The Placebo Effect

by David Rotenberg

  “Ain’t he a terrorist now?”

  A believer, Decker thought, not a terrorist, but he said nothing.

  “Don’t do that.”

  Decker quickly put the stack of books back on the floor. “Sorry, Theo.”

  “I like the mess here exactly the way it is, so don’t move things, don’t try to impose your sense of order on my things, Decker.”

  “Okay, I’m—”

  “Sorry, yeah, you said that—always moving stuff around. What is that, anyway?”

  “I won’t do it again.”

  The dingy little gay man was the owner of the Junction’s best used-book shop and the area’s foremost amateur historian—and Decker’s friend and coresearcher on the documentary.

  They went down the aisles narrowed by thousands of used books, some on shelves, many simply stacked on the floor, passed rotting cardboard boxes of old cassettes from which Decker had first heard John le Carré read his novels, then racks of yesteryear’s porn rags with the genteel appellation of gentlemen’s magazines—as if women’s magazines had pictures of naked men flaunting their parts. Then down a steep set of stairs made narrow by six-foot-high stacks of books on either side.

  “Trish thinks we need more mystery for episodes five through eight.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? As in you have something mysterious?”

  “Yep. I found a real oddity in the amalgamation between the Junction and the city. A fact that doesn’t align.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “One of the police cases in the Junction didn’t make it onto the police blotters of the amalgamated city police force.”

  “Clerical error?”

  “It’s possible, but it was the only pending police investigation in the Junction that didn’t survive the amalgamation.”

  “What kind of—”

  “A public lynching.”

  Decker looked at him sharply.

  “Of a boy.”

  “In the Junction?”

  “At the corner of Annette and Mavety—just around the corner.”

  “And there’s no mention of the crime on the city’s records after the merger?”

  “I’ve checked and rechecked and there’s no mention of it—anywhere. The crime just went away. Just like that.” Theo snapped his fingers. They made no sound.

  “Things do get misplaced in a merger,” Decker said.

  “Or mergers are arranged so things can get misplaced. We always wondered why the Junction bothered to join the big bad city.”

  That sat like something hot and heavy between the two men.

  “No mention of suspects in the Junction’s records, I assume?”

  “None.”

  “Details of the victim?”

  “Not much. He was a fourteen-year-old male—no distinguishing marks, nothing except that his fingernails were long and painted.”

  “A gay kid?”

  “They didn’t call us gay back then.”

  Decker thought about that. Theo seldom talked about his sexual orientation.

  Then Theo asked, “What reaction would a fine upstanding Junction family have if one of their own was smitten by one of mine?”

  “It would have to be a powerful family to have bought all that silence for all these years so that all that remains of a boy’s entire life is one sentence in a police file.”

  “I agree.”

  Theo took a long wheezing breath and coughed up something whose colour hadn’t yet been named. The coughing suddenly increased in intensity, grabbed hold of him, shook him like a hard wind does a loose canvas sail.

  “Damn it, Theo, take a pill.”

  “They only work sometimes,” he huffed out between spasms.

  “Well maybe they’ll work now.”

  Decker reached into Theo’s shirt pocket and took out the bottle of pills, shook one out and handed it to the older man, who swallowed it dry. Theo’s breathing shallowed and slowly his cough eased.

  “See, Theo, it worked,” Decker said. “Take your damned pills, will ya.”

  Theo muttered, “Yeah, that pill—that particular pill worked. I’m telling you they don’t all work anymore. It’s like new razor blades. When they come out with a new product they’re great—actually cut the whiskers off your face. Then once people begin to buy them, they lower the quality.”

  “So you think your pills…”

  “Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck knows what’s actually in any fuckin’ pill…” Theo dried his mouth with his sleeve.

  “You okay?”

  “For now.”

  “So someone lynched a gay teenaged boy just before amalgamation.”

  “Yep.”

  “And because the case didn’t get to the city’s police blotter you assume a powerful Junction family was behind this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Write it up and get it to Trish.” He turned to go.

