When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like Harry Houdini, the greatest escape artist there ever was. I even wanted to meet him, but he’d been over twenty years in the grave before I was born, so that wasn’t going to happen.
I practiced, you know. I studied everything I could learn about Houdini and all of his secrets and then I practiced whenever I could. My parents scoffed at me; well, my father did. My mom just shook her head indulgently and warned me not to talk too much about my dreams in front of my dad. Seems she knew even then that he didn’t like it when people got too ambitious around him. Life on the farm was good enough for him, and it had to be good enough for everyone else. Later, when the farm went broke, life was good enough in the factory for him and it was for everyone else. You get the idea.
My number one supporter was my sister. For some crazy reason, Millie believed in me, even when I lied. She was half my age, maybe ten when I left home, and through everything that happened, she managed to have faith that her big brother would never do her wrong.
I told her I’d be home for the holidays, but I never made it. I swore I’d buy her a pony…another lie, and still she trusted me and believed. I never wanted to lie to Millie. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes the world makes a liar out of you and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
That doesn’t make you feel even a little better about the lies though, not if you have a conscience, like I did back then. These days? Well, let’s just say that whether or not I have a conscience is up for debate and leave it at that, shall we?
Life changes you, whether you want it to or not. The only escape from that particular fact is death and, believe me, death is no guarantee.
Have you ever seen a ghost? I don’t mean the floating sheets and graveyard type, or even one of the floating trumpet gimmicks the so-called mediums like to use. I mean the sort that can really haunt you.
I was in a Starbuck’s of all places—in a little upscale community where I would have never fit in as a kid—eating a breakfast with my overpriced latte and reading the Times when I saw Millie’s ghost. I hadn’t thought about Millie in years. I maybe even went out of my way not to think about her, because too many decades had passed without contact and she was better off without me in her life.
Mostly I tune out the people around me when I’m in a place like that. If I look at them or notice them, it starts me wondering about who exactly I’m looking at. We all have secrets, right? Well, some of us have darker secrets than others and there’s a part of me that always wants to know what a person is thinking and hiding. And sometimes that same part of me feels like punishing them for whatever they might be hiding. I’ll admit it: I have a few issues when it comes to unpunished crimes. I’m not exactly a vigilante, and I’ll never be a cop, but now and then I feel a need to get a little payback, even if it’s second hand. So, not really my thing to notice the people around me when I’m trying to relax.
I heard laughter and turned my attention to the door where a woman and her kid were just walking out. The girl carried a small sack of pastries and her mother balanced two carrying trays full of drinks to wash them down. It wasn’t a school day, so all I can do is guess they had a group they were meeting with. The woman had on too much make up and enough perfume to blind anyone with allergies. Her glory days were gone and she was desperate to keep them. She hadn’t gone into the latter stages of her curse of faded youth, where she got bitter and started drinking too much, but she was definitely heading in that direction. Her daughter was a different story. She was too young for makeup and didn’t need any. She had her ears pierced but everything else about her was, well, enough to make people notice that she was a kid. The girl was dressed in a light sweater and a skirt that was knee high or so. Scandalous back in the day, but conservative in this age of immodesty.
I don’t know what the mother said to her kid, but I looked up just as the girl was opening the door with a smile on her face. I heard her laugh. The way she sounded, the tilt of her head, the way her fingers idled through her hair: for just one instant, she could have been Millie.
A kid, ten years old, tops, too young to be my little sister, but enough like her to bring back all the feelings I’d tried to forget. I shivered, absolutely absorbed in memories of my little sister, and haunted by her as surely as if her ghost had whispered in my ear.
Here’s the thing, that kid at the coffee shop? If I saw her on the street right now, I probably wouldn’t recognize her. Another face in the crowd, you know?
She didn’t look all that much like Millie; she just set off all the memories with her laugh, her smile. Just enough like my sister to haunt me.
