Where the Bodies Lie

by Mark Lisac

  At the end of the afternoon he left his office light on, as the note had suggested, and went home to tell his sister what he had done.

  “Oh, Gordon,” she said. He had hoped that taking that step would prompt her to declare that she in fact had some document or documents that someone badly wanted to suppress. She would not say anything more.

  About half past nine, the telephone rang. An unfamiliar voice told him to be at an abandoned barn a few kilometres southwest of town at the same time the next evening. He was to bring his sister and the goods to make the deal final and receive $20,000 cash in exchange.

  “This isn’t to make a deal,” Finley said. “This is to talk about an arrangement. And my sister won’t be there. I can handle this myself.”

  “You want more?” the voice asked. “Your bargaining time is running out.”

  “Tell the boys I want to see them face to face to talk about this,” Finley said. “And tell them I won’t be making any exchanges in a place and time that they’ve chosen by themselves.”

  He hung up. Angela looked at him as he explained that he intended to meet the Rat Brothers the next evening and try to sort things out. He did not say he wanted to try to make them see reason. He had never known them to do that. They lived by their own skewed logic, sometimes warped by a whim. The only reason in their existence was the law of greed and survival.

  She had been getting ready for bed early, layering up for the freezing night. She was wearing her good blue housecoat over her flannel nightgown, and her oversized slippers.

  She still looked stubborn, Finley thought. She also looked tired and worried, although not defeated. She seemed smaller than the mental image of her he had carried all his life. She had always been his big sister, always in charge and there to support him, even long after he had grown much bigger than her and gone into dangerous places in the world on his own.

  The last thought gave him a rueful start. Who was to say whether facing junior high school classes ten months a year was any less stressful than most of what he had seen in the army? He had respected and depended on her for as long back as he could remember. Now she seemed diminished.

  “Goodnight, sis,” he said. “It will be all right.”

  23

  ASHER TOOK THE PHONE CALL THE NEXT MORNING. “AN Angela Apson calling for you,” the receptionist said. “She said you know her.”

  Angela did not waste time after saying hello. “Can you come down here tonight?” she asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “Gordon’s about to do something dangerous. I want you to talk sense into him.”

  She described the situation. Asher agreed he should drive to Barnsdale to talk to her brother. He felt mildly guilty that he had not agreed to talk Finley out of the meeting, only to talk to him.

  The drive would give him time to think. He cancelled his afternoon appointments and asked the new office administrator to arrange for a rental SUV with winter tires through the firm’s standing account at the agency around the corner. The XKE was enjoyable to drive but not the best choice in the bleakest depth of winter when there was a good chance of encountering ice and bands of packed snow on the highway. With his morning’s work done, he drove the vehicle home and made himself lunch.

  Then he went down to the car bay in the basement, opened the storage locker, and took out the sawed-off handle of the wooden hockey stick that was his souvenir of the last time he had played shinny when he was still capable of really playing. He had kept playing from time to time after that, but knew his old skills were nearly gone. He also retrieved the box of fishing weights that were his last link to his former father-in-law, whom he had liked. He took the stick and the weights back up to his condo and taped the lead to the cut end. Now the stick had taped knobs at each end, but one end was decidedly heavier. He hefted the stick. It was just long enough that it would be difficult to hide under his down jacket. He thought about its puffy sleeves.

  He went to the cutlery drawer in the kitchen and pulled out the sharpening steel that Sandra had given him one Christmas. He had lost track of how many years ago that had been. But he remembered her laughing about making sure that that year he would have a sharp knife for carving the turkey rather than tearing at it. He hadn’t had much use for the steel since Sandra and he had split up, nor much use for a large knife. He kept it because… because I sometimes have trouble coping with reality, he thought.

  He held the steel next to his bad arm. The black handle fit with an easy grip into the palm of his right hand. It would just fit into his jacket sleeve, extending from the heel of his left palm to his elbow. These preparations did not match what Angela expected, he knew. He told himself they were a fallback.

  The early afternoon traffic out of the city was light enough to let him leave large gaps between his vehicle and the ones ahead of him. He had taken his sunglasses but made do with the visor pulled down. The sun was a suggestion of light in a sky the colour of overused dishwater. He hoped any snow would either hold off or fall only in sporadic flurries. Chances of that were good because the temperature was already minus-twenty-three. It would certainly sink below minus-thirty by early evening.

  He had brought along music for the long, bleak afternoon on the road: Our Mercury and Shane Yellowbird, followed by Corb Lund hoping to meet “The Gothest Girl I Can.”

  He recognized that loud and fast songs were what his hockey teams had listened to when they were getting themselves ready for a hard game. They had to be ready to deliver and take big hits. Bursts of skating at maximum effort constituted a form of violence in themselves. Asher felt himself swirling down into a familiar vortex that ended up with him thinking, “What the hell?” Sometimes he got as far as “What the hell? Why not?” He didn’t answer the second question.

