The Hole

by David Halliday

  “He ain’t, that’s all,” Wiggy responded. “A guy knows things about another guy.”

  “Isn’t getting smacked serious enough?” Adelle said, her voice angry and impatient. “He’s hit her before.”

  The sky above the plaza lit up. A few moments later the calm was shattered with thunder.

  “Whoa!” Wiggy trembled. “That was close.”

  “You’re such a wimp,” Adelle cried. “I keep thinking that Cathy is out there in this storm with that creep.”

  “Where are we going to look?” Frank asked.

  “Down at the lake,” Adelle responded. “Cathy told me they liked to go down there sometime.”

  “To the lake!” Wiggy cried. “That’s like sending troops to the front.

  Just look at the sky down there. Nature doesn’t take prisoners. I’ll go down but I ain’t getting out of the car. Our house was struck by lightning once and-”

  “We’ve all heard that story before,” Adelle interrupted impatiently.

  “Wiggy’s got a point,” Frank added. “Besides, Cathy can take care of herself.”

  “You too!” Adelle spat out, jabbing her finger into Frank’s chest. “It’s our friend out there and we’re all going.” She turned to Wiggy.

  “Understand?”

  “Okay.” Wiggy cowered. “But if you get fried, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Thunder rolled in the distance.

  “Look,” Adelle said pointing to the other end of the plaza, “here comes Terry.”

  Beaten

  As Mary jiggled her keys in the lock of her building’s front door, Hank stepped up behind her. Mary jumped.

  “Shit!” she cried. “You scared the life out of me.” Hank smiled. “Give me your keys. I’ll unlock it for you. I dropped in at the Zig Zag. Jack said you’d already left.” Mary handed her keys over to Hank. The effects of the gin made her feel uneasy on her feet. “Where the hell were you all night? I waited. You know how I hate waiting.”

  Hank smiled. “That’s not much of a reception.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “You’ve been drinking.” Mary pushed Hank away. “What the hell did you expect me to be doing? I’m a little drunk and really pissed off.” Hank reached out for her again. “Come to daddy.” Mary relented, falling into Hank’s arms. She let him kiss her again, his hands roaming down the back of her dress and squeezing her ass. She put her arms around his neck as he slowly lifted her dress, his hands moving between her legs.

  “You missed me.” He grinned.

  Mary moaned. “Let’s go upstairs where the neighbors aren’t watching.”

  Hank opened the door and followed Mary up the stairs, slapping her bottom playfully. At the top of the stairs, Mary turned around.

  “By rights, I should push you back down,” she giggled, her hand reaching into his trouser pocket. “Seems you missed me too.” Hank took her in his arms.

  “Hurry!” Mary said, taking Hank’s hand and leading him through the darkness of the living room toward her bedroom. Someone moaned.

  Mary cried out. She turned on the light. Terry lay on the couch, his face bloodied, holding his stomach.

  “What…” Mary rushed over to the couch and examined her son.

  “I’ll call an ambulance,” she cried.

  “No,” Terry muttered. “I’m okay. Just got to get cleaned up.”

  “But what happened to you?”

  Terry looked up at his mother sitting on the couch next to him and then up at Hank standing behind her.

  “Nothing,” Terry said.

  “I’ll bet the other guy looks worse than you, eh,” Hank laughed. Mary turned and gave Hank an ugly look that knocked the smile off his face.

  “Couple of guys tried to mug me,” Terry said.

  His mother looked at the bruises on his face. Then she touched his side. Terry winced.

  “I think you might have broken a rib,” Mary said. “I really think you should see a doctor.”

  “Please, Mom, I’ll be all right.”

  Mary looked at her son. “We should phone the police. But first, let’s get you cleaned up. Rest easy now. I’ll get a face cloth, some cold water, and bandages.”

  Mary smiled at her son then quickly left for the bathroom. When she had departed Hank moved closer.

  “Mugging, eh?” he said.

  Terry nodded.

  “Your mother can’t hear us from the washroom. What really happened, kid?”

