The Haunted Air Part 5

"So that's why you was holding them by the top corner. You always hold them bottom center." Charlie frowned. "You think he here to make trouble?"

Lyle shook his head. "No. I got the impression he didn't even want to be here. I think he was bored and having a little fun with me. He knew exactly what I was doing but he was cool with it. Just sat there and let the show roll."

Lyle wandered into the waiting room; Charlie followed, saying, "Maybe he in the game."

"Not ours. Another game, but don't ask me what." Lyle had sensed something going on behind that white guy's mild brown eyes; something that said, Don't mess Don't mess. "Some game of his own."

Lyle prided himself on his ability to read people. Nothing psychic about it, no spirits involved, just something he'd been able to do as long as he could remember. A talent he'd honed to a fine edge.

That talent had found the visitor named Jack a hard read. Bland-looking guy: nothing-special clothes, brown hair, mild brown eyes, not handsome, not ugly, just... there. But he'd moved with a secret grace inside a d.a.m.n near impenetrable s.h.i.+eld. The only thing Lyle had sensed about him besides the steer-clear warning was a deep melancholy. So when he'd seen his question-"How is my sister?"-Lyle's instincts shouted, Recently deceased Recently deceased!

If the reaction of the woman with him was any indicator, Lyle had scored a bull's-eye.

"But we came out okay," Lyle said. "We may have hooked a future fish or two, and after Moonie finds her long lost bracelet right where I told her it would be, she'll be singing my praises to anyone who'll listen."

Charlie sat down at the upright piano that had come with the house, and pounded the keys. "Wish I could play."

"Take lessons," Lyle said as he drifted to the front picture window.

He pulled back the curtain just enough to reveal the bullet hole at the center of its crack web. Before filling it with translucent rubber cement, he'd run a pencil through the hole with ease. So small, and yet so deadly. For the thousandth time he wondered- Movement to his right caught his eye. What? G.o.d d.a.m.n d.a.m.n! Someone was out there!

"Hey!" he shouted as a burst of rage drove him toward the front door.

"Wha.s.sup?" Charlie said.

"Company!" Lyle yanked open the door and leaped.onto the front porch. "Hey!" he shouted again as he spotted a dark figure racing away across the lawn.

Lyle sprinted after him. Somewhere in his brain he heard faint cries of Danger Danger! and Bullets Bullets! but he ignored them. His blood was up. Good chance this was the banger wannabe who'd done the drive-by, but he wasn't driving now, and he wasn't shooting, he was running, and Lyle wanted a piece of him.

The guy was carrying something. Looked like a big can of some sort. He glanced over his shoulder. Lyle caught a flash of pale skin, then the guy was tossing the can Lyle's way. It didn't go far-sailed maybe half a dozen feet then hit the ground with a metallic sound and rolled. Unburdened, the guy picked up speed and beat Lyle to the curb where he hopped into a car that was already moving before the door closed.

Lyle pulled up at the sidewalk, gasping for air. Out of shape. Charlie came up beside him, breathing hard, but not as hard as big brother.

"See his face?"

"Not enough to recognize. But he's white."

"Figured that."

Lyle turned and headed back. "Let's go see what he dropped."

He squatted by the object and turned it over. A gasoline can.

"s.h.i.+t!"

"What he gonna do? Burn a cross?"

"Doubt it." Whites were in the minority on these streets. Another dark face moving in was a nonevent. "This is business. He was looking to burn us out."

He rose and kicked the can, sending it rolling across the gra.s.s. The New York psychic game had only so many players. One of them had done this. He just had to find out who.

But how?

4.

"All right," Gia said. "We're finally alone. Tell me how Ifasen did what he did."

She'd been dying to know ever since they'd left the psychic's house, but they'd been stuck driving Junie home. Since Karyn and Claude lived on the Lower East Side as well, they'd tagged along. Jack had dropped all three outside Junie's apartment building and now he was ferrying Gia uptown on First Avenue.

Despite the late hour, progress was slow. Gia didn't mind. Time with Jack was never wasted.

