… on a hunch, Q tracing the husband of Mrs A to the Northern fringes of the Latino-Disco Crossover Quarter, where he is rumoured to be professionally dancing the paso doble under an assumed initiaclass="underline" “O”. A largely colourful room crowded with the contours of humans; in the centre about thirty middle-aged bisexuals thrashing out symbolic acts of dance. Dubious dress codes at work: purple sequinned shirts, casual khaki slacks, Manhattan sandals… an unusual man bearing a passing resemblance to Kris Kristofferson in a lime-green rental tuxedo… a slim white cane sweeping in front of him, left to right, right to left, like the feelers of an insect socialite.
Q doubts the veracity of this disability, almost immediately…
“… did you ever dance the paso doble with Mrs A?”
Silence.
“Did you ever dance the paso doble with Mrs A and then not contact Mrs A for some time afterwards?”
Silence.
“Do you still dance the paso doble nowadays… with other people?”
“O” smiles diffidently, the expression of idyllic contentment written across his face: “Sometimes,” “O” admits, “I feel like a dead man. But I’ve made my choice. I have a certain life and I like my new way of thinking. I’m happier where I am today. I remain fairly confident of that…”
… unperturbed, Q puts on his hat… only when he looks down the hat isn’t there anymore. Instead, in the place where the hat should be: no hat, a reduction in hat-based circumstance. Out in the street, noticing almost everybody seems to be wearing hats, wide-brimmed fedoras mostly, noting how hats are central to maintaining confidence during daytime detective work in the street.
As a consequence, Q feels hatless and alone…
… the corridor adjacent to his office: an incredibly angry looking young woman in a rhinestone kilt leaning heavily against an instant coke machine. Q wondering: what is the source of the young woman’s incredible anger? Were her parents incredibly angry throughout her formative youth? Does she have an incredibly angry young husband at home? Are her clothes incredibly angry clothes? What is the significance of the incredible anger of the incredibly angry looking young woman? What is the incredibly angry looking young woman
“You are investigating these crimes not from compassion but from intellectual avarice,” she tells him – incredibly angrily. “That may sound totally asinine – but that’s never stopped me before…”
The incredibly angry looking young woman then invites Q to supper at her brownstone townhouse. Having already slept with more than five hundred young women during his investigations, Q welcomes this latest development…
“… you can disappear in this city,” explains Q. “Its belly is death… you can become entangled in the everyday nuisances here, ensnaring you like a pop career you never even wanted.”
“That’s why this city needs you,” she snaps. “Some people don’t realize it yet. Others, however, are only too keenly aware…”
“… but” – Q flounders – “my masculinity appears to have become badly eroded, over time, to the point where I am starting to feel like I’m trapped inside a bad Phil Collins song…”
“How can you say that!?” she shrieks. “That implies there are good Phil Collins songs, which, as we both know, there are not…”
… down in the square, a travelling carnival in residence: a procession of bearded ladies, Siamese triplets, marching penguins, fire eating gypsies, alcoholic strong men belittled by self-doubt… under the shadow of the big wheel, two men appearing like plain-clothed policemen, lingering across the street like plain-clothed policemen, blending in with their environment like plain-clothed policemen, smartly dressed in homburgs like plain-clothed policemen – Q suddenly suspecting that these men… might… actually… be… plain-clothed… policemen... as if to confirm the hypothesis, grabbed from behind by thick-set arms – thrust into a wall, gun pushed into the nape of the back.
“We have certain questions,” they say together, nonchalantly waggling a subpoena. “Questions of a certain nature. Concerning a certain matter. Although we are not authorized to release any further information at the present time.”
There is no struggle. Q not being guilty of anything, – other than a cheap haircut and a sexual trajectory that had roused latent curiosities, perhaps – no need for a struggle. “I am not the person who crucified Mrs A,” Q informs them, forearms wrapped around his head…
… beneath the ethereal lighting of the interrogation room, Q continues: “People are happily killing each other, cheerfully maiming themselves. And I am genuinely fearful for this city and any future implications for its general populous. Death is being interwoven, intimately connected on some level I don’t understand. My findings have surprised me on many levels. I never knew there were so many deaths of a suspiciously transvestite-based nature, for instance…”
Chief Inspector S bends forward, removes the gilt-edged silver coffee spoon from his mouth with a confounded sigh and guffaws through a quick-fire series of shuddering jowls and crumpled face-skin: “So what is it you are trying to tell me exactly?” he says, voice incredibly loud, expression extremely close up.
“People are dying,” Q tells him. “Some are vanishing. Others are being co-opted by the ghosts of the formerly living.”
“Who are these people exactly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are these people now?”
“I don’t know that either… but their lives form part of the wider investigation.”
“And how wide has this investigation got?”
“At least twice as wide as it is long.”
Droopy-eyed and sanguine, Chief Inspector S appears to be wearing a white turtleneck pullover and gold chinos, a prize Smith & Wesson half-cocked down the front of his pants like an utterly meaningful trophy. On his feet: a pair of tartan espadrilles tapping enigmatically to a soundtrack of smoothly-syncopated swing standards recreated by an authentic orchestra of recognized legal experts…
“Have you managed to reach any firm conclusions yet?” Chief Inspector S asks.
“Absolutely none,” Q confesses, “of any firmness whatsoever…”
… more deaths…
Frozen motorcylists. Electrocuted clergymen. Castrated hoteliers. Barbecued spouses. Casually skinned multi-storey car park attendants… Q occupying chairs, manipulating desktop toys, looking at women adjust themselves through digital binoculars – from high vantage points… slouching in gay revue bars, starting to feel like James Stewart at the end of Harvey… encountering an unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves – in a gay revue bar – who tells him: “Come with me and you will find the answers you seek…” before sprinting unhelpfully in the opposite direction. Following a high-speed jog through the futuristic ruins of the city, Q tails the unusually tall man in heavy-rimmed sunglasses and yellow rubber gloves to a back street, down a side alley, through a sliding door, up dark creaking steps, into the grubby hallway of a communal spa which – Q guesses – is probably funded by an anonymous pervert millionaire for his own private purposes: the enjoyment of watching strangers conduct themselves nakedly, in private, via a two-way mirror system…