by Shan, Darren
Fabio knew I was a sucker for a lost cause. This wasn’t the first time he’d tugged at my heartstrings to manipulate me, but I never could bring myself to hate him for it.
“I’ll give it a go,” I sighed, removing my jacket. “But if he resists, or it doesn’t work first time, I won’t push.”
“It’ll work,” Fabio assured me, then nodded at Flo to stand.
“What’s your son’s name?” I asked.
“Drake.” She was nervous. “You won’t hurt him, will you?”
I smiled at her. “No. Fabio’s explained what I do?”
“Kind of.”
“There’s no risk involved. It works or it doesn’t. Worst case, Drake goes on like he is. Do you have a pack of cards?” She handed them over. She’d been holding them since before I came and they were warm from the heat of her hands.
I knelt and waited for the kid to look up and catch my eye. When he did I smiled. “Hi, Drake. My name’s Al. I’m a friend of your mother’s.”
He studied me suspiciously. “Are you gonna take me away?” He had a thin, reedy voice.
“Why do you think that?”
“My daddy said if I wasn’t good, a man would come and take me away.”
“But you’ve been good, haven’t you?”
“I been kicked out of school,” he said, half-ashamed, half-proud.
“That’s nothing. I got kicked out of four schools when I was a kid.” It was the truth. “Does you good to have a break from all that teaching.”
“What were you kicked out for?” Drake asked.
“Can’t say. Not in front of a lady.” I winked at Flo. “Want to see a card trick?”
He perked up. “Is it a good one?”
“Best around.”
“My friend Spike does tricks. He taught me a few.”
“I bet he’s never shown you one like this.” I started shuffling slowly. “Keep your eyes on the cards.” I shuffled for a minute, then slapped four cards down on the floor. “Pick one but don’t tell me.” He ran his eyes over the cards. “Picked?” He nodded. I gathered the cards and shuffled again. “Watch the deck. Don’t look away even for a second. Trick won’t work if you do.”
I speeded up the shuffle, speaking softly, telling him to keep watching. I flipped the deck over, so he could see the faces of the cards, and moved up another few notches, telling him to watch the colors, focus on the numbers, concentrate.
After a couple of minutes I laid down another four cards. “Is one of them the card you picked?” He gazed in silence, as if he wasn’t sure, then slowly shook his head. I picked them up and shuffled again. This time I didn’t have to tell him to watch the cards—his eyes followed of their own accord.
Three or four minutes later I laid the cards aside and waved a hand in front of Drake’s wide-open eyes—no reaction. I smiled tightly at Fabio and Flo. “It’s working. Have a pillow ready for when I’m through.”
I placed the index and middle fingers of both hands on either side of Drake’s head and softly massaged his temples. I crossed my legs and sat opposite the boy, hunched over so our heads were level.
“Look into my eyes, Drake,” I whispered. “Focus on my pupils. Do you see cards in them? Colors?” He nodded. “Concentrate on the colors and count to fifty inside your head. Can you count that high?” He shook his head. “Then count to ten, five times. Can you do that?” A nod. “Good boy. When you’re done, close your eyes and sleep. But carry on listening to what I’m saying, OK?”
I continued rubbing his temples while our gazes were locked. I tried not to blink. I spoke as he counted, commenting on the colors, the bloodred hearts, the night-black clubs, the sparkling diamonds, the plain spades. When he closed his eyes I took a deep breath, let my lids shut and pressed my forehead to his.
“Breathe slowly,” I said. “Take a breath, hold it for five seconds, let it out, then breathe again.” I breathed the same way and within a minute we were coordinated, lungs working in harmony, as if connected. My fingers never stopped at his temples, neither slowing nor quickening.
“I want you to think about your nightmares, Drake. Who appears in them?” I felt his frown and his head shook slightly. “It’s all right. You can tell me. Nobody can hurt you while I’m here. Who appears in your dreams?”
“Daddy,” he said quietly.
