Nightrise (3 page)

"So what did you think?" he demanded at last.

"The boys are very impressive," the bald man, Colton Banes, replied.

"I told you — they can really do it. There's no trick. It gives you the creeps, if you ask me. But it's like they can get inside each other's heads." Don reached out for a half-smoked cigar and lit it. The bitter smell of old tobacco rose into the air. "The other acts in the show…they're nothing. But those kids are special."

"I'd be interested to know how they first came to your attention."

"I'll tell you. I picked them up three years ago. They were about eleven then. Nobody has any idea where they came from. They were dumped when they were just a few months old. They were picked up by the Child Protection people someplace near Lake Tahoe. No mom. No dad. Probably got Indian blood in them…you know, Native American. Paiute or Washoe or something. Anyway, they were fostered a few times but it never worked out for long. I'm not surprised. Would you want to have someone hanging around with you who could see into your mind?"

"They read other peoples' minds as well as each other's?"

"They can do it. Sure. But they pretend they can't and I can't make them. I mean…all right, on the stage.

Party tricks. But never outside. Never in real life." Don sucked on his cigar, then blew out smoke. "So they got bounced around a bit and they finally ended up with my girlfriend's sister and her husband in Carson City. But that didn't work out too well, I can tell you."

"What happened?"

"They were there for about a year and then Ed — he was the husband — did himself in…committed suicide. Maybe it was something to do with the kids. I don't know. They were on their way out anyway.

He'd had enough of them." Don leaned forward conspiratorially. "Ed always said there was something weird about them. Like, if you belted one, the other would feel the pain. Can you believe that? You whack Scott and it's little Jamie who gets the bruise on his face. One of them always knew what was happening to the other one, even when they were miles apart. Ed couldn't live with it. He used to say it was like being in an episode of

The X-Files.

So he was going to get rid of them, and the next thing I know, he's dead, my girlfriend's sister is freaking out, and nobody wants the boys."

A lump of ash fell off the end of the cigar. It landed on Don's sleeve but he didn't notice.

"That was when I decided to take them in," he went on. "I was running this show. At the time it was called

Don White's World of Illusion.

But when I saw the boys, when I realized what they could do, I changed all that. I called it The Circus of the Mind, and put them in as the final act. The strange thing is, everyone thinks there must be some trick. Hidden signals and codes…that sort of thing. It isn't just the audience. Even the other performers don't know how the boys do it. Isn't that funny? Marcie and me, we think that's hysterical."

Banes had introduced the other man as Kyle Hovey. Now Hovey spoke for the first time. "Why haven't you put them on TV?" he asked. 'You could have made more money that way."

'Yeah. I thought about that. Marcie and me talked about it. But they get too well known, someone's going to take them away." He hesitated, not sure how much he should tell the two men. 'You know how it is," he went on. "We only got them in the first place because the foster care system is so overstretched.

Too many files, not enough caseworkers. That's what Marcie says. Right now it seems like everyone's forgotten about them…and maybe it's best to keep it that way." He examined the cigar for a moment, gazing into the burning ash. "Anyway, it's like I told you, they won't do it. It was hard enough getting them to perform on the stage. I took a belt to them. Then I starved them. I told them — if you don't work, you don't eat. And even then they still refused."

"So what did you do?" Banes asked.

Don White smiled. "I used one of them against the other. I told Scott that if he didn't do what I asked, I'd beat Jamie 'til he bled. I told him I'd do worse than that. And so he agreed, to protect his brother. And Jamie did it because Scott told him to. That was the end of it. Now we get along just fine. I'm their uncle Don. They do the shows and I look after them."

"What about school?"

"They went to school in Carson City when they were with Ed, but it didn't work out. So now they're home-schooled. The state's happy enough about that. They even pay us money to look after them.

Marcie's smart. She teaches them all they need to know." There was about an inch of the cigar left. Don took one last puff, then ground it out on the plate that had held his hamburger. "Maybe you're right," he admitted. "Maybe I should have put them on TV. I'm fed up with the theatre. Nobody's interested.

