The Talented (6 page)

In a single motion Usher pulled a deck of cards out from his jacket pocket and fanned it out in the long fingers of his left hand. 52 cards and not a single one out of place. Impressive. He picked one out with his right hand and asked, “Can you tell me what card I have here?”

“What do you think I am,” I answered, “a mind reader?” Of course, that’s exactly what I am, but no need for him to know that.

The tall man said, “If you were really good, you could tell my card just by looking at the expression on my face.” All the while his face held no expression, like a marble statue that talks.

There was no reason for me to cooperate with his line of questioning. What possible good could come of it? Yet, there was a part of me that felt ashamed of cheating this man, like being caught stealing candy from the candy store. All I wanted was to make it up to him and then never see him again. What is the worst that could happen?

I extended my consciousness, but when I touched his mind there were still no exposed thoughts for me to read. I could, however, see through his eyes, like a video playing in my head. There was his card, in living color. High-Def.

“Jack of Spades,” I replied.

Usher narrowed his eyes and deftly picked another card.

“And this?” he asked.

“Six of diamonds,” I answered, getting bored with the game. Then he pulled out a third card, but didn’t look at it. He slapped it down on the desk unseen and unknown.

“Last one,” he said. “Call it.”

Okay, a challenge then. Probing Usher would be useless, since he had no knowledge of the card. I would have to try another way. Reaching out I opened my awareness to include the card under his hand. The card was as much a part of me as my bones and skin. Although no image of the card appeared in my head, I had an intuitive awareness of what the card was, what that newly acquired part of me was.

“Surprising,” I said, “I would not have expected that someone like you would even have this card in your desk.”

“Try me,” he replied with a wicked-looking grin.

“It’s a Joker.”

His big hand flipped the card over and slapped it onto the desk. When his hand lifted, there it was. The dancing Joker with bells on his multi-colored hat and shoes with toes that curled up. His mirth seemed tainted with sinister overtones. Or maybe that’s just me.

He swept up the cards in a single motion and tucked then back into his jacket pocket. Usher regarded me for more than a moment then said, “I have a 19-year-old-daughter. Haven’t seen her in three years. Her mama and I are split up, and my little girl wants nothing to do with either of us. Last I heard she was on the street.” Usher took a picture of her out of his wallet and handed it to me. “Her name is Alicia.”

The portrait must have been a school picture from junior high school. She had a complexion just slightly darker than her father and a mouthful of braces in an innocent smile. Her eyes seemed very alert and I got a sense of the intelligence that lay behind them.

Looking up from the picture, I said, “So what does this have to do with me?”

“I want you to find her, bring her back to me. Make her want to stay.”

Bad idea. “Let me get this straight. You want me to find and essentially brainwash your daughter. You sure about that? If she has strong feelings about not coming back, then my tampering could really mess her up. I’m not willing to take that chance.”

Usher pursed his lips. “You are going to do this, and you will make sure that she is NOT harmed. Treat it as the most important thing you ever did. Probably will be the only damn important thing you ever do. “

I sighed, “What do I receive in return? What’s in it for me?”

While Mr. Usher’s facial expression didn’t change, I could feel his sense of relief. Now I was speaking his language. Also, the more I spoke to him, his mental barrier began to soften ever so slightly. Wisps of concern, regret and even love became just barely detectable, but spoke of a rolling intensity underneath.

He answered, “You get $10,000 cash, and forgiveness for how you have wronged me, so long as you never gamble in my house again.”

Shaking my head, “Make it twenty, return my wallet to me, and you’ve got a deal.”

Usher let out a smirk. “I’ll make it 10,000 and one. And the wallet. All of which you get after my daughter is living in my house. Plus,” he added with a wicked smile, “I leave your friend in the loony bin undisturbed. Let him vegetate in peace. ‘Tranquility’. Isn’t that what the picture says?”

How stupid of me. Why did I not check to see if I was followed to the hospital? Now they know about Gus, and could hurt him any time they wanted. What made this so difficult is that I could kill this man thirty different ways without getting out of this very comfortable chair. If I were willing to hurt or kill anyone who got in my way, nothing in the world could stop me. It was a chilling thought. I do not want to be that person. Gus would not approve. Which makes this choice a no-brainer.

