“I don’t know what’s helpful. Continue, Frank.” Sam knew that Frank had to talk. Perhaps it would reveal more than Kelly’s questions could elicit.
Frank smiled. “Her boyfriend gave me a nickname.”
“Red?” the detective asked.
Frank shook his head. “Puppy Dog. What a name, eh?”
“Well,” the detective smiled. “You got the girl so I guess the dog got the last bark.”
Frank laughed quietly.
“Did you know June Mackenzie, Joe’s wife?” Sam asked. “Her maiden name was Hare before she married.”
“There were some Hares that went to school with us. One of them was a girl, I think. Can’t remember her name. What does she have to do with the fellow dying outside the Zig Zag?”
“She disappeared,” the detective replied.
“Didn’t she run off with some fellow?” Frank asked. “Some ex-hockey player.”
The detective nodded. “How about a Joseph Begin? Have you heard of him?”
Frank shook his head.
“What’s all this about, Officer?”
“Missing persons.”
Frank’s eyes dropped. “Our son disappeared,” he said, his voice tentative.
“Yes, I know.” The detective spoke softly now. He didn’t want to go through another meltdown with Frank.
“Ruth, she never got over it. Keeps thinking Johnny will come back.
He ain’t coming back, Detective. We would have heard something from 105 him, if for no other reason than to bum money off us. Johnny was a loser.
He was never good at anything. Looks and personality, but no character.
He was my son and I loved him, but he was a bum.” Margaret
“What did you do?” Adelle asked Cathy, her eyes wide with anticipation.
Cathy leaned across the restaurant table in the booth the two girls occupied. “I kneed him in the balls!”
Adelle clapped her hands, leaned back, and laughed. Cathy smiled.
“Nobody is going to try that crap on me.” Cathy’s voice was sharp and bitter. “You were right though. The guy is a creep and to think I let him touch me. God, it makes me feel so sleazy to think that I touched…” Margaret arrived at the table to take the girls’ order. With her hair pinned up, her thin bosom-less body, and the low sarcastic voice that slipped out of the side of her mouth, she was, for the girls, the anti-fe-male. The girls looked up with disgust. Couldn’t she see that they were talking? The girls ordered.
“You dragged me over here for a Coke and two straws?” Margaret said with a snarl.
Cathy looked up and smiled with as much charm as she could garner.
“We are having a conversation,” Cathy said, enunciating each word as if she were speaking to someone who did not understand the English language.
Adelle turned and raised her eyebrows, giving parenthesis to Cathy’s declaration.
Margaret tapped her pencil impatiently on her ordering pad, leaned to one side, and smiled. “We are running a business,” she replied. And then leaning over the table, added, “And if you ladies give me any more of this snotty business, you’ll no longer be welcome in this establishment.” The two girls were silent for a brief moment before Adelle added, “I’ll have toast.”
Margaret returned to the counter.
“Where is she coming from?” Adelle cried.
“What a bitch!” Cathy whispered.
“No wonder there’s never anyone in this place,” Adelle added, her eye on Margaret. “I would never talk to a customer like that. Mr. Leblanc would fire me on the spot. She must be going through the change. My mother’s like that. The other day she went into a rage because I used a 106 bit of her makeup. There was hardly anything left in the tube of face cream and she blames me because it’s all gone. Like it’s my fault that she didn’t buy more. She uses my tampons and I don’t scream at her. Why do women become such witches? If I turn out like that, promise me you’ll have me put down.”
Margaret returned with the girls’ Coke and toast. Both girls smiled at the waitress. Margaret shook her head.
“Why did you go to the beach with him?” Adelle asked once Margaret had departed.
“I didn’t go to the beach. We just ended up there,” Cathy explained as she placed her straw in the Coke. “I was feeling sorry for the guy. It was kind of obvious what he had in mind once we got there, but I felt this ob-ligation to be fair with him. Why do we bother? No matter what I said, he wouldn’t let up. At least when I ask Terry for space, he gives it to me.
