Another problem in hiring an investigator was the temptation to think in stereotypes. I did not want a down-at-the-heels sleazeball with a permanent squint from peering over transoms, nor did I want a rugged individualist, spiritual descendant of your frontier gunslinger, who acts in defiance of the law and who would resolve any personal disagreements we might have by knocking me out.
But as I reflected I began to recollect. About two years ago one of my partners had been handling a small merger between two companies owned by members of the same family. They had stumbled across a considerable discrepancy in inventory. A private investigator had been engaged who discovered that the sales manager of the larger company had been selling inventory privately, pocketing the proceeds, and falsifying the records to cover up the missing stock. The case had not involved incriminating photographs taken from the fire escape, nor assault charges against the investigator for punching out the chief of police. The name of that investigator must be on file. I decided to check it out.
The office building on the edge of Old Montreal was dated but scrupulously maintained. Brown linoleum gleamed with swirls of highly buffed wax, and even as I entered the small lobby a uniformed maintenance man was removing debris from the standing cylindrical ashtrays. Before I had even stepped into the elevator my first preconception had been shot down, namely that private detectives have their offices in seedy buildings.
My next surprise came from the neat gold lettering on the frosted-glass door: Patrick Fitzgerald Associates: Private Investigators. Had I really expected a hand-lettered sign on a piece of shirt cardboard taped to the door?
Another idée fixe was severely shaken up when, in the reception area, I was greeted by the kind of neat, personable, businesslike secretary I would have wanted in my own office. She did not look like a spinster languishing with unrequited love for her boss, nor was she a bimbo. Instead, she was quietly pretty, and wore a well-tailored suit.
I introduced myself.
“Please have a seat, Mr. Chadwick. Mr. Fitzgerald will see you just as soon as he gets off the phone.”
I hung my coat in a closet concealed by louvred doors and sat gingerly in one of two Breuer chairs, chrome and leather constructions that looked more like orthopaedic devices than casual seating. I slid my buns down the raked leather seat until brought up short by a horizontal leather band. Directly across from the chairs a Vasarely silkscreen billowed queasily off the wall, adding the one spot of colour to otherwise desert tones. Where were the battered filing cabinet, the cigarette-scarred desk, the chair spilling its stuffing, the Varga girl calendar, and the dented metal wastebasket overflowing with Styrofoam coffee cups? There was no place in my private mythology for tough detectives and tasteful decor.
A red light flickered on the secretary’s telephone. “Mr. Fitzgerald will see you now, Mr. Chadwick.” She ushered me through a door, which she shut behind me.
From the far side of a medium-sized office, a man wearing a tweed jacket came around from behind a handsome teak desk. The black hair may have turned iron grey, but the cobalt- blue eyes were unmistakable.
“Pat!”
“Geoff!”
“You’ve turned grey.”
“So have you.”
Uncertain of what else to do, we shook hands.
“Look,” I began, “this was not meant as a joke. Would you prefer me to go back through that door and pretend it all never happened?”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m far too curious to know why you’re here.”
“I come as suppliant, as a prospective client. I honestly did not know that Pat had become Patrick Fitzgerald Associates.”
He smiled to reveal those large white teeth than even now I could hardly believe were real. “I did not make the connection between Lyall, Pierce, Chadwick, and Dawson, and Geoff. Here, sit down.”
I sat, in a small upholstered armchair that suited me far more than the wheelchair without wheels I had just vacated.
The surprise of recognition made us temporarily mute. Many years ago, more than I care to remember, Pat and I used to trick, a pleasurable activity that disease and disapproval have sharply curtailed. To trick is to have sex purely for its own sake, totally unencumbered by emotional complications of any sort. Tricking is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of consumerism, where you use another human being purely for your own pleasure and are willingly used in return. Formerly an almost exclusively homosexual activity, tricking has now branched out. Most of the men and women in singles’ bars claim to be seeking true love, but they are more than willing to settle for a good fuck.
Tricking is the last natural high. It is not necessary to sip or sniff or snort or inhale or puncture a vein. All you need are two people and the right chemistry. North American society has always frowned on tricking. No two people should enjoy so much pleasure without pain.
“Now, tell me,” Pat began, “what brings you here?”
“Before I begin, would you prefer me to call you Pat, Patrick, or Mr. Fitzgerald?”
“What do you feel most comfortable with?”
“Patrick. Pat suggests a relationship that ended long ago. And all things considered, I don’t think I could call you Mr. Fitzgerald with a straight face.”
“I guess not. Tell me something – Geoffry, if you can remember all those years back, did you ever call me after I went back to my wife?”
“Yes, I did, two, maybe three times. We had a good thing going. I was reluctant to give it up. Why?”
“My wife once mentioned, casually, a man had called, more than once. She said he had a cultivated voice and excused himself for dialling the wrong number, when most people just hang up. Given that, I knew it must have been you.”
Patrick’s voice was even more sonorous than I remembered. He spoke like an announcer, or someone doing voice-over for a wildlife special on the frozen north.
“I must have called three times, the magic number. I figured by then you and your wife had worked things out, and it was time for me to bow out.”
