Off to Be the Wizard Read online

  Eventually Miller closed the folder and put it on the table.

  “Mr. Martin Banks,” he said, “we’re going to ask you a few questions. The more quickly and more honestly you answer, the sooner we can all go home.”

  Martin considered this. “So, I may be going home tonight?”

  “Oh definitely, Martin, you’re going to go home tonight. But, bear in mind, jail might be your new home.”

  “Ah,” Martin said.

  Miller continued. “See, My partner Murph and I aren’t from Seattle. Heck, until today Murph had never been to Seattle, isn’t that right Murph?”

  “That’s right.”

  “See, we had to fly up from L.A., on no notice, because of you. That’s where we live. L.A.. Hey Murph, why do you live in L.A.?

  “Because I hate rain.”

  “He hates rain, Martin! So you can imagine how happy he was to have to come to Seattle in October! You happy, Murph?”

  “Nah, I ain’t happy.”

  “He’s not happy, Martin! You got anything to say about that?”

  Martin stammered. If he were any more off balance he’d be lying on his side. “I’m sorry?”

  “Murph doesn’t want your apology, Martin! He wants answers! If you answer Murph’s questions well enough, we can go home tomorrow, and maybe get some sightseeing in before the flight. Would you like that, Murph?”

  “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  “Murph wants to go sightseeing, Martin! Maybe see the Space Needle, or that market you got where they throw great big fish around for no reason. Murph’s seen it on the Food Network about a thousand times.”

  “Oh,” Martin said, mostly out of reflex, “if you do go to the fish market, right next to it there’s a little shop that sells the best tiny donuts. You don’t wanna miss out on that.”

  There was a silence so thick you could lean on it.

  “Why,” Special Agent Miller asked almost too quietly to hear, “because we’re cops?”

  ‘NO!” Martin said, an edge of desperation in his voice. “They’re just great donuts! A little machine makes them fresh, and they … give them to you … in a brown paper bag.”

  “Shut up about the donuts! Murph doesn’t want your donuts! Murph wants you to answer his questions!”

  “Then when’s he going to ask a question?”

  “Shut up, Martin! I’m asking the questions here!”

  “That’s kinda my point.”

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shuuuuuut uuuup!”

  Miller sat down and panted for a while. Murphy just stared at Martin. Finally, Special Agent Miller continued.

  “Look, kid. We’re Treasury Agents. We mainly used to investigate bank fraud and we were good at it.”

  “Too good,” Murph said.

  “That’s right, Murph, too good. We were so good we got promoted to a special task force. A small task force. Elite, they call it. How many agents are on our task force again, Murph?”

  “Two.”

  “Two agents, me and my partner, Murph. I’d say that’s pretty freakin’ elite. We investigate the bank fraud cases where nobody can figure out what the fraud was, even the bank that got defrauded. That means that before we can start solving a crime, we gotta figure out if there was a crime at all. That’s why we’re here, Martin. To try to figure out if you’ve committed a crime.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “Have you committed a crime, Martin?”

  Another silent moment passed.

  “No.”

  “Good! Glad to hear it,” Miller said. “Perhaps you can tell us how you managed to put five separate sums of money, totaling more than twenty-three thousand dollars, in your bank account without making a deposit or a transfer.”

  Martin had never stopped to add up all of the cash he’d created. “Wow, that’s a lot of money.”

  “Not really,” Special Agent Miller said. “Normally, it takes more than a hundred thousand to get our attention. It was the number of times money just showed up that made the bank suspicious.”

  This news did not make Martin happier. I’m screwed, he thought. The jig is up. All the way up. Even if I get out of this, they’ll be watching me for the rest of my life. My best-case scenario is that I get to go back to my life the way it was, only now I’m unemployed and gave all of my furniture to Goodwill. At least I can buy it back for cheap. It won’t come to that, though. They’ll pin something on me. I’m going to prison. I can’t see how I can get out of this.

  “So, you gonna tell us, Martin?”

  Martin had been so absorbed in his misery he’d nearly forgotten the men in the room with him. “Pardon?” he asked, startled.

  Special agent Miller smiled. “My partner Murph and I were wondering if you’d tell us how you got all that money into your account without depositing, transferring, or even earning it, as near as we can tell.”

  Martin perked up instantly. “Oh! I’ll do better than tell you. I’ll show you! Special Agent Murphy, will you please hand me my phone?”

  Chapter 7.

  Martin materialized in his apartment with his thumb on the home button, the plastic bag containing all of his belongings in his other hand, and a big smile on his face. The smile faded as he fell to the ground, again landing directly on his tailbone. He cursed himself for not having the foresight to stand before he teleported. Luckily, the federal agents searching his apartment didn’t see him fall. They only heard him hit the floor.

  The agent sitting at Martin’s desk searching the new computer slowly turned around. He and Martin made eye contact for a moment, then Martin sprinted out the front door. As he passed the bedroom, another agent peeked around the corner. Martin raced out the door and made for the parking lot, cornering as best he could in his unlaced sneakers. He was happy to see they hadn’t towed his new car yet. He got in and tore out of the parking lot as quickly as he could, narrowly missing a bedraggled old man on a beat-up bicycle.

