Papier-Mâché Peter: Part 2
> Note: Start by reading Papier-Mâché Peter, Part 1: "The End..." here!
Part 2: "The Middle..."
The evening Pete Switzerland Jr. disappeared, Sheriff Jefferson Jefferson assured us he and his officers would not rest until our gorgeous son was brought home safely.
The official search was called off just nine days later due to budget cuts.
Jefferson Jefferson accepted an early retirement package and moved to Chokoloskee, Florida — a small island community just south of Everglades City. Last I heard, he’d opened a fishing shop called JJ’s House of Bait, and the notoriously prickly locals had accepted him as one of their own.
We heard from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, too, but the woman who took our statement said they were pretty busy. When she hung up without even saying goodbye, I was so enraged that I hurled my Samsung Galaxy foldable phone into a flaming barbecue pit nearby.
This was especially regrettable because it took place at our nephew Gary’s fifth birthday party and — by all accounts — put a bit of a damper on the festivities.
Not to mention some melted plastic from the foldable phone allegedly found its way into a burger patty and made one of Gary’s classmates violently ill. The child’s parents sought legal recourse, but their lawsuit never made it to trial. (It didn’t hurt that the town’s only judge was an old table tennis buddy of mine.)
After Sheriff Jefferson Jefferson’s broken promise and the FBI’s appallingly discourteous conduct, Lil’ Pete’s mother Doris and I were on our own. We carefully weighed our options (from reputable psychics to highly trained bloodhounds to relentless bounty hunters) and eventually followed the advice of Rock Watson, my brother-in-law and a big-shot executive at Harper, Pickle & Bonk — an iconic marketing firm with offices in New York, Shanghai, and New Manatee, Massachusetts.
“What you really need,” Rock told us, “is share of voice.” He explained ‘share of voice’ referred to how much of the cultural conversation our ‘brand’ (Pete Jr.) received versus the competition.
“Keep in mind, the ‘competition’ isn’t just other missing children,” he added. “It’s March Madness. The latest episode of Game of Thrones. What’s trending on the Twitter. It’s this entire, overcrowded media landscape — and we need Little Pete’s story to cut through the noise like we’re carving a goddamn jack-o'-lantern!”
And so, Rock orchestrated what he called a “shockingly indiscriminate media blitz.” Soon, Small Peter’s face was all over A&E, Court TV, Investigation Discovery. We landed cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and, strangely, Good Housekeeping.
Tips came flooding into our hotline, but the only call that really amounted to anything came from a surprising source — Hulu. They wanted to produce a direct-to-streaming movie inspired by Peter’s story. Doris and I had reservations, but Rock insisted this was exactly the kind of awareness boost we needed to find our boy.
Suddenly, a script — titled For Pete’s Sake — was in development. Roger Donaldson, the filmmaker behind hits like Cocktail and Dante’s Peak, signed on to direct. Scores of child actors were auditioning for the role of Young Peter, and none other than Bruce Willis was in talks to play me, Pete Switzerland Senior.
Things were moving quickly, until they weren’t. The Writers Guild of America went on strike, bringing production to a sudden halt. I was torn — of course I wanted to draw attention to my son’s disappearance, but I was also a tireless advocate for the rights of organized labor.
Rock, on the other hand, was beside himself. He hired Bennie Melon, a notorious Hollywood “fixer,” to pressure Hulu into some sort of shady arrangement with a nonunion screenwriter. The scheme failed, Bennie cut a deal with federal prosecutors, and my brother-in-law ended up being sentenced to three years in prison for bribery, libel, and a bigamy charge unrelated to the Hulu shakedown.
The film was dead. And less than a week later, so was Doris — Pete’s mother and my partner of 27 years.
Doris had embarked on a solo expedition to search for Peter Jr. in New Manatee State Park — even though she’d never been camping, was legally blind, and had lost her right foot in a go-karting accident two years prior.
A day into her journey, she was eaten by a pack of wolves. The ranger who found what was left of Doris said this kind of tragedy was exceptionally rare, although not unheard of when the wolves came across a particularly appetizing parkgoer.
Suddenly, I was completely alone. But there was no time to grieve. Tiny Peter was still out there.
Our efforts thus far had yielded exactly zero leads of merit, but I’d netted around $300,000 from the Hulu deal and other media contracts. It was time to put that money to use — finding my missing boy.
Pete’s disappearance was, of course, a confounding mystery. What I needed was an elite mystery solver. Honestly, anyone would likely fare better than the shiftless bumpkins at the New Manatee Police Department and the ice queens at the FBI! But with $300k to burn, I had the funds to bring in the best of the best.
