Death is Eternal #339
Sunday. March 12, 2023. 5,502 words.
What will this Death is Eternal look like? No idea! All I know is that it will be a long one because Harvey Turpin is back. But other than that, I have no idea... Ok, that’s a lie. I have a small idea because I know what I want to write about. But is this enough for me to know what the newsletter will look like? No. But it’s more than, “I have no idea.” Be it as it may, let’s see what the future brings.
Contents
Harvey Turpin: Private Investigator (intro)
Harvey Turpin: Private Investigator
Writing: Prompts
Bye!
Restaurants
Last week (March 6 to 12, 2023)
This week (March 13 to 19, 2023)
Death is Eternal review #185: Batman: Fortress by Gary Whitta, Darick Robertson, Diego Rodriguez, Simon Bowland, and Ben Abernathy
Death is Eternal review #186: Batman: One Bad Day: Bane by Joshua Williamson, Howard Porter, Tomeu Morey, Steve Wands, Jessica Berbey, Dave Wielgosz, and Ben Abernathy
The end
1. Harvey Turpin: Private Investigator (intro)
After a brief hiatus, here’s the fourth and final draft of Harvey Turpin: Private Investigator. Can you spot the differences between this draft and the first one? More importantly, do you think the story is better now than before? I hope so! Otherwise... Well, I don’t even know what to do if you think the first draft is better. So, please, don’t think the first one is better than this one!
2. Harvey Turpin: Private Investigator
Harvey Turpin had been miserable for the last few weeks. The private investigator hadn’t had a case since the last one, the murder of a wealthy boy—that, in the end, wasn’t a murder, but rather, it was merely a foolish kid that believed a rascal woman. Turpin had been drinking himself to oblivion since he solved that one. It was always like that. Drinking, investigating, solving, rinse and repeat.
By the way, the P.I.’s glass could use some rinsing; but we’re not here to talk about his lack of cleaning habits. No, we’re here to tell a story that you know how it begins, how it will evolve, and how it will end. After all, aren’t all noir stories the same?
“I need a case!” Harvey shouted to himself while slamming his fist on the table.
The empty bottle of whisky rolled to the floor, and the glass would do the same if the P.I. hadn’t acted fast. So fast that one could think the overweight drunk-as-a-skunk investigator could never be that quick. And he couldn’t, usually. But there was still whisky in the glass...
Harvey emptied the glass. Someone knocked on his door. Just when he was about to throw the glass onto the floor, pissed about being out of whisky and the lack of cases.
Needless to say, it was a femme fatale with a new case. After all, if it weren’t, there’d be no story.
The blonde woman was wearing a red dress, as expected. She smelled like perfume and money and clearly didn’t belong there. Her makeup was smeared, a clear indication that she had been crying.
Harvey didn’t know his life was a mere fiction created by someone else with deadlines—yet?—but he knew when a new case had just entered his office. After all, most of his cases had started with a rich blonde woman in a red dress entering his office. And more importantly, most of his cases ended similarly: with a somewhat happy ending.
Will this be like the others? When I was writing, I had no idea. Now, I’m editing, and I can assure you: it was a pale imitation.
“Please, help me,” the rich blonde woman in the red dress begged.
Harvey, who was struggling to speak just moments earlier, now seemed like a respectable gentleman. If the woman stayed away, she’d never know he was drunk.
The P.I. offered the chair to the woman while saying, “How may I help you?”
She sat down while he went to his chair on the other side of the desk. It was an excellent desk. The nicest thing in the office. Harvey’s great-grandfather made that desk many years ago; it was the most precious treasure of the Bullock family—it was the only treasure of the Bullock family.
The P.I. offered a tissue to her. She took it but never used it. It was as if she was afraid of ruining the makeup… She was afraid of ruining the makeup because, as you all may know, the woman hides a secret Harvey will uncover during his investigation.
“Please, tell...”
The woman interrupted Harvey with her story—after all, this story can only have a max of 4,000 words; that doesn’t leave much space for world and character building; it’s one or the other.
“My name is Blake...”
Think Blake Lively, although the name came after searching for “femme fatale names.”
“...and my husband was murdered last night,” Blake cried a tearless cry.
Harvey analyzed Blake as she delivered the news. His instincts were screaming that there was something wrong.
“Why didn’t you go to the cops?” He asked.
“I can’t,” Blake said while still crying a tearless cry.
“Why not?”
