Out of Spite, Out of Mind

by Scott Meyer

  Agent Murphy sat in the passenger seat, poking at the trackpad of his laptop. “You wanna roll that window up? It’s freezing.”

  Miller growled, “I’d love to close the window, but if I do, the windshield fogs up. Not that you’d know it, staring at your computer while I watch the subject.”

  “The file’s out there somewhere, Miller. We just have to find it again. And at least the laptop’s generating a little bit of heat. You can roll the window up a little. Then the window wouldn’t fog all the way up, and we’d still be able to see the Luxurious Rothschild Building.”

  “Yes, Murph, but just rolling the window part of the way up won’t make it any warmer in here, will it? And you don’t have to call it luxurious every time you mention it.”

  “That’s the name of the building, Miller. The Luxurious Rothschild Building. That’s what it says on the sign. That’s what it says on Google Maps. That’s what the building’s called.”

  “Yeah, well, you can just say the Rothschild Building. I’ll know what you mean. Who puts luxurious in the name of a building anyway? What the hell even is that?”

  Murphy shrugged. “I dunno. It makes sure you know the building’s luxurious. It’s probably good marketing. Or maybe the guy the building was named after was called Luxurious Rothschild.”

  “Sounds like a pimp.”

  “We’re in Reno. I’m sure a lot of the buildings are owned by pimps.”

  Miller glanced at the side mirror. He saw a smattering of tourists on the sidewalk for a moment before it was all eclipsed by the midsection of a young man in jeans, a denim jacket, and a plaid flannel shirt approaching with a thick stack of flyers in his hands. Miller groaned and pulled his arm back inside.

  The young man stooped down to greet Miller eye to eye. When he exhaled, the plume of his condensed breath extended into the car. He smiled and pushed one of his flyers into Miller’s open window. “Hey, sir! If you and your friend are looking for something to do later, why not—”

  Miller stared into the young man’s eyes but said nothing as he cranked the window shut. The young man stopped talking, but kept the flyer extended so that it got caught in the window. As the glass extended into its slot at the top of the frame, the flyer bent and flapped downward as the young man stood up and walked back to the sidewalk behind the car.

  Miller mumbled, “How they found a rental car with crank windows in this day and age, I’ll never know.”

  Agent Murphy asked, “What’s the flyer say?”

  Miller squinted at the tiny print. “It invites us to Follow the Treasure Trail.”

  Murphy shuddered. “Jeez, is it for a casino or a brothel?”

  “A casino. Declan’s, on the strip, about a block down from the Arch. They have this stupid path of gold coins printed on the carpet. You follow it all the way to the back, through a gauntlet of slot machines, and you get a free spin on a giant slot machine. Then you have to walk out through the gauntlet of slot machines. That’s how they get you.”

  “What do you mean, that’s how they get you?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? They want you to lose all your money on their slot machines, so they make you walk through the whole casino.”

  “To play a giant slot machine?”

  “Yeah. I don’t see why this is so hard for you to understand.”

  “Oh, I understand,” Agent Murphy said. “I just don’t think that luring you in to play slot machines by promising to let you play a slot machine is as underhanded as you seem to think it is.”

  Agent Miller flapped his hand dismissively at his partner. “Aw, pipe down. You just don’t understand how gambling works.”

  “Not the same way you do, obviously. You should knock it off anyway. The director’s not going to be happy if she finds out you’re spending a lot of time at the casinos, Miller.”

  “What I do on my time is none of her damn business, Murph.”

  “It’ll reflect poorly on the task force.”

  “This is Reno. It’s the biggest little eyesore in the world. The place you go when Vegas is too upmarket. Just being here reflects badly on the task force.”

  “But the scenery’s beautiful.”

  “Yes. The area around Reno, that isn’t actually Reno itself, is lovely.”

  Murphy said, “It’s better than riding a desk. I don’t want to go back to the desk, Miller. If we screw up and get yanked from this task force, that’s right where we’ll be.”

