by Deen Ferrell
A car approached from further down the road. The tall man moved, craning his neck like a praying mantis. He raised a hand to his chin, frowning. The car pulled over to the curb and the back door opened. Willoughby slid to the other side of the metal bus stop and shot a quick glance around the corner. A short, stocky man climbed out of the back of the car and lumbered toward the taller man. The man wore only a thin muscle shirt in the chill air. He had tattoos running up both bulky arms. Was it the same man he and Antonio had seen taking pictures of the symbol and of them? The man was the right height and build and he had the tattoos. Willoughby hadn’t seen him clearly in the dim light across from the Corner Barber, but he could see the man clearly now. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Even from a distance, it was obvious that every inch of this man’s visible skin was covered by long, twisting tattoos. They seemed to crawl up his arms and neck as the man flexed and relaxed his muscles. The twisting tattoos seemed to come to an elaborately detailed head that hooded the man’s bald scalp. Willoughby could make out few details, but even from a distance, the seeming crawl of the tattoos was both disconcerting and mesmerizing.
“I suppose you find it humorous to keep me waiting?” the tall man snapped in crisp, European-sounding syllables.
“I suppose you find it humorous to call me out of the blue and demand a meeting,” the tattooed man countered in a deep, gravelly croak. He had the stance of a middle linebacker and the voice of a chain-smoking whaler from New England. The burly man stopped at the edge of the light and grinned, his tight-fitting t-shirt barely muting the undulation of his painted demons. “I’m not one of yours, Mr. B. In fact, you can keep those, those fly-boy things away from me, you hear that? Far away! My driver didn’t even want to come tonight.”
“I’ll see that you get a new driver,” Mr. B said coolly. His smile was pure ice. “You amuse me Reese. That’s lucky for you that you do.”
“I’m sorry,” Reese grinned. “I meant to insult you.”
“Always pushing, aren’t you, Reese? You know I’ll only put up with so much.”
“Ah. So, I should be shaking in my boots? Last time I looked, I wasn’t on your payroll.”
The tall man gave a tight smile. “You know of me, and yet you are alive. I would say that trumps your payroll.”
Reese raised an eyebrow. “Do you want something from me, Mr. B? If you don’t, I’ve no time for this—not if we’re to stay on schedule. In fact, that’s what you’re all about, isn’t it? You’re the man with the schedule.”
Again, the man flashed a tight smile. “I was attracted tonight by an unusual junction, Mr. Reese. Care to venture a guess as to what that is?”
“Your…pleasures are not my concern.”
The tall man ignored the jibe. “An unusual junction is a rip in the natural seam. These rips are hard to find and even harder to exploit. It formed quite near here. You wouldn’t, perhaps, be aware of the location?”
“Enlighten me.” The stocky man stuck his hands into his pockets.
“Of course,” the tall man said, pursing his lips. “It formed right in front of your eyes, Reese. It effectively drew attention to you, but you…were not able to identify the junction.” The man’s mouth widened into a broad smile, showcasing a row of yellowed, pointy teeth. “Someone else did, though.”
The tattooed man frowned. “Who?”
“It was the boy.”
“The boy…? You mean the kid in the shop, the one getting his hair cut? Impossible!” The man spat on the ground. “Where was his technology? You trying to tell me he has voodoo power like you—that he can just see the seams? I watched the whole time. There was nothing to indicate this kid has any special talent. He was just a kid who needed a haircut. He happened to look out and see me. So what? It was coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence, Reese. He may be just a boy, but he seems to have abilities we didn’t anticipate. I’m beginning to wonder what else you and your…patron didn’t anticipate. If this group proves to be more advanced than your team has surmised, our entire plan could be compromised.”
“We’ve done our due diligence.” Reese said. “We aren’t worried about the plan.” He scratched at his face, making what appeared to be thin fangs, tattooed above his ears, wriggle like those of a striking snake.
“I’m glad to hear you’re so confident. I don’t like failure.” Mr. B walked to the edge of the light’s glow. “The boy saw me, Reese. No one should be able to see me unless I choose to let them.”
