by T. F. Pruden
Copyright © 2016 by T.F. Pruden
All rights reserved. No part of this manuscript may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design & Format by Indie Designz
This novel is dedicated to the friends and fans of the man from Harwill
whose support made writing it possible.
For Rich.
Part One:
the Gamble
CHAPTER ONE
Wayne Stevens loosened the towel, damp and threadbare, from around his waist.
He tossed it over the back of the metal folding chair next to the worn dresser in the small bedroom where he stood. The hot shower neither refreshed him nor eased his bodies many aches. His hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, back, and what felt like every part of his body throbbed with pain. Even his eyelids were exhausted and scratched his pupils as he struggled to keep them open.
He lowered himself to sit on the padded faux leather frame of the king sized water bed behind him. Wayne rolled onto the cool expanse of the wave-less mattress. He stretched his heavily muscled six-foot frame across the bed and shut his eyes, with a sigh escaping him despite their burning.
The return to a life of physical labor extracted a higher price than he imagined it might.
As he lay atop the big bed, he wondered again how long it would be until his thirty-one-year-old body; apparently fit and gym trained to perfection, adjusted to the demands of the scaffold riggers’ job. It was a decade since he asked his body to do anything more taxing than lift weights in the cleanliness of a bodybuilding gym. After completing three six-day weeks of twelve-hour shifts the aches resulting from the work had yet to ease.
It depressed him to think he might no longer meet the demands of the laborers’ life. In spite of a dogged pursuit of upward mobility he was first hired for the strength of his back, not his brain. He viewed his youthful experience in the trades as a fallback position should the worst happen and failure result from his entrepreneurial activities.
He opened his eyes to relieve their burning and stared at the low ceiling and the neat fixture mounted in the center of the room above him.
His water bed took most of the floor space in the small room. Though placed against a wall and in the corner of the basement bedroom little space for movement remained.
He turned his glance away the white tiles of the suspended ceiling to the open closet at the foot of the bed. It now filled to bursting with his favorite club wear, and he wished again it had a door.
As he looked to the assortment of expensive clothes, once necessary to his earlier life, a twinge of pain arrived. The lack of a door on the tiny closet meant he couldn’t avoid seeing the flashy collection. The pain of his recent failure was fresh, and he remained unable to synthesize the uneven mix of guilt and shame.
Despite his concerns the rising dust and potential damage to his beloved wardrobe caused by it picked at his wounded pride.
He pulled his eyes from the open closet and peered around the small room containing his remaining possessions.
The walls were sheathed in knotted pine while a white painted hollow-core door; set at a forty-five degree angle in the corner of the room beside the closet to conserve floor space, led to the basement proper. The four brass hooks mounted at eye height on the wall just inside it he filled with his spring and summer outerwear. A pair of leather jackets, one brown and the other black, occupied the first two while a lined denim, heavily worn, filled the third. Upon the last hook hung the hooded plaid vest he wore until the sun rose high enough in the Manitoba spring sky to make a T-shirt comfortable.
He hated the knotted pine with a dulled passion.
Wayne glanced to the folding metal chair against the wall. The three drawer melamine dresser beside it contained his work clothes, socks, and underwear. He noted, again and with bitter misery, there was precious little to show for a life of hard work and constant striving.
The rough finished bedroom where he now lived occupied a corner of the basement in the East Kildonan bungalow owned by his friend and foreman Ben Newberg.
Ben was five years his elder and Wayne had known him for only a couple of years. A man of limited social inclinations beyond those related to business, Ben was the closest of his few friends.
Wayne rented the room with its painted grey plywood floor for three hundred dollars per month. It was real gratitude he expressed when Ben allowed him to move in without paying in advance.
He soon handed over three months’ rent from the proceeds of his first paycheck.
Wayne was also indebted to Ben for getting him the job.
Though the apprentice ground man rate of fifteen dollars per hour was scarce enough to keep him afloat, it relieved him to be working. Without prospects he teetered on the edge of bankruptcy with the closing of the failed night club at the end of the previous month.
He had done his best to keep up to the demands of the work since joining the tight-knit crew. This despite ceaseless misery from his aching body and the fact he now found himself in the ignominious position of low man on the totem pole. He made a point of neither complaining nor allowing his often bruised pride to impede his effort.
It had been several years since he worked in either a non-supervisory or ownership position.
Wayne continued to be surprised by the difficulty it caused him.
The hard facts were that he had little practical experience and less real prospects. Yet his battered ego and worn nerves grated ruthless when he was ordered to complete another of the menial tasks his new position demanded.
His gratitude to Ben aside after only three weeks the miserable work had him wondering if he could stick it out until his next paycheck arrived.
