Whipped

by William Deverell

  I have not seen the Lincoln Navigator wander by since its last brief visit, on July 7, when its passenger, who remains a mystery woman, tried to rouse the absent Mr. Sabatino.

  The prints of my photographs of her and the driver are sharp and clear, despite being blown up. What is interesting (and becomes more interesting as you read on) is that detectives in the Surete’s organized crime unit failed to identify them as known Mafia figures. One officer said they looked “vaguely familiar,” but that was it.

  Enter Harvey Plouffe. And here I gratefully pause to blow out a plume of fragrant smoke from my Escepcion. (I confess I became addicted when you sent me to Cuba: the Narvaez case — you remember that? — death by exploding cigar. I must have visited fifty cigar factories.)

  M. Plouffe, the steady customer of Svetlana Glinka whom I mentioned in my last report, took me to lunch at an expensive restaurant in the Old City. He insisted on paying. He is of the moneyed class — an inheritance, I gathered. A plump, rose-cheeked fellow of almost unchecked amiability.

  I had to confess to him that my interest in bondage-dominance was purely intellectual, but he was quite accepting of that — indeed intrigued that, as a private investigator, I was looking into Ms. Glinka’s disappearance. He took no issue with my being bound by confidentiality as to my employer.

  M. Plouffe is gay and he’s well out of the closet. He is out, as well, as an aficionado of BDSM, and openly espouses it as therapy.

  He too had enjoyed Ms. Glinka’s strokes — the “delightfully erotic shiver that comes with anticipation of pain,” as he vividly put it. He admitted to no clear understanding of his need for this, though he mentioned strict, religious parenting and “une montagne” of guilt.

  He believed he was Ms. Glinka’s favourite. They would chat “like old girlfriends” after sessions, and she shared something of her history. Born in Moscow, entered the sex trade as a teen, arrived in Montreal a decade ago in response to an internet marriage proposal. After getting her papers, she left her husband and went back to the work she knew: call girl, madam, finally graduating to her specialty of the last several years.

  M. Plouffe had a regular weekly slot with her, Tuesdays at four in the afternoon, and would usually stroll there from his home in the Gay Village. But on Tuesday, June 4, he slowed his pace on seeing a small white van parked out front, and a man and woman carting heavy cardboard boxes from her home. They had a key to the door, and locked it, then loaded the van and drove off. There was no sign of Ms. Glinka or her car.

  M. Plouffe had no idea who these two persons were but recognized them from my photographs of July 7: the moustachioed heavyweight behind the wheel of the Lincoln Navigator, the tall brunette who tried Mr. Sabatino’s door. This is the same couple Ms. Litvak observed at Dorval. Farquist’s lawyers are using the Puhl Detective Agency and I hope to confirm that the couple in question work for it. Sam Puhl himself is likely running the show. I worked with him a few years ago on a corporate fraud matter. He must be doing well to use a pricey Lincoln as his ghost car.

  Back to June 4. After the couple drove off, M. Plouffe called Ms. Glinka’s unlisted number and left a message. She never called back. (“I am bereft,” he said.)

  Her landlord, the estimable Rocky Rubinstein, has subsequently confirmed that her suite is empty except for furniture and some clothing. The tools of her trade are gone. As is her phone, voice recorder, computer equipment, and files. Clearly, the couple observed by M. Plouffe were tasked to remove all records that might connect the Hon. Emil Farquist to Ms. Glinka.

  Doubtless, the terms of the deal to buy Ms. Glinka’s silence required her to spill all the beans, including admitting to sharing the Farquist tape with Lou Sabatino. And so Mr. Farquist’s agents have been prowling the neighbourhood in their big SUV looking for him. To try to buy him off? To question him? to threaten him? or worse?

  If they do locate him, and if they learn he copied the video, is it conceivable they would weigh solving their Sabatino problem by tipping off the Mafia? I doubt George Cowper Jr., QC, would go so far, but one of Mr. Farquist’s devoted minions might not be as scrupulous.

