The Devil's Copper

by Jamie Crothall

  Walter was waiting for me outside.

  In fairness to him, he could have gone inside – it’s not like the door was securely locked – but he waited for my return instead. Did I treat him too harshly before?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I tried calling.”

  “I was busy.”

  “Can I come in?”

  I gestured towards the door. “You know how to do it.”

  He opened the door and entered, giving the place a quick look over to make sure no one was waiting for me. Good call, I never considered that.

  “Looks safe,” he said. “Hey, so I was doing some thinking today. I did a little digging around too. Talked to a few people I know to be involved in sketchy things. Just trying to get a few feelers. Not too much to get excited about, but I did hear a few tid-bits about a few racist cops on the take. Then again, what cop isn’t racist around here? Not sure how valuable that information is, but…”

  “So you’re a time traveler, are you?” I asked.

  Why not cut to the chase?

  “Well…”

  “Are you from the future?”

  “No.”

  “Are you from the past?”

  “No,” he said, a little more impatiently this time.

  “So, do you travel forward through time or back?”

  “I’m…not sure to be honest.”

  “You can see how that’s unconvincing.”

  “Look,” he said, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, “I’m not sure if I travel in time or if time travels around me.”

  “Well that clears things up. Thank you.”

  He laughed, as though the idea of clarifying it was absurd. It probably was.

  “I can see ten seconds into the future,” he explained. “And if I don’t like it, I can snap myself back and do something different.”

  “ ‘Ten seconds,’ ” I stated flatly. I wasn’t verifying it so much as repeating it.

  “It used to be more, but…y’know…things don’t last as long when you start to get older.”

  “I’m glad you think this is funny.”

  “Flip a coin,” he said.

  I didn’t hesitate, and took up the challenge.

  “Call it,” I said as I flipped it and cupped it on the back of my hand.

  “Heads.”

  I peeked. It was heads. I did it again.

  “Heads.”

  Again.

  “Tails.”

  Again.

  “Heads.”

  I won’t write out how many times we went through this.

  “Starting to seem like less of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  It would explain why I often heard him counting to himself. But I wasn’t going to acknowledge that.

  “You know why I trust you now?” he asked.

  “…no.”

  “I had you pick a number. I ran through every number from one until seven, and you agreed it was seven. I then ran through it a few more times to see if you’d change your mind. It always came back to seven. You could have changed your answer to be contrary. A lot of people do. You kept your answer though. Even if it meant conceding to me when you really didn’t want to. That meant I could trust you.”

  Huh. “Wait…so how many times did we go through that then? Assuming it was true.”

  “About twenty times. You didn’t realize it though, ‘cause I always snapped back to the same point.”

  “Or it could have been a coincidence.”

  “Like the twenty coin tosses I called?”

  “We only did ten.”

  “Yeah, but I got it wrong a few times, and had to re-do it. It felt like a lot more. I lost count.”

  “I still don’t buy it,” I stated.

  I mean, I have to admit that part of me did. But I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction.

  “Tell me a story,” he offered. “Something I wouldn’t know. Something Jack wouldn’t know. Something personal, but something short.”

  “Why would I tell you if I never told Jack?” I asked.

  But I knew why. It would prove it wasn’t something Jack told him.

  “Keep it short though,” he said somewhat impatiently, like it wasn’t the first time he told me. “Ten seconds, remember?”

  I thought for a moment. His lips moved as he started counting, but when I didn’t immediately offer a story he started from ‘one’ again.

  “Okay then,” I said, taking a deep breath. What did I have to lose except a little self-respect? “When I was eight years old I was…”

  “Kissed by a boy unexpectedly and you hit him. A week later he died in a car accident and you secretly blamed yourself for it for a lot longer than you should have.”

  Okay, that freaked me out, not going to lie. “How…”

  “I told you how.”

  “All in ten seconds?”

  “Well, you kept taking too long, so I had to re-start a few times. To be honest, I’m only guessing you stopped blaming yourself at some point. Tell me you don’t still think it was your fault somehow.”

  “This is very invasive.”

  “I can also tell you that you’re wearing a red bra and matching underwear.”

  I gasped and I held my arms to myself, as though he were about to pull my clothing away.

  “Ha, see? You do believe me!” he said. “Relax, I saw your strap and guessed the rest.”

  “You’re an ass.”

  “Think about the security guard then,” he offered. “I had no idea who he was. I just asked him a question, got an answer, snapped back, asked him further questions, snapped back, and in the end, I had him fully believing I’d known him for years. Barry, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A lot of time and effort went into that. What do they call that now? Data mining? People will tell you a lot more than they normally would if they think you know them. It’s just a matter of going back several times to draw out more details.”

  “How long did that take?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to say. Twenty minutes? Plus at least another twenty minutes to guess Jack’s password. He doesn’t use the same one at work as he does at home, the bastard. Then, a lot of trial and error avoiding the men coming down the hall. It was a long day for me yesterday.”

