Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery

by Jeffrey Round

  They spent the morning by the pool. In the afternoon, they walked around the neighbourhood. To Dan, Toronto was Yonge Street — the Eaton Centre and downtown strip with its sex shops, sporting goods chains, and fast food outlets. Beyond that, it seemed to sprawl without boundaries. You could walk all day without reaching the end of it. Here was another gleaming new part of it. With its staid brick homes and sturdy elms, Leaside represented the kind of family environment Dan had never known. It was a world away from the bleak mining town where he’d grown up.

  Two months later, Bob picked him up on the same corner. Only this time, Dan didn’t leave again for quite a while. The invitation to live in a place with a pool rather than the over-crowded mission was more than enough of an enticement. He stayed with Bob for three years, finishing high school while they lived together. Bob put Dan in charge of his domestic finances, along with housekeeping duties. They’d been more like a couple than an older man and younger hustler. Even then, Dan hadn’t admitted to being gay. Sharing Bob’s bed for three years hadn’t changed that. It was only when Bob died unexpectedly — an epileptic seizure in the shower one week shy of his fortieth birthday — that Dan realized he’d loved him.

  In a way, their last year together had been more like father and son than anything Dan had ever known. It would be another five years before he got up the courage to go home and confront his real father face-to-face. By then he had his own son.

  Dan looked over the missing boy’s photograph, scrutinizing the features. He wasn’t attractive, but he wore an air of toughness — probably as a result of the schoolyard bullying — that would go a long way to make up for not being a pretty boy. To survive on the city streets, you needed one or the other.

  Dan wondered what the parents were hoping for, information on their son’s whereabouts, a reassurance as to his mental and physical well-being, or the whole Corpus Christi? Usually they wanted their children back, even when it wasn’t in anybody’s best interest. In this case, it was too early to tell.

  Teenagers could be surprisingly elusive once they connected with other runaways to help them stay invisible. There was no paper trail of credit card purchases or personal cheques cluttering things up. No Welfare files or ROEs pinning them to specific addresses. Hand-to-mouth was a tough game to play, but it kept them off the radar. Sometimes Dan got lucky when a kid was picked up for shoplifting or vagrancy, though they often lied their way out before he got to them. A twelve-year-old he’d been searching for had stood in a police station two feet from a picture tagging her as a runaway. No one had noticed. Dan found this out later when she turned up half-dead of a drug overdose, alive thanks to emergency resuscitation procedures at the hospital after someone threw her into a cab along with a twenty-dollar bill and closed the door.

  He scanned Richard’s photograph into his computer and printed a dozen copies, jamming them into his briefcase. He’d put out a few calls — nothing official, just a guy making inquiries around the gay community. Maybe Family Services or Child Find Canada had come across him, though the police would have contacted the brigades of bespectacled middle-aged women wearing their all-weather skirts, hand-knitted sweaters, and freshwater pearls who tirelessly followed up unlikely leads and telephoned to tell you if they’d heard anything, anything at all. If the kid were still in town, someone would come across him sooner or later. Sooner was always preferable.

  He’d take the picture around the bars before going home tonight. The bouncers were scrupulous in keeping out underage kids in the evenings, but it was possible for a kid like Richard — half-man, half-boy — to sneak in undetected in the afternoon, especially if he was looking for a daddy. If he had, the bartenders would have noticed.

  The phone rang. It was 55 Division calling to say the coroner’s office had a possible match for one of his cases and could he come down for a look. They all knew him by name, though most of them called him Sharp, never Dan, except for a couple of female constables he suspected of hitting on him.

  He was put on hold. One of his co-workers entered and slapped a photo on his desk. He pointed at the subject’s face, an old sharkie they’d been tracing for a dog’s age. The man made a cutting motion across his neck. Dan put a hand over the receiver.

  “Confirmed?”

  A stiff nod. “Just came in. Nasty stuff — looks like gangland. I’ve got the deets when you want them….”

  Fifty-five Division came back on the line. Dan held up a finger while he wrote down the specs. When he turned around, his colleague was gone.

