"Xultulan, hear my call," Madame Pomerol intoned, her voice echoing again. "Lend us your otherworldly wisdom as you lead us to the souls of the departed. I have with me four seekers after the dear departed..."
Yeah-yeah-yeah, Jack thought, reaching inside his shirt. No sense in waiting any longer. Besides, her phony accent was wearing on him.
He found the lipstick-size remote stashed inside his belly padding and located the business end. He fixed a shocked expression on his face, then pressed the button with his thumb.
The overhead spotlights blazed to life to reveal a shocking tableau.
The four sitters and Madame Pomerol sat in their places, but behind the medium stood a man dressed from head to toe in black-his turtleneck and slacks were remarkably similar to Carl Foster's, but he'd added black gloves and a black ski mask with narrow slits for eyeholes. He held two long black manipulating rods from which a billowy length of chiffon dangled. The sudden illumination revealed him swinging it in undulating arcs through the air above his wife. A scream from one of the women-she apparently thought the room had been invaded by some weird terrorist-froze him in mid-wave.
Jack caught a brief, sudden glare from Madame Pomerol as her eyes bored into his, and was glad he'd prepared his expression beforehand.
Suddenly she laughed. "You should see your expressions!" Another laugh. "Carl, our little demonstration really took them by surprise!" She began to applaud. "Magnifique! Magnifique!"
"I... I don't understand," one of the blondes said.
Madame Pomerol looked over her shoulder and laughed again. "Take off that mask, Carl, and put down those silly sticks."
"I demand an explanation," said the redhead.
"And you shall have one, Rose," Madame said, fully composed now. "If you read the papers, I'm sure you know that fake spirit mediums are popping up all the time, making fantastic claims to prey on the needs of gullible believers, trying to entice them away from those, such as myself, with the true gift. Carl and I arranged this little show to demonstrate how easily one can be fooled. I control all the lights here, of course, and when I deemed the time ripe, I turned them on so that you might witness charlatanry and fakery in media res."
Whoa! The lady throws in a little Latin.
Jack wished he had a way to work the remote again. Nothing he'd love more now than to start turning the lights off and on while she was spinning out her line of crap. But he couldn't allow himself to be seen reaching into his shirt.
It was such a weak line, though, straining toward the breaking point under the transparent weight of its own bullshit, that he didn't see any need to help it along. He had to strain to keep from laughing out loud.
Had to hand it to the lady, she was glib. Delivered her lines with utter conviction. But any minute now these four sitters would begin to scatter, fleeing this Temple of Eternal Wisdom to tell all their rich friends and everyone else they knew that Madame Pomerol was a class-A fake. Word would spread like a virus. If she was bent out of shape before about losing a few suckers, just wait till these four got through talking. She'll qualify as a Cirque du Soleil contortionist.
"Really?" said the other blonde. "You staged this all for us?"
"Of course, Elaine." She pointed to Jack. "And that was why I broke with my usual procedure and allowed a newcomer to observe a reading. I wanted Mr. Butler to witness firsthand the cheap tricks of the conscienceless swindlers who sully the reputations of all the truly gifted spirit mediums."
As the sitters stared at Jack he saw something in their eyes, something he didn't want to see.
No. This can't be. They're buying into her lame-o story. I don't believe this. How can they be so gullible?
An unmasked Carl approached the table with the material he'd been waving in the air.
"See?" he said, grinning as he held it out for the ladies to feel. "Nothing more than cheap chiffon."
"But it looked so real," the brunette said. "Exactly like when ectoplasm comes out of Madame during-"
Madame Pomerol cleared her throat and rose to her feet. "I think it is time for a little break. Please wait in the outer room while Carl removes these tools of chicanery. In a few minutes we will reconvene and make true contact with the Other Side."
Jack followed the women into the waiting room. As soon as the door closed behind them, he heard Madame Pomerol say, "What the fuck just happened?"
