Spoonbenders

by Daryl Gregory

  The infuriating thing was that with all this government money flying around, so little of it was going to the ones doing the work—the psychic operatives. They were paying Maureen and Teddy peanuts. When Teddy pointed this out to Smalls, the man went into a speech about duty, protecting the country, and the threat to democracy itself. Asking you to forgo your fair share for the good of the nation, the company, or the church was a common enough scam, but telling you to go broke for the sake of an abstract philosophy? That took balls.

  The real money, Teddy quickly figured out, was going to consultants and third-party contractors. Case in point: The morning before the night Teddy proposed to Maureen, they arrived at the barracks to find several workmen in orange coveralls setting up stacks of electrical equipment. Smalls called the seven members of the staff into his office. “I’ve got some good news,” he told them. “Management is very excited about the results that we’ve achieved so far. We’ve been given our own funding line, and an official code name. As of today, we are Aqueduct Anvil.”

  “Wow!” Jones said. “What does it mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Smalls said. “It was next in the book.”

  “What book?”

  “The book of available code names.”

  “You have a book of pre-generated code names?” Teddy asked.

  “If you don’t, then everybody picks names like ‘Thunder Strike.’ In other news—”

  Teddy raised his hand. “Can I tell people I’m in AA?” he asked innocently.

  “Don’t tell people you’re in anything,” Smalls said.

  “Can we still call it ‘the program’?” Bob Nickles asked.

  “Then they’ll know we’re in AA,” Teddy said. Only Maureen and the secretary laughed.

  “In other news,” Smalls repeated, desperately trying to regain control of the meeting. He never laughed at Teddy’s jokes. Any sense of humor in the man was short-circuited in Teddy’s presence by his jealousy. The poor lug was sweet on Maureen, but couldn’t admit these unclean thoughts to himself, and so had to take out his frustrations on her charming, loudmouthed beau. It didn’t matter that Teddy and Maureen’s relationship had been classified top secret by the woman herself; Smalls could sense it.

  “Management also approved an expansion of the program,” Smalls said. “We’re going on a hiring spree.”

  Smalls had gotten permission to test army personnel and read them into the program if their scores matched the desired “psychological profile.” Teddy assumed that meant gullibility.

  “Test them how?” Maureen asked.

  “That’s an excellent question,” Smalls said. “Thank you, Maureen.”

  God help us, Teddy thought.

  Smalls gestured toward the door. “Here is the man who can answer your questions.” Standing there, hands clasped behind his back, was a short man in a black suit. His hair was wispy on top, but his mustache was as thick, oiled, and pointy as a silent film villain’s.

  “This is G. Randall Archibald,” Smalls said. “And he has a device that will revolutionize psi research.”

  “You don’t say,” Teddy said.

  The mustachioed man surveyed the room. “My torsion field detector can measure psi ability with ninety-five percent accuracy.”

  “Ninety-five point six,” Smalls said. “How about we begin with you, Teddy?”

  “Say what?” Teddy asked. He glanced at Maureen. She suddenly took an interest in her shoes.

  “You of all people have nothing to be afraid of,” Archibald said with the tone of a physician hiding a large syringe behind his back. “Not a talent as powerful as yourself.”

  Coming home did nothing to improve Teddy’s mood. Buddy was crouched in the living room, sweaty and distressed, trying to rewire a lamp. (Why? Was it broken? If it hadn’t been it was now.) Frankie sat at the kitchen table, three empty beer bottles in front of him, sucking down his fourth.

  “What are you doing here, and what have you done with my beer?” Teddy asked.

  “I dropped off Matty. He’s a hell of a young man. Good worker, enthusiastic, and ready to push himself. Not like most kids.”

  “Right,” Teddy said. “Not like the kind who hang around your house, expecting a handout.”

  “Exactly.” Frankie finished his beer, got up to pull another one from the fridge. “A real go-getter.” Under the table sat a cardboard box.

  “What the hell is that?” Teddy asked, knowing full well what the box was.

  “I brought you a refill,” Frankie said.

