Trust Your Eyes

by Barclay, Linwood

  “You think Dr. Grigorin believes it?” I asked him. “What it is you’re doing? Memorizing maps and street plans so you can help secret agents on the run? And that one day, there won’t be any maps at all and you’ll have all the information stored up here?” I tapped my index finger just above my temple.

  He put the banana down and rested his palms on the kitchen table. “If she didn’t believe it, why would she ask so many questions about it? If she didn’t believe it, she’d dismiss it out of hand.” Disappointment washed over his face. “I guess you don’t believe in what I’m doing. I was wrong, thinking Dr. Grigorin could convince you.”

  “Think about it, Thomas. You’re just some guy, living in a house outside Promise Falls in upstate New York. You’ve never worked in law enforcement or for any kind of government agency. You don’t have a degree in whatever one gets a degree in if they’re an expert in maps and—”

  “Cartographer.”

  “What?”

  “A person who’s an expert at making and studying maps is a cartographer. But you can’t really get a degree in cartography. You’d probably get a degree in geography and apply what you’d learned while acquiring that degree when you began working as a cartographer.”

  He’d thrown me off my game for a moment there, but it didn’t take me long to get back on track. “Okay, so, you don’t have a geography degree, and you’ve never worked as a cartographer.”

  “That is correct,” Thomas said, nodding.

  “So what you believe is, you, with no actual qualifications and no connections to the powers that be, have attracted the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency, this multi-billion-dollar organization with operatives all over the world, and they want you to be their map guy.”

  Thomas nodded. “I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  “That it is,” I said.

  “But I have a good memory. So I’ve been chosen.”

  I leaned back in my chair and said, “You are the chosen one.”

  “Now you’re mocking me again,” he said.

  “I’m not—okay, I suppose it sounds like I am. What I’m trying to do, Thomas, is point out to you how totally absurd this is. Dr. Grigorin even told me that you’ve been in touch with former president Clinton.”

  The night before, standing at Thomas’s partially open door, I’d watched him carry on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. The phone was on the hook, and he wasn’t on the keyboard or looking at the monitor. I’d heard him say, “I almost called you Bill.”

  “That’s right,” Thomas said. “But you can still call him Mr. President. Former presidents are still called that.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Thomas said. “Those pills the doctor gave you aren’t working. I thought they’d make you more tolerant and understanding. But you’re just like Dad.”

  He left his unfinished banana on the table, got up, went back up to his room, and slammed the door.

  WE needed food in the house. I couldn’t keep going out for subs and pizza. I was loading up on frozen foods at Price Chopper when I ran into Len Prentice and his wife, Marie. Len and my father had maintained a friendship after Dad left the printing company. Normally of pasty white complexion, he looked as though he’d gotten some sun lately, although he’d lightened up slightly since the funeral. Marie, however, was pale and washed out. She’d had health problems as long as I’d known her. I couldn’t remember what, exactly, but thought it had something to do with chronic fatigue syndrome. Always tired. I’d known the two of them—admittedly, not well—for the better part of three decades. They had a son, Matthew, who was about my age, and whom I’d hung out with some when I was in my teens. He was an accountant now in Syracuse, married, with three kids.

  “Hey, Ray,” said Len, who was pushing the cart. Marie had been trailing along behind him. “How’re you and Thomas doing?”

  Before I could answer, Marie said, “Ray. Good to see you.”

  “Hi,” I said to both of them. “We’re good. Managing. Just getting in some provisions.”

  “It was a lovely service,” Marie said earnestly. Dad had always referred to her as “Mary Sunshine,” although not to her face. Despite her health problems, she was perpetually cheery. The minister could have dropped his pants and waved his dick around and she’d still have commented on how nice the flowers were before anything else.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks again for coming.” I looked at Len and smiled. “I meant to ask you the other day whether you fell asleep under a sunlamp.”