Reese raised his eyebrows, dumbfounded. “That’s what you got all in a fit about? Some kid may or may not have seen your ugly mug and you think the sky is falling?”
“I find your stupidity shocking. I have no interest in what someone thinks of my ‘mug’. I do find it disturbing when a boy is able to see into one of my junctions. Current time stands still in a junction, which is why you did not see me. A boy who can find and step into a junction would be a formidable enemy, don’t you think?”
“What’s the kid’s name?”
Mr. B shrugged. “I thought you were in charge of surveillance.” His smile seemed plastic. “You were at the shop tonight. Why don’t you illuminate me?”
“He’s just a friend of the barber guy. He always seemed like an ordinary kid to me. He gets his hair cut there every other week. In fact, he’s one of the few regulars that frequent the shop.”
“He comes there regularly and you know so little about him?”
Reese shrugged.
The tall man frowned. “I thought you were a professional, Reese. You certainly tell me that enough. What have you been doing this past month, playing games on your cell phone? What do the barber and the boy discuss? Do they trade papers or disks? Go on, tell me. I won’t bite. Not yet…” Mr. B flashed what was more a leer than a smile, designed to show again his sharp, yellowish teeth.
“Listen,” Reese said impatiently. His eyes narrowed to strained slits. “I was there to watch the shop and the barber. This kid comes in for a haircut every couple of weeks. How would I know what they talk about? They shared iPods a few times, like they were listening to music. That’s all.”
Willoughby pushed away from the corner into the shadows.
Reese squared his shoulders. “I’ll tell you what else—I think the whole shop is a sham. So the place has a copy of the symbol over its door, so what? That don’t mean they got the mechanism there. In that place in St. Petersburg, there was a whole segment of underground subway re-routed, even though the full mechanism was buried hundreds of feet below the subway level. The building at ground-level was in constant use too. It was some sort of office building. People came and went all the time. Not this barbershop. The place is like a tomb. There’s nothing under it, or beside it. Cheap apartments fill the three floors above it. I see lights go on and off. The place sits empty most of the time. The barber only shows up a couple of days a week. He has maybe six or eight regular customers. He leaves and locks up soon after dark. Some days, he just sits there reading magazines. The kid is his most consistent regular. The barber seems chummy with him, like the boy is a nephew or brother or something.”
Brother? Willoughby raised an eyebrow at that one, but he did find it interesting that other customers did, occasionally, venture into the shop. This didn’t, however, give him any clue as to how Antonio stayed in business. The tattooed man looked over toward the bus stop.
The tall man hissed, almost imperceptibly. “Keep an eye on this ‘kid’, Mr. Reese. He is…an item of interest to me.”
“You want more surveillance? That will impact the time-table.”
“Hmm. No, keep to the plan. We’re too far vested. But if you do see the kid, see where he comes from. Where does he go after he leaves the shop? Does he live around here? I’ll watch as well.”
Reese gave a curt nod.
“One bit of advice, Mr. Reese,” the man narrowed h
is dark eyes. “You’re a middle man dealing with danger on both sides of the knife. You would do well to remind Belzar of that, too.”
Not turning from Reese, he held up a thin, bony hand, and motioned at the still idling cab. The cab glided slowly toward the lamp-lit side of the street. Willoughby saw with astonishment that there was a driver in the cab now—a stiff, unmoving figure. Where had the figure come from? No one had gotten in or out of the cab as he had been watching, he was sure of it. Had the man been hiding in the seat, or napping, or something?
The tall man walked to the cab and opened the back door.
“We’re not your lackeys, Mr. B,” Reese muttered, partially under his breath.
The tall man glanced over his shoulder. “Not yet, Mr. Reese…It will go badly for you when you are.”
Reese spit at the ground. He forced a grin. “I’d like to see if it’s true that you can’t die.”
“Oh, we all die, Mr. Reese.” The tall man said, climbing into the cab. Once seated, he rolled down the window. “Some of us just know how to come back.” He gave another flash of yellow teeth. “Tell Belzar it won’t be long.”
The cab glided away.
