by Debra Dunbar
Vincent shook his head.
Hattie grinned. “Then you’re just fretting your pretty little head over me, aren’t you? Awwww. That’s sweet.”
Vincent pulled the spoon from his saucer and tossed it in Hattie’s direction, drawing a squawk from her throat.
Then the jollity had drained from his face again. “The Crew will be on the lookout, though. If you’re going to stay a free pincher, you’ll need to keep your eyes peeled and your shoes light.”
She bit her lip. “And if I don’t?”
“Well then, we’d be happy to welcome you into the Baltimore Crew,” he teased. “Shall I go over the many benefits again?”
“No,” she drawled. “Your recruitment pitch is still shite. I thought you were working on that?”
He rolled his eyes. “Haven’t found another free pincher to try one out on.”
“Maybe you should send off for one of those Dale Carnegie courses?”
“I only had the one spoon to throw at you, but I’m sure there’s more inside.”
He moved to stand, and she kicked him under the table. They laughed together, then they caught their breath together. And then, came silence. It was weird and heavy and full of something neither one of them wanted to face at the moment.
Hattie cleared her throat, shifting awkwardly in her chair. “You really don’t want me working for the Crew, do you?”
He glanced up at her with an odd smile. “That would be…a disaster.”
“Agreed. Maybe I don’t want you working for the Crew, either?” she added softly.
Vincent sighed, and she lifted her hands.
“Alright,” she grumbled. “I know, I know. Something about having a purpose and the way things are, the way they should be. And none of that applies to me, but only to you.”
“Yep.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m thinking you’re holding out for something better than a lowly light pincher, anyway. One of those mind readers maybe? Or like that crazy fool down in Virginia only less crazy?”
“Hattie, you’re not lowly, and you’re far more than just a light pincher.” He ran his hands over his face. “You’re…scary. Alright? What you do is so much more than illusions. It’s…scary,” he repeated.
She closed her mouth.
Vincent continued, “You’re probably the second-most terrifying pincher I’ve ever met. Myself included.”
“Who’s the first, then?”
His eyes narrowed but he didn’t reply.
“What about you, then?” she offered. “One second, everything’s peaches, and then the next, you’ve done whatever it is you want to do to a person while you’ve pinched time. Something could happen at any moment, and a person would never see it coming, never have a moment to react or defend himself. I don’t think you fully grasp how intimidating that can be to the rest of us.”
He nodded. “I have, actually.”
She watched him with interest.
Vincent returned her gaze. “But when it comes down to it I just stop time. You manipulate all five senses, not just light, not just visual illusion. When…whatever it was happened to the two of us in Deltaville? Those men. Those Upright Citizens thugs.” His face blanched.
She crossed her arms and stared at her knees. “Aye.” After a long silence, she added, “Even I don’t know exactly what I did to those poor bastards. I gave them a nightmare come to life, but the source was their own fears, not what mine would have been.”
Which meant she’d unconsciously read their minds. It was a disturbing thought. Vincent withdrew into personal contemplation, and Hattie afforded herself a measure of the same.
How could anyone hope to defend themselves, when their own mind had been stolen? That was what her illusion had done that night at Deltaville. That’s the potential she had. She stole someone’s senses away, twisted them and made them into what she wanted. And with the new immersive style of illusion that she’d been honing with Raymond down at Locust Point, it all begged the question of whether she was, indeed, perfecting some manner of evil.
And with the Aqua Vitae, that evil could be boundless.
That was a notion that broke her out of her own thoughts. Hattie peered over to Vincent. He’d suffered at the hands of his own magic, as did any pincher. Magic came with a cost, and a nasty cost at that. But for her to let him use this magical elixir that Leon had provided for her father’s health? That would tip the balance of power unnecessarily.
She genuinely liked Vincent. He was by any reasonable measure a “good man.” He acted out of a center of self-managed morality. And even he knew that he served masters who controlled and dominated and abused people. The facile justifications he’d attempted to perfect in pitch? That was all, as he liked to put it, “bushwa.” She knew that deep down, he too believed that.
