Nerve Damage (14 page)

“I want the best defense money can buy,” Roy
said.

“You're talking about the kid's gun charge?” said Turk. They sat in his office, overlooking the green; a crow landed on the snowy top of
Neanderthal Number Nineteen.

“He didn't do it,” Roy said.

“Someone planted the gun?”

“Yes.”

“One of the gangs?” Turk said. “And the kid was the real target, for reasons unknown? Pretty expensive ploy—they'd be sacrificing the gun, a six-hundred-dollar item.”

“It wasn't one of the gangs,” Roy said.

“No?” said Turk. “Who, then?”

Roy took out Skippy's drawing, handed it to Turk. “Her,” he said.

Turk put on his reading glasses. “One of the Corderos?” he said.

“This isn't a Cordero,” Roy said. “Her name's Lenore. She's supposedly a clerk or manager in a wineshop in D.C.”

“I don't get it,” Turk said. “What's her relationship to the kid?”

“No relationship,” Roy said. “She needed uninterrupted time in the house, that's all.”

“Your house?”
Roy nodded.

“She's an art thief?”

“A thief, anyway,” Roy said. “Among other things.”

“What did she take?”

“A sketch.”

“One of yours?”

“Yes.”

“How much is it worth, rough estimate?” said Turk, reaching for a pen.

“Nothing,” Roy said. “Not monetarily. It's more like…evidence, I guess you'd say.”

“Evidence of what?”

“This all goes back to Delia,” Roy said.

Turk glanced at Skippy's drawing. “This woman knew her when you were in D.C.?”

“No,” Roy said, but as soon as the word was out, thought:
can't be sure of that.
Lenore was probably about the same age Delia would have been now. “This is all about the Hobbes Institute.”

“What's that?”

“The outfit Delia worked for.”

“Yeah?” said Turk. “I always thought she worked for the government.”

“You did?”

“What's so weird about that?” Turk said. “They must hire economists by the thousands.”

“I didn't say it was weird.”

“You're looking weird.”

“I'm surprised, that's all,” Roy said.

“About what?”

“That she never mentioned her work to you.”

“Actually, she did,” said Turk. “She told me she hated it.”

Roy shook his head. “She must have been joking. Delia was dedicated to her job.”

“Maybe,” Turk said. “But I remember this one occasion distinctly—that night we got snowed in at the warming hut.”

“Winter carnival?”

“Yeah,” Turk said.

Roy remembered. One of the last winter carnivals in Ethan Valley: the selectmen commissioned a study to see whether it made economic sense for the town and canceled it soon after. He and Delia, Turk, Turk's wife at the time, and a few other people snowshoeing on the back side of the mountain got caught in a blizzard. This was before Ski America came in, before any cutting on the back side. There was just one steep and twisting path—probably going back to the Indians—that hooked up with the Appalachian Trail, and at the T stood the warming hut. They'd fired up the woodstove, shared what food they had—a surprising amount—and there'd even been a wineskin to pass around.

“We went out for wood from the pile behind the warming hut,” Turk said. “All unsplit, so Delia got to work with the ax while I held the lantern.”

“Delia did the splitting?” Roy said.

“I was going to at first, of course,” said Turk, “but she took the ax.”

“Delia never handled an ax in her life.”

“Then she was awful good for a beginner,” Turk said. He got a look in his eye. “In fact, I distinctly remember mentioning it to you.”

“When?”

“At the rink one night. Between periods.”

“I don't remember.”

“No?”

But surely he would have remembered that. “I must have thought you were joking,” Roy said.

“Maybe,” said Turk. “The point is, the wind's howling up there, snow flying all over the place, but we're sheltered there behind the hut, in this quiet pocket, and she turns to me and says, ‘I could live this way forever.' Meaning living rough, cabin in the woods, water from the stream, all that.”

“That's not her at all,” Roy said.

“Her exact words—they made an impression,” Turk said. “And I told
her she'd get bored pretty quick, start missing her job. That's when she said she hated it. I asked why, but her answer didn't make much sense.”

