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I am writing this because I am in the Roma Street Watch House, yes, the hoosegow, the jug, the can, the coop. Hard for me to believe I've been arrested and put in a cell block. It's conveniently right next to the District Court. Here it is, Sunday night and I won't get a hearing until tomorrow morning. I'm telling you this just in case justice isn't done.

 

I've been in Australia a little over a year now. And If I hadn't been dragged down here, I'd be gone - my flight left today. I was flying home, having finished my post graduate course work. I had all but finished off my dissertation. It was just a matter of turning it in for my Masters Degree. Friday was our last day here, and my roommate, Tyler, and I had spent it packing. Most of the students had already left the dorm and campus anyway. We were the leftovers. Tyler was flying out of Brisbane airport that night, a direct United Airlines flight to New York; at least Tyler told me so. And I was off the day after for a holiday stopover in Singapore, before I, too, returned stateside.

 

Just a year ago, I was lucky enough to get a residence, right on the edge of the Queensland University campus. The Housing Services told me there was a first floor double room, close to the dormitory exit. I found this to be one of the main quadrangles, right on the edge of the campus.

 

The cabbie dropped me off in front of a huge pile of suitcases, bags and boxes. Students moving in and out deposited them there, because it was convenient to the buses, vans and cabs making pickups or drops.

 

It's important you know this, because the dorms themselves were self-accommodation. I walked to the nearby gothic design sandstone building where I was billeted. The arched entrance had a name of some Queensland patron of the university, I guessed, designating it as a dormitory. A small entrance sign read: Ground Floor, Rooms C1-C36.

 

Entering the narrow hallway, my room was right next to the entrance. I inserted my key into the door and tried the handle; it was already open. "Come on in,"a strong American voice said. I swung the door open and dragged my large canvas suitcase in behind. Looking up, there was Tyler. He was sitting on his bed, checkered shirt and suspenders, a grin on his face, a right hand extended and crutches lying next to him. When you looked at him from the waist up, he would have been a pretty good-sized guy. Well muscled from hands that carried his weight on his crutches, his handshake was exceptionally firm. But even through his specially tailored trousers, you could tell his legs were the length of a ten year-old. His pants were made for suspenders, which were much better for freedom of movement than a belt. In a way they were camouflaged by the checkered shirts he wore. It was obvious why they gave him this room-- it was close to the exit and on the ground floor.

 

"I'm Tyler Varney the Third, call me Ty", he chuckled, and before I had opened my mouth to reply, he asked whether I arm wrestled or played table tennis and what was I most paranoid about?

 

"Only on a barstool, not very often and inquisitive roommates," I replied.

 

"What would you rather do now, arm wrestle or play chess?", he said. "Think I'd rather take a shower and unpack," I said as I dropped my gear next to the other bed. "So be it!," said Tyler,"No one wants to compete any more," he said with mock disappointment, returning to his deck of cards. He picked a card from the deck and flicked it over finger to finger, finally palming it. He opened his palm and it was gone.

 

"But, I can see who you are from here." He said pointing at the big yellow name tag on my luggage.

 

With that, he picked up the book lying next to him, CASE STUDIES IN PARANOID BEHAVIOR. "I'll bet you could typecast me as one of those," I opined, trying to make light of his questions. Tyler just grunted: "Later, later, the shower's just down the hall. I take mine after all the hubbub."

 

About 11 pm, I discovered why. Gone were Tyler's checkered shirt and suspenders. He had on a bathrobe, put his soap in a pocket, tossed a towel over his shoulder and then said "Follow me." I had already seen the facile way in which he handled his crutches. We had earlier walked to the nearby student cafeteria for dinner.

 

He could walk faster than me just on his crutches, his legs swinging for balance, just touching the ground--he used them together, as though he were stiff-legged. It was a three-legged cantor.

