A Murder of Crows

by David Rotenberg

  She’d been sitting on the bench in the very centre of the nine Rothko canvasses, where they had videotaped Decker Roberts after his fruitless search for his son, Seth.

  In the video it was clear that Roberts entered the chapel terribly agitated. Every move betrayed his deep distress. He had walked up close to the large painting on the south wall then slowly turned a full circle and a half, ending facing the huge canvas on the north wall. Then he sat on the bench where Yslan sat and somehow his agitation—after only a minute or two—ceased and he remained perfectly still for the better part of a half hour, after which he got to his feet and walked calmly out of the chapel and headed back to his Toronto home in the Junction. Once there he picked up his life where he’d left off before his confrontation with the head of Yolles Pharmaceuticals in that old Pittsburgh synagogue.

  It had surprised Yslan when Roberts moved in with Eddie—Crazy Eddie—who had so profoundly betrayed him. But she thought she understood it better after watching the tape of Decker’s acting exercise, the Betrayal Game.

  She looked back at the massive darkness of the print on her wall and thought, Maybe all this—this abstract expressionist stuff—was all just one big hoax.

  Three months ago she’d been called in to watch the interrogation of a trickster who’d gotten himself in trouble passing stolen strip bonds. She couldn’t have cared less about the theft, but this guy, Mike Cranston, had for a few years been the toast of the New York City art scene and his canvasses—large white things with diagonal slashes of crimson—had at one time sold for in excess of a hundred thousand dollars. That all ended when, in a drunken stupor, he’d confessed to a fellow party guest that he didn’t know shit about art—“Just copied what was popular and made it bigger.” His line “The real ones commit suicide, the smart ones just sit on their shoulders and make money,” made headlines in the New York Times Arts section—the party guest had been a reporter for that paper.

  For a while Cranston was actually made into a hero by the Fox News folks. They called him the Robin Hood of modern art, fooling the intellectual elite. He had his fifteen minutes of fame seven or eight times over.

  But there he sat in the interrogation room, ravaged by some inner torment, the skin on his arms and face seemingly alive with angry red blotches that he tore at with his ragged fingernails.

  She watched closely as the lead cop presented the evidence against him. Cranston didn’t request a lawyer or deny any of the charges. And when they put a confession in front of him, he went to sign it—then stopped.

  “One request.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me keep the painting in my room.”

  Yslan quickly went through the police photos of his shabby tenement room. In the sixteenth photo she saw it: hung to one side of the entry door a perfect, reduced in size, copy of the massive Rothko painting on the north wall of the chapel in Houston that bears the great artist’s name. It was the same print that now hung on her office wall.

  She stared at the print again.

  Decker Roberts believed in art. And somehow she thought that understanding the art he believed in would allow her to understand him—and his gift.

  But the more she looked, the more bewildered she became.

  “Bewildered,” she said softly.

  She thought about the word. She knew it came from the Anglo-Saxon fear of the danger in the woods. To be confused was to be lost in the woods—bewildered. She sensed that she was in the woods when it came to knowing her special synaesthetes, but she also sensed that she had to go deeper into the woods to really understand them. Deeper into the woods! What does that even mean? she asked herself. But she ignored her own question because she sensed that there was a profound secret in the woods—in bewilderment. And after her time with Decker Roberts she’d begun to believe in her intuition, that which she sensed.

  Her private line buzzed and she picked up.

  “We lost him.”

  She was suddenly on her feet. She held the phone away from her face until she had her anger under control then asked, “How?”

  “Don’t know. We’ve got watchers on the front and back of their house.”

  “And no one left?”

  “For fourteen hours, no one came or went. Lights on and off but it’s probably a variable timer.”

  “But you saw no one leave?”

  “No. No one left.”

  “But now they’re gone? Both gone? You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, we’ve been inside. They’re gone. “

  Yslan grabbed her coat. “Wait for me. Don’t do anything else till I get there.”

  The sharp beep of a cell phone turned her to the door.

  “Lost someone, Special Agent Hicks?” Leonard Harrison was standing in the door of her office, his eyes fastened to his BlackBerry. “One of your Gifted perhaps?”

  “Our Gifted . . . sir.” This last she added quickly.

  “Decker Roberts?”

  Yslan nodded. She wanted to ask how he knew—but she knew how. One of her two assistants up in the Junction—guys Decker Roberts had named Mr. T and Ted Knight—had clearly called Harrison before he called her. Shit!

  “Well, what are you waiting for, Special Agent?”

  Yslan leaned forward to pick up her briefcase. Leonard Harrison watched every move, every arch, and muscle contraction—all of it.

  Then Yslan felt Harrison’s gaze move past her to the west wall of her office where she’d hung the Rothko print. “Sir?”

  His phone gave off a quick sequence of beeps, the digital equivalent of dashes and dots, paused for a three count, then gave a single high-pitched tone.

  Harrison’s phone had been switched over to high encryption. He hit the accept button.

  She knew that he had accepted a countdown to some operation or other. She’d seen him do this very thing several times before, but never had she seen him smile as he set his watch to the countdown timer. He mumbled just loud enough for her to hear, “One for the good guys.”

