by Steven James
I’m a magician.
Involved in the only honest profession.
So I tell her what she needs to know.
As I wait for word from the doctors, Fionna and her children arrive. Xavier must have told her about me being in the tank because she hands me a set of dry clothes from my house.
After changing, I hear from the surgeons: Charlene is recovering well. It looks like she’ll be spending a couple days in the hospital but will be alright.
I hear Turnisen is in one of the rooms on the first floor.
After checking in on Charlene and finding her asleep, I swing by Tim’s room on my way to fill Xavier and Fionna in on Charlene’s condition. The door is slightly open and the lights are off.
I decide not to disturb him and head to the lobby to update my friends, wondering how much trouble I might get into with the undersecretary.
And who the person Akinsanya reported to really is.
Part VIII
Fallen Princes
Monday, February 11
Fourteen hours later
11:32 a.m.
Here’s what we know:
(1) Charlene is doing well.
(2) Dr. Schatzing got a pretty good gash on his head when he was attacked last night, but it looks like he’s going to be fine.
(3) Dr. Jeremy Turnisen is getting the wounds that Akinsanya gave him treated.
(4) Tomás didn’t commit suicide after all. Video surveillance at the police station showed a couple of cops walking down the hall to transfer him to another cell. But the transfer was never sent through from HQ. Turns out it was the two cops who’d been in the theater helping Akinsanya last night.
(5) There’s nothing on the news about the drone incident, which comes as no surprise to Xavier.
Now, Fionna and the kids are out flower shopping for something special for Charlene, and Xavier and I are in the hospital room with her. I’m sitting beside her bed; Xavier has positioned himself on the wide windowsill where he’s eating a pecan log roll.
Agent Ratchford swings by. “So, I just wanted to see how you were,” he tells Charlene. “I was shot last year. I know how much it hurts.”
He was shot?
This guy continues to surprise me.
“I’m feeling much better. Thank you for stopping by.”
We talk for a few minutes. He isn’t able to share much with us about the case. “But there is one thing you might be able to help me with,” he says. “Did any of you hear the name ‘Jesús Garcia’ when Akinsanya and his men were around you?”
We all shake our heads.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. His name came up yesterday. A woman who Akinsanya poisoned mentioned it before she passed away. That’s all we have right now. That, and some unsanctioned research we need to look into at a robotics center. But who knows, maybe if I can get permission we might be able to subcontract a couple researchers to help look into Garcia.”
“Fionna and Lonnie?” Charlene guesses.
“Let’s just say that’s a possibility.”
After he leaves, Xavier crunches his way through a mouthful of pecans and nougat. “I still don’t understand who Akinsanya was working for. You think it’s this Garcia dude?”
They both look at me as if I might have some insight into it. “I don’t know,” I tell them honestly. “I really don’t know.”
As I think about it, that’s not all I’m wondering.
Something else still bugs me.
After everything that happened, the drone didn’t go where Akinsanya was trying to get it to go. The coordinates were wrong.
Or were they right?
Charlene asks if I wouldn’t mind getting her a Coke, and mulling things over, I leave for the soda machines in the lobby.
As I pass the nurses’ station I see a series of photos cycling across the woman’s computer screen—her standing next to a broad-shouldered, smiling man, children playing beside a cabin, a collie running across the desert.
It gets me thinking.
“Say”—she looks at me knowingly—“aren’t you the man who did that magic show for the children yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“I was there. It was very nice what you and your friends did.”
“Thank you.”
There’s a web of relationships here, and I can see threads leading from one person to another, but how they’re all connected is still murky to me.
The photo of Emilio and Tim.
The RixoTray USB drive.
Emilio’s notebooks.
The one person who might be able to shed light on everything is here at the hospital.
I’m not sure if I’ll be allowed to see him, but this nurse seems to have an affinity for me from seeing the show, and she unreservedly gives me his room number when I ask for it.
I swing by the vending machines and buy the Coke. I’m on my way back to Charlene’s room when I decide I can afford a couple-minute detour.
I knock on the door and Dr. Turnisen invites me in.
He’s sitting up in bed.
When I see the extent of his grievous injuries, my heart goes out to him.
Akinsanya cut his face and then stitched him back up in ways that almost made you want to look away when you saw him. It’s gut-wrenching to see.
His left hand is thickly bandaged. I heard he lost three fingers, sliced off by Akinsanya.
“Hello, Dr. Turnisen. My name is Jevin Banks.”
“I’ve seen your billboards.” He struggles somewhat to get the words out. “You must get that a lot.”
“They’re hard to miss. I’ll have to get you into the actual show sometime.”
A nod. “You’re the one who found the codes at my desk.”
“Yes.”
Out of propriety I’m about to ask him how he’s doing, but I figure I can already guess that by seeing his condition. “You went through a lot yesterday.” I really can’t think of any other way to get a conversation started. “You were incredibly brave.”
