by Liam Durcan
“Even if I agree to do this, he’ll know I’m lying.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Dr. Lazerenko.” Oliveira paused. “Think about it. The Garcías need your help. Hernan is a good man. Whatever our disagreements are about the larger issues, I know we agree on that.” He emptied his glass and put it down on the table without a sound. “I should be going.” He edged out of the other side of the booth, ending up at a place where the logistics of a parting handshake with Patrick were too awkward to even consider. Celia bounced up out of the booth to catch Oliveira and together they walked to the bar’s entrance. She said something to him and he nodded. After a handshake, Oliveira was gone and Celia returned. He watched her feet, concentrated on her feet and felt an energy, an anger that he shared.
“What the hell was that? Suddenly, for the first time in your life, you develop political consciousness?”
“Well, we’ve both changed, then.”
Celia leaned over the table. “You asshole, you know this is about getting my father out of jail.”
“What do you want me to do, Celia?”
“Maybe not insulting the guy would be a start.”
“Jesus, did you hear him? They don’t care about Hernan. This is a public relations campaign. It’s spin. Your mother–”
“Don’t you dare talk about my mother.”
“Your mother would have hated that guy. And the Celia I remember would never get involved with idiots like this. What happened to you?”
“My father went to jail is what happened to me. I want Paul to know his grandfather. Oliveira’s the only one who’s made things happen.”
“Sure, between trying to overthrow Castro and bailing out Pinochet.”
Celia threw up her hands. “You come here, you say you want to help, and then you act like this.”
“‘It’s not necessarily a disadvantage if the results are tailored to support Hernan’s innocence.’ Did you even listen to him? He wants me to massage the data, Celia.” Patrick waved the waitress over and mouthed the word “beer.” She didn’t disappoint, understanding the whispered SOS, stopping and turning in a moment like it was a dance step.
“He just wants to explore every avenue.”
“I have a reputation.”
Celia lifted her glass and held it in front of her lips. “You have a reputation for making money.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She put her hand on his forearm, that demilitarized zone of interpersonal contact, and apologized.
“I know what the Democratic Voice does. Believe me, I know. But there are more things than my feelings. I don’t have that luxury. Respect that, Patrick. Please tell me you’ll try to help.”
The waitress arrived with a prodigious glass of beer, an aquarium of beer, and seeing this, Celia ordered one for herself. This provoked a look from the waitress that could only be described as rueful. He thought for a moment of Birgita and the table at the other end of the bar where they had sat the night before. The waitress returned with aquarium beer number two for Celia, the look on her face unchanged, and he thought she might be the same waitress who had served him the previous night, that this look was really some European form of waitressly disdain for him showing up with a different woman on consecutive nights. Yeah, it was a sisterhood issue, he thought, and he was the bar guy in the equation, the sort of guy he’d always seen and laughed at, a shiner the product of a dust-up with a cheated boyfriend. But the beer was an able antidote to the swell of paranoia. Sweet and yeasty, one sip was all it took to make him want to propose to the brewmeister’s daughter. He drained the beer in a series of almost-involuntary python gulps and the froth-veined glass was set free on the table. It was chemical inside him now, a flare of good mood, a window of sociability.
“We’ll have to speak to Hernan first, of course,” Patrick said, understanding that it was the promise of meeting Hernan face to face that made him agree to the plan, wondering now if it was another manœuvre to get him to sign on. “Then I have to speak to this company that Oliveira’s contracted.” He paused. “And di Costini’s okay with this?” Celia nodded. “I can’t promise anything, you have to understand that. The technique is the same, but I’ve never designed a study to look at lie detection. I study how people respond to advertising, for God’s sake, and I’m not even sure the technique works very well.”
“But these companies still pay you, right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t pay.”
“Well, I don’t know about that. One thing you learn about large retail corporations is that the people who run them are insecure, I mean pathologically insecure. They need to justify every decision to their superiors and their shareholders and industry analysts and so they look for something they can base their decisions on. They need proof. And if the proof is a technique that’s new and exotic and exclusive and gives cool pictures, well, all the better. That’s the only reason I can think of. I mean, we’ve never made an unsuccessful store into a successful one.”
“Come on, you work with Globomart.”
“They were a steamroller long before us. I have no idea if what we’re doing actually works for those people. And we haven’t tanked anybody yet, either, so it’s hard to tell.”
“And people buy shares in this company of yours?”
“They step over each other to buy it. Not being able to understand what they’re investing in never stopped anybody.”
“I never had you figured as a business type.”
“Me neither. But if it’s any consolation, it hasn’t worked out like I planned. I thought I’d have more freedom to do what I wanted.”
“Please don’t talk to me about freedom.”
“You’re not the most sympathetic person,” he said, bracing himself for her response, but her face was expressionless.
“So what would you like to be doing?”
