Independence Hall

by Roland Smith

  She was lying almost as well as Boone.

  “I’m going to take him back to an examination room,” the nurse said. “You can wait in the waiting room.”

  “Can’t we go with him?” I asked. I thought it would be safer to stick close to Everett and the doctors and nurses hanging around him.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “We only allow patients in the exam rooms. We’ll take good care of him and come and get you when he’s fixed up.” She handed Angela a clipboard and pen. “Just fill out what you can.”

  That ought to be simple, I thought. The only thing we knew about him was that he was old and that his name was Everett. And that probably wasn’t his real name.

  The nurse wheeled Everett away.

  I looked through the glass door. “They’re coming and the one you blew the knee out on is a woman.”

  “What?” Angela joined me at the door.

  The ski masks were off. Eben Lavi was helping a woman with short blond hair across the lawn. She was in obvious pain as she hopped along on one leg.

  Angela and I looked for a place to hide, but all the doors were locked except for the waiting room, which didn’t have a door. We stepped inside.

  Royal Flush

  We were the only ones in the waiting room.

  “Now would be a good time to pull a rabbit out of your hat,” Angela said.

  “I don’t have a hat,” I said. “And if I did I’d try to pull a gun out of it, not a rabbit. You’d better call Boone and tell him we’re still in trouble.”

  I watched the door while Angela made the call. Eben and the women were making their way to the front desk. The nurse came out from the exam room.

  “When it rains it pours,” she said. “This place was like a morgue until a few minutes ago.”

  “She fell and hurt her knee,” Eben said.

  “Looks like you fell too,” the nurse said.

  Eben touched his swollen face. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  The nurse retrieved another wheelchair and helped the woman into it. She handed Eben a clipboard. “You’ll have to fill out this paperwork. The waiting room’s over there.”

  Eben saw me and gave me an icy grin. As he started toward the waiting room a door down the hall opened. Two doctors, a man and a woman, in powder-blue scrubs came out. I wanted to run past them through the door before it slammed shut, but I couldn’t leave Angela behind.

  I stepped in front of them, “Hi,” I said. “Do you want to see a cool card trick?”

  “What?” the woman asked.

  “A card trick,” I repeated. “You know, magic.”

  The man looked at his watch. “I’m not sure we have—”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “If you’re not impressed with the trick I’ll give you four tickets to the Match concert tonight.”

  The man laughed. “I just happen to know that the Match concert at the Electric Factory sold out in less than an hour and that you can’t get tickets unless you want to pay a couple of hundred bucks a pop from scalpers.”

  Eben was halfway to the waiting room.

  “You can if you’re Blaze Munoz’s son,” I said quickly. “

  Right,” the man said. “And I’m Elvis Presley.”

  “It’s the truth,” I said. “Roger Tucker’s daughter, Angela, is here too. A friend of ours bumped his head in an auto accident. They’re looking at him inside.”

  “Do you always solicit complete strangers to watch you do tricks?” the woman asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “But I just learned a new one and Angela is bored seeing it. I need a fresh audience.”

  “Why not?” the man said, smiling. “But I’ll warn you. I’ve seen a lot of card tricks and it’s going to be hard to impress me.”

  I didn’t care if he was impressed or not. All I needed was for him and the woman to stick around until Boone showed up.

  Eben reached us. “Excuse me,” he said. The right side of his face was starting to turn an ugly yellow and it looked like he would have a pretty good shiner before sunrise. He brushed past us and we followed him into the waiting room.

  Angela was still on her phone with Boone and she was clearly relieved that I had brought company. “Oh,” she said loud enough so everyone could hear. “I think we’ll be fine. Q just walked in with a couple of doctors.” She looked over at Eben. “There’s only one other person in here besides us. He just came in too. Okay. We’ll see you soon.” She ended the call and walked over to us.

  “Are you really Roger Tucker’s daughter?” the woman asked.

  “Angela,” she said.

  The man looked at me. “And what’s your name?”

  “Q,” I said.

