By the Balls

by Jim Pascoe

  “What is that, some kind of entertainment fraternity?”

  “Oh, you go ahead and laugh now, sir,” he said.

  I wasn’t laughing.

  “I wanted to laugh too, when they said they knew a way I could actually talk to my dead father, whom I love very much, thank you. Little did I know they could torture the dead!”

  The ridiculousness of his statement certainly amused me, until I thought he might actually start to cry. He managed to continue: “That’s why you have to help me. I didn’t cooperate with them, so now they will defile my poor father’s spirit by tormenting him forever!”

  Misty had been right about one thing: superstition ran hot in this husband of hers. But just because I didn’t believe this mumbo-jumbo didn’t mean I couldn’t see the harsh belief in his eyes. Someone or something had scared this guy bad—bad enough to give life to his own ghosts. He could tell I was skeptical, probably from the cockeyed smirk I just couldn’t wipe off my face.

  He insisted: “I have proof! When you hear my story, you’ll see.”

  “A story is hardly proof,” I said, “but all right, let’s hear the—”

  “No! Not here. I can’t stay in one place for too long or the Voice will find me—”

  “The voice? What are you talking about?”

  “We’ve got to go somewhere safe . . .” he pleaded.

  “All right, let’s get to my car. I’m parked right over here.” I waved my hand, gesturing at a row of vehicles parked down the block.

  “A car? That’s no good, they’ll—”

  “It’s good enough to get us somewhere else,” I interrupted. “Now come on, unless you want to stay out here.”

  Stan gulped and nodded frantically.

  “Then let’s get going,” I ordered, putting my gun back into its holster.

  Anxious to get this business over with, I took off for the safety of my car with long, brisk strides. Stan wasted no time falling into step with me, managing to keep up and keep quiet.

  * * *

  “Windy tonight, isn’t it?” Stan asked as I pulled my powder-blue Galaxie 500 away from the curb.

  “Don’t be a sap,” I scolded, keeping one eye on the road in front of me and one eye on the rearview mirror.

  Stan didn’t respond; instead, he stared down at the rumpled paper bag, now resting between his feet.

  “You’ve got better things to talk about than the weather,” I growled, “so get yappin’.”

  “What do you want to know, Mr. Detective?”

  “First, I want you to stop calling me Mr. Detective. It’s unnerving. My name’s Ben Drake.”

  “Okay, Mr. Drake. No problem.”

  “Good. Now give me all of it.”

  Stan took a deep breath, straightened his bow tie, cleared his throat, and began: “For you to really believe what I’m about to tell you—or at least for you to begin to understand—I have to start at the beginning. My father, Stan Summers Senior, never hurt anyone; he was an entertainer. He began teaching me sleight of hand before I could walk. I knew tricks that would amaze adults even when I was in kindergarten. But my real passion was my father’s passion: ventriloquism.” He slouched forward, his hands on his knees. “It was only me and my father growing up—”

  Suddenly, he slid his body as far away from me as he could, pressing himself almost flat against the passenger door. “What are you doing!?”

  I sat there dumbfounded. “I’m trying to light a cigar, what’s it look like?”

  “Smoking is a filthy habit, sir, absolutely filthy. And that’s not to mention the devastating damage it does to your vocal cords. Just listen to what it has done to your voice—”

  “Hey, I’m no singer.” I slid the car’s lighter back into its slot and dropped the cigar into the ashtray. I sighed. “There, no cigar for me. Now you keep talking.”

  “Thank you.” He relaxed only slightly, smiling a smile meant to fade. It did. “My father was quite superstitious. He believed in the real power of ventriloquism. I didn’t know what he meant by ‘power’ at the time, though I would one day find out. My hopes and dreams were very important to me when I was younger. And they were smashed to pieces the day my father died, penniless. He used alcohol to escape, you see, and in the end it took his life.”

  Stan sneered at me, I assumed, not because of anything to do with me personally. It was just the sneer of a man made bitter by having his family taken away. It made me wonder: how did a guy like this make it as an entertainer?

