The Placebo Effect (5 page)

“Why should I bring in my son?” the Austrian replied.

Because there is a liar here
, Decker thought,
but it's neither of you two.
The black woman slipped her pineapple back onto the shelf and took another. The Austrian swore he would never shop in this fruit market again. The Korean cashier said, “Your pastries no good anyways, and too expensive, much.”

Decker smiled. Better this mixed-race city than the all-white one he had grown up in—even if you couldn't leave your bicycle unlocked on the street.

“Next, next here.” The Korean woman tabulated the cost of the fruit in Decker's basket, then asked for $10.27. He went to reach for his credit card then realized two things. One, that his Visa card didn't seem to work anymore, and two, that this store didn't take credit cards—no fruit market took credit cards.

“Ten twenty-seven,” she repeated. He handed over twenty dollars and, as she gave him his change, she announced, “Have a good day.”

It sounded just a wee bit more like a command than a recommendation, but then again the meaning could easily have been lost in translation—just another multicultural moment.

Decker stepped out onto Bloor West and his cell phone rang.

“Yeah.” Decker wasn't much for cell phone courtesy. He pressed the device hard to his ear, almost gave up, then shouted into the thing, “Yeah!”

“It's me.”

“Eddie, you sound like you're calling from Poland or something.”

“Nope. They've got better cell phone service in Poland than here.”

“Here as in Toronto?”

“Malaysia has better service, so does China—and India, off the charts. Buddy, I think even western Borneo…”

“Nice to know that, Eddie…”

“When it comes to cell phone service, Hogtown is in the pig shit. But hey—
tempus fugit.
”

“I think you mean
‘Sic transit gloria mundi.'
‘Tempus fugit'
means ‘time flies.'
Sic transit
, et cetera, means ‘so goes the world'—or in your terms, ‘pig shit happens.'”

“Always nice to know that someone cares about the dead stuff.”

“Okay, Eddie, I'm tired. I taught late last night.”

“Yeah, well,
sic fugit gloria
—and her sister if she has one.”

“Eddie!”

“Okay. Three requests came in last night while you were doing whatever it is that you were doing.”

“I was—”

“Yeah—and I thought you could get the twenty thousand dollars that Seth needs in one, two, three.”

The only news he ever received about his son, Seth, Decker got through Eddie. He knew that Seth was out in western Canada somewhere. Where exactly he didn't know—Seth never told him. But the boy was nineteen, made his own decisions, lived his own life, and this was the very first time he'd ever asked for money. Decker thought of asking Eddie where Seth was, what his phone number was—and why suddenly he needed twenty thousand dollars. But Decker knew that Seth didn't want him to know any of these things and he knew that Eddie would never betray Seth's trust—certainly not the way that Decker had. He hoped against hope that Seth wanted the money to go to college, but he doubted it. Seth was intensely bright but way too independent a thinker to have a successful university career.

“So who wants what?”

“An Orlando firm wants you to watch the final vetting of a new
head of sales before they give him the job. Willing to pay fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Okay—no sweat, done that before.”

“Then there's something in Pittsburgh for eleven thousand two hundred and ninety dollars, and a third thing in Cleveland for ten thousand.”

“Eleven thousand two hundred and ninety dollars? Where did that figure come from?”

“Just call me wild and crazy.”

“Crazy, sure—you've always been crazy.”

“Fine. So?”

“Okay—sounds good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah what, Eddie—I hear a but.”

“Two t's or one?”

“One.”

“I'm just concerned about the timing.”

“Did you check the—”

“Airlines? Yeah—you can make the first two in one day if you're willing to fly a puddle jumper to Dallas to make your connection to Pittsburgh. It's tight but doable. And there's a wild outside chance you could even get from Cleveland to Toronto that same night. But I doubt it. I'll book you a hotel in Cleveland and get you a reservation on that late flight just in case—but the timing is way too tight, you'll never catch that one.”

“Oh boy, a night in Cleveland—and second prize is two nights in Cleveland.”

“Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there, river on fire, Dennis Kucinich—hey, good times.”

“Yeah.”

“So I'll book you a hotel.”

“You said that already, and there's still a ‘but' hanging on here.”

There was a moment of silence on the phone. Decker could hear Crazy Eddie inhale deeply—a little early for that, but what the hell. Finally Eddie said, “You've never had three requests at once.”

“So—is three a bad-luck number or something?”

“No. But it's odd—three at once is odd. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“More of that ‘what I'm doing is dangerous' stuff?”

“What you are doing
is
dangerous stuff, Decker.”

Decker thought about that. “They pay enough to get Seth his money?”

“With some to spare.”

“Then set it up, Eddie—I don't teach again for two days, so this fits perfectly.”

“Too perfectly.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know.”

“Me neither. Set it up, Eddie—a night in Cleveland somehow seems appropriate punishment for someone like me.”

“Is there a trash can around you, Decker?”

“Yeah, it's Bloor West—more trash cans than stores open after eight o'clock.”

“Then toss your cell into it and walk away. The forty-eight-hour rule is still in effect.”

Eddie didn't trust cell phones, so he had Decker buy a new one every forty-eight hours. “Too bad, I was getting to like this one.”

“The things we own end up owning us,” Eddie said without a hint of sarcasm.

“That's from
Fight Club
, isn't it?”

“Very good, you're not as stupid as you look.”

“Thanks, I guess…”

“My pleasure. Now dump that phone.”

“Okay. Set it up, Eddie,” Decker said and clicked off. Then he tossed his phone into the recycle section of the trash can—and walked away.

