Real Magic (30 page)

"Come on. You don't believe that. Not for me. Once he has the Door, he'll kill me — or he'll ask you to do it. And then he'll have you kill Vincent and then Lucy."

Freddie's hand snapped out and yanked on Duncan's tie. He curled his fist around it and shoved Duncan back against the car door. "You don't know nothing about this. And you don't know Mr. Walter. He ain't a backstabbing creep, and he don't kill women and children. You don't want to be in his good graces, that's your problem. But I'm telling you, so listen close — you do what he says and you and the girl and that fuck Vincent will all get out of this fine. You screw it up, and you'll find out just how hard a life I've lived."

With a flick of his hand, he released Duncan and settled back in his seat, once more laying his hat over his face. Though Duncan had not intended to rile Freddie so much, he liked the result. Whether or not he would be able to capitalize on it later remained to be seen but that was the way these things worked. If he kept hitting Freddie's sore points, it would keep the thug off-balance, keep him thinking with his emotions instead of his brain. That was often the best set up to cheat a mark.

For now, he had to let Freddie stew. Duncan checked his watch — not much time had passed. If he could manage it, sleep seemed the best thing to do. Down the road, he might not have the luxury. Though he closed his eyes, his mind refused to quiet, and he spent the next hour running one scenario after another like a parade of movie screens, each playing out different versions of the same story. Few of them ended well.

By the time the morning sun edged passed the roof of the post office, Freddie had been snoring like a rhino for a half-hour. Duncan poked him in the side three times before he woke. Snorting and startled, Freddie sat up, banging his knee on the steering wheel.

Squinting, he peered out at the dawn. He glanced around the parking area, pausing at the three cars that had slipped in while he had slept. "Follow me and don't say anything until we find the right man."

One step into the post office and Duncan knew that Freddie had muscled these guys before. They all ceased working and stared at Freddie like dogs that feared punishment would be dealt out soon. Freddie put out his hand to keep Duncan back.

He strolled deeper into the waiting room, a black-and-white tiled area with a long wood bench running the wall opposite a chest-high wooden counter. Freddie pushed open the door to the right of the counter and walked into the mail processing area. From the waiting room, Duncan watched through the opening above the counter.

As Freddie passed by clerks wearing visors on their balding heads and suspenders over their boney shoulders, Duncan witnessed the relief each clerk felt not to be the point of this disruption. Until Freddie stopped and the clerk before him shook hard enough to rattle the envelopes in his hand. Freddie leaned close to the clerk's ear and mumbled something. The clerk, shivering through each motion, reached across his desk, picked up a pencil, and scribbled on a piece of paper. Freddie snatched it away, read it, and then looked back at Duncan. Motioning with his head, Freddie whistled loudly. "Back here."

Duncan hurried through the door, navigating his way amongst the maze of desks and mail, making sure to avoid eye contact with the clerks, and reached Freddie in seconds. "What is it?"

Freddie handed the paper over. "Name of the letter carrier with your farmhouse in the route."

Duncan read: CLARENCE HOLSTEN. "Is Mr. Holsten here yet?"

They looked at the clerk who nodded vigorously before pointing a quivering finger to the back.

As they weaved their way toward the back, the bustle of activity re-ignited behind them. Only one man worked in the back, taking stacks of envelopes and placing them in his own bag. The man was young, rather dumpy, and wore his slicked hair parted straight down the middle. He looked like a caricature of a man in a barbershop quartet.

"You Holsten?" Freddie barked.

The fellow dropped his envelopes into a disorganized slop on the floor. "Sheesh, you want to kill me? Don't scare a guy like that," he said in a whiny voice before bending down to pick up the envelopes.

"I'm gonna do a lot worse than scare you if you don't tell us what we want to know."

"W-What?"

Freddie shoved Holsten to the floor. "You were paid by a guy to watch for mail addressed to Rufus Clubb coming from Gettysburg. We want to know where that mail went."

"I don't know what you're talking abo —"

Freddie's fist popped Holsten in the mouth hard enough to knock the chubby man over. "You do know and you'll tell us, or I'm going to get angry."

As Freddie pressed upon Holsten further, Duncan had to admit that a guy like Freddie could be useful. Not that he wanted to consider what such ideas said about him in relation to Nelson Walter, but he recognized that without Freddie, he would probably still be in the waiting area attempting to charm whoever dealt with the public.

"Y-You shouldn't be here. I-I'll call for the police if you don't go."

Freddie grabbed the man by his suspenders and hauled him to his feet. Then, shoving his nose right against Holsten's, Freddie said, "I understand your problem. You're being paid well for this. Postman's wage won't keep a guy like you fat. You eat well and that costs money. But none of that should matter to you right now. See, if you don't start talking, I'm going to break your legs."

"No. Please don't. No, no, no." Tears dampened Holsten's face.

Duncan stepped forward. This, he decided, was what separated him from Walter. Nelson Walter would continue to sit back and watch this poor fellow be beaten for information. But Duncan couldn't do it. He tapped Freddie on the shoulder and gestured for the thug to back off.

"Sorry about him," Duncan said, watching Holsten's wild eyes settle into nervous curiosity.

"Who are you?"

"Doesn't matter. You need to be concerned with your situation, not who you're talking to." It hit Duncan that he had just set up Holsten with a good cop/bad cop routine. Though not his intention, Duncan decided to play it out for whatever it might be worth. He peeked over his shoulder as if concerned Freddie might jump in at any moment. "I don't know how long he'll listen to me, so don't waste this time."

"Look, pal, I'm not trying to do nothing except deliver the mail."

"Now, Clarence, don't start lying. You and I both know that you took money on the side to intercept some specific letters. We're not cops. We're not here to cause you trouble. But we need to know where those letters went and who they went to. Give us that and we'll be on our way."

