THE GLOWING GREEN GAMBIT
(c)2004 by Fender Tucker
Farmington New Mexico
1955
Lazy Day at Miley Mud
The Miley Gang—the four top dogs of Miley Mud and Chemical Company—lounged in various positions around the office. Arky Miley was on the phone and his wife Neta was talking quietly with Bill Smith and Don Tucker.
“Okay, Ace, okay. . .I get that. . .” Arky spouted, “Even J. B. Rhine, whoever the hell that is, uses your paper. But we don’t necessarily need that much security. We sell mud, for Pete’s sake.”
Neta smiled at Tucker and said, “And let’s not forget chemicals.” She was a strikingly handsome woman of 40 or so years with dark brown hair and a big smile.
Tucker, a bald, sincere-looking man of about 45 with a square jaw, whispered back, “Yeah, the smell of mud and chemicals is the smell of bread and butter to us.”
Bill Smith’s eyes were open and he seemed to be listening but a quick jerk of his head showed that he was almost asleep in his easy chair. He was movie-star handsome and had already had a couple of shots at his desk that morning.
With a short nod Arky spoke into the phone, “You got it, Ace. Eleven o’clock at Harry’s. Bring your money.” He hung up the phone and laughed out loud, startling Bill awake.
Miley Mud and Chemical Company was a support company for the oil drilling business in northwestern New Mexico. They sold a special type of chemical mud that drillers used to pump into the well to cause pressure that forced the oil out. It was a sweet business to be in when gas exploration in San Juan County was at its peak.
“So tell us, Arky,” Neta said to her husband, “why we should get off our duffs to see Ace Spelvin at Harry’s bar at eleven in the goddam morning.” She’d had a drink already too.
“Oh the same old thing. He wants us to buy letterhead envelopes and stuff from Security Stationers. I told him we didn’t need that kind of secrecy but he kept jawing about the new breakthrough they had in opaque envelopes.”
“Man, this is some exciting day,” Bill Smith moaned and Tucker kicked him in the shin.
“I tried to get a game of ping pong going but you weren’t up for it.” All three stared at Tucker and he set his jaw and settled lower in his chair. “Okay, okay. So I like ping pong.”
“Well, hell,” Arky said, “Ace is buyin’ and we’re not doing anything. Let’s go down and hear him ou—”
Bill interrupted. “Wait a minute, Arky. What was that he said about J. B. Rhine?”
“You heard of him? He just said that Rhine used his envelopes in some of his experiments. What kind of experiments?”
Bill seemed to perk up. “I just read something about him in Colliers. He’s some professor at Duke University who thinks that people have some sort of ‘sixth sense’ and has been doing a bunch of experiments to prove it since the 30s. They call it ‘ESP’ or something like that.”
Tucker and Neta spoke at the same time. “I read that too—” They all laughed.
“Q.E.D.” said Bill.
“ ‘Sixth sense’, eh? How does that work, Bill?” Arky asked, sitting up at his desk and moving things around on it.
“Well, it has something to do with these cards they use. Cards with designs on them. They hide them from the, uh, subjects, and then ask them to say which card they’re holding. According to Rhine, some people can guess the right card more often than chance allows. That means they have ESP.”
Arky rubbed his Ernie Kovacs mustache and sat back in his chair. “Tell me more, Bill.”
“Well, if I remember right there are five kinds of cards, or designs on the cards. There’s a circle, a square, a five-pointed star and, uh, lessee, a cross or a plus sign—”
“That’s only four,” Tucker said.
“Yeah, a plus sign and—what the hell’s the other design?” Bill thought for a minute then snapped his fingers. “I got it. A wavy lines design. They purposely made all five designs as different as possible so there wouldn’t be any chance of getting them confused with each other.”
“And so they get some cards with these five designs and, what, hide them from the guy who’s being tested?”
“Yeah. Maybe they have them sealed in an envelope and then have the guy guess which cards are in it. I don’t know for sure.”
Arky squinted his eyes shrewdly and said, “Hmmmm. Let me think about this.”
Neta looked at him and laughed. “You’re still thinking about last month when Ace took you for $300 at poker, aren’t you?”
“Lemme think. Lemme think.”
