Author’s Note: This is a strange post; strange even for me.
Some weeks ago, I was offered a job to write an independent investigative column. I thought it was a good idea, so I wrote a demo article for it. Today I decided not to do it, for a lot of reasons, but I liked what I wrote a little, which is rare for a writer; so I thought I’d publish it anyway on my own blog.
The heart of it will always be true - the hero thing: because that is who I am.
After about a year of research, I also started writing my film today. I feel better writing that. That will do a lot of what I planned on trying to do with this; but I still wanted to share it because “there’s somethin’ there.”
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Expense account item 2: one tall English Breakfast tea. (Item one was coffee.) I learned to drink this stuff in Dublin. (I lived there for two years.) That’s the real religion over there- tea.
It’s a crisp fall day, even though it’s still technically summer: 75 degrees and sunny, but with the kind of cool breeze that is unique unto fall and makes it by far my favorite season of the year.
Today is also the first day of a new chapter in my life. I will explain.
The Boulevard Is Not That Bad
It was the summer of 2015. I was running on John Glenn Boulevard, near where I lived then, as I often did, when I came across what looked like the contents of a purse that had been strewn over the side of the shoulder, probably the night before judging by how those things closest to traffic had been shattered.
There was makeup and whatnot, but what was most peculiar to me as I leaned over the mess was a cell phone: still partially charged, and on the lock screen image was a young girl, early twenties, with what looked like a sister or a friend in the backdrop. She was somewhat attractive and looked like the kind of girl who was down for anything, which is what I assumed was going on before losing her purse.
It was the presence of the phone that disturbed me though. A thief would have kept it, taken out the memory chip, and sold it for fifty or a hundred bucks at a pawn shop. But it was there, which suggested to me some sort of physical altercation had taken place, the assailant not being interested in the value of the contents of the purse, and the texts from several friends and someone whose contact was listed as “Mom” wondering where she was seemed to confirm this suspicion.
A few feet away I found a Wegman's card with a name on it: “Amanda Stewart,” it said.
The phone was locked; otherwise I would have texted “Mom” myself to get to the bottom of things. I took it home.
After a few unsuccessful Facebook messages to every Amanda Stewart I could find in the area, I called the cops and told them the story. They said I could take it to the station nearby and have them jailbreak it and track her down. I told them I was worried Amanda was in trouble.
There was no urgency on the other end of the line. I supposed they saw this sort of thing all the time and it didn’t phase them.
It was phasing me.
I dropped the phone and the card off at the County Sherriff’s station. He took my name and number and I walked away, feeling like a Good Samaritan, but still not at peace.
About a week later it was still bothering me, so I called the sheriff to see if they had found her. The voice on the other end of the phone told me they had no record of the event at all. I asked them to double check.
Nothing; they had nothing.
I went back online and searched frantically for her, calling jobs some of the girls had listed, but no one was really allowed to give me any information, no matter how far deep into the story I got.
A year later I was running through the same place and it bothered me so much I checked again. Same thing.
Part of me thinks she’s fine: she’s home with her family or off at college enjoying a normal, young-girl-in-her-20’s life. The other part of me does not.
Sometimes I see her face when I wake up in the middle of the night. And I can’t go back to sleep when I do.
The Professor
A week ago I got an email from an ex-professor at Syracuse University who is a fan of my work: mostly because “I kill bad people” and have “an extraordinary sense of sight.” He “had an idea” he said that would be “something I would be interested in.”
“Bullshit,” I thought. I’m a writer and I don’t write other people’s shit anymore. I agreed to meet but told him I would probably say “no.”
I had to hear him out though.
He said he was putting together a new indie news site and wanted me to write an investigative column and I could write “anything I wanted” and operate autonomously.
“You’re my first pick,” he said, because I was a “great” writer and also because, “You’re not afraid,” he said.
I looked at him.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
Glen Zinszer
I used to be a journalist. Ended abruptly because it wasn’t my thing. Just because you write doesn’t mean you are good at writing everything. Just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean you can play every instrument.
I’m more of a jazz musician.
This lady contacted me about a year ago, telling me her married boyfriend, who I had written a few articles on, had stolen a million dollars from his own company and that no one believed her because they thought she was crazy.
She was def crazy, I could tell, but even crazy people tell the truth sometimes.
I took the story to my contacts at the downtown paper, and worked with John O’Brien, the seasoned investigative reporter there for the next eight months until we got him.
I remember there was a moment when I looked at John and he looked at me and we both knew he was guilty but we couldn’t prove it. We got the Board of Directors to open the bank account, find the evidence, and fire him from his own company.
