A Murder of Crows (29 page)

Yslan looked at him but said nothing.

“Don't you see?”

“No, I guess I don't.”

“If winning is everything, then what do you do with all those who haven't won? How can you make them feel part of all this?”

“Of what?” Yslan was clearly getting exasperated.

“How can there be a civil society—a place that doesn't need gated communities and private police forces—if people don't feel they're part of the same world as the winners?”

“So now you're a communist?”

“No. I worked in Moscow under Brezhnev and directed in Shanghai before the changeover. Their answer isn't right either. ‘I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me.' ”

“You've lost me yet again.”

“It was the Moscow joke.”

“Those wacky Russians—always good for a laugh.”

“Not so ha-ha funny when you sat for hours waiting for a server to take your order in a restaurant because he was paid the same if he worked hard or if he didn't work at all. I'm not proposing that.”

“Then what are you proposing?”

“A system where somehow we all feel part of what is happening to us. Where we don't use the SUV answer.”

“Well, I have to congratulate you, Mr. Roberts, you've lost me
twice in under two minutes.” Decker turned away. “No, you're not allowed to do that. The SUV answer? What the fuck's that?”

“Do you know what the thinking was behind the making of SUVs?”

“There was thinking from Detroit, how novel.”

Decker looked at her—she'd spoken almost exactly like him. For a moment both felt the bizarre connection. Finally Decker said, “Yeah. There was some thinking from Motor City. The death toll on American highways had hit a new high. The roads were fucking dangerous.”

“So?”

“So, rather than dealing with the hard problem—”

“Which was?”

“How to make people more respectful of one another and hence drive more carefully, Detroit came up with a simpler solution. Make a car like a truck—which is what an SUV is. Let the winners buy the safety of a truck and be damned what happens to the losers who drive small cars.”

Yslan thought about that for long moment, then said, “So you want a world without winners?”

Decker didn't answer.

“Wasn't it you who told me that this university produced an important product—brain power? Surely that's special, about winning. Surely this kind of brain power will make the majority of these kids winners. On top of which you said that the brain power that elite institutions like this produce is essential for the good of the country—fuck, you said for the good of the world.”

Decker again didn't answer.

“So what you're saying doesn't really make any sense, does it? Besides your other business, your acting business, deals with stars—not workaday actors, stars, aka winners. And to completely demolish your argument, and to get somewhat more personal, you know that you're not ‘one of the people.' ” She made air quotes as she said that, then continued, “You're special, Mr. Roberts, and you know it.”

“As are you,
Special
Agent Yslan Hicks.”

“I worked hard for that Special title.”

“I have no doubt you did. I also assume that unlike your jerk of a boss, you don't hold it over the heads of the people you work with.”

“How would you know that?” But the moment the words were out of her mouth, she knew how he knew. He'd been watching her as much as she'd been watching him.

“What's the private name you had for yourself when you were a little girl, Special Agent Yslan Hicks?”

She was stunned by his question. How did he know she had a private name for herself when she was a little girl? A name she told no one. She looked away. She wasn't going to tell him that when she was a little girl she had a secret name for herself—from a card game. She thought of herself as a waif called Solitaire.

She smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. She looked at it for a long moment, then handed it to Decker.

He took it, opened it and read:
I've okayed the publishing of your book on acting.

“You stopped—”

“Turn it over, Mr. Roberts.”

He did and read:
Your son, Seth, is in the Wellness Dream Clinic in San Francisco.

He looked at her. She'd changed a lot since he first met her when she kissed him in the restaurant in Manhattan's Chelsea district.

“Be seeing you around, Mr. Roberts. You can count on that. And, oh yeah, our deal is still in place—you don't leave the country without notifying me.”

“Won't you be watching me anyway?”

“What do you think, Mr. Roberts?”

“I think you will.'

“And why would that be, Mr. Roberts?”

“Because I'm an asset.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, Mr. Roberts—you're a
valued
asset.” Then she winked as she said, “Travel safe,” turned and left Decker to his thoughts.

He raced back to his dorm room. Threw his things into his knapsack—contemplated leaving his script of
Love and Pain and the Dwarf in the Garden,
then stuffed it into a side pocket—and after taking a brief moment to look at the church headed to the nearest airport.

EDDIE DIDN'T LIKE LINES, SO HE HAD TO WORK AT KEEPING HIS
feelings in check as he waited to clear security at the Hamilton International Airport.

He glanced at his watch. He still had lots of time to make his plane. Then he checked the GPS on his BlackBerry and saw that Decker's plane was somewhere over Middle America. He rechecked his watch. Decker's flight was early—too much ahead of him.

He whispered an apology to the gods of flying and punched in a twenty-digit code. When the prompt came up he typed in “Potential right engine failure—advise landing in nearest airport for safety check.”

Then he looked down at his pant leg. A police dog was there—and way too interested.

He saw a cop coming toward him with a grim look he'd known for a very long time—that every pot smoker has known for a long time. He pulled up his pant leg revealing the old metal gizmo that lifted his foot so he wouldn't trip on his downturned toes.

The cop stopped and looked at the contraption.

“What—”

“Torn Achilles tendon—long time ago. Football injury.”

The dog whined.

“Come on, Copper,” the cop said.

Eddie thought,
Fuck, the cop called his dog Copper. More cleverness from the constabulary,
but decided silence was a better response to the situation.

“Next!” the immigration guy hollered.

Eddie elaborated his limp as he made his way to the counter. Over his shoulder he heard Copper growl, then bark.
Life's tough then you die,
he thought, then added a second thought:
Eat crap, Copper.
But he had a large smile on his face and said to the immigration officer, “Good morning. How's your day going?”