A paycheck of some kind was a necessity at this point, and the scaffold job though not unionized paid wages either at or above the carpenters’ scale. It also followed the practice of paying an overtime wage rate of time and a half after eight hours per day. The twelve-hour shifts produced fourteen hours of daily wages. A six-day work week allowed him to survive in spite of the punitive Canadian tax load. As long as he could work he would look forward to eventual recovery from the most immediate and devastating financial aspects of the recent loss of his business.
The emotional wounds were another matter.
Wayne now did his daily best to avoid considering the damage done to his psyche by them. To consider the loss of his dream at this point was beyond his emotional capacity. The rise of bitter anger and thickness in his throat remained his first response to thoughts related to the failure of the club. It had been his longest held dream and the two years spent operating the business was everything he hoped.
At least the first year of it had been.
Efforts to stop the hemorrhage of cash that eventually destroyed the business and forced him to close the doors consumed the last year.
He and his partners were confounded by an unexpected turn of events following an initial run of heady success. They were unable to discover the root cause of the ongoing failure in time to save the business though Wayne wondered now if they had been willing. Their joint efforts to reinvigorate the night club gave way to despair as the losses mounted.
The partners in no time descended into backbiting and blaming one another for a collective failure. Soon the resulting spiral of rancorous feelings between them fed on itself. Before long the negativity of the partners infec
ted the operations staff and thereafter poisoned the atmosphere of the business.
The toxic mix made recovery from the natural vicissitudes of a seasonal marketplace impossible.
It was a stunning reversal.
An extended run of success for the business and Wayne broke, and he remained shocked by the swift failure.
On the previous morning he awoke from a tortured dream in a cold sweat. The strange surroundings, a knock upon the bedroom door, and the sound of Ben’s voice informing him it was time for work left him bewildered. The unfamiliar surroundings frightened Wayne for a moment. He struggled to break the hold of the dream.
He soon managed a calm reply, telling Ben he would be up in a minute.
Wayne dragged himself to full awareness and the panic filling his chest receded. The chill of the plywood floor beneath his feet cleared his head as he rose to sit on the edge of the bed.
The knowledge that all he worked for since graduating high school was lost had filled his heart during the night. It threatened to incapacitate him. Only a supreme effort of his remaining will allowed him to stand under the weight of the growing dread.
Wayne knew he must guard the flicker of hope left inside him. A day would come when he could with objectivity consider the situation. He held no illusions about the damage done to his confidence by the inescapable failure. The mental and emotional wounds he would bear in silence.
He promised, to himself in secret, to allow no one to see how the shameful failure harmed him.
Wayne looked forward to a day when he would look with reason upon the scars left by his first business failure. He also knew he would always be affected by it. He had lived enough to know about experiences a man doesn’t walk away from without unseen damage.
Though every scar fades each must be gotten used to, no matter how long it might take or how much trouble be found accepting their permanence. Wayne appreciated the wounds remained too painful for him to view with anything but horror. One day they would fade to a point where he would cease to notice them.
Only patience was needed to get him there and of that he had plenty.
The ringing of the telephone in the rec room beyond the bedroom door roused him from his thoughts. He wondered if Ben would pick it up or if he should. When the third ring was interrupted, he knew Ben had grabbed it.
He relaxed back onto the bed.
“Wayn-er!” the sound of Ben’s muffled voice called from upstairs, “Grab the extension down there—you’ve got a phone call.”
CHAPTER TWO
Rene Lemieux stood on the uppermost of the four decks built onto the back of his expansive Norwood West home.
He leaned against the dark stained wood of the six-inch top cap covering the hand rails surrounding the terrace. The sturdy patios connected to each other by stairways and overlooked a wide curve of the muddy Red River. The river overflowed its banks and meandered from the south to disappear into the heart of the city to the north.
From where he stood the setting sun hung suspended between the still naked branches of the enormous Elm trees surrounding his home. The branches arched above the terraces overlooking the rivers’ bank and the dock floating below them.
Rene bent at the waist with his forearms atop the railing, a cigarette in one hand and a mug of hot coffee in the other.
He enjoyed the view. When his schedule allowed he liked to watch the sunset from this position. Through the long months of summer when his work kept him on the road and away from home he would think of it often. The cool months of spring were upon the Midwest now and the annual breakup stopped the work of the pipeline builders for a few months.
Thus he was free to enjoy it.
That he found himself alone in the six-bedroom manse was a rarity.
Rene was a frugal man in spite of his relative wealth and rented three of the bedrooms to an assortment of friends and acquaintances. The rental income enabled him to live mortgage-free. This was one of many allowances he made throughout his life to ensure his financial freedom.
