by Meisha Rosenberg

     The Police Department nicknamed him Sherlock because every day he stood in a phone booth by the K-mart with the receiver in the crook of his neck and reported everything. He pressed the phone to his right ear so he could scribble in a notebook. He could barely hear himself over the din of teenagers playing video games at VideoDen.

     "Citizen Sherwood calling. Three men, thirtyish, out of town license plate: 987-HXJY. That was- 9-8-7-H-X-J-Y. I repeat, 9-8-7-H-X-J-Y. They're headed towards JC Penney. Very suspicious." The men walked at a synchronized clip.

     Officer Delaney said, "You need more than that, Sherlock. Grounds for suspicion?"

     "The tallest guy is carrying a big bag. Looks empty. Possible theft."

     Delaney said, "OK, Sherlock, it's all yours. Just don't blow your cover."

     Sherlock followed the three men into JC Penney. He was careful not to look obvious but he looked more suspicious than the men he was following. Sherlock's eyes roved over everything. He wore civilian clothes to be less noticeable--a tan windbreaker, a plain white hat--the kind sold at every truck stop--and a pair of shoes he had tied twenty years ago and never had to retie.

     The three men were headed to the third floor. Suspicions confirmed, thought Sherlock. The third floor was the top floor. Only things of interest to women there; lingerie, infant and children's wear, home furnishings. One of the three men stopped in lingerie, the other two went to home furnishings. "Clever," thought Sherlock. It was a case of divide and conquer. Sherlock walked over to the television that constantly showed ads for perfume. He acted bored, like he was waiting for his wife. Meanwhile he watched the men. Soon the three men met up to leave JC Penney for the main mall. Sherlock followed them until he saw them going into Victoria's Secret.

     Sherlock had never been in Victoria's Secret. He waited for a while before entering. He walked to a rack of the most innocent looking pajamas he could find; the winter rack, flannels now on sale.

     Sherlock thumbed through the price tags. He overheard the three men talking to the saleslady who asked, "What size bra is she?"

     There was an uncomfortable pause during which the men and the saleslady tried to maintain composure. Sherlock saw the men were looking at fire-engine red teddies.

     "36 B. Yeah, 36 B--that's it," said the leader.

     "Check this out," said one of the other men smiling nervously, pointing to the G-string crotch of the teddy. He elbowed the leader, who fake punched his friend.

     The saleslady had noticed Sherlock and came over to him.

     "May I help you?" she asked.

     "No; I'm fine," said Sherlock. He abruptly left the store, and sat across the mall at Muffin Break until he saw the three men leave. The cashier knew him at Muffin Break. He hoped the saleslady at Victoria's Secret saw him amiably greet the Muffin Break cashier.

     "They went to the third floor, lingerie and home furnishings, bought some intimate apparel. They might just be hassling salesladies. Could be innocent. Looks like casing the joint. I'd suggest keeping a record of their plates." Sherlock hung up. He went back to his post in front of the mall entrance. "Hello, how are you today? Fine day to shop!"

     Sherlock was a busy man. "Never a dull moment!" the officers teased him over the phone. Sherlock came upon his job quite by chance, when he happened to be in Tru-Valu shopping for plant food. In Tru-Valu Sherlock had seen a man stuffing a duffel bag full of hardware parts. Sherlock had dragged him over to where a cashier could detain him. The thief was afraid that Sherlock, sweating and eyes popping, was going to assault him. Then Sherlock had called the police. He accompanied the Tru-Valu thief to the station, where he had first met Officer Delaney. For a few hours, Sherlock was a hero, written up in the local Register Guard. Sherlock saved the front-page article--now dimly yellowed in his photo album-titled Local American Hero.

     The police station was usually quiet, bored. Several times Sherlock called in actual parking lot accidents, and because of these few times the officers listened to him. Sherlock liked Officer Delaney best; the others were corrupt. Sherlock had been at his post for a year, his decision to fill the position coming after his sixtieth birthday. He felt as if he had done everything at least once, at least sampled everything once; love, travel, hard work, crime, unemployment. He had become more and more distant from the people around him as time went on, and he realized this was just a biological consequence of aging. As he aged, he accrued more memories that no one else could share.

     All his original connections were gone; his first love, his wife, had died several years ago, his parents were dead, his best friends had traveled to distant parts of the globe. He had no one to reminisce with. On another level he felt he had much in common with humanity, with the people he served at the mall; so much time constantly whizzing by, so many broken headlights and dented fenders, stolen packs of gum and dropped groceries, and at least that he shared with everyone.

     Sherlock was afraid that the burden of his steadily growing memories would tug him down. He wanted to remember every detail of his life; from the shine on the hood of his first car, a powder blue Thunderbird, to the way his wife had put a garnish of parsley or melon on his dinners, to the details of his recent battle with the white flies infesting the geraniums in his front yard. If he didn't remember, who would? As the responsibility of maintaining his memory grew with each second, he felt compelled to report his observations to the Marlboro County Police Office.

