Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read Read online

  “What was?” Steele said.

  “Yeah, what was?” Gus said.

  “He was in motion,” Shawn said.

  “Who?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Shawn said. “Because part of the deal is you don’t know his name. You’ve never seen his face. You’ll never even know he exists until the moment he steps up behind you. Until then you live knowing he could be anyone. Even Gus.”

  “Who could I be?” Gus said.

  “The hit man, Gus,” Shawn said. “The one Dal put in motion, but can never stop. The money’s been wired into his account, and now he’s going to be coming after you relentlessly. That’s why you called us. Because we’re the only ones who can track down his identity and stop him before it’s too late.”

  “If I had hired someone like that, it’s good to know that you’d be able to call him off,” Steele said. “But when I bring a new person into my work family, I like to meet them face-to-face first. Talk over the parameters of the job, get a good feel for how the other guy thinks. And let him know that while I do appreciate individual initiative, I also need to know that if I want an employee to make a major course correction—such as, for instance, not carrying out a hit on me—he’ll be responsive.”

  “That’s good management,” Gus said.

  “Bad plotting, though,” Shawn said. “How would Barnaby Jones ever have made it through a single season if people didn’t hire hit men they couldn’t call off?”

  Before anyone could come up with an answer, the waiter came back into the room, this time carrying a junior version of the original silver tray. On it was a crystal highball glass, filled to the brim with sparkling black liquid. “Your beverage, sir,” the waiter said as he handed the drink to Shawn.

  “You might want to think twice before you drink that,” Steele said with a smile. “I’ve got to warn you, it can be pretty addictive.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Shawn said, and took a large gulp of the drink. As soon as the tiny bubbles started popping on his tongue, he knew that he’d be lying awake night after night craving another taste. “Not bad.”

  “And, Gus, how’s your coffee?”

  Gus took a sip and swirled it over his tongue. “Intriguing,” he said. “My first thought was Sulawesi, but there’s an undercurrent I can’t place.” He took another sip. “Wait a minute—this isn’t Kopi Luwak?”

  “I’m impressed,” Steele said. “It is. Have you had it before?”

  “Only in my dreams,” Gus said.

  “Since when do you dream about coffee?” Shawn asked. “Especially coffee with such a stupid name?”

  “Since that time I studied to be a professional nose,” Gus said.

  “Professional brown nose, more like it.”

  “Kopi Luwak is the rarest coffee in the world,” Gus said. “And the most expensive. There are at most a thousand pounds of it available for sale every year.”

  “And this is actually a little rarer than that,” Dallas said.

  Gus gaped. “You mean this is Vietnamese weasel coffee?”

  “In a way. I find the Vietnamese weasel produces a more sophisticated product than the Asian palm civet, which they use in Indonesia. But I’m not wild about the actual Vietnamese coffee, so I ship Sulawesi beans to my own private weasel ranch outside Saigon.”

  Shawn was looking from Gus to Dallas and back to Gus again, trying to make sense of the conversation. “Wait a minute. They grind up weasels and put them in the coffee?”

  Gus and Dallas shared a knowing laugh. “You’ve got that backward, I’m afraid,” Dallas said. “The coffee berries are fed to the weasels.”

  “So how do they get them—Oh,” Shawn said.

  “The animals eat the berries, but the beans inside don’t get digested,” Gus said. “The enzymes in the weasels’ stomachs break down the proteins that make coffee bitter.”

  “So you’re drinking coffee that comes out of a weasel’s butt,” Shawn said.

  “Not directly,” Gus said.

  “I realize the butler isn’t down in the kitchen pumping some rodent’s tail to dispense the coffee, but what you are drinking is made from beans that were crapped out of a weasel.”

  “First of all,” Gus said, “the beans are cleaned extremely well. And second, you’re drinking a beverage that’s forty percent made by French people, and their women don’t even shave under their arms.”

  “Does that make sense to anyone here?” Shawn said. “I only ask because I had a spicy garlic shrimp burrito before bed last night, and I think I might still be dreaming.”

  Gus took a loud sip of his coffee and turned to Dallas. “So what is it we can do for you? I mean, unless Shawn wants to ask the spirits again.”

  “Yes, as much as I’m enjoying catching up on old times, I guess we should get down to business. This is really about my bride—”

  “You’re married?” Gus was surprised.

  “Very recently.”

  “I didn’t see anything about it in the papers.”

  “My bride is very shy about publicity,” Steele said. “The wife of a billionaire is subjected to a lot of pressure, and we’d rather enjoy our honeymoon privately for as long as possible. I can count on your discretion, can’t I?”

  “Absolutely,” Gus said. He looked over at Shawn for confirmation. Shawn was bent over double, his fingers curled around his skull. “Shawn agrees, too.”

