Invisible Streets Read online

  “Will, can you tell me what you know about Ledley’s work in the years that we’re talking about—’58, ’59? Do you know anything?”

  “I don’t, Frank, I really don’t. Understand, we weren’t colleagues. We were opponents, competitors. There was only so much money, so much journal space for this kind of work, and he and I were both after those things.

  “What I can tell you is that we had different research methods. You know about mine. They got me fired. Ledley stuck to what he knew, experiments, observation of subjects; but what exactly he did, I have no idea. It was all kept behind closed doors.”

  “But he did experiments? On people?”

  They were walking again. “Yes. Students, I think. Maybe others.”

  “And he would have paid students for taking part.”

  “Sure, especially if it took place over time, if he needed them to keep coming back. He needed to give them a reason.”

  Frings thought about this for a moment. “Would these experiments be … potentially harmful to the students? Could there be negative effects?”

  Ebanks shrugged. “Sure, there could. Listen, you can’t understand this stuff unless you’ve taken it. You can’t understand where I’m coming from, what the potential is. It’s impossible to explain because there is no frame of reference. All I can give you is analogies. It’s like seeing the world in black and white and suddenly it’s in color. It is like being confined inside your body and suddenly having your soul released, incorporeal.”

  “So it’s powerful enough that it could be harmful if used incorrectly?”

  “God, yes. But why would someone would want to do that when you have so much beautiful potential?” His face darkened. “But Ledley, Ledley would be the guy. He’s blind to beauty. He wouldn’t see it if it slapped him in the face. LSD shows you how false the way we humans order our world is. Ledley is committed to that order. I don’t know how the hell he would deal with that contradiction.”

  They continued their walk, the leaves forming intricate latticed patterns of shadows on the path. Frings was troubled by what he was hearing—and seeing—from Ebanks. In the past couple of years, the only time he’d seen Ebanks had been when Ebanks was either intoxicated on powerful drugs or recovering from using them. Without the chemicals, there was something different about him, some mix, Frings thought, of anger and arrogance. Frings wasn’t surprised that Ebanks would be upset with Ledley, a rival who’d bested him, even gotten him fired. But the intensity of the rage on display was hard to square with the man he’d known for years, whose personality had been bound up in his aristocratic calm.

  “I need another way in, Will.”

  They walked some more, Ebanks thinking.

  “He had a research assistant for a while, a grad student. He’s over at City College now. I’m trying to think of his name.”

  “He would have worked with Ledley on his LSD project?”

  “The timing is right, but I don’t know for sure. Ledley kept things tight. But so did I, I guess. What was his name? A weird little guy, though of course you had to be weird to last working with Ledley.”

  They heard footsteps behind them and their conversation stopped as a group of boys, probably in their early teens, came upon them, surrounding them, looking them over, projecting aggression.

  Ebanks stiffened, his face reddening. “Get the fuck out of here before I kill all of you,” he growled.

  The kids froze. Frings stopped. The hairs on his neck bristled.

  “Get the fuck away,” Ebanks screamed with unrestrained ferocity. “I will kill you.”

  The boys looked at each other, but found no confidence and began moving away, keeping their swagger to save face.

  Frings looked to Ebanks, who was heaving in breaths. “What the hell was that, Will?”

  Ebanks nodded absently, humming something to himself, oblivious to Frings’s question.

  “Toth,” he said, smiling triumphantly. “Leonard Toth. City College.”

  • • •

  Excerpt from True Revolution, a pamphlet by William Ebanks

  Now let us turn to how Spiritual Insight will lead to True Revolution. When we speak of revolutions, real revolutions, we are speaking mainly of oppressed people, often formerly colonized people, who take up arms against their oppressors in a violent attempt to overthrow the existing government and replace it with a new one, presumably more responsive to the wishes of the people—or at least the revolutionaries. These revolutions are important and should be supported by people who believe that freedom does not truly exist without freedom from oppression for ALL people.