     "1300 hours and twenty five. Blue Chevy, parked illegally in the handicap space. License 776-UMN. Driver turned off motor, sitting in car. He's been there for half an hour now. He's waiting for someone. A drug deal." Sherlock looked at himself in the reflective surface on the phone. He practiced nodding, frowning seriously.

     In the winters when it was cold Sherlock waited inside. He cupped his hands to the windows outside K-mart, staring out as if waiting for a ride, while ghosts of condensation rose around his face. Summers weren't any better. The sun shone haughtily down in defiance of a mall where it could never enter. He sat in the phone booth or prowled the sidewalk. Sometimes Sherlock used the mirror of the phone as a kind of rear-view mirror, to watch people without having to gaze directly into the sun.

     1400 hours and a woman walked out of the mall laden with three big shopping bags. She glared at the sun and drove off with the Blue Chevy man Sherlock had been watching.

     "1700 hours thirteen. Two men, orange caps, eyeballing foreign car," he said and hung up. His last call of the day. He looked at himself in the scratched mirror of the phone. He was looking tense, worried. He had run out of quarters. At home he gave himself permission to take a bath, putting in some Epsom salts the way his wife used to. Sherlock had put in a hard day of work.

     The next day at the mall was dismal. It was cloudy and hardly anyone was shopping. Everyone was irritated. Sherlock said "hello" to a woman who regularly greeted him. She ignored him. A taxi driver drove up to the phone booth where Sherlock sat. The driver got out and said, "Did you call for a cab?"

     "No" said Sherlock.

     The taxi driver went into K-mart and spoke to an old couple sitting by the windows reading Reader's Digest. They shook their heads no also. The taxi driver drove off, glaring at Sherlock. Fifteen minutes later, another cab from a different company drove up. The driver asked Sherlock the same question.

     The cab driver said, "Are you sure you didn't call buddy?

     Cause you're the only guy out here."

     "I'm sure," said Sherlock, "but I'll see what I can do to straighten this out."

     Sherlock called the police office, and said, "Taxis keep showing up here, but no one has ordered them. Someone making crank calls."

     "Oh yeah?" said Officer Young, "and who's making those calls, huh? Psycho, right?"

     "No." Sherlock thought, guilt drying his throat, "I should have checked the other phone on Two. Maybe suspicious activity there."

     "What if all the taxis in town are tied up?" said Officer Young, his voice rising in feigned hysteria, "we better get right on it."

     "You're right, Officer. Someone could be out there, in an emergency, and need a taxi. What are they going to do with all the taxis tied up like this?"

     "I'll get on it right away," said Young. A lie for a lie. Young hung up and took another puff of his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair, the only man in the office, his feet up on the desk.

     One day Sherlock had been upstairs in JC Penney, tracking a potentially abusive mother. When he checked in with Dispatch, Officer Young told him that they were about to send over a car: With Sherlock distracted upstairs, someone had jumped the turnstiles at K-mart. "I don't have any time for this," Young had said on the phone, "You missed the real crime: stay out of the way, OK? This isn't 'America's Most Wanted.'" Sherlock had waited for the familiar white and blue Chevy Caprice to arrive. He waited in his phone booth as if in prison. He could not bring himself to meet his own reflection in the mirror of the coin return slot.

     The Caprice had arrived, red and blue lights flashing but no siren. Sherlock went into the store. The youth who had jumped the turnstile said he hadn't stolen anything, but the store manager said he was sure the youth was guilty. The cashier said, "I chased him, then he jumped the stile." The cashier was a gruff man with a buzz cut and a big mole on his cheek. "The kid ditched the stolen item on the wrong shelf," the cashier said. He had heard about Sherlock, and tried only to look at the cops while he spoke. Still, he couldn't help noticing the shaving nick on Sherlock's cheek.

     Sherlock combed the aisles, looking for misplaced expensive items, video game cartridges, a watch. All he found was a package of gummy bears on a shelf of garbage bags. Not grounds for suspicion, and not expensive enough. The youth waited out by the bubble gum and prize machines by the automatic doors. The youth had had friends with him at the time he jumped the turnstiles. They had either deserted, or he had told them to run ahead, martyring himself. He certainly looked like a martyr to Sherlock; the youth wore a huge cross around his neck, and dark pants with an apocalyptic T-shirt, covered with what looked like flames, or thunderbolts. The cashier with the mole held the youth's hands behind his back.

     Sherlock, the first to return, said that he hadn't found anything. Sherlock held out the package of gummy bears. "This is all I found," said Sherlock. The youth rolled his eyes and the cashier sighed.

     "Look, just go on home," the cashier had said to Sherlock. "It's been a long day."

     After that terrible failure, Sherlock took no more chances. He improved efficiency. He had bought a small spiral notebook where he recorded times of mall arrival and departure. He began calling local stores when customers wrongly used designated parking spaces. "I'm calling from right outside," he would say, "someone parked in your store space illegally."

     "Thanks," the cashiers would say, and then ask their managers if it was important.

     Sherlock wrote in his log detailed and trivial descriptions. Sometimes he sketched faces. As the years went on, he called the office less and less. Three days after the mysterious taxis had appeared, Sherlock called in and Officer Young picked up again.

