BLIND TRIAL

by Brian Deer

  Doc Mayr shuffled, tilted her seat, and turned her face away into a pillow.

  Here and there, the road twisted, or narrowed to two lanes. His eyelids felt heavy. Fucking heavy. He watched the yellow line and breathed slow and deliberate until, eventually, the glow of Santa Rosa colored the sky like a nightlight on a bedroom wall.

  He reached to an air vent and twisted it toward him. It breezed like a Windy City keyhole. He unleashed a yawn and shook his head.

  He so needed to sleep.

  But not yet.

  And now he heard whispers: whispers from the window. Tense, hissing whispers. Time to sleep. But the whispers continued and might break into shouts. They might follow him into his dreams. What his brain needed was a cold shower to wake him, while all his body craved was warmth.

  He edged the seat forward and sat stiffly over the wheel. The smart thing now would be to stop. The biggest risk was no longer from Hoffman, in pursuit, but of peacefully cruising through a bubbling warm mist into some black ditch of death that lay beyond.

  Then—shit—he snapped alert behind an unlit Volvo rig, drifting between lanes like himself. He blinked, shook his head, and punched the horn.

  Doc Mayr released a grunt and rubbed her eyes.

  “Sorry. I wake you?”

  “That’s okay.”

  He opened the driver’s window and rotated his shoulder blades. His back hurt as bad as his head. He turned off the radio, shut all the windows, and the sounds of the freeway dimmed.

  “Ma’am, can I ask you something? It’s nothing like important.”

  She coughed and grappled with her seat.

  “It’s just something people say. It’s like a saying kind of thing.”

  “We need to stop for cigarettes. Ask me then.”

  “It’s only that saying, you know, ‘Like father, like son.’ Just wondered if you figured that’s true.”

  Forty-seven

  TRUDY MAYR sat on a Motel 6 bed and studied Ben Louviere’s face. She squeezed his nose. “Hard to tell, it’s so swelled. Go down and get yourself some ice.” She released her grip, pressed her palms to his cheeks, then tapped his eye-sockets and teeth. “You see my finger? You follow my finger.”

  His eyes slid left, then right.

  They’d been lucky on a Friday to find a vacancy in Petaluma, forty miles north of the Golden Gate. The Quality Inn, Double Tree, and Best Western were all full, but Motel 6 had a late cancellation. The room—233—had twin beds and a bathroom, TV, side chair, and little else. The window was draped with a coarse blue curtain that ballooned in an aircon draft.

  She’d wanted to continue to the Hyatt right away, but Ben was falling asleep at the wheel. More than once she was frightened by the bump-bump-bump of Botts’ Dots under the tires. At the sound, he’d twitch, mutter gibberish at the windshield, yawn, shake his head, and rub his face.

  She’d brought nothing with her this morning for an overnight stop but carried her purse to the bathroom. She tugged the shower curtain, twisted the faucet, and adjusted the water to warm.

  “Dr. Mayr,” Ben called through the open door.

  “I hear you.”

  “Can I ask something else? It’s nothing major.”

  She stepped back into the room and pulled a towel from a rack. “Ask when you come back with the ice.”

  “It’s just why you think people steal and do crooked stuff? I mean, not everyone, but people who do it all the time?”

  “Why? Oh, you name it. Greed, poverty, laziness, low self-esteem, revenge, fear, shame, not being loved enough.” Then she shut the bathroom door, pulled down her underwear, and sat on the toilet to read.

  BEN THUMPED down two flights of stairs to the lot, where the Sentra sat cooling by a wheelbarrow. Clutching a towel, he found a payphone. But Luke didn’t answer. No message. That avenue was closed. Then he hunted through his wallet and pulled out the business card that Sumiko had given him in the module.

  Her number rang twice, then he heard Pearl Jam. He’d no need to ask if she was safe. She was safe alright. She was safe with Murayama. She wasn’t playing Binaural to her fish.

  “S’me,” he said softly.

  “It’s late.” She spoke loudly. “You realize it’s after one o’clock?”

  “Hey, Sumiko, it’s me.”

  “I’ll call you then tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Look, we need to talk. Are you alright? I thought you’d want to know what we found out. Are you alone?”