"I wish I knew," her husband replied. "/ can't imagine how-"
"Fuck imagine! Find out! I want the real story, not your fucking imagination! The electronics of this operation are your responsibility and obviously you fucked up!"
"I didn't fuck up! I haven't changed anything!"
"Well, something's changed. Find out what!"
"I'm going to check that switch."
"Shit! I've never been so embarrassed in my whole fucking life!"
"But you handled it beautifully."
"Yeah, I did, didn't I. And those four bimbos swallowed it. Do you believe that? Sometimes I'm ashamed of the caliber of people we have to deal with. I mean, how fucking stupid can you get?"
Jack wished he had the ability to play this conversation through a speaker in the waiting room. If only he'd thought of that. He'd heard Madame Pomerol's salty tongue last night and should have seen this as a golden opportunity to let her clients know what she really thought of them.
The Fosters lapsed into silence while Jack wondered how to play Madame Pomerol's sitters. He decided to listen first. Maybe he could find a way to salvage the day. He sidled up to the redhead whose name he remembered was Rose.
"Well," he asked in a low voice, remembering the hidden mikes, "what do you make of this?"
"I think it's stunning," she said. "What courage!"
"I feel so honored," said the dumpy blonde. "To think, she chose us-us!-for this demonstration! I can't wait to get into my psychic chat room and tell everyone how wonderful she is!"
The will to believe, Jack thought, fighting a wave of leaden chagrin. Never underestimate the will to believe.
And that was just what he'd done.
He remembered an experiment James Randi once ran on psychics and their marks. He set up a pair of sitters with a psychic, and after the reading they emerged very impressed with how the psychic had been able to see right into their minds. When Randi showed them a videotape of the session and pointed out that the psychic averaged fourteen or fifteen erroneous statements for every correct one, the sitters were unfazed. Even with the evidence of a poorly done cold reading staring them in the face, they remained impressed by the handful of correct guesses and disregarded all the wrong ones.
The will to believe...
Jack saw two options. He could show the women his remote and tell them he'd rigged the lights to expose Madame Pomerol as a fake. But he doubted very much that he'd sway them.
The will to believe...
The other was to play it cool and return for another go at the Fosters.
He decided on number two.
"Shit!" Jack heard Foster say. "Look what I found in the light box!"
"What's that?"
"A remote control on-off switch!"
"Fuck me! You've gotta be kidding!"
"Believe me, I know these switches."
"You think it's that new guy?"
"Could be, but how would he have got in here to install the switch? And don't forget, he paid us in gold."
"Gotta be those niggers then! Fuck!" She then began stringing together innovative combinations of every four-, ten-, and twelve-letter expletive known to humankind.
"You think so?" Foster said when she ran out of breath.
"Fuck, yes! They're the ones who tied us up last night and-"
"That was a white guy."
"Did you see him!"
"No, but-"
"Then what the fuck do you know?"
"It was a white guy's voice."
"It was them, I'm telling you! They must've taken our keys and come here and fucked us up. Who kn
ows what else they've done! They're gonna pay for this. Oh, are they gonna fucking pay!"
This wasn't going the way Jack wanted. The whole idea of coming here had been to distract them from the Kentons.
"All right," Foster said. "Let's just say it was them. After what happened, do you really want to risk going back to Astoria? Our car's impounded, all our credit cards are gone, not to mention the humiliation of having to walk around Lower Manhattan dressed in cardboard."
"They're gonna pay! Maybe not this week, and maybe not next, but first chance we get, we're gonna fuck those niggers over good!"
Conversation between the two Fosters stopped, and Jack assumed that the Mrs. had stomped off while Carl reassembled the light switch.
Jack and the four women hung out for another ten minutes or so, then Foster reappeared to welcome them back into the reading room.
Jack hung back.
"Is something wrong, Mr. Butler?"
"Yeah. I think I've seen enough."
