Trust Me (19 page)

He heard the call for the bus servicing Little Rock, Memphis, and Chicago. He boarded - the bus was more crowded than he expected. Not good, but it was easy to be as anonymous as you wanted on a bus, especially at night. Luke settled into a rear seat, kept his sunglasses on, his cap low. He dozed, on and off, and as the bus made its stops and brief layovers in Little Rock and Memphis and a dotting of towns in between, the long evening and his clear lack of interest in chatting kept him in a cocoon.

When he didn’t sleep, he thought about Henry. He didn’t truly know the man who had helped raise him since his father’s death. The man who had barely survived the crash that had killed his mother. The realization sent a twisting chill down his spine. After his own dad died, Henry had been a constant rock in his life. Strong when Luke was weak, focused when Luke drifted. He was the one who always believed in Luke; the gentle man who’d married late in life and seemed both surprised and grateful to fate for giving him a special friend, and son, in Luke.

Had it all - every sign of support, every gesture of kindness, every encouragement - simply been the cruelest and most calculated of lies? What kind of monster was Henry?

I’m going to uncover the truth about you, Luke thought. Every awful truth. No matter what it would take, no matter what he would have to do.

The next day,
he arrived in Chicago at three in the afternoon; the bus had been delayed extra hours in Memphis. Luke felt exhausted and grimy. The bus station near downtown Chicago was busier than Luke expected. He saw young mothers, soldiers, older couples, single men. He could vanish into the crowd, get his bearings. Then figure out a way to find Eric and to see if he could learn anything useful from ChicagoChris.

His nerves felt taut as violin string. Now he would be playing someone he knew to be dangerous, maybe even homicidal; possibly someone who was part of the Night Road. This could be a lions’ den. It could be a trap. He felt almost like bouncing on the balls of his feet, getting into a fighter’s stance, trying to cut past the fatigue to force himself to be smart.

Luke headed toward the doors on Harrison Street, navigating through the crowds of people arriving and departing, and a hand closed around his arm. He jerked away, nearly falling over. The man who held his arm was young, head shaved bald, an intense glare burning behind his clunky glasses.

‘You’re Lookout.’ He steered Luke out into the bright sunshine of the street. ChicagoChris was shorter than Luke, with a brow furrowed as if in constant worry or anxiousness or anger. Pale lips and eyes of light hazel gave his face an unfinished look. His teeth shone, tile-like, in his tense grin and Luke thought, I bet you got teased about that grill. He wore a black leather jacket and a black T-shirt with a raised fist in gaudy red. ‘You made it!’

‘Um. Yes.’ Luke had not expected him to show up at the bus station, but why shouldn’t the guy? He’d paid the ticket, he knew the itinerary, he’d been promised information in return.

‘I’m glad my money was helpful.’

‘I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’

‘Your face is all over the news, Luke. You can’t be out here. Let’s go.’
He knows you’re Luke Dantry
. Luke didn’t want to go - he wanted to find Eric and Aubrey’s trail. His reluctance must have shown on his face because Chris unveiled a harder diamond smile and said, ‘Of course I could scream out to all these nice people that I found you. The cops would be here in no time.’

‘That’s not necessary,’ Luke said.

‘Glad we agree. Let’s go. I’ve got an art studio over in Wicker Park. We can talk there.’

‘Wicker Park.’ He had heard of it. ‘Very hip, right?’ If this guy had a high-end address and money to risk sending to online friends, he must be a successful artist. So why would he be spending his time posting hate and anarchy and revolution? What was he so angry about?

‘Wicker’s so ancient now,’ Chris said. ‘It’s all going corporate.’

Feeling like he had no choice, Luke followed Chris to a car. A polished new Porsche. They pulled away from the bus terminal and headed north, past downtown. Luke stayed low in the seat, wondering if Chris was the only extremist he’d found who drove a rich man’s car.

The Texarkana
barkeep finally said to his wife, over cigarettes and coffee before going in for his next evening’s shift: ‘That young man on TV. The one who shot the homeless guy down in Houston.’

‘Who?’ She did not follow the news much; she found it depressing, and the recent chlorine attack in Ripley only confirmed her pessimism.

He told her what he had seen on the news and that one of his customers from a day ago sure looked like that young man. ‘He wore sunglasses inside. Weird unless you’re blind.’

