Two for the Show

by Jonathan Stone

  I hunch over her at the sink as I do it—our shoulders together, our hands touching—I rinse and sterilize the area carefully, bandage her immediately, working feverishly, a desperate mess of bandage and white tape. That’s the first thing, obviously. Everyone else seems too much in shock to help. (I didn’t know if the Stewartsons had much experience with this. Judging by their reactions, they hadn’t.)

  My little girl. My little girl. But it had to be done. I had to save her. I had to save her.

  My mantra. My mantra to bring myself to do it.

  And when they lean closer, I exact from the Stewartsons the only small revenge I can, I suppose. I hold out the fingertip to them—red, severed, horrifying, covered in blood. “Go ahead . . . get it out of here.” Before I go dizzy myself. Very dizzy. Heading for a bedroom, where for a few moments, not surprisingly, I too pass out in a heap.

  You hardly have to be there. You know. We all know, don’t we? We all know exactly. Shriveled, blackening already, it arrives in a package at that spectacularly turreted, pink-and-white sandstone, fairy-tale residence, that glistening sultanate in the desert.

  Who knows what kind of a wail went up when they opened the package?

  How loud the screams?

  How many knees buckled?

  I had done it to my own flesh and blood.

  I had blood on my hands.

  But probably, more blood—different blood—than you think.

  SIXTEEN

  A typical visitor to Vegas will remark wide-eyed and giggling on the “unreality” of the place. And yet the colored fountains pump real water. The miniaturized bowdlerized versions of the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids are built of real steel and stone. Meals are prepared. People pay. It is arguably no less real than any other place. I don’t know if Vegas represents unreality, or hyperreality, or an alternate reality, and I don’t know if it really matters. I do know that being hunted in a city, hunted by an entire city, but a city filled with places to hide, as if this were all a big video game, ups the Vegas unreality/hyperreality/alternate reality quotient considerably. Of course, if we’re caught—in fact, whatever the outcome—the consequences will be all too real. A degree of reality that I, for one, have not yet experienced in my largely, comparatively unreal existence.

  She was a smart girl. I had the advantage of knowing how smart, watching her grow up, knowing her achievements, her inner calm. I only gave her the instructions once. How she needed to scream. Scream in horror, agony, fall to the floor. How it would be bloody, yes, but the blood would be from my own last finger. How I would immediately bandage her own finger, still intact, and she must continue to writhe, to scream, in the acting role of a lifetime. Using all her considerable acting skills that I saw in her school show. She must trust me, that it’s the only way. And then I realized, as I said it, I needed her to know I would do it. I needed a way to assure her that I could be trusted, that there was a reason, that this made sense. So I had no choice. I told her. “Amanda, I’m your father. That’s why I’m doing this. Why I’m doing this for you.” And that did it. That explained it. It explained her weird sense of knowing me from somewhere. Her dad wanted to help her. She wanted to help her dad. She knew now, knew more surely and knew at last, where the knife would fall.

  And certainly the next moments—bloody, fulsome, rife with activity and terror and stagecraft—distracted her from anything but the overwhelming present. Or maybe her screams, her performance, had extra authority, an extra measure of distress and expressiveness. But I had no time to notice how she absorbed the news of my paternity, and more importantly, she had no time to absorb it either. A shaping fact of her life, slipped into her life as if in passing. No immediate reaction from her, any feeling hidden, subsumed. Daddy’s little girl.

  And if Dave had said ear? I wasn’t sure. Her bandaged head would have covered it. I would have put the bandage right on. And my own longish hair, would that cover my own ear? No way. No chance. But that’s gambling. It’s Vegas. Bet it all on red, or on black. Vegas—where fifty-fifty is considered odds to actually play. Where rolling the dice is ingrained in the culture. Part of the desert air.

  Have I been in Vegas too long? Buying for a moment, for an unscientific moment, into blind faith? A moment of pure belief? How could I? Did I believe somewhere in me that perhaps someone, something, some universe, some agency, was watching over me? Hard to say. Because if he had said ear, would I have worked out something else?

