Sleight

by Tom Twitchel

  Settling back into the chair again, he made himself comfortable. “Yes, science. I believe that there are physiological variables, identifiable reasons for these manifestations. That is why I call them attributes or differences. Knack, natural or ability all speak to something that can be developed or encouraged. These attributes are differences that occur unbidden and in some cases, like Mr. Giacomo, unwanted. I see them as an aberrant to the norm.”

  This was news. Mr. Goodturn had never gone into detail as to how knacks occurred. He had just accepted that they did. There was something in the way Mr. Kenwoode talked about them that made them sound like more curse than gift.

  “Aberrant?” I was unfamiliar with the word.

  “Aberration. Mutation or...difference. Just so.” He responded.

  “What causes them then?” I was curious. If there was a scientific explanation then maybe it would help me to understand what had happened to Justine, as well as what had created my own knacks.

  Clearing his throat and tugging at his vest he said, “Undetermined at this point. My research does not have the advantage of the latest technological advancements. It is theoretical at this point.”

  I smiled. “So, we don’t really know then, right?”

  Those massive brows lowered again and his voice took on a gravelly tone. “Theoretical, I said. Not guesswork. The theoretical nature of my documentation does not change my convictions in the slightest.”

  It wasn’t hard to guess why this argument with Mr. Goodturn over the nature of knacks had gone on for so long. I added stubborn to the list of Kenwoode’s qualities. Challenging him on the issue wasn’t going to endear me to him, or get him to help me.

  “Gotcha. So, the other person is Justine. She’s the girl that got kidnapped with me and then never turned up.”

  “And how, at this late date, does her disappearance concern you?” he asked, quickly composing himself.

  “It’s not her disappearance that bothers me, it’s the fact that she showed up yesterday and again today. She hasn’t even contacted her parents yet and she just randomly showed up at my apartment.”

  He folded his hands on the table top. “Give me the details, Benjamin. The devil is in the details.”

  Yeah, so that was a creepy way to put it. I tried to get comfortable in my chair and started filling him in on my relationship with Justine, the dramatic change in her appearance and what had happened when we’d been out together. His reaction wasn’t exactly what I had expected. He seemed intrigued.

  Leaning over the desk, hands placed flat upon it, he asked, “Was she angry then, when you believe that she used her attribute?”

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  “Her eye color, did it change when you believe she exerted her difference?” he pressed.

  “Sort of. They sort of glowed but I thought—”

  Cutting off the rest of my comment he said, “When you fell, and she knelt over you, what was her demeanor?”

  “Well, she was worried about me. She didn’t—”

  “She didn’t know what had happened. Benjamin, her attribute is not common. Your young friend, possesses an attribute that I’ll need to discuss with a colleague, straight away.” He clasped his hands, his eyes wide and glinting in the filtered sunlight.

  TEN: BAD BOYS BAD BOYS

  I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why he needed to consult with someone when it seemed pretty obvious that Justine’s knack was the same as Sonja’s. Despite my excited demands for an explanation he had quickly dismissed me and picked up the ancient corded phone on the desk to make a phone call. The abrupt end to our conversation shouldn’t have surprised me, it was how he operated, but following what had been the most engaged conversation we had ever shared it was irritating.

  Getting up from the chair I lazily walked through the halls and decided to look in on Mr. Goodturn. After assuring myself that he was comfortable, I quietly closed the door to his room, and left the apartment. Riding the elevator down I debated whether checking in on Breno again was necessary. As I walked through the pawnshop I felt guilty that it had been closed all day. Kenwoode had said that the income from the shop wasn’t necessary to support Mr. Goodturn or his other business dealings. He’d called it little more than a hobby. In just one day there was a fine layer of dust collecting along the counter surface. When I opened the door and walked out the bell on the door jingled. It struck me as wistful.

