They're Watching (2010) Read online

  "I was told that you could be in danger," I said.

  She gasped, hand to her chunky necklace. "Danger? Someone threaten me?"

  "I . . . I think so. I was told to come see you. Or you'd die."

  "But who would want to kill me?" It came out "keel me." "Are you come to harm me?"

  "No, I--no. No, I wouldn't hurt you at all."

  Though she was distressed, still she kept her voice quiet. "I am Hungarian grandmother. I am waitress at crappy diner. Who do I threaten? What do I do to hurt anyone?"

  I leaned forward as if to rise, practically crouching over the cushions. What was I going to do? Enfold her in a comforting hug? "I'm sorry to upset you. I . . . look, I'm here, and we'll figure this out together and fix it, whatever it is. I came to help."

  She balled a Kleenex and pressed it to her trembling lips. "To help what?"

  "I don't know. I was just told . . ." I struggled to figure out the connection, the angle in, the nudge of the dial that would bring the picture into focus. "My name's Patrick Davis. I'm a teacher. What's your name, ma'am?"

  "Elisabeta."

  "Are you . . ." Grasping at straws, I pointed at the picture. "Is that your daughter?"

  "Granddaughter." She couldn't say it without a smile lightening her face. But quickly the haggardness returned. "My son, he is in the prison ten year for he sell the"--she acted out shooting up in her arm, making a pccht-pccht sound as if she were shooing a cat. A shiny manicure made her nails surprisingly beautiful--that quiet dignity showing through again, a pride that felt oddly like humility. "His wife, she go back to Debrecen." She waved a hand at the photograph. "So I get her. My little jewel."

  I got it finally, the hushed voice. "She's sleeping."

  "Yes."

  "Why . . . ?" I asked, looking around. "Why are there so many bananas?"

  "She is not well. She take many pill, one type so she can urinate off extra fluid. Low potassium, they say from this. So the banana--it is game we play. If she get her potassium from banana, one less pill to take." She shook a frail fist. " 'We beat it for one pill today.' "

  My pulse quickened. SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP. But how?

  "What happened to her?" I asked.

  "She have the surgery back when she is three. Last month I notice her shoes no fit again. The swelling . . ." Her hand circled. "I do not want to believe. Then she have the breathing"--she mimed shortness of breath--"again on the playground. And yes, it is the heart valve again. She needs new. But it is hundred of thousand of dollar. I cannot afford. I am waitress. I already spend second mortgage on this house for first surgery. It will give out. This valve"--she spit out the word. "Tomorrow or next week or next month, it will give out."

  The duffel sat a few inches to my side, nudged up against my shoe. What good was twenty-seven grand in the face of that kind of money?

  My amped-up drive here had left me more emotional than usual; seesawing between dread and relief, fear and concern, I could hardly find my bearings. The girl peered up at me from the picture, and I recognized now that she had her grandmother's curly hair. The desperate conversations they must have had right here in this room. How do you explain to a six-year-old that her heart might give out? I swallowed, felt the tightness in my throat. "I can't imagine."

  "Except I see in your face," she said, "that you can." She plucked at the loose skin of her neck. "A friend of mine back home"--a wave to cross the Atlantic--"lost his wife to Lou Gehrig. A cousin of my cousin lost her daughter and two grandson in plane crash five year back. On anniversary this year, my cousin ask her, 'How do you handle this?' And she say, 'Everyone has a story.' And it is true. Before we go, everyone has sad story to tell. But this child, this child . . ." She rose abruptly, crossed to one of the closed doors at the end of the room, and set her hand on the knob. "You come see this beautiful child. I will wake her. You come see and tell me how I am to explain her this is her story."

  "No, please. Please don't disturb her. Let her sleep."

  Elisabeta came back and sank into her armchair. "And now someone want to kill me. And for what? Who will take care of her? She will be left alone to die."

  "Don't you have . . . is there health insurance?"

