Trust Me

16

Chris worked near the heart of Wicker Park, not far from the Damen train station, in an old building converted into retail on the first floor and office and loft space above. The exquisite metal carved sign mounted on the brickwork read BENNINGTON GALLERY. Next door stood an open-air coffee shop, with idlers on laptops soaking up the nice sunny day; on the other side was a high-end martial arts center that looked like a Japanese spa. Behind the building, Chris eased the Porsche into a reserved parking spot below an old iron fire escape. As they walked inside a nervous doe of a woman hurried toward them. She was in her forties, dressed all in black, skinny as a teenager, with an elfin face that looked like a kinder version of Chris’s stony stare.

‘Hi, Chris, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ She gave Luke an uncertain smile that seemed to beg Luke to be Chris’s friend. But almost like she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet any friend of Chris’s. A conflict of emotions swirled on her face.

Chris’s eyes hardened at the word sweetheart and he said, ‘Yeah, he’s a friend, and fuck the hell off, Mom.’

Luke froze. He had fought plenty with his mother through the years, but he never would have dreamed about speaking to her that way. Chris’s mother’s smile wavered and then withered but didn’t entirely vanish. Chris gave his own little smile as if to say: just what I expected.

‘I’m sorry,’ Luke said. He didn’t know why he was apologizing but he felt someone must. ‘I’m Warren. It’s nice to meet you.’ He gave his father’s name again.

‘Nice to meet you,’ the woman said and hurried off, toward a wall of multicolored smears of abstract art. No customers were waiting. She simply retreated from her son’s ugliness.

‘She’s useless,’ Chris said. ‘Come on. My studio’s up here.’

‘This is your mom’s place?’

‘Yeah,’ Chris said grudgingly.

The irony that she was providing Chris studio space above her gallery, when it could probably command a substantial rent, was not lost on Luke. The whole interchange had the feel of a high schooler mouthing off to his mom, trying to look cool in front of a new friend and revealing that he was simply an insecure jerk. But Luke said nothing.

Chris had five locks on the door and it took him a minute to work all the keys.

Five locks, Luke thought. What are you up to that you need five locks?

Inside, the studio – which doubled as a living space, with an unmade bed shoved in a corner – smelled of paint, of stale coffee and weed, of unwashed shirts. Exposed brick walls and clean skylights were the best features. It was expansive, room for a big talent to spread its wings, but the art Chris painted was very bad. Angry. Smears of red and black, a brown earth hanging above a closing red hand, penciled figures of suburbanites running from flowering napalm fires. Ugly, Luke thought. Another painting showed an array of fists, connected with a spider’s web of lines, flame arcing along the threads. A graffiti swirl of paint, spelling an obscenity in cheerful rainbow colors, in a font favored for children’s books. A final one, two teenagers, scowling, fire erupting from their heads as though they were volcanoes. The two painted faces looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place them.

‘Nice.’ Luke didn’t know what else to say and he was afraid to make no comment at all on the art. How did one compliment death? Did this crap sell?

‘ Nice? It’s not at all supposed to be… nice.’ Chris’s face reddened.

‘I’m sorry. I meant to say it looks accomplished. Insightful. Compelling. Forgive my exhaustion.’

Chris took a deep breath, as if drinking in the praise through a straw. ‘I’m influenced by the photojournalism of war, and I transpose that on an American setting.’

‘I’m sure they must sell well,’ Luke lied.

‘Hell no. They’ll never sell. They’ll be recognized as great art one day, but not while our diseased culture remains.’

‘How do you pay the bills?’

‘My dad builds homes. Thousands of them.’ Chris smirked. ‘You can’t believe the waste you see in the modern suburban home. The sheer extravagance of it all. Money that could feed half the world.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, but people need houses,’ Luke said.

A light flared in Chris’s stare. ‘Build large apartment buildings. Much more convenient, much less ecological impact. Burn the cities to the ground, man, and stack the apartments high. Much less waste.’

‘That’s grim,’ Luke said. ‘You would have been a good architect in the Soviet Union.’ He wandered past the paintings and as he turned back to Chris, Chris was less than a foot away, a devil’s curling smile on his face.

‘After I help you,’ Chris hissed. ‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No. Not at all. I’m sorry.’ He’d made a misstep. Chris didn’t carry the single-minded stare that he’d seen in Snow and Mouser. The light in his eyes was something entirely different in its heat. He had to make Chris tell him what he needed to know, but carefully. ‘I’m really surprised you trusted me with the money. You don’t know me.’

‘I know your words. That’s the same, to me.’ Chris lit a cigarette, offered the pack to Luke, who shook his head. His anger seemed gone, quick as a snap of fingers. ‘So. What’s the information you have about the wreck in Ripley?’

‘It was a bomb.’

‘Old news. Next?’ He smiled. ‘I bet you know who put it there.’

‘Yes,’ Luke lied. ‘The government.’ He thought this story was exactly the kind of meat that Chris liked to chew.

‘Ah. And you have proof of this, in exchange for my many kindnesses to you?’

‘I think I can find the proof. If I had the right kind of help.’

‘Help.’

‘I need to know if you’re part of a… group that can help me.’

‘Group.’

‘The Night Road.’

‘You want to know if I’m part of the Night Road.’ He looked, to Luke’s astonishment, as if he might laugh.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a really good lie,’ Chris said. ‘Better than I expected.’

