Two for the Show

by Jonathan Stone

  The Vegas library. I had expected it to be a kind of oasis, but for me it turns out to be more empty desert. I head out of its cool gloom back into the searing sunlight.

  I pull Debbie’s old Triumph into her driveway, head back inside with a carton of milk, orange juice, a can of coffee, and a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread—sufficient explanation, I thinly hope, for my sudden disappearance with her car.

  Crack!

  An explosion at the side of my head.

  The concussive noise so close.

  A spinning room.

  A sudden blackness.

  In a moment, I find myself surrounded by my own groceries.

  Lying on Debbie’s bright-green entrance rug and hardwood floor.

  I’m staring down into the rug’s forest of bright-green fibers, as if I’ve just tripped.

  Which I have. Tripped on my own stupidity and carelessness.

  Dave holds the gun to the back of my head as I lie there. “Hey, hero. She ain’t here. But you are.”

  And when I am once again shackled to a chair, when my mouth is once again taped and I am nice and docile and cooperative, I am subjected again to the verbal stylings of Dave Stewartson/Stewart Davidson—as if merely picking up where we left off.

  “Now where were we?” he says with a smile. As if mainly to demonstrate how I can be taped back into a chair, easily, anytime, anywhere. That it’s nothing for them. To show that I can’t escape. Not really. Not ever.

  Dave once again pulls a chair up next to mine, once again turns the chair to sit on it backward, like any and every old-movie interrogation. I am looking once again at the strangely angular face, the tautness around his mouth, the fearsome bulge of his eyes. But despite my once more being a “captive audience,” the tenor and purpose of this conversation prove entirely different.

  “Wallace the Amazing, he fooled you, didn’t he? Took you in as much as he took in Archer Wallace. Maybe worse, for all the years it’s gone on for you.”

  He couldn’t know that. He was speculating. I didn’t say anything.

  “I know you grabbed your laptop when you left your place. I don’t know the exact nature of your relationship with him, but I’ll bet it has to do with that laptop. And the fact that there’s so little record of you, so little paper trail or evidence of your existence. And the thing I noticed the night we watched him on TV—whatever you were doing for him, apparently he doesn’t need you to do it anymore. Clearly you’re more dispensable than you thought.” He smiles thinly. “He’s abandoned you to the likes of us.”

  He pauses, examines his hands for a moment, frowning, as if hoping to find a cigarette in one, or a cuticle that needs some work, or another section of an orange. “But we want you, Chas. We respect your skills. This is your town, not ours. And we know you can find us Archer Wallace.” He flexes and stretches his hands, and I see in them mute experience, the tools of wet work. “Think about what I’m saying. Think about how shocked you are, how disillusioned, how uprooted you feel by what you’ve learned about your boss. Think about how your world has already been turned upside down. Think about the state you found the real Wallace in. And as you’ve realized by now, that wasn’t something we did. That was something he did to himself.” He leans back, exhales (as if releasing frustration in a controlled discharge) into the air above him—and if it were an exhalation of cigarette smoke in a backroom interrogation, the smoke would now hang for a silent moment, dramatically, like a complex question, gray and musing. “Think about what it means to have agreed to a certain existence, to a certain life, and it turns out that whole existence came with false terms. Under false pretenses. See, I think you know a little something about that.” Those big hands drum for a few beats on the back of Debbie’s chair. (I had her car—so where, how, is she not here?) “We want to propose something. Don’t say anything right away. You’ll be skeptical at first. Just think about it before you respond. We’re willing to cut you in. Substantially. That’s how much money there is. Do you have any idea what kind of stake we’re talking about? How much Wallace the Amazing has? Your years of service. You can get compensated for it—by your employer, no less—in one lump sum. We’re offering a partnership. Something Wallace the Amazing, your former employer, if that’s what he was, never did.”

  It was, of course, everything I’d been thinking. Everything that irked me, that I had been brooding over, that I was bristling about. Wallace suddenly didn’t seem to need me. This could be my severance package.

  “Think of it as your severance package,” says Stewartson. I blink at hearing what I’ve been thinking uttered aloud.

