The Placebo Effect (26 page)

Decker was on his feet, unable to hide his agitation.

Yslan hit the pause button. “What?” she asked.

“Play that last speech again.”

Yslan did.

Decker closed his eyes and it was like shooting stars—completely random patterns. The guy who hired him might not be telling the truth. Hard for him to be sure from a tape. “Could you get your friends to check that legal citation?”

Yslan stepped outside. The moment she did Decker began to shake. Clearly the insurance guy was lying—that's what he told the lawyer who hired him—but only now did he realize that the lawyer who hired him might be lying too. So when Yslan returned and told him that there was no
Rae Ellen B. v. the State of North Carolina
and that most annuities do not include the return of principal upon death, it did not surprise him.

Yslan asked, “Why did they need you there at all?”

“It puzzled me then, it's why I saved the tape—”

“And the law firm hired you?”

“I think so. The guy who paid me certainly made out that he was from a law firm.”

“But he could have been from the insurance company parading as the law firm?”
Or
, Yslan thought,
this could have been one of Harrison's little tests that it sure would have been nice if he had shared with her.

“I guess he could have been from the insurance company. I really don't know.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I said I don't know.” But Decker was thinking back to a small room in Orlando, Florida, with a one-way mirror and a bald exec at his side, where both the person being interviewed and the interviewer were lying—both lying.

“Do you often not know who hires you?”

“It's not my concern. They pay, I provide a service—simple as that.”

“Telling them if someone's telling the truth?”

“Yeah. That's what I get paid for.”

“But what service did you render here?”

That's precisely what Decker was wondering. Like in Orlando where both parties were lying. What service was he providing? Why the fuck were they paying him anything, unless—unless they were trying him out, auditioning him.

Auditioning him? To see if they wanted to use him?

Then a line flew into his mind: “He's using us.”

And suddenly Decker was sure the balance guy was the man he'd seen on Bloor Street, then in the fruit market, and it was this Mike person who had attacked him on his driveway and screamed, “He's using us.” But there was something else he'd said. Something about a ratio—a ratio? “What's Your Ratio!” his sign said. Then there were the other signs: “I worked here” and “Who's Jumping Now!”

Suddenly there was the sound of a doorbell. An ordinary doorbell. It startled Decker that something so normal could happen in this place. Then a voice—a somewhat high, effete American voice was calling out, “Hicksy, oh Hicksy, I know you're in there.”

THAT VOICE GOT LOUDER AND LOUDER
.

Yslan said, “Stay!” turned, and ran toward the front door.

Decker heard a sound he knew really well—the sound of generators, generators that supported camera crews. “Hicksy! Hicksy!”

Decker looked out of the room. Yslan was in conference with Mr. T and Ted Knight. The knocking at the door was getting louder and the glare of the camera lights could be seen beneath the door and around the jam. The men nodded and Yslan threw open the door.

A tall preppy-dressed man smiled benignly as six full camera crews turned their undivided—at least until a better story came along—attention towards Special Agent Yslan Hicks, who stood in the door doing her best to be just Ms. Ordinary Citizen.

Decker looked at Yslan's tense back then turned to his room. He opened the bottle of Evian, and putting his finger over the top shook it hard, then he aimed it at the old wall socket. He hoped the information he'd gleaned from the cop back in his studio about what could cause a fire in an old house was right.

Nothing happened for a moment, then all the lights in the house went out and the sound of sizzling came from the walls.

Decker took a deep breath. When flames came from the wall socket, he grabbed his computer, checked that his cell phone was in his pocket and charged toward the front door, yelling as loudly as he could. Lights and cameras panned to him as Mr. T reached toward him. In the lights' glare the large black man backed off and Decker pushed past Yslan into the front yard.

Immediately cameras and microphones swung toward him. Decker stared straight at Yslan and her two goons and said, “Good evening.”

“Your name sir?” demanded a reporter.

“Martinelli, Joshua L. Martinelli.”