“Think about your dad. Focus on him and the way he looks when you sleep at night, the things he does. Are you doing it, Drake?”
“Yes.” He was frightened but he trusted me.
“Now I’m gonna help you push the nightmares away. You feel my head against yours?” A nod. “Imagine there’s a tunnel between them, linking us. It’s wide, as wide as it needs to be. You see it, Drake?”
“Black,” he whispered.
“Yes. But you needn’t be afraid. It’s only a tunnel. There’s red in it too, if you look closely. Can you see the red?”
A pause, then, with excitement, “Yes! Red. Like the cards.”
“Exactly. That’s all it is, Drake, a tunnel of cards. Are you afraid of it?”
“No.” Positive this time.
“Good. Now take those nightmares, all the pictures of your father, and push them down the tunnel. It’s easy. They’ll slide along like ice cream through a cone on a really hot day. Are you pushing?”
“Yes.”
“Push steadily, until they’re gone from your head, every one of them, so that they come out the other end of the tunnel, on my side.”
“They’re bad dreams. I don’t want to give them to you.”
“It’s OK,” I said, touched by his concern. “They can’t hurt me. I know how to deal with them.”
A long silence followed. I felt Drake pushing as told, his tiny muscles quivering as he thrust. I pictured his bad thoughts spilling into my mind and mentally slid them to the rear of my brain as they gushed in, rendering them harmless.
Eventually he went limp and started to fall away from me. I held him in place with my fingers and said, “Don’t move, Drake, not yet. We aren’t finished.”
“I’m tired,” he moaned.
“Me too. But it won’t be much longer.” When he was straight, I rubbed the sides of his head again. “Are all the nightmares gone?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Good. Now I want you to close the tunnel. Just pull at a few of the cards and the whole lot will come tumbling down. Are you pulling, Drake?”
“Yes.”
“Are the cards collapsing?”
“No, they’re… Yes! Now they are. Falling everywhere.”
“Is the tunnel gone?”
“Almost. It’s going… it’s… gone.”
I sighed deeply and peeled my head away from the boy’s. I left my fingers where they were and kept my eyes shut. “When I remove my hands, I want you to lie down and rest. You’ve done a lot of good work today. Don’t fight sleep when it comes—you’ve got nothing to be scared of anymore. The nightmares are gone. You got rid of them; they won’t ever come back.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes. You pushed them down the tunnel, then tore it apart. There’s no way back for them. Understand?”
A pause, then, “No way back.”
“Gone for good?”
He nodded.
“Count to ten now, Drake, and when you get to the end, I’ll let go and you can sleep. Do you want to sleep?”
“Uh-huh,” he yawned.
“Start counting.”
When he reached ten he toppled. I caught him by the shoulders, then opened my eyes and called for the pillow. Fabio laid it on the floor and I leaned the boy down, positioning his head so it rested on the soft material, then tucking his arms in and straightening his legs.
“There,” I said, sitting up, exhausted. “He should be all right now. He might be a little confused when he wakes. Treat him carefully for a day or two, give him plenty to eat, keep him inside. If he seems OK after that, let him out to play, then try him at school when they let him back in
.”
“Will the dreams return?” Flo asked, standing over the sleeping boy, a look of uncertain hope etched into her features.
“I doubt it. If they do, send for me and I’ll try again. But he should be fine.” I told Fabio I’d only give it one shot, but that was before meeting the boy. It’s never easy to be clinical once you become personally involved.
“You want something to eat or drink, Algeria?” Fabio asked.
“A glass of water and some fresh air.”
“Coming right up.”
Flo coughed and looked sheepish. “I can’t pay you, but in a month or two—”
I raised a hand. “Send me a card next Christmas, tell me how he’s doing and we’ll call it quits.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jeery,” she sobbed, taking my hands and squeezing hard.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I replied, “for trusting me.”
Fabio handed me the water, I gulped it, then he led me downstairs, into the open, to recover.
