The Placebo Effect (28 page)

Fine.

More verbosity!

Decker typed in the link he'd managed to find to the image of Mike holding the two signs “I worked here” and “Who's Jumping Now?” then typed, “Where is this, Eddie?”

Give me a few hours.
Then Eddie was no more, and Decker felt as alone and as frightened as the day he found that Seth was gone.

EMERSON STARED AT THE MOVING DOT ON HIS BLACKBERRY
screen and thought,
So, you do exist.
He quickly corrected himself.
No, we do exist. Not just me. Us!

He remembered the touch of his
grandmère
that final night. He was six years old, a boy who seldom spoke. She'd called for him and shooed away his parents. Once the door had closed, leaving him alone with her, she reached for him. “Boy, give me your hand.” He put out his left hand and she grabbed it with surprising force. She ran her rice-paper-dry palms over his. “Look,” she said, pointing at the crazy quilt that kept the ebbing heat in her frail body. “Look at the pattern, the order.” He did. “Don't try to see it. It's not there to be seen, boy. It's there to be sensed if you have the sense to sense it.” She took a deep breath then barked, “Do it, boy!” He felt like she was going to call him Pip or something, but he knew that this was no Dickensian fantasy. This was the hidden world he'd sensed from the very beginning. The other place. The place where he belonged. A world that stretched back and back in time—a world of genetics itself. His
grandmère
was a mistress of the other world and she was testing him. Trial by crazy quilt.

“Find me in the quilt,” she ordered. Her voice was firm. A duchess voice. An aristocrat of nature itself, crowned by the rising of the sun and the movement of the tides.

He stepped back a pace, away from the gentle reek of decay that was only slightly hidden beneath her rosewater perfume. He took in the literally thousands of odd-shaped and coloured pieces randomly sewn together generations ago—in the English
backcountry with the standing stones in the far distance and the boulders in concentric circles radiating out from the farmhouse where old hands drew out pieces and made from nothing a history of their kind—able to be read only by their kind.

He allowed his lashes to gently close, then saw her face on his retina. But she was young and so beautiful that for a moment he thought his heart had stopped in his chest. He opened his eyes. He pointed to the foot of the quilt.

She nodded slowly and a smile took her face. With a single breath she released the tension from her body. And a calmness came into her voice. “Yes, boy, yes, boy…”

Later that night he stood by his
grandmère'
s side as the last of her light faded, then blinked out. She left this world proud, without a whimper or a cry. For an instant right after her passing, her image on the quilt shone like a sparkler on the Fourth of July, and then it receded back into the welter from which it had come. He took the quilt from her and pulled the sheet up over her head. He did not kiss her forehead or close her eyes. He felt her burden now heavy on his young shoulders.

He never explained to his parents what he had been doing in his
grandmère'
s room that night—and they had never asked. The most he ever heard about it was the odd whisper: “He's got the shine, like Ma”; “He's the witch's boy”; “He's something very old”—“But he's just a boy,”—“You ever see a boy with eyes that old?”

And so he had begun to hide. To find a blind in which he could function—Groton then Princeton were perfect. Within the effeteness he could pass as just another snot-nose. Another know-nothing trust-fund boy.

But he was hiding—another column of smoke within a fog—looking for his place in his
grandmère
's quilt.

And he'd sensed from the beginning that Yslan was the means—the access—to some important end. She was not the end in and of itself, although he had enjoyed his time in her bed. But
she was just a means to an end. So when he'd heard of her odd posting at the NSA he began to track her, and sure enough…

The dot on the screen began to move quickly. Emerson thought,
Run, Decker Roberts, run—but you and I have a date as surely as there is a sun in the sky.
Emerson felt strong. Felt the blood rushing in his veins. He wanted to stretch his neck back, open his jaws and howl like a wolf in the night. But he didn't—what would his fellow reporters think of such behaviour? And besides, Hollywood had made such a mockery of all that.

