by Mark Lisac
“Safe enough. There was an implied threat but not a serious one. Whoever it was seemed to be interested mostly in looking for something.”
“Would they have found anything?”
“Only the gas and electricity bills and some essays that I’m marking this weekend.”
“That means they’ll keep looking. Angela, is it all right if I come back later in the week? I have to look after my day job for awhile.”
“Yes, it’s all right. But why don’t we meet in the city? I have a professional development day on Friday and I have to be up there. Would it be all right to call you when I’m free and arrange a time and place?”
“That will be good. Call me anytime you think you have to. Or want to. I like the sound of your voice.”
“I like yours too. Goodbye, Harry. Have a safe drive.”
Asher kept to the speed limit on the way back north. He drove through the rising ground where it often rained and hailed in summer and where the winds often brought either fresh flurries or frequent drifts in the winter. He thought he could live with sliding into the ditch on a stretch of snow cover but did not want to risk denting his car.
Back home he called Karamanlis and arranged for a meeting that night. He knew Sunday night was the time Karamanlis was most likely to be free on short notice. Then he went out and walked along the top of the riverbank. Flocks of waxwings rose up suddenly from bare trees as if they had all heard a signal. They swirled like fog, then settled into other trees, waiting for the next signal. Blue-grey clouds had shoved in from the west. Asher thought people would usually describe them as having a leaden colour. They reminded him of bird feathers. Waxwings, magpies, blue jays.
He hadn’t taken a hat and was starting to feel cold. He walked on for a few minutes anyway. He reached the tourists’ lookout point and stared at the snow-covered ice on the river. Then he went back to his condo for dinner and a fresh shirt, wondering when he would really think of it as home.
He got to the restaurant a few minutes after eight. People might have thought that Karamanlis liked the place because it was Greek and the owners had connections to his family. Asher knew that helped, but that Karamanlis actually liked it best because it had a private room and a discreet owner, Poulos, who did not hang around doorways. Poulos had learned the restaurant business from his father, who had come up many years before from a sheep ranch somewhere in the western U.S. His father started what quickly became a successful restaurant, and then helped Karamanlis’ father start one. Some owners might have worried about the competition. The first Poulos had said people who tried one of the places would try the other as well and both would prosper. He and Karamanlis’ father were buried one row apart in the Orthodox cemetery. They were close enough that it was possible to imagine them appearing at night with a deck of cards, playing one of their endless games of casino.
Poulos showed Asher to the room. Karamanlis was sitting at the only table, with a glass of ouzo. He was talking with Gerald Ryan, who was sitting on the other side. They said hello and Karamanlis asked Asher if he wanted a drink. Asher took that as both a polite invitation and a sign that Karamanlis was expecting to talk. He wanted more than a quick report.
Asher asked for the house brandy, knowing that the restaurant never sold the cheapest bar brands. He talked about hockey until Poulos returned with the drink, wished him health, and left, quietly shutting the door.
Karamanlis watched the door close and said, “I assume you’re making progress, Harry? What have you found out?”
“It’s still mostly guesswork. I think I’ll be able to find out or figure out more in a few days. I talked to the Parson. He wasn’t much help and he’s half off his rocker. He talked around things but I think he knows more than he’s letting on. Maybe he’s guessing some, too. He’s starting to lose his grip on reality but he’s still cagey as ever. Maybe I can squeeze more out of him if I get the right leverage. Apson’s widow didn’t tell me much, but she knows more than she’s letting on. She’s scared. She also has some kind of connection to Devereaux. They went out for awhile in university.”
“We heard about that.”
“Gossip gets around. She’s not happy that it has. She thinks someone is connecting Devereaux to Apson, and thinking she was the go-between. I don’t see that. She says she’s had nothing to do with Devereaux for about twenty years. But something is going on there.”
Asher paused, then went on. “I also take it for granted that Apson dug up some kind of dirt about the Parson and that’s why Turlock killed him. The question is whether Apson gave information to Devereaux. If he didn’t, the question is whether his widow still has the information or knows something about it and is willing to give it to Devereaux. That’s only a problem if it somehow affects you or the party as well as the Parson. Anything that hurts the Parson’s reputation could hurt you, but it would have to be very bad. That’s still guesswork. All I’m sure about now is that Apson found out something about the Parson. The widow is scared enough that I think I can get her to talk.”
“You going to squeeze it out of her like you plan to do with the Parson, or use your boyish appeal? Is she a looker?”
“Average. Maybe a little above. I imagine she’s lonely. Whatever works.”
Ryan spoke up. “She didn’t give you any kind of hint? It makes a big difference whether Apson simply told her something or whether he had something on paper and she has it now.”
“I’ll have to see. There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about, Jimmy. What’s your interest here? I get that damage to the Parson may reflect on you and the party. But it can’t be that bad. Half the people in the province probably can’t remember much about him now. And the party’s changed. Why not hang him out to dry? If the old bastard did something to regret, that’s his tough luck.”
