Callahan's Con

by Spider Robinson

  He was following the individual sentences, but didn’t quite see how they added up to ten mil. “Maybe.”

  “Willard?”

  Willard interpreted, using extravagant hand gestures. “If you fuck up, it’s our ass, Tony. Flagler has so much juice, if you’re not the kind of guy who can come up with ten mil in a day or two, if you’re just muscle, then you’re just not in his league, and we’d be crazy to tell you dick. Plus which if he takes you out, we’ll need ten mil just to stay out of his way. Capisce?”

  Much better. “Gotcha,” Tony said. “Okay, how about this? How about I start snappin parts offa ya, start out wit little bits, and keep snappin stuff until you tell me dick no matter how crazy it is?”

  Willard turned pale, but Ida stood her ground. “Do you think I’m more afraid of you than I am of Henry Flagler, Tony?”

  “You oughta be.”

  “Perhaps so, but I’m not. I made up my mind seventy years ago: I will never permit Henry to lock me away again. The tools they have for mind control these days are just too good. So I took steps to see that the means of painless suicide are always with me. You can’t frighten me with torture, or with death. And Willard honestly doesn’t know just where the Fountain is.”

  Tony believed her on both counts. She’d have been crazy to trust Willard. He could kill her, but he couldn’t scare her. And if he killed her he had no fountain. “What’s the second reason you want ten mil?”

  “The only reason Willard and I are both still young,” Ida told him, “is that once—once—in the past, we were able to arrange secret access to the Fount, for just long enough to spirit away a few precious quarts undetected. Once you and Henry tangle, that will become infinitely more difficult, for decades to come, whichever of you wins…and vastly more expensive, when a chance finally does arrive. Ten million dollars is cutting it very close, I think.”

  Privately Tony saw her point. “That ain’t my problem, kid. I still like snappin stuff. Maybe I can’t frighten you, but I bet I can frighten Willard.”

  “You lose,” said Willard at once.

  “No, Tony,” said Ida, very firmly, and Tony was quite surprised to notice himself move about half an inch further away from Willard. “Willard is the only person on this planet I care a damn about. I owe him everything. My life, my sanity, my dignity—he gave me all those back, when I was dead and worse than dead. He has more courage than anyone I know. You could ‘snap things,’ as you put it, all afternoon and he would tell you nothing. But we’re not going to prove that, because if you lay a hand on him I’ll be out of here faster than you can stop me, and I’ll run straight to the Naval Air Station and tell them all about the Fount. Or maybe I’ll run over to Greene Street and discuss the matter with Mel Fisher, the world-famous treasure hunter.”

  “Bullshit. They’d laugh you out the door. You’d end up right back in the hatch.”

  “Not if I proved my story,” said Ida.

  Tony was starting to understand why she had begun to bug him: she reminded him of nuns. He hated nuns. You had to argue with them, but it was almost always a waste of energy that ended in humiliation. “What, you got a sample a the Ute Water on ya right now?”

  She nodded and turned around. Now Tony understood the second belt at her waist. It wasn’t part of her outfit, after all, but of a fanny pack she wore at the small of her back. A little one, just big enough to hold, say, a wallet and a bottle of spring water. The pack looked full. She turned around to face him again. “And I have a bit more of it hidden elsewhere. A very little bit more.”

  He held out his hand. “Lemme try some.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Ten mil, I don’t get a taste? You never sold drugs before, have ya?”

  “What’s the point? You know it works; you’ve seen me get younger.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, I ain’t. All I know, maybe you got older sisters look like you, an’ you’re all runnin’ some kinda game on me. Lemme try some.”

  Her turn to shake her head. “No. I need you to remain just as strong, mature, potent and wise as you are right now, Tony. The more immature your body and judgment become, the greater the risk that Henry will crush you.”

