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

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