"But —"

"Keep lying to me and I'll let Freddie do what he wants with you."

Clarence glanced around the room. Duncan could not tell if this was a search for escape or a search for privacy, but after his scan, Clarence lowered his head. "I'll admit that I took some money to get the Rufus Clubb letter but I won't be telling you no more. That guy can do things I never seen anybody do, and I don't want to be on his wrong side."

"You know whose wrong side you'll be in if you don't tell us, right?"

Clarence looked to Freddie and nodded on the verge of tears.

Duncan said, "You're telling me you'd rather let Freddie here beat you into mash, you'd rather piss off Nelson Walter, than cross some old magician?"

"Look, I need this job and I need his money. Okay? Nelson Walter's not going to kill me over a damn letter."

"You think this magician will?"

"I think this magician knows way too much about me to be normal."

Duncan pulled back a moment. He had no doubt that Freddie would work the guy over and get some kind of information from him — probably wouldn't be the right information, though. They would waste hours and by the time they came back, Clarence would be in another state. But Clarence feared magic in a clear and profound way. Anyone who would rather face Nelson Walter than a magician seriously believed in magic. Duncan could use that to his advantage, but it meant more than a card trick or two. He would have to rely on a psychological force which did not always pan out.

Lowering his voice and giving a furtive glance toward Freddie, Duncan said, "Clarence, you've got a real problem. I'm looking for this man
because
he's a magician. And that's because I'm a magician, too."

Clarence's eyes narrowed. "You're no magician. If you were, you wouldn't need that muscle."

"He doesn't know," Duncan whispered, "and I'd like to keep it that way."

"You're lying, and I've got mail to deliver."

"Think of a number between one and ten," Duncan said, splaying his fingertips near Clarence's head. "Got it? You thought of the number seven."

The shock on Clarence's face was enough. Duncan got it right. Though the odds were in his favor — eight out of ten times a person will pick seven as the number — he didn't like risking Lucy's life on the odds. For that matter, if this gambit failed, there would be no other immediate solution except for Freddie, and Duncan did not want to become that kind of person.

"How'd you do that?" Clarence said, a new kind of tremor in his voice.

"I told you. I have real magic in me. How about this — think of card. Any card. Picture all the colors, big and bold in your mind." Again, Duncan splayed his fingers in an absurd show of mind-reading. "You've picked a Heart — King or the Queen — you're a bit fuzzy." Mentioning colors excludes black, and the words
big and bold
pushed people toward face cards. Odds favor the King or Queen of Hearts out of all in a deck.

"I picked the Queen."

Now that he had primed Clarence, Duncan had to sell the final threat. "Let's be clear on this. If I have to do so, I can pull the information I want straight out of your head. But if I do that, especially if you resist, there will be damage done. Even the little demonstration I just did has left its mark."

"You've damaged my brain."

"Quick, tell me what you thought while getting dressed this morning."

"Um, um."

"See that. Most people can answer within a second or two of thought, but you're struggling." Duncan had no idea if that statistic was true, but he figured Clarence didn't know either. "I'm asking you one last time to help me out. Refuse again, and I'm going to reach into your mind and grab what I need, no matter what it does to you. It's a risk you take. But then again, if you're brain gets screwed up, you can probably clean used bedsheets over at a whorehouse. I know one in Reedsburg that'll hire you. You ever hear of Lady Lane's?"

"Okay, okay," Clarence said, his hands covering his head to protect his brain.

"Write it down."

Clarence scribbled the address as fast as he could manage and thrust the paper at Duncan. "Now, go. Please. Don't ever come back."

"I want the name, too. Who did you send the envelope to at this address?"

"Fine, okay, give me that." Clarence snatched back the paper.

On it, Clarence wrote: DOMINIC ROSE.

 

As Freddie drove the car across town,
heading for the farmland between Lancaster and Philadelphia, Duncan tried not to betray the flipping, twisting, rattling of his mind.

Was Dominic Rose a relative? If so, then based on age, Dominic could actually be Pappy. That would explain a lot of things, chief among them — how Pappy ended up with the Door in the first place. It would explain why Pappy never discussed his past other than magic. It would explain why he taught Duncan all that he did. All because he knew that someday Duncan would come back in time to meet him, that Duncan would need all the skills he possessed.

Unless this was the first iteration of these events. In which case, Pappy would have had no clue that this would happen and it had all been coincidence. Except Duncan didn't believe in coincidences. Things that looked like coincidences were planned — not in the "everything happens for a reason" sort of way but rather in the "people are always trying to screw you" sort of way. And the man most trying to screw with Duncan at the moment was Nelson Walter.

If Dominic turned out to be Pappy, then what would Duncan's actions do to the future? He had done a good job of curbing these thoughts, dismissing these concerns, but he could not escape them any longer. In a short time, they would reach the Rose farm, and Duncan would have to make hard decisions. If, indeed, time travel went along with the butterfly effect. But maybe it didn't. Maybe the actions of someone as insignificant to the whole universe as Duncan would have minimal effect on the outcomes of the future. There was no way to be certain.

That did little to assuage his concerns. After all, he was leading Walter's man straight to the Door. If Duncan's presence in 1934 had already set history askew, he could barely conceive of what would happen when Walter started disposing of people through the Door. What had been considered murders before would now become unresolved missing person cases. People who would have buried their loved ones and learned to move on, would suffer an endless life of hoping for a reunion that would never arrive.

Duncan's thoughts settled one thing firmly in his mind — he had to limit Freddie's access to Dominic Rose. He had to keep Freddie feeling as if the man were in control but at the same time wrest that control away. Easy enough when playing cards, but Duncan suspected this game would be much more difficult to play.