  “If we’re lucky. The Treasury Department probably won’t want us back, after both Jimmy Sadler and Todd Douglas escaped. If they boot us from this task force, we’re probably out of law enforcement for good.”

  “Yeah, all the more reason not to screw up, okay?”

  Miller nodded. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right, Murph. I just get a little . . . Crap! There he is!”

  “Where?”

  “Coming out of the building!”

  “Which building?”

  “What?! The Luxurious—shut up! Sadler’s on the move!”

  Murphy leaned forward. “We’ll see.”

  Across the street, a thin gentleman in his mid-fifties with a neat iron-gray goatee wearing black slacks, a black polo shirt, and a checked sport coat walked out of the front entrance of the Luxurious Rothschild Building, where he lived. Both agents knew he was James Sadler, aka Jimmy, aka Merlin.

  Sadler buttoned the top button of his sport coat, as if that would do anything to ward off the chill. He stood on the sidewalk, breathing deeply. After several breaths, he put his arms out wide and spun around twice in a cartoonish show of enjoying his freedom.

  “Bastard,” Miller snarled. “Why the director won’t let us move in and take him, I don’t know.”

  “It’s because she figures he’ll just escape again.”

  “Thanks for that, Murph.”

  “Well, you said you didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Miller jerked his head from side to side, checking the car’s blind spots. He brought his hand up to the keys, which were hanging from the ignition.

  Murphy said, “You know he’s just messing with us, Miller.”

  “He doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I might.”

  “Miller. Two hours ago he came down, walked to his car, you tried to start the c—”Miller gave Murphy a look that stopped him midsentence.

  Murphy put up his hands and continued in a softer tone. “We both know what happened. Then he acted like he’d forgotten something and went back inside. An hour later, he came down and got in his car. The same thing happened again, and he got out of his car with some mail he’d left on the passenger seat and went back inside.”

  “Yeah, and now, he’s going to go somewhere. Look, he’s getting in his car.”

  Across the street, Jimmy walked to the parking lot and slid into his glossy black two-door Lexus.

  Murphy closed his laptop and started to open his door. “At least let me check the back—”

  Miller grabbed Murphy by the arm, stopping him. “No time and no need. I’ve kept an eye on the rearview, and nobody’s snuck up behind us. I’m sure of it.”

  “Miller, we both know he can—”

  “Will you stop talking? He’s not onto us, nobody snuck up behind the car, and look, he’s started his engine. I told you this time he was on the move.”

  The black Lexus moved forward and turned to the right, pulling out of its parking space.

  Miller said, “Here we go.” He turned the key and started the car. The engine rumbled to life, purred for about three seconds, then coughed, sputtered, and died. The fan blew full blast, and a chime sounded from deep inside the dash, but no sound came from the engine.

  Miller shouted, “Damn
it!”

  Across the street, Jimmy put the Lexus in reverse, pulled back into the parking space he had just left, and killed the engine.

  Miller again shouted, “Damn it!”

  Murphy said, “Just shut the car off, Miller.”

  Miller gritted his teeth so hard that it felt like his incisors might crack, but he turned the key, silencing the chime and the fan. They heard people laughing behind the car.

  Murphy asked, “Shall I go get it?”

  Miller turned and looked at him, silently.

  “Yeah,” Murphy said. “I’ll go get it. You, uh . . . you stay here.”

  Miller continued to stare as his partner got out of the car, then looked back at Jimmy sitting in his Lexus across the street. He heard the laughter continue, and the voice of the young man with the flyers say, “Hey man, it looks like you fell for the banana in the tailpipe!”

  The laughter from the tourists grew louder.

  “Yeah,” Murphy laughed, insincerely. “Looks like it.”

  Some unseen woman said, “Classic. Banana in the tailpipe. It stops up the exhaust and makes the car stall.”

  “Yeah,” Murphy interrupted. “We all know why. Everyone saw the movie.”

