“You’d charge to talk?” He blinked, torn between a tightly drawn amusement and mildly righteous outrage. “I’m not sure my expense account will cover that.”
“I’d charge to flip you off in traffic if I could work out the logistics.” I straightened. “My time is valuable. You can pay or you can walk. It’s your choice.”
He reached for his wallet without further argument, only saying, “There goes my dinner money.”
Yeah, cry me a river. I accepted the hundred dollars he forked over and repeated, “Twenty-five extra for walk-ins.”
He raised an eyebrow but passed more bills over. “Could we sit down?”
“Sure,” I said as I counted the money in a fast riffle. “Knock yourself out. You’ve got thirty minutes on the meter.”
Making his way past me into my office, he sat in the client chair and looked around. The doorstop immediately caught his eye. “Do you have an interest in phrenology, then?”
Wasn’t he up on the whole ball of wax? “Nope.” I sat back in my chair, slouching a bit and linking fingers across my stomach. “Bought it at a yard sale. A buck fifty. Good for propping the door open.” And it made me laugh at people’s gullibility.
“You don’t put stock in reading a person’s character by the bumps on their head, I’m guessing?” He was serious, even with the faintly dry flavor to the question. It only made him seem more out of place. In this business, you usually have two categories: slobbering believers or foaming-at-the-mouth skeptics. This guy didn’t come across like either one. He didn’t have the fire of a zealot or the cynicism of the doubting Thomas. In another lifetime, I might have been curious. In this one, I only wanted to see the door hitting his ass. Curiosity killed more than cats, I’d learned that the hard way. And if that made me the only closed-minded psychic in the Western Hemisphere, I’d learn to live with the title.
“Only if I put them there.” I opened the top drawer, pulled out a deck of cards, and started to deal them out. “So talk, already. I’m on a schedule, pal, even if you’re not.”
His eyes followed the cards as he said firmly, “I did say no reading.”
“It’s solitaire.” I lifted eyebrows at his insistence. “The only thing I’ll pick up from this is paper cuts.” If I weren’t wearing my gloves. The deck was clean and new. I was the only one who’d touched it, but I wasn’t taking a chance around this one.
He gave a rueful smile and apologized smoothly. “Sorry. I’m a little sensitive to maintaining the integrity of the experiment.”
Great. He was one of those. Now it made sense, although he still didn’t quite fit the profile. For all that they tried to be unbiased, most researchers, to use the word loosely, were either skeptics or believers. Trying to prove or disprove, one or the other. This guy, however, was so buttoned down that where he fell I simply couldn’t tell.
I flipped over three cards and said matter-of-factly, “I’m not one for poking and prodding, Mr…?”
“Dr. John Chang.” He offered his hand and said, “I apologize again for the rudeness.” It came out so easily, so naturally, that I was almost tempted to believe it. Almost. This wasn’t a man who spent a lot of his life apologizing.
“Yeah, you’re all about the rudeness,” I said sarcastically. The guy was doing an imitation of upstanding that was so stalwart and upright that it made my teeth hurt. I nodded my head at his hand. “I thought you didn’t want to compromise whatever project you’ve got going on.”
“I was guessing you wear those gloves for a reason.” And a good guess it was. He pulled his hand back when it was obvious I wasn’t going to shake it. Money bought my time; it didn’t buy any manners to go along with it. Especially not for someone who was very probably lying to me. “And you are?”
I was positive he already knew who I was long before he stepped foot across my threshold, but I shrugged mentally and went along with it. My name certainly wasn’t private information around the neighborhood. “Jackson Lee Eye.” Corny, eh? I was an extra from every Southern-fried, squeal-like-a-pig movie ever made. Despite my urban appearance, I still had the good-old-boy drawl… only I wasn’t particularly good, and I had learned to speak “purty” enough to flirt with the older clients. But they liked the drawl, and I kept it. Smooth as molasses.
He glanced over his shoulder to look at the painted letters on the tiny lobby’s picture window. “Ah, the All Seeing Eye.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Clever.”
