The Man Who Sold Immortality

“I sell elixirs of immortality.”

The officer surveyed the man who made this statement. His expression had remained the same throughout his two-hour detention - he wore a faint smile, exemplified by the long beard he possessed. The length of his detention was merely a logistical inconvenience.

The officer had been scheduled to interrogate another arrested individual – a gang member - in the morning. The local goon would need to be released in a couple of hours because of the lack of evidence. After pursuing a final but fruitless line of questioning, the man was let go - these people were trained to never speak, which was a cause of secret admiration throughout the precinct. A mole had been detected in their police department, if not identified; everyone was on high alert.

The only reason the officer had taken out the time to visit this self-proclaimed seller of immortality was because the arresting officer also found a few pouches of an unidentified substance in his possession. The apprehended individual maintained his stance throughout, repeating what he told the officer just now whenever someone asked him what the white powder was - “It is the elixir of immortality.”

The officer stood at the other end of the interrogation room with folded hands. He was distracted because he needed to finish writing the update to the released gang member’s file, which one suspected would only grow as the years went by. His captain was at the end of his rope. The mole was efficient in the manner which he leaked information to the mafias of the same gang they thought a solid case was being built against. But any progress in their investigations resulted in immediate covering of their tracks and elimination of usable evidence. The network of people with access to all the leaked information was limited, which made the frustration of the captain even more visible.

“I am a busy man, sir,” the officer said. He empathised with the condition of the John Doe who sat in front of him. His clothes were decent but spoke of struggle, and his affinity for retaining facial hair indicated he was selling the drugs out of necessity more than bad company. “We have sent samples collected from the drugs found in your possession to our lab. It is a matter of time before the official report lands on my desk. And let me tell you, it won’t paint a good picture for you.”

“I always thought paintings are deceptive by nature,” said the arrested man who refused to identify himself with a name or a social security number. No papers had been found on him, official or otherwise. “I’ve never liked movies either. I went to one of the first they ever showed to the public. All they do is sell you dreams.” Leaning in, he whispered his next words, as if he was afraid of the eavesdropping walls. In the process, he made himself clearer to the recorder placed at the center of the table. “And dreams, by nature, aren’t true.”

The officer shifted his stance. He looked out of the darkened window, behind which his partner would be monitoring the entire conversation. After thinking over it for a minute, he pulled out the chair and sat down. This gave him a better look at the man. His grey eyes showed no emotion, but stood out as a contrast to the rest of his shabby appearance. They possessed a look which spoke of unaccounted years, ones that gifted him wisdom. But the officer dismissed his instincts as a fanciful whim.

The man’s obsession with the claim of selling immortality would probably be enough for the courts to dismiss him as a clinically unstable defendant. One way or the other, he would end up in a mental clinic, which made the officer place an offer on the table. He had mastered the art over the years. People are desperate to feel the illusion of freedom which regular society provides them with. But with madmen, any such illusion persisted or was perennially absent irrespective of their surroundings, so he knew he had to be careful.

“Look here, I know you must be having a tough time, otherwise a man like you wouldn’t be roaming around on the streets with the intention of selling drugs.”

The man smiled. Once again, his beard accentuated the slight display of pleasure. It spelt out his enjoyment of a situation where only one side understood the gravity of the other’s claims. The trouble was, each believed their version was the truth.

“Ah yes, times. They’re neither tough nor easy, for its existence has ceased to be important for the likes of us.”

“Us?” The officer spoke the monosyllable with annoyance.

“Yes officer, us. The ones who sustain the production and distribution of the elixir.”

“Immortality must be an attractive business.” The officer smirked as he said this.

However, the humour did not cut across to the other side of the table. “More than one would imagine,” the man replied - he was serious.

“Look brother. I would love to cut you a deal and try to get you in and out of the correctional system as fast as I can. But that cannot happen if you keep spouting this fantasy. It stops being amusing after a point of time. I know who you must be working for if you roam the streets you were picked up from. Just tell us everything you know. We will press the minimal of charges if you do.”

“I’m sorry sir. I couldn’t possibly tell you about the elixir. It’s something of an in-house secret.”

The officer looked into the eyes of the man once more, but he was too distracted to notice the amusement in them this time around. He knew there was anger in his own. He had entered the room hoping to find some valuable information about the gang war being raged in the vicinity of the precinct. But the arrested man was keeping anything he knew to himself, and engaging in silly tactics.

“So, if I take some of the immortality cocaine we confiscated, I’ll live forever?”

“Oh no, you’ll have to take daily doses for three months after every five years. It’s not as magical as one might expect. Those short doses will add a year or two more to your life, at the very most.”

The officer could not help but laugh out loud. The enigmatic gentleman did know how to amuse, even if it came at the cost of his time. The latter fact influenced him to get up from his chair. “We won’t be letting you go anytime soon. Think about whether you would like to open up about things more the next time we talk.”

He turned around, and walked out of the room. Waving to his partner keeping guard outside, he left. The partner would now take care of the paperwork as well as any other matters related to the case.

