The Hidden Man

by Anthony Flacco

  He made the place ready without knowing how it would play into his need for revenge, working purely on faith. Plans are for atheists, he reminded himself. And who could tell about that? The exposition was set to last for ten months.

  Questions for tomorrow. He had failed at Duncan, the genuine article, and the scalding rage drove him like lashes of a whip. He could not wait. Once she was properly tied and muffled back inside the hidden cave, he finally admitted to himself that he was not going to be fulfilling her hope of letting her go.

  He did not have a catch-and-release policy.

  At that same moment, in the kitchen of the Blackburn-Nightingale residence, Vignette stood between Randall and the Eastern Whore and tried not to drop the dish that she was rinsing and flee the room. Miss Freshell had her trapped in another one of her domestic rituals. Vignette called this one the Wash-Rinse-Dry ceremony, which left her stranded in the middle rinsing position and handing each dish to Randall. She did it without looking at him.

  Miss Freshell, in all her evil glory, controlled the pace of the ceremony because she did the washing. You could never go any faster than she wanted you to. This meant that nothing was ever over, in this little ceremony, until Miss Freshell damn well said it was. And now with poor Randall still so besotted, he no longer seemed capable of anything more than parroting Freshell’s proclamations and glaring in disapproval whenever Vignette or Shane put up any friction over the new set of opinions in their lives.

  Vignette felt like a worm under the beak of the Eastern Whore. This woman was able to shred her quarry and speak at the same time.

  “—not that the Ladies’ Hospitality League needs any recommendation from me. I know that you will find them to be the same stimulating mix of interesting women that I do.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Vignette…” Randall muttered under his breath to her.

  “What, Randall?” Vignette snapped. “What? She said it, she’s said it before, I acknowledged that she said it. So what is it?”

  “No, dear, Randall and I both agree that the very best thing for you now is the stimulating company of women who make an art out of graciously serving others. We are having our third orientation meeting on Saturday, but I’m sure I can convince them to take you as a late arrival.” Freshell beamed a withering smile at Vignette, then moved it over to Randall and held it there for several seconds while Vignette fought the sensation of bursting into flame.

  Instead she focused on simply holding still and nodding…rinsing each dish carefully…not dropping it…not looking up at Randall…not smashing a dish over Freshell’s coiffed curls…not screaming and screaming and screaming until Randall woke up out of his unbelievable sleepwalking stupor.

  “It’s only for ten months, dear. I’ll guide you through it. And since you’ll be there while I’m gathering material for my next book, you can always return the favor by working as my assistant! Fair as the day is long, wouldn’t you say?”

  And of course, while she asked the question of Vignette, her eyes and her smile were reserved for Randall. It struck Vignette that it felt just like this when she got herself caught in that tremendous riptide while swimming around the Golden Gate. She had been swept along by that overpowering force with no one to help her, even though she could see people on the shore. Now here was Randall standing right next to her, and he would never be able to hear her scream.

  “Vignette,” Randall quietly said, “in light of things, you know, this is fair for you to try. And to really give an honest effort to it.”

  “How can I—”

  “Also—as a personal favor to me—because you would be giving me something to tell my captain that might convince him that I’m not running an asylum here, and he does not need to continue with his bad jokes.”

  “Randall, you don’t—”

  “Not that his bad jokes would be enough of a reason in themselves, but as long as we have this opportunity to send you to a sort of finishing school, it’s a nice bonus for me. It’s something good that I can tell him about you.”

  He smiled at her and touched her face so that she met his gaze. “For me, Vignette. Please. Do this for me. Do it because I want good things for you in life and I can’t do enough to help you get them. I want you to know how to get the best out of your own life, and this can help you.

  He grinned. “And besides, aside from getting bored once in a while, what’s the worst that could happen?”

  Vignette handed him the next dish, but he was the one who dropped it. It hit the floor, breaking into clean halves. And in the quick moment when he bent down to pick up the pieces, Vignette slipped and allowed her eyes to turn toward Miss Freshell.

  The Eastern Whore flashed her the briefest moment of a sneer, glaring in angry triumph. Vignette did not know the exact reasoning behind it but she felt an instinctive revulsion.

  She found herself stuck in a web newly spun across a familiar spot, where there had always been clear air before.

  Shane was just finishing up the first day of his new work schedule at The Sea Mist, a Market Street restaurant so unusually posh that there was no food, only cuisine. He was now working strictly the lunch and afternoon hours, leaving him free to accompany Blackburn at Duncan’s evening performances. But after his first day on the early shift, it was already clear that he would be paying for the excitement with a drop in wages.

  Just as he leaned over his last table to polish down the top, he felt a strong hand grip his upper arm and pull him upright. He turned to see James “J.D.” Duncan peering at him like a man who has just caught a spy. Duncan pulled Shane into a high-backed booth and lowered his voice to a harsh whisper.

  “Nightingale! I thought that was you. What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Finishing up my afternoon shift,” Shane replied, puzzled, trying to figure out the cause for the older man’s alarmed expression.

  “…This is what you actually do?” Duncan looked at him as if he smelled bad.

