Free Two for the Show by Jonathan Stone

technique when he simply shifted the money from checking to savings. And with Archer Wallace out somewhere on the open road, this shrewd, enterprising boy, wandering into this new bank, could even begin to experience what it felt like to occupy the identity of Archer Wallace. He could come make his transfers, flirt innocently with the tellers; he could try it on . With the real Archer Wallace unknown and far away, he could safely become Archer Wallace a little. Maybe more than a little.
    Once all the money was in savings, he could transfer it in one sum to another institution where he’d opened an account, then take out the money and take off to another life. Before Archer Wallace even returned. And when and if the real Archer Wallace did return and realized he was the victim of an ingenious theft, he’d have no idea who the thief was or where he had gone. I think of our first years on the road—unknown entertainers, always on the move, no broad reputation yet. When we finally began to earn one, when Archer Wallace might have first heard of us, it would have been too late—Wallace the Amazing already established, with bank accounts, multiple identifications, credit, home ownership, a family. Much more of an Archer Wallace than some wandering, orphaned country boy suddenly claiming to be the famous magician. The real Archer Wallace—well-off, carefree, coddled since childhood—suddenly without parents or resources or even much of an official identity, spirals downward into a life of penury, struggle, disconnection, who knows what else.
    Something along those lines. I could see it so clearly.
    You don’t have to work very hard to imagine what the Stewartsons saw when they walked back into Room 103 of that motel. To feel what they felt. Whether or not they are actually killers, they have a record of—a capacity for—decisive, possibly violent action. Because they have somewhere, somehow, eliminated the real Stewartson or Stewartsons—buried them in a field, tossed them overboard, rolled them into a carpet, left them in a dumpster, disposed of them somehow. So you can imagine the need for retribution, for retaliation, working its way up in the fake Stewartsons—free-floating anger, because they have no idea yet who seized their quarry or else turned him loose. But they know the weak, debilitated Archer Wallace didn’t pull it off himself. They know someone helped.
    You don’t have to work very hard to see the simmering, threatening questioning they put the motel clerks and the Central American maids through, the implied threat behind their questions, the rage standing by, like an accomplice, tapping a lead pipe in a palm, ready to step forward and swing at the slightest provocation, maybe even doing so, here or there, just to stay in practice, just to stay in shape.
    And did a maid or clerk see something? Did they see my car sitting across the street? See me stride through the motel lobby? Help a sick guest out to the parking lot? I don’t know if the Stewartsons will be able to find me, but I don’t know that they won’t.
    And all this time, I am working. Doing the research, providing, as always, the necessary data for the show. Does Wallace trust what I am delivering him? Why not? He doesn’t know that I know any of this about him, about his thievery of someone’s life, about who he really is or isn’t. Although he might realize that I was watching the quick kerfuffle—the stumble and smooth cover-up—between him and Dave Stewartson. And might realize that his star researcher—rattled, startled, confused—might research what he had just observed a little more deeply.

    And then, a turn of events I might have predicted—if only I had realized who I was actually rescuing from the motel. Who I was actually saving.
    “Take me back to the Stewartsons,” Archer Wallace says suddenly.
    “What!”
    “I want to go back. I want to continue with our plan, split the proceeds with them, honor the deal they offered