I had a third option, but that one I hadn’t had to use once. The first two always did the trick. The guy was gone so fast, flinging the front door open with such force, that he shattered the glass encasing the chicken wire. When I’d seen my defaced poster, I should’ve known it was going to be a bad day.
I turned off the alarm. It wasn’t connected to a service. Wasted money. The noise alone was enough to send the thieves running. I replaced the Glock in its holster, but not before noticing the concealing black paint was chipping off the orange tip that was a dead giveaway that it was a fake gun and less lethal than a BB gun. But it was the only gun I would have. I didn’t like guns, and I didn’t like knives, which made it more awkward when I noticed the thief had dropped his in the middle of the floor as he ran for it.
Because, unlike my gun, it was real.
The body holds eight to ten pints of blood. I saw that on some stupid crime-scene investigation show where everyone is attractive and everyone wears sunglasses at night. I’d been channel surfing one night and wasn’t fast enough to keep surfing before I heard that unnecessary fact. I didn’t know pints or liters or anything like that, but I knew how much blood poured out of your mother when a knife was jammed into one side of her throat and out the other. In three minutes, give or take, it was a lake of blood. A lake you never forgot; a liter was just a word. I’d lay a thousand bucks not one of those actors had seen anything close to what they were blathering about. They were only reading their lines, and not once did it go through their empty heads that what they were saying and pretending was reality to some people.
A head popped in through the doorway as I dug out the Yellow Pages to call the glass guy to come fix the door. It was Luther, fifty and graying, from Pie and Puds three shops down. The pie was the best in Georgia, and Pud was for when you ordered Luther’s special brew of coffee with a slice. Thick as mud with enough caffeine to guarantee you didn’t sleep for a week. Pie and mud. Pud. I didn’t get it, either, but each to his own. Luther had a faithful elderly clientele that came every day. “Damn, boy, you get robbed again? And can’t you get an alarm that plays Barry White? I got old people in the place. You done made them soak their Depend diapers and scared ’em so bad the false teeth were flying around the room like some cheesy damn horror movie.”
“Sorry, Luther, but Barry wasn’t in the selection.” I eyed with grim unease the knife on the floor. “The kid dropped it. Would you mind tossing it into the Dumpster on your way out? I’ve got a customer coming and they’re already five minutes late. I have to get my mojo in gear.” I passed a hand in front of my face and reappeared with smooth features, mysterious fathomless gaze, and one raised eyebrow. “Huh? You think?”
He shook his head, grabbed the switchblade, and headed back out the door. “You are one strange white boy. That’s all I’m saying.”
Once he was gone, I finished calling the glass place. They were used to calls in this area. The office was in a well-traveled, artsy-funky part of town. It was up and coming, not as well known or expensive to rent as Little Five Points, which meant it was still rough around the edges, which had just been proven. That didn’t stop people from coming, and walk-ins were common. That didn’t mean the man who opened the door while I was sweeping up small pieces of glass wasn’t what I considered a member of my usual clientele. Not that I didn’t get men in, I did. But they were usually an older crowd or dreadlocked twentysomethings who smelled of incense and goat cheese. The man at my door didn’t fit. He looked to be in his early thirties and wasn’t being dragged along by a giggling girlfriend or sporting flip-flops and a tie-dyed shirt. On the contrary, he was wearing a suit. In this weather, the man was wearing a goddamn suit. Unbelievable.
Okay, there was no tie, and the shirt was open at the collar one whole button, but it was still a suit. I felt the sweat prickle the nape of my neck at the very sight of it. The guy was tall and solid, with short blue-black hair and almond-shaped pale blue eyes. I’d only seen that combination once before. A couple of months of my long-gone past, and here it stood before me. But this wasn’t the real deal. Years had passed, and except for the unusual coloring, I probably couldn’t have picked out my old acquaintance on the street. But I did remember that he’d had a helluva nose and was short. This guy had a nose of less than anteater proportions and was tall, taller than me. He wasn’t a good-looking guy, with a face of harsh angles and planes, but he had a quiet power about him. An air of competence. I wouldn’t have wanted to run into him in a dark alley. Abby, on the other hand, would’ve finagled his phone number in a heartbeat.
