Detective Rhinestone
Detective Edgar Rhinestone had to be the dumbest detective that I’d ever encountered in my years on the force. I’m aware that this is a particularly harsh way to begin my report, especially considering that I am — and have been — Detective Rhinestone’s Sergeant for a number of years — but I am afraid it is the truth.
My family kept asking why I couldn’t have been assigned to a detective more like Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse, or Detective Monk. I would repeatedly shrug and tell them that I wish I had an idea as to what was in that locked box of chance beyond Schrödinger's Cat pacing back and forth waiting for someone, somewhere to call, ‘Showtime, maybe.’ My lot was my lot.
Now — what do I mean in the particular when I malign the Detective’s intelligence in the abstract? Well, mum’s the word, but Mister Rhinestone once got into a car chase with the suspect in the passenger’s seat of his own car. I was in the backseat for this, at first repeatedly shouting that the suspect was ‘right here,’ which — after the Detective kept shouting, ‘Right where?’ and jerking the wheel yet again, prompting the suspect to shout, ‘What is happening?’ — I opted instead to offer encouragement instead. “Nearly there, sir!” I shouted, doing my best to convey the appropriate level of apology to the suspect in the passenger’s seat. “Any moment now!”
The Detective liked all the right things but for all the wrong reasons. He liked opera, but only because he said he was hard of hearing and liked that he didn’t have to ask the singers to speak up. He liked chess, but only because he said it reminded him of ‘tennis, but the kind of tennis where there’s a lot of people on the court.’ (“Doubles, sir?” “No, no. The one that’s more than that.”) He liked solving a murder because — he said, inadvertently echoing George Orwell’s essay on the matter — it made him feel ‘cozy.’
There wasn’t even the grace to be found in someone of his particular intelligence accidentally stumbling into the truth of the matter. Cases began in disaster and ended in disaster. It felt sad to feel the rhythm of my story placed alongside his. I kept hoping to introduce my sense of freedom to him, to have him adopt it in some fashion, but he seemed constitutionally incapable of being anything other than himself. One might diagnose it as a question of arrested development. One might ascribe a kind of perpetual Prince Myshkin-like energy to it — or, rather, ‘What if we gave Mister MaGoo a gun,’ but the core of the matter eluded me.
Nevertheless, I persevered. I took him to a film on the life and times of the jazz musician Ornette Coleman. He fell asleep. He took me to see Oxford take on Derby County. I fell asleep. Our Superintendent took us to the scene of a crime and then shouted at us both when we both fell asleep.
“What’s gotten into the two of you?” He said, whipping off his tortoiseshell glasses.
The Detective and I looked at each other and realized we were on the verge of falling asleep once again.