Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

by William Rabkin

  “That you don’t even own it, so we shouldn’t care if it gets crushed?”

  “Not exactly,” Gus said. “It means I’ve been entrusted with the responsibility to take care of a valuable piece of equipment owned by Central Coast Pharmaceuticals for use on my sales route. And that it’s my sworn obligation to return it to them in exactly the shape I received it, aside from routine wear and tear.” He turned back to the potatoes. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

  “Yeah, and you made it eighty-seven times,” the potatoes said. “Parked in front of a hydrant at the corner of Anacapa and Cruzon.”

  Gus pulled the laptop across the counter and stared at the screen.

  “That’s where that coffee place is,” he said. “But I never park on the street when I go there. Why would I when there’s a huge lot right down the street?”

  “Because you hate cold coffee,” Shawn said. “And when you’ve got to drive it all the way back to the office, every second of cooling counts.”

  Gus turned to him, realization, then rage, boiling up inside him. “You did this!”

  “Only because I care about your health,” Shawn said. “Once a cup of coffee drops below a hundred fifty degrees, all sorts of bacteria start growing in there. I couldn’t take a chance on giving you food poisoning.”

  Gus pointed at the screen. “You parked there an average of twenty-seven minutes each time.”

  “Do you think I just pulled that hundred-fifty-degree number out of the air? I was consulting with top coffee professionals.”

  “You were flirting with the waitress!”

  “Yes, but . . .” Shawn stopped. “You know, I’ve got no way of justifying that one.”

  Gus turned back to the potatoes, his voice trembling. “I need my car. Please.”

  “Six thousand dollars. Cash only.”

  Gus glanced hopefully into the wallet in case multiple thousands of dollars had spontaneously appeared there. Inside he found the crumpled two-dollar bill he hadn’t been able to spend, since most cashiers had never seen one before and refused to accept it as real money, and a certificate that would have gotten him a free Frogurt Plus with only four more purchases if the store hadn’t gone out of business a year ago.

  Gus turned to Shawn. “Do something!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like something you’d do if it was your car!”

  “I really don’t think this is the right time to upgrade the sound system.”

  “Shawn!”

  Shawn gave Gus a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then stepped in front of him. He looked at the potato-shaped man behind the counter—and he saw. Saw the way he pinched the burning ash out of his cigarette before dropping the butt into the ashtray. Saw the calluses on his hand, permanently blackened by dirt. Saw the fading red scar around his wrist.

  Shawn doubled over, clutching his forehead. Then straightened like a marionette wielded by a stroke victim. “I’m hearing something,” he moaned. “It’s a voice from beyond . . . and it’s singing to me.” As if controlled by a force from above, Shawn’s right arm drifted up, and his hand unfurled, leveling an accusing finger at the man behind the counter. “Singing to you.”

  “I don’t want anyone singing to—”

  “‘Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs, gonna use my fingers, gonna use my toes,’” he moaned. “‘Gonna use my, my imagination.’”

  “You’re gonna use your feet to get the hell out of my office, you know what’s good for you,” the potatoes said.

  “Wait a minute,” Shawn said. “That’s the wrong song. They’re sending me a new one.”

  “Maybe they could just send the six thousand dollars instead,” Gus said.

  Shawn arms flailed around his head. “‘Such a drag to want something sometimes. One thing leads to another I know.’”

  “What the hell is that?” the potatoes growled.

  “Sounds like the Pretenders’ greatest hits,” Gus said.

  Shawn jerked again. “That’s still the wrong song. They’re trying to tell me something, but they can’t find the right melody.”

  “Maybe they should look at the back of the CD box,” Gus said.

  “Yeah, like the Forces Beyond don’t have an iPod,” Shawn said, then reared back, as if hit by a psychic sound wave. “I hear it. . . . They’re singing to me. Listen.”

  Intrigued against his will, the potatoes leaned across the counter. “I don’t hear anything.”

  Shawn sang unsurely, as if a voice beyond was dictating to him. “‘I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh. What hijacked my world that night. To a place in the world we’ve been cast out of.’” He broke off and turned to Gus. “Little help here.”

  “What?”

  “I need backup!”

  “And I need my car.”

  “Just sing, damn it.”

  “Fine. ‘Oh oh oh oh oh.’”

  “‘Now we’re back in the fight. We’re back on the train,’” Shawn sang. Then he froze. He turned to the potatoes. “‘We’re back on the chain gang.’”

  The man behind the counter stared at him angrily. “Concert’s over, punk. Get out of here.”

  “The song doesn’t lie,” Shawn said. “You were on a chain gang. Which means you were convicted of a class-A felony in Arizona, the only state with an active chain gang program.”

  Gus didn’t stop to wonder how Shawn had figured it out. He stepped up to the counter. “And now you’re working for a city-approved garage, which means you must have given them a fake name to pass the background check.”

