by Anton Strout
It was only a few years since I’d given up a life of thievery and running with a criminal crowd. That meant that these days I was always on the lookout for my next big legitimate score, because the only true luxury I had established for myself was my apartment. Keeping up with my outrageous SoHo maintenance fees was hard, but now that I worked for the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, I was determined to do it somewhat honestly.
I had worked hard to put my unscrupulous use of my powers behind me. Long before finding the D.E.A., I had been an impressionable, confused kid with burgeoning powers, working part time for any antique shop that would have me. Cutthroats swarmed that business like sharks being chummed, and there were plenty of sketchy opportunists more than willing to drag me into the world of big scores, petty cons, and fast money. I started stealing from the legitimate stores I worked for, lying to them as I found hidden treasures I psychometrically discovered were worth a lot. All my less-than-honest role models just thought I had a knack for it, never guessing that I had some strange power, and I was happy to keep them thinking that. By the time I turned twenty, we were going for the big cash scores—priceless pieces of artwork—but we were sloppy and worse, greedy. After one too many close calls and the constant betrayal and backstabbing that you encounter with bottom-feeding miscreants, I was lucky enough to barely escape a stint in jail. Others weren’t so lucky. I took the whole misadventure as a serious wakeup call to get my act together and disappeared off their radar.
My life of crime had started gradually, but it ended the second that fear pushed me to see who I’d really become. I wasn’t a clever kid using his powers to pull the wool over a couple of too-rich dealers anymore. I was a thief. A criminal. I was a bottom feeder, too.
I sold off the last of my stolen goods to finance a new apartment and start fresh. After all, I knew it would be easier to turn over a new leaf in style.
At these midnight markets, I still found it impossible to resist going for a score—that feeling of finding something only I could tell was valuable. The call of life’s secret treasures waiting to be reclaimed was too great, and as long as I was paying for the goods, it was all on the up and up.
These markets fueled a deeper need in me, an emotional one that appealed to the same part of my secret heart that loved design-on-a-dime TV shows. I was as excited as a club kid finding out about a late-night rave. Plus if I could discover the right hidden treasure, it meant I would finally be able to fill my fridge with something more edible than its current contents of baking soda, packets of mustard sauce, and a month-old chicken marinara that was on the verge of growing its own legs and leaving on its own accord.
For 4 a.m., the aisles were crowded with an interesting assortment of people. Euro trash, insomniacs, and a few better dressed New Yorkers like me. I recognized a few familiar faces working behind the tables at their crude little stands. Over the years, I’d grown to know some of these wandering salesmen well. Some, I might count as friends, but even those I knew best were probably mostly after my greenbacks. All of them, though, had told me how much they admired my impeccable taste. Little did they know.
I wandered for twenty minutes before coming to a table that I thought was abandoned until a chipped-tooth Native American forced his bulk out through the trailer door behind the table. I nodded politely and then put on my poker face to look through his merchandise, pretty sure that Chippy wouldn’t be hard to out negotiate if I found something worthwhile. I needed my poker face. Some of these vendors were con artists, and I refused to get ripped off by overpaying for a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine or a warped LP of Sing Along with Mitch!
Chip-tooth had two long tables sitting under his watchful eye. They were full of eclectic junk spread out cleverly without price tags. He wanted haggling room, which was fine by me. The smug look on the big guy’s face showed that he thought he had the art of the haggle down to a science, which was also fine by me. There was no way he was going to out haggle a psychometric. As long as I could downplay any real finds, I’d get a bargain and he’d be none the wiser.
I picked one end of the table to start with, took off my gloves, and began to run my hands across everything he had on display. A pair of wedding flutes. Nothing. A Legion of Doom lunchbox. Cute, but nothing either. A hideous collection of early eighties fast-food glassware. They didn’t trigger my power, but I knew they were valuable because the paint on them had turned out to be toxic. Still nothing. My confidence started to waver. Had I picked the wrong table? It had felt so promising.
Chip-tooth watched me closely as if I might try to steal something. Clearly he hadn’t heard of my reputation from the other vendors. I didn’t blame him. Still, I found it frustrating. I was about to give up on his merchandise and go check out some of the Victorian furniture I had noticed two tables back, when my fingers touched a rectangular video game unit. The name Intellivision was printed across the top of it and the majority of the unit was plastered with Star Wars stickers. Two keypad controllers with circular push pads dangled lifelessly from tightly wound cords. Next to it was a pile of game boxes—twenty in all.
Instantly the electric snap of connection flowed up my arm and I fought to keep my poker face in place. I picked up the gaming console, and held it in front of my face as I pretended to examine it, but what I really hoped was that it hid my sudden look of interest. I closed my eyes and the market around me fell away.
In the vision, I was a young male, eleven or twelve years old. I focused quickly for clues to his name or location because if I didn’t figure out who he was or where he lived, it would be impossible to sell this long-lost property back to its original owner, a gambit of mine that’s proved incredibly lucrative over the years, especially with childhood memorabilia like this.
