"If you are lucky enough to have lived in New York as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for New York is a moveable feast." -Ernest Hemingway (updated for the 21st century)

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Real Life Colombo (pt 3)

The Story So Far....


Dan has -no, fuck it, I can't be assed to go through it all again!


If you want to catch up, go through the archive! Now's a good time, also, because i found the original 1st part, which i sent out as an email (it's called How My Troubles Began)



Now read on:


So. I now have a new prime suspect in my case


Would you like to see a picture?


Huh?



Huh?



Of course you would, and I'd be happy to oblige:




Look at him

Notice the eyes set slightly too close together (not unlike our soon-to-be ex-president)

He has the sloping brow and cranial bumpage of the career criminal!

(Not that I believe in phrenology -that was dismissed as quackery over 160 years ago1)

Anyway, this fellow's name is Christian

He is, coincidentally enough, also a Christian2

A Christian called Christian, ha ha

Not only that -he is a gay Christian

(Not that I care that he is a gay Christian -that whole schism in the church over the issue of gay bishops etc; I really, really couldn't give a flying fuck)

But his religious/sexual orientation has a certain bearing on the case, as we shall see


As you can see from the photo, Christian is in his late 30s/early 40s

What did I say about people of that age working/staying in a youth hostel?3

He even hit on me one time

Not that I mind being hit on by gay men; I find it flattering (usually)

But this guy -urgh!

Here's how he did it too:

[imagine his voice as this very nasal, american drawl]


HE: “Are you ABSOLUTELY sure you're not gay?”

ME: “Sure I'm sure. I break gay hearts every day. Why?”

HE: “I just find it very hard to imagine that such a wonderfully flamboyant character as
yourself could be straight.”

ME: “Hey your lot haven't cornered the market on being wonderful and flamboyant y'know. You might think you have. But you haven't.”


Brrrrr!

I had another issue with him too -one that we had a minor falling out over: cigarettes.

Christian smokes -but never has cigs: NEVER. I wouldn't mind so much that he bums them off me4; instead he does something I find really annoying: he “nickels and dimes” them off me

Nickel and diming, for those who don't know, is offering to buy a cigarette with a handful of shrapnel

I hate it because it puts you in a position where you feel you can't refuse because you've been offered legal tender, even though you don't want shrapnel in your pocket -and, this is the important bit, the other person knows that too. That's why they never offer a quarter -in case you accept. It's extortion, of sorts, but so petty it's not worth kicking up a fuss about

However, one day l lost my patience with it and said I wouldn't give him cigarettes anymore unless he was going to buy some, or at least stop with the nickel and dimes

We didn't really speak much after that; I could care less

But he found a new way to get his cigs:

Christian is one of the night shift staff

The night shift has the power to decide when to kick everyone out of the cafe bar if we're partying

So Christian starts to say that he'll shut it down -unless someone sorts him out with some cigarettes

Now that really IS extortion!

What a prick

(and, lest we forget, a supposed Christian)

But don't let the above lead to believe that I had an agenda against Christian

Honestly, the guy was barely a blip on my radar -just another slightly strange hostel person

But I zeroed in on him when everything was kicking off between me and darryl

He was hovering around the periphery looking extremely nervous

When we took it outside, he stuck his head out the door and back in again TWICE

(Like he wanted to know what was going on, but didn't want to SEEM too concerned)

Ho-ho, I thought, that's interesting

In Colombo, you will recall, the Rumpled One somehow intuits who the murderer is as soon as he arrives at the scene5 and then spends the rest of the show building a case against them

So, if i'm playing real life Colombo, I guess I better follow suit

OK. Let's start with Means, Motive and Opportunity


MEANS: Christian was working the nightshift the first time I thought my wallet had been stolen (and was shooting my mouth off about the $200 inside). So he knew there was money in the wallet. He has the MEANS.


MOTIVE: The oldest motive in the world (and coincidentally one of the Seven Deadly Sins): GREED6. And as the “nickel and dime” thing demonstrates, he never has any money. He has the MOTIVE.


OPPORTUNITY: He lives in the staff basement, and seeing as he was working the night shift, he wasn't sleeping. He has the OPPORTUNITY.


And because he is a Christian (or supposed-Christian) that helped to answer “one more thing that had been bothering me...”

[scratches head, flips through notebook, puffs on cigar stubb]


I couldn't work out why the money had been taken out of the wallet and the wallet replaced in my pocket

If i'd been the thief I would have taken the wallet, taken the money out the wallet -and then thrown the wallet into the nearest public trashcan

I was so drunk that night, when I discovered my wallet was missing my first thought would not be that the wallet had been stolen -i would have assumed i'd dropped it somewhere when I was off my head

I probably would have tried to retrace my steps, ask if it had been handed in at ding dongs, the front desk

And then when it didn't turn up, regretfully write it off as another piece of costly drunken sketchiness

Say no more

But because only the money was gone, I straight away knew it had to be theft

The thief has, from the get-go, put themselves in needless danger

What kind of person would do that?

Well first of all it screams “amateur”, but I knew that already -the basement is full of amateur thieves7

But then I tried putting myself in this person's shoes

Perhaps this person has ethics

(Skewed ethics, but ethics nonetheless)

They really want the money -have made whatever justifications they need to take it- but they don't want to totally screw me

The wallet had both my debit and credit card inside

If they disposed of the wallet i'd have no money and no way of getting any, in a foreign country

This person could say to themselves, “I took the money BUT I left the wallet” and feel good about themselves

What kind of person?

Well, religion, and Christianity in particular, is filled with moral equivocations of this kind

We need look no further than our beloved President, himself an Evangelical Christian, who has personally sent felons to the gas chamber as Governor of Texas and as President sanctioned the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians -and felt righteous in doing so.

