The Raven

by Mike Nappa

  “Let’s empty it out, then cap it,” Trudi said. “Don’t want to take a chance that the cap will leak and smear the bottle.”

  “Got it.”

  “What made you think to get his fingerprints?” Trudi said as they both walked to the tiny break room in Coffey & Hill Investigations. It wasn’t much but was still plenty for the two of them. There was a short table, two folding chairs, a mini-refrigerator, microwave, sink and counter, and random shelves holding office supplies and other equipment.

  “He said his name was Marvel DC.” Eulalie rolled her eyes. “Did he think I never read a comic book in my life?”

  “Yeah, right.” Trudi returned the eye roll but felt a little sheepish that it had taken her a few minutes longer than either Samuel or Eula to catch the joke in The Raven’s supposed name. That was embarrassing.

  “I figured, if a guy wanted to be that obvious about using a fake ID, then you’d want to dig deeper into what he was trying to hide.” She held up the Perrier bottle. “So, fingerprints! I thought the glass would hold the prints better than plastic.”

  “Good thinking,” Trudi said. “I love it when I hire smart assistants.”

  Eulalie hadn’t said anything at that, but Trudi could tell she’d been pleased. They’d sealed the Perrier bottle and stashed it back in Trudi’s office for the moment, on top of the desk.

  Now Eulalie was eying her with a combination of curiosity and admiration. Her assistant nodded toward the Perrier bottle, expertly sealed and waiting. “You want me to call Mr. Hill about that?”

  Samuel was always good about helping her with things like identity checks, but Trudi didn’t feel ready to call him about The Raven yet.

  “No. Other than my own curiosity, I can’t think of a legitimate reason why I need Samuel to run those prints. Not yet at least.”

  “I bet if Mr. Hill knew you were meeting that guy for dinner, he’d want to run a full background check. Maybe more.”

  Trudi smiled inwardly, but on the outside she said, “You’d lose that bet. Samuel and I have been divorced for years now, and even when we were married he was never really the jealous type.”

  Eulalie shrugged.

  “I think he just assumed no man could compete with him, so he didn’t worry about it.”

  Now a laugh escaped her assistant. “That sounds about right,” she said.

  Trudi decided it was time to move the conversation away from her ex-husband. “Are you going out tonight?”

  “Well . . .” Eulalie looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Sort of.”

  “It is Friday.” Trudi smiled, feeling a little jealous. “Of course one of your many admirers is taking you out tonight.” Trudi looked up at the clock and felt a grumble in her stomach. “How about some lunch? I’m buying. Taco Bell? I could use a Chicken Fresco Burrito Supreme. Maybe a Diet Coke too.”

  Something about that offer seemed funny to her assistant, but Trudi didn’t know why. All Eulalie said was, “That sounds great.”

  They stood and headed toward the door, but before they could leave the office, Trudi stopped and came back to the desk. She picked up The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and waved the collectible hardcover toward Eulalie. “While we’re there,” she said, “we’re going to figure out how to read minds.”

  Sitting in the corner booth at the Taco Bell across the street from Coffey & Hill Investigations, the remains of their delicious lunches littering the table, Trudi almost hated to bring out the Poe book. She’d set it on the bench seat while they ate, but now she was ready to work on the magic trick.

  What if I get taco sauce or some other kind of fast-food smear on my fancy collectible book? Maybe we should just go back to the office?

  Before she could make that suggestion, though, Eulalie sprang into action. “Let me clear out this mess,” she said, sweeping the wrappers and napkins into a pile, “and then we can work in a clean, well-lighted place.”

  Trudi appreciated both the cleanliness of her assistant and the offhand reference to Ernest Hemingway. Not bad for a psychology major, she thought. While Eula was dumping trash into the receptacle, Trudi took another napkin and wiped down the table until she felt comfortable laying the book on it. She opened it to page 108 and looked again at line number nine.

  Been.

  That was infuriating. She flipped the book shut and waited for Eulalie to return. When her assistant sat down, she spoke. “All right,” she said. “We know he didn’t really read our minds.”