     "Young girl wearing blue dress left K-mart wearing jacket not previously noted. Black Camaro parked in front of VideoDen illegally. Blasting music. 1500 hours," he said.

     "No shit, Sherlock," said Officer Young, "I have a clock too. Look- you're holding up the damn line!"

     Later on, Young cruised by the mall, and as he passed Sherlock, he waved, or rather, made a brushing-away motion with his hand, as if Sherlock were an annoying fly.

     Around this time Sherlock started branching out into mediating situations that were not exactly of criminal potential, and days now went by when he wouldn't call the office at all. He told harassed mothers to stop yelling at their children. He ordered boys to open doors for their girlfriends. He saw adolescents walk out of stores with candy they had just bought, tearing the wrappers off and throwing them on the sidewalk. Sherlock shouted, "Pick that up!" The adolescents turned around to see what kind of weirdo would care about littering.

     Sherlock ate less and less. It would be difficult to tell whether he ate less because he was working more, or out of a strange consideration he had for his food; he somehow felt obliged to save it. He felt pangs of helplessness every time he had to throw out a bad lemon or tomato.

     One day a few months later Sherlock called in to report some littering. Young replied, "Yeah, and it was Godzilla, right? I think you better check it out more before we send someone out. We don't want to lose a man."

     Sherlock said, "It's against the law to litter." He seethed with righteousness. The parking lot was a blur, the shoppers thousands of miles away. Only his own reflection was clear, determined.

     "So?" said Officer Young. "It's illegal to swear, it's illegal to make tapes of records, it's illegal to spit on someone, it's illegal to jaywalk, it's illegal to drive your car barefooted, it's illegal to make copies without a copyright. Who cares? 'America's Most Wanted' is just TV! Get a life!"

     Sherlock said, "I don't have to do this you know. I could quit."

     "Go right ahead!" Young chuckled.

     Sherlock had never considered the idea. "OK," he said, "You don't care about the law. Why should I? I quit."

     Sherlock made a last call. He waited a few minutes, called back and said, "I'm reporting a loiterer. In the phone booth by K-mart. Seen wearing tan jacket and sneakers. Older man, appears to be blocking traffic and tying up the phone." No officer showed up to arrest Sherlock. He walked home alone.

     Sherlock was unemployed now. Every day he carefully opened his junk mail. He read it all, the coupons, the pleas for donations, invitations to local firemen's balls. Where he could, he responded. He was busy. He ended up going to firemen's balls. He didn't really want to, but went out of a sense of obligation. He humored people that came to his door soliciting, his only guests. He rarely refused solicitors money when he could and at least offered hospitality. Once he bought a book written by a couple that came to his door. The couple claimed they were channeling Jim Morrison's poetry from beyond the grave.

     Sherlock was alone so often that solicitors coming to his door were an event, something to relish for days, elaborate on. He spent hours trying to remember exactly what the solicitors said to him. "Was it the wife who channeled Morrison, or the husband? Maybe it was both." He checked the spiral book to make sure who it had been.

     Sherlock played a game to see how much he could remember. The channeling wife had been wearing an aqua blue sweatshirt, tennis shoes, and had scraggly brownish hair. The husband wore glasses and carried a cane. Had it been sunny yesterday, or rainy? Sometimes he couldn't remember, and this bothered Sherlock. He was afraid the picture in his mind of his wife's dinners faded too, slowly, as if disappearing parsley sprig by parsley sprig.

     Sherlock became sensitized to the smallest changes in his environment. When it rained, Sherlock became rapt. He listened only to the water on his roof, and all his plans, like cleaning the refrigerator, memorizing his notebooks, and mailing the bills, were dwarfed in comparison to awesome nature. He had to hold all that information; bills, moldy cheese in the fridge, notes he had forgotten all about, and now rain on top of it! He worked himself down to one meal a day, to save energy. Some days he would forget to eat, becoming so absorbed in memorizing his old mall entries.

     One day Delaney showed up at Sherlock's front door.

     "We got a call," said Delaney.

     "Delaney, I'm glad you're here. This is a real case, right here in my own home. There is a man in here with a white dog, trespassing, and he won't leave."

     Delaney looked at Sherlock's front yard. It was full of houseplants, which Sherlock was airing. Sherlock was waiting in his chair, bracing himself in the arms as if he were in a fast swerving vehicle.

     "The man came in and went in the back, and I told him to leave, but he wouldn't listen to me." Sherlock clenched his teeth and cringed as if Delaney would hit him.

     "There's no one here, only you and me," Delaney said.

     "I hear him! He's in the back bedroom. He's stealing my notes, I know!"

     Delaney walked to the back room. He checked every closet and cabinet. Sherlock could hear the doors opening and shutting. He heard Delaney shout, "Get out of here!" There was scuffling, a shot, a dog yelping. Delaney ran back in the room out of breath. "Well, there's no one here now," he said.

     "But you're here," smiled Sherlock. He didn't complain when Delaney put him in the police car.