The Placebo Effect

by David Rotenberg

  “So who wants what?”

  “An Orlando firm wants you to watch the final vetting of a new head of sales before they give him the job. Willing to pay fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “Okay—no sweat, done that before.”

  “Then there’s something in Pittsburgh for eleven thousand two hundred and ninety dollars, and a third thing in Cleveland for ten thousand.”

  “Eleven thousand two hundred and ninety dollars? Where did that figure come from?”

  “Just call me wild and crazy.”

  “Crazy, sure—you’ve always been crazy.”

  “Fine. So?”

  “Okay—sounds good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah what, Eddie—I hear a but.”

  “Two t’s or one?”

  “One.”

  “I’m just concerned about the timing.”

  “Did you check the—”

  “Airlines? Yeah—you can make the first two in one day if you’re willing to fly a puddle jumper to Dallas to make your connection to Pittsburgh. It’s tight but doable. And there’s a wild outside chance you could even get from Cleveland to Toronto that same night. But I doubt it. I’ll book you a hotel in Cleveland and get you a reservation on that late flight just in case—but the timing is way too tight, you’ll never catch that one.”

  “Oh boy, a night in Cleveland—and second prize is two nights in Cleveland.”

  “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is there, river on fire, Dennis Kucinich—hey, good times.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So I’ll book you a hotel.”

  “You said that already, and there’s still a ‘but’ hanging on here.”

  There was a moment of silence on the phone. Decker could hear Crazy Eddie inhale deeply—a little early for that, but what the hell. Finally Eddie said, “You’ve never had three requests at once.”

  “So—is three a bad-luck number or something?”

  “No. But it’s odd—three at once is odd. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “More of that ‘what I’m doing is dangerous’ stuff?”

  “What you are doing is dangerous stuff, Decker.”

  Decker thought about that. “They pay enough to get Seth his money?”

  “With some to spare.”

  “Then set it up, Eddie—I don’t teach again for two days, so this fits perfectly.”

  “Too perfectly.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither. Set it up, Eddie—a night in Cleveland somehow seems appropriate punishment for someone like me.”

  “Is there a trash can around you, Decker?”

  “Yeah, it’s Bloor West—more trash cans than stores open after eight o’clock.”

  “Then toss your cell into it and walk away. The forty-eight-hour rule is still in effect.”

  Eddie didn’t trust cell phones, so he had Decker buy a new one every forty-eight hours. “Too bad, I was getting to like this one.”

  “The things we own end up owning us,” Eddie said without a hint of sarcasm.

  “That’s from Fight Club, isn’t it?”

  “Very good, you’re not as stupid as you look.”

  “Thanks, I guess…”

  “My pleasure. Now dump that phone.”

  “Okay. Set it up, Eddie,” Decker said and clicked off. Then he tossed his phone into the recycle section of the trash can—and walked away.

  Eddie hung up the phone and lay back on his bed, amazed that his damaged leg was shaking wildly in its brace—something it hadn’t done for years.

  7

  YSLAN AT THE NSA

  YSLAN MADE A DETOUR BEFORE RETURNING TO HER OFFICE, to the only place on the planet she thought of as holy—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial—and the imprint of her father’s name on the obsidian surface, Sergeant Lernon Hicks: the father she’d never met, but the relative who she felt closest to.

  She ran her fingers quickly over his name, and then as she had done so many times before she told him how her week had gone—her petty successes and her doubts about her present assignment.

  And she knew in her heart that he had listened. She felt lighter—less alone.

  At the office she passed through security quickly, then mounted the back stairs and shut her door before Leonard Harrison could get to her. She flipped open her computer and called up the important files she kept encrypted there. She read the transcript of Decker’s last acting class lecture. She quickly cross-referenced the voyaging stuff in his talk with rest of his lectures they’d recorded over the past three and a half years. There were many previous examples.

  But she couldn’t remember him ever broaching the subject of secret names before.

  She flashed her assistant a request for the video of Decker’s lecture, then did a quick search for the topic of secret names among the more than two thousand pages of transcribed lectures they had from his classes. There were no previous references.

  She thought about that for a moment—then about the secret name she’d had for herself for so many years.

  The loud knock on her door announced that Harrison wanted to speak to her. “It’s open.”

  Harrison strode into her office. He was holding two folders. “We need to talk about you and that congressional committee.”

  “Why?”

  He was careful not to look too closely at her. Once he did, he knew he would find it hard to take his eyes off her. “Because without their money we’re up a creek.”

  Yslan made a face and stood. “That’s not really what you want to talk about, is it.”

  “No.” He put the files on her desk—facedown.

  “Then what?”

  “Did you get the sense that the committee knew what we are really up to?”

  “You mean the ‘special talents’ we’ve been tracking?”

  “Of course I mean that. Did they buy it that we were tracking what you like to call silly synaesthetes?”

  She thought about that—ran certain sequences back in her head. Finally she said, “For now. But they’re not as stupid as they look. They know we’re up to something.”

