Sleight of Hand

by Lamont A. Turner

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

They found the next victim on her back behind a stack of trash cans in the alley behind the laundromat on Third Street. There was a pile of what looked like chalk dust where her head should have been, and her left arm was missing, sleeve and all, though there was no blood or other evidence to indicate its removal.

From the prints the cops obtained off the right hand, they were able to identify the victim as Jamie Billingsworth, seventeen years of age. Her parents had been searching for her since she had disappeared six months before she started taking naps in alleys without her head. She’d been picked up two months before for working the streets, but had given a phony name, and had posted bail before her prints came back with the right name attached.

The victim’s arrest record said she often worked the same street where McDaniel did his shopping. Finding Carla to see if she knew of a connection turned out not to be as simple as a drive around the block. Usually the summer rain would push the girls back into the doorways and into the lobbies of hotels with stained carpets and clerks with upturned palms. I slipped a few bills into one particularly greasy palm and asked where the girls were hiding.

“The pimps can’t get ’em t’go out,” the man said, eyeing the bills from behind dark glasses. “Most of ’em ain’t really trying, though. They don’t want to lose their assets.”

“Lose them how?” I asked, watching the bills disappear into his pocket.

“There’s a spook on the loose,” he said, not bothering to ground it with a smile. “Girls been disappearing.”

“Girls like Jamie Billingsworth?” I asked.

“They found that one,” he said. “I know of at least five more who went M.I.A. in the last six months.”

I had more questions, but I’d suddenly stopped being there for him. The glasses came off so he could stare through me at the plate glass window across the lobby. I turned and saw a pair of yellow hands pressed up against the glass. It was hard to tell through the smudges, but the hands looked rubber.

I left him standing there with his mouth open and ran to the door. By the time I got it open, the man with the rubber hands was half a block away. Pulling up my collar to keep the rain off my neck, I started after him, but a hand on my shoulder pulled me back.

“Rob! I’ve been looking all over for you,” said the voice in my ear. The voice was familiar but out of place. It took me a second to put it with Steve.

I shook him off and made for the alley the man had turned down. By the time I reached the alley, which opened into another alley that ran behind a row of shops, it was empty. Leaping over the trash cans that the man had tipped over as he’d passed through, I made it to the end to find the second alley just as empty. This time there no overturned cans to tell me which way he’d gone.

“Who are we chasing?” Steve gasped, using both hands to hold his heart in his chest. I let him suck in enough air to get the color back into his face before lighting into him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “There’s a good chance I could have ended this all tonight if you hadn’t slowed me down.”

“Or you could have ended up with a lot of trouble,” Steve said. “I’ve been trying to track you down all night. Your friend from the Homicide Division called. He said the Feds said to back off. He stressed that they weren’t playing around. You don’t answer your phone unless it’s somebody with curves on the other end?”

He should have known I’d have my phone off since I’d planned on interviewing a class of people best described as skittish. They tended to be suspicious of distractions. He didn’t look up to answering any more questions, though, and I was too tired of being wet to ask any. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off the wall he was holding up, and I herded him back down the alley. I wasn’t going to find the killer that night. I wasn’t even going to find Carla.

This time, we didn’t get a chance to feel foolish while our evidence turned to dust. The Feds took possession of the remains and of the case, advising the locals that the matter was beyond their jurisdiction. All of our dust piles were collected and carted off, along with all the files, and my witness suddenly relocated, leaving no forwarding address.

* * *

Five months had passed since the last signs of a man with a melted neck and a hooker with no head had been scrubbed from the public record. It was all just a fairy tale now, a myth pimps used to scare obedience into their stable. Noticing the cigar ash that had landed on Steve’s lap, I was reminded of the powder that had once been Jamie Billingsworth’s head and lamented on the one case that would never be solved.

Steve wasn’t very sympathetic. He looked at me from across the chessboard on my kitchen table, and blew cigar smoke in my face. He usually tried to put up a smoke screen when he was losing. I knew in a moment, after I moved my queen, he would spill a drink or knock over the board as he got up to use the bathroom for the third time in an hour.

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he said, glumly staring at his doomed king. “You were wasting a lot of time on a case with no client. You wouldn’t have solved it anyway.”

“What makes you so sure I wouldn’t have solved it?” I said pretending to study the pieces.

“Well, let’s see. You had a pile of dust that had once been someone you couldn’t identify, another pile that had been a clue you couldn’t decipher, and a junkie who told you she saw an armless man who did magic tricks and killed with his mind. Need I continue?”

“Do you have to use the bathroom?” I asked, smirking.

Steve looked at the board and scowled. “You know I know more about this case than I’ve let on,” he said, reaching for his drink.

He was drunk, and he was losing. He needed something to crow about if he was going to restore the natural order. I’d been waiting five months for him to get around to it. “I know,” I responded, sliding the board toward my side of the table.

“I have friends at the installation that employed Roseau.”

“Really?” I said disinterestedly, reaching for my queen.

“Were you aware that the first victim was not a maintenance worker, but rather the head of a top secret research project?”

“Oh,” I said drawing my hand back from the queen and reaching for my rook just to tease him. I drew my hand back and stared at the board, as if trying to make a decision.

“It’s true. Roseau was indeed a maintenance worker, but Roseau was not the victim. I knew it all the time, but I was asked to keep it quiet.”

