Cruel Devices

by George Wright Padgett

  Gavin chided himself for whipping out his wallet so casually during the confrontation. That had been stupid. If the woman was hiding behind a stack of junk, she’d undoubtedly heard—and even possibly seen—him brandishing hundred-dollar bills.

  Against his better judgment, he slowly advanced until he was peeking in the doorway. There was no sign of the woman, the men, or Madame Kovács. Gavin’s throat burned with stomach acid and bile.

  As he crossed the threshold, the all-too-familiar musty smell assaulted his nostrils. It took a moment for his eyes to acclimate to the darkened area inside, and his heart rate climbed again.

  If I make it through this day without having a coronary, it’ll be a miracle.

  He hadn’t noticed the sound of his tennis shoes squeaking on the cement floor before, but now it was unbearably loud. He was sure it would give away his location. Gavin stopped and, as quietly as possible, slid them off and cradled them under his arm.

  The cement floor of the warehouse was cool through his nylon socks. Each step filled him with dread, but something inside of him wouldn’t allow him to turn back, not yet. He moved stealthily, ignoring every rational thought in his brain like a moth drawn to a campfire.

  Gavin’s spine stiffened at a nearby noise. It sounded close, but perhaps it was deeper back in the warehouse. He wasn’t sure. He froze in place and strained to listen. He wasn’t able to determine if the sound was real or if his imagination had gotten the better of him. After a few tense seconds of absolute silence, he edged onward, taking even smaller steps than before.

  His heart thumped punishingly in his chest as if to remind him that he wasn’t well suited to this type of work. Technically, he was trespassing now, though it would have been their word against his. He warily scanned the area for any sign of foul play or his former captors or the woman in the yellow dress. There was still no sign of anyone.

  The creative hemisphere of his brain invaded his thoughts, as it was prone to do. As he crept along, caricature-like images of Béla, Puma, and Kovács bombarded his mind. He imagined a grotesque two-headed beast that wielded a massive broadsword. One of the heads was severely misshaped and spewed venomous, armor-melting acid at regular intervals. The other rambled on about castration. The demonic twins were controlled by an equally gruesome abomination: the cave troll queen of the damned, evil in its purest form—a creature who took her orders from a barking dragon’s skull that she obediently carried at her breast.

  That’s not helping right now. That’s actually making the situation worse. He bit the inside of his cheek to regain his focus, and the images blinked out of sight.

  On the verge of hyperventilating, he paused to regain control over his breathing.

  He wasn’t sure what had compelled him to come back. He could have walked away—should have walked away—but now Gavin had a new objective. It was mostly payback, but it was also loyalty to his old friend. He had decided to take the antique typewriter for Billy as an act of retribution for what they’d done to him.

  Anxious about the time, he checked the display on his phone. To his astonishment, maneuvering through the area hadn’t taken very long at all. By his estimate, there were a few minutes before the cab would arrive, but he needed to hurry.

  Gavin’s heart leapt when he turned down the aisle and the typewriter was waiting on the shelf, although it should have come as no surprise that it was exactly as he had left it. The storeowners wouldn’t even touch it.

  What a bunch of superstitious, inbred cretins. That annoying little dog probably has a higher IQ than the three of them combined.

  Gavin quietly placed his shoes on the cement and wiggled his feet into them. He moved to the antique but froze in place when indistinct voices echoed in the distance. His heart raced, but he kept his cool.

  Was it the woman?

  No, it sounded like Béla’s voice giving orders.

  Cleaning up that mess would likely take them a while, and he doubted that Madame Kovács and her little dog would offer any help. She had probably returned to her fortunetelling hut by now. The only one unaccounted for was the woman in the yellow dress.

  Gavin looked around, feeling vulnerable to attack, but he saw no one. The fragments of the sombrero-wearing cat crunched beneath his shoes as he reached for the typewriter. It felt good to hold the device again. Though he didn’t experience the sense of euphoria as strongly as before, there was an undeniable energy coursing through his body. He was sure that he could run a marathon at that moment if he had to. He attributed the sensation to the release of endorphins. Not getting killed by the Hungarian versions of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum certainly was a boost to the ol’ ticker.