Nobody comes. Look at this place! We get more cockroaches than we get paying customers. I want out.

"So I was in a bar and I heard somebody talking about this corporation that was prepared to pay good money for information about 'special' kids. I went over to them and they gave me a name. I made a call and now…here you are. You've seen Scott and Jamie. You know they're on the level. So what do you say?"

The man called Kyle Hovey glanced at his partner, who had been watching Don with empty eyes.

Colton Banes nodded. "We want to take them," Banes said.

"Take them? Just like that?"

"Children disappear all the time, Mr. White. As you yourself have just told us, these children have no family and no friends. The state of Nevada has lost interest in them. We will look after them from now on and no one will be any the wiser."

"What about the money?"

"We'll pay you seventy-five thousand dollars."

Don White licked his lips. That was more money than he had expected. But it still wasn't enough.

"Seventy-five thousand dollars…each?" he asked.

Colton Banes paused for a moment. But he had already decided. "Of course. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the two boys. But there is one thing you must understand: This figure is final. You will make no further inquiries about them, or about us. If you inform anyone about this transaction, you and your friend Marcie will also disappear. There is a great deal of sand in the desert, Mr. White. You would not wish to find yourself underneath it."

"When will you take them?"

"Tonight. Mr. Hovey and myself will be inside the theatre. We will have two more colleagues outside. It would help us if you would ask the boys to remain behind when the show has finished, until the other performers have left. We will then remove them and pay you the money in cash. Is that acceptable?"

'Yeah. Sure it's acceptable." Don's mouth was dry. But there were still some questions he had to ask.

"Who exactly are you? I mean, I know who you work for. But what are you going to do with them?

What do you want them for?"

"I don't think you heard what I said," Banes replied. "We are nobody. You've never met us. The boys no longer exist."

"Sure. Fine. Whatever you say…"

From outside the office came the sound of pop music, blaring from the speakers inside the theatre. A single bell rang once, warning the performers.

The second show of the evening was about to begin.

THREE

The Neon Prison

"For as long as I can remember, we've known what's been going on inside each other's heads. That doesn't make it easy when one of us is trying to pick up girls…"

How many times had he spoken the same line? As Jamie began his second performance of the evening, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. He hated Reno. It was his prison. It was the island where he had been shipwrecked. But it would never be his home.

It felt empty. The streets were somehow too wide for the number of vehicles that went up and down them, stretching in a straight line as far as the eye could see. The shops and offices were too far apart, separated by blank spaces that could have been building sites except that no building ever seemed to be going on. And there was never anyone around. They came every Friday, the tourists and the bachelor parties, but were sucked into the casinos the moment they stepped out of their cars or planes, only to emerge, bleary-eyed and broke, on Sunday night.

There was nothing else to do in Reno. Even the Truckee River, which cut through the center, was as gray and as uninteresting as it was possible for a river to be, trapped between two cement walls, the water flowing rapidly as if it was trying to get out of the city as quickly as it could.

Often when Jamie was walking to the theatre, he would look at the mountain range on the far horizon, thirty or forty miles away. Even when the summer sun was burning, the mountains were still tipped with snow. Sometimes he imagined that they were whispering promises of some other life to come. If he could just get across the mountains, over to the other side…But he knew it would never happen. He was stuck here. Drive ten minutes in any direction and you came to desert, scrubland, and sand-covered hills.

Scott had got it exactly right, just a few days after they had come here.

"We're in the middle of nowhere, Jamie. And that's exactly where we're going."

There were fewer people at the Reno Playhouse than there had been at the earlier performance that night…no more than forty. So far it hadn't been a good show. Bobby Bruce had forgotten his lines.

Zorro had gotten stuck in a pair of handcuffs. And even Jagger had been late appearing in the cage.

