Bitter Paradise

by Ross Pennie

  A shiver pierced Hosam’s shoulders. “The guy must be into some pretty nasty stuff.”

  “Unpleasant enough,” Ibrahim admitted.

  “And reckless. Carrying out such a brutal knifing in public? No mask or disguise? That was crazy.”

  Ibrahim nodded. “Out of his mind, over-the-top crazy. And slashing Marwan’s throat? Mother of God, the boss must be furious. He would never have ordered that type of hit. I could understand a warning cut on Marwan’s arm. But not cold-blooded murder in front of witnesses. Ghazwan is done for. The Caliph will see to it. No doubt about it.”

  Hosam felt the familiar boulder roll in the pit of his stomach. He thought he had left that ominous rock behind seven months ago when he and Leila and Omar had boarded the aircraft in Istanbul bound for Toronto. “You are saying Marwan’s knifing was ordered?”

  Ibrahim raised his eyebrows. “But Ghazwan went overboard. The big man must be pissed about getting so much attention from the cops. After all, the Caliph is first and foremost a businessman. I’m sure he only wanted to send us a little warning.”

  Hosam gulped down some tea, but it did nothing to alleviate the dread crammed into his belly. “Us?”

  “Everyone at the shop. The Caliph wants us to remember that he owns Paradise Barbers, that we work for him, that we do what he says. He gave me a clean job.”

  “Meaning?”

  Ibrahim picked a falafel from this plate, studied it, then set it down. It looked tired and stale. Last week’s fare. “I . . . I look after the place and provide him with the cover he needs — a place for his money and his guys to look legit. To . . . you know, hide in plain sight.”

  Hosam felt a flicker of understanding. “You mean, you help him launder the proceeds from his other . . . business endeavours?”

  There was little ambiguity in Ibrahim’s shrug. The look on the man’s face was enough to explain the recent purchase of titanium haircutting shears for every barber in the shop — each a five-hundred-dollar “gift” from “a grateful boss.” In reality, they were strings-attached tokens from the elusive Syrian everyone referred to as the Caliph.

  Hosam churned his tabbouleh with his fork. His suspicions of money laundering confirmed, there was no way he could stomach any more of his salad. “You have met the Caliph?”

  “Oh no. No one sees him. Everyone deals only with his messengers. Rumour has it he’s missing an eye and stays hidden so he doesn’t appear vulnerable. But I think that’s a bullshit story. When you’re ordering rough guys around, it pays to create a little mystique.”

  “By rough guys, you mean kids like Marwan who do extra jobs for —”

  Ibrahim raised his hand and looked around again. “Marwan wanted out. No more dirty jobs.” His face crumpled. “He has been dating a Canadian girl. And he likes being a barber.”

  “And so?”

  Ibrahim grabbed a napkin and dabbed the sweat on his brow. “The Caliph knows that if he lets you go, eventually you will squeal. Especially if, like Marwan, you belonged to the wrong faction back home.”

  Over a couple of beers, Marwan had broken the unwritten rule and confided to Hosam that at the start of the Syrian civil war he had belonged to the since-disbanded Farouq Brigades. A ragtag rebel group with allegiance to no one, the Brigades had created havoc inside the country. Marwan’s rebellious involvement, no matter how idealistic, had marked him as a government target. His parents insisted he leave the country before he was arrested, tortured, and executed by President Bashar al-Assad’s henchmen.

  After a few more beers, Marwan had told Hosam that he was being coerced into doing increasingly disagreeable favours for the Caliph. According to Marwan, the Caliph had been active with the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian civil war faction whose kidnapping, torture, and summary executions of Syrian civilians were legendary. Any reference to al-Nusra made Hosam’s palms run with sweat. If any of what Marwan said was true, Hosam could only imagine the lies a brute like the Caliph had concocted to win himself asylum in Canada.

  Ghazwan had given Hosam a pointed looked as he wiped the bloodied bowie knife on Marwan’s chair. That look was now making sense: with Marwan out of commission, the Caliph was likely to contact Hosam with a “request” for a job. At first, it might be couched as an innocent favour. But any relationship Hosam would have with the Caliph would end in a prison or a morgue.

