Two for the Show

by Jonathan Stone

  “Dave,” “Sandi,” and now “Wallace,” my “Wallace”: What does it mean, really, to take on a new identity? Las Vegas is arguably America’s ground zero for that. People pouring into the city to begin a new life, to start a marriage or end one—to say nothing of those flowing in by the thousands to “lose themselves,” to simply be someone else, someone more glamorous, more carefree, for a few hours, for a few days. (For years and years, Vegas was America’s fastest-growing city. And no wonder—its transitory nature makes it the perfect place to hide or start anew.) It’s a place where people come to remake themselves, for slithering snakes to slough their old skin in the desert and grow a glistening new one. But what happens when people come here to remake themselves and discover that they’re still the same? That it’s not so easy to remake oneself? That the past, the truth, leaks out? What do you do when you discover that you are stuck with who you are? Is it an occasion for acceptance, for a desert-lit moment of truth and self-discovery? Hah. It is almost certainly instead a moment to wrap yourself in some new layer of crust and coating like a quick desert tan, or else to finally lash out, to scream your frustration to the merciless, unresponsive, empty desert, or to take it out on whoever or whatever is closest. Maybe some can slough that skin, start over in the hot, dry cleansing desert, but surely some discover they cannot. And no one can do it entirely.

  At first, I’m furious enough at “Wallace” to consider taking Archer Wallace and his story to the police. Let them investigate, get to the bottom of it. Certainly it’s one way to save myself from the Stewartsons. Escort into downtown Vegas the still shockingly white, bony, broken Archer Wallace. Of course, it would all come quickly tumbling down—the act, the show, the income, the partnership, this life. But would the police immediately doubt it, not be up to it, screw up the handling of the truth, merely because of its complexity? The Stewartsons taking on someone else’s identity, then blackmailing “Wallace” because he had done the same thing, and “Wallace” running what might previously be classified as entertainment by the police but would now be seen primarily as a scam, given his false identity, given his theft of assets, etc. There would be newspapers, testimony, drawn-out trials and appeals, given Wallace the Amazing’s deep pockets. I would spend the next few years in close proximity to the Stewartsons, to both Wallaces, in the same hearing rooms, waiting rooms, and courtrooms. My privacy, my quiet, would be gone forever. Could someone like me handle that? Someone so private?

  “Your condition,” I say to Archer Wallace now, continuing to adjust, to newly understand. “That didn’t happen to you over a few weeks. You were like this when the Stewartsons found you. Did . . . did Wallace . . . keep you locked up like this?” Or were you a bum, living on the street, financially wiped out, ill-equipped from a previous life of privilege to deal with street life or the hardships of reality?

  He looks at me, doesn’t answer. At first. And then it comes in a flood.

  His parents had died in a boating accident in the Gulf of Mexico during his junior year of high school, and all their money went to him, their only child, with no instructions and no guardianship attached, and no close living relatives, and he dropped out, dismissed the live-in help, and rattled around in their big antebellum mansion for a few weeks, before hitting the road with a pocketful of hundreds. In those few rushed, chaotic, otherworldly weeks of death and inheritance, it became apparent to Archer Wallace that he hadn’t a true friend in the world, that everyone was angling for a payout, so he cut all his ties and took off, to start over.

  I asked him if his parents’ accident had been covered in any of the local papers at the time. He shrugged, had no idea. But I had the strong suspicion it must have been, and I was right. (For old newspapers, you used to have to rely on libraries, descend into their bowels to their outdated, rarely consulted microfiche machines and collections—old newspapers were just about the last thing left that you couldn’t access online. It really made you feel like a detective, sitting hunched over in a dusty carrel, scrolling through ancient headlines. But now, of course, there are online sites for old newspapers too.) I wanted to check for the story in the local papers for a couple of reasons. First, to see how closely Archer Wallace’s version of events matched or strayed from that of a local reporter or two. And second, and more importantly, I figured someone else had come across the story, might have discovered it this way too, from the local papers. Maybe heard about it, maybe read about it, maybe both, but became somehow infinitely and intimately aware of it.