Jamie could feel the bad temper of the crowd. They hadn't even smiled at his opening joke.

He continued on autopilot, allowing the spotlights to dazzle him, not even looking at the audience. This time, the volunteer picked the

Houston Chronicle out of the newspaper pile and the word that got circled was "and." That was always a bad sign. Small, ordinary words always made the trick seem less impressive. As Jamie returned to the stage, he remembered the word "funeral" that had come up earlier in the evening. It might not have been the most pleasant of words but at least it had had an effect on the audience.

Briefly, he swept his eyes around, looking for someone to come up and help him blindfold his brother for the next part of the act. And that was when he saw them. The bald man who had lent him his business card was sitting five rows back from the stage. The dark-haired man was next to him. Jamie had been talking but now he shuddered in mid-sentence and came to a halt. He felt Scott stop and look at him. Jamie knew what his brother was doing, even without turning around. Why had the two men come back? Sometimes, people did return for a second performance. More often than not, they were magicians themselves, men-talists and mind readers who were trying to work out how the two brothers' tricks were done. But these men in their identical dark brown suits clearly weren't entertainers. Nor had they come here to be entertained. The way they were watching him…they could have been two scientists in front of a specimen tray. Jamie remembered his unease the first time he saw them. He felt it again, only doubly so, now that they were here again.

"I…um…need someone to help me on the stage." The words were forcing themselves from his lips.

"Will you help me, please, sir?" Jamie had stopped in front of a man in his twenties. He was sitting with his arm around a girl. He had an Elvis Presley haircut.

"Forget it!" The man shook his head and sneered. He didn't want to leave his seat.

That happened often enough. There were plenty of people who preferred not to volunteer…because they were embarrassed or because the whole thing was beneath them. Normally, Jamie would handle the situation easily and move on. But tonight he didn't feel in control. He was afraid that one of the two men was going to volunteer, and whatever happened he didn't want them to come close. What now? He struggled to find the right words.

"I'll help you!"

A woman had stood up, a few seats away. She was black, slim, and attractive — in her thirties, Jamie would have said. Once again, he couldn't help feeling that something didn't quite add up. The woman was well dressed in jeans with a white silk shirt and a thin gold necklace. He could imagine that she was probably an executive in some sort of business. But what was she doing here — and on her own?

Still, she had given Jamie no choice. He waited for her to follow him up onto the stage, and a few seconds later they were standing in the spotlights. Scott was slightly to the side, not looking at them, waiting for Jamie to begin.

"I'm going to blindfold my brother…" Jamie began.

"How did you do that just now?" the woman interrupted. "That trick with the newspaper. I've never seen anything like that."

"Well…" Jamie didn't know what to say. Volunteers hardly ever spoke to him…and they never asked him questions like that, not when they were up on the stage. Why was everything going so wrong tonight? He turned away and, without meaning to, found himself looking once again at the two men in row five. They were staring at him. Of course they were. Everyone was staring at him. He was the reason they were there. But he still couldn't shake off the idea that they were different from the rest of the audience, that they were interested in him for another reason.

Jamie forced himself to calm down. The two men were surrounded by a lot of empty seats. That was the only reason they seemed out of place. They were here for the same reason as everyone else: to be entertained.

"I'd like you to help me," Jamie said.

"Sure!" The woman nodded.

Jamie picked up the blindfold, the hood, the English pennies. "I want you to make sure there are no hidden microphones."

"How did you do it?" the woman asked again. "Can you really read each other's minds?"

The audience was getting restless. They hadn't come here to listen to an explanation of how the tricks worked. And it was late — almost half past ten. They were ready to leave. Without waiting any longer, Jamie pressed the coins against his brother's eyes. For a moment, he felt Scott's breath, warm against his knuckles. Later on, much later, he would remember it. But now he was moving briskly on. He secured the coins with the blindfold, remembering too late that he hadn't invited the woman to examine it. Never mind. What did it matter anyway? He placed the hood over his brother's head.