Invisible Streets

by Toby Ball

  Macheda nodded.

  “You know, Andy, after I ran into you shooting the other day, I started to wonder how you picked your locations for Film 13. I actually wondered enough that I had someone go to the movie last night and keep track of where each scene took place.”

  Macheda smiled confusedly. “On the level?”

  Frings nodded.

  Macheda bit the corner of his lip, looking back at Frings. “You must have figured it out, Frank. It’s not very complicated. Most of those spots are gone or about to be gone, making way for the fucking Crosstown or the City Center. I’m recording the loss.”

  “I did get it. Most of the locations are like that, but some aren’t. What are those?”

  Macheda rolled his eyes to the side, a petulant tick. “Some scenes, they aren’t about the location. You have to shoot somewhere.”

  Frings nodded. People across the street had stopped to watch this conversation, the two men clearly out of place and drawing a different kind of curiosity than Macheda had with his film equipment. Macheda had, he noticed, sensed this, too.

  “Ben Linsky,” Frings said, sensing that he didn’t have much longer.

  Macheda started at the name.

  “Did you know him?” Frings pushed.

  “Sure.”

  He saw the same change in Macheda he’d seen the day on the demolition site, a retreat. “You know he was killed.”

  Macheda nodded. “Everyone knows.”

  “You have any thoughts about it?”

  “Like everyone else, I can’t get my head around it—that he’s gone, that someone would kill him.”

  “You can’t get your head around that someone would want to murder him?”

  Macheda shrugged helplessly.

  “Because, Andy, someone did murder him, and it seems like it was because they thought he was a snitch. What’s your thought about that?”

  “I don’t think I get you,” Macheda said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  Frings held his hands forward in conciliation. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just wondering what you think, if you have any idea why someone might think he was a snitch—if he even was a snitch.”

  “I don’t know.” Macheda looked past Frings, across the street and up.

  “Okay.”

  “Anything else? ’Cause, I’ve got to get to work, man. The sun crests those roofs and my shot’s fucked.”

  “Fair enough.” Frings nodded thoughtfully, then added as if it had suddenly occurred to him, “You wouldn’t know of anyone in Kollectiv 61 would you? I’m trying to track down someone to talk to.”

  He lost Macheda with this question, the filmmaker’s face going blank. “I don’t know anyone in Kollectiv 61, Frank, and fuck you for asking. I’m an artist, for god’s sake, not a fucking vandal.”

  Frings shrugged. “Okay, Andy. I appreciate your time.” He hesitated. “Listen, Andy, a cop was asking after you.”

  “Why’s that?” Macheda said, without much interest.

  “He didn’t say, but it’s probably along the lines of what I was asking you.”

  Macheda didn’t respond, so Frings walked away, leaving Macheda on the sidewalk with his movie camera and case, the crowd of onlookers watching motionless from across the street.

  61

  FRINGS HAD BEEN FORCED TO WALK SEVERAL BLOCKS BEFORE FINDING A cab to take him to the Tech, to drop in on Ledley. The hack steered off the street and down a Tech sidewalk to Bristol Hall, kids glaring as they made way.

  Inside, Frings took the stairs to the basement one at a time, leaning hard on the railing. The building was quiet, the scrape of his shoes on the tiled stairs echoing faintly in the stairwell.

  The basement hall was barely lit, but he saw a pool of light spilling from an open door and limped over. He tapped on the door with his cane, peered into the room to see Simon Ledley sitting on the edge of his bare desk, straightening his collar with both hands.

  “Dr. Ledley.” Frings saw Ledley look to Frings’s right, then back to Frings.

  “Mr. Frings.”

  Frings stepped halfway into the room before realizing that someone else was there, sitting in the chair against the wall. Frings took the woman in: severe face, a body that was sharp and thin, her hair a little untidy, her cheeks flushed. Her eyes, though, were cold. Frings smiled at her, not expecting much back.

  “An unexpected pleasure,” Ledley said with forced cordiality. “This is my colleague, Ada Hauptmann.”