But Johnny thinks he’s owed something. Like I should drop to my knees and do him. I am not his right hand.”
Adelle giggled. “You are terrible. Not his right hand. I’ll have to remember that one.”
“We started to argue. You know how boys are. He thinks he’s the one being reasonable and I’m being this incredible bitch because I want to talk about certain issues. What is a relationship if you can’t discuss things like adults? He starts telling me I’m yelling. Trying to paint me as hysterical. I was just so bloody frustrated trying to get him to talk. And then he gets physical with me. Pushes me to the sand and starts to undo his pants. When he tried to fuck me, I gave him the knee. He barfed. I rolled away but still got some on my hair. Yuck! What an asshole! How could I have ever let that slug between my legs? You warned me but I couldn’t see it. It’s like you’re so in love with someone that you don’t see them for who they really are.”
“You’re love blind,” Adelle added, pushing the toast to one side. Taking the second straw, she placed it in the coke and began to sip.
“Exactly.” Cathy nodded and paused to take a mouthful of Coke. “It makes you think that you can’t ever trust them. No wonder some chicks become lesbians. Women understand women. But men! It’s like you’re dealing with an alien species.”
“I could never do that,” Adelle said.
“What?”
The two girls sucked on the drink, their foreheads pressed against each other.
“The lesbian thing,” Adelle explained.
Cathy laughed. “You didn’t think I-”
“Of course not,” Adelle interrupted. “Just a point of information.
We’re stuck as heterosexuals. Like, I don’t care how desperate I was, I couldn’t become a lesbian. I’d rather enter a convent. Anyway, I’m still sort of a virgin.”
Cathy giggled. “What’s sort of a virgin?”
Adelle blushed, then whispered in Cathy’s ear.
“You don’t swallow!” Cathy roared with laughter.
“Not so loud,” Adelle cried with tears of laughter in her eyes.
When Adelle had recovered from laughing, she asked, “What happened next?”
“After Johnny upchucked?”
Adelle nodded.
Cathy continued. “He drove me home. He didn’t talk. He looked kind of sickly to tell you the truth. I was really pissed. I guess I laid it on kind of thick on the way back. He deserved it. Even after he dropped me off, I was in a state. Then my mother starts yelling at me about how she didn’t know where I was and all of my friends were out looking for me and that she had half a mind to ground me. I told her she had half a mind.”
“You didn’t!” Adelle gasped.
Cathy shook her head. “But I felt like it. God, she can be so annoying.
Your mother can’t hold a candle to mine in the nagging department. Sometimes I wish my father would slug her. I took a shower and washed Johnny out of my hair. And then I phoned Terry.”
“You didn’t!”
Cathy nodded. “I had to tell someone. He said he was going to kill Johnny. Fat chance of that, eh. Johnny was on the college wrestling team.
Until he got kicked off for drinking at a meet.”
“Don’t you feel kind of guilty now?” Adelle asked.
“About what? Terry getting beaten up? I warned him not to go after Johnny. He is so stupid sometimes. I can take care of myself. I don’t need Terry going around acting
like Sir Lancelot.” The two girls leaned over the table and finished their drink. They looked at the toast.
“I am definitely not eating that,” Adelle said, making a face of complete revulsion. “It’s dripping with calories.” Cathy grabbed the toast. “I’m famished,” she said.
Detective Kelly sipped at his coffee as he sat at the counter.
“The blueberry pie is fresh,” Margaret said. She’d always had a soft spot for a man in uniform, although technically Sam wasn’t in uniform.
Still, he was a cop. Her husband had been a fireman.
“Well, then I’ll have a piece.” The detective smiled.
Margaret turned away, returning a moment later with a slice of pie and a fork. The detective took a piece and smiled. Love to watch a man eat.
“This is good, Margaret,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
Margaret leaned against the counter and lit up a cigarette.
“I didn’t make it, so you don’t have to pretend that it’s good.” Pretend.
