Singularity

by Steven James

  Of course I’m curious about Martin’s connection with Solomon—if he works for him, if he’s just a stooge who brings people here, if we should be afraid of him despite his mild demeanor. Or if, possibly, he’s actually Solomon himself.

  I’m also wondering why he tracked us down outside the Hideaway in the first place.

  Together, the four of us stand outside the door. Martin raps on it. I’m expecting it to open slightly, or for a small panel to open and for him to whisper a password or something along those lines, but the door swings wide and an African American man who looks the size of an NFL lineman blocks the entrance. His head is shaven, and the occasional light from the streetlights at the end of the alley reflects dully off it.

  Martin speaks first. “I have some people who want to see Solomon.”

  The guy assesses us and then leans down and whispers something incomprehensible to Martin, who whispers something back. Then the bodyguard or bouncer, or whoever he is, disappears into the building, closing the door with a thick metallic clang behind him.

  Martin turns to us. “He’s checking. He’ll be right back.”

  It doesn’t take long before the man returns and points to me and then Charlene. “You two can come in.” His voice reminds me of the sound a sledgehammer might make smacking against concrete. He points a thick finger at Xavier. “You stay here.”

  I glance at my friends, and both seem to accept the terms. While I like the idea of Charlene being close to me where I can keep a protective eye on her, I’m committed to shielding her from a potentially dangerous situation, and I sense she’d be safer out here with Xavier and Betty.

  “She stays here,” I tell the sentry. “I come in alone.”

  He folds his massive arms. “I’d advise you to accept this gracious offer.”

  Martin looks at me urgently. “Go on in. Both of you.” His tone makes it clear that he thinks it would be safer to follow the instructions than to upset Solomon.

  Charlene puts a hand on my arm. “I’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

  “No. This is—”

  “I don’t think that we want to make him angry.”

  “Listen, I’ve already had a friend murdered. I can’t take the—”

  “I trust you. That you won’t let anything happen to me.”

  I process that. “I won’t.”

  “I know.”

  I mentally prepare to do whatever’s necessary to protect her, if it comes down to that.

  The guard pats me down to make sure I’m not carrying any weapon. All I have with me is my car keys, my Morgan Dollar, and the deck of cards I typically carry after my shows in case I run into fans in the lobby.

  I’m not comfortable with the idea of this guy frisking Charlene, but he doesn’t even attempt to. He just scans her detachedly and must find no reason to suspect that she’s armed, because he nods. “Alright.”

  Xavier steps back, and I keep Charlene by my side as we follow the mammoth guy, with Martin bringing up the rear. Behind me I can hear him pull the door shut and slam a deadbolt into place.

  Charlene doesn’t seem afraid as we pass through the dimly lit hallway. A series of doors about twenty feet apart lines the sides of the hall.

  Standing beside maybe half of the doors are women dressed in cheap, skimpy lingerie, waiting expectantly. One at a time, as we pass, they eye us. A couple of them smile alluringly. One woman points to Charlene and then to me, motioning for us to join her.

  “No thanks,” I reply.

  The walls are dingy and covered with crude graffiti. The sounds coming from the rooms that don’t have a woman standing by their door are the sounds I expect to hear.

  We reach the end of the hall, and the guard who’s leading us pulls out a key and unlocks the scratched steel door in front of him. It opens with an abrasive scraping sound.

  Inside the room, half a dozen women—three Asian, two Hispanic, and one Caucasian, and all dressed in the same style of seductive lingerie as the women in the hall—lounge on pillows surrounding a bone-thin Caucasian man who looks about twenty-five or thirty years old.

  He’s shirtless and has an intricate tattoo with a Chinese inscription wrapping in a serpentine circle around his neck and ending with a red drop, which I assume is supposed to be blood, falling into a vial tattooed onto his chest.

  The smell of marijuana lingers fresh and ripe in the air, and all the women except for one of the Asians, who’s seated near the man and has a length of chain fastened around her neck, look high. The man, who I’m assuming must be Solomon, holds the other end of the chain, and as we step into the room, he tugs it softly, drawing her closer to him.

  Martin and the sentry leave us alone, locking the door behind them.

  “I’m Solomon.”

  “Jevin.”

  His gaze shifts to my right. “And you are?”

  “I’m Charlene.”

  He studies us for a moment, then folds his hands placidly on his lap. “You’re not part of the law enforcement community, are you? Recent Nevada law. I’m asking this directly. You need to inform me if you are.”

  “We’re not,” I tell him.

  Most of the women appear uninterested in our conversation. The one with the chain around her neck looks demurely in my direction, then Solomon pulls lightly on it again, and she nestles in closer to him and gently kisses his fingers one at a time. I see a series of fresh scars on her thigh. One looks like it was branded on there.

  “I understand you wanted to see me.”

  “I’m trying to find a man named Tomás Agcaoili. He murdered my friend and I want him to pay for it. He flew into Las Vegas earlier today. I think someone hired him to kill my friend, and I think that person might be here in Las Vegas.”