  This time Frings nodded along with his smile. Ada Hauptmann did something with her eyelids that looked almost like a nod, but not quite.

  “Ada, I’m sorry, could we have a moment,” Ledley said. Ada didn’t seem happy about this, but stood and walked past Frings without a word. Ledley smiled weakly and motioned Frings to the seat Ada had just left.

  Ledley looked across the desk quizzically. “I confess that I thought we’d completed our business.”

  “Well, we’ve found some new and interesting information I wanted to discuss with you.”

  Ledley sighed and leaned back in his chair. “As I told you last time, I am prohibited from talking about the study involving Sol Elia. I can have my lawyer explain it again.”

  “That’s okay. Let’s see where we get. Indulge me. For instance, have you kept up with the people who were in that study? I mean, do you know what they are up to now?”

  Ledley looked away for a second, down and to his left, on guard now.

  “Because I can tell you,” Frings continued. “Three suicides—at least. And five more are leading really marginal existences by the standards of Tech graduates.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Now that you know …”

  “It’s unfortunate.”

  “That’s it? Unfortunate?”

  “You have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Frings. I don’t know anything but what you’ve told me. I’m uncertain how you came to know the names of the subjects of this study. I am, actually, a bit suspicious that you might not know what you think you know.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  Ledley thought about this for a moment. Frings looked around the room, was surprised to see photos of Ada Hauptmann on the wall, staring coldly out into the world, her face angular and humorless.

  “You talked to Toth.”

  “Who?”

  “My former assistant.”

  Frings shrugged. “I don’t discuss who I did or didn’t talk to.”

  Ledley bore in on him with his eyes. Frings gave him a quick smile.

  “I don’t have anything to say about it.”

  This time it was Frings who sighed.

  Ledley smiled, leaned forward to put his elbows on the desk. His posture seemed friendlier. “Are you familiar with the term ‘dyadic study’?”

  Frings shook his head.

  “This is the way I like to conduct my research or, for that matter, my life. In most studies, there are subjects and there are researchers, and the researcher is a neutral or absent observer. In a dyadic study the researcher and subject are both participants. It is a difficult type of study to conduct because of the researcher’s participation and the discipline and nuance necessary to maintain a viable objectivity. Do you see why this would be so?”

  “Sure.” According to Ebanks, Ledley’s methods were too traditional—but none of this sounded very traditional to Frings. Were these dyadic studies common practice, or were Ebanks’s methods so radical that Ledley’s unorthodoxy seemed normal in comparison?

  “In these situations it is also difficult to maintain a distance, a dispassion.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, when I say that I don’t follow the lives of my previous subjects, it is not because I am callous or dismissive toward them. It is because this is the only way to conduct the kind of research I undertake.”

  “I understand. But doesn’t it bother you when you hear that your study seems to have had a negative effect on the subject
s?”

  “Why would you assume that it was my study?”

  “What else do they have in common? What else could explain a suicide rate like that?”

  Ledley’s mouth twisted into a kind of half-smile. “I’m not so sure that you can be certain that my study is all they have in common. There may be other factors that would result in the numbers you have given me. It could also be a coincidence or a product of the type of students we recruited for the study.”

  “What kind of students would those be?”

  Ledley smiled, didn’t answer.

  “What are you trying to get across here, Simon?”

  Ledley leaned back in his chair again, his posture showing that in his mind they’d come to the end. “What am I trying to get across? Mr. Frings, you are a journalist and I understand that journalists work with different assumptions and criteria than scientists. But even if your information is correct, you are assigning causality without anything approaching evidence. Do you understand?”

  Frings wouldn’t let the guy get under his skin. “I do, actually. Thank you.” He stood up, his knee straightening painfully. “I expect that we will be talking again soon.”

  “That”—Ledley said—“will be my pleasure.”