  The hockey stick and the sharpening steel were precautions, he told himself. The music that stimulated an adrenalin flow was to help keep him awake as he blew through hypnotic strings of powdery snow snaking across the highway. He hadn’t yet heard everything that Angela and her brother had to say.

  He wanted her to tell him, finally, everything that she knew. He suspected he would be frustrated, just as he was frustrated in trying to get her to commit to a relationship that involved more than occasional telephone calls.

  At the Barnsdale exit, he turned off the highway but drove only to the family restaurant immediately across the tracks. He had told Angela not to bother about dinner for him. He ordered a steak sandwich and lingered over coffee until he was reasonably sure that Angela and Gordon would have finished their own dinner.

  When he pulled up to their house, he was still not sure what he intended to do. He had a feeling he wanted to make something happen. Making something happen would fill an empty space. It would take the place of Angela saying that she would come into his life. He would not tell her that. It was bad enough that she might figure it out for herself.

  He knocked on the door and Finley let him in. Finley looked calm but subdued. Angela looked shockingly haggard. When she spoke, her voice trembled on the edge of firmness, threatening at any moment to topple into crying, which Asher guessed was something she did not do much.

  “You know the general outlines,” Finley said. “It’s like this. Someone thinks Angie has some kind of document that makes someone look bad. It could work two ways. Either someone who could be hurt by whatever it is wants to get hold of it. Or some of the local bad boys want it because they think it would be useful blackmail material. They don’t believe that whatever they want doesn’t exist. There have been clumsy threats. It’s time to have it out and make them understand there’s nothing to gain from us. As long as things stand the way they are, Angie’s in danger. For that matter, I guess I am too,
although that’s of less consequence.”

  She broke in on hearing that. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare play that game of being the guy without a family who can take care of himself. It isn’t true. I worried about you the whole time you were in Afghanistan. I worried about you when you were doing dumb-kid things. I see enough boys in my classrooms reminding me every day of that recklessness. They believe they won’t or can’t get hurt. It isn’t true. You can get hurt. And you’re all I have now. Harry. Talk to him.”

  “I don’t want to see your brother hurt, Angela. But I don’t want to see you hurt, either. And you’re more vulnerable. You’re also the person they think is most likely to have what they want.”

  “I’ve been here all along. If they wanted to hurt me, they could have done it by now.”

  Asher hadn’t intended to side with Finley. But now he felt himself sliding. “That’s true,” he said. “But there wasn’t much percentage in going after you physically. Scaring you or buying you off eliminates a lot of risk. It keeps the police from getting involved. It avoids the possibility of some information getting out in public. But if they’re determined, they will do whatever they think they have to, and it sounds as if they’re serious.”

  “And Gordon is going to do what to persuade them to back off ? Are they acting like they’re reasonable?”

  Finley said, “All they’ve seen so far is a refusal to co-operate. If I show them that we’re just as willing to escalate things as they are, maybe they’ll get the message.”

  “Escalate?” Angela responded. “To what? Are you going to tell them if they bother us, you’ll beat them up? Do they act like that would stop them? You don’t even know who you’re dealing with.”

  Asher turned to Finley and said, “What about it? Do you know everyone who has to be convinced?”

  “A couple of the local bad guys, I’m pretty sure. Maybe they have a bit of outside help but everything I’ve seen says they’re running the show. They’re dangerous, but they’re not stupid. They know they have to live here. There’s only so far they can go before the police get on them.”

  “Then maybe Angela is right. Wait them out until they make a mistake, something you can take to the police.”

  Finley looked at his sister. “Is that how you think it would play out? We could ignore them and you wouldn’t be in danger?”

  “No,” she said. “Two people are dead already. John was murdered because he was directly involved. Devereaux… I don’t know, but he was involved and his getting killed in an accident is a huge coincidence. I’m afraid. But you have it backward. I’m the one who’s of less consequence. You have what could be a wonderful future ahead of you. You’re less involved, anyway. I’m the one John most likely would have given something to. That’s my protection. If they think I have some incriminating information, they can’t do anything to me while they don’t know where it is.”

  “Do you?” Asher asked. “Do you have something you haven’t told me about?”

  “I don’t have anything,” she said. She looked at him level-eyed.

  He had heard and read too many ambiguous statements over the years to let that go by. “Did you have? Have you ever seen anything?”

  “For God’s sake, Harry, I didn’t ask you to drive down here to play twenty questions. Gordon wants to go meet dangerous people in an out-of-the-way place. He wants to confront them. They may be cunning and afraid of the police getting involved, but they may also be unpredictable. He says they may have some links to a motorcycle gang.”

  Asher turned to Finley. “That right?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Finley replied. “But I wouldn’t put too much stock in that. If a biker gang were running this show, it would have gone differently.”

  “Then if there’s a chance they will have some backup, maybe you should too.”

  Angela looked at Asher bleakly, her emotions suddenly wiped dry by tiredness. “I should have known,” she said. “I should have known.”

  “It’s a chance to settle this,” Asher said. “I think it’s worth taking.”