  Lifting my face to the sky I felt the sun’s warmth despite the cold winter breeze, and reminisced about the many times Maddy and I had spent afternoons together when the weather was good. I’d shot off a couple of texts to her before I’d gone to bed and other than one short response hadn’t gotten anything else from her. We had been very close but had never truly crossed the line into the boyfriend-girlfriend zone. My legitimate reasons for adopting a low profile on social media didn’t help when it came to staying in touch with her either.

  As I entered my apartment building I pushed away painful thoughts of Maddy. I reasoned that I’d only been away for a little over an hour so I didn’t think Breno needed a check-in just yet. I’d spent a lot of the day on my feet and my leg was starting to ache. Looking at the stairs I wished for the umpteenth time for an elevator.

  I was distracted so that’s my excuse for what came next.

  Rounding the last flight and stepping onto the landing between the third and fourth floors I was immediately aware of someone on the stairs above me but couldn’t react quickly enough before I was tackled. My attacker was bigger and stronger than me and he forcefully wrapped an arm around my neck from behind and thumped my head against the floor. A stale odor of sweat filled my nostrils as I gasped for breath and struggled to get out of the headlock, pulling at the arm with my hands. My head was pulled back and I could tell he was planning on smashing my face into the floor again. Fighting against instinct I stopped trying to loosen his grip and dropped my right hand down and under my sweatshirt. Using my knack I softened my face-plant by influencing the space directly in front of my head and at the same time pulled my stun gun out of its holster. My forehead bumped against the floor, although less painfully. Using my knack again I forced the two of us into a body roll while I jammed the gun into what I sincerely hoped was his neck and pulled the trigger.

  There are times when things don’t work the way you expect them to, you make the right move, plan the appropriate second move and things go wrong. Then there are the times where it works perfectly.

  This was one of those perfect times.

  A heartbeat after I pulled the trigger the arm around my neck fell away and the weight of my assailant’s body separated from mine. Sucking in a lungful of air, I scrambled away and got to my feet.

  Sprawled on the floor was a kid roughly my own age. I rubbed my neck but other than some possible bruising I figured I’d live. Quickly patting him down to satisfy myself that he wasn’t carrying any weapons, I took his wallet. Congratulating myself on saving my own ass I came to the slow realization that now I had a problem on my hands. I was at a loss as to what to do with him. A low moan escaped his lips and his head moved a little. Feeling no remorse whatsoever I juiced him again and he lay still.

  Using my knack I could easily get him downstairs but where to? I wanted to know why the hell he had jumped me before I got rid of him, and I didn’t want him coming back for another try.

  Flipping open his wallet I checked for ID and received another surprise: Trey Canty. He was a junior at my school. The date on the ID was for the current school year, so he was busy mugging fellow students during the holiday season in between shopping for gifts. Getting a shoulder under one of his arms and using my knack to take up some of the weight I half dragged, half carried him up the remaining flight of stairs to the fourth floor and my apartment.

  I knacked open my door, pulled him in and dumped him on the floor. Grabbing a chair from the dinette I carried it over to where he was sprawled. I grabbed a roll of duct tape from a cabinet in the kitchen. It took me less
than ten minutes to get him in the chair and securely tape him to it. I wrapped a piece of tape around his head and over his mouth, just about the time he started to come around.

  His eyelids fluttered and he shook his head, groaned and winced. After a few minutes of fuzziness he looked up, and his eyes went wide. Then he started struggling. The tape held fine and reduced his attempts to get free to little more than scooting the chair along the floor. His eyes snapped back in my direction and were so wide I could see white around the iris in each one.

  “I Tased you bro’,” I smirked.

  No reaction. I figured he must not watch YouTube or Cops on TV.

  “Stop jerking the chair around, you’re gonna scratch the floor.”

  He stopped moving.

  “Before I let you go we’re gonna figure some stuff out together. ‘Kay?”

  Eyes still registering a significant level of freak-out, he nodded his head.

