Invisible Threads--Chapter 16

Writer's Note: Please read the previous chapters and prologue of Invisible Threads before reading this.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It's not like Jim Harriman had never broken the law. When he had first learned to pick locks for his magic act in his teens, he had made some of the wrong kind of friends by opening back-alley doors for them on Sundays. This brief foray into the underworld had not been particularly profitable and had ended when he had heard police sirens and bolted without giving them any warning. The rest of the group had been arrested but none of them had given away his name. Either it was some kind of code or they just didn't think of him. Either way, he had not had to reach back into what he had learned from those days until now.

It was only two weeks before the Las Vegas shows and he still had no clue about Richardson's trick. There were tricks where the magician never touched the trick's object, but those were usually gadget tricks like the old padlock ruse. Or they were card tricks involving math and probability. But he found nothing where a card was moved from one location to another without the magician making contact.

A machine continued to be the only solution. In order to copy the trick, he had to duplicate the machine. That meant he had to see it and take photographs. If it looked too complicated to recreate from photographs, he had to steal it or destroy it. The decision to steal it would be a big one. Right now, he was thinking about breaking and entering, or vandalism. In Illinois, both of those held six to twelve months in jail and $2,500 fine. If he walked out with the machine, it became burglary with three to eleven years and $20,000.

But the alternative was losing and ending his dream. He knew he wasn't the good guy in this narrative, but it didn't take much of a mental rewrite to cast him as the victim fighting for his rights. He was the one that had spent his entire life working for this break. Everything was poured into the act.

Magicians stole from each other. Being the first magician to work out a new type of illusion was like being chum in shark-infested waters. The others circled and attacked until they all had a piece of it.

But this time, Harriman was the only shark. And what had Richardson done to deserve the prize? He had probably been trying to do something else and accidentally realized his machine-made cards disappear and reappear. That kind of crap happened all the time to scientists. This guy was trying to use some happenstance fluke to rob him of the fruits of his hard efforts. Harriman wasn't the bad guy here. He was the little guy fighting against an unfair fate.

He also had fourteen hours of driving to do in one day to get all of the way to Champaign and back home without having to spend a night away which would register with his mother. A magician learns that the best way to keep an audience from noticing something was to give them nothing to notice. It is the differences that catch people's eye. Like a rabbit can be hidden in a hat, a trip to Champaign and a felony could be hidden in an apparently normal day.

So, he would take all of the cash saved up from his tip jar and hit the road right after his mother left for work the following day. All gas and food would be bought with cash. The Internet had been kind enough to divulge Richardson's address and the fact that he worked in the Physics Department at the University. More information was needed and more planning needed to be done. Just like an illusion, there was a time limit. He had a lot to do in less than twenty-four hours.

***

Mercurio's phone vibrated on the desk. It showed the same incoming number that he had just called. Apparently, he had passed muster but not by so much that the girl would let him have Richardson's direct number.

He answered: "Hello."

"Mr. Hampton? This is Gary Richardson. Cherie said you wanted to speak with me?"

"Cherie? Is that the young woman who answered the phone? Is she your business manager?"

"Basically."

The kid was not going to make it easy to break the ice.

"Feel free to call me Mercurio."

"Okay."

"We have something in common, Gary. I'm a magician, too. I've been at it for 40 years."

"I'm not really a magician."

Mercurio had watched the videos and knew where this was going but played the straight man anyway. "You prefer the term illusionist then? Many in our profession do nowadays."

The kid played it straight to script: "I am neither an illusionist nor a magician. I am a scientist and what I do is not a trick. It's science."

"Kid, that's a pretty good hook but it's going to get old. Look at me, my hook is that I'm Italian. I'm really not but it's the stage persona." Mercurio heard some noise in the background. "Are we on speaker?"

"Yes. Cherie is listening in."

"Good to know. Nice to speak with you again, Cherie."

"Hi."

Mercurio was annoyed by the breach of etiquette but let it lie. "As I was saying, the Superstar people like your act and think you have a shot. This puts them in a bit of a quandary as they usually have a lot more knowledge about an act in your position. It's pretty rare for someone to actually walk in off the street and surprise them."

"Okay."

"So, you're an outlier. Someone who is clearly going to make a splash during the run of the show. And they want to make sure that your trick isn't going to flame out under scrutiny. What we know about you is only your artifice - your stage persona - that you are clearly maintaining for this interview."

"I am?"

The pretense was now irritating but Mercurio had been through it before with young entertainers.

"You have a truly great trick but one trick and the nerdy scientist character will not get you very far."

"It's not a trick. Since it is a new offshoot of physics as we know it, there is no shortage of applications. I have just added levit-"

Mercurio heard a thwack sound followed by Richardson saying "Ow!" Obviously, the young woman had hit him.

