The Placebo Effect (7 page)

“Room two oh seven, down the hall and up the stairs.” Decker nodded. “Welcome to the
Plain Dealer
, Cleveland's finest daily newspaper.”

Decker suspected two things. One, that the guy hated having to say that to everyone he served, and two, that the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
was very likely Cleveland's only daily newspaper. As he made his way up the stairs to room 207 he wondered if a plain dealer was a forthright merchant or perhaps a guy who sells farmland or a very boring seller of used cars. At room 207 he clicked on his tiny digital tape recorder and opened the door to yet another office.

A secretary nodded a greeting and led him to a boardroom.

Two
Plain Dealer
staff writers were interviewing a man Decker recognized as the Republican senatorial candidate.

Decker was introduced as a researcher sent from the head office—better than when he used to be flown in as a play doctor and spent his time in the light booth putting together notes for the show's producers who didn't have the balls to tell the director that Decker was there to replace him.

The interview proceeded. Decker took notes and closed his eyes over and over again. And when he did the room unaccountably got cold, and for a moment his wife's stricken face shrouded in veil upon veil of ALS came alive in his mind—only her eyes able to move, staring at him, accusing him, imploring him to answer the last question she had ever been able to ask him: “What have you done, Decker? What have you done?”

“I'm sorry if I bore you,” the politician said.

Decker opened his eyes and realized the man's comment was to him.

“You don't, sir. I have an eye infection that requires I close my eyes periodically to keep them lubricated.” Decker thought,
Lie better.
So he added, “Doctor's orders.” And thought, Shit—
I really am a lousy liar.

The senatorial candidate shot Decker a look, then continued his pontification on subjects ranging from
Roe v. Wade
to the Iranian nuclear threat.

After the interview finally ended a secretary plunked down almost thirty pages of transcript in front of Decker. It took him only a minute to underline the two untruths.

He stepped out of the room and gave the transcript to the secretary. She gave him a thick envelope with the name David Gerts on the outside—and $10,000 in cash inside.

He made his way out of a side door and checked his watch.

It was tight, but he really didn't want to spend the night in Cleveland. He hailed a cab and threw fifty dollars on the front seat. “Get me to the airport—fast.”

He ignored Crazy Eddie's three-cab rule and, with his fast cab and the flight's forty-minute delay in departure, he just made the flight to begin his voyage first to Detroit and from there on the eleven o'clock flight to Toronto—and his home in the west end of the city, the Junction.

Henry-Clay watched the videotape of the interview and checked it against a copy of Decker's notes. The entire transcript was marked as truthful except for two statements. The first was, “Young men, I have a wholehearted and spiritually backed commitment to the values that made this country great—family values.”

“Yeah, Senator, family
über alles
,” Henry-Clay muttered, then added, “and what about those hookers in Huff you were taped with?” No great surprise that was a lie. Seventeen pages later Decker had marked his second and final statement as an untruth when the would-be senator stated his “one hundred and five percent opposition to the sale of Internet drugs from Canada into these here United States.” There were twenty-six more pages of claims and boasts, but none were marked as lies.

“Very good, Mr. Roberts—very, very good. So you can pick out a single lie buried in hundreds of truths, half truths, and opinions—like finding a kernel of corn in a barrel of cow shit. I do believe we can do business, Mr. Roberts.”

Henry-Clay stood. He'd made up his mind. He turned to the window and eyed the Treloar Building on the other side of the Ohio River. The tall building was bathed in golden light by the setting late autumn sun.

He caught his reflection in the window and said to it, “He's our new one—I can feel it.”

The light on the squawk box on his desk blinked. Henry-Clay liked the look of old technology; it made him feel that he was the direct descendant of all the other great capitalists going all the way back to the robber barons. He pushed a button on the old thing.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. MacMillan is on the line, sir.”

He checked his watch. Right on time, as usual.

“Good. Patch him through.” He loved saying that.

Henry-Clay quickly gave MacMillan Decker Roberts' flight
details. “I know you had men on him, but I want you to follow him personally, Mr. MacMillan. This is our new boy, Mr. MacMillan, and I want to know everything, and I mean
everything
, about him.”

