Lifehouse Lifehouse
Jude ceased to exist about a hundred
meters from Wally and Moira's house. Operation of his physical plant was taken over then
by Paul Throtmanian, who made a point of existing whenever it was not inconvenient. It was
he who conveyed the bag of swag a kilometer or two, from one end of Point Grey to the
other (passing within a block of the edge of Pacific Spirit Park), softly and triumphantly
singing John Lennon songs every step of the way. When he got within two blocks of his
current home--just as he got to the words, "I don't believe . . . in
Beatles"--Paul too ceased to exist, and became Ralph Metkiewicz, programmer, solid
citizen, and tenant-of-record for that address.
Ralph was the only safe person to be in
this particular neighborhood--was a considerably safer identity altogether than either of
the other two. (Though there were no warrants outstanding for him under any of those
names.) Nonetheless he kept the lowest possible profile, walking in shadow whenever
possible, and using every trick he knew to make himself unobtrusive when he could not. He
knew it would not be safe to openly enter his home tonight, even in darkness. Moira's
sweatshirt and Wally's parachute pants and sockasins were just too weird for his persona,
too memorable should certain questions ever be asked. Not that they would be, but he was
an artist . . . and a professional pessimist, besides.
Happily, Ralph's home had been chosen
specifically because one could leave it without being seen, even if it were surrounded by
many policemen . . . and the process worked just as well in reverse. He entered the
underground parking garage of an apartment building on West Fourteenth, used a key to open
a knobless maintenance door on its far wall, let himself thereby into a long concrete
corridor that led past the building's boiler room, and then turned left. Halfway along
this corridor, which ran the width of the building, he bent and picked up a small
unobtrusive piece of articulated wire from the filthy floor, about the length and strength
of a paper clip and bent at six places. At the corridor's end he came to a blank wall,
seemingly made of particle board sealed somehow to the raw concrete. There was a
heavy-duty electrical outlet set in it at about chest height, inset perhaps a quarter of
an inch as if sloppily installed. He inserted the bit of wire into the right-hand slot of
the socket in a certain way, rotated it clockwise, twice, and heard a small clack!
sound. Then he repeated the procedure, counterclockwise, with the left slot. He removed
the lockpick and tossed it behind him toward the spot on the floor where he'd found it. He
set down his bag, put his fingertips into the shallow space formed by the wall socket's
inset, braced himself, and heaved sideways. The wall slid away smoothly and noiselessly to
the left. He reclaimed his satchel of swag, stepped through the resulting opening into a
tunnel, turned and slid the false wall back into place, and continued on without troubling
to turn on the lights. At the end of the tunnel he found the keypad in the dark, tapped
the combination, and was admitted into his own basement.
The moment the door locked behind him,
Ralph was tempted to become Paul again. But he waited until he had queried the security
system and confirmed that his was the only entry, authorized or otherwise, since his
departure. Then he morphed back to himself, losing Ralph's slouch and outthrust
jaw, and emitted a sustained whoop of triumph and glee that made the basement ring.
It was more than the ninety-eight large.
His place in the annals of the great was assured. As of this moment, Paul Throtmanian was
legend. He had detected, perfected, and just now effected the first new con in at least
a hundred years.
With any luck, the bulk of the fame--the
on-the-record portion--would be posthumous. Ideally his achievement would not reach the
ears of anyone who wasn't bent until Paul was comfortably in the ground, or at least past
the statutes of limitations. But the players would all know, well before then. In the
bucket-shops of Vancouver and Melbourne and Markham, at all the major stock exchanges, in
the great seine of Times Square, in the cabs of Florida pickup trucks painted with the
names of hurricane-repair contractors, backstage at alien-abductee conferences, after
hours in Alternative AIDS clinics and Stop Smoking clinics and Facilitated Communication
clinics and Cure Cancer clinics, on cruise ships and in revival tents and in Vegas and Key
West and along Bourbon Street, in between dropping wallets or recovering memories of fetal
rape or pretending to treat frozen shoulder or dispensing market or other psychic advice,
the grifter elite of the English-speaking world would sooner or later speak of Paul
Throtmanian with respect, and even admiration. The beauty of the sting, the sheer joy of
it, the thing that would sell it, was that the higher the mark's IQ, the more
likely he was to bite. Pleasure without guilt, like Pepperidge Farm cookies. You could
almost use MENSA's mailing list for a hit sheet. It was possible that his fame would
become planetary, for the gag would work in any culture which had been exposed to science
fiction. It was even conceivable that the gambit might come to be known as a
Throtmanian . . . the way Murphy's and Vesco's and Rockford's names had entered the
language. Today, Paul had become one of the immortals.
For once, he would outshine his
partner.