‘Maybe he was blind.’

‘It’s preying on my mind, I should call the police,’ the barkeep said.

‘I seriously doubt you saw a fugitive,’ the wife said. Her practicality was a gift to the marriage. ‘I mean, all the bars in the world, and he comes into yours. While there’s a news story on about him. Please.’

‘He’s got to be somewhere when the news is on. I can’t quit dwelling on it. He had a knapsack. We get business when the buses come in the late afternoon.’

‘A fugitive on a bus. I thought they always stole cars.’

‘That’s the movies. Do I call the police or the FBI?’

‘The FBI,’ she said. ‘If you saw him, he’s already crossed a state line. No one runs to Texarkana and stops.’ She lit another cigarette, watched him stand before the phone as though deciding on a vote. She gave him a gentle nudge, for the sake of family peace. What harm would a phone call do? ‘If you’re right, and they catch him, you’ll be on CNN this week. Of course they’ll be no living with you then.’ She loved him a lot and she smiled.

The idea pleased the barkeep, but he just made a grunt, and he picked up the phone and opened the phone book. ‘I’ll call the cops first. Out of respect. Cops come into the bar and I’ve never seen an FBI agent there.’

The wife shrugged, went back to proofing their teenage daughter’s essay on
Alice in Wonderland
for her English class, only half-listening to her husband start to explain his silly, overwrought suspicions.

16

Chris worked near the heart of Wicker Park, not far from the Damen train station, in an old building converted into retail on the first floor and office and loft space above. The exquisite metal carved sign mounted on the brickwork read
BENNINGTON GALLERY
. Next door stood an open-air coffee shop, with idlers on laptops soaking up the nice sunny day; on the other side was a high-end martial arts center that looked like a Japanese spa. Behind the building, Chris eased the Porsche into a reserved parking spot below an old iron fire escape. As they walked inside a nervous doe of a woman hurried toward them. She was in her forties, dressed all in black, skinny as a teenager, with an elfin face that looked like a kinder version of Chris’s stony stare.

‘Hi, Chris, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ She gave Luke an uncertain smile that seemed to beg Luke to be Chris’s friend. But almost like she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet any friend of Chris’s. A conflict of emotions swirled on her face.

Chris’s eyes hardened at the word
sweetheart
and he said, ‘Yeah, he’s a friend, and fuck the hell off, Mom.’

Luke froze. He had fought plenty with his mother through the years, but he never would have dreamed about speaking to her that way. Chris’s mother’s smile wavered and then withered but didn’t entirely vanish. Chris gave his own little smile as if to say: just what I expected.

‘I’m sorry,’ Luke said. He didn’t know why he was apologizing but he felt someone must. ‘I’m Warren. It’s nice to meet you.’ He gave his father’s name again.

‘Nice to meet you,’ the woman said and hurried off, toward a wall of multicolored smears of abstract art. No customers were waiting. She simply retreated from her son’s ugliness.

‘She’s useless,’ Chris said. ‘Come on. My studio’s up here.’

‘This is your mom’s place?’

‘Yeah,’ Chris said grudgingly.

The irony that she was providing Chris studio space above her gallery, when it could probably command a substantial rent, was not lost on Luke. The whole interchange had the feel of a high schooler mouthing off to his mom, trying to look cool in front of a new friend and revealing that he was simply an insecure jerk. But Luke said nothing.

Chris had five locks on the door and it took him a minute to work all the keys.

Five locks, Luke thought. What are you up to that you need five locks?

Inside, the studio - which doubled as a living space, with an unmade bed shoved in a corner - smelled of paint, of stale coffee and weed, of unwashed shirts. Exposed brick walls and clean skylights were the best features. It was expansive, room for a big talent to spread its wings, but the art Chris painted was very bad. Angry. Smears of red and black, a brown earth hanging above a closing red hand, penciled figures of suburbanites running from flowering napalm fires. Ugly, Luke thought. Another painting showed an array of fists, connected with a spider’s web of lines, flame arcing along the threads. A graffiti swirl of paint, spelling an obscenity in cheerful rainbow colors, in a font favored for children’s books. A final one, two teenagers, scowling, fire erupting from their heads as though they were volcanoes. The two painted faces looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place them.

