The question was: did Myrna and Johnson have as much as a whole day left, before some form of all Hell broke loose?
“‘Said the flea, “let us fly!” Said the fly, “let us flee!”…’” Myrna recited.
“…‘So they flew through a flaw in the flue.’” Johnson said, giving the tagline of the ancient limerick. It so happened that he had written it. “This fly won’t leave a flaw in the flue, Flo. Slim Gaillard would have called it a ‘flatfoot floozie with the floy-floy.’”
She wasn’t really in the mood for word games—her neck was quite stiff, now—but he was trying his best. “Reet,” she agreed. “Let’s turn it loose-a-rootie.”
He heard the subtext in her voice, dropped the banter, gestured sharply at the Egg. It promptly ceased to exist, utterly and forever. The Superfly, without so much as pausing to dip its wings in salute, took off like a silent bullet, reappeared briefly above the nearby spot where Angel Gerhardt’s coke-laced baby laxative lay buried for all time, and departed in a northerly direction at just under Mach One.
They stood there in silence together for a minute or two, looking deep into each other’s eyes. She found the strength for one last effort. “Well,” she said, “the fly is cast.”
He winced obligingly. “Very dry.”
And of course, just then it began to rain again, wringing genuine giggles from both of them.
“Come on,” he said, taking up the umbrella and putting an arm around her. “Let’s go home. You look like you could use a neck rub.”
She put her head on his shoulder, her own arm around him, and squeezed hard.
In the distance a faint false thunder was heard, as the trackfly exceeded the speed of sound…
Chapter 13
The Shithouse
It was such a brief and such a kindly note, to have generated so much adrenaline:
Dear Mr and Mrs Dortmunder
somebodys askin around the island tryin to find you two without you knowin. I didnt say nothin but they will find you sure by tomorrow or the next day. You seem like a nice young couple. I thought youd want to know.
Regards,
Maurice Lycott
June always took a secret special pleasure in blowing her lover’s mind. So few people could manage it. Even she, who could blow just about anybody’s mind, usually had to work at it with Paul. The look on his face now, the color in his forehead, the little squeak in his voice as he said, “You want to what?” were enough to calm her down, and almost enough to cheer her up.
“Call Wally and Moira,” she repeated.
He made three successive sounds, two moist and one dry, none of which graduated to the status of a proper syllable.
“You said it yourself: they’ve got the kind of minds that can think about time travel without boggling. For sure they’ve been thinking about it longer than we have—and reading the thoughts of better minds than their own, too. The more I think about this, the more my head hurts. You need a getaway: you call in a wheelman. You need something moved: you hire muscle. Right now, we need a time travel specialist in the string, fast. Two would be even better.”
He closed his eyes, sighed, and opened them again. He began quietly, but built to a crescendo by the end of his question. “And you don’t suppose the fact that both those airheads are presently consumed by a passionate desire to examine my giblets with rusty fucking tongs might present a few trivial fucking obstacles?”
She ignored his anger: it was not really directed at her. “You tell me—you know them better. Which would a true-blue science fiction fan rather do, in his or her heart of hearts? Avenge a sting—or meet a no-shit time traveler?”
“No way they’re going to believe me a second time—”
“Way,” she said, knowing he hated that particular neologism. “They’re not stupid, you said. You steam-cleaned them, Paul, down to the last peso. They’re wigless, gigless and cigless now. You know it, and they know you know it. The only possible motive you could have for coming back on them again with the same tale is if it’s the truth this time.”
“That’s not—”
“That Kornbluth guy—was he a big name in sci fi?”
“One of the very very best. So what?”
“How much do you want to bet Wally or Moira once read the same story you did?”
He frowned and squinted ferociously, as at a sudden blinding light.
“Think about it, Paul. Everything I know about time travel, and half of what you know, we got from the movies and TV. They’re lousy sources of information about real science, for God’s sake. You want to blow this, through some equivalent of expecting to hear sounds in vacuum, or thinking cars blow up in real life?”