  “No, Mr. Duncan. This is how I actually pay my bills. There are other things that I actually do.”

  “I specifically requested Detective Blackburn and I’m sure I never said anything about a restaurant waiter accompanying him!”

  “Mr. Duncan, The Sea Mist is one of the best restaurants in town. It took me months to get a job here. I’m not ashamed of this work.”

  “Fine, but you’re not a policeman!”

  “No. I’ve already established that I’m not cut out of policeman material. Even so, Detective Blackburn believes that I can help him.” He sighed. “Look, I have these…sometimes I see…” Shane stopped, wondering how far to take the explanation.

  Duncan ignored it. “You two are related, yes? I’ve been asking around. People tell me anything I want to know. You may as well just—”

  “He adopted us. It’s no secret, Mr. Duncan. My sister and I have lived with him for the last nine years.”

  “All very touching. Except when it’s at the expense of my security.”

  “Mr. Duncan…First, it is just not in him to put you at risk like that. Second, he asked me to come because there are specific ways that I can help him.”

  Duncan still did not react. He simply stared with a darkening expression. When he finally spoke, the words came out drenched in venom.

  “I only stopped in here today because the theatre is so close by. But now that prompts the question: When was the first time you were ever backstage there?”

  “The other night, when we came back to see you after your show.”

  “Only then?” Duncan asked, using the vocal tone of a man who already knows that he will hear nothing but lies.

  “Yes.”

  “That was your first time?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “Maybe your first time was on that same day, but…a bit earlier?”

  “No, by the time we got to the theatre, the show was about to begin. I didn’t even get a seat.”

  “I’m not talking about the perf
ormance! I‘m talking about your activities backstage.”

  “Mr. Duncan, we should go outside if you want to talk more. I’m not supposed to stay around here after my shift is over.”

  “Has Detective Blackburn shown you any special techniques? Police procedures for doing things like, oh, finding hidden compartments in things? Picking open the locks?”

  “No, Mr. Duncan. He has not.” Shane leaned across the table and spoke with deliberate gentleness, realizing that he could never get away with offending this powder keg of a man.

  “Mr. Duncan, sir, I just help him a little sometimes, that’s all. Sometimes I can give him a different view of things. In your case, I also came along backstage mostly because I looked forward to meeting you, after that performance. Sir, I was very impressed by your ways with the crowd!”

  Duncan stared at him for another long moment, then his shoulders slumped and he exhaled heavily. “Oh, all right. All right, then. Our world has entered the Age of Nonsense, so why should this arrangement be different? My body guard will bring along his favorite waiter.”

  He stood up, shaking his head. “And if we get hungry, why, the energetic young fellow can always…” Duncan sighed and walked away without looking back.

  Shane turned and bent to finish polishing the table, but he felt the familiar grip on the back of his arm. Duncan leaned in again, so close that Shane smelled his coffee-soured breath. It was strong, as if the man drank gallons of the stuff.

  “People find it difficult to deceive me for any length of time, Mr. Nightingale. Perhaps for a passing moment, or maybe they slip through some convenient little lie, but not over the long haul.”

  Shane decided to forget cleaning the table and to go. He left the tip cash there for the next man, then straightened up and walked directly out of The Sea Mist without bothering to see if Duncan was following.

  Once out on Market Street, when he sensed Duncan’s footsteps behind him, he continued the conversation where they had dropped it, without bothering to look over at him. “Yes, sir. You are hard to fool. That’s good to know.”

  “Save the humor for another time, young man. I have realized that the thing to do is not just allow you to attend with Detective Blackburn. Instead I’ll be calling the captain to insist on your presence with him at all times!”

  “Well, that is good news for me, then. But what purpose does that serve? You already agreed that I could be there.”

  “It has to do with the precision of language, Mr. Nightingale. Before, you were allowed to come. Now, I insist that you be in my sight, whenever Detective Blackburn is with me. And I will see to it that both the theatre and my hotel each notify me immediately, if you are ever seen in the vicinity of the theatre or my belongings!”

  With that, Shane stopped in his tracks. He was barely more than half of Duncan’s weight, but nearly as tall. He ignored their respective masses and leveled his gaze straight into Duncan’s eyes. “Mr. Duncan, would you like to tell me what it is that you’re afraid of? Because whatever it happens to be, I tell you respectfully, sir, I should not be on the list.”

  Duncan’s face was like rock. “Fear? You underestimate me, Mr. Nightingale. Precaution is not the same as fear. There will be no more backstage visits for you, no visits anywhere, without plenty of other people knowing where you are. I have enough pull with the City Council to see to it that all of this occurs.”

  “I realize that.”

  Duncan gave up a begrudging smile. “And of course you understand exactly what I am doing.”

  “Taking precautions.”

  “Beyond that! You were surprised, weren’t you? Why don’t you just come out and say so? You never expected me to ride out a dose as heavy as that one, to give a complete performance and then walk away?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I just admired the way that you handled the crowd.”

  “You weren’t even the tiniest bit disappointed that the dose didn’t make me go insane in front of the most important people in the city?”

