COSMIC DISCO BOWLING
"What the hell?"
Across the parking lot, Kavi ducked from the driver door of her van. Coat belted against the cold, she jogged to Harris. Icy wind whipped at them both.
"Arthur texted you, too?"
"Yup." Harris pulled a hand from his pocket, revealed a file folder teeming with photocopies. "He told me to bring all the case files I'd gotten from Dalkowski."
Kavi shook her head and headed toward the entry. "But why meet at Rainbow Lanes? The Family Bowl is literally four blocks up the street. This place is a dump. I wouldn't take the kids here without a compliment of tetanus boosters."
They strolled into the entry portico, its water-eaten wood melting.
"Harris, do you...," Kavi sighed. Even out of the wind, she leaned close, lowered her voice. "Arthur is acting stranger than usual. Do you think he...?"
Harris shrugged, pulled open the front door. "Only one way to find out."
Rainbow Lanes unfurled in 24 dingy, dank bowling lanes. The ceiling felt low, always threatening to buckle and rain asbestos over your head. Missing drop tiles gave the ceiling a sort of uneven, sinister grin. The only visible 'rainbow' came in the variety of carpet stains. And despite Mayor Finnegan's outlawing indoor smoking some years previous, ghosts of Marlboros past still hung thick. A row of ancient arcade machines—Galaga, Donkey Kong, Centipede—lined the back wall.
"Ah," Kavi pointed to the far end of the lanes, "there's Arthur."
Arthur stood at lane 23, a bright yellow ball held in both hands. He waddled to the throw line like a penguin guiding its young. He swung the ball between his legs and heaved. The ball traced a high arc and landed with a loud kathunk! before immediately rolling to the gutter.
"Apparently," Harris said, "you're not a golfer."
Arthur, red faced and hair askew, turned to the voice. "Harris! Kavi! So glad you could join this little soiree."
Arthur swept a hand toward the scorer's table. A trio of glasses stood beside a closed pizza box. Two glasses brimmed with flat beer, the third drunk to its soapy dregs.
"Have you had the pizza here?" Arthur said, his voice a few clicks louder than needed.
Kavi wrinkled her nose. "Not willingly."
"And I hope you both like lite beer," Arthur raised his own empty glass, shook the bubbles to his lips. "Gary at the bar has directions to refill the empties with Milwaukee's Best Light."
Harris stepped to Arthur, sniffed. "Are…are you drunk?"
Arthur shook his head. "I had a social engagement during happy hour and, as a result, am well lubricated. Sue me."
Kavi stood, hands to hips. "I was cold-calling publishers all afternoon, trying to find even a whiff of motive, working my ass off, and you're here getting drunk?"
"Any luck? Any of them strapped for cash?" Harris said.
"They're fiction publishers, Harris, they're all broke."
Arms waving, Arthur shot to the rack of mis-matched bowling balls behind them. "Who wants to bowl the next frame?"
Kavi turned back to the entrance. "I don't have time for this."
Arthur swooped around, restrained Kavi by the shoulders. "No no! Our victory party has just started, you can't leave."
"Victory party?"
"To celebrate our impeding freedom." Arthur spun to Harris, almost toppling in the process. "Did you bring the crime scene reports?"
Harris pulled the flimsy sheets from his coat.
"Excellent!" Arthur clapped. Tottering, he walked to the ball return and hefted a bright pink 12 pounder. "Let's bowl a few frames, and then the real fun can begin."
Harris, with a shrug, swiped one of the glasses and drained it in a long, glugging gulp. He raised the empty toward the bar behind them. "Another Caucasian, Gary!"
"How about this instead," Kavi swiped the bowling ball from Arthur. "How about you tell us whatever the hell it is you want to tell us and we go home to our families while we still can? From the very start, from Tuesday night when you showed up late to our meeting, you've been nothing but evasive."
"Evasive? I'm not evasive." Arthur leaned close to Kavi. "I'm British."
"We know you didn't go home the other day after court," Harris stepped forward, the three of them forming a small triangle around the scorer's table. "And it's suspect that Sheila would leave her voice recorder."
"Well. If that's suspect, then this is going to be downright scandalous." Arthur flipped up the lid of the pizza box. Beneath the cardboard sat a large manila envelope in an even larger plastic zip bag. Three rows of tiny type addressed it to Sheila Talbot, 5220 Rutherford Ave., Apt. 3B, Bakersville.