  Marie patted my arm playfully. “Oh, you. Len got back from a vacation a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Where’d you go?” I asked. “Florida?”

  Len shook his head, like it didn’t really matter, but said, “Thailand.”

  Marie said, “Tell him how beautiful it was.”

  “Oh, it was that. Absolutely stunning. The water, it’s this coral blue color unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Have you been there, Ray?”

  “Never,” I said. “But I’ve heard people say it’s wonderful. You didn’t go, Marie?”

  She sighed. “I just don’t have the energy for travel. Not to go that far. I don’t mind packing up and spending a week at a lodge you can drive to in a couple of hours, but all that walking through airports, lining up at customs, having to take your shoes off and put them back on again. It’s too much for me. But just because I’m not up to gallivanting around the globe doesn’t mean Len shouldn’t head off with others who feel more up to traveling than I do.”

  “Ray,” Len said, “I’ve been meaning to come out and see you before you go back to Burlington.”

  “Not sure when that will be,” I said. “I need to get Thomas sorted out first. I have to decide what to do about the house. Thomas can’t live there on his own.”

  “Oh mercy, no,” Marie said. “The boy needs looking after.”

  I felt my back go up, but didn’t show it. She was right, that Thomas needed some looking after. But he was a man. Not a boy. He didn’t deserve to be treated as though he were a child. And then I felt a pang of guilt, wondering if I’d been too hard on him, the way I’d been challenging him about his mission.

  “Yeah, he does,” I said. “But I’m going to see if I can make him a little more self-sufficient.”

  It was something I’d been thinking about. Just because Thomas believed in things that were not real didn’t mean he couldn’t make a contribution in the real world. I wanted to get him making his own meals, and helping out around the house. Maybe, if I started giving him responsibilities, it would keep him out of his room for longer intervals. Involve him, if not in the outside world, in the operations of the household.

  “Well, we should let you go,” Len said. “Good to see you.”

  “I keep meaning to drop by with a casserole for you boys,” Marie said. “Or maybe you’d like to come over for dinner?”

  “That’s very kind,” I said. “I’ll talk to Thomas about that.” Fat chance, I thought, although dinner out with people he knew might be worth a try. A baby step out of the house. We’d already managed a trip to the psychiatrist without a major incident, so long as you didn’t count Thomas’s quarrels with Maria.

  “Thomas still memorizing maps for when the big computer virus hits?” Len asked, a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

  I was caught off guard. “You know about that?”

  “Your dad told me. I guess he needed to talk to somebody about it.”

  Slowly, I nodded. Marie said, “Len, don’t bring that up. It’s none of your business.”

  “It was. Adam told me,” he snapped at her, and Marie blinked. To me, he said, “Your dad was feeling the burden of it all, you know?”

  So everyone seemed to be telling me.

  I tapped on Thomas’s door and opened it far enough to stick my head in. “I’m back.”

  Thomas, clicking away on his mouse, traveling with his back to me,
said, “Okay.”

  “And you’re making dinner.”

  That got him to turn around. “What?”

  “I thought I’d let you make dinner tonight.”

  “I never make dinner.”

  “Then all the more reason to start. I got some frozen stuff. It’ll be simple.”

  “Why aren’t you making dinner? Dad always made dinner.”

  “I’ve got a job, too,” I said. “You’ve got yours, and I’ve got mine. I’ve got calls to make, and I may have to bring back some of my stuff from Burlington—”

  “Vermont.”

  “Right, from Burlington, Vermont, so I can work here while we sort things out.”

  “Sort things out,” Thomas said quietly.

  “That’s right. I’ll walk you through it. How to put the oven on, all that stuff. But you’ll need to come down around five.”

  I treasured Thomas’s shell-shocked expression as I closed the door.

  Almost on cue, my cell rang. It was my agent, Jeremy Chandler, who’d been fielding job inquiries for me for the last ten years.