"You were saying something about levitation?"

"I'm not at liberty to speak about that at this time."

"Or the young lady will hit you again?"

Cherie's voice piped in: "Oh, hell yeah."

Mercurio chuckled. "She sounds like a pretty normal business manager. While I have you two on the telephone, I was wondering if I might talk some business."

Cherie again. "Such as?"

"I was wondering if we could discuss my purchasing your trick? I would offer you top dollar for the trick as long as no one else had it by the time that your contract with Superstar was complete. Are you interested in discussing this further?"

He expected Cherie's voice but Gary spoke: "That's not possible. I don't understand the science well enough to teach it to someone else. I've tried but it just doesn't seem to work yet for anyone but me."

"Maybe I might be the exception."

"Possibly but you would have to come to my lab and we would run tests-"

Cherie's voice interrupted: "And as you just said, we can't do anything like that until after our contract with Superstar has been fulfilled."

"On that, you are most certainly correct. But maybe I can purchase the rights to be the only one that you test for a period of a year after that date?"

Gary's voice again, "No. I wouldn't want to limit my research that way. I couldn't agree to that."

"Well, if you change your mind, please keep this number and my name. I look forward to meeting you in Las Vegas."

And the call ended.

Mercurio typed the following e-mail to Lacy:

I spoke with Gary Richardson and his business manager, Cherie. He is either trying to live his stage character or is a one-trick pony. He started to talk about a levitation trick but Cherie shut him down. An inexperienced card magician trying to move into stage magic could lead to something very corny. I've seen it before. They showed no interest in selling the trick. I look forward to seeing you again when you return to Las Vegas and I look forward to seeing this young man's act in person.

***

It was coming up on lunchtime and Harriman was already tired and frustrated.

The day had started smoothly enough. He had left his home in the wee hours of the morning and been in Champaign on schedule at 10:30. His map app took him directly to Richardson's apartment. Getting out of his car, he went up the steps of the first two landings two at a time with extreme confidence like someone who had been going up these stairs every day for months. There was no one watching. But details mattered.

There were four numbered doors on the top landing and he was at Richardson's door within a minute. Sounds from within stopped him. He listened. It was music. Then Harriman heard a new sound: a female voice yelling an expletive, which confirmed that someone else was also in the apartment. Richardson was living with a woman. This did not match his stage character at all. His competition was not what he presented himself to be.

The clock was ticking, so he postponed the apartment search and drove to the University to scope out the Physics Department Building. The building itself was easy to find. However, a parking space not requiring a campus sticker wasn't so easy. He couldn't risk getting a ticket and leaving a trail and that cost him nearly thirty minutes between finding the space and walking to the building.

He slowed his nervous pace as he approached the main entrance of the building to avoid attracting attention. The building's security system was a retrofit and the card reader next to the front door was obvious. Two people entered as he was approaching without presenting cards so it must be an off-hours system. The exterior CCTV camera at the main entrance was conspicuous and he made his entrance from an angle that denied it a clear view of his face. The entrance to the lobby was a window wall through which he could get a full view of the interior before entering. There was no security guard or desk.

He passed through the doors and stopped at the building directory on the wall to his left. Quantum Physics was the phrase he'd seen most often in his research. Wall signage showed him that department was down the hallway to the left. The corridor door was propped open. Without looking around, he walked through it.

Sometimes you're good and sometimes you're lucky. Each door had a permanent plastic number attached to it with white numbers on a red background that was no help. But underneath the plastic numbers were sheets of paper taped to the door with the names of the occupants. Three doors down on the right, he found:

Duong P.

G. Richardson

And continuing his good luck, the door had a small window in it of thick glass with a wire mesh embedded within. Through this window, Jim got his first sight of Gary Richardson in the flesh. He was sitting at a desk and looking back and forth between his computer screen and a pile of papers on which he was making notes. There was a second person in the room at a different desk and Jim noted facial features so that he could recognize him upon seeing him again. All of this had occurred within three seconds after which time he continued to walk down the hallway and paused at two more doors before turning and exiting back out through the main entrance.

At 11:30, he was sitting in his car, wondering about his next move. The best bet was to go back to the apartment and wait out the mystery woman and then return here at the end of the day. He had to be in the building before the security system activated which would probably be 5:00pm. He checked his watch, did some mental time calculations, and returned to the apartment.

Behind Richardson's door, he again heard sounds of activity from within. As he was starting his descent back to the car, the door lock behind him clicked. He quickly continued down to his car and was sitting in the driver's seat in time to see a woman descending the stairs slowly while carrying a load of clothing. When she reached the bottom, she looked up to scan the parking lot, giving him a good look at her face. It was the girl from the videos.