  He knew where he was going, and happily, it was only a couple of miles away. That didn’t leave him much time to think, but he’d have all the time he needed to think soon, possibly too much. Now was the time for action.

  He looked in the rearview mirror and was not surprised to see two dark, unmarked cars with flashing lights concealed in their grilles closing on him. He sped up, not even entertaining the notion of getting away. He just needed to keep them from getting in front of him. Martin knew he was going to escape. Where he was going to escape to and where he was going to escape from were the questions.

  He didn’t want to teleport out of a moving car. He’d made a big enough mess without risking injuring or killing someone. He also didn’t want to teleport with anyone watching. He knew that Murphy and Miller had likely recorded his first disappearing act, but one video of an inexplicable event, witnessed by the two men who made the video, and who would be embarrassed to have let a kid in his mid-twenties escape, would probably look suspect. If he also disappeared in a public place with multiple federal agents watching, that would be hard to explain away. Martin hoped he would get a moment of privacy to grab the things he needed and think about where he wanted to escape to.

  Martin continued driving the speed limit. He figured that as long as he didn’t seem to be a danger to anyone, his pursuers wouldn’t risk the public safety to stop him. Whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it quickly. The two unmarked cars were now accompanied by at least three squad cars, all with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. He was only a few blocks from his destination, and if he didn’t do something to put some distance between him and his pursuers, he’d never get away.

  Martin’s shiny red hatchback led its loud, ugly parade through the quiet suburb where he grew up. Martin blew through a stop sign. A ticket for a moving violation was the least of his worries. He pict
ured his sentencing. Twenty years for bank fraud, followed by traffic school. All the more reason not to get caught, he thought.

  He got an idea that he hated immediately, but it was the only idea he had. There was only one turn remaining before he reached his destination, a ninety-degree left onto the street where he grew up. He had always avoided using his phone while driving, but in this case he made an exception. He pulled up the app and hit the tab with the compass on it. The phone displayed a satellite map of his surroundings. He selected a spot fairly close to where he wanted to be. The final turn loomed. His thumb hovered over the screen as he floored the gas pedal of the brand new car and aimed it for a huge tree he used to walk past on the way to school each morning. He glanced at the phone in his right hand, making sure his thumb was going to hit the right spot. If I time this right, he thought, I get away. If I don’t, maybe they’ll chalk it up to texting while driving. The car jumped the curb, and in the last second before hitting the tree, his thumb hit the screen.

  It was a workday in the suburbs, so nobody was on the street to see Martin appear in the middle of the street in a seated position, suspended a foot off the ground. Martin fell straight down to the road beneath him. Again, his weight landed on his still-healing tailbone. As he fell, he heard the surprisingly hollow crunching noise of his car hitting a tree two blocks away.

  He scrambled to his feet and peered into the distance. He saw what was left of his car wrapped around the base of the tree. He smiled as he saw the police vehicles pull up to the wreck, all sense of urgency drained out of them. The federal agents who had torn his apartment to shreds stepped out of the black, unmarked cars and ran to the crumpled wreck to see if Martin needed a doctor or a coroner. Martin’s happiness didn’t last long. It was shattered by a blasting car horn from behind him. He spun and saw a green minivan approaching. He had forgotten that he was standing in the middle of the road.

  He lunged to the side of the road, looked back to the wreck, and his worst fears were realized. The agents heard the horn, and had clearly recognized Martin even at this distance. They were pointing in his direction and scrambling back into their cars. The minivan’s driver, a mousy woman with a pinched face, gave Martin the stink-eye as she drove past, but Martin never knew it. He was already sprinting across a yard and into a specific house, his chosen destination.

  Walter Banks sat on a large sofa in the living room of his home, a split level ranch in the suburbs of Seattle. He was watching a rerun of an old sitcom. Back when he was working, he thought the show wasn’t worth his time. Now that he and his wife were retired (him from Boeing, her from a desk job at the school district), and the kids were grown and out of the house, he had more time to spend on TV shows. This, he was deciding, was not a good thing. He didn’t know the name of the show he was watching, but he did know that it adhered to the standard sitcom template. Average looking guy, married to stunningly beautiful woman, is unhappy.

  His wife, Margarita (who was roughly equal to him in attractiveness, but had made him very happy) was in the kitchen, doing whatever it was she was doing this week. If you asked her what her hobby was, she’d call it crafting. Crafting was a broad term, and every week she had some new thing she was making out of some new thing he wasn’t allowed to throw away anymore, or which he had to go to the craft store and buy with her. They’d stand in the aisle of Styrofoam balls, which was next to the aisle of big sheets of cardboard, and across from the aisle of fake ficus trees. It was the ficus trees that confused him. What could anyone possibly make out of those?

  TV wasn’t holding his interest, so Walter went to see what his wife was up to. She was sitting at the dining room table with her back to the entryway. A large part of the table was covered with newspaper. On the newspaper, blobs of white clay were sitting, spaced evenly. As he got closer, he was confused by what he saw. He kissed his wife on the top of the head.