  “I’ve got three jobs here for you but it’s not like the Sistine Chapel is asking you to paint a ceiling and you’ve got forty years to do it. These are magazines and one Web site, Ray, with deadlines. Looming deadlines. If you can’t do the work, I need to know now so I can farm these jobs out to other artists who, while not nearly as gifted as yourself, are clearly much hungrier.”

  “I told you, I’m at my father’s place.”

  “Oh shit, yeah, I forgot. He died, right?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what he did.”

  “So, the funeral and all that stuff, is that over?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be back in your studio when, exactly?”

  “I have some stuff to deal with, Jeremy. I might have to set up a makeshift studio here temporarily.”

  “Good idea. Otherwise, I’ll have to get Tarlington for these illustrations.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “The guy paints with his feet. His Obamas look like Bill Cosby. Every black guy he does looks like Bill Cosby.”

  “Look, if you can’t take the job, you don’t get to criticize. Did I tell you, I heard from Vachon’s people?”

  “Jesus.” Carlo Vachon, a noted Brooklyn crime family boss, was facing a slew of possible indictments on everything from murder to unpaid parking tickets. I’d been commissioned by a New York magazine to do a drawing of him in which I’d exaggerated all his physical features, particularly his girth, as he held a gun to the Statue of Liberty. In my version, she had both her arms in the air.

  I was breaking out in an instant sweat. “Is there a hit out on me?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. Apparently he loved the illustration and he wants to buy the original. The thing is with these mob guys, they love the attention, even when it’s not exactly positive.”

  “You have the original?”

  “I do.”

  “Send it. No charge,” I said.

  “Done. But that’s not even why I called.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a new site about to start up. It’s got backing from some very big people, and they want to take on HuffPo, but they want something different, and I said to them, what about an animated political cartoon, kind of like those ones on The New Yorker Web site. Ten seconds long, but the animation is actually kept to a minimum. You create movement by panning across the image and—”

  “I get how it could be done,” I said. “You mentioned me?”

  “I didn’t even have to. They came to me. This woman who’s setting it up, her name’s Kathleen Ford. Got financial backing like you wouldn’t believe. Lots of media money. She wants to have a sit-down with you ASAP.”

  “Okay, but right now I—”

  There was a knock at the front door. A solid, purposeful, somebody-means-business kind of knock. I hadn’t heard a car pull up, but Jeremy did tend to talk as though he was trying to drown out a 747, even when there wasn’t one in the vicinity.

  “Someone’s here,” I said.

  “Ray, this is huge. You’ve got to meet with this woman. It’s major bucks.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  I left the phone on the kitchen table and went to the door.

  There were two of them standing there on the porch, a black sedan parked behind my Audi, blocking it in, I supposed, should I decide to make a run for it. A man and a woman, both in their forties, both dressed in shades of gray. Both in suits, although his came with a narrow, businesslike tie.

  “Mr. Kilbride?” the woman asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Agent Parker, and this is Agent Driscoll.”

  “Huh?”

  “FBI,” she said sternly.

  THIRTEEN

  BRIDGET Sawchuck believes that if she’s going to have to discuss her situation with her husband’s closest friend and chief adviser, Howard Talliman, it better be in a public place. Maybe he’ll be able to resist the temptation to throttle her if there are witnesses, although she isn’t one hundred percent sure that will save her. She invites him to lunch at the Union Square Café, booking a table for one o’clock.

  Talliman has been Morris Sawchuck’s best friend since God was a boy. They went to Harvard together, got drunk together, practiced law together, vacationed together, probably even got laid together on a joint trip to Japan a couple of years after Geraldine died. Howard, very early on, began working behind the scenes on political campaigns—Republican, Democrat, didn’t matter. Only winning mattered. If a hockey player could be traded from the Rangers to the Bruins, then slam his former teammates into the boards, Talliman could formulate strategy for any party that was willing to pay his price. He’s never wanted to be the candidate. He is short and paunchy, and says he has the sex appeal of a garden gnome, but he knows how to play the political game from behind the bench and turn others into winners.