“Deal. But Mr. Usher…if anything happens to Gus, any unfortunate accidents, I will repay the favor a hundredfold. Do we understand each other?”

He stood towering over me and replied, “Yeah, now get the hell out of my chair. And my office. And my place of business.”

CHAPTER SIX

After willing the stupid mustache to fall off my face, which it did all at once and blew away in the wind, I hailed the first taxi in sight. The driver waited for almost half a minute for me to provide a destination, and then turned to me questioningly. I concentrated on the photo of Alicia and almost instantly could see her, right now, as she exists at this very moment. She was at a large gas station, finishing pumping gas into an 80s model Chevy Caprice. The driver of the car was a small, balding man in a cheap suit, and he gave her a dollar before driving away. After yelling at the man with some choice colorful insults, she stopped and breathed deeply. Alicia looked nothing like the photo. Although she was only 19, she appeared to be at least in her late twenties, wearing cheap clothing tight on her curvy frame. Even from here I could feel her pain and as I drifted away I realized something. I knew that gas station.

Since there really is nowhere to shop in Detroit, I would occasionally rent a car and drive north to decent suburbs like Troy or Birmingham to go shopping. On the way back I would sometimes notice a very brightly lit BP gas station right off the expressway around 7-mile. That was the one I saw in my vision. Had to be.

The drive didn’t take long, and as we approached the gas station I had the shocking realization that I had no idea of what to say to her. What was I thinking? The cab took the ramp on the right up, then turned left onto a bridge that crossed over the expressway. As the cab pulled into the gas station I gave him a twenty dollar bill.

“Stay here and wait for me,” I asked. He nodded his head, but I knew he would drive off as soon as I turned away. “Obey me,” I said quietly, and his pupils grew large and unfocused. This taxi was not going anywhere.

Feeling someone approaching I turned to find Alicia right up in my personal space. Almost as tall as me, she had to stand at least 6’3”. Her skin tone and hair reminded me of cinnamon, with eyes a slightly lighter shade of brown. She wore copious amounts of cheap perfume with a vanilla sweetness to it, although there was an underlying odor of sweat. Her blouse was tied beneath her chest, revealing a thin waistline and slightly visible ribs. Combined with her curvy hips and chest this gave her an hourglass figure, like a pinup girl from the 1940s. As trashy as she appeared, shame on me, I still found her attractive. Wildly so.

Alicia looked at me up and down and said, “I don’t know who you are, with your long wavy hair and muscles and all, but this is my spot, sugar, and you’re gonna have to get on out of here and find somewhere else to peddle whatever it is you’re peddling. I got a good thing here and you ain’t gonna screw it up.” Her finger poked me in the chest. “Got it?”

Looking her in the eye, I smiled and replied, “Just like your father.”

Alicia drew back as if she had been slapped. “Who the hell are you and what do you know about me and my father? I ain’t nothing like my father.”

Opening myself to her mind, I realized that she was telling the truth. Alicia was nowhere near as controlled as her father, but when I tried to read her all I could experience were her senses, and a glimpse of her surface-most thoughts. Deep thoughts and emotions were well protected beneath the surface. This was not at all like Kate, who achieved her resistance through years of training and practice. This was innate, maybe even genetic.

It also made my job much more difficult. I tried to probe her psyche for a way in without her noticing.

Just as I almost gave up I noticed some damage to the smooth surface of her psyche. I followed the spider-web cracks to their source and found a terrible, gaping hole. How did I miss this before? Careful not to disturb anything I went through the hole and surveyed the state of her mind. It was nothing short of a disaster. A tumor-like presence short-circuited all of the normal connections, making itself the core of her psyche. Examining that tumor-like thing was not pleasant, but I had seen it before and knew what it was. Drug addiction. This is something I dealt with a lot at St. Jude’s. The problem is that everything in her mind was wired to the addiction. Rip out the addiction and her mind will collapse. Lucky for me, I had discovered a solution years ago. 