“It’s not bad. Pretty good in fact.”
“You don’t mind?” Margaret gestured to the cigarette.
The detective shook his head.
“The boss is out. It’s the only chance I get to steal a puff. If he shows up, the cigarette is yours.”
The detective laughed. Margaret put an ashtray on the counter.
“I thought this place was nonsmoking,” he said.
“Only when a cop walks in.” Margaret laughed. Does someone cook for him?
Finishing the pie, the detective wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed the plate away. He took a sip of coffee.
“Tell me about the fight.”
“Wasn’t much to tell,” Margaret began. “The blond kid, Johnny I think is his name, was walking along the sidewalk out front. Good-looking tall young man. Reminded me of an old boyfriend I had. God, they’re all old now.” Margaret laughed before continuing. “Then Terry comes out of nowhere and stops him. Terry’s mother, Mary, and I are old school friends. Do you know her?”
The detective nodded. “She asked me to look into this.”
“I can see through the window that they’re having an argument,” Margaret continued. “Terry started pushing Johnny. Big mistake. He’s about a foot shorter than Johnny. Johnny levels him with one punch right in the side of the head. Terry just drops. I can see Johnny standing over him, yelling down at the sidewalk. Terry gets up off the sidewalk and kind of tackles Johnny. I can see that there’s blood on Terry’s forehead. He must have hit his head on the sidewalk. Johnny puts two punches into Terry’s stomach and that was it. Johnny walks away. By the time I got out there, Terry was already on his feet, bent over in pain but on his feet. I asked him if he was all right. He brushed me off and staggered away. I guessed he was going home.” 109
Margaret flicked a few ashes into the tray before continuing. “Mary must be pretty upset. It isn’t easy raising a teenager. Not that Mary was any angel when she was a kid. She told me once that Terry was God’s way of punishing her for her wild youth. That was about it.” Sam Kelly shook his head.
“Are charges going to be laid, Sam?” Margaret asked.
“No,” the detective responded. “Terry won’t talk to me about the incident. My hands are tied. All I can do is warn Johnny, maybe talk to his parents. That pie was delicious.”
Margaret picked up the plate and placed it with other dirty dishes. She took one last puff of her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray and then removed the ashtray from the counter.
“Any idea what it was about?” Margaret asked.
The detective shook his head. “With teenagers, who knows? Could have been over money, drugs, a girl, a perceived slight. Maybe Johnny looked at Terry the wrong way. Or just male hormones.”
“I guess you didn’t need this on your plate?” Margaret smiled.
“Especially with that salesman disappearing.”
“You heard about that?”
Margaret nodded. “You hear a lot of things in this place. What do you think happened to him, Sam?”
The detective shook his head. “Don’t know. Maybe he’s out of town, maybe he woke up the next morning with a hangover and took off on his route again. We’re trying to put a trace on him. Ever see him in here?”
“Could have. We get everyone passing through the Six Points area in this place. What did he look like?”
The detective gave a description that he’d received from Helen Kraft.
“That could be any of a dozen guys that walk in here every day.
Sounds like a real loser.”
The detective finished his coffee and dug into this pocket for change to pay the bill.
“It’s on the house,” Margaret said. “We were going to have to throw the pie out. It was stale three days ago.”
“I thought you said it was fresh,” he responded.
“The only thing fresh in this joint is the customers,” Margaret responded.
The detective laughed. “You’re too much, Maggie.” The detective climbed to his feet to leave then turned again to Margaret.
“Do you know anything about a tall gaunt fellow? About seven feet.
Dresses in black. Asks a lot of questions. Has an obsession with the year 1950.”
Margaret nodded.
“I thought he was trying to hit on me. Filled with all kinds of useless information. Asking me a lot of stuff about Mary’s ex. Him and Mary are an item. Seemed very interested in any stories about people who have gone missing over the last few decades. Gave me the creeps, to tell you the truth. But he’s a good tipper.”
The detective smiled, reached into his pocket and threw some change on the counter.