Power and competence. It made me think of Cane Lake and cops. I’d had my fill of cops when I was fourteen, including the sympathetic ones. None of it made for good memories.
“Are you the …” He closed the door behind him and waited for the tinkling bells to quiet before he finished the question. “Are you the resident psychic?”
I’d long slipped my glove back on. Resting the broom against Abby’s desk, I folded my arms to regard him suspiciously. The disquiet I kept to myself. He wasn’t the past, but this guy was someone, all right. Someone who wanted something from me, and it was more than where Auntie Liz had hidden the family silver before she died. He wasn’t a cop. He didn’t quite have the tinfoil bite to him, but he was something. And whatever that might be was pinging hard on my radar.
“That depends on your definition of psychic,” I drawled. It was my show, but there were times the trappings of it grated. “Walk-ins are twenty-five bucks extra. Rates are posted in plain sight per Chamber of Commerce rules.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the black-and-gilt cursive, Abby’s doing, on the wall.
He wasn’t put out by my rudeness. “I’m not here for a reading,” he said politely with a vaguely Northern flavor to his voice. “Not yet, at any rate. I would just like to talk.”
“I charge by thirty-minute increments,” I droned on as if he hadn’t spoken. If he wasn’t here for the talent, I wasn’t going to waste the usual routine on him. “I have an hour window in my schedule. You want the whole thing or not?” I didn’t care either way. On one hand, I wasn’t one to turn away money. On the other, well, I wasn’t one to turn away money. I suppose that meant there was only one hand, a moneygrubbing paw blithely unaware of my caution. Or simply resistant to it.
“You’d charge to talk?” He blinked, torn between a tightly drawn amusement and mildly righteous outrage. “I’m not sure my expense account will cover that.”
“I’d charge to flip you off in traffic if I could work out the logistics.” I straightened. “My time is valuable. You can pay or you can walk. It’s your choice.”
He reached for his wallet without further argument, only saying, “There goes my dinner money.”
Yeah, cry me a river. I accepted the hundred dollars he forked over and repeated, “Twenty-five extra for walk-ins.”
He raised an eyebrow but passed more bills over. “Could we sit down?”
“Sure,” I said as I counted the money in a fast riffle. “Knock yourself out. You’ve got thirty minutes on the meter.”
Making his way past me into my office, he sat in the client chair and looked around. The doorstop immediately caught his eye. “Do you have an interest in phrenology, then?”
Wasn’t he up on the whole ball of wax? “Nope.” I sat back in my chair, slouching a bit and linking fingers across my stomach. “Bought it at a yard sale. A buck fifty. Good for propping the door open.” And it made me laugh at people’s gullibility.
“You don’t put stock in reading a person’s character by the bumps on their head, I’m guessing?” He was serious, even with the faintly dry flavor to the question. It only made him seem more out of place. In this business, you usually have two categories: slobbering believers or foaming-at-the-mouth skeptics. This guy didn’t come across like either one. He didn’t have the fire of a zealot or the cynicism of the doubting Thomas. In another lifetime, I might have been curious. In this one, I only wanted to see
the door hitting his ass. Curiosity killed more than cats, I’d learned that the hard way. And if that made me the only closed-minded psychic in the Western Hemisphere, I’d learn to live with the title.
“Only if I put them there.” I opened the top drawer, pulled out a deck of cards, and started to deal them out. “So talk, already. I’m on a schedule, pal, even if you’re not.”
His eyes followed the cards as he said firmly, “I did say no reading.”
“It’s solitaire.” I lifted eyebrows at his insistence. “The only thing I’ll pick up from this is paper cuts.” If I weren’t wearing my gloves. The deck was clean and new. I was the only one who’d touched it, but I wasn’t taking a chance around this one.
He gave a rueful smile and apologized smoothly. “Sorry. I’m a little sensitive to maintaining the integrity of the experiment.”