  FRINGS WALKED TO THE END OF THE HALL, THE TAPPING OF HIS CANE echoing. By Frings’s reckoning, the wall cut the hallway roughly in half. A metal door with three keyed locks seemed to provide the only access. Frings grabbed the knob and tried to shake it, but the door didn’t budge. He put his ear to it. Nothing.

  Turning, he saw Ledley standing in his doorway, watching.

  “What’s back here?” Frings asked, walking back toward Ledley.

  “Labs, meeting rooms. They’re not in use anymore.”

  “Can I take a look at them?”

  Ledley smiled ingratiatingly. “I’m afraid I don’t have the keys.”

  Frings smiled back. “Maybe next time.”

  “Indeed.” Ledley nodded a farewell and Frings caught a flicker of something, maybe fear, maybe rage.

  62

  FOG HAD ROLLED INTO THE CITY LIKE A GENTLE TIDE, FILLING LOW alleys and muffling street sounds. Grip stood by a stoop on a wealthy block on the edge of Little Lisbon. The street lamps glowed in the fog, little suns getting smaller as they receded into the distance. Grip had his gun out. He’d had it out for an hour.

  He felt a little better. He’d slept for a few hours in a movie theater showing a matinee double feature. He hadn’t lasted past the cartoon trailer, some hysterical pig trying to foil a salivating wolf. An usher had jerked him awake when the lights went up. He’d slunk out, the spider webs in his head clearing with coffee and a couple of fried eggs. He realized he was running out of moves. He had no traction, was no further along than he’d been before Linsky’s death. He had to expand his possibilities, and the only way he knew how to do that was to get more information. As he saw it, that meant talking to one of two people: Ving or Zwieg. Neither was an appealing prospect, but, in the end, Ving’s authority seemed less daunting than Zwieg’s position in all of this—not to mention the blackmail. Which was why he was here, waiting.

  He heard footsteps, closer than he was expecting. He raised his gun, waited to hear a footfall on the stoop steps. Moving quickly from behind the stoop, he stuck his gun into Ving’s back. Ving stopped, recognized the touch of the end of a barrel.

  “Back down the steps,” Grip rasped. Even as he did this it seemed unreal, as if he were still going over the plan in his mind. Blood pumped in his ears.

  He withdrew the gun, let Ving take two steps down to the sidewalk. Grip nudged him with the gun barrel to the corner beneath the walk-up.

  “Turn around.”

  Ving hesitated, knowing what it might mean if he saw the face of his assailant.

  “Don’t worry, sir, the shit I’m in won’t get any deeper. I just need to talk.”

  Ving seemed to recognize the voice and turned. “Detective.” His voice was uncertain.

  He looked exhausted, his eyes deep in their sockets, the foggy light wiping out all color, making him look as if he were projected in black and white.

  “Where have you been, Tor?”

  Grip shook his head. “I’m asking the questions now.”

  Ving nodded, his eyes moving from the gun to search Grip’s eyes. Grip felt their cold assessment, but he kept eye contact.

  “Why were you running Ben Linsky as an informant?”

  Ving thought about this for a moment. Grip raised the gun higher, pointing it at Ving’s forehead.

  Ving kept his eyes on Grip’s face. “You’re going to tell me you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Do I?”

  Frings could see the uncertainty in Ving’s face. “Tor, you can always work something out. Nothing is done.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do now. Work something out.”

  “Okay. Why was I running Linsky? To keep tabs on the drug scene.”

  “That’s not what it looked like to me. I saw the note he wrote you. It was all about meetings, associations, people.”

  “You have any informants that are a pain in the ass, Tor? You have any who think they know better than you what you want?”

  “Like Nicky Patridis?”

  “Patridis?” Ving seemed genuinely surprised.

  Grip didn’t want to get into a discussion of Patridis with Ving, so he asked, “Who killed Linsky?”

  “I was hoping maybe you knew that. That’s not an accusation, Tor. It’s just that your sudden interest in him coincided so closely with his murder.”

  “He wasn’t my snitch. I had nothing to do with him until this past week. The way I look at it, whoever took him out, it was probably someone he was informing on or maybe even someone he was informing to.”

