by John Levitt
Weight. It needed weight to make it move. “Run along the stair!” I shouted, motioning frantically, all the while continuing my Savion Glover impersonation. He dutifully jumped up onto the horizontal stair and deliberately walked out toward the far end. He didn’t weigh much, but it was enough. As he approached the final rung at the end, the stairway gracefully levered down and presented itself. As soon as it touched down I bounded up the stairs to the safety of the platform above, with the stairway swinging up behind me.
I looked down at the now seething mass of slime-covered slugs with fascination tempered by disgust. Whoever had conjured up this mess had some power, no doubt about that. I focused in on the flickering blue curtain still blocking the entrance to the alley. I could tell it hadn’t been constructed with much care; it hadn’t needed to be since it was intended only to keep me penned up long enough for the slugs to do their job.
Even so, it would have taken quite a while to dismantle it, but I didn’t need to. I searched through it until I found a flaw in the energy flow, then diverted it enough to form a pocket right in the middle large enough to squeeze through. With some of the diverted energy I fashioned a protective layer around my feet and lower legs, picked up Lou, and stepped back on the stair. It swung smoothly down, depositing me right in the middle of the now almost knee-deep sea of wriggling slime.
I walked carefully toward the curtain opening, shuffling my feet along the pavement in a vain attempt to avoid squashing any more of the creatures. They popped and squirted under my feet, covering the ground with a greasy slime that made for some wildly uncertain footing. I fought down the impulse to run, forcing myself to walk slowly and deliberately, trusting that the protection around my feet would hold until I got out of the alley. I didn’t want to lose my balance and end up sprawled face-first.
I pushed through the curtain not a moment too soon, as my energy shield frayed and dissolved off my feet. As soon as I did, the curtain collapsed behind me and the alley pavement started bubbling in reverse, sucking down slugs like a giant pool of quicksand. Two minutes later, not a trace of anything remained.
Still barefoot, I hobbled back to my van. I just had time before the gig to stop by my house and pick up my guitar and a pair of shoes. As I drove back crosstown I had a lot to think about. I didn’t like the vibes I’d got from Christoph. Was his presence there and the following attack just coincidence? What about his aura, and his reaction to Sandra? And why did he seem so much more powerful than I remembered? Power, like athletic ability, is mostly inborn and doesn’t vary much. And why these attacks on me? Much as I hate to admit it, I’m not anything special. But one thing was for sure: I’d had enough and someone was going to pay. After all, that was my only good pair of shoes.
Five
Next morning I was up early despite getting in late. The gig hadn’t gone well, which was no surprise considering my condition. Tommy just might be thinking twice before he hires me for another gig. I drank several cups of coffee, then called Eli to tell him about the events of the previous night. He was concerned, of course.
“This is getting serious,” he said. “Maybe you should stay closer to home. Or at least not go out alone.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I’ve got Lou with me. Besides, what am I supposed to do, call you every time I’ve got a gig? And if I don’t go out, how do I find out what’s going on?”
“Still, you need to be careful.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I spent the rest of the morning puttering around and trying to think of another good source for some info. After last night, finding out exactly what was going on had become a high priority. Since Rafael had gone underground, I needed to come up with a second choice, and after some thought, I settled on Deuce. Deuce was a guy with the unlikely name of Jackson Jackson, so naturally everyone called him Deuce. He’d moved up a few years ago from L.A., where he’d been running a scam of some sort until Alejandro suggested he might want to relocate. Handsome, smooth, articulate, always dressed in the latest fashion of cool, he could have been anything he wanted. But he was cursed with the possession of some minor talent, and accordingly spent most his time figuring how to use it to scam his way through life without attracting too much unwelcome attention.
He’d once conned me into showing him how to perform a simple transfer illusion, how to make his driver’s licence appear to be that of someone else, hoping to avoid an outstanding warrant when he retrieved a car from the city impound lot. The next thing I knew he was using his newfound ability to change the faces on playing cards and running a three-card monte game down on Market Street.
The funny thing was, I’d seen con artists doing the same thing better without a smidgen of talent, just using their natural skills. Still, he made out okay, and anyway he was one of those people who’d rather spend two hours working a scam than one hour on actual work, even if the work made him twice the money. Being a natural con artist he tended to make a lot of friends, so he ended up knowing something about almost everyone and everything, at least as far as his little corner of the world was concerned. I hadn’t seen him for a while either, but I guessed Louie could track him down him without too much trouble.
Lou was outside taking care of some dog business of his own, but I had warned him to be back before it got too late. He breezed in about noon and I sat him down.
“We need to find someone,” I told him. “Do you remember Deuce?”
He looked puzzled, but I couldn’t tell if he didn’t remember who Deuce was or if he just didn’t understand what I was saying. Sometimes I forget I can’t just talk to him like I would another person. I got some cards out of a desk drawer, two aces and a queen, and played an impromptu set of three-card monte. Louie watched intently.
“Find?” I asked. “Can you find him? Deuce?”