Henry-Clay smiled. He felt like he was steering a great ship—he liked steering the ship. It had always been his experience that motion was better than stillness. Motion solved problems. Motion made money.

MAC TOOK NO CHANCES. HE'D BEEN WAITING AT THE CLEVELAND
airport just in case Roberts made the last connection to Toronto.

When Decker entered the departure lounge, Mac turned on his tiny video camera. He lifted his copy of
USA Today
to cover his face, although he thought it unlikely that Decker Roberts had any idea that he was being followed—and had been followed by Mac's men from the moment that Henry-Clay Yolles had told him of Decker Roberts' existence.

SO MANY CHURCHES AND RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER
from Decker's house. They must have known—they must have felt the evil a long time ago. Mike could feel it. So many churches and other religious buildings on Annette, Runnymede, and Dundas. He'd memorized the names, and as he prepared to spend his third night waiting for Decker he recited them—as if he were saying the rosary: Keele Street Christian Church, St. Cecilia's Catholic Church, High Park Korean United Church, Vida Abundante Igreja Pentecostal Portuguesa, Czechoslovak Baptist Church, Church of the Nazarene, the Sharing Place, Gracia de Dios Iglesia Cristiana del Nazareno, Runnymede Presbyterian Church, St. James Catholic Church. Then again and again as darkness took the city and Mike wondered if he was strong enough to withstand another night out in the cold. But he had to. He had to be there when Decker got back from wherever he was. He had to warn Decker.

Warn him that he was going to be used by the Enemy—as he had been used.

The Enemy had found us and now was using us.

He looked around, worried that he had spoken out loud. And there were a lot of dogs on Decker's street. He liked dogs—all dogs—but some dogs didn't like him. Then there was Decker's motion-sensitive porch light. He had to avoid that. He had to remember that light.

He curled up behind the recycle bin in the alley at the side of Decker's house. There was a steam pipe there that gave off some heat. He got as close to it as he could. Then he began to recite his
rosary again: Keele Street Christian Church, St. Cecilia's Catholic Church, High Park Korean United Church, Vida Abundante Igreja Pentecostal Portuguesa, Czechoslovak Baptist Church, Church of the Nazarene, the Sharing Place, Gracia de Dios Iglesia Cristiana del Nazareno, Runnymede Presbyterian Church, St. James Catholic Church and on and on into the night.

Just past one in the morning Decker walked from his cab toward his turn-of-the century house in the Junction. Twenty seconds later Mac parked his car and put a stub of a cigar in the corner of his mouth. He settled in to watch. Mac was good at watching.

Mike heard first one car, then another pull up in front of Decker's house. He hunched back into the shadows and prayed that it was Decker. He was so cold and things were getting mixed up in his head. He saw a man get out of a cab and start up the slanted driveway toward the front door. It must be Decker. It had to be Decker. And Mike was cold—so cold. He recited his rosary one more time quickly, then bolted from his hiding place—forgetting about the motion-sensor porch light.

Decker saw the porch light snap on, a blur of movement cross it, and a large shadowy thing was right up in his face, grabbing his coat and shouting at him. “He's got the ratio!”

Decker felt instantly nauseous—as if he were falling down a cavernous well.

Mac saw the shouting shadow at the same time Decker did. But he wasn't nauseous—he was astounded.

Mike stepped aside, and the porch light struck Decker's face. For a moment Mike couldn't speak—it was the same face, but an older version, of the boy hung from the lamppost. Finally he managed to shout, “He's using us. The Enemy's got the ratio, my ratio, the ratio—and my master ratio—no, my master password. He's found you. Don't you see! Secret ratio, secret password. Secret, secret, secret. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Don't you see? Ratio. Don't you? Password. How many times do I have to tell you?
How many times! I gave it to him. Both. I betrayed us. Betrayed us all. Don't you see?”

Decker saw the flabby lips moving but was so overwhelmed by nausea that all he heard was the word “ratio.” He was about to be sick—fuck, he was going to throw up.

