The Blindfold Test

by Barry Schechter

  “Uh, as I said, I first heard of the Legion a few weeks ago. That’s when I learned of an incident that occurred while Hank was tailing my dear friend Jeffrey Parker…that’s right, Jeff Parker the famous victim, you saw the magazine.” Fran gave Parker an elbow nudge. “Never mind who Hank is or why he was following Jeff. But Hank wanted his victim to know he was being followed, and what could make that point more forcefully than a beard, a trenchcoat, and mirror sunglasses? Hank knows how scary an out-of-context cliché can be.” Krell chuckled softly. “Funny guy, Hank. Seems to me he’s always seen himself as the Kafka character. Oppressed by the eerie denseness of his victim, the unfathomable designs of his masters. Uncertain of the role required of him—faking it, constructing it out of pop-culture static, the dank routines of dimly recollected villains.”

  The audience was mumbling, chairs emitting rack-like squeaks. Krell seemed to be veering off the topic. Was he panicking? Had he detected some ominous new harmonic in the crowd? Or was this a tactic—a precisely measured droplet of boredom to sedate their rage?

  “But I digress. When confronted, Hank improvised: He claimed to be a member of your organization. The next day word of the incident reached me. It was the first I’d heard of the Legion, as I said, and I was enraptured. I was especially struck by the symbolism of the outfits. I thought they expressed everything we deal with at Tolerance Management—isolation, alienation, the rage of the underground man. I was so impressed, I bought the franchise. I thought this convention would make an ideal laboratory. We could measure your anger, tweak it, feed it. With luck we might even start a mass movement—channel all that wasted energy right back into the system. But until I walked into the Arena tonight, it somehow hadn’t dawned on me just how pissed-off you guys are.”

  Krell’s story about the convention rang true. Which meant that Parker had just one enemy to evade instead of the entire crowd—two, if you counted Mrs. Slansky. Now if Krell could keep everyone confused and distracted a few more minutes…

  He was feeling hopeful enough to return Fran’s nudge in the ribs. As she turned her head she pursed her mouth and absently lifted a hand to her hair. Standing beside her, he needed a second to grasp what he was seeing in the crush of heads and bodies behind her. A black skein, glittering in the lights, arced upward from the back of her head: a man was chewing on her hair.

  * * *

  —

  Before Parker could raise his arm the man pressed something in his coat pocket against her back; she gasped and tried to look over her shoulder.

  Blowing out hair and spittle, Hank Monroe, Jr. said, “Yep, that’s a gun. Eyes front!” He’d given her a half-turn so that her body stood between him and Parker. He was wearing a black toupee instead of his bald wig, but even behind his sunglasses and beard there was no mistaking the round doughy drowned-corpse face.

  Parker had a hand on the lighter in his pocket; crouched behind Fran, Monroe, Jr. said, “I’ll take that. You don’t have a line of fire, genius, don’t piss me off. Lookit that, ma’am, that thing he’s doin’ with his mouth. I do believe that’s a look of grim determination.” The act was disintegrating—the accent so phony it was hard to recall what it pretended to be. “All tensed for his sudden move. Comin’ up any minute now, Parker’s sudden move. I’ll grease her first, dickhead. Come on, Ace, let’s see that move.”

  “Let her go.”

  “Sorry, bud. I need her to keep you focused. Goddamnit, you don’t pay attention!”

  Fran bit her lip.

  “You just don’t get the point, do you?” Monroe, Jr. squeezed his exasperation into clipped syllables. “I been tryin’ to make my point for fifteen years. Can I make my goddamn point?”

  Their conversation was sealed in a bubble; people inches away were focused on Harry Krell, who was saying, “You must be wondering: Why am I telling you this? Is it the desperate improvisation of a man on a sinking boat, tossing out everything in reach? But if that were true, why am I telling you that?”

  All Parker had to do was call out and he’d be the center of attention. But he doubted it would stop this man from killing them. Still, there was time: He was required to get the point.

  Monroe, Jr. held out his left hand. “First gimme the gun. Come on, for Chrissake, it’s been a long day. Still thinkin’ up his move—you gotta love the guy! Are we gonna have to do a countdown here, Slim?”

