The Port Victoria Bingo Hall was an unremarkable, one story, beige, rectangular building with a tiny sign hanging outside the door that read "BINGO" in prim, black and white lettering. There were two doors, one in front and one in back, and in defiance of all building codes there were no windows. The sign on the front door was turned to "CLOSED". It was probably the only bingo hall in the world without a trace of neon or any color at all adorning the outside, the building squatting there in the Australian scrub doing its best not to get noticed. A lone cargo van stood in the dusty parking lot, and the hood was warm to the touch, though that could have been from the sun and not recent use.
It's a common misconception that all Private investigators know how to pick locks. People also seem to believe that we can all roll our own cigarettes, fire two guns at the same time or jump cars over gorges. Me? I know how to fill out a form allowing me to deduct gas from my taxes. I know how to hand someone a subpoena (How? Quickly). I can sit still in a car for four hours at a time and watch a house.
What I do not know how to do is pick a lock. I can, however, find something heavy, which is what I did outside the Port Victoria Bingo Hall. There were two lawn statues out front (despite the fact there was no lawn), one of coral with eels coming out of it (and yes, it absolutely gave me the creeps) and one of whales with sandstone water coming out of their tiny blow holes. There was no way I was picking up the eels, so with no small effort I tugged the whale statue out of its hole, reared back and tossed it underhand through the plate glass front door, the crash sounding, in that moment, like the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
I briefly considered picking up one of the shards for use as a weapon, but concluded that It would probably do more harm to my hand than to an enemy. In the end I decided to follow Josh's lead, go back to the rental car, open the trunk and grab the crowbar. My main plan was still to run for my life if I saw any sign of Crayton, but having something solid and metal in my hands was comforting, and while it was a false sense of security at this point I was willing to settle for any sense at all.
Hesitating for only a moment at the doorway, I carefully ducked the glass shards that still hung from the top of the door frame and stepped inside, finding myself in a large, carpeted, modern, air-conditioned room covered in neon and Christmas lights, with large, flat-screen TV's adorning every wall. Every expense that had been spared on the outside of the structure had been spent inside, which wasn't too surprising considering that Crayton was catering to the world's best bingo players and wanted them to feel absolutely comfortable and on top of their game, focusing their energies in such a way that the act of winning somehow charged up the bingo charms they clutched in their withered hands.
Hollis' speech on bingo came back to me then, about how the game is played in virtually every city and town in the entire Western world, and is accepted in these communities without a second thought just because it's about the only thing that gives the elderly something to do. Despite the thought being terribly depressing even at face value, it was even more wretched knowing that the game of bingo had been designed and propagated merely to discover those with special gifts, gather them in one place and put them to use charging up bingo charms, in some way empowering them for the Magician.I had hoped that the charms would be left out and in plain sight, but all I saw were long tables with plush, padded chairs pushed under them in the middle of the room, a bar area to the left and a raised dais toward the rear of the room where presumably they'd set up the "blower" and call out numbers.
In the back of the main room was a closed door, and I instinctively and ridiculously tip-toed back to it despite the fact that I'd just made the loudest noise since the Big Bang in smashing through the front door.Once to the rear door I slowly turned the knob and entered into a hallway with five dark, wooden doors, two on either side and one at the end. A thin strip of daylight crept under the back door at the end of the corridor, and I made a mental note to run through that door to the outside in case there was trouble as I was now closer to the back door than the front.
I paused there in the hall for a moment and took a deep breath, thinking: Four doors, one cache of charms. They weren't out at the tables, so they're collected in one place, if they're still here at all. And behind one of these doors could be Crayton, just waiting for me. If he isn't, is that better? That means he'd be waiting for Josh right now...
Shaking my head in an attempt to banish these unhelpful thoughts, I gripped the crowbar tighter and chose the left-hand door closest to me, turning the knob carefully and opening it onto a wholly disappointing accounting room, a bookshelf on the right-hand wall filled with ledger books. I didn't know how they would be of any use, but I did step over and grab one at random, my intention to ship it to Yoshida to give him something to pore over for a while, and with the hope that there was at least a chance that the pages were covered with some kind of contact poison.
I closed the door to the accounting room behind me, and holding the ledger in one hand and the crowbar in the other, I made my way over to the door on the right side of the hall, opening it and stepping through into an office with a large, dark green-colored safe sitting in the corner on the left and a mahogany office desk in the middle of the room.