‘I’m not lying. I…’

‘I want in.’

‘In what?’

‘In whatever group you’re a part of. Is it called the Night Road? I like it, kind of a twist on the Shining Path. The Peruvian terror group. They’ve lasted a good long time.’

Luke blinked. He’d made another misstep. ‘I’m not part of any group. I thought your group could help me.’

‘I don’t care for liars. You know what I mean. The group your step-father is putting together.’

Luke crossed his arms. ‘You know him?’ Oh, God, what if he’d contacted Henry, told him Luke was coming here.

‘Yeah.’ Chris exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘I joined the online groups because no one believed as I did. None of my family, none of the people I tried to be friends with…’ He caught himself and said, ‘None of my friends. But you don’t really belong to anything in this world. The people in the internet groups, they’re nothing but talk, sound and fury, signifying very little indeed.’ He pointed out the painting of the fists connected by lines of fire. ‘That’s what the online communities should be, fire and action and burning this dirty nasty world to ash so we, the right and noble people can start again, but they aren’t.’ Now he turned his gaze to Luke and Luke’s blood chilled. This guy, he realized, wasn’t just angry, he was clinically crazy. The triumph in Chris’s eyes was bent, wrong, ugly. ‘The new group you’re in, you’re shutting me out now. That just won’t do.’ The smile slid back onto the white mouth.

‘I told you, I’m not part of any group.’ He was suddenly more scared of this guy than he had been in the cottage kitchen with Mouser. Chris’s soft, false grin was a mask for a different, twisted darkness.

‘Your stepfather contacted me, Luke. A month ago. Wanted to meet me for coffee near the airport. I recognized him from CNN yesterday, talking about you.’

A thrum of horror touched Luke’s chest. ‘Did he say why he wanted to meet you?’ This was it, proof that Henry had taken Luke’s research – and personally reached out to the extremists. And he’d pissed this one off.

‘He found me through the IP address I used to post from. He said he admired the beauty and logic of my arguments. My passion. It’s not the kind of invite I get every day. I went and I had coffee with him. He wore a heavy cap, and different glasses, and he spoke with a Southern accent he seems to have lost when on television. But it’s him.’

‘But it didn’t go well.’

‘I can see judgment in eyes of lesser people. I’m a threat to folks, their sense of security. Because I’m smarter and more talented. Mother tells me everyone’s jealous. It explains a lot. But I wasn’t good enough for him.’ The awkward happiness he’d shown earlier was gone, replaced by a simmering fury. ‘Can you imagine?’

He was a threat because he was crazy, Luke realized. Not focused, not disciplined like Mouser or Snow. The army doesn’t want the crazies, neither does the Night Road. Crazies are a risk.

Chris had not been invited to the party.

Luke looked past Chris’s shoulder, searching for a weapon, a way to defend himself. His gaze fell again on the paintings: the fists bound in a web, the two sullen teens. With a wrench of his gut he recognized their faces. The Columbine gunmen. ‘Maybe my stepfather didn’t properly assess your potential contribution.’

‘He wanted to know if I’d ever thought of turning my words to action. Did I have computer skills? Was I able to get money easily, did I have contacts in the drug world? Please. I don’t cloud my head with drugs. I’m a decent guy who’s just sick of hypocrisy. And I guess being a painter just isn’t enough.’ The sneer deepened. ‘I never heard from him again. If he was contacting me about world-changing work, it stands to reason he was contacting others. People he’d found on the discussion boards who can make a difference. So.’

‘So.’

‘You’re valuable to him. You’re my invitation into his private club.’ Luke took a step backward. ‘You’re wrong. Dead wrong.’

‘You beg me for help, and now you won’t help me. Story of my life.’ His anger turned into a pleading whine. ‘I could be of real value to you guys. I can help you change the world. I could finally…’ He stopped and in Luke’s head he heard the sad simple truth: I could have friends.

What was it like when even the fringes rejected you? He saw an abyss in Chris’s anguished stare.

‘I am really, really tired of being told I’m not good enough. I caught you when no one else could. So let’s you and me call your stepfather, and see what we can work out.’

Luke closed the three steps and he slammed his fist into Chris’s jaw. It surprised them both. Chris crumpled and the pain from the blow rocketed up Luke’s arm. ‘Did you tell my stepdad I was coming here?’ Luke yelled.

Chris fingered blood from the corner of his mouth. ‘You hit me. You can’t hit me.’ He sounded like a first-grader, outraged by a breach of playground etiquette.

‘Answer me.’

‘Yeah. I sold your ass. I give you back, I get in the Night Road, I get to show how I can shine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘They should be here for you soon. I just wanted you to know I’m much smarter than you. Much smarter than they are.’

‘You’re insane.’

Slowly Chris got to his feet, as though feeling his arms and legs for the first time. ‘The martial arts studio next door. They teach krav maga. You know the beauty of krav maga?’

‘Now you’re raving.’

He gave a disgusted huff. ‘Krav maga is Israeli self-defense. I joined because when the war comes, I wanted to be ready. People said I fought like I enjoyed it too much. They kicked me out.’ He rolled his eyes at this bit of insanity. ‘But I learned enough to break your bones. You’re not going anywhere.’

And he rushed at Luke.