I went a long, long time without letting myself think about my family. I left behind a loving mother, a father who was a good provider, if stricter than I’d have liked and a little too comfortable with a bottle of wine. I left behind the family dog and my little sister. For all I knew they were all dead and gone, but catching a glimpse of a stranger was enough to start me on my search.
I wanted to see her again. I wanted to know what sort of life she’d made for herself after her lying brother disappeared from her world. The decision didn’t happen just like that. I didn’t drop my breakfast and run off into the cold hard world or anything. I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I couldn’t escape the guilt of doing Millie wrong, you see. I could look back at my life and never regret forsaking my parents, but not my little sister.
After mulling the idea over for close to a month it was decided. I had to find her. If she was dead, I had to know it, and if she was alive, I wanted to see my little sister again and maybe let her know that I never meant to lie to her. Maybe even explain what had happened to me that made me a liar. If it’s possible to really explain that sort of thing.
Was it an obsession? No, not really. Believe me, I know all about getting fixated on a person or a notion. I’ve done it before. I can definitely tell the difference. No, I think it was more about redemption. I’ve hurt a lot of people in my time, and I don’t imagine I’ll stop anytime soon, but I hated that somewhere along the way, through circumstances that I caused and that simply befell me, I’d let down the only person I think I ever really loved.
I guess for a lot of people there’re too many obstacles in the way. There are families, obligations to employers, to loved ones. I didn’t have any of those burdens. You could say I’m something of a free spirit.
The work I do, well, it leaves me a lot of free time. I’m not exactly in demand, not that I ever really was. No family, except Millie, no girlfriends to leave behind, or even a goldfish. I set aside the few cases I was thinking about looking into and I got my affairs in order. As for the work I did back in the day, the stuff that led me to where I am now, well, most of the good outfits are long since gone and the few that are around wouldn’t know what to do with me.
There was only one place where I could really start, wasn’t there?
I had to go home.
That thought was almost enough to scare me, and believe me when I say this: I do not scare easily.
It was a living. Julio Regaldo told himself that as he walked along the street and looked at the people around him, hauling the latest batch of boxes into his van. No one bothered him, but he could feel their eyes on him, like cockroaches with an attitude.
They could be called people, technically. Mostly he thought of them as wastes of breathing air. The homeless, the desolate and the wretched, plus those who fed on them; the predators who found whatever they needed by taking it from people in worse condition than they were. A bad side effect of working for a delivery company that had their offices in the low rent district.
He unlocked the back of the battered metal van and started sorting boxes by the road where they’d be delivered. Next to him, Lou Harper kept an eye out to make sure no one got too close.
Ten minutes later he was riding away, breathing a sigh of relief, because even with the burly security guard who made sure he didn’t get mugged on his way out with a large shipment of other people’s shit to deliver, he didn’t like going down to central processing to handle a package delivery. Most days he worked from the satellite office and that was a sweet deal, but now and then some asshole called out sick and who do you think got stuck taking his route? That’s right, Julio, who was always willing to go the extra mile to make sure he got noticed and got one of the sweet deals out in the ’burbs. You had to pay your dues, and whether or not his old man had worked for the company, he had to pay them, too.
Julio lit a cigarette and drove, knowing full well that he could get into deep shit if he was caught smoking in the company van and not caring in the least. The window was open and he had another ten miles to drive.
He let his mind drift a little, happy that he was back in his comfort zone and well away from the sleazy bastards in Cabbage Town. Atlanta wasn’t exactly the safest place to be in the first place, between traffic and the losers on the street always looking for a fix or a quick meal the easy way, but it could be a good place, too.
It wasn’t that he was a coward, really, not as far as Julio was concerned. It was just that he wanted to have a safer life. He’d left Detroit because of the shit going down on the streets and he didn’t want to have to deal with it all over again now that he was down in the south.
He made a mental note to kick the crap out of his cousin Raul next month at the family reunion. Raul was the one that told him Atlanta was just getting a bad rap on the news.
No, he knew he was to blame. He’d listened to Raul in the past and it always ended badly.
