by Jim Stark
"We'll put you up at the manor—that's north of Quyon, in Québec—until we can firm up security at Wilson Lake. We have a lodge out there, at the east end of the estate. You can stay there for as long as you want, if that's okay with you. So, Mr. potential partner, will a handshake do until we check you out?"
"A handshake will do just fine,” said Victor, “as long as I also have the protection I asked for from Patriot Security, and a good-faith down payment of fifty thousand dollars into this bank account—here, I've written it down on a piece of paper—by tomorrow—shall we say—uh—noon?"
He stood, gave Whiteside the slip of paper, and held out his hand. He knew his offer was solid. Randall Whiteside cracked a coast-to-coast grin and shook the good hand of Thomas Victor Helliwell, his new partner in ... whatever.
"You sure as hell don't talk like no cabbie,” he said, doing his very best imitation of common-speak.
"I'm not a cabbie,” corrected Victor. “I'm now basically ... well, retired."
Whiteside let fly with one of his patented belly laughs and gave Victor a mock left-hook to the jaw. “Why right now, Victor, and why the hurry?” he asked as they walked towards the door of the library.
"Because I'm finally ready, because I think I understand what has to be done with this ... ability of mine, because I'm tired of keeping it a secret, because I'm tired of being so poor, because I'm sick of getting mugged, because there seems to be no end to terrorism, because the Cold War has started up again and the nuclear arms race is on again, because the world needs what I have ... you tell me when to stop, eh?"
Whiteside looked over the stout figure in the bowling jacket as if one more reality check might bring an Allen Funt III or Dom De Luise III leaping out from behind a two-way mirror. He glanced at the back of Cadbury's card and read the words “Remember the clones.” The senator was still a tad bitter about not getting an early piece of the PC action twenty-five years earlier. He desperately wanted in on the ground floor this time around, probably for whatever his couple of million would buy.
"Cam, Michael, could you come in here a minute?” said Whiteside as he opened the door. “Boys,” he bellowed, “you may congratulate me and Mr. Helliwell here. We have agreed in principle to a very important business deal. I'll tell you all about it in the limo.
"Michael, it doesn't look like we're going to make it to the driving range. Would you call Mom and tell her that Mr. Helliwell—Victor—will be our guest tonight? Cam, I'm sure you'd rather be at home watching the hockey play-offs, but could you double up security at the manor, effective immediately? And tighten up security at the lodge as well. Victor will be staying there for a while. Deposit fifty thousand dollars in this account, by noon tomorrow, and arrange for Victor to have an office down the hall from mine at HQ. Oh, and I'll have to meet with the legal team at the manor—ten o'clock tonight—the top two available guys. Don't take no for an answer. And Cam, I want you and Helen in on that meeting. Michael, Victor, let's go."
"Where to?” asked Victor into the teeth of Whiteside's torrent of instructions.
"The pro shop, to take your measurements,” explained Whiteside. “And just call me Randall, okay?"
Chapter 2
THERE'S THE RUB
"Randall, I—uh—smoke,” said Victor sheepishly as the limo rolled past a dilapidated wooden sign pointing towards the ferry landing at Quyon. “Is there any place I could buy a pack?"
"Pull in to Ray's, Helen,” said Randall to the driver. “It's right at the turnoff for the estate,” he explained to Victor.
Ray's Restaurant was a single story white box, thirty miles northwest of Ottawa, on the Québec side of the river. It was on the highway, one mile north of the town of Quyon, where most of its local customers came from, and two miles south of the Whiteside estate, where none of its customers ever came from, not even for takeout. Ray's was one of those establishments that people in the area couldn't imagine being without, but in spite of the reliable patronage, a long succession of owners had found that making a profit from the restaurant was a tough assignment. The last two owners hadn't even bothered to put their names on a sign out front, almost as if they knew in advance that their run would last only a short while. The current owner was Ray Barr, a personable twenty-six-year-old would-be entrepreneur with teeth laid out by a drunken god.
Ray checked the pizza oven and came out of the kitchen to grab a sip of coffee and goof around with his regulars. “Lookee here,” he said towards the window as he passed a comb through his prematurely thinning hair. “That's Whiteside's limo, isn't it?"