When that fucker found out his mistress had informed on him, he beat her half to death, almost blinding her in one eye.
It took all of me to not drive over there and do the same to him.
We turned all the evidence over to the District Attorney. Last I heard he was still free, I don’t know why, that motherfucker.
Batman
A little while ago I was in a dark place. For an artist, it is in the darkness that the most unusually beautiful things grow.
I was listening to the Allman Brothers song, driving down the infamous “13 Curves” (a haunted roadway south of where I live) when I felt it: I saw in my mind’s eye a man depressed to the point of suicide, driving in a car with the windows down, running drugs, caught up in the world of human trafficking, somehow.
It was the beginning of my current film script Midnight Rider.
I wrote an ad on Craigslist, asking for information regarding sex and drug trafficking. I thought my chances were slim to none getting any response.
I got responses.
I met with a couple of people who knew stuff. Cops followed me around for a while, I kid you not.
As a writer, in order to write something authentic, you have to get a little “method,” like Marlon Brando or Daniel Day-Lewis in any role.
I got connected to a lawyer out of the Midwest, a friend of a friend, and now a friend. He really has balls: he goes to Asia to bust assholes who pimp out kids.
I run in the city at night in Batman spandex. It’s more an exercise thing but I saved somebody once. I’d do it again.
I was talking to this lawyer and he was telling me the tip of the iceberg on all the shit that goes down in that world: the third world, and also under our noses. We got talking about Batman.
I am Batman.
“He knows Gotham will always be corrupt, that shit will always happen there and that he can never completely stop it,” said the lawyer.
“But what keeps driving him to go out there every night is this idea that ‘you can’t save everyone, but you can make a difference.’”
You can’t save everyone but you can make a difference.
I once worked on the film The Stoning of Soraya M., which won 2nd place in Toronto to Slumdog Millionaire and outlawed stoning in Iran.
When the professor came to me with this, I thought of that.
The Midnight Rider
I agreed to give this column a shot because after all, I was looking for true stories surrounding the fiction I would put in my movie. Why not kill two birds? Plus. I had the chance to make a difference while I did so.
Everyone has seen the haunting faces of the kids who are missing on the wall at WalMart, on the milk cartons, or in those “throw-away-almost-as-soon-as-I-get-them” things they send in the mail.
I didn’t throw it away this week. I ripped off that page that had the missing kid’s face and put it in my pocket.
“Standing by the checkout line
At the CVS, by the missing signs
She puts her quiet hand in mine,
‘Cause she’s the brightest thing I got.”
(I just went to that concert.)
Most of those kids are probably dead. The rest of them nobody cares about.
I care.
Two years ago, a high school buddy of mine was found dead in the middle of a field, empty gas cans surrounded his body, and a set of footprints led away from the corpse and off to the highway where they disappeared.
His name was John Allen. He was the happiest, most athletic kid. He was like a brother to me.
Two detectives were assigned to the case. His brother told me the autopsy revealed that he died of “natural causes” and that the family “was okay with it.”
Bullshit! I am not okay with it.
I told the professor I would take a stab at this because it was a road I was already walking down. That I literally have the scorpion jacket from Drive in the back of my car and I wear it at night when I have insomnia and walk the city.
“I don’t wear a mask,
I don’t carry a gun,
I drive.”
I can feel things as they happen, far away, kinda like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable (the greatest film in its genre); I feel things that happened in the place I am in the past, from the people they happened to, as if they are speaking to me without words. I was in the woods yesterday near where I grew up and I felt this strongly.
“I will tell your story,” I said to them, silently.
“All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” - Rutger Hauer
The professor wants me to get my private eye license. I’m talking to one of those tomorrow.
I used to be an over-planner. Now I feel you can’t discredit the value of feeling out what you’re gonna do when you gotta do it. But in any case, no pun intended, I’d appreciate any thoughts, tips, stories, cases you may have that you can send to us.
I’ll make the professor sift through that shit.
I grew up on detective stories. It made me an okay writer and left an unquenched thirst in my soul for justice. This column made me feel, for the first time in a while, like I had somethin to drink.
Maybe we’ll solve a case; maybe the Bills will win a Super Bowl (my team) - who knows. I’m gonna try anyway.
I told the professor I swear a lot and to “shutthefuckup” about it. [Laughs.]
I’m sure there are some bad motherfuckers out there who are wondering “do I have to worry about this guy?”
Yeah, ya do.
That includes you - Glen Zinszer: I’m coming for you.
And Amanda Stewart: wherever you are, I will find you.
I will find you.
