The Placebo Effect

by David Rotenberg

  Garreth was pleased when he heard a commanding officer order his men, “Take down that rag. Now!” The television on the other side of the room was carrying a live feed as the riot police forced their way through the crowd and ripped down the banner. The protestors howled. Such is life in the Big Smoke, he thought.

  Garreth smiled and returned to the files on his desk. The first was an arson report from Fire Captain Hugh Highlander. Garreth wondered how Hugh was health-wise. Then he stopped wondering as he began to read the report on the most recent blaze—just a few blocks from the station. The phrase “definitely not an electrical or gas-related fire” leapt out at him.

  He marked down the owner’s name and got the crime site report from his computer. Something about the name Decker Roberts sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He ran it through the data banks—nothing. He put the file to one side and drew a large question mark on the front.

  At one o’clock he took his lunch break and made his way up to Dundas. Now that the street finally allowed alcohol in its restaurants, there were more interesting places to grab a bite. And now that he wasn’t burdened with a potential mortgage or potential kids’ education costs—having neither house nor children—he had the money to indulge.

  Children, he thought, and the memory of Decker Roberts bloomed full in his brain. He swore aloud. Decker Roberts. His father had a case almost forty years ago with a Decker Roberts. Garreth knew it because it drove his father to drink—literally.

  Garreth remembered finding his strong bull of a father thrashing around in their basement. Swearing at the walls—at the bottle of single-malt scotch—at the world as a whole. Swearing at a person—no, a kid—named Decker Roberts.

  Back then—it was another world—back when his father had been a decorated and honoured homicide detective.

  Mike giggled as his bus pulled into the Cincinnati Greyhound station.

  He’d done it. Gotten away from the Assassin and gotten back to Cincinnati. He couldn’t wait to get some General Tso’s takeout and some chips, and lock his door, and forget all that stuff he’d seen in the Junction. Awful stuff. That boy on the lamppost. Awful.

  He flagged a cab and hopped in.

  The voices had been wrong. He’d done it. He’d delivered his message to Decker. He’d done it. Himself. Done it himself. He wasn’t too fat. He wasn’t.

  Maybe Natasha would like him better now.

  Now it was up to Decker.

  For a moment Mike considered the possibility that Decker hadn’t understood what he had said to him about the ratio. Then he reran the tape in his head. No, he’d told Decker everything he’d have to know. Now it was up to Decker. It was Decker’s turn.

  “Stop here,” he said to the cabbie. Then he balanced two Canadian two-dollar pieces end on end in his palm and showed them to the startled taxicab driver.

  “It’s all just a matter of finding the right ratio,” he said. “Just the right ratio.”

  “Well that may be,” the cabbie said, “but that ain’t real money. I need twelve American dollars—plus tip, naturally.”

  Decker still had time to kill before he taught, so he drove north and east, zigzagging his way to Bathurst and Lawrence—the homeland—and Leena’s restaurant.

  Once there, Decker ordered a pastrami sandwich. Not Schwartz’s on the Main in Montreal—but good—and from his past. His atheist/Jewish mother would have approved. She had been primarily a culinary Jew.

  As he took a second bite it occurred to him that this deli could make a fortune if there was a cardiac clinic next door. Pastrami and heart exam—today’s lunch special. More practical than the “Souper Lunch Special”—which this day featured lentil soup.

  The waitress hustled him into buying a diet ginger ale (“Schweppes, don’t ya know?”) and a full dill that he didn’t actually want. But hey, deli once every six months—have a pickle and splurge.

  Around him snippets of dialogue knifed through the somewhat steamy air. “Thin you’ve got thin—That booth’s open, yeah, but booths are for three or more—kineahora, so many choices; hard to choose, don’t you think, Moishe?”

  Over to one side Decker noticed a man with liver-spotted hands trying to make an event out of his lunch—perhaps the only event in his long day. The man’s loneliness reached across the restaurant and touched Decker. A younger woman came in and ordered takeout. She turned and eyed the older men in the restaurant, her thoughts clearly etched across her face; Will my guy become one of these old geezers?

  Poofy-haired women talked loudly of kids and grandkids and a world gone nuts—meshuga.

  Decker took in the scene around him—the mise-en-scène. As with the synaesthetes, he was like these people but not of these people. Like a wisp of smoke within a fog—he could hide here, be taken for one of them. But it wasn’t true—he was not one of anything… anything.

  “Care to share, Decker?”

  He looked up. Leena’s kindly face looked down at him. A sad smile dominated her once-beautiful features—features that had been beautiful until Decker had gone back to using his gift.

  It happened when he went with Leena to buy a used car. They were both sixteen and had been an item for a while. As the salesman pitched cars to Leena, Decker closed his eyes over and over again and told Leena when the salesman was telling the truth and when he was not.

  She had been impressed, and showed her appreciation in a new way later that evening. Driving back from Leena’s place that night, Decker considered using his gift more often—until the police arrived late that night to ask him when he had last seen Leena.

