The Matter of the Shredded Signature

The Matter of the Shredded Signature

Captain Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was boning up on Shakespeare because he, Shakespeare, was to be the focus of this year’s Sandersonville Renaissance Faire. And he, in this case Noonan, was to play a part. He, Noonan, had hoped he, again Noonan, would be chosen as the proverbial background man-in-crowd who, in the background, appeared to be talking to the woman-in-crowd and that would be the extent of his theatrical participation.

Such was not to be.

He, Noonan, was to portray an associate of Shakespeare in a mini-mini drama written, produced and directed by his majesty the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, Edward Paul Lizzard III. “You will be well met,” Lizzard had told Noonan though he — both Noonan and Shakespeare (if he had been alive) — did not/could not understand what Lizzard meant.

It was not going well; until and when Harriet, the office administrate assistant and purveyor of common sense, wandered into Noonan’s office and broke into verse: “Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog.”

“Nice try,” the detective snarled. “That’s from Macbeth. This,” he said as he shook the fool’s foolscafe, “is hardly of the same caliber.”

“Perhaps,” she said suspiciously confident. “But, you know, if someone . . .” She looked with faux innocence out Noonan’s office window. “ . . . were to save you from a fate worse than ignominy . . .” She tapped the top of the copy of the script in his hand “ . . . would it be worth a day of paid leave?”

“Absolutely!”

“Line Three. Guy had his signatures stolen.”

* * *

“Noonan here.”

“Captain, . . . “

“I’m not Captain until a crime has been reported. Are you reporting a crime?”

“Not sure. It’s odd. I was told you handle oddities.”

Noonan looked at a smirking Harriet. “You can say that, yes. What can I do for you?”

“Do you remember the Bob Dylan song, ‘Ballad of a Thin Man?’”

“Refresh my memory.”

“The line I am referencing is, ‘You know something’s happening but you don’t know what it is.’”

“Ah, my memory is refreshed.”

“Good. That’s me. I know something’s happening but I don’t know what it is. And I should because I’m the Warden of the Willow, Alaska, Pretrial and Psychiatric Holding Facility.”

“That’s a mouthful! I’m not familiar with the Institute. Is it a facility for the mentally ill or a prison?”

“Both. It’s a holding facility for convicted felons who are mentally unstable, both long and short term, as well as those on their way to trial who are, shall we say, showing symptoms of

insanity.”

“You meant they’re faking it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I know. I did. And what can I do for you?”

“An explanation would be great! Let me tell you what happened and then you can tell me what to do.”

Noonan laughed. “We’ll see.”

“I’m Harold Giudecca, by the way.”

“Like the island in Venice?” Noonan asked as he dug through is desk for a notebook and, looking up, gave Harriet a visual, congratulatory thumbs up.

Giudecca chuckled. “You are quite knowledgeable! Yes, my great-grandfather was born there. When he came to America in 1919 the immigration people said his real name was too long for their form so they shortened it. To the place of birth. He didn’t care; he was in America.”

“So much for history, Mr. Giudecca. I’ve got all day for you.” Noonan smiled at Harriet as she grinned over her shoulder on her way out of Noonan’s office. Then she was a gone as last Thursday afternoon.

“Great! There are four things happening at the same time. I know they are all related but I do not sure what to make of the mess. But, since it involves a felon, I’d better figure it out. That’s why I’m calling you.”

“Like I said,” Noonan smiled as he dumped the mini-mini drama written, produced and directed by his majesty the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, Edward Paul Lizzard III into File 13. “I’ve got as much time as you need.”

“OK. First, do you know what a magazine signature is?”

“Actually, no.”

“When you open a magazine and find an inserted postcard, have you noticed it is connected to another postcard deeper in the magazine?”

“Yeah. There’s a perforation so both postcards are connected.”

“Yes. The magazine pages between the two postcards are called a signature. That’s because those pages came from a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides. Then a machine folds the sheet of paper so the pages are chronological. Finally, the now-folded, single sheet of paper is cut along the edges and presto! you have a signature to be combined with others into what we all call a magazine.”