Tucker, who didn’t drink anything but juices and soft drinks, but who had also lost at poker to Ace in the past, said, “I’m up for scamming Ace Spelvin whenever possible, even if he is buying.”
The rest of the Miley Gang sat and watched Arky rub his mustache vigorously, his eyes shut and lips pursed like Nero Wolfe. They knew he was hatching something, and when Arky Miley schemed, somebody was going to be the egg.
Finally, he opened his eyes and took a fountain pen out of his desk drawer.
“Tucker, you have any of that liquid carbonized barium you were playing with last week?”
Tucker got up and strode toward the door. “I think I do. Hold on a minute.” He left.
“How big are these cards, Bill?” Arky asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe a little larger than regular playing cards?”
Arky scrounged around in the drawer and took out a few blank 3”x5” cards. “Neta, here. Take some of these in your purse.”
Tucker walked in with a small bottle of a thin, black liquid and handed it to Arky, who shook it to see its consistency, then smiled and set it down on the desk. He then emptied out the fountain pen into the waste basket and filled the pen with the black carbon/barium fluid.
“Bill, when we get to Harry’s be sure to mention J. B. Rhine in passing if Ace doesn’t. And Tucker, here’s what I want you to do . . .”
The four conspirators huddled around Arky’s desk and plotted. A minute later they all burst into laughter and stood up.
“Let’s go have a drink on Ace.” Arky led the way to the Miley Mud Lincoln and they hopped in.
Harry’s Bar
There was going to be a parade later that afternoon for the local high school football team, the Farmington High Scorpions, and already people were picking out parking places on Main Street. So Arky had to park the Lincoln down the block from Harry’s Bar. Harry’s was on the north side of Main in the same block as the Palace Grocery, the Allen Theater, a barber shop, Gardenschwartz sporting goods and Sweetbriar clothing store. Harry’s was sandwiched between the barber shop and Gardenschwartz, with a door that opened onto a long bar on the left and a few tables towards the back, away from the street.
Across the street was a drug store, McClellan’s five and dime store, Brown’s Shoes and a furniture store. Arky parked in front of the ultra-modern shoe store, and they all checked out the black leather wingtips in the window before walking across the street to the bar. It was right at 11 o’clock in the morning.
Ace Spelvin, a rotund balding man in an orange plaid suit, was sitting at the long bar and spotted them as they entered. They were momentarily blinded by the relative darkness of the bar as they came in from the bright sunlit day.
“Arky! Neta! Over here,” Ace grinned and led them to a table in the back, where they were the only customers. “Hey, Tucker, Bill, glad you could make it.”
They all sat down and ordered drinks; martinis for Arky and Neta, whiskey for Bill and orange juice for Tucker. Ace was drinking beer and had a briefcase with him.
They started with small talk and before long the martinis took over and the party of five was getting a little louder. Ace had mentioned poker, causing Arky to stiffen momentarily, but soon the laughs were coming regularly, with Neta having an especially good time surrounded by the four more or less oiled men.
Inevitably, Ace brought up envelopes. “I tell you, Arky, there’s nothing worse than some rival competitor sneakin’ a peek at your company’s mail. It happens all the time. I heard the Rosenbergs got caught that way, somebody saw ‘E=MC squared’ or somethin’ in one of their letters.”
Bill chuckled at that and said, “If only they had used Security Stationers for their correspondence, Roy Cohn would be chasin’ ambulances in Hoboken right now.”
“Huh?” said Ace, then continued. “No, I mean it. You gotta keep prying eyes outa your mail. Especially with all those hush-hush deals Miley Mud is making with the feds.”
This brought on a gale of laughter, and Ace ordered another round of drinks.
“Okay, okay,” Arky conceded, “Tell us what is so special about your envelopes.”
Ace seemed to sober up a bit and he brought out his briefcase from under the table. “Lemme show you. Here’s a typical white envelope, prob’ly the kind you use. And here’s one of our envelopes.”
They looked identical.
Bill knocked back his whiskey and said, “Ace, you’d need some kind of magical sixth sense to tell the difference between those two.”