  “No.” Teddy shook his head. “No no no no.”

  “You know this stuff is good for you. It’s got—”

  “Antioxidants! Jesus Christ, I know. Take it out of here, Frankie. I got enough God damn antioxidants to drown a steer.”

  “If you become one of my down-line distributors, the price gets even cheaper.”

  “We’ve talked about this. That’s your scam, not mine.”

  “All I’m asking is for once in your life you show a little support.”

  “Once in my—is that what you said? Once?”

  “I don’t mooch off you,” Frankie said, in denial of all historical records. “We all know you’re loaded—”

  “I’m not loaded.”

  “—but at least I don’t squat here, eat your food, expect you to take care of me.”

  Teddy opened the high cabinet and brought down the Hendrick’s bottle. “So what you’re telling me,” he said, pouring three fingers into a thick-bottomed glass, “I buy one more box from you, that’s it, you’ll never ask for anything again?”

  Frankie frowned. “What’s the matter with you?” He wasn’t used to sarcasm from Teddy, whose habit in these post-work sessions was to listen quietly. Two or three times a week Frankie would do this, come in after work, start holding forth on herbal supplements or real estate taxes or whatever had gotten into his brain or under his skin, and consume all Teddy’s Heinekens and Ritz crackers. He was in no rush to go home to Loretta, probably because he didn’t want to get stuck watching the twins or taking them to gymnastics practice. He’d keep talking until the beer or Teddy’s patience ran out. Then Teddy would clap his son on the arm, agree with whatever his last point was, and head upstairs for a nap. (Though it wasn’t so much a nap as a retreat.) He’d decided years ago there was no profit in arguing with the boy, and no way to stop his yammering any more than he could start Buddy talking. Theoretically, Buddy would be the perfect sound-absorbing device for Frankie’s verbiage, but ever since the riverboat the brothers could barely look at each other.

  “I’m fine,” Teddy said. “Just fine.” He handed Frankie his gin glass and nodded at the fridge. “You’re closest, drop some ice in there.”

  Frankie did as he was told. He popped the last three cubes from a tray and slid the empty container back into the freezer.

  Jesus Christ, Teddy thought, I’ve raised a family of Visigoths.

  “So you’re going to buy the box?” Frankie asked.

  Teddy leaned forward. “Let me tell you a story.”

  “Ugh.”

  “That’s right, it’s my turn. You know what everybody told me when your mother died?”

  Frankie all but rolled his eyes. “That you should give us all away.”

  “Damn straight! Pack you all off to social services.”

  “Or Mom’s family.”

  “You’da liked that. Raised by a bunch of mick alcoholics.” Frankie made a face and Teddy said, “That don’t make me racist. Some Irish do drink like God damn fish. Your mom’s ma, God rest her soul, was a teetotaler, but her pa? Hard-core alkie. And her brother was a fall-down drunk.”

  “I thought Mom’s brother died in high school—”

  “Sure did.”

  “—of leukemia.”

  “Alcohol-related leukemia,” Teddy said. “That’s your genes, there, Frankie boy. Better watch yourself.”

  Suddenly Buddy charged into the kitchen, looked around wildly, and then
lunged for the phone. It rang just as he picked it up. He stared at it a second, then held it out toward Teddy.

  “Hello?” Teddy asked.

  “So your calling card is a two?”

  “Graciella,” he said. Couldn’t help smiling.

  “I would have thought you’d pick an ace at least,” she said.

  Teddy ignored Frankie’s questioning look, then walked outside with the phone. God damn he needed a cordless in this house full of people. “See, if I give you an ace, you’d think I was bragging,” he said. “I could go down to a face card, but then there’s no room to write. But the deuce, well, it may not look like much, but it’s wild.”

  “So,” Graciella said. “Degloving.”

  “Ah. As I said, I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  “Tell me the story, Teddy.”

  “Not over the phone. How about the diner by Dominick’s?” Where we first met, he didn’t add.

  “They don’t have a bar. I’m going to need a drink.”

  “I know a place,” he said.

  “I’ve already called the babysitter,” she said.