This confirmed his collusion theory. The apparent Superstar staffer was actually Richardson's girlfriend. This allowed her to install the machine in the locations needed. She was small which indicated that the machine could be neither overly bulky nor heavy. He was looking for something small and easy to conceal.

He waited until she drove away in an old, unwashed car before getting out. He picked up the Amazon box that he had brought with him along with an electronic notebook and ascended the stairs. At the top, he placed the box and notebook down and pulled out his lock pick set.

The locks were cheap. He was familiar with them, and they had a simple pin arrangement, no variable-strength springs, and a single shearline. The dead bolt was going to be the more difficult of the two, so he did it first.

He dropped to his knee for a more comfortable position and was pulling out his tools when he heard a noise. Deftly placing the tools in his pocket, he reached down and picked up the notepad and started typing into it as if he were recording the package delivery. Sixty seconds was sufficient to confirm it was a false alarm.

He made sure and touched nothing with his ungloved right hand. Placing the tension tool in the lock, he began to work. The first lock pick tool he chose did not match the pins so he stood to let his back muscles relax and swapped out.

Out of habit, he timed himself. Eight minutes and forty-one seconds for the dead bolt. Not great but not bad. The doorknob lock was done in under three minutes. And he was in. He picked up the box and the notebook and entered.

With the door shut behind him, he allowed a few seconds for his eyes to adjust and to get the lay of the place while he put on the second rubber glove. The first thing he noticed was that the sofa had messed up sheets, blankets, and pillows on it. One of them was sleeping there. This changed the story. They were not boyfriend and girlfriend, which gave even more credence to the collusion theory. Otherwise, why would they be living together in an undersized apartment?

He set the timer on his phone to vibrate at twenty minutes. He hit Go and it began to countdown.

He placed the box down on a table made of plywood and milk crates and opened it to reveal the fluorescent replacement light bulbs with which he had filled it. There was a ceiling light in the kitchen area that he unscrewed and placed on the kitchen counter. His cover story was that the apartment was getting a tax credit if they replaced all existing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent or LED ones before May. The story didn't have to stand up to intense scrutiny, it just had to get him out of the door, down the stairs to his car, and out of the parking lot before anyone took any pictures or wrote down his license plate number.

He opened every drawer, looked on all the kitchen shelves, looked under mattresses, and pulled up the sofa cushions. Neither had made their beds so this didn't require remaking any linens. He checked the bathroom and inside the toilet tank. The freezer was empty except for ice trays and frozen pizzas. The garbage can was relatively empty so he rummaged through it and then removed the liner bag and looked underneath. He checked for strings hanging from windows and even hazarded opening the windows to look for something attached to the outside of the building. The search was thorough and complete but the apartment was small, so he was done when his phone vibrated the end if his time. He replaced the light fixture.

A knock at the door startled him and he froze. There was no window from the breezeway so no one could look in. He waited to hear Open up, Police! Or Who's in there? But neither statement came.

When no second knock came, he looked out the peephole. No one was there. He packed up and opened the door to find an Amazon package on the ground next to the door. A sigh escaped his lips. He locked the doorknob lock, and left. He made no effort to lock the dead bolt. She would probably assume that she had forgotten to lock it on her way out. There were now three hours to kill which was good since he was hungry.

***

"I can't go to the movie tonight with you and Phang." Cherie stated this on the phone with Gary as if it made sense,

"Okay." He could think of no other response since she had not been invited.

"When will you be home?" It still seemed weird to him when she referred to his apartment as home.

"We're going to leave work early and hit the matinee. Tickets are only four dollars with a student ID. And we'll be grabbing dinner out. I should be there around eight o'clock.

"Good, I need you to get the final dimensions on this costume after you get here." She hung up.

Standing like a tree while she stuck him with pins. Something to look forward to.

***

Jim entered the main entrance of the Physics building at 3:58. He walked down the hallway and glanced into Richardson's office and saw both men sitting at their desks having a languid conversation. A quick look down at the door lock as he strolled past revealed it to be top quality.

He returned to the lobby and loitered, checking his phone as the timer passed 4:00pm. He listened and heard no clicks, hums, or other indications that an access control system had activated. He exited the building and stood out by the street where he could appear to be waiting for a ride while watching the front and side doors. In less than five minutes the two officemates left the building through the side door. They mounted bicycles and pedaled away down the street.

Jim returned at a relaxed pace through the building's front door and returned to Richardson's office. With a gloved hand, he turned the doorknob. It opened - no lock picking was necessary. In his pocket was an envelope addressed to Gary Richardson inside which was a fake invitation that he had photoshopped together from a Physics Symposium that he had found on-line. Again, a weak dodge but hopefully enough to get him out of the door if someone interrupted him.