Reese looked after it. He spat on the ground again, spun on one heel, and jabbed a hand into his pocket. He pulled out his cell phone. As he walked back to his car, he stabbed furiously at the keys on the phone. He opened his door, threw himself into the back seat, and screamed, “Move!” The car squealed away from the curb.
Willoughby waited until it was a good block down the street before he came out from behind the bus stop. What had that been all about? Why couldn’t people see this Mr. B unless he wanted them to? What was their little “enterprise,” and why was the tattooed man watching Antonio’s shop? The man called Reese had said something about a building in St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg, Russia?
With questions racing through his mind, Willoughby started moving down the sidewalk, pushing again into a jog. Why had he been able to see this Mr. B guy anyway, and why did this make him an “item of interest,” or a boy they “can’t afford to ignore?” He knew he was bright and unusually gifted in mathematics. Was there something else? He picked up the pace as he rounded a corner. “Don’t be paranoid,” he mumbled to himself. He hadn’t seen any guns. There had been no talk of violence. The tall man had made a reference to coming back from the dead, and the whole exchange had been creepy, that’s all.
He forced his thoughts to shift. He tried to think of his mom and his sisters, waiting for him in the car at his step-dad’s work. A thought of his birth father, Gustav, popped into his head. Why was he thinking about Gustav suddenly? Was it this sudden sense of mystery he found himself embroiled in? Up until tonight, Gustav’s disappearance had been the biggest mystery in his life. No one knew what happened to him. No one had heard from him since he disappeared almost twelve years ago. No trace had ever been found of a struggle, or motive for a crime. He had just left and never returned.
Willoughby puffed out his cheeks. Gustav was gone and his disappearance had nothing to do with this new mystery in his life. Still, he felt a pang of longing. He had tried to bury the hurt away, but somehow it was always there, mingling with the faintest wisp of hope. Was it possible that his real father could someday come home?
The cold air turned his warm breath into mist. He forced his mind back to the conversation he had overheard. This Reese guy didn’t know his name. He was just a kid who came to the shop for a haircut. He didn’t want to put his family or anyone in danger, so he would take precautions. He would let Antonio know that, since the shop was being watched, he wanted to mix up their schedule a bit. Maybe come on random weeks, or on Saturdays when Klaas had to come in to work in the morning, which was a fairly often occurrence. and they would have to meet somewhere else for a haircut for a while. If he ever caught the tattooed man following him directly, he could call the police.
A memory burst suddenly upon his mind. He could see his father, Gustav, patiently arranging blocks on the floor. Willoughby watched him stacking distinct piles. There was a pile of three blocks, a pile of five blocks, a pile of seven. Gustav pushed the unarranged blocks toward him, not saying a word. As Willoughby looked at the piles, he felt he knew how many blocks should be in the next pile. He set up the next pile to contain nine blocks. His father laughed, delighted. “You can’t help it, can you?” he said. “Mathematics is in your blood.”
Mathematics was in his blood? Willoughby stopped abruptly. He had been told that Gustav was a highly sought-after structural engineer. Could his father have had a similar gift with numbers? Could this gift have led him to a puzzle too—one so intriguing that he couldn’t turn away? Had he followed the mystery until it was too late to turn back?
He looked down, surprised to see his feet pumping away in a slow jog. His mind was so preoccupied that he hadn’t even realized he had pushed again into a run. He rounded the corner and saw the family Nissan in the distance. Mom had parked under a streetlight. Klaas was working late hours on a new project, so Mom insisted on picking him up. He told her Sam would probably be fine with taking him home rather than dropping him off at Klaas’s work after school—at least until Klaas was to catch the train with him again, but she had insisted. On every day but Tuesday, it was earlier, but Tuesdays was the day Mom had to take Densi, the older of his two half-sisters, to violin lessons. So, it was easy on that day to squeeze in a haircut.
He could see Mom’s frown through the driver-side window. She had probably been waiting for a good 20 minutes. He should have called. He could see her drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. He slowed to a walk, gulping air, and tried for a casual smile, rounding the front of the car and jumping into the passenger’s side. Sweat trickled down his face and his breathing was still in ragged gasps.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I thought I could squeeze in a haircut today, and Antonio was…slow.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
Willoughby shrugged. “I didn’t think of it.”
