BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

her with an elbow—skin against skin—and she didn’t step away. Looking good.

He bent toward her ear. “Any lawyer jobs going in San Francisco?”

Jimi Hendrix didn’t back off an inch.

AFTER A few minutes of reverence, they reclimbed the hill to where Doc Mayr was finishing a phone call. The vaccine chief appeared to have grown in their absence. Her size seemed to vary with her mood. At the airport yesterday, she’d shrunk to a husk, her face more furrowed than Nebraska. But in the ballroom this morning, when Sumiko gave her talk, she’d expanded like a blowup sex doll. Now—flapping the hat like an albatross wing—she looked as pumped as the Michelin Man.

“So, no more fighting.” She struggled to her feet. “Main thing now’s we don’t all fall out. We’re all on the same side. Remember that.”

They headed east, in the direction of the Smithsonian museum, and paused at a public water fountain. As the women took gulps, Ben turned and looked back. Jimi Hendrix was following. Surprise. He was twenty yards behind them, all casual, hands in pockets. No onlooker would spot a connection. But Ben had learned lots from the store detectives’ ways. Especially playing couple with Luke.

Back home in Chicago, he’d known guys follow him for an hour. More than one followed him home. Oh look, there he is at J.C. Penney. There he is, riding the L. And it was all but impossible not to look back—an issue that often screwed him at the gym. Look back—just once—and you’re in for a long one. Because now you’re looking at them.

Sumiko stepped from the fountain and wiped her lips. “Be a nice spot to run, don’t you think?”

“You run?”

“Not much recreation for a single girl in the city.”

“Should come to Atlanta, like I said.”

“Parents are at Palo Alto. Father’s at Stanford.”

“What’s he like?”

“Distant. Lazy… Yours?”

Now there was a question to answer today. Not. This walk would be over in minutes. “Mom’s a nurse at Northwestern Memorial.”

They crossed Fourteenth Street, then Madison Drive, where Doc Mayr suggested riding the subway. She was walking pretty shaky, but promised not to faint, and asserted her right to decide. “Runs straight on through to Metro Center. Comes right up beside the hotel.”

At Smithsonian station, a sheet steel escalator descended to a concrete cavern. Tourists and kids crowded the platforms on both sides. On the board: a Blue Line to Van Dorn.

Ben pressed a sneaker around a stud for the visually impaired, as his legs felt the draft of a train. “When’s your flight to San Fran?”

“A quarter of five, I think.”

“National?”

“Dulles.”

“Lucky you.”

The train rumbled in the tunnel. Lights pulsed in the platform. Then he saw Jimi again. This was sucky. He was stomping along the platform like he was late for a date. Ben had known guys to get that way.

The train was getting closer… Jimi was closing… There was only a narrow gap for him to pass.

Ben dropped the bag and moved to block.

Too late: the guy was upon them.

Jimi Hendrix lurched and stumbled into Sumiko.

She wobbled… She toppled… She fell.

Ben watched her fall, saw her arms fly out. He felt the train’s weight in his feet.

She was crouching on the track… She was standing… She was reaching…

For an instant, the world stood still.

Then he leaped, sprang, flew onto the track: a leopard on top of its prey.

He felt concrete vibrating, glimpsed the dazzle of headlights. Brakes squealed. He slipped on a rail. Every second became a minute. Every inch became a yard. He couldn’t move. They were going to die.

Then he picked her up and tossed her to safety.

And the leopard sprang back to its tree.

The train crashed past. Ben gasped, “Thank fuck.” Gapers gaped. Doors opened with a grind.

But Jimi didn’t stop. He stepped into a car and, behind him, the doors snapped shut.

SUNDAY JULY 20

Nine

THE STEAM age landline in the living room rang. And it rang. It didn’t twitter or bleep. In the third-floor apartment at North Cleveland Avenue, Chicago, hardwood floors resonated to the jangle of real metal on a genuine bell.

Nothing else moved: only steel inside the phone. But there was evidence of recent activity. A scuff line on a wall marked the translation of a dining table, now centered in a broad bay window. Scrapes on the floor recalled a stained brown couch being dragged from the window to the wall. A ring of dust lingered where a lamp was lifted from its spot between the doors to two bedrooms.

Behind the door to the right, Luke Ronson’s eyes opened to the face of a travelers’ alarm clock. They told him the time: 11:06. They didn’t need to tell him it was Sunday. A call on the landline meant his mother or Ben. It would make sense to get it disconnected.

He squinted toward a window—half-open, blinds raised—and ran a diagnostic on his brain. Two twos are four. Four fours are sixteen. Sixteen sixteens are… Hell, something big. He’d gotten pretty wasted last night.

The ringing ceased, and a literal machine snapped on with a ping in the living room. He crawled out of bed and opened the door.

“Yo bro. What’s happening? Hey man. Wake up. Turn your cellphone on. Need to ask you something. Wakey.”

His ex-roommate sounded urgent. But he rarely sounded otherwise. He was probably getting a fuck instead of fired. Ben’s life was like that: a string of heroic bungee leaps. Down, up… down, up… down, up. How many nights did he claim “endogenous depression” only to whistle over his Cheerios at 7 a.m.? How many afternoons did he “finally quit” law school before coming in second in his class?

Luke rose, touched his toes, squeezed his balls, stretched his arms, and stared into the glare of morning. The view from the back of the rock-fronted greystone was one reason why they rented this apartment. The foreground was nothing: a brick church—St. Michael’s—with a clock they lit up at night. But behind, two miles south, poked his favorite building: the tapering, one-hundred-floor,