"First let's decide where we're going," Jack said. "Your place or mine?"

Gia glanced at her watch. "Mine, I'm afraid. We're getting to the end of the sitter's time frame."

Vicky, her eight-year-old, still would be up. She rarely failed to cadge extra hours of TV out of her sitters.

Jack sighed dramatically. "Another celibate night."

Gia leaned close and nuzzled his ear. "But it's the last one for the next week. Did you forget that Vicky leaves for camp tomorrow morning?"

Gia had been trying trying to forget it. She'd hated the week Vicky had been gone last summer-the seven loneliest days of the year-and was dreading her departure tomorrow. to forget it. She'd hated the week Vicky had been gone last summer-the seven loneliest days of the year-and was dreading her departure tomorrow.

"I did. Forgot completely. I realize you'll miss her terribly, as will I, but I know just the thing to ease the pain of separation."

Gia smiled and twirled a lock of Jack's hair. "And whatever would that be?"

"That's my secret until tomorrow night."

"I can't wait. And speaking of secrets, what's Ifasen's?"

"No-no," Jack said. "First you tell me the question you asked. If 'two' was the answer, what was the question?"

She shook her head. She now found herself a little embarra.s.sed by her question. If she could get away without revealing it...

"You first. Tell me how that man can give answers when he doesn't know the question."

"You're sure you want to know?" Jack said, turning his head to give her a smile.

A smile from Jack... so few of those since Kate's death. She missed them.

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Might spoil the fun."

"I can handle the truth. How does he do it?"

"Pretty much the same way Johnny Carson did when he pulled his Karnak the Magnificent shtick."

"But he was reading off cue cards."

"Exactly. And in effect, so is Ifasen."

Gia shook her head, baffled. "I don't get it. We sealed those envelopes. We heard him give the answer, we watched him open the envelope and read the question."

"Things aren't always as they appear."

"I know that only I knew what was written on my card."

"Not after his brother Kehinde did his work."

"Kehinde? But he just-"

"Appears to be a gofer? That's what you're supposed to think. But Kehinde is key. Ifasen put on the show, but he couldn't have done it without his brother's help. The method is called 'one ahead.' If you remember, right after Kehinde collected the sealed envelopes he took the bowl around to the rear of the podium and made a show of covering it with the cloth. That's the key moment. Because while you think he's fiddling with the cloth, he's really slitting open one of the envelopes and removing its card-or billet as the psychics like to call them. He was also tossing in a marked envelope containing a blank card."

"Why?"

"Think about it. When Ifasen-and by the way, if that's his real name, mine is Richard Nixon-when he removes the white cloth on the bowl, he looks down and reads the question on the card Kehinde opened for him. Then he picks up one of the sealed envelopes and raises it above his head. But he doesn't answer the question in the raised envelope; he answers the question on the card in the bowl."

"I get it!" Gia said, feeling a burst of pleasure as all the pieces fell into place. "After he answers the question in the bowl, he tears open the envelope and pretends to read the question he just answered, but actually he's seeing the next next question." question."

"Exactly. And for the rest of the show, he stays one envelope ahead-which is how the method got its name."

"And the blank card in the extra marked envelope is so Ifasen won't wind up one short." She shook her head. "It's so simple."

"The best tricks are."

Gia couldn't hide her chagrin at being so easily fooled. "Am I so gullible?"

"Don't feel bad. You've got plenty of company. Millions, I'll bet. That trick's been conning people since the eighteen hundreds. Probably started as a sideshow mentalist gag, then the spiritualists picked it up and they've been milking it ever since."

"So Ifasen's a fake psychic."

"That's redundant."

"How do you know so much about it?"

Jack shrugged, but didn't look her way. "You pick things up here and there."

"You told me earlier you once helped a psychic. One of your customers?"

"No. I worked for one, as a helper, playing the gofer like Kehinde, plus doing behind-the-scenes stuff."

"No!" She'd never imagined. "When?"

"Long time ago, when I first came to the city."

