Nolan shakes his head and clenches his eyes. McKelvey deduces the man is suffering the inexplicable ripple effects of a hard hit to the head. It can leave you in a fog for days or weeks, this sudden onset of vertigo.
“Travis told me this is a real problem in Saint B. He wouldn’t tell me who he got the dope from, but he said we have no idea how many kids are on this shit. I have to be honest here, Charlie. I don’t have any experience in this sort of thing.”
“I never worked Narcotics, but Hold-Up is the other end of the whole drug chain. Junkies rob gas stations and liquor stores to get the cash to buy their dope,” McKelvey says. “The first thing I’d do is go and press hard on the usual suspects, the guys dealing pot by the gram. Start at the centre and work your way back out. Shake enough trees, the monkey eventually falls out.”
“I should bring them down to the station maybe, rattle them a little?”
McKelvey shakes his head. “You want to go in easy at first, easy but hard. Do it in private so word doesn’t get out. You need to work against the disadvantage of small-town gossip, don’t let these assholes get the jump on you. Let them think you guys are a bunch of Keystone Kops.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” Nolan says.
“Then you go at them where they live and work, right in the middle of their safest environment. In front of as many of their friends and buyers as possible. Maybe rough them up a little, who knows. Whatever you need to do.”
Nolan nods slowly, but his eyes are not convinced.
“I’ve only ever been a cop here,” Nolan says. “I doubt I can pull off the bad cop routine with these people. Maybe you should ride shotgun with me for a few days. I can talk to the Chief, see if we have budget left for consultation fees. Who knows, maybe even get you signed on as an auxiliary officer.”
McKelvey looks out the window at the winter day. He has yet to read the pamphlets in his dresser drawer. A Survivor’s Checklist. He has yet to contact his doctor to have the follow-up discussion on treatment options which were outlined in their last visit. It occurs to him that Caroline is right; he has run away from home. He has run away from his life, from The Diagnosis. He should be right now entering treatment in a Toronto hospital for the prostate cancer that killed his father.
“I’m retired,” McKelvey says.
“Your experience could really help. This is your home town, Charlie. The people of Saint B need you right now. Why else did you end up back here?”
McKelvey laughs. It is a genuine laugh, and it feels good from the inside out.
“Save the speech,” he says. “I don’t owe this goddamned place a thing.”
“Maybe it owes you.” Nolan smiles his boy’s smile.
“You’ve got a chief here, right? He’ll have a plan, kid.”
“Chief Gallagher wasn’t impressed that I drove down to the correctional centre to see this Lacey boy. It’s case closed as far as he’s concerned. He’s gearing up to run for mayor. He has this idea about using the closed sections of the mine as a landfill. Something about trucking Detroit’s shitty diapers up here.”
“Sounds like typical police brass. More politician than cop.”
“He’s a good man, but he’s in the wrong line of work. He was a sheriff for a long time in a small town somewhere in the U.S. Midwest. Said he was used to running for election every five years. Prides himself on the fact he never used his weapon. He’s all about the status quo.”
McKelvey stands now and holds out his hand. The meeting is adjourned.
“Thanks for the coffee, but I don’t think I can be of any help.”
“I’ll let you think about it.”
McKelvey shakes his head. The kid is stubborn. Standing there in his uniform, smiling through a concussion. For a moment McKelvey sees himself. Right there. Standing in this very kitchen. Having driven all night to come home to see his sick mother. She turns from the stove and she sees him. He has left the city straight from a midnight shift and he is still wearing his uniform. Her tired eyes light up. She smiles.
“My policeman,” she says.
Nine
Darkness is falling. The lights of Main Street burn with a phosphorous glow. This far north, the aurora borealis appear on the coldest nights, these dancing and twisting snakes of coloured vapour — smeared streaks of green and yellow and sometimes blue. Nolan often pulls the cruiser over to the side of the highway just to sit and watch the spectacle. It reminds him of being a boy, how his father would do the same thing in his pickup truck. And Nolan remembers how the cab was always warm, how it smelled of his father — Old Spice and stale sweat — and how perfect life was as they sat there on the side of the dark highway, the world silent and uncomplicated. His father was a miner, and yet Nolan had always sensed there was something untapped within the man, some unnamed sensibility. Life was good back then, simple and easy to understand.
“Front row centre for one of nature’s greatest shows,” his father would say.
“What causes them?” Nolan would invariably ask.
“It’s magic,” his father would say. And later, when he had started the truck and was pulling back onto the road, he’d always offer a variation on this existential observation. “Those dancing lights,” he’d say, “prove just how small we really are. A man remembers that, and he’s got his place figured out just right.”
Nolan is at the wheel of the cruiser, thinking about his father and remembering how the old man had talked about leaving Saint B, moving southwest to Elliot Lake, because his father had seen a brochure about the town. Once a mining centre in its own right, Elliot Lake had reinvented itself as a retirement mecca, offering cheap bungalows and peace and quiet, good hunting and fishing. His father only ever talked about it, and now it was too late. The big man was lying in a bed, withering away to bonelike fruit left on a shelf.
He is on Main now, headed west out of town. As he passes the police station, nestled between the one-room public library and the two-room town hall, he spots a strange vehicle. He slows to a crawl. The vehicle is a black SUV — a loaded Suburban — with Michigan plates. He glances in the rear-view, stops, then puts the vehicle in reverse and eases back to the station. He pulls into a spot beside the Chief’s Jimmy. The Chief always drives his own vehicle, and charges mileage to the town, something he says is a holdover from his sheriff days.
Nolan enters the station and the small squad room. Chief Gallagher is leaning back in his swivel chair, boots up on his desk, his guest seated across from him with his back to Nolan. Gallagher is ruddy-faced and his eyes are shining. Nolan spots the tumblers of amber booze. The Chief keeps a bottle of scotch locked in his bottom drawer for special occasions, which are rare in Saint B these days. He keeps his only weapon, a pearl-grip .38 revolver, locked in there, too, and Nolan catches a glimpse of the handle. Gallagher is not a heavy or frequent drinker, and the booze always rushes blood to his face. Nolan has witnessed the rapid transformation of the man’s demeanour after just a single drink. He smiles too much and his head lolls as though it is too heavy to hold up, his cheeks and nose flushing red.
“Constable Nolan,” Gallagher says, and swings his boots to the ground.
The visitor turns around. He is an olive-skinned man of about forty, and when he stands to greet Nolan, the constable sees that the man is dressed in designer blue jeans and a navy sports coat with pinstripes, no tie, an expensive black overcoat draped on the chair. Nolan holds out his hand and they shake.
“Tony Celluci,” he says.
“Ed Nolan.”
“Chief Gallagher was telling me about your head,” Celluci says, patting the side of his own head in illustration. “I know how you’re feeling. I had two concussions back when I played college football. It’s like you’ve got the worst hangover in the world and you just can’t shake it.”
Nolan finally has an analogy that works for his condition. He smiles and nods.
“Want a drink?” the Chief asks as he reaches into the drawer. He stops and looks up, a
nd points to the side of his head. “Are you supposed to drink with your, you know?”
“No, thanks,” Nolan says. “I’m on my way out to talk to Wade Garson.”
The smile falls from the Chief’s face. He straightens up, shakes his head slowly.
“Wade Garson? Why would you be going out to see Wade Garson at this hour, with your head all bandaged up, and you supposed to be on office duties anyway?”
Celluci looks at a poster on the wall that has suddenly attracted his attention.
“We should talk in private,” Nolan says.
The Chief nods and closes the drawer, lifts up with a sigh.
“Excuse me just a minute, Tony, but police business calls.”
Out in the hallway, Gallagher puts his hand on Nolan’s shoulder and gives a gentle squeeze. This close, Nolan can smell the peaty Scotch.
“Who is this guy?” Nolan asks with a nod toward the office.
“He’s from Detroit. Works for the city, Department of Waste Management. He’s up here on a tour of northern communities. I told you before they’ve got their eye on Saint B as a potential landfill site.”
“Great. I’ve always wondered what Detroit smells like.”
“Easy now, Eddie. It’s early days yet. But listen, what are you doing here? Go home to bed, for Christ’s sake. You don’t need to be going up to Wade Garson’s and surprising him in the dark. That paranoid son of a bitch could have guns for all we know, and we know he’s got a goddamned dog that’s crazier than he is. You know how much he hates the cops, Eddie, especially since we sent his brother away on that weapons charge. Those people aren’t right in the head, never have been. Their old man, Dewey Garson, you know he about killed a man with a pool cue one night in the Station Hotel twenty years ago. Over a spilled beer.”
“Travis Lacey told me he was on methamphetamine, Chief. Meth, right here in Saint B. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it, but he said there’s a lot of it going around the last couple of months. I talked to this former Toronto detective, Charlie McKelvey, today, and he—”
“Whoa, whoa there, Ed. What are you talking about? You mean that McKelvey who’s renting his old house from Carl Levesque? You need to stay away from that character, let me tell you. I made a few calls when I found out he was in town, see. That’s my job, to know who we’re dealing with in this little fishbowl. Well, let me tell you, son, McKelvey has quite a history. You best just leave him to his walk down memory lane.”
Nolan’s head begins to pound with such clarity that he swears he can feel and trace the line of each pulsing artery back to its root. It is after seven. The winter night is pure blackness, even blacker out near the trailer where Wade Garson lives and peddles junk car parts and sells dope by the gram. Nolan forms an image of himself once again sprawled in the snow, his head or chest bleeding, Wade Garson standing over him, a dog barking and howling across the empty night. The Chief is right about one thing. It’s not the time or the place to come at Wade Garson. He needs to slow down and use his head. And regardless of what Gallagher says, Nolan wants this veteran cop McKelvey at his side. He will need to convince the man to ride along. Or trick him. Either way, the cause is righteous.
“Maybe you’re right, Chief. I should get some rest.”
Gallagher’s hand squeezes Nolan’s shoulder and the Chief smiles.
“Now you’re talking sense, my boy. We don’t need any fireworks in Saint B these days. We’ve got a chance here to turn things around. It’s our job to keep things nice and tidy, okay?”
Nolan nods. The Chief pats him on the back.
“Watch that black ice,” Gallagher calls as Nolan opens the door and enters the cold, dark night.
The Saint B coin laundromat is located at the south end of Main Street in one of the first collection of low-rise buildings on the approach into town. There is a butchery located on one side of the laundromat, long since closed, and a Kwick Kash on the other side, which is closed at this late hour but otherwise still in operation. This is the place where locals cash their unemployment and welfare cheques when they don’t want to follow the seemingly inconsistent hours kept by the Royal Bank branch located beside the library. In exchange for cash-in-hand, they are willing to lose up to twenty-eight percent of the cheque’s face value. It’s a racket Carl Levesque wishes he had thought of years ago; legalized loansharking.
The full glass-front window declares MODERN COIN WASH, but the paint is faded and someone has used the opportunity to substitute an L for the C in the word Coin. Levesque still smirks every time he sees that, slogging in now with his green garbage bag full of dirty clothes. Actually, he thinks, that’s not such a bad business idea either. Why nobody ever thought of setting up a massage parlour in this craphole is a crime. Back in its heyday, the place, like most mining towns, had about a four-to-one ratio of men to women. He knows that Saint B has had its share of “known bawdy houses,” these nondescript bungalows, the addresses passed around on payday. He sees the unrealized potential in cornering that market. And it’s too late now. The town is caught in that in-between place: too many old people, too many kids. It’s the middle group that is missing, the consumers with regular paycheques, and they are disappearing from Saint B in droves.
He’s shoving his twisted ball of pants and shirts and socks and underwear into an industrial front-load washer. The bells on the door jingle. Three teenagers shuffle in — two boys and a girl, sixteen or seventeen — and a rush of freezing air rolls in after them like a delayed wave. Levesque eyes them, but continues with his task. Four quarters, a shot of powdered soap, and he slams the door and turns and puts his back against the wall of washers, folds his arms across his chest. The teens congregate near the washroom at the back, where the girl has retreated. There is a corkboard on the wall beside the washroom door. It is pasted with months-old notices for bake sales, campers for sale, winter tires for trade, someone’s lost dog. One of the teens rips a flyer from the board, crumples it into a ball, aims at a garbage pail in a corner near the emergency exit at the rear. He misses the shot. The crumpled ball of paper hits the rim and bounces off.
“Tool,” his friend says. This boy is the taller of the two, about six feet. He is dressed in jeans and untied Kodiak boots, a wool navy pea coat. His hair is long and dyed jet black.
“Hurry up, Casey,” the thrower says. He knocks on the door loudly. “You’re not taking a dump are you?” and this makes the two boys laugh.
“Dump,” the bigger teen repeats as though it is the funniest thing he’s heard.
Levesque looks out the window onto Main. There is no traffic. He does not expect to see any. Only half the street lamps are on, a cost-saving measure, and this creates an eerie false dawn. The town is in dire straits thanks to a dwindling tax base. Garbage collection is now every two weeks. It will be monthly before long, and then the rat population will bloom. One of the town’s two snowploughs sits idle at the town garage. Cause and effect. He looks back to the kids, who also keep eyeing him while pretending not to notice him. Goddamned Saint B, how has he ended up in this place? Doing laundry at quarter to ten on a Friday night? That he is owed, that some good luck is due his way, goes without saying. Goddamned right. And if the luck won’t come, then he’ll just do what he’s always done, he’ll make things happen. He hears the voice of the man from the tapes in his car — take control of your destiny. Decide what you want from this life, make a plan, and go for it …
The door of the washroom opens. The girl steps out and gives the tallest boy a shove. She wears a black toque over long blond hair. Levesque sees that her nose is pierced and her eyebrows, too, and her eyes are ringed in black makeup. She has an edge to her, something he likes. He figures in a mere three years this girl will be someone’s pregnant wife. Unless she makes a break for it, heads to a city. And even then the odds aren’t good, he knows. And it’s a shame is all, how these two young studs are too stupid to see what’s right in front of them. She is at the apex of her beauty.
“Hey,�
�� Levesque says, and the teens look over.
They stare, as though he is doing his laundry in the nude. He remembers well this age, how the very existence or presence of adults seems an insult to the meaning of life. They simply can’t accept the fact they, too, will eventually start their day by gathering what remains of their hair into a swirl on top of their balding skulls, they will wear their shirts untucked in a vain attempt to reduce the visual impact of their burgeoning girth, and they will reach out and snatch from life whatever she offers, and they will be grateful for it.
“Fuckin’ cold out there, eh?” he says, as he slides a hand into the breast pocket of his jacket. He pulls out a twisted cigarette and a lighter. He licks the end of the joint and pops it in his mouth. He lights it, inhales long and deep, holds the smoke in his lungs a half-minute. He tilts his head toward the ceiling and exhales a funnel like an industrial chimney up at the Carver Company mines. He sighs and smiles.
“Toke?” he says, and holds the joint out to the group — an offering.
His eyes, though, are on the girl.
Ten
There are few places to which a man in a small town can escape once the walls begin to close in and the memories start. There is the tavern at the Station Hotel with its mouldy reek of floorboards made wet from spilled beer, the spattering of garden-variety losers nursing their drinks, playing dollar-a-game pool. So McKelvey sits at the counter of the Coffee Time, sipping a fecund coffee and picking at a stale cherry stick. The place is empty at this hour, half past ten, except for a lone pensioner seated by the windows with a bowl of chili and a dated copy of The Mining News. In one of life’s sour ironies, gold is on the upswing, and nickel, too, thanks to the requirement of both resources in the manufacture of today’s modern accoutrements. Too bad the reserves of both minerals are on the decline, at least in these parts. In Africa they seem to find new veins and deposits with the digging of every new hole in the ground.
The Devil's Dust Page 6
