The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  The woman opened her eyes, smiled, and sat up. I knew her, but couldn’t remember her name.

  “Hi,” she said. She stood, massaging her arm.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Or tried to. It came out as a hoarse croak. My lips were dry and my throat felt as though it were lined with sandpaper. She held a cup to my mouth. I wrapped my lips around the bent plastic straw and drew a mouthful of tepid water. Nothing had ever tasted so good. I licked my lips and tried again to speak.

  “Nina,” I said, remembering her name. If only I could remember mine.

  She smiled. “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on? Why am I in the hospital?”

  “You don’t remember?” She was still massaging her arm, flexing her hand.

  “No. Is there something wrong with your arm?”

  “It’s gone to sleep,” she said.

  “Told you so,” I said.

  She smiled. “I’ll be right back. I have to tell the nurse you’re awake.”

  “I won’t go anywhere.” Maybe the nurse would tell me my name.

  I closed my eyes and went back to sleep, but woke up again when Nina came into the room with a nurse, who checked me over and pronounced me indeed awake.

  “I will inform the doctor,” she said in her island-accented French.

  Nina dragged her chair closer to the bed and sat down.

  “Fuck, Riley, you scared the living hell out of me.”

  “Sorry.” That’s it. My name was Riley. Stupid of me to forget.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Nina said.

  “Yes,” I said. It came back to me the moment she asked. “I remember trying to talk Strom into letting Rebecca go. I remember him slashing you with his knife. I remember him stabbing me. I wish I didn’t. I don’t remember anything after that. Are you all right? He cut your neck.”

  “Just a nick,” she said, turning her head. She had a dressing the size of her palm on the side of her neck. I learned later that, although the wound had been superficial, it had required a half a dozen stitches to close. The surgeon had been careful not to mess up the tattoo on her neck. I’d also added to my collection of stitches.

  “How long has it been?” I asked.

  “About a week. They put you into a medically-induced coma for a couple of days after they transferred you from the Lakeshore General. You’re in the Montreal General now. You’re going to be okay, by the way.”

  “Glad to hear it. What happened to Strom?”

  “The cops arrested him. He’s in jail in Valleyfield. Gil Maxwell sat on him till the police and paramedics arrived.”

  “Gil? He came back?”

  “Yeah,” Nina said, a hard edge to her voice. She shrugged. “Still,” she added, voice softening, “if it hadn’t been for him, you might not have made it. He had some first-aid training and told us what to do while we waited for the paramedics. What not to do, really. We’d’ve probably killed you. We wanted to pull out the knife, but he told us not to. The paramedics said the duct tape you had wrapped around your waist helped, too. Gil said Marc Lefebvre shot you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, remembering that, too. “Did the police arrest him?”

  “Lefebvre? Yeah. He tried to tell the cops he shot you in self-defence. Gil told them what really went down.”

  “And Gil?”

  “Did they arrest him? No,” Nina said.

  “He was behind Terry’s and Rebecca’s kidnapping,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Nina said. “But the only person who could testify to that is Fred Strom, and he isn’t exactly playing with a full set of strings. Did Gil admit to being behind it?”

  “Not in so many words. He told me he didn’t know about it until after the fact. I don’t believe him. Either way, he set everything in motion by siccing Thomason on Terry.”

  “The only people Terry and Rebecca saw were Lawrence Thomason and Fred Strom, and neither of them mentioned Gil’s involvement in their hearing. Terry was as surprised as I was that he was involved.”

  “What about their phones?” I said. “He may have installed eavesdropping software on them, like he did mine.”

  “The police did a pretty thorough search of Strom’s house and the barn, but as far as I know didn’t find Terry’s or Rebecca’s phones.”

  Again, I regretted destroying the phone Gil had lent me, but even if they had been able to find spyware on it, or on Terry’s and Rebecca’s phones, it would be next to impossible to prove conclusively that Gil had installed it, even if the phones could be traced back to him.

  “What about Strom’s mother?”

  “Oh, shit,” Nina said. “You’re not going to believe this. When Strom said his mother didn’t get out of bed much, he wasn’t kidding. She was dead. Had been for some time, apparently. The police found about a hundred empty spray bottles of Febreze air freshener in her room.”

  My eyes were burning, so I closed them for a moment. When I opened them, the room was dark, and Nina had been replaced by Rocky. She was asleep in the same chair, arms folded on her chest, head resting on a folded jacket wedged against the front of the bedside cabinet, heels of her cowboy boots hooked on the side rail of the bed. I watched her for a moment, then closed my eyes and went back to sleep. When I opened them again, Rocky was still asleep in the chair, but she’d changed position, on her side, knees drawn up and jammed uncomfortably against the arm of the chair. As I watched her, she wriggled in an attempt to get more comfortable, then muttered and sat up. She looked at me.

  “How long have you been watching me, you cheeky bugger?”

  “Not long. How long have you been here?”

