Mindbenders (2 page)

“Okay,” he puffed, “you’d better come. But you do what I tell you; don’t go improvising on your own. Got me?”

I nodded but I didn’t really mean it. He sighed and reached into his shirt pocket and fished out the paper from Uncle Dave’s desk. He unfolded it and handed it to me:

Greg:

Dulles will get you to safety if anything happens to me. Don’t worry. You worry too much. I trust him to get you where you need to be.

Dave

I was downright shaky on Mr. Dulles but I trusted Dave. “Okay,” I said and we went up the block fast. A van was parked in the alley behind the store, shiny black with smoked windows and a couple of stubby cellphone antennas popping out of the roof. Mr. Dulles stepped over to it and knelt at the rear fender, running his hands over the surface without touching, like he was worshiping it or something.

When he turned back, he said, “It’s them. There’s three of them, they have weapons, two of them are decent shots but the third one is the most dangerous because he’s out of control. No judgment. Everyone is afraid of him because he goes off for no reason.” He shook his head. “Idiots send other idiots into the field.”

I leaned over and took a close look at the fender. There was nothing written there. I ran my fingers over the thing, in case it was Braille or something. Of course, there was nothing there and he’d never really touched it anyway. I was feeling a bit dizzy.

“Okay,” he said, “when we go inside, the storage room is just off the door. You know it?”

“How do
you
?” I couldn’t ever remember him coming to the store.

“Just go inside and stay down. It should be over fast. Okay?”

I nodded but he could stick it. I’d been with him the whole time since the house. The killers left way before us and we never sighted anybody on the way that looked slightly like them. I had more reason to worry about him being nuts than about three or four or twenty guys waiting inside Dave’s store with guns.

I wouldn’t have been with him at all if I had anyplace else to go. Whether it was the VA or the hospital or another halfway house, with Dave gone, I didn’t have a home, I didn’t have a friend, I didn’t have any reason not to do anything anybody—even Mr. Dulles—wanted me to do.

His expression softened. He looked almost friendly for a moment. “If I tell you I know something, I know it. If you ask me how, I’ll have to lie to you—so don’t ask. You’ll go in the back room and stay down, yes?”

I hadn’t said I wouldn’t.

“Well, you said you would—but you didn’t mean it,” he answered, just like that.

“Okay, okay,” I said, impatient, busting him for being such a pain in the ass. And then, with my stomach going queasy, I realized he’d replied to something I hadn’t said.

“Let’s go,” he told me, loping to the back door and throwing it open like he knew it was unlocked. He pointed me immediately into the storage room. I nodded and headed that way but lingered, watching him barrel down the hall straight for Uncle Dave’s office. As he got there, a bulky man in a dark t-shirt and blue nylon pants came out of the door, reaching for the gun in his belt.

I yelled—at least I did all the instinctive things you do when you mean to yell. I felt my vocal chords tighten up and air pouring out of my mouth but nothing happened—no sound came out at all. Not that it made any difference. Mr. Dulles touched two fingers to the man’s temple and he collapsed in a heap, like all his bones had just disconnected from each other.

He came back down the hallway to me now, eyes sharp. He held a finger up in my face. “If you can’t stay put, stay quiet,” he whispered. “I have to concentrate on
them
, not you. Okay?”

The finger he was wagging in my face had just made the t-shirt guy fall apart like a toy—I stared at it like it was a gun. He turned down the hall again and headed, crouched, into the showroom.

The showroom was as wide-open as the hallway was cramped, display cases and thick-bordered tables heaped with our junk. We moved past the severed alligator’s heads with little feet sticking out of them, the arrowhead fossils I used to pound out at the kitchen table and the wind chimes with an Everglades mosquito stuck inside each glass piece. All our little toys.

Dulles motioned me up one aisle while he took the next. A moment later, I heard a sizzling electrical sound and a thud and then he was next to me again, whispering, “Two down—that way,” pointing me to the front of the store.

And then a huge man in a Hawaiian shirt stepped out around the edge of a big display case with a dark Glock in his hand—a nine millimeter, a real nasty gun—pointed right at us.

“Stand your ground!” he shouted. “Identify yourself!”

“You first,” Mr. Dulles answered, calm as could be. They stood facing each other for a long moment, each waiting for the other to speak.