  Terry did not respond.

  “Look, kid. I like your mother. I don’t want her to be facing a lot of pain because of you. If you’re into something over your head, maybe I can figure a way out of it.”

  Terry looked up at Hank. His figure, silhouetted by the room’s lights, gave him a menacing appearance.

  “I can take care of myself,” Terry said, wincing as he attempted to sit up on the couch.

  “That’s right.” Hank smiled. “You can really take care of yourself.

  Look, kid, I’ve been in a few scrapes myself and I know a little more about the world. Don’t be a fool. Whoever did this to you, I can do a lot more to them. And their friends.”

  At that moment Mary returned with a basin of water, a face cloth, and some bandages.

  “Look, Hank,” she whispered, pulling him to one side, “maybe you should leave. I can take it from here. I’d feel a whole lot better talking to the police if I was alone with Terry. They might start asking you questions about us and…”

  Hank nodded. He looked at Terry.

  “Remember what I said, kid,” he said, then let himself out of the apartment.

  Mary sat down on the couch and started to clean Terry’s wounds.

  “Now that Hank has gone, would you like to tell me what really happened, dear?”

  “Are you going to marry that guy?” he asked.

  Mary smiled. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because,” Terry said, “that guy gives me the creeps. What do you know about him?”

  Dark Alleys

  Joe Mackenzie stepped behind the bank and into the shadows. Turning off his flashlight, he leaned against the wall and began to urinate.

  When he was finished he turned around and almost walked into the figure standing behind him.

  “Jesus!” Joe cried.

  “Gave you quite a fright, eh, Mr. Mackenzie?” Wiggy said, laughing.

  “It’s the Indian blood in me. I can sneak up on just about anyone.”

  “You know what happened to the Indians,” Joe responded, as he turned his flashlight on and checked the alley to make sure there weren’t any other surprises.

  Wiggy thought about Joe’s remark for a minute then laughed.

  “Oh ya,” he cried. “Good one, Mr. Mackenzie. Just relieving the old bladder, eh? I won’t turn you in.”

  Joe Mackenzie ignored Wiggy’s remark and walked down the alley behind the plaza. As he walked he shone his flashlight into the dark crevices and loading docks of the stores. Wiggy walked beside him.

  “You ever find anyone back here?” Wiggy asked.

  “Besides you?” Joe asked.

  Wiggy nodded.

  “No,” Joe responded. “But they pay me to check out the back of the stores here so I do it.”

  “You think people are going to break into the paint store or that new picture framing shop? What’s there to steal?” Joe ignored Wiggy’s question.

  “What are you doing out at this hour?” he asked.

  Wiggy shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. Couldn’t get to sleep.

  Thought I’d come and talk to you. Didn’t mean to scare you, Mr. Mackenzie. I wanted to thank you for not calling the cops the other night. I hope we didn’t wake you up. Just having a little fun with some girls back of your place. Nothing bad, Mr. Mackenzie. Just drinking a little gin and smoking a little weed. We gotta go someplace, right? I guess we were a little loud. I saw your light go on all of a sudden and we kind of panicked. I mean the girls panicked. But I told them you wouldn’t call the
police.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” Joe replied. “I didn’t turn on any light.” The two were silent for some time as Joe continued to flash his light at the back of the shops. When they reached the back of Apache Burger, which was not attached to the plaza but was situated near its southern end, Joe sat down on a tree stump. Wiggy asked if he could borrow a cigarette. Joe informed Wiggy that he didn’t smoke. Wiggy took a seat on a tree stump a few feet away.

  “You like this job, Mr. Mackenzie?”

  Joe shrugged and turned off his flashlight.

  “I guess you get lots of time to think about things,” Wiggy suggested.

  “I like to think about things. Not school stuff. Real stuff. The night makes you feel so small that you figure your questions can’t hurt anyone. Like if you think about those questions during the day, people think you’re queer or something. One night I was out on our back lawn staring up at the sky and imagining that with all those stars, there must be zillions of planets and with all those planets, there must be some guy just like me on his back staring up at the heavens looking right up at the sky at me.

