Napier's Bones (13 page)

He felt a sharp
stab of pain in his shin, looked over to see Jenna glaring at him. He kicked
her back, smiled to see the look of surprise that accompanied the one of sudden
pain.

“No,” said
Martin, who hadn’t seemed to notice any of the under-the-table shenanigans.

“No?” Dom
gritted his teeth. He had to have the puck.

“I said no,”
repeated the bum. “You can’t fool me. You take the puck and then I never get it
back. I think you should pay me for it instead.”

“Pay . . .” Dom
coughed, choking for a second even though he’d swallowed nothing.

“Yeah, pay me.”
Martin cocked an eye at Dom, giving him a look that showed that, despite the
free meal, he definitely didn’t trust him. “You figure you can get this from me
with just a burger and fries and Coke, you’re a fuckin’ idiot.”

“Um.” Dom didn’t
know what to say. He’d expected to have to wrestle this damn thing from the
bum, at best grab the puck and run like a son of a bitch, at worst put Martin
down so he wouldn’t get back up again. And here he was saying that all he
wanted was some money.

Martin stood and
re-pocketed the ratty paper bag with the puck. “Maybe I’ll just go, then,” he
said. “Looks like you don’t think it’s all that valuable, so maybe someone else
will want to buy it someday.”

Dom reached out
and grabbed Martin’s forearm. “I
would
like it. What do you want in
return?”

Martin gave Dom
a look that showed how remarkably stupid he thought he was. “Jesus Christ,” he
said as he shook his head. “Money.”

“You want
money,” said Jenna. “For that puck.”

Martin nodded.

“Doesn’t it mean
anything to you? It was your father’s, even if you don’t care about the history
of it.”

Martin pulled
the puck from his pocket and removed it from the bag, rolled it around in his
hand while he stared down at the floor for a moment. Then he sat back down and
looked up, first at Jenna, then at Dom. “These things I see, they’re the reason
I took this puck in the first place. I figured it would help me deal with the
stuff, the little things that dance around the corners of my eyes.” He paused
at this, then as if in response to this statement slapped at some numbers that
briefly hopped around his face as they bounced to avoid Jenna. It looked to Dom
like the numbers were only marginally visible to Martin; he had a tiny vestige
of numeracy, it seemed, but not enough to allow him control of the numbers
around him, only enough to make him susceptible to their presence.

“And?” prompted
Jenna.

“And the thing didn’t
help me with jack shit,” replied Martin. “It was like it called to me, but when
I took it I didn’t get anything good out of it. I mean, it somehow let me do
some things I wasn’t able to do before, like when I was trying to check the
ghost out of you, but it’s only helped make my life crap ever since I took it.”
He sat back and folded his arms, puck still in his right hand.

“How much do you
want for it?” asked Dom. It was all he could do to keep from licking his lips.
Instead of fighting for mojo, or stealing it from someone, all he was being
asked to do was pay. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

“Thousand
bucks,” said Martin. The look on his face now was defiant, daring Dom to offer
less.

Dom pulled his
wallet from his back pocket and flipped through the bills. “I’ve got seven
hundred, but it’s American.” He dropped the money on the table between them.
“That’s not quite there, with today’s exchange rates, but not too far off.
Fair?”

Martin
rolled the puck across the table with one hand as he scooped up the pile of
bills with his other. “Fair.”

He stood to
leave, but Jenna put a hand out to stop him. “Martin, please be smart about how
you spend the money.”

He smiled at
her, then at Dom. “Absofuckinglutely.” And then he left, skipping a couple of
times even before he had reached the door.

Dom hefted the
puck, a smile on his face. “Couldn’t have gone better,” he said.

“I’ve never seen
an easier time getting something that feels this powerful,” answered Billy.
“Knocked down in an alley a couple of times, then you buy the fellow supper and
pay him money that isn’t even your own.”

“No sneaking
around, no breaking in, no duels or brute force,” continued Dom. “Remarkable.”

Jenna stood.
“Why do I get the feeling that the two of you have just ripped off poor
Martin?”

