BLIND TRIAL Page 5

  “And Wilson gets away with it?”

  “Not at all. Judging by Marcia this morning, Frank’s run his last trial for us. That’s if what you’re saying’s correct.”

  “It is correct.” Her gaze broke away from Ben’s hairy crab ladder. “And what if it comes out how screwed-up everything was at the center I worked at? What happens to my reputation?”

  “Your reputation? Honestly. Nobody will know you had anything to do with it unless you tell them. Name’s not on the paper. Maybe the online supplement, it’s true. But if you don’t want it there, we’ll take it off for you—although that would be a mistake on your part.”

  Ben sat up. “Could come over to us. Atlanta. There’s MD vacancies all the time if you look online. And they can’t get enough docs out at Athens.”

  Trudy Mayr nodded. “That’s a good idea. Look, if you don’t care to work with Frank, Ben’s right. There’s alternatives. Better alternatives. I’ve still got some influence you know.”

  “I’ve quite enough alternatives already, thank you.”

  Ben’s lips pressed a pout. “Was only a suggestion. Atlanta’s cooler than you think, most probably.”

  “You know, I actually thought this would be a proper meeting, a discussion to consider the facts. I thought you’d be concerned about the science.”

  Sumiko sprang from the towel, folded it into the shopping bag, and hurried off down the hill.

  Eight

  HE CAUGHT up with her in the shade of an American elm avenue on the north side of the Mall’s Reflecting Pool. She’d walked so fast from the Washington Monument that at times he was sprinting to close the distance. But now she’d stopped to admire a flock of Canada geese honking and thrashing on the water.

  Even softened by a backdrop of birds on a pond, she looked tense. Her fists were clenched. Her right hand clutched the loops of the Macy’s paper shopping bag, bursting with the red-and-yellow towel.

  She looked hot when she was angry. She was one foxy lady. She’d an ass to follow on foot round the Beltway. But some part of the fury she must be feeling right now was definitely aimed at him.

  She swung the bag. “Told you, didn’t I? I was a fool even to open my mouth.”

  He sank to a crouch. “Yeah, maybe I miscalculated. But she didn’t seem that hostile, and you were still right to tell her. Professional duty. Your conscience is clear.”

  Her fists pressed the belt of her black leather miniskirt. “And where was your duty? I didn’t hear you back me up. Jobs in Atlanta. Nice.”

  “What could I say? I’m not a doctor or a scientist or anything. And besides, they’re blaming me for this. They’re saying I cranked you up to badmouth Wilson. I’m probably losing my job over this.”

  “You won’t lose your job. That’s not how they work. They only control us while we’re taking their money.”

  She’d got a point there, but she didn’t know the story. She didn’t know they knew about his father. The best thing now was to switch to something light. Be social, skip business, and chill. “Want to go see the patron saint of Illinois? What you say? Might as well now we’re here. What you say?”

  They strolled along the avenue to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial ascending, white and bright, beyond the trees. Ben took the bag. Squirrels leaped and scurried. Crows stabbed beaks in trash cans.

  Inside, Ben gazed up at the sixteenth president, enthroned in his church-hollow hall. Around them, cameras beeped and tourists murmured as if the Bearded One himself might speak. A shiny-headed guy silently mouthed an inscription: “With malice toward none,” and so forth. And three little girls in fairy-pink dresses held hands for cellphone snaps.

  Ben scanned the faces of the Apostle Abe’s admirers, then realized he’d snagged one of his own. Once—no, twice—his gaze met another: that of a guy with a mustache and one earring. He looked like Jimi Hendrix, with an afro haircut and tie-dye vest. He was glancing round the plinth, pretty sly.

  Guys had hit on Ben since before he knew why. They’d trailed him through life like store detectives. But, without wishing to stereotype, this one was unusual: too off-center; too one-of-a-kind. Luke always said gay guys were like photographs and straight guys more like sketches. When d’you last meet a gay guy who plays guitar? He usually had to admit Luke was right.

  Sumiko stood quiet, a fist clenched like old Abe’s. But she was definitely cooling down, chilling out. Ben nudged her with an elbow—skin against skin—and she didn’t step away. Looking good.