  But this is not True Revolution. Why not? Because these revolutions merely replace one hierarchical structure with another. This new structure may be more JUST than the last. It may, in fact, be The Most Just Structure that one can have. But it is still a Structure. There are still people who rule and people who are ruled, even if this relationship is no longer that of oppressor and oppressed. After the bloodshed and the destruction, what has changed? The leaders. Perhaps the nature of the government and its attitude toward the governed. Is this True Revolution?

  Any revolution, any struggle for that matter, is doomed to failure because the Roles in Society are not changed, the people who perform those roles are. We have already seen how humans play Roles in their lives, Roles that are in large part assigned at birth, then perhaps modified through the assertion of particular talents or ambitions, and follow us to our graves. By taking these roles we accept that we are shedding our Identities to become a TYPE and are therefore become alienated from our True Nature. If we look at society as an amalgamation and ordering of these Roles, you will see that only through the destruction of these Roles will meaningful change be brought to any society.

  This is how Spiritual Insight with the aid of the new door-opening drugs will lead us to True Revolution. Spiritual Insight, by allowing a person to commune with his or her Identity and therefore his or her True Nature, allows, no, FORCES the shedding of the Roles accumulated over the person’s lifetime. We have already discussed this. Now, imagine this on a societal level, masses of people achieving Spiritual Insight, casting off the Roles that they have been assigned and reordering society based on the needs of people’s Identities. This is True Revolution, a true overturning of existing society and the creation of a new form that allows people to achieve actual fulfillment and HAPPINESS, conditions denied when Identity is subjugated to Role.

  33

  GRIP HAD LINSKY’S PLACE STAKED OUT FROM THE WINDOW OF A COLLEGE pub called the Ale House, which occupied the ground floor of an apartment building. He’d got the names of Linsky’s two roommates when he’d planted the memo and looked them up in a Tech yearbook in one of the administration offices, while an aging secretary kept a nervous eye on him. Norman Lane and Oliver White. Heemies, of course, and, though a head-and-shoulders shot wasn’t the best thing in the world to go by, the route from campus to Linsky’s place passed by this window, and he thought he’d be able to ID them. The problem would come if Linsky walked by first. Everything depended on one of the roommates finding the letter.

  Grip drank slowly, just fast enough to keep the beer from getting warm at the bottom. Time passed. He found himself on his fourth with his bladder rioting. He couldn’t risk leaving his spot, though, on the chance that Linsky or one of the roommates walked by while he was gone. Jesus, but he was uncomfortable.

  Minutes later he gave in, sticking his head out the front door to see if anyone likely was coming down the street, and seeing no one, hurrying back to the restroom. When he returned, someone was sitting in the other chair at his table, boyish face turned up to chat with the young waitress. Art Deyna.

  Grip sat down, tipped his glass to the girl for another beer, and, pointedly ignoring Deyna, glanced out the window to the empty sidewalk.

  “Afternoon, Detective.” Deyna wore a knowing grin he must have practiced in front of a fucking mirror.

  Grip pursed his lips, gav
e Deyna a steady look.

  Deyna cocked his head, voice friendly. “I didn’t expect to find you in this kind of establishment. It’s a long way from Crippen’s.”

  “You didn’t expect to find me, what the fuck are you sitting at my table for?”

  “Happy coincidence.”

  The waitress returned with their drinks. Deyna looked to be drinking whisky on the rocks. Grip took down half his beer and looked outside again. A group of students, the right basic look, walked down the sidewalk toward them.

  “What brings you to the Tech, Detective? This isn’t your turf.”

  “What brings you here?”

  Deyna smiled. “I thought I might look in on your friend Ben Linsky.”

  Grip kept his face blank, took another long pull on his beer, but his guard was up. The students were almost by the window now. Grip thought he might recognize one of the boys—sandy-haired kid, long face—among them. As they passed by he became more certain, felt the tension ease in his shoulders.

  “Detective?”

  Grip turned back to Deyna.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Now that Linsky’s roommate had passed, he was no longer trapped at this table.

