Blind School (14 page)

Ryan saw red. Maybe
Milford
’s constant picking on Tommy, maybe the strain of the past days at
Blind
School
– he suddenly snapped. He jumped up and pushed Milford off Tommy.

‘Leave him alone, shit-brain! Go find some other mug to sting.’

Milford
quickly recovered, leapt back and punched out – hit Ryan below one eye, sending his sunglasses flying.

Ryan lunged back, caught
Milford
a glancing blow on the chin. And as they grappled and
Milford
's pals moved in, a teacher forty yards away caught sight of them.

‘
Hey
– you two!’ he shouted their way. ‘Break it up!’

Milford
stepped back; reluctantly. Ryan picked up his sunglasses.

   ‘What's with the dark glasses?’
Milford
asked, and Ryan gave him a cramped smile.

‘I read in 'Maxim' that girls thought guys in dark glasses were 'cool'. They got lucky more.’

Milford
took in Ryan's spiky hair for the first time.

‘Not looking like that you won't.’ Shaking his head,
Milford
moved off, Stevie and Jed in tow. ‘Catch ya later, ton-ton.’

‘Four-eighty-... five hundred.’ The car-breaker counted the last twenty dollars into Frank Lyle’s hand. ‘We all square?’

‘Yeah. Reckon we are.’

The breaker nodded to his operator by the crusher, and its sides started to press in on Lyle’s black van.

Lyle stayed and watched until it was a mangled, unrecognizable mess. He’d taken two hundred light on the deal to have no registration listed, so the last thing he wanted was any of it left intact and parts sold which could then be traced.

He jumped on a city bus a half mile from the breakers yard and within forty minutes was appraising a similar van with tinted windows in a car lot, this time in grey. 

The black van with tinted windows drifted steadily through the city streets.

   An FBI agent was at the wheel while another in the back of the van viewed a bank of monitors, one of which showed Alex Culverton's black limousine three cars ahead.

As they watched the limousine screech off from the next set of lights and pick up speed, the driver remarked:

‘Looks like he's in a hurry to get somewhere.’

In turn his voice and the van monitors fed through to a central FBI control room, where an operator with the same view responded:

‘ Stay with him. Could be a key meeting.’

‘Okay. Read you.’

But then they watched the limo ahead suddenly put on another spurt.

The agent floored it, swung out from a slowed car in front, swerved to miss another – he sped through the next lights just after they turned red.

‘Oh... shiiiit!’

The other side, the limo swung sharply into the next turn, and he followed – weaving and zipping through traffic now.

He saw Culverton’s driver glance in his rear-view mirror just before he swung sharply into the next turn.

Touching sixty, his heart was in his mouth as he saw the lights just ahead of Culverton turning red. Point of no return – he knew he’d lose them if he braked.

They flashed by one car crossing, horns blaring from all around – but the approaching truck was another matter.

Its driver saw them, eyes wide in alarm as he braked and fought to swerve – but too late.

The truck hit them broadside with a bang, and suddenly they were spinning, monitors crashing down, a blizzard of glass swirling past them before settling.

In the FBI central operations room, the sound of the crash had reached them, but the monitor screens were now dead.

‘You okay...
you okay
?’ the operator asked.

The driver and the agent in the back slowly stirred. Bloodied but still alive. The monitoring agent’s headset had come off, was now on the floor two yards away.

He squinted one eye at the tinny voice coming over it: 
'You okay... you okay?'
 Annoying.

EIGHTEEN

Jessica Werner waited on the gurney in the
Blind
School
lab as Ellis Kendell conferred with the clinic doctor.  Kendell gave a final nod, as if to confirm he had the procedure clear, then turned to Jessica.

‘Now if you manage to talk your mother out of this appointment with your doctor – put her mind at ease through our clinic here –
great
.’

‘Okay, yeah. I'll give that another shot.’

‘But if not, at least there's a contingency plan.’ Ellis looked at the doctor, who held up a pill bottle.

‘Take two of these three hours before the appointment: these will give

blood and urine markers consistent with hemeralopia.’ He then held up an eye-drop bottle. ‘And a drop of this in each eye just an hour beforehand. These will give the right dilation level – and the light will in fact hurt your eyes for a while.’

‘Yes. Okay.’ Jessica looked between the two bottles, hoping she’d got the instructions clear.

Alex Culverton's limousine was parked in a deserted warehouse district, shadows heavy in the fast fading dusk light.

A grey car pulled up behind and a dark-suited man got out.