  “My shift started at ten.” She looked at her watch. “It’s a little past midnight now. How you doing, Ace?”

  “I’m okay. My side hurts, but it’s not too bad.”

  “They’ve got you on some pretty good shit,” she said.

  “Why don’t you go home?” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Nina would tear me a new one if I left you alone,” she said. “We had to threaten to physically drag her out of here to get her to go home and get some proper sleep. That girl’s been at your side almost constantly since you got hurt. That girl loves you, Ace. And not like a brother.”

  I realized then that I’d been aware for some time that I loved her, too, in the same way, but had been too stupid to admit it to myself.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” I said.

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m working on it.” I changed the subject. “Who’s looking after Mum?”

  “Lucinda. She’s an absolute peach. She actually cried when I told her what happened to you. And she doesn’t even know you. By the way, we’ve had a couple of offers on the house. Good ones, too, according to Glenda Good Witch.”

  “Who?”

  “The real estate lady. I don’t know her real name.”

  Damned if I could remember the woman’s name, either.

  “Anyway,” Rocky said. “I think she’s getting kind of anxious to show them to you before the buyers get tired of waiting.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about selling,” I said.

  “You have?” Rocky said, eyes widening. It was as much a surprise to me as it was to her.

  “If it’s all right with you,” I said.

  “Let’s not worry about that now,” she said. “Maybe it’s the shit that’s talking.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But all right, we’ll talk about it when I’m off the ‘shit.’ In the meantime, tell her that we’re not ready to entertain any offers.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  The next time I woke up, Nina had returned. I was in a different room, which was bright with sunlight filtering through a grimy window. T
here were three other beds, all empty. I was ravenous. If I didn’t get something to eat soon, I told Nina, I’d eat my shoes, laces and all, if I could find them.

  “If it’s okay with your doctor, I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “But this is a hospital. I wouldn’t expect much from the food.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  After getting the okay, she arranged for something to be delivered to my room. The best they could manage was a packaged ham and cheese sandwich, a fruit cup, and a single-serving carton of 2% milk. I ate half the sandwich, most of the fruit cup, and drank all of the milk.

  “Feel better?” Nina said.

  “You bet,” I said.

  A doctor came in. I knew he was a doctor because he wore a white coat and had a stethoscope draped around his neck. He looked about twelve years old, with a shock of inky black hair, skin the colour of polished teak, and glasses with heavy black frames. He examined the wounds on my abdomen and my hands and told me they were healing well, speaking English with soft, lilting accent. He instructed the nurse that I could be disconnected from everything but the IV drip. I asked him when I could expect to be released.

  “You’ve had a very serious injury,” he said. “I don’t want to take any chances. Let’s give it another day or two. If there are no complications, and I don’t expect any, we can talk about getting you home. In the meantime, get as much rest as you can.”

  When he left, the nurse disconnected me from the cardiac monitor and blood-gas thingy on my fingertip, which I learned was called a pulse oximeter. She asked Nina to leave the room, pulled the curtains around my bed and removed the catheter. I was glad I’d been unconscious when it was put in.

  “Are you up to some visitors?” Nina asked, when the nurse had left.

  “I think so,” I said.

  Nina left and came back with Terry and Rebecca. Rebecca also had a bandage on her neck. I asked her how she was, and she blushed and told me she was fine. She and Terry asked the usual questions and I gave the usual answers. Terry was uncomfortable, though, couldn’t look me in the eye. When there didn’t seem to be anything left to say, she asked Nina and Rebecca if she could talk to me in private for a few minutes. Nina looked at me. I nodded.

  “Let’s get a Coke,” Nina said to Rebecca. They left the room.

  “What is it?” I said to Terry, as she sat down.

  “Nina told me how Lawrence died,” she said. “Did he …?” She faltered and tried again. “Did he suffer?”

  “Some, I suppose. But not for long.”

  “He wasn’t a bad man, you know,” she said. “Not really. Just misguided.”

  “Misguided,” I said, voice harsh with anger. I calmed myself down. “Sorry, Terry, but he was a bad guy. The phones he gave you and Rebecca were probably infected with eavesdropping software. He may have also bugged your landline. He set up Strom’s assault on you so he could play the hero, figuring, I suppose, to gain your trust. When that didn’t work out, he abducted you and Rebecca and handed you over to Fred Strom. God knows what he was hoping to accomplish. He was using a woman as a shield when Chaz shot him with the crossbow. He used you and Rebecca and Chaz’s sister and her family as bargaining chips. He wouldn’t have thought twice about cutting Rebecca’s throat to get you to give him what he wanted.”

  She paled, swallowed with difficulty.

  “Sorry,” I said again, ashamed of my cruelty.

  “And Gil was behind it all?”

  “He set the ball in motion.”

  She nodded and stood, looking down at me for a moment, eyes glistening. She had something more to say. I waited.

  “I remember a line from Julius Caesar,” she said at last. “From Marc Antony’s ‘I came to bury Caesar’ speech: ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’ In other words, forgotten.”

