His adrenaline-soaked senses caught the faintest tinge of wood smoke. It was familiar enough, in an age not yet electrified. Distinct from the oily odor of lamp smoke, the bitter dust of coal heat, or the acrid smell of electrical fire—none of these were in the aroma. He was glad for that much; any of them was a sure sign of disaster.
Wood smoke: The trace smell reminded him of wooden matches. Such a distinct scent could hang in the air for half an hour. It did not necessarily mean trouble, but there was the question of its origin.
And so the time picked him. Shane slowed his pace to a shuffle, turned to Duncan, and went to work. He pretended to be speaking to the showman, but when he shouted at the top of his voice, using every ounce of his vocal power, the intent of every word was aimed at the big man with the glass sword.
“My father didn’t even bother to kill me! He just rubbed me out of his life! He walked away like a mongrel walks away from its own puke.”
That put the brakes on. Their assailant stopped along with Shane, while Duncan stopped with the lack of momentum. And initially, at least, the younger version of Duncan did not protest. His attention was not engaged, yet, but his expression showed annoyed impatience. That meant that a door was open, no matter how small, or for how brief a time. If Shane could sink a hook into the opening before it slammed shut again, he could possibly drive the man to an hysterical explosion—one in which his own emotions might provide enough distraction to create an opportunity to finish him off.
He pressed on, without giving the brief flicker of interest a chance to fade from the attacker’s eyes.
“He wasn’t just famous!” Shane shouted to Duncan while watching Duncan’s twisted progeny from the corner of his eye. “The man had to feel famous! He had to be the biggest news in the room, no matter what, no matter where!”
He felt it more than saw it; a slight wave of confused disinterest passed over the son—that shot had missed. Shane tried again, throwing one out that could catch his opponent on either the literal or symbolic level.
“He never even knew I was alive! And the day he finally saw that I was alive, was the day he decided to wipe me out!”
Shane saw the brief facial spasm that flashed across their assailant’s face. Bull’s-eye.
“Why don’t you tell me something I don’t already know?” he snarled at Shane, even while his eyes shifted to Duncan. For an instant, Shane disappointed himself by dropping his concentration long enough to notice that the smell of smoke was getting stronger.
One thing at a time, the words went through him, just the way Randall always said it. He threw his focus back onto their unstable host.
“He made you the garbage bucket!” Shane hollered back, and this time it was directly to him, ignoring Duncan. “He soaked up everything good and left you with nothing but the dregs.”
No reaction.
“He’s only your father the way a dog in the alley is a father!”
That one set off a little spark of the son’s interest. Shane drilled into it, taking a risk with facts.
“He never even gave you his name, for God’s sake!” That one hit the son like a spike. Shane caught an involuntarily swallow.
A bastard, then, with the expected load of a bastard’s resentment. He noted the younger Duncan’s terrible teeth, his mottled skin, his yellowish, rheumy eyes. There was a range of sore points to explore.
“You grew up on your own, from when you were small. On the street. You didn’t know anything about a showman named James Duncan.”
“J.D.!” the son corrected him, with a strange grin popping onto his face. “You have to call him ‘J.D.’! Very important!” He gave up a malevolent chuckle.
“Unless you call him ‘Boss,’” the son went on. “He doesn’t mind that one at all.” Just as abruptly, he dropped the grin and raised the glass edge. “Now keep moving. We’ve got a show to attend.”
The attacker was only a few inches taller than Shane, and a good sixty pounds heavier. He stank of criminal intent: the sour smell of fear, the animal musk of unwashed skin, rotting teeth, and mouth blowing death breath for two yards in every direction. His body appeared to have been street-hardened into a piece of walking pig iron. One glance was enough to convince Shane that a direct attack would leave him badly the worse.
He had to hold silent for a moment and let J.D.’s progeny feel his power, here. Feed him an easy win. Watch for any sign that it might cause him to lower his guard.
After all, something had been gained already. The emotion in the younger Duncan’s reply had hinted of some good pay dirt.
Shane was getting closer. It was like navigating blind, following a smell. And with the thought of smell, there was the smell of smoke, back again, tapping at his attention a bit harder now.
There was too much of it not to notice, but not enough to see. Shane had no idea whether it figured into young Duncan’s plan, but the bastard son appeared to be completely unaware of the unmistakable tinge to the air.
Shane hoped that this meant he was severely distracted by whatever roiled his mind at that moment. Shane could look for a way to use that to his advantage.
Now he could feel that he would be able to shove his fear far enough down inside of himself to put forth a convincing façade of confidence. The illusion was all he needed; Shane’s twenty-one years of life had already been enough to convince him that all bullies were cowards. Therefore, he did not need to die fighting this one; he only needed to convince him that he was quite willing to die—so long as Sonny Boy died with him.
When a bully realizes that you are actually prepared to die fighting him, he can be counted on to fill his pants, scream random accusations of unfairness, and vacate the premises. Randall had often claimed, laughing, that half his ability to survive years of walking a rough beat lay in that sole piece of knowledge.