“It isn’t just him. Remember that it was my cabinet minister who killed Apson. Someone I had enough confidence in to let him run part of the government, at least in theory. Anything connected with the murder reflects on me. He wasn’t satisfied being a pea-brained, thieving prick and all-around crackpot; he had to be a murderous crackpot, too.”
Karamanlis took a deep breath.
“It’s bad enough that I have to watch a lot of the others hoping they’ll keep their dicks zippered up. The older ones start spending a lot of time away from their wives and some of them start thinking someone on their staff is more understanding and attractive. One of the young ones already has a reputation for harassing secretaries, maybe even making promises he doesn’t intend to keep. Another one had a string of girlfriends back home and got caught with one of them by an electrician who walked into his office to do a repair. The electrician was in the local beer parlour by suppertime telling everyone what he’d interrupted. God almighty, and people wonder why I send them on so many foreign trips. Some of the women are just as bad, in their way. They’re manipulative and controlling, screaming at their staff or phoning them at five in the morning. Then they wonder why they’re always having to find replacements.”
He got back to the business at hand and his voice took on a more thoughtful tone. “The bad thing is we don’t know what Apson was working on. It could be something so far in the past that no one cares; it could be something still relevant today. That’s what makes it dangerous if Devereaux is poking his finger into the pie. I can handle him, but he knows how to raise a stink. No reason to let him loose with skunk spray. Then there’s the Parson. He may be senile and losing it like you say, but he likes to talk. If something pushes him over the edge, who knows what he’ll come out with? And the half of the province that does remember him can still decide an election.”
“All right,” Asher said. “I’ll leave the politics to you.” He waited to hear th
e rest of it.
Karamanlis looked at Ryan, who was smiling as if he were enjoying a cosy evening with old friends. Ryan’s left hand was up at his chin, his thumb propped under his lower lip. His right hand was spread out on the table. His index finger slowly and silently tapped the table, like a dog’s tail slowly wagging. “You see, Gerald? That’s an old hockey player for you. Harry knows the value of playing a role and teamwork. Harry, I learned a long time ago not to assume I knew what anyone else was thinking. You remember that story I told you about meeting Franklin Hemstead?”
“Yeah, your brush with the Nobel Prize.”
“That’s right. He laid the foundation for a lot of the circuitry inside computers and the Internet. Thanks to him, teenage boys can look at tits and pussy without their mothers finding magazines hidden in their closets. People can buy just about anything they want without having to provide a living to an honest retailer in their own community. Some contribution to humanity.
“Hemstead had a high-class party at his place while I was away finishing the business program at university. I got the catering contract. My dad taught me how to make up some nice little appetizers and arrange them on nice-looking plates. It beat working for someone else.
“The party went well and Hemstead took me aside later and said he had something special for me. I was expecting a pretty nice tip. He sat me down in his living room by the baby grand. I was wondering what was going on. Then he played part of some Mozart sonata for me. That was my tip. I was already used to dealing with people, but that was my graduate course. Never assume you know what someone else is thinking. Never expect anything until it’s in your hand.”
Asher listened to Karamanlis’ unexpectedly high, reedy voice, a voice that could have almost sounded angelic if it weren’t so raspy. He had long ago become used to the voice but still thought it didn’t fit with Karamanlis’ bulk, his dark complexion, and his thick, rounded eyebrows.
“That little catering business taught me some of what they teach you in law school,” Karamanlis concluded. “I got an education and saved a lot of time and money doing it that way.”
Ryan took his hand down from his chin. “Speaking of knowing what someone else is thinking,” he said, “we heard about an intriguing offer a few days ago from a private collector in the U.S. He lives in Las Vegas. Seems he has some of the same types of artifacts we were hoping to buy for the Oil Country museum. He’s not exactly pushing them, but he’s quietly letting word around the richest circles in the business that he’s willing to part with them for the right price. One of the people who heard is a reliable contributor to the party.”
Karamanlis said, “Now where do you suppose he’d find something like that, Harry? In the same place where you happen to have made a lot of money playing poker a couple of months ago?”
“I did. I never said I didn’t make other money while I was there. What I did tell you was I didn’t think some of that stuff was authentic — no more authentic than all the slivers of wood lying around in European churches that are supposed to come from the cross they nailed Christ to. I saved you a world-scale embarrassment by not bringing that junk back here. You think those so-called relics would have stood up to scrutiny?”
“All we needed from you was the material, Harry. I would have provided the authentication.”
“From a hired expert? You think people would have believed that?”
“Spoken like a lawyer. Life isn’t a courtroom. Most people don’t cross-examine everything that comes in front of them. They believe because they want to believe. They’ve believed in everything from slivers of the True Cross to the latest vegetable slicer because they want to believe. They believed Tom Farber’s promises of a tractor for every farmer who needed one. They believed the Parson’s promises of a hospital at every rural crossroad. They believe my promises because they want to believe.