  “Yes, of course, I understand. Yes, tomorrow would be convenient. Okay? I’m rather busy now, and it’s late.”

  He heard a bang—a wooden bang—a bottle on floorboards. “You alright. Is he there? Is he listening?”

  “Yes of course, I see. Good. Okay. I’ll be calling you tomorrow then.”

  “Sumiko. Hey Sumiko. Is he stopping the night?”

  “I’m afraid it’s really much too late for work matters.”

  “There’s stuff I got to tell you.”

  “Thank you very much. Goodnight.”

  HE SAT ON the stairs to the second-floor walkway and poked his swollen nose. Then he packed the towel with ice, pressed it to his face, and climbed to room 233.

  The lights were still on, but Doc Mayr had crashed and lay on her side facing a wall. A wrinkled arm rested above a thin brown blanket, and a smell of burnt tobacco stained the air.

  He crept to the bathroom, pulled off his shirt and pants, and studied his body in the mirror. Not just his face, but his throat was discolored. His right ear was grazed and bleeding. His knees looked undamaged but felt tender to touch. His ankles and toes seemed fine.

  By the soap-skimmed washbasin lay Doc Mayr’s purse, plus a typescript of Wilson et al. She’d marked it with notes, numbers, calculations: in small writing too scratchy to make sense of. He kicked off his shorts, nudged the door shut, and climbed into the warmth of the shower.

  When he stepped out and dried, the room was freezing. The aircon was running full whack. Every fifteen or twenty seconds it clank-clank-clanked, as if somebody fed it a spoon. The curtain ballooned. He raised a flap and shut it off. The clanking ceased, the curtain settled, and he sank onto a hard chair beside it.

  He wore only a towel, but Doc Mayr was unconscious, breathing slow and rasping, almost snoring. He rose, killed the lights, returned to the chair, lifted the blue curtain, and looked out.

  The Sentra wasn’t visible: only a yellow-bulbed light pole and a truck with its tail to the building. He let go the curtain, which brushed against his face: a brief contact of fabric with skin. It didn’t catch his bruises or his possibly broken nose. But that touch… That touch was enough.

  How often had a drape, or a sheet, brought it back? A sensation: a bewildering heartache. One minute he’d be sitting, or lying in bed, and the next he was standing on a chair. He was standing on a chair after running through rooms to a wood-framed window with curtains. He was running to beat a car, tan-colored and boxy, rumbling on gravel outside.

  He was five years old. He’d just started kindergarten. Most days he made this dash through the house. From the kitchen in the back to the living room in the front: the dash to watch his daddy leave for work.

  He remembered a different man—black hair, white smile—to the pictures he’d see in the papers. Years later they’d show him all shifty and pale for his first trial, in federal court. The Trib made him look like a psychotic movie star. The Sun-Times: grinning like a reptile. But he was never like that reading bedtime stories or kicking a ball around in the yard.

  The car rumbled outside. Ben remembered that sound. He remembered how it paused at the sidewalk.

  Brake. Turn signal. Wheel left. Gas.

  His daddy looked both ways and was gone.

  SATURDAY JULY 26

  Forty-eight

  NORTH HALSTED was popping in the early hours of Saturday morning, and Luke felt good walking home. After the fight with Mario, he’d spent hours at
a sauna, until every muscle and synapse relaxed. On North Cleveland Avenue, his Cuban heels clicked the sidewalk as he passed cold cars and dark windows. The sound was irregular: a useful reminder he was at least two steps past drunk.

  This section of the Near Northside was once Italian-German, but more recently became a home for bank vice presidents and Board of Trade dealers, with their armies of accountants and lawyers. The streets were canopied with locusts and maples, and the sidewalks planted with shrubs. Outside 1804, he checked his Fiat Spider: looking seriously mean in the dark. Classic retro soft-top. One hundred forty horsepower. Black paint. Black interior. Black.

  From his building’s front stoop, he climbed two flights, unlocked his front door, and was home. He wrenched off his boots and eyed the answering machine, now flashing to signal calls received. He hit play, uncapped a bottle of sparkling water, and gulped at his bedroom window. On St. Michael’s church clock, the little hand touched four and the big hand was closing on eleven. To the south, above the Loop, old John Hancock fingered, his red lights sparkling sharp.