“I can take a hint.” He laughed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Wheelchair
Detective Kelly pushed the wheelchair up to the edge of the sidewalk looking across Bloor Street to the Six Points Plaza. Ed Kaye, his passenger, sat mutely in the chair. When the traffic thinned out, Sam pushed the chair across the street and into the plaza. The two men moved leis-urely through the plaza past the bank and a video store. When they reached the Canadiana Restaurant, Sam wheeled in. A few minutes later the two men sat at a table by the window with a cup of coffee.
“Ya think that they would have torn this place down by now,” Ed said, his eyes wide and excited like a child’s first glimpse of Niagara Falls. “Haven’t been over here in years. Ugliest damn strip mall west of the Humber, and I miss it.”
The detective smiled. He sipped at his coffee, stealing a glance at the counter where Margaret served a customer. She spotted him and smiled.
“Where did all that time go?” Ed sighed. “Like it all happened yesterday. Like it never happened. Like I was always a surly decrepit old man.
Program the other night on the television about black holes. I thought they was talking about manholes. Scared the bejesus out of me.” The old man scratched his chin. “Seems that if you get caught inside one of these holes there ain’t no escape. Even time itself gets caught. Everything happens at the same time. Sounds like old age.” The old man shook with laughter, his voice gargling. Choking with phlegm, he cleared his throat and swallowed. Rolling his head around as if he were rolling dice with his memories, the old man spoke again.
“Remember one winter we found an old man… God, I can’t remember his name. Kids called him Captain Hook. Lost his hand in the war. We found him in a car, there in the driver’s seat. Dead. Car was buried under about three feet of snow. No one knew the car was there.” Something caught the old man’s attention at the other end of the room.
It was Margaret. The old man smiled.
“And then there were the fights between the Catholic kids and the Protestants,” he continued. “Pitched battles just around the corner in the hydro field. We had reform school then… I sent a kid named Ernie O’Connel up there. God forgive me.” The old man’s voice broke. He bowed his head for a moment. Then he looked up with a smile
as if his previous melancholic thoughts had been totally erased from his mind.
“And then there were hot rods. Teenagers used to race their cars up by Richview Side Road. They changed the name to Eglinton Avenue when they built… I can’t remember why they changed the name of the street.” The old man stopped. He looked up into Sam Kelly’s eyes. “You ever wonder where all those troubled boys went, Sam? All those lives lost at such a young age. Disappeared into prison or alcohol. And nothing I could…”
Sam Kelly looked at the old man. He wondered if it had been a good idea to bring the old man over to the plaza. Sam sipped at his coffee. It was too hot. The old man started to shake again. And then he laughed.
“And there was the time,” he continued, “the Queen rode along Burnhamthorpe Road, and The Beatles landed at Malton Airport. And Trudeaumania…” The old man took a deep breath. “I guess they’ll bury all those memories in the same hole they drop me in.” The detective stirred his coffee slowly with his spoon. “Sure you don’t want some pie? They have real fine pie here.” Sam drank his coffee.
Ed shook his head. A drop of drool ran down his lip. The detective was about to wipe it off with a napkin when Ed slid the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Nothing ever lasts,” Ed said, his eyes drifting off into other memories. “What was the point of living them? I have regrets, Detective-”
“Sam,” the detective interrupted.
“Sam.” Ed smiled briefly with a puzzled expression on his face. “I forgot. I don’t regret big things. Don’t regret that I didn’t climb no god-damn mountain or travel to some godforsaken place, or gamble my money on some woman dressed in red. Regret things I didn’t say. Those mornings I could have told my wife she was still beautiful. Or that I didn’t tell that tough-looking kid sitting in the station, scared out of his mind, that it was okay. He’d survive the experience. None of us survive life. You regret anything, Sam?”
Sam was lost in a daze, watching Margaret carry two plates across the floor. He didn’t hear the old man’s question. He gestured to Margaret.
The Hole Page 14