“Hey, you’re right!” Ace beamed. “They look the same but there’s one big difference. You can see through the regular envelopes. But ours, you can use any kinda light you want, hell, use a lighthouse beacon if you want, but you can’t see anything through our envelopes. They’re white, but they’re totally opaque. An’ speakin’ of sixth sense, they’re so good that J. B. Rhine used them for his ESP experiments. He didn’t want anybody being able to see through the envelopes at the cards inside so he used ours.
“And that’s another thing,” Ace continued, getting into a rhythm, “we use a special glue that really sticks. Once you seal a Security Stationers envelope that sucker stays sealed. Anybody tries to open it, you can tell right away.”
Arky looked skeptical. “I don’t know, Ace. That’s pretty hard to believe. Now maybe if your envelope was black, or dark grey—”
“No, I mean it. Once you close it, it’s impossible to see what’s inside. And there’s no way to get it open without somebody bein’ able to tell.”
Arky rubbed his jaw wryly and the other three had to stifle their laughter. “I’d have to see that to believe it.”
“Hell, give it a shot. Put something in one of these babies and I dare you to see what it is.” Ace handed Arky an envelope.
Bill spoke up. “Hey, how about we give it one of those ESP things? You know, with the designs on the cards—”
Ace brightened. “Great idea, Bill! We could—”
Neta reached for her purse. “Here. I’ve got some blank cards. Let’s draw some designs on them. Anybody got a pen?”
Arky quickly pulled out his fountain pen and said, “Lemme do it. What are those designs again, Ace?”
Ace, with a big smile on his face, said, “Uh, there’s a circle, a square, some wavy lines, and, uh—”
Arky began drawing in thick dark lines the designs. Bill prompted, “There’s also a plus sign, or cross, and a five-pointed star.”
“Go ahead, Arky. Make ’em big and black. You still won’t be able to see ’em once they’re in the envelope.” Ace was on a roll.
Arky finished the five designs and handed Ace the cards. “Okay, how do we do this? How about you pick one of the cards and without letting anyone know which one, put it in the envelope and seal it. Then we’ll see if we can see which design it is. I have a feelin’ that it’ll be easy. There’s no way that white envelope can keep me from seein’ it.”
Ace nodded his head energetically, “That’s right Arky. You keep thinkin’ that way.” Then he looked around the table at the four. “How’s about we make this thing a little more interesting . . .?”
Arky pondered this for a couple of beats and then said, “Tell you what. Let’s give it a real test. Let’s do the experiment three times, with three cards and three envelopes. If we can get the card right three times in a row, you supply the entire stationery needs of Miley Mud and Chemical for a year, free. If we miss even one, we sign a contract with you for five years, at double the regular price.”
Ace tried to keep the smile off his face, but failed. “Why—it’s a deal!” He and Arky shook hands.
Arky said, “Go ahead, Ace. We’ll all turn our heads and you put one of the cards in an envelope and seal it. Then you give the envelope to Tucker and he’ll try to see what’s inside. What do you say, Tucker?”
Tucker nodded and replied, “It’s too dark in here to see anything. I need to take it outside the door and look at it in the sun. Is that okay, Ace?”
Ace bobbed his head up and down. “Fine. Fine. However, I think I’ll retire to the men’s room to put the card in the envelope, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem,” Arky said. “We’ll wait here.”
The tipsy stationery salesman took the five cards and an envelope and tottered to the men’s room. The four others tipped their drinks and looked at each other, smiling.
Soon Ace swooped out of the men’s room, envelope in hand. He sat down and patted his jacket pocket. “I got the other four cards right here. Here you go, Tucker. No fair peekin’! I can tell if you try to get into the envelope.”
“Don’t worry, Ace. I won’t touch the seal. I just want to see it in the bright sunlight and will come back as soon as I’ve seen—or not seen—anything.” He got up and walked toward the front door of Harry’s bar.
“Another round!” Ace shouted.
The Three Experiments
Sunlight streamed into the bar when Tucker opened it and the other four celebrated as the bartender brought the next round.
“So you’re a big believer in these ESP ’speriments, eh?” Bill asked Ace.