“Fuck it all, man. Just do the job and get back home, that’s what I’m saying.”
He had a date with Terry to think about. Cute little thing from New York, not the city but the state, as she always said, and he was looking forward to it. Girl was pure class, and had looks like a model.
The first delivery was coming up on Peachtree Street, and Julio pulled the van over into the alleyway between the building and its closest neighbor, narrowly avoiding a dumpster in his way, grateful, again, that he’d gotten away from the central hub in one piece.
He killed the engine, climbed into the back of the van and sorted until he found the right package. Seeing the name put a smile on his face. He’d delivered a few other things to the recipient and she always tipped good and liked to flirt, too. He wasn’t looking and he knew she was just yanking his chain, but it was nice to get a little attention from a pretty girl now and then, especially one that was famous.
Just one delivery at the theatre. If that was any indication, the rest of the day would be easy.
He opened the back door of the van and stepped out, making sure his uniform looked presentable. It wasn’t cool to look unprofessional, not with what he was paid and sure as hell not when there might be a few tips coming in. He always made sure he looked professional and well groomed for that reason.
The alleyway almost made it a waste of time. The buildings were clean enough, but the ground was covered in sludge from the most recent rain and he had to step carefully to avoid getting it on his shoes. The heavy shadows in the area didn’t make it any easier to step in the cleaner spots, either.
Julio hadn’t taken fifteen paces before the man came up from behind him. In front of the place, he would have been fine with it—you expected heavy foot traffic in the city. But like most of the places around downtown, all the deliveries were done in the back of the building and there weren’t too many people who had a reason for hanging around in the narrow alleyway.
He nodded at the guy and tried to look confident. Back when he was a kid, he’d gotten mugged twice. Both times by single guys who looked innocent enough until they hit him. The man moving his way made him nervous because he moved the same way, like he owned the street and everyone should be grateful he was letting them share his air.
He was reaching for the buzzer on the back door when the stranger moved.
“Don’t push that button, Rube.” The man smiled. He could barely make out a face in the twilight of the alley, but he could see the flash of teeth that split the darkness. “You don’t want to do that.”
“But, I have to make a delivery.” It was all he could think of to say while the man was looking at him.
Light blue eyes considered him, and the smile on the face grew a little wider.
“I’m going to take care of that for you, my friend. I’m going to make your day a little easier.”
Julio looked at the man and straightened up a bit. He didn’t want to. The last thing he wanted was to make the man angry. He knew that deep in his heart, because that gnawing feeling of dread wasn’t getting any better. The guy sounded cool enough, almost happy, but Julio could feel sweat starting to stipple his brow and it wasn’t nearly warm enough for him to be sweating.
“I can’t do that, man. I could lose my job.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.” The man’s voice was soft, but brooked no argument.
“Seriously, I can’t let you do that. I need the job, man. It’s all I’ve got.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, you have your life, right?” The stranger stepped closer. He wasn’t much taller than Julio himself, but he seemed like a giant at that moment. The faint light in the alley let him see the face of the stranger better than maybe he wanted to. He could see the make up on the man’s face, and slight spots where it looked like the make-up was covering scars. Somebody had cut the dude in a bad way once, and whoever had done it had been stupid enough to leave him alive.
Icy blue eyes looked down from Julio’s face to his shirt and then back up as the lips peeled back again, showing broad white teeth that looked like they could maybe bite through steel.
Julio tried to step back, ready to run if he had to.
“Julio… Listen carefully. I don’t want to hurt you. I just really need to deliver that package for you.”
Julio tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. In the end, it was pride that did him in. He had learned a lot since he was a kid and got the shit knocked out of him a few times. He’d taken courses in Judo and he’d taught himself to be brave. Cowards just got picked on more and more, but if you stood up for yourself, you sometimes got lucky.
“Look, I’m trying to be nice here, but you’re starting to piss me off. You go do your own shit. Get a job as a courier. I got a delivery to make.” He deliberately thickened up his very faint Latino accent and made himself sneer at the stranger.
