The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  She nodded and fell silent. I let the silence stretch between us, taking another small sip of Lawrence Thomason’s beer as she set the kitchen table and laid out cold cuts, cheeses, crusty bread, and salad. Her hair was tied back, and she was wearing snug jeans and a roomy plaid shirt. She wore the past twenty years well, but she wore them nonetheless. She was a little heftier in the hips and thighs, perhaps, and beneath the shirt her breasts were lower and heavier than I remembered, but she was still a very attractive woman.

  She became aware of my scrutiny.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay.” She gestured for me to take a place at the table. “I’ve been kind of studying you, too,” she said, as she sat down opposite me. “You’ve changed in a lot of ways, but in other ways you haven’t changed much at all. You look slimmer than I remember. Stringier. And more beat up. Have you been in an accident recently?”

  I told her about the mountain rescue incident.

  “Sounds like interesting work.”

  “Strictly voluntary,” I said. “I worked for the guy who ran the mountain rescue team.”

  “The same kind of work you were doing in Lebanon?”

  “For a while,” I said. “But for the last couple of years I’ve been co-managing a trekker’s inn and pub outside Fort William while trying to write a book.”

  “Another travel book?”

  “No. I was trying my hand at a novel. Still trying. Not sure it’s going anywhere, though.”

  “Well, you can write at least,” she said. “That’s a start. The people who send me their manuscripts only think they can write. Many of them are wrong.” She ate some salad, sipped some wine. “Did you come home very often?”

  “No, not often. This is only the fifth time in twenty years.”

  “I saw you once, you know. It must have been ten or twelve years ago. I was living in Hudson with my first husband, Rebecca’s father. You were with Nina. She was performing at a music festival. I hardly recognized her. It was the first time I’d seen her since you left. I think she saw me, too.”

  “She didn’t say anything,” I said.

  “She looked pretty nervous,” Terry said.

  “She was scared out of her mind. It was her first major gig. I’m surprised I didn’t see you, though.” Standing less than two inches under six feet in her socks, with that bright mass of red hair, she tended to stand out in crowds. I said as much.

  “My hair was shorter then,” she said. “And darker, I think. Besides, you were busy helping Nina set up. I did almost go over to say hello, though.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Things weren’t going very well between Gary and me. It wasn’t long afterward that we separated. I didn’t think he’d be keen on me talking to an old boyfriend, especially after he’d had a beer or six. Poor Gary. He was never a very good husband, but he was a better father to Rebecca after we were divorced. He even quit drinking. She was inconsolable when he died.”

  “A road accident, Nina said.”

  “Yes. Ironically, he was killed by a drunk driver.”

  She asked me if I wanted another beer, not noticing that I’d drunk very little of the one I had, and when I said, “No, thanks,” she emptied the bottle of wine into her wineglass.

  “Tell me about your business,” I said. “You’re a publisher?”

  “Not really. More like a service bureau for people who want to self-publish. What used to be called a vanity press but is now called independent publishing. I do aspire to some legitimacy, though, and don’t accept everything, although my standards are flexible if there’s enough money involved. Not many of my clients earn their investments back.”

  “But some do?”

  “A couple have,” she said, adding with a laugh, “They have large families.”

  Chapter 11

  While we ate, she told me more about her work, and I found myself talking about my mother’s situation—and the guilt and shame I felt that I might have to sell her house to pay for her care.

  “The guilt is perfectly normal,” Terry said. “My parents felt the same way when they had to place my grandmother in a nursing home. But you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Tell Rocky that,” I said, which necessitated explaining Rocky’s situation, too. “I don’t think she feels I appreciate the sacrifices she’s made.”

  “Doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice to me,” Terry said. “Cheap room and board, not to mention free studio space, for looking after her sister.”

  “Well, I suppose it has put a bit of a damper on her social life,” I said, realizing too late that it was nothing compared to the inhibiting effect Terry’s husband’s crimes had had on Terry’s life. But Terry let it go.

  “I liked her when I first met her,” Terry said. They’d met at a vernissage for a show of Rocky’s work, I recalled, before Rocky split with her second husband and started hanging around the apartment, smoking her dope. “But I always felt she thought a little too highly of herself.”

  Although I didn’t say so, I’d always felt that Rocky lacked more than a little in the self-esteem department.

  “She made a pass at me once, you know,” Terry said. “At least, I think she did. I was pretty naive about that kind of thing.”

  “I didn’t know. But that’s Rocky.”

  “She probably wasn’t serious.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said.

  “I don’t know why I never told you,” she said, her cheeks pinking, making her freckles stand out. She was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t know about you … ”

  “What?”

  She didn’t respond for a couple of seconds, then said, “I’m finding this situation very awkward.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “You aren’t?”

  “No. It seems quite normal to me. A pleasant lunch with an old friend who also happens to be a beautiful and intelligent woman.”

  “You are so full of crap,” she said, blushing again. She sighed. “Things never quite turn out the way we expect, do they?”

