The Higher the Monkey Climbs

by Bruce Geddes

  33

  Back in Wanstead the next day, I knocked with a single knuckle on the door at Louise’s house. In my other hand I carried a modest bunch of flowers, an assortment of carnations unified by baby’s breath and greenery. It was the only thing fresh in my appearance. My pants were wrinkled, my face unshaven, gooey with sweat. Even my laundered shirt was out of sorts, twisted and bunched after the three-and-a-half hour drive to Wanstead turned into five-and-a-half hours with a six-car pile-up near the Mersea exit.

  When no one answered, I pushed open the door. “Anyone home?”

  “I’m in here,” Louise replied from the kitchen. “My nails are still wet.”

  In only a week, the place had changed. It smelled fresh, lemon and apple layered atop ammonia. In the vestibule, Tony’s mother’s shoes, the flats, the slippers, the zip-up, low-cut boots, were arranged in their proper pairs, heels flush against the wall. I stepped inside to see more improvements. Colours on the rug were brighter, the pillows on the sofa had been fluffed. In the kitchen, Louise sat in a chair, her feet hoisted onto another, white cotton wedged between her toes. On the table, a new microwave: cool white, room enough for a turkey.

  “How are you, Louise?” I said.

  “Worried sick,” she said. “Are those for me?”

  “I thought they might cheer you up a bit.”

  “Put them in water. There’s a vase somewhere in here,” she said.

  I began to sort through cupboards. They were freshly wiped down, filled with neat stacks of plates, glasses, pots and pans.

  “Maybe in the one beside the fridge,” Louise said. “Unless the Nip moved it.”

  I still couldn’t find a vase. As I was reaching for another cupboard, Drew Herringer entered the kitchen.

  “It’s in the cupboard beside the sink, Tricky,” she said. “And Corazon’s not Japanese, Louise, she’s Filipina.”

  “Same difference,” Louise said.

  In linen pants and a short-sleeve cotton t-shirt, Drew looked at home in Tony’s mother’s kitchen. Now she did. Only days ago, the state the place was in, she might have seemed like a city inspector, checking the floors and walls for sturdiness, the basement for mould and mouse droppings, judging finally if the house were suitable or not for human habitation. Plus there was the way she knew the exact cupboard where the vase had been stowed and the way she called Tony’s mother by her first name, something Louise didn’t like at all.

  “You want to call me Louise, you should have married my son when you had the chance,” she said.

  “Have you heard anything?” Drew asked me.

  “Nothing. Sorry. Who’s Corazon?”

  “My housekeeper. She’s on loan. You should have seen the place when I got here. I figured I could handle it, but no way. So I brought Corazon over. She’s upstairs now, in the bathroom, trying to scrape the soap scum off the walls. I might need to rent her a sand blaster.”

  “At least before I knew where everything was at!” Louise cried, rising from the chair, perhaps planning an indignant, stomping exit.

  “Just stay put, Louise, or you’ll ruin your nails before we have a chance to put on the decals,” Drew said. And then to me: “Corazon does nails on the side. Have you heard anything?”

  I shook my head. “What about you?”

  “He missed five shifts already at Fabrivida. Any longer and they won’t hold his job.”

  “And then what am I supposed to do?” chimed Mrs. Langlois, demanding to be heard from her vinyl stoop. “Who’s going to take me shopping? I’m already out of cheese.”

  With her head inclined, forcing her eyes and brow together, Drew glowered at Louise, who browsed the selection of toe-nail decals. If Drew had ever regretted not marrying Tony Langlois, those feelings had surely dissolved over an acidic day with her would-have-been mother-in-law. She grabbed a set of keys from the kitchen table.

  “Tricky and I are going for lunch, Louise. We’ll pick up some cheese on the way back.”

  “Are you leaving me alone with that zipperhead?”

  “You’re damn right I am,” Drew said. “And you’d better be nice to her, too. She’s half ninja. And she’s got her nunchucks with her today.”