“Asked?”

“OK, warned. I was warned not to tell you. It was a matter of national security.”

“Tell me more.”

“I’ve said too much already.”

“I think you’ve told me bullshit,” I said reaching for the queen again.

“I’m serious. I have important friends.”

“You don’t have any friends,” I said moving my queen. “And you’re in check.”

“Then how do you suppose I know about J.G.?”

“Stop trying to be mysterious. It doesn’t suit you.”

Steve leaned back in his chair and exhaled a cloud of smoke. After he got tired of glaring at me, he got up and walked to the window.

“Project J.G. was an attempt to harness a certain radiation to create the perfect camouflage. It was theorized that this radiation could render an object, or man, invisible. The problem was, nobody knew how this radiation would affect human physiognomy. Unfortunately, before there was a chance to work it out, an accident occurred. I don’t know the specific details, but a maintenance worker named Roseau was involved. Shortly after that, Roseau vanished, and not long after that we had our first victim.”

“So you helped them cover this up while innocent people were being murdered?”

“The situation was being handled.”

“You’re a phony. You knew about all of that before the Feds cleaned house,” I said with a grin that would have impressed the Cheshire Cat. “And, for your information, while the case will never be solved on the record, I know what happened. I solved it.”

I took a moment to savor Steve’s defeat. With a sigh, he sank back into his chair to await the unraveling.

“It had taken me three months to find him. During that time, I learned the government was not looking for him; they knew where he was. After a brief period as a freelancer, he had been working for them. In return, they paid him well and ignored the occasional powdered corpse that turned up in some back alley. However, in their arrogance, they’d failed to clean up after him, and I followed the dust trail right to his door.

“The key had been McDaniel. I spent some unpleasant evenings making myself feel dirty, looking into his romantic life. It turned out one of his conquests had a familiar last name. I tracked down Mrs. Roseau and we had a nice chat. Mrs. Roseau didn’t know what had happened to her husband after the accident. She suspected he might be alive, but the check the government had written for her made her less inclined to look into it.

“Roseau let her think he was gone for good, but he kept tabs on her. He was the jealous type and, even though he’d left her behind, he didn’t care for the notion he might be replaced. McDaniel should have stuck to the hookers.”

“So, how did you find out Roseau was working for the government?” Steve asked.

“I found that out the night I met him,” I said, pausing to let Steve’s eyes shrink back to normal size before continuing.

“I’d been to his motel room and found the rubber gloves he wore when he didn’t want to scorch everything he touched, and the rubber sheets he wore under his sleeves to keep from burning his shirt off on the days he decided to have arms. While I was there, I left him a note, inviting him to his coming-out party in the parking garage of the Hilton at eleven that night.” I paused to hand Steve the ash tray. As still as he was, I was tempted to take his pulse.

“Roseau showed up early, probably eager to dispatch whoever was on to him, but my other guest had yet to make an appearance. I waited, peeking up over my dashboard at Roseau, and getting a little dizzy watching him pace in circles, when I saw car lights. Roseau stepped back behind a pillar, and reached up the sleeve of his long overcoat to remove his right glove. A familiar green Buick pulled up, and a second later, Alonzo climbed out. I’d called him earlier that afternoon, telling him I had a case I couldn’t solve, and that it was urgent he meet me.

“As he passed the pillar, heading for the elevator, where I told him I’d be, Roseau stepped out to greet him. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I assumed Roseau was asking Alonzo how he’d found him. At first, Alonzo looked indignant, then confused, then frightened. He stepped back, and turned to run, but Roseau took his hand from his pocket and reached out with an empty sleeve. I took aim and fired.

“I stepped over the corpse of Roseau, and grabbed Alonzo by the shoulders, spinning him around to face me.

“‘No! Don’t!’ he shouted; his eyes wide with terror. I slapped him just hard enough to bring him back down to the real world and made him tell me why he’d lied to me about the government confirming the corpse in the morgue was Roseau.”

“How did you know he wasn’t just repeating a lie he believed?” Steve asked. “What made you think he was in on it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was just the way he’d made a point to bring it up out of the blue. Maybe it was the way he’d mentioned you when he’d never met you and I’d never mentioned you to him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but then I remembered I’d hired you after the last time I’d talked to him, so I hadn’t mentioned you to him.”

“What did you do with him?”

“There wasn’t much I could do. I was pissed he’d let me go around chasing my tail, but what he was doing was government sanctioned. I let go of him and he dropped back to the ground, curling up at my feet, whimpering. Alonzo had a conscience once, and I’d just reminded him of it. I left him there, next to the monster he’d helped conceal.”

I heard Steve exhale. His face was even paler and more fish-like than usual. “You really don’t expect me to believe all of that, do you,” he asked, his bulging eyes trained on me as though I had just sprouted a second head.

I just smiled and poured him another drink. “You know it’s true because, when the boys in black clued you in about all of that secret project business, they put you on the payroll. You’ve been keeping tabs on me all this time. That’s another thing that made me sure about Alonzo; he knew you because you were on the same team.”

Steve drained his glass. “So, what now?”

“Now I find a new secretary. I know a girl named Marcy who claims to be one hell of a typist. Or perhaps it’s time to relocate. Maybe I’ll start a private detective service somewhere in the tropics where the women are slim and tan and the men all wear short sleeves.”