  Well, that was hard to argue with. He had to agree that he was at this moment a perfect specimen of manhood in his prime. Still. “Ten mil and no sample. I dunno, lady.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” With quick impatient movements she pulled the fanny pack around in front of herself, unzipped it, took out what looked like a standard clear plastic one-liter bottle of distilled or spring water. It was nearly empty, only an inch or two of water left at the bottom. Before Tony could frame a question, she twisted off the cap and drank half the bottle’s contents. Then she capped it again, put it back into the pack, held her hand up and slightly to the side of her face, and Tony could see his own familiar signature on the palm of her hand—the one he had written (or so he believed) on a considerably older girl yesterday. As he recognized it, she changed, right in front of his eyes—

  Tony had once made a guy eat a grenade, and had not flinched even when one of the guy’s eyeballs ended up in Tony’s own shirt pocket, staring up at him. He flinched now.

  Just as an earthquake is outrageous because the ground is simply not supposed to move like that, what he saw happen to her was outrageous because bone and flesh are not supposed to flow that way, to shimmer so confusingly, to sparkle in such a manner. What it was incredibly like, Tony thought, was somebody beaming down from the Enterprise, except that the somebody was already there to start with, and the sound was different. Less of a mzzzzzzzzzhaou—and more of a whuff! Weirdest of all, it was only the girl herself who sparkled and shifted: her clothing was unaffected.

  When it was over Ida Alice Shourds was, tops, seven years old. The yellow outfit was no longer snug on her; the shorts were halfway to her knees now. The autograph on her palm was smaller, like the palm itself, but still legible.

  The Miracle Brat was saying something to him.

  Tony was busy. There was no other way—he was thinking. Doing his best, anyway.

  For ten mil in a hurry he would have to go to Charlie Ponte. Was there any chance in hell he could get ten huge off of Charlie without stating a reason? Even with maximum vig?

  No way. Two huge, Charlie might just have gone for—because Tony was known to be a serious man whose word was good (save when given to a civilian or a cop), and because he was way too noticeable and memorable to hide anywhere in the world, and mostly because Charlie almost certainly had two huge of his own lying around in cash, convenient for disbursement. Also Tony knew that Charlie hated his guts, behind him being his father’s son, and would have relished the constant hope that Tony might fuck up, miss a payment, and provide Charlie with an excuse to raise up the full power of his authority for executive action against Tony.

  But ten million in cash was more than Carlo Pontevecchio aka Charlie Ponte would have around—of his own money. To come up with that much, he would have to lay it off on the Five Old Men. Two mil each, probably. That meant he would have to be given a reason. A real good one.

  Tony had a reason. He just wasn’t sure it would do him any good. He laboriously assembled a mental picture of himself about to tell Charlie Ponte about the Fountain a Ute, pushed the PLAY button, and watched it unfold in his mind’s eye. The results did not please him. Then he created another movie, in which Charlie passed along Tony’s explanation, five times, to the most skeptical humans in the solar system. An even more emphatic thumbs-down this time.

  Was there a fake reason that would persuade the old men to cough up a couple mil apiece? If so, was there a chance in hell that Tony Donuts Junior could think of it?

  Like computers, some chimpanzees and nearly all politicians, Tony lacked true intelligence, or even the hardware to run it on, but was often able to mask this by relying on certain painfully learned algorithms—or as he called them, Rules a Tums. One of the oldest such subroutines in his repert
oire stated that if he really wanted something but the price was too high, threatening to maim or kill the vendor might prove effective—and if not, actually doing so would at least be soothing. Tony had developed a mild distaste for beating up seven-year-old girls, back about the time he’d been graduating from juvie to adult court, so he decided to work on Willard instead, to start with, and see how she felt about that—

  Ida must have read his intention on his face. As he was bunching his shoulders, before he had even begun to turn toward Willard, she yelled, “Run, Prof!” and pulled over a rack of videotapes to block Tony’s path. Willard sprang for the same hidden door by which he’d entered and slammed it behind him before Tony could kick his way through the smut-slide. A second, distant slamming sound a few seconds later confirmed that Willard was not going to reappear behind the counter this time. Without pausing for thought, or even an algorithm, Tony snatched the kid up—grabbed her at the waist with both hands, lifted her clear off the floor, and shook her, while growling, “Bad girl!” He kept shaking until he could tell she was either unconscious or so dizzy as to amount to the same thing, and then he slung her over his shoulder and headed for the street. For all he knew, Willard might return in a matter of moments with cops, or a gun. Tony did not exactly have a plan yet—but he did know that if you have a treasure in your hands, and you don’t know how to use it, you at least make sure it’ll stay in your hands until you figure it out.

