Caught Page 5

  Got a look at the paper, did you? the guy said. I figured that was you when I saw a fellow standing on the side of the road. Tall as a long, cold glass of water.

  Who was that in the car? Slaney said.

  That was an old girlfriend, the man said.

  She didn’t look that old, Slaney said.

  Things were left up in the air, he said. My name is John Gulliver and I guess you’re David Slaney.

  Why’d you stop for me? Slaney said.

  There’s pigs all over the road, Gulliver said. I like a toke as much as the next guy. Nothing wrong with it.

  Jesus, Slaney said. Then Gulliver said about dishes on the counter at home, piled to the ceiling. He said his wife had never done a load of laundry as long as he’d known her.

  I can’t hack it, he said.

  And that girl in the car, Slaney said.

  These babies were one night’s work, Gulliver said. I made a mistake. He said the girl in the car was a singer. He said he believed you get one love in this life. One love, and that’s it. Lucky to get that.

  The voice on her, he said. He’d had to beg her to come meet him.

  I wanted to hear her say it in her own words, he said. That it was over.

  Did she say it? Slaney asked.

  What you witnessed there, Gulliver said. That was good-bye. She doesn’t want to lay eyes on me ever again. He drove on without speaking. Then he slammed his fist down on the dash.

  Anybody can make a mistake, he said. Am I right? Slaney said it was true.

  But you pay for your mistakes, sure as shit, the man said. Next thing comes the information from my now-wife telling me twins. Not one but two. Rochelle, that was Rochelle in the car. She heard twins and she never looked back. We were all at a bar and my now-wife came up and told us. Told Rochelle and me right in front of everybody. Made a scene. Brought up did I want these kids to have a father. In front of everybody she told us twins.

  I was married two months later. We’re trying to make a go of it, the mother and me. But I’ll tell you what. He just shook his head.

  Slaney didn’t answer him. But the dog shuffled around and dropped its jaw on the man’s lap.

  There’s a nationwide search, John Gulliver said. You’re big news, my friend. Billy the Fucking Kid, excuse my French.

  Slaney didn’t answer.

  The bees escaped, he said. Last summer. They get it in their heads.

  You got them back? Slaney said.

  I just had to wait for them to settle down somewhere, he said. Then I snuck up on them with a net.

  Slaney thought again about trust, the comfort it afforded. The opposite of trust was doubt. They were the two choices.

  He imagined trust and doubt as twins joined by a fused skull, eye to eye, the two of them, trust and doubt, in the dark forest yelling at each other: Put up your dukes.

  Or trust was a door in your head you let fly. You came to a decision.

  Whatever is out there: bring it on.

  And doubt was the wind that slammed everything shut. Don’t stay in one place. Don’t settle. That was the doubt. Hearn had not gone to prison. He had jumped bail.

  Four years for Slaney, Hearn had lit out. And Hearn was having a good time. He’d made some false ID for himself and gone to university. He was studying English literature with the intent of becoming a professor. It’d taken four years for him to get the second trip together. Hearn was certain the cops had no idea where he was.

  There’s the phrase they say in court: element of doubt. Slaney remembered the definition of element from his grade nine chemistry book. It meant something pure.

  Doubt was a pure and indestructible thing. The cops had been waiting. The whole bloody town had been waiting for them when they came in off the water, four years ago, with two tons of weed on board.

  This time, Hearn had implied, there would be no cops.

  All of this had come to Slaney second-hand. Harold had an old girlfriend who knew someone who had passed word on from Hearn. Unbeknownst to Harold’s sister, Sue Ellen, Harold was in for the long haul. Forever. He could get information in and get it out and that made his stays there profitable despite the fact that he was of a smaller build.

  Slaney had to believe there was a connection between people. He had to believe trust was pure too. It was worth fighting for. He trusted Hearn. He could say that out loud. It would be better that way. And he had no choice. Trust lit up on its own sometimes without cause, and there was no way to extinguish that kind of trust.