  Looking at the scroll of paper spilling from the top of the machine, he noticed a new line of type. Below the word “ouch” was the sentence:

  I'M COMING THROUGH.

  It struck him as the oddest thing he’d encountered all day. The three Hungarians were terrified to even touch the machine. For one of them to type on it must’ve been a major breakthrough.

  Béla probably made Puma do it, but why?

  He tucked the device under his arm and headed for the exit. The fear of being caught was gone. He felt invincible. With the typewriter balanced on his hip, he fumbled in his jacket for his wallet. Gavin was many things, but he wasn’t a thief.

  He wadded up four of the bills and tossed them on the floor. Then, after several brisk steps, he returned and snatched up two of the hundreds, tucking the crumpled bills into his pants pocket.

  Gavin effortlessly negotiated each twist and turn through the maze of junk to the exit. He swiftly shut the door, being careful not to slam it. There was no reason to risk alerting anyone to what he had done. The way they had reacted to him barely handling the antique, they’d blow a gasket at having the device out in direct sunlight.

  Boogeyman never goes out in the daytime.

  He convinced himself that taking it was actually doing them a service. They were free from whatever morbid fixation they had with the machine. Even more than that, he’d deliver it to a nice home where it would be treasured, not locked away in some junk-heap dungeon. Wherever it came from, whatever it was, those lunatics wouldn’t need to worry about it anymore. As peculiar as it was, he felt a little like a hero of sorts.

  Across the vacant lot was a silver Town Car with a Red Dot logo on the side. He tried his best to move inconspicuously to the cab without sacrificing any speed. After a few seconds, he abandoned acting casual and broke into a trot.

  The driver got out of the cab as he approached.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, opening the passenger door.

  He wasn’t sure if she meant because he was running or if she was commenting about the condition of his tobacco-stained clothes.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Uh… I need to go to the bathroom really badly.”

  It was a lie, but it instantly shut down any further questions.

  “Take me to the Droverton Convention Center Resort,” Gavin said, bracing the antique typewriter on the seat next to him. “There’s a big tip in it for you if you get me there quickly enough.”

  Four

  GAVIN SHOWERED LONGER THAN USUAL when he returned to his room. He scrubbed vigorously until even the slightest hint of Béla’s mint-flavored tobacco juice was just a bad memory. The luxurious room’s trash bin overflowed with the shirt and jacket he’d worn. He knew it was wasteful to throw the clothing away—a good dry cleaner could’ve treated the stains—but even if every disgusting molecule of Béla’s spit had been purged, the items would carry the humiliation and shame of it. His pride alone would forbid him from ever wearing them again. He knew he wouldn’t even allow himself to replace them with anything that looked similar, because it would remind him of his defeat.

  Though, in some perverse way, he had won. The antique typewriter on the plush bed of his hotel suite was like a trophy. For everything that those three had put him through, he’d come out of it with a prize: the perfect gift for Willi
am Cavanaugh. No one would be able to outdo this present.

  As Gavin dried himself, he looked across the enormous suite at the device perched on an oversized pillow. He recalled dozens of times that Billy had boasted about how he had outbid Tom Hanks at a Sotheby’s. They had been neck-and-neck, bidding for a 1904 prototype typewriter designed by François Lambert. Billy had stolen the auction from the actor for a few thousand dollars and had put the artifact on permanent display in his study. To Gavin, that machine had looked like the brake drum of a car in miniature, with button-sized lug nuts positioned around the circle—in other words, a rusted piece of junk. Even so, it made the old man happy, and Gavin’s prize was ten times stranger.

  Wrapped in a bath towel that threatened to unknot itself at any second, Gavin moved to the device. He tore off the exposed section of the paper roll, the part of the scroll with the sentence “I'M COMING THROUGH” typed below the word “OUCH.” He frowned, remembering the tender spot atop his head that he’d been careful to avoid in the shower. What were the odds of accidentally typing “ouch,” or any other comprehensible word for that matter?