“Thank you.” He seems unsure how to respond to the compliment.
“We had a mutual acquaintance.”
“Emilio Benigno.”
“Yes.”
“Agent Ratchford filled me in,” he explains. “I was a little out of it last night.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
After a moment he says, “You killed him. The man who did this to me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“From what Ratchford told me, he didn’t die in a very agreeable way.”
“That’s true.”
“It sounds like a strange thing to say, but I’m glad.”
“Considering the circumstances, it doesn’t sound strange at all.”
As I think about what Dr. Turnisen went through yesterday and our visit to his research area at Groom Lake, a few things come together.
The photo on his desk.
The progeria research.
The launch codes.
They were the wrong codes.
Or the right ones.
Yes. It would explain a lot.
“You know, Doctor, a friend of mine once told me you can tell what’s important to someone by looking at three things: his calendar, his checkbook, and his refrigerator door.”
“That makes sense.”
“Well, there’s one other place.”
“And that is?”
“His desk.”
“His desk?”
“Yes.” I walk toward the window. Look out across my city, with all of its filth. With all of its glory. “There was only one photo on your desk.”
“Yes? And?”
I face him again. “Dr. Turnisen, how many people keep a photo of their friend and their friend’s friend on their desk?” I shake my head. “No. People keep pictures of family members on their desks. And that’s why you kept a picture of your son there, where you could see him every day.”
He stares at me for a long time. “Clo
se the door.”
I do.
“How did you know? Just the photo?”
“No. The codes. You erased the original ones. Only yesterday’s set was in pen.”
“There has to be more.”
“There were RixoTray USB drives in your drawer at work. And you allowed yourself to be tortured all day even though you knew the codes. You could have told them to Akinsanya at any time, but you held back. I was thinking about that, about how hard it would be.”
He glances down at the hand that’s missing three fingers.
“I did a show here yesterday, and the hospital administrator mentioned that a sizable anonymous donation was going to be made for the progeria research. How much were you going to get from the drug cartel for delivering the drone?”
He hesitates. “Twenty million.”
“So you were the one. And you were going to donate it to RixoTray’s transdifferentiation research with Dr. Schatzing . . .” I’m thinking aloud, tying the threads together. “But you didn’t want Emilio dead . . . Is that when you changed the codes in your notebook? After Emilio was killed? Is that when you decided you didn’t want the drone to get into the hands of these people after all?”
He looks at me curiously. “How do you know all this?”
“We were looking into Emilio’s death. We stumbled across a few things. When I met Tim yesterday he told me his parents were divorced, that his dad wasn’t allowed to see him.”
“It’s a long story. It wasn’t my choice.” He waits for me to say something, but I have no idea what to say, and at last he goes on, “I’m no saint, Mr. Banks. But I love my son.”
“Yes.” I’m not sure what else to say and finally ask, “How did you contact Akinsanya and the drug cartel?”
“Someone named Solomon. He has connections.”
Solomon.
Why doesn’t that surprise me.
Tim’s dad looks at me concernedly. “Are you going to tell Agent Ratchford?”
I consider the wounds he suffered while holding out so that he could find a way to do the right thing. To both protect innocent people and help his son. He changed his mind about the drone when he realized what the consequences of turning it over would be.
Free will.
We are broken gods, fallen princes, with animal instincts and divine desires.
Incongruous. Able to go along with our convictions, or go against them.
Finally I answer, “How would it help Tim if I told anyone?”
He’s silent.
It’s hard to know where to take things from here. I hold up the Coke. “I should be going.”
“Thank you.”
When I’m halfway to the door I have an idea. “When you’re feeling better, I’ll get you some tickets to my show. Seat D4. Remember that.” It’s inadequate, but it’s all I can think of at the moment and I go with it.
“D4. Sure. Thanks.”
“There’ll be a mutual acquaintance of ours in D5,” I tell him. “If you ask him, I’m sure he’ll do a French Drop for you. He’s really very good.”
Part IX
Lovelock
Thursday, February 14
Valentine’s Day
“I think I got it.” Lonnie is at my kitchen table, leaning over a pad of paper filled with algorithms and permutations.
Xavier peers over his shoulder. “So what are we looking at?”
“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Like what?”
Donnie stands near the window texting a friend. Upstairs, Fionna is helping the girls get ready for today’s drive across the state. Charlene, who can’t tackle stairs yet because of the gunshot wound to her leg, has found a lounge chair in the library and is answering some get-well-soon emails on her laptop.
“Well,” Lonnie says, “let’s see . . . Think of space/time as a fabric. You’ve heard of the book A Wrinkle in Time?”
“Sure,” Xavier replies. “It’s a classic. That one’s definitely stood the test of time.”
“Yeah. Hmm. I think it has. Well—”
Donnie stops texting long enough to interrupt. “It’s not that far-fetched. To travel through space, I mean, really through space, to the far reaches of space, you need a way to warp time to allow you to move faster, to travel light-years in an instant. Otherwise the prospect of interstellar travel is just science fiction or wishful thinking.”