  “Now wait, Mr. Duncan! If you think that I’m some kind of a threat to you, why do you want to ‘insist’ on having me around so much?”

  “I am keeping you close. No slinking around in shadows, for you. If you are, perhaps, a man who wants to do me harm, you will not do it in secret. You will carry out the act in front of others.”

  Duncan straightened up with a look of triumph, the face of a man who has just outsmarted a tough adversary. He took a step back, forced a showman’s smile, and opened his arms in that famed welcoming gesture that was so loved by audiences everywhere.

  “Friendly warning.”

  He turned and walked away again, this time without coming back.

  DAYS LATER

  IN THE DEAD SPACE

  BY THE TIME the nondescript man dragged his captive young woman into the dead area behind the false cliff, he had already spent an entire day alone in there, testing, doing his research. And so he knew that as long as he kept a gag on his victim, nobody outside would hear a thing. On rare occasions, he could feel the vibrations from passing footsteps, falling on the same floor as his floor, not so far away. To any sane mind, they were a last feeble warning, a cautionary tale.

  His experiences in working with the Boss had whet his taste for high-tension excitement, way back when. Now he needed it just as much as Duncan did. Thus every hour of suffering that he inflicted upon the Revenge girl allowed him to squeeze out a little more of the poisonous rage. It helped even more, when he made her apologize for everything over the years, and got her to say the kinds of things that should have been said to him all along.

  And he loved the romantic, orangey-red light of the single candle flame, loved the way his hulking shadow moved around at all angles on the inner walls of the artificial cliff, while the shadow of her bound form remained motionless. He was so drunk on romance that the scene could not have seemed more perfect unless a violin player stepped in.

  He constricted her throat with his thumbs until she woke up, gasping, uselessly struggling against her padded restraints. Not only could she not move a single inch, the special bindings would not leave marks. Gentle chains, he forced her to call them.

  “Start from the beginning. We’re not going to do anything this time. I just want to hear it. You can use the practice.”

  He pulled loose the knot binding her mouth gag and removed the cloth. When she coughed, licking dry lips, he gave her a sip of water from his personal canteen, tenderly. He even pulled back for a few seconds to give her the opportunity to compose herself and prepare.

  Then he pressed both thumbs into her windpipe again and repeated, gently, “Start from the beginning.”

  Her voice came out in a dry hiss, but he could hear her words well enough. They drizzled over him like cool water on burning coals. Never enough to put out the fire, but a relief nonetheless, a most welcome relief from the pain of the endless burn.

  He grabbed her hair and pulled so hard that her words came out between clenched teeth. “You do it so I don’t need it from any other man! Nobody else!”

  He let go of her hair, let go of her altogether, then backed away a few steps to let the poor thing get some rest. She was clearly exhausted now, after days of this. What an experience it had been. What a learning process! The nondescript man had discovered that if he obtained enough gratification, he could manage to see past his usual sexual compulsions long enough to get some idea of what the other person in the room might be experiencing.

  And now, sated as he was, it hurt him to see this innocent working girl bound up in such a fashion, even though his method of padding her bindings was a stroke of inspiration. He reminded himself that it was far more comfortable than the ropes or chains that any other man would have used.

  He could appreciate that her offense against him was nothing more than that of being on her way home from work at the fairgrounds, some girl toiling away at getting a gift shop ready for the big opening. She just got herself caught out there
at the wrong time of day; he could have grabbed any desirable female. Either way, it was going to happen. He was self-hypnotized, primed, set, and ready to spring. It was no longer a matter of choice. He would risk it all for the chance to get one of those women back to his insulated dead space, back where he could safely lose himself in the abyss of her suffering.

  How odd, he marveled, the way one thing leads to another. The long gray ordeal of the nondescript man’s pointless life was quite unexpectedly interrupted, when the dead space behind the cliff was first revealed to him. It cost him a hundred dollars to switch areas with the foreman who was originally assigned to it, by claiming that it was closer to his rooming house.

  But as sated as he was feeling just then, there were moments when he realized that he never should have kidnapped an innocent shopgirl, no matter the temptation. He glanced over at his victim, who was either shivering or convulsing against her bindings. What did she ever do to him? he asked himself, other than commit the crime of being delicious and unavailable to such a man as he?

  By now she had already been a guest in his dead space for so long that there were certainly family, friends, possibly co-workers, all asking about this girl. Did she meet a man and elope?

  In that moment, he felt a cold rush of envy when he realized that a better brain than his would visualize the problem clearly enough to find a better solution. He saw no solution but one, but since the nondescript man was quite painfully aware of his middling intellect, he expected nothing more of it now.

  Someone with a mind like Duncan’s, however, would likely find some other opportunity buried in all this. A man with the ability to manipulate whole groups of people and convince them that they loved to function as puppets—a man who is anything but nondescript—such a man would somehow sniff out legitimate opportunity here, where the nondescript man possessed nothing but a mental fog.

  He hated to admit it, but the great James “J.D.” Duncan would probably even know, or magically guess, how many people were active in this woman’s daily life—people who might actually be upset that she had turned up missing. Thus Duncan would be able to predict how hard they would search for her.