  “As the official psychic to the Santa Barbara Police Department, I have an obligation to turn you in,” Shawn said. “But you’ve been so kind to us, I hate to see you fired, maybe jailed for perjury. If only I’d never come here today, I never would have found out.”

  “The only reason we came here is to get my car,” Gus said. “If we had it back, it’d be like we were never here at all.”

  “It’s a big yard, must be thousands of cars here,” Shawn said. “No one’s going to notice if one blue Echo is missing.”

  The potatoes thought that over. “It is a big yard, and there are thousands of cars here,” he agreed. “No one’s going to notice if one blue Echo has a couple of bodies in the trunk.”

  “Good, then we’re—” Gus said, then broke off. “Bodies?”

  The potatoes moved so fast they barely realized he was reaching under the counter before the barrel of the shotgun was leveled at them.

  “Got a song for this, pretty boy?” the potatoes said.

  Shawn and Gus dived below the counter as flame erupted from the shotgun and a rain of pellets tore holes in the corrugated wall.

  “Okay, this is not how I planned things,” Shawn said.

  “I’m certainly glad to hear that.”

  “All he had to do was give you back your car,” Shawn said. “It wasn’t like it was his car. Hell, it isn’t even like it’s your car, technically.”

  “It’s still my responsibility!”

  “Exactly. Your responsibility, not his. So why is he trying to kill us? Because there’s something going on here. Something he’s willing to kill to cover up.”

  Shawn was right—they had stumbled onto some major criminal enterprise. That was the only explanation for the potatoes’ behavior. As a detective, Gus knew he should care about this. He should be working through the clues, piecing together the puzzle, unmasking the mystery.

  “I don’t hear any singing!” the potatoes said, slapping two more shells into the gun.

  On the other hand, what good would solving one more mystery do for Gus if he was dead? “So let him cover it up. We’ll pretend we don’t know anything about his massive criminal conspiracy if he lets us live.”

  “Think he’ll buy it?”

  “He wouldn’t have to buy it if you hadn’t parked in front of a fire hydrant eighty-seven times,” Gus said. “I can’t believe I’m going to die because you wanted to flirt with a waitress.”
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  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Shawn said.

  “It’s not ironic at all,” Gus said.

  “Dude, it’s so like a black fly in your chardonnay.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that’s not ironic, either?”

  “Rain on your wedding day?”

  “‘Irony’ is the use of words to convey a meaning that’s opposite to their literal meaning,” Gus said. “That stupid song came out fourteen years ago, and we still have this exact conversation at least once a week.”

  “Yeah,” Shawn said. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Gus threw his hands up in despair—and felt hot metal just above his head. A quick glance confirmed his fear. The shotgun’s barrel was pointing down at them. All the way at the other end of the gun, the potatoes gave them a cheery smile.

  “I didn’t realize how much I missed having music in this place,” he said. “After I kill you, I’m going to buy a radio.”

  Gus grabbed the gun barrel and pulled. He nearly screamed in pain as the blazing metal burned his hands, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Run, Shawn,” he said. “One of us has to keep on living.”

  Shawn didn’t move. “I can’t leave you here to die. Not when it’s at least a small part my fault that you’re here in the first place.”

  “A small part!”

  “Okay, since you’re giving up your life to save me, I’ll let you have this one—it’s all my fault. Shake on it?” Shawn extended an open hand to Gus.

  “My hands are a little busy here,” Gus said. Above them, the potatoes was yanking on the gun’s barrel, trying to get it away from him.

  “I’m not leaving until we shake hands,” Shawn said.

  “Then you’re crazy.”

  “Let go of my gun,” the potatoes grunted, giving the stock a yank that nearly pulled Gus off his feet.

  “Absolutely,” Shawn said. “Let’s shake on it.”

  Gus stared at Shawn’s outstretched hand, baffled. The potatoes yanked at the gun again, and suddenly Gus understood. “Oh, shake on it.”

  “If you don’t let go of my gun, I’m going to come around and beat it out of you,” the potatoes shouted, then gave the stock another hard pull. Just then, Gus clasped Shawn’s hand and gave it a hearty shake. Of course, to do that, he had to let go of the barrel first. The gun flew upward, blasting hundreds of tiny holes in the tin roof as the potatoes toppled over backward.

  “Now run!” Shawn shouted. Gus hadn’t waited for him to explain the rest of the cunning plan. He was halfway to the door before Shawn was on his feet. Somewhere behind him he knew the potatoes was pulling himself up on his spud feet and reloading the shotgun. Gus could feel the muscles in his back rearranging themselves into the concentric circles of a practice target, and he needed to put the bull’s-eye out of range.

  In college, Gus had tried out for the track team to impress a girl his roommate had described as “fast.” With the sure, if completely mistaken, knowledge of a date with the most beautiful woman in the northwest quadrant of campus as his reward, Gus ran faster that day than he ever had before, missing the qualifying time for the four hundred meter by less than a minute.