  He bent toward her ear. “Any lawyer jobs going in San Francisco?”

  Jimi Hendrix didn’t back off an inch.

  AFTER A few minutes of reverence, they reclimbed the hill to where Doc Mayr was finishing a phone call. The vaccine chief appeared to have grown in their absence. Her size seemed to vary with her mood. At the airport yesterday, she’d shrunk to a husk, her face more furrowed than Nebraska. But in the ballroom this morning, when Sumiko gave her talk, she’d expanded like a blowup sex doll. Now—flapping the hat like an albatross wing—she looked as pumped as the Michelin Man.

  “So, no more fighting.” She struggled to her feet. “Main thing now’s we don’t all fall out. We’re all on the same side. Remember that.”

  They headed east, in the direction of the Smithsonian museum, and paused at a public water fountain. As the women took gulps, Ben turned and looked back. Jimi Hendrix was following. Surprise. He was twenty yards behind them, all casual, hands in pockets. No onlooker would spot a connection. But Ben had learned lots from the store detectives’ ways. Especially playing couple with Luke.

  Back home in Chicago, he’d known guys follow him for an hour. More than one followed him home. Oh look, there he is at J.C. Penney. There he is, riding the L. And it was all but impossible not to look back—an issue that often screwed him at the gym. Look back—just once—and you’re in for a long one. Because now you’re looking at them.

  Sumiko stepped from the fountain and wiped her lips. “Be a nice spot to run, don’t you think?”

  “You run?”

  “Not much recreation for a single girl in the city.”

  “Should come to Atlanta, like I said.”

  “Parents are at Palo Alto. Father’s at Stanford.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Distant. Lazy… Yours?”

  Now there was a question to answer today. Not. This walk would be over in minutes. “Mom’s a nurse at Northwestern Memorial.”

  They crossed Fourteenth Street, then Madison Drive, where Doc Mayr suggested riding the subway. She was walking pretty shaky, but promised not to faint, and asserted her right to decide. “Runs straight on through to Metro Center. Comes right up beside the hotel.”

  At Smithsonian station, a sheet steel escalator descended to a concrete cavern. Tourists and kids crowded the platforms on both sides. On the board: a Blue Line to Van Dorn.

  Ben pressed a sneaker around a stud for the visually impaired, as his legs felt the draft of a train. “When’s your flight to San Fran?”

  “A quarter of five, I think.”

  “National?”

  “Dulles.”

  “Lucky you.”

  The train rumbled in the tunnel. Lights pulsed in the platform. Then he saw Jimi again. This was sucky. He was stomping along the platform like he was late for a date. Ben had known guys to get that way.

  The train was getting closer… Jimi was closing… There was only a narrow gap for him to pass.

  Ben dropped the bag and moved to block.

  Too late: the guy was upon them.

  Jimi Hendrix lurched and stumbled into Sumiko.

  She wobbled… She toppled… She fell.

  Ben watched her fall, saw her arms fly out. He felt the train’s weight in his feet.

  She was crouching on the track… She was standing… She was reaching…

  For an instant, the world stood still.

  Then he leaped, sprang, flew onto t
he track: a leopard on top of its prey.

  He felt concrete vibrating, glimpsed the dazzle of headlights. Brakes squealed. He slipped on a rail. Every second became a minute. Every inch became a yard. He couldn’t move. They were going to die.

  Then he picked her up and tossed her to safety.

  And the leopard sprang back to its tree.

  The train crashed past. Ben gasped, “Thank fuck.” Gapers gaped. Doors opened with a grind.

  But Jimi didn’t stop. He stepped into a car and, behind him, the doors snapped shut.

  SUNDAY JULY 20

  Nine

  THE STEAM age landline in the living room rang. And it rang. It didn’t twitter or bleep. In the third-floor apartment at North Cleveland Avenue, Chicago, hardwood floors resonated to the jangle of real metal on a genuine bell.

  Nothing else moved: only steel inside the phone. But there was evidence of recent activity. A scuff line on a wall marked the translation of a dining table, now centered in a broad bay window. Scrapes on the floor recalled a stained brown couch being dragged from the window to the wall. A ring of dust lingered where a lamp was lifted from its spot between the doors to two bedrooms.

