Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller)

by M. C. Soutter

  “You and every other man in this building.”

  “Do you know her? About her?”

  Jean shook his head sadly. “Not really. She’s only been here a year. We’re friendly enough, but we’ve never had a real sit-down. Not the way I’d like. I tried to corner her last week, in between all those pre-year meetings. We chatted a little, and I asked if she was single. Just because it’s a hot topic, you understand. But she got grumpy about it. I couldn’t get a straight answer.” Jean shrugged. “I don’t know. At first I thought I had made her uncomfortable, maybe she thought I was asking for me – can you imagine? – but Beck’s no fool, so it couldn’t have been that. Maybe it’s something on the sly. She sure acts like somebody who’s got somebody, you know? She smiles all nice-nice at everyone, but never too nice.”

  Kevin nodded. He was on the point of asking something else when he caught a flash of light green from one of the far doorways.

  “Ah,” Jean said, as if he had spotted a rare species of hummingbird. “There she is.”

  They watched her cross the room, her head up, that easy smile on her face. And those bright eyes. With so many other eyes in the room watching. Some in secret, some with open, unabashed eagerness. Without taking his own eyes off of her, Kevin turned and spoke to Jean in a whisper. “How do I do it?” he asked. He was speaking urgently, as though he needed to have an answer before Emily reached the food line. “How do I get her?”

  Jean snorted. “Don’t ask me. You’re the new meat in town, make it work for you. You’re good meat, too, and don’t forget it. You’ve got a better chance than most, if there’s a chance to be had. Take her dancing or something.”

  Kevin turned to face Jean with an expression of disdain.

  Look at me, he tried to say with his eyes. I’m light on my feet, but not that light. Dancing? Be realistic.

  Jean stared back at him, unwavering. If he had received any of Kevin’s message, then the response was:

  Don’t give me that. Take her by the hand, bring her onto the floor, and spin her around a few times. It’s what she wants.

  “Go sit with her so that I can sit down with you,” Kevin whispered, ending their stare-off.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?”

  “I don’t know. Pressuring me to put on high-heeled dancing shoes.”

  “They’d look good. Show off your butt.”

  “Okay. Now you’re making me uncomfortable.”

  “They would.”

  “Sexual harassment. Right here.”

  “I’m going to go sit down now.”

  “Good.”

  As If He Weren’t There

  Jean played his role as well as he could, but in the end it made no difference. Emily Beck somehow managed to sit at the same table with Kevin Brooks and yet behave as though she were barely aware of him at all. She was as polite as could be: she said hello, she smiled her smile. And then it was as if he weren’t there. Not that he could claim she was ignoring him. If he said something, she turned to face him. She listened and nodded and then carried the conversation forward from there. But her eyes, her luminous eyes, never seemed truly locked onto his; they would touch down on his face gently, briefly, so that he could barely feel their weight, and then those eyes moved on, flew on, they went searching for a resting spot that would somehow be more suitable. More welcoming.

  Though Kevin could not imagine what he was doing wrong.

  When he came out onto the sidewalk at the end of the day he was still thinking about it, still wondering if he had imagined the strained atmosphere, the way his stomach seemed to turn the wrong direction every time she looked the other way. It hadn’t been that bad. After all, hadn’t he planned to be just an ordinary person, a normal person having a normal lunch? If he had said something strange or offensive, yes, that would have gotten her attention. But then he would have had to start from scratch on Monday. Then he would have had to atone not only for being foul-smelling, but obnoxious as well.

  At least now she knew he was safe. He smelled a bit of man-sweat, apparently, but according to Jean, that was fine. New-meat fine. And he wasn’t prone to saying stupid things. He was not obnoxious. Two for two. Very good.

  So why do I feel as though I just flunked a job interview?

  He turned and headed for home. He had a schedule to keep, a schedule that the wise and caring Dr. Petak had recommended, and that schedule would not allow for this kind of self-indulgent rumination. He still had to socialize, exercise, eat again, rest again, and so on and so on until his system was back to normal.

  After next week, he promised himself. Then you can stew about this business all you like.

  As he walked away from the school, Kevin passed two uniformed police officers walking the other direction, and he gave them a little nod. They nodded back. They were squad mates of the late Officer John Hulse, who had been run down in broad daylight two days ago in a hit and run. What looked like a hit and run. A Ford truck matching the description of the one at the scene had been found abandoned just three blocks from the accident, motor still running. Which would make sense for the panicked driver of a hit and run involving a uniformed cop.

  Just get out and go. Run away. Don’t look back. Move to Canada.

  But when they ran the plates, they came up with nothing. The plates were fake. And fake plates didn’t sound like panic at all. Fake plates sounded like a plan.