* * *
That thought came close to derailing his
joy, for he loved her and respected her professionally and did not want to envy
her, and besides there was darkness in her life just now. But he also knew that she would
not begrudge him his triumph--she would probably take some of the credit for it, and
probably deserved it--and perhaps his glow would brighten her present darkness just a bit.
If not, perhaps ninety-eight large in cash would. And he had to share the news or burst.
She must be back from California by now,
was probably at her own apartment waiting for his call. (They had learned, early on in the
five years they'd been a team so far, that both their personal and professional
relationships went better if they maintained separate addresses. Aside from that they were
practically married.) So: check in with her at once. Or nearly . . .
He left the cash in a place even the
building's architect could not have found without deep radar, and set demons to guard it.
He stripped off Wally's and Moira's clothing and fed it to the furnace, along with the air
ticket to Halifax, the Toronto phone number, the cab-driving tips and the envelope that
had contained them. The pepper spray and the cab fare he took with him as he padded naked
up the stairs. He went straight to the phone machine, which greeted him with four blinks.
The first call was a hangup--no manners left in the world. The second was an infant or
small child, happily pushing buttons at random--no parents left in the world. The third
caller warned him that the opportunity to buy into lucrative lottery ticket syndicates in
other, tax-free nations was about to slip through his fingers--Paul recognized the voice,
and grinned. The fourth, at last, was his lady love, who said:
"Honey, I'm into something heavy
here. I'm walking in the Endowment Lands, and I ran across a mook looking to bury
something nice just off the Lowrie Trail, Dorothy twice, but that's not the good part. He
was digging away at the base of a huge old toppled elm tree, and he hit something with his
shovel that made a sound like clack, something like plywood or plastic. And then .
. . I know this is nuts, but then he had an orgasm, all by himself, standing up. And then
he started to talk out loud, as if somebody was grilling him--only I was only fifty meters
away and I swear there was no one else there. He said his name was Angel Gerhardt and he
lived over in the East End on William Street and his e-mail handle, God help us all, was
'Frosty,' and he named his girlfriend Linda Wu and his two housemates and said none of
them knew where he planned to bury the . . . the thing . . . and the weird part was, he
didn't say any of this like a mope giving information to the heat, he said it like a guy
opening his soul to his new lover, happy as a clam. Then he filled the hole back in and
buried the package in another spot. He's gone now. I'm going to put the package somewhere
else--but I'm not going near that goddam fallen elm without you, and maybe Rosco. I don't
know what we've got ahold of here, but whatever it is is very very big. Call me as soon as
you get in, okay? I hope everything went okay."
Paul frowned. It was a good thing for her,
he reflected, that he loved her. . . .
* * *
His phone had no redial button (it was
barely a touch-tone), and he had a mental block against remembering her cell phone number.
So it was necessary to go consult the tackboard in the kitchen, again. Along the way he
stopped in his bedroom and threw casual clothes on, chiefly to give him time to deal with
his irritation.
Even for God, this seemed low comedy.
He didn't have the slightest idea what the
hell June had stumbled onto--any more than she seemed to. But it never entered his mind to
doubt for an instant that whatever it was, was of greater and more lasting
significance than ninety-eight large in small bills. Or even maybe the first new con of
the century. That much was obvious. This was his punishment for being a male chauvinist
pig--penance, for the sin of Pride.
Most infuriating of all, the mystery
fascinated him.
It seemed clear that her mook had
triggered some kind of security system light-years beyond anything Paul had ever heard
of--and security was a field he had given diligent study. Whoever had designed the system
possessed technology the RCMP or American NSA would unquestionably kill, maim and/or
torture for. Paul's most plausible first-hypothesis was aliens, and he emphatically did
not believe in flying saucers.
What that system was meant to protect, he
could not even begin to guess. He did not waste time trying. It would be more efficient to
just go find out. He was already scheming ways to beat the system as he returned to the
kitchen.
There he made and drank Ghimbi coffee
while he replayed the relevant tape, twice. At the third mention of Rosco's name, he went
to the bedroom and got him. Then he sat in the kitchen again and thought hard for several
minutes, occupying his hands and eyes by cleaning and oiling Rosco and practicing with the
speed-loader.
Maybe he was looking at this the wrong
way. Just backwards, even. Maybe he was going to become twice as immortal as he had
thought. How many players had ever hit two world-class jackpots on the same day?
He read June's number off the wall and
dialed it.
She answered at once. "Hi, hon."
She sounded depressed--more accurately,
chipper: the way she sounded when she didn't want you to know she was depressed. June said
depression was like farting: that all humans are subject to it, but it is not done in
polite company. He knew it ran deeper than that, for they had long since reached that
point of intimacy at which they could fart unself-consciously in each other's presence.
