Invisible Streets

by Toby Ball

  “Then what? Look, Frank, my research wasn’t completed by any means, and you can’t do research without money, so I was looking at the end of the whole thing unless I could scrounge up some cash. When you get kicked out of a university, there’s not a whole lot of people looking to throw money your way, especially when nobody’s heard of what you’re doing. It’s hard to go to the feds or to a foundation or even some rich biddy and say, ‘Hi, my name is Will and the research I am doing is the most important spiritual work of the last two thousand years and, oh, by the way, my university kicked me out because of it.’ You’d get laughed out of the room. But in my last few weeks there, Ving—he didn’t identify himself as a cop at first—starting talking to me about a new source of funding. He was sketchy with the details—surprise, surprise—just trying to figure out how desperate I was for the money, I guess. We met maybe a half-dozen times, and he finally put his cards on the table: the cops would bankroll my research, give me a house, everything, and in return I’d keep them apprised of my research and I’d also fill them in on what was going on with the people in my orbit, mostly heemies, but some academics and others. They were still shook up about the LaValle murder, and I guess I don’t blame them. But no one’s ever been arrested from information I provided, Frank. No one.”

  No arrests? So then what was the point? Why not just let him focus on research? “Don’t you wonder why they still have you reporting if they’ve never used your information?”

  Ebanks bristled. “What are you saying? I’m mostly paid for my research. The reports, those are on the side. Why would they want that info?”

  Frings nodded, thinking about Vilnius Street. “You ever wonder why the cops are so interested in your work? They don’t seem like a particularly spiritual organization.”

  Ebanks didn’t like this, but he thought about it.

  Frings could think of a number of possible reasons, none of them consistent with Ebanks’s apparent conception of his own work. Ebanks wasn’t dumb. He must have thought about it in the past, had it linger on his psychic periphery. It may have even fueled the outsized claims that he made, as though this grand endeavor justified any negative consequences.

  “Does it matter, Frank? Do you think about the uses to which your articles might be put—who suffers, who gains? Don’t act like I’m the only one making moral compromises.

  Frings didn’t want to lose Ebanks to acrimony, so he switched tacks. “You didn’t know Linsky was on Ving’s payroll?”

  “No. I wasn’t sure until you just confirmed it.”

  “But you’d guessed.”

  “Sure I guessed.”

  “So who else would you guess is on the payroll?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Frings paused to think.

  Ebanks spoke quietly, his voice calmer. “The person who killed Linsky, I think he knows about me. I think he tried to kill me.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I had a drop last night. I leave envelopes down in L’Ouverture Park. There were shots.”

  “Hold on. Someone tried to kill you last night?”

  “Yes, Frank. I didn’t see the guy. It came from up the hill. A bunch of shots. I got behind a tree, and they stopped, and there were a few more a little bit later, a little further away.”

  “Jesus, Will. But that doesn’t sound like anyone was coming after you—not if the shots got further away.”

  “You don’t think so? Because I see Ben Linsky dead, a snitch, and then a few days later I’m in a fucking empty park, dropping off my little report and suddenly the bullets are flying. What am I supposed to think?”

  Frings nodded, conceding the point. “Okay. What are—”

  “What am I going to do? I’m in a hard place here, Frank. I’m hoping that Ving is working Ben’s murder, but I basically have to wait. What else can I do?”

  Get out of the City, Frings thought. Get the hell out of the City.

  • • •

  EBANKS FADED AFTER A WHILE. FRINGS GOT UP TO LEAVE. THEY DIDN’T shake hands. Frings walked toward the door, anticipating another charge of hostility from Blaine, when a question occurred to him.

  He turned back to Ebanks. “There’s something else that’s come up, I thought maybe you might have heard about it. You know back eight or nine years ago, they quarantined a block of Vilnius Street?”

  “Christ. Look, you’ll have to talk to Ledley about that. That’s his thing. I really don’t know anything about it.”