  Which was why there were now two officers on this beat today instead of just one. They’d be walking this beat for several days, maybe several weeks. Tracking down leads, tracking down hunches. They passed the school and continued on their way, heading toward those painters taking a break outside the three white vans parked near the end of the street. The officers didn’t expect to get anything useful from the painters, but they would ask a few questions just in case.

  Just to be thorough.

  An Actual Hold-Up

  That night, Kevin could barely wait for his reading time. He stopped into the restaurant where Danny said the teachers would be, but not for more than a half-hour. And yes, he took his run in the park and then let Andrew stuff him full of food, but all of it seemed like a distraction, a necessary set of duties that kept him faithfully following Petak’s advice.

  At his core, he just wanted to get to the books. And to the couch.

  Get ready.

  “Right, that’s my plan,” Kevin said, addressing the bookcase now as if it were the source of the voice. It was still there, that voice – it hadn’t left his head completely, as he thought it might have done this morning – but Kevin believed the tone had shifted noticeably. It was still insistent, still urgent; but the voice was no longer panicked. No longer paranoid.

  “I’m going to need some more stacks over here, Andrew.”

  “On my way.”

  When they were finished, nearly fifty titles had been placed in neatly spaced collections by the head of the large couch. Kevin saw Andrew’s eyes going over the stacks, then scanning the spare living room floor.

  “I’ll try to be neater this time,” Kevin said, though he wasn’t sure this was true. He had no idea who was in charge of things – in charge of him – while he was reading. He might as well have promised not to rumple the sheets of a bed in which he was sleeping.

  “I was only looking at the rug, wondering about its country of origin,” Andrew said smoothly. He cleared his throat, ashamed at the inelegance of the lie. “I’ll come get you at 6 AM again?”

  “Please.”

  Kevin settled himself down onto the couch. It was only now beginning to get dark outside the windows, but he knew Andrew would be walking around pulling the curtains soon; the light wouldn’t matter. He picked up the first book on the nearest pile.

  The Stuff of Thought, by Thomas Pinker, he read to himself. All right, Mr. Pinker, show me what you’ve got. Keep me occupied for more than ten minutes and you win a big red balloon.

  He opened the first page, let his head fall back onto the lar
ge cushion behind him, and began to read. The room went gray around him.

  Kevin sat up suddenly. The book in his hands, The Atlas of Emergency Medicine, Third Edition, went sliding to the floor.

  “What?”

  He was on the verge of reaching over to retrieve the book when he realized abruptly that he didn’t want to. His mind was quiet, and his body felt rested. He wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. He needed conversation. Interaction.

  Petak warned me. Socialize. Like a normal person. I thought half an hour at a bar would do it, but that’s ridiculous.

  He slipped on his shoes and walked carefully to the elevator, hoping not to wake Andrew. He didn’t need to check the clock on his fancy cell phone; the dark silence coming from the living room windows told him it was sometime in the middle of the night. When he reached the first floor he walked through the lobby and then stepped out into the warm, quiet city night. Then he paused.

  Where to find someone to chat with?

  Not here, not with the slack-jawed, sleep-deprived doorman who had just let him out. And certainly not in some bar; he wasn’t falling into that trap again.

  He turned east toward Lexington. There was one person he knew would be up at this hour – whatever this hour might be – and this person would be not only up and awake but alert, would be grinning and ready to talk and maybe even doing a little dance, moving his arms in small circles.

  Kevin walked into the delicatessen with the large yellow awning outside, and the wiry Latino man was there. Just where he had been every night this week. Maybe he had been there since Kevin was in high school. He was thin and brown and ageless, with closely-cropped gray hair and tiny ears. As before, he was standing behind the counter reading a paper, rocking his body gently side to side with the sound of the music coming from somewhere in the back of the store. He looked up when Kevin came in, and this time his smile was wide and immediate, welcome, so good to see you again, what can I get you tonight, more sleeping pills or more Vodka, or maybe even a shot of something stronger?

  Kevin smiled back, hoping the shopkeeper didn’t think he was an addict of some kind. Then again, this man didn’t look like the sort of person who passed judgment too quickly.

  Running an all-night store in the middle of Manhattan probably gives you a good perspective on things, Kevin thought.

  The man watched him, still smiling that broad smile, waiting to see if a request would be forthcoming. He was ready to serve. Kevin hesitated, suddenly aware that he had no idea where to begin. He just wanted to talk. About anything. But the shopkeeper had his routine already in place; he had his Samba music and his newspaper, and maybe he wouldn’t want to talk. Maybe his English wasn’t even that good.

  Kevin had a sudden thought. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to put the right book in front of his mind’s eye. Then he looked back at the man and spoke quickly, careful not to listen to his own words. “You own this store? How long have you been here?”

  The shopkeeper’s eyes brightened, and his arms stopped their rhythmic rotations. He cocked his head to the side. “That’s good,” he said in English, and Kevin felt a small mental jolt as he was knocked out of his Spanish groove. The man’s English was passable, though far from perfect. “I understand you,” he continued, “but I’m Brazilian. You speak Portuguese?”