  “You’ve probably seen this routine in the movies: I’m going to remove the tape over your mouth, but if you start hollering I’m going to jam this,” I raised the stun gun and pulled the trigger once releasing a bright spark and a loud snapping noise, “into your armpit and we’ll have to start over. Understand?”

  He nodded again. It seemed almost too easy.

  Removing the tape, not worrying much that some hair and skin came off when I did it, I stepped back to get another look at him. Short sandy-colored hair, muscular build, big features including a pair of ears that would have looked better on a water pitcher, and a wide thin-lipped mouth. Then I realized who he was. He played on the varsity football team.

  “Okay, Trey. Tell me why coming to my apartment building and jumping me in the hall was such a good idea.”

  He looked down and took a deep breath. Shaking his head he glanced up but wouldn’t make eye contact. “I was just supposed to mess you up a little and give you a message,” he grumbled.

  “Message? From who?” I asked, although I thought I knew where this was going to lead.

  Not immediately responding, he looked around, and then hung his head again. “I’m not supposed to tell you that.”

  Now it sounded even more like the movies. This was the part where the rogue cop would torture the bad guy and eventually get the info he needed. Problem: other than another zap from the gun I wasn’t prepared to torture him.

  But he didn’t have to know that.

  “You might want to rethink that; you have bigger problems to worry about,” I said, trying to weave a little melodramatic menace into my voice while I waggled the stunner near his face.

  Heaving a heavy sigh he looked out my windows and grimaced. “He’s got stuff on my girlfriend. Photos. If I tell him how this went down she’s screwed, and so am I.”

  “Let’s try this a different way then, what was the message?” I asked feeling even more certain that I knew who had sent him.

  Looking up he stared at the ceiling, trying to recall something. “He said to tell you to remember to mind your own business and that he hoped everyone you cared about was okay.” He shook his head in disgust, but I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted with himself or with the message he’d been asked to deliver.

  The message confirmed what I’d been suspecting. Not that it was going to make a huge difference. I still wanted to nail it down. “So what does Baffle have on your girlfriend?” I asked.

  That got his attention. “Don’t tell him I told you!” he gasped. I marveled at Baffle’s lack of sophistication. The kid could make a computer dance, got great grades but he wasn’t swift enough to realize that the message he had asked to have delivered would immediately reveal who had sent it. Dumb, in a common sense kind of way.

  Nodding, I said, “Don’t worry. I have a plan for how you and I are going to work this out, and you can go along with your life.”

  “You’re not like he said you were. He said you were kind of dumb.” He winced as he said it, realizing that dissing someone who had you taped to a chair wasn’t the smartest thing you could do.

  I laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like him, and so does the blackmail.”

  Flexing his arms and shoulders he gritted his teeth and sighed again. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “First, I’ll un-tape you, but if you try to take a swing at me I’ll put you down again. Cool?”

  “I guess.” He frowned.

  “Second, you’re going to tell Baffle that this whole thing worked just the way it was supposed to. You roughed me up, gave me the message and that was it. When I get back to school I’ll back your story if it ever becomes necessary. Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The third thing is something for the future and you’ll need to think it over carefully before you agree, because if you do agree to it, and you mess me over, I’ll make you regret it. But I don’t want it to come to that. You and I are sort of on the same side. Baffle does his best to get over on people and use them. But it won’t stop. He’s got something on your girlfriend? He’s gonna keep messing with you until you and your girlfriend get out from under it. So, here’s what I’m proposing...”

  ELEVEN: DROPPING EAVES

  BY THE TIME I finished up with Trey and planted the seeds for dealing with Baffle it was late in the afternoon and close to dinner time. The hand pie and latte had been forever ago and I was starved. Here’s a problem that’s specific to a teenager living without parental supervision: the fridge and pantry are never stocked, and if they are it usually isn’t anything all that healthy or filling.

  It was getting dark outside and one of my personal rules was to avoid being caught out at night alone. But, there was a new sandwich shop just two blocks away and I figured that my stun gun and my knacks would keep me safe. Besides, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for the way I’d taken down Trey. As I thought about another trip downstairs though, I grimaced. How many in one day would that make?