"You never told me."

"Not necessarily something I'm proud of."

Gia laughed. "Jack, I can't believe this. After all the things you've done..."

She saw him glance at her, then train his eyes back on the traffic again. He said nothing, but that look said it all: You don't know all the things I've done. Not even close You don't know all the things I've done. Not even close.

How true. And Gia preferred it that way. The Jack she saw on almost a daily basis was even tempered and good-natured, gentle and considerate in bed, and treated Vicky like his own daughter. But she knew he had another side. She'd seen it only once. That had been when- Had it been almost a year already? Yes. It was last August when that filthy creature abducted Vicky. She still remembered Jack's face when he heard about it, how it had changed, how he'd bared his teeth, how his normally mild brown eyes had become flat and hard. She'd looked then into the cold harsh face of murder, a face she never wanted to see again.

Kusum Bahkti, the man Jack had gone after that night... he disappeared from the face of the earth, as if he'd never been.

Jack killed him. Gia knew that and, G.o.d help her, she'd been glad. She was still glad. Anyone who wanted to harm her little girl deserved to die.

Kusum wasn't the only man Jack had killed. Gia knew of one other for sure: the ma.s.s murderer he'd stopped in mid-slaughter on a subway car back in June. For a while the mystery "Savior" had been all the media talked about, but the furor had pretty much died down now.

Gia was sure there had been others. She didn't know this for a fact, but it was a reasonable conclusion. After all, Jack made his living fixing situations for people who'd run out of aboveground options. When that happened, some of them went underground in search of a solution. A few of those wound up with Jack.

So Jack's clientele-he insisted on calling them customers instead of clients-was hardly the cream of society. And to solve their problems he sometimes had to mix it up with some abominable lowlifes, people ready to kill to prevent Jack from doing his job. Since Jack was still alive, she had to a.s.sume that some of those others were not.

None of these were happy thoughts, and Gia preferred to tuck them out of sight where she didn't have to deal with them. She loved Jack, but hated what he did. When she'd stepped off the bus from Iowa to pursue her dream of being an artist, she'd never known a man like Jack could exist, let alone that she'd wind up with him. She was a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen; he was not.

She'd finally forced herself to face the truth: she loved a criminal. He wasn't on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, or on anyone else's wanted list, for that matter-because none of the list makers knew he even existed-but he definitely lived outside the law. She couldn't imagine how many laws he'd broken and continued to break every day.

But strangely he was the most moral man-her father aside-that she'd ever met. He was like an elemental force. She knew he would never break faith with her, never leave her in the lurch, never allow her to come to harm. She knew that if it ever came down to it, he'd give his life for her. She felt safe with Jack, as if surrounded by an impenetrable s.h.i.+eld.

No one else could give her that feeling. Last year at this time, they'd been split. Jack had told her when they first met that he was a "security consultant." When Gia had learned how he really made his living, she'd walked out. She'd dated other men during the hiatus, but they all seemed so insubstantial after Jack. Like wraiths.

And then, despite all the hurt and invective she'd heaped on him, when she and Vicky had needed him most, he'd been there.

"I mean," she said, rephrasing, "with all the scams you've pulled through the years-"

"Scamming a scammer is different. The fish these psychics hook don't know any better. I think people should get something real for their money, not just smoke and mirrors."

"Maybe smoke and mirrors is what they're looking for. Everybody's got to believe in something. And after all, it's their money."

Jack glanced at her. "Am I hearing right? Is this the Gia I know?"

"Seriously, Jack, where's the harm? Probably better than throwing it away at Foxwoods or Atlantic City. At least they can get some comfort out of it."

"You can lose the ranch in a casino and, trust me, you can lose just as much to a psychic. The b.i.t.c.h I worked for..." He shook his head. "b.i.t.c.h is not a term I use lightly. It took me a while to realize what a foul, vindictive, is not a term I use lightly. It took me a while to realize what a foul, vindictive, small small person she was, and when I did-" person she was, and when I did-"

"Did she cheat you?"