Sleight of Hand

by Mark Henwick

  I had to think for a while. “His name was Major Petersen. I guess he was from some legal department.”

  A nurse came in, glared at me, and took a look around. “If his signs go like that again, you’ll have to leave,” she said to me, before returning to her station.

  Top lay back and I could see him willing the readings back down to their resting levels.

  “That’s all bullshit, not being able to speak to us. That’s not legal department crap. That’s someone making a play. I’ll tell Colonel Laine. He’ll clear it up.” He lay silent, while the realization of what had been done sank into me. No one in 4-10 knew about the agreement I’d had to sign. Everyone would have thought I had walked away from them, assumed that I didn’t care, that my life in the unit had been a lie. I felt sick with anger. No wonder I had spent a couple of years thinking the colonel was disappointed in me.

  “I’m sorry, Farrell. We all thought you just wanted to cut us off. We—I—should have known better. Long before you said something to the colonel and he spoke to me.”

  I frowned. What was it I had said that the colonel had queried at the last meeting? It came to me. “I said I would come back in a heartbeat, but things have changed.”

  “Such as…”

  “I’m a goddamn vampire, Top, near as.”

  “And? They’re allowing you to walk around in Denver. You tapping people who don’t need it?”

  “No one who didn’t need it.” I sighed. “It’s not 4-10, but it’s a job. I just wish I could see the lines clearly. I wish I could be certain about what’s happening to me.”

  “Tell me,” he said immediately. When I hesitated, he went on, “Not as if I’ve got anything else to do. And I promise to take it to the grave.” His chest fluttered with his wheezy laugh.

  My head felt overstuffed with things I couldn’t tell people. So many things I had to remember, each one labeled who I could tell it to. Some of those labels were lies, if Top was right. If not Top, then who? I knew I shouldn’t, but I began to speak. As if a dam had broken, as soon as it started, the words just flowed out of me. I went through almost everything that had happened in the case and personally.

  We took a break when his dinner came. I texted Tullah, explaining I was visiting a sick friend.

  Then I had to call Jen. I told her where I was and explained how I had failed her by letting Onebrow go. I started to say that I would understand if she wanted me off the case.

  She stopped me. “Forget that, honey. Hell, we’re all brilliant in hindsight. Straighten out your business there and then get back.” She paused. “I need you here.”

  The way she put it made me feel better. We finished up, and I grabbed a sandwich from the canteen and made my way back to Top.

  The nurses didn’t look happy when I went back in, but Top waved them out and I finished off the story.

  At the end, Top was lying back with his eyes closed. I thought he might have fallen asleep, until he spoke, his sentences choppy and breathy. “You’ve got the best team available looking for this chef, who’s probably dead. And the cops are looking too. You’ve uncovered financial problems in this Kingslund company. You got a guy going through the computers. If he can’t find out who’s behind it that way, you’ve got the finance guy himself you can question. You’ve identified werewolves tearing up the resort. You’re getting an intro to them from the vamps. You’ve got a good team protecting your client. You’ve got powerful friends who trust you.” He grunted. “Sounds good to me for a week’s work. So why am I hearing it’s a problem?”

  “I just think it all connects and I can’t see how or why. I feel stupid.”

  “Jesus, Farrell, you don’t lose your stripes just because you take the uniform off. If this was some pissant corporal reporting to you, you’d chew him out for his attitude. All this negative bullshit, that’s just energy that isn’t being directed. Sure, it may be connected. Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll find out.”

  “But I may not have time. The prion count just keeps going up.”

  “You talking to me about not having time, soldier?”

  I shut up and ducked my head to hide my blushing. When he put it like that, it hurt.

  “Ease up on yourself, Farrell. Stop worrying about what you may become. Use what you are. Use all that energy. Do what you can while you can. None of us can do any more. And it sounds like you’ve got some real important work ahead of you. I don’t mean the Kingslund case. Sure that’s important now, but this Panethus/Basilikos war is more important in the long run. Sounds like they used to keep each other in check. Keep their numbers down by killing each other. This cold war they got going must mean that there’s more vamps around than ever before. I can’t say I’m happy with that, but, from what you say, the worst thing is for Basilikos to win. Get in there with Altau and make a difference for Panethus.”