I was in a bedroom and the décor clearly indicated the late seventies or early eighties. From a hook on the back of the bedroom door hung bell-bottomed corduroys and a plaid cowboy shirt complete with pearl white snaps. It was the Farrah Fawcett poster, however, the one every boy in my middle-school class had drooled over, that convinced me of the time period. The Intellivision console was pristine back then and the boy was cutting up bubble gum stickers with Star Wars characters on them. He proceeded to tape the assembled clippings across the face of the console, carefully avoiding the controllers. May the Dork be with you. He then proceeded to add color-coded stickers to the corner of each game box, but I couldn’t make rhyme or reason as to what they meant.
The world of the vision shifted and fell out of focus. When it surged again, what I saw made me feel real sorry for the kid.
Time had passed in the room and now the kid’s mother was there. She had discovered the console and the stickered boxes, and with the ferocity of a feral cat, she tore a Star Wars sticker from the unit. Thankfully for me, she did what mothers who were pissed at their kids always did—she called the teen by his full name. Kevin Arnold Matthews. I had what I needed to try and find him, but I couldn’t escape the vision. Kevin begged for her to leave them alone, but the mother just ignored him.
The vision went blurry again. I knew time had passed because Kevin’s toys had all shifted place. He was standing there, watching and crying as his mother packed up the unit and games and, this time, threw them away. I felt the burn of his tears, his nose thick with snot.
Whatever caused this hateful display in this boy’s mother, I didn’t know. It was beyond my power. Only select glimpses were imprinted on items like the game console. I had to do a great deal of interpretation to figure out the whole story behind an item, and I constantly had to remind myself that I was human and therefore wrong sometimes.
But my interpretation of this vision so far was that the woman was a stone-hearted bitch for throwing the games out in front of Kevin. I felt compelled to return them to him, though, and I hoped they would help the guy reclaim a bit of his youthful idealism or happiness. If I was able to find him via the Internet. Sometimes I simply couldn’t track someone down if his name didn’t come to me i
n the vision and I’d end up selling the item back to another antiques dealer who simply thought I had a good eye. When everything fell in line, it felt great. It was those little victories that kept me going. Well, that and being able to pay my maintenance with the finder’s fee they hopefully felt compelled to cough up. Kevin Arnold Matthews, I repeated to myself over and over.
I heard a voice that called from outside the scene in my mind’s eye.
“You like George Plimpton, huh?”
I felt my concentration snap back to the real world. Being torn out of a vision prematurely was always disorienting. Like clockwork, my low blood sugar kicked in and I felt a little weak in the knees. I set the console back on the table gingerly and fished in my coat pocket for my Life Savers. They were the most portable and convenient source of quick sugar short of carrying a syringe full of pure glucose. Less pointy, too.
The chipped-tooth Indian was smiling. I knew I had blown my poker face. Damn.
“I’m sorry?” I said, trying to focus on the immediate world around me.
“George Plimpton,” Chip-tooth repeated, this time with a phlegmy chuckle. I could see the dollar signs light up in his eyes.
“The actor?” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could. Next to the console was a Mickey Mouse phone, and hoping to draw attention away from the Intellivision, I picked the plastic rodent up and tested its ancient rotary dial. “What about him?”
Chip-tooth’s attitude shifted and he put his pudgy thumbs through his belt loops. “He did a series of commercials for Intellivision. Now you wanna make me an offer on that or you gonna fondle my stuff all goddamn night?”
I didn’t appreciate his impatience or the attitude. I continued examining the phone for a few seconds more before I slowly put it down and took up the console again. “It’s not in the best shape. There’s some wear and tear to it. How much you asking for that and the pile of games?”
“A king’s ransom,” Chip-tooth said and proceeded to laugh with such force that he started to cough. His body shook with the violence of it. I thought the big guy might keel over right in front of me.
“Seriously,” I said when he finally recovered. “How much?”
He scratched his sizable gut with one hand. With the other he rubbed his chin in thought. For a moment, he looked as if he was mulling it over sincerely, but I was sure he already had a set price in mind.
“Well,” he said, drawing his words out, “seeing as how it’s got a little damage to it, I suppose I could let it all go for two hundred dollars.”
I stifled a knee-jerk urge to laugh in his face.
Two hundred dollars? He was insulting my mad phat antiquing skills! To anyone but the guy I was going to return it to, the console was worthless because of the stickers all over it. I cursed myself for blowing my poker face. I also cursed Chip-tooth for his greed.
“Three dollars,” I counter offered, totally deadpan.
“Don’t waste my time, son,” Chip-tooth fired back.
“Three dollars,” I repeated with even more conviction.
Chip-tooth sighed and shook his head.
“Listen, son,” he said, poking one of his pudgy fingers at my chest. “That console is a gen-u-ine piece of history—of rock and roll history, in fact. I purchased it at great expense from none other than Yoko Ono herself. She and John Lennon bought it in seventy-five and they used it until the day he got shot right here in New York City. That makes it worth two hundred dollars and not a dime less.”
He was so full of shit that I felt real anger building inside me, but I simply kept calm and looked him straight in the eye.
“First of all,” I said, pushing his finger away from my chest, “even if this console had ever been within forty miles of John Lennon, you’re still as full of shit as the Hudson River. Lennon died in 1980. That gaming console didn’t release until later in the year, after his death. Now I’m gonna give you twenty dollars for this, tops, and you’re going to take it. You know why? Because I know my shit.”