He uttered an abrupt bark of comprehension. Okay, so we were on. I didn’t feel like wrestling with downtown traffic, so I got out my backpack and leather jacket and headed off toward the Twenty-fourth Street Mission BART station, Lou trotting along beside me. When we got there I opened up the backpack and he jumped in. The pack has a fine mesh netting along the top half that he can look through, and of course I never fasten the top flap. Being small does have its advantages; if he were a full-sized dog I could never have sneaked him on BART. Being unnoticed is probably a more efficient survival skill than being ferocious anyway. Of course I could have just masked him, but it takes energy and concentration to carry that off for extended periods.
I got off at Powell Street and rode up the long escalator to street level where I let Louie out of the backpack. No one looked twice. If a dog in a backpack is the strangest thing you see on a typical San Francisco street you’re walking around with your eyes closed. It certainly couldn’t compete with the guy tap dancing on a wooden platform, shirt off, one pant leg rolled up. He was thin but muscular, with no more body fat than a low-fat latte. Down the street from him was a black guy in a cowboy hat singing songs in French with the voice of an angel.
It had stopped raining by then but it was still cold and gusty. Louie stood on the corner, shivering slightly, nose quivering in the wind. He looked liked he was casting for a scent, but that just wasn’t possible. There are tens of thousands of people streaming through the downtown area at any given time. But he was casting for something, because after a minute or so he gave a sharp bark and trotted off east down Market Street, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was following. When we reached Fourth Street he stood indecisive for a few minutes, then continued on down Market. Just before we reached the Four Seasons Hotel, I noticed a small crowd gathered in a plaza between buildings. I strolled over to the edge of the crowd and there was Deuce, crouched on the sidewalk, shuffling his cards and talking up a mark. In front of him was a soft black cloth that he was using for the card layout, secured against the wind by some fist-sized rocks on the corners.
The mark was almost a carbon copy of Deuce, except larger and louder and blacker. A tall, good-lo
oking guy, except where Deuce played it understated and hip, this guy was flashy and crude. Shaved head and diamond stud in his left ear, but too large. Flashy watch. An expensive suede jacket, but the sleeve was pushed up on the left arm so you wouldn’t miss the watch. His girlfriend, a young Asian woman with long black hair, was pulling at him, trying to get him to leave but he was having none of it. Apparently he was down quite a bit and wasn’t about to let some chump on the street get up on him. Deuce was keeping up a running line of patter as he moved the cards from hand to hand, all the while eyes darting left and right, keeping an eye out for cops.
“It’s easy, just follow the little lady, anybody can do it, it’s as simple as can be, watch where she goes, put your money down and win yourself a little cash, watch her now, watch her now.”
His hands were moving fast but it didn’t look that hard to tell where the queen was. The hands stopped and the guy pointed at the card in the middle. Deuce flipped it over and revealed the queen. He flashed a rueful grin.
“Sharp eye, sharp eye, got me that time, my man,” he said.
The mark put down a twenty and Deuce shuffled the cards again. This time, the mark lost, then won, then lost a couple more times. This went on for a while and the guy won a few, but lost more. He was clearly down more than a few bucks overall and was beginning to get pissed. He threw down a fifty, raising the stakes, and guessed wrong again. Deuce scooped up the fifty and the three cards all in one motion.
“Damn!” the mark said.
“Got to keep a close eye, got to keep your eye on the lady.”
“One more,” the guy said, ignoring his girlfriend, who was still tugging on his arm.
“One more, last time. How about some real money? Win yourself some real money, buy your lady something nice. How about it?”
The guy knew he was being taken but he couldn’t figure out exactly how it was being done. You could see he was still convinced he could beat the game.
“How much we talking?” he asked.
“Two hundred dollars, lay it down, win it all back and then some. One chance. One chance only.”
The guy hesitated, not wanting to lose any more money but not wanting to back down, either. He knew he could beat this con. Deuce started to roll up the cloth, and the guy took the plunge. He reached in his pants pocket, pulled out a money clip flush with bills, and peeled off five new hundred dollar bills.
“How about five?” he said, making it a challenge.
Deuce smoothed back out the cloth, pulled out five hundred dollars of his own, and stuck both stakes under one of the rocks to keep them from blowing away.
“We have a player, ladies and gents, we have a man here,” he said.
This time his hands moved quite a bit faster but always smooth and under control. All the while, he kept up his patter. “Watch the lady, watch the lady, she moves and she grooves, she spins and she wins.”
The small crowd leaned in for a better look. The guy was watching with a look of ferocious concentration. Of course, with Deuce’s other type of talent, he didn’t stand a chance. When Deuce stopped, the guy unhesitatingly leaned over and put his hand on the end card to his left. Before Deuce could move, he flipped it over himself. Ace of spades. Deuce flipped over the other two cards, showing the queen on the opposite end, lifted up the rock, and pocketed the money. He put the cards away, rolled up the cloth, and was up and walking down the street in a matter of seconds. By the time the guy could make up his mind whether or not to do something about it, Deuce was halfway down the block. The guy stood there not really knowing what to do. Finally he grabbed his girlfriend’s arm and roughly pulled her away as if the whole thing had been her fault. The crowd drifted away, several of them shaking their heads in admiration. They certainly had got their money’s worth. And Deuce certainly had improved his performance skills. It was like watching a formerly lame musician suddenly rip off a killer solo.