  74

  GRIP CAUGHT SOME SLEEP IN A BY-THE-WEEK HOTEL IN THE HOLLOWS, IN the room of a prostitute he’d known both as a cop and a client for the better part of the last decade. It was a depressing place, bugs, mold, walls with gouges in the plaster. He’d given her a night’s worth of trick money and he’d slept, fully clothed, next to her in the bed. For a few semi-conscious minutes he’d watched the reflection of the flashing red vacancy light on the ceiling, its glow sectioned by the shadow of the window frame. He’d glanced over to look at the woman, her cheeks slack with sleep, her red hair fanned across the pillow. Her face wasn’t pretty, but there was an honesty to it, he thought, even after the life she’d led. He’d desperately wanted to tell her everything, thought it would be an almost physical unburdening. But—either because he didn’t trust her or because these things were simply too private—he stayed silent until he was again engulfed by sleep.

  Now, naked to the waist, he washed his face and hair in the oily water that ran from the tap in the shared bathroom at her end of the hall. For the first time in days he didn’t feel the weight of fatigue. Instead, he was at a loss about what to do. His options seemed played out. He had vague ideas about getting together with Albertsson again, finding another way to use him, but he couldn’t get past the feeling that his best opportunity with that moron had been blown the previous night.

  He dressed again, noticed just how stale his clothes had become. He exchanged a long look with the woman, both of them silent, Grip unsure if the look conveyed some kind of mutual understanding or just the opposite. He walked down the stairs to find two uniforms waiting for him, guns drawn.

  THEY TOOK HIM BY PROWL CAR TO THE RIVER AND WALKED HIM ACROSS a fallow field surrounded by abandoned buildings that had been obsolete since his grandfather’s day, when the railroad had supplanted riverboats as the key to the City’s commerce. The field was filled with debris—wood; sheets of tin; random artifacts—the landscape like an unruly archaeological site. Grip wondered if this was how it would end—shot and dumped in the river or maybe just dumped in the river, left to drown in the tricky currents. It seemed convoluted, though. Why not just shoot him in some alley, no witnesses, no mess? They’d taken his gun. They could make it look like a suicide. He’d clearly been isolated, acting strangely—even threatened a superior.

  The uniforms weren’t talkative, but they weren’t unfriendly either—deferential, if anything. Grip figured that they’d either been told to treat him well or to ease him off his guard. Before they’d left the prowl car, one of them had notified someone through the radio that they’d arrived. At the riverbank now, Grip saw two men approach, recognizing, even from this distance, the size and swagger of Lieutenant Zwieg.

  The wind off the river was chilly, but Grip didn’t feel it, adrenaline coursing through him as if a tap had been opened.

  Zwieg looked at Grip appraisingly. “I never figured you for a beard, Tor.”

  “I haven’t had much of a chance to shave.”

  “You’ve had plenty of chances. You haven’t taken them.”

  “No?”

  “You’ve been running around like a fugitive, Tor. Why? We’ve been watching you the whole time, could have picked you up at any time. You think it’s so easy to duck the police? You of all people should know better.”

  It was true, Grip thought. He’d been fooling himself, acting out some part in a strange theater. “Why am I here?”

  “You’re done. Assignment completed. Good work.”<
br />
  The words almost startled him. “I’m done?”

  “You can go back to your old duties, work the sites. Take the rest of the day off, show up tomorrow, good to go.”

  “But I never found Kollectiv 61.”

  Zwieg smiled, probably trying to look reassuring, but failing. “You did better, Tor, trust me.”

  Grip stood quietly, disoriented, aware of the four men around him, that he had no control over anything that happened right now. He heard the roar of the river, its noise somehow playing with his perceptions; Zwieg seeming too big, too vivid before him.

  “I knew you’d find this confusing, but you have to trust me.” Zwieg laughed at this, the absurdity of asking for Grip’s trust. “As I promised you, here are the photos.” He reached into his pocket, handed Grip an envelope. Grip opened the flap, saw the burnt orange strip of negatives.

  “You have any more copies?”

  “I don’t, and I didn’t have to give you the negatives. But I’m a man of my word. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Grip blinked a few times, trying to normalize his vision. “I don’t know what to think about this.”