Even though I fully expected to run into Crayton, I was not at all prepared to see a small, bikini-clad woman with tight, bouncy, brown curls atop her head kneeling down with her back to me going through the safe. I dropped the ledger in shock, my jaw open. "Keane? Helen! My God, you're-"
She turned her head then, still sitting down, and her eyes stared into mine, her face split by a wide, fiendish smile. I heard my own voice murmur, "Oh... oh, no. Oh, God. What has he done..." Keane stood then suddenly, and I jerked back, stumbling into the door on the other side of the hall. What had been Keane began to walk toward me, slowly and steadily, her wide, unblinking eyes never leaving mine.
"Helen... don't do this. Fight it, fight him! You can do it... please..." Keane never stopped, never gave any sign that she'd heard a word I said. I was frozen there in the hallway, staring into those eyes, the thought of fighting her simply not entering into my mind as an option. "Remember who you are, Helen! Don't let him win! I'm begging-"
Just then the back door opened and the hallway was flooded with sunlight. Standing in the doorway was an older man in a security guard uniform, a gun in its holster at his side. Graying hair peeked out from under his guard's cap, and he was muscular enough to be called stocky instead of fat. Keane stopped and turned to look at him, standing right next to me in the hallway.
The guard quickly sized up the situation and decided he didn't like it a bit. Scowling, he growled, "All right, now, just hold it up. What's the story here, and keep steady, if you please."
Thinking fast, I blurted, "She broke in! She's on drugs, just look at her face! Let's get her to a hospital, now!"
The guard stared at her for a long moment as she looked back at him, then he nodded. "Right. Hospital. I'm calling for a divvy van, so just hold tight. Christ, but she's gone."
From behind the guard came an old, raspy voice, tinged with amusement. "That won't be necessary, Will. The woman is with me." Crayton stepped around behind the guard, his bloodshot eyes glaring at me as he opened his mouth, revealing yellowed teeth and making an expression that was somewhere between a smile and a sneer. Crayton was dressed in a heavily wrinkled three-piece suit, his gray hair wild and dishevelled. "The American is the intruder."
The guard looked confused, but did turn his focus on to me, his brow furrowing. "All right then, Miss. Enough games. Come with-"
"Kill her," Crayton said casually, his eyes turning toward the guard. "Shoot her, if you don't mind."
"What? Mr. Crayton, I... I can't do that!" Will looked positively aghast.
Crayton smiled patiently, the rest of us rooted to our spots. "She has a weapon, she broke in... no court will convict you, I assure you. I will give you..." He mulled it over. "...A quarter of a million dollars. Tax free." He nodded back toward me. "Go on. Kill her."
Will turned back to me, his face conflicted and confused. There was a long, long pause until finally he licked his lips, shook his head and moaned, "I just can't do that, Mr. Crayton. Let me call the police-"
"Bad news/good news time," Crayton said as he ushered Will into the building through the door and into the hallway with Keane and I, the two of them a full twenty feet away from us. Crayton's tone was reassuring and casual. "Bad news is you're fired." Before Will could react he continued, "Good news is you won't have any of those nagging 'basic needs' to worry about any more." Crayton lifted up his arm, pulled his shirt cuff up very gently and a giant moray eel shot out from inside his sleeve and directly into Will's face, its fangs latching on immediately to the bridge of his nose.
I screamed as blood poured from Will's face, the eel flapping about obscenely, its tail slapping the hallway walls with wet smacks. Amazingly, even as Will fought to pull the writhing eel off of his face, he still managed to draw his gun and shoot Crayton right in the stomach, the gunshot echoing deafeningly off the close corridor walls.
Peering down at the bloodstain spreading slowly over his vest, Crayton frowned and muttered, "Now, that's a nuisance." Then he reached out both arms, pointed his open palms at Will, and suddenly that end of the hall was filling up with frenzied, blood-crazed eels all covering and biting the doomed guard. He gave one final scream as they piled on him in a gigantic mound, until nothing could be seen of him at all.
I covered my mouth in horror, unable to move or speak as Crayton slowly walked over to me, the eels doing their best to flop and slither out of his path. His voice now came out devoid of mirth, his tone sharp and guttural. "Take her to the safe room." Suddenly Keane's arm shot up, her hand gripping my neck with impossible strength. I fought through the pain and managed to raise up my crowbar to smash over her head, but as I looked into her eyes, for a moment, all I could think of was that bouncy, energetic girl from yesterday- the sweet and tough Aussie who'd become one of us.One moment's hesitation was a moment too long. Keane's other hand swatted upward, knocking my hand back into the hallway wall and jarring the crowbar loose, falling to the carpeted floor with a muffled thud. Then she both pulled and dragged me forward into the safe room, my fingernails clawing at her hand in a vain attempt to break her grip. The next thing I knew she pivoted and lifted me at the same time, slamming me down on the office desktop flat on my back, my head ringing with the impact.