  It turned out that she had been in a serious car accident. The beauty of her features had not survived the three operations she’d needed to reconstruct her facial bones.

  As he spent time at her hospital bedside he began to feel that his showing off—his use of his gift—had caused this to happen to Leena. He also saw a question deep in her blackened eyes that he would only understand years later. It was the same question his ALS wife would demand an answer to: “What have you done, Decker? What have you done?”

  “Care to share, Decker?” she asked again.

  Decker noticed the deepening sadness in her. It had been that way since her husband died four or five years before. He couldn’t remember exactly.

  “Of course you don’t—want to share, that is. Private Decker’s never been into sharing.” Leena sat and put the condiments back against the wall, slid Decker’s plate in front of him, and rearranged the cutlery the way it was before Decker fiddled with it. “Still moving stuff around on tables, eh? That doesn’t change either? So what are you doing here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Just having a bite.”

  Leena laughed a short chortle. “Is it good?”

  “It’s reliable.”

  “I’ll tell the cook. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. So what’s up, Decker? You never come here unless something’s happened to you.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re reliable for that.”

  He knew without closing his eyes that he could not tell if she was telling the truth or not—in a profound way he still cared about her.

  He told her about his house burning down. He almost told her about the insurance company’s “sorry for your loss” but thankfully stopped before he got there.

  “You have a place to stay?”

  Decker nodded.

  “You look thin. Anyone looking after you?”

  High school was a long time ago; here they were into their forties…

  “No one special.”

  Leena did that sad smile thing again, stood, then put his bill on the table and said, “You remember my number?” Without waiting for an answer she wrote it on the bill. “Call. I’m often home.”

  Clearly a truth.

  Mac watched from the shadows down the hall as Mike fumbled in his backpack for his apartment keys. He wondered what kind of
grown-up wears a backpack like some dumb college kid.

  But then again, Mr. Shedloski was a great deal like a college kid. An overaged, undersexed, way-too-old college kid—the kind of college kid who didn’t get invited to the parties. The kind of kid who, when he was young—some twenty years ago—no doubt not only read Science Today but actually did the experiments. He probably followed the directions in the back that showed its avid readers “How to Build an X-Ray Machine from Old Television Tubes.” The magazine neglected to inform the geeks that if they did build their jerry-rigged X-ray machine, they could sterilize the entire neighbourhood if they failed to line the walls of the room with lead.

  Mac smiled as he patted the bowie knife at his side and reached for his garrote. A few steps, a twist—and the world is one mathematic weirdo less. No great loss, he thought.

  Then Michael Shedloski turned. The two men locked eyes. Neither expressed fear. Michael quickly calculated the odds of his survival—and was not happy with the ratio—so he charged. Spinning with surprising balance he was just about to land a heel to Mac’s throat when the Assassin’s knife cut deep into the soft flesh of his thigh—then twisted and slashed through the large artery there.

  Mac grabbed the keys and opened the door. Michael Shedloski was bleeding out fast. By the time he’d dragged the body into the apartment, Ratio-Man was even whiter than usual—and he wasn’t moving.

  Mac quickly searched the man’s backpack but couldn’t find his computer. Then he turned to the apartment.

  Against one wall was a stack of signs. The topmost was the damned thing the weirdo used to carry as he marched up and down in front of Yolles Pharmaceuticals after he’d been fired: “Who’s Jumping Now?” In the front room there was one of the freak’s weird balancing-act statues. A second tiny one sat by the front window.

  He threw open the door to the bedroom and was greeted by a bizarre statue of Ratio-Man done in stacked computer peripherals with three printers as the guy’s chest. The likeness was amazing.

  Something caught his eye. Something about the statue was wrong. Something was off balance.

  It was then that he heard the sound of dogs—large dogs—barking, and their master’s, “Okay, we’re going to Mikey’s. I promised my dears and that’s where we’re going.”

  Mac swore under his breath, took a quick look around, then, without Mike’s computer, crashed out of Ratio-Man’s apartment and raced down the stairs so quickly that when the police later interviewed the dog owner all he could say was that the guy was big and white.

  Decker arrived at Trish’s apartment on College above Bar Italia just a few minutes before five. She greeted him with a kiss that was a bit too friendly, tossed the network’s notes on the table, and retreated to her bathroom. Over her shoulder she said, “I don’t think I know anyone whose house has burnt down.”

  “Well you do now.”

  She stuck her head out of the bathroom and asked, “You weren’t inside it when…?”

  The lie came easily to Decker, “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Thanks to the gods for that,” she said and shut the bathroom door.

  Decker knew that she meant it. He could still tell when she was being truthful. He liked her but had never committed himself to caring about her.

  Decker picked up the network’s notes, cleared a mess of old magazines from a chair, sat and took a look around.