A religious mind can find right in doing wrong

So I decided to keep a close eye on Christian the Christian

This wasn't easy because he wasn't around much over the next couple of days

I did find out though, in the course of my investigations, that Christian was leaving the hostel in a couple of weeks; more circumstantial evidence: if he was going, he might feel emboldened to take the money as he would have only a few days of having to occasionally see his victim

But on Friday I saw something that had me 99% convinced

I'm in the cafe bar, chillin, when Christian comes in

I observe him surreptitiously

The first thing he does is take a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and go out to the smoking area

(Like I said before he NEVER has cigarettes)8

Then when he comes back in he buys food from the cafe bar

He never does this either

He uses his change to use the cafe bar internet

A bit later on he goes back to the cafe bar to break a twenty -a twenty- to get more change for the internet

I've never seen Christian with cigarettes

I've never seen Christian buy food from the cafe bar

(I've never seen him buy ANYTHING)

I've never seen him use the cafe bar computers -which are expensive- ever

This dude suddenly, two days after I got robbed, has money

Hmm, could there be a connection, d'you think?

I couldn't believe it

I mean, this guy is either incredibly arrogant or incredibly stupid (or, I suspect, both), to come into my cafe bar and start breaking twenties -my twenties- right in front of my eyes!

What. The. Fuck.

So I shared my suspicions with a couple of people I could trust

Their opinion was that I should take it out of his ass

But i don't have any proof

Doesn't matter, they said, just get drunk and pick a fight with him, you can't let him get away with it

Well, fighting is not my style

(It can't be when you are a skinny wretch like me)

I prefer brains over brawn

And besides we are playing Colombo, remember, not Dirty Harry

Colombo doesn't beat confessions out of people

No no no

He fucks with their heads


Find out how I go about doing that next time!


TO BE CONTINUED....



1But, of course I'd say that: I have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter! (© The Simpsons)


2Or perhaps, not coincidentally: maybe he is easily led: one can only wonder what might have happened had his parents named him Buddha, or Judea...


3See post Freek City


4That “Can I bum a fag?” joke has been said so many times at the hostel now it's becoming anti-funny.


5A reader of this blog (who knows who he is; cheers!) sent me the following, by critical theorist Slavoj Zizek, on Colombo's seemingly preternatural powers of detection. If it hasn't appeared in Private Eye's Pseud's Corner then it ought to:


'In the TV-series Colombo, the crime (the act of murder) is shown in detail in advance, so that the enigma to be resolved is not that of "whodunit?", but of how the detective will establish the link between the deceitful surface (the "manifest content" of the crime scene) and the truth about the crime (its "latent thought"), how he will prove to the culprit his or her guilt. The success of Colombo thus attests to the fact that the true source of interest in the detective's work, is the process of deciphering itself, not its result (the triumphant final revelation "And the murderer is…" is completely lacking here, since we know this from the very outset). Even more crucial than this feature is the fact that not only do we, the spectators, know in advance who did it (since we directly see it), but, inexplicably, the detective Colombo himself immediately knows it: the moment he visits the scene of the crime and encounters the culprit, he is absolutely certain, he simply knows that the culprit did it. His subsequent effort thus concerns, not the enigma "who did it?", but how should he prove this to the culprit. This reversal of the "normal" order has clear theological connotations: the same as in true religion where I first believe in God and then, on the ground of my belief, become susceptible to the proofs of the truth of my faith; here also, Colombo first knows with a mysterious, but nonetheless absolutely infallible certainty, who did it, and then, on the basis of this inexplicable knowledge, proceeds to gather proofs… And, in a slightly different way, this is what the analyst qua "subject supposed to know" is about: when the analysand enters into a transferential relationship with the analyst, he has the same absolute certainty that the analyst knows his secret (which only means that the patient is a priori "guilty", that there is a secret meaning to be drawn from his acts). The analyst is thus not an empiricist, probing the patient with different hypotheses, searching for proofs, etc.; he embodies the absolute certainty (which Lacan compares with the certainty of Descartes' cogito ergo sum) of the analysand's "guilt," i.e. of his unconscious desire.'


6Certain apologists for the thief have come to me with the following excuse: “You have to understand there are very poor people in the basement, people who sometimes don't know where their next meal is coming from, and $200 is just too much temptation.”

Well, I had this to say in response: “You do not need $200 to fill your belly. You can fill your belly with $2. $2 of bologna, sure, but $2 nonetheless. In fact a 'starving' person could have taken a twenty out and left the rest; I wouldn't have noticed. To take the whole $200 is naked greed, pure and simple.” In fact, it's more than greed. It's GREED and SLOTH: they're taking money I earned, so they don't have to work themselves. There are poor people in that basement because they can't be assed to get a second job, despite living in a city with a superabundance of vacancies in the “services” sector. Perhaps they have too much PRIDE. And if they DID spend that whole $200 on a blow-out meal, that's GLUTTONY. (Can you see where I'm going with this?) Or perhaps they took that money out of ENVY that I have that kind of disposable income. Or perhaps a petty dispute over, say, cigarettes could make them enRAGEd enough to steal the money out of retribution. Or, um, -I'm reaching now- this person could be, er, addicted to dirty phone lines? And needs money to feed their LUSTful habit?

(one, two, three... seven! Got em all in there! ;-P)


7In the aftermath of the robbery somebody (I forget who) told me that if I live in the basement I should EXPECT to get robbed. First of all: I was only in there ONE night. And second of all: Jeez, how do you people LIVE like that?


8I wish now i'd gone out there and scabbed one of him. But I didn't think quick enough. Esprit de l'escalier...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You need adrian monk in your life. It's detection like columbo, but way more tidy.