  I squirm in Debbie’s chair. I don’t know how I feel. Stewartson can see that. “Let me give the idea a little shape and substance for you. Your share would be five mil.”

  The sum has finality, authority, clarity to it. Five million.

  He rips the tape off my mouth in one motion. I wince from the sharp sting.

  I look at him. “Five million.” I wanted to hear myself say it. To hear my own voice utter the words into actuality.

  “Five million if this works. Five million, or nothing. Nothing in between.”

  I nod. Understanding? Acceptance? Acquiescence?

  Sandi is already freeing my nimble keyboard fingers.

  After a few minutes the Stewartsons took off, leaving me alone to start on my side of the bargain. I watched the red Mustang pull out from behind a truck down the street, where I had never thought to look.

  I didn’t bother to search the little house for Debbie, I knew the Stewartsons had already looked thoroughly. She had been smarter than me, must have escaped when she saw their car. Her cell phone was on the kitchen counter. She must have left in a hurry. She might not risk coming back so fast. Seeing her cell phone there—that thin last thread of connection, now broken—I felt the pang of separation more than I thought I would, sharp and immediate. A further severing from each other. Her even temper, her straightforwardly upbeat view of things, the familiar comfort of her voice, coming from the darkness in bed beside me or through a tiny phone speaker—all now gone.

  I did the only thing I could think of. The only thing that would inch me toward normal. I opened my laptop.

  There was the e-mail reply back from Wallace to Wallace. I thought Wallace the Amazing might simply pretend not to have seen it, since acknowledging it would begin to lend credence to it, which would be the wrong tack for him to take. His return e-mail to Archer—all one line of it—was sufficiently cryptic to have no definitive meaning in an investigation or a court of law. But it was a clear enough indication of his stance, of his temperament, and even of a sense of irony.

  TO: Archer Wallace

  FROM: Archer Wallace

  SUBJECT: Who do you think you are?

  A few hours after that—once I’d returned to my own condo, safe again, now that I wasn’t trying to hide from the Stewartsons—Wallace the Amazing amazes me once more.

  Because Detective Armondy and Detective Hammer of the Las Vegas Police Department are suddenly at my door. Flashing badges in the Vegas sun. Squinting into the cool darkness as they step inside. Just like in the movies—as if they know how they are expected to act. The whole deal. And big boys too, both of them. Meaty as offensive linemen. “Can we sit down?” As in, we’re gonna be here a little while.

  The LVPD. One of the detectives is studying me. I already have the sense. That Wallace to Wallace e-mail. They must have seen it too.

  They settle themselves carefully into the chairs I direct them to. Chairs no one had ever sat in before, I realize. Before I got taped into one.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Somebody is trying to blackmail Wallace the Amazing.”

  Wow. A preemptive strike. Wallace the Amazing has brought in the Vegas police. Gutsy. Risky. He is going to head this off quickly, fire from both barrels—presumably beca
use he is truly concerned about everything coming undone.

  I’m smart enough not to say, “What’s that got to do with me?” I know why they’re here. My being cc’d on the e-mail is at least as mysterious to them as it is to me. “I know the e-mail you mean,” I tell them. “I thought it was sent to me by mistake, or else a joke I didn’t get.” Wallace the Amazing obviously forwarded the e-mail, as is, to the police. They have not been able to trace it to the sender either. But they have been able to find me, the cc, the e-witness. Is Wallace the Amazing willing to risk connecting the two of us? After all our cautiousness, after all these years? Does this simply prove further he doesn’t really need me?

  “You know who sent it?”

  “No.”

  “You know Wallace the Amazing?”

  “I know of him. I’ve seen him perform. I watch his show. He is amazing.”

  “He said he knows you.”

  My heart pounds. Did he give me up? Just like that? Turn on me? Over this? My strangled look of fear, of anguish, is maybe taken for anger, irritation.

  “He couldn’t have said that. Because he doesn’t know me.”

  Hammer smiles. “No, he said he doesn’t. We were just . . . asking.” A clever little play by the LV detectives, the kind they love—not in the manual, but certainly in the playbook.