  His chances of requalifying as a surgeon and practising in Canada were about to vaporize in a cloud of smoke. The Caliph was poised to smash his dreams into smithereens. The al-Nusra bomb that had exploded through the roof of his parents’ house in Aleppo had done the same. Warlords like the Caliph had left nothing of his mom, his dad, or his sweet, eight-year-old Farah to commit to sacred ground.

  Hosam’s mouth filled with bile.

  Chapter 4

  By three thirty that Friday afternoon, Zol figured if he didn’t get fifteen minutes alone — just fifteen little minutes — he was going to explode. He pictured the mess: blood, guts, and neurons spattered over every square centimetre of his new office. And what a pity. He’d worked so hard for the promotion that came with the picture window, the bleached birch panelling, and the orthopedic chair that was perfect for his long, achy back. He shuddered as he sensed his dad shaking his head and muttering from his workshop in the sky. Even in the Hereafter, Dad’s accent was undiminished: “I always was tell you, Zoltan. Be careful what you wishing for.”

  At least he’d got Max squared away. The Emerg staff had Max’s skull X-rayed and his forehead stitched within two hours of their arrival. And now, he and Travis were “chilling” at home. They were debriefing in the best way they knew how: playing an absorbing game of Fortnite on Max’s PlayStation 4. Zol offered to spend a fatherly afternoon deconstructing the barbershop trauma with the boys, but they made it clear they’d rather be in the company of the heroes and villains of Battle Royale. He wondered whether he should arrange to have them talk to a counsellor about this incident or wait and see if they had nightmares or flashbacks.

  He figured watchful waiting would be best for now. Both kids were nothing if not resilient. Was there a better quality a father could foster in a son facing the future challenges of climate change, massive refugee migration, and unpredictable populist politicians? Well yes, a heavy dose of compassion was also essential. Was he was modelling that well enough for Max? Tasha certainly was. He could feel himself smiling in spite of himself. It took little imagination for him to conjure the sandalwood-scented warmth of her beneath the goose-down duvet she’d given him as a pre-wedding gift.

  He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. From underneath his treasured copy of Sir William Osler’s The Principles and Practice of Medicine — an 1899 edition bound in brown leather and worn at the edges — he fished out his briar wood pipe, tobacco pouch, and brushed brass Zippo. Sir William would have appreciated the hiding place. The great physician had indulged. A lot. A good pipeful helped him think, he’d insisted. And allowed him to keep his head, weigh the evidence, and help others see reason, the prerequisites of any medical man facing a crisis.

  Shoving his smoking stuff into his suit jacket pockets, Zol glared at the phone on the desk. Paperwork had almost buried it. Daring the cursed thing to ring before he made his escape, he strode to the coat rack by the door and grabbed his hat — a black Stetson he’d bought at the Calgary airport last summer. He and Max had flown out west to Alberta. And had a blast doing their single-father-early-teenage-son thing at the Stampede and the Badlands. Was that only ten months ago? It felt a helluva lot longer. And in a safer time.

  He looped a cotton scarf around his neck to counter the chilly May winds that had superseded this year’s overheated April. He tugged the Stetson’s brim as low over his forehead as it would it go and headed for the back stairs. Anyone who wanted a piece of him would have to wait fifteen minutes.

  He walked across Concession Street and opened the rear do
or of the Nitty Gritty Café. Without stepping inside, he knocked three times and waved a greeting to the barista. Then he walked to the grassy vacant lot conveniently adjacent to the café’s nonsmoking patio and sat at the beaten-up table he’d found at a flea market. Here, the leafy limestone Niagara Escarpment sliced its way through the city only steps away, its rocky precipice protected by a fence. Hamilton’s downtown core, lakeside suburbs, and rusting steelworks were spread below him like a 3D map. On the horizon to the left, Toronto’s over-priced condos and cocky CN Tower flashed in the crisp sunshine. To the right, the Falls at Niagara thundered unseen and unheard in the far distance.