It was the thing that bothered him most. The easiest access to the jet stream was through sex. The pornographers accessed it without even understanding what they were doing. And people consumed it with the hunger of the starving. But this debased the jet stream. Made it common. The only other simple access to the jet stream was through faith. Twenty prostrations on the third Tuesday after the new moon and you get a gulp of the stream, but you don't even know what it is. You name it god, or angels, but it is neither. Like the pornographers, they denigrate the greatness, make it common, debase the truly sacred, the special, the real gift of the gods.

DECKER SAT IN THE BAR ON AVENUE A THAT HAD A WI-FI HOT
spot and waited for Eddie's response.

The evening news was on the surprisingly old TV over the bar. An item about a local politician caught cheating on his wife was finishing its tawdry reportage. The item finally ended and a commercial break followed. The first ad was for a new razor that had three hundred and seven blades or some such nonsense and made the usual wild claims. Decker thought of Theo's diatribe against new shaving products, then of the older man's rant about how some of his bronchitis pills worked while others didn't do a damned thing.

The ad finished with a swipe, naturally, then a dark screen held for a beat—an incredibly expensive moment of prime time nothingness. Sappy strings swelled. Decker feared that Celine Dion was going to warble but the music segued to a Keb' Mo'–like upbeat blues as a scene of a New England autumn filled the screen—in black and white. A sincere male voice announced the name of a new drug: Calatrex. “Calatrex is guaranteed to return colour to your life as surely as autumn brings colour to the trees of New England.” Naturally the black and white scene turned to glorious gazillion-pixel colour. A happy young woman wandered through the scene, her smile glorious. A second voice-over followed, this one more matter-of-fact and lawyerly, announcing in staccato rapid-fire the potential side effects of Calatrex, which included such niceties as thoughts of suicide and rectal tears. Then a sultry female voice purred,
“Another fine product for a better life from your friends at Yolles Pharmaceuticals.”

At the end of the newscast the business update included a story about the new drug.

 

Calatrex, Yolles Pharmaceuticals' new antidepressant medication, made its appearance in American drugstores earlier today. Original information claiming that the cost of producing the drug was prohibitively expensive has proved incorrect, and the drug is now priced at a very competitive price point—and the shares of Yolles Pharmaceuticals were the big winners today on the New York Stock Exchange.

Decker noticed the guy to his left staring at him. Decker picked up his drink and said, “Do you mind?” To which the drinker replied with a sneer, “No one ever brings anything small into a bar around here.” Decker recognized the quote. It was from
It's a Wonderful Life.
The bartender says it to Jimmy Stewart in the dream sequence when Jimmy Stewart entered the other world. Decker thought it might also be from a Tom Waits song, but wasn't sure which one.

Decker took his drink and moved to a table, nearer the Wi-Fi hot spot. Once there he opened his computer. “I worked here—what's your ratio—who's jumping now—yeah, I'm thinking about that,” he whispered as he waited for the computer to boot up. When it finally came online he quickly navigated to the syn site and then to the blocked room. No message yet from Eddie.

He was about to turn off the computer but found himself drawn to the chat room. Once at its entrance—its portal—he found that he was holding his breath. He'd never entered the room before—only lurked. He hit the command and entered the chat room, then watched as his fingers typed, “Who is Mike?”

That sat in the emptiness of cyberspace for less than five seconds, then image after image after image of impossible yet somehow beautiful examples of balanced junk filled the screen.

At the corner of his screen Eddie's icon—a naked cross-legged yogi with a huge erection smoking an equally huge joint—popped up.

Decker exited the chat room and reentered the blocked room. Eddie's message was clear and unambiguous.
You can just see over the top of one of his signs a logo on the top of a building. It took me a while to clarify it—but it's Yolles Pharmaceuticals in Cincinnati, Ohio. And your guy's name is Michael Shedloski—and hope you're sitting down Decker—follow this link.

Decker hit the link to cincinnatipost.com/civiccrime and up came an image of Michael Shedloski, murdered in his apartment—no suspects.