I strained to peer over at the door, Keane still pinning me down as Crayton sauntered into the room. "I prefer to kill my enemies. A simple philosophy, but effective. Back in my soldiering days I learned hard lessons about not leaving the enemy breathing at the end of a battle. Why the Magician toys with you is beyond me. I see an enemy, I kill 'em, like with the old woman who employs you back in America. Did I wait for him to give me the order? Hell, no." The old man knelt down next to the desk and his rancid breath in my face would have made me gag if I wasn't also being strangled to death by Keane at that moment.
He glanced up at Keane's smiling face. "Do you know how I made her? All I did was tell her a little secret." Now I could feel his breathing on the side of my face, his lips brushing against my ear. "You want to know it? You want to know?" Crayton chuckled with perverted glee. "I'll tell you. Listen close. Listen, and become mine forever." His trembling tongue touched the outside of my ear, running from the bottom of the lobe all the way up as I writhed in disgust, still pinned hopelessly. "Lifetimes of servitude for you... pleasures and pain you cannot imagine. Are you ready? Here it comes. Here's the secret." He took a deep breath and leaned close into my ear.
"I'll tell you a secret, @sshole." The voice came from behind Crayton, and suddenly Josh's face was right over his shoulder. "I found the knife."
Crayton screamed, his eyes bulging wide as he crumpled to a heap on the ground next to the desk, Josh standing up behind him holding a bloody, eight-inch knife at waist-level. The next moment Keane took her hand off of my neck and lunged for Josh, and he brought the knife up reflexively, barely nicking her forearm, but she instantly fell to the carpet face-first and stayed there. Josh hastily rolled her over, only to discover that she was stone dead.
Meanwhile, Crayton bellowed in agony and rage as he writhed on the carpet, his back covered in blood. "I cannot feel pain! I cannot be hurt! I was promised! Damn you, damn you! I can't move my legs!"
Josh began pulling me towards the door, but instead I rolled over the desk to the safe, took a quick glance at the box inside, saw it was filled with bingo charms and hurdled the desk back to him. "Now we can go," I said, my voice coming out in a raspy croak through my damaged windpipe.
Stealing a meaningful glance down at the knife, then to me, Josh asked, "And him? Do we..."
Before I could begin to consider the question, Crayton let out an anguished roar, lifted himself on one arm and pointed the other arm at us. Reacting quickly, I shoved Josh out of the room just in time to avoid a stream of eels, their jaws snapping open and shut hungrily as they crashed into the door on the opposite side of the hall.
We ran from the bingo hall, Crayton's tortured wails echoing in our ears as we fled. In seconds we leapt into Josh's new pickup truck and tore out of the parking lot, tires squealing.
An hour later, on the road to Adelaide, we finally calmed down enough to talk about it.
JOSH: Getting around the Smiler he'd left at the house was no picnic, but once I found out Crayton wasn't there, I knew he'd be at the bingo hall, so I grabbed the goods and put the hammer down. There's an old top hat and cape in the trunk back in the truck bed, too.
ME: How did you know the knife could actually hurt him?
JOSH: I didn't. I just saw you there and... did what I did. I didn't think about it.
ME: (Pause) My ex-husband divorced me because I can't have children. We both wanted them. We tried everything.
JOSH: Okay.
ME: You asked about him... and what happened with my marriage.
JOSH: Okay.
ME: We did it today, Josh. We got the charms, the knife... we crippled Crayton, and I think that's permanent. Somehow the knife-
JOSH: Yep.
ME: I have never heard you say this little, ever.
JOSH: I just stabbed a guy. I know that's as commonplace as rolling cigarettes or jumping gorges in your profession, but as a Philosophy grad student it doesn't come up as often.
ME: Would it help if I put my head on your shoulder as you drive?
JOSH: That would probably make me more nervous.
ME: Oh. Nevermin-
JOSH: But I'll take my chances.
We got a hotel in Adelaide. We are going to sleep for the next hundred years.
The initials carved into the knife hilt are: G.G. I'll try and do some deducing when I eventually come to.
We did it. We really did it.
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