  John Gulliver stopped for gas and some snacks for the road. He said he was going all the way to Montreal and he was happy enough to take Slaney with him. Said he even knew a place in Montreal where Slaney could stay. He’d drive through the night. He filled the tank and went into the convenience store to pay and when he came out Slaney was gone.

  Patterson

  Patterson sweat. He was clammy in the creases of his skin, an ill-smelling dampness where his clothes grabbed at him. At the end of the day a mild stink enveloped and appalled him. Once, one of the secretaries had crinkled her nose.

  His shirts strained, a tiny bird-beak around each button. The knees of his pants twisted up, cutting off circulation. The arms of his jacket like the blood pressure cuffs they used in hospitals. His blood pressure was through the roof.

  His sweat had a smell so singular he half loved it and was, at the same time, felled by the shame.

  Patterson had flown into Nova Scotia that morning and rented a car, checked into a Holiday Inn. He’d seen a men’s clothing store on the way to the bar. The sign said QUALITY APPAREL FOR GENTLEMEN. He’d thought a few new shirts when he was on the way back. He was perspiring profusely.

  You wouldn’t think a thing like that could make or break. But he was certain it was why he hadn’t been promoted. Look at Nixon, sweat ruined him. Patterson was a staff-sergeant in the Toronto Drug Section but they’d given him to understand promotion was pending. Promotion hinged on getting to Brian Hearn.

  There was a size in shirts he would not go above. They brought him shirts bigger than a certain size, he said no. Patterson didn’t want to grow into the size.

  He’d ordered a scotch and the bartender put it in front of him on a paper napkin.

  You from around here? the bartender asked.

  Passing through, Patterson said. There was a row of pinball machines and a man in a leather bomber jacket was slamming against one of them. Three of his friends stood around him cheering and he was thrusting his hips and banging the chrome knobs. The bells pealed and pinged, balls snap-kicked, shot up and rolled back. Lime green light glowed up from the glass top and lit his friends’ faces so their eyes were zombie sockets.

  Patterson raised his glass to drink and he tried it out quietly: Inspector Patterson. Said it to himself, a minor incantation.

  A group of women came in through the door, full of racket. One of them let loose a cackle and hit another one on the shoulder with her purse. She trotted up to the bar and squeezed in next to Patterson, waving a bill between two fingers. Her wet-look pantsuit shone bright red and the zipper was low enough to show cleavage.

  For a moment their eyes met and she was full of fun and naked innocence, but whatever she saw in Patterson’s face caused her to close down. She looked back over her shoulder toward her friends. He knew she had seen the stealth and eager accommodation in him and it had made her feel tawdry.

  The bartender asked what he could do for her and she was instantly jazzed up again, Patterson forgotten. She ordered up a table full of cocktails, bringing her fist down on the bar after she named each drink. Some of the cocktail names were lewd and she enjoyed saying them.

  A man came in the door of the bar in a red-and-white checked Levi’s shirt and blue jeans. He wore a big metal belt buckle with the silhouette of a cowboy riding a bronco. He wasn’t wearing the buc
kskin jacket with the fringes he’d mentioned on the phone.

  The guy sat down on the stool next to Patterson without glancing at him or speaking. He ordered a rye and Coke. He asked for something to nibble on.

  The bartender put down a bowl with Nuts’n Bolts between the two men and Patterson pushed it an inch or two away.

  He had run five miles that morning and lifted weights at a gym on the outskirts of town. He’d skipped rope. He was trying the Hollywood diet. Half a grapefruit, first thing. He’d read grapefruit was a miracle food. Red meat, no carbohydrates. You weren’t supposed to exercise. He was exercising.

  You’re late, Patterson said. In a previous generation, sweat had currency, Patterson thought. It was a show of honesty, sweat on your brow. Patterson’s father had been a farmer. But within a generation sweat had become a stain.

