It felt late. There’d be no fire tonight. Dan turned off the stereo. He went around the room closing the shutters, before putting out the lights and settling on the ten-thousand-dollar-sofa. It didn’t feel any more comfortable than a regular sofa. Jags could have bought something for five hundred dollars and put the rest of the money to better use.
He picked up Jags’ book. It was an engaging read, but his depiction of childhood sounded almost too ideal. It included everything but the gingerbread house and the devoted mother wearing an apron day and night, at least until Jags ran away as a teenager and found himself in Toronto’s Queen West punk scene. What could have been more normal than that?
Jags was harder on no one more than himself. He was candid about his drug abuse and his relationship problems. The whiffs of scandal felt more like true confessions from a friend with a problem to confide, rather than a plea for sympathy. When it involved others, Jags was credible and kind in his reportage. Dan had read more than half the book by the time he put out the light and lay on the pillow, wondering how long it would take to fall asleep.
He stirred and lifted his head in darkness. Something had woken him: a ghostly hand on his throat, a spirit visiting his dreams. His watch glowed: 1:33. He’d been asleep for two hours. Ralph lay on the rug beside the couch, alert.
Jags was no longer at the table. The bedroom door was closed. An unearthly sound spread through the room. It was Ralph, growling long and low. He was up now and staring at the door. The fur on his back bristled. Inside, they were safe from prowling animals, Dan knew. Not even a bear could get in, unless it happened to be able to pick locks. Still, knowing how isolated they were from the world and how complete the darkness was outside left him feeling vulnerable. He wondered what sort of people might be in the area looking for uninhabited cabins to rob. The alternative could be worse. What if someone had spotted Jags’ car and thought they were easy marks out there in the middle of nowhere?
Ralph continued the low, sustained growl deep in his throat. Dan pulled on his jeans and crept over to the window. He stood looking out on total blackness.
If there was anything out there, he couldn’t see it.
He thought he heard Jags snoring in the other room.
A sleeping drunk was a happy drunk.
The wind blew around the cabin, a low drone that died to a whisper before picking up again. It worried Dan. If there were anything prowling outside,
he wouldn’t hear it.
Ralph’s growling rose to an eerie falsetto whine. Clearly he too was worried by the possibilities. Dan turned to him.
“What is it, buddy? Do you smell something?”
Encouraged by Dan’s words, Ralph went to the door, sniffing and scratching at the sill.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to let you out,” Dan told him. “Whatever’s out there could be a lot bigger than you. And it might like to eat dogs.”
Ralph looked questioningly at him. Dan’s hand crept over his head and patted his neck.
“Glad you’re here, Ralphie,” he said. “When we get home, you get an extra bone.”
A light rain began to fall. It grew steadily stronger as the wind increased. Dan continued to watch out the window. Shapes defined themselves in the darkness, the black outline of trees shivering in the gusts, the shed with the car farther off. He didn’t check his watch again till he felt his legs tire. He was shocked to see the time: 3:46 a.m. He’d been standing and staring out the window for more than two hours. It seemed like he’d been there for about twenty-five minutes. Time had slipped past while he was focused on the darkness outside. Somehow, it had contracted and pulled him in with it. Maybe he was being absorbed into a black hole. Maybe it would seem like that in the tomb.
He stood there a while longer, reluctant to give up his vigil. Finally, the weariness in his legs told him to stop. Nothing more would happen tonight. He lay down again, trying to remain alert and conscious. He was asleep again in minutes.
Morning, a shaft of light bisected the gloom, lighting up Dan’s torso and the blankets that clung to the supple musculature of his frame. He looked up at the opening overhead. It made him think of a bus stop ad featuring a teary-eyed, dirty-faced child holding out an empty bowl. “Honey, do we really need another skylight?” the ad asked all those yuppies intent on bettering their homes. Do we really need another anything? Dan wondered. Whenever the rich got into trouble, Dan’s conclusion was invariably that they had too much time and money on their hands. Otherwise they’d be too busy earning a living like everyone else to get in hot water. Kennedy curse? What Kennedy curse?
Dan looked out the window. Whatever had been out there a few hours previously, there was no sign of it now. He picked up Jags’ book and resumed where he’d left off. Jags was well into his career successes and excesses by now. The celebrity gossip was a bit more salacious, but nothing that would make an enemy of its author. The tone grew darker as the price of fame left its mark: anxiety, depression, drugs, and broken relationships. Perhaps he hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said he just wanted a normal life, or some semblance of it.
Jags still hadn’t stirred by the time he finished. Dan clanked around in the kitchen, made some scrambled eggs and toast and put them on a platter in the middle of the table. He was just pouring the coffee when Jags’ head appeared through the crack.
“Help yourself to breakfast,” Dan told him.
“I’ll do that.” Jags looked distractedly around. “What happened to the party?”
“You’re what’s left of it.”
Jags didn’t say another word till he’d poured himself a cup of java and downed half of it. He looked over at the coffee table where Dan had left the book.
