Two for the Show (15 page)

As for his other daughter, Alison? Not mine, I knew. Not the efficient second use of my frozen sperm, because there was not a trace of resemblance, in look, movement, or (in my admittedly prejudiced view, anyway), in personality or intelligence, to me. (I had followed the girls’ upbringing, don’t forget. Followed it like a detective on a stakeout or a tail. A lifelong stakeout. A forever tail. I had held my breath, waited anxiously, when Sasha was rushed to the hospital near the end of her pregnancy with Amanda, some sudden problem with the fetus. The hours I spent pacing in my condo like an expectant father, until the crisis had passed. My ineluctable caring, my investment of feeling, right from the start.) I knew—knew as a father can know—that Alison wasn’t mine. There was someone else. But if not Wallace (because maybe his sperm count, his low motility, had been overcome by the time of Alison’s conception—a different period in his and Sasha’s life, the pressure off), then who? Who would be that close to him? Or was that part of his consummate tactical genius too? To keep me anxious, nervous, about who it might be?

And I see that for me—especially, particularly—my filial connection to Amanda means so much, because it is evidence of my existence. Evidence of my presence. Proof of my existence beyond an anonymous sterile condominium, beyond a half-life of screens and keyboards. Without Amanda, I remain pure shadow. A mere extension of the digital. In a sense, hardly existing at all.

Did Wallace sense how important it would be to me? The extra protectiveness, the extra loyalty, it would engender?

Wallace the Amazing and I both understood that Amanda and I would never meet. Or that it would only be after his career, in her adulthood and my dotage, if even then. He would have named me her godfather, he let me know, if we lived in a world where our connection could ever be known. That was the debt he felt he owed me. Or was it just one more tactic?

In a city of fifty thousand motel rooms, it is easy to find a safe place to keep Amanda, at least in the short term, as long as we usher her into the room unseen. Pop on the television, give her a pile of books, an endless supply of junk food, bar the bathroom window so she doesn’t contemplate anything foolish on her occasional peeing breaks, and then we will wait. Wait to hear what comes first—wailing sirens at full alert, or a discreet phone call to the untraceable number we left.

Is it a safe motel room?

Depends on what you mean by safe.

We open the motel room door to hustle Amanda in, and there are the Stewartsons, waiting for us.

As previously planned, carefully arranged with me.

Archer Wallace is disarmed in seconds—professionally, in a blink. Not even adjusted yet to the dark of the motel room, its blackout shades and blinds drawn, hardly aware of it even happening, he’s relieved of the gun that he so effectively and aggressively brandished, that he had stowed in his pocket during our check-in and for the necessary double-handed moment of inserting the key card and opening the door.

Not too smart.

His awkward, flailing, unthinking protest is met with a fist across the side of the neck. A blow I fully recognize as a veteran of it. Swift, sobering, decisive, only needed once—one warning punch all that is necessary.

And I happily hand them my gun too—no bullets, only a prop anyway—glad to be relieved of it.

What choice do I have?

I knew that Wallace and I could not pull it off without the Stewartsons following us. That they would be watching me, watching us, no matter what. Even when I found Wallace at the eldercare facility, they were close behind me, barely shakable. Even though I know Vegas like no one, I didn’t think I could lose them—or if I could, it wouldn’t be for long, and they’d only come back madder and meaner.

And I could not forget the beating I took last time. It was exactly as memorable as they hoped. It achieved what they wanted, I know, redirecting, refocusing, my behavior and actions. Their carefully calibrated escalation of violence with each encounter. I was painfully (ha-ha) aware of that measured escalation. I could too fully anticipate the next lesson. And the only way to avoid that next encounter was to bring them Archer Wallace, and fast. Risky enough, the lost hours of my quick and startling side trip to my mother. Hard enough to hold them at bay during that. So really, what choice did I have?

So I have delivered the goods directly to them. Amanda, their bargaining chip, and Archer Wallace, who crossed them. He and I are taking the risks. The Stewartsons and I will reap the rewards. An arrangement the Stewartsons liked immensely when I filled them in on Archer’s plan the day before. Letting them avoid the risk of actually kidnapping Amanda, letting it happen from a safe remove, no risk of video cameras capturing them (they didn’t know about my extensive knowledge on that) or of being seen, leaving them less exposed.

“Nice work, boys,” says Dave Stewartson—highly arch, broadly sarcastic, a movie-gangster imitation. With a little nod, he adds, “We’ll handle it from here.”

In a few moments, Archer Wallace has come full circle.

Gagged and handcuffed to the tub and sink in the motel bathroom.

Back where I met him. Back where he began.

And now that the Stewartsons have Amanda, Archer Wallace has lost his value. That was part of the appeal of Archer’s kidnapping plan when I told the Stewartsons about it: no more worrying about, dealing with, Archer Wallace. He was no longer a picture card, just a mere deuce or three in this high-stakes poker game. The nothing, the nobody, that he was when the Stewartsons discovered him. Worse than that, because he is now expendable, and the Stewartsons seem entirely comfortable and vaguely experienced with various forms of “expending.” They won’t leave him chained to a motel tub and sink forever. What will happen to him?