  The wall clock crept around to eleven. The numbers swam in his field of vision. It was going to be a long, slow morning. Dan rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t hit forty yet, and genetics said it was only going to get worse. Maybe he should stop while he was ahead. Take up a kinder, gentler career. Whatever that might be.

  Bob had left Dan enough money to finish university, but Dan balked when it came time to choose. He’d wanted a career that sounded impressive and might be helpful to others. But what was that? Bob had listened thoughtfully while Dan ran through the possibilities: doctor, lawyer, maybe even a minister. But, as Bob pointed out, Dan got faint at the sight of blood, hated debates, and didn’t believe in the existence of anything that could vaguely be construed as God-like. That seemed to cancel out his hopes in those areas.

  “Go for the money,” Bob advised, “but make sure it’s something you enjoy. Forty years is a long time to do something you don’t like.”

  Bob tried to steer him toward a vocation where he had aptitude as well as interest, but this proved elusive. Dan had mechanical skills, but the usual choices — plumbing and engineering — held little appeal. And while he had a love of cultural things, music in particular, he had no real artistic inclinations. What Dan knew and seemed to grasp instinctively was other human beings — how they interacted, what motivated and intrigued them. Human resources could always use good people, Bob argued, but discouraged Dan from a career that would cement him in the business world. He was too bright and restless to get bogged down in the corporate mentality.

  At the time, it made sense for Dan to attend the University of Toronto and stay with Bob. But then Bob died and his nieces and nephews sold the house. His future uncertain, Dan enrolled in a smattering of courses, hoping to ferret out his interests and potential skill sets shotgun style. He excelled in psychology and sociology but found the disciplines too wide-ranging to hold his attention for long. If he’d been asked what interested him most, he would have narrowed it down to the well-being of other people, but that hardly sounded like a career.

  In his second year, he chose a path with the impressive sounding label of Social-Cultural Anthropology, and then got sidetracked briefly by paleontology, thinking he might find himself tracking skeletons in the deserts of Africa. But the dream was more glamorous than the reality — the bone business was already overrun with various social misfits and wannabes who ended up running safari operations for tourists. In the meantime, university failed to stimulate him. He found the academic world labyrinthine, astounded to learn his fellow students might spend years pursuing such abstruse matters as the history of various disciplines without ever tackling the actual subjects.

  Ultimately, he didn’t take well to studying — possibly because Bob was no longer around to impress or because he’d just lost his home a second time. The centre of his universe hadn’t held once again, and it showed. His course advisor summed it up when she told him he had a piercing but restless mind, striking a similar chord to what Bob had said. His papers showed brilliance, but he folded on the exams. She hoped he’d do better.

  He might have, but something sidetracked him first. Whatever else those two years had given Dan, they’d brought the realization that university wasn’t for him. They’d also given him Kedrick.

  Five

  Kedrick

  Whitney Hall, Dan’s residence in second year, housed an interesting collection of humanity. He made friends with the staff, who quickly sensed his orph
an status. One in particular, a talkative night porter, painted from midnight to dawn then packed up his artist’s gear and went home. But from ten p.m. to midnight, the artist held court. He’d established a cult appeal among the student body, having known celebrities and worked briefly as a bodyguard for an English movie star.

  Among his coterie was a young Syrian named Arman, who had a habit of wearing as little as possible around the residence. In deep winter, Arman stalked the halls like a restless lion, dressed in sleeveless T-shirts and loose-fitting sweatpants. The porter’s room was small, and Dan often found himself crowded in next to this silky-skinned Arab. One evening, bored or tired, Arman leaned his head on Dan’s shoulder. Dan flinched.

  Arman turned a cool gaze on him. “Afraid of being touched?” he asked, with his superior-sounding English accent and comically raised eyebrows.

  “N-no,” Dan stammered and felt his face flush.

  “G-good,” said Arman, and laid his arm across the back of Dan’s neck.