  It’s possible, right? There might even be more than one guy. There might two or three guys. Maybe a hundred guys. With all those stars there could be a million guys just stretched out there on their backs staring up at each other. All of them wondering if they were the only guy. And then I get this feeling, a really sick feeling in my stomach. Maybe I am the only guy.”

  Joe sighed. Wiggy laughed.

  “I think you need to get yourself a job,” Joe said as he rose to his feet.

  Wiggy remained on his stump, looking up into the sky. When he turned his attention back to the plaza, Joe had turned the corner of the building and returned to the front of the plaza. Wiggy stood up and ran over to the dumpster behind the camera shop where Frank and Terry were waiting.

  “I thought that you’d never get rid of him,” Frank said.

  “Come on,” Terry said. “Give us a hand with him before he wakes up.”

  “Ah, hell.” Wiggy laughed. “I’ll just knock him out again.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Puppy Dog

  Sam Kelly stood up and shook his visitor’s hand. He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. The stocky middle-aged man flirted with a smile. Sam took a seat. His visitor sat.

  “I could have come to your home,” Sam said, sweeping some papers he’d been looking at off to one side of his desk. “Thanks for coming to see me, Mr. Gray.”

  “It’s Frank. Ruth said you’d been at the house.” Frank smiled uncomfortably, looking around the detective’s office. “She was concerned that I was in some sort of trouble. I’ve never been in any trouble with the law.” 101

  “Relax, Frank. This isn’t an interrogation. Just a friendly interview,” the detective said.

  Frank seemed to jerk slightly as he nodded. He ran his hand through his thinning hair.

  “Not like television?” the detective asked.

  Frank shook his head. “Neater,” he replied, his smile flickering on his lips. “Police shows have messy offices and filthy streets. There are more filing cabinets than I expected. And I expected to see pimps, hookers, drug dealers lining the walls. You have someone come in here and clean up?”

  The detective chuckled. “I like to clean my own office. It gives me time to think. Most of the time there isn’t much else to do.”

  “I thought the police were overworked.”

  “Traffic is. We don’t get too many homicides out here in the suburbs.

  Can I get you a coffee?”

  Frank declined, his eyes still darting around the room as if he were looking for a quick getaway. The detective stepped out of the office into the hall and grabbed himself a cup of coffee. Sugar and cream were nonexistent. He was getting tired of drinking coffee black. He glanced in-to his office. Frank Gray was still fidgeting in his chair. Probably scared out of his mind, the detective thought.

  “Let’s see what we have,” the detective said as he wheeled into his chair and looked down at his notes. “Did Ruth tell you anything about our conversation?”

  “Some,” Frank responded, looking into his lap like a schoolboy who has forgotten to do his homework. “Didn’t make a lot of sense. Ruth was upset. She thinks I’m in some kind of trouble. You know the way women fret.”

  The detective rubbed his chin with the end of his pen.

  “I didn’t mean to upset your wife, Frank. But there are a lot of leads we have to follow up on and… Why don’t I give you a brief outline of the case.”

  For several minutes the detective entertained Frank with the tale about a man dying on the corner of Bloor and Botfield and the police report on the fellow who had discovered him and how his name was the same as Frank’s. Frank listened attentively but said nothing. The detective waited. The two men looked at each other for some time.

  “When did this happen?” Frank asked as he straightened up in his chair, leaning slightly forward.

  The detective smiled uncomfortably for a minute and shook his head.

  “Why would you ask that?” He tapped the end of his pen on the desk and then, noticing that Frank had become mesmerized by the pen, put it down. “That’s my problem. A fellow, we don’t know who he was, came into the Zig Zag last week and reported to the bartender that a man had just died on the sidewalk only a few yards from the front door of the tavern. We have no record of anyone dying on that corner that evening, or any evening that year. But we do have a record of someone dying on that corner thirty odd years before.”

  Frank stared at the officer.

  “This is a joke, right?” he cried.