  “And you don’t know who sent it?” I am asked again, seriously. Back to the real question.

  “Well, maybe I do know them”—I’m establishing a tone of scrupulous honesty—“but the to is the same as the from, so I can’t tell who it is.”

  “Any guesses?”

  I shake my head.

  Detective Hammer settles back a little. “See, thing is, this isn’t just garden-variety blackmail.” He cocks his head, looks around my neat, spare condo, blankly assessing. “Wallace the Amazing is an institution. He generates revenue for this town. Employs lots of people. Gives generously to local organizations. Police. Fire. Children’s hospital wings. Cut to the chase: guy is part of the local economy. Big part. Maybe whoever sent this has really got something on Wallace. But personally, I’d rather not know what it is. And Las Vegas doesn’t want to know what it is. Because whatever it is, it can’t weigh in at nearly what this guy Wallace has done for this town.”

  He looks at me, making sure I understand. “Okay, so you don’t know who sent this.” He pauses meaningfully, he’s nobody’s fool. “But if you figure it out, it might be good to convey this sentiment, this point of view, to whoever sent it. There’s an extra level of, uh, local sensitivity that they need to be aware of. There’s more at work here, capisce?”

  Wallace. Impresario and civic supporter. Piling high the chips of goodwill. Of social capital. As if anticipating such a calamity. His high-profile, unsubtle insurance policy against it.

  Why did Archer Wallace put me on the e-mail? To push me out into the open? Or just to warn me? Or—and as soon as I think of it, I know this is the reason—because any subsequent electronic tampering I might try would now be detected by the police. He was tying up my nimble keyboard fingers.

  “Blackmail is illegal, whatever the facts behind it,” Hammer says pompously. “Whoever sent this is doing something criminal already, right off the bat, whatever he may or may not be holding over the victim. That’s why it’s good Wallace came straight to us with this and didn’t try to handle it himself. His instincts are good. But even if this blackmailer ultimately wants to come to the police with whatever it is he has, he needs to think about it. You know, whatever it is, if Wallace hid it all these years, the police could hide it too.”

  He shrugs. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t dare. It is as if the words exist, float independent of him, as if he has nothing to do with them.

  Why is he revealing so much to me? Clearly because he knows that I know more than I’m letting on. That I’m connected in some way that he’s not forcing me to say. Not yet, anyway.

  I promise them that I’ll call if I get another suspicious e-mail. I show them out politely. “What line of work are you in?” Hammer asks.

  “Computers.”

  He looks at me. I answer before he can ask.

  “I tried to see where that e-mail was coming from,” I pretend to confess. “I couldn’t trace it any better than your guys could.”

  He smiles. That seems to satisfy him.

  The Vegas police. Preemptive strike from Wallace the Amazing. Upping the stakes. Throwing me over? Or warning me I’d have to swim on my own from here.

  I now have to move carefully, I realize. I’m probably now being physically observed. Can’t contact either the Stewartsons or the real Wallace. We’ll have to stay away from each other. This might be the end of any involvement for me. Have to keep my nose clean.

  It was only later that I realized what the Amazing Wallace was doing.

  Local civic booster. Part of the economy.

  I’d watched Armondy and Hammer’s unmarked car pull out slowly—circle around and pass by again ten minutes later, as if to convey to me explicitly that yes, they would be watching from here on in.

  It was all perfectly staged. The ten-dollar haircuts, the leathery too-long-in-Vegas tans, the physical heft of doughnut stakeouts. So it took me a while to realize that those weren’t real detectives. That Wallace the Amazing would never alert the police, never risk bringing in the real thing, when he could head everything off with these actors, and there was no risk of the curiosity of the real police, and he’d still be safe. Wallace would never risk it if he didn’t have to. Look at his show, the care, the planning, the elimination of variation and risk. No, this was certainly the route he would take. As if confirming, or commenting on, his own permanent impersonation, by siccing a secondary impersonation on us.