  “Where’re you going?”

  Decker didn’t hear the question. He was thinking about powerful families—people powerful enough to burn down his house, get his credit card cancelled and have his loan called. Powerful people he was a threat to. He and Eddie had been careful to cover his tracks, but clearly someone had found him.

  “Earth to Decker.”

  Decker stared at Theo.

  “Where—are—you—going?”

  Decker smiled, then said, “Out.”

  Theo smiled back, “Mit whom?”

  “Friends.”

  “Unt, when you comink back?”

  “Later.”

  Decker put out his hand. Theo shook it—they held each other’s hands just long enough for neither of them to know what to do next. Finally Theo withdrew his hand and said, “Safe voyage.” Then he pointed to the back door.

  Decker nodded. Polonius saying good-bye to Laertes, he thought.

  Decker used his key and entered the side door. Eddie’s house was quiet. Decker passed by the kitchen. The doll sat on the table as if it owned the place. He went to Eddie’s room where he collected the $16,290 he’d kept from his recent earnings then headed back out the side door. He thought about leaving Eddie a note, but decided against it.

  A half hour later he handed over four packages with U.S. addresses to the Chinese man who ran a post office from the back of his convenience store then headed over to Stafford Street and his studio. He went to open the door of the old building but his key wouldn’t turn the tumblers. He stepped back. It was then he saw the city notice: THIS BUILDING IS CONDEMNED.

  “And one more makes four,” he muttered as he circled around the back and accessed the rear fire escape from the top of the Dumpster. Once in the lab he bolted the door behind him and went into the small kitchen. Beneath the sink at the bottom of a stack of prop dishes, pots and pans he pulled out a plastic cutlery tray. He flipped it over. In the indented slots he’d secreted USB keys. He carefully pried them out. Each held a recording of a truth-telling session. He recorded every session, but these he had kept hidden. Eddie had warned him long ago that overhearing some information could be dangerous, and each of the sessions on these USB keys had struck him as exactly that—dangerous.

  He assumed that one of them would tell him who was behind all this.

  Holding the USB keys in his palm he added the Pittsburgh key from his pocket and reentered the studio. He set up Trish’s computer on a simple IKEA table, then slid in the first key, marked “Stanstead.” He plugged in his earphones, hit enter, listened to the voices from the past and began his search—his voyage.

  23

  STANSTEAD

  HUNKERED INTO A BORDER DIVOT OF QUEBEC’S EASTERN Townships exists a strange little community called Stanstead, Quebec. In fact, the community is so close to the U.S. border that in its only bowling alley a bowler bowls from the True North Strong and Free and hits pins in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. The community has several other odd quirks. The first is that is has a bunch of different names—Stanstead, Rock Island a
nd Beebe Plain. It also has a private school that stands in stark contrast to the pronounced poverty of the area. In the summer an exclusive girl’s hockey camp takes over the campus.

  Rich girls from Toronto and Montreal and Boston and New York City descend on this little town whose one attraction outside the hockey rink is an ice cream store. Oh yes, there is another attraction for the rich girls—the local boys. Poor boys from working (when there is work) class families with whom several of the girls develop an across-the-tracks summer dalliance. But on occasion it gets to be more than that.

  The first time Decker went to the small town he had been hired by a New York City law firm to interview a Stanstead cop. It seemed that a local boy’s love for a rich New York City girl was evidently returned by said girl, who had ended up pregnant. The girl refused to tell her father who had impregnated her, so Decker had been hired to see if the police knew which boy had done the nasty deed.

  “Stanstead’s a small town,” Decker had said.

  In response Officer Matthews had grunted—or sort of grunted. What was it with cops and grunting? But at least this fat cop was his own man. No modeling his behaviour after some bad TV actor here.

  “Is it the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business?” Decker pressed on, following the script the lawyer in New York City had given him.