  A young man said, “I’d heard it doesn’t work, though. Saw it on TV where they tried and couldn’t get it to work.”

  Murphy said, “Yeah, well, I suppose this must be some kind of magic banana, then.”

  Murphy continued to make small talk about bananas, tailpipes, and Beverly Hills Cop, but Miller tuned it all out, watching Jimmy get out of his Lexus, looking irritatingly pleased with himself, almost skipping back into the Luxurious Rothschild Building.

  Murphy got back in the car, clutching a dirty, soot-smeared banana.

  Miller said, “I watched. I watched the rearview mirror. I watched both side-view mirrors. There’s no way anyone snuck up behind the car and stuck a banana in our tailpipe without me seeing.”

  “Miller, it’s Jimmy. We’ve seen him teleport. We know he can make things appear and disappear out of thin air. He clearly used his powers to put the banana in our tailpipe, what, three times now? I mean, it shouldn’t even work. That’s a dead giveaway.”

  Across the street, Jimmy continued his stroll away from the parking lot, exchanged some friendly banter with the doorman, then disappeared into the building, briefly turning his head to let his vision sweep across the street. He cast a surreptitious look at Miller and Murphy, and let them see the smile on his face.

  “Why?” Miller asked. “Why would he go to the trouble to keep putting bananas in our tailpipe, when he knows it shouldn’t work?”

  “It really bugs you, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s your answer. The end goal is to bother us, and inconvenience us, and we get a chorus of tourists laughing and wanting to talk to us about the banana in the tailpipe, and how it’s not actually supposed to work. He knows us . . . let’s be honest, he knows you well enough to know that that’ll drive you crazy.”

  “But still, why? If he knows we’re watching him, why not just ditch us?”

  Murphy shrugged, reopening his laptop. “I figure two reasons. One is that he’s not worried about us. And the other is that he’s a jerk.”

  Miller thought for a long moment. “I can’t argue with that.”

  4.

  Martin, Phillip, Brit the Younger, and Gwen flew in a lopsided V formation, like a flying checkmark. Even though wind resistance meant little to the wizards in terms of energy expenditure, less wind made for a more pleasant flight, and taking a cue from geese made flying at high speed more fun for everyone, except whoever was flying in the lead; in this case, Martin.

  They came in low over the forest canopy, then slowed as they reached a zone of dead trees and scorched earth that thinned into a clearing by the base of a granite cliff.

  Martin calibrated his speed and angle of descent in such a way as to drift into a cave, shaped like a screaming skull, about twenty feet up the cliff wall. He decelerated smoothly, landing at the back of the cave at Gary’s doorstep—or at least he would have if he hadn’t been forced to come to an abrupt stop. In the dim light inside the cave, he saw a person sitting, slumped, with his back to Gary’s door. Brit, Gwen, and Phillip nearly crashed into Martin’s back, but they all managed to stop with great effort and much muttered cursing.

  Martin peered through the dim light at the figure on the doorstep. “Who is that?” he asked. He inhaled tentatively through his nose. “Hubert. What are you doing here?”

  “Learning the mystic arts from my master,” Hubert, the town of Leadchurch’s apprentice dung sifter, said.

  From inside the door, Gary shouted, “No you’re not.”

  Gwen asked, “Who’s your master?”

  Hubert jerked a filthy thumb back over his shoulder toward the door. “The Necromancer. That fearsome mystical warrior known to man and demon alike as Gary.”

  “No,” Gary shouted from inside. “I’m not teaching you squat!”

  Phillip crouched down to address Hubert closer to his own eye level, with the hope that the warm, fragrant air coming off of Hubert was rising. “Hubert, what is it you think Gary is teaching you by refusing to let you into his house and insisting that he won’t teach you anything?”

  “He’s teaching me the importance of humility and patience.”

  “So, things that Gary himself doesn’t know,” Gwen muttered.

  Brit the Younger shouted through the door, “That means he figures you’re going to let him inside eventually.”