“I just sensed you coming,” Hawaiian Man said. “I’m usually faster than that.”

Mr. Dulles shrugged. “Maybe I’m not really here,” he said lightly. This seemed like a crazy response to me but the guy holding the gun on us seemed to take it real serious. His eyes narrowed.
Maybe I’m not here
? Everyone tells me I’m addled but I was out of my depth with these guys.

And then, all at once, Hawaiian Man began to sweat. His face started twitching, as though he was under some kind of pressure he didn’t want to admit to. He was still the one packing the gun but it didn’t feel like it all of a sudden. His arm wavered up and down, as though the gun had suddenly gotten heavy. He kept staring at the arm, then back and forth, first at Mr. Dulles and then at the arm again. He looked like he kept trying to swallow but couldn’t. Finally, Mr. Dulles said quietly, “You can scratch if you want.”

Hawaiian Man lifted his hand to scratch—you could see how bad he wanted to—but he flinched an inch away and burst, “There’s nothing there! It’s a trick!” He couldn’t stop those quick flicking stares at his arm, though. “It’s a trick!” he repeated.

“Your gun’s not there either,” Mr. Dulles said quietly. The gun
was
there—I was sweating over it bigtime—but, as soon as he said it, Hawaiian Man jerked back in surprise, stared at his hand and held it up in front of him, as if to say,
Where the hell is it
? He opened the hand in disbelief and the Glock fell to the floor with a clang.

Ohhhh, he didn’t like that. An evil look crossed Hawaiian Man’s face as he leapt for the gun. But, as he got close, it jumped away from him, a little hop and skitter across the floor. He jumped after it again—it was only half a foot from him—but again it slid away, across the floor towards us. He looked up, eyes fiery at Mr. Dulles, who was holding out a finger, moving it lightly back and forth. The gun moved as the finger moved.

One last lunge brought Hawaiian Man just a foot away. Mr. Dulles jumped forward and touched his shoulder for just a second. With a crack and a flash of light, Hawaiian Man flew backwards three feet and slammed hard into the wall. When he settled, limp against the yellow-painted bricks, his body was twitching, his head and arms freelancing, his shoulder, where Mr. Dulles touched it, smoking, the steam rising eerie off the fabric of his shirt. Mr. Dulles’ arm was quivering too—he turned to hide it but I could see it took several seconds to get back under control.

He kicked a chair over in front of Hawaiian Man. “Sit,” he ordered. It took Hawaiian Man a couple tries to get into the chair and then he just stared resentfully.

“You better call whoever sent you,” Hawaiian Man said once he got his mouth working. “We’re protected.”

“The sheriff loves you?” Mr. Dulles asked. “Personally?”

Hawaiian Man’s lips curled. “I don’t give a damn about the fucking sheriff,” he said.

“Me neither,” Mr. Dulles replied, real quiet. “So you’re
not
protected.” He held a finger up, pointing it at Hawaiian Man’s forehead.

Hawaiian Man had six inches and at least a hundred pounds on Mr. Dulles. His gun was on the floor about two feet away but he never looked at it. He shrank, involuntarily, at the sight of the finger.

“Not much point to it,” Hawaiian Man shrugged. “We’re blank slate—double-blind. They give us coordinates and a suggestion—when we see the target, we know it. But that’s all. We got no over-the-horizon at all.”

“What’s the target?”

“I know it when I see it.”

Mr. Dulles stepped forward and slapped his hands to the man’s temples, one to each side, and he sat up rigid as a statue. His mouth came open but nothing came out—I knew what
that
felt like. When Mr. Dulles released him, he sank back onto the chair, huffing like a steam locomotive.

“You really
don’t
know anything,” Mr. Dulles said, frustrated.

“I’m just a foot soldier,” the big man answered. “Who the fuck are
you
?”

“A footnote.”

Mr. Dulles ran one finger lightly over the bridge of Hawaiian Man’s nose. “Sleep now, ” he said, almost tenderly and by the time he finished speaking, the man was snoring, a little smile on his lips. He slumped off the stool and hit the floor hard—we both winced at the sight of it.

Mr. Dulles shrugged and headed toward the back of the building. I followed but every step was a struggle.