There was a pause—Decker knew full well he didn't look like someone named Martinelli—but it was in fact the pause he had counted on. He grabbed the mic from the startled interviewer and shoved it under Yslan's chin. The cameras and lights turned to take in the moment.

“So Ms. Hicks, do you work for the NSA?”

“No, I don't,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

Decker covered the microphone with his hand and said, “Don't grind your teeth. Not good for the jaw and it looks bad on camera. Like a guilty person with something to hide.”

She whispered back, “Don't do this.”

He looked at Mr. T.

“I'm just not sure, Ms. Hicks, whether we were really meant for each other, you know what I mean?”

A glimmer of a snarl creased her beautiful lips, then disappeared.

Shouts from behind him of “take your hand off the mic” and “speak up” prompted him to shove the mic back beneath Yslan's chin.

“You don't work for the National Security Agency?”

“No.”

“And you wouldn't be involved in kidnapping, would you?”

The word “kidnapping” rippled through the crowd of newsmen. One stepped forward and demanded, “Are Mr. Martinelli's claims true?”

Others crowded in and Decker cautiously stepped back. The windowpane to his right cracked and smoke poured out—and all hell broke loose.

Decker bulled his way through the reporters but was surprised to be stopped, facing the tall preppy-dressed man.

“Emerson Remi,” the man said in a low voice with his hand out. “Hicksy's friend.”

Decker didn't take the proffered palm—almost couldn't with his growing vertigo.

“Fine. But all I need do is raise my voice and you're not going anywhere. Nice fire, by the way.”

“What do you want, Mr. Remi? Your story's over there,” Decker managed to say.

“Yeah there's a story, but it's not my story—the one that tells what is really going on here. This has to do with synaesthetes, doesn't it?”

Decker tried desperately to concentrate—was he going to faint? “And if I give you that?”

“I'll help you get away from here. The black guy is still by Hicksy's side, but I don't know where the white-haired gentleman got to—no doubt he's looking for you… Mr. Martinelli.”

“Yeah,” Decker said and stepped back. For some reason that lessened his disorientation.

“Here's the keys to my car. My number's on this card. Call me, I'll make it worth your while.” Suddenly he stuck his cell phone in Decker's face and shot five quick shots, each accompanied by an eye-popping flash. “These pics go to every news agency and police force in the country if you don't call. I'm sensitive that way.” He paused. “Canada? Right. That accent—no
ehs
—but that nasty upward inflection and the
oots
and
aboots
gives you away, brother.”

The word “brother” made Decker pause before he said, “Fine.”

“Oh…”

“What?”

“You have that reporter's microphone—I'm sure he'd like it back.”

Decker stared at the thing in his hand then gave back the mic, turned, and began to run—with every step away he felt oddly better. Over his shoulder he heard Emerson's mocking voice, “Go, Leaves, Go.”

He was tempted to turn back and say “Leafs! Not Leaves, you moron” but didn't.

As Decker moved away Emerson looked down at his cell phone. He pressed a menu button and a code, and a small dot came up on a map. The map was of the local area. The dot was Decker Roberts in motion, sent from a tiny transponder stuck on Emerson's business card. He said a silent thank you to his Princeton dining club fellow who now ran the world from San Jose, California.

Emerson looked at the dot on the map and smiled. “I'm right. I'm not alone. There's not just a me—there's an us.”

Forty-five minutes and three wrong turns later—once going through the same tollbooth on the Jersey Turnpike twice before he finally got it right—Decker got to the Newark Liberty International Airport. He parked the car illegally, wanting it to be found, then ran to the terminal. Using his one remaining credit card he bought a ticket to Atlanta then headed toward the rail link that would bring him back to New York City. He assumed they would quickly find the car then the ticket to Atlanta. He also assumed they would know it was nothing but a bluff. But he had few more cards to play.

The train to New York disgorged him at Penn Station with hundreds of others. People were his best blind. He needed time to think. He believed that Mike—the balance guy—was his key to finding out who was behind all this. He just needed time to think, to find the order of things—maybe even to chart.