  Making it to the lobby as quickly as I thought safe I was in front of Breno’s door in record time. He took his time answering.

  Cracking the door a few inches he peered out at me. “Hi Benny.”

  “Hey, I was just checking in on you and making sure you were okay.”

  His eyes travelled a slow lazy arc and came back to rest on me. “Yah. I’m fine.”

  “You, sure? You have anything for dinner?” I asked, wondering why he was being evasive.

  “Oh, yah. I got soup. And I got crackers,” he said, brightly.

  “Alright. I’m going out but I’ll be back.”

  Without even saying goodbye he closed the door. If I hadn’t know him so well I’d have sworn he was acting guilty, but he did deserve his privacy and I hadn’t smelled even a hint of smoke. I promised myself that I would visit him on my way upstairs after I got back. I was feeling confident as I turned to walk down the hall toward to the street. It was a bit chilly outside and I wished that I’d put on a heavier jacket but I wasn’t willing to climb the stairs again. The walk was short but my stomach was rumbling before I even got to the shop’s front door. It was called The Grub Stop and featured fresh-baked bread and fresh sliced to order meats and veggies. It was counter service which was fine with me. I grabbed my order after a short wait, and took a seat at the long bar running along the windows facing Seneca Street. Smiling, I bit into my grilled Reuben, a little juice running down my chin. When I happened to look out the window I almost choked.

  Walking down the street and heading for the waterfront was the one-eyed weasel that had been part of the duo that had kidnapped me and Justine. Wearing a gray windbreaker, black jeans and black boots he practically blended in with the surrounding buildings, which considering what he did for a living was probably the whole idea. His hair was long and flopped back and forth as he walked. I won’t lie: I smiled a little when I saw the eyepatch. The little creep had been getting ready to blow me into oblivion when I’d hit him there with a card I’d thrown.

  Cramming two huge bites into my mouth and forcibly washing it down with a swig
of soda, I hurried to get outside before he disappeared from view. His bow-legged swaying gait and the floppy hair made it easy for me to spot him across the street. Impatiently waiting for the light to turn green I loped after him to close the distance between us. He was moving in an unhurried but purposeful way that was taking him down toward the waterfront.

  I followed him for several blocks. We were getting pretty far from my neighborhood and the sun was dropping fast. I hung back about fifty feet but he never looked back. I wondered how he had gotten back on the streets after his involvement in the kidnapping, especially considering that he had already been in custody at the hospital where he’d been receiving care for his injuries.

  He crossed over First Street and walked past the no-man’s land between First and the waterfront and turned right heading toward the lower portion of Pike Place. And in the direction of the burned out pier. There were fewer pedestrians so I allowed the distance between us to grow and hugged the buildings and doorways as I manifested my camouflage knack. As he drew closer to Pier 55 he started acting more secretive, frequently looking around and moving more erratically. He looked over his shoulder and dodged behind a massive concrete pillar that supported the freeway viaduct. I stopped and waited. When a couple of minutes went by and he didn’t reappear I carefully made my way to the pillar where he’d vanished.

  Keeping my camouflage in place I edged around the pillar and found nothing. A moment of frustration passed when I noticed a metal square set in the ground immediately adjacent to the pillar. It was hinged on one side. On the leading edge there was a finger-sized gap between the metal and the ground. Hesitating for only a moment I got my hand under it and started to lift it, using my knack to help. The hinge didn’t make a sound and the metal cover was actually very light. As I opened it all the way I saw metal rungs set in the wall of a square shaft that yawned below me.

  That made me pause. I looked out at the water and realized that the sun would be setting soon. The freeway overpass made the area where I was standing even more shadowy. A gust of wind whipped through, sending exhaust fumes and dust drifting around me. My early months in Seattle had taught me a few lessons and caused me to develop some rules. One of those was not to be caught on the streets after dark.