throne—“I sample the energy that’s around me. There is a sensor in my USB port that reads me.”
“How?”
“It’s got several ant-like antennae suspended in the center,” he said. “They vibrate when I do. I wrote the program and built the plug-in. It’s pretty impressive.”
“Sounds like it,” I said, trying to hide my renewed dubiousness over fluttering hairs and a sudden feeling that this was a behema -sized waste of time. But there was always the way, way outside chance it could work.
“I gather your program matches incoming etheric energy with whatever you’ve recorded?”
“Exactly. What’s great is that it doesn’t even have to filter out my own vibrations because those are part of the original recordings.”
“That is great,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too sarcastic. “Do you have any appointments for tonight?”
“One, at seven. She ‘liked’ my Facebook page, saw that I would be here. I get at least one gig from that in every city I visit.”
“God bless social media,” I said. Actually, that got me thinking: I wondered if I could just ‘like’ the High Holy Days so I wouldn’t have to go to temple, deal with the crowds. “Do the vibrations have to be fresh?”
“You mean, recent? As in, the person having been in a place lately?”
I nodded.
“No, they have to be there now. The device simply isn’t sophisticated enough to record energy residue. I’m not one of those idiot ghost hunters.”
“Right.” It was marginally reassuring to know that even among these kooks there was a pecking order of craziness. “So what do you think about going out there, seeing if we can pick up the vibrations of bad guys who may be in the area?”
“For what kind of fee?”
“Free.”
He made a face. I didn’t.
“What you get from this experiment is proof that your system can be used in crime fighting,” I told him. “If that happens, I see a reality TV series in your future.”
He stopped pacing as he considered the proposition. “Hmm. That is a possibility, isn’t it?”
“Damn right.”
He thought a moment more. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Swell. I’ve got a sympathy call to make. How about I pick you up at nine?”
“All right. Where are we going?”
“Hadley Park, off Interstate 40,” I said. “A place where there are eleven trees.”
“Sounds a little vague.”
“It isn’t really,” I told him. “The foliage is grouped close together there, pretty easy to count.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you out front so you don’t have to sit in the lobby,” he said.
“Why? Maybe I could make a few bucks.”
Banko wasn’t sure whether or not I was kidding. I assured him I was. I think. When you marry or date men who think that all women should be geishas, handmaidens, or mute, when you hang around after those first warning signs and let your self-esteem erode, the aftershocks continue to be destructive, not constructive. Even after the ties are broken. You want to burn off your own skin, keep the pain close, reinforce how low this man made you feel so you don’t do it again.
And then you stupidly date the same man or another one just like him, at least several more times.
I left the hotel to return to the martial arts school. Maybe I had been distracted or a little numb or just worn out by the day’s events, but as I walked along the street something alarming occurred to me.
What if Banko was the person who had been casing out the deli?
I was taking him to a remote area assuming that he meant me no harm. But what if he was some kind of loon who went from town to town doing etheric and ethnic cleansing? Maybe I should—
What, call Grant to come with? Didn’t you just decry women who do stupid things with men ? You might as well just paint yourself as a plastic sex doll without a voice box and ride in the backseat for when he needs you.
What about Detective Bean or Agent Bowe-Pitt?
No. Southern bad