by Jim Stark
"We'll have coffee and pecan pie in half an hour,” decreed Randall. “You got time for a shower if you like, Victor. Julia, I want to have a talk with Mr. O'Connor for a minute, and then I'll be down to the rec room to play ping-pong, okay? Thanks for understanding, hon. Michael, one hour, tops, if you want to join Cam and Helen and me for the talk with the lawyers."
Things always seemed to swing into action around Randall. Sarah went to the recreation room to help Julia get “warmed up” for the big game. Michael went to talk to his girlfriend, to explain that he had to participate in “some kind of meeting” later. Doreen went to check with the cook to make sure the pastries were in order, and Randall went into the study to mollify his security chief—the titular one.
Lucinda Tachita, the wrinkled Venezuelan maid that Mrs. Whiteside had been so careful to introduce by name, led Victor past paintings of look-alike ancestors, up the spiral staircase, and down a long, thickly-carpeted hall to a large guest room in the back corner of the house, overlooking a still-empty swimming pool. She fluffed up the pillows and generally made sure Victor knew where everything was.
"Call me if there's anything you need,” she said. “Just ring five on the intercom. I drew a nice hot bath for you. I figured you couldn't shower with that plaster cast on your arm. You don't have a problem with waterbeds?"
"No,” he said.
"Good then,” she blinked. “See you later. Coffee and pecan pie in half an hour ... and ice cream, if you want."
Victor could only nod his appreciation as Lucinda disappeared. He had no idea what to make of her, but at least she was real. I should have said thank you, he worried. God, I'm rusty at this.
It wasn't rust; it was inexperience. He used to have a life, sort of, a very long time ago, but he'd never had occasion to tickle a daughter or thank a loving wife for her understanding. He'd never split a gut with a son or scurried from an important meeting to attend a school recital. Even ping-pong was a game that other people played. Victor had never known “family” as these people did. It wasn't the opulence that threw him, the signs of wealth, but the wealth of emotion, the trust, the interdependence.
He found himself alone for the first time since his wait in the library of the Royal Oaks. He'd spent all of his time alone in recent years, by choice and of necessity—alone in his rented farmhouse or alone in the random company of cash fares. “I wonder who I'd be today if I'd been raised in an environment like this?” he said aloud. Now, at last, he would find out if the years of isolation and secrecy had been worth it.
The “room” he'd been assigned was more like a suite. It had a leather-covered bar, a four-poster waterbed, a sound system with quadraphonic speakers, a TV, a telephone, a Discman for private music or radio listening, a loaded iPod for private music listening, a writing desk with a computer, two easy chairs, two dresser drawers, one with an oval mirror on top, and on the wall were two Tom Thomsons—originals, he was sure. In the dressers he found socks, underwear, and sweaters, all brand new, and all his size. In the walk-in closet he found suits, sports jackets, shirts, and pants, also his size. He found belts and ties, even a trench coat. All the clothing was from the Royal Oaks pro shop, and had arrived aboard the Whiteside corporate helicopter ten minutes before the limo pulled up outside. In the private bathroom he found a variety of toilet articles, a pair of slippers, and a terrycloth bathrobe.
For a long moment, he stood in front of the sink, in front of the mirror, wondering how his image might change in the coming months, years. He couldn't stop thinking about the PC in the bedroom. In all those years out at his rented farmhouse, he had never dared send an email, never even dared to connect to the Internet, all to be sure that he was never traced, all so he could get to this point “unmurdered.” Ah well, he thought. That was then and this is now.
He closed the door to the bathroom, although he wasn't sure why, and had a leak. As he stood there, a smile crossed his mind as he thought about a plasticized card he used to hand out to his fares, to mask the fact that he knew when people told their lies (and to get bigger tips from nice people). “Your driver has Tourette's Syndrome,” the card read, “a rare medical condition that involves physical tics and causes sufferers to involuntarily blurt out swear words, racial slurs, sexual insults, or random exclamations like ‘yikes’ or ‘whoop.’ Those who have this disease do not mean to offend anybody. Most victims of Tourette's are unable to work because they feel too embarrassed and ashamed. Help Mr. Helliwell keep his job. Please try to understand and please be patient.” It seemed to have been signed by a doctor, but it was actually a forgery.