  Trish’s professional life, as an independent TV producer, was ordered to the point of being anal. But Decker knew her personal life was anything but ordered. Still, Decker was surprised by the new appearance of piles of newspapers in the corners of her living room and the dishes stacked to overflowing in the kitchen sink. He had a pang of conscience. Had her contact with him done this to her? At least there were no cats. Yet, Decker thought. No cats yet.

  Decker had first met Trish seven years ago when he was summoned to the set of a prime-time TV show whose young female lead was having a meltdown. Decker often got the call in such situations.

  This actress’s breakdown was costing significant cash. Decker’s assistance would cost considerable cash as well, but less than having an entire crew doing nothing but eating the free food.

  Decker knew the show peripherally. Some of his best students played guest leads, but the producer, in true dumb producer fashion, had decided he wanted two untrained actors to play the leads—one of whom was now puking her guts out as Decker entered her trailer.

  Behind him a tall, blond associate producer, Trish Spence, said, “Clara, this is Decker Roberts.”

  The actress looked up from her kneeling position. Decker took a good look at her. Twenty-two, maybe twenty-four tops. Single, from the country—he’d bet Newfoundland—close to her mom but very, very frightened just now. He turned to Trish. “How much time do I have?”

  “We’re burning just over five thousand dollars an hour.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “An hour, Mr. Roberts. Please, no more than an hour.”

  Decker liked what happened to Trish’s face when she said please. All the bullshit hard-assed crap fell away and an interesting woman emerged. A woman caught between the beauty she had been as a teen and the handsomeness she now possessed in her mid-thirties but didn’t know if she liked. And alone—whoa—huge alone.

  He smiled at her.

  She caught his smile and smiled back. Both felt the connection—his aloneness and hers.

  “Give me half an hour, Ms. Spence.”

  “Trish. Call me Trish.”

  “A half hour, Trish. Got an extra walkie-talkie?”

  Trish took a spare from her belt and handed it to Decker.

  “Good.”

  Trish left the dressing room and the actress stood up to face Decker.

  He read her quickly and made a decision. Hard—not soft. “So Clara, you have exactly five fucking minutes to tell me what the fucking problem is. Five and no more than five.”

  Clara cried a little, yelled a lot, threw something that Decker caught like a football aimed at his head and finally said, “The second AD.”

  “What about him?”

  “The way he looks at me…” She began to cry again, then repeated, “The way he looks at me.”

  Decker pressed the talk button on the walkie-talkie.

  “Trish here.”

  “You sleeping with the second AD?”

  “God no.”

  “Good. Fire him. Do it now. Right now.” Decker clicked off and tentatively put a hand on Clara’s shoulder. She looked into his eyes. “Clara, he’s history. Trust me, he’s got about ten more minutes on this set.” She came close to smiling.

  “I feel bad about…”

  “Don’t. Now what else?”

  “The director…”

  “He stays, Clara—I agree he’s an idiot, but he stays. Show me your script.”

  She did.

  He turned to the end and found her final line in the screenplay. “You see—there—that’s the way, come on, please—let’s go.”

  Decker circled it then asked, “Do you know how to chart?”

  She shook her head slowly—tears filling her eyes.

  “Not the time to cry, Clara—time to work. So you see your final line?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s where your journey in the film leads. Toward you showing the male lead the path—the way. Right?”

  “I never thought about it like that—but yeah.”

  “It’s called a super objective, but that’s not important. What’s important is how each scene either gets you closer to succeeding at your objective or farther away from it. Nobody shoots in sequence anymore, so an actor has to know where along the journey line each scene is. Yes?”

  She nodded. Her beauty was returning, and her brightness was asserting itself. Good, Decker thought, very good. He liked Newfoundland actors, had trained several; two were on their way to stardom.

  Twenty-five minutes later he opened the door for Cl
ara and nodded toward Trish.

  “Is she…”

  “Ready to work? I think so. Is the second AD gone?”

  “Left the set twenty minutes ago.”

  “Good. You can always replace a second AD, but you can’t replace your lead.”

  Trish nodded.

  “If the director leaves her alone she should be fine. I gave her a phone number; she’s to call if she gets lost—no, when she gets lost. Okay?”

  Trish smiled. “You know…”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t going to call you.”

  “Yeah, there are those in this town who aren’t fond of me.”

  “Me too. That people are not fond of—not…”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. By the by, I always hated that stupid fuck.”

  “Which one?”

  Trish laughed—brayed, actually. Decker liked her for that too.

  The shoot went fine. Trish called on Decker’s services several times thereafter, and when she began to produce her own projects she approached Decker about joining her production company. Decker declined the offer but on her suggestion began to bring her projects. The latest was At the Junction.

  Trish came out of the bathroom and grabbed her winter coat. “That laptop on the table’s for you. Two weeks Decker—two weeks tops.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Read the network’s notes?”

  “Yeah…”

  “They’re right, Decker, these first four are okay but it needs a better mystery to continue.”

  “And better writing,” Decker said.

  “I’m afraid I agree, but he’s the network’s guy.”