  “You can take this as far as you want to go,” Howard told Morris more than a decade ago. “The only thing that limits you is your own ambition. If you’ve got enough of it, it’ll take you right to the top. But you have to build in increments. A tough prosecutor, then an attorney general—you start drawing a line and see where it takes you. It takes you right to the fucking top, that’s where it takes you.”

  Howard Talliman mixes the Kool-Aid, and Morris drinks it.

  All the hard work is paying off. Big time. Morris is surely headed to the governor’s mansion, and who knows where the hell he’ll go after that?

  As proud as Howard is of shaping his best friend into a political star, it was finding him a new, beautiful young wife to stand at his side during victory speeches that really puffs him up. He’d encountered Bridget at the PR firm he had hired on behalf of another client, a circuit court judge who’d found himself with his nuts in a vise after his son was arrested for running a meth lab out of the judge’s summer place in New Hampshire. The moment Howard saw her he knew she’d look perfect standing next to Morris at every campaign stop across the state of New York. She was sexy in a Michelle Obama–Jackie O kind of way. Statuesque, long neck, nice figure but not too busty. Poise to spare.

  Howard, Bridget realizes now, maneuvered Morris and her together without their even knowing it at the time. He brought her in to organize that kids’ baseball diamond fund-raiser, which put Bridget and Morris together at the same place at the same time. Howard made the introductions, whispered into each of their ears that the one was interested in the other.

  Machiavelli with a little Cupid’s arrow, that’s what Howard was.

  But there was something there. Within a week, Bridget found herself sprawled across the backseat of Sawchuck’s limo, belts unbuckling, snaps unsnapping, a would-be governor’s head between her legs.

  A lot of fun, even if Bridget has not always been, strictly speaking, exclusively heterosexual. But what the hell. Once she found out the kind of life she was looking at, hooking up with som
eone like Morris Sawchuck, she figured she could play on just the one team forever.

  Didn’t turn out to be the case, but that realization didn’t dawn on her until after she and Morris were married.

  Not that Allison was her first time falling off the hetero wagon. But she was the first one Bridget had slipped away with for a few days. She didn’t consider it serious, and Allison didn’t appear to, either. Bridget hadn’t used her real name—made sure Allison never saw her passport—and stuck with the oversized sunglasses and sun hat whenever they were out and about. The truth was, even though people spotted her husband in public and sometimes even asked for his autograph, very few recognized her when she was on her own. Sure, men noticed her, and women, too, for any number of reasons. But people didn’t look her up and down because of who she was, only because of what she was: gorgeous.

  And now Bridget’s in trouble.

  She glances at the café menu, and when she looks up, there he is.

  “Bridget,” he says, bending down and giving her an air kiss on the cheek. “You look delicious, as always. Good enough to eat with a spoon.”

  “And you look wonderful.”

  “Oh please. When I was coming past the bar I heard someone whisper that they just saw Danny DeVito.”

  Bridget laughs awkwardly as Howard settles into his chair across from her. She can see it in his face. He knows something is up. He wouldn’t be where he is now without being able to read people.

  Although he never read her right. Not when he met her. If he had, well, they wouldn’t be where they are now, would they?

  “We’re going to need drinks, I suspect,” he says. “What will you have?”

  “Uh, white wine spritzer,” she says.

  Howard’s eyebrows go up. “Things can’t be that bad, then, can they? A spritzer? That’s the kind of drink you turn to when your Times shows up at the door fifteen minutes late.” He turns in his chair and catches the attention of a passing waiter. “The lady will have a white wine spritzer. Scotch neat for me. So, what’s on your mind, Bridget? I figure you didn’t bring me here to start an affair. I honestly don’t think I could squeeze one into my schedule.” Howard has never been married, and if he has any kind of love life—other than his love for political chicanery—no one is aware of it.