  He tried his best to determine how much of the paper scroll was left in the machine. It wouldn’t do well to give it to Billy without a healthy amount of paper. The coarse, dingy, beige roll of stock curved out of sight into a locked undercarriage, making it impossible to tell how much remained. He placed the clunky relic beside the laser printer on the suite’s massive oak desk.

  Gavin marveled over the layout of the typewriter. He recognized the function of many of the components. The couplers, the platen and knobs, the clapper, the bail arm, and the carriage release were all there, but they were twisted, curved, or fastened in a different area of the device than that of a conventional typewriter. The absence of plastic meant it was constructed a century or more ago. Nearly the entire machine consisted of copper, steel, brass, and even lead in places. The only exception to this was a cobalt-blue piece of felt affixed to what appeared to be the space bar. It jutted out further from the base than the other keys and had the peculiar shape of a comb. Gavin delicately ran his finger over the felt, careful to avoid putting enough pressure on it to make it strike.

  Stranger still were the keys themselves. Far from the conventional QWERTY keyboard system, Gavin counted only twenty keys in all. Every letter was accounted for, but the embossed metal top of the round pads had an odd pairing of T above D, G above O, Y with H, Q with 4, Z with 1, and so forth. Each character set was displayed in bold uppercase letters. Thinking of how he could send text messages from a modern device that fit in the palm of his hand, he mused, “What a long way we’ve come.”

  Gavin cracked his knuckles and said, “Okay, let’s test this baby out. Can’t have any keys sticking, now, can we?” He dictated as he typed, “’The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’” On every letter, the device’s tiny hammer against the paper made a hard cracking sound. “Wow, this is really loud.”

  He leaned forward in the desk chair to view his handiwork. A smudged parade of crooked, oily, black letters presented themselves across the top of the page:

  TYE QUI3K BUOWN FGX JUMMS OVEU TYE LA1Y DOG.

  He discovered that the felt-covered space bar also served as the register key. When struck normally, it functioned as the spacer, but when struck with slightly more pressure, the machine rewarded the user with a satisfying clink and the bottom character of the pad activated. Gavin scoffed, “The learning curve to work this thing must have been horrendous.” He straightened in his chair, preparing for a second attempt. “No wonder this thing never made it to market.”

  He typed with determination, expecting the loud cracks this time.

  THE QRICK BROWN FOX 5UMPS OVIR THE LAZY DOG.

  “Spellcheck, where are you when I need you?” He surveyed the page. Despite his inability to master the quirkiness of the typewriter, all of the letters appeared boldly on the page. “He’s gonna love this. It’ll be the best gift at the party. Nothing else will even come close.”

  Inspired, Gavin reached for his cell phone and dialed Billy’s number. As it rang, he continued to play with the typewriter. “’The five boxing wizards jump quickly.’” He viewed the faulty result:

  DHE FEVE BOXISG WEZARTS JUMM QUECKLY.

  Just as the other party picked up, he exclaimed, “Crap!”

  A confused-sounding, elderly voice on the other end replied, “Hello?”

  “Hey, sorry, Beverly. It’s Gavin Curtis.”

  Relief came into the woman’s voice. “Oh, yes. How are you? You’re coming next week, right?”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s kinda why I’m calling. Is the old man around?”

  “What’s that noise?”

  “It’s nothing,” Gavin said as he typed. “They’re doing some construction where I’m at. That sound is a nail gun or something.” He pictured Beverly on the other end of the phone, probably wearing her trademark checkered apron. She always wore an apron. In fact, he couldn’t recall any event where she hadn’t been wearing one.

  She also couldn’t keep secrets, which was why he had just lied to her. He had learned that the hard way with his proposal to Josephine. It was easier for him to fib than to risk telling her anything.

  “You’re coming with Josephine, right?” Beverly asked.

  “We’ll both be there, but we’re coming separately,” he said absently, continuing to type.

  “You know that she’s available again, don’t you?”