Before answering, the blonde in the red dress with the perfectly blurred makeup closed her eyes as if trying to gather some strength to tell the tale. In reality, she was merely rehearsing her story one last time.
“You see, I think the cops did it...” Blake confessed in a burst. As if that truth was too scary to tell, and there was no other way to say that information out loud. She could never say; she could only confess everything at once.
Harvey could smell the sweet perfume that Blake used, but not as much as he could smell trouble. The P.I. had a history with the cops, an ugly one—as all noir stories, and as all noir stories, the investigator is also a war veteran with PTSD; wouldn’t it be nice to say that’s a problem from the past?
Harvey knew what to ask after Blake’s confession, but he was afraid. Not of the investigation but of the beating the cops would give him as he dug into the case. “Why would the cops murder your husband?”
Blake looked deep into Harvey’s eyes and said, “My husband was Bryan Reynolds.”
Yes, Bryan Reynolds. Since we’re down this path, let’s go down hard.
Harvey felt a chill go up and down his spine. Not only did he know the name, but it was also the first time Blake had been honest. He didn’t like that.
“So, you’re Blake Reynolds?” She nodded. “And why come to me? Your husband surely has enough manpower to uncover the truth.”
“I don’t trust them,” Blake confessed. “They’d do anything to take what my husband has built for him,” she quickly corrected herself, “for us!”
“A man full of enemies, eh?”
“One could say.”
The two fell silent for a couple of seconds. Harvey thought about what he should do, while Blake wondered if the investigator believed her lies.
“Who knows this?” The P.I. broke the silence.
“You and me,” Blake said.
“How is that possible?”
“My husband doesn’t work in the mornings. He’s usually asleep, so people don’t bother him before lunch.”
“Tell me, how did you find the body?” Harvey asked while moving himself in his chair.
“Every day, I wake up an hour earlier than him. He doesn’t like seeing my face when I’m not wearing makeup. I wake up before him so he doesn’t have to see my true face,” Blake started to cry; tears were coming down her eyes this time. “When I get back from the bathroom, he’s already up. Today, he wasn’t. I found it weird but didn’t give it much thought. ‘Maybe he’s tired,’ I thought. I went to have breakfast. Almost an hour went by without him waking. That’s when I decided to ask if he was okay...” her voice trembled.
It was the first time she saw a dead body, Harvey thought.
“So, only the two of you were in the room?” Harvey asked.
Blake looked down, pretending she was trying to stop crying. In reality, she was hiding a smile. She knew the P.I. would think about her as a suspect. I’m ready for this.
“Yes,” Blake whispered while still looking down.
“Anything unusual happen during the night? Did you hear a sound or anything like that?”
“A sound? Like, someone trying to sneak in?”
“Maybe,” Harvey said while confused by what Blake had said. His instincts were screaming, but there were so many, and they were so loud he couldn’t understand what they were trying to say.
Um, that’s some inventive imagery right here.
“No, I didn’t hear a thing,” Harvey was about to say something, but Blake was quicker. “But, now that you mention something unusual did happen last night. You see,” she looked past the P.I. as if she was trying to see what had happened the night before, “Bryan didn’t like to see me without makeup. So not only I woke before him, but I also had to go to bed after him. But due to the... nature of his business, sometimes he needed to work overnight. Whenever that happened, he called to let me know I could start my bed ritual because he would sleep at the office. That happened last night,” Blake seemed shocked, even angry. It appeared she was blaming herself for not noticing this before.
Harvey smiled; now, the gears were starting to spin. “Still, you woke up next to him.” Blake nodded. “Did this ever happen before?” She seemed confused. “Was this the first time he called saying he was going to sleep in the office, but when you woke up, he was at home?”
“Ye-- Yes.”
Harvey scratched his forehead. He could see how the case would unfold. He had worked on one too many cases not to know—which is funny and somewhat ironic because even the mastermind behind the story doesn’t know how it’ll unfold since, unlike the protagonist, that’s his first case.
“How long do we have before people discover the body?” The P.I. questioned.
The woman in red looked at the tiny and elegant clock on her wrist, “About half an hour, if we’re lucky.”
“How long does it take to get from here to the house?”
“Ten minutes,”
Harvey jumped from the chair while grabbing his coat and hat simultaneously, “Hurry! We don’t have time to lose.”
The pair rushed to their cars. It was the first time Blake smelled the whisky in Harvey, while it was the first time Harvey felt Blake’s skin against his. She seemed indifferent, but he was far, far away from indifference.