Decker settled his breath and wrote down the address of Michael Shedloski's apartment, then thought about the man's sign: “I worked here.” Where? At Yolles Pharmaceuticals? Then he thought of his warning—“He's using us!”—and the news item about Calatrex supposed to cost way more than it was eventually marketed for, then finally his lecture to Special Agent Yslan Hicks about what's a lie, specifically his reference to placebos being a lie that works.

He typed quickly:
Eddie can you find me a relationship between the phrase “What's Your Ratio” and Calatrex?

In less than five minutes Eddie's response came back.
The initial estimates were that Calatrex would have to cost well in excess of $65 a pill. Hence unmarketable since the competition sells for $45 a pill. But Yolles Pharma is selling Calatrex for just under $40 a pill. Either they're trying to suck people into using the drug with a loss-leader price or they've found some way to lower the price, which is impossible, since the actual compounds used to make the drug have had a stable price for over twenty years—stable and expensive. The only thing that could really change the price is the placebo ratio.

Decker was about to respond when his monitor went black. At the bottom of the screen he saw that the website was being hijacked from one server to another with incredible speed. He
was about to shut down his system when an odd floating pattern filled the screen. Clearly this was a live webcam. The image slowly clarified itself—it was the back of an elaborately embroidered Chinese silk dressing gown. The robe began to ripple as the wearer turned slowly to the camera to reveal a grotesquely cartooned 3-D figure of a fat man, in all his exuberant, jiggly glory. The camera zoomed in on the behemoth's face—then his generous lips. “Welcome fellow travelers—and a big hello to you, Mr. Roberts.”

Decker stabbed at the power button, then pulled the battery from the back of the laptop.

Back in Cincinnati, Henry-Clay howled with laughter as he took off the silk robe and turned off the cartoon-generator software attached to his webcam. “Got you, Mr. Roberts,” he said aloud. He was just so pleased with himself—with the profound genius of Henry-Clay Yolles.

As Decker raced out of the bar he noticed that for some reason an episode of
Sesame Street
was on the TV—they were singing the “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just…” ditty, which Decker had always hated.

The night was wet and fiercely cold.

Cincinnati, Ohio, and Michael Shedloski's apartment are next on the agenda
, Decker thought.

He'd directed a play in Cincinnati; god, it had to be fifteen years ago, and there was that terrific kid there. What was his name? Yeah, Steven Bradshaw.

Decker assumed that Yslan had figured out that he was in New York City and would have the bus station and Grand Central covered, and LaGuardia and JFK were sure to be swarming with agents. But he needed to get to Cincinnati. As he walked across town, images of a New York City hockey girl and her love of the Stanstead boy leapt into his head. The image of the boy encased in ice almost made him retch. Decker felt a stabbing coldness in
his bones. The boy was in the river—in the earthly version of the jet stream, locked in ice—just as Decker knew he would eventually be locked in a room without a way out. Then the phrases came like screams from the back of his head: “Can't wait to have your baby,” “One of theirs murdered one of ours, simple as that,” “Breaks the laws of God and man,” “I worked here,” “What's your ratio!” “Who's jumping now?”

Decker leaned against the wall of an old warehouse and tried to stop the world from spinning. If he'd been a real drinker he would have retreated to a bar and drunk away these fucking images. But he wasn't much of a drinker, so he stepped out on the avenue and flagged a cab.

The landlord at Decker's former Sixty-ninth Street address claimed he didn't know anything about “no letter sent here to a Roberts, Roberts who?” But at Decker's former East Side address, the response was a little different. Yslan had no sooner pulled out her NSA ID then the geezer who opened the door began to confess, “I didn't know what to do with it. I mean, I know it wasn't for me, but you know I didn't do anything wrong, did I? And even if I did it was a mistake—ya know?”

Yslan allowed the man to finish groveling then in her best fuck-you voice said, “Get it for me. Get it now.”

The guy retreated into the apartment and she turned to Mr. T, a smile creasing her face. “Works better than showing a teenage boy a bra strap.”