Kavi oomphed the bowling ball down the lane and took the envelope. "What the hell is this?"
"Well I thought it was obvious," Arthur snatched the envelope back, dangled it before Kavi's eyes. "It's the copies of your story that were sent to Sheila, along with a note from the criminal telling her what to do."
As if for punctuation, Kavi's slow roller hit the headpin just off center and struck the rest.
"Arthur," Harris said. "Did you send this to Sheila before the robbery?"
"Me?" Arthur wrinkled his nose.
"How did you get it?" Kavi crossed her arms over her chest, glare levelled at Arthur. "Another mix-up with Sheila Talbot at Perky's? She accidentally grab your manila envelope filled with evidence?"
"Oh, no." Arthur smiled.
"No?"
"I blackmailed her."
"You blackmailed her!?"
Arthur rolled his eyes. "I can have Gary put you on the PA if you'd like to shout that any louder."
Harris stepped back, his posture softer than Kavi's. "You threatened her with the voice recorder files."
"I know!" Arthur put a hand to his chest. "It seems terribly out of character, doesn't it? But I figured, hey, if we're going to be trapped in a shitty mystery novel, I should at least act like a shitty detective. Sam Spade wasn't above blackmail, why should I?"
"Uh, because it's fucking illegal, Arthur." Kavi, exasperated, swiped the beer closest to her and drank. "This is my life you're playing with! We're not characters in some damn book."
"Oh, but we are," Arthur said. "However you want to look at it, Kavi, we're the protagonists in our own lives. We only get one shot. And if you want to live by fear, if you want to shrink under anxiety whenever the cards fall against you, then I pity you."
"Fuck off." Kavi glowed. "I don't need your pity."
"I refuse to let myself be the victim of circumstance. If I have to blackmail a shitty reporter—a reporter, by the way, who was willing to frame us for a crime we didn't commit—then so be it."
Harris sipped his beer, looked to its sloshing waves. "It's just all very convenient. Alex says it's suspicious that you go missing and then show up with this miracle evidence."
"Alex? Detective Dalkowski?" Arthur said threw his hands in the air. "Will you stop thinking with your prick, Kagan? She knows you've gone gooey for her and she's turning you against us. Wake up! She wants us to break and start accusing each other under deposition! I bet she told you to keep an eye on me, to report back to her if I did anything, quote, 'suspicious.'"
Kavi turned to Harris. "Is that true?"
"It's a complicated case." Harris could only look deeper into his beer. "Lotta ins, lotta outs… lotta strands to keep in ol' Duder's head."
Arthur crossed his arms. "Who's stuck in a fiction, now?"
"Answer the question, Harris," Kavi said.
"Fine, yes! But I'm not spying on anyone. Alex said she wants to help us. She said she only wants to find the truth."
"I'm sure she's telling you lots of things," Kavi said.
"Oh like you're much better, Kavi," Harris said, "having us chase your horny boss all around town."
"Well at least we uncovered something," Kavi said. She opened her mouth to fire another salvo but stepped back. "But...," she exhaled, "that's exactly it, isn't it? You're absolutely right, Harris."
"Please don't tell him he's right," Arthur said, "his head will float up to the stratosphere."
"We're not detectives. We're not." Kavi said. "We're pawing around in the dark. Arthur steals some voice files, an envelope. Harris, you sweet talk photocopies from the detective. I find my boss in bed with the Chief of Police…what does it prove? It proves fuck-all. We're out of our depth. I don't want to be following people. I don't want to be searching for costumes or cold-calling publishers. I want to be with my family. If we're going to prison for this, I want to tuck my kids in at night. I want to read them stories. I want to have dinner with my husband. If I'm going to be in a ten-foot box for the next five years, I'm going to need those experiences, those memories. I need that or this will kill me."
Arthur dangled the envelope. "You can't just quit."
"I can. I am." Kavi grabbed the beer, drained it to spiderwebs. "You're good people, Harris, Arthur. And for what it's worth, I don't think either of you did it. Hopefully Detective Dalkowski is telling the truth. I hope she connects the dots and we get to walk free. But I'm not going to waste my time chasing ghosts. Good luck to the both of you. I'll see you in—"
Blackness smothered the bowling alley. The ambient classic rock crackling the speakers died. For a long, chest-tight moment, Rainbow Lanes shrank to claustrophobic nothingness. Panic scenarios filled the vacuum. Suicide bombers cut the power and rushed in. A great storm killed electricity to the greater Tri-Cities area. Two massive kaiju engaged in mortal battle on the roof. The Police SWAT team finally had enough evidence to drag the Irregulars to hell, kicking and screaming.
