AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No. We’ve searched that place from top to bottom,” Jericho said.
“Can’t any old code-reading machine work in a pinch?” Memphis asked.
Sam shook his head. “Huh-uh. The code is specific to the machine.”
Ling nodded at Evie. “Why don’t you just read the cards and get the information?”
Evie bristled. “Why don’t you just dream walk and ask your dead relatives to tell you? Do you think I haven’t tried? I haven’t been able to get much from them. Maybe because they were meant to be read by a machine.”
“How many of those cards are there?” Henry asked.
Sam held up one of the cards. “One hundred forty-four.”
Memphis’s head shot up. “There’s that number again.”
“What is it, Poet?”
“In Harlem, we’re superstitious about numbers. A hymn at church or a street number that comes up twice in one day or you have a dream about something, well, there’s a number for that, too. You can look it up in the policy book. One forty-four is the same number my aunt’s boarder, Blind Bill, has been playing for a few weeks now. Calls it his lucky number even though it hasn’t hit for him but once. But it’s also the number Isaiah calls out sometimes when he’s in a trance. That’s an awful lot of coincidence.”
“Makes me think about what that egghead fella Carl Jung said when we went to visit him,” Theta added. “Something about coincidences being more than that. About them being related.”
“The eternal recurrence,” Jericho said.
“Not this again. Pal, can we let Nietzsche have the night off?” Sam protested. “Look around: We’re in a nightclub. People are having fun here.”
Theta frowned. “Come to think of it, when I dropped Dr. Jung’s book, what page you think it was opened to?”
“If I say one forty-four, do I ge
t a prize?” Evie asked.
“Yeah. You get to be right,” Theta said, trying to ignore the itching in her palms. What she didn’t say was that the book had been opened to a picture of a Phoenix rising from the flames. A mythological firebird.
“We’re also superstitious about numbers in Chinatown,” Ling said, frowning. “Fours are unlucky. The word for four sounds like the word for death.”
Sam looked from Ling to Jericho and back. “You know what? I’m gonna call you two the spooky twins.”
“What are we going to do about this?” Henry asked. “Clearly, Dr. Fitzgerald and Miss Walker have lied to us.”
Ling didn’t like knowing that Miss Walker had lied. She looked up to Miss Walker and had come to see her as a mentor. Now her heart wrestled with a problem: Could you still like someone who had done something so clearly wrong? Could you admire someone for their talents even if you condemned their methods? “Maybe they had reasons for doing what they did. We don’t know everything about Project Buffalo. Why don’t we just ask them about it?”
“Nothing doing!” Sam said. “Until we get the card reader and find out what’s on these, we’re gonna keep our traps shut.”
“Memphis Campbell!”
Ling looked up to see a glamorous chorus girl in a skimpy beaded costume and a glittering headband sauntering toward their table, a red carnation tucked into her cleavage. Her smile was dazzling, and she walked with a rare confidence. The chorus girl threw her arms around Memphis’s neck and kissed his cheek. Ling glanced over at Theta, but she didn’t seem bothered.
“Where you been hiding yourself lately? And don’t tell me you’ve been going back to that old African graveyard to write,” the chorus girl said.
“Oh, you know how it is. Here and there,” Memphis said, and Ling could see that they were friends. In fact, they almost seemed like siblings. “Everybody, this is my friend Alma. Alma, I think you know most everybody here.”
“I surely do. Well…” Alma cocked her head and smiled at Ling. “Not everybody.”
“Miss Alma LaVoy, may I present Miss Ling Chan.”
Alma stuck out her hand and offered up her most winning smile. “Charmed. Why, I had no idea Memphis had such a sweet friend.” She dragged over a chair, positioning it between Ling and Memphis. “Mind if I join you all?”
Memphis snorted. “Like I could stop you.”