  Kevin opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked around the store as if he were searching for a Portuguese dictionary. “I don’t know if – ” He stopped again. Then he shrugged. “Can you say something to me in Portuguese?”

  “Sure. What’s wrong, can’t sleep?”

  Kevin looked back blankly at him. He was confused. “Yes, I’m up all the time. But wait, are you going to say something in – ”

  The man’s laughter interrupted him, a hooting, gleeful sound that filled the little store like a new song. “That is atrocious,” the man said in between hoots. “That’s the worst Portuguese accent I have ever heard. Where did you learn that?”

  Kevin exhaled with relief. He had read a book on this man’s language. Whether the night before or within the last several hours, it would have been impossible to say. But Kevin didn’t care. The conversation had begun. It was maybe going to be a conversation focused on his phonetic butchering of the Brazilian tongue, but he could live with that. He was making a friend. “I took a course,” he explained. “On-line.”

  “Wow. For what?”

  “Um.” This was a question Kevin wasn’t prepared for. “I don’t know,” he said. “For a girl.”

  The man’s expression turned a shade more serious, and he nodded knowingly. This, it seemed, was exactly the right response. Kevin made a mental note to use “for a girl” or “because of a girl” as the answer to a wide range of otherwise unanswerable questions that might come up in the conversation.

  What was all that Vodka for two nights ago?

  How come you’re having trouble sleeping?

  Why are so many politicians in hot water these days?

  It was, Kevin decided, a response with broad cross-over capacity. The man leaned over the counter and reached out a hand. “Alexi,” he said.

  “Kevin.” They shook hands.

  “And did you get her?”

  “Who? Oh, the girl. No, not yet.”

  Alexi stood back. He put up his lean brown hands, shaking them above his head in shock and sympathetic outrage. “But you speak Portuguese! You speak it very well. The accent is American, yes. The accent is heavy. But this is real effort on your part. She doesn’t see it? What is the problem?”

  “Oh. Well, she – ”

  Kevin stopped again. Now they were heading down a path he didn’t want to travel. He hadn’t learned Portuguese for a girl, after all. He had just… learned it. For the same reason he had learned all about hand guns and diesel engines and artillery and electrical engineering and hand grenades and God knew what else. For no reason at all. Simply because he needed to. Because it was the only way he knew how to get calm, how to rest. How to make that relentless voice leave him alone about getting ready all the time. Yes, there was a girl. And yes, it was true he had not made much progress with her. Had barely talked to her, as a matter of fact. But that wasn’t because she was ignoring any grand gestures on his part; he hadn’t written her a song or tried to decorate her classroom door with rose petals. There was really nothing to tell.

  So now he worried he would end up having to create a whole fiction for Alexi, a story about unrequited love, a story that didn’t exist. It wouldn’t ring true.

  But Kevin’s new friend was not pushy. He sensed the discomfort, saw the hesitation, and he assumed he had touched a sensitive spot. He closed his eyes and shook his head quickly, dismissing the topic as though it were distasteful, as though it were not worthy of their time. “No, come over here,” he said, with a beckoning wave. “You sit on the stool over here, sit as long as you like. You’re big, you’ll scare away the late-night robbers. We will chat. We will talk about sports and politics and whatever you like. Until you are ready to go back to sleep. Okay?”

  Kevin nodded. The man was incredibly kind and welcoming – they had been virtual strangers until three minutes ago – and now he was offering exactly what Kevin had been hoping for when he came into this store. Some easy social time. Some normalcy, relatively speaking. He would have settled for two minutes of banter about the uncommonly warm September weather.

  He walked behind the counter, and now Alexi was leaning over, reaching down to a large horizontal freezer/fridge under the register. “Here, for you,” he said, sliding the door open. “I keep these for myself, for the dead times when I know there will be no one coming through the door for hours at a time.” He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer. He was in the act of handing it over to Kevin when he frowned. He pulled the bottle back. “It’s warm,” he said. He put the bottle on the counter, reached back down, and slid the door open again. He ducked his head inside the opening as though he were bobbing for
a carton of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. When he came back up his face was tight with frustration. “They just fixed this one,” he said, putting a hand over his eyes. “I use it to store overflow. So expensive, these people. And they fix nothing.”

  Kevin was silent for a minute, thinking.

  “Hold on a second,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Alexi looked questioningly at him, but Kevin was already out the door. He jogged back to his building, rode up the elevator, and as soon as he was in his apartment he went straight to the bookcase.

  I saw it here, he thought. I know I did. But I haven’t read it yet, I can tell.

  After another moment he found what he was looking for, high up in the second-to-last shelf in the corner. He took it out and then walked back to the apartment entryway, where he sat down in the one wooden chair by the front table. He didn’t want to pick up any more books without meaning to.