  “Fuck you.” Grip got up.

  Deyna laughed. “You really screwed yourself when that partner of yours got himself killed. Am I right? I don’t know if you’ve got the quality for the upper ranks, but surely you could have made sergeant by now.” He shook his head in wonder. “But you two were crazy and it caught up with you. You had everyone scared of you—or were they just scared of Morphy? That makes more sense, because once his luck ran out, you turned into a goddamn puppet for shitheads like whoever’s got you doing this. Who is it, Zwieg?”

  Grip stared down at Deyna, breathing slowly, willing himself to maintain his calm. If there was truth in what Deyna said, there was also Grip’s understanding that he needed to restrain himself, not let his anger take over.

  “You know what I think you’re doing?” Deyna taunted. “I think you’re staking out Ben Linsky’s place. Actually, I know you are. But I ask myself, why?”

  Grip fished into his wallet and dropped a five on the table.

  “And I’m not exactly sure, but I think I might have a guess. Do you want to hear it?”

  Grip replaced his wallet in his back pocket.

  “It has to do with some missing equipment from one of the Crosstown sites. I’m right about that, aren’t I? You know, it sounds crazy. It really does. But you start putting together the pieces and you can come up with a connection between Linsky and Kollectiv 61, and if you think that Kollectiv 61 took the explosives—I’m not sure if that means that it’s likely, but it is definitely possible. I was thinking I might pay a quick visit to our friend Ben Linsky and see what he thinks. That just might be where the story is.”

  Grip walked out into the street, lightheaded. Deyna’s mocking laughter cut off as the door closed behind him. How the hell did Deyna know so much about what he was up to?

  34

  DORMAN ARRIVED AT THE STATION AFTER THE SHIFT HAD CHANGED AND Zwieg was already gone. A cop in the squad room recommended The Shield as a likely place to find him, so Dorman walked the two blocks to a dark bar on the first floor of a towering office building. The place was full of off-duty cops, loud conversations, games of darts in the far corner, testosterone in neutral. Dorman eased his way through the crowd. From his time in the Navy, he knew how to move with the cop swagger. He fit in.

  Zwieg was at a table with four younger guys. One of them, a guy with black-framed glasses and a wispy mustache, was telling a story that had his three buddies smiling and Zwieg looking bored. Dorman caught Zwieg’s eye, watched him say something to the table before coming his way.

  “Mr. Dorman, you here to buy me a drink?”

  “I could do that.” Dorman saw Zwieg checking out his swollen eye, but didn’t offer an explanation.

  The place was nice, Dorman thought, a lot of shiny wood, brass, hanging lights with heavy colored-glass shades. The line of liquor bottles behind the bartender was impressive. He let Zwieg carve a spot at the bar. Zwieg ordered them drinks without asking Dorman for a preference, then put out a hand for cash. Dorman gave him a five and got nothing back.

  Whisky shots. Zwieg nodded at him, and they both tipped them back. Dorman hadn’t intended on drinking, but the alcohol felt good going down. And anyway, it was necessary, he told himself, to start off on the right foot with Zwieg.

  “So, now that you’ve bought me my drink, are you going to take me home like a common slut?”

  Dorman nodded toward a corner. “Let’s talk over there.”

  This seemed fine to Zwieg, and they walked to a spot against the wall in the far corner, on the far side of a line of three pool tables. Dorman didn’t normally size cops up. The advantage that he could exploit wasn’t physical, though he felt he could take a lot of guys. But even though he was out of shape, Zwieg was still too damn big, a tough bastard.

  “Okay, Dorman, you’ve got five minutes.”

  Dorman waited a moment, not letting Zwieg rush him. There was an issue of power here—there was no official hierarchy to sort out the relationship between the two men. He wouldn’t be bullied.

  “Who was on the three security guards killed the other day?”

  “I’ve got a couple of my guys on it—younger guys. It wasn’t a complicated case.”

  “Wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “You found who did it?”

  “A couple of tough guys, working for a book down in the Hollows.”