  Someone who had grown up, as it happened, pretty close to Archer Wallace’s little one-horse southern town (according to the few, spare details of the “official” myth-soaked “biography”). Close enough, I realized, to read the story in the papers, or hear about it, the facts of the tragedy passed casually, offhand, high school kid to high school kid.

  Local folks were dripping with sympathy, I’m sure. But I could see how it would look to a certain ambitious, impatient, cynical, brilliant, fame-hungry boy. This kid Archer Wallace—this dumb-luck kid in the newspaper—has now got everything. Endless money, no responsibility. He can do anything. Go anywhere. Be anyone. While I have nothing. Well, not nothing—suffocating parents, both working three jobs, a family that struggles to eat, living hand to mouth and meal to meal, sharing beds and sharing baths (not bathrooms, baths), breathing on one another, no space, no place, no privacy. I want to be that kid. That Archer Wallace. And with the boldness, cunning, and ambition of youth, he didn’t see why he couldn’t be.

  The real Archer Wallace had no real plan, of course, so he kept a significant portion of his money—initially at least—in little mounds and rolls of cash hidden around the immense house whose secret corners and tucked-in places he knew so well. He soon saw the risks of that—yes, he was completely adrift, but not completely stupid, he tells me. So before taking off on his extended travels, he opened an account in another town, an anonymous bank, where people didn’t know him. He chose the anonymity, somewhere far enough away, where he presumed the story hadn’t followed him. Where there would be no pointing, no special treatment, no deference, no whispering. Where he was only a nameless, faceless, unremarkable account holder. With a plain-vanilla checking account.

  And someone—someone ambitious, brilliant, cynical, someone following closely but not too closely—opened an accompanying, linked savings account, and began to transfer funds. Copied Wallace’s signature. The high school experience everywhere involves fake IDs for buying beer and getting into bars. Someone used the same simple techniques to produce a license with “Archer Wallace’s” new photo and his name beneath it. Usually at stake—a few six-packs and enhanced chances of meeting girls. At stake in this case—a fortune. But it was the fortune of a high school kid, and no one thought in terms other than high school, and it was the simplest thing in the world to pull off in a sleepy, trusting, casual, small southern town. It aroused no suspicion, and he was able to test both his ID and his technique when he simply shifted the money from checking to savings. And with Archer Wallace out somewhere on the open road, this shrewd, enterprising boy, wandering into this new bank, could even begin to experience what it felt like to occupy the identity of Archer Wallace. He could come make his transfers, flirt innocently with the tellers; he could try it on. With the real Archer Wallace unknown and far away, he could safely become Archer Wallace a little. Maybe more than a little.

  Once all the money was in savings, he could transfer it in one sum to another institution where he’d opened an account, then take out the money and take off to another life. Before Archer Wallace even returned. And when and if the real Archer Wallace did return and realized he was the victim of an ingenious theft, he’d have no idea who the thief was or where he had gone. I think of our first years on the road—unknown entertainers, always on the move, no broad reputation yet. When we finally began to earn one, when Archer Wallace might have first heard of us, it would have been too late—Wallace the Amazing al
ready established, with bank accounts, multiple identifications, credit, home ownership, a family. Much more of an Archer Wallace than some wandering, orphaned country boy suddenly claiming to be the famous magician. The real Archer Wallace—well-off, carefree, coddled since childhood—suddenly without parents or resources or even much of an official identity, spirals downward into a life of penury, struggle, disconnection, who knows what else.

  Something along those lines. I could see it so clearly.

  You don’t have to work very hard to imagine what the Stewartsons saw when they walked back into Room 103 of that motel. To feel what they felt. Whether or not they are actually killers, they have a record of—a capacity for—decisive, possibly violent action. Because they have somewhere, somehow, eliminated the real Stewartson or Stewartsons—buried them in a field, tossed them overboard, rolled them into a carpet, left them in a dumpster, disposed of them somehow. So you can imagine the need for retribution, for retaliation, working its way up in the fake Stewartsons—free-floating anger, because they have no idea yet who seized their quarry or else turned him loose. But they know the weak, debilitated Archer Wallace didn’t pull it off himself. They know someone helped.