He remembered a snippy woman passenger, a lawyer, who had tried to pretend she was in the personal employ of the federal Minister of Justice. “Liar, whoop, bitch, slut,” Victor had blurted with a spastic jerking of his head. He recalled a large Italian man who had bragged, falsely, about his sexual exploits, all the way from the Ottawa International Airport to the Lord Elgin Hotel. “Jew-boy, faggot,” Victor had yelped. “Nigger, asshole, yikes,” he'd added for good measure.
All that is behind me now, he thought as he gave it a shake, zipped up and flushed. He didn't have to drive a taxi any more, and soon he wouldn't have to conceal his ability to distinguish truth from falsehood. The universe was unfolding as it had to. The “Helliwell effect,” as he had sometimes called it in the privacy of his old farmhouse, was about to slam into planet Earth.
He washed his hands and went back into the main room, closing the bathroom door behind himself to keep the heat in. He took off all his clothes and kicked them under a chair—force of habit. The steaming bath had looked inviting, but first, a wee nap, a few delicious asleep-at-the-wheel minutes while the ping-pong game raged below.
There was a puffy navy blue comforter on the bed, with pastel blue sheets showing, and matching pillowcases. He unfolded the top, crawled in, and pulled things up. The cool cotton sheets began to warm as he sucked in a jagged breath and let out a long, soul-satisfying yawn. It was 9:10 p.m.; about twelve hours since he had parked his cab for the absolute last time. He hadn't slept since 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday—yesterday evening. His eyes closed involuntarily, and the tensions flowed from his mind like an invisible column of electrons screaming skyward from the business end of a lightning rod.
THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2014
Chapter 3
THE WILSON LAKE BUBBLE
At ten o'clock the night before, Lucinda had listened at the door to Victor's room and heard him snoring, loudly. She had reported her findings to the boss, and he had decided about midnight that there was no reason to wake the man up.
Randall had been working with his two top legal advisers plus Cam and Helen, trying to rough out a contract for which the exact quid pro quo was unknown. It was difficult enough to get lawyers to agree without that sort of wrinkle. By 3:00 a.m., he had worn the lawyers down to where there was some prospect of success. Then it became a matter of translating principles and ideas into a binding text, and that meant Randall could get some shut-eye.
Now, morning had broken. Normally, he preferred to go to his office in the limo, a pleasant, fifty-minute drive, much of it through some of the prettiest farmland to be found anywhere in the world. It gave him a chance to read the paper and talk on the secure car phone without interruption. But today, such luxuries were unaffordable. He'd had only a few hours of sleep, and it was poor quality sleep, disturbed sleep, enough to recharge the batteries but not enough to let him feel truly energized. So this morning, he had the corporate pilot fly him to work in the Whitebird III. That way, he could get from his own back yard to the roof of the office in fifteen minutes flat.
He began his morning ritual—a series of short, sharp phone calls—from the sky, and as he spoke, he gazed out the window at Pontiac County, the largely English enclave at the western end of francophone Québec, “home” to the Whiteside clan since the time of his great-grandfather. He was on his third call by the time they crossed the Ottawa. The river looked like a conveyor belt for ice floes and
slush. Soon it would be sparkling blue, dotted with tilted white triangles and the widening V-wakes of motorboats. Finally, they flew over the awakening farms of Anglophone Ontario, the town of Carp, and descended towards the middle-class orderliness of Kanata, an offspring municipality, forever suckling the western end of the Canadian capital.
As they eased down onto the rooftop helipad, Randall enjoyed a sense of pride at the sight of the twelve-story office tower and the eighteen-acre plant, a complex that churned out high quality electronic products for the world and handsome profits for his family and the other shareholders. It had always surprised him that success had seemed easy, and yet it was a daily battle to ride the bleeding edge of an industry that tended to evolve faster than the trade literature could follow.
Once he was inside his corner office on the top floor, he tried to concentrate on the several dozen items that awaited his attention, but his mind was still reeling from the implications and possibilities that arose from his “discovery” of Victor Helliwell. He did get back to Senator Joe Cadbury, to thank him, and to apologize for not having done so last night. “He said you were the most honorable man he had ever analyzed,” Randall recounted to his old golf buddy. “He analyzed you right off the freaking TV."
