Chapter 3 (The Genuine Phony)

A light mist settled over the few acres that consisted of my office building. Perhaps it would eventually change to rain, or clear up completely, but until then it remained the damp, lifeless weather I've become accustomed to in Jersey.

I pined for nicotine, but settled for caffeine, when another case...and by case I mean question, appeared on the screen. I should have been working, but it was Friday and I was tense, thinking about a few hours from now, about a girl named Maeka, and a girl that would help me forget all about Maeka.

'Do you read private eye?'

I let the question wash over my cerebral cortex as I twitched with the need of another cup of tea. Where did this question come from? What game were they playing? How did I exactly fit into all of this?

I decided there was no way forwards besides diving headfirst into the mystery. Perhaps I would be able to piece together the puzzle before me and perhaps not, but I knew my chances would be a lot better when I knew what picture I was attempting to assemble.

I played his game, and typed "Yes, I do. Far far too many. Hammond, Chandler, Christie, Doyle and many others. I've read so many, and watched even more. I even own a copy of Garfield's private eye story, 'Babes and Bullets'. I don't know why, I just love the genre...of course, you already know that, don't you?"

I hit the answer button, took a sip of tea and awaited the next question, hoping it would shed some light on this dark conspiracy.

There was the unmistakable sound of someone knocking on the felt side of my cubicle wall, behind me. I checked my gun, reholstered it, and then called them in.

I was safe, so I didn't need the gun...which was just as well, since it wasn't a very powerful gun. 

In fact, it was a stapler...but it was the hefty metal kind, so it was better than nothing.  I wouldn't need my mediocre office weaponry though, as my visitor was none other than my gorgeous cubicle neighbor, Dora.  She was barely five feet tall, but God had taken the mass that would have gone into her height and simply added it to her curves instead...which was more than fine by me.  I forced myself to maintain eye contact (which wasn't too hard, her large brown eyes were quite a nice sight too) as she gave a small smile and asked,

"Have you seen Ernesto today?"

I let the question wash over my mind.  My brain plucked out the meaning of the words without difficulty, but continued to probe the question in a vain attempt to discover the true...

"Ziti?"

"Huh?"

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah, sorry, I was busy...thinking.  Do you mean Ernesto Senior or Ernesto Junior?"

Dora gave me the condescending roll of the eyes that's customarily used when dealing with people who are 'out of touch'.

"Ernesto Junior is still in Mexico, remember?  I haven't seen his father ever since he got the news yesterday."

"At the risk of sounding completely out of touch, Dora, what news yesterday?"

I knew the risks that came with the statement, and I paid full price for my ignorance, as Dora laughed slightly, gave me a funny 'do you live under a rock' stare and recounted the full story.  I couldn't care less.  It beat working.

"Well, Ernesto's son had to go back to Mexico...as part of his work visa..."

I pulled my bottle of liquid life out of the desk drawer and unscrewed the cap.  Dora continued talking as I poured myself a slug into a plastic cup.

"...Senior's already a full citizen, so he didn't have to go with him...why don't you just drink the iced tea right out of the bottle?"

Instead of answering her question, I slammed back the shot of lightly caffeinated heaven and asked,

"Does Ernesto Senior go back a lot?"

"Oh yeah, all the time.  He stays about nine months of the year up here, and then he goes back to visit his extended family in Mexico during the off season."

I stroked my brow thoughtfully.

"Does he bring his wife and kids with him when he goes?"

My brunette beauty thought about it and then responded,

"I don't think so.  His wife and other children have...different types of work visas..."

Probably the type of work visas that are, in fact, not work visas.  Hell, the government probably didn't even know that his family up here even existed.  The lovely Dora, who was wearing a fetching white cotton shirt that day, continued,

"So his son didn't go down to Mexico until the boss got together the appropriate forms...and..."

"Sent him down to become an official guest worker?"

"Yeah!  Only when he tried to get back into the United States, they wouldn't let him in."

Now that was strange.  I've worked in this place for quite some time, and they took their yard workers seriously (desk jockeys were a dime a dozen, but skilled laborers were difficult to come by).  Something unexpected had happened on the border.  I let my bombshell cubicle neighbor continue as I poured myself a second slug.  I offered the bottle to her, but she declined.

"He answered all the questions they asked him on the border..."

I imagined a short, but intense question period, where Federal agents found out who you are, where you're going to work, and how you even know where you're going to work if you've never been inside the country before.  My good friend glanced around, as she was going to confide in me something that wasn't common knowledge.  Some dames are all too eager to spill everything they've sworn to never say. 

"They said he'd tried to get in the country two times already, and been turned away each time."