"The old man's slumming it tonight,” said Merrick McFee, the redheaded owner of the un-busy garage that abutted onto the restaurant at the west side.
"Friggin’ estate up at Wilson Lake is like a friggin’ foreign country,” said a hairy heavyweight called Buck Ash, loudly, from the corner table that he shared with Merrick McFee. “He gets louder by the beer,” people in the region said about Buck.
"Friggin’ estate is like a foreign country,” mimicked young Bobby Thompson from a table on the other side of the cash, loud enough for his fellow ne'er-do-well Geoff Farley to hear, but not loud enough for Buck Ash to overhear. Bravado was one thing; getting into a tangle with “the Buck” was quite another.
The back door of the white Lincoln opened, and Victor got out. As he entered the restaurant, all the regulars studied their food, or their beer, or each other, except for stolen glances at the un-rich outsider in the black bowling jacket.
Victor slumped onto a red vinyl stool at the Arborite counter, clacking his cast down on the counter, whereupon the proprietor, or at least the young man that Victor assumed was the proprietor, promptly walked off into the kitchen. It seemed odd, even rude, but Victor decided to just wait.
* * *
"Grant, are you there?” asked Helen into the mike on the dash.
"Eamer here,” said a voice over the radio. “I just flew back from the Oaks with Mr. O'Connor. What's up?"
"Victor Helliwell, the guy we met at the Oaks, he's in Ray's Restaurant on the 148, buying cigarettes. He's paranoid about security—he even talked to Mr. Whiteside about possibly getting whacked. We want to impress him. Take the chopper up and lead us in from here to the manor, okay?"
"Be there in about one-point-six minutes,” said the pilot.
* * *
"Pack of Rothmans,” said Victor politely as Ray returned to his post.
"On the wall, help yourself,” said the young boss from behind the counter. “You didn't see it?"
"I was...” Victor was going to say that he had seen the cigarettes, but decided against it. A wooden frame with twenty cubbyholes was mounted on the wall, and each slot had a different brand of smokes in it, all right out in the open, as if people could be trusted. He had never seen anything like that, not even during his pre-nicotine childhood. He picked a pack, tossed it casually onto the counter, and dug out his wallet with his good hand.
"How much?"
Twelve forty,” said Ray, with a straight face.
Now why on Earth would this fellow lie about the price of a pack of cigarettes? he wondered. Twelve forty?” he inquired. “They're only eleven eighty in Ottawa."
"Well,” said Ray, planting an elbow on the cash register, “if you head on down the highway east there for about half an hour, you can save yourself sixty cents. O’ course we got a ten percent discount if you're on welfare. You on the dole?"
Victor didn't look up from his wallet or hear anything out of the ordinary, but he knew that if he turned around quickly, he'd see a lot of concealed smirks. There was no welfare discount policy at Ray's, and the going price for a pack of cigarettes wasn't $12.40 either. This pretentious junior achiever was having him on.
"You work for Whiteside?” asked Ray as he scooped up the twenty Victor had slapped down, punched in $12.40, and dinged open the old-fashioned till.
"We're ... doing some business together,” said Victor, resenting the intrusive question.
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"Bust your wrist?” asked Ray as he placed $7.50 on the counter.
"Yeah,” said Victor as he retrieved his change and stood to leave. “I was parachuting, and I—uh—shouldn't that be seven sixty?"
"Dreadful sorry, my mistake,” deadpanned Ray as he fished out a dime from the till and flipped it at his customer.
Victor tried to catch the dime, missed, and trapped it under his shoe as it bounced on the linoleum floor. He bent over and picked it up, and now the snickers of the locals were no longer suppressed. “Mistake my ass,” he mumbled as he headed for the door.
"You're too fat to parachute,” volunteered old Jesse McCain from his table near the potato chip rack, under a framed photograph of last year's tractor-pull. “Too old, too."
"Well, maybe I fuckin’ lied,” spit Victor as he made good his escape.
"Nice move, Jesse,” scolded Claire Lapine, waitress extraordinaire.
"What?” protested Jesse toothlessly. “You—uh—trying to attract a better class of clientele?"
"He was on to you,” said Merrick McFee to Ray, ignoring the old coot by the chip rack. “He knew you overcharged him on purpose."
"No way,” laughed Ray.
* * *
As Victor jogged back to the waiting limo, he ripped the cellophane from the Rothmans package and stuffed the wrapping into the pocket of his bowling jacket. A day earlier and he would have littered, but now he was in with a non-littering crowd—a non-smoking crowd, too—and he had to make adjustments. He put the full pack of smokes into his shirt pocket, resolving not to light up until it was unequivocally kosher to do so.
He glanced up in the direction of an approaching helicopter, and got back into the passenger compartment with Whiteside and his son. “All set,” he said, meaning about the cigarettes. “There's a heli—” He stopped himself in mid-noun as he pulled the door closed—no sense acting paranoid.
"Whitebird Three to limo,” came Eamer's voice over the radio. “I've got you now."
"Lead us in, Grant,” said Helen into the mike.
"What's a Whitebird?” asked Victor.
"You said you wanted security,” said Randall, pointing out the window at the shiny white helicopter that was now hovering about five hundred yards in front of the limo.
Victor ducked his head down to see. The helicopter was turning and heading up the road in front of them, perhaps fifty yards above the asphalt. “Jeeze, you don't fool around!” he said.
The locals knew the Whiteside estate mostly as a lofty stone arch, a “fancy shmancy” security hut, and a very long and tall fence. In the winter, you could see a bit of the manor house through the bare trees, up on the hill, but in the summer, the black tip of a roof and the three chimneys were all that protruded above the green canopy. The property had been carefully assembled over nine decades by four generations of Whitesides, and by 2014, it encompassed more than twenty square miles. Most of it was bush, but two bankrupt family farms had recently been acquired, and rumor had it that these lands were destined to become a riding stable—an extremely private riding facility.
The fencing had only gone up in 2012, when there was some kind of burglary attempt that never quite made it into the papers, at least not in any detail. Since “the incident,” as it was usually called, the estate had been perceived in the region as a fortress. The unwritten rule for the uninvited seemed to be: “Please don't bother us—we don't bother you.” The Whitesides could be counted on to contribute to any local charity campaign, but apart from that, they didn't mix.
No one in the area knew how many people actually lived on the estate. The best guesses ran between twenty-five and thirty, if you included the security people. Aerial snapshots on the wall of the only barber in Quyon showed eight buildings close to the manor, plus an Olympic-sized pool. Then there was the sprawling log lodge, with a boathouse and a seaplane hangar, out at Wilson Lake. The grandeur of it all and the intentional social distance between the Whitesides and ordinary folks led to a profusion of apocryphal stories that surfaced every Saturday night at the British Hotel in Quyon; on other days at Ray's highwayside eatery.
The chauffeur executed a smooth turn onto the circular driveway in front of the manor. Two female Patriot agents stood by the stone arch over the entrance, waving the limo through with winning smiles.
"Female agents?” asked Victor.
"Smaller targets, bigger brains,” said Helen teasingly, with a glance into the rearview mirror for reactions.
Victor lowered his head to take in the full dimensions of the stone mansion. It had turrets, a triple garage, and a porch almost the size of his entire current—or rather his former—dwelling. So this is how the other .001 percent lives, he thought, how I'll live soon.
Victor wasn't much of a drinker, but he'd been coerced into a toast or three during the thirty-minute trip from Gatineau. He'd always wanted to have a drink in the back of a limo, with ice cubes, like they did in the movies, and he had enjoyed the company of Randall Whiteside and his son. He was surprised that they spoke so frankly, talked from the heart. The only people who had behaved that way towards him in the past dozen years had been hookers and drunks, in his taxi, and those types were a crushing bore ... in spite of their compulsive candor.
The glass partition between the front of the limo and the back compartment had been left down during the trip, and Helen Kozinski had seemed like one of the gang, raising her spill-proof coffee mug and joining in the celebrative toasts. Randall and Michael Whiteside had shown a genuine interest in Victor. They'd asked him questions—nothing too personal—the sort of questions that might come up during a round of golf, or at a cocktail party. It was a well-intentioned gesture, but Victor hadn't anticipated the problem.