“Well, you’ve been kind enough to remind me that I’m not really a doctor. It’s not like I could just go and start seeing patients. Besides, that would kill me. And I sort of burned my bridges in academics.”
“But you run the company. You could decide what projects to do.”
“I don’t own it,” Patrick said, thinking about what Marc-André always said about the tools of production, “not any more. It’s a publicly traded company. I can’t just do research that interests me, not with other people’s money. I imagine it’s like doing design work. It pays. You like it well enough and it’s sort of what you saw yourself doing.”
The glasses were both empty and now that they had considerately synchronized their drinking he felt no compunction about having the waitress bring them two more. The beer was delivered and the waitress did seem less angry, enough of a change that he could convince himself that she had been mollified by his gesture. Deep down, amid all the layers of personality, in his beer-drinking self, he was still Canadian after all. It was like a truth serum. No need for a big machine to read people’s minds. Maybe they should just get Hernan drunk, he thought.
“I’m a graphic artist. No qualms about the choice. Let’s not talk about my work. I just worked on a cover for some children’s book by this movie star who wrote it while she was still in rehab. Tell me what you’d do if you could”–Celia curled her index and middle fingers into quotation mark gestures–“break the chains of your Globomart oppressors. C’mon, no limitations.”
“I’d probably go back to some of the research I was doing when I left the university.”
“The pornography stuff?” Celia said, smirking, until she saw his look. “Sorry.”
“Moral reasoning,” Patrick said firmly. “Not in the individual sense, not like for Hernan, you know, who makes what decision, but determining what parts of the brain are involved. Stop smiling.”
“I’m just surprised that you’re interested in that sort of stuff.”
“Well, you don’t know me.”
Celia put her glass of beer down.
She had finished three-quarters of it. More than he had. “Could you just drop that?”
“What?”
“The feeling sorry for yourself stuff. It’s got to stop.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry, but you should be happy.”
“Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?”
“Yes. So tell me, how would you do this research?”
“You present the subjects with a scenario, while they’re in the machine, and then you see what sort of activity occurs when they deal with the conflict.” Celia was still smiling, broadly enough that he knew a buzz was building inside her, helping her to patronize him. It irritated him. “For instance, there’s this scenario where we ask the subject to imagine that their town has been occupied by an invading army with orders to kill anybody who has been caught hiding. A whole group of townspeople have hidden in a barn, along with you and your baby–”
“There’s a baby?”
“Yes; and it’s vitally important that everyone stay quiet. And then the baby starts crying.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s a question of whether or not you kill your child. The conflict over violating emotional conviction–not to harm your child–or saving the group.” The smile disappeared. It worked. It always worked. He edged in, trying not to look too pleased. “So what would you do?”
“I’d breast-feed the baby.”
“No, that’s not an option. Do you smother your baby or do you let everyone die?”
“That’s idiotic. I’d breast-feed the baby.”
“You don’t understand–we’re trying to find what part of the brain becomes active when this sort of reasoning goes on.”
“I can’t believe people would just answer that. Are these all men you’re studying? Did any of them have children?”
“That’s not the point. But no, some were women. Most of them are students, so probably no kids.”
“Well, there you go. That tells you all you need to know right there.”
“It’s like talking to a wall.”
“Here’s an idea: maybe you should do a study to find out what part of the brain is activated to get people to ask stupid questions like that.”
“Why don’t you just finish your beer.”
The waitress clunked down two more beers, which he hadn’t remembered ordering. By the third beer he was usually less discriminating, but this third beer was gorgeous, a wave of taste he hadn’t appreciated in the first two: a Dutch pastoral, a sweeping vista of flood plains and luridly green countryside, ascetic monks weeping as the hops give themselves up for the glory of God. Then the alcohol hit him like a soft, tidal shove and he was suddenly sleepy. But he didn’t want to go.
“I’m pretty certain Lindbergh is going to subpoena me.”
“About the testing?”
“No,” he replied, freshly stung at the implication that his expertise was the only reason he was subpoena-worthy. “They know that Hernan was treating patients.”
“Everyone knows about that, now.”
“They think I know more. I’m worried they know about the farm workers he looked after.”
Celia shrugged. “Compared to the mess he’s in, I don’t think any of that is so important.”
“The day we went out there with Hernan, to the dormitory with all the workers, one of the workers died. Your dad was looking after him.”
“How do you know that?”
“You were outside, but I went back into the dormitory. He didn’t know I was there.”
“You saw this?” Patrick nodded. “What did you see?” Celia asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“No. No, not your opinion, Patrick. I need to know exactly what you saw.”
“I saw him carry something back from the car. He told me to stay there, that he’d help the man. But I went in. I was thirty, maybe forty feet away. I saw Hernan doing something, I can’t be sure what it was, and then, the man died.”
“Have you told anybody about this?”
“I don’t know what I saw.”
“Have you told anybody?” she repeated.
“No. I didn’t see anything for certain.”