 

As soon as he exited the door turning into the narrow passageway, his back to me, in quick motions, he tossed the left crutch in my direction and almost instantaneously plunked the face of his left hand against the wall, the right crutch taking his body weight. Then a couple of seconds later, the right crutch came my way as Tyler clamped both hands on the walls, his bare feet swinging just touching the tiled floor. "Bring the crutches with you," he said, and proceeded cantering down the hall, hand by hand until he reached the shower door. "I'll need these now," he said, taking the crutches from me and pushing open the door with one. "Stay close, because I might slip on the wet floor," but he never did.

 

Tyler simply assumed I'd be happy as his closest mate. As it turned out, we did almost everything together, even to having a lot of the same post graduate classes. My study area was behavioural science and his was abnormal psychology, even though after his graduation he planned to return to New York and work for an advertising agency. He was a prolific reader, a brilliant student with an eidetic memory. He had an animated way of imposing his insight to his professors without being threatening. He might speak out and say:"Well, do you suppose the real cause of this form of hysteria could come from..." And the professor would answer in terms of a probability, to which Tyler would respond:"I wonder if we could test this by asking the client whether..." The professorial answer was likely: "That certainly would be a valid test..." And add:"Good thinking, Mr Varney, I see you have read Witkoff's Analysis of Irrational Personalities..."

 

We did play table tennis on occasion at the Student Union. I went the first time because I thought I'd have to help Ty with his crutches. Totally wrong. We waited until a table was free. Tyler balanced himself on his crutches and leaned against the table. It looked as though it was an easy game to put the ball out of his reach near the sides and the net. Just the opposite!. Any easy ball over the net was slammed back with a twist of his wrist. A ball hit back at speed, he would easily block and with his quick reflexes and angle it to the opposite side from where the ball was hit. The only way to get a point, and it wasn't easy, was to make it bounce to where he leaned against the table. That sometimes prevented him from getting his paddle behind it. He knew the strategy and put an under or over spin on it to make the ping pong ball extremely hard to control. Ty beat almost everyone, with the exception of a lanky player from the tennis team, Fred Denby, a gold team pin on his Team sweater so identified him. His tactic was to lob big top spins out of Ty's reach.

 

I could see Ty's frustration, when his incapacity caused him to lose a point. I caught him glancing at the gold tennis team pin. I assumed he was thinking that at his own game he could match any able-bodied athlete. Tyler sliced and viciously cut the ping pong ball, but Fred's long reach and slow return lobs won him the day. They usually said "good game", shook hands after their match and retired to the nearby uni cafe for a cool drink. But this day, Ty said he had to go to the library. "Next Time," warned Ty with a smile. When they shook hands, it was as though Ty was about to tumble. Fred grabbed his arm and Ty's clumsily leaned against Fred for support, his hand pushing against Fred to straighten himself up.

 

"Thanks, I'm OK", said Ty, as his hands again wrapped around his crutch handles. "We'll catch you again and I promise you a better game."At that we went off, but returned to the dorm, instead of going to the library. Ty sat at his desk and I picked up my notebook for a seminar the next hour. Ty was pulling the drawers of his desk open, pulling out one pen after another. Out of the side of my eye, I noticed a gold flash, and assumed it was his gold pen that came loose from his shirt pocket.

 

I only arm wrestled with Ty once. It was Friday night and he wanted to attract a crowd at the hotel, which a lot of student athletes and sports people frequented. He toyed with me, grunting as if I were really forcing his arm to the utmost. When several burly guys with beer jugs in hand gathered around out of curiosity, he gradually forced my hand down. A good show, so I turned to the group and said: "Any others? For a pot." A heavy-set broad shouldered young man set his beer down and said: "I'll give it a go." Tyler made it look good, as if he were struggling, but the veins on his forehead didn't even stand out. He just kept his hand vertical. After about a minute, he simply snapped his opponent's wrist to the table top. I enjoyed the hour, a good act, a lot of free pots - Tyler never lost.

 

I had downed several pots that Ty had won- he rarely drank- so I was feeling loose and playful. When we left, I wanted to needle him, so I said: "Hey Ty, that was a great scam. You're a real con artist." I didn't expect his reaction. His eyes flashed. His voice was guttural. "Don't ever tell me what I am!" Then he immediately turned his twisted expression into a smile. "It's just a game; I'm seen as an easy mark. All I do is wait for that fraction of a second when some dude is distracted or relaxed. And it's over. The crowd is always wondering if my opponent let the poor gimp win. Or maybe that's what the mark says. Then, I've got another mark. How many beers did you say you had?"