  “Sir?”

  “All you need to know is that it’s T equals plus a month and counting,” he said, then without any further explanation, turned and left her office.

  So that’s what he had been hiding, she thought.

  She knew better than to ask her boss for clarification. T plus a month and counting to something that’s one for the good guys was all she was going to know about that operation. She closed the door behind him and turned back to the Rothko print. Only thirteen months ago she’d have scoffed at the idea that she’d buy a piece of abstract expressionist art. But that was before she’d kidnapped Decker Roberts from that restaurant in New York City and interrogated him for three days.

  Before she’d accompanied him to the Junction.

  5

  MORE VAGARIES OF VEGAS—T EQUALS 1 MONTH PLUS

  THE DRY HOT AIR OF LAS VEGAS HIT DECKER LIKE A STEAMROLLER. He shielded his eyes by pulling down his Djuma Game Reserve baseball cap. He never wore sunglasses because he valued the accuracy of his sight too much to allow a coloured lens between what was out there and what he saw.

  He flipped open the new cell phone Eddie had insisted that he buy and called Eddie, who picked up on the first ring. “You asked me to call when I finished. I never do that—why this time?”

  “Because you rented a suite at the Bellagio.”

  “I did?”

  “You did—well, your credit card did. Can’t have you staying in the Paris of the Desert all by your lonesome—too sad.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “So you’re in Vegas?”

  “Across the street, genius.”

  Decker looked across Fremont, and there was Eddie, waving like he’d found a long-lost friend.

  Taking his life in his hands, Decker crossed the six lanes of traffic to Eddie. “Which way?”

  “To our hotel?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eddie pointed. Decker moved.

  “We’re going t
o walk? Nobody in Vegas walks.”

  “I walk.”

  “So I see,” Eddie said, catching up by using the strange hop/hobble he’d had to adopt since he snapped his Achilles tendon all those years ago on the Ledbury Park playing field.

  “How’d you find me, Eddie?”

  “Remember me? The one who sets up gigs for you?”

  “Right. Were you followed, Eddie?”

  “No.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “Same as you.”

  “You left through the old steam tunnels?”

  “First to the generator station, then a cab to Hamilton Airport—nobody serious watches Hamilton Airport. Used my new passport.”

  “Who are you this time?”

  “Roberto Clemente, humanitarian, Hall of Famer—”

  “And dead—and Puerto Rican.”

  “Really?”

  “Would I lie to you?”

  “Do tell.”

  Despite himself, Decker smiled and said, “Welcome to Las Vegas.”

  “Thanks—this is my kind of town,” Eddie said, pulling out a pair of wraparound yellow sunglasses as he tipped his hat to two young women—clearly hookers. “And a very fine day to you too, ladies.” The women ignored Eddie. “You know it’s raining in the Junction.”

  “No kidding.”

  “It’s sunny here, you may have noticed.”

  “It’s always sunny in Las Vegas.”

  “Now why’s that?”

  “Cause God has a weird sense of humour.”

  “Why do you hate Las Vegas?”

  “I don’t—hate it, that is.”

  “But you don’t like it.”

  “Well I don’t like Dupont Avenue either, but—”

  “Nah, nah, nah there’s something here that annoys you. Let me guess—the relentless pursuit of money, the greed—”

  “No. I actually like the energy those things give this place.”

  “The lack of class, then. Fat ladies in shorts, smoking as they plug the one-armed bandits while their half-naked no-neck monsters terrorize the help?”

  “The visual is none too pleasing, but that’s not it.”

  “Well, what pray tell is it?”

  Decker thought for a second then said, “It’s wildness without restraint to give it form.”

  Eddie stopped and turned Decker to him. “Run that by me again.”

  “Well come on, Eddie, you sense the wildness here.”

  “For sure.”

  “It’s unleashed—money and greed have unleashed it.”

  “But that’s not what pisses you off about Las Vegas? The wildness?”

  “No, it’s not. It’s the lost potential. There’s no sternness here forcing that wildness into any form.”

  “You already said that, but I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

  “Do you remember Fanny and Alexander?”

  “Fanny and Alexander; in Swedish; Fanny och Alexander, 1982, written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Originally conceived as a four-part miniseries for TV. A one-hundred-eighty-eight-minute version was released as a movie. The TV version has since been released as a film; both the long and the short version have been shown in theatres around the mundo. Supposedly Bergman’s last film, but it wasn’t.”

  “Plot, Eddie—do you remember the plot?”

  “Boy wants to be a writer. His father dies. His mother marries a prick of a pastor who makes the kid’s life hell. Mother finally leaves the pastor and marries kindly merchant. Very Dickens that—who else believes that merchants are kindly, I mean really?”

  “Eddie—the plot.”

  “Right. Once at the merchant’s place the boy begins to write, roll credits, finita la musica.”

  “Good, Eddie, but you missed something.”

  “Me, the great raconteur, missed something? Enlighten me.”