Senator Joe already knew that Helliwell could detect lies over the media from his chat with the fellow, but he didn't realize that his fundamental character was laid bare as well. “Well, it's true that I don't ever lie,” he replied. “In public,” he added judiciously. “I always figured nobody's got a good enough memory to be a successful liar. And besides, Randall, I'm a Liberal. We take an oath never to lie unless it's absolutely convenient."
"Well,” chuckled Randall—he'd heard that quip before, “be that as it may, it was your integrity that prompted Mr. Helliwell to go through you to get to me. I owe you big time, as my son would say. How about I sell you ten thousand of my own WT shares at eighty-five dollars a pop—that's only a few points below market, but our stock should shoot up twenty or thirty percent in a month if this guy Helliwell is for real—maybe a lot more. Deal?"
"Deal,” said Senator Joe. “And thanks, Randall."
"No no no,” insisted Randall. “No thanks needed. I owed you that, old friend. Let's just hope for both our sakes it all works out."
Apart from that transaction, Randall's morning was a bust. When he hung up, he pushed his secretary's button on the intercom. “Sandra, hold my calls, okay?"
"Except for the call about the contract,” she said.
"Oh yeah,” he remembered. “Right."
He felt embarrassed whenever Sandra did that. She didn't ask it; she said it, he thought. His memory wasn't what it used to be, and it bothered him that other people seemed to know this.
He settled back into his chair, swiveled towards the window, and clasped his hands across his round belly, hooking his thumbs under his belt buckle. I didn't forget that I was waiting for the call from the lawyers, but I did forget to mention it. I wonder why that didn't click in? I could rationalize it by saying that I assumed she knew I meant “with the exception of the call from the lawyers,” but if I'd said that to Helliwell, he'd have known it wasn't true. I just forgot ... and I wouldn't have forgotten a few years ago.
How does that happen—that things we know get filed in our brains in such a way that they don't get recalled when they're needed? For that matter, I wonder how things get filed away such that they can't be accessed at all, even when we try hard to remember. They're not gone, surely. They're ... what ... buried in the subconscious mind? I never found out what exactly that was, the subconscious mind. Last I heard the shrinks didn't have much of a clue themselves as to what it was. They only knew that it was there, that they could get in there and haul stuff out, using hypnosis. Young science, psychology! I wonder if this new skill that Helliwell has will change that discipline?
I wonder how history would have turned out if this ability to detect lies had been discovered a long time ago? Maybe there wouldn't have been a World War II if Hitler had been caught lying back in the 1930s. I wonder if people would be different today if Helliwell had come onto the scene ten or fifteen years ago? We're going to have to do some research on these questions.
Randall sat there for more than an hour, wandering through the past in his mind and wondering about everything from his career to Cold War II, trying to imagine the impact that Helliwell's skill might have had if it had existed long ago. Part of him still couldn't believe that the taxi driver was genuine, but he hadn't missed a single item that had been thrown at him in the library of the Royal Oaks. It just can't be, he thought as he rubbed his tired eyes, and yet...
Finally, at 11:04 a.m., the intercom brought him the news that he'd been waiting for. The legal text was done, he was told, and it would take maybe two more hours for word processing and a final legal verification.
That was enough to kick-start his second wind. The fatigue began to melt away as the thrill of the kill stirred in his veins. Soon he would know the secret of Victor's amazing ability, and one minute after that, barring unforeseen circumstances, he'd master that skill for himself, to the everlasting chagrin, he swore, of cheats, liars and assorted terrorists the world over.
He dialed home, chewing aggressively on a toothpick as he waited. He was surprised when his chief of security answered—not the titular one, the real one. “Helen?” he said. “You're still at the manor?"
"Doreen's in the kitchen talking to Victor. He slept in. Julia calls him Rip Van Winkle, and he's being a good sport about it. She really likes him. I'm driving him out to the lodge in a few minutes—that's if I can get Julia to let go of his leg."