“We tried, but it didn’t work. We got a divorce. She remarried, and I faced up to the truth.”
“We all have to, sooner or later.”
“But you obviously did not come here to talk about the past.”
“You’re right. However, the clock on your desk says it’s almost six. Shall I tell you my story here or over a drink?”
He smiled. “My mouth feels like terrycloth. How did you guess?”
“Mine does too. And we are both old enough to drink, I mean as part of our daily routine.”
“I have a short call to make, and then we can push off.”
“I’ll wait for you in the foyer.”
Seated in a far corner of the bar, as far away from the piano spilling Jerome Kern as it was possible to get, I signalled to a waiter whose four-inch sideburns did not divert attention from his receding hairline. I ordered two scotches with soda. Remembering that most bar drinks are measured with a thimble, I asked for doubles. “No problem,” replied the waiter, although why a straightforward request for two highballs should present a problem escaped me.
I told Patrick the story of my involvement in the wedding, my meetings with Lois Fullerton, and the three caveats. I derived a curious kind of comfort from the mere narrative, at once less than a confession and more than an anecdote. To tell of any experience imposes a shape on the events; furthermore, I was spared a great number of explanatory digressions because Patrick and I shared a point of view. He understood my difficulties with Lois; he did not think me guilty of macho boasting; he did not think it strange I wanted to keep her at arm’s length.
I showed him the notes, the page from the envelope, and gave him the knife, still wrapped in my handkerchief. Patrick listened carefully, with only the occasional interruption to clarify a point. At the end of my story he asked the question I knew he must. “Do you have any idea whatsoever of who this might be?”
I took a swallow of my drink. “Would you think me a little soft
in the head if I said I had a hunch, but only that?”
“Not in the least. Which is another way of saying I assume your judgement is sound.”
“I think it could well be Lois Fullerton’s chauffeur.” As he had not yet figured in the narrative, I filled Patrick in about my brief but possibly telling contact with the driver.
“You suggest he could be foreign. Were you aware of any trace of accent when he, or the unknown caller, spoke on the phone?”
“I couldn’t tell for sure. I was startled, needless to say, and I had the impression he was probably disguising his voice.”
“The notes themselves don’t give us much help. Those snip- and-paste messages are almost as old as the printing press. But the note left under the windshield wiper has the letter c missing from your name. Chadwick spells itself phonetically; most native English speakers would get it right. There could be a connection.”
Patrick reached for his glass, raised it halfway to his mouth, then set it down. “Geoffry, would you mind if I took on this case myself? I mean instead of turning it over to one of my partners?”
“I’d be delighted. It’s far easier talking to you than to a total stranger. Now, have we reached the point in the script where I take out a wad of bills and peel off five one-hundreds as your retainer?”
“You’ve been seeing too many old movies. We charge one hundred dollars an hour prorated. If we spend fifteen minutes on the phone you are charged twenty-five dollars. You will receive an itemized statement at the conclusion of the investigation.” He smiled. “Can I presume you are a good credit risk?”
“To the point where you are at no risk at all. Another drink?”
“I’d like to, but I have to run. I want to take these things back to my office for safekeeping. And I have a dinner engagement, with my ex-wife and her husband. Very ‘Design for Living,’ I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“Perhaps, but civilized too. I find it difficult to understand how some people can cut themselves off from those who have formerly been close. We can avoid people who have once shared our life, but we can’t ever be rid of them. You are fortunate. Now, if you are running late just push along, and I’ll deal with the check.”
“You’re the client; by rights you should outfumble me.”
“You can get the next one.”
We stood and shook hands. “Thanks, Geoffry. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something to report.”
I WALKED HOME ALONG SHERBROOKE STREET, bathed in the relief that comes from finally shaking off inertia and making a positive move. The ball was now in Patrick’s court. All too often I am afflicted by a sound idea, such as seeing the doctor for a checkup, having my eyes tested, submitting to the dentist, even having my apartment repainted, only to find a broad plain of procrastination stretching between the onset of the notion and its execution.
I had taken steps to deal with my obscene caller. Heretofore I had thought him little more than a nuisance – until this morning, that is. That knife jammed into my tire suggested violence, and is not violence the ultimate obscenity?
My sense of relief sprang from more than just having taken a positive step in dealing with the situation. In his professional capacity Patrick Fitzgerald gave off an air of competence. My gut reaction told me he knew his business, an impression reinforced by his surroundings. Even though I had been truly surprised at seeing Patrick again after all these years, I had still managed to absorb a few details of his office, the handsome teak desk, the Japanese scroll hanging above the leather couch, which served to dispel my TV-induced notion that private investigators waited for clients in a clutter of Salvation Army rejects.
