Spoonbenders

“Payday, Matty. The big payday. And due to circumstances beyond my control, this is the last time I—we will ever get a shot at what’s in that safe.”

“What’s happening?”

“Too complicated to explain.” Frankie glanced at his watch, then saw that he’d forgotten to put on his watch this morning. He jumped up from the couch. “I gotta go see a guy. I’ll check in with you later. But while I’m gone, think about your future, Matty. Think about embracing who you are. You’ve got to embrace life.”

“The UltraLife,” Matty said quietly.

“Yes! Exactly! I knew I could count on you.”

Frankie spent the first hour of his arrest alone in a motel room, trying to open the handcuffs with his mind. Agent Smalls had deposited him in the room and told him to wait “until we get set up.” Frankie had no idea what he meant by that. Set up what, torture equipment?

He perched on the edge of the double bed closest to the door and stared at his wrists, willing the restraints to spring open. Or unlock. Or merely tremble. But all he could think of was chips flying into the air, and arms grabbing him. He doubted he could move a paper clip now.

His shirt was still damp, not from river spray, but from sweat. He’d been sure the casino operatives were taking him away to be beaten or killed. When Destin Smalls had shown up, Frankie had been relieved, but the longer the handcuffs stayed on, the longer he sat on this floral bedspread that smelled of industrial cleaner, the more he suspected that he’d made at best a lateral move: out of the frying pan and into the frying pan.

The door opened and Frankie jumped up. Agent Smalls filled the doorway. He was in his late sixties, but Frankie gave no thought to bum-rushing him. You could hurt yourself running into a wall, even an old one.

“I’d like to call my lawyer,” Frankie said.

“Sure,” the agent said, and grabbed him by the elbow.

It was near dawn, but there was no light in the sky except the small yellow face of the Super 8 sign. The parking lot was full of dark. Frankie felt another hope die. Not a person in sight to witness his illegal incarceration.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” the agent said. “I came to your house dozens of times before your mother died.”

“To do what, harass my dad?”

“That was a side benefit.”

The trip was all of five feet, to the next motel room door. Smalls opened the door and nudged Frankie inside. “Do you remember him?” Smalls asked.

A bald gnome with a handlebar mustache sat behind a round table loaded with electrical equipment. The waxed, curlicued mustache had turned silver sometime in the past twenty years, but Frankie recognized him all right.

“Motherfucker,” Frankie said.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again as well, Franklin,” said the Astounding Archibald. “Please, have a seat.”

Agent Smalls unlocked the handcuffs and gestured toward the chair opposite Archibald. The devices on the table between them hummed and buzzed. Cables spilled onto the floor and snaked toward a stack of black metal cases. The air smelled of ozone and aftershave.

G. Randall Archibald lifted one of Frankie’s hands like a manicurist and began slipping rubber-tipped thimbles over the fingers. Each thimble sprouted a bundle of wires that led to one of the machines.

“What’s this?” Frankie asked. “Some kinda lie detector?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Archibald said. “The items before you comprise a torsion field detector, mobile version. With it, I can measure psionic potential within two point three taus.”

Frankie tried to snort derisively, but it came out a grunt. He had no idea what a tau was, but he was damn sure not going to admit it.

“I assure you,” Archibald said, “it’s quite accurate. Not as fine-tuned as the larger version in my lab, of course. That TFD prime is sensitive enough to pick up zero point three tau.” The gnome spoke in the clipped, precise diction of a nerd. “There should be no need for such a sensitive measurement in your case. I understand you’ve already had a pret-ty active night.”

“Whatever those guys said they saw, they’re lying.”

“Or,” Archibald said, “they don’t know what they saw. My job, tonight, is to determine whether that activity was truly psi-related, or mere flimflammery perpetrated by the son of a known cheat and fraud.”

“Hey! I’m not gonna sit here and—”

Smalls put two big hands on his shoulders and shoved him back into the seat. “Stay.”

“I thought you were a skeptic,” Frankie said, almost spitting the word. In his family, there was nothing more despicable.

“I certainly am,” Archibald said.

“I’ve seen you on Johnny Carson. What you did to that channeler woman from Australia? Humiliating her like you did us? That was cruel.”

“It didn’t seem to hurt her career. She went on to make a lot of money.”

“And the thing with the faith healer, who knew what people’s ailments were! People believed in him, and you destroyed him.”

“He was using a radio in his ear to receive diagnoses from God, who happened to sound an awful lot like his wife. He was a fake. A fraud. Are you a fake?”