  “Stan, are you just lying to me? Or are you lying to yourself too?”

  Blank noncomprehension washed over his face.

  “Don’t play dumb. I did a little research this evening. Your father may have liked to booze it up, but that’s not what killed him, and you know it.”

  His skin paled a few shades. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Please. We both know you found your father dead, shot full of holes in his apartment! The police never solved the murder, but I’ve got a strong hunch I know what the killers were after.”

  The poor guy’s lips trembled at my brutish behavior.

  “Look, I realize I’m being harsh. Truth is, though, it’s twenty-some years too late to help your father, but start giving me the real story and I’ll help you out of this mess you’re in tonight. How about it?”

  I looked over at Stan. He stared straight ahead, arms folded angrily across his chest. His answer to me turned out to be a sullen pout.

  We rode in silence for a few minutes. I craved a smoke something fierce but settled for listening to the soothing purr of my car’s eight cylinders.

  “Where are we going?” Stan asked.

  “I’m taking you to my place. No one will bother us there.”

  “No! No! You’ll get me killed!” Stan shouted, clawing at the handle of the door.

  “Calm down, you crazy rabbit!” I shouted back. I reached over and grabbed a fistful of Stan’s jacket, then slammed him back against the seat. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “They’ll find me at your place . . . just keep moving . . . please.”

  I sighed again. “Fine, we’ll keep moving.”

  I made a few turns and pointed the car back toward downtown, taking the occasional split-second corner. A pair of headlights kept my eyes pinned to the rearview. I steered us through a stretch of bright streetlights and noticed the headlights belonged to a tiny red car.

  Looked like my trench-coated shadow had returned. I opted not to mention it to Stan; I didn’t need him freaking out any more than he was already. I planned to just keep driving until he started talking again.

  “My father wasn’t dead yet, you know—when I found him, I mean. I’d like to think he held onto life’s breath just long enough to tell me goodbye. I could see that he was trying to say something, but I could barely listen to him, I was so afraid and horrified. I was crying and screaming . . .” He paused to wipe the corners of his eyes. “But he kept telling me to be quiet and listen. ‘Stanley,’ he said. ‘Go and get the brown performance case in the bedroom . . . the one that looks almost new.’ After complaining that I didn’t want to leave his side, I did what he asked.”

  “Let me guess: he gave you something special, right?”

  “Very special.” Summers reached down, gingerly lifted the paper bag, and set it on the seat between us. Nervously he reached in and slowly withdrew its contents.

  Looking at what came out of the bag gave me a creepy, unbalanced feeling—a feeling I remembered getting from campfire ghost stories when I was young enough to believe in them.

  He fiddled with the unfinished, handmade ventriloquist’s puppet he held in his hands. The wooden smile—no, not a smile, a hinged slit—was the only feature on the blank face. No eyes, no ears, no nose. No molded hair, no painted freckles. Just a plain, oval, white-painted headlike shape.

  Unlike Dandy Don and his snazzy suit, this figure wore an all-black jumpsuit. I wanted to reach out and touch it, simply because i
t looked so unreal. As Stan took it out of the bag, he sat it up in the crook of his left arm as delicately as if it were a flesh-and-blood baby.

  “He gave you a puppet?” I asked.

  “Yes, isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It doesn’t look quite finished.”

  “My father had been working on it. When he gave it to me he said—and I’ll never forget this as long as I’m on this good earth: ‘I did some things that may not have been right, but I needed to do them for us . . . for you. Take this and make it your assistant. Let it be the gateway for all the voices you have in your head. It will protect you if you protect it. Never, ever let it out of your sight.’”

  “What makes this figure so special?”

  “It’s filled with the power.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It took me a long time to figure it out, Mr. Drake. After my father left this world, I spent a lot of time alone. Most weekends I would go to his grave and read books on magic or practice my act. It was during this time, under the shade of cemetery trees, that I developed an interest in the occult. When I met my wife, Misty, this fascination of mine really made her feel uneasy. She thought I always went too far.”