Striding along the street, I almost laughed out loud at the incongruity of walking in to hire a private eye only to discover we used to trick years ago. It is not as though I don’t bump into people I once used to sleep with. Whenever I go to the ballet, which believe me isn’t very often, I invariably see a vaguely familiar face across a crowded room, who, on closer inspection, turns out to be a former trick. Sometimes we exchange a glance, sometimes a nod, on occasion even a brief smile. Most of the time, however, we behave as though we have never met, particularly if he is with a woman who looks like his wife, or a younger man, obviously the current dearie. The alternate lifestyle has its codes, none the less binding for being unspoken. And even though the man with whom you spent an action-packed afternoon in a musty motel room may cut you dead in the Ritz lobby, there is a reverse civility in the gesture. By refusing to compromise himself, he is also guaranteeing that you will be spared any embarrassment.
Patrick Fitzgerald spun in and out of my life during the sixties, that watershed decade of peace and promiscuity. “Make love not war.” Truth is, we were all so busy making love we couldn’t have found the time for war. Life was a giant toy store where teddy bears were alive. We all played games, the game of sex, the game of drugs, the game of peace. As North Americans take games more seriously than anything else outside of money, these games usurped our lives. Sex became compulsive; drugs grew addictive; peace demonstrations all too often ended in violence. If there was one thing that we all feared more than the Bomb, it was the tiniest curtailment of our personal freedom.
In retrospect the sixties seem like a latter-day Garden of Eden. We drifted through an endless summer. Fish were jumping and the living was easy. Were we expelled, or did the Garden just wither from lack of tending? Marijuana and hashish and heroin (whatever happened to heroin?) have been pushed aside by angel dust and cocaine and crack, bringing with them a demography of destroyed lives. Far from disappearing, the nuclear threat has swelled. Reactors run amok, evacuating cities and disrupting ecosystems. Smoking a little grass, strumming a guitar, singing a little protest song will not make the problems go away.
And now there is AIDS, the scourge of our freewheeling sexuality. The Black Death was caused by fleas; AIDS is caused by a rogue virus. Both have been blamed on God. But he has always been the ultimate scapegoat. First it was blame the homosexuals. Then blame the Haitians. Blame the drug addicts. Blame Africa, which is already blamed for every disease except the common cold. Blame blood banks, singles bars, visible minorities. Blame someone. And when all possibilities are exhausted, blame God.
The closing years of our century will be known as the decade of the condom, as evidence of which the flag of the United Nations will one day be replaced by a giant inflated condom, floating above the East River, looking not unlike the Hindenburg, a tribute to safe sex and sterility. The final grim irony of this coda to the sixties, the joke that goes far beyond black, is that the only known cure for AIDS, the one certain way to check its spread, is the Bomb.
By the time I reached my building, I decided to skip the stairs and treat myself to the elevator. I was just about to press the button for my floor when a voice cried “Hold it!” and Prints Charming swooped across the lobby like a flamingo, if you can imagine a flamingo wearing a black leather coat. He takes up more room than any one person should be entitled to. I felt terribly compressed when the doors slid shut.
“Did you hear the one about the woman who went to her gynaecologist?” he began. “The doctor asked her if she practised safe sex. ‘Yes, doctor,’ she replied, ‘I never smoke after intercourse.’ “
I laughed politely. “Good for her. Not every woman bothers to look.”
9.
JUST AS A WET GREY DAY can drive out all memory of sunshine, so did the prospect of a visit from my sister tend to push other, more important considerations into unused corners of my mind. Mother telephoned the morning after my meeting with Patrick Fitzgerald to tell me Mildred was coming to Montreal for the weekend. This unsavoury bit of news gave Mother an excuse to call and invite me to dinner on Sunday, but only after she had brought me up to date with the comings and goings on “Coronation Street,” which she loves to watch, even though she finds the accents very lower class. I promised to be there at half past twelve, then undertook the not inconsiderable task of getting Mother off
the telephone.
My sister’s mind works methodically, but it works. She would never get from A to U without pit stops at the intervening vowels, but connections would ultimately be made. By now she must have come to grips with what my having power of attorney might entail. The spectre of austerity hovered over her plans for the wedding, and no doubt she wanted to clarify her position with Mother. Mildred was coming to Montreal to lobby.
Patrick telephoned during the week to suggest I avoid seeing Lois Fullerton for a while. If he could find a reason or reasons to suspect the chauffeur, then I could arrange a meeting with Lois, which would be carefully monitored. I was only too happy to comply with the request. With any luck I wouldn’t have to see Lois Fullerton again until the day of the wedding rehearsal.
The week passed, filled with concerns of getting and spending, and blissfully free of anything to do with the nuptials. I no longer feel starry-eyed about my profession, as I once felt during the days when I was married. Then I saw the law as a noble calling, justice as a universal right. I soon outgrew those attitudes as I came to learn that the practice of law embraces more than its share of scoundrels and shysters, and that most people tend to get as much justice as they can afford. On the plus side of the ledger, however, I came to realize that what I lost in ingenuousness I gained in competence. The more unblinking my realization of what the law really entailed, the more skilfully I served my clients. I could never be a great jurist; I lack the hieratic spirit. I do not serve at the altar of the law; I practise my profession. Such satisfaction as I can derive springs from the knowledge that I handle my clients honestly and to the best of my ability. It is a small satisfaction, granted; but at my age it will have to do.
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