Two for the Show

by Jonathan Stone

  He lives in a compound out in the high desert. A bright, shimmering, white-and-pink sandstone fortress of domes and turrets, rising like a mirage, a sensual Arabian fantasy, set up on a bluff, proffering an extra half hour of essentially private and personal afternoon light. Protected by massive gates with fanciful filigree. Among the believers, among the credulous and the converted, the theory is that he chose this spot because it is removed from the mental waves and pulses that relentlessly surround him, that he cannot quiet or avoid except far out in the pristine desert. I know better. That he was simply looking for privacy and quiet for himself and his family, to replicate and preserve the intense control that he is used to maintaining onstage and backstage in his professional life and that he wants, demands, cherishes, in his personal life as well.

  And eventually, Vegas’s endless supply of rock supergroup reunion shows, the titillating dance and sex reviews, the elaborate choreography in water or midair, the spectacle, the visual assault, all wear thin, no longer fascinate, and there is one show left: Wallace the Amazing, entering minds, invading the last realm, bringing nightly, reliably, a note from the beyond. A show that sends its audience in on itself, that summons everyone’s past, that frightens, that exhilarates with the unexplained, that burrows into your consciousness, into all your questions about omniscience and thought and mind and life. A show that is intimate, dangerously intimate, for each audience member, because it is about us as individuals, special, unique. A show that makes magic not out of spectacle but out of our daily world, our daily connections, our daily lives. It is, quite understandably, quite unassailably, the ultimate Vegas hit.

  THREE

  So what happened? Obviously, I would not be writing this—“outing” myself, setting it down, risking its exposure to the world (and in truth, I still haven’t decided what to ultimately do with this account), memorializing it here for you to judge me and what follows as either truthful or mendacious—if something hadn’t happened. Of course something happened. You don’t have to be a mentalist to sense that.

  Something that went above and beyond, under and beneath, the facts and data that I supply each night.

  Something that overwhelmed the smooth, seamless duo that wordlessly handled Big Eddie and his henchmen.

  Something that made Big Eddie look like child’s play.

  I’m making a late-night snack, only half watching the show. Dave Stewartson of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is standing in the aisle, dumbstruck, shaking his head in disbelief, as Wallace the Amazing is talking about Dave’s childhood dog, Reddi. “A chocolate Labrador?” “Yes, a chocolate Labrador!” “I see him running around a blue-shuttered house.” “Yes, yes, that’s right . . . a blue-shuttered house!” “And now he’s running by a red bush, and I see money for some reason . . . coins.” “Yes, when I was a kid,” Dave admits, flushed, stunned, “I buried my treasure under that bush!” Dave, clearly for physical balance and support in the face of these shocks, puts his hand on the shoulder of his wife, Sandi, standing by his side. (Maiden name Parker; grew up at 21 Owens Trail, Lansing, Michigan; certificate in primary education from Michigan State; second grade teacher, Alwin Elementary; sixteen kids in class, Arnold, Sarah, Cal . . . It’s all more than passingly familiar to me, of course. I’ve just done all the research.)

  I recognize the litany of facts, admire as always Wallace’s artful arrangement and delivery of them, weaving a narrative that will dive deeper and deeper, for the audience’s awed entertainment, but something isn’t right, and I can’t tell what it is, but I have a feeling. I’m a mentalist’s assistant, after all—so I’m particularly, professionally qualified to have such a feeling.

  I drop the snack fixings, fairly leap over to my laptop, call up the file. I confirm immediately that Wallace the Amazing has all his facts exactly right.

  The only problem is, that’s not Dave Stewartson he’s talking to.

  The Internet is showing me a photograph of a different guy.

  And what’s obvious to me immediately, unless something untoward and unprecedented has happened to Wallace the Amazing, is that Wallace must know it’s not the right guy. This is what he does, after all, this is the skill he works from, his remarkable visual memory. Unless he’s had some kind of stroke, or short-term memory event or disruption, his visual memory has been infallible.

  Not the right guy—and yet the guy is acting happily amazed.