He set the timer on his phone and went straight to Richardson's desk. None of the drawers were locked and all were jammed full of miscellaneous crap. Most of it was papers, pencils, pens, etc. He found an out-of-date telephone and inspected it closely. He pressed the power button and nothing happened. He opened the back and popped out the battery and took pictures of the insides. It looked like an old phone. He put it back in the drawer and fluffed the contents with his fingers to recreate the chaos inside.

There were two cabinets in the room. Inside the first one were piles of papers, some books, and some electronic devices. One of them looked like a Dustbuster. He took it apart confirming that it was simply a Dustbuster but he took pictures anyway. The other two devices were more interesting. They had obviously been hand-made and were not in any kind of housing so that all of the wiring and components were in plain sight. He took more pictures. He picked one up and noticed that it was covered with dust and small cobwebs. The space on the shelf where it had been showed the clear outline of the device in the dust. The other was the same. Neither had been moved or handled in a long time. He took pictures and carefully replaced them in their previous locations.

The final cabinet was locked but it was a very simple cylinder mechanism and he had it open in just over a minute. Like the last one, it was filled with a disorderly clutter but in the middle of it all was a hemisphere that looked like an over-sized bicycle helmet made almost entirely of copper and silver wires. Neither it nor the shelf upon which it rested were dusty. Next to it was a console with buttons, gages, and dials. The next shelf down held another similar console and a large and heavy piece of equipment that had Power Supply and Distribution Board conveniently hand-written on it.

He checked his timer. Seven minutes had elapsed. He started taking pictures. The helmet was large, bulky, and heavy. It clearly connected to the power supply board that was also bulky and heavy. It seemed unlikely that the small woman could sneak this into a set or under a stage of a busy production.

Still, the helmet held his interest. Embedded within the wiring were multiple devices that were all hooked together to do something. But what? He knew that he could not recreate this thing. That left the option of destruction. He would have to rip it completely apart thoroughly so it would take longer to rebuild than the two weeks they had before Las Vegas. He pulled his multi-tool from his pocket, flipped it open to become pliers...

And collapsed.

His heart was hammering in his chest and his lungs were fighting for breath. He fell to his knees and then over onto his back. The soil was soft and cold and he gasped in the...

Soil?

While still struggling to fill his aching lungs with air, he opened his eyes and looked up into the branches of a tree and then the sky.

Where was he?

He flopped his arms out to his side. His right hand glanced off the trunk of a tree and his left hand found an interface between soil and grass. There was some form of plastic separator between the two. Seconds passed as he willed his heartbeat to slow and felt his lungs begin to catch up. Sitting up, he looked around and did not recognize his surroundings.

There were footprints in the soft soil leading out of the grass and to where he sat. Were the footprints his? He pulled out his phone in order to use the map app to find his location. When he opened the screen, the timer was still going. It showed twenty-eight seconds remaining. He cancelled the countdown

Seven minutes had elapsed since... what?... thirty seconds ago? Maybe a minute? The map app showed his position. Some scrolling and pinching found the Physics building. The scale was small but he was able to determine that it was about a mile away.

He looked at the footprints in the dirt and then more importantly noticed a couple of people standing and staring at him. He had clearly done something unusual. A crazy guy in street clothes sprinting past and collapsing under a tree would draw some attention. He stood, made a show of checking his pulse, pretended to type something into his phone, and then turned, leaned up against the tree, and did some stretching exercises. People exercised in some pretty strange clothing, so maybe he would get away with it. When he stepped back from the tree and glanced around, the couple were walking away.

Had he just run a mile in six minutes without remembering it? Whatever Richardson's machine was, the theory that it affected playing cards without affecting people no longer held water. He considered going back and making another effort to destroy it but if he truly had just boomed out of the office and sprinted down the corridor, there might be some people keeping an eye out for him. The mission was over and it had failed.

He was back at home and in bed before sunrise. His mother had left him dinner in the refrigerator that he ate. When she returned from her night shift in the morning to change clothes and shower between jobs, he cooked her breakfast. Nothing unusual. Just a normal day.

***

To Gary, the movie sucked although Phang seemed to laugh at the appropriate parts with the rest of the small Monday night crowd. They grabbed some burgers after the movie and then Phang headed home. Gary went back over to the office to pick up his laptop. When he got there at 8:30, the building was busy with cleaning crews and graduate students under pending deadlines.

Gary stepped into the office, turned on the lights, and walked over to his desk. The backpack with his laptop was as he had left it. He hoisted it over one shoulder and left. He didn't notice anything out of place because there was nothing to notice. The cabinet was closed and locked.