  Fran cringed as Parker held it out by the barrel. The reaction of the people near them was unexpectedly quiet; they crammed out of its way, opening a space around Parker, Fran and Hank Monroe, Jr.

  With military crispness and speed, Monroe, Jr. grabbed it with his left hand, transferred it to his right, and put the right hand back into his pocket, the barrel pressed against Fran’s back. Parker was baffled by this maneuver, but suddenly things were looking up.

  He said, “Now here’s my plan: We ignore him.” She gave him a tight, closed, agonized smile that roughly translated as, your joke is noted.

  He tried to reach her through both their mirror lenses: Trust me. Icebound, she fought the pull of his hand as he yanked her forward, nearly toppling her off her heels, and they pushed up against the people in front of them. The way ahead was blocked.

  Monroe, Jr. was laughing. “That’s just pitiful. I’m right behind you, asshole. You think if you’re pathetic enough I’ll throw you back like a minnow?”

  Perhaps the man had never had a gun in his coat—couldn’t get it past the weapons check, maybe, had to leave it in his car. Or maybe he’d made the substitution because he thought it was more humiliating to kill them with Parker’s gun.

  The lighter was still turned up to the Jerry Lewis setting. “Don’t turn around,” Parker warned her, pushing her in front of him, and then there was heat at his back; Monroe, Jr. was screaming; a twist of dirty smoke made the lights smear.

  * * *

  —

  Krell had gone rigid at the podium. The screams broke off; flocks of reverberations reeled off the walls and ceiling. Parker looked back, but all he could see were the bodies pressed up against him, lights exploding among their heads like the bulbs of mad ideas. He locked his fingers in Fran’s. “What…!” she gasped, the rest drowned out by people shouting “Don’t run!” The smoke had cleared, but the crowd was moving at a forced-march pace, the impulse to run a gale at their backs. His arm ached as he strained to keep her fingers in his grip. A man snared in their outstretched arms was yelling in Parker’s face, the words lost, gathered into the Roar. Up front the cops were moving now, helmet shields down, hands on their holstered clubs.

  The Roar, when it builds, has been compared to a subway train descending into the tunnel, gathering speed. Blasted by damp breath and nullified curses, Parker felt like he was clattering into the yelling man’s mouth.

  He couldn’t be certain that he wasn’t screaming himself.

  * * *

  —

  He turned on the lights and tried to make sense of his disappointment. At some level he’d believed that the death of his enemy had changed everything; that he’d arrive home to something other than the old stick furniture, bare bulbs and bare white walls.

  A whiff of the raincoat as he took it off brought on an olfactory hallucination; he could smell the man burning. He tossed it on the couch and headed for the Johnny Walker Black Label in the kitchenette cupboard. He took a gulp from the bottle, waves of horror and relief spreading with its warmth, and asked himself why he was sure the man was dead. He hadn’t seen anything, but what about the smell, the screams?

  Wasn’t it just as likely that Monroe, Jr. was in a burn unit somewhere? Well, he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon; there’d be time to deal with him. Regardless of how preposterous the story sounded, Parker would go to the police. If that didn’t work, he’d go back to his FBI pal Ed Vishoolis, who seemed as eager as he was to make Monroe, Jr. go away.

  Inevitably his imagin
ation served it up: Monroe, Jr.’s disguised face thrust in his, shades of red, purple, and black detectable between the whiskers and the mirror lenses, Parker’s hand drawn irresistibly to the fake beard. “Go on, amigo, give it a shot!”

  Still, he thought, I’m taking it pretty well. He would have expected to be puking by now. Hasn’t sunk in yet, has it, Ace? Nope! Protective obtuseness? You bet!