  You don’t have to work very hard to see the simmering, threatening questioning they put the motel clerks and the Central American maids through, the implied threat behind their questions, the rage standing by, like an accomplice, tapping a lead pipe in a palm, ready to step forward and swing at the slightest provocation, maybe even doing so, here or there, just to stay in practice, just to stay in shape.

  And did a maid or clerk see something? Did they see my car sitting across the street? See me stride through the motel lobby? Help a sick guest out to the parking lot? I don’t know if the Stewartsons will be able to find me, but I don’t know that they won’t.

  And all this time, I am working. Doing the research, providing, as always, the necessary data for the show. Does Wallace trust what I am delivering him? Why not? He doesn’t know that I know any of this about him, about his thievery of someone’s life, about who he really is or isn’t. Although he might realize that I was watching the quick kerfuffle—the stumble and smooth cover-up—between him and Dave Stewartson. And might realize that his star researcher—rattled, startled, confused—might research what he had just observed a little more deeply.

  And then, a turn of events I might have predicted—if only I had realized who I was actually rescuing from the motel. Who I was actually saving.

  “Take me back to the Stewartsons,” Archer Wallace says suddenly.

  “What!”

  “I want to go back. I want to continue with our plan, split the proceeds with them, honor the deal they offered me. But I won’t let them chain me to the tub this time.”

  He sees my startled look, regarding him as if he is delusional, so he tries to explain. “Look, they were afraid I was going to get scared. Back out on them, run away. They saw me as only a pawn in the plan. And I started to see myself that way too.” He pauses, considers the logic of that for a moment. “But I’m stronger now. After this, they’ll realize they can’t mess with me like that anymore. I won’t tell them how I got away, but they’ll see I have the power to escape. And I still want my portion of the deal. Because I still want to get even with Wallace the Amazing, and this is the best way to do it. And they still need me, after all. I’m still the proof of his criminal past that would destroy him, that will give us all leverage . . . and cash.”

  I’m stronger now. Thanks to me. Thanks to my cutting the chain links in the bathroom. Thanks to my care and feeding.

  I thought I was saving the real Dave Stewartson. If I had thought I was saving the Stewartsons’ fellow blackmailer—and plunging my quiet, orderly life into question, confusion, anxiety, by discovering the real Archer Wallace—I would not have acted so heroically, so instinctively. I would have left him in that bathroom.

  He pauses, considering again. Sits up taller, adjusts his shoulders back. “Come to think of it . . . why do I even need them?”

  You need them because they are the pros, I’m thinking. Because they’re threatening. They’re scary. They generate consequences. You need them, because you think you don’t. Because you don’t understand the seriousness of the game you’re about to play.

  “Are you going to tell them about me?” I ask.

  “You’re part of the cash machine. You’re part of the goose and golden egg. You won’t confirm it, but I know. It’s obvious. So I’d be crazy to give you up. To risk unplugging the cash machine. I guess you’ll have to trust me not to tell. It’s in my own self-interest, all our self-interest really, to keep Wallace the Amazing generating income. Remaining successful. Plus, if I give you up, then you become the leverage; they don’t need me anymore—you take my place as the one to bring him down. So I won’t be doing that. No, you need to stay on his payroll.” He smiles. “A payroll that’s about to expand, that’s all.”

  “And you think they’re just gonna let you waltz back in and rejoin them? Like nothing happened? Like you never left? They’ll trust you less than ever. These are not nice people, Archer.”

  He shrugs. Is quiet. Is thinking about that, I hope.