  He went back inside, resumed his seat. Took a long, bittersweet sip of the Hendrick’s. Leaned back.

  Frankie was looking at him with an odd expression. “What just happened?” he asked.

  “Nothing, my boy. Nothing.”

  “You’re smiling at something.”

  Teddy swirled his glass, thinking.

  Frankie nodded slowly. “So…”

  “All right, all right,” Teddy said with an artificial sigh. “One box.”

  On the bus ride home from Fort Meade, Maureen was silent, her expression distracted.

  “Don’t you worry,” Teddy told her. “That machine don’t mean a thing.” She didn’t answer. Because of course it did mean something, because Smalls believed in it. And how could he not? The results corresponded with all his biases.

  G. Randall Archibald had tested each of them. They didn’t start with Teddy, because Jonathan Jones was so anxious to go first. Archibald fastened electrodes to the boy’s arms and temples, then plugged him into the stack of electronic devices—which in aggregate evidently formed this torsion field detector. The boxes hummed and whirred and emitted a smell of hot rubber. Archibald asked Jones to go through a remote-viewing exercise, and the staff watched tensely as the dials of the machine twitched and swung. Afterward, Archibald wrote down numbers on a pad, harrumphed to himself, and then called up Bob Nickles. The retiree performed about the same as Jones.

  Then came Maureen. As soon as she closed her eyes to concentrate on a target on Russian soil, the gauges slammed to the right like Barney Oldfield’s speedometer.

  Archibald seemed shocked, and mumbled something about recalibrating the device, but Smalls reassured him. As far as he was concerned, the detector was right on the money.

  Teddy went last. Archibald taped the electrodes to Teddy’s skin, turned on the machine…and waited. The gauges didn’t move. Teddy made a joke about Maureen burning them out, and no one laughed, not even Maureen. A second round of testing with the group returned similar results: Jones and Nickles were active but feeble, Maureen was a powerhouse, and Teddy was a dud.

  “It’s the oldest scam in the book,” Teddy said to Maureen, still trying to cheer her up as the bus rumbled toward Odenton. “That guy, Archibald? He’s going to make a mint ripping off the government. It’s a better deal than being a psychic, that’s for sure. He’s taking Smalls for a ride. There’s no better sucker than a man with signing approval on a governmental line item.”

  Still Maureen didn’t speak.

  “Okay, does it work?” Teddy asked rhetorically. “Maybe.” That was a lie, but for her own good. “It sure was right about you, though.”

  Maureen finally looked at him, and he was shocked to see that her eyes were gleaming. It tore him up to see her holding back tears. Worse than full-fledged crying. She said, “You believe in me now?”

  “Babe, you’re asking a born second-deal man whether he believes in psychic powers. I know every trick in the book, and the ones that aren’t in the book? Well, I know enough to watch the left hand when the right one’s waving around. And kid, I’ve been watching every move you’ve made since last summer.”

  He sighed. “But God damn if I could catch you. Every day in Dr. Eldon’s lab you had me turned around, mystified, and befuddled. And then we got out here, and I thought, at last, I’ll be able to watch her every day, there’s no way she could fool me every minute. Smalls maybe, but not Teddy Telemachus. And you know what? I was right.”

  “What? I never—”

  “You didn’t fool me, Maureen McKinnon, because you weren’t trying to. You’re the real thing. It took me long enough to believe it—it’s against my nature. I’d be damned if some blue-eyed Chicago beauty was going to make a mark out of me. But you, you’ve got the goods. You’re an honest-to-God psychic. And I’m in love with you.”

  She sat back in the vinyl seat, and now a tear had escaped to track down her cheek. He was mystified again. Was she happy or upset? He decided to go with happy, because the alternative would crush him.

  “And what about you?” she asked finally. “Is the machine right about you?”

  “You already know,” he said. “I’ve told you every trick I’ve used.” All but two, he thought. The one he pulled this morning, and the one he was about to perform. He was going to do it later, over dinner, but she needed a little magic right now, on this bus crammed with soldiers and secretaries.

