Shades of Eva (33 page)

I wasn’t anything like this so-called Chet
Imil. The man sitting in my chair filling out those papers was a
stranger to me, a sort of butterfly emerging from a stone cocoon, a
man emerging who I didn’t recognize. I felt lost again, but not
lost between the dimensions of past and present, this time—I was
lost in identity. For the first time I regretted the derivation of
an alias. I wanted to be Mitchell Rennix, and I wanted Daisy to
know the real me.

But that wasn’t meant to be.

I was scared, and I wanted to leave. But
leaving wasn’t an option—not then. Something held me in that seat
that day. Maybe it was Amelia’s losses and those wonder-provoking
scars on her back. Maybe it was the hope that I could actually find
her aunt’s art, and at least, so far as Amelia was concerned,
return those treasures to their rightful heir. Maybe it was the
wish that things would develop for me and Amelia that was holding
me there. Or maybe it was my brother’s bones that were calling to
me.

Maybe it was all those beautiful trees!

I leaned in toward the window as Daisy was
making sure I’d completed everything, as close as I could get to
that composite glass, and tapped on it again.

Daisy looked up at me.

“Catell, the man who developed this
personality test,” I said, smiling just as broadly as ever, “wasn’t
just a psychologist…he graduated summa cum laude in Chemistry.”

“Really?” Daisy said, her voice interested,
her eyelids dancing again.

“He was interested in the heart of the atom,
and the mysteries of its radiations.”

Daisy leaned in closer, playfully, setting
her forehead just inches from mine, and replied, “Radiations of the
heart…or the atom?”

This isn’t going to be easy, I thought. But
then again, it might not be too difficult.

***

Monday, 3:05 p.m. 

I was sitting at my computer desk at the
Victorian rental about two hours later, toying with my PC when the
phone rang. It was a man named Maxwell Cleveland, one of the
regents at Coastal State. He asked if I could come in for what he
called a face to face before the day was up. They either liked what
they saw of me—of Chester Imil that is—or the lie scale buried in
Catell’s little lie detector test had somehow exposed me.

I said of course and by four o’clock I was
sitting tail end of a long, mahogany table in a boardroom with
three Asylum biggies: Cleveland, a man named Theodore Sax, and
another regent, Margaret Hipshire, all Ph.Ds., all smiling with
pens ready in hand, all staring with budding interest at the
Hometown Kid come back to say hello.

For an instant in that boardroom, my mind
drifted back to the toolshed when I was just a boy, and to the
tests Dad had once given me with a similar, bespectacled look. One
involved a drink of whiskey, and another involved pulling the
trigger on myself in a game called Russian roulette. I’d always
felt I’d failed those tests miserably—but had I? I took a drink
because I wanted to be a son. I took a drink because I trusted Dad.
That’s not failure. I didn’t pull the trigger on myself because I
was afraid. That’s not failure, either. Looking back, maybe I
passed those tests. There was nothing wrong with wanting to make a
father happy, or in trusting him, or in wanting to be a son. There
was nothing wrong with being afraid. There was nothing wrong with
being ignorant at age five. Little boys aren’t expected to see all
the tiny details grown men see; they aren’t expected to see the
bullet hidden in a father’s hand any more than they’re expected to
see the magician’s palming of a quarter pulled mystically from
behind their still-wet ear. Little boys are expected to believe in
ghosts and to trust in their fathers. Looking back, I think I
passed those tests. I hoped I had passed the Asylum’s.

This was just a chat. The biggies wanted
little more than to meet and greet the guy who scored mercenary
with morals and tough poise, whose protective, compassionate nature
seemed to know no bounds. I’d spent enough time in bars and
whorehouses bullshitting and cavorting with people to know a thing
or two about the good old boy network, fitting in, and seduction.
So if Amelia could have seen me, how proud she’d be. I had taken on
the personae of a good guy, a strong-willed, well-adapted citizen
who’d just moved into town and already had his sights set on
memberships at St. Anthony’s diocese, the YMCA, and the local
Fraternal Order of Police. I had become the knight in shining armor
the Brass at Coastal State had been looking for, and it felt
good.