What choice did I have?

Better, I had decided, not to contend with the Stewartsons’ practiced violence. Better to prove myself to them, get the credit I may need to exercise later. Better not to have them enter the Wallace fiefdom, the Wallace Shangri-la themselves, and do something foolishly violent, their instinct, their default setting, I knew by now. Better to acknowledge to them that I had found Archer, that he had this kidnapping idea and I thought we should go through with it. That it might be the only sure way to get Wallace the Amazing to respond, to act, to deliver.

The discussion of the idea with them had been concise, focused, professional. Wallace the Amazing didn’t seem to be taking the threat of his false past and stolen identity being revealed very seriously. The Stewartsons were beginning to understand the same thing I was—that he was above all a showman, and this would become part of the show. This sideshow was not merely a distraction and annoyance, but would feed directly and usefully into the main event. What were the consequences of revealing his identity? The threat of the loss of his fortune. Of his show. But only the threat. And only eventually. And on the way to it, years of litigation. Teams of high-priced Las Vegas lawyers. A circus of a court case. Publicity you couldn’t buy. A colorful, hidden past, which would create intrigue, excitement, and who knows, enormous sympathy? (The lawyers’ investigations would probably bring out all kinds of nuggets from the past, which would only excite more interest.) You couldn’t say what the outcome would be. And he and his brand and his influence seemed to be so well established in Vegas, who knew how well or how fairly the litigation would go?

The Stewartsons had assumed that it was worth at least a few million bucks to Wallace the Amazing to make this little problem from his past go away, given his stature now. For a few million bucks, why jeopardize it?

What they hadn’t figured was that Wallace the Amazing might not take it seriously at all. Might welcome the threat of exposure. The challenge of litigation. That he didn’t really see it as very jeopardizing. Because he could hold them at bay, duck and feint, go on with his act, even incorporate it. Frustrate and infuriate them.

So the threat of exposure seemed to take a backseat. Kidnapping seemed stronger. Traditional. Tried-and-true. No matter how he genuinely felt about his own children, he’d have to deal with it, one way or another. He couldn’t simply let his daughter be taken. He’d have to try something, do something, to get her back.

(And once kidnapping was the plan, I had to be the one to do it. To engineer it, to oversee it.)

I know. First, my partnership with Wallace the Amazing. Then, a partnership with Archer Wallace. Then, a partnership with the Stewartsons. Always, a path of least resistance. A path of agreement, of docility. Secret partnerships, that no one else knows anything about. Don’t think I don’t notice the pattern. New partnerships before the old ones have dissolved. Saying yes to everyone. Accommodating everyone else. Never doing it on my own. And is it now primarily to best protect Amanda and myself, as I tell myself? Or is it the need to stay the beta male, keep to the background even when I am forced into the foreground? A man of changing loyalty—because a man of no loyalty? Or of enormous loyalty to his own daughter, and I see this as the only way to protect her. To be there for her—literally, finally.

A man of no relationships. Inexperienced, incompetent with relationships, with friendships, with loyalty, with belonging. Cut off from all social interaction. So what do you expect when relationships are demanded of me? I don’t know what to do, how to treat them, how to behave. Promiscuous in alliances. What do you expect?

I can’t bring myself to even exchange looks with him. My doppelganger. Fortunately he is back in the bathtub. Out of the way. How far out of the way remains to be seen.

And now I have kidnapped my boss’s daughter. What a sorry banality. What a low-class, sordid revenge.

Or if you prefer, I have kidnapped
my own daughter
. Still a banality. Like white-trash couples who use their kids as pawns in divorce proceedings, in love triangles, swiping them from each other in Walmart parking lots or from school playgrounds in situations of increasing and surpassing sordidness.

And the only solace, and the cruel irony—and it is considerable in both solace and irony—is that I get to know her a little. This truly wonderful young girl.

I look at Amanda. I can’t help myself. Bright, alert, yet managing to remain calm. (I had gotten the inkling, in those few swift, chaotic, purposeful moments inside their home, that she was the smart one, the calm one, and it turns out I am right.) Terrified of course, but hopeful. She is executing the best strategy, pulling off the best trick of any hostage—making her captors, or this captor at least, feel horrible about the turn of events.

The calm one. The smart one. And unquestionably the beautiful one. Big eyes, ethereal, flawless complexion, despite a childhood beneath the harsh Vegas sun. And as we check into the motel room, move around it cautiously, I see that she knows it about herself. Her smarts, her calm, her own beauty, are not lost on her.

I don’t tell her, of course, that I know her friends’ names, have checked on the safety of their homes and the relationships of their parents. I have checked on her safety and comfort at school. I have been her silent, unseen, and unknown protector for all her fifteen years. I have been her silent, unseen surrogate parent, and now, as of an hour ago, I have taken an utterly opposite role: very much seen, in behavior that is far from parental. And I don’t know if I’m managing to hide my paternal concern for her—I don’t know if anyone could do it completely—because she seems to somehow sense (and why wouldn’t she?) this special connection, this special concern. And she looks at me with questioning eyes, with a slight tilt of the head, as if waiting for me to explain myself, waiting for me to right things, to release her, to bring her back home.