 

 

 

The most gorgeous student I had ever seen sat down next to Tyler in one of our social psych classes. "I'm Laura Lee Wheeler",'Wheelah' when she pronounced her surname. She, too, was an overseas student. A southerner from New Orleans, she wore her Creole black hair in a pageboy, every hair in place. Her hair framed a perfect triangular face with wide black eyes and slightly turned up nose. Her full lips just had a touch of lip gloss. Laura always wore demure dresses and gold earrings, never jeans or skirts like the other female students. The large diamond on her ring finger made it obvious that she wasn't available--we later learned she had followed her fiance to Brisbane, where he was interning at the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

 

Laura Lee and Ty immediately hit it off. That she was engaged mattered not to Tyler, he played the platonic friend. Together, they studied in the library, ate cafeteria lunches and discussed assignments, the important points to remember in textbooks, dissertation topics and anything else Laura Lee was willing to talk about. You could hardly find one on campus without the other. Back in our room, Tyler often talked with me about their joint projects. I also observed that he almost never talked about other joint acquaintances. Strangely, but shortly after they had become tight, Tyler enticed me into joining them as a threesome. It soon became obvious that I was there to chauffeur them around off-campus, but I think also he had a role for me as a foil.

 

Well into the semester, the three of us, tired of hitting the books, decided on having a drink at the local Regatta Hotel, the same one at which Tyler arm-wrestled. A Friday night, the bar was crowded with beer-drinking students. A few called to Ty, challenging him to take their mates on. His face reddened when Laura Lee asked him about their comments."They just like buying me pots", said Ty without explanation. They called to Tyler, but their eyes were on Laura Lee, in her form-fitting red dress and flared skirt, dangling gold earrings, so different from the other mini-skirted or jeans- wearing female students.

 

In the wooden booth, Tyler sat on the outside, next to Laura, placing his crutches against the table. I picked up the beer for me, while Tyler and Laura sipped ginger ale. By the time I returned, another graduate student was sitting in my spot and talking to Tyler while eyeing Laura. He said he had an arm-wrestling challenger for Tyler, but Tyler shrugged him off, pulling his deck of cards from his pocket. He amused us for a while with his sleight-of-hand card tricks. His large hands were amazingly quick. While Tyler was doing a Vegas dealer's one-handed card shuffle, we slid into Jungian philosophy, interviewing techniques, survey validity and shagged more drinks. It was 11 pm before we realised it.

 

"I've got to go," said Laura Lee. "My fiance's off at midnight tonight."

"We'll drop you," I offered.

 

"Just one more tired old trick," Tyler interdicted. And Laura and I sat back."I have here the Ace of Spades, Laura Lee", he said showman-like. Place it anywhere in the deck." She did. "Funny," he said and turned to her. He propped himself on the table with an elbow and reached up under her straight black hair with his other hand and tugged at her ear. "I could have sworn it's here." As he pulled his hand from under her hair, he turned his palm up--the Ace of Spades was sitting in it. "The ole ace in the hole trick," Ty quipped and Laura and I giggled because it was so hokey. She never discovered one of her gold earrings was missing until long after we dropped her off.

 

I think Ty suspected that I'd seen the missing earring drop into his pocket (although I never did), because he made a brief comment when we got back to our dormitory room. "I wanted a souvenir. That's as close as I'll ever get to that doll." He held up the earring briefly as he dropped it into a black jewelry bag he had in one of his bureau drawers."I'll return it to her next week." He said no more.