  We took Drew’s smooth-riding and spacious Esplanade. At the restaurant, neither of us admitting much hunger, we opted to share a thin-crust pizza. Drew talked about Louise.

  “She as ornery as a trapped bat,” she said. “I don’t know if she knows how serious all of this is.”

  “Have you spoken to Bernard?”

  “I called him last night. He wants to help. He was supposed to go back to the Congo this week but he’s going to come down here instead. I told him he didn’t have to. He wants to hire a private investigator but I don’t know.”

  A waitress brought the pizza on a wooden slab. It was streaked with roasted red pepper and dotted with artichoke and dollops of goat’s cheese. I sliced and served. Drew peeled a pepper strip from the surface and sucked it through her lips onto her tongue.

  “Maybe a private investigator isn’t such a bad idea.” I said.

  “But it all depends,” she said. “If Tony’s running, it’s one thing to track him down. But Bernard said that if he’s had a breakdown, he might be hiding in some motel room or an abandoned building and we’d never find him until he wants to be found.”

  We chewed in silence. We toasted with water.

  “To our health,” I said.

  “To my health, at least. You look awful.”

  “Ah, well.”

  “I mean it. You look like you haven’t slept in days. When I first saw you this morning, I thought something had shit you out into Louise’s kitchen. What are you living on, vodka-sodas?”

  “I just haven’t been sleeping so great,” I said. “Inés took the good mattress.”

  “It’s not worth it, Richard. You need to understand. I know he’s your cousin and everything, but Tony hasn’t been the same for a long, long time. He’s more the new Tony than the Tony he was when you lived here.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’re not responsible for him,” she said, as though granting me a pardon. “He’s the father of my son, Richard, but he’s not all there.”

  This was true. I knew that. Everything that had happened over the past several weeks only served to prove the fact. In fact, Tony probably realized that he wasn’t all there, too. I rested a dour chin in my open palm. “I know. I know he’s not all there. But some of him is.”

  “You know what the guys at the WAW told me? That Tony actually went to the director’s counsel and suggested they kill Allistair Forzante. They laughed him out of the building.”

  “They didn’t even let him explain why he wanted to do it?”

  “Why would they?” she said. “Did you?”

  Troubled, I shifted on my stool and peered across the restaurant to the wood-burning stove, its mouth open and ready to receive. The pizza maker idled opposite, arms folded across his chest, contemplating the flame.

  “I didn’t. But now I’m thinking maybe he’s got a point.”

  “About what?”

  “About Forzante ordering Gord’s murder,” I said. “I’m starting to believe Tony.”

  Drew’s eyes grew wide, accusatory. She raised a hand. “Excuse me? We’ll take the cheque.” Her face reddened. She pursed her lips and leaned in, lowering her voice to a hiss. “Richard, I don’t mean to tell you the law, but I don’t think you’re allowed to accuse people of killing someone in public places, even if the supposed victim was your father. And especially when that accusation is based on the crack-pot theories of a nutcase. And most especially when the guy you are accusing of murder is who you say it is.”

  Agitated, Drew fumbled in her purse for her wallet, pinched a pair of twenties and twisted to look for the waitress. She lifted her hand to get the girl’
s attention, flapping the green bills like a captured bird.

  I waited until we were back in the Esplanade to ask.

  “Why are you afraid of Forzante?”

  She was having difficulty concentrating on her driving, had already jumped a curb and screeched to a halt when she arrived at a red light with too much speed.

  “I am not afraid of Forzante.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  The light turned green. We accelerated but drove more slowly.

  “Look, Tricky. You may not have lived here in a while. It’s never a good idea to say things about Forzante in public.”

  “Would he have you killed?”

  “What?”

  “Or disappeared?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Well then?”

  Drew frowned.

  “Maybe he had Tony killed,” I said.

  “Oh that’s just idiotic,” Drew said.

  “But he’s got you afraid and you didn’t even say anything. I was the one who accused him. Yet you’re the one going red-faced and driving over curbs.”

