A/N: Guess who's back! Oh wait, don't guess; it's a shocking habit, destructive to the logical faculty. Deduce who's back! Yessir, it's Wakizashi, with another installment of my Rhodes and Bridges series. Huzzah! Your reviews for the last one were so fantastic, I couldn't stay away for long. For those of you who are new to my stories, 'A Perfect World' and 'Down the Rabbit-Hole', my characters, Ethan Rhodes and Nadia Bridges are my modern, American (gasp!) variations of Holmes and Watson. It might be a good idea to read the first two, to familiarize yourself.
To my faithful readers: I took your suggestions about point-of-view to heart, and came to the agreement of most of you that it wouldn't be such a great idea to tell it from Rhodes's POV; we like his inner thoughts to be an insoluble mystery, don't we? So here's what I decided: mostly Bridges's point-of-view, with some third-person present-tense thrown in for some variety. Because Bridges can't be everywhere at once, can she?
Also, many thanks to my beta reader, solitairebbw218 for fixing all of my atrocious spelling errors, and for all of her nice comments. Thank ye kindly, Soli!
One last note, and I'll shut up, I promise. This story, unlike the others, is not a modern remake of one of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. I suppose you could say it's more of a cross-over, really. In fact, a few of you might be familiar with the series I'm, er, borrowing from. But it was still inspired by Conan Doyle's characters, so I'll just keep it in the Sherlock Holmes section, to make it easier to find. Okay, I'm done! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: My characters are inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Anything you like about them probably wasn't my idea.
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The Collection
a modern Sherlock Holmes fanfiction
by Wakizashi
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Prologue
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The long tanned fingers rest gently, infusing their warmth, their life, into the smooth white keys. There is a tense, expectant silence, and then the fingers begin to move, lending temporary life to the inanimate object beneath them. Music - the bright, lively tones so characteristic of that master weaver of the music of life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - fills the cavernous concert hall, falling on the ears of every hearer, who have come solely for that object: to worship sound.
But though it is the 'Turkish March' from the Sonata in A major that they are hearing, it is not Mozart's hands that are playing. These hands, which fly up and down the keys like nervous birds, alighting here and there to extend a note before taking flight again, do not belong to any of the great composers of centuries ago - not unless the great composers wore digital wristwatches.
The sprightly strains of the 'Turkish March' soon subside, giving way to the more melancholy sounds of Chopin's posthumous Nocturne in C# minor. The fingers slow, lingering almost regretfully on every note, while the listeners sit rapt, utterly lost in the moment. And then the fingers surprise all in attendance - beyond expectation, beyond comprehension - with a sudden aggressive, pulsing rhythm: Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'. They pound on the keys relentlessly, and the astonished audience cannot help but listen, caught up in the unexpected but compelling change of mood.
Then, all too soon, the hands come to a rest. Silence again fills the hall, until it is replaced all at once with thunderous applause. They came to worship sound, and they have not been disappointed.
Pushing back from the gleaming black Steinway & Sons grand piano, Christopher DeMarco stands up and faces the audience with a bow. As usual, DeMarco attempts to remain as calm and composed as a member of a church choir, and as usual, he cannot quite hold back a disbelieving chuckle as he looks out over the seemingly endless rows of the Carnegie Hall. It seems, to him, that he will never get used to the adulation he receives after every performance.
DeMarco's sheepish grin as he waves to the audience only serves to renew the applause to a deafening degree. He cannot help but notice that a large percentage of the seats are occupied by young women. His cheeks redden a little, and he gives another quiet chuckle. It had taken him by surprise when he had first learned that the New York public had dubbed him "the rock star of the classical scene". With his thick, slightly curly dark hair, his warm brown eyes, and his ingenuously appealing smile, Kit DeMarco is considered something of a heart-throb by the music community. The reputation and the moniker, along with the sheer multitude of his female fans, make him feel more embarrassed than flattered.
As the curtains close, DeMarco exhales in relief and trudges off backstage in search of his overcoat. He finds it, of course, in his dressing-room, where he left it. Shaking his head, he shrugs his coat on and, after looking around carefully, creeps out into the corridor and takes the most circuitous route possible to the exit, and to his waiting limousine.
Immediately he is bombarded by legions of adoring fans. DeMarco finds he is forced to, in the most polite manner, gently elbow and shove his way toward the limo, stopping unavoidably to accept hearty words of praise and to sign cd covers and concert programs. His embarrassed smile seems to be permanently etched on his face. Cripes, he thinks to himself, they must be confusing me with someone from American Idol.
By the time he succeeds in throwing himself into the safety of the limousine, DeMarco is rather breathless, and thoroughly drained. He rubs at his aching shoulders, looking forward with growing eagerness to his pleasantly lumpy couch and one of his old leatherbound classics. Maybe a scotch on the rocks. Ooh, yeah, that sounds good.
His manager, Michael Spencer, is already seated at the other end of the spacious compartment, looking at him closely through his stylish wire-frames. "Rough night, Kit?" he asks in a deliberately casual voice.
