I munched on an egg salad sandwich. It tasted exactly like nothing. Plain grey mush. “I’ll be right back.” I stood up and carried the sandwich over to the condiment station. The sandwich was my patient and I had to doctor it up. I loaded it up with salt, pepper, and Tabasco and took a bite. Doctor, we’re losing him!
I forced myself to take a few more bites — the body needs fuel — and then I chucked the soggy mess into the garbage and walked back to the table.
Melody pointed to my empty hands. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry, Melody. The sandwich didn’t make it.”
Shit, Jack, what kind of fucked-up joke was that? Melody’s dad was shot and you’re cracking wise about not making it? Goddamn, man!
Still … was that a smile? A slight uptick of the lips, and then it was gone. Melody turned her face to the window. The moonlight was streaming in. “My dad used to make sandwiches for my school lunches. My favourite was cream cheese with grape jelly, with the crusts cut off.” Melody smiled. “You should have seen him back then, Jack. This big, tough, long-haired, big-bearded biker, covered in tattoos, walking little six-year-old me to school, hand in hand. I’m sure the other parents and teachers didn’t know what to make of him at first. But you know what? He was there. He came to every soccer game, every school play, every recital. He volunteered on field trips. He took me and my friends to the ROM and he would pretend to talk to the animal exhibits. He would do the animal voices, too. ‘Hello, Mr. Polar Bear, how are you today?’” Melody made her voice gruff, imitating her dad imitating a bear: “‘I’m fine, how are you?’” Melody smiled at the memory, her eyes welling up with tears. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a paper napkin.
“After my mom left, he was my dad and my mom. You know? I didn’t think it was anything unusual. It was just my life. But he wasn’t like the other dads. It wasn’t just because he was a biker. Just being that involved in your kid’s life back then, as a dad … that was different. The other dads were more distant. I remember one of my friends, Claire. I’d play at her house and her dad would serve us milk and cookies with a towel draped over his arm, acting like he was a waiter at a fancy French restaurant. Later he went to jail on some stock fraud shit. But mostly it was the moms. All the other moms would make a big fuss over me. Claire’s mom once sent me home with a big lasagna. I thought it looked delicious, but my dad … you should have seen his face. He was so angry he was shaking. He literally turned red. ‘She thinks I can’t feed my own kid?’ He had his Satan’s Blood jacket on, the one with the big grinning, bleeding devil on the back. He was going to go over to Claire’s house and, I don’t know, throw the lasagna in Claire’s mom’s face or something. I was clutching on to his arm and screaming, begging him to stop. He had been drinking …”
Melody looked down at her soup. “Eventually he calmed down. He didn’t go over there and he still let me go play at Claire’s house, but he didn’t let us eat that lasagna. It looked so good, too.” Melody scooped up some soup. “This isn’t bad. You want some?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Quietly, we shared the soup.
CHAPTER 13
Walter was wide awake, sitting up in his bed in the ICU. There was a giant white bandage taped to his stomach. A short nurse in light-blue scrubs with yellow happy faces on them was bustling about, checking the lines that snaked into Walter’s skin.
Walter saw us and frowned. “Can you believe this shit? They’re not letting me eat. I’m fucking starving.”
“You got shot in the stomach, Dad.”
“Yeah, well — I’m not going to get better if I can’t eat. Ain’t that right, Matilda?”
Matilda the night nurse shook her head. “Can’t eat just yet, Mister Walter.”
Walter grinned at us. “Bullet missed all the vital organs. Another inch, it would’ve shattered my spine.” He turned slightly and winced. “Still hurts like hell. Where’s that goddamn morphine button? Is this thing even on?” Walter looked up at me. “Goddamn placebo is what it is. A dummy button. You click and click and click and you’re still getting the same tiny dose.”
“Otherwise you’d OD, Dad.”
“Don’t give me that OD shit. I’ve been doing drugs since before you were born. Matilda! I need some fentanyl up in here. Come on, help a brother out.”