  Chasing down the nun who had his Jeep, while carrying an unconscious child, sounded too aggravating to even think about. So Tony curbed his impatience and himself. He stood there on the sidewalk outside the porn shop, ignoring the stares of pedestrians, browsing passing cars with his eyes. Key West is a favorite destination for owners of convertibles; one came along nearly at once, an ancient and hence sturdy Dodge, slowing for its turn onto Duval Street. It contained two college students, dressed as morons and drunk enough to pass. The nearer one had a long ponytail, so that was what Tony yanked him out of the car by as it glided past. The driver stood on the brake, turned his head, saw a creature out of nightmare clutching his buddy and another victim, and stalled the convertible. Tony dropped the unconscious Ida Alice into the empty passenger seat, casually tossed the student over his shoulder into the porn shop, and walked around to the driver’s side. By the time he got there the driver, ice-cold sober now, had scrambled over the windshield, crawled across the hood, and disappeared. Tony took his place, restarted the Dodge, and drove away from there.

  He drove to his rental cottage on William Street, pulled the Dodge into the Jeep’s garage around back, and went in to get a few items for the road. He was able to carry the brat inside without being seen by any nosy neighbors, largely because he never had any. By the time he carried her back out to the car and dropped her back in the passenger seat she was beginning to come around—and her ankles were locked together by a pair of standard-issue handcuffs. Nobody outside the car was going to see them, but there was no chance of her jumping out and running away on him.

  “Where’s the Profes…where’s Willard?” she asked as he was fastening her seat belt.

  “Still runnin’, I bet. Forget him. Listen up: If you want that ten mil, I gotta convince a guy, okay? You’re gonna drink some more a the Ute Water in fronta this guy, show him what’s what, just like you did for me. Then he gives me the ten mil, and you tell me where the Ute Water comes from—me you tell, not this guy—and then I give you the ten mil an everybody has a nice day.”

  Her expression was skeptical—even for a seven-year-old—but she made no reply.

  He left Key West, took US 1 across Cow Key Channel to Stock Island, entering the long straight pipeline that led east and north back up the chain of Keys to America. With good traffic he could reach Charlie Ponte’s place in Miami in three or four hours.

  Key West is so laid back, and its street layout so eccentric, that it is often possible to tail a car through town on a bicycle. The Professor was able to keep up with Tony’s stolen convertible, right up until it was clear it was going to leave the island. Then he gave up the chase and found a pay phone. (He told me later it was the first and only time in his life he’d ever even briefly wished he owned a cell phone.)

  I’d have thought that on the day I spoke the words, “Doc Webster is dying,” to my friends, no other declarative statement could possibly qualify as important. But I changed my mind fast when the Professor said, “Jake, I think Erin may be in trouble.”

  Zoey, a good twenty yards away, saw my expression and came running. “What?”

  I held up a hand—I’m trying to find out—put the Professor on speakerphone, and said, “What kind of trouble is she in, Prof?” People fell silent and listened.

  “Everything went just as planned, right up to where my character bugged out to save his neck. But when Tony came outside with her, she was unconscious.”

  “What?” I was incredulous. “How the hell can somebody knock out a teleport? Especially one as alert as Erin?”

  He sighed. “My theory is, he literally did it without thinking. She never had a chance to see it coming, because even he didn’t. Probably picked her up and shook her until she passed out. I didn’t see any signs he’d actually hit her.”

  “She was just unconscious? You’re sure?” Zoey said urgently.

  “Absolutely,” he said at once. “I saw her awake and talking a little later on, at Tony’s place.”

  She slumped slightly, and so did I. “Thank you, Willard.”