  It is therefore ever more vital to locate the poor fellow. His wife, Celeste, might know his haunts, but she may be almost as hard to find. His parents are deceased, and he has just one sibling, an older sister, Antonia Colombo.

  Her husband’s uncle, Nick Giusti, has recently been done in by the Mafia, so when I talked to her she was nervous, though cooperative, and in much distress over her brother’s disappearance. She was of little help, other than to connect me with Sabatino’s wife’s father, Simon Brault, a mining supervisor living in Rouyn-Noranda.

  M. Brault had earlier, by phone, declined my request to visit, but relented when your office called with our scripted white lie — that I was investigating Mr. Sabatino’s disappearance on behalf of his co-workers in the media.

  M. Brault is francophone but perfectly bilingual, a brusque fellow and not fond of his son-in-law, who made an impromptu visit to his home on Sunday, June 9, while on a quest to locate his family.

  That is the last time that Mr. Sabatino surfaced. M. Brault believes he’s suicidal — at one point he apparently jumped into the lake outside their home. My notes read: “His funeral ain’t going to attract any vast throngs.”

  I finally persuaded M. Brault to connect me with Celeste Sabatino who, it turns out, is living in Calgary with her sister, Lucille. He telephoned Celeste and explained to her my mission. I spoke to her briefly and won her permission to visit.

  So far, Mr. Sabatino hasn’t shown up there, which seems surprising, and adds to my foreboding about his prospects for survival. Mind you, no bodies have been found, and the Mafia usually does its work openly. But if they do dispatch him, our tasks become very difficult indeed.

  For what it’s worth, I have a jump on the opposition. It appears that neither M. Brault nor his daughter have been visited by any detectives from the Puhl agency, so it’s unlikely they know the couple has split up.

  Now I have wasted half that Escepcion — still burning but with a thick curl of ash — and allowed my wine to lose its chill.

  Au revoir, my friend.

  Francisco

  THE SIERRA FILE

  Tuesday, August 13

  Dear Arthur,

  I am sorry I missed you in Calgary, where you had a chambers motion to speak to, but on winding up my tasks there, I caught a flight back to Montreal.

  Let me encapsulate my visit to Mrs. Celeste Sabatino. She and her children are temporarily with her sister, Lucille Wong, and her spouse, Langston Wong, a geophysical engineer, in a ranch-style home in Upper Mount Royal, a prosperous Calgary neighbourhood. Lisa, eight, and Logan, six, were in school when I came by. The Wongs are childless. Langston Wong was at work.

  Though alerted by her father to expect me, Mrs. Sabatino seemed wary of me until satisfied I was who I am. Apparently some noxious fellow has been trying to lure children from school playgrounds in Calgary — it’s been in the news.

  Mrs. Sabatino’s sister was a soothing presence during my interview, and helped Celeste open up. A fetching woman, Celeste, as blunt in speech as her dad, she has taken on part-time work as a designer for a downtown dress shop.

  She hadn’t been aware her spouse had been laid off. She confessed to being worried about him and feeling guilty about her manner of leaving him. “I just had to escape from that shitty, cold flat. Even the mice were shivering.”

  And she needed a break from Lou, who kept “dragging me down with his paranoia and gloomy vibes.” He had been more of a husband to his computer than her.

  She conceded that he wasn’t at fault for his dire situation as a hunted man. Indeed, she had been proud of him for breaking the Waterfrontgate story.

  And she ruefully admitted that her children missed him, for he’d been a loving, considerate father. “If only he wasn’t such a .
. .”

  An incomplete sentence, but her lips seemed to frame the word “twerp.”

  She is shrewd, and at one point tested me with: “This [my investigation] wouldn’t have something to do with that vile dominatrix living below us?”

  Lucille commented: “Yes, isn’t that so weird, it’s all over the news.”

  Celeste said of Ms. Glinka: “I thought she was a poseur, une vache. The noise they made!”

  I hedged by saying I was interested in Svetlana only insofar as she had also strangely disappeared, at about the same time as Lou.

  Celeste: “I hope she didn’t get him involved in something.”