  Marcus, the café’s ginger-bearded owner and barista, wasted no time in bringing Zol his usual to the makeshift patio. A large double latte. Guatemalan beans. An extra splash of cream, no sugar. Marcus had been particularly attentive lately. He understood Zol’s heavy burden in the face of the city’s first polio epidemic in sixty-four years. So far, two deaths and three cases of total-body paralysis. Dozens of emotional stories had been flooding the Hamilton Spectator and the TV news, many of them chastising Zol for not ending the crisis as soon as it started.

  He pulled his pipe, pouch, and lighter from his jacket and set them on the table beside the steaming mug. Provincial laws said you couldn’t smoke on café patios but made no reference to vacant lots. He’d taken up smoking only a month ago, though he’d had a lot of experience with tobacco. As a boy, he’d learned the knack of packing his father’s after-dinner pipe exactly the way Dad liked it. Tobacco had to be sprinkled, not dumped, into a pipe’s chamber. And it had to be tamped to the proper density. If you pressed too hard, the pipe wouldn’t draw. Too lightly, and the tobacco would burn too quickly — all flame and no smoke. The novelty of preparing his dad’s pipe without being allowed more than an occasional puff himself wore off by the time he became a teenager. But it was a skill he’d mastered and retained. Like setting acres of tobacco leaves on wooden laths and hefting them into the drying kilns on his parents’ tobacco farm, an hour’s drive south of the city. One long, stifling summer after another.

  Feeling the bite of the afternoon’s burgeoning cold front, he tugged his scarf tighter around his neck then flicked open his Zippo. He waved the lighter’s flame in a circular motion over the tamped tobacco and took short puffs on the pipe. A few strands glowed, swelled, and unravelled in the short-lived flame of the customary “charring light.”

  He pressed the blackened strands gently with his finger and applied the Zippo’s flame a second time. A few puffs later, he was basking in the sensuousness of the smoke. The sun winked at him from the mirrored surface of Lake Ontario on the far side of the city, and an orchestral version of “Rêverie” by Claude Debussy filled his brain with its glorious, sinuous melody. He sat back, breathed deeply, and let his late mother’s favourite musical piece waft through him without the benefit of a PA system, a radio, or any other device. His neurologist had an explanation for this tech-free phenomenon: post-concussion synesthesia. A blow to the head a few years back had crossed a bunch of wires in his brain. He’d slipped on a patch of ice, bashed his head on the sidewalk, and woken up in a hospital bed with a new set of pathways linking his sense of smell to his hearing. Strong scents conjured musical sound bites so vivid they sounded like the real thing. Cumin summoned Miley Cyrus, cardamon brought on k.d. lang. The sensation happened less frequently now than it used to. Céline Dion had finally stopped bellowing “My Heart Will Go On” every time he brewed a pot of coffee.

  As the orchestra played in his head, he realized he hadn’t felt this relaxed in weeks. Had someone spiked his pouch with marijuana? For a moment, he wondered if Tasha, tired of his recent moodiness, had slipped him some weed. Like him, his fiancée supported Parliament’s move to get recreational pot use out in the open by legalizing it. But as public health professionals, Zol and Tasha knew that weed was going to preoccupy their working lives for years to come. On the home front, getting stoned wasn’t for either of them. He was content with numbing his brain with pipe tobacco and a single malt Scotch. Tasha usually stuck to white wine. As for fourteen-year-old Max, Zol was almost certain he hadn’t yet tried dope. Although . . . perhaps he was just an earnest dad who was kidding himself.

  The Debussy lasted longer than his usual crossed-wire snippets of synesthesia, and by the time the piece had finished he’d smoked his pipe down to the dottle. As he was about to clear the spent tobacco from the chamber, his cellphone chirped. It was a call from a number he didn’t recognize. He ignored it and tapped the pipe against the ashtray. The chirping stopped then restarted a moment later. The same local number lit the screen. Still, he ignored it, frustration and resentment intruding on his tenuous state of tobacco-induced contentment. Whoever it was should bloody well have the courtesy to stop calling and leave a voicemail.

  The phone rang a third time. Same number. As he reached for the power-off button, curiosity overtook him and he stabbed the bright green icon. “Szabo here.”

  “Darling. I was afraid you’d never pick up.”