He worked long years and made a practice of managing his money with diligence.
This to provide for himself and his family a style of life his parents’ would consider both needless comfortable and far too soft. He grinned with sympathy as he thought of them.
Their family lived a brutal life in the Cape Breton townships.
His father worked sixteen-hour shifts six days out of seven in the coal mines while his mother took in laundry so they could clothe and feed their dozen children. The life of constant toil would take both of them early.
There were occasional mornings when Rene felt himself wanting to lay in bed rather than get up and go to work.
On those days he was most grateful for the memory of his father. The remembered voice filled his mind with awareness of his duty. His father reminded him that God would reward him and keep his family safe only if he worked hard enough to demonstrate his faith.
The reminder, like the work, he delivered daily.
Unlike his father the fiscal rewards of Rene’s earthly toil were abundant. Yet among his many gifts he found not the patient love of a faithful wife.
For Rene was divorced, and most unhappy about it.
In spite of his continued faith in the God of his parents he lived without the happiness of his children surrounding him. His boys lived with their mother in a well-appointed home in the village of Lorette thirty minutes south of the city Rene was proud to provide for them.
The failure of his marriage and resulting divorce, illegal in the eyes of his church, was the source of his greatest shame. On the countless nights he prayed for salvation and forgiveness he gave thanks his parents were spared the sight of his miserable attempt at raising a family.
The distant sun almost touched the treetops on the horizon to the west and Rene grunted with satisfaction as he straightened. He raised the mug and swallowed the remains of the sweetened coffee.
There was work to do this night.
Rene placed the mug on the railing and reached into the chest pocket of the plaid cotton shirt he wore. He removed the pair of folded bank drafts held there. As he stubbed the remains of the cigarette into a plastic ashtray beside the mug, he opened the drafts to again confirm their identical amounts.
His excitement rose as he once more considered the business proposition awaiting his decision. He remained unsure of his participation. The risk of a new venture fired his imagination.
The business now considered was new and he without experience. Rene longed for such an opportunity almost as long as he worked for himself. The conservative returns of real estate and the safety of blue-chip stocks were haven for his hard-earned personal investments. He wanted a crack at a venture as risky as that presented to him this morning. The fact he requested the bank print the drafts to cash was as clear a sign as any.
Rene had decided to take the risk laden opportunity.
He argued with himself through the day about the business.
A phone call earlier that afternoon from Richie Pallento; one of his most trusted friends and owner of the Marlene Hotel, put him on the precipice. The opportunity they would discuss this evening came as a complete surprise.
He and Richie had ridden together in the bad old days and remained friends after Rene emerged from his lone extended stay in prison. Besides hard work the men shared a variety of interests including fine homes, big bikes, sports cars, fast boats, beautiful women, and making money. Rene was at once intrigued by the news Richie shared despite a lack of experience in the hospitality industry.
He envied the lifestyle enjoyed by his friend.
It was provided by his ownership of the big hotel in the French Canadian neighborhood of St. Boniface. While he trusted no one to handle his money Rene was pleased Richie called him when the lessee of the hotel restaurant indicated a desire to sell. He was proud his friend considered him both willing and able to take on the challenging new opportunity.
In spite of his advancing ye
ars and lack of experience.
Rene spent the day considering various aspects of the situation.
He took into account the potential for success and failure associated with it, doing his best to see it rationally in spite of the rising excitement. Rene understood without doubt he would need specialized help if the venture were to succeed.
This did not intimidate him.
He considered himself to be not only an excellent judge of character but also a flawless leader of men.
His crop of renters numbered among them a young chef who now celebrated his first anniversary of sobriety. The fellow had intimated to his landlord a desire to improve his current lot in life.
This was precipitous no doubt as it might provide an answer to one of the most important questions facing him now.
He was also aware the younger brother of another former compadre from the old days was an entrepreneur.
Rene was a regular participant in the night life of the small city and familiar with the club scene. He knew the young fellow suffered the loss of his fortune due to the failure of a once successful night club.
The sting of defeat either serves as motivation for a man to work harder or makes it easier for him to quit.
Rene knew this well.
His familiarity with the young fellows’ history led him to believe failure would leave him champing at the bit in search of opportunity. This presented a likely solution to another of the pressing issues surrounding the new business.
The lad was likely to possess not only the experience Rene lacked but also the time required to build and operate a restaurant.
Rene said nothing to either the two young men or anyone else. In truth he did not know where the younger of them might be found. He was confident his extensive list of contacts would locate him soon enough if needed.
From there it would be a case of selling the youngsters an opportunity.