  “I’m not,” Gary shouted.

  Martin asked, “Do you plan to let us in?”

  Gary opened the door. Hubert’s eyes grew wide with horror and fascination at the sight of him, with his black robe and hat, his skeletal prosthetic leg, and his face hidden by a full gas mask.

  Gary pointed down at Hubert. “You, get out of my friends’ way.”

  “Yes, Master!” Hubert scuttled like a crab away from the door, then kneeled, looking up with reverence. Gary kept his eyes on Hubert as he held the door open wide.

  Once all of the wizards had entered, Hubert said, “I wait to do your bidding, Master.”

  Gary snarled, “Good! Then go home.”

  “Already done, Master. My home is by your side.”

  Gary slammed the door shut.

  “How’d that happen?” Martin asked as they all walked through the ceremonial antechamber where Gary performed magic for any locals who came to him for help. They passed through the circular cave, past the many torches and the stone altar holding an immense, ancient-looking leather-bound book, which concealed a mid-nineties trackball PowerBook.

  Gary took off his gas mask and led his guests to the door at the far side of the chamber. “I don’t know. He found that old Gene Simmons action figure of mine, and thought it gave him magical powers. I guess he got the bug. Now he wants more.”

  Gary opened the far door, revealing his actual home: a haven of off-white walls and beige carpets. It was clear that he had tried very hard to make his place look nice, but had no idea what nice looked like. It was a home that was quick and easy to tidy up, but would be next to impossible to actually clean.

  Gary asked, “So, why’d you fly in? You said you were gonna teleport.”

  Gwen walked to one of Gary’s two giant brown recliners. They’d come as a set with a matching giant brown sectional, and were large enough to hold two well-acquainted people if they each scooched far to the sides. Gwen looked Martin in the eye and planted herself directly in the middle of the seat.

  The chairs and the couch faced a faux wood-grain rectangle of pressboard slabs holding multiple electronic devices tethered to a massive Sony Trinitron from the days when having a large flat-screen TV meant
owning a huge, heavy box containing a massive glass vacuum tube, the 32-inch front of which was flat. The TV was tethered to a series of dusty black boxes by a series of tangled black cords.

  Once settled, Gwen pointed to the corner of the main room where people materialized when they used Gary’s preprogrammed teleportation algorithm. In it sat a plastic backyard kiddie pool full of some gray liquid.

  “What’s that, Gary?”

  A guilty smile crept across Gary’s face. “Wet concrete. I’ve enchanted it to harden as soon as any solid object appears in it.”

  “Any solid object, like our feet.”

  “That’s one example.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why we didn’t teleport in.”

  “Fair enough. I got Jeff and Roy, anyway. They should be back any minute. Chiseling their feet free shouldn’t take long. And Tyler hasn’t arrived yet. Should I remove the concrete?”

  Martin said, “You know what we’re going to say.”

  “Of course not?” Gary asked.

  “Of course not,” Martin said. He opened the refrigerator, and found it fully stocked—with beverages and condiments. He grabbed a beer, closed the door, twisted off the bottle cap, and threw it into the garbage can, which was full of empty beverage and condiment containers.

  A bluish light filled the room. Everyone’s attention turned as Jeff and Roy materialized, hovering two feet above the kiddie pool full of concrete. Their shoes had a dirty gray cast about them, and the hems of their robes hung straight down, still weighted by small chunks of concrete stuck to the fabric. On Jeff’s wool robe, the gray stains looked incongruous. Roy, on the other hand, wore a trench coat and a modified fedora for his wizard uniform, so the cement stains looked appropriate and gave the impression he’d narrowly escaped angry mobsters.

  “Was the concrete hard to get rid of?” Gary asked, obviously hoping the answer was yes.

  Jeff said, “It wasn’t as unpleasant for us to remove as it will be for you when you find where we put it.” He and Roy floated to the edge of the wading pool, dropped to the floor, and walked to empty spots on the sectional, leaving dusty gray footprints.