Matilda made a tsk tsk sound and hustled away. Walter leaned back against his pillows. “They’ve still got to sew me up some more, reconnect some veins and shit.” He stared at me and narrowed his eyes. “Right after you came to see me, I get shot in the gut. That’s what I call a crazy fucking coincidence.”
I stepped closer to Walter and sat down in the chair next to his bed. “I assume you’re not going to call the cops.”
Walter looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
I nodded. “You want to work it out yourself, that’s fine with me. You and Fisher can work it all out. But, see, there’s other people involved in this.” I turned halfway in my seat and pointed to Melody. “We have to keep her safe.”
Walter grimaced. With a grunt, he heaved himself closer to me. His eyes flashed with anger. “You think I can’t protect my own daughter? Get the fuck out.”
“I didn’t —”
“I SAID GET OUT!”
In the hallway I closed my eyes and took a breath. Breathe, Jack, breathe. On the other side of the door I could hear Melody talking to her father in low, measured tones. That’s it. Get the old man to calm the fuck down.
A porter with dyed-black hair and huge Elvis-style mutton chops strode past me, pushing an old lady on a gurney. The lady was twisted and tiny, about the size of two watermelons laid end to end. She reminded me of the most predictable headline in the world: World’s Oldest Person Dies. Who could’ve seen it coming?
Two young doctors who looked like they were about twelve years old walked past going the other way, laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world. Melody walked out into the hall, passed the doctors, and fell against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her. “It’s going to be okay.”
“He wants me to bring him his gun.” She laughed and wiped away a tear. “Shit.”
I didn’t say anything. I hoped Melody knew she couldn’t bring a doped-up man a loaded handgun. If he started firing at shadows during the night, those stray bullets could hit anyone.
Melody looked up at me. “He’s scared, Jack. He’d never admit it, but he is. Shouting at you, that’s his way of showing it. Men like him, his generation, they weren’t taught to feel. All his life he’s been told to ‘suck it up’ and ‘be a man.’ Anger’s become his only go-to emotion.”
“Or maybe he’s just an asshole.”
Melody laughed. “Yeah. Well, he is that.” She glanced back into the hospital room. Walter had turned his back to us. He was muttering under his breath and jabbing at the morphine button with his thumb. “Who shot him, Jack?”
I hesitated before answering. “It was Fisher.”
Melody shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Everybody loves my dad.” She shot me a sad little smile and walked back into Walter’s room.
I was willing to bet that Fisher hadn’t been gunning for Walter. He had been gunning for me. Walter was just an unlucky bastard who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I lingered in the hallway with my ear near the door, trying to overhear Walter and Melody’s conversation. Walter’s Mumble Game was strong. I couldn’t hear shit.
I walked down the hall until I found a pay phone. I dropped in my coins and dialled up Eddie. “Any word on Cassandra?”
“Nothing yet. Got a line on someone she used to play cards with, but they haven’t called back yet.”
“Keep me posted.” Quickly I filled Eddie in about Fisher and Walter. “I think he was gunning for me.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“What can I say? The man is high strung.”
“Speaking of which … did you hear? Grover’s back in town.”
/> “Yeah, I heard something about that.”
“Watch your back, Jack.”
I hung up the phone. Apparently payphones are filthy germ factories just swarming with all kinds of creepy-crawlies. Makes sense if you think about it. When was the last time you saw a janitor pick up a pay phone and give it a good wipe-down?
I stood alone in the hospital hallway, listening to the chirp and ping of distant machines. And that’s when it hit me. There wasn’t going to be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. There weren’t going to be any soaring strings, sunlight bursting through the clouds, or angelic choruses. Best-case scenario: I was going to find Cassandra, help her pay off Anton, and then she would go back to her life and I would go back to mine, and that would be that.
But then again, as my old friend The Chief used to say, ain’t nobody got a crystal ball.
CHAPTER 14
I missed The Chief. The man had saved my life. I had bombed out of school, left whatever was left of my family far behind, and I was drifting, aimless, until The Chief found me.