  Dan sat, paralyzed with self-consciousness, as the group dissected European political views in light of the Gulf War. Now and again someone would look up at the pair, with disappointment or envy, Dan wasn’t sure. After that, Dan attended the talks as much on the chance of seeing Arman’s honey-coloured skin and deep-set eyes as to hear the artist talk. Arman gave spirited debate on any subject under discussion, mesmerizing them with his accent and clear voice, receiving as much attention as the porter.

  At midnight, the painter made it clear his studio time had arrived. The group broke up reluctantly, lingering in the hall to protract the discussions, this taste of the larger world. If neither of them had an early class, Arman might return to Dan’s room, where the conversation resumed with Arman sprawled across Dan’s bed in his scanty attire. Dan secretly hoped something would throw them together, but if Arman harboured any desire for his new friend, he never showed it. He seemed content being admired from the far side of the room. For Dan, to have Arman’s exclusive company nightly had been enough at first.

  On weekends the residence emptied, the students going home or out of town. Dan stayed behind, having no place to visit and no invitations to take up. One Saturday, Arman arrived at his door with a slighter version of himself. He introduced his sister, Kendra, who was studying fashion at another institution. They were off to Chinatown for a bit of shopping and invited him to join. Dan hadn’t known Arman had a sister, let alone family in Toronto. He got the feeling she was a black sheep of sorts, which Arman later confirmed with various off-hand remarks letting Dan know he was ashamed of Kendra’s whole-hearted embrace of North American life.

  Like her brother, Kendra was keen-spirited and attractive. She made a habit of teasing Arman and quickly transferred that to Dan. That same day, over coffee, Dan asked her out, perhaps hoping to impress Arman or maybe to make him jealous — he wasn’t sure.

  They began to date. Dan didn’t fall in love with her and he was sure she wasn’t in love with him, but he was drawn to something behind the velvety eyes that looked purple in the right light. The first time they kissed — on the subway steps outside the Royal Ontario Museum — he imagined for a moment it was Arman he held in his arms and wondered if that was why he was attracted to her. Perhaps that was when he made up his mind to find out. If he couldn’t have Arman directly, maybe he could have him through Kendra.

  One evening, after too many pints at a local pub, he brought Kendra to his bedroom and, with her guidance, experienced the first and only heterosexual event of his adult life. Then she disappeared.

  Arman was vague when Dan inquired: his sister was busy, she’d been out of town, and no, he hadn’t seen her. As far as Dan could tell, Arman had no idea what had occurred between them. He continued to join Dan for their nightly “UN Conferences,” as they jokingly referred to them. Dan wasn’t sure how Arman would react if he knew how far his relations with Kendra had gone. When it came to family matters, Arman was surprisingly conservative. While he tolerated Dan’s interest in Kendra, he made light of it — the question of a future for them would never be in the picture.

  After another week, Dan began to wonder if he’d done something to offend her. Finally she called. She was fine but couldn’t see him, claiming an agonizing schedule. He pressured her, bewildered by her avoidance. Since their lovemaking, he’d spent the past few weeks imagining a future for them — marriage, a home. It never assumed a definite shape. He was even beginning to convince himself he was in love with her.

  When she called next, a month had passed. Kendra was all seriousness — she was pretty sure she was pregnant. Dan panicked. There was a flutter in his voice. How sure? Very — a girl didn’t say these things lightly.

  Dan froze. He wondered if she were making a pitch for marriage, trying to snag him or at the very least a quick citizenship. He didn’t voice these thoughts. After all, he’d been considering marriage himself. She reluctantly agreed to meet for coffee the following day.

  It was a gloomy afternoon, sleet pelting the campus. Kendra stirred her mint tea, looking out the window from time to time. Yes, she’d had the results. Yes, she was definitely pregnant. Dan saw his future going up like the little wisps of steam rising from the greenish tea and vanishing between them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  A look of concern passed over her face. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve screwed up like this. I’ve always been so careful.”

  She felt conflicted, regretting the situation she’d dragged him into and stricken with guilt over her neglect. Her bravado, the North American hubris she draped herself in, had fled.