Great. He was one of those. Now it made sense, although he still didn’t quite fit the profile. For all that they tried to be unbiased, most researchers, to use the word loosely, were either skeptics or believers. Trying to prove or disprove, one or the other. This guy, however, was so buttoned down that where he fell I simply couldn’t tell.
I flipped over three cards and said matter-of-factly, “I’m not one for poking and prodding, Mr. …?”
“Dr. John Chang.” He offered his hand and said, “I apologize again for the rudeness.” It came out so easily, so naturally, that I was almost tempted to believe it. Almost. This wasn’t a man who spent a lot of his life apologizing.
“Yeah, you’re all about the rudeness,” I said sarcastically. The guy was doing an imitation of upstanding that was so stalwart and upright that it made my teeth hurt. I nodded my head at his hand. “I thought you didn’t want to compromise whatever project you’ve got going on.”
“I was guessing you wear those gloves for a reason.” And a good guess it was. He pulled his hand back when it was obvious I wasn’t going to shake it. Money bought my time; it didn’t buy any manners to go along with it. Especially not for someone who was very probably lying to me. “And you are?”
I was positive he already knew who I was long before he stepped foot across my threshold, but I shrugged mentally and went along with it. My name certainly wasn’t private information around the neighborhood. “Jackson Lee Eye.” Corny, eh? I was an extra from every Southern-fried, squeal-like-a-pig movie ever made. Despite my urban appearance, I still had the good-old-boy drawl … only I wasn’t particularly good, and I had learned to speak “purty” enough to flirt with the older clients. But they liked the drawl, and I kept it. Smooth as molasses.
He glanced over his shoulder to look at the painted letters on the tiny lobby’s picture window. “Ah, the All Seeing Eye.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Clever.”
“It pays to play to your audience,” I replied with an edge of mockery. I had no interest in proving myself to a possible academic who had nothing better to do with his time or to someone even more annoying like a flat-out liar, and it was pretty evident in my voice. If he thought I was a fake, my feelings wouldn’t exactly be hurt. He’d certainly spend less time sniffing around. “Time’s ticking away, Doc. Do you actually have anything to discuss besides my window treatment?”
“Sorry again.” Yeah, right. He turned back to face me with a rub of his finger across his upper lip. “I have to admit that I’ve researched you somewhat, Mr. Eye. Were you aware that you have a completely clean slate with the Better Business Bureau? Not one complaint. That’s unheard of in your profession. None of the others could make that claim.”
“Others?” I felt like groaning. This guy wasn’t messing around. Not content to focus on one fish, he was throwing a wide net out to catch whatever he could. It did, however, reinforce the conclusion that he was an academic, if a slightly shady one. The doctor probably came from a PhD rather than a medical degree. “You’ve visited a few of my esteemed colleagues?”
His smile transmuted to one more wry, mocking, and slightly predatory. If I had to put a label on it, I’d say it was that of a lion counting antelopes. When was enough enough? When was that belly full? Decisions, decisions. “A few,” he affirmed, noncommittally.
I was liking all of this less and less. The nearly inconceivable notion of refunding his money crossed my mind. Just shove it back into his hand and hustle him out the door. “What exactly do you want, Chang?” I asked flatly as I scooped up the cards and shoved them back into the drawer. “You’re beginning to make me nervous.” I flashed teeth in a predatory grin of my own. “And Houdini doesn’t like it when I get nervous.”
Houdini was my third option behind the fake gun and the alarm.
Dr. Chang didn’t have to ask who Houdini was. The full-throated growl that emanated from under my desk was introduction enough. Eyes dropping toward the floor, he carefully pulled his feet back a few inches and with a raised eyebrow asked, “German shepherd?” It was a good guess. The back panel of the desk kept Houdini hidden from sight.
“He’s damn sure not a wiener dog.” Actually, Houdini was a mix. He had the distinctive shepherd bark, body, and ears but the smooth black coat of a Rott or a Lab. He came from the pound, same as me, and neither of us had learned to love people yanking our chains. “And both of us would appreciate you getting to the goddamn point.”
Leaning back in his chair with slow caution but no discernible fear, he commented, “Wasn’t Harry Houdini the ultimate skeptic when it came to psychic phenomena?”