“I recognized something in you,” The Chief told me years later as we sat on the deck of his trailer watching the sky turn pale pink with sunset. The Chief was smoking one of his foul home-rolled cigarettes that dyed the skin of his fingers formaldehyde yellow. The man had hands like a preserved corpse.
I didn’t smoke. I was sitting back on one of The Chief’s ratty old plastic chairs sharpening my knife, dragging the blade back and forth against the whetstone. “Oh yeah?” I said, scraping the knife against the jet-black stone. “What’s that?”
I thought he was going to say something encouraging, some Hallmark card sentiment about Stick-To-Itiveness or something of the sort. Instead he smiled, the stubble around his cheeks more salt than pepper. The sun kept dipping down, turning the sky from pink to deep purple, the colour of a bruise. “When I looked at you, I saw myself.”
The Chief’s body was never found. Sometimes, even though I know better, I think maybe he’s still out there somewhere, living it up on a beach in Antigua, wearing swim trunks and a billowing white shirt, a frozen margarita in his hand, his bare feet toasted brown by the sun. The Chief was gone, though. He wasn’t coming back. Sometimes that’s what happens. Not everyone lost gets to be found.
CHAPTER 15
Eddie clapped me on the back and sat down next to me on his stool at the end of the bar. The casino was in full swing. He held up two fingers to Vivian, the bartender. Viv nodded and gave him a wink. She pulled Eddie’s private bottle of Scotch out from under the bar and poured two fingers into two glasses. Then she slid the Scotch across the bar to us.
I gave her a smile. “Thanks, Viv.”
Eddie and I clinked glasses and drank. Goddamn, it was good.
“How’s Melody?” he asked.
“She’s doing okay. Her dad was lucky, man.”
Eddie’s left eyebrow shot up. “Getting shot in the gut counts as lucky now?”
“You know what I mean. He could be paralyzed. He could be dead.”
“True, true.”
I leaned closer to Eddie and covered my mouth with my hand. Time to play The Mumble Game. “Grover was here earlier, in my office. I didn’t let him in. Did you?”
“What?” Eddie looked like I had just slapped him upside the head. “You know I didn’t.”
“That’s my point. Somehow he got in here. I want to check the security tapes.”
Eddie sighed and drained the last of his Scotch. “I’ve got a thousand bucks that says the tapes won’t tell us shit. Grover’s gonna Grover, man.”
“Yeah, well, I want him to Grover somewhere else.” I finished my Scotch and stood up. “I’m going back to the safe house. Maybe there’s something I missed.”
“You need to sleep, Jack.”
“Fuck that. She’s out there somewhere.”
“You’ll find her when she wants to be found.” Eddie stretched his hands up over his head and yawned. “That guy I was telling you about? Used to play poker with Cassandra? He says he’ll meet.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
“Tomorrow, Jack. Regular people sleep at night.”
The body needs rest and the body needs fuel. I knew this, in theory. Putting it into practice was something else.
I was never an easy sleeper. Plunging into my own mind every night was not something I looked forward to. I thought maybe sleep would come easier as I aged, but if anything, it was getting worse.
I left Eddie down in the casino and went up to my office. I unlocked all the locks and then I slowly swung the door open. I flicked on the lights with my left hand and pulled out my knife with my right. Slowly, I reached over to the bathroom door and jerked it open. The bathroom was empty.
One of the benefits of having a tiny place is that it doesn’t take long to search. No one was hiding in the bathroom or behind the couch or underneath my desk. I put my feet up at the desk, poured myself a whisky, and raised my glass to my plant. “Salud.”
I was hoping the whisky would shake something loose from the ol’ brain pan. Something I had overlooked about Cassandra.
The first drink didn’t do it, so I poured a second.
Cassandra, Melody, Walter, Fisher, Anton, Grover. I needed one of those conspiracy corkboards with the thumbtacks and the red thread. Get all the players up on the board, see how they connect. I rummaged through my top desk drawer. I had some thumbtacks somewhere, I was sure of it. First though, one more drink.