  Solomon has sharp, incisive eyes, and when he lets his gaze pass from me to Charlene, I sense that he’s carefully evaluating what to say. “Tomás Agcaoili.”

  “Yes. I’m willing to pay for information.”

  “I don’t want your money. There’s something else you can give me if you really want me to tell you what you came here to learn.”

  The guy who’d been driving the blue car backed out of the alley and took off, and Fred Anders, who’d been watching from the shadows near the street, took a deep breath and then drew his gun.

  Wray was finally alone, standing in the alley, staring at the door that Banks and the woman had disappeared into.

  Fred eased forward, shaded by the darkness draping across this side of the alley. When he was just far enough away to be safe from the Taser that he knew Wray carried, he called out to him.

  “Xavier.” Wray turned and Fred leveled the gun at his chest. “Throw your Taser to me.”

  Wray reached toward his pocket.

  “Slowly.”

  Without a word he produced the Taser and tossed it toward Fred’s feet. He kicked it back behind him and it slid under the reeking dumpster, then he closed the space between himself and Wray.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Well.” Wray didn’t look afraid, but he was eyeing the gun cautiously. “I’m all ears.”

  “You were at Benigno’s house this morning.”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Ah. And so were you.”

  “Do you have the drive?” Fred asked.

  “The drive?”

  “The files.” He raised the gun. “Do you have them?”

  Wray raised his hands. “Easy now, bro. Yes.”

  “What’s on it?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about a pharmaceutical firm’s research, that’s all we know.”

  “I need that drive.”

  “I don’t have it with me.”

  “Then you’re going to take me to it.”

  “No, I need to stay—”

  “You’re coming with me.” He waved the gun to signal Wray to go with him to his car. “Let’s go.”

  Solomon’s Dilemma

  “What was your friend’s name?” Solomon asks me.

  “Emilio
Benigno.”

  “He was killed in the Philippines.”

  I’m a little surprised he knows that, but it could just be from watching the news. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why was he killed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know. If it’s not money, what do you want from me?”

  “I know you can pay. I know who you are, Mr. Banks.”

  In this case I’m not sure if fame is an asset or a liability. “Billboards?”

  “Tomás.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “I do.” A light breath and then a warning: “This is a dangerous world you’re poking your nose into, Mr. Banks. I would suggest that you leave it alone, but I’m guessing that since you’ve come this far, that’s not going to be enough to convince you.”

  “No, it’s not. Where is Tomás?”

  It takes him a moment to reply. “Do you remember the story of King Solomon and the baby?”

  Charlene speaks up. “Two women came to him. They told him that they lived together in the same house, that they’d both recently had babies only a few days apart, but no one else was there to see the babies. One of them died in the night.”

  A nod. “Very good. And do you know how?”

  “The first woman claimed that the other had rolled over in her sleep onto her own baby and it died. Then, according to her story, the other woman switched the children so that she would have the living baby. But the woman she was blaming claimed the first woman was lying—that the living child was hers and the dead boy was the son of the first woman. And so it went—back and forth.”

  “Exactly. And so Solomon was faced with a dilemma.” He holds his hands in the air as if he’s balancing the truth in them. “What was he to do? The women argued bitterly in front of him, each claiming that the dead baby was the other woman’s.”

  “Solomon ordered that the living child be cut in two,” Charlene answers, “with half of the boy going to each of the women. One of the women told the soldier to go ahead, while the other cried out, ‘No! Give the boy to her! It’s her son!’ And Solomon, knowing that the child’s true mother would do anything, say anything, to save the boy’s life—even if that meant letting the other woman raise him as her own—judged that the baby was hers and stopped the guard before he could harm the child. He gave the boy to her.”

  Solomon taps a finger against the air. “You see, sometimes we have to take chances to find out the truth. Something must be at stake. Unfortunately, in this world, the way it is, honesty is in short supply. Did you know psychologists say that men tell six lies every day.” A small laugh. “Twice as many as women, interestingly enough.”

  Some of the women in the room like that and smile or snicker.

  I’m not sure where he’s going with all this, but I get the sense that things are not moving in the direction I would like them to move in.

  “What is it you want?” I ask him.

  “One magic trick.”

  Apart from close-up work with cards, I prefer the word effect, but I’m not about to correct him. “One trick?”

  “Yes. That I haven’t seen before, and that I can’t figure out. You give me that, and I’ll give you Tomás.”

  “Why?”

  “Why would I give you Tomás?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure he told me the truth,” he says pointedly. “Maybe he did. Maybe you did. Can you do it?”

  “Okay.” I pull out my deck of cards. “I’ll do it.”

  Charlene looks at me somewhat uneasily.

  Solomon steeples his fingers. “I used to do a little sleight of hand myself. Close-up effects, back when I was growing up. It’s like that for most magicians, I suppose, huh? They start with the walk-around and street magic tricks, but to ever make it big you need to do the stage stunts. That’s why Blaine doesn’t have a show here in Vegas, right?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  He gives me a head tilt and a faint smile. “I’ve lived in Vegas my whole life. I’ve seen a lot of tricks.”

