City of Brick and Shadow

by Tim Wirkus

  The rules of the challenge were simple, which wasn’t to say they were easy.

  “I want you to spread the word throughout the neighborhood,” the Argentine had explained on that night in his general store, his deputies’ grizzled faces eagerly upturned, his minions’ pale heads cocked to listen. “I want you to tell them I’ve become a prisoner of my own mind, and the only way to free me is to successfully deceive me. You tell them that anyone who can fool me, stump me, trick me, or surprise me, I will reward with everything that I own and control. If, on the other hand, they fail, they forfeit their life.”

  After so many years and so many failures, however, those who took up the challenge employed increasingly unlikely tactics. They presented him with elaborate lies, labyrinthine hoaxes, intricate scams. Some contestants, as the Argentine referred to them, tried to stump the Argentine with obscure bits of trivia, an approach that only annoyed the Argentine, as in the case of the runny-nosed bookseller who asked him how many stones were in the Great Wall of China.

  “370 million,” said the Argentine.

  The bookseller sniffled at this.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Are you saying I’m wrong?” said the Argentine.

  “I would say that number seems quite low,” said the bookseller.

  “Then tell me the correct number,” said the Argentine.

  “Ah,” said the bookseller with a sniffle, “in fact, I don’t know the exact number myself.”

  “And why not?”

  The bookseller pulled a tissue from his pocket and wiped at his nose.

  “But don’t you see,” he said to the Argentine. “The only way to find that out would be to dismantle the wall. That’s why I asked you.”

  “Idiot,” said the Argentine, and had the man executed.

  Other approaches proved no more successful. A lovely young woman in an aubergine dress began by telling the Argentine the story of a young prince who traveled to a far-off land, only to discover the inhabitants of this distant kingdom—each and every one of them—turned to glass. Astonished at what he found, the young prince wandered among these gleaming, transparent lords and ladies, knights and fools, blacksmiths and cowhands, each of them immobilized by this strange enchantment. Baffled by what he found, the young prince wandered the countryside, looking for someone who could explain this strange situation. One day, as the young prince passed a little pond in the forest, a voice called out to him. Approaching the edge of the water, the prince saw a large fish—green and scaly, not made of glass—poking its head above the surface. You there, called out the fish, and the prince crouched down at the edge of the pond. He asked the fish how it had learned to speak. The fish explained that it, too, had once been an ambitious young prince. He had arrived in the land many years earlier.

  The young woman in the aubergine dress paused.

  “What did the fish have to say?” said the Argentine.

  The young woman said, “For that, sir, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow night.”

  “No,” said the Argentine, “I know this trick,” and he had the woman executed.

  One day an old magician tried his luck.

  “Inácio the Magnificent,” announced one of the two brawny armed guards, deputies of a deputy, before escorting in a scarecrow-like figure in a top hat and tails. His costume, threadbare and shiny, had seen better days, as had Inácio himself, his thin hair and drooping moustache a uniform, unnatural black against his wrinkled skin.

  Approaching the front of the store where the Argentine sat in a sturdy wooden chair, Inácio waved his arms with a creaky flourish and, in a voice stripped bare by decades of performance, said, “Inácio the Magnificent, at your service.”

  He bowed, and the Argentine applauded politely.

  “Your excellency,” continued Inácio, “Today I will perform a feat most astounding. Using the immense powers of reflex taught to me by an ancient Eastern sage, I will, from a gun fired at my head, catch a bullet in my teeth.”

  He produced an ancient-looking revolver from his jacket. The two guards stepped forward, hands on their own weapons.

  “It’s fine,” said the Argentine, and the guards stepped back.

  As the act gained momentum with Inácio’s explanation of the great risks involved, the magician began to move, not like a younger man, but like a man who had trained his body over decades to captivate an audience. With a grace only slightly creaky with age, he removed a cartridge from the cylinder and presented it with a bow to the Argentine.

  “If you will,” said Inácio, “please mark the bullet so that you may identify it later.”

  Inácio turned his back to the Argentine, who removed a penknife from the pocket of his pants and carved an obscure symbol into the tip of the bullet.

  “All right,” said the Argentine.

  Turning with another bow, Inácio the Magnificent took the cartridge and returned it to the cylinder. He turned to the two guards.

  “I will now select a volunteer to fire the weapon,” he said.

  “Stop,” said the Argentine.

  Inácio the Magnificent turned back around.

  “The cartridge I marked,” said the Argentine. “You’ve hidden it in your mouth.”

  At this, Inácio’s face brightened, even his drooping moustache perking up.

  “No,” said Inácio with a smile, “no, I haven’t. It’s not in my mouth.”

  He opened his mouth wide, lifting his tongue. Empty.

  “See, you’re wrong!” he said, grinning now, practically jumping up and down in excitement. “See, look! It’s still right here in my hand!”

  He lifted his hand to the Argentine, revealing that the bullet, now free of its case, was, in fact, still in his hand.

  “You were wrong!” he repeated. “You were wrong!”

  The Argentine smiled sadly at this. With a wave of his hand, he signaled to the two brawny deputies, who crossed the room to restrain Inácio the Magnificent, each of them gripping one of his tuxedoed arms.