  That little detective show was intended primarily for the real Wallace—maybe a fake restraining order with it, I’d bet. Probably they couldn’t find him, in which case I was the next-best thing, and made an excellent dress rehearsal. And if I did know where the real Archer Wallace was, I’d pass on the news—the police position on this, the high hurdle that had already been set in front of exposing the truth, so maybe it was better to back off, call it off, etc.

  Preemptive strike, indeed. A cleverer one than I’d thought.

  And was I just as inauthentic a detective as they were? Since I didn’t originally detect their artificiality? Are they inadvertently—or purposely—some sad commentary on my own cut-rate brand of detective?

  I had to find the real Wallace. Before they did.

  EIGHT

  Fortunately, he stands out physically. Shockingly. That extreme emaciation, the thin tufts of hair, the translucent skin. Yet the Stewartsons and the fake detectives haven’t seen him, and they have all, I’m sure, cruised the Vegas night, the hooker-dealer-gambler-pimp neon night, and haven’t located him.

  Which tells me what I need to know. That he has found his way someplace where he is not standing out. Where he is blending in. Unobtrusive, unnoticeable. I have spent twenty years blending in like that, learning to go unnoticed; I’ve learned a thing or two about it.

  The unseen Vegas. It is indoors, as artificial and hermetic and self-contained and well air-conditioned as casino Vegas, but there the similarity ends. The unseen Vegas is retirement communities, eldercare facilities, nursing homes, for our failing parents and grandparents. An unseen Vegas population that does not match, that contrasts with, the city’s youthful, brazen, bronzed, endless-night culture but is there beside it—white, weak, moving their fragile bodies through the dry, mythically salubrious desert air. The only place Archer Wallace can disappear. The only place his appearance makes him unnoticeable. (Here, or a hospital. Not out of the question, but a higher standard for entry—verifiable sickness, after all—and maybe too confining and closely observed once you’re in.)

  It would probably be a big facility, where his arrival will go
mostly unnoticed, unremarked upon. A big facility. With Wi-Fi and free Internet access and computer terminals for the patients/residents lined up in the hall so that they can go online easily, check headlines and box scores and stock quotes and look for the lone stray e-mail from a distant guilt-racked relative. I call the four biggest eldercare facilities, tell each administration I’m looking for my uncle, who, with his failing memory, neglected to tell me which one he was going to be checking into, but let me describe him—lean, bald, white-skinned.

  “Sir, we’ve got dozens of new arrivals who match that description. Just give us his name.”

  But of course, I know he’s not using his own name. It’s the one name he won’t be using: Archer Wallace.

  I tap into each facility’s credit card transactions. Looking for the flurry of activity indicating a new arrival. The facilities have everything already—bedding, food—but maybe there’s something. Some medication. Anything.

  At Golden Care, a clothing purchase. Who shows up without clothing for a terminal stay, a visit until death, except Archer Wallace, who has no clothes? I tap into the inventory control on the computer of the local store where Golden Care made the purchase (Jesus, no security at all) and find the transaction. Three men’s medium short-sleeve shirts. Three men’s pants. All of it a single purchase. All waist twenty-six. Someone thin. Emaciated. Bingo. A little more investigation of Golden Care, and I see they’re at the low end of these facilities—a Medicaid facility, pay weekly, indigent care provider, not much checking on residents. I can see how he could make his way in.

  I head over to Golden Care at sundown—golden hour—mealtime for the institutional elderly. When I can review all the residents, dining together in their depressing dining area, in various states of alertness. I pull into the lot of Golden Care and take it in: a series of buildings tossed up together sometime in the sixties, I’d say, without apparent benefit of an architect or site plan. (Wide-open, dirt-cheap desert land so who cares, what the hell.) Sidewalks overgrown with high weeds. A deeply cracked entrance fountain that hasn’t seen water in decades. Lots of plate glass, so the residents can look out on empty, relentless nothingness, an earthly proxy of the cosmic nothingness they are all headed for. It’s easy to locate the dining area—the longest row of windows. I scan carefully from outside the plate glass, observing the white-haired men and women hunched over their meals, slurping, mumbling, or chatting with one another.