  “What are you implying, Tor?”

  “Nothing. Just telling you how I see it.”

  “I’d think you, of all people, would be aware of the lengths that these radicals would take.”

  “Right,” Grip said, flatly.

  “We caught the incident with our bugs. The boys in the room thought that it might have been a … sexual episode. Nobody spoke. There were no voices.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You’ve got a gun.”

  Grip thought for a moment. “Who called the News-Gazette about the explosives heist and Kollectiv 61?”

  “What?”

  “Fuck.” He didn’t like that this question took Ving by surprise. It showed how little Grip understood.

  “What do you want, Tor?”

  “What do I want? I want to know what the fuck is going on.”

  “We can figure that out, detective. You put away the gun, we can go to the station, pull in whoever we need to talk to, and get to the bottom of this.”

  Grip didn’t like the way that Ving was making it sound like they were on the same side, that Ving didn’t have something to hide.

  “I appreciate that, sir. But I don’t think that makes sense for me.”

  “Don’t overestimate the difficulty of your situation,” Ving said.

  But Grip was already walking away, his footsteps nearly silent.

  63

  FOR THE BETTER PART OF FOUR DECADES, FRINGS HAD REGULARLY DINED out with some of the most beautiful and glamorous women in the City. Being seen in public with Frings was tantamount, in some of the lowbrow rags, to an actress or model or singer having “arrived.” Frings had enjoyed his time with nearly all of the women that he’d had any kind of lasting relationship with, but he’d never met one that he wanted to marry. This had been fine with him—it still was. But as he’d grown older, the attraction that he’d held for these women had understandably diminished, and the ones who still sought him out seemed so young to him now that he’d become suspicious of their motives. It no longer felt right. He didn’t want to become pathetic in his own eyes. So in recent years, he had occasionally courted women whose age seemed more appropriate for a man of his years,
but most of the time—like now—he was alone.

  Which is why it was both strange and familiar to be dining with Joss Eastgate in an off-campus restaurant called Bardo’s, which she’d suggested. Bardo’s was the type of dive where Frings might conceivably dine alone, but certainly not a place he would have taken one of his high-profile paramours. It was small and dim and utterly lacking in elegance. The chairs and tables didn’t match; the utensils were stained with rust; the floor was made from unfinished wood. But the food was good, and in the back a woman sang bossa nova tunes accompanied by a man with an acoustic guitar.

  They made small talk during dinner, the conversation at one point drifting to Ben Linsky’s death. Frings wasn’t surprised to hear that Joss knew Ben. Ben, though unambiguously homosexual, did enjoy the company of beautiful women. She’d been among the pool of people that Linsky would often contact to form an audience for a poetry reading or a film screening, or whatever cultural event he was involved in.

  Frings also asked her if she knew Andy Macheda, and she’d said that she did, but hadn’t elaborated, and Frings got the feeling that she either didn’t know him very well, didn’t like him, or both. Which was why he didn’t ask her about Sol—if Andy had provoked such an ambiguous reaction, he didn’t think it would be fruitful to bring up Sol. Anyway, answers to these questions were not the point of the evening.

  THEY WALKED THE FOUR BLOCKS FROM BARDO’S TO EBANKS’S HOUSE, Frings leaning heavily on his cane. His was especially aware of his limp as they made their slow progress. His left hand was in his pocket, and she’d put her hand in the crook of his elbow as they walked. Frings felt his years very acutely.

  Joss knocked on the front door. Blaine, whom Frings had met in Ebanks’s room on his prior visit, let them in, giving Frings a dull stare as they walked past.

  Frings had never been in the warren of rooms at the back of Ebanks’s house. Joss led him through rooms where people—mostly, Frings thought, Tech students—were smoking reefers and playing guitars, or listening to the hi-fi, or drawing with charcoal. She said hello to a few people as they made their way. Some of the kids seemed to recognize Frings, though no one said anything.