Harvey and Blake rushed through the city and got to the Reynolds house in about ten minutes. They made their cars go as fast as they could—which wasn’t much because both had Ford Ts—and got to the crime scene in record time.
Harvey parked his car outside the mansion while Blake waited to give him a ride past the gates. No one questioned her; everyone knew better than to do that. However, all the men working for Mr. Reynolds noticed Blake driving a man inside. And not any man, Harvey Turpin. They all understood that if the most famous P.I. in the city was there, something big had happened or would happen.
“No one discovered the body... yet,” Harvey said while entering the mansion. “Otherwise, this place would be surrounded.”
Blake smiled. It was the first time she could see why Harvey was such a big deal. “So, we got lucky.”
Lucky that there’s a word limit to the story.
“Show me the room. We don’t have much time,” Harvey ordered.
When not working a case, Harvey was an unhappy and insecure drunk. But when on a case...
Blake carefully opened the door just enough to let them enter. There was no one else with them in the corridor, but better safe than sorry. Harvey entered, followed by Blake. She quickly closed the door. When she did it, she put her ear on the door, trying to listen for any noise. There was none. Blake allowed herself a sigh of relief. She then turned to see the room; it was exactly like she had left it before going to Harvey’s office. The only difference was Harvey.
The smell-like-whisky detective was looking at Bryan Reynolds’ body; he was taking notes. Blake walked slowly. The P.I. was looking at the dead husband with so much attention that she didn’t want to distract him—actually, she was trying to get close enough to read the notes without Harvey noticing what she was doing. But Harvey was on a case, and as such, nothing got past him. When Blake started to discern the letters, he closed the notebook and turned to her, asking, “Do you think someone was here? Do you think someone contaminated the crime scene?”
Harvey’s speed startled Blake. One moment she was almost reading the notebook; on the other, the P.I. went back to interrogating her. That’s why people think you’re the best. At first, no one thinks highly of you. But then, you start working, and everything changes. I must say, I’m impressed. You were good enough to fool me.
“No,” Blake answered without fully knowing if she had understood the question.
“And do you see something missing?”
Blake looked around. That was the time she had to do her best acting.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said while starting to wander the room as if looking for something that should be there but wasn’t. “Do you think this was a robbery?”
“I don’t know what I think. But if something is missing, I’ll start thinking it’s a robbery,” Harvey lied.
Not that he knows the answer; if he knew, the story would end here. Why drag the reader if he could explain everything already?
Blake had rehearsed that part over and over again. That was her moment to shine. Now, it was the moment to free herself by making Harvey look the other way. Blake needed to be a magician, attracting Harvey’s attention to one hand while the trick happened on the other.
“Wait,” she said while looking at a painting, “this isn’t right. Literally, look,” Blake called Harvey, “it’s not aligned. It’s too much to the left.”
Got it? It’s not right because it’s too much to the left... Sorry! And, yeah, there’ll be a safe behind the painting.
Harvey didn’t think twice; he moved the painting and revealed the safe. The safe wasn’t wide open; it was open just enough to show someone had opened it.
The P.I. pulled the door and saw that the safe was empty. He turned to Blake and asked, “What did your husband keep here?”
“I don’t know. He never showed me!” Blake started to cry, a tearless cry. “All I know is what he told me.”
“And what did he tell you?” Harvey was doing his best not to scream at her.
“That this was important. Whatever was inside the safe, it was his most precious treasure.”
Harvey thought about a million things, but not what it really was. If he’d focused more on the sentimental and less on the monetary value, the P.I. would’ve solved the case much faster. But Harvey is from another time, so he’d have to go through all the steps before even thinking about the correct answer. And even when he discovers what it indeed was, he’ll fail to understand why everything happened because of that small thing. Maybe in the future, he’ll understand. Now, that’s an idea for, like, the last book of a collection of ten books focused on the character. A circle closing and whatnot...
“You swear you don’t know what...”
But before Harvey could finish his question, a maid entered the room. She looked at Harvey, who was grabbing Blake and looking pissed at her, then she saw Mr. Reynolds’ dead body. She did what she could. She screamed. While she screamed, Harvey let Blake go and cursed.
Ten seconds after the maid started to scream, three men appeared. At this time, Harvey was already smoking a cigarette while Blake ran to the maid’s side, begging for help. The three looked at the scene, and the moment they saw the dead body, they prepared to attack Harvey.
