Decker sat back hard on the pew behind him and yanked at the wire Yslan had insisted that he wear. He reached for his cell phone, hit reply, and begged for Seth to pick up.
The phone rang as it flew through the cold Vancouver Island air and even rang as it hit the incoming wave.
Seth turned his back and walked toward his car thinking. Shoot me, what the fuck’s the difference.
Mac’s man didn’t shoot him—his work was done here.
The phone rang and rang and rang until the cold Pacific salt water penetrated its casing—then it rang no more.
50
AFTER
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” YSLAN ASKED.
Decker’s face was stained with tears, he was freezing cold, and the dark space in front of him between the two synagogue galleries was begging him to jump and be done with the whole thing.
“Mr. Roberts? Decker?”
He felt the metal object heavy in his hand and the blood running through his fingers—and he was vomiting, his body throwing the adrenaline from itself in convulsive waves. His heart was racing.
Yslan was by his side, ignoring the bile and vomit and insisting, “Breathe Decker, breathe or you’ll have a heart attack and die on me right here. Come on, Decker, surely this is the last place on earth you want to die.”
Decker looked at her. What did she mean by that? How much does she really know?
Decker turned and saw Henry-Clay being read his rights by two burly feds while dozens of others rounded up the rest of Yolles’ men. On the far side Decker saw Mr. T leading Steven in handcuffs. The young man was staggering, his eyes glazed, a light sheen of spittle at the sides of his mouth.
“What happened to—”
“We’re not sure; he had a seizure or something. We’ll get him to a hospital. We needed him to lead us to you.”
“But—”
“We’ll get him to a hospital, I told you that.”
“Tell Ted Knight to do it now.”
“Who?”
“White hair, prissy—Ted Knight.”
“What?”
“Mary Tyler Moore—never mind.”
“I’ll google it and figure out what the hell you’re talking about.”
Steven suddenly fell to the ground. “Please get him to a hospital.”
Yslan ordered it and Steven was carried out of the building.
Decker stood, reached beneath his shirt, and pulled off the wire Yslan had taped to his chest in the alley. He tried to clean his jacket, then he took the thing off and threw it over the balcony. A squawk from down below.
Yslan leaned over and commanded, “Shut it!”
And silence followed.
“Would Yolles…”
“Have murdered you? That’s a possibility, but I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“It’s your job to keep me safe.”
“Yeah, my job, Mr. Roberts. I’m you’re guardian angel.”
Images of a grotesque angel with a flaming sword at the gates filled Decker’s head. “So what happens to him now?”
Yslan stood and Decker watched her.
“You suddenly deaf? What happens to him now?”
Yslan turned back to him. “We scare him—create as much bad publicity as we can, then cut him loose.”
“What?”
“Think, Mr. Roberts. What exactly did he do that was against the law?”
“The placebos are a form of fraud.”
“Accepted medical practice.”
“But at that ratio? At eight percent sure, but not at almost thirty-five percent.”
“It might be the right ratio—it’s to be determined.”
“He murdered Mike…”
“Did he? Who saw him do that?”
“Well he didn’t do it himself, he had someone do it for him. He’s rich…”
“…and rich guys never get their hands dirty. In this case he covers his tracks. MacMillan probably did it, but he’d serve four life sentences before he ratted out his boss—he’s Irish,” she said the last with a smirk.
“Probably Scottish.”
“Who cares?”
“Not fucking me.” Decker was suddenly screaming. “He threatened me! He burned down my damned house…”
“Enough, Mr. Roberts. You threatened him too. You drew him here in the middle of the night. We’ll hold him for as long as we can. Maybe we can get him a biker roommate for a few charming evenings, but I doubt it. He’s already lawyered up. I doubt he’ll even spend the night enjoying the hospitality of the city of Cincinnati.”
“And my house?”
“Canada’s problem.”
“So he can come after me anytime he wants?”
Yslan thought about that and finally said, “Do you know the strategy of containment?”
“You mean the one that worked for forty years against the Soviets but that Bush didn’t think was good enough to use against Saddam? That containment strategy?”
“Glad to see you haven’t lost your caustic sense of humour.”
“That one, Hicksy?”
“Don’t call me that. But yes, that one.”
“And how do I contain Henry-Clay Yolles?”
“With the threat of using your voiceover that opens each episode of your show to expose him.”
Decker nodded, then his face darkened.
“What?” she asked.
“What happens if the show fails?”
“You mean it gets cancelled?”
“You know that’s what I mean.”
“Well, according to a brief study on my part, nothing at CBC has played for more than two seasons—except for that stupid dog show and the even stupider fisherman show—but those were back in the sixties. So I think you have Mr. Yolles under control for at most two years—assuming your show runs that long.”
“I’ll never use it because he’d cut off Seth’s treatment. And he knows it.”
“True. Well, it would have been nice if you’d shared that bit of information about your son with me.”
“I didn’t know it myself.”
She looked at him closely. “What else haven’t you told me, Mr. Roberts?”
