Looking for Henry Turner

by W. L. Liberman

  “Can you show me, anyway?” I asked.

  Olsen sighed, then glanced at his watch. He figured he'd had his fun but we didn't bite. “Okay, but it's got to be quick. It'll be faster on these.” He pointed to a brace of bicycles propped against the wall.

  Olsen grabbed one and just like a 10 year-old riding home from school, hopped on and took off. I took one and followed suit. It had been over 20 years since I'd actually ridden one of the things and took it a bit wobbly at first. That was nothing compared to Birdie, whose knees tucked under his chin as he pumped the pedals. He kept it moving though.

  Olsen was right. It took some five minutes or more of hard riding, ducking around concrete pillars and skirting metal rails to get to the far end of the plant. As he stated, the storage areas were locked up tight and I couldn't see how somebody like Henry Turner could be able or even interested in breaching their security.

  “I just don't think your man is here, gentlemen. Be a crazy way to live, wouldn't it?” Olsen asked.

  “There's probably worse but I'm having a hard time thinking of it,” I admitted. “Thanks for your time, Olsen. Sorry to have dragged you away from your regular duties.”

  “That's okay,” Olsen said. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” He glanced pointedly at his watch.

  “There is actually.”

  Olsen sighed. “What's that?”

  “When's the next break?”

  “About five and a half minutes.”

  “Do you mind if I ask a few questions of the men?” Olsen rolled his eyes but didn't say no. We walked the bicycles over to the canteen, a large room lit by interior fluorescent light. Along the back stretched a counter. Under glass sat a row of tin trays belching steam. A guy in a white smock and cap stood sweating behind the counter. A bell clanged and almost immediately, the din of conversation filled the outside corridor.

  The door sprang open and groups of knackers pushed their way in ready for some refreshment despite the horror they'd left behind them in the plant. An easy camaraderie came with the men who filed into the canteen punctuated with barks of laughter and shouts. When the room had filled, Olsen grabbed a spare chair and stood on it. I watched the seat bend dangerously. He blew a shrill whistle through his lips. That caught their attention.

  “Men, we have a couple of guys here who are looking for someone–” He didn't even have to finish before a groan went up. This was their free time and we'd spoiled it. “–just hear them out, will ya?”

  I didn't stand on the chair. I just spoke up. “Gentlemen, we just want you to look at a picture and let us know if you've seen this guy. Won't take but a second of your time. Please carry on with what you were doing.” The men didn't hesitate and lurched back into action.

  Birdie and I circulated the room showing Henry Turner's picture as we went. One guy laughed.

  “What's so funny?”

  “Take a long look around the room, Mac.”

  I did.

  “No offence,” the guy said “but you won't find too many coloured working here.” As he spoke, the crowds of men drifted apart. I noticed one black man sitting at a table by himself, ignored by the men around him. He sipped at a cup of coffee keeping his head bowed. Alone. Across the room, I spotted Birdie as men moved nervously out of his way. They gave him a darting glance before sliding off to grab a drink or a doughnut before going back on shift. My one true friend and these men avoided him like he had a disease.

  We didn't get any other reactions. Most of the men took a quick glance then shook their heads. They weren't curious. They didn't ask any questions. Their minds were focused on the few minutes of pleasure they had before them, cherished time ticking off until they returned to the mechanized slaughter they undertook day in and day out. It had been worth a shot but we didn't get a hit.

  I thanked Muldoon on our way out.

  “Find your man?” he asked.

  “Nope. Just a lot of dead cows.”

  Muldoon chuckled. “That's money on the hoof, Sarge. Big money.”

  “Guess you're right. So long, Muldoon.”

  He waved as we set off down the drive. Two minutes later, we found ourselves back in the heart of the city. I wondered who in their right mind would choose to live near a slaughterhouse. We weren't any closer to finding Henry Turner. Or Liu Chen and her baby.

  “Wanna go for a burger?” Birdie asked. He looked serious.

  I considered it for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  We made our way to the Brazier King on St. Clair and demolished four burgers between us, one for me and three for Birdie plus two malteds each. For some reason, it just felt right.