Mac reached for the handgun and the bowie knife beneath the seat. This was not happening. Not happening on his watch. He threw open the car door.

The light from inside the car drew Mike's eye.

For an instant, Decker saw the fat man's face. Then he heard a car door slam and the light blinked out.

The Enemy's assassin! And then Mike was running, crashing through fences, running and running and reciting his rosary.

Decker found himself on the cold interlocking bricks of his driveway and suddenly felt better. He looked around and saw the taillights of a sedan speeding down the street, and the fat thing, whatever it was, was gone. He got to his feet and scanned the street, and all was as it had always been—the old, stodgy Junction. He thought of calling the police, then let it go. He wasn't hurt, hadn't been robbed. Some poor, crazed thing had… he didn't know what it had done. As he climbed the steps to his house he said aloud, “Using a ratio? What the fuck!” He looked around again to make sure that “the thing” wasn't there, then he opened the door—and was home.

“AND YOU'RE SURE IT WAS RATIO-MAN?” HENRY-CLAY DEMANDED
.

Mac pulled the BlackBerry away from his ear—his boss was shouting, no, screaming. “Yeah, it was him. I told you we should have dealt with him, not just fired him.”

Henry-Clay took a deep breath—then a few more. He had to calm himself. He had to think. “Mr. MacMillan—what exactly did you hear him tell Roberts?”

Mac repeated it pretty much as Mike had said it—using us, told him the ratio, etc.

Henry-Clay thought about that. Then about the ratio. Then about the potential lawsuits, nightly ads on television encouraging liars to join a class action against Yolles Pharmaceuticals, years of litigation—fucking lawyers up his nose, down his throat, inside his head—massive stock losses—and he's right on the edge of a gold mine, an antidepressant-inspired gold mine—looking into a pure vein of money! He thought about all that… then about murder. “Mr. MacMillan, Ratio-Man knows too much.”

“Granted, but what about what Decker Roberts just heard?”

Henry-Clay paused. Decker Roberts could be a valuable asset, and he was loath to let go of an asset.

Mac pressed, “He knows, Mr. Yolles—and unlike Ratio-Man he's not a nut, so people might take what he has to say seriously.”

Henry-Clay nodded in his darkened office but didn't reply.

“He knows too much to live, Mr. Yolles.”

Henry-Clay let out a long breath. Killing Ratio-Man was more
like putting a dog down, but killing Decker Roberts would be crossing a new frontier for the owner of Yolles Pharmaceuticals.

“Is it really necessary, Mr. MacMillan?”

“It's prudent, Mr. Yolles. Prudent.”

“And there's no other way?”

“To be sure that this Roberts guy doesn't talk? Not that I know. Just his bad luck, Mr. Yolles, just Mr. Roberts' bad luck.”

Henry-Clay thought about that, tried to weigh the risks against each other—killing versus his bottom line—and made up his mind. He felt better—Decisions R Us. “Your report on the Junction says there's been a lot of fires, Mr. MacMillan.”

“Seems there's a firebug in those parts.”

“Good, that'll cover our tracks. Burn him down, Mr. MacMillan—he lives in an old house, doesn't he?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, old houses have fire problems, don't they?”

“They do indeed. When?”

“Can it be done tonight?”

“For the right amount of money, anything can be done. Tonight or any night.”

“Tonight. Decker Roberts does not see the dawn—got it, Mr. MacMillan?”

Henry-Clay slammed down the phone, stood and made himself think it all through carefully one more time. Mac would take care of Decker up there, then come down here and take care of Ratio-Man, but there was a loose end. How the hell had Ratio-Man found out that he was scouting Decker? Henry-Clay allowed his mind to retrace his steps from seeing Mikey on the Discovery Channel while drunk in Puerto Rico to tracking him down—to setting up the fake job interview.

It had taken Henry-Clay less than twenty minutes to get Ratio-Man to address the issue of placebo ratios—in fact, the guy was happy if anyone listened to him. And oh, yes, Henry-Clay Yolles was listening closely.

“Well, there has to be a ratio. Everything in nature has a ratio.”

“Placebos as well?”