But he respected her need to suffer in silence, and tried not to be insulted by it.
"After considerable reflection, I've decided to let you live," he said.
"That's nice."
"I will, of course, do my best to
ensure that your every moment is infinite agony--but it just seems to me Hell doesn't
deserve you."
"It never will. What'd I do?"
"What did you do? Only you
could have done this to me, bitch. I pull off the triumph of my career, dead bang perfect
the first time--and you top me before I can even tell you the news. It's fucking typical,
I tell you. You're a menace."
"Paul, what the hell are you talking
about?"
At once he inferred that she was not
alone. Something had gone horribly wrong since she'd left her message. It was now
imperative to know whether the third party could hear Paul's end of the conversation too,
or only June's. "I see. Good as a nod, is it?" he said, hoping to hear an
"Uh huh," that would mean they could communicate safely as long as he could
phrase his questions to require yes/no or similarly cryptic answers.
Instead she said, "What?"
Confused, he tried, "You're
alone?"
"Yeah, I'm out for a walk, over in
the Endowment Lands. Why?"
He had to nail it down. "Where did we
first meet?"
This should do it. If someone were
listening, she would answer with the Official Version: the one they gave to strangers,
straight acquaintances, and casual friends.
But she answered accurately.
"Fogerty's. I'm really me, okay? So what's going on? Did something go sour with your
thing, or what?"
Now he was baffled. "No. No, it went
just great . . . right up until I got home heavy and found your message."
"What message?"
"--," Paul said, and then
repeated it for emphasis.
"I just got out of Customs three--no,
four . . . that's funny--four hours ago. It didn't go real great down in San Francisco, so
I dropped my stuff at my place and came out here to think. Did this message actually sound
like me? What did I say?"
The one thing he was certain of was that
the phone message was from June. Not an impressionist, not a computer-assembled matchup of
voice recordings: June. In speech pattern, emotional nuance, it was unmistakably his
lover. He knew he might be wrong, but he was positive.
She was an amnesiac or a zombie. There was
no third choice.
"Look," he said slowly, "I
think it would be best if we discussed this in person. I really really do."
Brief pause. "Okay. My place or
yours?"
Paul thought quickly. They had long since
agreed and arranged that, for reasons of professional risk hygiene, neither should be able
to enter the other's home in its owner's absence--the stated theory being that what you do
not know, you cannot babble if drugged or otherwise coerced. Paul had never quite been
certain that security was the only reason for this arrangement, but had never pushed to
find out. June was the senior partner of the team; it was enough that she always let him
in when he knocked, and usually came when he called. But now he was seeing things through
new eyes. If someone else were operating her now, the tactical advantage for him lay on
his own turf.
"Come in the front way, okay?"
Longer pause than before.
"Paul?"
"Yeah, love."
"What time did we meet at
Fogerty's?"
He blinked. Okay, fair enough.
"Twenty minutes after closing."
Her relief was audible. "I'll be
there in about fifteen minutes."
He hung up the phone and glowered at
Rosco, so frightened and angry that holding him did not make Paul feel as ridiculous as it
usually did. Dammit, he had not expected to have to be this paranoid again for months,
yet! A man deserved a break after a big job.
Mess with my woman's head, will you? I'm
coming for you, pal. I don't care who you are: I'm bringing it to you. You just bought the
whole package. Batteries are included.
* * *
The living room projected out four feet
from the rest of the house, with a big bay window facing north that wrapped at east and
west ends. Someone sitting in the rocker by the window could see a pedestrian or motorist
approaching the house, from either direction, from at least a block away. So could someone
crouching beneath the window with a toy periscope in one hand and Rosco in the other.
She came from the right direction. It was
for sure her. She was alone. She did not appear to be under any kind of duress or
constraint, did not look drugged or at gunpoint. She looked totally serene, in fact, until
she was within a few feet of the door, at which time she allowed an expression of mingled
curiosity and weariness to cross her face. It was still there as she let herself in the
unlocked door and locked it behind her. Then it was gone, for you cannot look curious and
weary and hoot with helpless laughter at the same time.
"I'm sorry," she said when she
could. "I know you told me, but I guess I didn't--I hadn't--" She lost it again,
and sat in a nearby chair.
Under other circumstances he might have
been irritated--but he was too relieved. So far as he understood, zombies did not giggle.
Or break their lover's balls. "Issss," he said in a hokey baritone, and rubbed
his free hand across his bald scalp, "a pozzlement!" The hand she could not see
put the safety back on and put Rosco away in his small-of-the-back holster.