“This is all done by hand?”

“Not in the large shops. It’s done in what is called a web press. Basically, a web press is a massive machine that sucks in paper from a roll as wide as the unfolded signature from one end and spits out the magazine at the other. The rolling sheet of paper is routed through the web press and printed on both side. At the far end of the web press — and I am making a complicated task sound simple — the paper is folded and cut to make the magazine.”

Noonan shook his head. “Wait a minute. My administrative assistant told me you were missing signatures. But if the signatures are automatically created, made, whatever the verb is, how can you be missing signatures?”

“A fair question. A big operation has a web press. The Pretrial and Psychiatric Holding Facility is very small and we are using a very old press. What we do is print the signatures independently and then we have our inmates assemble the magazine. They put the signatures in place and then staple the magazine together. It provides something for them to do and they pick up skills they can use when they are released.”

“OK,” Noonan said as he wrote furiously. “What you are saying is a magazine you are printing there at the Pretrial and Psychiatric Holding Facility is made of, oh, three signatures. You print the individual signatures and then the inmates assemble the magazine together by hand.”

“Yes. We have a small printer so the magazine is small. We use three signatures to make the magazine. One is missing.”

“Missing as in it was not printed or missing as in stolen?”

‘There are other issues here — the reason I am calling you — but let me piecemeal this. Yes, the middle signature to the magazine is gone. It could not have been stolen because we are a secure facility. We know everything that goes out, particularly out of the print shop because our clients are local businesses. They are paying for a full magazine, all three signatures. Being short one signature — and the one from the middle at that — is not going to cut it. So, no, it was not stolen. It vanished. Most likely run through the shredder.”

Noonan was clearly still confused. “Why would someone print three signatures to a magazine and then destroy one?”

“Actually, I have half of that answer. It’s the other half I need from you.”

“I wait with bated breath.” Noonan held his pen posed over his notebook with ???? running down one side.

Giudecca took a deep breath. “It will be an odd story. I have to start at the beginning which is before the disappearance of the signature.”

“Go ahead,” Noonan said as he chuckled softly while looking at the Shakespearean mini-mini drama written, produced and directed by his majesty the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security, Edward Paul Lizzard III. “I’ve got all afternoon.”

Giudecca swallowed. “This story centers around an Alaskan conman, Harold Wilcox. He is the type of man who would prefer to steal a dime than earn an honest dollar. He was into everything from land swindles to caribou meat smuggling and the bulk sale of salmon fillets that did not exist. If there is an illegal dime to be made in deep water, he dives in. Even then, he’s strictly penny ante.”

“Nice fellow,” Noonan said flatly.

“Finally the law caught up with him. It wasn’t a heavy charge, selling wild game. In his case he was selling caribou, which is a wild game, as reindeer which is the same species of animals but domesticated. He’s also not a Native which is a no-no in Alaska.”

“You can be jailed for selling wild game before a trial?”

“There were a lot of other charges pending along with two felony appeals in progress, one in state court and the other with the feds. Bottom line, the judge would not release him on his own recognizance.”

“So faked insanity and ended up with you,” Noonan guessed.

“Correct. And he was trying to run his enterprises — and that’s in the plural — from his institute bed. But it has not been going well for him. The problem was his go-between. His son. His son is, shall we say, is an apple that fell miles from the tree. He’s not stupid; just moving in a different life direction. He wants to be a poet. Dad wants him to be a crook and keep the family business operational. Reginald, not so much.”

“Is Reginald expected to run the business while dad is in jail?”

“That was clearly the way it Wilcox wanted it to be. But Reginald does not have a bad bone in his body . . .”

“. . . and dad has a skeleton of them.”

“You got it. They meet often, father and son, and from the conversations, there is no meaningful communication about the syndicate business between them. Wilcox is pushing his son to be tough and collect such and such from on client or another. Reginald is talking about the complexity of iambic pentameter, similes and when to use ‘which’ and ‘that.’”