  “At the end of the film the boy finally sits down to write, but he feels a cold gust of wind. He turns and sees—”

  “The mean pastor.”

  “And what does the mean pastor say to him?”

  “ ‘Never forget me—you must never forget me.’ ”

  “And the pastor’s right, Eddie. The freedom—the wildness—that boy feels living with the kindly merchant doesn’t make art. It—the wildness— makes art only when constrained by the pastor’s sternness.”

  “Art? You think Las Vegas should be about art?”

  Then Decker found himself laughing—the absurdity of it simply overtook him. Talking art philosophy on the streets of Las Vegas—what was he thinking! He dug into his pocket and pulled out the USB key that had the data from his casino truth-telling session and held it out to Eddie. “Take it and hide it for me, Eddie, and don’t tell me where you hid it.”

  “Another dangerous one?”

  “Yeah—a lover betrayed.”

  “Yikes.”

  “If Seth weren’t so sick I’d have walked out of that thing on the second question, the cash be damned. But Seth might need the money—right, Eddie? Seth might need it, right?”

  Eddie looked away then back to Decker. “Okay. Ask.”

  “About my son? You’ll answer questions about Seth?”

  “He swore me to secrecy but he’s sick now, so ask away.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  Decker knew that even if he wanted to “truth-tell” Eddie, it wouldn’t work. He cared about Eddie. It never worked on people he cared about.

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly, Decker, he never told me and when I’d ask he’d duck the question.”

  “Did he cash the twenty-thousand-dollar bank draft I gave you for him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But he got it.”

  “Yes, Canada Post did a fine job getting it to him.”

  “So you do know an address, dammit, Eddie.”

  “I don’t. He gave me a generic Victoria, BC, postbox.”

  “When did you hear from him last?”

  “A while after you tried to find him out there.”

  “And?”

  “Not sure you want to hear this, Decker.”

  “Fuck, tell me!”

  “He said to tell you to keep away from him. That bad things happen to people you get close to. Then something about a dead boy in ice that he said you’d understand.”

  6

  A DREAM OF SETH’S—T EQUALS 1 MONTH PLUS

  SETH WAS FLYING IN HIS DREAM.

  He saw the huge glass structure in the far distance and turned toward it. The faster he flew the farther away it seemed to get. But it was always there, beckoning him onward to go deeper into the dream. It was his favourite dream, and he was urging himself forward when suddenly he felt himself falling and crashed into waking as the vomit lurched from his mouth and splattered on the rocky Vancouver Island beach.

  He’d had his BCG treatment less than an hour ago. Usually it took longer for him to get sick. His urologist had lowered the dosage when Seth told him of his reaction to the treatment for his bladder cancer, but he also warned Seth that they couldn’t lower it much more or it wouldn’t have any protective effect. Then he’d said the words that Seth had dreaded hearing since he first began to pee blood just over two years ago: “We may be near the end of the benefits that BCG can offer you.”

  “If that’s so, what’s next?” he’d asked.

  The doctor hesitated then said, “Surgery.”

  “Remove my bladder?”

  “Yes . . . and your prostate.”

  “I’m only twenty-one years old.”

  “You have cancer, Seth, cancer.”

  He retched again, just missing his boot.

  “Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.” He swore as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve then shouted at the surf, “Stop feeling fucking sorry for yourself and fucking do something. Do something!”

  When he began his research, references to a Wellness Dream Clinic kept popping up on the sidebar
of his Gmail account. And almost every time he opened a bladder cancer site there was a link to that clinic prominently displayed.

  Five full days of research on the Web and phone calls and time in the reference library and he’d called Eddie.

  “Twenty thousand dollars—that’s a lot of money, Seth.”

  “Yeah,” he’d said.

  “Gonna tell me why all of a sudden you need so much money?”

  “No, Eddie, I’m not going to tell you.”

  After a moment Eddie said, “I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thanks, Eddie,” he’d said, then asked, “How’re you doing?”

  “Great.”

  Seth cared about Eddie, and despite the fact that he couldn’t see him he knew, beyond knowing, without closing his eyes, that Eddie had not told him the truth.

  He walked down to the water’s edge. The surfers in their thick wet suits waited on their boards for a wave—something to carry them. They rose and fell with the swell. Like a heartbeat, Seth thought. No, he corrected himself, like a dream.

  He knelt and plunged his hands into the freezing cold Pacific and tossed the salty water into his mouth. Better the bitterness of the ocean than the taste of death—his inheritance from his dad for his “gift.”

  And there he stayed for more than an hour, as the tide slowly crept around his feet, then his knees.

  Then he saw them, darting in the shallows—crimson torpedoes, salmon, salmon heading toward the mouth of the river.

  He marvelled at the power of life in the fish, returning—after years at sea returning home. He got to his feet and ran to his car, gunned it back up the logging road, then took the first fork north and ground to a stop. He threw open the door and plunged into the bush. Ignoring the branches tearing at his pants and face and arms he forced his way through the brush until he got to the river . . . and there they were—hundreds and hundreds of them fighting the fierce current, moving, no, fighting upstream toward the making of new life and the giving up of their own.