  “I’m Dr. Rask and this is Dr. Wilson.”

  We shook hands.

  Dr. Rask looked at Angela. “Q said that he wanted to show us a card trick and if we weren’t impressed he’d give us Match concert tickets.”

  Angela smiled. “Then I wouldn’t count on those tickets,” she said. “People are usually impressed with Q’s card tricks.”

  Angela had never seen me do a card trick, but she was right…people are usually impressed. I hoped I had set up everything right and that I could draw it out until Boone got there.

  I took my deck out and handed it to Dr. Rask. “Take a look and make sure it’s just a regular deck of cards.”

  He flipped through the cards. “They look okay to me.”

  “Give them a shuffle.”

  He sat down at one of the coffee tables and gave the deck several good shuffles.

  “I’m going to turn my back,” I explained. “Spread the cards out on the table and pick one.” I waited several seconds, trying to slow the trick down. “Do you have a card?”

  “Yep,” Dr. Rask said.

  “Good. Show it to everyone.” I waited another several seconds before asking if everyone had seen it. They all answered yes, except for Eben, of course, who didn’t think he was playing. “Okay,” I said. “Put the card back into the pile and give the deck several more shuffles—really mix them up.”

  When he finished shuffling I turned back around. Eben was sitting in the chair nearest to the entrance watching us. I hoped Boone showed up soon. I didn’t think the doctors would hang around for a second trick.

  I picked up the deck and held it flat in my palm with my eyes half closed as if I were trying to feel the vibration of the card he’d picked.

  “It’s a spot card,” I said.

  “Nice try,” Dr. Rask scoffed.

  “What’s a spot card?” Dr. Wilson asked.

  “A high card,” Dr. Rask answered. “Ace through ten. Don’t tell him. If we gave him that information he’d be able to eliminate the thirty-two low cards.”

  I smiled. Dr. Rask knew a little something about cards. “Oh look,” I said, pointing to the deck in my hand. The edge of one card in the middle was sticking out a little farther than the others. (This had been accomplished during his definition of a spot card).

  “That might be your card,” I continued. “But let’s not look at it yet. Instead, I want you to look at the card in your pocket.”

  “I don’t’ have a card in my pocket,” Dr. Rask said.

  “Back pocket,” I said.

  He reached into the back pocket of his scrubs and pulled out the ace of hearts. “Interesting,” he said. “But this isn’t the card I picked.”

  “I know,” I said. “But if you were to draw another card what would you like it to be?”

  “If I were playing five-card draw,” Dr. Rask answered, “I’d want to draw a second ace.”

  “I have something a lot higher than a pair of aces in mind.” I looked at Dr. Wilson. “Why don’t you check in your back pocket?”

  She pulled the king of hearts out of her pocket and held it up. “Pretty amazing,” she said.

  I looked at Angela. “I think you’ll find the queen of hearts in your pocket.”

  Angela checked several pockets before finding it an
d pulling it out, grinning.

  “And this is…” I pointed to the card sticking of the deck. “Go ahead and take it out, Dr. Rask.”

  He eased it out of the deck and turned it over.

  “Jack of hearts,” Dr. Rask said. “We almost have a royal flush. But none of these is the card I pulled out of the deck.”

  I was just about finished. Where was Boone?

  “I don’t know what went wrong,” I said, acting shocked. “Check the deck and see if your card’s there.”

  Dr. Rask went through the deck card by card, slowly and thoroughly, for which I was very grateful. By the time he got to the end he was chuckling. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “It’s not there.”

  “Where is it?” Dr. Wilson asked.

  I looked over at Eben Lavi. He was still watching us, but then suddenly turned his bruised head toward the waiting room entrance.

  “Uncle Boone!” Angela said.

  Boone and another man had appeared in the doorway.

  “How y’all doin’?” Boone asked in his old twang, stepping into the room.

  He was followed by a man half his age and twice his girth, with shaggy black hair, who looked like a professional wrestler. He had his right hand buried in his coat pocket and his unblinking eyes fixed on Eben Lavi, who now had his right hand in his coat pocket.