  He squirted Joy onto his breakfast dishes and ran the tap. The Hank Monroe, Jr. of his imagined scene was still hanging about, camping it up now in the role of some silent looming accusing shade. Parker tried to form an impression of the man he’d…possibly, arguably…killed. He thought of how frightened his enemy must have been to efface himself behind that act; how vulnerable he must have felt to leave not one atom of a real self exposed. The obtrusively fake accent, the bad-guy clichés, the latex makeup, the beard, the sunglasses, the bald wig, the other wig: It wasn’t a disguise or an impersonation; it was the debris that gathers around a black hole. Monroe, Jr. was frightening because there’d never been a person there to contend, plead, or reason with—he’d made himself as unassailable as a recorded message. And before we do a telethon for the poor man, Parker added, let’s remember him coming home at the end of a long day, going to his closet shelf and taking down a big bag of hair. He tried to think of one other thing he knew about the real guy. Oh, yeah: he’d been trying to make a point.

  He assured himself there was nothing to feel guilty about, even if his brain seethed with a sort of atrocity minstrel show, teeth and eyeballs twinkling in charred faces. He reminded himself that the man might have had a real gun! The pocket was big enough for the lighter and a real gun. And if he’d warned him…!

  It occurred to Parker that he was standing at the sink with the sleeves of his sport jacket plunged into soapsuds, and as if this were the last straw his legs gave way. He sat up. You could mop it with anything, the damn linoleum always looked dingy. He would have liked to close his eyes and listen to the refrigerator hum, but he had to call Fran.

  Standing up? No problem. He filled half a glass with Johnny Walker, then carried it with him while he brought the phone out of the bedroom, turned on the TV—the 10 o’clock news was coming up, there’d be something on the convention—and plopped onto the couch as if from a height. It was the station break before the news, the set brightening on dust, cattle, a mini-van. He placed the phone on his lap, the receiver between his ear and shoulder, the drink in his left hand, and pressed her number. While it rang he set the drink on the floor and wriggled out of his wet jacket.

  They’d gotten separated as the mob advanced on Harry Krell. Like the lone machine-gunner holding off the enemy in Back to Bataan, the grudgeologist held fast at the microphone, discharging bullshit till the last instant, when he escaped through a door in the podium. By the time the crowd kicked it down, he’d disappeared.

  Weightless with shock, Parker was carried along with the crowd as it vainly scanned the parking lots, taverns, and Italian beef stands for an object commensurate with its rage. The cops were on their best post-1968 behavior, allowing the feckless march to advance as long as it didn’t block the street. But somewhere around Dearborn the marchers halted. It seemed to Parker that whatever had animated them this far was trying to form an intention. The cops mistook paralysis for civil disobedience and ordered the crowd to disperse. From somewhere in the middle he looked back at the throng behind him, a river of frozen lights. Then word spread down the line: The cops were negotiating to avert a riot; what were the crowd’s demands? The effect was of startling a sleeper awake and asking him to recall his dream. The crowd began pocketing their beards and sunglasses, scratching at the adhesive residue on their faces, hailing cabs, walking toward parking lots or the El.

  He took the subway to Hyde Park and, when no one answered Fran’s bell, waited at Andre’s, the same bar where he’d fought for Ziploc’s bag. His tan raincoat an explosion of color among the funereally hip attire, he tried the pay phone every few minutes for the next hour till it occurred to him that while he waited, Fran might be impersonating a mummy on the table in his lobby.

  So here he was, sitting by himself studying the damp stains on his bare walls while her phone rang. If I feel this lousy, he’s still alive, Parker thought only half-jokingly.

  Her recording came on. “If this is Jeff, I’ve been sitting in a restaurant till I calmed down enough to drive. I couldn’t reach you, but I got your messages—the last one said you were leaving Andre’s, so you must be on the way home. Wait there, I’m leaving now.” Only her slightly parched voice betrayed her effort to soldier on. “Hey, my knight in shining blinders!”

  Before he could savor those words, the news led with footage from the convention: Hank Monroe, Jr.—in longshot from above—trying to strip off his burning trenchcoat, the circle around him bulging outward each time he staggered in a new direction.