  He laughed quietly. “Wasn’t what I thought I would be talking about. Vampires, witches and werewolves! Shit.”

  “I’m glad we did. It helped, however pathetic I’m sounding.” I gave him a smile. “What did you want to talk about, Top? Saints for the Super Bowl?”

  He snorted. “Not this year. Not your Broncos either. No, some old stuff. Old, old stuff. Doesn’t mean it’s not important.” His eyes closed again and I waited patiently, cocooned by the quiet hissing and ticking of the equipment.

  “When you came to us,” he started up again, “you were sending all your money home. You just told me about your sister. I want you to tell me how that came about.”

  This was painful stuff I left buried mostly, but he knew half of it, so I might as well give him all of it.

  “It dated back to ’96, when my Dad got sick—”

  “Blane, wasn’t it?” he interrupted. I nodded. Whatever else was failing, Top’s memory was as good as ever.

  “He got sick and the insurance wouldn’t pay. We were broke. We’d moved into a bigger house in a good area with a mortgage, now we had healthcare bills and then lawyers’ fees. Just Mom’s income to keep us going. We kept all that from Dad.” I looked, unseeing, at the window. It would have been a day like today in the autumn, in a room like this at home, filled with equipment we couldn’t afford, and Dad lying sleeping. “I was home from school one afternoon, doing homework, sitting with him in case he needed anything. He was dreaming and he was smiling.”

  I felt Top’s hand come to rest on mine. It felt like old paper, dry and light.

  “When he woke up, I asked him what had made him smile, and he said he’d been dreaming of us graduating from college. He made me promise it would happen. I guess everything afterwards went towards that. But we did it, only way it could be done, Kath graduated and I helped make it happen.”

  “But you’ve given up on that promise then.”

  “No, Top, it wasn’t possible to get us both through college. It had to be done that way.”

  “I’m not talking about back then. I’m talking now.”

  “I can’t go to college now.”

  “Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime. You’re a vampire now, you got more time.” He chuckled throatily. “But you gotta promise me.”

  I couldn’t say no.

  “Good,” he said. “Then, when I see Blane, I can tell him his daughter honors his memory by keeping her promise.”

  I looked down and screwed my eyes shut. There was something I had to ask him.

  “Top?” I said. “Athanate have this stuff that heals people. I could—”

  “No, Farrell. Sounds like you got enough debts you can’t clear. And I don’t want it anyway. I’ve made my peace. I’m going soon.”

  I dropped my head again. I’d had to try. I’d known what he would say, but I’d had to try.

  “I’m not finished yet,” he said. “And this one is tougher. I should have got to it much sooner.” He cast his eyes slowly around the room before coming back to me. “You know, Farrell, you were on point down in South America because you were the best. And because of t
he job you did that night, our casualties were half of what they would have been. And it was still the worst we ever had.”

  “Thanks, Top.” I’d still messed up. My squad. My responsibility.

  “I told you that because the next part is going to be hard. You nearly weren’t there at all.”

  I looked at him and waited. Top had a reason for doing and saying everything. I couldn’t think he would have been saying things now that weren’t important, however painful they might be for me.

  “You only saw me once you’d joined 4-10, but I personally selected every single last one of you. And it was my name against every one that failed too.” He wiped his mouth with his hand, the unshaven beard rasping under his fingers. “Your instructors filed requests with me to wash you out of the advanced training four times in the first two months.”

  He paused again and took a sip of water. His hand returned to mine.

  “I had your files from basic training and I had the recruiter go talk to your school. I know what went on.”

  My stomach clenched.

  “As far as they know it, and that wasn’t far, was it? They knew you did that crazy jump off the clock tower. They knew you were working nights and giving your Ma the money. They knew lots of things, but they didn’t know why you made that jump, did they?”