“What was it?” Roy said.

Turk screwed up his face. “Something along the lines of ‘when you see how things really happen, the fun goes out pretty quick.'”

“What things?” Roy said.

“That's what I didn't get,” said Turk. “Economics is at the other end of how the world works, right? The theoretical.”

“Not always,” Roy said, thinking of the pineapple caper, as Paul Habib had called it—practical, hands-on. “But this kind of fits into the problem.”

“Which is?”

“Delia's job,” Roy said. “The Hobbes Institute seems to have disappeared.”

“Disappeared like…?”

Roy told his story—mistake in the obituary; Richard Gold and his cell phone; Consulate of Greece; Tom Parish; Wine, Inc.; Lenore; Sergeant Bettis.

When he finished, Turk was silent for twenty seconds or so. Outside the window, the crow perched on
Neanderthal Number Nineteen
spread its wings wide. It didn't take off, just stood there like that.

“You're saying the reporter's death is somehow connected?” Turk said.

“Not out loud till now,” said Roy. He was suddenly aware of his own voice, the strain in it, the tension; was it possible he sounded afraid?

“That would be pretty extreme,” Turk said. His eyes went to Skippy's drawing. “The kid drew this?”

“Yes.”

“And it's the wine-store woman, for sure?”

“Lenore.” Roy forced his voice back to normal. “Got to be.”

Turk gazed at it for a moment or two. “One thing off the bat,” he said. “We can clear up this Hobbes business.” He swiveled around to his computer. “Spelling?”

Roy spelled
Hobbes
. “What are you doing?” he said.

“Heard of Google, Roy?”

“I'm an idiot,” Roy said.

The crow folded its wings.

Turk tapped at the keyboard; thick fingers, misshapen from being broken so many times, but the typing was quick and agile. “Sure about that spelling?”

“Yes.”

“Funny,” said Turk.

“What?” Roy said.

“No hits.”

“Meaning?”

Turk didn't answer, tapped a few more keys. “Rephrasing,” he said. “Sometimes that…” He gazed at the screen, shook his head, typed some more.

“What now?” Roy said.

“Other…Nope.” He turned to Roy. “This Hobbes Institute of yours doesn't seem to be on the Web.”

“So?”

Turk smiled. “Surf the Web much, Roy?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“You mean just sort of exploring around?”

“Yeah. Surfing the Web.”

Roy shook his head.

“You're missing something,” Turk said. “For example, let's try R-O-Y V-A-L-O-I-S.”
Tap-tap
. “See?”

Roy glanced over.

“Twelve thousand four hundred twenty hits,” Turk said. “Probably some other Roy Valois mixed up in there, but still, not bad. The point I'm making is that anyone who's anyone or anything that's anything gets hits on the Web.”

“Try Delia,” Roy said.

Turk leaned over the keyboard. “Delia Stern,” he said. “Middle initial?”

“She never used it.”
Tap-tap.

Roy got up, stood behind Turk, read over his shoulder.

“One hit,” Turk said. He clicked on the link.

“Would have thought there'd be more,” Roy said.

A long list of names in alphabetical order appeared on the screen, Delia Stern, toward the bottom, underlined in red.

“What is it?” Roy said.

Turk scrolled to the top, revealing the heading:
Former Employees, Economics Section, UNESCO.

“UNESCO?” Roy said. “Is that the United Nations?”

Turk nodded. “United Nations Education and something-or-other.”

“The United Nations?” Roy said, his voice rising on its own. He read the heading again, three, four, five times. “But it's wrong.” Almost unaware of what he was doing, he crowded Turk out of the way, took control of the mouse, scrolled back down.

Delia Stern.

“Why is her name underlined?”

“The search engine does that,” Turk said.

“Why in red?” he said.

“Some programming thing,” Turk said, on his feet now. He touched Roy's back. “Roy?”

“What?” Roy said, scrolling back to the top to see that heading again.

“Let's go for a walk.”