“So dad’s losing money.”

“By the dump truck load.”

“They breaks my heart,” Noonan snickered.

Giudecca chuckled and then said, “Now the story bifurcates. While dad was here, his assignment was working on our magazine. The magazine for the Institute. It’s our in-house publication, a feel-good magazine for inmates to write about their rehabilitation. Photos of their family and friends, what they did before they came here and what they are going to do when they get out. That kind of thing.”

“I’ll bet Wilcox was not keen on that.”

“Correct. So he tried something different. He wanted to put in an article on himself. We said ‘fine,’ and he spent a lot of time on it. So much, in fact when he turned it in we were up against the publishing deadline.”

“Let me guess,” Noonan said stoically. “It was six seconds before the magazine went to into that web printer thing and what he gave you was unacceptable.”

“You’ve been reading my mail! Unacceptable is a nice way to put it. It was well written but that’s the nicest thing you could say about it. Basically it was a long diatribe about how he and others of his ilk were subject to, and let me quote, “blatant discrimination by the State of Alaska and United States courts for providing what common citizens” want to pay for. Why, he claimed, he was just, another quote, “an honest businessman” and if he wasn’t the one providing some service, someone else would.

“So you pulled it.”

“Yup. Replaced it with a two-page spread of artwork and photographs.”

“And,” Noonan guessed, “he was not happy.”

“To say the least.”

“And right after that, the magazine signature with the artwork and photographs vanished.”

“Yup.”

“So why are you calling me? This seems like a pretty cut and dry case of destruction of a signature.”

There was a long pause. “Well, the story gets more complicated.”

“Uh-oh,” Noonan said.

“Truly. Since the signature disappeared we could not print the inhouse magazine and there was no time gap in our print schedule to print it again right away. So we put it off for two weeks, when the next Institute magazine was scheduled to come out.”

“Then something dramatic happened,” Noonan said flatly.

“You read this like a book. Wilcox had been ill for some time. He’s in his upper 70s. The diagnosis came back and it’s cancer. And not just any cancer, a particularly virulent strain. He’s only going to have a few months to live and they will not be pleasant months.”

“O-K,” Noonan said slowly.

“So suddenly, within 24 hours of receiving his diagnosis, he has a change of heart. Now he’s a lot easier to deal with. He’s no longer the sniveling conman he once was. Very amiable.”

“Care-ful.”

“I agree. But there’s not much he can do. That can be done. He’s here until his trial and it’s set for next June. He won’t make it.”

“What about his son?”

“Estranged I guess would be the best word to describe their relationship.”

“OK. Why are you calling me?”

“Well, suddenly Wilcox wants a poem put in the next Institute magazine. Dedicated to his son.”

“Poem?”

“By some obscure Alaskan poet. The name would not mean anything to you.”

“What’s the problem?”
“I’m not a poet. I barely read anything other than reports. I just need someone in law enforcement to look over the poem and tell me there isn’t anything like a hidden message to someone outside the Institute who . . .” he let the sentence hang.

“What’s the poem about?”

“Appears to be the tale of a con gone bad. Or good, I guess you’d say. It failed. Kind of this happened and then that happened.”

“Dedicated to his son?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t what to say over the phone. Why don’t you email me a copy and I’ll take a look at it.”

* * *

Harriet was not particularly happy to be back at work on Thursday — after taking an unexpected, extra day of sick leave.

“Did you enjoy your day off, the one before the day of sick leave?” Noonan asked when he saw Harriet two days later.

Harriet was grim. “It was tough. The Margaritas were not cold enough so we had to switch to Bloody Marys. Met a nice guy but he wouldn’t give me his name. I ran his license plate. He’s got priors.”

“Ah, the world is such a cruel place.”

“Don’t you know it. How was his majesty’s mini-mini Shakespearean whatever?”

Noonan smiled stoically. “Rain check. I had to go to Nags Head to use the library to look up a poet.”

“You couldn’t use your computer?” she said as she pointed at Noonan’s on his desk.