  “No, Top,” I whispered.

  “You weren’t sure about pulling the cord, were you?”

  “No, Top.”

  “And that’s what your instructors thought too.” He thumbed imaginary files and read from them. “The most able recruit in the group, smarter, stronger, faster.” He stopped as if at the last page. “Just not sure whether she wants to live or not.”

  I couldn’t say anything. He was right. It had taken months to imprison the coward where she wouldn’t ever get out again. I showed her that I was not her. Fear was the key. When I felt fear, I knew I was alive, and I knew she was locked away.

  “And I’m reckoning it was your promise to your Pa that kept you going.”

  I jerked my head.

  “Look,” he said gently. “A girl comes to basic with her hair hacked off like you had, doesn’t look at a man for the first couple of years, throws herself into every dangerous thing there is…I know what happened, Farrell. Not the detail. And I’m not going to give you any bullshit about knowing how you must have felt. But it made me ache to see, and I tell you this: I have never felt prouder of a soldier in my squad, than when you went on and made sergeant.”

  Sergeants don’t cry. They’re not even really permitted to bow their heads, so I raised mine and looked at him again, but I still couldn’t say anything.

  “Now the really tough part,” he said, his voice hoarse. “You’ve buried it. My guess is, you use it. But you haven’t fixed it. That and something else is chewing your gut. I don’t know what that something else is, and I’m not sure you do either. But these things have a way of coming out when you don’t want them to.”

  His voice was getting fainter.

  “I was gonna suggest you talk to the colonel. He’s better at that stuff than you might think. He’s on your side. But the way you’re talking, I’m thinking some of your new friends will be the ones.” He eyes lost focus for a minute and he was quiet. I had to lean forward to hear his next words. “You’re confused about a lot of things, what’s happening to you, what’s happening to your body, what you’re feeling. But underneath all that, it’s still you. You hold to that, you can’t go far wrong.”

  His hand gripped mine, surprisingly strong still. “You listen to me one last time. You got to play the hand you’re dealt.”

  A nurse came in behind me. “You really have to leave now, it’s far too late.” She started to note down readings from the monitors. “Only family are supposed to be here.” She stopped suddenly and looked at me. “You aren’t family, are you?”

  Top laughed his bubbling, wheezing laugh. “Family? This paleface squaw! Nurse, can’t you see, I’m a Dark Lord of the Sith.” We laughed together, even harder at the blank incomprehension of the nurse.

  “Goodbye, Amber,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Gabriel,” I whispered.

  THURSDAY

  Chapter 41

  I walked back to the airfield. There wasn’t any other place I was going and it only took me a couple of hours. Luckily, down here, the weather was milder than Denver. It took me almost as long to get into the base as it had to walk there. The guards on the gate checked my ID about a dozen times before letting me through.

  Once I was inside, the loadmaster confirmed I had a ride on a Hercules transport leaving at 8 a.m. I made myself useful to the loadmaster, and at 8:05, I was dangling on the webbing in the belly of the beast.

  I felt dazed and remote from everything. There was no one I could talk to about Top. No one who could replace him. No one who could share my grief. But the world kept turning and I hadn’t slept that night. Sitting in the webbing listening to the thunder of the engines was like coming home and I fell asleep till we landed at Buck field early in the afternoon. A series of hitches and walks eventually got me back to my car and I drove back to Jen’s.

  Tullah sent me off to shower and change, refusing to talk to me about anything until I had, and so it was almost 5 p.m. before I got an update.

  Matt had stripped the data from Verdoon’s computers and passed them along. Tullah had worked through the files during the day, calling Jen to ask questions about names of people and companies. I noted Jen had taken Tullah’s involvement as a given, which had worked out well.

  There was no smoking gun. I guess that would have been too easy, and whoever was behind this and however they had done it, it had been managed very carefully. It was clear from the data that Verdoon had been the person to sign off every single major money movement in the last month. What was not clear was why.