  We let it go at that. Celeste promised to alert me if Lou made contact. I tried to assure her that the absence of any calamitous news about him showed he was alive and, hopefully, well.

  My interview ended when Mrs. Sabatino apologized for having to run off to take her turn as a voluntary guard at her children’s schoolyard. (Several children at various Calgary schools have been approached by this suspected pedophile, but none molested.)

  The ambivalence that Celeste displayed about her husband hints there is hope for reconciliation. If only I could reunite them — that might persuade him to do the right thing by Margaret.

  I spent the entire last week in Calgary, which, despite the downturn in the energy sector, was bustling, its inhabitants friendly and accommodating. But of course I felt the general anxiety about the schoolyard prowler.

  The other topic on most lips is Farquist v. Blake, and while the minister is widely supported, there were doubters, one of whom provided an enlightening background on Mr. Farquist.

  Before introducing him, let me say I have spent far too much time in fruitless research into the plaintiff’s background. There is not much of value in the public record beyond the oft-repeated mention of his mother’s tragic suicide — it appears in his surprisingly brief Wikipedia entry, which focuses on his degrees and accomplishments, his political history.

  Work has been his mistress all his life, and he has never married, though he has had relationships with women. Perhaps the trauma of his broken-hearted mother’s suicide deterred him from seeking a bride.

  Assembling all the bits and pieces, I have this: his father, the late Dr. Sandor Farquist, fled from Communist Hungary during the revolt of 1957. His original surname was Farkas but on adopting a new country he adopted a new surname. He studied economics in the States and Canada, taught it in Calgary, and was a prominent polemicist of the Right.

  Sandor Farquist remained a bachelor until 1969, when he married Lee Watters, a grade school teacher — he was 44, she half his age. She took his name on marriage. Emil was born in 1971, their only child. They divorced eight years later. Sandor remarried; Lee did not. He died of a stroke some time ago at 77.

  Emil remained with his mother until she died at 40 of a barbiturate overdose. He was 18. Accounts describe him as having braved this loss, but there are hints he suffered severe depression. However, during the next several years, he buckled down, emerging at 25 from the University of Chicago with a Ph.D. in economics.

  By the time he was 35, Farquist was chief economist for Mobil Canada, and went on to the Bow River Institute, rising through the ranks from Senior Staff Fellow to Executive Director. He then turned to politics, and the rest we know. Or think we know.

  I expect, Arthur, you have read about Dr. Alfred J. Scower’s recent forced resignation as executive director of the Bow River Institute. He is now regarded by former conservative colleagues as a black sheep, or perhaps a green one, because of his evolving views on conservation and climate change.

  Dr. Scower is soon off to Edmonton to teach a fall semester, and when we met at his Calgary home, I found it full of packing boxes. He is a big, ruddy, amiable man in his late sixties, and quick of mind. My lame explanation for wanting to see him was shredded before I could utter it.

  “You’re working for Margaret Blake, I suppose.”

  To have pretended otherwise would have been foolish, especially since Dr. Scower didn’t try to conceal his delight in her public shaming of Farquist, whom he suspected of influencing the Institute’s board to cashier him.

  He holds some admiration for your wife but has little good to say about Farquist, under whom he worked for several years as a Senior Fellow.

  He went on at length about our opponent’s political sins and seemed particularly upset by what he called his “wheedling” to win cabinet approval of the Coast Mountains Pipeline.

  That approval came only four days after a Russian consortium bought into Coast Mountains Pipeline Corporation. A mere 5 percent stake but worth close to a billion dollars.

  My notes read: “Stinks to high heaven. Russians? Those thugs have got more petro resources than they know what to do with.”

  He was helpful with Mr. Farquist’s personal history, though he regretted that much of it was anecdotal. “It was known that Emil regularly had a physical therapist come by his home [in Calgary]. Office gossip had him enjoying a little sex with it. Maybe it was something different.”

  I append several more quotes from our taped conversation:

  “He never talked about his mother’s death — or about her at all. It was as if he’d repressed it, buried it.” But clearly hers was not a blissful marriage.

