The Placebo Effect (36 page)

“Point taken.”

She put the scripts for episodes five and six on the table. “Great stuff. That hanging—really great.”

Decker riffled through the first script. His eyes quickly caught banal sentence after banal sentence. “We couldn't get real writers…”

“Once we're successful we can ditch the network's hacks and bring on novelists like you wanted.”

He pushed the scripts aside.

“You okay, Decker?”

After a hesitation, he said, “I don't know.”

“Can I help?”

“I don't know that either.”

She shrugged her shoulders—strong, handsome shoulders. “I'm here for you. You know that, right?”

Decker didn't know what to do with that. He was used to being the one who helped, not the one who received assistance. So he just smiled.

“Drink with me, Decker.”

He had one but declined a second. As he gently removed her hand from his and kissed her on the forehead she said, “I'm lonely.”

He wanted to say “The world's lonely” but instead said, “Someone important will come along and see how very, very special you are, Trish.” He got up. Put the keys to Trish's apartment that she had given him on the table.

“No,” she said, flipping them back at him. “Keep them. Never know when you'll need them—or I'll need you to have them.”

He pocketed the keys and waved good-bye as he headed toward the exit.

When Decker entered the store, Theo was thumbing through some old copies of
Playboy.
“Changing your orientation, Theo?”

Theo pursed his lips and then stuck out his tongue. It was vaguely blue.

“Looking up a Gahan Wilson cartoon series.”

“Which one?”

“Great farts of history. Here's number six in the series.” He turned the magazine to face Decker. The cartoon took up a whole page. In it a large men's club reading room had dozens of sprawled figures of wealthy men clearly dead. Way over to one side a little old guy sat with a big smile on his face and a carton of takeout Chinese in his hand.

Probably General Tso's chicken
, Decker thought as his mind ran back to Mike's apartment in Cincinnati.

Theo looked at his friend then snapped his fingers centimeters from Decker's nose. “Earth to Decker. Earth to Decker.”

“Sorry, Theo.”

“So has the traveler returned?”

“Yes. I'm back, Theo.”

“Where were you?”

“In the States.”

“Any news from the evangelical right you'd care to share?”

“Yeah the Tea Party guys want you down there right away—they need an old gay guy to rob a bank while assaulting choirboys and advocating for socialized medicine.”

“Ah, a modern-day Willie Horton. I'd make a great poster boy.”

Both of them stopped. The shared image of the dead gay boy hung on the lamppost on Annette rose in both their minds—and killed any sense of bonhomie. It was their unique folie à deux.

Theo began to cough.

Decker offered a hand, but Theo pushed him aside and took out a small vial of pills. He popped one, closed his eyes—and the coughing stopped.

“Theo!”

“These are new. They work, but they turn my tongue blue and give me record-setting gas.” He returned to his
Playboy
search, then he added, “For now. Now they work. Now that they are new, they work.”

“It's open,” Yslan called out in response to Decker's knock on the door of her Lakeshore hotel room. It was just before four in the afternoon. She was fresh from a long run along Lake Ontario and just emerging from a shower, her thin frame flowing easily inside the hotel's white terry-cloth robe, a towel around her hair.

“It's not so pretty,” she said, rubbing the towel against her scalp.

“What's not so pretty?”

“The lake.”

“At least it's cleaner now.”

“Toronto doesn't deal with its lake like Chicago does.”

“To say the least.”

“I mean, folks here know they're living on the shore of a big lake, don't they?”

“Yeah, but this is a mercantile city. It's always been that. The lake was good for business in the beginning—and easy to put roads next to.”

“Yeah, but those easy roads cut the city off from the lake.”

“I guess.”

“Sorta dumb, don't you think?”

“Just practical.”

“Explain Avenue Road.”

“You lost me.”

“There's a major street in this town called Avenue Road, isn't there?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Avenue Road? What kind of name is that for a street? Why not Boulevard Street or Lane Crescent?”

“I guess they didn't want to offend anyone.”

“What?”

“This town's into that too—not offending. So maybe there was a battle over the name and they came up with the compromise.”

“Avenue Road as a compromise?”

“Yeah—pretty inoffensive.”

“Pretty ball-less if you ask me.” Yslan removed the towel from her head and shook out her hair in Decker's direction. Misted drops—what Cape Towners call moth's breath—surrounded him.

Yslan turned away, then pointed to a brown envelope on the coffee table. “For you.”

Decker opened it. A new Visa card fell out first, followed by a note from the TD Bank reinstating his loan, then a municipal order rescinding the condemning of the building housing his acting studio.

Decker looked up.

Yslan was in the bathroom. The door was ajar. She was three quarters back to him and had pulled down the top of the robe. He could the see the curve of one breast. He pulled his eyes away and said, “You do good work.”

“Thanks,” she said, pulling on a blouse then a fresh pair of sweatpants as she came out of the bathroom and walked up to him. For a second Decker thought she was going to put her arms around his neck. But she didn't. “So Yolles had MacMillan burn down your house.”

“You mean try to kill me.”

“Let's leave it at burn down your house.”

“If we have to…”

“We do.”

“So are they going to arrest him?”

“I doubt it. The evidence is circumstantial at best, and the NSA is not going to help you with this.”

“Why?”

“Because we don't give a shit about your house.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just care about me.”

“Right, Mr. Roberts—just about you.” Yslan turned from him and looked out the window at the dark lake across the six lanes of traffic. “But there's this too. We couldn't find any connection between Yolles and your credit card or loan problem—or the condemning of your building.”

He nodded and mumbled the
Sesame Street
ditty.

“You can't keep a tune, but I think you're right.”

“Yeah, but how do you explain all four happening at the same time?”

“Coincidence?”

“I wouldn't have thought that someone like you would believe in coincidence.”