  Dan wanted to know what she was going to do. She shrugged. There was no question of telling her parents. They would cut her off financially — and who knew what else. “At least they don’t do honour killings any more,” she said darkly.

  Dan grimaced. He didn’t know what honour killings were, but he could guess. Had she told Arman? She looked aghast. No! Arman would be furious — he might even tell her family. Didn’t Dan know her brother well enough by now? Anyway, she’d already decided to have an abortion.

  Dan’s stomach spasmed. It sounded worse than the spectre of marriage. He haltingly suggested an arrangement between them, wondering yet again if she were trying to snag a citizenship.

  She turned her mocking eyes on him, reminding him even more of Arman. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She saw his hesitation and reached out a hand to him. “I didn’t expect you’d be emotional about this,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, clearly you are. No offence, but I have ambitions to be more than a housewife, and I think you may realize one day that you’re gay.”

  Dan’s eyes flickered away.

  “Besides,” she continued, “no one in my family has ever married outside our culture. It would be a disaster.”

  The double slap came as a shock. “I’d keep it,” he blurted out. “I’ll raise the child.” He had no idea what that entailed, and years later he often wondered at his outburst, but somehow the thought of saving the baby was foremost in his thinking.

  “You’d do what?”

  “I’ll look after it. I’ll raise it.” The idea had taken control of him, driving his impulses.

  Somehow it was imperative to make her understand this baby meant more to him than anything in his life so far. He rambled on, spinning himself deeper and deeper into his daydreams, his improvised fables of fatherhood. He thought she’d refuse, but her whimsical side won out. To his surprise, she agreed to consider it.

  She began to scheme. She had an aunt, rumoured to be a lesbian and considered even more of a renegade, who lived in California with a bunch of crazy artists. The aunt could take her in for the final months of the pregnancy, which, she calculated, would coincide with the end of school and summer holidays. If all went well, she wouldn’t be showing before then.

  Her
light-hearted smile returned. It was an adventure. Suddenly she was Holly Golightly making an impromptu appearance at the Go-Go-A-La-Mode, clearing everything up for him where he thought he’d come to rescue her. Afterwards, Dan was never sure if he’d made up his mind or if she’d made it up for him.

  “Let me think about it,” she told him.

  Years later he related the story to Donny, who sat quietly through the tale of youthful courtship and terror.

  “So you fucked her to be with her brother?”

  Dan looked sourly at him. “No — I fucked her because I was drunk.”

  “Ah! That’s different. I’ve always said we’re all just one beer away from being straight.” Donny winked. “I think it’s cool that the kid owes his life to a pint of Heineken. You should have named him after it.”

  The prospect of a child to look after made a huge change in Dan’s life, far greater than he could have imagined. He suddenly found himself willing to do anything as long as it would bring in money. Anything but hustling — that part of his life was over. There’d be no lonely middle-aged men this time to take him in and provide. Providing was what Dan would be doing.

  It was agreed that Kendra would return to school in the fall, after the baby’s birth. In the meantime, Dan would do whatever he could to bring in money. She would remain independent and they would live apart. Custody agreements could be drawn up later, but she already knew she didn’t want to raise a child.

  Dan had signed up for a third year at university, but even before his acceptance came through he realized he wouldn’t be able to afford the tuition. Somewhere along the line, practicality won out.

  He bought a newspaper and dug out the classifieds. With his limited experience and incomplete degree, there was little he was qualified for that would support a family. The smiling man who answered his call and greeted him an hour later made him feel he’d been waiting for someone like Dan forever. That probably wasn’t far off. The sort of people who tracked insurance scammers were little short of sociopathic misfits, Dan learned. While there was no shortage of those in the city, few were capable of holding down jobs, and the ones who were seemed even more dubious specimens of humanity than the supposed criminals they were tracking. If they were good at exposing scammers, it was because cheating was in their blood, low-life losers who thought, pissed, and shat scams till they became experts at them.