  Drew said nothing as we turned down O’Neil, heading back to Tony’s mother’s house. I was feeling like I had the upper hand in the conversation but I didn’t want to badger Drew Herringer like a hostile witness I would never see again. At the same time, I wanted to know what had her so agitated about Forzante. It’s a delicate thing to balance, this power, even when you have it in your hands, it can be fragile and slippery. So I let her drive and said nothing more about Forzante, but my silence held a passive sway. She stopped at a corner, shifted into park and turned to me.

  “I wasn’t afraid for my life,” she said. “It’s something different.”

  I waited.

  “It’s more complicated.”

  I said nothing.

  “I really shouldn’t get into it.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Okay, here’s it is. Forzante is about to head into contract negotiation with Stone Industrial. And he’s been talking to Gus and he’s going to make laser eye surgery one of the demands, because it’s not covered by the government insurance.”

  “So?”

  “Well, the way it works is that for every employee or family member who opts for the surgery, Gus sort of pays a finder’s fee to Forzante.”

  “A kickback.”

  “It could be a few thousand patients,” she said. “Once they’re all done, Gus retires and for six months minus a day of every year of the rest of our lives, we live in a Tuscan villa.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said.

  “No it’s not. It’s typical. I don’t know why you’re acting so smug. You as much as anyone should know that sort of thing has been going on for years.”

  “I guess I should,” I said, though having never looked at Gord’s personal papers, I didn’t know the extent of it. They—and the secrets they kept—flew to the Carribbean with my mother, exiled, never to return. Not that I knew if they would show me anything. Hiding money is an elusive art. And though I don’t know for certain if Gord had been stowing money away in secret places, I’m certain that if he was, he would have done it well.

  “Anyway, you can see how I can’t risk having Forzante angry with me. He could easily find an orthodontist and strike a deal for invisible braces. I never should have said anything. You can’t say anything.”

  I promised I wouldn’t.

  “So you understand that I’m not afraid of Forzante,” Drew said.

  “Not because you think he’ll kill you, anyway.”

  “Right.”

  “But it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Tony.”

  34

  Louise had made her selections from a set of Looney Tunes character toenail decals. Bugs on the big toe, Tweety squeezed onto the little one, as far away from Sylvester as ­possible.

  “I wanted my hands done, too, but Tokyo Rose here says there’s no time,” she said.

  “There is still so much to do upstairs,” Corazon explained in her tuk-tuk accent. “I’m not finished in the bathroom and I haven’t been into the second bedroom yet.”

  “What do I care if that room is clean? Only Tony stays there. I sleep in my bed,” Louise said.

  “She can come back another day for the hands,” Drew said.

  “Make her do my hands, too, Drew. Why don’t I ever see my grandson?”

  Drew’s eyes narrowed and her hand made a fist around the car keys.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said. “Corazon will do your fingernails. Tricky and I will finish upstairs. Okay?”

  “That’s fine,” Louise said. “She’s not ninja, you know. I asked.”

  “They’re not allowed to tell, Louise. It’s a code. So you’d still better behave, get it?”

  Upstairs, with Drew spraying cleanser over yellowing tiles in the bathroom, I rolled the vacuum cleaner into the second bedroom. The top floor was several degrees warmer than the first, the heat trapped like sludge in the low, sloping ceiling. Dust floated in the stony air. The open window was unhelpful against the atmosphere.

  Tony’s bedroom had a neglected, temporary feel, as though he hadn’t really been living there for many years, stripping the room to its basic function while searching elsewhere for sanctuary. Old brown striped sheets covered the bed, the pillows still crushed by Tony’s last sleep, and a yellow crocheted blanket lay crumpled on the floor. A set of battered wood bookshelves held four dusty yearbooks from Caplan C.I., plus early 1980s editions of Car & Driver magazine, and a collection of cassettes, dubbed from others, erased and re-recorded, layers of handwritten labels documenting the history of each tape. A pay stub from Fabrivida showed that three weeks before, Tony had worked 35.5 hours, been paid an hourly rate of $19.47 for a net total of $691.19, minus deductions. I collected clothes spread over the floor, an incongruent collection of pants and shirts.