  I keystroke madly, cross-checking. There is no mistaking. I am looking at the photo of the real David Stewartson. Or at least, my Dave Stewartson. A guy whose photo is there on the Internet in front of me. And the guy now on television, in the Vegas audience of our show, is someone else—someone, for whatever reason, who is saying he’s Dave Stewartson.

  I hit keys in a blur, checking now on wife Sandi. And there is Sandi Stewartson online (second-grade teacher Sandi, Michigan State teaching certificate Sandi, maiden name Parker, etc., etc.), but the mousy Sandi seen in online photos does not match the bob-haired and somewhat brassy-looking blonde on my television screen. So . . . double trouble. Tending to move whatever is going on from the arena of mere error to the arena of malign purpose.

  The plot thickens almost immediately. Because as I keystroke back to Dave, cross-checking, scurrying site to site, this Dave Stewartson—the one still on my TV screen, hugging his wife, lit up, virtually atremble with Wallace the Amazing’s abilities—is now making several cameo Internet appearances before me. Here he is on a social networking site. Here he is on an archived computer dating site. Here he is on a job-search site. Here he is on someone’s blog. Here he is in someone’s group photo, his name in the caption. Yet racing back now to the sites I rely on—“unhackable” police databases, protected governmental and encrypted military-service identification sites with no consumer access—there is the original Dave. My Dave. Serious, smileless, guileless. A mild frown. A straight-ahead, no-nonsense guy. A different guy.

  I am, of course, struggling instantly—panicky, heart racing—with a couple of obvious questions. Which one is the real Dave, which is the Dave Stewartson imposter? Although I’m pretty sure I know already—that somber old photo from the official sites, versus the charmer, the smiler, on the consumer and social networking sites—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn—so susceptible to misrepresentation.

  Have I not been thorough enough? Clearly not. And now my shoddiness, my not double-checking, my small moment of laxness, could topple us. Bring it all down.

  And still the bigger, simultaneous, and more confusing question: Why has Wallace called on him? If this Dave didn’t match the visual description, didn’t click with Wallace’s prodigious visual memory, why did he choose him?

  Maybe it was a momentary slip on Wallace’s part—just a momentary lapse, and now he’ll have to dig out of it. But this strikes me as off, somehow. The whole enterprise, his life, our life, is built on not making a slip like that. In having never made a slip like that.

  And the big accompanying question: Why is this fake Dave (if this is the fake Dave) playing along like this? Is he going to turn at any moment and reveal—prove with his driver’s license and birth certificate, waving them around, offering them to the TV camera for a close-up, for instance—that he’s not Dave Stewartson at all. Showing that Wallace is merely a smooth charlatan, a high-level, supremely accomplished card counter of some sort (which arguably is exactly what he is), backed into an error that pulls aside the curtain, unveils the utterly conventional rods and levers and pulleys and strings.

  I check my official data again. It’s as if I can’t believe, can’t accept, what I already know. The online picture is Dave Stewartson—Dave of the blue shutters and the chocolate Lab and the buried treasure, I’m certain—and this guy on television is not him.

  I check another file, one always at the ready on my laptop—my file of “frequent fliers,” crazy acolytes, stalkers, and nut jobs known to me and Wallace. I’m familiar with, on the lookout f
or, all of them. I thought for a moment I’d forgotten one, but no. No one like him there in the file.

  Another possibility: this guy has been given—or else has stolen—the real Dave Stewartson’s tickets, and is a legitimate, or illegitimate, guest of the real, somber, frowning, official Dave. This we’ve had happen before—but it was the visual ID that always prevented this brand of trouble. Wallace knew what appearance went with what set of personal data before he set foot onstage. So how did Wallace, the unerring Wallace, stumble into this?

  And with this imposter playing along like this—so entranced, so receptive, so amazed—does Wallace even realize his mistake? Or does he know exactly what he’s doing—and I don’t?