 

A popular Professor in Criminology, William Q.Taft was a tubby little guy with bi-focals. Always in his white shirt, tie and vest, he liked sitting against the front of his lecture room table- the lectern practically hid him when he was standing behind it. This way he could look at his students and talk directly to them. In this post graduate only Research Methods class, there were but nine of us, so he could be relatively informal, even if he wasn't dressed that way. The vest, which covered his pregnant-looking belly, had a breast pocket with a gold Parker pen in it. Taking the pen out when talking, he toyed with it incessantly as he referred to criminal case studies in journals and their intricate psychometrics. He chose spectacular cases in which he had actually been involved- not only did this illustrate research methodologies, but it also kept his students awake and often on the edge of their seats. To emphasise a point, he poked the air with his pen; when he completed a topic, he slid it carefully back into his vest pocket.

 

 

 

Tyler was nearly every professor's favourite student. He asked poignant questions when there were pauses. He almost always had the right answers, when his lecturers poised them. Yet he never volunteered answers unless asked. When no one else had a good answer, Tyler would reluctantly venture one - the right one. He would often lag after class, partly because he needed time to mount his crutches, balance with them underarm, and then gather his notes, which he would clip to his crutches.

 

And so he would join the two or three around Professor Taft, students who were thinking of having the good professor as their dissertation supervisor, particularly if they were interested in Criminology. When the post class questions were finished and all turned to go, Tyler turned awkwardly toward his professor, whose ample backside still rested against the front of the table. His hand grasped the shoulder of his professor for support. Professor Taft stood up and asked: "Are you right there, Tyler?" "OK now, thanks," Tyler replied and reached down to regather his books. It was quite unusual for me to see Tyler slip like that. He was always so steady and skilful with his crutches. Not until Professor Taft was in his office chair and opening his diary did he notice his gold Parker pen wasn't in his vest pocket.

 

It turned out that Tyler picked a term project that fitted best with Professor Taft. It was a typological analysis of criminal motivation. Tyler wanted to investigate the area of non-violent crime, in particular, deceit, fraud and imposture. His research was to find evidence of motives other than money and greed among this population. It meant that he would have to interview, record and analyse his meetings with these groups. Tyler already knew where he would find them--at nearby Wacol prison. Professor Taft was already on an advisory board there. He was involved with creating on-going rehabilitation programs for inmates, thus it was relatively easy for Tyler to get permission to interview selective inmates. He found a large percentage of willing clients. They were most willing to tell their stories, particularly to someone who listened objectively and wasn't assigning blame or trying to convict them. If fact, although Tyler's study was qualitative, he worked out a number of statistical tests and pyschometrics for categorising their motives.

 

One wouldn't think that he could or would, but Tyler often worked out at the gym. I often went with him- it was a respite from pouring over library books, note-taking and finding clients to interview. I would do some sit-ups or pull-ups using a high bar. Tyler would go straight for the parallel bars. He'd grab a bar on one side as he leaned his crutches against the bar stand. Then with both hands, he would lift his body until his waist was at the same height as the wooden rail. Slowly, his track-suited butt would rise above the bar until he was perfectly balanced. His short, limp legs swung loosely at the floor. He would then walk hand over hand along one bar to the other end, cross his hands and turn 180 degrees without ever losing his balance. Sweet Jesus, he could have competed in the Olympics with form like that. He never failed to draw observers. Whatever others in the gym were doing, they would catch Tyler and his acrobatics. He'd cap off his performance by straddling both bars- one arm was now on each bar. He'd bend his elbows, doing several vertical push-ups, then with elbows bent spring in the air, clap his hands and grab the bars, still keeping his balance. He'd clap his hands over the bars three times, then say: "OK, finished, let's quit," as he vaulted off the end and in a single motion pick up his crutches.

 

All the campus police knew and liked Tyler. Usually, it was Jim Beauford who walked around the campus with Tyler and me. I could often hear him when he came by our dorm. His master keys jangled a bit, hanging on a light chain, outside his right pocket. He was one of the older security guards. Ty called him Jim-bo and he would escort Tyler along the long intersecting walkways that snaked through the grassy commons and around the various campus halls- past Psychology, Chemistry, Mining, Physiology, ending up near the security house.