“Did you read it?”
“Yes. It kept me up most of the night.”
“Any good?”
“It’s well-written. Extremely visual. You’ve got a good writing style.”
“You sound like a connoisseur. What kind of books do you read?”
“I like a lot of things: Proust, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford. But it’s not that kind of book. This is just nice, clean prose with a straightforward outlook and some very convincing opinions about music and art that do you justice. I enjoyed every word, and that’s rare with me and books.”
“A critic, huh?”
Dan pushed the platter of eggs toward him. “No, just a discerning reader. You can fit in only so much reading time in this life, so it’s important to make every book count.”
“A good way of looking at it.”
“Anyway, that’s my take, for what it’s worth. Maybe in another twenty years you’ll be ready to write Part Two.”
Jags smiled ruefully. “Let’s see if I live that long.”
Dan opened the front door and stood on the porch. “Ralph thought he heard something in the night,” he remarked, looking across at the tree line.
Jags came toward him. His expression was dark. “Like what?”
“Hard to say. He got quite worked up. He was growling a lot. I thought there might have been a bear prowling around.”
Jags snagged a pair of binoculars hanging from the
wall. He scanned the trees anxiously then stared at
the ground leading up the path to the porch. “We’ll go,” he said after a moment.
“What?”
“We’ll go back to town. It’s probably not safe here.”
“If it was just a bear, it’ll be gone by now,” Dan protested.
Jags shook his head. “They come back sometimes. They’re drawn to things. Smells, dead animals. Something always brings them back.”
“Up to you,” Dan said, bewildered. “But we’re probably safe here.”
Jags shook his head. “It was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”
Dan watched him, wondering what was going on in his head. Jags continued to look around, as though trying to convince himself of something. He seemed spooked.
“Yeah, we’ll
go. It’s too fucking quiet out here anyway.”
Jags dropped Dan off at home. The house was still and silent when he entered. Ralph scampered in, looked around for Ked and Trevor, then resigned himself to a boring afternoon lying on his kitchen bed. Dan checked his messages. There was one from Ed, apologizing for disturbing him and saying the police were pressuring him to ask Dan again about his sources. Dan didn’t feel up to returning the call. Donny had left a message asking him to phone. He sounded anxious. Dan guessed it had to do with Lester.
Sure enough, when he called, Donny told him Lester had left a message on his machine, saying he was being kept in the house against his will.
He sounded agitated. “I could kick myself for not being here when he called.”
“You can’t stay in the house forever. He’ll call back.”
“He said they watch him every minute and lock him in his room at night. Apparently they took away his cellphone, so he had to sneak his mother’s phone from her purse when she was in the bathroom, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to call me.”
“Have they hurt him or mistreated him physically?”
“I don’t know. His message didn’t say anything like that.”
“We could call social services, but chances are they’d be on the parents’ side, since we’re dealing with a runaway. As long as there’s no physical abuse, they can take away his roaming privileges without being considered to be abusing him.”
Donny sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Unless we know for sure that they’re hurting him, it’s probably better to do nothing.”
There was a noticeable pause on Donny’s end. “He threatened to torch the house if they won’t let him out.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Exactly. I feel like I have to rescue him. I can’t stand it. I know I’m not his father, but I feel as though I am and that makes it imperative for me to do something.”
Dan had never heard him sound so at his wit’s end. Donny the Imperturbable was in a flap, and it wasn’t an amusing thought.
“Do you know where their house is?”
“No.”
“Then you’re just going to have to wait till he calls again and find out what, if anything, you can do to help. But I’m warning you — don’t get involved in some kind of kidnapping scheme. You have no legal hold over that boy.”
“I know, I know. I just feel so useless.”
Dan sensed his frustration. “Lester’s a bright kid. He’ll think of something.”
“Preferably something that doesn’t include torching his family home.”
“Preferably, yes. Let’s not go there, all right?”
Dan hung up, feeling he hadn’t done much to console his friend, but knowing that he would feel much the same in Donny’s shoes. There could be no words to console him right now.
The machine’s final message was from Domingo. Would Dan be free for lunch any time in the next couple days?
Yes, he thought. I would.
Twelve
The Maharajah’s Plate
Tucked away on the northeast corner of Hayden Street, just south of Bloor, The Bishop and the Belcher was Domingo’s favourite downtown hangout. In winter it was a cosy, curl-up-by-the-fire-and-indulge sort of place; in summer it had the regulation outdoor patio, replete with loud straights who thought coming to the edge of the gay ghetto was a lark. The joke was on them because the place was gay-owned and -operated. Just look for the inverted rainbow triangle on the front door, Dan wanted to tell them. Better than a smear of lamb’s blood to the ancient Hebrews. The B & B was vrai gay, just not as gauche as its way-downtown sister and brother hangouts like Slack’s and Woody’s. With fewer drag queens and no hustlers to speak of,
it boasted the best pub menu on the strip, including some of the tastiest curries this side of Sri Lanka.
