Two for the Show (8 page)

I am obviously dealing with a certain level, or at least a certain kind, of professionalism. I’ve always known that the highly democratic Internet—its databases, sites, passwords and codes to be cracked by hackers—is a boon to law enforcement, and the same boon to scam artists. I see now that I’m not the only technologist in Vegas.

Stewartson, I notice (my eyes adjusting to the low light), is holding an orange from my fruit bowl. Now he peels it. Detaches and sucks slowly on a section. “And this actually works out better. Because while you may not respond to the threat of harm to yourself, now there’s our pal Archer here, and we’re sure you’ll respond appropriately to the threat of harming him, fragile as we both know he is . . .”

They were settling in, I saw. Stewartson and his babe, Sandi. Curtains drawn. In the low light, something in the angles of their faces, their noses and cheeks, catches me. Their features project a kind of unnerving strength and aggressiveness, which they both seem to share. An assertive tightness around their mouths, eyes puffy and bulging. Like some subtle deformity portending criminality—a predictive trait discovered by university researchers. Weird and undefined in the muted light.

I wasn’t so concerned with my own safety. I wasn’t even that concerned with Wallace’s. They needed him—he was what made their blackmail work—so what could they really do to him, beyond terrify him or pretend they didn’t care what happened to him. No, my big concern (as Sandi duct-taped me to the chair, working silently, expressionlessly, clearly with plenty of practice) was how I was going to do my job. How was I going to give Wallace the next show’s information? What would he do if I couldn’t get it to him? Suddenly cancel the show? Say it was a sudden illness? A family emergency? (In a way,
yes
, a family emergency.) My computers, in the next room, showed nothing—I was always careful, even in the house alone, not to leave revealing screens or information up there if I wasn’t sitting there—but I still could not figure out how or when I was going to be able to send him what he needed.

“You’ve got a lot in common, you two, don’t you?” said Stewartson, checking the duct tape on Wallace and on me. “Both under the radar, both pretty much alone. Have you discovered that about each other, your brotherly bond?”

If Wallace didn’t get the information he needed, he would know there was something wrong. The absence of communication was really the only way for me to signal that something was wrong, and after twenty years, it would be a strong message. He would realize, I hoped, that he now had to rescue me, as I had rescued him. The Wallace that I no longer knew, no longer trusted—now, for the first time, I really needed him.

With both of us tied up tight, my doppelganger brother and me, the Stewartsons did a little reconnaissance around the condo. Stewartson soon confronted the locked door to my office. He returned, looked inquisitively at me. “You lock a door in your own condominium?” Ripping the piece of tape off my mouth—the sudden sharp sting on both cheeks made my eyes water—he waited for an answer.

“There’s lots of valuable computer equipment in there. I’ve been robbed before.”

“And a locked office door is going to discourage a thief? You kidding? It’s going to do just the opposite.” He pressed the same strip of duct tape back over my mouth.

He went out to my garage, returned a minute later, crossed the living room with an armful of the tools from the bag in my car’s trunk, and in a moment I heard some pounding, scraping, a sharp sound of wood cracking, and then silence—obviously while he looked around inside the office after breaking open the door. He didn’t bother to ask me where the key was, or demand that I open the office for him. Maybe he figured I’d try something, or find some way to stall. Maybe it was less risky to leave me tied up. Maybe the destruction was mostly to make a point.

He returned to eye me. “That is a lot of computer equipment.”

“I’m a consultant.”

“What kind of consulting?”

“Information consulting.”

“What kinds of clients?”

Only one.
“You name it,” I said. “I’ll work for anyone.”

“See, I don’t think that’s true,” said Stewartson, sitting down again, settling into a spot on the beige couch this time. “The way I see it, I stood up at that Wallace the Amazing show, and suddenly you’re trailing us, and then you take Archer Wallace from us, suddenly willing to be involved, to take a risk. I’m seeing a little cause and effect here. I think maybe you and the Amazing Wallace are connected. Connected through those computers, I’d venture to say.”

A professional. An artist of the criminal kind. No dummy. “Like I say, turns out you hardly exist. I doubt that’s an accident. So here’s a guy who doesn’t exist, except for his impressive roomful of computers. And the nice condo, the food in the fridge, it comes from somewhere. So I wonder what it means, if you can’t get to those computers of yours,” he said, as if with an offhand curiosity, a mere comment in passing, but looking at me closely, to gauge my reaction.

