17 May 2009

Occam's RAZR

It was on a sunny Spring day like today, Watson, on which El General, whose acquaintance I’d had the pleasure of making over a year prior, summoned me.

On this particular day, Noon found me strewn across the 3-seat maroon sofa in the living area of my rooms. I was in one of my throes from which you’ll recall I suffer, during which time my mind craves so much for stimulus that I withdraw from life completely in its absence. How I wished for some narcotic to give me even the will to turn my body that I might watch TV. Such as it was, however, that seemed impossible.

Shortly thereafter, a heavy knock came upon my dark-wooded door. I ignored it at first, as well as the second, louder, more insistent knock until I heard the distinctive slide and click of a Glock pistol being readied for action. My visitors were about to kick down my door and take me with force! Finally, I thought, some excitement!

I sprang from my position of repose and jumped spryly to the door, which I opened quickly and much to the surprise of the foot soldiers I later learned were sent on the errand of obtaining me. So quickly and with such fortuitous timing did I open the door that the younger and less tattooed of the two—from the follow-through to his great kicking motion—fell over and into the apartment past my left leg. I retained as straight a face as I could, though you, I believe, would have noted my slight smirk of satisfaction.

“Hello, good sirs. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“You Sherlock Holmes, puto?” asked the older and more decorated man.

“The very same,” I replied with a slight bow of my head.

“El General sent us to get you.”

“Ah yes, El General. A wise man if ever there was one. Well, then, what reason did he give for me to leave my most fascinating researches?”

Just then, the younger thug, who’d now righted himself from off my floor, put the muzzle of his gun to the back of my head. “He said we could kill you if you refused, ese.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that, sir. But if that’s the case, please feel free. I expect that you’d receive the same treatment were you to return without me in tow. Go on, then. No? Very well, then, what did El General offer to lure me from my rooms?”

The gun was withdrawn at a nod from the senior grunt in front of me, who simultaneously produced a small—very small—baggie of cocaine; an answer to my prayers! I pocketed the token of esteem and eagerly followed the gangsters to their cheaply lowered El Camino; telltale grey dust caked to the rear of it revealed it had been lowered by cement bags, at least one of which had broken some time ago.

We drove an indirect route meant to prevent my ability of finding El General’s compound on my own, but I noted it carefully should the need arise. Hollywood, Burbank, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Venice... Finally we came to a long and inconspicuous driveway in Inglewood, which, with an approving nod from a plainclothes guard, we turned onto and drove slowly down. The drive was narrow with tall brick walls on either side, making any unwelcome visitors easy prey to the men El General could station on either side; very clever. We came to a crossroads and made a sharp left turn onto a new, less coarse type of gravel composed doubtless of large and flat smooth stones of the type one might skip across the water at a lake. This had to be the way to the posh living portion of El General’s estate.

Once the car was parked, I was ushered into a large two-story house, shown to a comfortable sitting room and offered drink, which I refused. There I waited for not less than thirty minutes before El General drew open two doors and greeted me with his hand.

“Sherlock Holmes! I am very sorry to have sent two such disrespectful children to bring you to me. I promise they’ll get theirs for the way they treated you, ese. Please, sit.

“I have a situation with which I can use your help,” he said and produced a black Motorola cell phone, which he tossed to me and which I quickly studied. “I think my wife is cheating on me. This is her phone, but I can’t crack the password to look at her texts. Can you?”

I looked closely at the phone using my magnifying lens and quickly—and perhaps not with proper emotion—let El General know that his wife was likely faithful to him, though his two new mistresses of poor means were having a Lesbian affair with each other.

He looked at me seriously for a moment, and then erupted into a roar of laughter. He motioned for some companion to join him, whom he next addressed: “See? I told you there was no fooling him!

“Sherlock, how did you know? What gave it away?”

“Well, sir, the phone is older and the fingernail polish chips of paint cheaper than what your wife must surely keep upon her person, meaning the phone belongs not to your wife, but to some other woman of lesser means. The battery is of a slightly different shade of the phone’s body, indicating the battery was purchased aftermarket, something only done by someone budget conscious or having poor credit, given the going price of a RAZR2 versus the price of a battery. There are two sets of female fingerprints roughly diagonal to each other on the back of the phone, suggesting two distinct hands using the phone a great deal. While women lend each other their phones all of the time, there being only two sets suggest these women are very, very close, likely intimate for there to be so many instances of them. Also, when it was closer to my face, I detected two scents of perfume lingering about the phone, further suggesting two women, both of whom used the phone a great deal. That it’s an old phone and that the nail polish is cheap suggest that you only recently started seeing these two women.”

He laughed more and patted his dumbfounded companion on the back most vigorously, who then produced several $20s which he handed to El General.

“Surely, though, you didn’t bring me here for parlour tricks, General.”

“No, my friend, no I did not, but I had to prove to Carlos here that you could be trusted and were just the man we needed. Come, let me show you to my den and we can talk business.”

And so began my second contact with El General, the rest of which I shall record for you shortly. Suffice it to say for now that the simplest solution to any problem is usually Lesbianism.