  “Wait,” said Inácio, his elation evaporating. “What’s this?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Argentine. “It was a good try.”

  “Stop,” said Inácio, as the guards dragged him across the room. “I fooled you. You thought the cartridge was in my mouth.”

  “No,” said the Argentine, “I fooled you. I tricked you into telling me that the bullet was in your hand.”

  For his insolence and his failure to deceive, the shabby magician was burned alive in a stack of old tires.

  And still, improbably, the contestants came, one after another, each failing to deceive the increasingly despondent Argentine.

  • • •

  Some say that the Argentine anticipated all of this, that he understood from the beginning that his challenge was an exercise in futility. What he had created could not be undone, and the challenge only served as an outlet for his frustration, a means of punishing the residents of Vila Barbosa.

  Others say that he still holds out hope—dim though it may be—for a contestant clever enough to deceive him.

  Until that day, however, the Argentine remains trapped in his own imagination, a prisoner of his own power. By day, he roams the subterranean system of tunnels, halfheartedly recording acts of cruelty that he’s already conceived of. By night, he lies awake in his bed, terrified by his own omniscience.

  CHAPTER 24

  Whenever—many years later—Mike Schwartz thought back to that day, he could remember only vaguely their walk home from Luis’s little store. All he could summon from his murky recollections were brief snatches of conversation here and there. He could remember Elder Toronto insisting that the man they had just met was a lonely old crank, that they needed to go back to their apartment and take a second look at some of the information on the note cards.

  “That whole meeting was a wash, then?” said Elder Schwartz.

  “No,” said Elder Toronto. “We still have enough information to take to Cabral.
We fulfilled our end of the deal, and now he’ll have to tell us what he knows.”

  “But how are we going to visit Cabral?” said Elder Schwartz. “President Madvig is going to show up at our place any time now.”

  “I told you last night,” said Elder Toronto. “You distract President Madvig here in Vila Barbosa and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I need something more concrete than that.”

  “Fine,” said Elder Toronto. “We’ll hash something out when we get back to our place. Just let me think for a minute.”

  “You know,” said Elder Schwartz, “President Madvig could already be there.”

  “I doubt it,” said Elder Toronto, and started walking a little faster.

  Even all these years later, though, Mike remembered with an alarming degree of clarity what happened when they arrived at their apartment.

  They should have seen it coming.

  The two missionaries stepped into their dark front room and before they could turn on the light, someone closed the door behind them. Elder Schwartz was knocked to the ground with a blow to the back, and Elder Toronto yelled at him to run. Elder Schwartz scrambled to stand up, but a booted foot kicked him in the leg. As the foot wound up for another kick, Elder Schwartz recognized the man attached to it as the bald police officer who had come to investigate the murder of Ulisses Galvão. On the other side of the room, his partner, the officer with the moustache, held Elder Toronto’s arms behind his back while the third attacker, the man who had claimed to be Grillo, his muscular body even more imposing than either of the two policemen’s, hammered at Elder Toronto’s torso with his meaty fists.

  The bald policeman kicked Elder Schwartz again, this time in the gut, and the air went out of him. He curled into a ball, not breathing. Just as his diaphragm began to resume functioning and Elder Schwartz could breathe again, the bald policeman stomped on his shoulder with an audible crack, and then kicked him in the face. Everything went dark in one eye. Moving methodically, the bald policeman picked him up by the throat, throttled him until he almost lost consciousness, and then threw him to the ground. Elder Schwartz curled up into himself, whimpering.

  The bald policeman turned his back to Elder Schwartz and joined his two fellow assailants. The broad backs of the three men formed a musclebound veil that obscured from view what, exactly, they were doing to Elder Toronto. Still, watching from between his fingers, Elder Schwartz caught flashes of the violence. Fake Grillo pounding Elder Toronto’s face—a swelling, bloody mess of its former self—again and again and again. A kick to Elder Toronto’s knee that sent it bending back in the wrong direction. Something skittering across the floor—a bloody tooth. And then another.

  The three men stepped away and Elder Toronto collapsed to the ground. When he started to push himself up with his wobbling arms, the officer with a moustache picked up one of the desks and threw it down against his struggling body. Elder Toronto didn’t try getting up again and lay there wheezing dangerously.

  The men crossed the room and Elder Schwartz curled up into an even tighter ball. The officer with no hair gave him one last brutal kick to the back of the head. Before he blacked out completely, the last thing Elder Schwartz saw through his one still-functioning eye was the three massive men walking out of the apartment, leaving the flimsy metal door partly open behind them.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  It was one of those Arizona summer mornings when the heat arrives like a biblical plague. With noon still a long way off, backyard thermometers already registered triple digits. Swimming pools, bathwater warm, provided no relief. Morning news programs advised the weak and the elderly to stay indoors. Air conditioner repairmen waited by their phones in tense anticipation. Dusty, brown lizards hid in the shade. The streets of Sandpiper Flats, the subdivision where Mike Schwartz lived with his wife and children, were deserted.

  Inside the Schwartzes’ beige stucco home, the four-ton-capacity air conditioner strained to keep the temperature down.