An FBI agent, despite being a deserted area he fired an anxious glance around as he approached Culverton's limousine. Alex Culverton and Coby were sat in the front, so he slid into its back seat.

   Alex appraised him for second in his rear-view mirror.

‘So, what news? What have you been able to find out about this teen

kid?’

Alex’s voice fed through a speaker grill to the back. The FBI agent was fazed by it for a second, finding it odd that Alex had chosen to stay in the front by his driver. Last time they’d met they’d sat in the back of the limousine together. Thick plate glass separated them.

‘Not much, I'm afraid. Whoever he is he's buried deep. Deeper than any internal department I've ever come across.’ Those eyes stayed steadily on him in the mirror.

After a second Alex smiled dryly. ‘So despite the line you fed me before about being able to find out
everything
– you obviously have your limitations.’

The voice through the grill was odd, unsettling. The agent held a palm out.

‘I told you about them putting tabs on you after the air-crash, didn't I? But that brings up another problem now. I start digging deeper, someone's going to pick up the connection between us.’

Alex nodded; thoughtful. ‘If in fact they haven't already done so.’

Alex nodded to Coby and he started the engine.

The agent’s brow knitted. Were they going somewhere? Alex stared at him again in the mirror.

‘But good of you to confirm what I already suspected: that you've outdone your usefulness. I like a man who is honest.’

The agent at that moment got the first whiff of fumes, and realized that the exhaust was feeding into the back. He tried the side door:
locked
! He leant forward, banging on the glass separating them.

‘What the hell, Alex!
Come on
!’

Alex's stare in the mirror was impassive. Coby had spent an hour before leaving bypassing the catalytic converter with a tube, then the complication of the FBI van trailing them. It had been vital to lose them before this meeting now.

‘.... A man who let's me know where I stand.’

Panic now from the agent as the air started getting short. He banged harder on the glass.

‘Fuck's sake, Alex – let me out of here!
Out
!’

Alex turned on a CD. Vivaldi's Four Seasons,
Spring
, started playing. Alex shifted his gaze from his rear-view mirror to ahead, relaxed into the music drowning out the pleas and banging behind him.

The agent took out his .38 and fired at the partition glass once...
twice
. Only faint surface starbursts.

Frantic, choking now with the fumes, he fired four more shots into the side and back windows too: the same, only surface penetration. The glass was bullet-proof inside and out.

Alex turned up the music, started waving one hand like a conductor.

Ryan and Jessica sat at a candle-lit table in the
Albany
restaurant. Twenty floors up, it had a panoramic view over the city.

They were halfway through their meals, the vibes loose and mellow between them. Jessica looked across the table after taking a mouthful of Salmon in dill sauce.

‘So is this a date?’

‘Yeah, suppose so...’ Ryan looked pleased with the idea. ‘Two supposed hemeralopia victims wearing identical dark glasses. Puts a whole new meaning to 'Blind Date'.’

Jessica chuckled, looked round at the restaurant. ‘Do you think any of them really think we're blind or halfway there?’

‘Nah. Maybe jazz musicians.’

‘Too young. I mean, are there actually any jazz musicians still alive?’

Ryan beamed ‘Okay, rock stars then... or Mafioso.’

‘Or fashion icons.’

‘All sounds A-list cool. Until you catch 'em struggling to read a menu in a candle-lit restaurant like this, and realize they're just stooopid.’

They broke into chuckles almost at the same time. They were enjoying the banter, and each other's company. Ryan shook his head.

‘Had trouble even with some pizza instructions the other day. Had my glasses off to read when my mom walked in. Ended up making some bullshit excuse about fluorescent lighting being weaker than sunlight.’

‘Know what you mean. I don't know if I'm cut out for this double-life either. Lying to my mum. Her lying to me.’

Ryan chewed a mouthful of food, thoughtful. ‘Ellis manage to sort something out for you on that front?’

Yeah. Got some pills and eye-drops which apparently fake the symptoms.’ She tapped her handbag. ‘Along with my inhaler and my mom's enzymes, I'm a regular walking Schwartz's drug store.’

She smiled tightly, but Ryan could sense it was mainly bravado. Beneath she looked as nervous as hell. He reached a hand out, touched her hand reassuringly.

‘You'll be okay.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’ They fell silent for a second. ‘One thing they'd never guess, though. What the dark glasses are really for... and what's
really
going on out there.’

Her gaze shifted from the people around them to the window at their side, and Ryan joined her in looking out across the city panorama.

‘No. I guess they never would.’

Not a single twinkling city light within eight miles, the darkness at Frank Lyle's farm was inky black, impenetrable.