The officer looked at Eddie, then at his passport. “Where're you off to today?” the man asked—no, demanded.

“Portland, Oregon, then on to San Francisco.”

“Ticket.”

Eddie produced it and the officer looked at it closely.

“Not a very long stopover in Portland.”

“No, just long enough to pick up someone.”

* * *

The “someone” was waiting for him at the Portland airport. Standing by herself in the midst of the arrivals terminal, she had a small bag in her hand, a torn teddy bear in her arms, and a profoundly lost look in her eyes.

“Marina,” Eddie said gently.

The girl turned toward him and for a long moment didn't know who he was. Then a smile creased her frightened face.

“Where's your mom, Marina?”

“She said I was to stay here and that someone would come for me.”

Eddie had to control his fury. “She just left you here?”

“She drove me.”

“But she just left you here?”

“She said someone'd come for me.”

Eddie let out a long breath. “Well, I'm here for you.”

“Yes.”

“And Marina—”

“What?”

“I'll always be here for you—always. Promise.”

The girl reached up and took his hand. She was almost fourteen years old, but clearly she was closer emotionally to a six-year-old. Eddie didn't care.

He had his daughter back.

IT WAS AFTER SUNSET WHEN DECKER FINALLY HOPPED OUT OF THE
cab in front of the warehouse building that matched the address Special Agent Yslan Hicks had given him. There was no indication that this was a doctor's clinic, and when he approached the front door he was surprised that there was no buzzer or bell. No sign that this was the Wellness Clinic—no sign that this was anything but an old warehouse.

He stepped back from the door and noticed the glass pane embedded in the upper panel.
Odd for a warehouse,
he thought. Then he saw the outline of a square in glue residue on the glass. He ran his hand over the ridge.

Something ticked in his head. He'd worked on so many film sets and film sets used stick 'em etchings that adhere to glass with cheap glue—like this. With the right lens and lighting it looked like expensive etched glass rather than a cheap Mylar cut out.

He put his hand on the handle—it turned—and the door opened.

He stepped into what looked like a reception lobby. He flicked on the overhead and quickly he saw that something was wrong. The furniture was clearly rental-quality stuff. The prints on the walls were pretty close to what he'd seen on cheap television sets. He walked behind the empty receptionist's desk and saw it immediately—it was only a façade of a desk.

He turned. The whole thing was like a film set.

He looked at the wall behind the “receptionist's desk” and saw that it had been painted in cheap scene paint, not house paint—it was already beginning to blister and lose its colour.

He approached the only door out of the reception room and was surprised that although it had been painted to look like wood, it was in fact metal. The steel in the door was the only real thing in the whole place—that and the bolting mechanism.

He turned the doorknob, heard the lock click, and to his surprise the thing opened.

He quickly made his way down a corridor and past a nurse's station that fell over when he pushed it. “Seth! Seth!”

He was running—and shouting—no screaming—his son's name.

He threw open the doors to the “patient rooms.” One after another—empty, empty, empty.

“Seth! Seth!”

He turned a corner and faced a long dimly lit corridor. A figure was at the far end, leaning against a wall . . . then it was speaking.

“He's not here.”

Garreth Senior heard his words slur. He was tempted to reach for the bottle he kept in his coat pocket but resisted the impulse. “In fact, they're all not here.”

Decker stepped forward. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom of the long, vacant corridor. When they did he saw an older man, maybe sixty maybe sixty-five, with deep lines on his face and the classic sunburst of blood vessels on his cheeks that marked a serious drinker. He had a camera with a big zoom lens on it over his shoulder.

The man took a step forward and stumbled—he almost fell. The camera came off his shoulder and he caught it by the strap and let it dangle there.

“Who's not here? I don't know what you're talking about,” Decker said.

“What a lousy liar you are.” Again Garreth Senior heard his words slur again.
Shit, of all times not to be able to hold my liquor!
“You were a lousy liar all those years ago, too, Decker Roberts.”

Decker resisted asking how this drunk knew his name and what he meant by “all those years ago.” Instead he asked, “Where's my son?”

“He went with the dream healer or whatever the fuck he is. The
rest of them—the actors or whatever they were—are gone, too.” The liquor was in control and it wanted to laugh—so he did. The laughter rolled from him and the camera dropped to the ground. The lens cracked with a sickening crunch.

Decker fought the desire to walk away from this creature and forced himself to ask, “Where did he go?”

“The actors?”

“No, my son.”

Garreth Senior spread his arms and lifted his shoulders in the international symbol for “who knows,” and moved forward. A goofy smile crossed his face, although he didn't want it to.

“But Seth was here, right?”

“Yep.”

“When did he leave?”

“A few hours after sunrise.”

California was three hours behind upper New York State, so that would be right around the time when Yslan told him where Seth was. Had she warned Seth he was coming? Maybe. Seth was the strongest card she had to make him work for the NSA. So maybe she did. He wasn't sure. “Who are you and what business is this of yours?”

“Don't recognize me, Decker Roberts?”

Decker really didn't like the way he said his name—knowingly. As if he were talking to a child. “No. I never met you before in my life.”

“Not true, lad. Very, very not true,” the man said as he continued to move toward Decker.

Decker detected the rising of a Scottish accent in the midst of the drunkenness.

“We've met before.”

Decker closed his eyes—cold, metal object and slime between his fingers, three parallel lines across his retinal screen—a truth. He opened his eyes and looked more seriously at this strange gnarled man. Something about him was vaguely familiar, but what? Then he remembered a conversation with Special Agent Yslan Hicks fifteen months ago in a hotel room on Lakeshore Avenue in Toronto: