by David Pierce
"Like the message," I said after a minute, when I'd caught his eye.
"All men should learn to hear truth," he enunciated carefully more or less in my direction. After another peaceful moment or two had passed, I asked him politely what he was writing, was it mayhap a letter to mother? Which reminded me—postcards, to the folks back home. But not one to Lew Lewellen, that . . . that film producer.
"At the risk of evoking your ribald laughter," the guy said, "and it is a considerable risk, one that I would not undertake did I not perceive you to be a visiter to these fair shores, I am endeavoring to scribe the great Canadian novel."
"A worthy labor," I remarked, falling easily into his professional venacular. "I happen, at this very minute, to be traveling with a noted Californian poetess who, unfortunately, has only been privately published so far." Fortunately is more like it, I thought.
"Indeed," the fellow said. "Not unlike myself."
"I wonder if I might contribute to the encouragement of Canadian letters in a modest way by offering you some warming libation?"
"Double C and C, Samuel," the guy said instantly.
"Comin' up," Samuel said.
When Sam had served us both refreshers, I asked the scrivener how long he'd been working on his great epic. He looked at his watch and said, "About twenty minutes."
"And how is it progressing?"
"Brilliantly," he said. "I have the first three chapter titles already. 'Out of the Closet and into the Saddle—A Short History of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.' 'Birchbark—Fact or Fiction?' 'The Use of the Moose in Saskatchewan Dance Hall Mythology.' "
"A great start!" I enthused. After I'd put away a tasty snack of two pickled jumbo wieners, two pickled eggs, and one giant pepperoni stick, my erstwhile companion furthered, if not increased by several hundred percent, my knowledge of Canadian history by informing me that the ex–prime minister of Canada, one Pierre Trudeau, once had a wife who always wore, next to her skin, a cameo brooch containing a lock of Mick Jagger's hair. He also told me the Canadians had once marched south and burned Washington; I didn't know which statement was the more unlikely.
I got back to the hotel about two-thirty; the kids showed up, bursting with news, about a half-hour later. They also burst into my room, where, postcards bought in the lobby all written, like a good boy, I was stretching out on the bed ruminating, not for the first time, on the slim monograph I planned to scribe one day. It wouldn't be as mammoth an undertaking as the great Canadian novel, of course, I know my limitations only too well, it would merely be a few pithy and cogent reflections about those illusive fragments in the puzzle of existence—why did they seem more attainable after six Canadian beers and assorted pickled goods?
As my favorite nitwit was hopping up and down by the bed, I had no choice but to put my idle cogitations away for another day.
"Guess where we're going tonight!" she said. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and she was wearing what looked like a new woolly hat, in the same colors as my drinking buddy's.
"Where?"
"Ha-ha! You'll find out. So we follow this guy," she said, "down into the depths of the metro or whatever it's called, man, it's neat down there, and warm, and clean, there's no grafitti anywhere."
"Shu!" I said. "Not so loud, that juvenile delinquent posing as a bellhop might hear you."
"We even get in the same car as him, it's crowded, he doesn't have a clue we're there. So we get out when he does and walk along St. Catherine Street and guess where he goes?"
"Into a bar," I said.
"Into the Forum," Marlon said.
"Aha," I said. "Last time I heard, the score was still lions, six, Christians, nothing."
"Not that Forum, stoopid," Sara said. "The one they play hockey in. So I buy this," referring to the hat, "staying out of the way, and I woulda got you one but they didn't have one big enough, and George lines up behind the guy and gets us tickets too. They're way up top somewhere but George says he was lucky to get even them. So that's where we're goin tonight, if it's public enough for you, to watch the Montreal Canadiens play who?"
"Washington Capitals," Marlon said.
"Did you know those damned Canucks once marched south and burned Washington?" I remarked casually.
"Probably started with his teeth," Willing Boy said. "Everyone knows they were made of wood."
That's all I needed, Brando branching out into comedy.
10
It was the end of the first period. Les Canadiens, also known as Les Habitants, were leading 2–0 on goals by Carbonneau and Naslund, and the seventeen thousand or so fans in the joint were lapping it up and living it up.
I was sitting next to the gent we were hoping was William Gince, with the twerp, in her new cap, which was in the Canadien's team colors, I had figured out by then, on my other side and Willing Boy next to her. The guy who had been sitting on the far side of William had just been chucked out by the Forum fuzz for fighting with the guy behind him after a ten-minute exchange of insults, spilt beer, and the like. Which altercation, however, had been mild compared to the mayhem down on the ice; fortunately the carnage was interrupted from time to time by some fast, furious, and highly skilled ice hockey. I'd never seen a pro game live before although my mom and her best chum, Feeb, who was my apartment landlady and lived below me, used to watch the Los Angeles Kings occasionally when they were in a particularly masochistic mood.
The teams had just skated off to their dressing rooms to suck orange halves and have their wounds cauterized and munch a few uppers and get their tetanus shots. An invisible organ up somewhere in the gods like us was playing a medley of old-time chansons and a guy on a funny little water wagon was driving from end to end of the rink repairing the ice surface. William took himself up the aisle for a leak or a beer or a smoke or maybe un hot dog; he had a Canadien's scarf wrapped around his neck and had been enjoying himself thoroughly, shouting, booing, cheering the goals, and screaming at the referee, just like everyone else, including us.
"That water cart is a Zamboni," Willing Boy told me. "Invented by a dude called Zamboni." Sara hugged his arm and looked at him like he was Einstein.
"You ever play, Marlon?" I asked him.
He curled his upper lip at me. "Are you kidding? Everyone in Canada played. I started in like a peewee league when I was six, then played all through high school, and on the scout team. A lean 'n' mean left winger, I was."
"I'm surprised you still got any teeth left at all," I said.
"Oh, I've got the full complement," he said. "And they're all mine, too, I paid for them. Or at least Mom did." He showed me most of them in a dazzling grin.
"I knew they were too good to be true," I said, catching sight of our quarry who was making his way carefully back down the aisle, a large paper cup in each hand. As soon as he'd sat down again and had taken a long swig, I put on my most dazzling grin, leaned toward him, and said, "Mr. William Gince, by any chance?" He jumped a foot in the air, which wasn't bad from a sitting start, spilling some beer on the shoulder of the man in front of him, who luckily didn't notice. I put one outsize mitt reassuringly on his arm and also to make sure he didn't try going anywhere in the immediate future.
"Now, now," I said. "Relaxez-vous, there's nothing to worry about, I just want a quiet word with you and I figured here'd be as good a place as any."
"Who the fuck are you?" he said.
"Well, if he's the ham," I said, pointing to Marlon, "I must be the glaze."
"What does that make me?" the twerp said.
"The sweet patootie," I said.
"Well I don't want a word with you here or anywhere," William said, "whoever the fuck you all are. Beat it or I'll call a cop."
"Spill any more of that suds on the guy in front and you'd probably get all you want without calling," I said.
"Fuck off!" he said.
"William," I said. "Calm down. I've come from your mom and sister, OK? That's show I knew where you were." Which wasn't totally untru
e. "And if I was going to do anything unpleasant, like breaking both your legs with a goalie stick, which is the farthest thing from my mind, my associates and I would hardly have chosen the Forum as a meeting place, now would we?"
"How should I know," he muttered. "All I know is your fat fucking friend Fats must have sent you, right?"
"In a way," I admitted. "But he ain't no friend of mine, I can assure you."
"Oh, no?" he said. "So what d'ya want, then?"
"Maybe I can help," I said. "I hear you can use a little help these days."
"I bet," he said. "Help dump me in the river someplace." He stared gloomily into his paper cup, then thrust the second cup he was holding in my direction. "Here, fucker," he said. "I ain't thirty no more. Hope you choke on it."
"I hope it's hot cocoa." I said, taking the cup and peering into its depths. "Oh, darn, beer, but thanks anyway." I took a satisfying swallow. A roar went up as the teams skated back onto the ice. I felt William tense up; he started looking around furtively.
"No chance, William," I said, tightening my grip on his skinny arm. "Anyway, I've got Mrs. Leduc's attractive house over there on St. Michel staked out, too. Loved the snowman next door." William sighed and slumped in his seat. The organist played a series of ascending chords, the crowd shouted encouragement. The second period got underway; we watched without talking for a minute. A dastardly Capital body-checked a Habitant from behind, sending him crashing into the boards. He bounced once, then lay still. William jumped to his feet. So did I, just in case.
"Jeez, did you see that!" he shouted. "Send the bum off!" He subsided into his seat again. I did likewise. The Washington player skated slowly off toward the sin bin to the boos of the crowd. The announcer said something in French. The crowd cheered. A minute later, the Canadiens, playing with the extra man, scored their third goal from a slap shot from just inside the blue line. The announcer said something in French again.
"Look at it this way, William," I said as soon as the cheering had died down. "Worse shit you could not be in. It took me all of ten minutes to find out where you were, and if I could do it, so could someone else, someone a lot more unpleasant than I could ever be even in my wildest dreams." The twerp leaned up against me trying to listen in; I gave her a friendly shove away. "I'll tell you something else. Not only is Fats not a friend of mine, I do not like him overmuch. I don't trust him overmuch, either. I've taken his money for services performed once or twice but that doesn't mean he owns me. Or my brain. He did hire me to find you. When I did, I was supposed to let him know where you were. I found you. I have not yet let him know where you are, which is watching a hockey game from a seat so high up you got shown to it by a stewardess."
"How much?" William said then, finishing off the last of his beer. I did likewise.
"You mean how much not to let him know I found you?"
"Right on, bro'."
"How much you got?"
"I got a few bucks put away," he admitted.
"Saving up for a new car?"
"Saving up to buy off cheap fuckers like you," he said bitterly.
"Cheap is puttin' it mildly," the twerp tossed in. I ignored her uncalled-for and totally untrue interruption.
"As for how much, if you give one good reason why I shouldn't tell Fats where you're holed up, nothing is what it'll cost you, I'm already getting a fair whack out of Fats, or at least I hope I can get it out of his obese hide. It might cost you a bowl of moose stew somewhere, but that's all."
He peered at me suspiciously through his steel-rimmed specs, while I tried to look like the honest, upright, and well-meaning citizen I was. Then he took out a large red handkerchief and wiped both his face and his glasses. Then he crushed his empty paper cup with one foot. Finally he said, "They're with you, right?" indicating Marlon and Curly with a jerk of one thumb.
"Right. Their names are Marlon and Curly. Me, I'm Vic. They're just along for the ride, really, I do all the work." Sara gave me a dig in the ribs I could have done without.
"How many you got staking out the house?"
"Well," I said, "just that snowman, actually."
He gave me a small grin. "I figured," he said. "Give me a minute, will ya?"
"Take two, they're small," I said. Willing Boy leaned over to ask me how it was going. I gave him the thumbs up sign. William furrowed what there was of his brow and thought. Down on the ice the Capitals scored two goals in under a minute. The crowd was not pleased. The game was stopped briefly as a team of slaves with miniature snow plows cleared debris off the ice. The loudspeaker said something in a foreign language again.
Then William turned to me and said, "OK. You like good pastrami or would you rather go for the stew?"
"I'd kill for good pastrami," I said, "but I don't think the Stage Delicatessen in New York City delivers this far north."
"You got a surprise comin', bud," he said. "Now is it OK if we watch the rest of the game?"
"Vic," I said. "Not 'bud.' Or 'Prof.' "
"Will," he said. "Not 'William' or 'Willy.' "
"Sara," the twerp said. "Not 'Curly.' "
"George," Willing Boy chimed in. "Not 'Marlon,' please!"
"Shut up, you two, will you?" I said. "Some of us are trying to watch the game."
We watched.