  “Not always, no,” I said, trying to remember how I’d thought my life would turn out. I tend not to dwell much on the future, though, or the past. I have trouble enough with the present.

  “When I was twenty-one,” she said, “I never thought my life would be extraordinary in any way. I figured I’d graduate, get a job, get married—not necessarily to you—have a couple of kids, then grow old and die. A dull life for a dull girl.”

  “You were far from dull,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling. “But I think I was. Still am. The only thing that makes me at all remarkable is that I was married to a goddamned sociopath who scammed money from just about everyone he met and that I was too stupid and self-absorbed to see him for what he was.” For a moment, her eyes went out of focus, then she shook her head. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Self-pity is so unbecoming, don’t you think?”

  “Happens to the best of us,” I said. “Besides, if anyone’s entitled to indulge in a little self-pity now and again, you are. You’ve been through a lot. It can’t have been easy for you. Or your daughter.”

  “It was a hell of a lot harder on Chaz’s victims.”

  I wondered if she knew that Gil Maxwell’s father had been one of her husband’s victims. Given her freakish memory, it was a dead certainty she remembered I’d had a friend named Gil Maxwell, but to the best of my less reliable recollection, she and Gil had never met. I hadn’t seen much of Gil after starting at McGill; he had gone to Concordia, Montreal’s other English university.

  “Did you know any of them?” I said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Yes, I knew some. How could I not? Almost all of them were people who’d lived in Hudson and the West Island for years
. Including his sister and brother-in-law. Poor Yvonne. Chaz took her and her husband for everything, including their kids’ education fund. Fortunately, he didn’t take out a mortgage on their home, although I expect he’d have got around to it eventually.” She regarded me for a moment, eyes shifting as she searched my face.

  “What?” I said.

  “I can almost read your mind,” she said. “You’re asking yourself how I could have lived with him for five years without knowing he was a fraud. Believe me, I’ve asked myself that same question countless times in the last three years.”

  She’d done some reading about sociopaths and psychopaths, she told me. She had learned that, no matter what you called them, they were extremely difficult for the layperson to identify. So manipulatively charming, so skilled at constructing a believable façade, masters of the “big lie,” they cast such a convincing spell that even professionals were fooled. She told me of the case of a woman who’d worked as a consulting psychologist at a prison who’d been manipulated into helping one of her psychopathic patients escape. What chance did a sheltered housewife have?

  “Until I knew better,” she said, “if anyone had suggested to me that Chaz was a con man, I wouldn’t have believed them. He was handsome, charming, funny, thoughtful, kind, and caring. A good man. Maybe not warm, maybe not terribly demonstrative of his

  affections, maybe a bit egocentric and egotistical, but a good man nonetheless. But I wouldn’t have believed he was a criminal, let alone a psychopath. He coached kids’ soccer, for god’s sake, was a volunteer fireman till he hurt his back, worked at the Christmas food bank, served meals at a homeless shelter.”

  Of course, she’d realized on hindsight, it had all been a charade, an act. And an imperfect one at that. There had been warning signs, but she’d been too taken in by him to recognize them, perhaps distracted by her first husband’s death and Rebecca’s grief. With her nearly perfect verbal memory, though, when she thought back to her time with him, it was like listening to a recording in which the overblown, self-serving, grandiose language became glaringly apparent, like false notes in a familiar piece of music.

  “It makes me cringe to realize that I was such a bloody fool.”

  “Look at it like vaccination,” I said. “Or acquired immunity. You won’t likely ever be taken in by a psychopath again.”

  Little did I know how wrong I was.

  We relocated to the living room, which also appeared to have been furnished by Ikea—sofa, easy chairs, end tables and floor lamps, even the carpets. She sat on the sofa, and I sat in a matching easy chair that was more comfortable than it looked.

  “Have—have you spoken to Gil Maxwell recently?” she said.

  “Gil?” I said. “Yes, as a matter of fact. I saw him yesterday.”

  “Did he tell you that his father was one of Chaz’s victims?”

  “He didn’t, no,” I said. “I heard it from an old acquaintance who writes a tech blog. You know his father’s dead, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I wanted to call him when I heard about it, to apologize for what Chaz had done, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. You know Gil and I went out for a while, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, surprised. “I didn’t know you even knew each other.”

  “I got to know him after you left,” she said. “He came by the apartment looking for you. At least you left me a note. As far as he knew, you’d just dropped off the face of the earth.”

  “What can I say? The only person I told face to face was my mother.”

  “It didn’t last long,” she said. “I quickly realized he was not a very nice person, crude and sexist, almost misogynistic. I couldn’t understand why he was your friend.”

  “I suppose I could take that as a compliment,” I said. “Sexist, yes,” I added, remembering his remark about Mindy, his receptionist. “But I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say he hates women. I guess, like your friend Lawrence, Gil’s social skills could use a little polishing.”

  “Mmm,” she said, with a noncommittal smile.