I’d been curing people since I was a kid, guided by Fabio, who’d been the first to note my calming influence. He’d spotted me hanging around, befriending wild cats and dogs. I used to slide up to them, ignoring their growls and raised hackles, talking softly, extending my fingers. Within minutes they’d be flopping over onto their backs, offering me their stomachs to rub, letting me play with their ears and feed them scraps.
Fabio initially tested me on a scattering of people plagued with migraines. He found that by talking to and touching them I was able to bring measures of relief to their lives. After that it was troubled friends of his, old men and women who sat around mumbling to themselves, tormented by visions of the past. I’d hold their hands and talk, and they seemed lighter of spirit when we departed. One old dear said she’d had her first full night of sleep in twenty years after my visit.
Fabio helped me develop my skills, modeling my techniques on those of other healers. We tried various methods before settling on the cards, which suited me best. Fabio hoped to make a killing, bring me along slowly, keep it low-key so I didn’t attract the attention of sharper operators. Then he planned to launch me on a wealthier clientele and make them pay through the nose.
Things didn’t work out that way. My mother was proud of my healing abilities but believed it would be immoral to profit from them. She blocked Fabio’s efforts to turn me into a cash cow, coming down hard when she caught him pulling a sly one behind her back, terminating contact between us for months at a stretch.
He tried convincing me to go on the road with him when she was gone but she’d died slowly, horribly, and for a couple of years I wanted nothing to do with sick people. I turned my back on my powers, on the ill, on Fabio. He remained a friend—maybe because he liked me, maybe because he thought I’d come around in the end—but by the time I got my life back on track I was part of the Troops. The lure of the healing profession had passed me by.
Resigning himself, Fabio settled on asking for occasional favors, only calling me when he was in a fix. Nobody other than Fabio and those I helped knew of my powers. I never advertised. I didn’t want hordes of miracle-worshippers camping out on my doorstep.
I’d no idea where the power stemmed from. I didn’t believe in God; I hadn’t made a study of the phenomenon; it wasn’t something I sought or cherished. It was just a talent I’d been born with. Maybe it was the city—as Time had attested, these streets were paved with supernatural wonders. Perhaps some of the wonder had rubbed off on me.
I’d almost forgotten about the power these last few years. Alcohol had screwed up my head. I could hardly help others when I was in dire need of aid myself. And since sobering up I’d had more pressing matters on my mind—divorce, staying sober, work, piecing together a new life.
I thought about it while sitting in the wreck of a burned-out car with Fabio at the foot of the block. I brooded upon the old questions: How do I do it? Can any harm come of it? Is it spiritual, physical, psychological? Did I really help Drake or had I just driven the demons deep for a while?
Fabio sighed and patted me on the back. “You ain’t lost your touch, Algeria. You were smooth. Way quicker than you were last time I called you out.”
I grunted, recalling the hours I’d spent on his last “customer,” another of his street maidens, a young woman who’d been in and out of mental hospitals her entire life. I was still drinking at the time. I seemed to help her, but a few months later she plunged to her death in the river.
“Thinking about Cassie?” he asked. “That wasn’t your fault. She was messed up bad. If anybody was in the wrong, it was me, for letting you at her in the state you was in.”
“Think I could have saved her today?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Who knows? A kid like Drake hasn’t had time to let the pain sink deep. Different when a sufferer’s older and the trouble ain’t so easily identifiable. You tried. That’s the most any of us can do.”
I stared up through the fire-eroded roof, letting the sun warm me.
“Feel good?” Fabio asked.
“Yeah.”
“You should do it more often.”
I smiled. “Hire a tent? Preach the Bible? Go out into the world and cure the masses? Earn a fortune?”
“That ain’t what I’m talking about. You got a God-given talent, no matter what you believe. It’s a sin to waste it, working for The Cardinal, staining your hands with blood when you could be using them to heal. It ain’t right.”
“I couldn’t do this full-time, Fabio. It’s nice to come here every so often, do a good deed and go back feeling like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. But the Troops are my life. Party Central’s where I belong.”