  “How can it be a long day if you go back ten seconds to the original time?”

  “Oh, my body had a normal twenty four hour day. But my brain was on duty for about thirty six hours. That’s why I knew things before you told me. You already told me. I just kept going back for more detail. I like to cut through the fluff and get to the core of the issue. People just take too damn long for my liking.”

  I looked at him blankly for a few moments, then found other things to look at while I absorbed this information.

  “Okay then,” I said, “if this is true…”

  “You believe me.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You want to.”

  “If I believed you,” I continued, “then answer me one question. How?”

  He could have responded in a lot of ways and I would have been skeptical, but instead he gave me an answer I wasn’t expecting. He simply shrugged.

  “No idea.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have you always been like this?”

  “As long as I can remember.”

  “And you’ve never questioned it?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re a control freak who doesn’t like unanswered questions, and you’re telling me you’ve never tried to figure it out?”

  “It is what it is.”

  “What if you had an unhealthy dose of radiation at some point? Oh god, am I in danger just by being near you?”

  He laughed. “Now I know you were a tomboy. Read a lot of comics as a child, I assume?”

  “Did I tell you that? Ten seconds ago?”

  He shook his head. “Just a lucky guess.”
<
br />   “What if this is a gift from God?” To this, he simply rolled his eyes. “You could have been given a gift to change the world for the better!”

  “In ten second intervals?”

  “Well, I understand how you pulled a winning Nevada ticket your first try.”

  “Oh my god! That took over an hour,” he gasped, vexed by the reminder. “The average box around here has about one thousand tickets. Each box has about ten $100 winners, and a few others with lower prizes. It’s a matter of going in again and again, until you find a winner worth keeping.”

  “So you have a one-in-one hundred chance of pulling a winner?”

  “Slimmer odds than that, because you often end up picking the same one over and over again by accident. Depending on how lucky I am, I might go for more. Sometimes I get so fed up, I settle for a five dollar prize. Of course, this is all dependent on the lotto booth being honest when they tell you how many winners are left in the box. And let me tell you; they’re not always honest. I tried to call a few owners out on that, but it's hard when you can’t prove it. Plus, if you win too many times, they get suspicious. So you have to go elsewhere. That’s when I find other ways to make money.”

  “So, when you got accused of cheating at cards…”

  “Exactly. I had to learn to keep my winning streaks to a minimum. It’s easy to get carried away when you can just get up, lean over someone’s shoulder and look at their cards. As long as you go back ten seconds before they punch you. Or shoot you. You see, I helped Jack get back on his feet by taking him down south and hitting a few casinos. I kept our winning streaks as low-key as possible, and when we started getting noticed we’d find another one to go to.”

  “So Jack knew? About your…ability?”

  “I revealed myself unto him, yes. In one weekend, Jacky boy made enough money from his share to get back on his feet, put himself through school, and get the career he wanted. He used his money to better himself.”

  “And what did you spend your money on?”

  Walter shrugged. “I bought a purebred.”

  I wouldn’t have thought of him as a dog-person. “When was this? Hold old is it now?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Shep, thank you very much.”

  I didn’t know how to reply to that, so I didn’t. I didn’t know how to reply to a lot of it. I still wasn’t sure what to believe. But the part of me buying Walter’s story was feeling paranoid. If any of it was true, how did I know how many conversations he and I had that I don’t recall? How much information have I disclosed without knowing I did? It was like having my autonomy wrestled away from me. I didn’t like it. At all.

  “You don’t have any food,” he said. Was that a statement or an assumption? Had he already checked without my knowing? “There’s a pizza joint around the corner, isn’t there?” I nodded. “Let’s go, I’ll buy.”

  I threw up my hands, figuring ‘why not’? I followed him out the door and down the steps as we made our way down the street and around the corner.

  “So, I know what you’re wondering,” he said.

  “No I really think you don’t,” I replied. I hesitated. “Or maybe you do. How many times have we had this conversation already?”

  “Aw, see you’re getting paranoid now. This is one of the reasons I don’t tell people. Anyway no, we’ve not had this conversation, but you’re probably wondering if this has any relation to ‘Inspiration, Inc’, Jack’s little pet project.”

  “It crossed my mind,” I admitted.

  “Totally his idea. Though I probably served as an inspiration. He got me involved. I think he was trying to get me to work a regular job, though he should have known better. I helped him out where I could though. I mean, you get a bit of information from the person hiring you about the intended ‘target.’ However, I can glean more information by having an informal run-in with them on the street, and get some minor details out of them. Helps if they don’t remember, but that all depends what I can get out of them in ten second segments. I always thought the idea was a bit dumb, to be honest.”

  “I think it’s lovely,” I said defensively. “He gives people hope. And Encouragement.”