  “I’m telling you,” said Jason Jenson, sprawled out in an armchair in the Schwartzes’ living room, “this juice supplement is where the action is.”

  Only nine A.M. and already the sun had rendered the closed window blinds practically transparent. Light streamed in, unbidden.

  “Juice supplement?” said Mike Schwartz.

  “Not now,” said Connie Jenson, waving a sleepy hand at Jason. “It’s too early in the morning.”

  “He’s interested,” said Jason. “You’re interested, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Mike.

  He propped himself up with one of the pillows from the couch.

  “Should one of us go check on the kids?” said Alison Schwartz.

  “They’re fine,” said Connie.

  A steady stream of thumps, giggles, and squeals emanated from the bedroom on the other side of the wall. The kids had built a fort in Jodie’s room, which, amazingly, had kept the whole lot of them—seven kids, all told—entertained for half an hour and counting.

  In contrast to their children’s current exuberance, the two couples lay sprawled around the dim living room, still in their pajamas, moving as little as possible. This way, said Alison, they’d generate less heat.

  Jason, though, was sitting up straight in his recliner now, starting to come alive. He and Connie were visiting from Utah, staying with the Schwartzes for a couple of days before wending their way to Disneyland. Connie and Alison were sisters, which made Mike and Jason what, exactly? From his pile of pillows on the floor, Mike wondered what the term would be. Connie was Mike’s sister-in-law, but Jason, as her husband, was one more step removed by marriage. So he wouldn’t be Mike’s brother-in-law. Or would he? This ambiguity briefly troubled Mike, but the unease dissipated as Jason, nobly situated in the recliner, began to speak.

  Although a few years younger than Mike, Jason exuded a snappy competence that made him seem, if not older than Mike, then at least more capable. Drawing power from the savvy aura that surrounded him, Jason began holding forth on the new juice supplement he was involved with—both drinking and selling. He said that someone in their ward introduced him to it. After drinking it for a week, Jason felt better than he ever had in his life. He went back to the guy in the ward and told him he wanted to get involved. And so the guy got him all set up, and now Jason was selling the stuff himself.

  “So it’s one of those pyramid schemes,” said Alison, who had little patience for Jason.

  “No,” said Jason. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, Alison. It’s not a pyramid scheme. This is legitimate. It’s a networked personal business opportunity, and we’re selling something that people need.”

  He said that the founder of the company—a good guy, a member of the church—had served his mission over in Asia somewhere, Jason couldn’t remember where exactly. But while he was over there, he worked in this rural area where—he discovered—everyone lived to be very old. Nineties at least. And they were all really proud of this, and they’d tell people that it was because of this berry that they ate.

  “It’s a berry that doesn’t exist in the West,” said Jason. “Or at least it didn’t until now. There’s not even a name for it in English.”

  He explained that after the company’s founder got back from his mission, he remembered this berry and started to investigate. He went back to this region of Asia and got some samples of the fruit and brought it back to be analyzed. And when he discovered all the amazing properties it had, he knew he couldn’t keep something so great to himself. So he founded the company and developed the juice supplement. And now he just needed people to sell it, so that the juice could help as many people as possible.

  “He’s just a really good guy,” said Jason. “He’s using the power of nature to create greater wellness opportunities for everyone.”

  “And how is this supplement supposed to work?” said Alison.

  Connie rested her hand on her sister’s arm.

  “I was skeptical
at first, too,” she said. “But then I tried some, and let me tell you. I feel amazing. See, how it works is—actually, Jason, you explain it. You’re better at it. Tell them about the Negatoxins.”

  “I’ll get to that,” said Jason. “So, they analyzed this berry, and what they found is that the reason it’s so amazing is because of this chemical or molecule it contains. The name the company uses for it is Positrol. And Positrol is so amazing because when you consume it, it eradicates all of the Negatoxins in your body. Obviously, Negatoxin isn’t the official scientific term for it—that’s just the word the company came up with. The thing is, if you use too much scientific jargon, you run the risk of coming across as an elitist with the people you’re selling to. But I’m getting ahead of myself—you’ll learn all that in the home-business training.

  “What I’m saying is that over in Asia, the people who eat this berry live to be ninety, even a hundred years old on a regular basis. That’s their average age, and I’m not even kidding, and now, that same berry is available worldwide through this supplement.”

  “This juice stuff works, then?” said Mike.

  “Sure,” said Jason. “The main thing, though, is that this company is amazing. Their business model is really, really smart. And I’ll tell you what the best part is if you decide to get involved. Do you get paid for helping people find this juice? Yes. A whole lot, if you play your cards right. But is that the best part? No. The best part is that you’re giving people the gift of wellness. This stuff, Mike? This stuff saves lives.”

  “So it’s been working out well for you,” said Mike.

  “I’m telling you, Mike,” said Jason, “if Connie and I keep on track like this, I can quit my other job by the end of the year. I’m not even kidding. That’s how well we’re doing with this juice supplement. Ten-hour work week, here we come. And that’s great, because you know what that means, Mike? More family time. Because that’s what this is all about.”

  “Interesting,” said Alison.

  Jason shook his head with a good-natured smile.