Trust Your Eyes (17 page)

They know shit.

Weeks ago, the company bosses have him in for a little chat in the boardroom. Three of them on one side of a long, mahogany table, Lambton on the other.

They slide some paperwork across the table to him and the company president says: “You are going to sell our offer to your people. You can bad-mouth it all you want. You can tell them they deserve better. You can tell them the company is forcing them to eat shit and smile as they swallow and say, ‘May I have some more, sir?’ But in the end, you’re going to sell this offer, because it’s the best they’re going to get in the current climate. Tell them that if they’re happy for someone named Juan or Felipe or Dong Hung Low to make these parts, then vote to reject. But if they want their jobs, they’ll take this contract.”

Michael Lambton calmly pushes back his chair, stands, unzips his jeans, and sends a stream of urine across the mahogany tabletop, thoroughly soaking the contract in the process.

The company people, seated on the other side of the table, push their chairs back a little as the puddle of piss spreads.

Lambton tucks his penis back into his pants, zips up, and says, “That’s what I think of your offer. The economy’s coming back. GM’s having a good year; so’s Chrysler. The bailout worked. You guys are making money and you can afford to continue to give my workers a decent wage; don’t even think about any takeaways.” He smiled. “Are we done here?”

The president turns to the man next to him and says, “Get some paper towels and blot that up.”

The man can’t believe what he’s being asked to do, but he does it. When the mess is cleaned up, the president places a leather satchel on the table.

“It’s half a million,” he says. “You can count it if you want. All you have to do is get your people to vote for this contract.”

Lambton takes a moment to consider this new bargaining tactic. He says, “That does change things.”

It would not be the first time he’s done bad things for money. He is a practical man.

“Half now, half after the vote, assuming it goes the way it’s supposed to,” the company president says.

Now, leaving the union meeting, he’s certain he’ll be getting the other quarter mil. In a few days, the members of the local will mark their ballots. Michael Lambton has been doing this kind of thing a long time, has addressed a lot of crowds, and can read a mood. All the votes he’s been through, he’s never called one wrong.

They’ll go for it. They’ll hold their noses when they vote, but they’ll go for it.

Driving home from the meeting, sitting in the power, heated, leather captain’s chair of his SUV, thinking about all that money he has coming his way, he has some major wood going on.

He thinks, briefly, about hitting a bar, maybe lucking into somebody. But that can be a hit-or-miss play. He may end up paying for it, and he can damn well afford it, but feels that’s beneath him. He considers himself a good-looking guy. Maybe a bit heavy around the middle, but Tony Soprano had a gut, too, and it didn’t stop him from getting some strange whenever he wanted it.

He’s heading down the two-lane highway, hitting the wipers every ten seconds or so to clear some light drizzle coming down, when he sees a car pulled over onto the shoulder about a hundred yards up ahead.

Some Japanese import wagon, the back door swung open. The way Lambton figures it, in some ways, it’s the Japs’ fault he’s taken the money, that he’s compromised his principles. It’s the Japs who nearly killed North American auto manufacturing.
The Germans, too. Two former enemies, getting their revenge at last. Lambton, taking that money, keeping his guys working, it’s the Japs and Krauts who’ve forced his hand. Because when you really thought about it, they—

Hold the phone, what’s this?

Some chick’s trying to wrestle a spare tire out of the back. He can only see her from behind, but he likes what he sees. Blond hair to the shoulders, black jacket, blue jeans, over-the-knee leather boots. Slim. Could use a little more meat on her bones for Lambton’s liking, but not bad.

She has the floor panel in the hatch propped open and the tire halfway out.

Lambton slows as he cruises past, scoping her out through the misted passenger window. She glances over and he can see she’s probably late thirties. Nice face.

Pull over and help, or not?

He doesn’t have to think long. He noses over onto the shoulder just ahead of her car, kills the engine, and takes out the key. He’s got his hand on the door when his cell rings.

“Shit.”

He reaches into his jacket, looks at the number. It’s no one he knows. But he hears from a lot of people, some who like to use different phones all the time. Ones that are hard to trace. Michael Lambton knows how important that can be.