Eddie hung up the phone and lay back on his bed, amazed that his damaged leg was shaking wildly in its brace—something it hadn't done for years.

YSLAN MADE A DETOUR BEFORE RETURNING TO HER OFFICE
, to the only place on the planet she thought of as holy—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial—and the imprint of her father's name on the obsidian surface, Sergeant Lernon Hicks: the father she'd never met, but the relative who she felt closest to.

She ran her fingers quickly over his name, and then as she had done so many times before she told him how her week had gone—her petty successes and her doubts about her present assignment.

And she knew in her heart that he had listened. She felt lighter—less alone.

At the office she passed through security quickly, then mounted the back stairs and shut her door before Leonard Harrison could get to her. She flipped open her computer and called up the important files she kept encrypted there. She read the transcript of Decker's last acting class lecture. She quickly cross-referenced the voyaging stuff in his talk with rest of his lectures they'd recorded over the past three and a half years. There were many previous examples.

But she couldn't remember him ever broaching the subject of secret names before.

She flashed her assistant a request for the video of Decker's lecture, then did a quick search for the topic of secret names among the more than two thousand pages of transcribed lectures they had from his classes. There were no previous references.

She thought about that for a moment—then about the secret name she'd had for herself for so many years.

The loud knock on her door announced that Harrison wanted to speak to her. “It's open.”

Harrison strode into her office. He was holding two folders. “We need to talk about you and that congressional committee.”

“Why?”

He was careful not to look too closely at her. Once he did, he knew he would find it hard to take his eyes off her. “Because without their money we're up a creek.”

Yslan made a face and stood. “That's not really what you want to talk about, is it.”

“No.” He put the files on her desk—facedown.

“Then what?”

“Did you get the sense that the committee knew what we are really up to?”

“You mean the ‘special talents' we've been tracking?”

“Of course I mean that. Did they buy it that we were tracking what you like to call silly synaesthetes?”

She thought about that—ran certain sequences back in her head. Finally she said, “For now. But they're not as stupid as they look. They know we're up to something.”

“Great. Just fucking great! Have any of our analysts figured out anything more about Decker Roberts or the others—anything that gives us a clue as to how the hell they do what they do?”

Yslan hesitated, then said, “No. Sorry, but…”

Harrison flipped over the two folders; both had Arabic names on the covers and were designated top secret. “I need your guy Decker's help with these. And I need it soon.”

“Why, is there an imminent–?”

“Not your purview!” He saw the shock on her face and had a momentary impulse to let her in on all this, then decided against it. “All you need to know is that one of these two assholes is telling the truth—but I don't know which one.” He let out a long
sigh, then said, “Get this Decker Roberts to work for us or figure out how he works.”

“He's a Canadian…”

“So?”

“Do you want me to kidnap him?”

“Or seduce him or corral him or just fucking get him to tell you how he does it so we don't need him.” As hard as it was for him to take his eyes off her, he looked past her out the window—all those people out there going about their business, relying on people like him to keep them safe. He turned and picked up the two folders from Yslan's desk and left the office without saying another word.

Yslan turned back to her computer and hit F6 and up came the day's reports on the doings of the “special talents” she had been tracking—she thought of it as handling—for the NSA for the past five years.

“SO?” THE BALDING EXEC AT DECKER'S SIDE ASKED FOR THE
third time.

Decker ignored the man, wondered why Disney had picked Orlando, then turned up the volume on the overhead speaker and stepped closer to the one-way mirror. On the other side of the glass, the company's fiftyish head of human resources was interviewing a well-dressed younger man.

Decker had already surmised that they were trying to fill a vacancy in their Paris office that controlled their vast European sales force. He didn't bother learning more, since further information wasn't essential to the successful completion of his work and the subsequent pocketing of the giant company's $15,000.

Decker felt the small digital recorder taped to his right thigh. It calmed him. For a moment he had a visual of John Dean at the Watergate hearings saying, “Oh yes, everything said in the Oval Office is recorded.” It was his favourite YouTube clip, even though it happened when he was only a kid. He played it over and over again, always astonished by the naïveté—or was it just the honesty—of the man.

It reminded him that there was a time when actors imitated the way real people acted, unlike today, when everyone you meet seems to be trying to imitate some performance they've seen on television. Cabbies act like the smart alecks they see on the tube—cops wouldn't know how to walk without
NYPD Blue;
doctors imitate versions of
ER
—all backward. All of it. So that
John Dean's naïveté seemed one of the last honest acts in a desperately dishonest world.

He put his fingertips on the thick glass. The two men on the other side continued their conversation. Decker slowed his breathing. Instantly he felt the cold approach, then the weight in his right hand. He closed his eyes, allowing the light to filter through his lashes—and watched. He tilted his head, and the clarity flew up his nostrils, hit his upper brain stem and played out on his retina screen. He saw—and he knew—beyond doubt. Beyond scientific certainty. Beyond all reason.

“So?” the bald exec demanded for the fourth time.

Decker felt the cold retreat, but it took longer this time. Every time he “went up,” the cold was just a little more intense and lasted just a little longer—and his suspicion increased.

Decker stepped away from the glass, flexed his right hand and opened his eyes.

“You're supposed to be the expert—so tell me already!”

Decker reached up and turned off the overhead speaker, then picked up his coat. “Do you have my money?”

“Yes. In cash, as you asked.”

“I should charge more now that our dollar is worth as much as yours.”

“I have the agreed upon fifteen thousand dollars in U.S. currency. So tell me.”

This one was simple—too simple? Decker dismissed the thought. He didn't care. This company made more money in a year than some third-world countries made in a decade. He held out his hand. The bald man passed over the money.