He gestured, like a beggar seeking alms. Shylock, crying, “My daughter! My ducats!” could not have sounded more conflicted. “But June—ask a mark for help? It’s…it’s not decent.”
She shared his pain, but pressed on. “You don’t like that argument? Here’s one you’re gonna love: it goes right to the root of your favorite root. So far we think we’ve worked up a few field tactics useful for defending ourselves against this guy’s mind-ray—maybe—for as long as a pair of AA batteries hold out—maybe long enough to slip in under his radar. All to the good. But wouldn’t you like to have a way to threaten the bastard?”
His frown eased slightly. “With what?”
“Look, we know he’s afraid of exposure. Maybe even more than we are: we could go to jail, he could go to Never-Never Land. That in itself doesn’t give us a whole lot of leverage, though…because ninety-nine people out of a hundred, we could tell them everything we know, in detail, with a straight face and corroborating exhibits, and all they’d do is call the men with the thorazine. But suppose we convinced a science fiction fan, who’s wired into the Internet?”
Paul’s frown released altogether; so did all his facial muscles. “Oh, my,” he said softly. “Oh la.” He pulled his jaw back up, and shaped it into a grin. “Oh angel, I like it. That might be just about the only thing we could possibly do that would scare the living shit out of the son of a bitch. Will you marry me?”
“No.”
His grin faltered. “Huh? Why not?”
“Paul, don’t ask me that now, okay?”
Back to a frown. “I think it constitutes what I’d call a valid point of order,” he said. “I may have been smiling, but it wasn’t a joke question.”
“I know.”
Hurt twisted his features. “So?”
“I gave up on marriage a long time before I met you: it just isn’t in the cards for me, alright? Please, baby, can’t we just go on living in sin and get this fucking zombie off our backs and then see what happens?”
He turned on his heel and walked away.
“Paul?”
He reached the telephone’s base unit and thumbed the intercom; a loud repetitive whoop in the next room announced the location of the wandering handset.
“Aw, come on—Paul?”
He retrieved the phone, punched keys. “Yes, in Vancouver, operator, I’d like a residential listing for a Wallace Kemp, that’s kay ee em pee, on West 12th, please?”
“Paul—”
He held up a hand. As the digits were read to him, he punched them into the phone. When he had them all, he hung up, poked redial and returned the thing to his ear. “Ringing,” he said.
“Paul, damn it to hell—”
He held his hand higher and turned his face away slightly.
They waited, alone, together.
After what seemed like an eternity, he disconnected. “Answering machine. They stayed in Toronto. Oh damn.”
“Paul—”
“They gave me their fucking number there—and of course I burned it the minute I got home. Oh—” He began his swearing litany. It was different every time, and she had once heard him continue it for three solid sulphurous minutes before he slipped, and repeated an obscenity. Another time, the victim—a grown man—had fainted dead away, midway into th
e second minute. It was going to be impossible to interrupt him now until he had finished wringing the English language dry of its power to express his frustration.
She gave up and left the room, to attack the same task from a feminine perspective. Somewhere she couldn’t be interrupted either, with a door that locked, and lots and lots of kleenex.
But of course she was wrong. One simple knock at the front door, and she and Paul were both as interrupted as they could be.
“Look,” Paul said wearily, when they had all seated themselves, “the sooner you put those silly things away, the less chance you’ll end up using them as suppositories.”
“You’re probably right,” Wally agreed. “But I’m feeling reckless.” His gun-hand looked dismayingly steady.
“It’s not necessary, you know,” June said. “We were just trying to call you when you showed up, only we lost your Toronto number.”
Wally looked at her for a long moment. “That is such a preposterous assertion, I think I almost believe it.” He glanced to Moira.
She shrugged. “My experience is that the really ridiculous is usually true. But I’m not losing the gun.”