“You…you touched him and…” I wasn’t sure which touch upset me—the one that threw the man, sizzling, against the wall or the one that put him to sleep. Both. Either. I was sweating. Once I realized it, it felt like I’d been sweating for a while.

He went right to the storage room, flipped the light on and the sight of it didn’t help my dizziness any. Papers strewn all over the floor, all the drawers ripped out of the cabinets, all the extra store stock pulled off the shelves and smashed. They’d been in a hurry—for what? What was here that was worth searching for, much less killing for? Uncle Dave was dead—dead now, dead forever. I was beginning to absorb that now, just beginning to feel the hurt of it.

Mr. Dulles stalked around, hovering his hands over the surface of the cabinets the way he’d done with the van outside. He caught me staring at him and held up the key he’d gotten out of Dave’s drawer. “Dave left me a key. A key has to have a lock.”

“Not here,” I said. That seemed to get his attention right away.

“
What’s mine is yours—what’s yours is mine
,” he said in a different voice, a voice that seemed to echo inside my head. “Where’s the lock?”

“It’s mine,” I said—at least the words came out of my mouth. I heard them and felt them. But they didn’t come from me—I heard them at a distance, same as he did.

“Okay,” he nodded. “If you say so, it’s yours. But Dave wants me to see it. Where is it?”

My legs started moving, that’s the best I can describe it. I wasn’t against whatever I was doing but it wasn’t my idea either. I led him down the hall into the boiler room across from Dave’s office. Kneeling, I pulled a small toy box out from under the furnace and held it up to him.

He gave me a sharp look and I could see he was trying to figure out how much of this I understood. The simple answer was nothing—I knew nothing at all. I had no control over anything my body was doing. I was sweating and frightened. It wouldn’t have shocked me if my head had split open like a walnut—there was more than enough pressure pounding in there to do it.

He held the key up to the lock—it went in without a hitch—threw over the bolt and opened the lid.

“Oh, c’mon,” he growled. The box was empty. “Why send us here for an empty box?”

“It’s
my
box,” I said again, though I’d never seen the thing before that I could remember. His eyes narrowed. The look on his face made me nervous. I’d seen what he
could
do if he had to.

“Where’s the next nearest?” he asked.

“What?”

“
What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine
,” he said, enunciating like he was teaching a child a nursery rhyme. “Where is the next nearest?”

“Mark Tauber, Savannah Georgia,” I said and nearly fainted.

“Shit!” he said and stomped around the room cursing.

The name came out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. Actually, I didn’t understand it
after
I’d said it, either. I didn’t know any Mark Tauber and I didn’t know what he had to do with Mr. Dulles’ question. Tell the truth, I didn’t even understand the question—but I’d just answered it.

My heart was pounding and my shirt soaked through. I couldn’t think and I was afraid of what I would think if I could.

“Okay,” he sighed, “Let’s go.”

I stumbled after him but I kept banging into everything, desks and displays and kicking through piles of paper. My whole body was trembling.

“It’s not far,” he said, leading the way. “You can collapse once we get to the car.” But the trembling only got worse when I hit the seat.

“What’s happening?” I spurted, the words flying out of me. “Tell me what’s going on!”

“Relax, you’ll be okay,” he said, pulling a map from the glovebox. I reached over and ripped the thing right out of his hands.

“I’ll tear this to shreds if you don’t tell me—right now!” I screamed and I meant it. I had the pages between my fingers—no power on earth could stop me from doing it if he didn’t give me some answers there and then.

He flashed me a sickly smile.“They sell them at gas stations, Gregor,” he said, taking it back. Then he drove out to Main Street and turned left—away from the VA, away from the police station.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“Did you know you have a sister in New York?” I didn’t have any sister in New York. I mean, there are plenty of things I don’t remember but I’d remember if I had a sister. “I’ll take you to her—she’ll take better care of you than the VA would.” But that wasn’t enough of an answer, even if I believed it.

“I never
heard
of Mark Tauber,” I cried. “I don’t get the question but I’m answering it! And you’re pretending nothing’s wrong. What the fuck is going on?!” I was pitched forward in the seat, choking back tears, I’m not proud to say. It surely wasn’t the first time my mind had gone off on its own—but that was a kind of fear I’d thought I’d left behind a while ago.