She got the King and I reference,
and giggled even harder. "Thanks," she said when she was done. "I needed
that. You look like that guy from Star Trek, the one without the wrinkles. 'Make it
so!'--that one."
"It'll grow back," he said in
his own voice. "And it was worth it, believe me." He got up from his crouch,
went to the door and rearmed the security system.
"The scam worked? Oh, that's great,
honey--you're a genius! A bald genius. How big?"
"Ninety-eight kay," he said
smugly, buffing his nails on his chest. "Perfect blowoff. They won't even know
they've been stung for hours yet." He admired his manicure. "I'm so smart I make
myself sick."
Suddenly she was serious. "You're not
wrong. I take my hat off. Do you have any idea how many people spent their whole lives
trying to think up a new bit?"
He had not meant to be sidetracked by
this, but he couldn't help himself. "Aw hell," he said, "it's really just a
refinement of the Horse Wire."
By this he referred to the classic con
outlined in the film The Sting, in which the mark is led to believe the player has
secret advance access to telegraphed racing results. It is indeed the historical
grandfather of most "insider-information" cons, and a case could be made that
Paul's creation was merely another, admittedly highly refined, variant.
But June answered as if he had primed her.
"The hell it is. It looks a little like a Horse Wire, but it's fundamentally
different. It's about the only con I ever heard of that doesn't require the mark to be
corrupt. Your sting works on altruists. You've broken new ground!"
For some reason her praise made him
flinch. Okay, he thought, you've had your minimum daily requirement of stroking. Back to
business!
"So have you, love," he said.
She frowned, shifting gears at once.
"Oh yeah. What's this about a message?"
"You better listen to it
yourself."
"I guess so." She got up.
He pushed away from the door, and just in
time remembered to say, and just in time had the wit not to preface it with By the way,
"How's Laura?"
She winced, and came to him, and they
hugged. "Later, okay?" she murmured into his neck.
Sure. Maybe in their golden years.
"Yeah."
They held each other for a long moment,
each relishing the physical comfort, each wishing it could be prolonged. Then they went to
the kitchen, and he started a pot of coffee while the tape played back.
She played the whole message twice, and
after she shut the machine off, for several minutes the only sound in the room was the
merry bubbling of water. Just as he was about to set out cups and spoons, she shook her
head as if coming out of a trance.
"You said there's a priest's hole in
this dump," she stated, fiddling with the machine.
"Yeah. Down cellar." His blood
began to pound: she was using command voice.
"Now. Bring Rosco!"
"I'll get a jacket--"
"Fuck the jacket. Let's go."
She was already heading for the door to the basement.
He caught up with her at the foot of the
stairs: she did not know which way to go from there. But she was right on his heels as he
led them to the emergency exit, one hand in her purse, looking back over her shoulder. He
had caught her urgency now, and didn't bother to conceal the code he punched into what
looked like a broken calculator. A slab of paneling became a door, which opened to reveal
the unlit tunnel. As he reached to turn the tunnel light on, they both heard the horrid
sound of an alarm echoing through the house, and probably the neighborhood.
"Son of a bitch," he
said. "Somebody just came through the front door." A different tocsin. "The
fire alarm too! Damn--I liked this place." Suddenly his eyes widened. "Oh,
shit--cover me! The ninety-eight large--" He began to turn back . . . and found that
June was pointing her own gun at him.
"Did the brain fairy leave you a
quarter last night?" she snarled. "Fuck the money."
She was right. He knew she was right.
"But--"
She took the safety off. "Move move
move move move--"
He moved.
* * *
The best car in the underground garage was
a '94 Honda Accord. June was better with cars, they'd settled that long ago, so Paul
guarded her back while she got in and got it running, a matter of seconds. She had it on
the street and accelerating before he could get his seat belt buckled. "Where are we
going?" he asked.
"How the hell do I know? Downtown,
for now: try and maximize witnesses, disappear in the crowd. After that, who knows?"
He nodded and watched out the window for
cops. A few blocks later, he said, "You don't remember it at all?"
She took her eyes off the rearview mirror
long enough to throw him an agonized look. "No! Not any part of it. If it wasn't my
voice, I wouldn't believe it. Except for one other thing."
He nodded. "Our visitors."
"No, they only confirmed it. I
believed it before we ran--that's why we ran."
"Okay: what's the one thing that
convinced you?"
"The part about Angel Gerhardt having
an orgasm."
"I don't get you. That part almost
convinced me you were hallucinating."
"When I left Dad's house this
morning, I was wearing panties. I'm not, now."
Paul turned pale, and then ruddy.
"Jesus."
Suddenly she started to laugh. "You
want to hear something stupid?"
"Sure."
"I actually feel better now than I
did when you called. And I'm scared shitless."