The smile on the face grew wider and the voice became patronizing. “Julio, are you trying to get macho with me?”
“Hey, fuck you!”
The knife came out of the shadows and slashed deeply into Julio’s throat. The blood didn’t spill from the gash in his neck, it erupted. Julio dropped his package and staggered backwards, more surprised than anything else. Both of his hands moved to his throat and tried to catch the crimson waterfall that spilled from between his fingers. He knew he was cut and badly, but there was almost no pain.
No, wait, there it was, a red-hot blast of agony across his neck and throat that overshadowed the warmth running down his shirt.
Even as he fell backward, the man reached out and snatched the cap from the top of his head.
Julio looked up at the man, and choked on his own blood. He coughed and felt the spray of warmth push past his fingers again, even as more of it spilled past his lips.
The stranger slid the cap in place and picked up both the package Julio had dropped and the electronic clipboard for signatures.
“I said I didn’t want to hurt you, Julio. Not that I wouldn’t.” He shrugged and then grabbed Julio by his feet. A moment later the stranger was dragging him into the back of his own van and slamming the door.
He heard the man walk to the driver’s side and heard the rustling sounds of his jacket being taken from the back of the seat.
“Little snug, Julio, but good enough for government work.” The man was whistling as he walked away.
Julio wanted to make a comment, but his muscles weren’t working anymore. He drifted into sleep first and death a few moments later.
Is there anything more magical than a circus?
The Carnivale de Fantastique qualified as a circus in every sense of the word, except the most traditional. Oh, to be sure there were acrobats and clowns, there were jugglers and dancers, and on occasion there were even a few animals, but none of that had anything to do with the sort of circus that set up in tents and put out thousands of poorly printed flyers in the hopes that people would attend.
No, quite to the contrary, the Carnivale was one of the new generations of circuses, a monumental vision designed, developed and funded by major forces in the entertainment industry. The advertising budget alone would have financially crippled almost any traditional circus in existence, or let a good number of the performers retire comfortably. There were program books, t-shirts, and a dozen different other chunks of merchandise that had to be reordered from the manufacturers after damned near every weekend worth of performances. The money generated by the overpriced DVDs of the different shows The Carnivale de Fantastique had performed was enough to guarantee the backers of the show their money back with a tidy profit, and that money was nothing compared to what the show hauled in annually from touring.
The premise behind the shows, and the source of the name, came from an urban legend that had grown over the last fifty years. Alexander Halston’s Carnival of the Fantastic, to be precise. There were stories of a circus troupe that had vanished one day, never to be seen again. There was even, according to whom you talked to, some evidence that the circus had even existed. Somewhere along the way, the tale had been examined in almost every way possible. Tales of murder, talk of a mass disappearance worthy of the colony at Roanoke, and even stories of alien abductions had all come and gone over the years.
The founders of the Carnivale de Fantastique were enchanted by the stories, and so they recreated them. The least successful version of the story they told was the one that involved aliens, but most of the variations on the theme of a circus that disappeared had been met with amazing approval. This year’s entry, the Carnival of Wonders, was a rousing success so far.
Critically speaking, the Carnivale was considered art in the truest form. The reviews were almost always positive and the few that were not usually came from the sort of naysayers who hated everything they encountered. While not every performer reached a level of stardom, there were many from the current show and earlier ones as well who had become celebrities in their own right. Hell, some of the performers who’d left the oversized troupe maintained their stardom well after they’d retired and moved on to different fields of interest. There were even plans, though not solidified as yet, to take the show across the waters and hit both Britain and Europe.
The Carnivale was reinvented every year—the premise was always the same, but the stories were almost completely unique—often with entirely new casts, because the stress of performing within the neuveau circus was both physical and emotional. Sets were designed that put all but the finest displays on Broadway to shame, and the current season had required costumes that broke the one hundred thousand dollar mark, each one custom tailored to the individual performer, because the show had to be flawless.