He and Lonnie share a look.
I sense I can see where they’re going with this. “And you’re saying that these algorithms, what? Prove that time travel is real?”
Lonnie answers, “Not time travel, no, but a way to take a shortcut through space, like you might slice through a three-dimensional object.” He backpedals a little. “Or at least they seem to point in that direction.”
The algorithms he’s been working on come from the chalkboards in the classrooms of Building A-13 at Groom Lake.
“So it’s true,” Xavier mutters.
“What’s true?” Lonnie asks.
“The space/time continuum. They’ve got a ship there. At Area 51.” He nods knowingly. “It might even be where they’re getting some of their thought-controlled technology from.”
Donnie lowers his phone. “You’re saying that our unmanned aerial vehicles were created from reverse engineering a spaceship?”
“If you believe the stories.”
“And do you?”
“You know me.”
“Yeah.” He smiles. “Wicked.”
Fionna calls down that they’re ready to go, the boys head into the other room, and Xavier comes over and holds up a knapsack.
“I got something for Fionna,” he whispers.
“Something memorable?”
“I believe it is.”
“What’s that?”
He fumbles through the pack and pulls out a bottle.
“Mango perfume.”
“Yup. Think she’ll like it?”
“What gave you the idea to buy Fionna mango perfume?”
“It’s fruity.”
“Fruity.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And it was on special. Two for one. This way, I’ve got next year covered as well.”
“I hope you’re joking.”
He looks slightly concerned. “You think I should take one back?”
“Xav, I’m . . . You know, I think Fionna would actually love a bottle of mango perfume coming from you two years in a row.”
“Yeah.” He puts it away. “I figured that too.” He places one hand on my shoulder. “Listen, what you told me last night, about the truck, I mean, I’ve been thinking and—”
“No. It’s okay. I was serious.”
“I can’t take your new pickup truck.”
“Really, you need something to get around town in.”
“Well . . . the RV is a little tough to parallel park,” he admits. “But—”
“Besides, this way, if the opportunity ever presents itself, you can maybe visit Fred at work—by the way, any word on those photos being released?”
“Nothing so far. We’re crossing our fingers. Hopefully that’s all in the past.”
When the girls come downstairs, Charlene joins us in the kitchen, and Mandie and Maddie hand around Valentine’s Day cards to everyone.
I find a prominent place on my fridge to hang mine up.
We’ve taken a lot of pictures this week, and I have to remove one of the extra magnets from a photo of my dad and me fishing off the Oregon coast to put the cards up.
He never did explain why he wasn’t able to come down to visit earlier this week, just that he had a doctor’s appointment.
“Everything okay?” I’d asked him on the phone on Monday.
“Sure. Everything’s fine.”
But still, over the last few days I found myself worrying about him and decided that next week I’m going to fly up to check on him.
I replace his photo and straighten it.
Fi
onna grabs her purse. “So I’ve been curious about something, Mr. Wray.”
“Yes?”
“What nuts are you eating today?”
“Almond Joy. In fact . . .” He digs through his knapsack and pulls out a heaping pile of candy bars. “I bought some for everyone. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Hmm. I was saving these for later today, but I suppose we can break them out now.” She goes to her purse and offers us a bag of those heart-shaped candies with little sayings on them.
“Are those the ones that taste like chalk?” Donnie asks.
“I don’t know, I . . .”
The kids all go for the Almond Joys instead. Charlene and I take some of Fionna’s candies so her feelings won’t be hurt.
It only takes me a few bites to discover Donnie is right.
They do taste like chalk.
Or at least what I imagine chalk would taste like.
We head outside.
Fionna, Xavier, and the kids pile into her minivan while Charlene and I head to the Aston Martin.
“How about I do some stories on the way,” I hear Xavier offer the kids as he climbs in.
“I thought there were rules?” Mandie sounds concerned. “That you have to wait until bedtime?”
“Once in a while it’s okay to break the rules. Right, Fionna?”
“Once in a while.”
“I’ll remind you of that, Mom,” Donnie says, his mouth full of Almond Joy candy bars.
“Quiet now. Don’t eat with food in your mouth.”
Then the door closes, Charlene and I hop into the DB9, and we all take off for Lovelock, Nevada.
“So what’s the big surprise?” Charlene asks me as I pull out of town. “Where are we going?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Oh. Let me guess: or else it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“See, we are operating on exactly the same wavelength.”
We spend some time brainstorming a new finale for our show when it opens up again next month. “Everything Xavier has proposed to me so far,” I tell her, “has to do with me being set on fire.”
“Imagine that. Maybe I could get set on fire this time?”
“We’ll have to see once your leg recovers.”
As our conversation cycles around the events of the last week, I think of my talk with Dr. Turnisen, something I haven’t told my friends about.