The chat turned into a conference. For
twenty seconds they nestled in a sort of huddle as I sat
cross-legged with fingers interlocked at the other end of the
table, staring at my lap with a humble smirk pasted on a hopeful
face.

 They broke huddle and Cleveland broke
the news. He offered me a position as security guard starting the
following day.

Amelia was correct. They wasted no time at
Coastal State.

A bevy of handshakes ensued and a herd of
smiles followed.

Sax handed me a contract and a pen.

“I was just wondering,” I said, taking the
pen and looking curiously at Dr. Sax. “The Sax Rehab House out
there.” I pointed toward the rear of the property. “Is that named
after you?”

He smiled, but shook his head. “We like to
refer to it as a rehabilitation center. Rehab house sounds a bit
arcane. It was named after my father, Walter Sax.”

The other regents were smiling and nodding,
as if the elder’s name deserved an ample degree of reverence.

I mimicked their expressions and turned my
attention to the contract.

“Sign here,” Sax said, pointing to a line
preceded by a blackened X.

In all the contracts Coastal State had ever
extended, of all the signatures the biggies had the privilege to
witness, mine was probably the ugliest. I’d never written the name
Chester Imil, and for a moment, I’d forgotten it was Chester Imil
they had offered the job to. I’d scribbled the better part of a
capital M—for Mark, no doubt—on the signature line before I caught
my error. I instinctively scratched at it with the tip of the pen
as the biggies hovered about, watching with atypical interest what
would have been just another signature if it wasn’t for my
forgetfulness.

I thought better of totally scribbling the M
out and starting over. That seemed far too elementary school for a
meeting room grand as this. So I etched a darkened C over the M,
and scrawled the rest of my newest alias. It read more like a
single word that looked to me like the word Chesty with a long,
spermlike tail caboosing it. I crossed the T and gave the second I
in Imil a zealous dot.

I smiled queerly and handed the pen back to
Dr. Sax.

Nevertheless, it sufficed. It was my mark.
It was ugly, but then again they probably weren’t concerned with my
handwriting. They needed to know if I could shoot straight and had
the good sense to put out small fires, and lots of them. My
references were impeccable and my credentials attested to
proficiency with firearms second to none. All of my permits,
licenses, and references were in place. Had they walked me out into
the courtyard and set up a target, however, and asked me to put a
bullet as close to the little red bullseye as I could, I wouldn’t
have passed. I wouldn’t have been able to load a gun—let alone hit
a target.

They didn’t ask me to pee in a cup, and they
didn’t ask me to hit a target. I figured Amelia knew they wouldn’t.
And they didn’t.

But then again, maybe they should have!
Maybe they should have tested me a little bit harder for their
sake. It might have saved a life.

I would start patrol of the grounds
the next day, shadowing a man named Isaac Flout, a veteran guard on
the eve of retirement and one whom I was to replace if things went
well. It was a nice offer, and would have been a nice gig for me.
In a way, I felt like I was home again. I could have spent the next
thirty years following in Flout’s footsteps if I was, in fact,
Chester Imil, a security guard with morals. I could have been quite
happy.

The place didn’t feel like an Asylum at all.
Coastal State felt like a college campus with its dormitories and
meandering roads. It wasn’t the little city it was in my mom’s day,
but it was still a little community, and it felt peaceful. There
was healing going on there. I could feel it. There were canaries
tweeting in the trees. There weren’t a thousand people crammed into
crowded rooms. There weren’t any disabused souls chained to walls
or shock tables that I could see. It was as if this place, a place
that probably had a ligature snug around its throat at one time,
had been suddenly freed and allowed to breathe. It wasn’t the same
place.

This place was an aged place, and she took
on an anthropomorphic quality. I imagined that in her younger days
she was prone to cruelty, much like children are with one another,
thus her ligature. But children age, just as this so-called
hospital has aged, and she wasn’t the same child she once was. She
couldn’t be. She was older now and had taken on an air of
gentility, a visage of respectability, even, like an aging
dignitary who’d exchanged the Machiavellian effluence of her youth
for the kinder, more graceful purity expected of such standing in
one’s latter days.

