The air around Detective Philly Giordano thickened with a sense of urgency he hadn’t felt in years the morning Police Chief William Schmidt called him into his office. “Philly, we’ve got a murder case unlike any other. Storytelling! It’s been slain!”
“Storytelling? That’s unheard of, Chief! Who did it?”
“We don’t know. No witnesses, no nothing. All we know is there’s a cold-blooded psychopath on the loose whose intent is to render everyone in New York illiterate! Storybooks, with their words ripped right out of them, strewn by the tens of thousands all over the city.”
“I could have never imagined anything like this, Chief!”
“That’s just it, no one could. I called every bookstore in Manhattan—no one’s got a clue. Word on the street is that the New York Public Library might close up shop altogether. The bottom line is that a world without storytelling is one with no past and no future. Now, I know you’re a reader and all that.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ve done my share of reading.”
“I haven’t read a story since I was knee-high to a fire plug. But you, you got all that college behind you.”
“Guilty as charged.”
Schmidt leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. “I want this guy bad, Philly. When you think of all the little children—who’s gonna read them a bedtime story now?”
“Breaks your heart. Who’ll even take a book to the park on a sunny day anymore?”
“And the housewives and their romance novels—forget about it!”
“And you know how strap-hangers love a good mystery on their way to work in the morning, right?”
“Brings tears to your eyes. And what about the beatniks and their er …?”
“Jack Kerouac?”
“Right. And that exit thing!”
“Existentialism?”
“Yeah, I never understood it.”
“Part of understanding it, Chief—is not understanding it.”
“You’re a forward thinker, Philly, yet your mind works counterclockwise. I admire that about you. That’s why you’re the only man for this job!” Schmidt took a long draw from his cigar and let out a plume of smoke. “The city that never sleeps won’t sleep until the man who killed storytelling is brought to justice.”
Chief Schmidt’s words hung like a guillotine blade, poised to sever the last remaining threads of a world Giordano held dear. The Chief wasn’t one for hyperbole; if he said storytelling was dead, its heart had indeed stopped beating.
Giordano’s mind raced as he walked back to his office, each step descending into a complex web of possibilities. Who could commit such a heinous act? Was it the work of a lone madman, or was there a darker force at play? The suspects were many, but the clues were few.
Philly Giordano was a rare breed on the force, a fusion of book and street smarts that few could match. Whip-smart and intuitively savvy, a gumshoe who navigated the corridors of human psychology and dark alleyways with equal aplomb.
Before entering the realm of criminal justice, Giordano had briefly walked the halls of New York University’s Arts & Sciences Department. It was an Introduction to World Literature that ignited his intellectual curiosity. However, feeling a gravitational pull toward his family legacy, he dropped out of NYU. His father had studied criminology at John Jay, and Giordano felt a calling to follow in those footsteps. He earned an MA in Criminal Justice and embarked on a career in police work.
His office served as both sanctuary and shrine, lined with the works of literary titans like Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Twain, and Poe. These authors, who wrestled with the complexities of the human soul in ink and paper, were his silent companions in a world increasingly devoid of meaningful dialogue. But, as time passed, reading the Masters took a backseat to the daily grind of police work.
His first lead took him to the hallowed halls of academia, where postmodern theorists spoke in riddles and paradoxes. They were the high priests of a new orthodoxy that questioned the very notion of authorial intent. But even they seemed like lost souls, wandering in a desert of their own making. They were not killers; they were exiles, banished from the kingdom of meaning.
Next, he delved into the bowels of the internet, where algorithms dictated the ebb and flow of human thought. Here, he found a more likely culprit: ChatGPT, the AI that promised to replicate human creativity but delivered only a hollow echo. It was a seductive villain—an elusive, shape-shifting demon that wore the mask of innovation—while gutting the essence of artistic expression.
Giordano lit a match and watched the flame fight against the cold New York air. The cigarette between his lips was more for effect than habit—something to punctuate his thoughts. The torn book page in his hand crumpled as he stared down at the bookstore's broken window.