  Sam Kelly shook his head.

  Frank took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring, his complexion growing red. “You have a guy dying on the sidewalk thirty years ago, and some guy who saw the incident reported it to a bartender a week ago. And someone with my name is mentioned in the case and you don’t think this is a colossal joke?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” the detective confessed. “Do you know Joe Mackenzie?”

  Frank, still agitated, moved about his chair like a caged animal.

  “What do you mean you don’t know what it is? You upset my wife and dragged me all the way down to your office for this?” For several minutes Sam Kelly sat silently in his chair and let Frank blow off steam. Although he’d stopped ranting, Frank’s rage seemed to move inside, like a brush fire running under the forest canopy. Sweat ran down his forehead. His breathing grew shorter and labored. The detective left the room and returned a minute later with a paper cup of water.

  Frank took a few swallows of water. When his breathing began to relax, Frank took a small container of pills from his shirt pocket and popped one in his mouth. He finished off the water. The detective offered to get him some more water but Frank declined.

  “It’s almost gone,” Frank said wiping the sweat off his forehead and neck with some tissues he found in a box on the officer’s desk. “I’ll be all right now.”

  “You sure?” the detective asked. “We could continue this some other time. I wasn’t trying to get you upset, Mr. Gray.”

  “No, I’m all right. Sometimes I overreact to situations. Doctor tells me that I’ve got to monitor my rage. I know you’re just doing your duty, Officer. And you have your procedures. I was so laid-back when I was a kid. Can you believe it? People said I had ice water in my veins. But 103 now… I just can’t be sure that at any moment I might explode. I’m like a bomb.”

  Frank chuckled as he continued to wipe the sweat off.

  “Used to be as cool as a cucumber.”

  The detective smiled politely and returned to his chair. God, he didn’t want someone dying in his office. He’d interrogated many prisoners, for minor offences in the main, but he’d never had someone implode right in front of him.

  Frank leaned forward, and spoke to the detective in a whisper as if he were sharing a personal anecdote. “Are you afraid of dying, Detective?
”

  “I’d like to avoid it,” Sam said with a smile.

  Frank did not. He was in earnest.

  “I figure that when you die, you end up in a room. The room is empty.

  No windows, no furniture, no door. And it’s dark. Not pitch black, but the darkness just before complete nightfall. Just enough light to see that you are alone in a room.”

  “Like being buried alive?”

  “Ya, in a way,” Frank said, nodding, “except you’re not horizontal and you don’t have trouble breathing, and you can walk around. But you’re in the room and you wait.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Frank gestured to the pack of cigarettes on the officer’s desk. Although the detective didn’t smoke himself, he found it helpful to have a pack around for interviews. It helped to loosen tongues.

  Sam nodded. Frank grabbed the pack, removed a cigarette and the matches that were tucked inside, and lit up.

  “Haven’t smoked in years,” Frank sighed, the smoke swirling out of his nostrils. “Doctor’s orders.”

  The detective was about to suggest that Frank might want to put the cigarette out when Frank insisted that they continue the interview.

  “Do you know Joe Mackenzie?”

  Frank thought for a moment. “Didn’t he live in that old farmhouse in the hydro field near Echo Valley?”

  “Still does.”

  “I thought that place had been abandoned for years.” The detective leaned back in his chair for a few minutes. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a pad and scribbled something in it.

  “You live around here all of your life, Frank?” he asked.

  “Most of it. Lived in Windsor for a while. That’s where I met Ruth. At college.”

  Frank stopped talking. The detective looked at Frank and waited.

  “I had more hair then,” Frank said, running his hand through his thinning hair.

  The detective smiled.

  “Red hair if you can believe it. Ruth was a great beauty on campus.

  Long black hair. People used to call us Sonny and Cher. After the singing duo. We sort of fell in love at first sight. Been together ever since. I was kind of a quiet kid. Didn’t have many girls. Ruth had a boyfriend when I saw her the first time. I don’t think I’m being of much help. I just don’t have much to say that amounts to anything.”