“Rise and shine, Sleepyhead.”
I groaned. At some point in the night I had made it over to my couch. Eddie stood filling the doorway. I resisted the urge to hurl an empty bottle at him.
“Go away.”
“Come on, bud. Get up.” Eddie grinned. “Time to see the Cowboy.”
CHAPTER 16
The one-eyed man peered through the curtains, rifle in his hands. “Damn coyotes. They come up from the ravine and eat my peacocks.”
I looked over Cowboy’s shoulder at the wide expanse of lawn gently sloping down to the Rosedale Ravine. A garden party was in full swing. Servers in formal attire carried silver trays of canapés through the crowd. A beautiful brunette with long tan legs and short white shorts was trying to convince a man in tan slacks and a yellow sweater to play croquet with her. She had him by the arm and was pulling him toward the wickets. Just do it, you fool.
I didn’t see any peacocks. I tilted my chin toward the lawn. “Sorry for taking you away from your party.”
The one-eyed man shook his head. “That’s my wife’s scene, not mine. She loves this shit. If I went down there, she’d make me break out my formal eye patch.”
Right now Cowboy wasn’t wearing an eye patch at all. The place where his eye had been was all pink and puckered and scarred. Eddie had told me the story. In his younger days, Cowboy had been heavily into various substances. One afternoon while high on PCP, he had gone on an epic biblical trip that ended with him shrieking, “If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out!” Which he did. Goddamn PCP, man. That’s some horrible, horrible shit.
I nodded toward the rifle. “Is that thing loaded?”
Cowboy frowned. “Wouldn’t be much good otherwise. What am I going to do, jump through my window and club a coyote to death?”
I grinned. “I bet you could if you had to.”
He laughed. “You’re damn right.” He leaned the rifle against the wall and stepped toward the bar. “Drink?”
I nodded. “Scotch. Something smoky.” I glanced around, taking in the tapestries, the fireplace, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “Nice place.”
“Ah.” He dismissed it all with the wave of his hand. “Got lucky, that’s all. Invested my money in the right shit at the right time.”
“Simple as that, huh?”
“Well …” Cowboy’s eye twinkled. “There was the small matter of getting the money to invest in the first place.”
I nodded. “Speaking of which … you still know some people from the old d
ays, right?”
Cowboy shook his head. “I put all that street shit behind me. You know what I’m into now? Music. I’ve got my own studio down in the basement.” He grinned. “Want to see? I’m working on some killer tracks, man.”
“Another time. You know why I’m here.”
Cowboy nodded. “Cassandra.”
I nodded back. “That’s right.”
He exhaled. “Yeah, I knew her. Man, that was like a million years ago. I staked her in a few games. Nothing too crazy, you know. A million, tops.” He laughed. “Like I said, man, that was a long time ago.”
“You know a guy called Fisher?”
The one-eyed man paused for a minute, tapping his chin. “Fisher. Yeah, sure. He was a road captain for Satan’s Blood. Those guys were stone cold killers, but man, they could really move the shit.” Cowboy chuckled. “It’s funny, you know? With all the shit I made, the acid was the best. We’re talking world-class quality. Fisher and his crew never fucked with it, though. They wanted meth. As much meth as I could cook. For a year I had a lab out on an island up north. I’d fly up there every weekend on my float plane. I was hiding garbage bags full of meth all over the damn place. Under rocks, inside tree stumps, you name it. When I got back the next weekend, the shit would be gone.” He shrugged. “They sold it mostly in the States — Florida, Louisiana. The Southern Pipeline. The meth goes south and guns come back north.” As Cowboy smiled, the skin puckered up around his missing eye. “They were the ones who gave me the name Cowboy. I don’t know why they called me that, man. I’ve barely even seen a cow.” He scratched his arm. “What’s Fisher been up to? Last I heard, he was still locked up.”
“He’s out now. He’s tight with another old-timer named Walter. They rode together back in the dinosaur days.”
Carve the Heart Page 8