  “You haven’t seen this one.” I riffle through the deck but keep the cards in order. I do an overhand shuffle, a strip and a weave, cut the deck one-handed, and then pause. The secret to card tricks, to so many things, is not in what cards you’re dealt but in what you do with the ones in your hand.

  He can tell I’m just getting set up for the effect. “Do you need a table?”

  “That would be best. Yes.”

  He gestures to one of the women, and she crawls forward and positions herself in front of him. He pats her back, but I’m not going to demean her like that.

  “The floor will be fine.”

  He catches my drift. “I understand.” He pats her butt and she scrambles out of the way.

  I hand Solomon the deck so he can inspect it.

  When working with control cards, you need to be able to know exactly where they are in the deck and be able to shuffle off any card that you want to, when you want to. Some people are able to shuffle off the second card or the bottom card, but the best sleight of hand magicians in the world can do any card they choose.

  I can do any card I choose.

  But first you have to memorize the deck to know where the cards are that you’re working with. That’s the hard part.

  I’m not nearly as good as Lennart Green, but I can memorize a deck as I shuffle through them, noting the cards, the order, the orientation. He can do it in mere seconds, but it takes me about fifteen to twenty, which might be too many in this case.

  I hand Solomon the cards. “Shuffle the deck as much as you’d like.”

  Playing cards are always packaged in the same order so whenever you open a deck, you already know where every card in the deck will be. If you’re careful enough and practice shuffling enough, you’ll know where each card is, even after you cut or reshuffle them. If I ask you to cut the cards, it doesn’t change the order of the cards, it doesn’t shuffle them, it just simply changes which cards are on the top of the deck.

  One magician in the thirties knew half a dozen ways to do the same card trick. He invited people to try to guess how he did it, but he would shake his head. “No.” And then he’d prove it by doing the effect again, but this time he would change his technique. He cycled through things that way, always staying one step ahead of them, and no one ever pinned him down or figured out what he was doing until he explained it all in a book he wrote late in his life.

  I kneel while Charlene waits nearby. “I’ll deal five poker hands. Tell me one card you’d like in each of the hands and which hand you’d like to be dealt if you were in the game.”

  It’s close to an effect Green does, but as far as I know he’s never done it quite like this, and I have the sense that this way will be harder because I’m allowing Solomon to choose one of the cards in each of the hands and not a single control card.

  And I’m going to allow him to shuffle the cards himself before I deal them.

  While I’m not looking.

  Holding the cards facedown, he passes his way through the deck. “They’re still in order, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  He checks them, flipping through the cards faceup. “Alright. Let’s go with the five of diamonds, the nine of hearts, the three of spades, the king of clubs, and the queen of hearts.”

  “And which hand would you like to be yours, if we were playing poker?”

  “The second hand you deal out. The one with the nine of hearts.”

  I think of Emilio and how much is at stake here. It takes me a second to calculate what each of the hands is going to have to be, then I close my eyes. “Shuffle the cards.”

  He seems to guess what I’m going to do. “You’re kidding.”

  “Shuffle them and I’ll show you the trick.”

  After a few moments he tells me that I can open my eyes, and he hands me the deck.

  Tonight I’m going to have to do this nearly as fast as G
reen does, and I’ve never even attempted that before. I turn over the deck so I can see the cards, then finger my way through the deck, noting the location of the cards Solomon chose, memorizing their position and the position of all the other cards I’ll need in order to deal the hands I’m planning on dealing.

  I give myself eight or ten seconds—it’s hard to say since I’m not really paying attention to the passage of time, just committing the deck to memory.

  Then I turn the cards over, riffle through them twice, and glance at Solomon. He’s watching me attentively.

  Man, this would be a lot easier if I had another deck and I could just switch them without him seeing.

  I focus on the cards.

  Okay, if I’m right, I know the location of each of the twenty-five cards. Now, I just need to shuffle them out of the deck in the right order into the five poker hands.

  As I do it, I banter slightly to keep from focusing too much on what I’m doing and let instinct take over instead. “You met with Agcaoili today, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  I finish with the first card in each hand and start going around again. “Did you hire him to kill my friend?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “But you know who did?”

  I finish with the second, move to the third card in each hand, then the fourth.

  “I don’t know his name. He calls himself ‘the hero avenges.’”

  That brings me up short. Distracts me. And that is not good. I think of the man we stumbled onto last fall, the assassin the FBI still hasn’t been able to locate. “Akinsanya?”

  “So you’ve heard of him. That surprises me.”

  Studying Solomon’s eyes, I see no deceit there, and I can tell that everything he’s been sharing with me is true.

  Akinsanya is involved? How? And why? Because of the RixoTray connection?

  I do my best to return my attention to the deck, but I still have one more card to deal into each hand and I’ve lost my place.

  Bad, bad, bad.

  I take a small breath.

  The five steps Arno Ilgner outlines in his book on mental training for rock climbers to deal with the fear of death, The Rock Warrior’s Way, come to mind. They’re the same five steps I use to deal with fear in my escapes: observe, accept, focus, intend, commit.