Her husband nodded, and turned back to June. “Why were you going to call us? You don’t look like gloaters. You know you tapped us out. Oh, wait, I get it—you must have found out somehow that we hit your other place on Point Grey Road. What, you were going to ask us to give you your money back?”
June groaned. Another perfectly good address and identity, blown for good. Not to mention another large cash-stash gone. “You know,” she said to her own partner, “I’ve had better weeks. Lots of ’em.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Our own has been excessively eventful,” Moira pointed out.
“Let me take this,” June said.
“Of course,” Paul agreed.
There was no more than that to the exchange: half a dozen banal words, absolutely no ironic vocal undertones or pained expressions. But June clearly saw Moira grasp that she and Paul were presently in the middle of a quarrel. From this she inferred that Moira was no fool, and reconsidered her opening.
“Wallace, Moira, my name is June Bellamy, and this is Paul Throtmanian. I can’t think of any reason why you should believe those are our real names, because I’m as good a professional liar as he is. But you have to call us something. It’s a place to start.”
“Call me Wally, June,” Wally said.
She felt relief. She did not want to address herself principally to Moira, to seem to be trying the lame let’s us girls work this out while the boys hold weapons on each other ploy. “Thank you, Wally. As I said, Paul and I were discussing phoning you and Moira. Not because you have brains—we have brains—but because you both have a particular kind of brains. And I think you’ve proven that, by tracking us. Frankly, I don’t know how you pulled it off—and please don’t think I’m asking how you found us: I haven’t earned the right. But we have a problem we need your kind of brains to solve, and I’d like to explain it to you.”
“Pardon me,” Wally said, “but I want to get this straight. We’re holding guns on you, and you’re trying to hire us?”
“Basically,” she agreed.
He nodded. “I’m beginning to like you, June. Proceed.”
She carefully did not smile. “Thank you, Wally. Since you say you got as far as the Bernardo house, I assume you must know what happened to Paul’s Metkiewicz place.” She glanced to Moira for confirmation, got back nothing, glanced away. “From that and our hasty departure for here, you must have deduced that someone else is after us. Someone we are very respectful of.”
“And you want to hire us as consultant hackers,” Wally said. “Oh, this is lovely.”
“Would you like to hear our minimum fee?” Moira inquired.
June turned back to her. “Please, let me define the job correctly first. It may not involve any hacking as such, for instance. What we really need is your expertise as science fiction fans.” She saw Moira begin to frown. “Please,” she said quickly, holding up a hand, “I know that sounds like exactly the same sort of grifter technique my partner used on you: tell the mark what she wants to hear. Unfortunately, it happens to be the truth. Paul and I need a fan, badly. All I have to overcome your reasonable suspicion is logic. If you’re really who we need, you’ll see that logic. Will you listen?”
She was quietly elated when Moira shared a glance with her husband before saying, “Yes.”
“Again, thank you. I’m going to make another assumption. I’m guessing you’ve both figured out where Paul got the idea for the game he ran on you. A story by…what’s his name, honey?”
“Cyril Kornbluth,” Paul supplied.
“Told you,” Wally blurted, and flinched at the glance it got him from Moira.
“Thanks,” June pressed on. “Kornbluth.” She began slowing the pace of her speech. (“June,” her mother had once told her, “it is almost impossible to speak foolishness slowly”) “I haven’t read it, but Paul’s told me about it. You’ve read it. A grifter pretends to be a time traveler. He works a long con.” Beat. “What happens to him?”
Moira’s eyes began to glitter a whole second before Wally’s did. She covered superbly, kept her face serene and body relaxed. Wally managed to keep silent, but allowed his eyes to widen and his knuckles to whiten on his Glock, which happened to be pointed at his own ankle. Neither said anything for several seconds. Then simultaneously they turned to each other, exchanged a silent high-speed transmission, and turned back to June together. Wally’s gun was no longer pointing at his ankle.