I followed slowly in his direction. This was clearly not the place to stop him for a chat, and with Louie following there was no way I could lose him. We strolled down Market to Third, turned south, crossed Mission, and finally turned off onto Minna, a small alley that runs parallel to Mission. Louie stopped outside a café called Mirabelle’s and sat down on the sidewalk. I took off the backpack and he hopped in. It was too chilly to leave him outside and I thought I might be a while. I put a small masking on him so he would seem to be a sweater unless you looked closely.
There weren’t many people in the café, just a bunch of small round wooden tables awaiting the coming after-work crowd. Deuce was sitting alone at a back table enjoying a latte with a big basket of thick-cut fries sitting in front of him. I pulled out the chair opposite him and helped myself to a seat, putting the backpack with Louie in it on the spare chair. He looked up over the menu and a big smile spread over his face. Either he was genuinely glad to see me or his acting skills had improved along with the three-card monte.
“Well I’ll be damned!” he said. “Mason! What brings you out on this cold December day?”
I smiled back. It was hard not to like Deuce, even if he was a scammer. I suppose that’s a good con man’s stock in trade.
“I felt a compulsion to watch some three-card monte,” I said. “You’ve improved.”
His smile broadened. If he felt uncomfortable in any way it didn’t show. “I have, haven’t I? Did you see the show down on Market?”
I nodded. “I was dazzled. But one thing puzzles me. I was waiting for the power surge on that last blow-off, but I didn’t feel a thing. How did you pull that off? You’re not good enough to shield like that even if you tried.”
His smile grew even broader, if that were possible. “I don’t use my talent when I’m playing anymore. It’s all good old-fashioned sleight of hand. Let me tell you, it took a whole lot of work to master it.”
“I believe it, but why bother?”
“Well, for one thing, it keeps people like—what’s that guy’s name?”
“Victor?”
“Yeah, Victor. It keeps people like Victor off my back. And secondly—” He broke off, looking embarrassed for the first time. “Well, to be honest, if I use my talent it feels too much like I’m cheating people.”
“But you are. What’s the difference how you do it?”
He seemed a bit annoyed. “Jesus, Mason, I thought you of all people would get it. It’s not the same. Not the same at all. People expect me to cheat; they just think they’re smart enough to catch me or beat me anyway. But they don’t expect me to cheat.”
Actually, it made a sort of sense the way he explained it. Louie poked his head out of the backpack, having noticed the tempting smell of fries wafting toward him. He stretched his neck forward and delicately lifted one out of the basket.
“I see you’ve still got Lou,” Deuce said.
“Can’t seem to get rid of him.”
Lou looked over at Deuce and gave him a brief noncommital tail wag. Friendly, but with reservations. Sort of the way I felt. He ducked back into the backpack as a waitress came over. I ordered a cappuccino and we chatted for a while, checking up on mutual acquaintances before I got into the reason I had looked him up. Or rather, tracked him down. Deuce was very keyed in on what I was talking about.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” he said. “You can feel it.” He adopted a phony British accent. “An evil, malign influence, pervading the very air we breathe. Seriously, man,” he said, dropping the accent, “something’s not right in this town. I’ve been thinking of heading up to Portland, or maybe back to L.A.”
“L.A.?”
“Well, maybe not L.A. Not for a while, anyway.”
“Any idea what’s been going on?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Though I did hear about some freak who’s found a way to accumulate a bunch of power and is in the process of becoming one serious motherfucker. Trying to become some sort of superpractitioner, I guess.”
“Come, on,” I said. “Even you know that’s not po
ssible. Talent’s an inborn trait. You can certainly maximize your potential with practice, but you can’t acquire power. Any more than a normal person could ‘acquire’ the ability of a Michael Jordan.”
“Don’t I know it,” Deuce said ruefully. “Still, that’s what I hear. Who knows? Maybe some dude has figured out a way to pull it off.”
“Any talk of who it might be?”
Deuce shook his head. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the gemstone I’d borrowed from Victor, placing it carefully on the table in front of him. Lou wrinkled his nose and curled a lip when he saw it.
“Ever seen anything like this before?” I asked.
Deuce reached out a hand to pick it up but I intercepted him, grabbing hold of his wrist. Letting a con man with talent handle a priceless stone wouldn’t be the smartest of moves, and Victor would kill me if I lost that stone.
“Don’t touch,” I cautioned. “Just look.”
Deuce laughed, not offended in the least. Then he focused in on the stone and stopped laughing. He stared at it for a full minute, then shook his whole body as if throwing off a spell.
“Wow,” he said. “And here I was thinking it was all bullshit.”
“So you have heard something, then?”
His eyes kept returning to the stone, so I picked it up and returned it to my pocket. It’s not that I didn’t trust him. Well, yes, of course it was.
“Stories,” he said, nodding. “I’ve heard some stories. A new kind of precious stone. Some new type of diamond that’s magically enhanced, but permanent. Supposedly, if you manage to get your hands on one, you can buy an island and retire.” He absently handed over a now cold french fry to Lou and looked at me enviously. “You got yourself an island picked out yet?”