“Hell, I only heard of ’em a year or so ago when I took over the Rhine account. They’ve been doing them for about twenty years now. There’re some skeptics who make Rhine and his crew jump through all sorts of hoops to make sure that there’s no fakealoo goin’ on. We kept havin’ to make our envelopes more and more foolproof to suit ’em. That’s why I’m so confident you’ll be doin’ bidness with us for the next five years—at double the usual price.”
“But you think there’s somethin’ in this ESP?” Bill insisted.
“Ah, hell no. But don’t tell anybody I said so.”
The door opened again and Tucker walked back in, the sunlight at his back as the door slowly closed. He handed the envelope to Ace, who looked at it with squinted eyes, fingering the glued flaps carefully. “Hmmm. Looks okay. So whaddya say it is, Tucker?”
“It’s the wavy lines, Ace.”
The salesman looked a little stunned, then pulled the other four cards out of his inside pocket and threw them on the table. The Miley Gang leaned closer and saw the four cards.
“Lucky guess!” Ace spouted. “You had a one in five chance to get it right. There’s no way you coulda seen that card.” He handled the envelope again, obviously trying to see if he could feel anything from the outside. He couldn’t.
“Well, there’s still two more you gotta do. Lemme go to the rest room again,” Ace grumbled as he headed off with another envelope and the four cards from the table.
The four at the table took another drink and grinned at each other.
Arky snickered, “We’ll have Ace joinin’ the Rhine cult before this is done.”
Neta laughed, “Arky, you are the devil incarnate.”
The men’s room door swung open and the orange-suited salesman returned to the table with one hand on his jacket pocket and an envelope in the other. “Here ya go, Tucker. Maybe I used the same card. You never know.”
Tucker took the envelope and said, “We’ll see about that,” and walked out the front door. Once again they were momentarily blinded by the sunlight.
“So,” said Ace, “did Tucker say how he decided? Did he say he could see through the envelope?”
Bill said, “He didn’t say, but I think he’s usin’ ESP.”
“Don’t give me that! I’m not sayin’ he peeked. I think he just made a good guess. We’ll see how he does this time.”
About a minute after Tucker left, he came back in the door and the four at the table looked up at him expectantly. Tucker stared back at them.
Finally, Ace sputtered, “We-ell?”
“The circle.”
Ace took the envelope from him and looked at it very closely. Without taking his eyes off it he reached in his jacket and took out four cards, which he threw on the table.
“Goddammit! That’s bullshit luck! I don’t believe this.”
Bill spread out the cards to see that they were the wavy lines, the square, the cross and the star. Neta looked up at Tucker in mock awe and said, “You have the power! By the way, what exactly does ‘ESP’ mean?”
Ace muttered, almost under his breath, “Extra-Sensory Perception. It’s a bunch of crap, I tell you. They can’t see through our envelopes and neither can Tucker.”
Tucker said soothingly to Ace, “You’re right. I can’t see through the envelopes. I hate to tell you this at this late stage of the bet, but I’ve always had this kind of ‘gift’, a kind of—”
The salesman snapped, “Cut the crap. You’re just on a lucky roll. I dare you to do it one more time.” He picked up the cards and another envelope and walked to the men’s room. As he walked he was looking carefully at the empty envelope, scowling.
“Is anyone but me starting to feel sorry for the poor—?” Neta asked, and Arky interrupted.
“When I get my $300 worth of revenge I’ll start feelin’ sorry for him.”
“That’s about what we spend on stationery every year, idn’t it?” Bill said.
“Just about.” Arky leaned back in his chair and finished his martini. “Bring another round!” he yelled at the bartender.
Ace stayed in the men’s room a little longer this time. When he did come out Arky handed him a new beer.
“Okay, guys. The third time’s the charm. If you get it right again, Tucker, I may have to change my mind about all this ESP stuff. I know you can’t see through the envelope, even in the sunlight.”
He handed Tucker the third envelope and sat down with his beer. He took a big swig as he watched Tucker stroll out the front door, the envelope swinging at his side.
“You know, Ace, if you’re using this Rhine guy as a sellin’ point for your security envelopes, you prob’ly oughta at least act like you believe in his thing.” Arky looked at Ace with seemingly genuine concern.
“Oh I do. I do. I figured I didn’t have to do any actin’ with you guys, though. Normally I tell everybody that ESP is the next big fad, like Davy Crockett or Frank Sinatra. Only I don’t use the word, ‘fad’. I say ‘trend’ or ‘th’ future’.”