“She didn't even like the UN—she wrote a paper about it.” Roy hit the back arrow, returned to the original link. He clicked on that, landed again at the UNESCO list, unchanged in any way. He scrolled up, scrolled down, scrolled up, scrolled down, scrolled—

“Roy?”

 

They went
for a walk, around the green. The snow from the storm lay in puffy white drifts, but slightly settled now, like day-old meringue. “Do you have a favorite?” Turk said.

“Favorite?”

“Of the
Neanderthals
.”

Roy glanced up at Number Nineteen, saw the crow was gone. “No,” he said.

“This one's like an old friend to me,” Turk said. “Those huge shoulders and at the same time…”

Turk paused, gazing up at Number Nineteen. Roy looked at him in surprise: Had Turk ever talked about his work before, outside the context of showings and money?

“…at the same time,” Turk went on, “the way he's turning, as though he's heard something, maybe there's trouble on the way, even for a giant like him.” Turk saw the expression on Roy's face, misinterpreted it. “Maybe it's just supposed to be I-beam shapes and stuff—I'm no art critic, that's for sure,” he said, looking a little sheepish. “But lots of people feel the same about him, kind of attached. Like he's watching over the town.”

“I didn't know that,” Roy said.

Their eyes met. The sunshine, bright already and brightened more by all the reflecting snow, lit up networks of tiny lines on Turk's face, lines Roy had never noticed before. He could picture how Turk would look as an old man, one of those sweet, round-faced old men with no regrets; then he thought:
something I won't see in real life.

“I feel kind of bad,” Turk said, “like all this is my fault.”

“All what?” Roy said.

“The whole obituary thing was my stupid idea,” Turk said. “If I'd just kept my mouth shut, you wouldn't be going through all this agitation.”

“That's crazy,” Roy said. “I'm not an ostrich—and I don't need protecting.”

“I know that,” Turk said. “But this is a time for looking out for yourself, not getting agi—not wasting your energy on some wild—some little mix-up that doesn't really matter in the end.”

“Little mix-up?” Roy said. All at once, he had no air, could hardly get the next sentence out. “Mind telling me what you think's going on?”
His voice, starved for air, turned thin and harsh, like a preview of how it would be, or would have been, in forty years or so.

“I don't know, Roy,” Turk said. “Somebody made a mistake, wrote down the wrong thing, it all got magnified, memory plays tricks on people—does it really matter?”

“Memory plays tricks on people?” Roy said. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It was a long time ago,” Turk said.

“Delia worked for the Hobbes Institute, not the UN,” Roy said. “It was real. I was inside. There was a goddamn fountain.”

“Maybe it was part of the UN,” said Turk.

“It was a think tank.”

“Possibly funded by the UN?”

“No.”

“Then who funded it?”

Had Roy ever known? “Private money,” he said. But he wasn't sure.

“Like who?” said Turk.

“You mean the actual people?”

“Yeah. Private money means actual people.”

“I don't know,” Roy said. He'd never thought much about the funding; and the realization that specific people might have put up the money was hitting him now, for the first time.

Turk smiled, and, as though his mind had been following a parallel track, said, “You're an artist, Roy.”

Roy didn't smile back. “So don't get involved with this? Is that what you're saying?”

“I'm saying there's probably nothing to get involved in,” Turk said. “And if Dr. Chu pulls this—if it works out, then there'll be lots of time for your investigation. But right now it's about Roy. That's my advice as lawyer and friend.” He glanced at Roy's arm. “And speaking as the goalie for the Thongs, we need you back on the ice. How's the arm?”

“Fine.” In fact, it was aching in a dull way pretty much all the time. Angles changed in Roy's mind, unbending a little: if the cocktail worked,
he'd have time, years and years. Where was the flaw in that? “What about Skippy?”

“He gets the best defense money can buy,” Turk said. “On the house.”

“What's the defense going to be?”

“No reason we can't use this robbery idea, insurance scam, getting the kid out of the house, all that,” Turk said. “We'll just keep the wraps on this…this murky part.”

So: no flaws left.