Suddenly he laughed. Chart your own life—yeah, but what's my final line?

Final line, the last thing I ever say?
he thought. And suddenly he felt very cold, and knew for sure that the fire in his house in the Junction was not just arson—it was an attempt to get him to his very last line.

He shook it off. An odd idea popped into his head. It made him laugh.

The guy beside him gave him a funny look and said, “I could use a chuckle—what's ticklin' you?”

“A Monty Python sketch. You remember them?”

“English, right?”

“Yeah. Well they had a sketch about an old knighted actor. The director says to him, ‘Well, Sir Riley they're all there now. Yes, all the words are there. Now let us try to get them in the right order.'” Decker chuckled again. He stopped chuckling when he looked at the man beside him.

The man was clearly unmoved. Finally he said, “I don't get it,” turned, and left.

Decker realized that sketch had popped into his head because like the old actor he had all the facts—he just needed to put them in the right order. He fell into step with the hordes of people leaving Penn Station from the Thirty-fourth Street exit. There was an odd sense of order in their movement that he knew could only be understood from above. Decker knew that's what he needed to do, stand above the events of the past and see their order.

It was snowing and he thought of that and the notion of order. Lines from Chekhov's
Three Sisters
came to him. The older officer is pontificating that there was a meaning to everything that happens. A younger cynical officer turns to the window and notices that it's snowing outside and says, “It's snowing. What's the meaning of that?”

“It means it's cold, you asshole,” Decker said aloud. It was New York City, everyone spoke to themselves here. He stuck his hands deep into his jacket pockets and turned into the wind.

DECKER HAD ALWAYS KNOWN HOW TO HIDE. HOW TO FIND
the place behind the furnace, the access to the dumbwaiter or the laundry chute. And now he found himself hiding—again. And it was no surprise. Even as a kid he'd known that one day he'd have to hide in earnest. Other kids practiced walking with their eyes shut or hopping on one leg. He'd practiced hiding because if he didn't hide really, really well they'd lock him away. After much practice he determined that the best place for a column of smoke to hide is in the midst of a fog. Smoke within a fog—that was him within the world of synaesthetes, not actually one of them, but enough like them that he could hide in their midst. He allowed himself to be seen as one of them so if someone had to categorize him they could. “What's he, Mommy?” “Oh, he's a synaesthete—look it up, it's in Mr. Webster's big red book.” “Oh, that's why he's so weird, Mom?” “Sure—sure—sure it is—don't stare, it's not polite.”

Decker leaned against a lamppost and listened to the steady din of the traffic on Seventh Avenue.

He was beginning to suspect that he was not the only column of smoke hiding in the fog. There might be other hiders—he wished he had a better name for them than that, but “hiders” would have to suffice for now. There were others who had gifts that would be best kept from the eyes of the world. Gifts that were best pawned off as madness or obsession or synaesthesia.
The hiders were blessed and cursed with the ability to put their heads up into the jet stream and access the pure air there.

He'd seen others do it—often subconsciously. Most athletes didn't have a clue where their genius comes from. Sometimes the surfers do—or the skateboarders. The young man who invented all the early skateboarding tricks was so terrified by his gift that he hid it in drugs—and now will serve the rest of his life behind bars in a Hawaiian prison. But it's more often the solitary artist or monk who has a glimmer, a sense that there is a somewhere else—that there really is a there out there but you have to imbibe a deep draught of the jet stream. And there's a whoosh—always a whoosh up there. The jet stream drags you back—it always drags you back… to where it all began.

He thought about the profound sense of nausea he'd felt near Emerson Remi, and the other times—with the strange Ratio guy in his driveway the night his house burned down and with the pianist, Paul Scheel. A phrase popped unbidden into his head—“If I sense the trees, I enter the forest.” Then Mr. Scheel's comment, “Your forest will infect mine… don't you know that?” Well he knew it now.