  Searching for a hamper, I opened the closet door. A surprised moth flew from a darkened corner. There was no hamper but instead, a dark blue, soft shell suitcase that I assumed empty. When I lifted it out, however, I felt the weight of something shifting inside. I laid it flat on the bed and opened it to find a mass of unbound papers, differently sized, differently coloured, clippings from newspapers, others from magazines or books, envelopes, tiny spiral ring notebooks, the edges of their pages tattered and uneven. With a tentative hand, as an archaeologist sweeping away surface dust, I pushed the first layer aside, papers stuck together from time and weight, and revealed a cluster of photographs.

  The first of them was Gord and my mother seated in aluminum-framed lawn chairs, a snap taken one summer on the deck at Forzante’s loaned cottage in Michigan, a weekend Tony had been invited up. My mother, slightly out of focus, read a copy of Chatelaine, possibly unaware that she was being photographed. But Gord, his briefcase leaning against the leg of his chair, looked at the camera and smiled guardedly, his facial muscles held tight, trying to look like he was having a good time. He wore brown swim trunks and a dress shirt unbuttoned to the top of his stomach. I remembered the swim suit. On the left leg there was an embroidered logo, Neptune’s trident, but I couldn’t see it in the photo.

  Other shots, some photographs, others scissored from publications, showed various UCF executives. They drank beer from stubbies, smoked cigars and pipes, clasped shoulders as they posed. Almost everything in the suitcase seemed to be connected to Gord or one of the two unions. I found a map of the intersection where my father was killed, enlarged by photocopy so many times that all the lines were blurred. Another scrap of paper showed Gord’s name in the centre, circled with spidery legs pointing to other names. I replaced the page with the others. There were thousands of bits of paper, photographs, and documents, and it would take a person days to go through them all, to try and make sense of what Tony knew, what he supposed, an
d what was just random guessing. I was still standing there, staring into the chaotic contents, trying to decide what he was going to do with it, when Drew spoke from behind.

  “Doesn’t that woman throw anything out? She has drug bottles in her cabinet dating back five years,” she said. “Lorazepam, oxycocet, metoprolol. All empty. What’s in the suitcase?”

  I shook my head slowly, scrunched my lips into a tight line and exhaled. “I don’t really know,” I said.

  Drew peered into the case. “A lot of crap,” she said. “He must get that from Louise.”

  “Some crap, it must be.”

  Drew wiped her brow with the side of a forefinger and placed her hands on her hips. I folded my arms over my chest and arched my back. Together, we contemplated the suitcase, its depth and contents, as though we were visiting an art gallery on a rainy day and viewing a tricky abstract piece. I picked up another pile of papers, tossed them back in the suitcase and flipped the lid down.

  “You’re taking it with you?” Drew asked.

  I lifted the thing by its sticky handle.

  “For now,” I said.

  35

  I stopped the car in front of Forzante’s place, watched a couple of kids roll past on their bikes, and then moved forward, parking a few houses away. With their maple trees in full green bloom, their lawns trimmed and weed-free, Forzante’s neighbours’ homes were as impressive as his, only not as large. Before opening the door, I called the answering machine at the townhouse and left a message noting the date, the time, and the fact that I was about to pay a visit to Alistair Forzante. A pickup truck pulled in behind my car, startling me until two men in green began to off-load a lawn mower and weed trimmer. By the time I arrived at Forzante’s front walk, their rattling engines were already disturbing the quiet.

  My godfather was seated in his wheelchair in the mansion’s backyard. When I was shown through the double doors, he was instructing a gardener in clean white coveralls on how much to trim from the rose bush and where to plant the Japanese maple currently lying flat on the lawn, its roots still bound in burlap. A path paved in smooth grey stone meandered from the stained deck to a lawn of soft, fat-bladed grass.