Harvey Turpin, Private Investigator, in “The Mirage of Love”
Nova Loncastre, 1924
Gasping for air, Harvey’s gravelly voice sliced through the thick tension, “I’ll nab ya... someday.” His words, whispered as if confessing to the shadows, hung heavy in the dimly lit alley. Leaning over, hands on his knees, beads of sweat traced weary paths down his furrowed brow.
Who is Harvey Turpin, Private Investigator, you ask? Well, dear reader, let me shed some light. Picture your quintessential 1920s noir detective—sharp, rugged, and with a heart of gold. Here’s the expected twist: Harvey’s got a bit of a dance with the bottle. His life goes like this: Drinking, investigating, and solving. Rinse and repeat. Currently, he’s in the solving phase, specifically, the “catching the bad guy stage.” And wait, there’s an unexpected twist! Me! The omniscient narrator! Also, where can you uncover this and all his past exploits? Right in my very own newsletter (GiovaniCesconetto.Substack.com). Now, let’s plunge into our narrative...
“I ought... to stop...” Harvey’s gravelly voice trailed off, hanging in the smoke-filled air. A confession scratched in the dim glow of a flickering streetlamp. Quitting the bottle, however, danced on the edge of impossibility, a line Harvey dared not cross.
Leaning heavily on his knees, breath thick with the residue of stale cigarette smoke, the private investigator lingered in the aftermath. The spectre of the villain had vanished into the nocturnal maze, leaving Harvey enveloped in the shroud of his own futility. He craved more than the cessation of breath-stealing fatigue; he hungered for redemption that seemed as elusive as sanity in a mad world.
In the solitude of the abandoned alley, he grappled with the ephemeral nature of resolve. It was akin to the fleeting sensation of health after sickness, a memory fading into the shadows of past wellness.
“Well, now I just have to outsmart him because I won’t be able to outrun him since he’s an athlete.”
The guy wasn’t an athlete. Not even close. He just didn’t drink and smoked his days away, like Harvey did.
The words emerged as a quiet declaration, wrapped in the smoke and shadows of Harvey’s inner turmoil, a chess move on the gritty board of the city’s underbelly.
Ten minutes ticked away, each one dragging its leaden weight on Harvey’s shoulders before he could muster the will to set one foot in front of the other. The act of walking, usually a testament to human grace, became a laborious dance with exhaustion and the ghosts of failure.
Yet, pride, the thickest armour in Harvey’s arsenal, barred him from succumbing to inertia. The alley’s cold embrace, where he tasted the bitterness of defeat, was too much to bear. More than the sting of humiliation, it served as a silent reminder of his vulnerability. He had no choice but to keep moving, for stagnation would be a concession to the shadows that loomed ever-present.
The private investigator, with the weight of the world etched on his haggard face, made his way to the sleek black automobile parked under the jaundiced glow of a streetlight. The engine roared to life, punctuating the night’s hushed symphony with the growl of horsepower.
Harvey contemplated a detour to the client’s abode as the tires rolled over the unforgiving asphalt. It wasn’t just a visit but an uninvited intrusion, a silent assertion of his dominion over the case. The client’s house, now a nexus of secrets and conspiracies, beckoned him—a chessboard where Harvey moved pawns and kings alike.
Is it home where you leave your toothbrush? If it is, then Harvey has no home. But, he left much of his whisky at the client’s, which meant feeling at home to him.
His foot eased on the gas pedal, the engine humming in tune with his ruminations. The vehicle cut through the night, slicing through the darkness like a prowling predator. The office awaited a sanctuary tainted by the scent of cheap whiskey and the residue of unspoken truths. Harvey Turpin, a sentinel of the night, pursued his path through the noir-laden streets, where every shadow whispered a secret and every corner held the promise of revelation.
The exhaustion clung to him like cigarette smoke in a speakeasy. Tired and sore, Harvey, the silent architect of shadows, resisted the urge to seek solace in the abode of the blonde woman. He wouldn’t voice the turmoil within; wisdom and stubbornness stitched his lips. But in the quiet of the night, he was acutely aware that love, like a clandestine rendezvous, was creeping in, unwelcome yet undeniable.