“I like skeptics. They keep me humble.” I slapped the top of the desk, and Houdini came out. Black lips skinned back from ivory teeth, he fixed his pale russet eyes on Chang. “And that’s not what I call getting to the point.” Houdini had been with me for some time. There were times when Abby was alone in the office if I had to run out for a while, but only with the door bolted and Houdini sitting behind it baring his teeth at whoever walked by. He loved that. It was nothing more than a game to him. Abby suggested we get a real gun so she could keep the office open. That was a flat no, hell no, get the fuck out of town no. Guns were as bad as knives. I didn’t like what they could do to the meat of a human body, no matter how deserving that body. The cloying smell of blood, the chunks of raw flesh and yellow fat splattering away from the flying metal, it wasn’t must-see viewing. Not for me.
Not again.
And who needed an actual gun when my own personal security force was up to the job? From the dog’s flattened ears and rippling growl, you’d never know that Abby called him Harry Bear and used him as a footstool or that the regulars brought him treats on a frequent basis. In one of my more cynical moments, I’d taught him a trick that was a huge hit with his fans. When asked “What does my future hold?” he’d drop to the floor and cover his eyes with long legs. I’d thought about having him simply roll over and play dead, but I somehow doubted that would be as popular.
“Sometimes I do have trouble getting to the point.” Careful not to move too quickly, he lifted his wallet from inside his suit coat and laid it on the desk. “At least, my students said so often enough in my class evaluations.”
I picked up the wallet and gave serious thought to peeling off my glove and getting all the info I wanted and then some, but I had the feeling he’d make a grab for it if I did. And “Harry Bear” would change from pretend attack dog to the real thing. He, Abby, and I were family. We watched one another’s backs. Sighing, I decided to escape an assault charge and do things the hard way. I opened the wallet and examined the contents. “So you’re a professor?” I asked absently as I pulled a university ID free. Maybe he was and maybe he was something more. I wasn’t forgetting that tinfoil bite to him.
“Not anymore. I’ve moved to the private sector, but I am still affiliated with the school. I do quite a few research projects with them. It keeps me in touch with the scholastic world. The freedom of thought, pushing the boundaries of accepted theories …” His lips curved with dark humor. “The academic backstabbing. How could I give all that up completely?”
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“Fascinating,” I said blandly. The rest of his wallet was the usual: driver’s license, credit card, auto card, all reading John Chang—curious. Curious but getting boring. There was also the picture of a laughing woman. It was an older picture, from the late sixties or early seventies judging by the dated clothing. She had purely Asian features, probably Japanese or Japanese-American judging by the delicacy of her bone structure. “John Chang” assumed I couldn’t tell the difference between someone of Chinese and Japanese heritage. Careless.
The woman wasn’t beautiful, but she was pretty, with a glow that would have drawn people to her without effort. “Your mama.” My drawl became a little thicker despite myself. “She’s been gone for a while.” I didn’t need to be psychic on that one. He would’ve had an updated picture if one had been available. Not waiting for a comment, I returned the wallet to him. “No video card? Where do you get your pornos?”
“I’ll look into getting one,” he said in a distinctly humoring tone. “Have I passed inspection? Do you believe I am who I say I am?”
“No one is who they say they are. Even if they don’t know it.” I laid a hand on a sleek black back and gave Houdini a subtle down signal. “I’m still waiting to hear what you want. Not,” I added instantly, “that you’re going to get it. Keep that in mind.”
Deciding to ignore my automatic rejection, he replaced the wallet and rested his hands on his knees. “I want you, along with many of your fellow psychics, to participate in a study. The usual, really, trying to measure psychic activity. But our controls will be very strict. We’ll also be testing psychics with every known variety of talent.”
“Are you sure it won’t be like the movie? Where you zap us with electricity if we answer wrong?” I scoffed lightly.
He obviously had no idea what I was talking about, pop culture, Dr. Venkman, and great movies apparently not his thing, but was able to tell that I wasn’t serious. “The university couldn’t afford that kind of utility bill,” he said with a gravity that was betrayed by the glitter in his eyes.