  "We are nearing lifetime maximum, they call it. I meet with--what do they call it?--finance committee at hospital. They are willing to make charitable donation for operating room, surgery. But even between their generosity and what is left on insurance, I am still left with more than I can . . ." She shook her head. "What do I do?"

  My voice shook with excitement. "How much is left?"

  "More than you can imagine."

  I leaned forward, put my hand on the table, upsetting the bowl of nuts. "How much exactly?"

  She got up and went into the kitchen. A drawer opened, jangling with flatware. Then another. She thumbed through a sheaf of menus and flyers, finally returning with a paper. She fluffed it out like a royal decree. "Twenty-seven thousand two hundred forty-two dollar." Her mouth tugged down in the beginning of a sob, but she caught it, transformed her expression to contempt for the figure.

  "No one's threatening you. I misunderstood." My throat closed, and I had to stop talking. A sheen rose in my eyes. I lowered my head, said a silent prayer of gratitude. I walked over to her and set the duffel on the floor at her feet.

  She stared at me, shocked.

  I said, "This is for you."

  I stepped into my Nikes and left, careful to ease the screen door shut so as not to wake the girl.

  Chapter 30

  I was up again, pacing around Ariana, who listened, glazed, from the patio chair. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her sweatshirt pulled over them, the parka flaring out to either side. It wasn't raining, but moisture flecked the air. Two in the morning and counting, and my heart rate showed no signs of slowing down. "The fear, then the relief--even fucking gratitude. And then it starts all over again. It's like a drug. I can't take it. I don't care that it worked out this time--"

  "We don't even know that," Ariana said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Delivering cash to a woman in Indio? What if it was a scam?"

  "How? It wasn't our money. I was just playing Santa Claus."

  "I'm not saying you were the target." She watched her words sink in. "What happens if someone shows up at that woman's door and asks a favor of her? A favor to be repaid?"

  "I'm the one who gave her the money."

  "But it wasn't your money. She doesn't owe you."

  Nausea crept into my stomach, an ice-water trickle. I sank slowly into the chair opposite Ari. I could tell from her face that she felt bad. Her hand rooted in her purse and produced a roll of Tums. That purse was like the stomach of Jaws--she was always pulling out a pair of sunglasses, a new shade of lipstick, a waffle iron.

  Chewing a tablet, Ariana double-checked the cigarette-box jammer and pushed forward--"If there are no strings attached to that cash, why wouldn't they just give it to her themselves? For all you know, that money puts her in danger."

  "I think she'd take that risk," I said quietly. "So her granddaughter wouldn't die."

  "But she didn't get to make that decision."

  "Because I made it for her." I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, my groan turning to something like a growl. "But what the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the cops? Thinking it might kill that woman?"

  "Not then. But now. Why not now?"

  "They'll find out. Given what these guys have shown us so far, do we really want to see how they retaliate when they're pissed off? Plus, are you forgetting that a seven-figure lawsuit might be hanging in the balance, pending my cooperation?"

  "So you keep doing this?" she asked. "Following orders blindly from an all-powerful boss you don't even know? Waiting around like some clown in a Beckett play? For how long?"

  "Until we get the settlement agreement from the studio. Until I figure out an angle into this. Into them."

  "And in the meantime? These aren't your lives to tamper
with."

  "It's not that easy, Ari."

  "There are probably thousands of kids in this country with that girl's heart condition," she said. "Millions of people with millions of problems. What makes her life any different from anyone else's?"

  "Because I can save hers." I could feel the knots up the back of my neck. Ari lifted her eyebrows, and I held up my hands, half in apology, half to slow myself. "I know it sounds like this is some kind of God complex--"

  "Not even, Patrick. It's a God complex by proxy."

  "But these people are hostages, even if they don't know it. That girl was entrusted to me, like Beeman. She's been made my problem, my responsibility. When I've been given a bag of money to save her life, how can I not leave it for her?"

  "You don't show up to begin with, that's how. What's that line from WarGames?"