  “I checked on Everett,” Boone continued. “He’s gonna be fine. I’ll get you kids back to the coach. Uly here will keep an eye on things at the hospital. “

  “Your nephew was just showing us a card tick,” Dr. Rask said. “I don’t think he’s quite done. We’re one card shy of a very clever…” he paused and smiled at me, “and impressive royal flush.”

  I was tempted to say forget it, the trick didn’t work, and get the heck out of there. But I couldn’t make myself do that. I had to play it all the way to the end. I looked over at Eben again.

  “Sir?” I said. “Can you reach into your left pocket?”

  Eben stared at me. “Why?”

  “Magic,” I said. “All of us have a high heart, but there’s one missing.”

  Very slowly without taking his right hand out of his pocket, or his eyes off Uly, Eben reached into his left pocket. He pulled out a card and held it up.

  “Ten of hearts,” Dr. Rash said, shaking his head. “That’s my card.”

  “I guess we don’t get those tickets to the Match concert,” Dr. Wilson said. “But it was worth it.”

  I started retrieving the royal flush from them. “You’ll get your tickets,” I said, glancing at Eben. “You saved us…uh…or at least Angela from having to see the trick again. I’ll leave the tickets under your names at will call at the Electric Factory.”

  “We really appreciate that,” Dr. Rask said.

  Eben slipped the ten of hearts back into his pocket. I let him keep it.

  Damage

  “Maybe bringing you two into this wasn’t such a good idea,” Boone said.

  That’s an understatement, I thought. We were sitting in the back of the Range Rover heading to the warehouse. The woman driving our Range Rover was named Vanessa. She looked like my grandmother and was the same woman who had pulled the door closed on the produce truck, which they had borrowed and had returned according to Vanessa. I assumed they had borrowed the taxi too, but it was not going to be returned. The guy sitting next to Vanessa was Felix. He was middle-aged and even bigger than Uly. He looked like he could pick up the Range Rover with one hand.

  “We were in this a long time before you showed up,” Angela said. “At least my father and I were. If you hadn’t come along we wouldn’t have been ready for Eben.”

  “I still should have known he’d figure out where we were. If Eben hadn’t gotten his head cracked in the car wreck he would have grabbed you.”

  Boone’s intel was flawed. “His head wasn’t cracked in the car wreck,” I said. “It was cracked with Angela’s foot along with his partner’s knee.”

  This got everyone’s attention. Vanessa looked at Angela through the rearview mirror. Felix turned around. And Boone stared at her with his mouth open in surprise.

  “It was no big deal,” Angela said, looking down at her lap. “If Q hadn’t lured the two doctors into the waiting room with the card trick Eben would have gotten us. All I did was slow him down outside. Q stopped him.”

  Now they all turned their attention to me. I looked out the window. “It was just a trick,” I said.

  Boone started laughing and was soon joined by Vanessa and Felix.

  “What’s so funny?” Angela asked.

  “I can just imagine Eben and his crew’s shock at being overwhelmed and outmaneuvered by two kids,” Boone said, still laughing. “I guarantee that the official version they give to their bosses will be very different than what actually happened at the hospital.”

  “What happened to the other two?” I asked.

  “Ziv has a broken ankle,” Felix said. “He’ll be out of commission for awhile. The woman with him dislocated her shoulder. She’ll be back…” Felix looked out at his side view mirror. “In fact, I think she’s behind us right now.”

  “I see her,” Vanessa said. “She’s been behind us since we left the hospital. She should be pretty easy to shake, driving one-armed. And that car she’s driving is on its last legs.”

  I turned to look. The same car that had smashed into us was half a block behind us. One headlight was out. The other headlight was pointing up at the sky.

  “Don’t bother trying to lose her,” Boone said. “We’re almost at the warehouse. Once she figures we’re settled in for the night she’ll back off and they’ll regroup.”