  Luke’s mother’s voice echoed. Could they fix a place for lunch? She’d booked him to look at pianos. He couldn’t play much: mostly early Mozart and stuff Bach wrote for his kids. But to his mother his renditions of tunes from the Lion King were sufficient to consider him a maestro.

  A beep from the machine then right on time. “You there? If you’re there, pick up. It’s me. Pick up… Fuck it, bro. If you’re out, please call me… Call me tonight… Any time… This is heavy.”

  Luke sighed, rubbed his eyes, moved from the window, and plugged his Motorola on charge. Then he locked the front door, killed lights and fans, stripped, hung his pants on the back of a chair by his bed, and collapsed face-down to sleep.

  But sleep didn’t come. He pressed his chin to the pillow, unable to clear his head. The image came too easy of Ben opening drapes to signal how he hadn’t got a fuck. So, why would this guy Hoffman—who knew something of Henry Louviere—want to know if he scored or not? What was the issue about the data on the vaccine? And what was that package all about? How was it that Ben “practically saved” the lady’s life?

  What shit had he gotten in now?

  All Friday, Luke had struggled to suppress old instincts. He’d nearly phoned Ben for the answers. But new boundaries should be clear—with no room for doubt—their relationship must change, no matter what.

  Yet his mind wouldn’t rest. He’d always known everything—every scrape, scam, and scandal—pretty much since that day at the Cozy Cleaners. That was always how it worked: through their secrets, intimacies. Nobody in the world knew Ben like he did, and nobody knew him like Ben.

  Fond phantoms stepped from a parade of memories that stalked him like Resurrection Mary. He remembered an afternoon up a tree in Oz Park, and Ben talking him down, foothold by foothold. He remembered the weekend he first heard Ben sing: a hesitant “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He remembered a wet night in a tent in Wisconsin.

  And he remembered Ben’s fear of Luke’s men.

  “Add your boyfriends together and you know what you get?”

  “What you get?”

  “You get me. Hee-hee.”

  Luke crawled out of bed and grabbed his phone. Ben’s cell rang four times, then voicemail.

  The clock on St. Michael’s said a quarter after four. So, two-fifteen Pacific, five-fifteen Eastern. He tried the number again.

  It rang once… Twice… Three times… Four times…

  Then a squawk. He stood. “It’s me.”

  Silence. Then laughing. “Hey me. This is me.” A young male voice he didn’t know.

  Then another, way off. “This is me.” And a female. “Hi-ii.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “I’m trying to get Ben.”

  A snigger. “We got a Ben here? Don’t think we do.” More laughing. “We got a Jackie, a Denise, a Calvin, and I’m Skip. Who’s you dude? What’s up?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Welcome to the party for our new Samsung.”

  “Look, where’d you get that phone?”

  “Wouldn’t ya like to know?”

  Skip hung up.

  Forty-nine

  IF DOC MAYR even saw the identical white sedan, she gave nothing away as Ben pulled in at the corner of Twentieth and Missouri. She’d said next to nothing since breakfast in Petaluma and, apart from toll options at the Golden Gate Bridge, then confirming her identity at checkout from the Hyatt, she’d barely uttered six sentences this morning.

  She’d said, “Get home first” when he mentioned the police, a curt “if you insist” when he spoke of Sumiko, and now gazed silently at duck-egg siding as he parked next to Murayama's rental.

  Ben felt wired. Adrenaline pumped. Every molecule was firing for action. He didn’t sleep long at the Motel 6, but he did sleep deep, and out of that depth surged a boiling, hyperenergized rage. In the Petaluma Denny’s, he practically blew a fuse when he couldn’t get blueberry syrup for his waffles. Approaching the Robin Williams Tunnel, he fingered fuck off at a guy trying to switch lanes in front. And as they cruised the orange mile from Marin County to the city, he turned Manhattan cabbie—tailgating, honking—as if his life hung on every second saved.