  “Great. Just fucking great! Have any of our analysts figured out anything more about Decker Roberts or the others—anything that gives us a clue as to how the hell they do what they do?”

  Yslan hesitated, then said, “No. Sorry, but…”

  Harrison flipped over the two folders; both had Arabic names on the covers and were designated top secret. “I need your guy Decker’s help with these. And I need it soon.”

  “Why, is there an imminent–?”

  “Not your purview!” He saw the shock on her face and had a momentary impulse to let her in on all this, then decided against it. “All you need to know is that one of these two assholes is telling the truth—but I don’t know which one.” He let out a long sigh, then said, “Get this Decker Roberts to work for us or figure out how he works.”

  “He’s a Canadian…”

  “So?”

  “Do you want me to kidnap him?”

  “Or seduce him or corral him or just fucking get him to tell you how he does it so we don’t need him.” As hard as it was for him to take his eyes off her, he looked past her out the window—all those people out there going about their business, relying on people like him to keep them safe. He turned and picked up the two folders from Yslan’s desk and left the office without saying another word.

  Yslan turned back to her computer and hit F6 and up came the day’s reports on the doings of the “special talents” she had been tracking—she thought of it as handling—for the NSA for the past five years.

  8

  ORLANDO, FLORIDA

  “SO?” THE BALDING EXEC AT DECKER’S SIDE ASKED FOR THE third time.

  Decker ignored the man, wondered why Disney had picked Orlando, then turned up the volume on the overhead speaker and stepped closer to the one-way mirror. On the other side of the glass, the company’
s fiftyish head of human resources was interviewing a well-dressed younger man.

  Decker had already surmised that they were trying to fill a vacancy in their Paris office that controlled their vast European sales force. He didn’t bother learning more, since further information wasn’t essential to the successful completion of his work and the subsequent pocketing of the giant company’s $15,000.

  Decker felt the small digital recorder taped to his right thigh. It calmed him. For a moment he had a visual of John Dean at the Watergate hearings saying, “Oh yes, everything said in the Oval Office is recorded.” It was his favourite YouTube clip, even though it happened when he was only a kid. He played it over and over again, always astonished by the naïveté—or was it just the honesty—of the man.

  It reminded him that there was a time when actors imitated the way real people acted, unlike today, when everyone you meet seems to be trying to imitate some performance they’ve seen on television. Cabbies act like the smart alecks they see on the tube—cops wouldn’t know how to walk without NYPD Blue; doctors imitate versions of ER—all backward. All of it. So that John Dean’s naïveté seemed one of the last honest acts in a desperately dishonest world.

  He put his fingertips on the thick glass. The two men on the other side continued their conversation. Decker slowed his breathing. Instantly he felt the cold approach, then the weight in his right hand. He closed his eyes, allowing the light to filter through his lashes—and watched. He tilted his head, and the clarity flew up his nostrils, hit his upper brain stem and played out on his retina screen. He saw—and he knew—beyond doubt. Beyond scientific certainty. Beyond all reason.

  “So?” the bald exec demanded for the fourth time.

  Decker felt the cold retreat, but it took longer this time. Every time he “went up,” the cold was just a little more intense and lasted just a little longer—and his suspicion increased.

  Decker stepped away from the glass, flexed his right hand and opened his eyes.

  “You’re supposed to be the expert—so tell me already!”

  Decker reached up and turned off the overhead speaker, then picked up his coat. “Do you have my money?”

  “Yes. In cash, as you asked.”

  “I should charge more now that our dollar is worth as much as yours.”

  “I have the agreed upon fifteen thousand dollars in U.S. currency. So tell me.”

  This one was simple—too simple? Decker dismissed the thought. He didn’t care. This company made more money in a year than some third-world countries made in a decade. He held out his hand. The bald man passed over the money.

  “Thanks,” Decker said, pocketing the cash. “Your applicant isn’t telling the truth. He’s not an idiot, so he’s trying to cleverly not tell the truth, but clearly he’s not telling the truth. He could be lying, prevaricating, equivocating, paltering or just plain old fibbing. I really couldn’t tell you which. What I know is when people tell the truth—and he isn’t.”

  “How do you know that—something he did or the way he spoke or moved or what?”

  Ah, that television stuff about fingers twitching and eye movements betraying a liar. Decker liked the actor on that show, Tim Roth. Thought he was an amazing talent. But the show was based on a bogus premise. Yes, a person can learn, with years and years of practice, to piece together the physical manifestations of those who might be lying, but it’s far more art than science, and the margin of error even for those who are really good at it is way too high for it to be of any real use. Humans are just too damned varied in their response to any given stimulus. And the kinesics notion of establishing a baseline of behaviour simply has too many assumptions in it to be reliable. Kinesics is just good guessing, period. But the TV show was fun—voodoo hoodoo—but fun.

  “My job’s done here,” Decker said as he headed toward the door. But at the door—for no particular reason; just a moment of ego burst—he stopped and said, “And so’s your interviewer, by the way. Not telling the truth, that is.”