  Lee Watters had just got her teaching certificate when she met Emil’s father. “She was quite the beauty, and deeply in love with Sandor, but was apparently no intellectual spark plug.” It appears Sandor became bored with her, and several years into his marriage began an affair with a fellow academic that led to the divorce. Emil had little contact with his father after that.

  “The consensus was that Lee’s broken heart never mended, but she waited until Emil was of age before ending it all.”

  We chatted awhile about how her death might have impacted Farquist in perverse ways. Dr. Scower didn’t press me but obviously was curious about the source and details of Margaret’s tale told out of school. I explained I had to seek your permission to divulge more.

  I thank you for your note saying that you stopped by in Victoria to water and deadhead my roses. How grows your garden?

  Stay well,

  Francisco

  THE CLIPPINGS FILE

  Edmonton Journal, Wednesday, September 4

  CALGARY —The trial of Emil Farquist’s $50 million slander suit against Margaret Blake has been set to begin in six months, on Monday, March 4.

  At a hearing Tuesday in the Alberta Queen’s Bench, Chief Justice Rachel Cohon-Plaskett scheduled eight days for a trial that most observers believed would take at least a year to get underway.

  Speaking to his application for an early trial date, George Cowper Jr., counsel for Environment Minister Farquist, said, “It’s vital that my client’s name be cleared as quickly as possible, given the massive and unseemly publicity this case has roused.”

  A.R. Beauchamp, counsel for Margaret Blake, the Green Party leader, agreed to the date but spoke against another application by the plaintiff for “further and better particulars of the statement of defence.”

  That document, he said, is “clear as a bell” and needed no amplification. His client had admitted to speaking the words complained of and stood by them, he said.

  Cowper argued that his client had the right to know the source of Blake’s “salacious” comments and the circumstances surrounding them. Beauchamp contended it was not the purpose of court pleadings to recite evidence.

  Chief Justice Cohon-Plaskett denied the motion, saying, “I agree with Mr. Beauchamp. There are other ways of seeking and testing the opponents’ evidence.” She advised counsel to arrange for early discovery, a procedure by which parties are examined under oath before an official court reporter.

  §

  Montreal Gazette, Tuesday, September 10

  The sudden disappearance of
three men accused of racketeering at the Port of Montreal has forced a postponement of the trial of the Waterfrontgate Seventeen, originally scheduled to begin next month.

  A motion for a delay was granted Monday in Quebec Superior court after Crown Counsel J.R. Charlebois announced that the three men, alleged to be high-level Mafia figures, failed to sign in Saturday to Montreal police headquarters, as required each week by their conditions of bail.

  A new date will be set at a hearing on September 29.

  Warrants have been issued for Sergio Castellani, Mario Baptiste, and Jules “the Monk” Moncrief. Airports and U.S. border crossings are being monitored, said Superintendent A.R. Malraux of the Sûreté de Quebec. He expected, however, they had already left the country. Moncrief is known to have business interests in Colombia.

  The remaining fourteen accused include two employees of Transport Canada, five elected municipal councillors, a business agent for the Longshoremen’s Union, and six reputed mid-level Mafia figures.

  §

  Calgary Sun, Friday, September 13

  Fear has gripped Calgary following the attempted abduction of an eight-year-old girl from a quiet north-end street.

  The girl, whose name and address have not been released, was walking home after school on Thursday, when a man stopped his car and offered to drive her home. According to police, when she backed away he reached out the car’s passenger door but was only able to grab her backpack as she ran into a neighbour’s yard.

  He abandoned the backpack and drove away.

  He is described as of middle age, of medium height and build, either balding or with short hair, and wearing glasses. A neighbour who answered her door to the girl did not see him or his car, the make or colour of which the frightened girl could not remember.

  Over the last three months, there have been three reports of children being approached by a suspected pedophile of similar description. Police have increased patrols near primary schools, aided by Street Watch, a volunteer parent organization that escorts children to their schools and watches over playgrounds.