"Good stuff,” Randall laughed. “I'll be coming to the lodge in the chopper about one or two o'clock, with the contract, but don't tell Victor, okay? He doesn't expect it until this evening."
"Well, okay, but if he asks I can't lie to him, eh?” said Helen.
Randall shook his head and realized again how much was about to change because of this taxi driver. “I ... suppose you're right about that."
* * *
While Helen was in the study taking the call from Randall, Doreen had explained the Patriot facts of life to Victor. Yes, Mr. O'Connor was the chief executive officer of the security firm, and yes, he and Randall were—or had been—close friends. But Helen Kozinski was the operational chief of security, the person Randall really depended upon and trusted. Yes, it was complicated, but Randall's sense of loyalty was such that a convoluted chain of command was preferable to the alternative—letting him go. Cam O'Connor had effectively been “kicked upstairs” a few years back, but he still managed to show up on site whenever a real problem emerged—like he did last night at the Royal Oaks. No, Helen wasn't upset, but no, she didn't exactly like it either.
"Just play along,” was Doreen's advice to Victor. “Treat Mr. O'Connor with the respect he demands, but if the chips are down, call Helen."
* * *
"The Patriot compound is just over that hill,” said Helen from behind the wheel of the jeep as she drove Victor out the back gate of the manor and onto a winding dirt road that led into the bush. “You can't see it from the manor, but it's quite a big installation. There's a very sophisticated communications center, a garage, training facilities, and sleeping quarters for twenty or so people. There's even a small house in there, just for Mr. O'Connor."
Victor nodded and looked admiringly at her long blond hair as it fluttered in the cool spring air. He also copped a quickie peek at her breasts, which bobbed and jiggled beneath her khaki shirt with every bump in the trail. It bothered him that his body wanted to turn Helen into a sex object. But then I'm not responsible for my every feeling, he thought, and I have been alone for an awfully long time, and I don't live to be politically correct, and ... straighten up, he scolded himself. And he did, or tried to.
The top was off the jeep, and again he had that feeling of being a little boy, this time being taken to summer camp. He then found himself wond
ering about Randall's apparent preference for female security agents, and the thought crossed his mind that perhaps it might be something more than a professional decision. It doesn't bother me that Randall might be boinking some of his staff, he thought, but once everyone has access to the truth ... well, that could come out, and there would be a lot of trouble.
"Nice country, eh?” said Helen as the bare branches closed in momentarily overhead.
"Beautiful,” replied Victor.
"Julia really likes you. She sure had a lot of fun giving you a hard time about sleeping in ... calling you Rip Van Winkle and all that."
"She's a sweetie,” said Victor. “Is she—uh—I mean...?"
"Yeah,” said Helen, “she's mentally challenged. She goes to a special school a few hours a day."
Victor let a few seconds pass by as he struggled with the question that was really on his mind. He didn't like to pry, and he didn't like using his special advantage to find things out, but he was concerned about security, and he felt it was important to ask.
"Cam O'Connor,” he said bluntly. “Can he—uh—be trusted?"
"I ... think so,” said Helen, with a hesitancy that revealed more than it concealed. She couldn't lie to Victor, and yet she couldn't exactly tell the whole truth either, lest she endanger her job. “We do all we can to assure ourselves on that score, but there's a limit to what we can know about anyone—or at least there was until you came along. We figured maybe you would help us pick up on any problems, if there are any, regarding our people. We—uh—don't get along all that well, Mr. O'Connor and I,” she added.
Pretty long way of not saying “yes," he thought. I wonder what it is about Mr. O'Connor they're concerned about?
Victor didn't care too much for the human race, and the side of the beast that deceived and conspired ... well, he preferred to not even read about that, let alone discuss it. He realized he'd brought the subject up himself, but to be asked to participate in this world of suspicion and intrigue—that was the last thing he wanted. He thought of the words to an ancient song that used to be a favorite of his, from way back in the 1960s, before he was born—or was it the 1970s? "Paranoia strikes deep," he remembered ” ... into your heart it will creep ... it starts when you're always afraid ... da da da da, the man come and take you ay-way.” What was that anyway? Oh, yeah—"step out of line, the man come..."