  Decker did what he thought of as “escaping” from the Orlando office tower by heading to the basement and exiting through a crash door. Outside he took the USB key from his digital recorder, put it in a preaddressed and stamped envelope and popped it into a U.S. Mail box. Then, as Eddie had instructed, he took three different cabs and just made his flight. It would get him to Dallas, where he’d grab his flight to Pittsburgh.

  He’d directed plays in the regional theatres of the American South, and he was a fan of southern writers. The South seemed to be, in its own way, in touch with an “otherness” that Decker recognized, so he found himself anxious to watch the magic of the South just beyond the plexiglass window of this three-seat-across puddle jumper.

  The engine roared as the plane bounced into flight, although it never bothered to break the cloud cover.

  And the magic of the South did come into view—the land lost its green as the plane scudded westward and the white beaches of the Florida Panhandle painter-taped the coast. Industrial patches sprouted by the water—petroleum and its invariable partner, pharmaceuticals.

  Then the mighty Mississippi River segued into hundreds of snakelets heading home—to the sea. A sudden mist along the Gulf obscured the division between land and sea and then, before the modern, haunted pall of Dallas, ancient myths loose their emanations and dragged you inland toward the Deep South. An old land in a new world, where corpses lie in shallow graves—and never get to tell their tales. Beyond it the new Industrial South beckoned—telling you to forget the old and embrace the new—but its argument is not convincing. The shining towers of the insurance industry only distract from the underworld, the real Deep South, where ancient, ivory-white bones poke through the ground in winter rains.

  Decker watched, knowing there was something important here, something he needed to understand—to be able to understand himself.

  As Decker settled back to watch the Mississippi, Henry-Clay Yolles tracked his every move. From what he thought of as his “big chair” he watched the replay of the interview on one screen and read Decker’s response on another. He thought, Very impressive, Mr. Decker Roberts, very impressive indeed.

  9

  THE FURTHER VOYAGE OF MICHAEL SHEDLOSKI

  MIKE WASN’T SURE IT HAD BEEN DECKER IN THE FRUIT SHOP. Things were getting mixed up—off balance—in his head. Now he was standing on another manhole cover staring at a lamppost—or that’s what it looked like to anyone who was passing by. Some sad misbegotten man, crying his eyes out under a lamppost on Annette Street in the Junction in West Toronto.

  That’s what it looked like from outside.

  From inside Mike saw the boy struggling against the rope. Reaching up and trying to relieve the tension on his neck—to stop himself from strangling.

  Then the boy turned toward him and held out his hand. Mike saw the fingernails—the boy’s fingernails—the painted fingernails and his face.

  He stepped back then he heard the gurgle. Death really does have a rattle, he thought. Then he looked around him. Across the way the old library. Beside it the Masonic Temple. Down the block the old Heintzman House, but here the lamppost from which a fourteen-year-old boy had hung by the neck until death.

  There was always evil around the portals. Mike knew that. And churches nearby trying to fend it off. But the evil was winning—Mike could feel it. He needed to find Decker and warn him, or else he could be hung from a lamppost like that poor boy had been more than a hundred years ago.

  10

  PITTSBURGH

  DECKER SAT IN AN INTERNET CAFÉ—PLACES HE ALWAYS thought of as al-Qaeda cafés—just down the road from the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and tried to recall what play he had directed there; something by Christopher Durang or maybe it was Joe Orton, he couldn’t remember. Back then he was directing six or seven plays a year—often reading the script for the first time on the plane the day before rehearsals started.

  Decker always liked Pittsburgh. He admired the people who had to
ughed it out after the big steel mills closed down. Those who remained loved their hometown and the surrounding countryside. And they’d made themselves a clean, smart little city.

  He checked his watch; he still had more than half an hour to kill before his second of three truth-telling sessions.

  He looked up—nothing but potential terrorist operatives and teenagers playing games their folks wouldn’t let them play at home. Fine.

  His fingers opened the synaesthetes web site as if they were leading and Decker was just along for the ride. He entered the chat room—and lurked. For a moment the screen was blank then a video popped up. A young monk stood, back to the camera, in a perfectly cylindrical, domed building. The young man tilted his head back and sang a pure note up into the dome. Nothing happened for a second, then a cascading ring of echoes one after the other came down toward him. Before the first reached him he sang a second note, this one a third higher than the first, followed quickly by a third note a fifth higher than the first. Then he opened his arms and whole chords of music—in echo—wrapped around him.

  Decker stood, amazed, because he thought, just for a moment, that the young monk, bathed in the chords of the oddly familiar liturgical music, rose off the floor and floated in midair.

  Decker looked around. One strange creature had turned toward him, then shrugged and returned to his screen.

  Decker sat and punched in his tertiary code, which led him to what he thought of as a small side room off the main chat room, what Eddie called their “blocked” room. He signed in again and sent the electronic tone that would summon his friend.

  In under a minute Eddie’s unique script bibbled across the bottom of the blank page: If you’re asking why your son needs the money, don’t! I’ve already told you that Seth swore me to secrecy. And I won’t betray that trust and you know I won’t, so don’t ask me to. How was Orlando?