Celia paused. It was a mistake to have told her. “You would have seen something. You can’t mistake that sort of thing,” she said in a way he knew was mostly for herself. “If you weren’t certain, I think it would be best if you didn’t repeat this to anyone.”
They were saved by a nightly routine lurching into motion around them. At ten o’clock, the television was turned off and piped-in music started and the bar at the Metropole–now filling: couples at tables, a younger crowd clustering around the bar–revealed its disco aspirations. Celia got up to go to the washroom and crossed the designated boogie-zone as a half-hearted light show started, the equivalent to a grooving airport employee swinging two flashlights around. Patrick couldn’t tell the difference between ABBA and ABBA covers and fought the losing battle not to hum to either.
She returned from the washroom and they sat together wordlessly. He didn’t have the energy to talk about Hernan any more and he imagined she felt the same. Hernan was all they shared now, and the thought depressed him. He watched her finishing her glass of beer with small sips. There had been a time when Hernan hadn’t figured into the way they felt. He could ask her now. They’d had enough beer and talked enough that they knew they were impervious to each other’s questions, and if it hurt her, well that sort of thing happened when people spoke frankly. No, it wouldn’t seem maudlin if he asked. It would help, too, to know that she had loved him, that she came up to his room that night because she wanted to, that she knew nothing of José-Maria Fernandez or wasn’t cajoled or prompted to reach out to him. No, she’d slap him. That’s what she’d do, because she was an adult with some dignity left that she wouldn’t allow to be shredded by his little dramas and questions. She’d accuse him of calling her a whore and her father a pimp and there would be the definite possibility of another García assault. They had something but it was over. There was nothing between them except the life they’d shared. The words floated in the beer and the music and then they sank. The music was too loud anyway, he thought. She’d never hear me. So they sat in the booth and tipped their glasses back and they appeared like any other couple enjoying an evening of each other’s company and silence.
EIGHTEEN
He said goodnight to Celia at the entrance to the Metropole. A polite kiss on the cheek and she turned to wave for a taxi and then she was gone, as quickly as if she’d stepped off a riverbank into a fast-flowing current. Oliveira was long gone too, choppered out or whisked away in an armoured Humvee convoy or in whatever way passed for an imperial mode of departure. Patrick stood on the pavement, unsure of what to do next, squinting with the doorman under the marquee lights.
Inside, the Metropole was quiet. Even the bar and its half-hearted disco ambition couldn’t shift the mood. He floated through the empty lobby and found several elevators idling in wait, doors yawning.
Patrick entered the nearest one. As it was about to shut tight on the frame, the elevator door shuddered and recoiled like jaws that had closed on something surprisingly hard. Then four slim fingers appeared, curling around the metal edge as the door opened more fully, and in one deft commando manoeuvre, Elyse Brenman swept into the elevator. Patrick said nothing, the cumulative effects of Celia and beer and listening to Oliveira all inducing a dreamlike state–rendering him entirely suggestible, compliant. Yes, Elyse would appear like this. In the elevator. It’s Elyse. Of course. Welcome, Elyse.
“I saw who you were talking to.”
“Are you stalking me?”
“I saw you with Caesar Oliveira. He’s like the macher for the Democratic Voice.”
Patrick ignored her, spinning in his gauzy beer haze. He felt the elevator start to climb.
“You shouldn’t be dealing with people like that. Definitely out of your league.”
“I’ll decide who’s in my
league or not, okay?”
Elyse didn’t press any buttons, choosing just to watch Patrick, who lifted his eyes skyward, focusing on the array of lights above the elevator door and contemplating the twelve feet per second rate of ascent. Fifteen seconds of ride time. Maybe twenty.
The elevator emoted its gentle keening beep and after a minor geophysical moment, the doors opened. Patrick took off down the corridor and reached into his wallet for the key to the room, all the time hearing Elyse behind him, even though he knew it was impossible with the carpet sucking up all sounds of human movement. But he heard Elyse, he swore he did, footsteps like the beating of wings.
“Where do you think you’re going, Elyse?”
“We need to talk.”
“Just have them subpoena me. That would be easier for everyone.”
“Here’s how I figure it. Caesar Oliveira is meeting with you for a reason. Either you know something exculpatory about Hernan, which I doubt, I mean you would have said something, what, five years ago, or they want something from you, your expertise.”
“Maybe it was just people having a drink,” he said as he jabbed the hotel card key into the locking mechanism of his door. “Did you think of that?” The little red light on the mechanism flashed. He tried again, with the deliberateness of a man asked to defuse a bomb. Then the green light blinked and the handle gave way and he turned to look at Elyse still standing in the hallway.
“Good night, Elyse.”
“Do you know what the funny thing is?”
He sighed. “What?”
“In a way, you already work for him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sentient Systems.” He shook his head in that manner of the truly, hopelessly lost. He needed Birgita, or someone capable of reorienting him on the tour of his life. “They’re a multinational–”