But he doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. He’s got to tend to a damsel in distress. He slips the phone back into his jacket.

Lambton doesn’t see another car coming either way on this stretch of road.
Not much traffic out here,
he thinks. Something could happen to someone out here, no one would ever know.

Don’t let your mind go there,
he says to himself. Then,
Okay, maybe just for a minute or so.

He pulls his long jacket around the front of him, buttons it.
Not just to keep dry against the drizzle. He doesn’t want to scare this chick from the get-go by showing off the growing bulge in the front of his pants.

“Trouble?” he shouts.

Figures, help her out, change her tire, then see if she wants to grab a coffee somewhere. He’ll be all wet by that time. She’ll feel sorry for him, indebted. It’ll be hard for her to say no. Maybe she’ll suggest he come back to her place, dry off.

The woman peers out from behind her car.

“Oh my God, thanks for stopping!” she says. “I think I ran over a nail or something!”

“You call Triple A?” he asks, hoping she’ll say no. Doesn’t want some tow truck driver crowding in on his action.

“I’m just kicking myself, right? I get those notices in the mail, telling me I should join, but then throw the things away. Total idiot, right?”

He’s around the back of the car now, getting a good look at her. Five-nine, maybe 140 pounds, high cheekbones. Small tits, but you couldn’t have everything. Looked European or something. Long legs, jeans fitting her good and tight like leggings, tucked into her boots. Leather gloves. Something athletic about her. The way she holds herself.

“You should join,” he tells her, then worries she’ll suggest he call using his own membership. He’s only a couple of feet from her now. Doesn’t want to crowd her, frighten her. She looks wary. Like,
I’m glad you stopped, but please don’t start waving it at me, okay
?

“I guess I’m lucky you were going by,” she says.

“What’s your name?”

“Nicole.”

“I’m Frank,” he says. Why use his real name on what is clearly not the beginning of a long relationship?

“You want to sit in my car while I do this?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Nicole said.

Lambton’s cell rings again but he ignores it.

“Is there anything I can do?” Nicole asks. “Like, hold a flashlight or something?”

“You got one? I got one in the truck.”

She takes out her own cell phone from inside her jacket pocket, which Michael thinks is interesting, since most women keep them in their purse. “I’ve got this app. I can turn the phone into a flashlight.”

“You don’t want to get that all wet,” he says. He has a grip on the tire and is leveraging it over the back bumper, getting ready to drop it to the ground.

“Which tire’s flat, anyway?” he asks. It occurs to him, at that moment, that he hasn’t noticed the car listing to one side or settling on any one corner.

“Front passenger,” Nicole says.

As he peers around to the front of the car, Nicole bends down, like she’s giving a tug on one of her knee-high boots.

“Nicole, that tire doesn’t look flat to—”

The ice pick, swift and noiseless, feels hot going into his right side, just above his waist. In the second it takes him to register the pain, Nicole has withdrawn it, the pick red and glistening, and thrust it into him once again, this time higher, between his ribs.

Nicole withdraws again, then drives the ice pick in a third time.

Hard.

Michael Lambton gasps and falls to the wet gravel. He tries to speak but all that emerges from between his lips is blood.

Nicole kneels down and says to him, “Your people, they wanted me to tell you, they know you sold them out. They know about the double-cross. They know you fucked them over.”

Then, just to be sure, she runs the ice pick into him a fourth time, piercing his heart.

She stands and turns her face up to the rain. It feels good. Cleansing.

She rolls Michael Lambton down into the ditch and slips the spare tire back into the hold below the hatchback floor. Once she’s behind the wheel and heading off down the two-lane blacktop, her own phone rings.

“Yes.”

“It’s me.” No hello, no introduction. But she recognizes the man’s voice. It’s Lewis.

“Hey,” she says.

“I’m calling about your availability. I mean, it’s not like you’re exclusive with Victor anymore.”

“Kind of busy right now,” she says.

“I may have something for you.”

“I’m north of the border. About to take some time off.”

“But if I had something for you, could you take it on? It’d be worth your while.”