“Better reception there.”

“Uh-huh. Let me guess. Same with the other two in the mini-mini?”

“Terrible day for crime fighters.” Now Noonan smiled broadly. “One had to go to Ocracoke and the other to Kitty Hawk. Upset his majesty to no end.”

“Horrible thing to happen to such a nice man. What’d you find out about the missing signature?”

“Interesting. Perp dying of a nasty, fast-moving cancer wanted to put an obscure poem into a newsletter. I was asked to take a look at the poem.”

“You?! Look at a poem?!”
“It was Alaskan,” Noonan smiled and waggled his right index finger in the air, “ I have an affinity for anything Alaskan.”

“OK, tell me about the poem.”

“Narrative rhyme. About a con man who invented a new species of animal that sheds fur every year.”

“Really?”

“That’s what the con man said. And he made some fur vests for imported lizards to prove it. Didn’t work out so well. But the poet was clever. Very subtle.”

“How’s that?”

Noonan pulled a sheet of paper off his desk. “I’ll show you. You take a look at these two stanzas.”

“The treasonous flask hit the hearth with a crash

and when liquor found flame it came alive with a flash.

Zagreb started roasting before he could stand.

With the seat of his pants ablaze from the brands

he streaked from the hearth like a rocket in flight

with a pathway of sparklers lighting the night.

“Sir Trackle’s eyebrows and mustache were flash-burned from his face

as he passed the wretched hornswoggler in a mad, seaward race

until the cool waters of Salisbury Sound

wetted his clothes as the plantation burned down.

Zagreb wept in rage o’er his neatly foiled scheme

while Trackle did splash after Tlingit legs lean.

Harriet read the stanzas and then looked up. “What are Tlingits?

“Alaska Natives in Southeast Alaska. It’s spelled correctly.”

“What am I supposed to be seeing?”

“Harriet, this was kind of the conman’s last statement. To his son. He dedicated the poem to his son.”

“So?”

“His son wants to be a poet. For the son to get it, dad had to be subtle. Where he found this poem I do not know. But look at this first stanza. Note how it rhymes in couplets and each line is four beats long.”

“OK. So?”

“But when you read the next stanza, the first two lines are a lot longer. It has more beats. It was a clever addition by the poet, to make the beats of the line be feet to emphasize the con and his target are running away from the building. That’s when the conman loses everything. I think dad is telling the son to take whatever money there is and run while he still has it.”

“You think the son is going to get the message?”

“A man who wants to be a poet miss the subtly of another poem? I think he’ll see the message. If he follows his father’s advice, who knows?”

Harriet shook her head and chuckled. “Kids these days. What can you say? I’m sure Shakespeare would have something to say about that.”

“Probably. I’m more inclined to be earthier. ‘Sometimes parents are the last people on earth who should have children.’”

THE CHICHAGOF HORNSWOGGLE

Steven Levi

“On Chichagof Isle off Salisbury Sound

walrus pups feed on fresh shrimp in the round,

and moose and the caribou, dapple and gray,

forage the meadows for saplings in May,

there’s an ancient plantation, gutted and gaunt,

a crumbling of rubble a ghost wouldn’t haunt.

“The main building’s been gutted apart with such force

that the black chimney stones had plowed into the dirt.

The roof has collapsed and the walls fallen in

leaving mortar in dust piles to mix with the wind

and the ramshackle pens at the edge of the field

are grown-over with grass and by tall weeds concealed.

“Here in the Spring of Nineteen Twenty-Three

when winter’s snow pillows had dropped from the trees

and the green bloom of April painted the hills

scorched barren and brown from the last winter’s chill

was the site of the fleecing of Lord Alfred Trackle

with millions in pounds in quest of parsnackles.

“This parsnackle saga, Alaskans recall,

is a tale of hornswoggling recounted by all.

Francois Zagreb, his mind on the romp

tried hawking a township of blackwater swamp

as secluded plantation, with mansion and stables

for the crossing of bull snake and finely furred sable.