  My heart is pounding. I am riveted, transfixed, as if watching an oncoming train wreck. I am now in front of the TV screen, jumpy, coiled, ready to scream, to strike at it, like a Giants fan when the Eagles score, like an ardent liberal when the conservative invokes God or intelligent design. Ready to enter the television, administer swift, blind, unthinking physical justice to the babbling figure, who in reality is only projected light, only pixels, akin to throttling a ghost.

  “So . . .” Wallace continues confidently, the ersatz Dave Stewartson and wife still amazed, the audience of a thousand still appreciative. “As you have seen, I have connected to Dave’s old dog, and his old blue-shuttered house, and a few other things, and as you know about this show, we are dealing with the otherworldly, the phenomenological, the unexplained, and in keeping with that tradition, pay attention to what happens here. Because the problem is”—he turns boldly, broadly back to Dave—“the problem here is you don’t have that dog, you didn’t have that house, you didn’t grow up in that town. I don’t think you’re really Dave Stewartson at all, are you?”

  Gasps.

  Including—needless to add—my own.

  But even here, at this moment of confusion, of panic, of crunching anxiety, I doff my hat, I bow down to Wallace’s flair and instinct for drama, for upping the ante.

  “The question is, why are you playing at it? What’s going on here?” asks Wallace the Amazing grandly, and it is a dramatic moment in the show, not least because Wallace never asks the questions, never risks appearing at a loss or at sea.

  What’s going on here, indeed?

  But now I see, at least, that Wallace does know. Knows this isn’t the researched, vetted Dave. And I see—anxiously—that he is utterly trusting my research. The infallibility, the perfect record of twenty years of my research.

  So trusting, he is making a bold move with it. I feel my heart stuttering . . . like a drumroll of anticipation.

  Why would he risk it? Why would he play with fire like this?

  Did he sense something was off, out of the ordinary, even before he called on him?

  And if this is an imposter, if it’s some kind of identity theft—which would make sense, given “Dave’s” credulousness, “Dave’s” playing along with the amazement—is Wallace expecting imposter Dave to stumble and mumble and crumble in the glare of lights, shuffle uncomfortably, maybe make a run for it? In which case Wallace will be a hero, and a fraud will be unmasked on national television—great news for Wallace’s show and ratings.

  But Dave stands his ground. He is all innocent confusion and stiff resolve. “But I am Dave Stewartson. That was my dog Reddi who slept by my bed when I was growing up. Those were the blue shutters on our house. This is my wife. I promise you.” Big smile. But clearly a little insulted by the mentalist’s implication.

  The wife dutifully nods. Sandi.

  Twinkling eyes. Middle-aged body, but sculpted and tight. Just past bombshell, but the bomb still ticking. And although from one angle the two of them are typical out-of-towners—at least by their now doubtful bios and addresses and buoyant, smiling midwestern style—I sense something ineffably Vegas about them too. Something slick. A weird angularity to both their faces. And I sense a voltage running strongly between them.

  I want to look again online at the real Sandi. But I can’t stop right now, can’t distract myself from the TV screen.

  I figure Wallace is about to have the imposter show his driver’s license, hold it up to the camera, but he might figure the license—which may, after all, say Dave Stewartson—would only back the man up. It’s too risky. He takes a less risky tack. And shows, once again, his mastery.

  “So you’re saying I’m right. I’m right about your past . . .”

  “Yes.” Emphatic.

  “I’m right about your name . . .”

  “Yes, amazingly, yes.”

  Wallace frowns. “There’s something in the way here. Something isn’t right.” And this covers Wallace brilliantly, because whatever the aftermath of this moment turns out to be, it will explain Wallace’s extrasensory stumble. It will reaffirm his direct if not always perfectly straightforward contact with the mysteries of the universe. And who, anyway, expects the universe’s mysteries to be straightforward?

  “So Reddi or not . . .” Wallace says now, referring once more to “Dave’s” childhood dog and to his own moment of confusion, and now his eyes squinting, as if suddenly seeing into something, realizing something. “It’s turning out I was . . . more Reddi than I thought.” Wallace smiles, recovering, commanding, smooth. “Because there is more than one Reddi here tonight. Pamela Ardsdale?” And Pamela and her girlfriends scream, and the spotlight moves from “Dave” to Pamela, and Wallace says, “You worked at Reddi-Cut Carpet, didn’t you?” and Pamela and her girlfriends scream again, and the audience laughs, and the show moves on.