Chip-tooth snorted and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t believe me?” I said, grabbing the Mickey Mouse phone and dashing it to the ground. “Ask anyone here.”
He stared at me, angry and dumbfounded, and then turned to look around. The sound of laughter rose from several of the nearby booths and I almost felt sorry for the guy. I pulled out my wallet, and held a twenty out toward him.
His face dropped in defeat. Without argument, Chip-tooth took the twenty and began to wrap the console and games in silence.
My cell phone vibrated to life in the pocket of my brown suede coat and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The last thing I expected in the predawn hours was a phone call on my private line. I pulled it out and checked the display. CONNOR CALLING.
Connor Christos was my Other Division mentor. He specialized in working with ghosts, but was surprisingly not a part of the Department’s Haunts-General Division. They took more of a ghost-busting approach to their work, while Connor was more of a spirit spotter and ad-hoc psychologist to the lingering undead, when his lack of patience didn’t get in the way. Why he was calling me this time of night, I had no idea.
I flipped my phone open and was greeted by an earful of static.
“Hello?” I said. Another wave of static crashed into my ear and I pulled the phone away as fast as I could. “Connor?”
“Simon!” Connor called out through the choppy signal. “Did…wake…ou, kid?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I was already up.”
There was desperation in Connor’s voice.
The signal on my cell phone continued to break up. It sounded like listening to an old-time radio as it was being flipped through a variety of stations.
“Still hav…trouble…sleeping?” Connor asked. In the background, I heard a loud crash from his end of the phone line. “Dammit!”
“Never mind my nocturnal problems,” I said, dismissive. “Is everything okay?”
Another wave of static crackled in my ear and I pulled it even farther away.
“Need…help. Can you meet…University…Seventh?”
Maybe it was the bad connection, but I thought I could hear nervousness in his voice and I didn’t like it. Usually he was the calm and collected one.
“University and Seventh?” I repeated. “Yeah, I’m up on Seventy-Ninth, but I can be down there in about ten minutes. Traffic should be light.”
“Thanks, kid,” he said, “and hurry.” The static rose once more and the line fell dead.
Something strange was brewing and a horrible feeling began building in the pit of my stomach. I needed to get moving, but Chip-tooth was still taking his sweet time finishing his packing job.
“Can you bubble wrap it?” I asked. “And hurry up. I’m packing for battle.”
3
After I hung up with Connor, I jumped a cab and headed downtown. Thirteen minutes later, the cab dropped me off at West Eighth and University and I headed toward Washington Square Park. I looked for signs of Connor, but didn’t see him. When I came across a small crowd of drunken late-night tourists fleeing toward Union Square, however, I figured I was on the right track. They jostled their way past me, and I lifted my shopping bag over my head and out of harm’s way. A clamor of footsteps and the crash of metal came from the alley between Sixth and Seventh, and I ran toward it while the last of the tourists snapped a few quick pictures.
The alley was filled with a weak yellow light from high overhead and I slowed as I followed the sound, partly out of caution but also because the last few blocks had winded me. I followed the alley along another fifty feet before it turned right. I rounded the corner and found Connor standing a few feet away with his back to me. Something stirring farther along in the darkness had caught his eye. At my approach, he turned and held a single finger to his lips. His muss of sandy brown hair looked more unkempt than usual and there was a strange white streak an inch wide in it that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
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“What happened to your hair?” I whispered. Then realization dawned. “You’ve been skunked!”
“You’re kidding,” Connor said with an almost school-boyish glee in his voice. He tugged at his hair, trying to pull it far enough forward to see for himself. “Really?”
“You’re excited about it?” I asked. “Makes you look older.”
“Course I am,” he whispered back, beaming with pride. “You know it’s something special to be skunked, kid. A mark of prestige in the Department. It means you looked the devil in the eye and lived to tell about it.”
“That’s comforting,” I said, feeling for the retractable bat hanging from my belt. “So now you’re in their elite little Hair Club for Men?”
“They prefer to be called the White Stripes, thank you,” Connor shot back.
“I know that, but they’re sooo not hip enough to pull that off,” I said, adamant.
Connor shushed me and sighed before changing the subject.
“You’re late, kid,” he whispered. There was a bit of venom to his tone. “And thanks for saying I look older. You’re all heart.”
I ignored his attitude. “What’s the sitch?”
Connor turned back to the dark and unexplored section of the alley.
“I was minding my own goddamn business walking up University,” he said, “when I heard a scream. It was hideous—like someone getting their back waxed. Then, out of nowhere, this spectral phantasm appears, streaking up and down the alley and scaring the souvenirs right out of a group of tourists.”
I looked at the ground. Shot glasses with the Statue of Liberty on them, “I Heart NY” T-shirts, bootleg copies of cheap Asian porn videos, and postcards showing the New York skyline were scattered all around. There was also an odd assortment of broken clay pieces mixed in with everything, but they didn’t look like any kind of tourist chatchke I knew of. I stepped carefully over the mess and moved closer to Connor.