There were two shows a night, every night, for at least three weeks, in ten major cities. That was the schedule and the producers intended to stick with it, regardless of the physical wear and tear on dancers and acrobats alike. Every part in the performance came complete with a second set of wardrobes and at least one backup performer. A sprained ankle or a broken bone would not be enough to stop the show and the cast knew it, just as they knew that each and every one of them could be replaced with a minimum of muss and fuss. Everyone was salaried and everyone also got a cut of the profits, provided they stayed through the season. Most of the serious money got divided between the performers who managed to survive until the end of the tour. That was the way the Carnivale had always been handled and despite a few attempted lawsuits by disgruntled ex-employees who had dropped out or been canned, that was likely the way it would always be handled. The performers had to sign a contract that said as much and to date no one had found a loophole on the seven-page document.
That suited Elizabeth Montenegro just fine. As one of the leads in the show, she was guaranteed to make a ridiculous amount of money, and the performances, while demanding, were not likely to cause her any permanent injury as long as she remembered to stretch before and after every show. She’d had a harder workout when she was one of the minor characters in Cats when it ran on Broadway.
The worst of it was the down time, because as much as she might wish that someone else had to pack her outfits and prepare for the next town, the Carnivale didn’t work that way. When the shows were done in one town, she had to inventory everything and pack it herself. She might get help actually transporting it, but her costumes and all of their accessories were her responsibility.
She was elbow deep in the costume for the final scene of the play, the “Ice Princess” costume, with all of the glittering arcs of sequined metal and foil streamers. It wasn’t a delicate costume, none of them were, but it still had to be handled carefully.
Elizabeth carefully wrapped the cape, sliding foam rubber inserts in between the long streamers and the two sweeping shoulder pads that made her look like something from another planet. The audience always ooed and ahhed when it was all said and done, but she still thought the costume was atrocious.
The last of her packing materials were in place and she was just sliding the cape into its carrying case when the knock came at the door to her dressing room.
Elizabeth sighed and frowned. She didn’t want to be disturbed and little ticked her off as quickly as interruptions during her down time. “Who is it?” She tried to keep the bitchiness out of her voice, but only half-succeeded.
“Special delivery, Ms. Montenegro.” She stood up quickly. The last six months had garnered her a total of two stalkers and as a result, no one was informed about which dressing room was hers unless they had a legitimate delivery. There were only two packages she was expecting, one from her mother and one from her dealer.
“Can you tell me who the package is from, please?” she spoke calmly, but did a nervous dance on her side of the door. She needed a quick fix before they left town. Just something to keep her calm when she got on the plane, because she hated flying.
“It says it’s from ‘Nana Montenegro,’ ma’am.”
That was exactly what she wanted to hear. Her hands quickly unlocked the door and pulled it open. The man on the other side was no one she’d seen before, but Julio normally sent the packages by legitimate couriers so that wasn’t exactly a surprise for her. He stood a little less than six feet in height, and was as lean as he was tall. His hair was slicked back and half buried under a cap that advertised the local delivery service, and his face was handsome enough, not that she was looking, with a friendly smile, a broad nose and the coldest blue eyes she had ever seen.
He handed her the package without hesitation and presented a clipboard with a signature sheet and a pen attached.
Elizabeth scribbled her signature down on the paper and smiled briefly at him as she slid the small box into her jeans pocket. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” His voice was a purr.
She stared at him for a moment. He was…unsettling. Despite his pleasant demeanor, there was something about him that gave her the creeps. Still, there were matters of decorum to consider. She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the two folded dollar bills she kept there for just such situations.
“Here you are. Have a nice day.” The bills were proffered and she stood facing him. No way in hell was she going to turn her back on him.
The deliveryman looked at the bills for a moment and his lips stretched out in a smile. “That’s very sweet of you.” He took the bills and held them up for her to see. They trembled lightly between his index finger and middle finger for just a moment, and then simply vanished.
She smiled, pleased by the cheap parlor trick.
“Neat. You have to practice that a lot?”
