As soon as Jack was out the door Lyle grabbed Charlie’s arm and dragged him toward the TV room.
“You’ve got to see this.”
Charlie snatched his arm free. “Yo, what up with you, bro? Whatchu go and gaffle Jack like that for?”
Lyle felt bad about that. Jack had said white and he’d seen red.
“I’m a little on edge, okay? A lot on edge. I apologized, didn’t I?”
“You mad at him for what he say ’bout value for value?”
“No. Of course not.”
Not mad … but it had stung. Maybe that was why he’d gone off about the “whitest black guy” remark.
Lyle didn’t kid himself. He was a flimflam man, but he wasn’t a cad. He didn’t go after people who couldn’t afford it—no poor widows and the like. His fish were bored heiresses, nouveau riche artists, yuppies looking for a New-Age thrill, and dowagers seeking to contact their dead poodles in the great boneyard of the Afterlife. They’d probably spend the money on a trip to Vegas or another fur coat or a diamond or the latest status toy—like so many of his clients who never eat at home but simply must have a Sub-Zero refrigerator in their kitchen.
“And why keep this licked TV a CIA secret?”
“Our business. Not his.”
More than that, he didn’t want to distract Jack with any of their side problems. Keep him focused on getting Madame Pomerol out of their lives, that was the most important thing.
“Take a look.”
He led Charlie to the entryway of the room and stopped. He let him see the basketball game that was running on the set.
“Yo, it stopped playing the Cartoon Network. What you do?”
“Nothing. It switched on its own.” He watched his brother’s face. “Okay. You spotted that. What else do you see?”
His gaze lowered to the floor. “All kinda circuit boards and junk.” He glanced at Lyle. “You been messin’ with my stuff?”
Lyle shook his head. “That’s all from inside the set.”
“Inside?”
“Uh-huh. I took it apart after you left. Damn near cleaned out the box. Practically nothing but the tube left in there, but it keeps on running. Still unplugged, by the way.”
He saw Charlie’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “You messin’ wit’ me now, ain’t you.”
“Wish I were.”
Lyle had had most of the day to adjust to the craziness of their TV, but watching it still gave him a crawly sensation in his gut.
“Hey,” Charlie said slowly, staring at the screen. “Who that playing?” He stepped closer. “That look like … it is—Magic Johnson with the Lakers.”
“You finally noticed.”
“What you got on—Sports Classics?”
Lyle handed him the remote. “Flip around the channels. See what you get.”
Charlie did just that, and wound up on CNN where a couple of talking heads were discussing Irangate.
“Irangate? Whuzzat?”
“Something that happened when you were too young to care.” Lyle barely remembered it himself. “Keep surfing.”
Next stop was a close-up of a big-haired blonde crying so hard her make-up was running down her cheeks.
Charlie’s eyes widened. “Ain’t that … ? What’s her name?”
“Tammy Faye Baker,” Lyle said. He’d known what to expect, but even so, his mouth was growing drier by the minute. “Keep going.”
Then came a football game. “Hey, the Giants. But that look like snow on the sidelines.”
“It is,” Lyle said. “And check out the quarterback.”
“Simms? Simms ain’t played for …”
“A long time. Keep going.”
He picked up speed, flashing through a news show where the Bork nomination was being discussed, then to a review of Rain Man, a Dukakis-for-President ad, and then two dreadlocked guys prancing around on MTV.
“Milli Vanilli?” Charlie cried. “Milli Vanilli? This is like Trek, man. We in some kinda timewarp or somethin’?”
“No, but the TV seems to be. Everything showing on that tube comes from the late eighties.”
Lyle stood with his brother and watched Milli Vanilli swing their plaits and lip-synch “Girl, You Know It’s True,” but he heard next to nothing. His mind was too busy rooting through everything he had learned or experienced in his thirty years to find an explanation.
Finally Charlie said, “Now do you believe me? We haunted.”
Lyle refused to board that train. Had to quell this queasy, uneasy buzz in his gut and stay calm, stay rational.
“No. Crazy as all this seems, there’s got to be a rational explanation.”
“Will you give it up! You always laughing at the sitters who believe any fool thing we throw at them. You call them compulsive believers, but you just like them.”
“Don’t talk like a fool.”
“It’s true. Listen yo’self! You a compulsive nonbeliever! if it don’t fit with how you want things, you deny it, even when it smacks you upside the head!”
“I don’t deny that this TV is running without power or cable and showing stuff from the eighties. I’m just not jumping right off the bat to some supernatural explanation, is all.”
“Then why don’t we haul it to some scientists and have them look at it and see what they can come up with?”
Some scientists … what did that mean? Where do you find “scientists”?
“I’ll look into it in the morning.”
“You do that,” Charlie said. “I don’t wanna squab. I’m steppin’ off. Gonna do some reading.”
“On ghosts?”
“No. The Good Book.”
As Lyle watched Charlie head for the upstairs, he almost wished he had something like that to comfort him.
But all he had was an impossible TV.