  Officer Matthews shifted his considerable bulk in his wooden chair behind the cluttered desk. The chair creaked. He took a chipped coffee cup and perched it on the top of his protuberant stomach. “Nah. That’s a big city myth about us small-town folks.”

  Decker quickly shut his eyes. Random lines and swirls crossed his retina—the man was not telling the truth. “Okay.” Decker nodded. “Maybe not everyone knows everything. But a budding romance might draw a few eyes, don’t you think?”

  “Okay. I’ll buy that.”

  Decker closed his eyes—a simple, perfect square. “Did you know Carrie Kimmel, one of the girls at the hockey camp?”

  “Yep. A cute girl.”

  “Was she dating one of the town’s boys?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. She struck me as a pretty wild filly.”

  Decker had been given three names. Boys’ names. Local boys. “Was it Lawrence Allen?”

  “No.”

  Decker closed his eyes. A parallelogram. “Peter Ethan?”

  “No.”

  Two perfect triangles. “Robert Irwin?”

  “Nope.”

  Squiggly lines—Officer Matthews was not telling the truth.

  “What kind of boy is Robert Irwin?”

  After a lengthy pause Officer Matthews said, “The Irwins aren’t rich. Not many folks in Stanstead are rich, but the Irwins are good people and he’s a good boy.”

  Decker had named Robert Irwin as the probable father in his report and been paid his fee. He had put it behind him and gotten on with his life, but then, three months later, the New York City law firm contacted him again.

  Apparently the boy, Robert Irwin, disappeared—only to be found in the icy river behind the hockey rink several months later. There was a suicide note but a lot of doubt about the actual cause of death. The local police were stretched. The girls were all back in their respective cities and safe wealthy homes. The girl who was the object of the boy’s desire was somewhere in Europe—on an extended semester abroad.

  They prepared a second script for Decker. It seemed vague. “What’s the point?” Decker asked the lawyer.

  “Do you want this job or not?” the lawyer had demanded.

  Decker told them that he wasn’t comfortable working this way, but when they doubled his normal fee—well, he agreed. It was the two-year anniversary of his wife’s death and he silently promised to give the money to the ALS Association.

  The second interview of Officer Matthews was completely different than the first.

  Decker had little more than said hello than Officer Matthews tossed a photo onto the desk and turned it to face Decker. Instantly Decker’s gorge rose and he had to fight the urge to push the thing away. Just barely contained by the colour eight by ten was a teenage boy lying on his back, eyes wide, his chest bare, his mouth filled with silent horror, encased in the ice of the shallow stream behind the hockey rink.

  “Robert Irwin?” Decker managed to get out.

  “Who else?” the heavyset cop said as he inserted a hunk of chewing tobacco into his cheek and flipped on a Hank Williams CD. “Rich people never pay for their crimes.”

  Decker was stunned by his candor and completely forgot the script the lawyers had given him. “Do you mean that this wasn’t a suicide?”

  “No suicide here. One of theirs murdered one of ours. Simple as that.”

  Back in his studio Decker hit the pause icon on his computer. He stared out the window at the winter sky. He clearly recalled closing his eyes—two squares, side by side. Officer Matthews was telling the truth—at least the truth as he knew it. He double-clicked on the play icon.

  “No suicide here. One of theirs murdered one of ours. Simple as that.”

  The unabashed class anger had been something new to Decker, but before he could comment the jowly cop had continued. “That rich Jew girl loved Bobby. Wanted to leave her rich school and come live with him. Here. In Stanstead.”

  Decker allowed the Jew part of this to slide. He’d heard a lot of griping about Jews in his life that should have been aimed against rich people, not specifically Jews. He remembered being in High Park watching a kid’s baseball game. Beside him two men were bitching loudly about how expensive it was to have their kids play rep hockey. Fair enough. It was outrageously expensive. But then one said, “You know, I was at Forest Hill to watch a game and these fuckin’ Jews had their kids in fuckin’ five-hundred-dollar skates. Kids in five-hundred-dollar skates. More than I make in a week for fuckin’ skates and these…”

  Decker couldn’t resist saying, “Hey, if you went to wealthy WASP areas of the city like Leaside or Humber Valley you’d see the same thing.” For a moment a light seemed to dawn in one of the guy’s eyes, then it went out and the two walked away. It was just easier for them to blame Jews than see it as clearly as this cop saw it—rich versus poor.