“These days it almost comes naturally.” His hand turned around, so that the palm was to her, and then turned again so that she could see the fine, dark hairs on the back of his hand. He turned his hand a second time and there was a shining flash of metal held between his fingers.
Elizabeth barely had time to be surprised before the blade pressed against her face. “Now, let’s you and me step into your dressing room and have a little talk, hmmm?”
She felt the cold metal slide softly across her cheek and down to her neck and shivered from top to bottom. “Unnn?”
“No talking. Not yet.” The pressure increased, and she took a step back into her room. The man followed, giving her no chance to escape.
After he’d entered the room, he closed the door and locked it.
“Please, don’t hurt me.” Her voice cracked and her knees were trembling.
“Shhhh. Don’t speak until spoken to. Don’t make a noise.” His smile grew broader. “If you play nicely we can both forget all about this in a little while, and I won’t have to carve your pretty little face off of your skull.”
She almost nodded her head and then realized it would be a bad idea.
“We’re going to have a talk, Elizabeth. I’m going to ask you questions, and you are going to answer them truthfully.” His voice stayed soft and low, but despite his smile, she could feel the hatred coming from him like heat from an oven. He kept pressing her backward and she kept going, horrified by the idea of what the blade against her neck could do.
“What do you want to know?”
The cold blue eyes that stared at her glittered.
“Well now, we have a lot to discuss. Let’s get started, before anyone interrupts us.”
Life On The Road: Part One
I was what, maybe sixteen when I left home. There were a lot of reasons, but mostly it was because there was no work in town that didn’t involve being in a factory or mill for most of the day. We’d been away from the farm for three years or so and I’d seen what the factory did to my father. It ground him down and sapped away his strength a little at a time. Sometimes I thought it was leaving the farm that did him in, really, but other times I knew better. It was the backbreaking work and the knowledge that it wouldn’t get any better. It would never get any better.
He wasn’t an old man. Neither of my parents were old. I think my old man was nineteen when he got married, but he was looking closer to sixty by the time I packed a few sets of clothing and took off. And the reason for it was obvious to me. He was working himself to death in order to pay the bills and keep a roof over our collective heads. Not even to get ahead of the game, just to make ends meet.
He came home six days a week, seven sometimes, if there was extra work to be had, smelling of molten metal, that had fused its odor to his clothes and his skin alike. There were days when, as soon as he was done with his shower, he’d sit in his favorite chair with a hand held mirror and pick the black spots from his skin, particles of hot metal that had burned themselves onto him. You can see why a day or two of that would put a man in a bad mood, right?
Well, it left my father worse than bitter. It left him defeated. After a while I think he was just going through the motions. He’d always been a proud man, and losing the farm had been a bad blow, but believe me, he changed when he went to work at the foundry.
Now and then when I talk about him I think I’m too harsh. He wasn’t a bad sort. He just wasn’t really built for fun. My father’s idea of a good time was a Sunday visit to the church, followed by a picnic in the back 40, and then a few hours of chores before dinnertime. I guess I’d have been the same way if I’d been through the Second World War and depression before that. Most of his generation seemed to be that way, at least to my eyes. That probably changed later.
He didn’t beat us, he didn’t do any of the things I’ve heard tales about over the years. He was just stern. Sometimes that’s enough to make you dislike someone. I loved my father, but it’s fair to say we never had the chance to be friends. I guess that can only come later in life, and I wasn’t around when that time could have or should have come around.
So after we left the farm, I only stayed around long enough to know I couldn’t bear the idea of being like my father. Even that revelation took a while. I told myself I was leaving to help the family, to make sure that they could pay the bills on time, and to make damned sure my little sister didn’t end up living on the streets.
I left a note for Millie. Don’t ask for the exact words, because you won’t get them. They were for her and her alone.
After I hid the note beneath Millie’s pillow, I slipped out of the house and moved away like a thief in the night.
I’d planned on heading for New York, to try my luck as an escape artist. I thought if it worked for Houdini, I could go the same route.
Fate had other plans.