That was strange.  I asked, thoughtfully,

"He was born in Mexico, right?"

Dora nodded, but added,

"His family came over when he was very young, but he hasn't been back since then.  I can't imagine why they'd think he'd already tried to get in the country two times before."

"What about his extended family?"

"Well, his mom's family has taken him in for now, but he hasn't seen anyone in his father's side of the family for years.  I mean, I'm sure they'll take him if they need to..."

My mind tossed the facts back and forth between its lobes like a man sifting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle between his fingers.  Come to think of it...it was a little harder than that.  Maybe the box the puzzle came in got thrown away too, so the guy didn't exactly know what the picture was supposed to look like, only that it seemed to involve cats.

I caught Dora off guard with a random thought.

"You don't think he's intentionally keeping away from his family, do you?"

Dora was shocked by the question, as we had both worked with Senior and Junior for some time. 

"They get along fine!  They're a very close family!  You know how well the two of them get along!  He wouldn't run away...why would you even think that?"

She was right, it was a ridiculous question.  Even if he did decide to leave, Junior wouldn't go back to Mexico first.  I knew the question was ridiculous before I even asked it, because it allowed me to innocently drop in the following untrue statement,

"I heard that his parents were having some problems at home..."

"No!  They get along great!  In fact, I've never known a couple that got along better!"

"They've never had any problems...ever?"

This time Dora seemed genuinely angry, as if she had something to prove.

"Ziti, I know his family well, and they've ALWAYS got along without ANY problems."

Dora had always been a careful, reasonable woman, so I had to assume that her judgment was correct, and Ernesto genuinely had a perfectly happy family life.  In the twenty years of marriage, they had gotten along more or less completely fine...

Nine months here, three months there.  A perfect marriage and family.  Junior grows up here, goes back to Mexico and then gets a strange story from the Feds about things he never actually did during a time he wasn't even in that country. 

He hasn't seen his father's side of the family in a very long time, but his father visits them regularly.

Ernesto Junior. 

Ernesto Junior.
         
Click.

"Boarder agents generally don't make mistakes about those kinds of things.  No, if they said that Ernesto Junior, son of Ernesto Senior, attempted to cross the boarder twice already, then they must be correct."

Dora's brow scrunched up, and she gave me the 'you're crazy' stare.  I could feel it coming.

"You're crazy."

There it was.

"Ziti, we've worked with Ernesto Junior for two years, you and I know he hasn't..."

"The other Ernesto."

"What?"

"The other Ernesto."

Dora treated me to one of the prettiest blank stares I've ever received.

"Ziti, are you suggesting his father went down and impersonated his son?"

"No, not Ernesto Senior.  The other Ernesto Junior."

A less confident man would have been dismissed as mad, but Dora could hear the virtual swagger within my voice.  Instead of shaking her head and leaving (which Molly did in 'The Case of the Sapphire Nothing'), Dora was interested enough to press on.

"What other Ernesto Junior?"

"The one Ernesto Junior doesn't know about."

Dora calmed a bit and smirked, now fully in the belief that I was just messing with her.  In a prim, formal voice, she asked,

"Oh?  Where did this 'other Ernesto' come from?"

"The family that Ernesto's family doesn't know about."

I could see it in her eyes.  She was almost there.  She'd left her everyday, humdrum office life and entered the seedy underbelly of the world, and like all newcomers to it, she went a little too far in the right direction, overshooting it.

"You mean it's someone from his father's side of the family, trying to convince the government that he's the real Ernesto Junior?"

I gave a slow, casual shake of my head.

"No, but you're close. He did try to convince the government he was Ernesto Junior, son of Ernesto Senior, but that's not the problem.  The problem was that he didn't have a job waiting for him.  That's why they turned him away twice."

I nursed my next shot of tea as Dora wrapped what I'm sure is a very pretty brain around the situation.  She couldn't see it.  It's no fault of her own.  It's so simple I almost missed it myself.  She asked out loud, partially to herself,

"Why would this other guy say he's Ernesto Senior's son?"

"Because he is Ernesto Senior's son."

Stunned silence.  In a second she'd dismiss me as a fool.  I had to act quickly.

"No matter how hard a family tries, there's always problems.  It's nothing to be ashamed about.  One of the most common problems that usually rears its ugly head is unfaithfulness.  Again, it's part of life and marriage, and families deal with it in their own way.  Ernesto Senior dealt with it by having another family."

I finished my drink.  Dora was too stunned to reply, so I continued,

"It no doubt started as an affair during a trip to see his family back home, and since it was during the off season, it was probably legally required for his work visa, as this would be long before he became a full citizen."