“You didn’t think of it?” Mom’s eyes were spitting fire. “So, what if I just happen to not think of cooking dinner, or coming to pick you up? You have a cell phone. You pay good money for it. You seem able to call Klaas, your barber, your friends, but you can’t think to call your Mom?”
Willoughby frowned. “Okay, so I was an idiot. Antonio and I got to talking and I didn’t realize the time. I won’t let it happen again.” He couldn’t help but wonder what “friends” his mom thought he was calling.
“Yes—if I only had a quarter for every time I’ve heard that. ’The point is, Willoughby; that you’re not an idiot. But you faithfully tell me every time we have this discussion that it won’t happen again.”
“Do we get a vote?” Densi, Willoughby’s half-sister, piped up from the back seat.
Mom glanced up at the rearview mirror; “A vote?”
“Yea, on whether Willoughby is or is not an idiot,” the seven-year old said innocently. Mom’s frown was enough to silence her. She turned back to Willoughby.
“I expect to be compensated for the 20 minutes of my time you’ve wasted,” Mom added.
“Yes!!!” his younger half-sister, Cali, shouted. Cali was five. “Can he empty the dishwasher for a year?”
“No, he can scoop the dog poop for the rest of his life!” Densi sang out.
Willoughby sighed, turning to glare at his sisters. “Thanks guys. You give me the golden chores, what a surprise! For your information, a year of dishwasher duty is roughly 5500 minutes, not 20. Nor do I believe that 20 minutes of poop scooping will extend to the end of my life.”
Densi stuck out her tongue. “You don’t impress us with your numbers talk!”
“Yeah,” Cali said. “Don’t impress us!”
Mom started the car and put it into drive. The Pathfinder accelerated into the empty street. Willoughby took a deep breath. He was always the one who ha
d to say something to break an uncomfortable silence. “So,” he finally said, looking into the rear-view mirror at Densi. “How was the violin lesson? Kill any cats today?”
“MOM!” Densi squealed. General mayhem broke out. Willoughby tried to amend his question while Densi loudly proclaimed that she had NEVER actually killed a cat, maybe annoyed a few, but that wasn’t the same as killing it! Mom tried to stop the argument, but Densi just yelled louder, saying that she didn’t know why cats screamed when she played—maybe they just didn’t like Mozart—and she had every right to not like cats if she wanted to because this was a free country, and she was a free citizen!
Mom finally got her voice to be heard shouting; “Enough!” There was a brief silence, punctuated by Cali adding softly, “A-A-Amen!” The two girls fell into flutters of giggles.
Mom took a long breath throwing a sideways glance at Willoughby. He tried to ignore the fact that he had started the exchange and bent quickly down to fumble in his pack. Truth was, he liked his half-sisters, though they could be trying and annoying at times. He waited until Mom had settled into a lane on the freeway.
“Klaas’s firm worked on the Grove Street renovation, right? It included the Certus Grove building.” He opened the roll of blueprints he had pulled from his pack. “Antonio got these for me. He’s…he wants me to help him with a project. He’s studying the architecture of the building.”
Mom glanced over. “Well, I can’t rattle off every project Klaas works on, but the name Certus Grove sounds familiar.”
“Klaas pointed the building out to me a few times on the ride home,” Willoughby said. “I think he worked on it a few years ago. Look here…” He pointed to the bank of upper floor windows. “If you look closely, there’s space up at the top of the building that doesn’t seem to be used.”
Mom glanced over but kept her eyes on the road. “What does Antonio want you to do?”
Willoughby’s eyes never left the plans. “Well, it’s the same architect that designed his shop—Antonio’s Corner Barber.” He finally tore his eyes away from the plans and began to re-roll them and stick them back into his pack. “They’ve used some interesting angles. They also use the golden mean in a number of sub-structures. I was thinking of going tomorrow to take a few measurements. Sam could drop me off there after school.”