As the fists started to fly, one of the men said, “That’s how you always find the guilty part, huh? You killed them, and then you blame someone else?”
Harvey was outraged by the accusation, but it was three against one, and soon there’d be even more. So, he didn’t say anything. He just protected his body to the best of his ability. Not long after the beating began, bodyguards swarmed the room. Blake and the maid were nowhere to be seen. The beating stopped when Mr. Reynolds’ right-hand man entered the room. At this point, Harvey was bleeding profusely over the expensive carpet.
“Well, well, well,” Daniele Totti said when he entered the room and saw the scene, “Harvey Turpin. To what do we owe the honour?”
Harvey sat on the carpet and reached into his pocket for another cigarette. Slowly, he started to smoke and get up. The men almost shot him when he reached for the pocket; the bodyguards thought he was going for a gun. But neither he nor Totti said anything to stop the men from shooting. Totti wanted to see what Harvey would do, while the P.I. needed to show he wasn’t afraid of the family.
As he got up, he pointed to Mr. Reynolds. Totti looked at the boss and didn’t even try to hide a smile. “Was it you?”
Harvey didn’t answer.
“I figured,” the right-hand man then looked at the men and ordered, “Leave us.”
The men hesitated. Not because they thought Harvey was the one to blame—everyone there knew the investigator, some were his drinking buddies, others had used his services in the past, and one even spent Christmas in Harvey’s house once. No, they hesitated because with Mr. Reynolds dead, there was no leader. If they obeyed Totti now, they’d be giving the power to him, and everyone wanted it for themselves.
Totti was ready to shout the order again, but he didn’t have the chance. As he prepared to scream, they all heard police sirens getting close.
“What did you do?” Totti asked furiously to Harvey. He felt betrayed. He knew the investigator would never kill Mr. Reynolds, but involving the cops was too low.
“C’mon, you know that I know better than that. Chances are the cops are going to pay y’all a beer while putting me in jail for a week without meals,” Harvey’s mind wandered to whom would’ve called the cops.
Blake? If she wanted the cops, she would’ve gone straight to them. The maid? Would she do something like that without orders? Someone set me a trap, and I fell for it.
“I hope you’re telling the truth,” Totti threatened.
“Y’all know I am.”
Everyone in the room nodded—everyone except Totti.
“All right, all right, all right, what do we have here?”
Blake, Reynolds, why not a little McConaughey?
The bedroom was practically empty. All the men ran downstairs to hide whatever they needed to hide before the cops stormed the mansion. Upstairs, only Totti, Harvey, and Mr. Reynolds were still in the room. Harvey still bled a little, but Totti had let him use the bathroom to freshen up a bit.
“O’Keeffe, what is the chief of police doing here?” Totti asked, trying to appear as intimidating as Mr. Reynolds once was.
“Someone called us,” the cop dismissed Totti as if he were nothing. “Now, why is it that whenever there’s a body, there’s you, too?” He asked Harvey.
“People know I’m better at this than you are,” Harvey answered candidly with a smile.
O’Keeffe hit the P.I. in the stomach with his baton. Harvey bowed, holding his stomach while trying to breathe; the cop followed him and whispered, “I finally caught you.”
“What do we have here?” O’Keeffe walked to the bed. After investigating the body for half a second, he said, “Well, seems pretty straightforward. The detective here tried to create another case for him to solve. The wife and the maid found him as he was trying to escape. He went for the wife but forgot the maid. She called us. But you,” he looked at Totti, “found him first.”
“That’s...”
“Are you sure you wanna go down that road?”
Harvey didn’t say another word. He knew he’d have a hard time in jail, and there was no need to make things worse.
“Well, today was a good day,” O’Keeffe said while handcuffing Harvey. “Good luck,” he said to Totti.
Totti tried to put on a brave face, but he failed. The “good luck” made it clear that the war that was about to start wouldn’t be easy. Worse, with Mr. Reynolds dead, even the cops would want to grab the spoils. Totti knew he didn’t have what he needed to win. So, he ran and never looked back.
There should be a whole scene of Harvey in jail here, but no planning means running out of words too quickly. So, pretend you read about the P.I. getting beaten, tortured, and going days without food and sleep. Also, know that he was thinking about the case and almost solved everything—only one missing piece.
“Harvey, you’re free to go,” a cop said.
