Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

“And when I get to this address on Orchard Street,” I’d said, “what exactly am I supposed to do? I mean, it’s not likely this head is going to still be in the window after all this time.”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “You’ll think of something.”

Howard Talliman had not been sleeping well.

Howard Talliman had not been sleeping well for nine months. He hadn’t had a good night’s rest since the end of August.

He’d lost weight, too. Sixteen pounds. He’d come in two notches on his belt. If it weren’t for the bags under his eyes and his gray pallor, he’d look pretty good, or at least as good as a guy who’s shaped something like a garden gnome can ever look.

Talliman’s appearance and his short temper, brought about by too little sleep, were sources of embarrassment to him. They sent a signal that something was troubling him, and Howard did not want anyone to think he was worried.

It was not in Howard’s nature to worry. Howard made other people worry. It was not in Howard’s nature to feel anxious. He made others feel anxious.

It was tough, these days, keeping up appearances.

“You look terrible,” Morris Sawchuck had been telling him. “Have you been to a doctor, Howard?”

“I’m fine,” Howard insisted. “You’re the one I worry about, Morris. You’ve always been my number one concern.”

Howard normally thrived on pressure. It was his oxygen. Any election campaign he’d ever worked, it didn’t matter how grim things looked, how far his candidate was behind. He never gave up. He never broke a sweat, even as those around him were saying it was all over. He assessed problems, and solved them. One time, on a city councilman’s reelection bid, the primary challenger was a woman touting her considerable experience as a community volunteer. She’d put in hundreds more hours helping the poor and disadvantaged than Talliman’s self-serving son of a bitch ever had.

“We have to find a way,” Talliman said, “to make her volunteerism a negative.”

To which everyone on the campaign went, “Huh?”

Talliman said if John Kerry’s service in Vietnam could be used against him, anything was possible. Go after the woman’s strength, and find a way to undermine it. Talliman put Lewis Blocker on it. He found evidence that could be used to prop up the suggestion that the woman’s commitment to helping others had been at the expense of her children and husband. Her teenage son had been picked up for coke possession, although the case never went to court. Her husband spent a lot of time in neighborhood bars and never saw a waitress’s butt he didn’t want to pinch. Talliman made sure the press found out, even though he never passed on the information directly. If these stories weren’t proof the woman was turning a blind eye to the home front, what was? With only a couple of weeks left in the campaign, Talliman flooded the district with flyers depicting his candidate as a strong family man, implying that his opponent cared more about strangers than her own family.

No one cared if a man put his career ahead of his family. But a woman?

It was slimy and underhanded and a misrepresentation of the truth. Worked, too. “Positively Rovian,” his admirers, and detractors, called it after the woman lost by more than three thousand votes.

It was around then that Howard put Lewis Blocker on permanent payroll.

It couldn’t have come at a better time for Lewis, who needed the money. He’d left the police before qualifying for a pension. He and several other officers had been called to a hostage-taking. A man was holed up in an apartment, threatening to kill his family. Shots were fired from inside the unit. Then the door flew open and someone charged out. Lewis, positioned down the hall, fired.

Too bad it was the shooter’s sixteen-year-old son trying to make a run for it.

No charges were filed, but Lewis Blocker’s career as a cop was finished that day.

Sometimes, Howard Talliman mused, things happened for a reason. If a young man had to die so Lewis Blocker could help advance the political careers of great men, well, who was Howard to argue with God’s plan?

But surely, Howard thought, God couldn’t have wanted things to go the way they had back in August.

The action he’d approved back then, the wheels he had allowed Lewis Blocker to set in motion, with the intention of protecting Morris Sawchuck, had the potential to destroy them all.

Sawchuck was more than a close friend to Howard. He was Talliman’s ticket to the Big Show. Once Sawchuck was governor of New York, it was only a matter of time, Howard knew, before he moved up the ladder from there. Sawchuck had the personality, the showmanship-even the most perfect set of teeth — to make it to the White House.

Howard had believed that Bridget’s lesbian affair with Allison Fitch, and-even more critically-what that woman might know about Morris’s political problems, could derail all that. He’d trusted Lewis’s instincts about what needed to be done. He’d also trusted Lewis’s instincts about who was best suited to get it done.

Not that Howard hadn’t expected there to be some fallout once the job had been executed, as it were. When a young woman is murdered, or goes missing, it’s likely to draw some attention.

There was one story in the Times. Police were trying to track down Allison Fitch’s whereabouts when she failed to show up for work. The article reported that she was originally from Dayton, and there was a line from her mother, who said she had not heard from her.

The New York Post ran something as well, deep inside, just before Sports. And it made NY1 one day. Her smiling face on screen for no more than five seconds.

After that, not so much. A missing person in Manhattan was not news for long. Some girl from Ohio doesn’t come to work one day? Big deal. So maybe she couldn’t hack it in the big city and went home. Unless someone stumbled upon a body, a missing person was barely going to make it through a single news cycle.

No one had stumbled upon a body.

Ordinarily, a body being stumbled upon would have put Howard Talliman at ease. Because even if the rest of the world did not know what had happened to Allison Fitch, he would know what had happened to Allison Fitch.

But he did not.

Lewis didn’t know, either.

No one had known for quite some time.

Shortly after Nicole had been sent to do the job, Lewis placed a call to Howard.

“I heard from her. There’s a problem.”

“What sort of problem?”

Lewis had explained that normally, Allison Fitch, who worked nights, would be home throughout the day, asleep, while her roommate, this Courtney Walmers woman who worked regular hours, would not.

At which point Howard Talliman had started to get a very bad feeling.

But on this particular day, Lewis had explained, there was an unforeseen development.

“The woman in the apartment was not Allison Fitch. The wrong target was taken out.”

Howard, sitting in his office, had struggled to remain calm. But Jesus, the roommate? Dead? Someone who’d never posed a threat in the first place? Someone he didn’t even know? Sure, Howard had caused collateral damage in the past. His political shenanigans had destroyed more than his opponents’ reputations. He’d seen defeated candidates lose their homes to pay off campaign debts. They left their wives, or their wives left them. One became an alcoholic, drove his car into a bridge abutment, and never walked again.

But nothing like this. No one had ever died.

And as unexpected, and bad, as this news was, Howard had still wondered whether this woman Lewis had hired, once she’d realized her mistake, had still managed to get the original job done. What about the intended target?