The Model T, a relic of an era stained with sin, found its haven in the laneway behind Harvey’s office. Each step up the creaking stairs resonated with the physical toll of the chase. “Oh, yeah, I’ll be sore tomorrow,” he muttered to the room, the echo of his own vulnerability reverberating in the empty space.
In the sanctum of investigation, Harvey’s gaze fixated on the murder wall—a tapestry of shadows and sins. The narrative unfolded with a void, a single name eluding his grasp. The absent puzzle piece, the kidnapper’s identity, lingered like a spectre.
GUY.
“That’s not even a name. It’s how you call people you don’t know!” Harvey’s disdain, a growl in the dark, echoed through the room. The escape of the enigmatic Guy, a phantom slipping through his fingers, fuelled the ember of frustration within Harvey.
“So, it was him the whole time...”
The words hung in the air, half a question, half an affirmation, as Leona, the unexpected interloper, materialized. Her presence rattled Harvey, an investigator usually impervious to such disturbances.
“What are you doing here?” Harvey’s voice, a raspy serenade to the night, pierced the silence as he reclaimed his ancestral desk.
“I saw you drive by. I saw you look up and consider going up, and, more importantly, I saw you giving up,” she declared, her gaze locking onto Harvey’s. “I want to know what happened.”
The fear Harvey harboured crystallized in her eyes.
“Leona...”
“Don’t, Harvey. Just don’t.” She descended to her knees, her plea woven into the fabric of vulnerability. Leona, an apparition in silent supplication, clasped Harvey’s hands and pressed them against her forehead. A prayer uttered in the language of desperation.
“Leona...”
They lingered in the sacred silence of unspoken truths. Harvey, the sentinel of the night, pulled Leona to the chair and then descended to his knees. In the sanctum of his office, Harvey assumed a posture of prayer, a dialogue with a higher power tainted by anger and resignation.
Instead of a primal scream, Harvey exhaled a weighted sigh, a requiem for the unravelling tapestry of secrets.
He was madly in love with Leona.
I wished I could show how Harvey fell in love, but I don’t have space. Also, do you think this is going nowhere? I’m trying to write this because of the deadline, but I don’t know what the story is about. So I’m just typing and typing and hoping I’ll have an idea. So, if you think it’s going nowhere, believe me, I have the same feeling.
“He fled from me, slipping through the shadows like smoke through a keyhole. I tracked him down, and though we had an agreement to apprehend him together, my desperate desire to be your hero led me astray,” Harvey confessed, the words stumbling from his lips, burdened with shame. The confession threatened to draw forth tears from the seasoned investigator.
His impulse was to justify himself, elucidate the events that transpired, and construct a narrative that would cloak his defeat in the fabric of heroism. Yet, the truth, a relentless pursuer, held him captive. With Leona, a client with ties woven deeper than mere business, deceit proved elusive.
“Oh, Harvey,” Leona’s voice hung in the air, an enigma of forgiveness or resentment. Entangled in the complex web of emotions, even she couldn’t decipher the precise nature of her utterance. Strong sentiments for the investigator mirrored his own.
“I found him once. I’ll find him again,” Harvey vowed to Leona, though the promise echoed more in the chambers of his resolve than it did for her. Love tethered him to her, but the sting of being outsmarted by a man named Guy added salt to the wound.
“Oh, Harvey,” Leona repeated, her intent clearer this time, a discordant note in the noir melody. Harvey, attuned to the rhythm of his own existence, sensed an unsettling cadence.
“You don’t trust me anymore?”
“I do! I promise I do!” Leona’s sincerity, a symphony conducted by her every fibre, reached Harvey’s ears. Yet, her body, words, and the unspoken ‘but’ intertwined into a dissonant melody.
“But...”