If it weren’t for the sad expression on his face, Harvey would think it was another trick. “Thanks,” he said while using all his strength to walk away from that hell hole.
From the police station, Harvey walked to his office. And he wasn’t surprised when he saw the room open, his files on the floor, and Blake sitting on his chair with her legs on the desk.
“You took your time,” she joked.
“I had to stop and buy that,” Harvey showed a whisky bottle; it was half empty already.
“That’s how you celebrate when someone frees you from jail?”
“No,” he took a sip, “That’s how I mourn solving a case.”
Wow, that was excellent writing! 4,000 words and only two lines worth remembering; no wonder it’s all self-publishing around here...
“Did you, though?”
Harvey sat down in the chair Blake once sat in. “I did,” he took another sip, a long one this time. “You did it... No, you let it happen.”
Blake lost her speech.
“You see, I understood what happened when I saw the body. But that’s just part of solving a mystery. I needed to know the why. What’s the fun in solving a mystery if you don’t uncover the reason behind it?”
Blake was still speechless.
“I saw the stain of blood on Mr. Reynolds’ pillow. His lips were also too red for someone dead. So, he died while vomiting blood. You listened, and you did nothing. I’m even willing to bet you turned him a little to make sure he’d choke. The thing is, you couldn’t’ve gotten rid of the evidence alone. But when the cops showed up, everything made sense. You and the maid acted together. So, while you prepared the mansion for the cops—by the way, thanks for framing them and giving enough evidence to the cops to arrest every member of the family—she called the cops.”
Blake wasn’t crying. Still, tears rolled down her cheek.
“What I don’t understand is why. Why would you do that? Mr. Reynolds may’ve been a criminal, but he was a good one. He kept the city clean. No wars. No struggles. Hell, he truly loved you! When he said he was working, he was actually working and not cheating on you...”
“Will you tell the cops?” Blake was afraid. Really, really afraid. But Harvey saw she wasn’t scared for her.
“Only if you don’t tell me the why,” Harvey knew that wasn’t right, but he needed to know.
Blake threw a passport to Harvey. He took it, opened it, and finally understood everything.
“He wasn’t an angel,” Blake said. “Everyone thought he was. But he wasn’t. He was the worst kind of devil, the one no one sees.”
“How long did you know?”
“Always.”
“Why didn’t you do anything earlier?” Harvey asked. “I would’ve helped you!”
“No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t’ve believed me. No one ever did,” for the first time, Harvey saw Blake crying for real.
“Go, I won’t tell a soul.” Blake hesitated. “Pinky promise.”
Blake smiled, got up, kissed Harvey on the forehead, and went away.
Yes, that’s the end. The passport was in the safe, but why did Blake not steal it before? And the maid, who is she to the femme fatale? And what did Bryan do to her? If only I had more words...
Harvey took a sip of the whisky as Blake went away. He thought about the case. Would I've done the same in her position?
The P.I. thought about the question for half an hour, and in the end, he said, “I wouldn’t.” He drank the rest of the bottle and felt the proper mourning process begin.
The end
3. Writing: Prompts
I know prompts are very helpful for some, but for some unknown reason, I find them annoying. I find them, as I aforementioned, highly limiting. Not being able to use my creativity to come up with a story it’s something that I don’t like. I like to challenge myself to come up with something, and I feel that prompts take out this part of the challenge. I keep asking myself, “Am I writing this because it’s my idea, or am I stealing from someone else that read the same prompt?”
So, obviously, I’ll have to use a prompt during The writer’s studio’s (TWS) cross-genre month.
I’ll try my best to come up with the best story I can, but it’s hard to do the best you can when, while doing, a voice keeps telling you that maybe, just maybe, someone had the same idea as you. And while I’m fully aware that having the same idea doesn’t mean coming up with the same thing—after all, each artist has their own way of seeing the world, the prompt, and telling a story—I still don’t like the feeling of “you’re not as creative as you could be.”
Anyway. Writing prompts don’t work for me. That doesn’t mean they’re useless. Some people can come up with fantastic material from them. However, it’s not just because it works for some that it’ll work for me. Artists need to learn and respect what makes us better at our craft. In this case, to me, that means avoiding writing prompts.
4. Bye
Here’s where we say our farewell to the free subscribers. If you want to read the rest of Death is Eternal, consider becoming a paying subscriber. If you already are a paying subscriber, first of all, thank you very, very much! And second, I’ll see you on the other side of the paywall.
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