 

I was heading for the computer center, Jim-bo for the guard house and Tyler for the library. Tyler and Jim-bo turned from one another, each heading for a different path, when Tyler's crutches banged hard against Jim-bo's side. The force of the collision turned both of them away from one another so they were almost back to back. Tyler virtually danced with his crutches to keep his balance and Jim-bo said concernedly: "You all right Tyler. "I can count on you, Jim-bo, to keep me headed in the right direction," Tyler chortled. They laughed and we continued on our separate ways.

 

The rest of this episode, I only heard about later, when Jim-bo joined us for a beer at the Regatta. Ty and Laura were chattering away.

 

"Hey, Ty," he interrupted. You wanna hear how you almost cost me my job?"

"I'm all ears," Tyler chided him.

 

"OK, then, it was just after my morning coffee break. I started on my usual rounds. I was at the back of the Chemistry building, when I reached for my master keys to open the supply room door. And there was only the big snap ring at the end of my key chain. My bloody keys were gone! I thought I'd left them back in the coffee room," he said with a great dramatic pause.

 

"I went back, searched round the tables, lockers and kitchen area couldn't find no trace of them. Maybe someone else in the guard house picked them up. I didn't say nothing to the other security guards and finished off my rounds.

 

"It was lunch time three hours later before I could do anything. I was pretty worried. I'd have to report the missing master keys if they hadn't been turned in. At the very least, I'd get hosed down. And with our super, I'd likely get fired.

 

"So, I decided I'd walk back along the path I had taken with Tyler. It was where I turned to go to the security building. It was where Tyler and I had bumped against one another. In the grass near the concrete path, my eye caught a shiny metallic reflection in the sun. I walked over to the spot and could just see the top of one key amongst the grass tufts. Good thing that lawn was just mown or I never would av' seen that key ring. The rest of the keys were hidden in the grass roots. I swore out loud, I tell ya.

 

Somehow, they must have pulled loose against Tyler's crutch, Once back at the guard house, I couldn't keep the grin off my face. It was so obvious, my mates were asking me "What the hell do you have to smile about?"

 

"What do you blokes think of that?"

 

While Ty, Laura and Jim-bo continued on with what Tyler called'witty persiflage', I recalled that same morning. Tyler had taken a bus to the local shopping centre. He was back before noon. When we met for lunch, he was particularly jovial. "You look like a Cheshire cat", I said. "I am one", he giggled. "Only my smile is visible." In the dining hall, we sat with several other grad students we knew. With our trays still on the table, Ty reached across and lifted up one tray and pulled out an ace of spades. He lifted up three more and pulled out the other three suited aces. He was really upbeat at that lunch. On the way out, I turned to him and said: "When you're like this, Tyler, I know you've got something up your sleeve."

 

"Sure, I do, an Ace," and left his words hanging.

 

That was our last time at the pub. Over the next few weeks, Tyler and I saw almost no one- no games, no beer, and no new sleight-of-hand on the part of my roommate. We were knuckled down with final papers, or pulling dissertation notes together, involved in the academic business of winding up our year at the university. We were in a kind of a limbo, between organising our chapters on one hand and organising our gear for shipping out on the other. Then one morning while finishing our breakfast in what was a now near empty dining hall, Ty suddenly beamed.

 

"Let's go to the University Art Gallery," Ty suggested."There's a special collection of impressionist painters I've wanted to see." He held out a small clipping from the campus newspaper. The news clip piece read:

 

Monet & Japan is the linchpin of the National Gallery's exhibition program. Thirty-nine of Claude Monet's best paintings from some of the world's greatest collections are on display alongside an extensive selection of Japanese woodblock prints, screens and scrolls - vividly demonstrating Monet's intimate relationship with Japanese art.

"Why not go. We have time. The exam period is almost over and we have a few days or so before we have to start packing."

 

"Since when have you taken an interest in art," I asked rhetorically, because Ty was always divulging new areas of knowledge and interest. "It's just part of the permanent traveling exhibition," he answered casually. "There's a slew of Monet's in Japan, and an impressionist legacy from Monet to Moore."

Actually, we didn't get over there until the day before our planned departures.