"I hope there's no misunderstanding here. You see-"
Foster thought Jack was bailing out. He cut him off to put him straight.
"I think that was real gutsy of her to pull that stunt. That shows me she's got real confidence in her powers. I'm totally impressed."
Foster switched gears like a Formula One driver. "Well, I took you from the start as a man of intelligence and discrimination."
"So when's the soonest I can book my own private session with the lady? You told me you had half an hour open Tuesday afternoon. Nothing at all tomorrow?"
Foster pulled the appointment book from the desk drawer and thumbed through the pages. He frowned.
"I'm afraid not. Tuesday is the soonest. Is three o'clock good for you?"
This lady was doing gold-rush business.
"I guess it'll hafta be. I'd really prefer an hour but, maybe a half-hour session for starters is best. You know, to see if she can make the right contact."
"Oh, she can, I assure you."
"Okay, see you then."
Jack let himself out and made for the elevator. Once inside and headed down, he slammed a hand against the wall of the car. Damn. He'd read this one all wrong. He saw what his mistake had been: He'd tried to strike at the Fosters indirectly, through their clientele. Wrong angle. He knew now he'd have to take the battle directly to them.
He had a half-formed plan of how to do that. He'd need the Kenton brothers' help to fill in the rest. He just hoped Madame Pomerol wouldn't be able to wriggle free next time.
6
Jack stood outside the screen door and watched Lyle's cautious approach.
"Can I help you?"
"Lyle, it's me. Jack."
Lyle stepped closer, his expression saying, Who is this fool kidding? Then he grinned.
"Well, I'll be damned. It is you. Come on in."
Jack stepped inside. "Didn't have time to change my clothes." He started to peel off his wig. "Man, this thing is hot."
"And beat ugly too."
He turned to see Charlie popping in through the front door behind him.
"So you're back," Lyle said to his brother. He glanced at his watch, thinking. "Finished your good works for the day?"
Good works? Had he been to church?
"Yowzah." Charlie turned to Jack. "Yo, G. How'd it go down?"
He hated reporting less than complete success, but they had a right to know.
"Well, the good news is the remote light switch worked perfectly..."
They all had a good laugh as he described exposing Carl in the act of waving fake ectoplasm through the air, then...
"But the rest didn't pan out. The lady cooked up some lame story about setting all this up in advance to demonstrate how other fake mediums will try to fool them."
"And they bought it?" Lyle said.
Jack nodded. "She's pretty glib."
"Aw, maaaan," Charlie said.
Lyle's voice took on a bitter edge. "So last night was all for nothing then?"
"Not quite. I've got an afternoon appointment Tuesday, and there's a lot I need to do between now and then if I'm going to bring them down."
"More electronics?" Charlie said, his eyes lighting.
"Not this time. This is going to be all manual-sleight of hand stuff. But I need your help with the setup. Do you subscribe to the Blue Directory?"
Lyle's expression was blank. "Blue...?"
"The medium I worked for used to subscribe to a book that had all sorts of information on hundreds of sitters."
"Oh, right. I saw a copy years ago, but I don't get it. We use a website-"
Should have figured, Jack thought. It was the computer age.
"You mean the directory's online now?"
"What we use isn't run by the Blue Directory people, but it's the same sort of thing. All you do is pay an annual fee for a password and-"
"Let's check it out," Jack said. "I need to find a dead guy to fit a certain profile."
Lyle looked at his brother. "Charlie's the computer guy. Want to take care of this?"
"Sure." He started toward the kitchen. "This way, my man."
Lyle grabbed his arm. "Use the one in the command center."
"But this one's closer."
"We've got a little problem in there."
Charlie gave him a look. "The TV's still...?"
Lyle nodded. "Simpler if we all just head for the Channeling Room."
Jack felt as if he were missing every other word. "What's wrong?"
"Electrical problems in the TV room," Lyle said. "That' all."
Jack was sure that wasn't all, but obviously they wanted to keep it between themselves.