  “Is he all right?” Steele said. He motioned to Shepler, who started across the room to check. Before he could get close, Shawn bolted upright, his eyes blazing.

  “A man of your wealth is prey to any number of parasites—and the worst kind of parasite is the woman who latches on to a man’s fortune and proceeds to suck him dry,” Shawn said. “You love your bride, but you need to be absolutely certain that she loves the real you, and not just your money.”

  “No.”

  “Of course not,” Shawn said without hesitation. “In your business you can see through people and know their real intentions. So you know she loves you for who you really are. But lately, as you’ve been planning the wedding, a cloud has come between you. She lapses into silence, and when you ask what’s wrong, she doesn’t have an answer. You’ve come to suspect that before she met you, your new wife was in a long, complex romance with a man of great beauty but little wealth. An artist. It was a torrid, passionate relationship, and she had to break it off for fear that she was losing her very selfhood in it. But break away she did, and when she ran off to some exotic resort to forget about Reynaldo—”

  “Reynaldo?” Gus said.

  “They’re always named Reynaldo,” Shawn said. “It’s like a law. Anyway, she went off to this resort, and there she met you, and ever since, she’s been happy. But on a recent trip back into Santa Barbara, she ran into Reynaldo again. He’s working as a landscaper, but he’s trying to put together a new show, the one that will make him famous throughout the art world. And he wants her by his side when he does. Now she’s torn between the rich, kind man who makes her feel safe and warm and the poverty-stricken artist who treats her badly but raises her passions to a level she’s never felt before.”

  “Wow,” Dallas said. “That’s really incredible.”

  “You mean he’s right?” Gus said.

  “There is a reason we call the agency Psych, you know,” Shawn said.

  “Actually, nothing you said had any relation to anything that’s ever happened in my life, but it’s such an incredibly detailed story, for a moment I felt I was actually living it,” Dallas said.

  Gus cleared his throat loudly. Shawn ignored him. He glared at Shawn. Shawn refused to meet his gaze. He drummed his fingers as loud as he could on the arm of his chair, but the noise was swallowed up by the padding. Finally he stood up, grabbed Shawn by the collar, and pulled him to his feet. “Excuse us for a moment,” he said to Steele. “Sometimes Shawn’s psychic batteries need a kick start.”

  “You mean a jump start?” Steele said.
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br />   “We may try a jump, but a kick is coming soon.” Gus dragged Shawn into the depths of the forest. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Astonishing him with my psychic prowess,” Shawn said.

  “He doesn’t look very astonished to me,” Gus said. “And you’re not even trying.”

  “I’m giving him exactly as much effort as he ever gave me,” Shawn said.

  “You’re dredging up clichés from seventies detective shows.”

  “That’s okay. He never watched TV,” Shawn said. “He studied, practiced, and worked instead. I remember how he used to brag about it.” He shuddered in revulsion at the memory.

  “And this is helping you how?” Gus said. “You’re making us look like idiots. You didn’t even know he was married.”

  “I could have known if I’d wanted to,” Shawn said, casting a glance over his shoulder at Steele, who waved at him cheerily. “He’s got the beginnings of a tan line on his wedding finger, and he’s touched it a couple of times as if he’s trying to decide whether he likes it better with the ring on or off.”

  “That’s good,” Gus said. “A little late, but good. What else?”

  “Aside from the fact that he’s a phony?”

  “Yes, aside from that. Because even if he’s phony, he’s rich, and he owns our building.”

  Shawn sighed and cast another quick glance back at Steele. And then he saw. Saw the sole gray root on his temple that had somehow outgrown the last application of dye. Saw the tiny scar under his left ear. Saw the custom-made clothes designed to hug and show off every toned muscle in his body.

  Shawn bent over as if in pain. “It can’t be,” he wailed.

  “Of course it can,” Gus said. “Shepler called and told us—”

  He broke off as he saw Dallas staring at Shawn.

  “What can’t be?” Steele said.

  “All this beauty, all this wealth, all this success,” Shawn moaned. “You’ve worked so hard for so long to reach this reward, and soon it will all be gone. Worse, it will still be here—but you will be gone. Age is catching up with you, and while you still have decades to live, you know they will pass like minutes. And then what happens? Is it all just gone?”

  Gus looked over at Dallas and saw he was staring at Shawn as if his innermost soul had been torn out and tossed on the table in front of them.

  “I need to know,” Steele said.

  “You called me up here to see if I actually had a connection to the world of spirits,” Shawn said.

  “To find out if that world exists,” Dallas agreed. “I have to know.” Dallas had risen from his seat, almost physically reaching for the answer.

  “If I said yes, it wouldn’t help you at all,” Shawn said.