 

The Monet exhibition was in the University's art gallery, a ground level building with automatic opening hardened glass doors. Ty waved one of his crutches in front of them, expecting that when he broke the infra-red beam the doors would open. They didn't. He laughed: "It takes more than a walking stick to open this one." As both of us drew closer, the doors swung inward and we entered. "Wish they had doors like this on all the buildings," Ty commented. "Make life a little easier for people like me."

 

I remembered this comment in particular, because he almost never referred to his being a paraplegic. He knew the security guard and engaged him with his eyes and smiled, so as not to break the quietness of the place. We turned the corner into the gallery itself, passing the entry desk and table- it was packed with books on Monet, materials on the Impressionists and stacks of art prints of the exhibition for sale. It would be a lucrative exhibition for the university. Rails had been installed along the walls, so as to keep the public from touching the paintings. New security cameras at both ends of the gallery also peered down the aisles, eyeing all who walked there.

 

Thirty-nine of Claude Monet's best paintings from some of the world's greatest collections were displayed alongside an extensive selection of Japanese woodblock prints, screens and scrolls.

 

Led by Ty, we spent the next hour and a half hours walking back and forth in the gallery. Ty read every caption, compared each Monet to the other, looking for changes in technique, looking for Japanese influences and commenting on the colours, brush strokes and blending of paints."You can see how Monet was fascinated by how the Japanese viewed water lilies and flowers." He pointed out how the Japanese artists presented the impressions of flowers, but were more literal than Monet. Monet left a montage of colors instead of flower heads and stems. One imagined what they were."Did you know his Giverny garden featured Japanese quince and cherry trees? You could see them from his Japanese bridge. That's my favorite- the bridge. It's the soft green touches, the subtle green brush strokes, the blended dark greens and browns that let you see it as a bridge at all," said Tyler. Leaning on the rail, he almost touched the frame.

 

"You know, there's no reason for such ornate gold frames on such small works. The paintings don't need them. They take away the reality of the times, the scene. They're just a 19^th Century afterthought." Then, Tyler went on and on about Monet's development as a painter. We stopped before a blown up print of Monet, which had been painted by another impressionist, Edouard Manet. Next to it on the wall was a large plastic covered page summarising Monet's work."People are taken by the expression on his face and his quaint mustache, but I am taken by his hands. It's like they are..." He didn't finish. A security guard had walked over and joked with Ty. "You gonna try your hand at painting now, are you Tyler?" Tyler smiled and nodded at his crutches: "Not right now, I've got my hands full," and they both laughed.

 

We stopped at the entry table on the way out. Ty selected three prints of the Giverny Garden. One was the green bridge. One was of the lilies and one was of the water plants, showing a portion of the bridge. Each print was the size of the original, quite compact really. When the lady at the desk was about to roll up the prints, Ty said,"No, no, I want them flat! He reached down and took two sheets of cardboard from under the table, where the stock boxes and packing were stored, carefully placing the prints between them. "There, that's better," he muttered. Then, he clipped them against the flat of his crutch- he always had a pair of clips fixed to his crutches, for holding notebooks and papers and freeing his hands for the crutch rungs.

 

He made an odd comment as we left. "You know, my hands are like his. His were rough, strong and able to manipulate the smallest of implements."

 

On the way back, we went by the taxi and bus-stop quadrangle, which one could glimpse from our dorm room. There were bags piled everywhere, ready for departure. The students were clearing out. Ty said: "I'll be one of those soon enough. I wonder what it would be like to leave a permanent mark here. You know, like a gargoyle carved above the dorm entrance. Or maybe I'll paint my portrait on the door of our room. It will say - 'Tyler was educated and emigrated from here' or maybe I'll just leave a legacy." he added with a tone of finality. I was only half listening. "Guess we had better start getting our gear together," I said. "I still have books to return to the library," Tyler went on as if he hadn't heard me.