  28

  I slung my jacket over the back of the scarred, wooden bench and sat down to read on the periphery of that sad patch of moth-eaten grassland known as Henley Park. Birdie had dropped me off and gone to the office. I thumbed through the well-annotated copy of The Invisible Man I'd lifted from Henry Turner's bedroom.

  I glanced to my left as a city worker idly speared bits of flowing paper with a stick and flicked them into a canvas sack he carried on a strap across his shoulders. He wore government-issue coveralls and a straw hat and didn't seem to be in a hurry. Two mothers sat on the other side of the park, hunkered down by the sandbox watching a pair of toddlers chop away with tiny plastic shovels, filling tiny plastic buckets. The mothers chatted and smoked enjoying a few minutes of freedom away from the drudgery of domesticity. The sun continued to shine and a light breeze rustled the leaves in the trees. It came easy to think the world operated in peace and didn't have a care, that no one suffered or felt pain and happiness reigned supreme.

  Turning my attention back to the book, I leafed through some pages finding myself caught up in the machinations of the Brotherhood, Ras the Destroyer and the funky rhythms of Harlem before the War. I'd read the passage where the narrator's friend and colleague, Clifton, had been arrested then shot in the street after struggling with a beat cop. Clifton had left the Brotherhood and become a street vendor selling little black Sambo puppets making them dance obscenely before crowds of grinning whites. Puppets that horrified and offended the narrator's sense of morality.

  During that dangerous time, the narrator discovered an alter ego called Rhinehart who assumed the personas of a gangster, a pimp and the pastor of a Holy Roller church. Merely by donning a hat and dark glasses, the narrator transformed into Rhinehart even fooling the criminal's closest associates. The Invisible Man had become less of himself and more invisible as the story progressed, merging into what he thought others, his associates in the Brotherhood and neighbors in Harlem, wanted him to be.

  “…I was invisible, and hanging would not bring me to visibility, even to their eyes, since they wanted my death not for myself alone but for the chase I'd been on all my life; because of the way I'd run, been run, chased, operated, purged—although to a great extent I could have done nothing else, given their blindness and my invisibility. And that I, a little black man with an assumed name should die because a big black man in his hatred and confusion over the nature of a reality that seemed controlled solely by white men whom I knew to be as blind as he, was just too much, too outrageously absurd. And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others…”

  Until there was nothing left of himself. In the end, the narrator tumbled down a dirty coal chute into a filthy cellar and couldn't find his way out. Thinking about all of this made me shiver and I wondered if that's what Henry decided to do, make himself invisible. His life appeared self-effacing. Well-liked at school but no stand-out. Kindly thought of at Flint but after the accident, he faded away. Then he became a non-entity for the Fosters, merely a servant, someone for Alison Foster to harangue and abuse. Henry's life was all about being invisible and I found that sad. My thoughts again turned to Birdie, who was anything but invisible. How did he control his anger? I knew I couldn't.

  A shadow fell across the pages.

/>   “I never took you for a man who lounges around parks, Mr. Gold.”

  I looked up. Her hair was framed in a halo of light blurring out her features. She wore the saucer-sized sunglasses.

  “It's not something I do often, Miss Rosewell.” I shifted over. “Take a pew.”

  Today, she wore a short-sleeved maize-coloured blouse, tan slacks and low heels without hose. I glanced down to be sure. “May I?” she asked, reaching out for the book. I nodded and she took it from me. Our hands touched for a moment. Her skin was warm and moist, the palms plump. Adele riffled the pages stopping to look and skim the notations.

  “Henry sure loved this book,” she said.

  “Looks like it.”

  “He wrote all over the margins.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Doesn't get you any closer though, does it, Mo?”

  There was a gentle teasing in her tone, a bit of a smirk at the corners of her full lips.

  “Probably not,” I admitted.

  I glanced around. The city worker had left, ambling on to the next park most likely. The mothers hauled their toddlers out of the sand swatting off their bottoms to howls of protest. I reached into my jacket and pulled out a packet of Sweet Caps.