  “Right.”

  “And we know he couldn’t have tampered with my book.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But he did pick up my book and thumb through it.”

  “Yeah, but could he have memorized the whole thing that fast? Maybe he has an eidetic memory or something? And how could he have known which page you’d pick for the word?”

  A lightbulb flashed inside Trudi’s head.

  “He forced the card on me.”

  “What? I didn’t know he used cards for this trick.”

  “No, it’s just a saying. I mean, when a magician does a card trick, he often knows ahead of time which card the mark will choose because he forces that person to choose the card he wants. The Raven must have done something like that with my book.”

  “He forced you to pick The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe?”

  “No, but the book was already on my desk. Maybe he just took advantage of what was available to him at the moment?”

  “Seems a stretch. How could he know which word you’d pick out of the entire book? Or where that word would be? Or even what the words would be in a book he’d never seen before he walked into your office?”

  “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” Trudi said. Her mind was clicking now. “Let’s try this. Let’s try the trick again and see if I can read your mind.”

  “Seriously? That guy is a professional magician. You think you can do his trick after just a few hours?”

  “I think I’ve figured it out, yes. Want to try it?”

  “Let’s go for it, boss.”

  Trudi handed Eulalie a napkin and a pen from her purse. “Okay, first you have to pick a triad—that is, a three-digit number. Write it on the napkin.”

  Eulalie wrote “111” on the napkin.

  “Hmm,” Trudi said. She ran the next steps in her head. Reverse the digits, subtract the lower number from the larger number . . . but 111 minus 111 equals zero. That can’t be right.

  “What’s next?” Eulalie said.

  “Something’s messed up. I’ve missed something.”

  “Did I pick the wrong number?”

  Yes! That’s it!

  “Oh, that guy was sneaky,” Trudi said. “He manipulated me like nobody’s business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said I could pick any three-digit number, but then he challenged me a bit.” She mimicked his voice, adding an annoying nasal sound to the performance. “‘If you want to make it hard on me, use a number where the first and last numbers are at least two digits apart.’”

  “That was important?”

  “Yep. Of course I wanted to make it hard on him. What I didn’t know was that he was needling me into making it easy for him.”

  “Okay, so what’s next?”

  “Let’s start over. Eula, pick a new triad, any three-digit number, but if you want to make it hard on me, use a number where the first and last numbers are at least two digits apart. Write it on the napkin.”

  This time Eulalie wrote “357.”

  “Good,” said Trudi. “Now, if I’m right about this, it’s all in the math. Ready?”

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “First we reverse the digits of your triad, so now you’ve got 753. Then we subtract the smaller from the larger.”

  “753 minus 357,” Eulalie said. “I’ve never been great at math. Is that 386?”

  “396,” Trudi said. “Good. Now we reverse those digits and add the last two triads together.”

&nbs
p; “So, 396 plus 693? What is that? A thousand something?”

  Trudi did the math in her head. She felt triumphant. She reached over and took the pen from Eulalie and wrote the number on the napkin.

  1089.

  “That number is important?” Eulalie said.

  “It’s the same number I got, even though I started with a different triad.”

  “Ahh,” Eulalie’s face lit up with understanding. “So it really is all in the math. Pretty clever.”

  Trudi pushed the napkin away and leaned back in her seat. “So no matter what you start with, you always end up with the same number: 1089. That’s the ‘card’ he forces on you. 1089. Then he uses that to make you choose page 108, line nine.”

  “So,” Eula said, “when he was just”—she made air quotes in front of her—“randomly flipping through your book, he was actually checking out page 108, line nine. He knew he could make you choose the word in that spot, so he memorized that one word and waited for you to fall for the bait.”

  “Hook, line, and sinker.” Trudi felt the corners of her lips beginning to tug upward. She liked that she’d figured out the mind-reading exercise, and she found herself liking that The Raven had been able to trick her with it.

  He is pretty clever.

  “Gotta like a guy who can use something as simple as math to trick two college-educated girls like us,” Eulalie said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Trudi said. She tried to appear casual about the whole thing.