DeMarco shrugs, doing his best to ignore his manager's scrutinizing gaze. "No more insane than usual, lately," he replies lightly. "Toss me a Coke, will you, chief?"
Wisely deciding not to take the young pianist's request literally, Spencer takes a can out of the mini-fridge and passes it to him. "You sure about that?" he asks.
DeMarco is inescapably aware of Spencer's searching blue eyes as he throws back his neck and chugs thirstily. Finally he sighs impatiently. "Okay, Mike, what's with the cross-examination? We've known each other for years. If you want to ask me something, just ask me."
"Yeah, I know. Sorry, Kit." The older man leans forward in his seat, regarding him very seriously. "No offense, but you seemed kind of out of it tonight. I don't mean the performance; that was technically flawless, as usual. But there was something... I don't know, off. Like you were somewhere else." Spencer pauses, as if in hesitation. "Anything wrong?"
DeMarco sighs, rubbing absently at his shoulder again. He half-heartedly wishes he would stop slouching. "Nah; not wrong, exactly," he says as he stares out the window, the bright lights of the passing city periodically illuminating his clear-cut, refined features. "I've just... got a lot of things on my mind. Not bad things. Just... things."
"Things, huh?" Spencer fixes him with a sternly paternal eye. "Don't make me worry about you, kid."
"Sorry, chief."
"Look, you want to stop calling me 'chief'?" Spencer suggests with a glare.
DeMarco grins. "Could be worse. I could be like Gatsby, call you 'old sport'." His manager groans, and the younger man laughs. "All right, all right. But I'm fine, Mike. Really. Couldn't be better."
Spencer does not seem at all convinced, but he at least lets the matter drop, and their conversation drifts into other, lighter matters.
It is not until the limousine eases to a halt outside DeMarco's high-rise apartment in Greenwich Village that the subject is broached again. "Seriously, Kit," says Spencer, laying a hand on DeMarco's arm as he starts to climb out, "if anything's bugging you, and you feel like telling me, don't even think twice. Okay?"
DeMarco has to smile. "You know it, Mike," he replied, slapping the older man on the shoulder. "Take it easy, old sport."
"Get out."
He closes the door with a chuckle and watches as the limousine roars off down the busy street, standing for a while in the bitter January cold with his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes far away. Then he turns and strolls up the sidewalk to his apartment building.
As he steps inside his apartment and bolts and chains the door behind him, DeMarco's tall, lean frame instantly relaxes. He tosses his keys onto a nearby table and crosses the living room, stopping to check his messages. There is only one, a man speaking in a nasal, somewhat anxious tone: "Mr. DeMarco, this is Agent Girdley. We spoke the other day, about this latest disappearance. I was just calling to see if you'd had any new thoughts, theories, so on and so forth. Give me a call as soon as you can." DeMarco sighs, and writes on the Dry-Erase board on his refrigerator: "Call Nerdly".
He flips on a floor lamp, throws his coat over the back of a chair, and collapses onto his beige leather sofa. His lustrous eyes lose their distant, abstracted quality as they come to rest on a large black binder on his slate-topped coffee table. A slight smile quirks the corner of his mouth, and he picks it up and places it in his lap.
Flipping it open, DeMarco gazes down at the pages in his quietly intense manner. He leafs through them in a slow, familiar way, as if he has leafed through them many times before. On each page, under a clear plastic protector, are two or three newspaper articles. All are cut from the San Francisco Tribune; an odd choice, given the city he himself lives in.
As DeMarco continues flipping, a recurring theme seems to develop in the articles: crime cases, varying in their degree of importance and difficulty. There are cases of burglary, extortion, and occasionally even of murder. DeMarco flips to the end, where an article cut from the cover section of the paper fills the entire page. The headline proclaims in large, bold font: "EMBEZZLING RING EXPOSED BY RHODES AND BRIDGES".
The article exclaims in gushing admiration the success of the increasingly well-known young partnership, even going as far as calling them "the city's leading unofficial detective agency." Beside the article is a large color photograph of the partnership in question.
This picture shows a tall, thin young man in a dark gray suit, with longish, wavy black hair and light green eyes. His skinny arm is flung around a slight, freckled young woman with golden brown hair. The girl is not what one might call classically beautiful, but DeMarco is quite of the opinion that she is nevertheless very attractive in a petite, impish kind of way. The camera clearly caught them both laughing, as if at some uproarious joke, and the young man's innocently charming grin is strikingly similar to the one that suddenly spreads over DeMarco's face.
"I'm coming to see you soon, little bro," he says.
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A/N: I won't say anything. I'll just let you think what you will.
Yay, I'm so glad I'm writing about Rhodes and Bridges again! Even though I technically haven't yet. And I'm really liking this whole third-person present-tense thing. I must confess, I got the idea from reading Bleak House by Dickens - some of it is from the point-of-view of Esther Summerson, and the other parts are third-person present-tense. I'm starting to see the advantages of it, as opposed to past-tense; it feels more real, more personal to the reader. Anyway, there it is. Tell me what you thought, while I start work on chapter one!
-Waki