  “Of course you don’t know, Tor. You have no idea what’s going on. But give it a couple of weeks, and you’ll see. Two weeks and you will see it all for yourself. We won’t forget what you’ve done for us.” Zwieg extended his hand. Without thinking, Grip shook it. “But one thing—do not talk to Ving or Kraatjes. They are already finished, but they don’t know it yet. Don’t undo all the good will you’ve earned. If I get word that you’ve talked to them, I will fix you good when they go down. You’re on the winning team, Tor, don’t fuck that up.”

  Zwieg nodded to the other three cops and, as a group, they left Grip by the riverbank. Grip followed their progress from a seat on a tree trunk deposited by the current, their figures blurring as they receded. He was exhausted and bewildered, but, mostly, he was angry. He rubbed the negatives against a rock until they were scratched beyond any hope of repair. Then he tossed them into the roiling water.

  75

  FRINGS SPENT THE DAY IN HIS OFFICE, DOOR CLOSED TO THE SILENT HALL, putting in his most concerted effort since the News-Gazette merger, working on a story he didn’t intend to find its way into print. It was, in fact, meant for only three pairs of eyes, none of them in this building.

  It was very rare for anyone to visit his office, but in the afternoon word had apparently gotten around—maybe the mail delivery ginks—and Littbarski arrived unannounced in his doorway.

  “The scuttlebutt is that you’ve got the proverbial bit between the teeth.” He had a lopsided grin that Frings found hard to read. Was he gratified that Frings was working on something that he had every right to imagine was big, or was he merely mocking Frings?

  “We’ll see what it comes to.”

  “That’s enigmatic, Frank. Close to the vest. I like that. Keep the brass guessing right? Once a rebel, always a rebel and all that?”

  “It might be a while, getting everything sorted out. I think you’ll like the finished product.”

  “Front-page material?” There was that smile again.

  “Special-edition material.”

  Littbarski barked out a laugh, clapped his hands once. “That’s the Frank Frings of legend, not the impostor who’s been haunting these corridors for the past five years. Blood in the water.”

  Frings returned to his typing, and after a few moments, Littbarski left without a word.

  FRINGS WENT TO PANOS’S APARTMENT LATE THAT NIGHT. TO FRINGS’S surprise, Panos answered the door freshly shaved and wearing a suit. There was a moment’s pause, a flash of awkwardness between the old friends. Frings had called Panos the day before to tell him of Sol’s visit. He’d anticipated Panos’s reaction: relief that Sol was alive; anger the Frings hadn’t found a way to call him at the time, at least given him a chance to speak with his grandson on the phone; and hurt that Sol wouldn’t seek out the man who had provided so much for him—his only living relative.

  “I know I asked you to find him,” Panos had said. “And you have. But now that I know he’s okay, I am wanting more. I want to see him myself.”

  Frings wasn’t sure that he’d describe Sol as “okay,” but didn’t mention that fact. “I’ll try, Panos. But I don’t know if I can find him again. I didn’t, really, this time. He found out I was looking for him and came to me. And even if I do find him, I have no influence over what he does.”

  They had hung up with Panos unhappy, and Frings unable to offer honest solace.

  Now, Panos poured them each a glass of port from a crystal decanter, one of the few remaining signs of wealth left in his home. He’d shed most of the rest of it—couches, paintings, carpets, china—not because he couldn’t afford them, but because they put him in mind of his late wife. He’d loved the spoils of wealth because she had. Now that she was gone, they held only the memory of her.

  Frings passed Panos a folder containing the article, which now stretched to sixteen typewritten pages. The old man was pale, somehow withered beneath his suit. Frings wondered about the emotional toll learning about Sol had exacted on Panos. If he was right, though, the information in the folder would rouse the old man, however briefly, from his lethargy.

  “What is this?” Panos asked, opening the folder.

  Frings reached across the table, gently folding it shut again. “Read this when I leave. I’ve set up a meeting with President Milledge at the Tech for tomorrow morning.”

  Panos raised his eyebrows. Frings saw some of the spark, a Pavlovian reaction to an unspecified promise of the hunt.

  “Panos, this could be our last story; our most important story.”

  “Explain this.”

  Frings shook his head. “Read the article cold, let me know how it’ll play with Milledge.”