  “Margarita, what are you doing?”

  She turned and showed him what she was working on. “I’m sculpting little geoduck clams! We can send them to our friends who live in other parts of the country. A little piece of the Northwest,” she said, holding up the one she was working on so Walter could appreciate it.

  Walter asked, “That’s a clam?”

  ”It’s not done yet. I’m doing the necks first, and when they’re dry, I’ll do the shells.”

  In the distance, they both heard the sound of multiple sirens, getting louder very quickly. Walter walked toward the front window to see what was going on, but only got two steps before they heard the hollow crunch of a collision. Walter went to the window and started to open the curtains, but the front door burst open, and their youngest son Martin burst into the house. Martin slammed the door shut and locked the deadbolt. He had a plastic bag in one hand.

  “Son …” was all Walter had time to say before Martin had spun around and hugged him so firmly that it squeezed the breath out of him.

  “Dad! Mom! I need you to know two things,” Martin said. He released his father from the vice-like hug and advanced on his mother. He paused, confused at what his mother was holding, then hugged her much more gently then he had his father. “Just remember, I love you, and it isn’t true.”

  He released his mother and walked toward the hall that led to his old bedroom.

  “It’s not true that you love us?” His mother said, in a quiet, confused voice.

  “What? No! I love you. Something else isn’t true.”

  “What isn’t true?” his father asked. He had to shout, as the sirens were very loud now.

  Martin looked at the front window. He saw the color of the police lights filtering through the drawn curtains. He said, “You’ll see soon enough.” He took one last look at his parents, then said, “I’ll be in my room.” He walked into his boyhood bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  Martin felt bad for dragging his parents into this, but he knew they’d be fine. No evidence tied them to anything illegal, because there was no evidence of anything illegal. He’d securely wiped his old computer, and he hadn’t done anything with the new one. He was taking his phone with him. His parents could afford a lawyer if it came to that, but there might still be a way to keep them from needing one. He needed time to think.

  Peeking out the window of his old bedroom, which looked out on the front yard, it was clear he’d get no time to think here. The two unmarked cars and three squad cars were crowding the street, lights flashing. The agent who had been monkeying with his computer saw Martin through the window and smiled. Martin wrenched the curtains closed. His eyes darted around the room. He dove for the closet. Any second he’d hear the agents pounding on the front door, and then he’d only have a few moments of freedom left. He saw what he was looking for in the closet and he snatched it up, tucking it under his arm with his wadded up jacket.

  Well, here goes, he thought. Soon, I’ll have all the time to think I need.

  As quickly as one would rip off a bandage, or jump into the deep end of a cold swimming pool, Martin pulled out his phone, opened the app, and pressed the Escape button.

  Chapter 8.

  In the distance near the horizon, a bank of clouds was casting a shadow over what Martin couldn’t quite believe was France. Here, though, the sky was a pale blue with only a few clouds thrown in as if to add texture. The sea roared as the sea always did, but it was a distant, hollow sound. Distant, because despite the fact that this spot was only a hundred feet or so from the edge of the land, the actual point where sea met sand was at the base of a dizzying, chalk-white cliff.

  Here, on top of the cliff, a steady breeze blew the wild scrub grass and forced the sea birds to work for every inch of progress they made. On one side the horizon was nothing but clouds and sea. On the other, the horizon was all gentle rolling hills and trees. Martin would have found it all very restful, if he hadn’t known he was so utterly screwed.

  H
e sat on the ground right there where he had materialized and allowed himself to freak out. He alternated between panic, tears, and shame, waves of each rolling over his brain in random order and for indeterminate stretches of time.

  More than anything, he felt stupid. So very stupid. All he’d had to do was lay low. That was the whole plan. Two words. Lay low. So simple, but clearly too complicated for him.

  After a while, he started thinking instead of just feeling. He was in a mess. The first order of business was to figure out how to fix it. He listed his problems.

  No job.

  No cash.

  Bank account almost certainly frozen.

  Wanted by the police.

  Parents aware of the first four items on this list.

  No food.

  No shelter.

  Exiled to Medieval England.

  That established, he tried to prioritize the problems in order from least to greatest, and then spent an indeterminate amount of time feeling panic, shame, and sorrow again.

  Clearly, choosing which problem was worst was not productive. Instead, he tried to figure out which was the most urgent, which clarified things. He needed food, and he needed shelter. All of the other problems were part of one big ball of problems. If he could make the ball of problems go away, the food and shelter issues would be a piece of cake, but he didn’t know how to do that.

  His first impulse was to go back to his apartment, before the chain reaction of stupid decisions started, but he didn’t think that would work. What would he tell himself? “Be careful, or you’ll screw this up?” Past-him already knew that. In fact, he remembered thinking almost those exact words. Also, If he were going to go to the future to warn past-him, wouldn’t he have already done it? When he went back in time to tell himself to go back in time, and to play poker, his first experience of it was of seeing himself appear from the future, not of getting the idea to go to the past. If at any point in the future he were going to go warn himself, at some point before now he would have been warned by himself.