“But I’m afraid Guy will hurt you. This time, he didn’t anticipate you. You caught him off guard. But the next time, he’ll be ready. You don’t know him, but I do. I understand his capacity for malevolence, and I can’t bear the thought of losing you. I can’t bear it!” Leona’s tears flowed, an unmasking of her concealed affection for Harvey. The fear of a final showdown between Harvey and Guy left her vulnerable.
“He might be quicker than I am, but I’m meaner. If he hadn’t bolted, I’d have had him. I’ve been to Hell and back... multiple times. This kid doesn’t ruffle my sleep,” Harvey asserted, the grit of his words a testament to the wars he waged within himself. Small and fragile, yes, but battle-hardened. A war veteran, a former cop, and now a private investigator seasoned in the trenches of the city’s underbelly, he stood prepared for whatever trials Guy could unleash.
“You swear?” Leona sought reassurance.
Harvey’s smile, a cryptic response, satisfied Leona’s uncertainty.
“Here’s his address,” Leona whispered, placing a slip of paper in Harvey’s hand.
The revelation hung in the air, palpable yet implausible. The orchestration of their lives unfolded before Harvey’s disbelieving eyes and ears. A nightmare, perhaps, yet more vivid than any borne from war-torn dreams. For Harvey, wrestling with the demons of PTSD, reality intertwined with the surreal.
“We orchestrated everything,” Leona confessed, her tears forging rivulets down her cheeks. “Guy and I... Guy, the father. Ignorance was our accomplice. Our penchant for risk transcended casinos, leading us to stake our child in this perilous game. Our offspring and you,” she admitted, shame etched on her tear-streaked face. Harvey glimpsed the fractured pieces of her soul and heart.
“What...” Harvey began, his inquiry cut short, a symphony of unasked questions lingering in the room.
“We spun the perfect scheme: a gamble between us, laced with deception to keep the thrill alive. I wagered that you couldn’t capture Guy if I tipped him off about your every move. Guy, stubborn as they come, insisted you were the best; no amount of manipulation could thwart your determination,” Leona laid bare the intricacies of their plot, her words devoid of emotion, an automaton recounting a twisted narrative. “But I lost.”
Harvey’s gaze hardened. “The child?”
“Safe at home. He shares his afternoons with me while you are out chasing shadows.”
“So, I’ve been chasing a mirage?” Harvey’s inquiry cut deeper than the surface of the case, the enigma of their shared reality unravelling.
Leona nodded.
“Why confess now?” Harvey’s perplexity sliced through the room. “Are you angered by your defeat? Enraged that I’ve outsmarted you?”
“I never fathomed falling for you. That wasn’t part of the grand design. I believed I could manipulate you from a safe distance. I miscalculated,” Leona admitted, her confession an echo in the hollow space of their unravelling plot.
Speechless, Harvey bore witness to her unravelling truth.
“I couldn’t exist without you. You’re my vice. Yet, I acknowledge your current indifference. The moment I confessed, I became a walking corpse in your eyes. I knew Guy would never permit me to leave with you. Regrets are scarce in my life. I don’t lament the ease of taking a life. But I rue the agony of witnessing my child’s demise at my own hands. More than that, I lament observing the metamorphosis in your eyes—from love to hatred towards me.”
A fit of coughs seized Leona, her stoic façade succumbing to a river of blood. “But I don’t regret loving you, Harvey Turpin. Nor do I regret being the one case eluding your mastery.”
Harvey’s heart wavered between salvation and surrender as Leona’s lifeless form crumpled to the floor. Rationality prevailed, the harsh reality that he couldn’t salvage her from her self-imposed demise. “Poison,” stated Harvey. Another love withered, sacrificed to the unforgiving tides.
After disposing of the lifeless body and anonymously alerting the authorities, Harvey retreated to his sanctuary. Seated at his desk, he uncorked the cheapest bottle of whisky, the amber liquid offering a bitter toast to the enigma of their intertwined destinies. He imbibed in the dim glow of the office, each drop a remembrance etched in the annals of cases better left forgotten. This time, Harvey sought solace in the numbing embrace of intoxication, a requiem for a love that chose to die.
Drinking, investigating, and solving.
Rinse and repeat.