  It stained his underarms and the backs of his white cotton shirts. It could bead up on his forehead in a meeting. His cheeks would shine under office light. It dripped down his temples very slowly and it was all he could do not to touch it, not to draw attention.

  His doctor had asked was there a family history.

  There had been his father clutching the edge of the table with a one-sided wince, lowering himself to the floor, down on one knee, then both knees, and finally out flat on his back, an arm flung out on the linoleum, when Patterson was eight. This was history.

  I had to run an errand for my wife, the guy beside Patterson said. He took a billfold out of his breast pocket and flicked it open, holding out a Sears picture of two infants wrapped in flannel blankets, a background of an English fox hunt in progress.

  These here are my boys, the man said.

  Patterson put his glass down on the paper napkin and turned it one way, then the other. He lifted the glass but the napkin stuck to the bottom. The glass was sweating.

  Where’s Slaney? Patterson said. The guy flicked the billfold closed and put it back in his pocket.

  I picked him up. We were together a good three hours. I had him.

  He’s gone, Patterson said.

  I stopped to get gas, the man said. A few snacks. I come out and he’s gone. The only thing I can figure, there was a station wagon on the lot when I went into the store and I guess he got a ride with the lady. Housewife, it looked like. All I can tell you. He was willing enough to have me take him to Montreal, drop him off where we said. But I come out and he’s gone.

  He say where he was headed? Patterson asked.

  He said Alberta. Patterson dropped his hand in the little glass bowl. Miniature pretzels and bits of cereal spilled up over the rim onto the bar and his fist was full. He knocked the flat of his hand against his mouth and started crunching. The crumbs caked his bottom lip.

  We talked about Montreal, the guy said. He’s definitely on his way there.

  There had been lateral moves, over the last five years, in Patterson’s career. The moves had signalled a kind of quietude on the part of the higher-ups.

  He could be moved sideways, they must have said. O’Neill must have said.

  Patterson was in his mid-forties and he should have been an inspector by now. He had been considered and it had come to nothing.

  A band was setting up in the corner of the bar. They’d turned on a smoke machine and a thick fog was wending its way through the legs of the tables, turning blue, yellow, green, with the switching spotlights. The woman in the shiny pantsuit had made her way to the edge of the stage. She became a hazy smear of red in the drifting smoke.

  One of the musicians crossed in front of the strobe light to a mike stand, a mechanized hyper-blink of swinging arms and flopping hair. He spoke with solemnity: One, two, one, two, test, test, and the feedback squawked and spat.

  Patterson had every reason to believe he had been overlooked but then O’Neill had called him into the office. O’Neill had slapped down box after box of files onto his desk.

  They had a job for him. Very high profile. You pull this off, Patterson, and the promotion is a sure thing. Sweat gathered at Patterson’s hairline, the back of his neck. He’d rubbed his palms against his pant legs.

  The Newfoundlanders, O’Neill had said.

  Dead Man

  New Brunswick

  Slaney hit the bell on the reception desk and the ding rang out in the empty lobby. It was after midnight. The sound of a radio on low volume broadcasting a big orchestra of violins and thundering drums came from a room in the back. Slaney waited and then hit the bell several times with the flat of his hand.

  There was the loud thunk of the elevator behind him and a deep rumbling. It clanked and shuddered and the panel above it lit up. There was a folding cage-like door over the threshold but the elevator was empty.

  Slaney hit the little bell again and he heard a woman’s rough voice yelling for him to hold his horses.

  A minute later the woman bustled out from the backroom, patting her hair into place.

  She was not more than five feet, with several soft mounds of fat beneath her bosom, and her skin was soap white. She stopped abruptly and held her hand out before her. She wrapped a fist around her index finger and drew it near her waist. The woman’s nails were long and bright red and the index fingernail had cracked off and hung on by a filament of skin.

  Damn it, she said. Now I have to start growing it all over again. That’ll take me a good solid month.