I’m talking about world-famous inspector and noted polymath Sir Hugo Tinsley Walcott and Mackenzie “Mack Attack” Maguire — a spunky, streetwise kid detective a couple grades ahead of Pete at Manatee Elementary.
Sir Hugo had unraveled the “unsolveable” mystery of the vanishing Van Gogh, apprehended the infamous Santiago Strangler, and proven John Wilkes Booth was framed for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Mack Attack, on the other hand, had cracked the case of the Bologna Sandwich Bandit, exposed a match-fixing ring operating across multiple levels of the New Manatee Peewee Soccer League, and tracked down Miss Darby’s missing class pet — an irascible rabbit named Señor Snuffles.
Recruiting this unassailable investigative pairing paid off almost immediately. Mack breached Peter’s closely guarded laptop after cracking his login password (peteswitzerland1) and uncovered a series of stunning revelations.
With no indication of how or why, we discovered Pete was secretly fluent in Japanese — and he’d been in regular contact with a man named Bunji Sato, the Chief Operations Officer at a major Tokyo financial institution.
Attempts to contact Sato revealed the enigmatic businessman had perished in some sort of wakeboarding incident just two days earlier. Sir Hugo called in a favor and secured a copy of the coroner’s report; the cause of death was listed as “undetermined” and “really mysterious.”
Mackenzie also unearthed a hidden folder on Pete’s computer containing over a thousand images and videos of animated horses, but the detectives concluded this probably wasn’t relevant to his disappearance.
There was more. Just before he went missing, my son had used a prepaid debit card to purchase several wigs, moustaches, false eyelashes, and theatrical makeup — all delivered to a storage unit on the north side of New Manatee.
We raced to the storage facility, only to find the unit’s lock broken and its interior empty. All that remained was a single chinchilla hair, a faded receipt for Skittles and Dramamine, plus a torn-up note that said, “DON’T FORGET CHINCHILLA.”
It seemed like a dead end, but not for Sir Hugo Tinsley Walcott’s brilliant and beguiling mind. He theorized the Skittles and Dramamine had been purchased for a long-haul flight. A flight... to Tokyo, perhaps.
Peter Junior had never traveled by plane, but Skittles were his favorite road trip “snackaroo” (his words; not mine). And he had suffered from motion sickness aboard other modes of transportation like go-karts, sailboats, and ferris wheels. It all tracked.
The next day, we piled into my 1997 Ford Fiesta and set out for Boston Logan International — the nearest airport with direct flights to Japan. Mack Attack drove most of the way, which felt risky given she was 12 years old. But she hadn’t let us down yet.
After arriving in record time, we accosted a kindly passenger services agent and inquired if anyone on a recent flight to Japan had declared a chinchilla at customs.
No one fit the bill. It turned out visitors weren’t even legally permitted to bring live chinchillas into the country.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I howled. Sir Hugo wept silently.
Only Little Mack kept her composure. This pint-sized super-sleuth wasn’t ready to throw in the towel and quit detecting just yet.
“It might be a long shot, but did anyone heading to Japan recently declare a fur coat...?” she asked. The kindly passenger services agent tapped away on her computer.
“Why, yes!” she finally responded. “Two women on the same flight to Japan declared their fur coats just yesterday! I really hope they were faux-fur..."
Two women; not a sassy little schoolboy named Peter.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” I howled. Mackenzie burst into tears.
“Oh! And a gentleman departing for Japan declared 27 fur coats on February 13th of this year,” the agent added after a moment. February 13th, the day after my little man went missing...
“Can we see who it was?” I pleaded. The kindly woman smiled.
“Well... what the heck,” she chuckled and swiveled the monitor around.
Displayed on the screen was a passport for “Dieter Blitzerland,” age 67. The gentleman in the photo sported a flowing mane of white hair, a pencil-thin mustache, garishly rosy cheeks, and disquietingly long eyelashes.
It was clearly a young boy, poorly disguised as an elderly drag queen. Not only that — it was clearly... Pete Switzerland Jr.
"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!” I howled. Sir Hugo wept silently.
“Guess you found what you were looking for,” the passenger services agent said with an extended wink. It was weird.
Just a few days later, Sir Hugo Tinsley Walcott, Mackenzie “Mack Attack” Maguire, and I were in Tokyo and hot on Pete Junior’s trail.
To be continued in Papier-Mâché Peter - Part 3: "The Beginning..."