  • • •

  FROM THE KOLLECTIV 61 MANIFESTO, Prometheus, FALL 1961

  12. a. The Mass Communication of Lies: The second operating principal is the firmly held belief that representative democracy (a method of governing that, in theory, comes closest to manifesting a “will of the majority”) is the most morally defensible form of government. This judgment is predicated upon the principle that people are able to make rational decisions about their own governance. This may or may not be true, but what is inarguable is that a people’s will is formed by their reaction to “facts” about the political, economic, and social climate in which they live. IT IS CLEAR THAT, WITH THE ACQUIESCENCE OF TELEVISION, RADIO, AND NEWSPAPERS, THE PEOPLE ARE CONSTANTLY AND CONSISTENTLY MISLED BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS ABOUT THE BASIC FACTS OF THEIR (AND SOCIETY’S) SITUATION. WHEN THE ASSUMPTIONS ON WHICH DECISIONS ARE MADE IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY ARE FALSE, POPULAR WILL HAS NO MEANING IN ANY REAL SENSE. THE ELECTED GOVERNMENT, THEREFORE, IS ILLEGITIMATE, AS ITS ELECTION WAS FACILITATED BY LIES CRAFTED TO ENABLE ITS ASCENSION TO OR MAINTAINANCE OF POWER. IN THIS WAY, WE HEAD BY INCREMENTS TO TOTALITARIANISM.

  76

  DORMAN STOOD UNDER AN AWNING WITH FACHE—WHO WAS OFF DUTY and out of uniform—sheltered from the gray rain that kept the sidewalks largely clear of traffic. The smell of booze radiated off the cop, but Dorman didn’t care. Fache didn’t have to do much, just point a finger. In truth, that was all he was willing to do, point a finger as he saw Ed Wayne coming and then get the hell inside the diner behind them.

  Dorman had planned on hitting Crippen’s, to talk to him there, but a detective he knew had talked him out of it. Wayne was volatile, and Dorman would have no friends inside. Better to talk to him somewhere neutral, which was why he was here with Fache, waiting.

  “Yeah, there,” Fache said, indicating a man shambling toward them, head down, umbrella angled against the rain.

  “You sure?”

  “You don’t get Wayne mixed up with anyone. Trust me.” With that, Fache retreated into the diner, leaving Dorman alone on the street.

  Dorman watched Wayne shamble toward him on the sidewalk. Even under an overcoat,
it was clear that his shoulders sloped, that his body was soft. His gait was almost comical, his toes pointing out and his feet spread wide with each step.

  Wayne had just about passed by when he surprised Dorman by turning to him. Dorman felt a chill in the stare of Wayne’s too-small eyes.

  “Phil Dorman,” Wayne growled.

  Dorman could feel his face flush. He’d been caught completely off guard. “Mr. Wayne.”

  “I was in the process of trying to hunt you down.” Wayne let the statement stand, as if no further explanation were necessary.

  “I wanted to speak to you, as well.” Dorman stayed under the awning.

  Wayne pressed his lips together in a smile. “That is a truly fortuitous coincidence.”

  “Maybe we should go inside to talk.”

  “I don’t believe that suits me.”

  Dorman wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he waited. Water dripped off the brim of Wayne’s battered hat. His overcoat was soaked, though he seemed not to notice.

  “Not now. Not here. I like to choose the place and time of my business meetings. I do not like to be waylaid on the street. I do not like pukes like Fache pointing me out from among the masses.”

  Wayne looked past Dorman, through the plate glass and into the restaurant, with a rage and intensity that made clear to Dorman why he was so widely feared.

  With a quickness that Dorman wouldn’t have credited him with, Wayne shot his left hand in between Dorman’s jacket and shirt. Dorman reflexively pushed the hand away. His shirt was damp where Wayne had touched it.

  Wayne smirked. “You wearing a wire, Phil?”

  Dorman shook his head.

  “Say it.”

  “I’m not wearing a wire.”

  Wayne stared at him. “I believe you. I really do. I am confident that I would be able to see though any attempt at deception on your part, but I see nothing. I need to speak with you about a business proposition proposed by a mutual associate of some means. I believe you know who I’m referring to.”