  “Why don’t we just call the police and have them picked up?” I asked.

  “Because they have diplomatic immunity,” Boone said. “A get-out-of-jail-free card. The local police have no authority over them. What we did in Nevada by detaining them was technically illegal. They’re not going to let us get away with that a second time. Besides, they haven’t done anything wrong…at least anything we can prove. And they might be able to turn the whole thing around on us.”

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked.

  “Everett could be arrested for hit-and-run and car theft. By attacking Eben and the woman you could be arrested for assault. As U.S. citizens we don’t have immunity. I think Eben would be happy for us to call in the police.”

  Boone’s phone rang. He listened for a moment then clicked off.

  “Everett will be fine,” he said. “Mild concussion. They’ve stitched up his ear, but they want him to spend the night in the hospital for observation. Uly will stay with him.”

  “What about the woman with Eben?” Vanessa asked.

  “She just limped out of the hospital with Eben.” Boone grinned. “Apparently they couldn’t get their car started and had to call a cab.”

  Felix turned around and smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I did a little work on their engine. They’ll be spending some of tomorrow getting new wheels. Did Uly get a chance to talk with Eben?”

  “Yes,” Boone said. “He told Eben to back off.”

  “What did Eben say?” Vanessa asked.

  “Nothing,” Boone answered. “He just smiled.”

  “That’s not good,” Vanessa said.

  I counted off the team members: Boone, Vanessa, Felix, Uly, Everett, our parents’ new PAs… “Anyone on our team not accounted for?” I asked.

  “That would be Ray,” Boone said. “He’s our tech guy.” “

  He’s sitting in his intellimobile,” Felix said. “He doesn’t get outside much.”

  I was too tired to ask what an intellimobile was. Now that we were safe (at least I hoped we were safe) I felt completely spent. All I wanted to do was to climb into my berth and sleep.

  Vanessa brought the Range Rover to a stop in front of the warehouse.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Boone told Felix and Vanessa.

  We got out. The woman in the wrecked car pulled up to the curb ac
ross the street and parked. Boone nodded at her and we walked into the warehouse.

  Bugged

  As soon as we got inside the coach I climbed into my berth and Googled terrorism on my laptop. I came up with nearly 50 million hits. Trying to narrow it down a little I typed in Islamic terrorism. That was much better…there were only about a million hits! I got through about one-eighth of the first Web site before I fell into a comatose sleep.

  When I woke up (starving) I wondered if everything that happened the day before had actually happened. Apparently it had, because Boone, Vanessa, and a third guy I hadn’t met were sitting around the dining room table talking quietly when I shuffled into the kitchen.

  “How did you sleep?” Boone asked.

  “Not too bad,” I said. “Considering the Israeli Mossad tried to kill me last night.”

  I opened the fridge.

  “There’s nothing to eat in there,” Vanessa said. “I already looked.”

  I took out a plastic container of what looked like cauliflower and shook it. “Did you try these?”

  “I don’t even know what those are,” Vanessa said.

  I poured a bowl of cereal. At the sound of dry, tasteless flakes hitting the crockery, Croc jumped out of the passenger seat. I poured him his own bowl and joined the geriatric ex-spies.

  “You must be Ray,” I said to the spy I hadn’t met.

  He gave me a nod and shook my hand. “X-Ray,” he said. “But you can call me X for short.”

  “X is our wizard,” Boone explained.

  “We call him X-Ray because he has the ability to see through solid walls, hack into any computer, pick up any conversation,” Vanessa added.

  It was hard to tell how tall he was because he was sitting, but X couldn’t have been an inch over five feet and a hundred and thirty pounds. He was as old as Boone with short white hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and the thickest eyeglasses I’ve ever seen. When he looked at me his brown eyeballs appeared to be staring through twin magnifying glasses.

  “Vanessa means that I’m the resident geek,” X said. “In other words, I’m the guy who keeps the SOS from getting themselves murdered or arrested on a daily basis.”

  “That’s the name of your team,” I said. “Save our souls?”