  “Her family objected to the relationship?” Decker suggested.

  The cop made a dry mirthless sound that could have been a laugh. His substantial belly rose a little, challenging the strength of the buttons on his plaid shirt. “Yeah, you could call it that. They objected to their precious little cutie marrying a white-trash boy from bum-fuck Quebec.”

  Decker didn’t know what to say. Finally he blurted out, “Proof. Do you have proof?”

  The cop looked at him the way that experts always looked at dilettantes. He went to spit then decided against it. “Girl was pregnant with Bobby’s kid.”

  “Are you—”

  “Local drugstore remembers selling Carrie Kimmel a pregnancy kit. Remembers it because the girl came back for two more—and bought the only expensive one it had.”

  “But you don’t know—”

  “What the results of the test were? No, I don’t know that. I do know this, though.” He reached into his desk and pulled out an evidence bag. He smoothed the transparent surface and turned it toward Decker.

  It took Decker only a moment to realize that this was a teenage girl’s love letter. The words “Bobby, I can’t wait to have your baby” stood out like a line of blood on pale skin.

  Matthews reached across the desk and took back the evidence bag.

  “And you can’t get the American police to help with this?” Decker asked.

  “Not much love lost across this border. A lot of history still playing itself out here. During the Revolution, British supporters left the United States and many settled here. It’s why this town speaks English, not French.”

  “Yes, but United Empire Loyalists came here a long time ago.”

  “Yeah, but this is more about class than anything else. Bobby was made from cheap tin—our
little hockey princess from platinum and jade.”

  The words of an old song flew into Decker’s head: “And Billie Joe McAllister threw something off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”

  “So which rich New York City law firm sent you to see me, son?”

  Decker made up a name.

  “You’re a bad liar—don’t make it part of your profession.”

  For a moment Decker thought Officer Matthews was going to ask exactly what the fuck his profession was, but he didn’t bother pursuing that line of questioning. He lurched to his feet, hitched up his pants, turned up Hank Williams, then pointed to the office door and said, “Use it.”

  Eight hours later Decker faxed his report to his New York City employers. “Officer Matthews clearly believes that Bobby Irwin was murdered and that Carrie Kimmel was carrying his baby.”

  A package arrived at Decker’s P.O. drop box the next day, containing thirty thousand dollars in U.S. funds. Decker forwarded it anonymously to the ALS Association.

  Decker listened to the end of the recording a second time, then removed the earphones. He had intended to listen to all of the recordings and then make up his mind where to begin. But he shelved that idea as, in his mind, he heard Officer Matthews repeat, “One of theirs murdered one of ours. Simple as that.”

  Decker finally understood that he might be an accessory to a murder. First he’d identified the boy, then found out how much the Stanstead police knew about the boy’s death. He closed the laptop, slipped the other USB keys into his pocket, silently bid the safety and security of his studio good-bye and left by the interior freight elevator.

  24

  CHARLES CLEAREYES

  AROUND THE CORNER, AT POLITICA, HE DROPPED FIFTY cents into the pay phone.

  The First Nations actor, Charles Cleareyes, picked up on the first ring.

  “Sorry for calling so late.”

  “Decker?”

  “Yeah, Charles, I need a favour.”

  “Sure. I owe you.” Charles had been an extremely popular actor for several years. Then, on a whim, he cut off his waist-length black hair, and before you could say “The Lone Ranger’s a racist,” the work dried up. Charles came to Decker—a wife, two asthmatic kids, and no career. They had, carefully, together over time reinvigorated the actor who had been ignored by the business. A business that for years had cast his hair and ignored his talent. And once again, Charles Cleareyes was a popular and much-used actor.