Bill said, with what sounded like sincerity, “I don’t think Tucker is guessing. And I don’t think he’s peekin’. And—and I mean this, Ace—I don’t think the envelopes are faulty. I think they’re every bit as opaque as you say they are. So what does that leave? ESP. It’s Occam’s Razor all over again.”
“What the—? You say he’s usin’ a razor to get inside—”
Bill laughed. “Hold on, Ace! It’s got nothin’ to do with a razor. Forget I said that. Here he comes, let’s see if Tucker can do it again.”
Arky smacked his lips as Tucker strode back to the table. “My money’s on ESP.”
Ace reached for the envelope and scrutinized it with eyes and fingers. “Okay,” he said, voice filled with dread and, at the same time, hope, “what’s the verdict?”
Tucker waited a few beats and said, deadpan, “It’s the wavy lines again, Ace.”
There was silence around the table. Bill and Neta finished off their drinks. Arky played with his mustache. Tucker sat down and wiped the sweat off his pate. It was about 70 degrees outside.
Ace looked sadly at the envelope. “I’ll stop by the office Monday and set up your stationery account for the comin’ year.”
No one responded so he continued. “There’s somethin’ goin’ on here and it kinda gives me the willies. I figured as easy as it was to take you for a few hundred bucks in poker it’d be nothin’ to take you on this deal.”
Neta consoled him. “We don’t use that much paper at Miley Mud—”
“Oh I know. It ain’t the money or the paper. It’s just that I never gave much thought about Rhine and his theories. I’m startin’ to think that maybe there’s a ‘wave of the future’ that I mighta missed, if it hadn’t been for you guys. I’m thinkin’ that maybe Bill and his razor might be onta somethin’.”
“Now don’t go off the deep end, Ace,” Bill said.
“I won’t. Don’t worry. But I’m definitely gonna give it some more thought. Bartender, how about bringin’ that tab?” The salesman got up slowly and signed the slip the bartender handed him. He then reached in his jacket and threw the four cards down. He ripped open the envelope and added the wavy lines card to the pile.
“I’ll be seein’ you guys. Neta, it’s been a pleasure.”
“You too, Ace,” they all said at the same time, which made all five of them laugh.
“It’s ESP, and it’s the wave of the future,” Arky said. “How about a beer to go?”
“That’s okay. See you all Monday.” Ace Spelvin walked out of the bar into the bright New Mexico sunlight.
The Wave of the Future
The Miley Gang finished their drinks and the bartender gathered up the empty glasses.
Tucker said, “That was easy. It went just as you said, Arky.”
“Shhh. I’m thinkin’.” Arky was rubbing his mustache furiously.
They were silent. Finally, Arky said, “You know, all of this ‘wave of the future’ talk has got me goin’. That ESP stuff is all bull but I’m thinkin’ that we might ought to look into the real power behind this little scam we ran on Ace. I’m talking fluoroscopy. Did you have any trouble with the machine, Tucker?”
“Not at all. It was just as we planned. As soon as I got out the door I ran across the street to Brown’s Shoes, stuck the envelope in the foot part of the Green Magic Foot-O-Scope machine and looked through the viewer. The design on the card stood out like a sore toe. Then I ran back here.”
“That’s right! And just about every damn shoe store in the country has one of them machines. I even heard that some clothes stores are thinkin’ about usin’ ’em to make sure people’re gettin’ the right size clothes. Hell, they’ll be using fluoroscope machines in everything pretty soon. In hat stores, in the underwear department—you name it!”
Bill and Tucker sat up. “You might be onto something, Arky,” Tucker agreed. “Maybe we ought to be thinking about putting our money into fluoroscopes, instead of oil. Gotdoggit, this may be big.”
The four got up and walked to the door, one by one exiting the dark bar. Thanks to Ace Spelvin, stationery salesman, the future looked a little brighter for all of them.
Outside, people were milling around on the sidewalks and the sound of the Farmington High School marching band could be heard approaching from a block west, in front of the Avery Hotel.
The Miley Gang stayed to watch the parade. They were on a lucky streak.