  If only he’d had a shotgun pointed at his back in college, Gus might have had a chance to learn just how little interest the “fast” girl actually had in runners. Because Gus was blasting through that qualifying pace. He could feel the hot asphalt slamming into his feet through the thin leather soles of his English dress shoes as if he were barefoot, and he didn’t care. His calves were coiled springs, propelling him violently forward with every step.

  In the distance behind him, Gus could hear someone calling his name. If he’d stopped to think about it, he would have known it was Shawn, probably begging him to slow down a little to let him catch up. But he wasn’t going to stop for anyone, not even his best friend.

  It wasn’t fear driving Gus anymore. Not completely, anyway. It was the exhilaration of the run—the sense of speed, of freedom, of life itself. He felt that if he could increase his pace just a fraction, he could achieve escape velocity, actually lift off the earth and into orbit. He’d be flying.

  “Gus, stop!” Shawn was shouting somewhere in the far distance. Gus ignored him. Couldn’t Shawn see he was about to fly?

  “Gus, car!”

  When Shawn shouted, Gus was at least thirty feet in front of him. Since sound travels at seven hundred seventy miles per hour, it took his voice at least one-thirty-fifth of a second to reach Gus. Maybe a fraction more, since he was accelerating away from Shawn, and there was the Doppler effect to consider. Even after Gus heard Shawn’s voice, it would have taken at least another .028 of a second for the meaning of the word to penetrate his brain. Even if he could have shaved a couple of milliseconds off, there was no way Gus could have altered his direction in the time necessary. He was in midstride, both feet off the ground. The best he could do was twist his trunk around so he could see down the length of road he was crossing.

  So he could see the bright red Mercedes S500 slaloming down the street as its driver pounded the brakes. So he could smell each particle of rubber scraped off the smoking tires as they left sharp black skid marks on the faded asphalt. So he could appreciate the glint of sunlight off the shiny Mercedes logo heading straight for him.

  For one second, Gus knew exactly what he needed to do. If he could somehow keep himself in the air, postpone his descent for just one fraction of a second, he could clear the car’s hood and land on its opposite side with catlike grace.

  Gus squeezed his eyes shut and willed all his strength into his ankles. If they didn’t sprout small wings to keep him aloft like the Sub-Mariner’s, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.

  A second passed, and Gus realized he hadn’t been smashed against the windshield like a bug. He opened his eyes and saw the car screeching to a stop behind him. He did it. He flew. He looked down at his ankles to see if the wings had sprouted there.

  There were of course no wings. But that wasn’t the problem. He’d lived this long without feathered ankles. The real problem was the other thing he didn’t see down there.

  The road.

  Or any solid ground.

  All he saw was the battered gray metal of the guard rail disappearing under his feet. And then the long, long drop to the garbage dump below.

  Chapter Four

  The asphalt was surprisingly soft under Gus’ back. When he was running, he could feel every pebble and shard of glass piercing the soles of his shoes. But now that he was sprawled out over the pavement, it felt soft, smooth, and pliable. Gus stretched out a hand and probed the ground with his fingers. The asphalt compressed under his touch as if it were stuffed with down.

  Gus tried to understand what was happening. There was a faint possibility that he had developed super-strength to go along with his newfound ability to fly. But the aches in his muscles, the pounding in his head, and the screaming pain from his rib cage were suggesting strongly that he was not about to be sworn into the Legion of Superheroes. Which made it far more likely that what he was feeling under him was actually not the road where he’d fallen. He probed the surface again, and this time recognized the slip of sheet over mattress.

  He was in a bed. But how did he get here? He might convince himself that he’d dreamed the whole thing, Veronica Mason’s trial included, if there was an inch of his body that didn’t hurt.

  Using all the strength he could muster, Gus forced his eyelids open. A giant head filled his vision, sandy brows nearly brushing his own eyeballs. Gus let out a scream.

  The giant head screamed, too, and moved away quickly. Gus’ eyes fought to focus.

  “Dude, you’re awake,” Shawn said.

  Gus squinted against the light and was able to make out Shawn’s beaming face over his.

  “I was just checking to see if you were still breathing,” Shawn said.

  “What happened?”

  “You were,” Shawn said.

  “Before that,” Gu
s said. “How did I get here?”

  “Someone tried to kill us.”

  Gus tried to recapture his last, fleeting memory. A red Mercedes flitted across his consciousness before his subconscious hauled it back with the other moments too painful to remember.

  “With a car.”

  “With a shotgun.”

  There was something about a gun tickling the edges of Gus’ brain. For some reason, he envisioned what could only have been the mascot for the University of Idaho’s skeet-shooting team; a giant smiling potato holding a shotgun. And then it all came flooding back. The Echo. The shack. The attendant.