  He tried to slow down his whirl enough to follow the story. “…this violent good Samaritan,” the anchor was saying. A second figure entered the circle, threw a raincoat over the burning man and tackled him. The camera zoomed down, and Parker recognized the bald crewcut and the Armani-knockoff-clad back. It was Todd Woolcurt, his bodyguard. Woolcurt removed his coat from the dazed man, carefully peeled off the burnt coat beneath, hoisted the guy to his feet—flinging out an arm to keep his balance, Monroe, Jr. displayed a blackened shirt sleeve—and proceed to beat the crap out of him. “…no word yet as to what motivated this…” Monroe, Jr. staggered backward with the punches like a windblown scrap, too crazed and disoriented to fall down. Each blow raised a small puff of smoke or ash. It seemed to Parker that after the fiasco at Tolerance Management Woolcurt was trying to redeem himself: Tonight he was leaving nothing undone. “For more we go live…”

  Chips sprayed from a blow to the front door; Parker just had time to register his utter lack of surprise.

  * * *

  —

  He was sprinting for the back door. “Who is it?” he called over his shoulder, hoping his enemy might waste a second fashioning a sardonic reply. He ran past the bedroom doorway, backed up and slapped the bedroom wall till his hand found the panic button beneath the light switch.

  “You have activated the world’s ultimate security system,” announced the recorded voice of John Standell, sounding pleased with itself. “You have two minutes.” The second blow to the door loosed a xylophonic clatter of wood and plaster.

  Parker had the back-door key off the nail and into the deadbolt when the third impact sounded, followed instantly by the front doorknob banging against the wall, then shoes on the floorboards. He couldn’t get the key to turn.

  “Now this,” said Hank Monroe, Jr. behind him, “is a real gun. Go on—ignore it!”

  Parker stood with his face to the door’s pane and hoping to attract the attention of the man climbing the steps—it looked like Mr. Vasquez from the third floor—raised his hands above his head.

  “You have one hundred seconds,” John Standell proclaimed. Mr. Vasquez, it was too dark to be sure, passed the window and started up the next flight, no change in his pace or his slouch. The TV in the living-room was still mumbling importantly.

  “I didn’t really mean you could ignore it.” Monroe, Jr.’s tone of voice seemed weary and familial—they way you speak to a stupid relative you can’t just stop talking to. “Turn around.”

  He looked about the same. If the horrors Parker had dreaded were there (how could they be? He couldn’t be walking around, could he?), they were concealed. Monroe, Jr. was wearing his faceless-man disguise and a new trenchcoat, and he gave off a vaguely medicinal odor—something applied to his burns. The dark discolorations between his beard and sunglasses were probably just bruises. It was impossible to tell how badly he’d been hurt, but the gun was in his left hand. The right—the one he’d held the lighter in—was in his pocket, the arm held against his side. Parker didn’t place much hope
in his incapacity; he’d just broken down a door.

  “Raised hands strictly optional, amigo.”

  He dropped his hands. Distract him, he thought, keep him rattled till the time runs out. Parker’s reflection in the mirror lenses was that of a man thinking, Well, here goes. “What could happen if you dropped the act? Come on, what are you afraid of? You’ve got the gun.” As far as he could tell with a heavily disguised man, it was having no effect.

  “You have eighty seconds.”

  “The fuck is that?” Monroe, Jr. shook the gun in the direction of the nearest speaker. “Turn that fucker off.”

  “It’s the world’s ultimate security system. I’m afraid it’s unstoppable.” Parker had struck a temporary accommodation with his fear, channeling it all into a delirium of hope. “You know, the accent just isn’t happening. Why don’t you—”

  “Security system! You gonna kid yourself right to the end, Ace? I guess that takes a certain kind of integrity. So what’s it gonna do? Call the police? They’ll be too late. Anything else, the death rays or whatever, you’re gonna get it, too. A nap—that’s the ultimate security for you, boy…I was tryin’—”

  “You have one minute.”

  “—I was tryin’ to make my point. You don’t wanna die without knowin’ the big picture! ‘The meaning of it all!’ This is sittin’ down truth, boy.” Monroe, Jr. gestured with the gun and they started toward the living room.

  When they got there, they both remained standing. Parker switched off the TV. “Come on,” he said mock-chummily, “drop the act. Just a peep of the real guy. Are you that ashamed?”

  “I’m goin’ out with the same act I came in with. That’s what a man does.”

  “Forty seconds, chump,” John Standell taunted.

  They both looked up at the speaker mounted on the wall above the couch, dropping all pretense that they could focus on anything else.