  “Tasha? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m in the principal’s office.”

  “Don’t you have your cell?”

  “Long story. Mrs. Simon just collapsed at her desk. She looks awful. I called 911. I need you to come down here.”

  “Me?” He hadn’t touched a patient in years. “The paramedics will take care of her. I’d just be in the way.”

  “You have to see what I found.”

  “What?”

  “Zol, you have to see this for yourself.”

  She’d hit pay dirt at the elementary school? “Tell me, Tasha. What is it?”

  “Bring N-95 masks, gloves, Tyvek coveralls, and shoe covers. Everything’s in the tall cupboard in my office.”

  “Give me a hint?”

  She paused for a moment, then told him, “Think Central America. And I’m not talking honeymoon.”

  Chapter 5

  Zol pulled into the parking lot inside the grounds of Cathcart Street Elementary School. He’d expected to see the ambulance dispatched for Mrs. Simon, but the only vehicle in sight was a grey Ford Taurus hugging the chain-link fence at the rear of the lot. Hamilton’s first responders were either particularly efficient today or dangerously slow. He hoped it was the former.

  It struck him that the school — three storeys of dusty-rose brick, green aluminum siding, and sleek windows — was the most well-kept building in Beasley. The otherwise exhausted-looking neighbourhood, sandwiched between the lake and the city’s downtown office blocks, was a community of potholed streets, crumbling sidewalks, and scruffy houses. Almost every place needed fresh paint and major yardwork. On the way in, he’d passed the Good Shepherd Food Bank, the Salvation Army centre for the homeless, and rows of subsidized townhouses.

  As he opened the rear door of his minivan to retrieve the personal protective gear Tasha had asked for, a Saab 9-3 pulled cautiously through the opening in the fence. Behind the wheel was an anxious-looking Dr. Hamish Wakefield, Zol’s best friend. A specialist in infectious diseases, and an assistant professor at Caledonian University’s medical school, Hamish had a serious case of obsessive compulsion. More a character trait than an illness, his compulsions manifested most acutely at the car wash. Until recently, Hamish’s Saab got sprayed and buffed at least half a dozen times a week, especially in the winter. Not even the Swedes had been able to formulate a paint that could stand such a beating. But since his beau, Al Mesic, had come into Hamish’s life, the frequency of the car wash visits had tapered dramatically. Today, the car looked brand new. Either he’d traded his old one in for another of the same year and model, or he’d had it repainted. Hamish was colourblind and would have no idea that his precious vehicle was now the blue-grey hue of a stinky blue cheese, something he detested. He hated the idea of eating mould, no matter how exotic or expensive a form it took.

  Hamish s
traightened his tie in the rearview mirror and ran a hand across his always-perfect blond flattop. It seemed that fussing with his hair took Hamish’s mind off his diminutive stature. Poor guy was only five-foot-three. Zol had him beaten by almost a foot. No one ever said it, but they did sort of look like that magician duo from Las Vegas, Penn & Teller.

  Hamish got out of the car and locked the doors. He clicked the fob four more times as he looked around him. It wasn’t just his obsessions that were making him anxious. The Saab had been stolen in this part of town once before. Of course, he’d had it professionally fumigated after the police returned it to him more or less untouched.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly, Hamish.”

  “Anything more from Natasha? I hope this isn’t going to be a waste of time.”

  “Whatever it is, she wants us to see it for ourselves.”

  “I’m not counting on any breakthroughs.”

  “As Professor Romero used to say, ‘It behooves us to keep the eyes wide —’”

  Hamish rolled his eyes as he completed the dictum, “‘— and the mind open.’ Yes, I know.”

  A decade ago, they’d shared four years of medical school at the University of Toronto. There was no denying that Hamish’s success as a genius clinician at a tertiary-care hospital — and Zol’s advancement as a public health physician — owed a lot to Dr. Romero’s pithy tidbits.

  Zol shifted the box of protective gear in his arms and closed the rear door of his dusty, aged Toyota. When they reached the school’s main door, Zol motioned for Hamish to push the buzzer. “Tasha says she’ll let us in. They keep the doors locked.”