Dom stood with
her and they left, headed back towards the hotel. “You heard the man, Jenna,”
said Dom. “He didn’t want the thing anymore, and even more important to me, he
seemed to barely even use it. A good piece of mojo like this, it should be in
hands that know how to care for it, how to use it the way the numbers intend it
to be used.”

“And how is
that?”

Dom shrugged.
“That’ll take some time. I know the numbers are here. I’m sure you can see and
feel them as well as I can. And I have an idea what the provenance of the puck
is, just based on the memory of being a Canadian kid. I’d say that what Martin
called ‘checking’ has a lot to do with it.”

“Are you going
to explain?” asked Billy.

Dom turned the
puck in his hands. Solid black rubber, National Hockey League logo on one side,
but otherwise nothing to distinguish it. “Bill Barylko scored his last ever
goal with this puck.” He frowned, trying to remember the story. “The goal was
in the late fifties or early sixties, I think, and I do know that it won the
Stanley Cup for the Leafs.”

“Leafs?” Jenna
shook her head. “That’s a hockey team, I take it?”

Dom nodded,
stepped sideways to avoid a pack of young teenage girls all carrying shopping
bags. “The Toronto Maple Leafs. And then that summer he disappeared on a
fishing trip. I think the next time the Leafs won the cup was the year that
they found his body. I don’t think they’ve won another since.” He laughed.
“Hell, there’s even a famous Canadian rock song that refers to the story.”

“So that would
make this thing, this puck, a piece of mojo how?” asked Jenna. She looked
sceptical.

“The numbers
likely took on their power after all the events played out,” said Dom. He
opened the door to their hotel and let her walk in ahead of him. “The coincidence
of the Leafs not winning again until the year his body was found means that the
numbers built up a good amount of power. Already his scoring the winning goal
would’ve given the puck a little extra something, but coupled with everything
else it means that this thing carries loads of pent-up numbers, wanting nothing
more than to amplify a numerate’s abilities in their own special fashion.” He
pressed the button to call the elevator, and when they boarded let Jenna press
the floor numbers.

“If this is such
a famous puck, shouldn’t it have been somewhere special?” Jenna leaned against
the wall, hands in her pockets. “I mean, I don’t know anything about ice
hockey, but baseball and football have halls of fame where special things end
up sitting in displays, don’t they?” Dom nodded, smiling, which seemed to
irritate her. “So if hockey has a hall of fame, why would this puck be out
here, having just been bought from the hands of a street person, instead of in
there, sitting under glass, on some sort of pedestal?”

The door opened
onto Jenna’s floor, but she let it close, rode up to Dom’s floor, obviously not
willing to leave without an explanation. Dom got off first, led her to his
room, opened the door with his key card and leaned in to turn on a light.

Finally, sitting
down on the lone chair in the room, he said, “I expect that if the hall of fame
would hold onto Bill Barylko’s puck, then it thinks that it does have it.”

Jenna sat on the
edge of the bed. “What does that mean?”

“What does it
sound like it means?”

She made a face,
for a moment looking like she wanted to smack him upside the head, but then a
look of comprehension appeared in her eyes. “You replace them.”

“If
by ‘you’ you mean the person who goes in and removes the object, then yeah,
you’re right.” Dom hefted the puck, then tossed it into the air, caught it with
a downward sweep of his arm. “Obviously, I had nothing to do with this.
Wherever the puck was, it was likely Martin’s dad who scooped it.”

“Provenance is
usually important in finding numerate mojo,” interrupted Billy. “Just like it
is in antiques. Most often, if you know where the mojo came from you have a
better idea of what it’s capable of, to say nothing of knowing whether or not
something isn’t quite right.”

“What wouldn’t
be right?”

Billy shrugged
Dom’s shoulders, but it was Dom who answered. “Don’t really know. It depends on
all sorts of things. But there are some pieces of mojo out there that came
about because of something bad that happened, and usually the numbers that come
from those things are hard to reign in. Angry. Enraged, even.” Seeing the blank
look on Jenna’s face, he cast about in his mind for an example. “Like from the
Holocaust, for example. I bet there’s a whole pile of mojo that came out of
those concentration camps, but I wouldn’t want to be the one who messes with
anything from them.”