  “Smoke?”

  Adele shook her head. I shook one out of the pack, popped the head of the lighter and flicked it into life.

  “Those things will kill you,” she said.

  I smiled at her. “I don't think so. Plenty of others out to get me first.”

  “Ooohhh,” she trilled. “Such a dangerous man with a dangerous life.”

  “Now, you're mocking me”.

  Behind the glasses, I saw her eyebrow lift. “Me? Little old me? Don't be silly.”

  “Now I know you're mocking me. How's your aunt?”

  Adele Rosewell sighed.

  “Bereft if you must know. This thing is eating at her and it's affecting her health.”

  I blew out a plume of smoke. “Are you, bereft?”

  “Now, who's mocking who?”

  I sighed. The heat of the sun felt good on my skin. “I never mock,” I said.

  “Women must find you rather infuriating,” she replied.

  “Not just women.”

  “Still, I guess you'd be a challenge.”

  “Is that how you look at relationships? As a challenge?”

  “You don't understand.”

  “Understand what, Miss Rosewell?”

  “What it's like for someone like me.”

  I took another hit on the cigarette. “You mean, an intelligent and attractive black woman making her way in a white man's world?”

  The line around her lips tightened. “Something like that.”

  “Listen, sister. What makes you think you're the only one who's got it tough?”

  “I never said I was, the only one, I mean. Just that a white boy like you doesn't get it.”

  “And what is it I'm not getting, Miss Rosewell?”

  “That men, all kinds of men find me, attractive. But what they really want is for me to lay down and spread my legs.” That idea of her, that image, ran through me like an electric current. “And you're no different, Mr. Gold.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  She tipped the sunglasses up toward her forehead and looked at me directly. “I can see it in your eyes and your attitude. Feel it radiating off your skin.”

  “You think I'm just interested in getting you in the sack?”

  “Aren't you?”

  “There's nothing wrong with physical relationships between men and women,” I replied.

  “You didn't answer my question,” she said.

  I laughed and it came out as a nervous snort. “Miss Rosewell, I won't deny that I find you attractive in all kinds of ways.”

  “Now you're thinking I'm a prude.”

  I shook my head. “Well, you're pretty direct.”

  “…the way I like it…”

  “What if I offered to take you to dinner?”

  “Are you? Offering I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  Adele set the glasses back on her nose, straightened her posture and leaned forward. “Find Henry first. Then we'll talk.”

  “It's all business with you, is that it?”

  “I think you're getting the picture, Mr. Gold. It's how a girl survives in this cruel world. My body is my own. I decide who gets to see it and when. Understand?”

  I ground the stub of the cigarette under my heel. “Beginning to.”

  A tall shadow blocked out the sun. Birdie loomed over us.

  Adele glanced up, then shook her head. “Ah, the sleeping giant awakes.”

  She got up from the bench and flicked at imaginary dust mites.

  “Thank you for the chat. It was most interesting.”

  She nodded at Birdie then strode off down Dundas Street. I watched her hips and buttocks churn and those ankles slashing through the atmosphere.

  “Did I spoil the moment?” Birdie asked, then grinned.

  “Did you ever. Brother, did you ever. What have you got?”

  “Found joyrider Number two.”

  29

  The Royal Plaza Hotel at the corner of Bloor and Avenue Road had a rooftop pool and lounge area. That's where we found Harvey Troyer, Alison Lawson's ex-boyfriend. He lay face down on a lounger while a young woman in a bikini that barely covered her assets massaged baby oil into his shoulder blades. In fact, a number of young women in bikinis did the same to young men fanned out around the pool's edge. On the far side, stood a cabana bar. To the right the hotel had set up a number of tables with umbrellas. Those bright young things that tired of soaking up the sun sat and sipped their drinks behind dark glasses pretending to be movie stars. A light breeze kept the sun from being oppressive.

  “That's it, baby,” Troyer oozed. “Lower it down a little.”