“A man of healing don’t belong nowhere but among those who need him.” Fabio sniffed righteously. “You should be helping people live, not killing them.”
“I don’t kill many,” I replied, low-voiced.
“Makes no difference. You got a calling. I’m no holier-than-thou missionary—I’ve killed in my time, yes I have, and I’d do it again if I had to. But you…” He scowled. “I’m wasting my breath, ain’t I?”
I sighed. “This is the path I’ve chosen.”
“OK. I’ll shut up.” He turned and smiled. “How’s life otherwise? Get over the shock of finding your woman in the Fridge yet?”
I shook my head, bemused. “How’d you know about that?”
“I pick things up.” He wasn’t boasting. Fabio was as close to the heartbeat of this city as anyone I knew. I decided, since he’d brought it up, to ask a few questions. There was no telling what I might learn from an old gossipmonger like Fabio.
“Any idea who killed her?”
“Nope. Word is it was a crazy, maybe from out of town. A john she picked up somewhere and—”
“A john? She was a pro?”
“You didn’t know?”
I shook my head, stunned.
“She wasn’t a regular. And she kept it quiet. Nobody would have known, except sometimes she’d ball a guy in an alley or take him back to her apartment or a fancy hotel, and he’d talk, bragging the way you do when you’re young.”
“Nic was a hooker?”
“An amateur. That could be another angle—she might have tricked where she shouldn’t, or rubbed a pimp up the wrong way. But word of that would’ve spread. My money’s on the john.”
Nic’s being a pro changed everything. I’d been looking for boyfriends when it seemed I should have been scouring the streets for clients.
“Did you know any of her customers?” I asked.
“A couple, but they’re both in the clear—I did a bit of checking. As for the rest, I haven’t a clue. I never heard of her going with the same guy twice. You can ask around but I doubt you’ll unearth anything. Your best bet is to have a chat with a bitch called Priscilla Perdue. They used to—”
He stopped when he saw my face falling.
“Know her?”
“I had a drink with her last night.”
“How come?”
“I didn’t know much about Nic. I’ve been trying to put together a clearer picture. It seems important now that she’s gone.”
“Uh-huh.” If he guessed I was lying, he kept his suspicions under wraps. “That Perdue’s a nasty piece of work, ain’t she?”
“She seemed sweet enough,” I hastened to her defense. Then I remembered the Ku Klux Klub. “A little rough around the edges.”
“She got no edges,” Fabio chuckled. “She’s sharp all over, like a porcupine.”
“She said nothing to me about Nic being a hooker. Is she one too?”
Fabio shrugged. “She sleeps around like a whore, but I don’t think she does it for money. She’s a strange bitch. Used to dress all in black a few years back, holes in the skirts around her bush, so everyone could see. Walked around with her tail in the air, like those posh-ass cats in the Pepé Le Pew cartoons.”
“Think she had anything to do with the murder?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, but it’s not something I’d assume. As far as I know she’s never been into anything other than old-fashioned sleaze.”
We chatted a bit more about the two girls—he had no further revelations—then life in general. He asked how I was getting on at Party Central. Since he didn’t seem to know I’d been reassigned, I said everything was fine. I started to ask after old friends but then noticed the time and said I had to run.
Fabio told me not to be such a stranger, to call again soon. I said I would but we both knew it was an idle promise. I asked him to keep me apprised of Drake’s progress and let me know if the nightmares returned. We parted with a handshake and a few words of farewell, then I was on my way to Party Central for my meeting with The Cardinal.
He was seated by the window when I entered, playing with a puppet, looking pensive. When he spotted my reflection in the glass he turned and brightened.
“Al!” he boomed. “If you’ve cracked the case already, I’ll be impressed.”
“Afraid not,” I grinned ruefully. “I’ve made some inroads but that’s not why I’m here. There’s a problem…”
I told him about my meetings with Nick, Ziegler and Priscilla, the descriptions of Nic’s companion each had presented me with and my belief that the man was Paucar Wami. He listened silently, his face a blank.