  Behind the door to the right, Luke Ronson’s eyes opened to the face of a travelers’ alarm clock. They told him the time: 11:06. They didn’t need to tell him it was Sunday. A call on the landline meant his mother or Ben. It would make sense to get it disconnected.

  He squinted toward a window—half-open, blinds raised—and ran a diagnostic on his brain. Two twos are four. Four fours are sixteen. Sixteen sixteens are… Hell, something big. He’d gotten pretty wasted last night.

  The ringing ceased, and a literal machine snapped on with a ping in the living room. He crawled out of bed and opened the door.

  “Yo bro. What’s happening? Hey man. Wake up. Turn your cellphone on. Need to ask you something. Wakey.”

  His ex-roommate sounded urgent. But he rarely sounded otherwise. He was probably getting a fuck instead of fired. Ben’s life was like that: a string of heroic bungee leaps. Down, up… down, up… down, up. How many nights did he claim “endogenous depression” only to whistle over his Cheerios at 7 a.m.? How many afternoons did he “finally quit” law school before coming in second in his class?

  Luke rose, touched his toes, squeezed his balls, stretched his arms, and stared into the glare of morning. The view from the back of the rock-fronted greystone was one reason why they rented this apartment. The foreground was nothing: a brick church—St. Michael’s—with a clock they lit up at night. But behind, two miles south, poked his favorite building: the tapering, one-hundred-floor, John Hancock Center, renamed 875 North Michigan. It greeted him daily with two antennae fingers and bid him goodnight with red lights.

  Since moving to Atlanta, Ben called at least daily. The record so far: four times. He reported himself driving his BMW 5 series and spinning behind a beech-veneer desk. He described “awesome vistas” from the company’s roof terrace and sought advice about a lady in his shower. He chattered about reforming his band, Plus Tax, and of “Jad moving south.” Some chance.

  Then there were WhatsApps: what the weather was like; vital pickings from websites around the world.

  Did u know Chicago’s water is full of dihydrogen monoxide?

  I did

  OK haha

  Luke padded to the kitchen, spooned coffee into the machine, and marveled at the stove and countertops. After six years co-starring in their corny buddy sitcom, he was still getting his head round the change. The last year was toughest, after Ben traced his roots to one Jean-Baptiste de Louviere. He was born in Quebec in 1731 and deported—“yesss”—from Riviere St. Jean at the “mighty nice” age of twenty-three. After that, Ben’s cooking went all hot ’n’ spicy dog food with more gunk than a slaughterhouse can.

  Luke moistened a paper towel and wiped the refrigerator. Then metal struck metal again.

  “Turn your cell on. I need to ask ya something. Something I been thinking about. Call me.”

  He filled two mugs and returned to the bedroom, where his guest was undoubtedly awake. A crow-black buzz cut protruded from the sheets, and a muscular arm touched the floorboards. Mario gave the impression of still being asleep. But he couldn’t have missed the bell or that voice.

  “You conscious?”

  No response.

  “Time to smell the coffee and sign the lease.”

  Luke liked Mario. He was witty; in-shape; hairy; a horticulturist at the Botanic Gardens up at Glencoe. They’d met at Charlies Bar, where Mario hit on Ben, and ended up with Luke on the rebound. They’d talked a lot lately about him renting the empty bedroom: a kind of live-in fuckbuddy arrangement. But the deal wouldn’t close. They’d been circling for weeks. And the man was now threatening to return.

  Luke dropped onto the bed and poked the protruding arm. It withdrew like the limb of a turtle.

  And that was another thing: Mario was off sex. He didn’t even want to be touched. Luke cracked jokes, asked questions, dry humped, but Mario would push him off or get mad. And, surprise, surprise, Ben was somehow factored-in. You’d think he strangled babies at that biotech. When Mario was last here and Luke took a call, Mario spat “screw him” and went home.

  It made no sense. There was never a problem once Mario finally grasped Ben was straight. Sure, he felt excluded from their homelife intimacies: private jokes, shared clothes, naked breakfasts. But three weeks back—which was after Ben left—even his name became the trigger for a squabble.