  There were encrypted files in his personal area that Matt hadn’t been able to break into. Tullah was disappointed, but I knew that the ‘military grade encryption’ that even cheap software offered was extremely strong. This wasn’t TV, where the wiz in the lab complains when the boss only gives her an hour to decode the files. A supercomputer might crack those files by brute force in a few years’ time. For us, either we found a Post-it note with the password, or we found something in Verdoon’s personal life that gave us a clue. Matt was working on that, indexing Verdoon’s files and trying out words found in them as passwords.

  I took a USB from Tullah with a copy of Verdoon’s emails to take a look at later.

  “Tell me, Tullah,” I said, changing the topic. “Why is your spirit guide not on the approved list?”

  She looked around the study.

  “It’s private enough here,” I said.

  “No. I can’t explain. Umm, let’s walk in the gardens for a while. I’ll show you.”

  Her face was carefully impassive, but for some reason, I had the sense that there was a mad glee boiling underneath the surface. I felt my eyes wanting to roll again—I was about to get another secret that I couldn’t share with everyone. I was intrigued, even though the thought of keeping secrets from Mary made me nervous.

  We went through the living room and out through the patio doors. It was cold—just this last weekend, Jen had been sitting here in the sun, but the temperatures had taken a dive, and now it felt as if snow might be just around the corner.

  We walked past the helipad and continued on down until we were among the larches. I loved them for being different, looking like pines but turning gold and dropping their needles in the fall. Jen’s garden had them hedged by spreading cypress. Our footsteps crunched on dry needles.

  Once I was sure we were away from the patrolling guards, I asked, “What is the approved list?”

  “Oh, the predictable animals—the known qualities. Standard spirit guides like the bear and the cougar, the wolf and the eagle. Adepts like them because they’re safer. You know what you’re getting.”

  “You’ve got something no one else
has?”

  “Hmm. Think so. Around here anyway.” She pushed her hands deep into her coat pockets.

  “Okay, Tullah, we’re alone out here. I know you’re itching to tell me. Remember, I can’t promise I won’t tell Mary.”

  Tullah made a small pouting expression. “Ma’ll find out sometime. If she just looked hard enough, she’d know now. I just want to show she’s not dangerous first.”

  She stopped and turned to me, a huge grin breaking out. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

  I stood there in the whispering gloom underneath the larches and waited. I sensed something stir in the air around Tullah’s shoulders. She put her head back and laughed, reaching up with her arms. “She’s shy. Come on baby, it’s only Amber.”

  Baby?

  There was a gleaming movement like a section of river running past Tullah’s head, and then another running in front of it, in the other direction. Suddenly, there was a tower of them, sliding past each other, and a looming sense of a huge golden body stirring, uncoiling. Atop it, a massive eye opened and looked down at me from beneath an armored brow. A head as big as a truck emerged and swooped towards me, a mouth opening like a trapdoor to hell.

  “Oh. Shit!” I fell on my butt and thrust my hands out uselessly in front of me. My heart forgot to beat.

  The head stopped and turned to let one huge ruby eye inspect me closely. A tongue like a forked red towel flicked out and tasted the air around me. Then it withdrew. For a second the whole glittering, scaled body stretched up into the evening sky, with wings spread, before it dissolved into a twinkling of lights that fell to earth and disappeared like fireworks.

  My last glimpse of the face showed the same mischievous, self-satisfied smirk that Tullah wore. She knew exactly what reaction she’d wanted from me.

  “Shit!” I said again. “Baby? Tullah, that’s a freaking…”

  “Dragon. Yes. She’s so pretty isn’t she? See why I couldn’t show you indoors?”

  When Mary had made her bear guide visible to me at the restaurant, she’d been able to restrict the sight of it to me. Tullah hadn’t gotten that control yet. A guard wandered down to ask about the fireworks he had seen. We pointed off into the distance beyond the Country Club and shrugged. I hoped it was dark enough he couldn’t see us trying to stop giggling.