“Francois Phillipe Mendoza Zagreb,

spawn of Russian and Czechoslovak’s bed,

was known for his scams from Klawock to Haines

and westward from Juneau to Tenakee Springs.

Tlingits trusted his cards like they trusted a chair

tunneled by termites and braced with thin air.

“Zagreb had a scheme, (what hornswoggler does not?),

to skim off the cream of a millionaire’s pot

by plotting to sell a township of bog,

complete with mosquitoes and moss-covered logs,

as parsnackle plantation where he claimed he could make

a genetic crossbreeding of sable and snake.

“Once in contact with Lord Alfred Trackle

he claimed the distinction of breeding parsnackles,

a rare and strange species ‘tween sable and snake

with fur on its frame from its tail to its face,

and short, spindly legs with minimum bend

and inflamed as a badger with hemorrhoids in mend.

“He claimed they possessed, in a letter to Trackle,

the finest of pelts, this new species parsnackle,

blessed with the softest of fuzzy black hair.

These pelts could be garnered by searching the lairs

for parsnackles molt quickly in reptilian form

shedding their skins whene’er it got warm.

“Through Trackle agreed that parsnackles were rare,

he was tight with his pounds, (that’s ‘cash’ over there),

so he packed his sea lockers with clothes for the north

to see this plantation and gauge its true worth

for the price tag was high, to say the least,

Trackle would see the spread first before inking the lease.

“But Zagreb was set with a tightly-knit plot

for he’d already secured Rancho Chichagof,

bought from the Tlingit for six cases of gin,

two pounds of tobacco and seventeen fins.

The sable he stole from a sourdough sot

and the snakes were imported from a Frisco pawnshop.

“When Trackle arrived, green to the teeth,

Zagreb smiled like a wolf in the clothing of sheep.

He’d constructed a mansion with cobblestone stables

for this genetic crossbreeding of bull snakes and sable

and his wife had been sewing fur jackets with zippers

to be pinched ‘round the bellies of iguana lizards.

“At the sight of the beasts, Trackle was stunned —

not to mention the hooch which smelled strongly of rum

served by young maidens in the sheerest of clothes

their busts barely covered and, from their hips to their toes,

wore split skirts of otter exposing lithe limbs

wrapped in most alluring, satin smooth skin.

“As Trackle got tanked from his toes to his gills

Zagreb praised the ranch and its stock as a shill

who sews paddles of beaver to alley cat pelts

or waters the whiskey to make more from each belt.

Speaking to Trackle with the charm of a priest

he produced from his pocket a pen and the lease.

“Trackle stepped forward, the pen in one hand,

flesh in other on the lay of the land,

but in his excitement his toe caught a crack

and sideways he pitched striking his host on his back

Together they rolled under tables and chairs

’til the flagon of rum was launched in the air.

“The treasonous flask hit the hearth with a crash

and when liquor found flame it came alive with a flash.

Zagreb started roasting before he could stand.

With the seat of his pants ablaze from the brands

he streaked from the hearth like a rocket in flight

with a pathway of sparklers lighting the night.

“Sir Trackle’s eyebrows and mustache were flash burned from his face

as he passed the wretched hornswoggler in a mad, seaward race

until the cool waters of Salisbury Sound

wetted his clothes as the plantation burned down.

Zagreb wept in rage o’er his neatly foiled scheme

while Trackle did splash after Tlingit legs lean.

“The sable and lizards flew into such rages

they toppled the cobblestone walls of their cages.

The bull snakes broke free and headed for ground

into any odd holes that could wherever be found.

And the rest of that summer the Tlingits all ate

loin of roast lizard and ribs of bull snake.

“Now all that is left of this famous plantation

is a jumble of rubble. Of Zagreb’s creation

all that remains are the cobblestone cages

and an allusion in script upon history’s pages,

a footnote of the tale of Lord Alfred Trackle

almost hornswoggled by pelts of parsnackles.”

[You can find Steven Levi’s impossible crime novels at www.authormasterminds.com.]