  I cast out a sullen sigh. " 'The only winning move is not to play.' "

  She nodded solemnly. "Look, we both agree we need to break through on this thing. And to do that, you can play your game all you want. Just don't play theirs."

  I stared over the sagging fence at Don and Martinique's dark bedroom window, the curtain at rest. A bedroom like ours, a house like ours. Our quiet little neighborhood, all of us with a story to tell. And yet the scale of what I was confronting, the danger, had gone suddenly out of whack. How had I come unhinged from this ordinary life?

  "You're right." I lifted my hands, let them slap to my thighs. "As long as I keep taking the bait, they have me trapped. I'll stop. No more checking e-mail. No more following their instructions. Whatever that brings on, it brings on."

  "I'll be here for it." She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "It's the only good choice left. You have to call their bluff."

  She rose and headed inside, her head bowed.

  I sat for a few moments with the crickets, looking out to where the yard lost itself in darkness. I mumbled to the shadows, "What if they're not bluffing?"

  I lay beside my wife in the quiet dark of the bedroom. She'd fallen asleep maybe an hour ago, leaving me to study the ceiling. Finally I got up, went into my office, and unplugged my cell phone from its charger. On the built-in camera, I watched the ten seconds I'd managed to capture of the QuickTime video from them.

  View through a windshield. Car driving. The recording stopped well before the alley and the Honda.

  I downloaded the clip into my computer and enlarged it to fill the screen. A passing semi with daytime running lights swept through the field of vision, playing tricks with the light across the windshield. A dab of silver at the bottom of the glass caught my eye. I backed up the recording, froze the image. Not much more than a smudge at the base of the windshield. Leaning forward, I squinted at the finger-long reflection thrown up from the top of the dash.

  The metal plate stamped with the Vehicle Identification Number.

  It was blurred and faint, but perhaps the clarity could be brought up with the right tools. My first concrete lead. I ran a thumb across the tiny image, savoring it.

  My cell phone emitted an Asian chime. Slowly, I turned and regarded it lying there next to the keyboard. Picked it up. A text-message alert, sender unknown.

  A cold sweat crept over my body. My thumb moved before I could stop it.

  E-MAIL TOMORROW, 7PM.

  A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

  THIS TIME IT'S SOMEONE YOU KNOW.

  Chapter 31

  I sat in my car in the parking lot, watching students drift in to class. The phone rang and rang, and finally he picked up. "Hallo."

  "Dad?"

  "Stop the presses." And then, shouting over the receiver to my mom: "It's Patrick. Patrick!" Then back: "Your mother's in the car." My dad, from Lynn, Massachusetts, had the harsh Boston accent I'd never acquired growing up in watered-down Newton. Mothah's in the cah. "Still goin' through it with Ari?"

  "Yeah, but we're figuring it out." Hearing his voice made me realize how much I missed them, how sad it was that it took this for me to pick up the phone. "I'm sorry I haven't been great at keeping in touch these past couple months."

  "That's okay, Paddy. You've had a rough go. You get a real job yet?"

  "Yeah. Teaching again. No more writing."

  "Listen, your mother and I were just heading into town. Everything okay?"

  "I just wanted to know how you both are. Healthwise or whatever else. If there's anything you need, I mean, I can hop on a plane, no matter what I'm in the middle of."

  "What'd you join one of those cults out there?"

  "I'm just saying. I hope you know that."

  "Everything's fine here. We got a ways to go, you know."

  "I know, Pa."

  "We're not in the grave yet."

  "I didn't mean--"

  Car honking in the background.

  "Listen, your mother just discovered the horn. Do me a favor, Patrick. Call her this week. You don't just have to call when you're feeling okay. We're your parents."

  He signed off, and I sat there a moment, reliving the chill that had passed through me when the threatening text message had chimed into existence on my cell phone last night. Not surprisingly, it had vanished into thin air within seconds of my reading it. All this autodeleting left me wondering if I was making up this whole intrigue myself. But the knot in my throat said it was far too real.