  The only ones out of place were Birdie and I. Definitely overdressed. I felt like stripping down to my skivvies and cannon balling into the minty blue water. Troyer looked a lanky lad with skin the colour of putty. His hair looked like tar and he had it combed like Elvis. A fag dangled from his right hand. A fruity-looking cocktail sweated on the small table to his left. As the girl, a honey-coloured blonde, worked her fingers into the muscles in his back, her bra strap slid down her tanned shoulders revealing just about all that nature had given her.

  Wearing a dark suit and a fedora on a warm day at poolside makes you stick out. Birdie's natural consumption of space and the colour of his skin drew looks from the club clientele. A fussy waiter hurried over and I knew he was going to try and tell us the place was off-limits. I cut him off before he could open his mouth.

  “Two beers, Pedro,” I said. I nodded toward Troyer. “Put them on his tab and make sure they're frosty.” The waiter gulped, looked at Birdie who stared back at him impassively. When he raised his Ray Bans to tighten that look, the waiter nodded and took off.

  “Think we'll get the drinks?” he asked.

  “We better,” I replied.

  We sauntered over to Troyer while the blond exercised her fingers.

  “You do good work,” I said. She peered up at me and then took in Birdie and smiled guilelessly.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I work at the club here.”

  Troyer lifted his head. He had smarmy good looks, cleft chin, hollowed cheekbones, blue eyes and an irritating smirk.

  “That's enough, Alice,” he said as he pushed himself up, then reached for his sunglasses. Alice backed off as Troyer swung his legs around. Men, instinctively, don't like to feel they're in a vulnerable position when in the company of other men.

  “You Harvey Troyer?” I asked.

  “Who're you?” he replied.

  “Asked you first, Harvey,” I said in a tone with just enough edge in it to make him wonder.

  “Yeah, I'm Harvey Troyer, so what?”

  He reached for a packet of silver-tipped Benson and Hedges on the small pool table, shook one out
of the pack and lit it with a gold-plated lighter.

  “You didn't offer one to Alice,” I said.

  “Huh?” A look of juvenile confusion flooded into his face.

  “Rude Harvey,” Birdie boomed. “Just plain rude.”

  Alice grinned. “I don't smoke,” she said.

  “I help you with something?” Troyer said.

  “Sure, Harvey, that'd be swell.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “You know a lady by the name of Alison Lawson? Used to be Foster?”

  Now Troyer looked genuinely quizzical. “You guys cops?”

  We didn't answer just gave him our stone faces.

  “Alison? Yeah, sure. We dated in high school. That was a long time ago. Now she's married to some nob her daddy picked out for her. Is that what this is about? What's she done, anyway?”

  I sighed. “Too many questions, Harvey. You remember being pulled over by a cop one night when you were out with Alison and a kid called Rance Callaway and his girl, Gayle Sorenson?”

  Troyer gave a nasty little laugh. “She wasn't his girl. Gayle didn't even like Rance. She only came along because I asked her to.”

  “You had something going with her?” Birdie asked.

  Troyer glanced back at Alice. “I didn't say that, okay? We were friends, that's all. I was dating Alison.”

  “Things got a little wild, did they Harvey?” I asked.

  Troyer smirked. “Maybe a little. Alison was a thrill seeker. She liked to do crazy things.”

  “Like what?”

  Troyer took a long drag on the fag. “I don't recall if you guys said you were cops?”

  “Used to be. Private.”

  “You got a badge or something?”

  “Uh-huh. What sort of things did Alison like to do, Harvey?”

  Troyer laughed but it was a bit queasy. “Alice, honey. Why don't you go powder your nose or something while I talk to these guys, okay?”

  “Sure, Harvey. If that's what you want?” she replied in a brittle tone.

  Instead of heading to the ladies toilet, Alice stood up. She had a set of long, graceful limbs. She replaced the bra straps, strode athletically over to the pool and dove in elegantly barely making a ripple. Every male in the area couldn't help but watch as she stroked along the bottom and surfaced at the other end barely puffing for air. Her hair looked like spun gold laid sleek and wet against her tanned skin.