Dora refused to confirm or deny this statement, so I went on,

"His immediate family didn't quite have the same deal with the government as he did, so he had to go home without them.  Three months is a long time, especially for a man with a copious amount of spare cash to spend.  He eventually made a little friend.  Eventually that little friend became more than a friend.  Eventually that same friend showed up with her angry father and slash or brother as she clutched her rounded, swollen belly.  A small wedding shortly followed..."

"This is insane, Ziti!  I know his family!  They get along just fine!"

I nodded, knowingly,

"That's because Ernesto Senior gets to have a yearly vacation, away from the stress of home in his working class American apartment, all the way to his fine, upper class Mexican apartment, which only costs a mere pittance of the money that his job brings in.  When it's over, he comes back to his main family, calm, relaxed, and a little bit scared...or at least scared enough to make him behave like a model husband and father for the next nine months.  He does care about his main wife, and he didn't mean any of this to turn out this way...but these things happen."

Dora worked it over in her head.  She wasn't believing it, but she wanted to see where the the train of thought ended.  We were approaching the final station.

"Who is the other Ernesto?"

"The teenage son from his Mexican family.  I'm kind of surprised that Senior gave a son in each family exactly the same name...he must have a bad memory.  Anyway, his teenage son tries to get through the border and be a big shot in America, like his dad.  He thinks he'll get in fine, since his father is a legitimate citizen.  He gets turned back.  He tries again a little later, at a different entrance.  He gets turned down again.  He figures 'no harm...I won't even tell anyone it happened'."

"Then our Ernesto Junior..."

"Goes down, tells the men on the boarder that he's Ernesto Junior, son of Ernesto Senior, a legitimate American citizen, and that he's never tried to get into America before.  Because he has a 'different' status than 'citizen', 'guest worker' or 'legal', he keeps it quiet that he's already been in America before then."

She was there.  I could see it in her horrified expression.  She could see where I was standing, right next to the giant billboard that said 'TRUTH'.  I was waving.  Her innocent vision of a 'perfect model family' was beginning to fall apart.  I proceeded to put it out of its misery.

"The agents at the border had no real way of telling the two young men apart, and they're used to people lying to them all the time.  It just so happened that this one wasn't lying, he was just..."

"The other Ernesto..."

Dora's lips pursed after muttering those words, yet she managed to keep herself composed.  Would she readily accept it?  No, there was one final spark of life, one small glimpse of hope.

"Ziti, the only thing you have to go on is that the border agents say he's attempted to cross over twice.  How can you be so sure that there even is another Ernesto Junior and not some impostor?"

I have to admit, this was a little difficult...unless...

I spun my chair around and faced my computer.  I minimized the site I was on and brought up a second window.  I typed a few choice words into a search engine and waited. 

For a modern detective, the internet has been the greatest invention since black coffee, twenty dollar bills, and fedoras. 

The search results included a money scam, generic porn, and a fascinating page on the process for entering the country from Mexico.  With a single click and a triumphant grin, I scrolled the page down to paragraph C, entitled: 'Mandatory Photograph'.

"In order to keep the same people from trying to get in the country over and over again, each time with a different phony identity, the agents take a photograph of the person, most likely regardless of whether they have any intention of letting him in or not.  That way they can have a record of all the phonies, as well as all the people who are legitimate."

I spun myself back around to face Dora, and then continued,

"When they interviewed the Ernesto Junior we know, a red flag would have come up in the computer, and along with that flag would have been the file of the other Ernesto Junior, from his first two attempts to get into the country.  Attached to that file would be two pictures, one from each of his failed attempts.  They'd have the same name, same father, and more or less same basic information, but in order for Federal agents to mistake one man for another so easily, they'd have to look a lot alike.  In fact, they'd more or less have to be..."

"Brothers."

Dora's words were barely louder than a whisper.  She looked like she was going to tear up.  She fought it though, like a professional, and maintained her calm.  We were still at work, after all.  I poured myself another glass of liquid refreshment, and then left it alone.  I was more or less giving Dora time to let it all sink in.  This time, there was no counter argument, and the next words that Dora spoke were,

"You know...I think I will have some of that."

I nudged the plastic glass in her direction, and she gracefully plucked it up with her slender fingers.  I raised my mostly empty bottle of iced tea up to hers, as if to make a toast.  Dora's red lips broke into a small, bitter smile as she announced,

"To the real Ernesto Junior..."

I clunked my plastic bottle against the brim of her cup, and added,

"...and the way things ought to be."

Dora lowered her eyes, but her smile widened.

With a small grin of my own, I finished my drink.