  “What do you mean ‘too far’?”

  “Oh my God!” he shouted, and his eyes got real big. “Stop the car!”

  Everything slipped into slow motion as I slammed on the brakes. My car’s tires squealed on the dry pavement, and we came to a skidding halt. I’d been looking at Stan, and when my eyes snapped back to the road I expected to see another car, a person, or some sort of obstacle in the road. All I saw was air.

  “Goddamnit, Summers! I’ve just about had it with your insanity!”

  “This building,” he murmured, indicating the boarded-up old theater we’d stopped in front of. “We’ll be safe in here.”

  “What? How do you know that?” I glanced in my rearview mirror just in time to see a pair of headlights wink out.

  “The Voice, it told me so!” At this bit of nonsense his face lit up, and he stuffed his prized puppet back into its bag. Before I could say anything he bolted out of the car.

  Angrily, I spun the wheel and moved into a better parking position, then shut off the motor and followed Summers.

  I found him trying to pull open the boarded-up front door.

  “Didn’t this voice tell you how to get into the joint?” I snickered.

  “You should have more faith in the Voice, Mr. Drake,” Summers scolded.

  “I got plenty of faith right here,” I grunted, pulling out my gun. “Come on, if you need to get in here so bad, let’s try the back.”

  I wondered why I was playing out this charade as Stan led the way around the corner of the building. But this sort of puzzle is what I love about being a detective.

  Before we slipped out of sight, I checked the street behind us; all seemed quiet. Still, I broke open my gun to make sure the cylinder held all five rounds.

  In the narrow alley behind the derelict building we found a broken window that opened into the basement. We slipped through, landing inside a small, dark room.

  I rubbed my jaw, doing my best to forget about that smoke I wanted, thinking instead it might be time to start taking pulls off the flask I had in my back pocket.

  “Now what?” Stan asked.

  I rolled my eyes, deciding I definitely needed to grab a drink. I pulled out my flask and took a satisfying swig.

  Stan recoiled at the sight and shook his head. “Another bad habit—”

  “Tough,” I spat. “I’m putting up with your nonsense; you can put up with mine.” I took another swallow of bourbon. “Now, how about we jump to the part about some brotherhood chasing you.”

  Instantly all the fear that had marked his features when I met him returned. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled with his anxiety.

  “Okay, yes, I can do that,” he spluttered. “It was right after my performance on Monday night. You see, my friend, a circus clown named Rudy Romaine had put me in contact with a nightclub owner willing to let me perform my occult ventriloquism show. Only problem was, hardly anyone but Rudy and his friends showed up.” Stan’s fingers ran through his tousled head of hair. “Anyway, after the show, the club owner had a regular jolly time yelling at me, saying things like I was finished. I didn’t need him to tell me that.”

  He scuffed his shoe against the ground.

  “As I walked out from the back past the lonely chairs, Rudy stood near the exit, waiting for me. He told me he’d met some fellows—old carnies—who wanted to have a word with me. They said they had the ability to contact my father from beyond the grave.”

  Sure they did, I thought. I trickled a little more bourbon through my lips.

  “Of course I wanted to find out more, so Rudy led the way to an apartment building on the south side of town. We all went up to the third floor, but before we went into the room, Rudy handed each of us a white, expressionless mask from a small box sitting outside the door and told me that during the ceremony everyone had to wear them.”

  A scratchy meow sounded from somewhere in the old theater. Stan jumped and almost lost his breath. I felt a chill run through my body. Standing in the small room suddenly made me very nervous.

  “I could barely see with that mask on,” Stan complained. “We went through the door into a big, open space, very dimly lit. It had tons of candles scattered all over the floor, but only a few of them were burning. They made the room smell like wax. An old strongbox rested on a table in the middle of the room.”

  “Say, Stan,” I interjected, slipping my flask back into my pocket, “let’s get a move on, okay?”