He took a deep breath and looked away. There was a lot he hadn’t told her—and a few things he didn’t know enough about to tell her even if he’d wanted to.
“Listen, my job is to keep you safe.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you’ve said.”
“That’s my job.”
“And to use me.”
“Have I used you yet?”
“Your ‘yet’ is duly…” but he didn’t continue because Emerson Remi, accompanied by a full camera crew, bullied his way into the synagogue. Decker’s mind raced back to his brief encounter with this man—the feeling of terrible disorientation when he was near Mr. Remi. Decker knew beyond knowing that Emerson Remi was like him—a hider, someone in the fog with access to the other world. But not necessarily a friend, let alone an ally. No doubt there were friends and foes in that other world just as there were in this one.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“We spotted a guy casing your old home in Toronto—the one you grew up in on Strathallan.” She showed him the photo of Garreth Sr. “Do you know him?”
Decker shook his head.
“Come on, Mr. Roberts, who the fuck is this?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, until we figure it out, you’re with me—ball and chain.”
“Can I go home?”
“And where exactly—exactly—would that be, Mr. Roberts?”
Their eyes locked. He knew—and she knew—that she wasn’t asking about a physical place. Decker felt her gaze pierce his defenses and probe for an answer to that most invasive of questions. Finally he said, “Can I go back to the Junction?”
“Nope.”
“What…”
“You can’t go back to the Junction. We can go back to the Junction.”
51
HOME?
EIGHTEEN HOURS AND $435 LATER, DECKER AND YSLAN stepped off an Air Canada flight after a five-hour layover in Chicago—to a frigid Toronto evening.
Without bags they quickly got to Immigration, where Yslan momentarily disappeared, only to reappear on the other side of the counter, where she waited for Decker.
“Professional courtesy?” Decker asked.
“You could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“Logical cooperation with a fellow law-enforcement officer.”
“Our guys do that?”
“We share a border.”
“Yeah, I know, the longest undefended…”
Yslan laughed.
“I said something funny?”
“That border’s defended, boyo—you’d better believe that. Let’s go, you’re with me. I’ve got us hotel rooms.”
“Something fancy?”
“Hardly. The U.S. government doesn’t do fancy.”
The old hotel on Lakeshore wasn’t fancy. The constant din of the traffic rattled the walls—when trucks passed the lamp on Decker’s small desk literally hopped up and down. Decker didn’t sleep much that night.
The next morning Yslan entered his room without knocking and threw him the keys to his Passat. Before he could ask where the fuck she’d gotten those, she said, “We’re everywhere you wanna be, Mr. Roberts. Oh yeah, I forgot.”
She tossed him a thick envelope.
He caught it and recognized his own handwriting and the address on Fifty-eighth Street in New York City. He opened it and saw all the money.
“Four thousand two hundred and ninety dollars, Mr. Roberts, which I believe belongs to you. Go ahead and count it if you want.”
“Thanks but I trust…”
“…that all the money’s there. Swell.”
He put the envelope on the table between them. “I don’t like being in your debt.”
She pushed it back to him. “Tough. You owe me, Decker Roberts.”
He didn’t like the smile on her face. “And I assume you’ll come knocking at my door to collect some day.”
“Someday soon, Mr. Roberts, because in this world nothing is free. Be back here by four o’clock.”
“Or else you’ll send the Mounties?”
“The guys in the cute red suits and funny hats? Nah. I’ll send someone you’ve never seen before—and you’ll never know what hit you.” She turned and was gone. Decker looked out the window—the snow was horizontal coming off the lake.
LEENA
“You’re not telling me everything,” she sighed. “Of course you’re not telling me everything—you don’t tell anyone everything, do you, Decker?”
“Is the truth a defense?”
“Against what?” She sat at his table. “Tell me, Decker, tell me as much as you can.”
And Decker did. How he didn’t know where else to go. Who else to trust. How his house had been burnt to the ground. Trish and his TV show. Theo and their research. Eddie and his access to almost everything that was Decker.
She listened carefully as Decker’s trembling hands rearranged the plates and cutlery on the table. Finally she reached across and grabbed his hand. “Don’t do that!” Leena’s voice was strong—it centred him. “Work from where you are now—sitting across from an old girlfriend. Work backward, Decker. Isn’t that what you tell actors to do? Chart backward—isn’t that the Roberts method?”
Decker’s eyes looked wildly about him.
“You’re sitting here talking to me, Decker. Now how the hell did you get here?”
TRISH
Later that afternoon Decker slid into the booth at Rancho Relaxo beside Trish. He was happy to find her young man free—and she was strangely happy to see him.
“You okay? I was worried about you, Decker.”
“Why worried?”
“You were gone a long time—no phone calls.”
“One.”
“Yeah, and that was fuckin’ weird, even for you.”
“Point taken.”
She put the scripts for episodes five and six on the table. “Great stuff. That hanging—really great.”