  And it’s all a message to me really—this whole moment in the show is a directive to me, as direct and telegraphic and immediate as Wallace can get, which says, Chas, get on this and see if you can figure out what the hell’s going on.

  I am on it. All over it. Alert, checking, toggling my attention between the television and computer screen. Looking at the weak chin, the pasty skin, the drooping eyes of the Dave Stewartson in the online photo from secure Internet sites, and at the tanned, full-chinned, muscular, twinkle-eyed, charming, chiseled Dave Stewartson standing in the audience.

  I open a little software program of my own devising, which instantly gathers all the Dave Stewartsons in the United States into one database, all 3,864 of them (it’s a big country, 320 million of us, and it’s a common name—damn) with any photos available (driver’s licenses, passports, medical records, posted photos) arranged by birthday, and I scan through them and find both my Dave Stewartsons, next to each other, as it happens, since they are sharing not only a birthday but a driver’s license number, a passport number, and a Social Security number. The real Dave Stewartson and the smiling, concocted one, who has neatly, efficiently, and outrageously wrested the real Dave’s life away from him—and in the best-case scenario, is only temporarily sharing it in the televised spotlight, no doubt without express permission.

  And worst-case scenario? This fake Dave wants to somehow test, somehow complete, his inhabitation of the life and soul and memories of the poor real Dave Stewartson, wherever he is. (And where is he?) Or he has some other reason for wanting to be seen on national television in this assumed identity—to send a message, to be known, to be discovered.

  And most likely scenario? The most logical, but still stunning, explanation? Staring me in the face. Slapping me in the forehead. The outright lie that, I’m suddenly sure, will turn out to be the truth.

  “Dave” is simply cornered. He has stolen someone’s identity—hook, line, and sinker—and here he is at this show, probably figuring he would never be called on. One of two thousand audience members, what are the odds? He probably figured it’s all fake and canned and staged anyway and he’d never be at risk—and suddenly he’s in the spotlight, and he puts on a great impromptu performance—as good as Wallace’s, as good as it gets.

  He says it is his dog, his shutters, his past, because no
w it is. Because now it has to be. If it wasn’t his dog before Wallace recounted the story, it is now.

  But this is national television. And someone else besides me has to know the real Dave, someone else has to recognize the blue-shuttered house and the Labrador named Reddi. Someone is going to recognize these stories and find out what happened and come after this guy . . . meaning, if Wallace can negotiate past this moment (and it looks now like he will), it will pass for us, and fighting identity theft isn’t our job.

  Meaning, I don’t really care about this guy stealing someone’s identity. It doesn’t surprise me—there are all kinds of scams percolating across criminal America. Logic, and the fluent and continuing success of our own, says we are hardly the only ones out there . . .

  What bothers me is that “Dave” could expose our scam. Catch the interest of some vigilant cop, who was enjoying Wallace the Amazing with the rest of America. Is “Dave” holding that over Wallace? Does he even realize it?

  In which case, I might have to help keep this “Dave” from getting caught. I might have to make sure he preserves his fake identity, to minimize that risk.

  Another charlatan that I’d need to support behind the scenes.

  FOUR

  Identity theft. Setting aside, for the moment, forged signatures and siphoned bank accounts, it’s arguably the world’s most metaphysical crime, isn’t it? Because you’re not actually stealing someone’s identity—they are they, and you are you. In an absolute sense, it’s not possible to steal someone’s identity—unless the crime comes to involve DNA or plastic surgery, appropriating someone’s unique appearance or genetic code.

  Their actual identity is never in jeopardy. It’s the world’s version of their identity, and the proof of that identity, that is in jeopardy. So on its surface, it’s a crime in only a very vague sense. If you say you’re someone else but never steal a dollar, apply for a job, or profit in any way from saying you’re someone else, has there even been a crime?