By the time Dan arrived, Domingo was on her third fancy drink, replete with paper umbrellas and fruit chachka. She looked up, smacked her blood red lips and flashed a dazzling smile.
“Hello, gorgeous, how are you?”
Dan sat, bathing in the glow of her vibrancy. It was hard to believe she’d undergone chemotherapy recently.
“Great, thanks. It’s great to see you. How are you?”
She lifted her glass in salute. “As you see. Alive and well and enjoying every minute of life.”
“As it should be.”
A waiter swooped down on the table. After a quick perusal of the specials, Dan settled on the Maharajah’s Plate while Domingo ordered the Pulled Pork Lettuce Wrap. They handed their menus over to the waiter. Domingo took another sip through her twisty straw.
“How’s the new man?”
“Perfect in every way.”
“Except?”
Dan felt himself falter. She was watching him, doing that thing he hated.
“Why do you ask? Is your intuition telling you something?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No. I can see it in your eyes. Perfect in every way, but?”
Dan shrugged. “Except he’s not sure he likes it here. He’s not a city boy.”
She put down her glass. “You certainly seemed content together. He adores you, I can tell. I’m glad to see you with someone who appreciates you.”
“Thank you.”
She looked at the high-rise condos around them. Well detailed, handsomely constructed. This was a city of clean lines and easy propriety. A genteel people lived here. “Besides, what’s not to like? I always forget what an attractive city this is. Clean. Safe.”
“We could do more.”
She leaned her chin on her hand and smiled indulgently. “It’s not for everybody, but on the whole I think we’re a good people.”
Dan shrugged. “Is that enough? Shouldn’t we be good for something?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why so down on the hometown?”
“Just a hang-up I have about complacency. What’s the use of being polite, if all we can do is feel smug about it?”
“I know other countries look down on us. We’re not cool. They think we’re naïve and lacking in culture. I’d say the world is conflicted — they look down on us, but they envy our freedom, our natural beauty, our spacious living, our racial integration. And the great thing about it, if you’ve noticed, is that we don’t care what they think.”
Dan laughed. “How true.”
“Plus, it keeps out the riff-raff. That’s what I love about Canada. So what if we’re a weird combination of naïve and smug? At least we don’t go around invading other nations and lying about our reasons for doing it, like some countries I could name.”
She made a coy face and Dan laughed.
“Americans aren’t so worldly, either. They lived in their isolationist bubble for so long, insulated by television and dreaming that life was a theme park designed by Walt Disney, till they had a rude awakening a while back. Now they’re tearing themselves apart, half of them fighting to keep their delusions while the other half wants to point out the warts on the witch’s nose. Both sides blame the other for all their problems.”
Domingo ran a hand through that shock of white hair. She was right, Dan thought. There were worse things than a naïve populace.
“I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to you the other night. I’m sorry to hear what you went through.”
“Thanks, but I try not to dwell on it. There’s nothing so humbling as looking at a shadow on an X-ray, knowing something is growing inside you. Women’s bodies are funny. We grow babies who grow up and die and we grow lumps in our breasts that feed those babies, and they kill us. I had such beautiful breasts, round and firm, like polished melons. They gleamed in the moonlight, Adi used to tell me.”
She picked up her drink then set it back down.
“But there’s no sense in dwelling on that, either.” She nodded. “Adi’s been a pillar. A true rock. I couldn’t ask for more from her. I really couldn’t.”
She waved her arms in the
air, as if to make the topic vanish. Their server returned and set their plates nimbly on the table. Cutlery followed, wrapped in paper napkins as though they’d been embalmed.
Domingo took a bite, sighed, and looked up.
“I swear someone’s been stealing my mother’s recipes. It doesn’t get much better than this.”
Dan speared a shrimp with his fork. He tasted and nodded. “I hope they keep this cook a long, long time. A good curry chef is hard to find.”
Domingo looked across the table at him. “So what else is new in your life?”
Dan nodded. “Well, apart from the boyfriend, who you’ll be glad to know is putting me through my paces, we also have a housing project on the go.”
Domingo looked impressed. “Do tell.”
“Not much to tell yet. It’s a townhouse in Corktown.”
“Ooh, Corktown! How swank.”
“Trevor’s designing the interior. It’s costing a fortune, apart from the architecture plans, which are his contribution. It’s not going to be ready for another month. I just wish he’d commit to living here.”
“What’s stopping him?”
“He’s had a hard time. His ex-lover killed himself. It took Trevor a long time to get over it. The city makes him edgy. He prefers solitude. He lived on an island in BC for the last ten years.”
“That’s rough.” Domingo nodded. “It’s so easy to get lost in life, and so hard to get found again.” She smiled. “Not you, though. You go on your straightforward route, dead ahead, for good or for bad, just as if there was no other way.”
“I don’t really think about it. It’s not as though we have a choice.”
She shook her head. “But the rest of us aren’t like that, Daniel. The rest of us live life without a road map, for the most part. It’s not as easy for us.”
Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 49