 

"Actually, I came across this piece about Monet by pure chance, in a journal article on criminal psychotaxia and sociopathy. I was looking for citations to back my research. It took place just 20 years ago, 1984, and the perpetrators were never caught." He put the excerpt from the journal up on the board:

"I sure would like to have the chance to interview those guys," Ty said. "They would have been the icing on my chapter on ideopaths and obsessive-compulsives." In his thesis, Ty had contended that there were high correlations in the motives of various types of fraudsters. These psychological typologies, sociopaths, were motivated by the excitement of chance. Not by chance itself, but the figuring of the odds and minimising chance. "It was a way in which they gained self-esteem, show their mental superiority--that was their reward. They didn't steal for money, so much as for the satisfaction of knowing they could outwit authoritarian symbols."

 

I took both our folded bags down from the closet shelf. My canvas bag still had the large yellow identity tag on it. I could always spot it in a baggage pile, or when it was coming down one of those airport baggage chutes.

 

Classmates, friends and acquaintances kept dropping by all afternoon and into the evening. From somewhere, Tyler had pulled out several bottles of rum, wine and champagne. We went through a number of them. Tyler rarely had more than a light beer or glass of wine - he had to keep his balance - so this night was no exception. But he did ply me to keep up with all our mates. By nightfall, Tyler was ready and we carried his bags out to the quadrangle, with me unable to walk a straight line.

 

I was more than a little fuzzy when we got back to the room, when Ty brightly said: "I still have a few hours before my flight, there's some champagne left. One last farewell drink, good buddy." Ty handed me a wine glass. We toasted one another and that's the last thing I clearly remembered, except I felt like I was being dragged to my bed.

 

The next conscious memory I had was a knocking on the door. The light from the windows blinded me as I tried to open my eyes and focus on the source of the noise. The room spun around me. Ouch, it was morning! A voice"Anyone in? Ahoy, any one there?"

 

"Coming, coming!" I half collapsed on the floor. "The door's unlatched," I said looking up. Two campus police walked in. One was carrying my canvas bag with the bright yellow ID TAG. "Found this on the lawn in the quadrangle, with your gear spread all over the..." He stopped mid sentence. The second security guard said: "What the hell..." He, too stopped mid sentence. They were both staring at the bulletin board. I tried looking up, but was too dizzy to focus on it. Slowly, the room stopped revolving and I saw the ornate gold frame. I could make out the subtle greenish red colours of the painting inside. I knew what it was without seeing any more.

 

The campus cops also saw on my desk a large note on butcher paper and on it a neat row of items: a gold tennis pin, a gold Parker pen, a gold earring, and a set of recently gilded keys. The printed words identified each item, its owner and the date it went missing.

 

I've been in this cell all day, but it didn't take me that long to figure out how Tyler pulled off his super heist, although there are a few details I haven't worked out. With the campus, being almost deserted, Ty simply used the keys he had pinched and unlocked the gallery doors. He left the infra-red laser alarm alone. He lay flat on the carpeted entryway, slid his crutches in, and with his great arms he pushed himself inside.

 

Once inside, he pulled himself a few meters along the wall to where the guard rail was and hoisted himself up, just as he had on the parallel bars. He only had a few meters to walk hand over hand to where his much admired Monet painting had been hung. He was above and outside the focus of the security cameras, which were focused on the aisles.

 

He could have balanced himself on the guard rail quite easily. He then likely sat on it, facing the Monet. He carefully lifted the painting off the wall hook, clipped it to his back or slid it under his suspenders. He probably then walked hand over hand to the end of the rail, where he laid the Monet down, pushed it on the floor until he reached the glass doors. Just beyond the infrared beams he shoved it outside with his crutch. He followed and exited the way he came in. I'm sure that in case he was seen going across the campus, he had a cloth cover or cardboard over the painting.

 

Maybe he had put something in my drink, I'll never know, because the room was neatly cleaned up, glasses stacked and bottles disposed of.

 

The event may not even make the newspapers, because the University doesn't want this kind of publicity. Also, the painting was back in place before the gallery opened. Also there would have been the insurance company to contend with, if the theft were made public. So maybe that will help me. And besides, there was the explanatory note. They just have to verify its authenticity. Meanwhile, I've been taken into custody for possession and receiving...awaiting my court hearing and wondering if the magistrate will believe me. Tyler, in the interim, remains a person of special interest.

 

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