Which was why Vincent should never have access to that elixir.
He was a man owned. Vito Corbi literally owned the man. Perhaps not in a legal sense, but in every sense that actually mattered in these times. And he’d own Hattie if she let slip her true nature.
“I…need to tell you something,” Vincent whispered.
Hattie leaned in.
Vincent roughed up his hair with his fingertips, then smoothed it back down again, gathering his thoughts as Hattie’s trepidation grew.
Then he told her everything about the Russians. About how a young thief had sparked what had turned into a war, about the lives he’d taken, both directly and indirectly. He told her how that young thief’s death haunted him, such a steep price to pay for a few dollars pilfered here and there.
Hattie watched him as he spoke, simply taking it all in. He’d told her about other incidents before, like the one in West Virginia where a young boy, their informant, had mistakenly got caught in the crossfire and died, but this felt like some manner of confession. As sympathetic as she was, Hattie felt ill-equipped to offer him any absolution. When Vincent staggered his way to a conclusion, he peered over the table at her with uncertain eyes.
“So?” he mumbled.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. You’re a gangster, Vincent. I knew that all along. The fact that you’ve made such an agony over these lives you’ve taken…well, if anything that tells me there’s a bright and shining soul somewhere beneath those shirtsleeves.”
A smile of relief arose on his lips.
She nodded. “I’ll never judge a man for hating death. Quite the opposite. If you ever feel comfortable with’t, then you let me know. I’ll smack you hard.”
“I will.”
She shifted in her seat and needlessly rearranged her coffee cup and saucer. Vincent followed suit, defusing the moment.
Then Hattie looked up and chirped, “Well?”
“Well?” he parroted.
“What’s next with this Amish demon?”
He shrugged. “I figured maybe when we get a moment, you and I could take a drive?”
Her lips curled into a devious smile. “Why, you old dog.”
“Not…not like that,” he stammered.
“No, you’ve gone and put it out there.” She crossed her arms again. “You’re practically salivating at the thought of getting me all to yourself. Alone. In a car. Where you’ll conveniently get lost down some isolated road and proceed to take advantage of my virtuous self.”
He scowled. “You done?”
“Not even remotely, boy-o.”
They continued to banter until the waiters were surely thinking they would stay for dinner, then concluded their business with a handshake, and a resolution to meet back in a week to discuss the details of their road trip. For all of Hattie’s poking, she felt fine with the arrangement. Strangely, she’d come to trust this gangster. It wasn’t the fact he’d promised not to out her to the Crew. It wasn’t his striking good looks. It wasn’t even that boyish genuineness that emanated from the man like waves of righteous charisma from a holy saint.
It was his complete lack of guile. The man couldn’t
lie to save his own skin. He knew a thing or two, and he believed in far more things than he knew. That made him an idealist.
It also made him superbly easy to read.
As Hattie walked home, she thought about Vincent. His finely-chiseled Italian features. That mop of straight black hair that always found its way out from underneath his hat. He was the Valentino sort, she concluded, just as she spotted Raymond sitting in the Runabout in front of her house.
Hattie trotted up to the driver’s side window.
“Hey,” she grinned. “What’s the skinny?”
Raymond replied, “Last minute run. Sorry, baby girl. We got work.”
“Fine by me,” she chimed. “Let me tell the folks and change clothes, and I’ll be back down.”
Raymond drove her down to Locust Point, where Lizzie was outside guiding a truck into the warehouse. It was laden with barrels of…something. Raymond parked the truck by the front, and the two stepped around the Crew’s delivery goons to find Lizzie barking orders.
“Fresh delivery?” Hattie asked over the noise of the engine now well inside the warehouse door.
Lizzie nodded. “Last minute. I know it’s your day off. I’ll pay you five percent bonus.”
Hattie squinted. “Make it ten.”