  I was confused. “So why isn’t everything okay now? She’s conscious—and now she knows enough to watch out for further impulse-decisions of Tony’s. If anything else happens she doesn’t like, worst case, she just teleports back here and we all have dinner.” No response. “Right?”

  Willard spoke with obvious reluctance. “He stopped at his place before he left town, to change clothes and I suspect to collect his gun and some ammo. Whatever—he carried her inside with him, unconscious. When they came back out, she was awake…but he’d hobbled her with a pair of handcuffs.”

  “Oh shit,” Zoey and I both said together, and several people around us groaned or gasped.

  One teleports naked or not at all. Why this is so, Erin has explained to me several times, and I still don’t get it, any more than I can grasp how she teleports in the first place, but the bottom line is, for whatever reasons, organic and inorganic matter can’t travel together in the same load. You can teleport your clothing ahead of you, and dress on arrival if you like—or you can simply rob a clothesline at your destination. Or, as Erin had earlier, you can teleport into existing clothing if you happen to know where a set the right size has just been vacated. But not with metal touching your skin. If you’re wearing so much as a class ring, you can’t teleport at all. As long as Erin wore those cuffs on her ankles, she was at the mercy of Tony Donuts Junior.

  Zoey and I embraced. Friends moved in from all sides and it became a group hug. “Oh Jake,” she groaned in my ear, “she’s only seven years old.”

  “She saved the universe when she was two,” I reminded her.

  “Twice, really,” said Long-Drink McGonnigle, from somewhere to my left.

  “With you and Nikola Tesla and Jim Omar and half a dozen other people. She’s alone with that gorilla,” Zoey continued. Her voice was rising in pitch and speed.

  “So better she’s seven than a teenager,” I said, tightening my embrace. “The day she came out of your belly she was a thousand times smarter than Tony—”

  “Sure—that’s how she ended up in chains in his car—most of the people he’s killed were smarter than him, nearly everyone is—”

  I didn’t have a comeback for that one, and I could feel her working up toward hysterics. Now that I thought about it, so was I. Screw logic. My irreplaceable daughter was in the murderous hands of a moronic mastodon, her secret weapon disabled, and she was only seven—

  Tanya Latimer’s speaking voice is a lot like Pearl Bailey’s singing voice: low, l
iquid and soothing, absolutely unhurried and unworried. From somewhere behind me she purred, “Zoey, honey, did you read comic books when you were a little girl?”

  “Sure, what the hell has—”

  “Did you ever read Superboy comics?”

  “For a while, but—”

  “But you stopped after a while, didn’t you?”

  “Well—” The onslaught of questions was confusing.

  “I’ll tell you why you stopped. No suspense. Whenever Lex Luthor or somebody tried to kill that boy, you knew they were going to fail, didn’t you? How did you know that?”

  “Well, obviously, you knew he was going to grow up to be Superm—oh. Oh.”

  We had seen Erin at ages above seven. We had lived with a more-than-seven-year-old Erin daily for more than five years now. Ergo, she was positively not going to die at age seven. In fact, we knew for certain she would live to at least age twenty-one, because we’d already met her at that age.

  Come to think of it, she was not even going to sustain any noticeable injuries—or we’d have noticed them, back when she was seven and she returned from this time-hop caper.

  Zoey and I pulled apart just enough to look into each other’s eyes, and I could see we were in complete agreement. No logic chain, however compelling, can be strong enough or solid enough when the fate of your child is at stake. Thanks to Tanya, we could now prove there was nothing for us to worry about…so now we were only worried half to death.

  But that was clearly better than panic, which was where we’d been heading. Keep thinking, Butch—that’s what you’re good at…“Thank you, Tanya. Okay, I’m going to assume Erin is gonna get through this okay because we all broke our asses saving her. That way I got something to do besides go berserk. Anybody got a problem with that?” No. “Okay, she’s on her way north with the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Prof, how good is his car?”

  The split second hesitation cued me that the answer would not be comforting. Can’t help you, Sundance. “Pretty good, Jake. An old Dodge ragtop, kept up. It moved pretty good.”