  “Does he though? I mean, what if it was for the better that these people changed their ambition? In the end, are they doing what they want? Or are they being conned into changing their minds, based on what their friends or family think? I dunno. Call me a skeptic, but I always figured it was a bit manipulative. I get that it gives him satisfaction. It proves he’s got a good heart. But in the long run, who really benefits from it more?”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way. Nor did I really want to. It led me to meeting Jack, so that was always good enough for me.

  “Stay here,” said Walter, as we approached the small, and rather sketchy pizza place.

  I did as he said. He casually walked up the steps and in the front door. He hesitated a few times, looked over his shoulders, and craned his neck around to assess his surroundings. At one point, he gave a ‘one moment please’ gesture to someone behind the counter, pretending to read the menu board. Then, he simply lifted a prepared pizza off the counter, and left with it. He smiled as he descended the stairs.

  “Let’s go, I already got caught like four times,” he laughed.

  I followed him as he briskly walked back to our apartment.

  “Do you steal on a daily basis?”

  “Don’t go getting all moral on me. You’re such a buzz-kill, princess.”

  Why did it bother me so much when he called me that?

  “You’ve got me thinking,” I said as we returned to the apartment. “I’ve been putting so much thought into what Jack might have gotten involved with during his day job that I didn’t think about who he might have pissed off in his side job.”

  “Good point.”

  “Maybe we should go to his other office and check it out. See if there’s anything of any note there.”

  “You said ‘we.’ ”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Are you saying you trust me?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m still not entirely convinced, to be honest.”

  “Fair enough. Why don’t we go in the morning? It’s late and the freaks are more likely to be out now.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You can sleep on the couch if you need to.”

  “See? You do trust me.”

  I shook my head. “I trust that I still have a gun in my purse with three bullets.”

  With a mouth full of pizza he simply said, “Fair enough.”

  SIX

  I never questioned Jack’s need to have a separate office for his side job. He could have easily run it from home. I just assumed he didn’t want to have the phone based in his own personal residence. I wondered if he was setting up a base of operations, in preparation to someday go on his own, independent from his firm. When I’d asked, Jack just shook his head dismissively, like it was some far off idea. I never suspected anything illicit. I did my best to chase any such ideas. None of his meetings with ‘T’ seemed to occur at his office; they always took place at random locations around town. As far as I was concerned, it was just a place to base his fledgling operation.

  I parked at the City Centre. Walter and I walked through the downtown core toward Jack’s office building. It was on Larch, next to a medical building.

  Along the way, we made a quick pit-stop at a newsagents. Walter wanted lottery tickets. He was disappointed to find they’d stopped selling them. He tried his hand at a few scratch tickets, but the fact he scratched as fast as he could and still won nothing proved it took him too long to loop back and try again.

  Y’know; if you believe that kind of thing.

  We carried on our way.

  As we were about to round the corner, Walter froze in his tracks.

  “Bad idea,” he said, his eyes wide.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Cops. All around the building.”

  “I
sn’t that a good thing?”

  “Depends which cops.”

  He did say something about crooked cops. But it was vague. It was always possible he knew more than he let on.

  “…one…two…let’s go back. This was a mistake.”

  Walter turned and headed back the way we came before I could reply. I stood motionless, but he kept walking, so I followed him.

  I came face to face with Officer Simpson, the young, black policewoman I’d met at the precinct.

  “Billie Turner?” she asked.

  Walter seemed just as off-guard as I was. Either he saw no way to avoid her, or he wasn’t as paranormal as he made himself out to be.

  “Uh, hi,” I said.

  “Can I ask what you’re doing here?”

  “Does she need a reason?” said Walter.

  I gritted my teeth. He was going to make this worse, wasn’t he?

  “She’s not under arrest,” she replied coldly. “It was merely a question.”

  “Walter, this is officer Simpson,” I said, attempting to diffuse the tension with some level of familiarity. “I met her at the station the other day.”

  “Oh, right. When you thought Jack was arrested.”

  “Yes,” the officer interjected. “Did you ever get to the bottom of that?”

  “Look, I, uh…need to be somewhere, so if I’m not…”

  “Perhaps you should come to the station so we can clarify a few things.”

  “Uh…you said she wasn’t under arrest,” Walter insisted.

  “She’s not,” the officer replied.

  Officer Simpson craned her neck to look beyond us. A handful of officers were spilling over around the corner. One gestured to her. Walter and I exchanged a look, indicating we had both seen the same thing. Officer Simpson put her attention back on me, only this time her tone was more informal. “Billie, I really think it’s in your best interest to come with me.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  “I mean,” she continued. “I don’t know if…”

  “Well, let’s not be rude,” Walter said, putting his hand around my waist. “The officer wants a word, and doesn’t want to do it in the street.” He looked to the policewoman. “As you say, no one is under arrest, correct?”