  The point is, he had not said ear. I had slid all my cash, all my “credit,” all my winnings, all my faith, onto red, and it had come up red. Bloodred. An act of faith. An act of faith that Vegas had rewarded, that makes it the desert town, the epicenter, of faith and belief.

  (Spending years in Vegas, doing a show like ours, you get curious about the other shows. About other tricks, how they pull them off. You make the rounds of the other venues. You become a connoisseur, a lifelong student, a casual scholar of magic. You eventually figure out many of the tricks; I couldn’t risk getting to know some of the other performers and technicians, or I’m sure they’d have let me in on things. Many you figure out, some you can’t, and it returns you to the larger question, the original question: Is there magic in certain cases? But the point is, I had observed as a hobbyist, with a professional interest in the competition, with a scholar’s focus and curiosity, the local customs and flavors of entertainment, and I had learned a few things from the various shows. Learned about blood flow, and knives and blades, and diversion, and directing attention. Learned about the optimal angle at which to slice to minimize bleeding, and about the elevation of the finger I would need, when it would seem of course that we were elevating Amanda’s. Learned about surgical superglue, latest tool of the ER, and that the office-supply-store version is a perfectly adequate substitute, fast-sealing, practically invisible. Learned enough.)

  And what about my own missing fingertip? How is it possible for me to believe, to have faith, that the Stewartsons won’t see it? Won’t see a missing fingertip? Isn’t that a unique expression of blind faith?

  Keeping my hands in my pockets. Using my other hand for any observed activities. Moving my hands quickly. But no one is looking at them anyway. No one is expecting a missing fingertip. The only hand that attracts any attention is Amanda’s bandaged one. It is a matter of expectation, of focus. These are the lessons of Vegas stages and audiences and observation. A lifetime observing the art of misdirection from the stage performances of Wallace’s competitors.

  Think about it—if a friend of yours was suddenly missing the tip of his pinky finger, would you even know? How long would it take you to see? Would you ever?

  Plus, we are hiding in the dark in Big Eddie’s house now, keeping lights down, curled into ourselves, thinking obsessively about detection, thinking about the world outside us, all looking for us. Drawn shades and curtains. Occupying the shadows. Staying out of the light. A helpful environment of concealment.

  And I keep my fists curled in slightly—like millions of people do naturally. And if either of the Stewartsons happened to look, they would only assume I always kept them curled in slightly like that, and that they had just never noticed.

  And I am no longer delivering data. In such close proximity, in such tight quarters, I can’t. So the Stewartsons don’t see, and won’t see, my fingers on the computer keyboard. No typing. No data entry or data retrieval. No search. That constant in my life—like a heartbeat—suspended. So I am already forced to be a different person. To be someone new. Someone missing his previous self. So missing a fingertip is nothing. A trifle. Symbolic at worst. Symbolic at best.

  And will the fifth-finger fingertip of a middle-aged man really look enough like the fifth-finger fingertip of a fifteen-year-old girl? Absolutely—at least in the short term. Stop now, and take a look at your own. Except for outliers like Big Eddie’s thick gorilla joint, so many of them—just the fingertip—are indistin
guishable, pretty much the same, especially with a squeamish, cursory look. And in this case, even more so, because our last fingers—small, curved-in slightly, nail slightly arched in the middle, similar slight cuticle smile—are the same genetic material. The same genetic inheritance. Posture, fingers, hands, shape of lower lip, slight twist at edge of eyes—all obvious genetic connection, all predetermined, all the stuff of relatives’ remarks at a million family events every day across the globe. Like father, like daughter—right down to the fingertips. Or alike enough, at least.

  A case in point about misdirection. One that already proves my point. A single fingertip, drenched in blood, shriveling already, briefly revealed in its shroud of paper towel or linen rag, was enough to fool the Stewartsons.