  Music drifted down the stairs, someone playing the opening riff of “Hotel California” on an acoustic guitar. And playing it well. Rebecca, I presumed, as it didn’t sound like a recording.

  “She’s good,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Terry said. “I think so, too.”

  “Sounds like a good guitar, too, if I’m any judge.”

  “Nina gave it to her. A Martin. Is that good?”

  “Quite good,” I said. “One of the best.” Perhaps it was my old Martin, I thought. I’d left it behind for Nina and didn’t remember seeing it in her studio. If so, I was pleased it was in the hands of someone who could appreciate it.

  Terry gestured toward the nearly full bottle in my hand. “You clearly don’t share Lawrence’s taste in beer.”

  “I’ve been spoiled, I suppose. The Scots like their beer almost as much as they like their whisky.”

  “I wish I could offer you something else besides wine.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Speaking of Lawrence, I couldn’t help but notice he seems to have a somewhat paternal attitude toward Rebecca. Is he hoping to make that role official?”

  She shook her head. “Lawrence is just a friend. Why? Did Nina imply otherwise?”

  “No. She told me she didn’t think you and he were romantically involved.”

  “I imagine she put it in stronger terms than that. She can’t abide him, which she takes every opportunity to make abundantly clear, even around my daughter. Nina’s entitled to like or dislike whomever she pleases, but

  Rebecca practically worships the ground she walks on. Despite what Lawrence thinks, I can’t forbid Rebecca to see her. It wouldn’t work. I just wish Nina would mind her own business. But she never knew how, did she? She even ran a background check on him, for god’s sake.”

  “She did? She works for your lawyer, Terry. She was probably acting on instructions.”

  “Maybe so,” Terry conceded. “But she’s the one who instigated it.”

  “If that’s the case, perhaps it’s because she’s worried he might be some kind of fortune hunter,” I said. “Hoping to collect the finder’s fee being offered by Chaz’s victims’ lawyers.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said, anger flaring in her eyes. “Lawrence knows I don’t know where Chaz is or have any of the money he stole. Anyway, one could say the same thing about you, the way you suddenly showed up in my life again.”

  “One could indeed,” I said. Perhaps it was time to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” Terry said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Look,” I said. “Nina’s your friend. She’s concerned about you. You and Rebecca. Besides, as part of your legal team, it’s her job to look out for you, protect your interests. And what if Larry had ulterior motives, was taking advantage of your trust?”

  “His name is Lawrence,” she said, jaw rigid.

  “Sorry,” I said. I looked at my watch. It was nearly 2 p.m. “I should be going.” I started to get up.

  “Oh, Riley,” she said. “Please don’t be angry. I know she’s your oldest friend, practically your sister, but you have to admit she doesn’t always respect peoples’ boundaries. I like her, I really do, but I wish she wouldn’t meddle in things that are none of her business.”

  I took a sip of Thomason’s terrible beer. “How did you meet him?” I asked. “Nina told me he recommended some writers to you.”

  “That’s right. He introduced himself during a panel discussion on self-publishing at the Pointe-Claire Public Library.”

  “He was acting as a sort of literary agent for friends or family members?”

  “You could say that, I suppose.”

  “Not much money in it,” I said.

  “No.”

  �
��He’s in sales?” I said, remembering from the business card he’d given me—and taken back—outside the hotel in Hudson that he was the sales manager for a company called Excel Wood Products.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  “Does he live in Pointe-Claire?”

  “I—I’m not sure where he lives,” she said. “He’s a very private person.”

  “Have you met any of his friends or family?”

  She looked at me, heat building in her eyes again. “Damnit, Riley,” she said. “What’s with the third degree? What gives you the right to pry into my life like this?”

  “Not a thing,” I said. “I guess I just don’t want to see you hurt.” Again, I added to myself.

  “I appreciate the thought,” she said, not without some bitterness. “But I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself. I don’t need your help—or Nina’s.”

  Except, I thought, that starting with me and ending with Chaz Brandt she hadn’t shown much in the way of good judgment when it came to men.

  “I should go,” I said.

  Terry stood with me. She grasped my arm.

  “Riley, I’m sorry,” she said. “This didn’t turn out quite the way I expected. Or wanted.” She let go of my arm.

  “Me either. But, as you said earlier, things don’t always turn out the way we expect.” I kissed her on the cheek. “Thanks for lunch. Say goodbye to Rebecca for me.”

  Chapter 12

  I spent the rest of the afternoon checking out three assisted living facilities in the area. The experience left me feeling even more depressed and discouraged than I had after my meeting with the real estate agent. The first place was like a cross between a slightly shabby economy hotel and a small hospital—clean enough, but soulless and not cheap; it had a two-year waiting list. The second was the sort of place that, if you had to ask how much it cost, you couldn’t afford it; I asked anyway, and the answer took my breath away. As for the third place, no sooner had I stepped through the doors than the smell drove me out again.