  But she couldn’t stop grinning.

  18

  Raven

  Atlanta, GA

  Old Fourth Ward

  Friday, March 24, 12:05 p.m.

  21 days to Nevermore

  Nobody says anything for a few minutes while Scholarship digs around the drawers of my kitchen, looking for a spoon. When he finally finds one, he dips it into the strawberry yogurt and then lets his eyes return to me.

  I’m trying to swallow, but for some reason my throat is too dry. I want to say something, but it just comes out as a slight “uuuh.”

  Did he say I owe Max Roman ten thousand dollars? How is that possible?

  Pavlo reaches into his coat pocket for something, but Scholarship stops him. “Don’t be in such a hurry, Pav. Maybe this magician kid will just pay the ten thousand dollars and we can all go home happy.”

  “Huh,” Pavlo snorts. “No matter how hard you try, the bull will never give you milk.”

  Scholarship tips his head to the side. “Is that some Ukrainian proverb or something? Is it supposed to be some kind of wisdom? Because it’s kind of stupid. Why would you even want to milk a bull?”

  “I think,” my voice croaks, “it’s symbolic. Like, I’m the bull, and asking me for ten thousand dollars is like asking a bull to give you milk.”

  “Mm. That what you meant, Pav?” The dumpy one shrugs, and Scholarship shakes his head. “Anyway, ten thousand dollars isn’t that much money. Not like Max is asking for a million or something. So what do you say, kid? Do you want to give us ten thousand dollars so we can just call this thing done?”

  I feel like making a wisecrack, saying something about the dismal state of education and declining math abilities in American children, but my mind is blank. All I can think to say is, “I don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

  Pavlo turns his back and walks into the living room.

  “Yeah,” Scholarship says, “that’s what I thought. Oh well, we tried, right, kid?”

  “Look,” I say, “There’s $238 in my wallet, in my back pocket. Take it all.” I start to pull my hands out of the ice so I can get to my wallet, but the look on Scholarship’s face tells me that’s a bad idea.

  “Trouble is,” he says, “that still leaves us $9,762 short of what you owe.”

  Okay, so Scholarship is pretty quick with math. Good for him.

  “I don’t have ten thousand dollars,” I say again. I don’t know what else to say. I think I must be hyperventilating because I’m starting to feel a little lightheaded.

  “I see,” the football player says. “Well, that’s not good. Because Mr. Roman always insists that his debts are paid in a timely way.”

  “How do I owe Max Roman ten thousand dollars?” I say. My voice sounds a little shrieky even to me. “I mean, I gave back the pictures.”

  “You cost him time, and you embarrassed his, um, personal assistants. Plus, he can’t let word get around that a petty thief off the street such as yourself, no offense intended, got the better of him.”

  “None taken,” I say automatically, though I’ve never really understood how saying “no offense intended” makes it okay to insult somebody to their face. But that’s a philosophical problem for another day.

  “I didn’t get away with anything. My stupid plan to blackmail Mr. Roman backfired. All I got out of it was blood and bruises. He won. I lost. End of story, right?”

  “Not as far as Max Roman is concerned.”

  Scholarship looks at me placidly, and I suddenly realize how much I’ve underestimated this guy. I let his athletic frame and jock-star demeanor trick me into thinking he’s something other than what he really is. Mr. Scholarship is a businessman. Everything for him can be totted up in accounting columns, profit and loss, expenses and revenue, bottom line. The stereotypes don’t apply, and I’m a little ashamed that I thought they did.

  You see a large black man in Atlanta, you automatically think sports figure, I scold myself. What if he’s just a black man in Atlanta—one of many who are more than their skin color and physique can define?

  “You really did go to college on scholarship, didn’t you?” I say.

  He grins, like he’s proud to see that I’m finally starting to get it. “Yep. Full-ride, four years.”

  “Football?”

  He snorts.

  “Wrestling?”

