Trust Me

by Abbott, Jeff

  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 t
he 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.’

  A thrum of horror touched Luke’s chest. ‘Did he say why he wanted to meet you?’ This was it, proof that Henry had taken Luke’s research - and personally reached out to the extremists. And he’d pissed this one off.

  ‘He found me through the IP address I used to post from. He said he admired the beauty and logic of my arguments. My passion. It’s not the kind of invite I get every day. I went and I had coffee with him. He wore a heavy cap, and different glasses, and he spoke with a Southern accent he seems to have lost when on television. But it’s him.’

  ‘But it didn’t go well.’

  ‘I can see judgment in eyes of lesser people. I’m a threat to folks, their sense of security. Because I’m smarter and more talented. Mother tells me everyone’s jealous. It explains a lot. But I wasn’t good enough for him.’ The awkward happiness he’d shown earlier was gone, replaced by a simmering fury. ‘Can you imagine?’

  He was a threat because he was crazy, Luke realized. Not focused, not disciplined like Mouser or Snow. The army doesn’t want the crazies, neither does the Night Road. Crazies are a risk.

  Chris had not been invited to the party.

  Luke looked past Chris’s shoulder, searching for a weapon, a way to defend himself. His gaze fell again on the paintings: the fists bound in a web, the two sullen teens. With a wrench of his gut he recognized their faces. The Columbine gunmen. ‘Maybe my stepfather didn’t properly assess your potential contribution.’

  ‘He wanted to know if I’d ever thought of turning my words to action. Did I have computer skills? Was I able to get money easily, did I have contacts in the drug world? Please. I don’t cloud my head with drugs. I’m a decent guy who’s just sick of hypocrisy. And I guess being a painter just isn’t enough.’ The sneer deepened. ‘I never heard from him again. If he was contacting me about world-changing work, it stands to reason he was contacting others. People he’d found on the discussion boards who can make a difference. So.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘You’re valuable to him. You’re my invitation into his private club.’ Luke took a step backward. ‘You’re wrong. Dead wrong.’

  ‘You beg me for help, and now you won’t help me. Story of my life.’ His anger turned into a pleading whine. ‘I could be of real value to you guys. I can help you change the world. I could f
inally …’ He stopped and in Luke’s head he heard the sad simple truth: I could have friends.

  What was it like when even the fringes rejected you? He saw an abyss in Chris’s anguished stare.

  ‘I am really, really tired of being told I’m not good enough. I caught you when no one else could. So let’s you and me call your stepfather, and see what we can work out.’

  Luke closed the three steps and he slammed his fist into Chris’s jaw. It surprised them both. Chris crumpled and the pain from the blow rocketed up Luke’s arm. ‘Did you tell my stepdad I was coming here?’ Luke yelled.

  Chris fingered blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘You hit me. You can’t hit me.’ He sounded like a first-grader, outraged by a breach of playground etiquette.

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘Yeah. I sold your ass. I give you back, I get in the Night Road, I get to show how I can shine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They should be here for you soon. I just wanted you to know I’m much smarter than you. Much smarter than they are.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  Slowly Chris got to his feet, as though feeling his arms and legs for the first time. ‘The martial arts studio next door. They teach krav maga. You know the beauty of krav maga?’

  ‘Now you’re raving.’

  He gave a disgusted huff. ‘Krav maga is Israeli self-defense. I joined because when the war comes, I wanted to be ready. People said I fought like I enjoyed it too much. They kicked me out.’ He rolled his eyes at this bit of insanity. ‘But I learned enough to break your bones. You’re not going anywhere.’

  And he rushed at Luke.

  17

  The first series of precise blows sent Luke reeling across the scattered sketches on Chris’s table. His face, already bruised from Mouser’s blows, hurt bone-deep. He was going to get the snot beaten out of him by this freak.

  ‘No quarter is given in krav maga,’ Chris said, with the calm of a lecturer. He paused to pick Luke up, hammer his chest and face with a flurry of fists, and shove him hard toward the scrawled paintings.