  But when it goes to Wallace the Amazing, will he unwrap it, examine it closely, see—immediately, probably, presumably—that it is not the fingertip of his daughter, a fingertip from a hand that he loves, that he has held since childhood, whose fingers he has kissed and counted and sang to in her childhood crib, in a rocking chair while feeding her, in silly made-up finger-counting games with her curled in his lap, a finger that he knows so well? Or will he think that my small and fortunately hairless fifth fingertip is her middle or index? Will the father’s emotion and expectation of the moment overwhelm him, make him process the information, the evidence, a certain way?

  Or will he not have the heart and stomach to even look at all, for anything more than a grimacing sidelong glance, before he releases it directly to the Las Vegas police crime lab, which will examine it closely enough to see that it is not the finger of a fifteen-year-old girl, but will nevertheless dutifully and systematically and now quite curiously run the DNA (retrieving the necessary “A” sample from Amanda’s hairbrush or toothbrush or underwear or used tissues or any of a dozen places in a fifteen-year-old’s sloppy bathroom) and see—confused, befuddled, excitedly calling over a supervisor—that the DNA is yes, a significant match to that of the female hostage, but no, it is not her finger. And will they even share this finding with Wallace the Amazing? Because the finger, that of an adult male, is indeed a DNA match, but her father, Wallace the Amazing, seems to have all his fingers, look there onscreen—so what is this stage performer, this magician, this Vegas act, up to exactly?

  And if they do share the information with Wallace the Amazing, then he will certainly know my whereabouts—and will certainly appreciate my effort to keep his (my) daughter in one piece. Literally. And will understand why I’ve been too busy, too preoccupied, to deliver my daily data. And yet he still won’t know any better my motivation, which side of the fence I am on. I don’t know whether motel-maid Dominique reported back to him that I am a captive of the Stewartsons—or that I was merely trying, in that surprised moment in the motel, to appear like a captive.

  All open questions. And all to be answered I figure, one way or another, in the next several hours. A fifteen-year-old hostage’s life in the balance, they will start to run the DNA tests immediately, helicopter it to the Reno lab, call the lead technician back from lunch and the medical examiner off the golf course.

  In the dark, we watch the local news station (KIXP, on high alert since the kidnapping, local reporters perched eagerly for stardom) breathlessly inform the public about the receipt of his daughter’s finger by Wallace the Amazing—sent by anonymous overnight package, signed for at the door as you would sign for any delivery—and Wallace handing it dutifully over to the police and crime lab for further examination. No photos allowed, only descriptions, graphics, and graphic descriptions; the tip of my last digit enjoys an instantaneous fame that the rest of me has spent a lifetime steadfastly avoiding, as the rest of my hands watch in folded congregation in the house’s dark, which is stuttering and glimmering in the television’s fractious glow. My fingertip at center stage, but true to my own history and character, disguised. Unknown. For now.

  The breathless, overdramatic reporting on the kidnap victim’s fingertip, only helps confirm that version of events in the Stewartson’s—in everyone’s—minds.

  I am popping the extra-strength aspirin and painkillers we got for Amanda. They’re working for the pain—and the Stewartsons see the supply dwindling, and it confirms for them Amanda’s mute suffering.

  Sandi approaches Amanda to change the dressing on the wound.

  “NO!” Amanda screams. “Don’t come near me!”

  “We have to,” says Sandi. “Or it’s going to get infected.”

  “NO, NO!” Screaming . . .

  “Hey, hey, keep it down,” Stewartson hissing, again nervous about the noise being overheard.

  “No, you’re not touching me.” Frantic. “No way, no way . . .”

  Dave and Sandi shrugging.

  “Maybe we don’t have to change the dressing. Maybe it’ll be okay. It’ll be over soon,” says Dave.

  “Maybe,” says Sandi. “But we don’t want an infection. We can’t have a sick kid on our hands. That’s a complication we don’t need,” she says, annoyed, before letting it drop. She addresses Amanda warningly, like mother to daughter. “If this goes on another day, I’m changing the dressing—and I don’t care how much you scream and cry.”