  I pulled open the room’s only door, not surprised to find a hallway on the other side.

  “Uhhhh, where are we going?” Stan asked.

  “You’re the one who didn’t think it was a good idea to stand around in one place too long. I’m starting to agree,” I explained. “Let’s look around. While we walk, why don’t you tell me about the guys who ran this ceremony.”

  We moved our party into the cramped hallway, then toward what I guessed to be the front of the building.

  “Oh, they were a motley group. The biggest one, a massive man, never spoke. There was another big guy; he was more like your build, except he had tattoos covering his arms. He didn’t speak either. The last guy was named Phil. I could tell he used to be a carnival barker, and he did all the talking.”

  The hallway, which seemed to run the length of the building, held even less light than the room we’d left behind. I cautiously slinked forward, Stan Summers following closely behind me, now whispering.

  “Rudy told me to put my vent figure into the strongbox. He said they would use it later as part of the ceremony. Well, I was willing to do a lot of crazy things to be able to talk to my father, but I didn’t feel right letting go of Black Jack. Rudy started giving me some pleading explanation, when the little man cut him off with a sharp, booming voice. He asked me if I was familiar with . . . the power of ventriloquism. I remember he lathered his hands as he spoke.”

  I thought I heard the scrape of someone trying to be stealthy behind us. I paused in the hallway, wishing I’d had the foresight to get the pocket flashlight out of the trunk of my car before we began this adventure. Stan held his breath, face glowing with fear. After a moment, I nodded for him to continue.

  “So I told him I knew a little bit. He laughed and said that it was good I came because I’d learn a lot more. But first he wanted me to put Black Jack in the box.”

  Ahead of us, I could just make out the end of the hallway and a set of rickety-looking iron steps that led up to the main floor.

  “Rudy stood back and kept motioning at the table with his head. Then . . .”

  I heard Stan scuffle to a halt, so I stopped and looked over my shoulder. He just stood in the hall and nervously chewed at his left pinky finger.

  “Then what?” I whispered through clenched teeth.

&
nbsp; “Then the two thugs lit some more of the candles as Phil explained to me that the only way for me to learn about the Voice was to be fully aware of a displaced source. He explained that he was no longer going to talk directly to me. He was going to have the Voice talk to me . . .”

  Stan trailed off and went back to gnawing on his pinky.

  “Phil motioned to the giant man, who then moved his huge body just behind me, on the left. The other silent man stepped into place to my right, boxing me in. This is when I really started to get scared. Phil told me not to look in his direction but to keep focused on the strongbox. I was to imagine that his voice was coming from it. This, Phil said, was what ventriloquism was all about—the Disassociated Voice.”

  Stan’s fingers fanned out, and his voice took on a tone of mystery. It spooked me into thinking I’d heard something a few yards away. I strained against the darkness, looking down the hall, expecting whoever had followed us in the tiny red car to emerge. By now I knew who it was, and I was ready to make a stand. I just didn’t want it to happen in this narrow hallway.

  “Phil wasn’t all that convincing; it was more a demonstration of the power of the Voice. But the more I listened, the more I knew that I was really hearing the Voice.”

  “So what’d it tell you?”

  Stan began fidgeting more and more, tapping his foot nervously against the hard floor. I started up the iron steps and tried to coax him along with me.

  “It told me that the tradition of ventriloquism is timeless.” Stan rubbed his hand furiously over his brow, trying to flatten out the thick lines of anxiety. “And It gave me example after example. I didn’t see how this applied to me, other than my being a ventriloquist. But then the Voice told me about Orpheus.”

  Another noise came from down the long, dark hallway.

  “Orpheus had the greatest voice of any human being,” Stan continued. “A voice so sweet it was said that it could charm wild animals, literally mesmerizing them. His bride was bit by a poisonous snake and taken away from him by cruel fate—like my father was cruelly taken from me. But unlike me, he vowed to do something about it.”