“It pays to play to your audience,” I replied with an edge of mockery. I had no interest in proving myself to a possible academic who had nothing better to do with his time or to someone even more annoying like a flat-out liar, and it was pretty evident in my voice. If he thought I was a fake, my feelings wouldn’t exactly be hurt. He’d certainly spend less time sniffing around. “Time’s ticking away, Doc. Do you actually have anything to discuss besides my window treatment?”
“Sorry again.” Yeah, right. He turned back to face me with a rub of his finger across his upper lip. “I have to admit that I’ve researched you somewhat, Mr. Eye. Were you aware that you have a completely clean slate with the Better Business Bureau? Not one complaint. That’s unheard of in your profession. None of the others could make that claim.”
“Others?” I felt like groaning. This guy wasn’t messing around. Not content to focus on one fish, he was throwing a wide net out to catch whatever he could. It did, however, reinforce the conclusion that he was an academic, if a slightly shady one. The doctor probably came from a PhD rather than a medical degree. “You’ve visited a few of my esteemed colleagues?”
His smile transmuted to one more wry, mocking, and slightly predatory. If I had to put a label on it, I’d say it was that of a lion counting antelopes. When was enough enough? When was that belly full? Decisions, decisions. “A few,” he affirmed, noncommittally.
I was liking all of this less and less. The nearly inconceivable notion of refunding his money crossed my mind. Just shove it back into his hand and hustle him out the door. “What exactly do you want, Chang?” I asked flatly as I scooped up the cards and shoved them back into the drawer. “You’re beginning to make me nervous.” I flashed teeth in a predatory grin of my own. “And Houdini doesn’t like it when I get nervous.”
Houdini was my third option behind the fake gun and the alarm.
Dr. Chang didn’t have to ask who Houdini was. The full-throated growl that emanated from under my desk was introduction enough. Eyes dropping toward the floor, he carefully pulled his feet back a few inches and with a raised eyebrow asked, “German shepherd?” It was a good guess. The back panel of the desk kept Houdini hidden from sight.
“He’s damn sure not a wiener dog.” Actually, Houdini was a mix. He had the distinctive shepherd bark, body, and ears but the smooth black coat of a Rott or a Lab. He came from the pound, same as me, and neither of us had learned to love people yanking our chains. “And both of us would appreciate you getting to the goddamn point.”
Leaning back in his chair with slow caution but no discernible fear, he commented, “Wasn’t Harry Houdini the ultimate skeptic when it came to psychic phenomena?”
“I like skeptics. They keep me humble.” I slapped the top of the desk, and Houdini came out. Black lips skinned back from ivory teeth, he fixed his pale russet eyes on Chang. “And that’s not what I call getting to the point.” Houdini had been with me for some time. There were times when Abby was alone in the office if I had to run out for a while, but only with the door bolted and Houdini sitting behind it baring his teeth at whoever walked by. He loved that. It was nothing more than a game to him. Abby suggested we get a real gun so she could keep the office open. That was a flat no, hell no, get the fuck out of town no. Guns were as bad as knives. I didn’t like what they could do to the meat of a human body, no matter how deserving that body. The cloying smell of blood, the chunks of raw flesh and yellow fat splattering away from the flying metal, it wasn’t must-see viewing. Not for me.
Not again.
And who needed an actual gun when my own personal security force was up to the job? From the dog’s flattened ears and rippling growl, you’d never know that Abby called him Harry Bear and used him as a footstool or that the regulars brought him treats on a frequent basis. In one of my more cynical moments, I’d taught him a trick that was a huge hit with his fans. When asked “What does my future hold?” he’d drop to the floor and cover his eyes with long legs. I’d thought about having him simply roll over and play dead, but I somehow doubted that would be as popular.
“Sometimes I do have trouble getting to the point.” Careful not to move too quickly, he lifted his wallet from inside his suit coat and laid it on the desk. “At least, my students said so often enough in my class