“What do you mean, if?”

“I have to make the case to my boss. I think he’ll go for it. I’ll know very soon.”

She thinks. She really wants some time off, but then again, she hates to turn down work.

“What’s the job?”

“Some chick works in a bar,” he says. “Piece of cake.”

“Sounds like a job anyone could do,” Nicole says.

“We need some distance on this one, too.”

“Let me know when you’ve talked to your boss.”

She ends the call.

There’s something about his voice. It reminds her, just a little, of her father’s, although she hasn’t actually spoken with him for many years. The miserable son of a bitch.

But he’s always in her head, dear old Dad.

She can still hear him saying, “Jesus Christ,
silver
? We came all the way to Australia so you could win
silver
? You know what they say? If you win bronze at the Olympics, you’re just happy to go home with a medal. But when you win silver, when you come within a hair of winning gold, it eats you up for the rest of your life. It’s like being the second guy who walked on the moon. Who remembers him?”

She can still remember the slap she got when she said, “Buzz Aldrin.”

TWENTY-ONE

THE
following morning, it was as though it had never happened.

Thomas came down for breakfast like it was any other day. Even though I hadn’t stopped feeling guilty about how I’d handled things after the visit from the FBI, Thomas was going about things the way he always did, which is to say, he stayed in his room and traveled the world.

So many things about him puzzled me. I wished I could get inside his head. He’d always been a mystery to me, even when we were kids. There was this bubble around him, something that kept me from getting through, and him from reaching out. I’d always wondered, why him and not me? Why was he the one to be—is afflicted the right word?—with psychiatric problems, and not me? How fair was that? Did God look down at my parents and think, “I’ll give them one with a good head on his shoulders, and the other—I’ll have a bit of fun with him.”

There was no shortage of theories about why Thomas was schizophrenic. When we were kids, bad parenting—or, more
specifically, bad mothering—was often blamed, which didn’t go over well with our mom, who was a patient, loving woman. A nurturing woman, she’d have been more likely to mitigate the effects of someone’s mental distress rather than exacerbate it. Over time, other theories came to the fore. It was genetic. Environmental. A chemical imbalance in the brain. Stress. A childhood trauma. Processed foods. A combination of all of those things.

Or maybe something else entirely.

The bottom line was, no one really knew anything. I could no more explain why Thomas was the way he was than I could explain why I was the way I was. And Thomas, while troubled, was also tremendously gifted. His ability to remember all the things he saw while on Whirl360 was beyond my ability to comprehend. I asked him once if he’d be happier without this so-called gift, and he threw it right back at me. Would I be happier if I had no artistic ability? What I judged to be his curse, he saw as his talent. This was what made him different. This was what made him proud. His obsession was his source of pleasure. And when you thought about it, wasn’t that true of all talented people?

I just didn’t know.

What I did know was that my parents did everything they could to help Thomas, and loved him unreservedly. They took him to doctors. They took him to specialists. They met with all his teachers. They never stopped worrying about him. Often, as the older brother, I was drawn into that circle of anxiety. Once—I think I was fifteen at the time—Thomas had been missing for hours. He’d often get on his bike and wander Promise Falls, mapping it, learning every square inch of it. He’d return, his notebook filled with street plans, detailed right down to the placement of the stop signs and fire hydrants.

This particular day, he hadn’t returned home in time for dinner. That wasn’t like Thomas.

“Go see if you can find him,” Mom said.

I hopped on my bike and headed downtown. It struck me that that was where I’d find him. The crisscross of streets was more intricate downtown, and offered more entertainment value for someone with Thomas’s interests. I couldn’t find him.

But I found his bike.

It was tucked in an alley off Saratoga, between a barbershop and the Promise Falls Bakery, which made the best lemon tarts in the history of the universe. I thought maybe Thomas had gone in there for one, but the lady behind the counter had not seen him.

I went up the street and back, checking into every business, asking if anyone had seen my brother. At one point, I stood on the sidewalk out front of a shoe store, overcame my fear of drawing attention to myself, and shouted: “Thomas!”