  Luke reached across the floor, dragged over a black briefcase, and fired-up his MacBook Pro.

  The Law Offices of DePaul & Furbeck

  Client: James Mellerman

  Attorney: Luke Ronson

  Mr. Mellerman, forty-two, an adult bookstore proprietor, was driving his Jaguar XJ on the Eisenhower Expressway at 20:20 on a weekday evening. He was pulled over by a state trooper, one Vernon Beoletto, and later charged with aggravated DUI. Also in the vehicle were a thirty-six-year-old male and an eleven-year-old female—the aggravation.

  Luke switched on his Motorola Android One and considered the grounds recorded for the stop.

  Weaving and drifting.

  Signaling inconsistent with driving actions.

  Accelerating and decelerating with no clear intent.

  Driving 15 mph below speed limit.

  There was no doubt about it: this case had potential.

  Then his cellphone buzzed between his legs.

  Ten

  BEN PUNCHED out a WhatsApp message: “People might at least answer their phones.” Then he kicked his Cubs bag from where it blocked his front door and stepped out onto a concrete walkway.

  In Midtown Atlanta, the Ericson Vale apartment complex was still recovering from Saturday night. Its yellow brick walls, red doors, and green awnings soaked the summer morning in silence. He gripped a steel rail and looked down onto a pool flanked by aluminum recliners. The water shimmered pale, its surface only broken by a pair of tubular stainless steel ladders.

  Someone ought to help him relive the subway incident: how our hero saved the foxy lady’s life. That wasn’t a cheese-and-sausage thing: she might have been squashed. World religions were founded on less.

  From the walkway rail, he could see his ride, near a fence by a stand of Bradford pear trees. Before moving to Atlanta, he couldn’t afford a car. In Chicago, it would be cheaper to run for Congress. But he’d bought this bad boy from a guy at Emory University: a BMW 5 series E39 sedan, metallic green, stick-shift, and tilting a sunroof, with about a million miles under her wheels.

  He needed to talk: about the Sumiko thing to start with. And then there was the matter of Henry Louviere. He’d tried to blank that out since he last spoke with Luke. But it wasn’t going away. Shit was pending. Tomorrow, most probably, it might be adios BerneWerner and hola strumming for coins in Boystown bars.

  Some part of him yearned to pack up his stuff and hit
I-75 North. In twelve hours, he could be back at Cleveland Avenue as if his biotech nightmare never was. True, he’d be hauling a bigger debt than Argentina. But so what? Everybody owes someone.

  He stepped back into the apartment he’d rented since Memorial Day, opposite an open-air mall: Ansley Mall. For fourteen hundred a month, he’d gotten a second-floor one-bedroom with a living room that opened onto the walkway. He’d gotten aircon, dishwasher, and free cable hookup. The color scheme: beige on beige.

  The front door slammed behind him as he hauled his Gibson to the bedroom and emptied his Cubs bag on the floor. Out dropped a Wahl Aqua Blade stainless beard trimmer, a heap of Uniqlo socks—some black; some white—and a biography of Mohammed Ali. Then he gazed at the beige for eight or ten minutes, before making another call: to his mother.

  HE KNEW straight off where she was when she answered. Week to week, his mother’s life varied little. And how could he forget the sounds of St. Savior’s? Echo of stone. Thump of wood. Crack of knee. She was polishing in the nave after the second Sunday mass: her regular weekend ritual after the ritual.

  He’d serious things to say but aimed to play it light. Even mentioning Henry Louviere was verboten.

  “What’s up mom?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the mess they leave.” She spoke as if her teeth were wired together.

  “Guess you must be busy then. Or can I ask something quick? I’m kind of taking an opinion survey.”

  “There, that’s the last of it. Good. Go on. If it’s that Kindle, the battery’s fine.”

  “No. Good. Well… You know this job and everything? This job. I was wondering, just wondering… Like, how you would feel… I mean, I haven’t decided yet, or anything. What you’d think if I kind of came home?”

  Now he heard footsteps and the scrape of wood on stone. He saw St. Savior’s clearer than his apartment.