  Now he rolls his eyes. “I did play football as a walk-on in college. Tight end. But that was just for fun. I went to school on an academic scholarship. Made a 33 on the ACT. That score, plus my 4.0 in high school, was all I needed for Georgia Southern University. Earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics, with emphasis in International Business. Thought I was going to get an MBA, but Mr. Roman made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Now here I am.”

  He spreads out his arms and smiles. I feel like he expects me to applaud or something, but I don’t think my frozen hands will cooperate.

  “So this is all just business to you?”

  “Always has been.”

  “And from a business perspective, Max Roman thinks my failure to blackmail him means I owe him ten thousand dollars?”

  Pavlo reenters the kitchen. “No,” the Ukrainian says, walking to the counter. “He thinks you owe him twenty thousand. But this guy”—he jerks a thumb in the direction of Scholarship—“he talks Maksym into letting you off with half.”

  “I like you, kid.” Scholarship shrugs. “I think you’ve got talent. I see potential.”

  “Thanks?” I say, but all I can think is, How am I supposed to get ten thousand dollars?

  “Everything is ready in there,” Pavlo says to his partner.

  I definitely don’t like the sound of that.

  The Ukrainian reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a zippered leather wallet that reminds me of a shaving kit my dad used to pack when he went on trips. He sets the wallet on the counter beside me, then he looks hard at me, studying me clinically, like an optometrist during a vision exam. “Did you eat breakfast today?” he says out of nowhere.

  “An empty stomach can speed things up,” Scholarship says.

  “No,” I say. “All I’ve had today is Mountain Dew.”

  Scholarship curses under his breath. “You got to take care of your body, kid. That’s a finely tuned machine you’ve got there. Treat it right, and it’ll treat you right.”

  “I can’t feel my arms,” I say. It seems appropriate.

  “What did he say?” Pavlo asks.

  “Something about his arms,” Sc
holarship answers.

  My head hurts, and I’m starting to feel like my brain is churning through mud.

  “Better move things along,” Pavlo says.

  “Look”—Scholarship nods—“you owe Mr. Roman ten thousand dollars. You say you can’t pay it. So that means we have to take it in trade. Understand?”

  I feel a wave of relief, almost like euphoria. “Sure,” I say. “Anything you want. Take everything in the apartment if you want to. I’ll even help you cart it down to your car, once I can feel my hands again.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Scholarship says. “We’re going to take it in trade.”

  He emphasizes the last word like it’s something different than what I think it is. He nods to Pavlo, and the dumpy one unzips the leather wallet. Inside is a neat little row of sharp tools of varying sizes.

  “Are those scalpels?” I ask, but even I hear the slurring in my speech now. It sounds kind of like, Arethozse zcalbles?

  “You know,” Scholarship says, “you look at Pavlo and it’s sometimes easy to underestimate him. It’s the language barrier, mostly. He’s been in the States less than a year, and really he’s still learning English, and it’s not an easy language. Especially here in Georgia where people say southern things like they’re fixin’ to do something or the way we mash you all into y’all, things like that.”

  I’m feeling a little dizzy now, but I think it’s going to be pretty important for me to hear what this guy is saying. I hope I don’t throw up all over the ice cubes. Then again, there’s nothing in my stomach, so what am I going to spew anyway?

  “But back in Ukraine, Pavlo actually went to school.”

  “Medical school,” the Ukrainian interrupts.

  “Right, medical school. Pav here was going to be a doctor.”

  “Top five percent of my class when I left.”

  “Two more years and he would’ve finished medical school. Become a doctor. Lived happily ever after in the Ukraine with a fat wife and seven chubby kids, right, Pavlo?”

  “You know it, man.”

  “So why did he come here?”

  “Family,” Pavlo says simply. “To see family, no road is too long.”

  “Now that’s a Ukrainian proverb I can get behind,” Scholarship says. “Viktor—you remember Viktor, right? Viktor calls his cousin, says he’s needed here in Atlanta. And Pavlo puts family first. Leaves school, comes to America, and starts living out his own version of the American dream. Kind of sweet, actually.”