  Finley said, “You put bandages on me a few times when I was a kid, sis. I never told you about all the times I did something you would have worried about. Most of the time I didn’t need bandages.”

  “Just go. Take care of yourself,” she whispered. “Both of you.”

  24

  THEY DROVE AWAY IN ASHER’S RENTED SUV. HIS STICK AND sharpening steel were in the back. He asked Finley if he wanted to pick up a tire iron or some other makeshift weapon from his shop but Finley said if the meeting turned physical, he would do better without encumbrances. And he didn’t want to walk in looking like he intended a fight.

  They didn’t talk much. They established that Finley would enter the building first, stay ahead of Asher, and do the talking. Asher would merely be a presence, but would also serve as a valuable extra set of eyes; he could scan the sides and background while Finley concentrated on whoever was doing the talking on the other side. The only other subject was Finley’s educated guess about who would show up. He briefly told Asher about the Carswell boys and how they had very much earned the name most of the town knew them by: the Rat Brothers.

  The streetlights ended within a few blocks at the edge of town. Asher switched on the brights to make sure he was staying well away from the road’s shoulders. He was happy not to see headlights behind him in the rearview mirror. They both took it for granted that the other side would arrive first. The heavy-treaded winter tires sent a soft whir up from the darkness, punctuated by a thud whenever they hit an occasional bump.

  They reached the old farmstead. The faded, boarded-up house was dark. A yard light illuminated a three-quarter-ton crew cab near the sagging barn. Asher pulled up near the barn, turning the SUV back toward the road. They got out, hearing only the squeak and crunch of snow under their boots. Asher opened the rear door of the vehicle, stuffed the steel inside the left sleeve of his jacket so that the handle rested at the top of his palm, took out the short length of what had been his hockey stick, and quietly closed the hatch.

  They walked through the partly open barn door and adjusted their eyes to the dimness. One lightbulb on the near wall seemed to cast more shadow than light. Three figures stood near the opposite wall. Asher recognized two of them from Finley’s description. The third was nearly twice the size of either of the brothers and had a full beard.

  Chances were good that the biker carried a knife, he thought. But he might be carrying it mostly out of habit, as a last resort rather than a first one. The brothers looked fast and sneaky. If it came to trouble, he would have to leave the big man to Finley and take on the brothers himself. He remembered the taste of his own blood in his mouth, during a game. He hadn’t felt the coppery sweetness for nearly twenty years. The memory quickened his pulse.

  Lenny moved a couple of steps forward to speak, his brother stepping up with him as if they were tied together.

  “You didn’t say you were bringing a playmate with you. I hoped you’d change your mind and bring your sister.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t bringing anyone,” Finley replied. “Leave my sister out of it.” He saw no need to comment on the presence of the big-bellied man with beefy hands hanging back and to Lenny’s right.

  “Your sister could help solve everything by giving up her stash. It doesn’t do her any good. Or you. What about it? Twenty thousand. Cash. Then we go our separate ways.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Whoever’s paying you seems like they’re worried.”

  “Who says anyone’s paying us? We can run our own business. It’
s making more money than yours.”

  Finley ignored that. “They’d still be worried if someone who’d read the stuff was walking around. But who says there’s any paper stashed away somewhere?”

  “You always thought you were smarter than us, didn’t you, prick?”

  “I’m trying to keep this simple, Lenny. I came here to show you you can trust me. There is no paper. Twenty thousand, twenty million, doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to sell. You should leave us alone and go tell whoever’s got their shorts in a knot to find another hobby.”

  “Just like that. You think you can make me look like an asshole and cheat me out of a big payoff ?”

  Asher had been hearing the rising anger and watching the brothers’ eyes narrow and heads incline slightly forward. The big, bearded man looked bored. There was no easy way out now.

  “So it is someone else’s business,” Finley said.

  “Fuck you, boy scout. We’ll negotiate with your sister. Sometime when you’re not around.”

  Finley shoved Lenny to the floor with an explosive push and went at the bearded man. Asher leapt at mournful Kenny and pushed him back to get a solid swing at Lenny’s insolent face. The bearded man had taken a split-second to step up but had probably never needed a headstart in a fight. Lenny sprang up, saw the stick coming and half-leaned, half-stepped back, breaking into a grin as he did.

  Asher expected Kenny to join his brother and saw the mournful face out of the corner of his eye. He pivoted and swung the lead-weighted stick backhand and heard a crunch and a howl as it caught Kenny squarely on the nose. A stream of blood flowed down over the sad moustache and the mournful rat retreated into a dark corner.

  His brother lunged from the other side, more quickly than Asher had anticipated. He had picked up a spade that was leaning against the wall and swung it as Asher turned to face him with the stick. The force of the blow knocked the stick out of Asher’s hand. Asher saw Finley holding his own against the big man and apparently teaching him some hand-to-hand combat techniques. Lenny did not fight the momentum of his first swing. He spun around to deliver a second one. Asher saw it coming and lifted up his bad arm to block the blow before Lenny, snarling and his eyes glinting, could work up maximum force.