  I try once again to find out more about Dave Stewartson—the ghostly original one, my Dave Stewartson—but these new Stewartsons have done a good job of obliterating him. I stumble across more and more of the new Dave all over the Internet—licenses, IDs, tax filings, applications, more social media. All of it has digitally consumed the original Dave Stewartson, swallowed up his memory and his evidence, so that all I have is that one original picture, which presumably the new Dave has attempted to take down if he knows about it. I stare at the old Dave again—official, somber, expressionless. I didn’t search deeply enough, carefully enough. I made an amateurish error. I am staring at my own failure. The old Dave is in some government files, in someone’s old photo albums, but whose? Where? What broken family? What fleeting friendship? The picture says, in a small scratchy voice, like a thin, struggling radio transmission: It’s me. Don’t forget. It’s me. I’m still here. Find me.

  Carefully casing the motel for hours, rescuing Wallace just before dawn, I hadn’t slept at all. And since then, not surprisingly, I had continued to lay awake at night, restless, unable to sleep, thinking about both Wallaces, and myself, and my awkward painful last encounter with Debbie—Debbie now gone. A kind of strange, dizzying, intimate dance, the four of us, a discordant music swirling around us. I eventually gave in to complete exhaustion, curling into my mattress in a dizzy haze, my hyperwakefulness suddenly overwhelmed, collapsing into slumber. Done in by the events of the past few days.

  Which is why it still seems dreamlike, nightmarish, caught initially in some state between dreaming and wakefulness, when I wake to find Sandi Stewartson on top of me.

  A blonde on top of you as you wake—this is of course a Vegas dream. But I awaken, in fact, a few stumbling seconds later, to the click of handcuffs (which could still be part of a Vegas dream, of course, but in this case are not), and I am hustled in my underwear out of my dark bedroom into my living room, where Archer Wallace my houseguest is attached to one of my dining room chairs, his arms, legs, and mouth duct-taped, and his eyes wide, staring at me and at the scene. I am shoved into the chair next to him. All the lights are off. The Stewartsons check the windows, where I drew the shades and curtains earlier, and once they see they are all closed (my own thoroughness of privacy, suddenly working against me), they turn on a low kitchen light that still keeps us all in shadow.

  “What did you think?” says Dave Stewartson snidely, leaning down into my face. “Did you think that when we turned around to check behind us, we didn’t see you? Did you really think that going in and out of the Bellagio, we didn’t see you waiting in the lobby? That we didn’t see you in the market? That we didn’t see your nondescript piece of shit car in our mirror? Why’d we keep turning around, you
moron? To make sure you were still there.” He seems irritated, somehow insulted at my amateurism. “We could see how incompetent you were. We were afraid we’d lose you. And we had no way to know anything about you—who you were, what you knew. Hell, we couldn’t very well just turn around and ask you, God knows you weren’t going to tell us anything, and we figured threatening you might not accomplish anything either. So we had to wait until we could see where you live, get you at home, and the only way to do that was to offer you our prize here.” He gestures to Wallace. “We figured you’d just come in and look horrified and not touch, and when you left, we’d follow you home. But we also knew you might want to be a hero, and rescue the prize from us, which worked just as well, still told us where you live, and at least a little of who you are and how you see yourself.” He grabs another of my dining room chairs, spins it to face us, sits. His irritation seems to ebb a little. “We would have been here earlier, but we wanted you to get comfortable, start to feel safe, drop your guard a little, while we were checking other things. Making sure nobody else lives here with you. Making sure the girlfriend is out of the picture. It all took a while, and none of it’s as complete as we usually like, because as you know, Chas, you’re pretty well scrubbed from the world. You’re practically a spy. A spy here in Vegas. A nonentity. A ghost. Now what exactly would you be doing out here with a background like that?”

  I am obviously dealing with a certain level, or at least a certain kind, of professionalism. I’ve always known that the highly democratic Internet—its databases, sites, passwords and codes to be cracked by hackers—is a boon to law enforcement, and the same boon to scam artists. I see now that I’m not the only technologist in Vegas.

  Stewartson, I notice (my eyes adjusting to the low light), is holding an orange from my fruit bowl. Now he peels it. Detaches and sucks slowly on a section. “And this actually works out better. Because while you may not respond to the threat of harm to yourself, now there’s our pal Archer here, and we’re sure you’ll respond appropriately to the threat of harming him, fragile as we both know he is . . .”