“The only difference now is that people have so much that it’s tough to keep inventing new things to promise. That’s why Oil Country was important. We were running out of things to promise people. They already had all the trucks and electronic toys they wanted. Hell, I’m hearing that some of the people using the food banks are young guys who’ve put all their money into four-by-fours. Why they need trucks when they don’t use them for real work, I don’t know. We have oil and money — all anyone who doesn’t dream of being a billionaire could reasonably want. So we were going to promise them entertainment and culture. Real culture, but ours, made right here. The kind that would make people in New York and Paris and Shanghai pay attention to us. The only problem was deciding which of the cities to put it in — which is why we found a site halfway between them — split the difference, and give the rural folks a little money and something to be proud of while we were at it.”
His voice turned slightly deeper and quieter.
“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own, Harry. I don’t mind your making a little money on the side. But you shouldn’t have assumed you knew what everyone else was thinking.”
Karamanlis sounded more disappointed than angry. Asher kept his voice equally steady and quiet. “I couldn’t hand you stuff I thought was counterfeit, Jimmy. My name would have been on it. It didn’t matter whether my name ever got out, it would have been on it. Selling to the private buyer was different because I told him it was highly speculative and the stuff was probably fake. He was willing to take the risk. He was willing to tell himself it was real, at least for a while. If he changed his mind, he could always flip it to a sucker. Probably no different than a lot of his real estate deals.”
“The point is: how am I to trust you, Harry?”
“You don’t have to trust me on everything. You know I won’t act for someone else’s interests against your own. And you know I won’t bring you anything fake. You want to know why Turlock killed Apson? I’ll try to find out. Anything that looks real, I’ll bring to you.”
“And not look for other bidders?”
“You’re my client.”
“Not your friend?”
“I can have more than one friend. I have only one client on any one case. That’s what you can count on. That, and I know that part of what you want to find out is whether anybody else already knows whatever Apson may have known.”
“I believe you, Harry. Not because I want to. I think I don’t want to. But I do.”
Asher drove back to his condo. He stood at his window for a long time looking out on the river. He had a glass of brandy in his hand. He didn’t like to drink alone. This night he did.
12
DUSK HAD SETTLED IN. ORION DEVEREAUX KEPT WATCHING the ditches for deer that might stray into the path of his car. They were plentiful in the country west of Barnsdale. Stands of spruce and aspen dotted the fields more and more thickly toward the foothills. The deer liked to stay in them but would cautiously step out as daylight faded, then incautiously wander across roadways. Devereaux thought this was good country for running a body shop.
He was irritated that a meeting in a remote farmhouse had fallen through. A woman had promised to give him details about a government misuse of money. He had waited nearly half an hour but she hadn’t shown up. The sun was absurdly low on the horizon at this time of year. He had had nothing to do but watch it slide across and into the treetops, playing peekaboo, deep shadows alternating with bright glare.
Thin glints of snow floated around him sporadically, caught in imperceptible currents of air rather than falling. They could have drifted off a building in the light breeze or they could have precipitated out of the desert-dry air. Each one looked like a shattered flake of diamond light chipped off the fading sunshine.
The sky toward the west turned rose pink and powder blue, then a deeper red and
angry blue.
The yard had been silent the whole time he had been there. The kitchen light and yard light were on but no one was around. The cold air had settled in around him, moving in slowly from the northwest without shaking the trees. The chill isolated him and muffled the ceaseless noise of the surrounding world. He hadn’t liked it. He preferred to be busy and to have the world around him be busy as well.
Back inside his car, he wondered what it would be like to form a government someday and have a driver. He liked driving. He liked comfort and status as well.
He left the empty yard thinking he still had a reason to be thankful — heated car seats. He thought their proliferation had been one of the world’s great steps forward in technology. His life would improve further with his next car; he would be sure it had a heated steering wheel.
He liked company and would have preferred his assistant Jed had come along. But Jed had left with his wife for Mexico and wouldn’t be back until Monday. Devereaux would have to ask how the resort had been.
It was probably still light in Mazatlán, he thought. Here the sky was mostly clear but the moon was in a thin crescent phase and there was little light from any source to reflect off the snow. He switched on the brights. The extra visibility gave him the confidence to add ten kilometres an hour to his speed. Fenceposts flew by. The tires occasionally thumped on a clump in the snow or an uneven spot in the gravel surface underneath.
He came over a rise, scanning the sides of the road for wandering deer. So he needed an extra second to register the dark rectangle of a dumptruck straight ahead. It took another split-second to register that its taillights were not on and it was not moving.
He knew he had no time to brake and that slamming on the brakes on hard-packed snow would create even more danger. He jerked the steering wheel slightly left and tried to slip around the massive iron bulk. The manoeuvre might have worked in summer.