Charlie led the way to his command center off the Channeling Room. Jack knew this was where he controlled the sound, the lighting, and all the mechanical effects during the sittings. The computer's monitor was just one of many screens among the wires, the key cutter, the cameras, the scanner, the photocopier, and mysterious black boxes racked around the room. The swimming fish of the screen saver showed that the computer was already up and running.
Charlie seated himself before it and tapped the keyboard. Half a minute later the screen filled with the welcome page of a website with the innocuous name of www.sitters-net.com. The page contained boxes for user name and password set against wallpaper of a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
"Kind of obvious, isn't it," Jack said.
Lyle shrugged. "Probably gets hits from baby-sitters now and again, but 'sitter' is pretty much an inside term."
Jack knew the practice of listing the vital stats of sitters went back half a century at least. It started with mediums keeping private data on card files; then they started sharing cards with other mediums. Finally someone began collecting stats from all over the country and publishing them in a blue-covered directory sold only to mediums. His old boss, Madame Ouskaya, had been a subscriber. The Internet was the inevitable next step.
Charlie hit some keys and "d-town" appeared after user id, followed by a string of asterisks in the password box. He hit enter and a few seconds later a search page appeared.
Jack said, "I remember the old Blue Directory used to hang onto the names of sitters even after they were dead-just in case some relative decided later to try and contact them."
"This one does the same thing."
Charlie clicked the mouse pointer on an icon near the top of the screen. "This take us to the O-S section."
"O-S?"
"Other Side."
"Got it." Jack rested a hand on Charlie's shoulder. "Okay, do a search for 'coin collector' and see what comes up."
"'Coin collect' might get us more hits, yo."
He typed in "coin+collect." A few seconds later a list of half a dozen names appeared.
Only half a dozen? Jack was disappointed. He leaned closer to the screen searching for dates.
"I need a guy who's died in the past year or so."
"Ay, yo, trip this," Charlie said, tapping a finger on the screen over the f
ourth name down. "Matthew Thomas West. Died January twenty-seventh."
Jack looked and saw the typical documentation: name, address, date of birth-and, in this case, date of "crossing over"-along with Social Security number, the names of his wife-deceased sixteen years before him-and his brother and parents, even his dog, but no kids. Plus a list of his interests. Matthew West's big passion, besides his wife, with whom he'd been communicating through mediums for many years, was rare coins.
This guy looked perfect except for the address. Minnesota...
He shook his head. "I was hoping for something closer. Let's check out the others." He stared at the screen awhile, then shook his head again. "Nope. Looks like I'll have to make do with Uncle Matt from St. Paul."
"Uncle Matt?" Lyle said.
"I talked up a fictional uncle to Foster that I wanted Pomerol to contact for me. Fortunately I never gave his name. Well, now we have a name. Uncle Matt the Minnesotan. Can you print him out for me?"
"Done deal," Charlie said. "But what you got going?"
"A sting. If things go right, I hope to tempt Madame Pomerol into pulling the old Spanish handkerchief switch on me."
Charlie frowned. "Spanish handkerchief? Whuddat?"
"An old Gypsy con," Lyle said. "And I do mean old. Probably been running a couple hundred years now, and grifters are still working updated versions on the street." He looked at Jack. "But how's that-?"
"Once she sets up the switch on me, I'm going to work a double switch right back at her-one with a nasty barb at the end."
"Okay, but I still don't see what that's gonna do for us-me and Charlie."
Jack held his hands high like a preacher. "Have faith, my sons, have faith. I can't tell you all the details because I haven't figured them out yet. But trust me, if this works, it will be a sting of beauty."
Charlie handed Jack the printout. "You a natural at this. Why ain't you still in?"
Jack hesitated. "You really want to know?"
"Yeah."
You're not going to like this, he thought.
"I got out because I found it an empty enterprise. I wanted to be doing something where I gave value for value."
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