The lights came back on over a different bowling alley. Neon oranges and yellows vibrated from the walls. Bright yellow stars sprayed across the ceiling in a hundred constellations.
"What the hell?" Harris looked all around.
Deep disco bass thumped their chests. Laser lights swept to and fro across the alleys in time with Donna Summer's desperate vocals.
"Welcome to Cosmic Disco Bowling!" Arthur spread his arms wide. Black light caught his glimmering smile, dyed his teeth purple.
Kavi, her blouse now glowing an alien yellow, doled a swift punch to Arthur's shoulder. "That's what this is about? Black light bowling?"
"Cosmic Disco Bowling."
"You're insane!" Kavi had to shout to be heard over Donna Summer.
"No," Arthur thrust the envelope toward Harris and Kavi, "I'm a genius."
Under black light, Sheila Talbot's envelope danced with swoops and whorls. Harris brought his envelope practically to his nose.
"Fingerprints?"
"Our fingerprints!" Arthur said.
"Why are you smiling?" Harris said. "If these are our fingerprints?!"
Arthur snatched the envelope back. With careful fingers, he took the smallest corner of the envelope and pulled it from its protective plastic. "Harris, could I see the sheet with our fingerprints from the jewelers? The sheet you got from our buxom Detective?"
Harris riffled through the pages in his folder. He pulled a photocopy from the rest and handed it to Arthur. "This is the counter of the jewelers. All our prints are there on the glass."
Arthur, with great show, flipped closed the pizza box and laid the envelope side-by-side with the crime scene picture. "Aha!" He clapped, bouncing on the balls of his toes. "Just as I'd thought!"
Kavi stooped over the pages. "What are we looking at?"
Arthur pointed to a fat fingerprint in the top corner of Sheila's envelope. "Look at this one here. Harris' thumb, I believe." His finger then slid over to the crime scene photograph, to a big, fat fingerprint dusted onto the glass countertop. "And compare it to this."
Harris shrugged. "The prints match. I don't get it. Our prints are on the envelope. They're in the crime scene. Why are you giggling like a buffoon?"
"No," Kavi stood straight, hands to hips. She smiled and again punched Arthur's shoulder, this time softer. "You crazy bastard."
Arthur made a show of bowing. "Apology accepted."
"What in the holy hell is going on?" Harris said. "You're both drunk!"
"The prints don't just match," Kavi spoke through a purple grin. "They match…exactly. All of them."
Harris again looked between the big, fat fingerprint on the envelope and its counterpart on the crime scene photograph. The two weren't just siblings. They were twins. Identical twins. Every whorl, every loop, even the ragged edges where the thumb had lost contact with the surface; they were exact copies. Harris looked again between the envelope, the photograph.
Every fingerprint. They all looked copy/pasted from the same notepad.
Harris swiped his beer, drank heavily. "You have to let me take these to Detective Dalkowski."
Arthur shook his head, tucked the envelope back into its plastic. "No. We can't risk losing this envelope. Take a picture with your phone, the fingerprints side-by-side. It will be enough to make her take a second look at the prints they have on file for us."
Harris fished his phone from his jeans, snapped a quick photo. "I'd feel better about this if I could take the envelope and Kavi's story to Alex."
"'Alex?'" Kavi raised an eyebrow. "On a first-name basis, are we?"
"After tomorrow morning," Harris said, "she’ll cease being our detective and hopefully start being my better half."
"Show her the picture on your phone," Arthur said. "Show her the lack of variation in her mountain of crime scene forensics. I bet she’ll see the same copy/paste fingerprints on my gun. The evidence was planted."
"I have something else," Kavi said. "I had half a mind to just drop it, let the Detective sort it out…"
"What?" Harris said.
"This afternoon, driving home from school, Gwyn said that the kid, Ross Natze, she said Ross is telling kids at school that it wasn't us that shot him."
"Holy shit."
"I called over to Mrs. Natze. She agreed to let me talk to the kid tomorrow."
"Well that's it then, isn't it?" Arthur flipped open the pizza box again, pulled a stringy, cold slice. "We're casting the shadow of reasonable doubt over the pillars of the state's evidence! Let's all have some glorified cardboard, drink carbonated dog piss, and bowl under the black lights! Tomorrow, my fellow Irregulars, we greet the sun as free people!"
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