With the curtains drawn against any sense of day or night and the cheap kitchen wall clock invisible from the living room, you lose all track of time. With your elbows and knees and ankles pinned into place by duct tape and plastic ties, your muscles have no choice but to give in, relax into the resistance of your vertical bed, your upright home. The duct tape tight around your wrists and ankles, the forced immobility—both factors constrict your normal blood flow, creating a lethargy paradoxical to the situation. I find myself drifting in and out, moments of an exhausted semi-sleep. Seconds? Minutes? I see that Archer Wallace, next to me, is at moments sleeping upright too. Time collapses. Time deforms. Expands and contracts. Like waiting for a delayed flight in a featureless airport lounge. Sitting for hours in a bland bureaucratic hallway. The purgatories of modernity—and this is one more new form. Sandi and Dave drift in and out of the living room only occasionally. I hear them cobble together meals from my thinly stocked refrigerator; they peel the tape off my mouth, stuff a few bites of sandwich into me, pour a little juice down my throat, then do the same with Archer Wallace. I wonder if the goal here is to return him to his previous state of abject fear and docility, and take me along for the ride. They say little to each other, nothing to us.

And in this drifting, this drifting of unknown intention toward unknown outcome, I can’t help but notice that this imprisonment in my own home, oddly, isn’t so different from my regular working life. In quality, in texture, yes—the terror, the lack of control. But in
actuality
, in what is literally happening—and not happening—it’s much the same. I am strapped in a chair, immobilized, silent, for hours on end. What’s any different about that? Only that there are no computer screens in front of me. Only that my confusion, terror, anticipation, and dread are what’s in front of me. But when I quell those, when I let those dull and die down, it’s not so different at all.

And then, finally, Sandi turns on my big living room television. And suddenly the four of us—two of us bound—are watching a Vegas channel to which I subscribe. As if we are simply another strange Vegas family, no stranger than most.

Care to guess what show we are gathered around?

Though I try to hide it, to act nonchalant, only half-interested, I’ve never been more anxious to see a Wallace performance.

“You seem a little nervous,” says Dave Stewartson, archly, smug. “Why would that be?”

I don’t answer. I watch the screen. I had expected that Wallace would cancel. That he would alter the act, do some different tricks. That he would perform a different kind of show.

But Wallace the Amazing came onstage as confidently as ever. Made his graceful small talk. Took questions. Went into his mild trance, as always. I could sense that something was different about him, though, and of course it was. He would have to come up with some tactics, conjure up something, some misdirection, some other kind of magic. I felt hollowed-out, defeated. At last, I had failed him.

He began to call on members of the audience, and called out specifics. The names of their dogs. The colors of their curtains. Their first girlfriends. Their latest girlfriends. Weaving them into narratives. Showing relationships between audience members, where they had no idea there were any.

In short, doing the same show as always.

The Stewartsons were more than mildly disappointed. Sandi looked at Dave with an annoyed I-told-you-so expression. Dave must have revealed his hunches about me and promised her fireworks, and yet there was nothing. The anger was simmering in Dave; you could see it. I had the sense he would take it out on me.

As for me, I was in shock. A state of awe. Watching him, listening to him—everything about the show the same, everything about it profoundly different—I felt a shift in the universe, an almost physical realignment. A sudden new understanding of the unique, wildly ambitious kid who’d grown into the man on television in front of me, who knew how different he was, knew he deserved more, so saw it and seized it, compelled by something akin to a sense of mission, perhaps, to escape that backwater southern town. I realized that he had humored me all these years, hired me only to confirm and support his abilities, so that he could fact-check himself. I was the safety net beneath his high-wire act of mentalism, and tonight he simply walked the high wire without the net, because in a pinch, in a tight spot like tonight, if he had to, he could do it.

Wallace the Amazing, most amazingly, it seemed,
was
psychic. Or whatever more scientific, accurate, or sophisticated terminology than “psychic” existed for his brand and degree of prescient abilities. I felt, finally, at last, after all these years, what thousands, millions, felt in the presence of Wallace the Amazing, witnessing his show—felt at last that shift in my understanding, that shift in the universe. The recognition of, if not a world beyond, at least some separate dimension to this one. I finally accepted the notion of a capacity beyond myself. This was, I realized, a moment of religious conversion. A moment of religious experience. I was born again—or born, anyway—into something primal, substantial. I
knew
it, was
gratified
to know it and feel it authentically and thoroughly. If only briefly.

The weight of evidence still said no. The science said no. But something was nevertheless revealed. Until I realized the truth—and the realization hit me hard. No psychic ability. No sixth sense or paranormal fluency. Somewhere, squirreled away, holed up somewhere in circumstances and conditions that would be immediately recognizable to me right down to every mundane detail—bank of computer screens, empty closets, refrigerator full of takeout leftovers—there was someone else just like me. Someone else delivering the information to him as well, maybe so he could cross-check it, check us against each other to make sure we were both doing our work and neither of us was getting sloppy or slipshod or suddenly pulling a fast one on him. But mostly, mainly, it was to protect him from, to handle, a situation just like this. To let the show go on. Somewhere, there was someone, for all these years, all this time—someone else cut off, isolated, in Wallace’s employ—someone just like me.