The thought of Shane’s adoptive father flushed enough guilt through him to push away the rest of his fear. The effect was immediate. Anger rushed in to fill the void. He could almost feel himself stepping out of the huddled little body back in that kitchen pantry, facing the attacker today on far better terms.
They were up on the stage by then, the three of them, front and center. Shane did not know that he was smack in the middle of the focal point of the giant bowl-shaped cyclorama on the back wall. But he noticed that he could clearly hear the breathing of both the other men. His own breathing suddenly seemed abnormally loud and clear. It was a sensation he had never experienced before, and it only added to the aura of unreality that hovered over everything.
And then there was the smoke itself. Things were still spiraling out of control. He had to go back to work now, whether Sonny was ready to play or not. “Hey!” he shouted. “Am I the only one who smells smoke in here?”
In response, the bastard stepped directly to him and swung his thick right arm in an overhead hammer blow that exploded against the right side of Shane’s head. He felt something hit him hard on both of his knees, and then vaguely realized that he had just rammed them into the floor in the process of falling. Instinct twisted his torso to the left, away from the direction of impact, just enough so that the left side of his body, shoulder, and arm took most of the force of the fall before his head banged on the ground.
The shock wave blasted through him so hard that he immediately forgot where he was and lost track of his senses. His vision crumbled into flashes of light and shadow. The insistent ringing in his head drowned out everything else, even the well-focused sounds from the cyclorama.
Half-baked orders from his brain caused his muscles to raise his arms in self-defense, strike back with his fists, kick with his feet, and run away, all at the same time. The result was that he lay twitching on the floor, half conscious. A tiny part of him was aware of the sound of hysterical laughter. He was clear enough to realize that his attacker was enjoying Shane’s convulsions and savoring his victory. There was no way to fight back. His brain was caught in a lightning storm and his spasmodic limbs we
re otherwise engaged.
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING
THE PACIFIC MAJESTIC THEATRE—SAN FRANCISCO’S FINEST
J.D.’S FIRST CLEAR CLUE was the smell of smoke. His second was the sudden and sharp awareness that the smoke was coming up from the floor beneath him. His third was the realization that he and Shane Nightingale were in the midst of a pointless and fully preventable confrontation that he would have already concluded by now, if he had been playing with anything more than half of a deck before this moment.
This moment! What just happened?
Like electrical lights that suddenly flare up to illumination, full awareness returned to James “J.D.” Duncan, Master Mesmerist. It arrived without warning, and it was exactly as Dr. Alzheimer had cautioned him: a sudden reappearance of his full, true, and sterling self. It could not have been more of a shock if he had looked into a mirror and seen his own young face.
He knew, with clear recall of the doctor’s words, tone of voice, facial expressions, and the small gravy stain smeared on the man’s lab coat, that the effect was temporary. It was rare, utterly mysterious, and seemed to have no other purpose than to taunt the victim with all the differences between their normal selves and the impaired imitations of themselves that they had become.
In that brightly shining moment, J.D. saw with complete acuity that this nightmare of a disease had been pulling him deep into its grip for some time. It was only now that he could comprehend the difference. He could not imagine a better gift. He leaped at the chance to drink as deeply as possible of his magically restored ability to perceive and comprehend.
Since there was no way to know how long it would last, he knew that there were actions to be taken, and they had to happen soon. If not, what sort of evil would the bastard have committed by the time J.D. spontaneously got his clarity back again?
If he ever did.
He took a deep breath, making it a point not to reveal that he realized the deranged unfortunate in front of him was his own monstrous creation. J.D. would no longer give even a tiny gesture of affirmation to that destroyer of helpless women. What could his mother have ever done to him, if she caused his madness? And if she had not, how many insufferable and useless nights had she paced the floor over this abomination before he finally ran off and disappeared from her life?
To J.D., his demon seed existed in this world to haunt him for every sin that he had ever committed. So it seemed. And now of course it was clear that the bastard had not ceased shadowing him as he had promised to do, after the last big payment.
The feeling of sickness and insanity that circled around the bastard was powerful. J.D. knew that there must be a trail of bodies leading to this night.
When the bastard had first hunted him down, common sense would have had J.D. hand the lad some cash and send him on his way. But no. He was the all-powerful mesmerist who would fix the damaged orphan with a job and an income. This was going to compensate him for a life of existing on garbage.
In truth, he had plainly seen the rage on that too-familiar face. If he had been honest with himself, he would have realized that so much compacted anger could not go without an explosion. He pretended to stare into space and was glad not to have to look at the ruined hulk speaking to him. He pretended not to hear, not to understand, and waited for this curse of consciousness to deliver him to a workable moment of attack.
He ordered himself to shut up and wait for something to happen. To his genuine surprise, instead of doing that, he noticed himself standing up quite without thinking about it, and he heard his voice declare, “By God, I look at you and pray to be forgiven!”
J.D. was taken aback by his own outburst. Fear shot into him and lodged like a freezing bullet. It lay defrosting inside of him, radiating its icy message—he was not in control. There was no denying it. Even his reclaimed clarity was unable to stop him from shouting things that he had not planned to say.
