Beyond Recognition

8

October second came and nearly went without Ben’s taking any notice of it. Had it not been for Emily, he might have failed to remember its significance. But when he arrived at Emily’s late on the afternoon of the third, she sent him by bus all the way up to Steven’s Broadway News on the corner of Olive and Broadway, where he used the money she gave him to buy copies of the Seattle Times, the Intelligencer, the Tacoma News Tribune, and the Everett Herald.

Back at her purple house, the two of them read headlines and lead paragraphs, back and forth, until Ben asked, “What exactly are we doing?”

“The military man,” she said. “Do you remember him? May thirteenth, 1968.”

“Who?”

“The bad hand.”

Ben remembered the hand.

She said, “He came back for his reading about a week later. You must have been in school. I told him that the stars looked good for a business deal on October second. He was real nervous about it, and I got the feeling his business wasn’t exactly legitimate.”

“So we’re looking for something he might have did.”

“Might have done,” she corrected. “Yes. He’ll be back, that one. Very superstitious. I’d like to know what it was he did.”

“And you think we may find something in the papers, something about what he did?”

“If it was criminal, we might.”

“You think he’s a criminal!” Ben felt a pang of excitement in his chest. He didn’t know any criminals.

Turning a page she said, “He had something going on the second. I tested if it had anything to do with love and got nothing back from him. I tested money and got a definite reaction-lots of body language, discomfort. He’s selling something or buying something, and it wasn’t anything he wanted to talk about. If I identify it, and he walks back in here and I can tell him about it, I’ll have a customer for life. That’s the way it works, you know, Ben. You give people what they want, and they’re yours forever. He wants me to be able to see his past and his future.”

Ben read more carefully. Each article that dealt with any kind of crime he read aloud. Together, they cut the articles out of the paper with scissors and put them in a pile. The papers were full of various crimes. Ben said, “Nothing much good.”

“No. Nothing very good.” She pushed the papers aside and looked at Ben and said, “Tell me what you remember about him, Ben.”

This was a test. She did this every now and then-made him exercise his memory skills. She claimed it would make him smarter. He reeled off all that he could recall about the beat-up pickup truck, the camper shell, the contents of the front seat. He told her how he had been tempted to get a look inside the camper through the skylight. He gave her a detailed description of what he had seen through the peephole: buzz-cut hair, pinpoint eyes, the fingers on his right hand.

“How old did he look?” she asked.

Ben knew exactly how to answer this. It took him a moment to subtract the numbers. “Twenty-eight,” he answered, using the birth date she had already supplied.

She reached over and rubbed the top of his head, messing his hair, which was Emily’s way of saying how much she cared about him.

She said, “He wore black military boots. He had a faint red stamp on the back of his left hand that read COPY-probably from a bar or nightclub. When he paid me, he pulled out his wallet. He carried a pass to the PX, a discount shopping center on the base, which means he’s either active or works there. His driver’s license was from Kansas; I couldn’t make out the town or city. He had a ticket to the Seahawks in with his money.”

“He wore a big silver buckle,” Ben remembered. “Like a rodeo guy.”

“Very good!” she exclaimed. “Yes. That caught my eye as well. And did you catch it when he turned to leave?”

“Something on his back? I don’t remember,” he answered.

“His belt,” she said. “It had a first name stamped into the leather. Nick.”

“The guy’s name is Nick?”

“Yes. He’s twenty-eight, a long way from home, working on one of the bases, a football fan, hits the bars at night, rode a horse at some point in his life, or had a relative who did. He’s got business dealings that worry him to the point he’s having his chart read. The deal is worth a lot more than sixty bucks, or he wouldn’t be willing to shell out that kind of money.”

“We know a lot about him,” Ben said, impressed.

“Yes, we do,” she answered. “But not what he’s up to.” She went through the small pile of articles they had clipped. “And I have a feeling that’s his biggest secret of all.”