  “You sure about this?”

  Zwieg shifted a little, and their size differential became even more apparent.

  “Because,” Dorman continued, “it seems like a hell of a coincidence after the site they were guarding got hit with a major heist.”

  Zwieg glared at him.

  “That seems like an angle,” Dorman said.

  “You telling me my job?”

  “I’m saying it looks like a big coincidence.”

  “Oh, shit. Are you a cop now? On top of everything else? Look, you’ve got some weight ’cause you work for Canada. But this is outside your jurisdiction, okay? This has nothing to do with the Crosstown, nothing to do with the New City Project, nothing to do with you or Canada. We investigated; we identified the culprits; we apprehended them. We are not going to fuck around with a triple homicide, no matter what you want to believe. Stay the fuck out of it. Last thing we need is some asshole with a clipboard sticking his nose where it don’t belong. You stick to your business and let the grown-ups do the police work. You get me?”

  They stood for a moment like that, staring each other down, before Zwieg shouldered past Dorman, leaving him staring murderously at the wall.

  35

  DORMAN ARRIVED AT THE CROSSTOWN SITE ON IDAHO AVENUE AS THE police cruisers pulled out, leaving yellow tape around the blackened husk of a foreman’s trailer. Work went on as usual, cranes lifting girders high into the air where workers stood in wait on perilously narrow beams. Trucks came and went, the place bustled. The guard at the gate recognized Dorman, waved him in, and radioed to the foreman, a guy Dorman knew named Insua.

  “He’s on his way,” the guard said.

  Dorman nodded his thanks. He scanned the streets surrounding the site, looking from a distance to see if he could make out any occupied cars or people waiting around on the sidewalk, possibly watching. He came up empty. He turned his attention back to the building site and saw Insua coming his way—a big guy, dark skinned, a beard under his flattened nose, his construction hat pulled low. He carried a second hat that he handed to Dorman.

  “Mr. Dorman.” He had a deep voice still tinged with some kind of accent.

  Dorman followed him to the bombed-out trailer.

  “Nothing much to see here,” Insua said, gesturing broadly. “The police took pictures, bagged some paper, maybe dynamite wrapper.”

  “Definitely d
ynamite?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Dorman nodded to himself. It might be Kaiser Street dynamite, or it might not. There had been plenty of other, smaller, dynamite thefts. He wondered if there was any way of determining from which site the dynamite had originated. Maybe that was something he could mention to Mr. Canada to put in front of the Consolidated Industry guys. Put some kind of marker for each site, help trace where the stolen dynamite ended up. Dorman could hear the objection already—how would that help anything? How would we be any better off with that knowledge?

  “They left graffiti?” he asked.

  Insua led Dorman to an adjacent trailer. The usual black spray paint: “Freedom and Technology are negatively proportional.”

  “The police got photos?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Paint it over.”

  While Insua found someone to take care of the graffiti, Dorman walked around the base of the building, rising nearly sixty stories above him.

  Insua returned. “What else can I do for you, Mr. Dorman?”

  Dorman looked skyward. “Let’s go up.”

  THEY TOOK A LIFT ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY UP TO A WOODEN platform, forty stories above the street. They stepped off, Dorman eyeing a couple of guys in hard hats sharing a thermos. They saw Dorman and stood. Dorman shook his head.

  “Go ahead.”

  The men looked to Insua, who nodded, and they resumed their drinking.

  “Let’s walk out a bit.” Dorman nodded toward a girder probably three feet wide and three hundred feet above the ground.

  “You sure?” Insua looked concerned. “We can send these guys out there.”

  Dorman didn’t respond, but stepped off the platform onto the girder and began to walk. It was breezy up here, the lower wisps of clouds blowing by his legs. He liked being out on the beam, everything laid out below him. Out in the Pacific he’d swum in water a mile deep, but five thousand feet was no different than fifteen—if you swim, you don’t drown. Up here it was the same, four feet or four hundred: keep your balance and no problems.