Lizzie sighed. “We’ll call it two dollars extra, and I don’t put a deadline on it. How’s that sail?”
Hattie nodded. “How many barrels? Can we use Winnow’s Slip?”
“Ten barrels,” Lizzie shouted over the truck engine, turning to slap the side of the vehicle before its driver ran over a pallet. “Raymond’s boat should be enough.”
“Fine, then.”
“By the way,” Lizzie called as Hattie turned away. “You have a package in my office.”
“What?” Hattie blinked in surprise.
“Package. In my office.”
She lingered for a moment, then turned with a nod to Liz. Vincent had taken to sending messages to the Locust Point warehouse by way of personal courier. Neither of them wanted Lizzie to know how deeply she’d stitched herself into affairs with one of the Crew. The arrangement worked.
Inside Liz’s office, now a chaotic trash heap of paperwork and packing material tossed aside from bottle drops, Hattie found a tiny brown-paper-wrapped parcel tied up in twine.
She examined the parcel with a faint grin. Vincent had to have sent this prior to their meeting. What was that man up to?
Hattie pulled loose the twine and thumbed open the brown paper. Within she found a tiny folded card on white stock. She held it up to the daylight spilling in from the open warehouse door and unfolded it.
The writing was bold and florid. Neat calligraphy in ink. The handwriting presented a sort of refinement Hattie hadn’t seen in any of Vincent’s letters.
No…this wasn’t from Vincent.
She squinted at the letter, taking in the words:
Did you get lost in your own illusion?
Hattie gasped and nearly dropped the note. Who…how?
She lifted the note again to read the second line. It wasn’t any sort of English she recognized. Indeed, the glyphs seemed somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t understand it.
Γνῶθι Σεαυτόν
The note quivered in her trembling hand.
Who sent this?
There was no signature. Nothing to indicate whether this was a message of warning, or a threat? Or was this friendly?
Regardless of its intention, Hattie realized as she peered out over the business within the warehouse, that someone was watching her.
And they knew what she was.
Chapter 6
Vincent inspected his eye shadow in the mirror, feathering the edge of his left eye with the pad of his pinky. Just dark enough to look haunted, but not so dark that it looked like stage makeup—which, of course, it was. He snatched the fez from its stand behind him, bending slightly to settle it upon his head in the cramped broom closet that doubled as his changing room. With a final adjustment of his jacket, he gave himself one last look.
He waved a hand in a tidy circle in front of his sternum, declaring with a mysterious squint, “I am…Damir.”
He tried the word a few more times to get the R rolling properly.
With a confident nod, he muttered, “Showtime.”
Stepped through the red velvet curtains covering the door to his changing closet, Vincent sized up the gathering at his séance table. This was always a moment of rapid calculation for him—the first face-to-face. He simultaneously had to portray the best, most mysterious first impression as a Levantine mystic, all while gauging the customers’ level of skepticism. The old ladies were typically easy to convince. Often times, he’d find a young man or woman at his table, brought in by the word-of-mouth advertising he relied on. The younger ones tended to hold him to higher account, but he knew how to play the game.
Anyone who picked up on his former clients’ referral would have been instructed to bring with them the name of their dearly departed written on a slip of paper somewhere on their person, and a personal item. They were advised to keep these “tethers to the living” hidden away in a purse, or a pocket. Easy pickings, if one could stop time and rummage through aforementioned purses and pockets.
Tonight’s crowd consisted of two elderly women, one white and one black, and a well-heeled young man with a hawk’s beak for a nose and brown hair slicked back against his scalp. His grooming was immaculate. Manicure. Shoes with a high spit-shine. His ice-blue eyes followed Vincent as he stepped into the room with his typical flourish, a thin brow lifting in consideration.
Vincent pinned this fellow to the front of his brain, then cleared his throat to begin his theater.
“Good ev-en-ing, I am the Great Damir. I am the purveyor of the Secret Knowledge. The keeper of the Hidden Flame. I see beyond the veil between the living, and the dead.”