We all had a beer, on me, but Sara, who had a hot dog and a Pepsi and then some potato chips and then began working her way through a pack of Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum. Les Habitants won it in the end, 6–4, and we all trouped out with the happy and only moderately rowdy fans into the chilly night air. Twenty minutes later we were installed at a table in a crowded eatery known as the New Ben's and ten minutes after that I was eating the best pastrami sandwich of my life, and I'm here to tell you a lot of pastrami has in my life passed under my expensive bridgework. The pickle was only the second best I'd ever eaten, my accountant Harry had a Polish cleaning lady whose dill pickles were beyond the stuff o' dreams.
Willing Boy was working away diligently at a huge plate of boiled beef 'n' cabbage, with a stack of potato pancakes on the side. Curly was daintily attacking a bowl of chicken soup that had little raviolis in it, and Will, like me, was well into the first of his two pastramis on rye.
"Why do they call pastrami smoked meat up here?" I inquired idly between large mouthfuls.
"They don't," Will said.
"Oh."
"They are two different things. Different things usually have different names, which is how you tell them apart."
"Oh. Marlon, don't hog the pickles."
After the cheesecake, when we were finally replete and had put in our order for three coffees and one tea, which came in a glass, for Sara, who always had to be different, I turned to Will and said, "Monsieur, I thank you, that was indescribably sensational. My associates thank you. Thank the monsieur, children." They thanked the monsieur profusely. "Now it's story time, kids, so gather round. Will, take it from the top. Take your time. Remember, we are your friends, and those that have broke rye bread together have broke rye break together."
"That almost makes sense," Will said. "OK. So what did Fats tell you?"
I told him what little Fats had told me, that there was this guy who couldn't come up with five big ones plus the vig who had taken off somewhere, and that the whole thing sounded fishy as hell to me, there had to be something else going on even if that much was true.
"That much is true," Will said, sipping at his coffee. "I couldn't even come up with the vig. I went to ask him to give me another week. I'm sitting in that posh office of his begging when some drunken dame bursts into the front office and starts carrying on with some punk out there. Fats goes out to see what the fuck's goin' down."
"How come you went to a shark like Fats in the first place, Will, if that's not too personal a question?"
"Stupidity," he said, "if that's not too personal an answer. Guy named Benjy, supposed to know all the angles, he worked at the garage where I did, he had it all worked out. He welded a seco
nd gas tank inside the real one of his beat-up Chevy he had, took him two whole nights after work, beautiful job. He's got a solid connection in Tijuana all lined up, he's done business with him before, this guy is gold, his merchandise is first-class. We all kicked in what we could come up with, I should'a got back twelve grand for my five plus the grand vig, not bad for doing sweet F.A. for a few days,"
"No shit, Geronimo," said the twerp.
"So that's show come I was into Fats," Will said.
"Bet you a buck," I said, "the first place the federales looked was the gas tank."
"Tell me about it, pal," he said disgustedly.
"Bet you guys," I said to the kids, "a buck Benjy isn't where you think he is right now."
"He's gotta be in a Mexican jail, doesn't he, George?" Sara said, sucking the slice of lemon from her tea.
"It would appear so," he said cautiously.
"Tell you what," I said magnamiously. "If I lose, I pay off in U.S., if you lose, in Canadian." At that time the U.S. dollar was worth roughly a fourth more than a Canadian one.
"Deal," said Sara. "OK, Mr. IQ, where do you think he is?"
"Elementary, my dear Miss Dunce," I said. "Somewhere in the good old U.S. of A."
"Pay the man," Will said. "He's back workin' at the garage doin' lube jobs. That mother even told us he had a buy in San Diego lined up."
"Bet you he won't be for long," I said.
"Forget it," Sara said, counting me our four Canadian quarters.
The pretty waitress came by and said something in French to Willing Boy. He said something back to her in French. From the glare she got from Curly, you'd have thought she'd asked him to elope with her. She went away with a backward look over her shoulder at him. Not even my gray-haired mother ever looked at me like that.
"What led you to that brilliant deduction, Holmes?" Willing Boy asked.
"He just guessed," Sara said.
I smiled at the child. Ah, youth—so impetuous, so quick to come to totally false conclusions.