  It’s an impressive bit of acting from a fifteen-year-old—impulsive, effective. But then Amanda looks at me, and I am suddenly terrified of the solution she might propose: “It’s okay for him to change the dressing.” The guy who cut you?—the Stewartsons would ask—you want him to change it? Arousing suspicion where so much credit has been built up, so much suspicion has been settled. But after staging her fit, Amanda says nothing more. Keeps her mouth shut. Silent. Observing. That’s my girl.

  “Tests have confirmed that the DNA of the fingertip matches the DNA of Amanda’s father, the well-known Vegas stage personality Wallace the Amazing,” the police spokesman says flatly, over his bifocals, at the brief, quickly convened news conference, and doesn’t elaborate. “We’ll keep you informed of any further developments.”

  No shocked announcement. No gasp of confusion. The drama of the cut-off finger, suddenly itself cut off. I had imagined, looked forward to, the shock and surprise of the DNA test results, but I wasn’t really surprised at this announcement.

  It amounted to a tactic, and I had to sort out what the tactic was. And while I was not surprised, I was at some level disappointed, because I wanted my fatherhood acknowledged—if only shrouded in mystery and question.

  It feels like a report sent directly to me.

  But a report coded, vague, awaiting interpretation.

  Because the report has not said what they must know. “The DNA matches that of the daughter, but it is not the finger of a fifteen-year-old girl. It is the finger of an adult male. And Wallace the Amazing still has all his fingers.”

  My paternity—at least as far as the public goes—remains a secret.

  Which unfortunately, opens up a raft of possibilities:

  Are the police keeping their findings a secret, at Wallace’s request? Part of a tactic to crack the case?

  Or keeping their findings a secret from Wallace, for the purposes of their own investigation?

  Or a last possibility—so remote, so hard to fathom, that I could not then wrap my mind around it, could not and did not send my thoughts down that path. That the DNA of the finger they tested had nothing to do with father or daughter. That it was, in fact, the DNA—the fingertip—of an interloper. A deluded interloper, fooled into loyalty, loyal to the point of foolishness. A fool who had masturbated into a container, stealthily delivered its sacred contents, as part of a ploy to ensure that fool’s commitment. To keep that fool forever in close orbit. That, in fact, there was never anything remotely wrong with Wallace the Amazing’s sperm.

  But at the moment, for me, it was too illogical. It contradicted too much in my experience, in my memory, in my vision of myself and of the world. This last possibility—I had too m
uch faith to even entertain it.

  It begins to happen fast now.

  Fast enough that we don’t have to change Amanda’s dressing.

  Fast enough that I realize quickly: it’s probably being done at this pace to avoid the accompaniment of the Las Vegas police. To respect, return to, the Stewartsons’ original parameters. The message contained in the message: Let’s get this deal done.

  The curt phone call of arrangement, from a disposable cell phone found, eventually, in hotel trash. No fear, or surrender, or annoyance, in Wallace the Amazing’s voice, no gloating, no victory, no excitement, in Dave Stewartson’s. Just focus on clarity of arrangement. And as multicolored letters cut from various printed sources are a thing of the past, so is the classic victim-for-cash exchange on a lonely bridge or beneath an overpass or at an unguarded border. Too risky, too easily observed, too easily foiled or gamed by either side, fraught with peril. Now, it was a checking or savings account (or several, if required by the size of the deposit). Hidden and untraceable in a multiplicity of web addresses, the transfer of funds has come a long way from a briefcase full of cash. It is electronic, a matter of hitting “Send.”

  Or, in this case, something even better.

  “You’re going to purchase ten million dollars’ worth of shares of blue-chip stocks—Ford, Coca-Cola, Cisco, Exxon—and public-spirited personality that you clearly are, transfer them immediately to the Stewartson Charitable Trust, which was incorporated two days ago . . .”

  Dave Stewartson, I am suddenly quite sure, has both his accounting and law degrees from some academic degree mill, some night program, like so many FBI agents and intelligence operatives, so many in his line of wet work—skirting legality, crossing borders, transferring and tracking payoffs.