Decker riffled through the first script. His eyes quickly caught banal sentence after banal sentence. “We couldn’t get real writers…”
“Once we’re successful we can ditch the network’s hacks and bring on novelists like you wanted.”
He pushed the scripts aside.
“You okay, Decker?”
After a hesitation, he said, “I don’t know.”
“Can I help?”
“I don’t know that either.”
She shrugged her shoulders—strong, handsome shoulders. “I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
Decker didn’t know what to do with that. He was used to being the one who helped, not the one who received assistance. So he just smiled.
“Drink with me, Decker.”
He had one but declined a second. As he gently removed her hand from his and kissed her on the forehead she said, “I’m lonely.”
He wanted to say “The world’s lonely” but instead said, “Someone important will come along and see how very, very special you are, Trish.” He got up. Put the keys to Trish’s apartment that she had given him on the table.
“No,” she said, flipping them back at him. “Keep them. Never know when you’ll need them—or I’ll need you to have them.”
He pocketed the keys and waved good-bye as he headed toward the exit.
THEO
When Decker entered the store, Theo was thumbing through some old copies of Playboy. “Changing your orientation, Theo?”
Theo pursed his lips and then stuck out his tongue. It was vaguely blue.
“Looking up a Gahan Wilson cartoon series.”
“Which one?”
“Great farts of history. Here’s number six in the series.” He turned the magazine to face Decker. The cartoon took up a whole page. In it a large men’s club reading room had dozens of sprawled figures of wealthy men clearly dead. Way over to one side a little old guy sat with a big smile on his face and a carton of takeout Chinese in his hand.
Probably General Tso’s chicken, Decker thought as his mind ran back to Mike’s apartment in Cincinnati.
Theo looked at his friend then snapped his fingers centimeters from Decker’s nose. “Earth to Decker. Earth to Decker.”
“Sorry, Theo.”
“So has the traveler returned?”
“Yes. I’m back, Theo.”
“Where were you?”
“In the States.”
“Any news from the evangelical right you’d care to share?”
“Yeah the Tea Party guys want you down there right away—they need an old gay guy to rob a bank while assaulting choirboys and advocating for socialized medicine.”
“Ah, a modern-day Willie Horton. I’d make a great poster boy.”
Both of them stopped. The shared image of the dead gay boy hung on the lamppost on Annette rose in both their minds—and killed any sense of bonhomie. It was their unique folie à deux.
Theo began to cough.
Decker offered a hand, but Theo pushed him aside and took out a small vial of pills. He popped one, closed his eyes—and the coughing stopped.
“Theo!”
“These are new. They work, but they turn my tongue blue and give me record-setting gas.” He returned to his Playboy search, then he added, “For now. Now they work. Now that they are new, they work.”
YSLAN
“It’s open,” Yslan called out in response to Decker’s knock on the door of her Lakeshore hotel room. It was just before four in the afternoon. She was fresh from a long run along Lake Ontario and just emerging from a shower, her thin frame flowing easily inside the hotel’s white terry-cloth robe, a towel around her hair.
“It’s not so pretty,” she said, rubbing the towel against her scalp.
“What’s not so pretty?”
; “The lake.”
“At least it’s cleaner now.”
“Toronto doesn’t deal with its lake like Chicago does.”
“To say the least.”
“I mean, folks here know they’re living on the shore of a big lake, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but this is a mercantile city. It’s always been that. The lake was good for business in the beginning—and easy to put roads next to.”
“Yeah, but those easy roads cut the city off from the lake.”
“I guess.”
“Sorta dumb, don’t you think?”
“Just practical.”
“Explain Avenue Road.”
“You lost me.”
“There’s a major street in this town called Avenue Road, isn’t there?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Avenue Road? What kind of name is that for a street? Why not Boulevard Street or Lane Crescent?”
“I guess they didn’t want to offend anyone.”
“What?”
“This town’s into that too—not offending. So maybe there was a battle over the name and they came up with the compromise.”
“Avenue Road as a compromise?”
“Yeah—pretty inoffensive.”
“Pretty ball-less if you ask me.” Yslan removed the towel from her head and shook out her hair in Decker’s direction. Misted drops—what Cape Towners call moth’s breath—surrounded him.
Yslan turned away, then pointed to a brown envelope on the coffee table. “For you.”
Decker opened it. A new Visa card fell out first, followed by a note from the TD Bank reinstating his loan, then a municipal order rescinding the condemning of the building housing his acting studio.
Decker looked up.
Yslan was in the bathroom. The door was ajar. She was three quarters back to him and had pulled down the top of the robe. He could the see the curve of one breast. He pulled his eyes away and said, “You do good work.”
“Thanks,” she said, pulling on a blouse then a fresh pair of sweatpants as she came out of the bathroom and walked up to him. For a second Decker thought she was going to put her arms around his neck. But she didn’t. “So Yolles had MacMillan burn down your house.”
“You mean try to kill me.”
The Placebo Effect Page 27
