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He sat down again. He felt like checking his own pulse.
“I don’t know much about these things,” he said, “but it seems to me you’re spending a lot more to avoid being gouged than you would if youweregouged, and to an amateur. Is there something I’m missing?”
Plevin spread his hands. They were the things to watch, not his expression. They spoke five words to his one. “I don’t like to give up more information than I have to,” he said. “It wastes time and gives ammunition to the enemy. Which is what this is about. I want eyes-on before I hire a professional. It’ll be his job to gather proof that will hold up in divorce court. I’m a public figure. I won’t risk some motherfucker splashing details of my private life all over the tabloids—my own competitors, for Christ’s sake—until I’m sure.”
“What airline? And do you have a preference in auto rentals?”
“You’ll be driving the whole way. Anne hates flying.”
“That’s over two thousand miles!”
“Two thousand one hundred and forty-six. I googled it.”
The artist shook his head. “My car—”
“It’s a piece of shit. I saw you pull up.” He leaned back farther, fished in a pants pocket, and tossed a key onto the desk—what they called a key now, a black fob containing a microchip that controlled the ignition. “This year’s Corolla—a reliable model, and so popular it’s damn near invisible. It’s in the parking lot. Go ahead, take it for a spin. If you like it, it’s yours. Provided you take the job.”
CHAPTER 3
THE TOYOTA MADE his car look like a leaky old rowboat.
It was backed into a space with Todd Plevin’s name stenciled on the curb, a machine with the profile of a Stealth fighter jet. The finish was a glistening slate blue, the consumer’s color of choice that year, making it practically fade into the scenery along with millions of its sisters.
He got in and was seduced. The cushy black interior, with lumbar support built into the seats, smelled like a swanky luggage shop. The display of dials, gauges, and monitors in the dash made him light-headed. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to start it—with the “key” in his pocket!—and when he slid it into Drive and touched the accelerator, the car leapt forward with a lunge he felt in his testicles.
He’d stepped out Aspectus’s door still uncertain whether to accept Plevin’s incredible offer; by the time he’d driven around the block his mind was made up.
He had just one reservation, but it was major.
Plevin was waiting on the sidewalk in front of his private space, hands in pockets as before. He stepped up to the car before Cooke could get out, forcing him to slide down the window to ask the question.
“What if I lose her?”
“You won’t. Anne made all her hotel reservations on her credit card account. I’ll give you a copy.”
“What if she changes them?”
The sinister smile crawled back onto the media chief’s face. He leaned in through the window and pointed at a square of glass in the crowded dashboard, between the monitors connected to the backup cameras. Unlike them, it was dark. “Push that button.”
Actually it was a flat circle. Cooke touched it and the glass lit up, showing a cartoonish car on a stylized highway, poised to drive away from the viewer.
“It’s an after-factory option. I had my IT guy whip it up. It’s programmed to pick up the homing device he installed in Anne’s car, although he doesn’t know it’s hers. He thinks I’m making a road test. This gizmo feeds you the information in the form of directions, just like GPS. Its range is twenty miles. Japan’s ten years behind this technology. I told my guy if it passes the test we’ll split the take. It’s a cinch for a military grant.”
A plucky young intern drove Cooke’s old bucket of bolts to his place, parked next to him, waved, and took off at a brisk walk to catch a cab. Cooke sat in the Toyota, looking at the computer printout Plevin had given him. His bank balance was now ten thousand three hundred and sixteen dollars.
He got up several times during the night to peer out the window overlooking the parking lot. Each time he was sure the car wouldn’t be there, just his creaky old lemon, and that he’d dreamed the whole thing.
When finally he did dream, it was in abstract: bright colors, earth tones, and pastels; shapes, jagged and curved, working in union and at odds, signifying anything or nothing, and when nothing, saying something about the observer who saw nothing.
Awake finally, Dennis Cooke remembered his attempts at the form; they were early, too early. He wasn’t ready. To paint like Picasso and Miró and Pollock, you had first to learn to paint like Rembrandt.
He sat up in his Murphy bed, a fixture of the apartment, an efficiency flat on the top floor of a building that was old enough to be on the Register of Historic Places, but lacked both history and charm. Although the rent was moderate, it posed a challenge some months. He’d taken it over cheaper places for its north light, the artist’s best friend.
They were tarring the roof. Theswish-swishof the push brooms and the slurp of the viscous stuff they were spreading explained his dream. It sounded like brushstrokes.
The workers had finished by the time he got out of the shower. While shaving he tried to bring up the particulars of his dream. There had been a theme of some kind, a concept that might be turned into a painting, but as usual it deteriorated into nonsense when the rest of his brain cells lit up. He thought instead of the job he’d signed on for. It was bizarre—not just because of the circumstances, but because it gave him an eerie sense of déjà vu. By the time he rinsed off and dressed, he had a good idea what it was.
Back in the studio he looked at his latest project, an acrylic of a woman putting on her lipstick in front of a mirror—frankly a rip-off of Edward Hopper he hoped to sell to a publisher specializing in reprints of 1950s detective stories. It would make a striking cover.