‘Nice.’ Luke didn’t know what else to say and he was afraid to make no comment at all on the art. How did one compliment death? Did this crap sell?

‘
Nice
? It’s not at all supposed to be … nice.’ Chris’s face reddened.

‘I’m sorry. I meant to say it looks accomplished. Insightful. Compelling. Forgive my exhaustion.’

Chris took a deep breath, as if drinking in the praise through a straw. ‘I’m influenced by the photojournalism of war, and I transpose that on an American setting.’

‘I’m sure they must sell well,’ Luke lied.

‘Hell no. They’ll never sell. They’ll be recognized as great art one day, but not while our diseased culture remains.’

‘How do you pay the bills?’

‘My dad builds homes. Thousands of them.’ Chris smirked. ‘You can’t believe the waste you see in the modern suburban home. The sheer extravagance of it all. Money that could feed half the world.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, but people need houses,’ Luke said.

A light flared in Chris’s stare. ‘Build large apartment buildings. Much more convenient, much less ecological impact. Burn the cities to the ground, man, and stack the apartments high. Much less waste.’

‘That’s grim,’ Luke said. ‘You would have been a good architect in the Soviet Union.’ He wandered past the paintings and as he turned back to Chris, Chris was less than a foot away, a devil’s curling smile on his face.

‘After I help you,’ Chris hissed. ‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No. Not at all. I’m sorry.’ He’d made a misstep. Chris didn’t carry the single-minded stare that he’d seen in Snow and Mouser. The light in his eyes was something entirely different in its heat. He had to make Chris tell him what he needed to know, but carefully. ‘I’m really surprised you trusted me with the money. You don’t know me.’

‘I know your words. That’s the same, to me.’ Chris lit a cigarette, offered the pack to Luke, who shook his head. His anger seemed gone, quick as a snap of fingers. ‘So. What’s the information you have about the wreck in Ripley?’

‘It was a bomb.’

‘Old news. Next?’ He smiled. ‘I bet you know who put it there.’

‘Yes,’ Luke lied. ‘The government.’ He thought this story was exactly the kind of meat that Chris liked to chew.

‘Ah. And you have proof of this, in exchange for my many kindnesses to you?’

‘I think I can find the proof. If I had the right kind of help.’

‘Help.’

‘I need to know if you’re part of a … group that can help me.’

‘Group.’

‘The Night Road.’

‘You want to know if I’m part of the Night Road.’ He looked, to Luke’s astonishment, as if he might laugh.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a really good lie,’ Chris said. ‘Better than I expected.’

‘I’m not lying. I …’

‘I want in.’

‘In what?’

‘In whatever group you’re a part of. Is it called the Night Road? I like it, kind of a twist on the Shining Path. The Peruvian terror group. They’ve lasted a good long time.’

Luke blinked. He’d made another misstep. ‘I’m not part of any group. I thought your group could help me.’

‘I don’t care for liars. You know what I mean. The group your stepfather is putting together.’

Luke crossed his arms. ‘You
know
him?’ Oh, God, what if he’d contacted Henry, told him Luke was coming here.

‘Yeah.’ Chris exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘I joined the online groups because no one believed as I did. None of my family, none of the people I tried to be friends with …’ He caught himself and said, ‘None of my friends. But you don’t really belong to anything in this world. The people in the internet groups, they’re nothing but talk, sound and fury, signifying very little indeed.’ He pointed out the painting of the fists connected by lines of fire. ‘That’s what the online communities should be, fire and action and burning this dirty nasty world to ash so we, the right and noble people can start again, but they aren’t.’ Now he turned his gaze to Luke and Luke’s blood chilled. This guy, he realized, wasn’t just angry, he was clinically crazy. The triumph in Chris’s eyes was bent, wrong, ugly. ‘The new group you’re in, you’re shutting me out now. That just won’t do.’ The smile slid back onto the white mouth.

‘I told you, I’m not part of any group.’ He was suddenly more scared of this guy than he had been in the cottage kitchen with Mouser. Chris’s soft, false grin was a mask for a different, twisted darkness.

‘Your stepfather contacted me, Luke. A month ago. Wanted to meet me for coffee near the airport. I recognized him from CNN yesterday, talking about you.’