  The words hung in the air like a fog. Gavin stopped typing.

  “Are you still there, Gavin?”

  The question made him snap to. “Uh… yeah, yeah, I’m—”

  “Did you hear me?” Her voice was downright cheery to deliver the news. “She broke it off with that photographer guy. Oh, what is his name? It was something like—”

  “Ray,” Gavin volunteered a little too quickly.

  “Oh, yes, that’s right. You used to call him ‘X-ray Ray.’” She sounded giddy with gossip. “I guess he really is ‘Ex-Ray’ now.”

  As she giggled at her joke, Gavin pictured the man. Raymond Salazar had elevated his status from paparazzi to coffee-table–book photographer. His crazy idea to superimpose X-ray images of C-list celebrities over their pictures had been a wild hit. It had snowballed into the mainstream until the gag was a listing of Who’s Who in Hollywood. Major stars clamored to pose for Ray’s Celebrities Over-Exposed book series, which was enjoying its fifth volume. Ray had been transformed from a lowlife outsider to a mega sensation. He was like the doorman of an exclusive club, determining who was desirable and interesting enough to get through the velvet rope.

  Gavin’s only encounter with him was after the divorce. Josephine had served as publicist for both men and had begged Gavin to attend Ray’s first gallery opening. He was appalled that Ray’s gimmick would be considered art and had told him so. The photographer had said that he’d considered taking Gavin’s picture until he realized that he wouldn’t be able to find anything inside him to photograph.

  In true Gavin Curtis form, the first victim of his next book was a sleazy peeping-Tom photographer named Raymond Salamander. Months later, he found out that Josephine and Ray were secretly dating at the time of the opening and hated him even more.

  “How did you find this out, Bev? How do you know that it’s true? I mean, who told you?”

  “She did, my dear boy. Josephine said so. You two make such a nice couple.”

  Gavin’s mind flashed back to the bookstore. She had admitted to still loving him on the phone.

  “Be nice to her, Gavin. She’s one of the good ones.”

  “Yes. Yes, she is.” A lump formed in his throat.

  Beverly must have sensed it, because she said, “Let me go get William for you, sweetie. We’ll see you next week, okay, love?”

  Gavin nodded but couldn’t utter a response. It was all too much. To occupy himself while Beverly searched the townhome for her husband, Gavin resumed his typing. As his fingers
moved across the keys, he mumbled, “’The crazy expert in woven pajamas quickly stabbed a ghost frog.’” He paused, remembering the dream of Troy and Des that he had in the warehouse. This time, he didn’t check his sentence but quickly typed another of his practice phrases: “’Twelve ziggurats quickly jumped a finch box.’”

  “Hey, Sport,” a grizzled voice said from the receiver. “Is that the music of a Remington 16 that I hear?”

  Gavin couldn’t resist smiling. “No, not quite. How are you doing, old man?”

  “Breathing,” Billy answered as if the one word should be an ample sentence. He was a true editor.

  “That’s good,” Gavin chuckled. “Maybe I should try it some time.”

  “Whatcha working on, kid? Something new for me?”

  “Pangram,” he answered without a break in his typing.

  “What? A pangram?”

  “Yeah, you know—a sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once.”

  “I know what a pangram is. I’m your editor, remember?” The response sounded like a rebuke. “What I don’t know is why you’re typing a pangram instead of a manuscript for me to read.”

  “I’m in a rut,” Gavin admitted, pulling his hands away from the keyboard. “I’m done with Marksman. I’d just about give anything for a fresh idea.”

  “A rut? No such thing,” Billy chided him. “’When zombies arrive, quickly fax Judge Pat.’”

  “Zombies what?”

  “Pangram,” Billy said with the curtness of a drill sergeant. “’When zombies arrive, quickly fax Judge Pat.’”

  Gavin obediently typed the words. He was getting used to activating the lower register and locating the keys, and the result was slightly better than before. He paused a moment and then said, “Here’s a new one I came across the other day. ’Joaquin Phoenix was gazed at by MTV for luck.’”