"My life got sort of ... sidetracked,” he had been forced to admit. “Later,” he had finally promised, “I'll tell you all about myself later—what there is to tell."
"God, spring smells fantastic,” said Randall as he opened the back door of the limo and walked onto the wet, brown lawn. “You really know you're a part of nature when you can get your nose around it, I always say."
"It's true,” whispered Michael to Victor as they exited the other back door. “Dad always says that."
"Early spring this year,” said Helen as she got out and stretched her legs. “Must be that global warming thing."
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” squealed Julia as she skipped down the brick path from the house, her blond hair flying. “You said we could play ping-pong."
"Hah! I can beat you at ping-pong any old day,” Randall boasted as he swung his nine-year-old up to straddle his hip and planted a big, juicy kiss on her cheek. “But just one game and then you have to go to bed.” He burrowed a knuckle in her tummy until she pleaded for mercy, which didn't take long.
"Hi Daddy,” said Sarah as she held her face up to receive her kiss. “Hello,” she said to Victor, with a grown-up handshake. “My name is Sarah."
"Sarah, Julia, this is Victor Helliwell,” said Randall. “He'll be staying with us tonight, then he's going to live out at the lodge for a ... a while."
"Sarah is fourteen and I'm nine-and-a-half, almost ten,” Julia told the new person gleefully.
"Is Mr. O'Connor in the library, waiting?” Michael asked Sarah as they walked towards the mansion.
"Yeah,” said his sister. “He came up in the chopper, with a bunch of parcels from the Oaks for our mystery man ... Mr. Helliwell. Why? You don't even like Mr. O'Connor."
"Dad asked me to tell him about our new business venture,” he said proudly.
"What kind of business venture?” asked Sarah.
"Can't tell,” he boasted.
* * *
Cam O'Connor had been waiting in the study to talk to his boss. He was the chief executive officer of Patriot Security, 3,800 employees in North America alone, third largest of the companies that made up the Whiteside machine. His instructions had been to enhance security precautions at the manor and at the lodge. He'd done
that by phone; or rather he'd had it done, but it scraped his professional pride when he wasn't given the reason. It “bugged the shit out of him,” as he would express it to his wife, when Helen Kozinski knew what was going on and he didn't. “How the hell can I assess the risk unless I know what the situation is?” he grumbled at the study walls. It also bothered him that Randall had asked Helen to drive the limo back from the Oaks to the manor, and left him, Helen's superior, to return in the helicopter with Grant ... and with Victor's new clothes. “If the pay weren't so damned good,” he would complain most days when he got home from work, “I swear I'd..."
* * *
"My wife, Doreen,” said Randall as the group reached the front door of the mansion.
"Pleased to meet you ... Doreen,” said Victor. He'd been accustomed to using last names in the taxi trade, and his fares had been the full extent of his social interaction for twelve years. He felt like a teenager going to a friend's house to watch TV and meeting the mom. This first-name business will take some getting used to, he thought.
"Welcome to our home, Victor,” said Doreen Dawe-Whiteside. “I'd like you to meet Lucinda Tachita, our maid. She's one of the family, as we like to say. You'll want to freshen up while Julia gives her dad a good thrashing at ping-pong. Lucinda, would you show Victor up to his room?"
"I got white skin and yellow hair, and Lucinda has brown skin and white hair,” Julia informed the visitor.
Victor was deeply impressed by the Whiteside family, and by the subdued ostentation of the manor. This house had love ... and a carpeted, spiral staircase. Soon, he thought, I'll have a spiral staircase.
A pretty face suddenly appeared at an angle from a doorway down the hall. It hovered over the blue carpet, but the person it belonged to stayed out of sight behind the jamb. “Hi, I'm Becky,” the face said cheerfully. “I'm on the phone ... be out in a minute.” And then it disappeared.
"My girlfriend,” explained Michael. “Also one of the family ... sort of."
"I'm going to beat you today, Daddy,” laughed little Julia.