Yslan nodded slowly and poured two glasses of Chablis. “Normally I don't. But Yolles wasn't behind the credit cards or the loan or the building thing. We've got really good sources and Yolles is clean—about those three things. Clean.”

“Yeah. I figured that.”

“You did?”

“A wee bit redundant to try and kill someone
and
have his credit cards cancelled.”

Yslan nodded. “The coincidence was the timing, not that two different people wanted to hurt you.”

Decker thought,
Two people—Yolles and Charendoff.

Yslan watched Decker closely. Finally she said, “Two people, but only Yolles is contained—at least for the moment.”

Decker stared out the window for a long time. Finally he said, “Someone up here betrayed me, didn't they?” His voice was barely a whisper.

“You know the answer to that question. You've known that all along. You even know who it is—although you're not letting yourself see. You've known from the beginning.” She took a small disc and handed it to him. Then she gave him his digital player.

He looked at her and she shrugged.

He turned from her and sat in the bay window seat and watched the snow swirl and swirl and swirl. It seemingly as unwilling to land as Decker was to face the obvious truth.

When he finally did, his heart broke.

Emerson liked the Royal York Hotel on Front Street across from the grand old Union Station. The Canadian Pacific Railway knew how to build spooky old hotels. Not as filled with quality ghosts as the Algonquin, but enough ghosts of interest to keep him happy—especially since this was Decker Roberts' hometown. His other-world compatriot's hometown.

He pulled on his raccoon coat—he hadn't had a chance to wear it since he left Princeton. Momentarily he regretted not buying a kilt, then stepped out into the frigid night air.

But he didn't feel the cold because the dreadful aloneness that he'd lived with—carried on his back was more like it—since the
death of his
grandmère
was gone because he knew he was finally at home—no longer alone.

Garreth Sr. watched Decker's silhouette in the bay window of the Lakeshore hotel, room 218. He'd followed Decker all day.

He had no backup—only the knowledge he'd garnered almost forty years ago on a wintry day much colder than this.

“Decker? Are you all right?”

Decker got up from the bay window seat but didn't look at her.

“I'm sorry, Decker, I really am. But it's him for sure.”

Decker nodded.

She signaled him to approach the table. When he looked down there were photographs: a man outside, then inside Leena's restaurant. The same man two tables away from him and Trish at Rancho Relaxo.

“This is the same guy you showed me last night, the one who was watching the house I grew up in.”

She nodded.

“Who is he?”

“That's what I want you to tell me.”

“Well I can't, because I don't know who he is.”

“Think Decker, think.”

“I don't fucking know. I don't know him.”

“Is that the truth, Decker? The truth?”

“Yes. Yes and yes. I don't know who that is.”

“You're a lousy liar, Decker.”

“Be that as it may, I don't know who the fuck that is. Got it?”

Yslan nodded.

“But you know who he is, don't you?” Decker demanded.

“No.”

Squiggly lines. Special Agent Yslan Hicks had lied to him again.

He headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm getting back to my life. I suppose it would be too much to expect you and your guys to leave me the fuck alone.”

“Yeah. That would be too much to ask.”

Straight lines—three of them. A solid truth.

THE PASSAT DROVE ITSELF TOWARD EDDIE'S HOUSE. UP WINDERMERE
, then right along the Queensway then swung up through High Park. Halfway through the fabulous park Decker noticed a large patch of light. Generator-supported portable lights were shining on a stand of trees. Up in those trees were twenty or thirty nice Canadian boys with hair driers blowing the snow off the branches. He shook his head. Americans. They shoot up here because of the cost advantages but they keep on forgetting that we have a real winter in ol' Toronto. No doubt there's a film shoot set for the first thing tomorrow morning in the park—a summer scene perhaps. Can't have snow on the trees for a summer scene, so send those nice Canadian boys up those trees.

At Bloor he turned right and crossed Parkside, then headed into what the locals call “the Indians”: Indian Road. Indian Road Crescent. Indian Grove, etc.

He parked the Passat across from Eddie's house and just sat in the cold as his breath misted the windshield. His mind wandered from image to image: Eddie licking the ice cream cone and announcing, “No change—still tastes like chocolate”; seeing Eddie on the ground on Yonge Street, and first passing by him despite recognizing him; Eddie's infinite kindness and patience with his wife—and finding them together one night—and closing the door before either of them could see him.

He felt the phone in his pocket and said aloud, “Call me, Seth. Come on, call me and stop me from doing this.”

But the phone did not ring, and before he knew it he had opened Eddie's front door and was standing in the hallway.

He could see Eddie back in the kitchen doing that peculiar hop thing he did with his bad leg when he wanted to cross space quickly. He heard Eddie singing and could smell something tomatoey. Odd. Eddie seldom cooked.

Decker saw Eddie do that funny hopping thing again as he recrossed the doorway to the kitchen—and Decker decided. He would get his stuff from Eddie's bedroom and disappear.

He closed the door behind him and headed toward Eddie's bedroom. He reached for the door handle.

“Don't.”

He turned. Eddie's considerable bulk filled the door to the kitchen. “Don't open that door, Decker.”

“Why?”

“'Cause you're either going to get your stuff and disappear forever, Decker, or you're going to move in permanently to my home—make it our home. Well? Which is it?”

Decker didn't respond.

“Well, I'll make it easy for you. Come out back.” Decker almost didn't see the football as it came directly at his face. He blocked it just in time. The thing was hard. Would have broken his nose for sure. “Pick up the ball—meet me out back.”

Decker did.

The snow in the backyard was almost a foot and a half deep. An arc light high on a telephone pole illuminated the considerable length of the yard.

Eddie appeared on the small stoop still wearing his apron. He signaled for Decker to throw him the ball.