  “Regard this ordinary chapeau,” he said, and doffed his fedora. “Absolutely nothing inside.”

  She dabbed at her eyes with the knuckles of one hand. “Not now, Teddy.”

  He reached inside. “And yet, something appears out of nothing.” He lifted his hand and showed her the black velvet ring box in his fingers.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “It’s a little cramped, but I’ll try to get on my knees.”

  “No. Please.” She covered his hand with her own, pushing his fingers against the box. “I have to tell you something.”

  “As long as it ends in ‘yes.’ ”

  “Something’s happened.” Her face was so serious. “No. Someone has happened.”

  His chest tightened. “Another guy?”

  “Or girl,” she said. “We won’t know for a while.”

  “Oh,” he said. Then: “Oh!” Then: “Oh my God!”

  She watched him, still not smiling. Waiting for him to make himself clear. He said, “Are you sure? Have you talked to a doctor?”

  “I didn’t have to,” she said. “I can see it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not just remote things, Teddy.” She touched her belly. “I looked, and it was right there.”

  “Jesus Christ on a stick,” Teddy said. He breathed out, looking at the seatback in front of him without seeing it.

  “You can take it back if you want,” she said.

  “What?” He couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  “The ring.”

  She wasn’t making any sense.

  “I need to know what you’re thinking, Teddy. I can’t see inside your brain.”

  “What do I think?” He turned to her. His tears and the bright bus window behind her had made her face into a blur haloed in sunlight—a stained-glass angel. “I think this kid’s going to be the greatest thing in the world!”

  “Welcome to the Hala Kahiki Lounge,” he said to Graciella. “The finest tiki bar in Chicagoland.”

  She eyed the room’s bamboo paneling, the fringed lamps, the plastic, grimacing gods lining the walls. “I’m guessing it’s the only one?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps. But don’t disparage an establishment merely because it’s outlasted its peers.” Patti the waitress greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and showed him to his usual table. He ordered a rum they flew in from Barbados. Graciella stuck with bourbon.

  “So,” she said significa
ntly, midway through her second drink.

  “It’s really not a story for polite company,” he said.

  “All day I sit in court listening to terrible stories,” she said. “And every night I talk to my divorce lawyer. I haven’t been in polite company for a long time.”

  “You’re leaving Nick Junior?” He tried not to sound happy about it.

  “If I can without killing him.” She waved a hand. “This story of yours. Get cracking.”

  “Right.” He stirred his drink, deciding where to begin. “I told you I used to play cards with Nick Senior? There were a few of us who got together every week for a regular game at his place.”

  “The pizza restaurant,” she said.

  “Nick had a big table in the kitchen. He’d make pies as we played, open up the wine…”

  Graciella gestured with two fingers: speed it up.

  “Well then. One of these guys in the group, let’s call him Charlie, he was one of Nick’s best friends. They’d known each other for years, and Charlie did some work on the side for Nick. Nothing violent, but not exactly legal. They’d had this deal for years, no problems. Well, we show up for poker night, and there’s tension in the air. Seems Charlie has screwed up, and screwed up bad. A job went south, one of Nick’s friends got hurt, and Charlie lost a bunch of money that belonged to, well, certain people—”

  “I know what the Outfit is,” she said.

  “Of course you do, of course you do. And you’ve heard how much they care about their money. So Nick’s making a pizza for the group, white flour up to his elbows, and he starts asking Charlie about how he screwed up. Charlie’s nervous but he’s playing it cool. And Nick keeps talking at him, and the whole time they’re talking Nick’s running dough through the pizza roller—you know what that is?”

  She shook her head.

  “A big machine, with two rollers like metal rolling pins, squashes the dough. It gets going pretty fast, too. And suddenly two guys at the table grab Charlie by the arms and bring him up to the machine.”

  “Oh God,” she said. Getting it now.

  “Both hands,” Teddy said. “Shoved them in there. First thing that happens, the fingers get crushed flat. The rollers jam up on the wrists, but keep pulling. Then the skin rips off, all the way down to the fingertips.”