  “Maybe a little,” Gus said. “Maybe enough to get our building back.”

  Shawn ignored him. “You thought it would be enough for you to believe, but it’s not. That’s why I was spinning you all those ridiculous plots from seventies detective shows. It was a test.”

  “Is that what they were?” Steele said. “I never watch TV. I’d rather read or work.”

  Shawn worked to suppress his shudder.

  “If belief was enough, you would have seized on one,” Shawn said. “But you didn’t become a billionaire by believing what people told you. You did your own research, found your own truths. You need to prove it for yourself.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Steele said. “Funny thing is, I didn’t even realize it until you said it out loud. I need proof that there’s a life after this one.”

  “You need to test me in a way I can’t possibly cheat. No looking at cards or bending spoons. You will test me in a field you understand and I don’t.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much,” Gus said.

  “Investments,” Dallas said. “It’s what I do. I want to take a small pool of capital and put it at your disposal. If you’re really psychic, you’ll pick winners.”

  “See?” Gus whispered into Shawn’s ear. “You put in a little effort, you get something back.”

  “The spirits don’t respond to money,” Shawn said.

  “Some of them do,” Gus said.

  “I don’t mean to insult them or you with the offer,” Steele said. “We could arrange to give all the results to charity.”

  “Spirits aren’t so crazy about charity, either,” Shawn said quickly.

  “Then let’s just do it this way,” Steele said. “I’ll give you a pool of money to invest. Anything you earn over that initial nut, you do with whatever you feel will please the spirits best.”

  “I don’t need anything, but I think the spirits would be pretty happy if my friend Gus could raise about six thousand dollars about now.”

  “I was thinking of a slightly larger pool.”

  “How slightly?” Shawn asked.

  “How does a hundred million dollars sound to you?”

  Chapter Nine

  “Who’d ever think it would be so hard to spend a hundred million dollars?” Gus looked up wearily from his desk, which was littered with brochures, prospectuses, and press releases. “Haven’t we bought enough companies already?”

  In the weeks since they’d agreed to consult for Dallas Steele, Shepler had inundated them with paper. Apparently every request Dallas got for venture capital was being shipped directly over to the Psych offices. And as Gus was discovering, there were a lot of people in the world who wanted a multibillionaire to make their dreams come true.

  At first Gus and Shawn hadn’t intended to spend so much time on the consulting job. After Tara had brought them back from Eagle’s View, their first priority was to solve the murder of the impound lot attendant. It was the one way they could be certain they wouldn’t be blamed for the death.

  Shawn was sure it wouldn’t be all that hard. After all, they knew that the attendant wasn’t who he claimed to be. He’d served time on a chain gang, and even if he had finished his sentence rather than escaping, the city of Santa Barbara didn’t hire ex-cons to work in jobs where they’d be handling money. So first up was to figure out who the dead man really was. From there it would be easy to see who might have had a grudge against him. Probably someone he’d served time with or an old criminal associate. Couple of days to put it all together tops.

  But even as Shawn walked into the Psych office, the taste of that amazing Coca Cola Blāk mixture still dancing on his tongue, the fax was already whirring a stack of financial documents into its in tray. Before the day was out, the FedEx and messenger deliveries started to arrive.

  Even so, they might have shoved all the papers into the corner and focused on the murder. But their visit to Eagle’s View had changed them in ways they didn’t realize. They’d had a tiny taste of the life available only to the superrich, and they liked it. Shawn had never cared much about money, and if you asked him, he’d say he hadn’t changed. But the ability to have absolutely whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it—even if you didn’t want it all that badly—was a more powerful idea than he’d ever imagined. Every time he tried to concentrate on the dead impound lot attendant, he found his mind wandering to that sixty/forty blend of European and American Blāk. And though they never discussed it, Shawn was sure that Gus was dreaming of coffee emitted from weasel butts every time he sipped his Starbucks.

  As much fun as Shawn and Gus found solving murders, it was never going to make them rich. True, they were living comfortably, but they were hardly amassing huge savings. And even after Shawn offered the contents of his own bank accounts, Gus was still almost three thousand dollars shy of the cash he needed to ransom his company car. Steele had promised them ten percent of whatever profits were generated by the companies they chose to invest in. After the cash started rolling in, they could go back to detective work, and this time they’d do it in style.

  “It’s only hard because you make it hard.” Shawn was standing in the center of the office, a stack of prospectuses in his hand.

  “When you say �
�make it hard,’ you mean we actually do our due diligence and make sure we’re investing the money wisely,” Gus said.

  “Exactly.”

  “You have a better plan?”

  “Of course.” Shawn screwed his eyes closed and let the dossiers fly. Once they’d all flapped to the ground, he grabbed one up. “This is it. The big moneymaker.”