  She was wearing a limp black satin skirt that seemed to have been stained permanently by road salt and a sleeveless blouse of rustling taffeta. A faint moustache had been bleached and the skin above her eyes was hairless and inflamed, though she’d drawn on angled eyebrows that made her look sly and affronted. Her black crocheted shawl was smeared over her with static electricity.

  What can I do for you, she said.

  I was looking for a place to get in out of the cold for a couple of nights, Slaney said.

  Oh, me too, she said.

  Doesn’t have to be fancy, Slaney said. I’m short on cash at the moment. I’d be willing to do some work for it. I’d sleep standing up in a broom closet if I had to.

  Wayne will be along in a minute, she said, lifting a hand to her shoulder and waving vaguely in the direction of the room with the radio. The orchestra halted in its tracks and a two-fingered piano tinkling began. The piano stopped abruptly too. Slaney and the woman stood in silence then, taking each other in.

  Handsome bugger, aren’t you, she said.

  Thank you, Slaney said.

  Anybody ever tell you that? she asked.

  A girlfriend once, Slaney said.

  Anybody ever say those eyelashes are a bloody waste on a man? I’m not going to come out over this counter after you, don’t worry. I suppose you’re not long out of diapers.

  Slaney said he wasn’t worried.

  Let me touch something, she said.

  Pardon? Slaney asked.

  You got a handkerchief or piece of jewellery you keep on your person? I’d like to do a reading.

  Are you a psychic? Slaney asked.

  I am subject to visions, she said. Ever since I was a little girl. Sometimes I just touch a personal belonging and I get a whole life story.

  Slaney worked his mother’s engagement ring out of his pocket and passed it to her. The orchestra had started tinkling again and the violins swayed back and forth like they were deciding about committing for the long haul. They were noncommittal but the drums were building up. One drum boomed hard and deep.

  A tall, stooped man in black gabardine pants with shiny knees came out of the backroom behind her. He was shrugging on a red uniform jacket with gold braid on the sleeves. A yellow nicotine streak sluiced through his white hair. His eyes were the Nordic blue of a welder’s flame, and there was too much bone in the juts and crevices of his face. He had a forehead-led walk that caused him to look up under his eyebrows at Slaney. The look appe
ared incredulous but knowing. Slaney saw that part of the man’s shirttail was sticking out his open fly.

  I got this, Izzy, he said.

  He’s anxious to get settled, Wayne, she said. Out here hammering on that bell like there’s no tomorrow.

  How can I help you, young man? he said.

  Give him a bed, Wayne, the woman said. He don’t have any money.

  I was thinking I could do some maintenance, Slaney said.

  Just give him the room, Wayne, the woman said. She had his mother’s ring in her fist and she was holding the fist to her forehead with her eyes squeezed shut. She spoke as if reading off a teleprompter printing on the inside of her eyelids.

  The man turned to a large board behind him with fifty keys hanging on it and after a long moment he took one down.

  How long you planning to hang around? he asked.

  Long enough to catch my breath, Slaney said. I could mop up this lobby for a couple of nights after the day’s activities.

  Think you could tar a roof? I got a shed needs some tar.

  I could do that, Slaney said.

  You’ve got room 213, he said. You can stay in there until somebody else comes along. The shed is at the end of the field. I can show you where it leaks in the morning. How’d you hear about this place?

  I just happened upon it, Slaney said. The elevator dinged and the doors shut again. There was an explosion of trumpets from the radio as the orchestra gathered power and every instrument was hammering and rang out and then stopped, allowing the solitary tinkle of a lone triangle.

  You’re soaking wet, the woman said. Take my shawl.

  No thank you, ma’am. I’ll be fine when I get up to my room.

  Don’t be so foolish, take the shawl, she said. She walked to the end of the desk and lifted a hinged wooden inset and came out under it and pulled the shawl off and it crackled with electricity and sucked itself onto him. She reached up on tiptoe to arrange the shawl on Slaney’s shoulders.

  We can’t have you dripping all over the lobby, she said. She handed him back the ring.