  Now he leaped from the car, pressed two front doorbells, and heard the buzzer rasp upstairs. It brought back the memory of that raucous bzzzzzzzzzzz in the glow of the bubbling aquarium. He pressed a second time… Third time… And again.

  Fuck. She won’t answer. Fuck.

  She was pretending to be out, like she did Thursday night when Murayama tried to bust up their party. But she was up there alright: probably hanging off the bed; probably sucking on the Jap in a Suit’s dick.

  He sprinted round the corner and scaled the fire escape. The French doors to the kitchen were locked. He pulled out his keys and rapped on the glass. And again. But nothing. No answer.

  Fuck. She won’t answer. She wasn’t even going to answer. Even to hear what went down with the sister. Some professional. What bullshit that was. All she’d wanted were a few hard fucks. Probably, she needed them because her boyfriend was useless. She’d said as much. Assuming it was him. Maybe he wasn’t bailed yet, so she’d gotten someone else in. All comers in white sedans.

  SUMIKO STOOD naked at her bedroom window and fingered the venetian blind. She peered through its slats as the Sentra backed up, paused on Missouri, rolled forward, turned right, and disappeared on Twentieth Street. She guessed its route: down the hill to Potrero Avenue, past the hospital, then the freeway to the airport.

  In truth, since her dash to Bryant Street last night, she’d only one thing on her mind. Apart from that phone call, after one in the morning, Ben, Trudy Mayr, Wilson, Doctorjee, had faded to something like irrelevance. If she’d given them any thought since she’d learned of the arrest, it was to wonder why she’d bothered in the first place.

  Her boyfriend stood behind her, cupping her breasts. Since his release, he’d been childlike, needy. She’d been glad to lend support at this moment of crisis, but what could she say now to explain?

  Hiroshi fingered her nipples, his penis limp on her buttocks. “So, tell me then please, why is he here?”

  She let go the blind. “Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. That company. Once you’re on its payroll, they never leave you alone. It’s one thing after another.”

  His nails nipped her flesh. “Before nine Saturday morning? This is important business, I think.”

  She moved from the window and stared at the bed, at the nightstand, at the clock, at her yellow flannel robe: anywhere but near his gaze. In such needling interrogations, he sounded like her father. Would life be like this in Nagoya?

  “Oh, more of the same. More BerneWerner Biomed. They think they actually own your whole life.”

  He reached out and dug his thumbs into her levator scapulae. “And still you don’t answer h
im. Mr. Louviere will be offended, I think. With my car, he will know we are here.”

  She rolled her head as he kneaded her trapezius. “They always want something, those people.”

  “He’s attracted to you, yes, I think.”

  She studied the bed in which two men had slept—one after another, night after night—as she’d given herself up to sensation. “Let me make coffee. And we can go out for breakfast. Get our heads round this drugs charge insanity.”

  “He knows the back stairs? Yes? He’s been here before, I think. We met outside when you came from the hospital, but he has come here more times, I think.”

  She grappled for shoes and struggled for an answer. Ben hadn’t seen the fire escape Tuesday. She lifted a hairbrush, returned it to the dressing table, stepped toward Hiroshi, and took his hand.

  “Breakfast can wait. Come and lie down. There’s something I’ve got to confess.”

  THE FREEWAY ran clear, right through to the airport. But Ben’s mood didn’t pass so easy. “Guess Sanomo will be laughing when she tells them what she knows. That Murayama guy will be so happy.”

  Beside him, Doc Mayr studied a map on her phone and compared it with signs above the road. She’d begun talking a little more since Potrero Hill, as if something in that incident broke the ice. “Perhaps he will. But I’m not so sure. If our vaccine gets stalled, the whole field will fall under suspicion, and that’ll damage his work for Sanomo.”

  Ben signaled left as they approached a ramp. “So, you and Murayama then? Looks like you don’t exactly hit it off. Is it impolite to ask what that’s about?”

  “Nasty. So sly.” Her voice gained an edge. “Comes over oh-so innocent, in his cute little tie. But, believe me, he’s not. No, he’s not.”

  Ben hung another left. “You knew him before the conference then?”

  “Oh, we go way back. Way back.”

  “Looks kind of young for what he’s doing.”