And yet…his rejuvenated mental powers combined with the youthful speed of his thoughts and allowed him to grasp effortlessly the depth of the troubles to which he had been abandoned by his own less capable self.
After doing nothing more than appearing in J.D.’s life and asking for a handout—the bastard repaid him by using his new job as a cover for murder. They said that his first known victim was “only an alcoholic prostitute,” and for no better reason than that, he had been sentenced to the imminently escapable prison hospital. Nothing good ever came from anything that the bastard put into motion.
Time slowed down another level. J.D. was astounded to realize that he was now thinking so fast and comprehending so powerfully, the others nearly appeared to be standing still.
He glanced over at young Shane Nightingale, who looked as if he might get his legs back if he could just recuperate for a minute. In the same instant, it became clear that J.D. had to take control of the situation and stall the bastard until Shane came around enough to pitch in and help.
He stood up to his full height and turned to face him full on, keeping his chin up so that it would not quiver and betray him. “Do you intend to explain what you are doing?” he demanded. “Explain why you were following me?”
“Boss! Good morning! Nice to see you all shiny-faced! Are you surprised to see me?”
“Frankly, yes. If you are alive, it almost certainly means that others are not, because of you.”
J.D.’s bastard son leaped onto Shane Nightingale while he was still down, slipped the glass to his neck, and carved in a second long cut. This one was shallow enough, but it was a second source of bleeding.
“You show me one of your patented sneers and I will slice his head right off his body!”
J.D. met his stare and held it. “I believe you.”
“Good.” He stood up again. “What did you do, work out some kind of cheap after-hours rehearsal arrangement with the management?”
“I was summoned here.”
“I’m asking if that’s why you two were here! I imagine you were taking a break, stretching the legs, when I found you, eh?”
“We haven’t been in here at all, tonight. We just came down the hill from the Fairmont Hotel.”
“The door was already open, here!”
“Yes. I assume you saw us coming, ran ahead to jimmy the lock, then back to ambush us.”
“Fine idea, Boss, if I’d thought of it. But I followed you all the way down Nob Hill, so I guess it was just Fate that had me stake out your hotel.”
J.D. snorted. “Fate got you to this point? You need a new invisible force.”
The bastard’s face darkened. “I’m improvising here, Boss! Improvising! Latching on to whatever the circumstances may be and dancing along! I learned it from you!”
“You learned nothing from me.”
“Then maybe it was Fate after all, that left the door open for us, eh, Boss?”
“I never told you to call me that.”
“Liar!” The bastard’s face went purple again. “I finally track you down—you give me a job, following you around?”
“An opportunity that you squandered. Ruined your reputation there and mine for knowing you.”
“Knowing me? God damn you to Hell! Say my name. You never say my name. Sure I call you Boss. You never say my name!”
“And never will again, you miserable excuse for a man.”
The bastard froze at that and stared at J.D. for one densely packed second. His posture shifted. His face went dead of expression.
The overall effect made it look as though he simply dropped one persona and became another, except for the eyes, which did not change at all. They remained emotionless, predatory perceivers. J.D. realized then that the change in the bastard was not a real change at all. It was merely the dropping of a mask in favor of a more bluntly truthful expression of the cruelty waiting behind those eyes.
J.D. felt the predatory gaze. It radiated a fundamental truth more subtle than waves of body heat: Any trace of willpower would be seized as a provocation.
Another tick of the second hand passed. Years of habit propelled him to take control. “Did you follow me here from New York?”
The bastard laughed. Even his voice came out as a flattened version of itself. It was not there to help him to express himself; it was merely a function of delivering information with the minimum necessary effort. “Nah. I got here weeks before you. To get things ready.”
“It took you weeks to get things ready? What things? You followed me in the dark.”
“Hey!” the bastard bellowed, purple veins mapping his face. “I! Am! Improvising!” He turned toward Shane and saw that he was just climbing back to unsteady feet. So he stepped close enough to menace him with the blade and shouted at the younger man, “Your head’s still ringing pretty bad, eh? Can’t get your balance back into the legs, right? I don’t care if I have to kill you, but you really ought to see this. Just stand right there. You’ll be a witness to career history for the Great Mesmerist!”
He gestured to J.D. and added, “Duncan here is going to give us a show. He’s going to tell the entire audience why he had me arrested and stuck inside of a little brick box, a place for…I thought I’d never get out.”
“You broke out. There’s no show to be made of that,” J.D. replied. Try as he might, he could not keep the disgust from his voice. “The answer is too short to make a show out of it: I called them because you don’t belong anywhere else.”
In the next instant, J.D.’s olfactory nerves finally got their message to his beleaguered brain. He visualized thin wisps of smoke that his eyes could not see—warning ghosts rising up around his pant cuffs.
The bastard must have been here. He broke in when he saw them coming this way. He had set the fire going. Started it small, to give him time. No wonder he wanted us all up here.
The Hidden Man Page 23