Trying my best to appear calm and friendly, I brought her mind to a state of peace and tranquility, tricking the addiction temporarily to be satisfied, and continued, “Miss Usher, I’m sorry I upset you. My name is Adam and I am a sort of a hypnotist. A very good one. I promised your father, Mr. Usher, that I would bring you back to him.”

Her eyes half lidded, she lazily replied, “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to see me,” she hesitated, “Like this.” Tears brimmed at her eyes despite my calming influence.

I took a step forward and gently placed my hands on her shoulders, then said, “I can cure you, Alicia, right here, right now. I can make the addiction go away. Permanently.” I paused to let that sink in. I could make her believe me by sheer willpower, but it would be better for everyone if she went along willingly. “If you promise that you will go with me back to your father’s place and talk to him, I will cure you right here in this gas station.”

I could feel a drop of bitter cynicism in her, and underneath it a lake of fear. But rising to the top of that lake, rising slowly over the bitterness, was a tiny, battered emotion, but one of the strongest in my experience. Hope.

Her voice grew husky as she replied, “Do it.”

Taking a deep breath I put my forehead to hers and got to work.

Although it only took about a minute in real time, it felt like several hours of tedious, difficult labor, rerouting the connections in her mind. This was very dangerous for her and there was no room for error. The first time I tried this was on a guy at St. Jude’s that we called Slim Jim. As you might have guessed, Jim was rail thin and addicted to pain pills. Finding his addiction was easy, and when I removed it I thought that the process was done. The poor guy never touched another pain pill, but when he left the hospital he weighed more than 300 pounds.

Trying not to think about slim Jim, I worked on re-routing the final connections. When I was finished, I could distantly feel her start to collapse under my hands. I caught her and opened my eyes. A small crowd of concerned looking people was starting to gather. Not good. I quickly carried Alicia to the cab that was still waiting for me and got us both in.

“Book Cadillac Hotel, please.”

As the taxi left the station, my mobile phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. Alicia didn’t seem to notice and was slumped in her seat, already asleep. I answered the phone. It was Kate.

“What are you doing, Adam? Who is that girl with you? She looks like a prostitute.” She paused, “Wait, don’t tell me, I do not want to know.”

Understanding that Kate was seeing me in her mind’s eye, I began to appreciate just how skilled she was at remote viewing. I was about to answer when Kate cut me off.

“Adam, there is no time to explain fully, but another one of my friends was attacked.”

“Oh no,” I said, “I am so sorry. Who…which friend?”

Kate held back tears, “Oh Adam, it was Justine. She was hit by a bus. They said she died instantly. It seems like coincidence, but I just know that it was only made to look like an accident. She was pushed.”

Trying to take this all in, I replied, “Kate, with all of you scattered, the killer is just picking you off one by one. We need to consolidate everyone somewhere that’s well protected.”

“I was thinking the same thing. That’s why I booked us for the first flights to Chicago. You had better go straight to the airport. There is no time to pack.”

Looking over at the sleeping form of Alicia, I replied, “I think we need to get one more ticket. I’ll explain later.”

“Uh, okay,” she hesitated, “Under what name?”

“Alicia Usher.”

After asking the driver to change direction and go straight to the airport, I closed my eyes and tried to rest, but I couldn’t. Things were spinning out of control and people were in real danger. There was no way that I could bring Alicia home in her current state, even if there were time to do it. She needed to get cleaned up before seeing her father again. However, to bring a girl he hardly knew to another city without her consent, that must break any number of laws. Plus, just having her near Kate puts her life at risk. However, I could not just drop her off somewhere like this. She needed support for the cleansing of her addiction to truly work. It was dangerous, but she had to go with me.

As the signs for the Detroit airport came into view, Alicia inhaled sharply and opened her eyes. She looked at me, disoriented, and said, “What is going on? Where are we going? “ Without waiting for an answer she added, “I am so thirsty. Do you have any water?”

I attempted to calm her but the hole in her psyche was already healed, so I no longer had direct access to her feelings. Shaking my head in reply, I tried to assure her, “We will get water at the airport, where we will be in just a few minutes.”