The two women seemed to have swallowed the hook, but the man folded his fingers together as the corner of his mouth lifted.
Vincent’s faux Arabic accent faltered just a hair as those crystal glacier eyes peered through him, but he collected himself with a half-turn toward the shaded window.
“The mysteries of the beyond, the realm of the dead. You are all seekers, are you not? You have loved ones who have passed beyond our mortal prison.” He lifted a theatrical hand to his temple, squinted, then nodded to some ancient voice calling from planet Cockamamy. “Yes. I see this. Each of you have an item. Is this true?”
The women nodded.
Vincent cast a quick glance at the man. He unfolded his fingers, then sighed. “Shall we kneel together at the altar of eternity?”
He took a seat at the table, palms flat against the surface, then began his chant.
“Al…leppo. Al…manna. Al…Jeddah. Khartoum.” The tiniest of noises came from the man to Vincent’s left. A sniffle? Perhaps even a stifled snicker?
This wasn’t going to be a good night, Vincent could tell. Still, though. Even if this young man was a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic, Vincent had one more trick to pull—real magic.
As he throated the chant into increasing frenzy, the wide-eyed women stiffened, easing away from the table. With their tension at a peak, Vincent hammered his fists against the table, pinching time as they blinked.
The women blinked…but not the man.
Vincent froze, eyes hard on those glassy blues. He waved a hand through the murky, time-frozen air. The man’s eyes did not respond. Vincent eased his chair away from the table, the typical twelve inches. He knew precisely where he’d hit the table with his fists. Where the chair was when he stopped time. Which expression his face held. All of this had to be perfect for the time pinch to go off unnoticed.
And with one of the customers watching the entire time, there was zero room for forgiveness.
Vincent eased around the table to his right. He fished through the old ladies’ purses for the necessary info. Names of deceased husbands. A gold watch with an engraving from one o
f the major banks downtown. A hand-carved smoking pipe in the shape of a woman’s face.
And then Vincent came to this unflappable gentleman in black patent shoes. He nudged the man’s shoulder lightly, testing to be sure he was, in fact, subject to the time pinch. Confident that he was frozen like the others, Vincent slipped his fingers through his jacket pockets. Brushing against a stiff piece of cardstock, Vincent eased it from the jacket and held it to the light of the flickering candles in the corner of the room. Elegant calligraphy sliced across the card.
Nice pinch. Let’s talk after.
Vincent’s fingers tingled as his stomach dropped.
Who was this man?
Vincent pocketed the note as he paced back around the table. Whoever this was he had put himself into a weak posture, and very much on purpose. This wasn’t a threat. That wouldn’t make sense. It was a declaration.
An invitation.
The time pinch jerked at Vincent’s guts, and he staved off the sickness as long as he could, attempting to formulate a plan for how to deal with this man and finally deciding it was best to simply play along.
He arranged himself at the table—chair in the proper position, hands on the usual spots. As he released the time pinch, the sounds on the street returned, and the hammer of his fists echoed off the walls. The old ladies jerked back, blinking in alarm.
A bead of sweat trickled down Vincent’s cheek as he swallowed back the nausea. Dropping back into character, he avoided eye contact with the man. He spun a yarn of ghostly husbands calling from the hereafter, the banker expressing regret for focusing on lucre instead of a fuller life, the smoker with an eye for beauty calling on his widow to join him once her days had finished on this Earth.
And then, Vincent turned to this hawk-nosed man.
“And you,” Vincent droned, “have a sweetheart. A young love…I see her.”
The man’s eyes crinkled with mirth, and he nodded with a half-shrug.
Vincent continued, “A flaxen-haired girl with eyes dark as mahogany. Her passing was unexpected, was it not?”
The man drew in a breath, then spoke with a snappy East Coast bounce, “She took a header off the side of a luxury cruiser outta New York City. Dropped in off the coast of Nova Scotia.”