He retired to his own desk, where he went through the recent records of the police files throughout the country to see if anything could clarify things about the gang and its leaders which his team had been investigating for more than two years. It was a weekly survey done in case he saw something related to the case which might not catch the eye of the uninitiated. Nothing came to light, yet the job occupied him till sundown.

Half of the usual staff on his floor had dispersed when he decided to reward himself with a smoke break at around six in the evening. He picked up his lighter from the desk, placed it in his pocket, and walked down the stairs of the building to the back alley. There, he lit himself a cigarette. After a few drags, he looked around to make sure no one was around. He bent down and opened a familiar box hidden behind a trash can kept in a corner of the street. The box and its contents were hidden from the plain view of any casual observer who might venture into the back alley during the daytime. He took out the burner phone, and dialled a familiar number.

“Hello, it’s me.”

“Ah yes, good evening. Do you have any news for me?” The infamous voice on the other end was tempered, yet recognised in an instant by any officer who had worked in the precinct and heard the thousands of phone calls which had been tapped and recorded. They were always indecipherable, and sometimes, even misleading. It was the voice of the mafia boss the entire state had been searching for evidence against to incriminate the man for the better part of a decade.

“No updates since the last time we spoke. They seem to have lost any footings they gained because of your cover-ups and tying off the loose ends.”

“Thanks to you. You’ve been very good for us.”

The officer smiled. Double timing the precinct had come at a cost of loyalty, but allowed him to lead a good life.

“Do not worry, my men shall wire you your weekly installment to the same anonymous bank account,” the notorious criminal said.

“Thank you.” After a pause, he added, “I’ve got a small query.”

“Go ahead. As long as it isn’t about your colleague who disappeared last week.” The mafia thug laughed, even though his voiced lacked humour. The individual had indeed been taken care of after she found material she shouldn’t have while investigating an associate of the mafia.

“I just wanted to know… Have you employed an odd man to distribute your product in the area of my office? He’s got brown hair, grey eyes, and a grayer beard which probably weighs more than his brain does.”

“I… do not think so.”

“Are you sure? He cannot be selling the product on his own, or one of your men would have dealt with the matter by now.”

“Look, I’m a careful man. I know the faces of everyone who works for me, especially those who walk around the streets. There is no one who fits that description. There are a few people with an affinity for misfit beards, but none of them operate anywhere close to the area you speak of. Why do you ask?”

“We brought in a man possessing those features today morning. I feared he might spill out things to others, so I tried to talk to him myself. Turned out to be quite the madman.”

“Well, I only employ madmen who are beneficial to me. I’ll check before the next time we speak. My men will hide a cellphone in the same place as always. You’ll receive your money by the end of today.”

“Good night.” The phone line went dead. The officer placed the burner phone in both his hands, broke it into two pieces as was the custom for devices used for such matters, and tossed it into the same dumpster he was standing next to. Then, he entered the building and made his way back up to his work station.

As he climbed up the stairs, his thoughts troubled him. Who was this man who claimed to sell immortality? A madman, surely, but something about the situation put him off. He had an uneasy feeling that he could not grasp something because it was beyond his understanding. But he was semi-successful in dismissing any deviant thoughts from his head, when his partner on the case started walking towards him.

“Hey,” he said in between breaths. He was panting. “I’ve been looking for you all around.”

“What happened?”

“The crazy man… has escaped.”

The officer stood there for a while. “What do you mean he’s escaped?”

“I personally took him to a holding cell in the station and secured it. He was left unattended there, since there was no way he could escape. He was locked from outside. There are two guards patrolling the floor. Yet…”

“How did no one see him?”

“All of our surveillance systems blacked out a few moments ago, for just a minute. When we had the system up and running again, the one manning the footage realised the old man was no longer there.”

“What happened? Did he just disappear into thin air?” There was disbelief in the officer’s voice.

“I do not know. But he’s just not there anymore.”

The officer did not say anything. Not because he was at the loss of words, but because he did not care to think of any. He could not make any sense of what had happened. He felt trapped in his mind, as it ventured into thinking about the man who sold the elixir of immortality.

“When this happened, I was on my way to bring this file to you.” He held up an unmarked brown folder.

“I did a facial scan of the man in the system before completing the file. And this came up…” He handed over the file to the officer, who took it. On opening the cover, he saw a printed-out article on top of all the other documents.

“There has been only one mention of him in our servers. It is a news article. Look at the picture.”

The officer read the headline, which bore the typography of a bygone era – “Outsider Arrested for Witchcraft and Alleged Possession of Drugs.” The article bore details of the investigation and subsequent charges, even though most of the evidence was circumstantial. He shifted his focus to the image printed in the middle of the article. It was a mugshot of low quality, but the features of the man were distinct. Brown hair, grey eyes, and a grayer beard. He wore the familiar smile, an almost invisible one – the smile of someone knowing what the others did not.

“And look at the date.”

The officer saw it printed on top of the article: 12 November, 1920.

He looked at his partner, and spoke in a pale voice - “But that’s… almost a hundred years ago.”