“You allege that the Time Police are after you,” Moira stated. Her own gun was smaller, but nearer; June felt she could almost see the .22 bullet in there in the chamber. Dammit, this did sound exactly like another con, improvised to fit their known weakness. They were right to be angry. It was time to go for broke.
“I have a…call it a skill,” she said. “I call it the eye of power, or just the eye. I have not tried to use it on you so far—” She did so now, on Moira, gave her both barrels. “—but you can see that it is very powerful. I can sell a turd to a perfumier with the eye of power.” Moira nodded involuntarily. “I am now going to look away from you both and talk to the bay out there for a few minutes. You can shoot me any time you become convinced I’m lying to you. If you can think of any other explanation for what’s happened to us, I promise to believe it.” She switched off the eye, continued to meet Moira’s eyes long enough for her to grasp that, then slowly swiveled her chair until she could just see Moira’s gun in her peripheral vision.
And then she told them, as concisely and accurately and dryly as she could, everything that had happened to her since she had first seen the mook in Pacific Spirit Park.
She was quite surprised not to be interrupted even once. Her opinion of science fiction fans rose somewhat, in consequence. She did not try to hide her own complicity in Paul’s sting. When she came to the only part she had intended to gloss over, how she and Paul came to be in tenancy of this particular dwelling, she changed her mind and told that straight too, giving O’Leary’s name and a rough sketch of the game she had been planning for him, blowing it thereby.
For her finale, she got up, went to the phone’s base unit, and activated the speakerphone feature. “I just thought of one small piece of evidence that can corroborate at least one tiny thing we’ve told you,” she said, over the sound of dial tone. “I wish I had more.” Signifying for them like a mime, she pushed the redial button. After four rings, they all heard a click, and then Moira’s recorded voice saying, “This is what it sounds like. Do the obvious at the standard cue.” June disconnected before it could beep at them.
Wally and Moira exchanged a glance.
“You both must know the Sherlock Holmes quote about eliminating the impossible,” June concluded. “Paul and I are down to the X-Files, ancient hairy gods, a mad scientist, or a time traveler. I don’t know about you two, but time traveler
is the only one of those I can live with. I would reject that as impossible…if I had anything at all to replace it with. Do either of you see any possibility I missed?”
There was a long silence.
“And you see why we need you?”
Outside, the rain stopped.
She was mildly surprised when it was Wally who broke the silence. “You’ve defined the job. I will stipulate the problem is interesting to us. Will you hear our consulting fee now?”
She swiveled back to face them, and took Paul’s hand. “Please.”
“Ninety-nine thousand Canadian dollars.”
Paul’s hand tightened on hers. She squeezed back. “You’ve already—” she tried.
“—recovered a large fraction of what you took us for, yes. That’s a separate transaction. That’s why we’re probably not going to shoot you. This is different. Ninety-nine thousand dollars is the fee your partner set for giving us an education, in his area of expertise. We won’t work for less.”
June looked at Moira’s eyes. They meant it.
Paul groaned, and made one last try at preserving a shred of self-respect. “The correct figure—”
“Excuse me,” Wally said mildly, but it was the gesture with the Glock that cut Paul off. “I am not going to shoot you unless you absolutely insist. And I may work for you if we can agree on terms. But if you want to dick me around over change, I may be moved to pistol-whip you a little. Can we keep this friendly?”
“Sorry,” Paul said. He turned to look at June. She felt his pain, like a blow to an already weary heart. His hand was limp in hers, now. “That’s about everything we’ve got left,” he said.
Technically he was lying; there were a few stashes here and there, though none easily accessible. But in another sense he was correct. There could be no more humiliating fate for a grifter than to have to pay the mark double. If they agreed to this—even if they swore Wally and Moira to secrecy—it would be the irrevocable end of both their careers. No one but the people in this room would ever know what a genius Paul Throtmanian was. She groped for words. As she did so, her eyes met his squarely for the first time since Wally and Moira had arrived…and she fell in.
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