  A passing student waved, and it took effort to lift my hand and wave back. My car might as well have been a submarine for how detached I felt from the world beyond the glass.

  THIS TIME IT'S SOMEONE YOU KNOW.

  I clicked through the saved numbers in my cell phone. All those names, more bases than I could cover even if I knew what to ask. Not to mention all the names not in there. It could be anyone from Julianne to Punch to Bill at Bel Air Foods. Someone I'd graded, someone I'd roomed with in college, someone who'd loaned me a cup of sugar. Someone I loved.

  I flipped the phone shut and set it on the cracked dash. "The only way to beat them," I told it, "is not to play."

  I found Marcello alone in the editing bay, fussing over the digital sound console. On the attached computer monitor, a guy in a Speedo was paused midbounce at the end of a diving board. When Marcello released the diver with a click of the mouse, the bwang of the board was out of sync.

  "Take a look at something for me?" I asked.

  He froze the diver as he hit the water, and leaned over my cell phone. I played the ten-second clip.

  "Cinema verite," Marcello said when it was done. "I think the car is a metaphor for the journey of life."

  "I can't pause it on the cell, but look right here." I played the clip over again. "There's a little reflection on the windshield when the truck passes. You see it? I think it's the VIN. Is there some way to download it into Final Cut Pro and bring up the resolution?"

  "Could take some time. The focus part, I mean." A note of annoyance. "Patrick, what is all this?" He crossed his arms impatiently as I figured out how to phrase what I wanted to say.

  "They're sending me glimpses into people's lives. Their problems."

  "Like what they were doing to you?"

  "Yes. Sort of. It's complicated."

  He was scowling.

  I said, "What?"

  "There's no damn privacy anymore. It's like we all got used to it. Or we gave it away, bit by bit. Wiretapping laws. Citizen enemy combatants. Homeland Security looking up your nose. Not to mention all this reality shit. Girls Gone Wild. Crying politicians on YouTube. Spouses trash-talking on Dr. Phil. You can't even die in war anymore without every schmuck with a flat-screen watching the infrared footage. There's no . . ." His jaw shifted; his lips twitched, searching out some suitable term. ". . . propriety." He heaved out an agitated breath. "You used to have to be famous to be famous. But now? It's all real. It's all fake. What's the goddamned fascination with monitoring everything, putting an eye up to every peephole?"

  "I guess . . ." I stopped, studied my loafers.

  "Yeah?"

  "I guess people
want the comfort of knowing that things can be bad everywhere. That it's not just them. That no one's got the magic answers."

  His empathetic gaze made me feel naked. "When I was growing up, I thought the movies were magic. And then I got around them." He gave a wistful chuckle, his hand rasping over his beard. "Guys in rooms. Guys on sets. Guys at computer monitors. That's it. There's a loss there. I suppose everyone feels it. When you catch up to whatever you're chasing and get a close-up, warts and all. Then what do you do?" He made a popping sound with his lips, turned back to the console brusquely, and resumed adjusting the mix on the student film. The footage reversed, the diver unsplashing from the pool, the water vacuuming itself back into a flat sheet. How easily all that chaos was undone.

  "Marcello." My voice was a bit hoarse. "This has turned into a lot more than voyeurism."

  "I know." He didn't look over. "Gimme the phone. I'm done ranting."

  I set it down next to him on the desk. "You sure?"

  "I think so. I was gonna throw in something about Britney Spears and her lack of underwear, but I sort of lost the thread."

  A few students started to trickle in, and I had to whisper. "No one can know you're doing this. It could put you at risk. You okay with that?"

  He waved me off. "Don't you have a class you're late for?"

  Though no light shone in Doug Beeman's apartment, I knocked again on the peeling front door. And again there was no response. No eye hiding behind that old-fashioned keyhole this time, only blackness. Resting my forehead against the jamb, I stood helplessly, the neighborhood sounds and smells washing over me. The pump of a tricked-out car stereo. The scent of spicy cooking, maybe Indian. A static-fuzzed Lakers game coming through economy walls.