was. They suffered a denialism and were paying someone to speak the truth
for them. They needed the truth not a detective. I fed the denialism. After some weeks I would tell
them hey your woman is clean no man found. They would believe because they wanted and I would
get paid for doing nothing. Just telling a lie. A lie that would make them feel nice for a little while.
Both me and my client went to bed happy. And their woman too with some other man.

But I hadn’t got the opportunity in a while of fighting even such cases. I looked at the ground and then
picked another cigarette butt. The brand of this particular cigarette reminded me of a case I had
solved. I smiled, pulled in three drags and thought of the salad days. My very own Sherlock days. I
had solved a big burglary mystery. The burglar had broken in a jewelry store and stolen all the jewelry
leaving no clues. Only cigarette butts.
The owner told me the police had said it was a closed case with no shot at getting to the criminal. The
criminal had done his job efficiently I agreed to that but wherever men went they left a piece of them
and that piece could help us find our way to that person. That’s what I told the owner and assured him
that I would find the criminal.
Smokers are particular about their brands. I looked at the butts. They were of this particularly rare
brand that usually only woman chose to smoke. I drove around town finding all the shops that stocked
this brand of cigarette up in the vicinity and there were less than ten. In these less than ten shops only
in three had a guy and not a girl bought a packet of smoke during the day of the burglary and the day
before. The men behind counter at these three shops promised to ring up when the guy who had
bought those cigarettes around those two days arrived again asking for the cigarette. I told the owners
of these shop tell the men to wait a while after making the purchase. What do I tell them? They asked.
They had won a lottery for being the lucky customer buying that cigarette and a carton full of that
criminal loved smoke was their prize. I knew through by experience that smokers love more smoke
especially when it came free.

The first call arrived the same day. I went for the check. The man was old and could hardly walk at an
average pace. Too slow to do burglary. More the molestation material. Looks aren’t deceptive usually
and mostly a mystery is resolved in a quick educated glance. A good guess. That’s what the courts did
too. They just took longer than I did.

The second call came. The guy was big. Murder material. I struck a conversation. Asked him what he
did. He owned a big gym. The biggest of the area. The owner glanced at me smilingly as if thinking
he had helped me hunt my catch. Nah I shook my head smilingly signaling the truth at him and asked
for a packet of my brand of smokes and left. Have a good day I told the murderer before leaving.
Maybe I would catch him in some other case someday. I felt satisfied as I left. I knew the final call
would lead me to the burglar.

Next day the call came. I raced to the shop. The guy had asked for five packets of the smoke while he
usually bought a single one the shop owner told me over the phone. I entered the place and glanced at
him. He was skinny and looked like someone who wasn’t a criminal. That’s how the burglars usually
looked. He also looked too happy for someone who smokes. I approached him while he waited to get
his prize. Have you heard about the lottery win that the cigarette led to? I asked. He was gonna reply
but before he could I struck my right hard against the left of his face and said it was a rhetoric and the
answer is a thousand dollars for me.

I smiled at the flashback and was brought to life by the cigarette finishing between my fingers,
burning them. I was neat. That guy was the burglar. He got 20 years in prison. Now he must be in his
fifteenth. I used to be good. Used to be or still am? It was the industry that was in decline not me. I
was still as sharp as ever. I pulled the Rubik’s Cube out. Messed it and then solved it again in a
manner of some seconds. I heard sirens in distance. Someone had called the police when they should
have called me. It had begun to rain. My nostalgia was heavy for the clouds. I picked up a cigarette
butt. Too damp. I threw it into a puddle that had formed. I sighed at the thought of all the criminals
behind bars because of me. Then my stomach rumbled and I began to walk back in the rain. I had to
make money. Now that was a mystery to solve.