  “I remember it,” I said.

  “But Shakespeare was wrong,” she said. “I will remember what you did forever.”

  “I did what I could,” I replied.

  “You did more than that,” she said. “You saved my daughter’s life. And mine as well.”

  I didn’t tell her that the only life I was thinking about as Strom’s knife slid into me was Nina’s.

  She regarded me for a moment longer, then said, “Goodbye, Riley.”

  “Goodbye, Terry.”

  She turned and walked out of the room.

  “Is there anything I can get you?” Nina asked when she came back in.

  “Do you think you could organize a wheelchair? I don’t think I’m quite up to walking yet.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “They must have a coffee shop or something. I could really use a proper cup of coffee. A doughnut, too, maybe.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She left the room.

  I sat up and carefully swung my legs over the side of the bed. I felt a flare of pain below my left ribs, but it was bearable. The bullet wound in my right side and the stitches in my palms just itched.

  I rested for a moment, then reached over and pulled open the drawer of the bedside cabinet. Nothing. In the lower cupboard, though, I found my daypack, which contained my wallet, a pen and my notebook, and my new cellphone. I took out the notebook and cellphone, looked up Gil Maxwell’s office number in the notebook, and keyed it into the phone. I worked my way through the automated answering system until I got a human being, a woman who wasn’t Mindy. She told me that Mr. Maxwell was not in the office.

  I disconnected, looked up his home number, and dialled it. I let it ring until his voicemail picked up, then disconnected without leaving a message. I then looked up his cellphone number and dialled that. I wasn’t thinking straight, I realized. I should have called his cellphone first.

  “Maxwell.”

  “Gil, it’s Riley.”

  “Riley. Geez, how are you, man?”

  “Hanging in,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I’d’ve come to see you, but I’ve been crazy busy.”

  “I bet,” I said.

  “Yeah, well … So, what can I do for you, man?”

  “I just called to say thanks. Nina told me that I probably wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for you.”

  “Hem, well, you know … ”

  “Of course,” I said, “I wouldn’t have been shot or stabbed in the first place if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “Look, man,” he said. “I’m sorry about all that, you know. But it wasn’t really my fault, was it? Lefebvre was a drunk and Strom was batshit crazy. Christ, did Nina tell you? His mother was upstairs in that house, dead in her bed for god knows how long.”

  “Yes, she did,” I said.

  “Thomason was just as crazy,” he said. “Christ, I should never have gotten involved with him. Like I told you, I knew he was a fuck-up from the start. I understand how you feel, but … ”

  “I don’t think you do, Gil,” I said, as Nina came into the room with a burly orderly pushing a wheelchair.

  “Okay, maybe I don’t,” Gil said. “Look, I gotta go, Riley. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” He disconnected with a click.

  I closed the phone and returned it to my daypack. The orderly transferred the IV drip to the chair and helped me into it.

  “Who were you talking to?” Nina asked as she wheeled me toward the elevators.

  “Gil. He says he’s sorry about how things worked out, but that none of it was his fault.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Did he tell you he sold the company?”

  “What? No. He didn’t mention that.”

  “Google bought him out to get the rights to some piece of whiz-bang software his company developed,” she said. “Sy Chesterton broke the story in his blog a couple of days ago. Gil was none too pleased, apparently. He wanted to keep
it under wraps for a while longer. Looks like your investment is going to pay off after all.”

  “Assuming Gil doesn’t run off to South America or someplace with the whole bundle.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nina said. “Louise and Denis have that covered. Google has agreed to put the money into an escrow account until ownership of the company is sorted out.”

  “How much money are we talking about?” I asked as she pushed the wheelchair into the elevator, IV bag hanging over my head.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “A lot, I think, by anyone’s standards. And some of it’s yours.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” I said. “In the meantime, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Me first, all right?”

  “Okay, you first.”

  The elevator doors opened, and she wheeled me out into the lobby. There was a gift shop next to the coffee shop.

  “When you go back to Scotland,” she said, “I’m gonna go with you. You need someone to look after you, keep you out of trouble. Assuming it’s okay with you, of course.”

  “It would be more than okay,” I said. “If I were going back.”

  “You’re not?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about,” I said. I reached back and took her hand, pulled her around in front of me so she was half sitting on my lap. “I think I’ve done all the wandering I want to do. It’s time I settled down, found something useful to do with my life. How’d you like to help me with that?”

  “I’d—like that a lot,” she said, tears filling her eyes. She kissed me, lips soft and salty-sweet. Her tears were hot on my neck.

  I raised her hand to my lips, kissed her knuckles. “I also think it’s time you made an honest man of me.”

  She laughed. “Let’s not rush into things, okay?” she said, ever sensible.

  “Okay,” I said. “Another thing … ”

  “What?”

  I pointed toward the gift shop. “We need one more postcard for your collection.”

  Acknowledgements