Jane’s Bookstore.
It had been a while since he’d seen her—ten years, maybe more. She’d always had a cause bigger than the two of them. But seeing the glass shards glittering on the ground outside her bookstore in the Village brought something else to the surface—something raw.
The place was trashed.
Bookshelves were overturned. The air smelled of dust, ink, and something metallic. Philly stepped inside, careful not to make a sound even though the place was deserted. The books that hadn’t been destroyed were… blank.
“Who the hell prints blank pages?”
He picked up one of the hardcovers—The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. Philly wasn’t a stranger to the name. Jane had underlined half the book when she first read it. He remembered the night she’d stormed into his apartment, quoting: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
But this copy? The pages were empty. No quotes. No thoughts. No words. Just white nothingness.
That’s when he heard her.
“Philly.”
He turned.
Jane stood in the doorway, barefoot as usual, wearing loose jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. Her hair was a mess of dark curls, and she clutched a cigarette in one hand like it was the only thing holding her together.
He froze.
“Jane.”
She walked in slowly, stepping over the wreckage of her life like it didn’t faze her.
“You finally made it to the bookstore,” she said, half-smirking.
“Guess I needed an invite.”
She stopped at the counter, placed both hands flat on the wood, and sighed. “They’re gone, Philly.”
He nodded at the wreckage. “Books? Yeah, I noticed.”
“No.” Her eyes locked on his, wide and glassy. “The words.”
He frowned. “You’re serious.”
Jane walked to a fallen pile of books and picked one up—a poetry collection by Audre Lorde. She opened it. Blank. She grabbed another—Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Nothing.
“They’re all like this,” she said, voice cracking. “Simone, Baldwin, Plath… Gone. Every story. Every word. Like someone... erased them.”
Philly felt a chill run down his spine. He was used to mysteries—dead bodies, stolen diamonds, missing persons. But this? This was... absurd. And terrifying.
“Who did this?” he asked, quieter than he meant to.
Jane shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He walked toward her and reached out, but she pulled away.
“You left,” she said bitterly. “You walked away from all of this—the protests, the arguments, the fight. You could’ve stayed. But you didn’t.”
“I was in love with you, Jane.”
“And I with you, you bastard.”
“Things didn’t turn out,” he said, his voice soft. “Cops don’t get to live on poetry and philosophy.”
Jane laughed, but it was empty. “No. They live on rules and badges and lies.”
Philly exhaled slowly. The conversation was a familiar road—one they’d walked too many times. They once spent nights reading Finnegan’s Wake to each other aloud. And then walked barefoot through Washington Square Park discussing it ’til dawn.
“Look,” he said, motioning to the chaos around them. “Whatever this is, it’s bigger than you, me, or some fight we had.” He picked up a blank copy of Moby-Dick. “Someone is trying to erase everything—everything that matters.”
Jane sat down on the counter, her bare feet swinging like she was a kid again, reading On the Road on her fire escape. “Philly, do you ever wonder if…” She hesitated, staring at the blank book in her hands. “If maybe this is it? Maybe storytelling’s dead. People don’t read anymore.”
Philly’s jaw clenched. “No.” He shook his head. “Stories don’t just up and die. There’s got to be more to this.”
Jane’s eyes softened, but her walls didn’t come down. “You still think you’re some kind of hero, don’t you?” she scoffed.
“No.” He put on his fedora and adjusted his coat. “But I know a villain when I see one.”
End of Part One
© Michael Arturo, 2025
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Welcome to Michael’s Newsletter. Writer of contemporary political/social commentary, parodies, parables, satire. Michael was born and raised in New York City and has a background in theater and film. His plays have been staged in New York, London, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Michael also writes short literary fiction. Below is a link to his first collection.
FLATIRON and other tall tales
“Storm The Beachhead, Little Bitch"
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