Jenna nodded,
looking pensive, then stood and walked to the door. Dom didn’t blame her for
wanting to walk away from where this conversation was now headed. “What time do
we meet downstairs?”

“About ten to
nine. We’ll go to the bank first, and then get breakfast.”

She waved at
him, a strange smile on her face. “G’night Dom. Night, Billy.”

“Good night.”
The first word came from Dom, the second from Billy. Jenna raised her eyebrows
at the combination of accents and voices, then left the room.

Dom sat for a
moment, thinking about the look on her face as she had left, then shook his
head, got his toiletries out and readied himself for bed. He’d lie under the
covers and monkey with the puck until he was too tired to think, he knew, just
to keep his mind off the fact that he’d just been flirted with.

The
bedside alarm woke him at eight. The puck was sitting on the pillow beside his
head. Dom slowly got himself together and then, everything packed and the puck
in his pocket, took the elevator down. He was early and figured he’d have to
wait awhile until Jenna came down, but she was already there, coffee in hand.

She smiled and
stood when he crossed the lobby, handed him the cup and pointed to the sugar
packets and creamers sitting on the little side table. “I thought this would
help you wake up a bit before heading to the bank.”

After stirring
everything in Dom took a sip, felt the caffeine shaking the numbers awake in
his veins. “Ahhh,” was all he could say. He smiled and leaned back in his
chair, eyes closed.

“Billy, I have a
question,” said Jenna. “I didn’t sleep much last night, I was thinking about it
so much.”

“Go
ahead,” said the shadow.

Dom opened his
eyes and looked at her, curious. She seemed a little flustered, but pressed
ahead without much delay. “When you were with all your other hosts, how did it
feel, doing . . . personal things?”

Billy raised
Dom’s right eyebrow. Dom thought he could feel the beginning of a smile as
well. “Personal things?”

Jenna turned
red, an immediate flush from neck to hairline. “Toilet stuff, sex . . .” Her
voice trailed off, and she turned to face the far wall.

Dom felt himself
getting an unwanted erection, fought hard to keep it down. He started reeling off
multiplication tables in his head, but the numbers remained in the distant
background. Billy smiled, whether as a way of placating Jenna or at Dom’s
predicament, he didn’t know. Probably both.

“We had
different ways of handling it,” said Billy. “Some of my hosts didn’t much care
for sharing the space, even though it was usually their choice that I was
present. Those ones usually tried to force me under whenever they were engaged
in their toilette. Or, more rarely,” he added after a brief pause, “in carnal
relations.”

“Why more
rarely?”

“This is a
lonely calling, the life of a numerate. Most of us, alive or dead, don’t go out
of our way to interact with other people, aside from those we need to.” Here he
lifted his hand and pointed to himself. “Or those we choose to, as when we end
up getting involved in acquiring more mojo.”

“Did any of your
hosts sleep with someone who was aware of what they were?”

Billy sat quiet
for a long moment. Dom was up to multiplying together two sets of five digit
numbers now, trying to get the part of his mind that was not paying attention
to the numbers to focus on drinking coffee and fiddling with the puck. “None I
can recall,” Billy finally answered. He smiled again. “Why?”

Dom stood,
downed the rest of the coffee and marched over to toss it in the garbage can.
“Time to go if we’re going to make it to the bank,” he announced over his
shoulder and headed out the door without looking to see if Jenna followed.

“Time for a cold
shower,” said Billy in a whisper.

“You fucker,” responded
Dom, voice equally low. “She’s a good looking girl, but—” He stopped talking as
Jenna caught up. Maybe this would all be forgotten later and he wouldn’t have
to talk or think about it anymore.

Fat chance.

They got to the
car and threw their bags in the back, then climbed in, Dom behind the wheel.
The bank was downtown, a short trip across the river, over a low-lying metal
bridge that sat near a power plant and small but pleasant baseball park. He
parked the car in front of the bank, plugged the meter, but before going in he
led the way to another mailbox, performed the same routine he had in Bozeman,
and soon had a new piece of ID.

The banker
didn’t immediately recognize him this time, but smiled and nodded when he saw
his new driver’s license. “Mr. Donovan. Of course. Business in Florida still
good, sir?”