She simply wasn’t what I pictured.

At any rate, I’d have to determine what a
just response was for her at her age. Burning her might not be the
best response to something she’d done forty years ago. Leaving her
alone to bask in her own decay didn’t seem a just response, either.
Something had to be done, but I didn’t have to decide that day.

It was enough that she’d allowed me in,
deceptive as I had been to her. She wouldn’t have hired on a
descendent, just as a president wouldn’t welcome a childhood enemy
into her cabinet. Descendants of a place like this, much like the
enemies of one’s youth, can harbor a nasty grudge.

I left the administration building
and re-entered the Impala, closed the door on that warm, sunny day,
and called Amelia. It took me a moment to remember I had to hit
SEND on the damn phone for the call to go through, but SEND started
a distant phone ringing, and soon, Amelia picked up.

“—
Hi, Chet!”

“How did you know it was me?”

“—
Caller ID.”

“What the hell is that?”

Amelia was laughing.
“—What do you want,
Guard Imil?”

“Well, I just wanted to let you know I’m
just leaving the Asylum. I didn’t get the job.”

“—
Liar, I heard the whole thing.”

“What?”

“—
Your phone is a radio transmitter as
well as a recorder; I thought I told you that. I can pick up your
audio from here when I need to.”

Impressed, I said, “So you can hear me
farting in the john!”

“—
If I need to, yes.”

“So you’ve been listening in on my
dumps?”

Amelia laughed.
“—Only your interview—and
your little meeting with Daisy pants. So Catell’s interested in the
heart of the atom, huh, and the mysteries of its
radiations?”

“Oh, you heard that?”

“—
Yes, I heard that, you flirt! So you
start tomorrow?”

“Correct.”

“—
Good. What’s your plan for
tonight?”

“I’ve got a meeting with Ben Levantle at six
o’clock.”

That seemed to surprise Amelia. I had shown
virtually no initiative to that point. There was a brief pause
before Amelia responded.
“—I’m in Gary. I’ll be speaking with
your uncle tonight.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Tell him
hi for me didn’t seem appropriate. I simply hung on the line like
dead air, waiting for Amelia to continue. She remained silent. I
finally asked her, “Your contact who talked to him the other day,
what did he learn?”

“—
He told Ully he was a private detective
working on a hit and run traffic case from 1954 and needed to ask
him and Fred a couple questions. Ully was cooperative, but he
didn’t offer anything.”

“Typical Ully!” 

“—
He told my contact he doesn’t know
where Fred is. And I don’t think he’s lying.”

“Well, that’s a good reason to see what Ben
knows.”

“—
We’ve watched Ully’s calls for two
days, and he hasn’t contacted anyone out of the ordinary, save his
lawyer, which is to be expected.”

“So he doesn’t know where Fred is?”

“—
Not saying that for sure. I just put a
feeler out there. If he truly knows, I’ll find that out tonight. If
he does, there’s really no reason for you to see Ben.”

I had to stop and think. That wasn’t
entirely true. I wanted to see Ben for two reasons: the first was
to try and use him to get to his brother. That much was obvious.
But there was another reason beyond Amelia’s reason that he might
be able to help whatever was ailing me. My mother loved this man.
He knew her when she was young, so in that sense, he knew my
teenage mother better than I did. I wanted to know more about those
teenagers. After all, I was coming home to get to know the real
Eva, not just avenge her. I wanted to meet the kid she fell in love
with.

“I’m meeting Ben, if for anything I just
want to meet him. He was part of Mom’s life.”

“—
We only need him to find—"

“Amelia, I want to meet him. You told me I
needed to be a part of this. I’m telling you that I think Ben needs
to be a part of this, too. This is his brother we’re talking about.
I need to meet him. I need to look him in the eye.”

There was a brief pause between us. I guess
Amelia was working over the morality of what I said, along with its
wisdom—or lack thereof. It probably wasn’t the most practical thing
to do—set up an appointment with your target’s brother and risk
identifying yourself and tipping the target off—but he might just
know where Fred is. Ully might not. Ben might just drop those
whereabouts in casual conversation. And I was morally right. This
was his brother, and he should be involved.