“You’re bleeding.”
Trang pointed to a small puddle pooled around Hornsmith’s feet, viscous like dark cherry sauce highlighted by the afternoon sun that streamed through the windows.
Awakened by the alarm in Trang’s tone, Hornsmith raised his eyebrows and studied his feet with curious interest, like a man watching an ant with a heavy burden work its way across the floor.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “Perhaps we should talk again some other time.”
When we were alone, out of Hornsmith’s earshot in the hall, Trang’s guard came down.
“I don’t know what you guys are doing here,” he said, “but your Mr. Hornsmith’s a sick man. He looks like he’s going to die.” He sounded concerned. He could almost have been who he said he was, someone who happened to be a cop sent by his family to diversify their investments.
“Yes, I suppose he is. I’m not sure.”
Trang shook his head. “You should get him some help.”
“I should,” I said, “but he’s stubborn and secretive. He hasn’t told me anything. Intestinal cancer, I’m guessing.”
“Shit. That’s painful. What’s he on?”
“I haven’t seen any painkillers or prescriptions,” I said. “I don’t think he wants into the medical system.”
“I understand that,” said Trang. “I also accept my mortality. I’d want to die undisturbed.”
“Heroin might be good. I don’t suppose a man in your position might know anything about getting that for a sick, dying friend?”
Why not ask? I figured a man of diverse interests like Trang had to know something about the narcotics business. Besides, it amused me to say something like this to a cop. Our deal was probably fucked, anyway.
“Careful what you ask for,” Trang said with a chuckle over his shoulder on his way down the stairs. “I like you guys, and I want in your business. Get your friend to a doctor. We’ll talk more, I’m sure. This is going to be good.”
“You can’t bullshit your way out of this with me,” I said to Hornsmith after Trang was gone. “You need to come clean so I know what we’re up against.”
He hadn’t moved from his chair. “You’re witnessing the last days of a man’s life,” he said. “The last days are the most intense. I feel that every moment in time is crystallized for me to savour.”
“I just crystallized you passed out midconversation, dripping blood onto the floor. You scared off our only investor. There’s something about your health you haven’t told me.”
I was about to mention the doctor’s letter I’d found in his drawer, but squashed the notion when he teared up.
“I’ve got what the quacks call an ileal carcinoid tumour. It’s complicated by an inherited condition called Meckel’s diverticulum, which means I’ve had painful periodic rectal bleeding since I was a child,” he said. “I won’t be plugged in and cut up so I’m going to die of small intestine cancer. No one knows. Except a doctor who owes me a favour. And now you.”
This could’ve been one of his acts, motive unknown. He could cry on demand. Practically everyone did that trick. But then he described the bulge in his intestine that was a vestigial remnant of the fetal vitelline duct. He went on to explain the lesions on his feet. Bowel obstructions and polyps. The details were too rich to be invented. Plus, the blood would have been hard to fake.
Bastard. I resented the burden of his secret. But of course, I had no choice. My prying already unearthed it. Now it was confirmed.
His progress down the stairs from our offices that evening was slow. He took each step with his right foot first as he steadied himself on the banister, his fedora pushed back to reveal his reddened forehead. His fashionable tan suit hid any signs of physical deterioration. Only his bloodstained ass gave him away.
SIX
All in the Family
HORNSMITH’S HUSTLE lacked higher purpose. He seemed content with self-preservation. There was no Scotch in his paper cup. No blue in his notes. No regret to his goodbyes. He stood alone in the face of Creation. Shirt pressed, he moved across the stage as required. He talked about the price of gold and the war in the Middle East. He drank Burgundies and single malts. He knew show tunes and operettas. He claimed to like Rembrandt and dislike Byron. He flattered and he smiled and never exposed anything about himself, unless it was meant to seduce. It was all part of his act. He had a family, but it was possible he didn’t have friends. He was mute on the subject. His worlds didn’t overlap. His boxes didn’t leak. He withheld. He ducked. What he thought, who he loved, what he cared about was a mystery.
Except once, early in my apprenticeship, in a rare gesture of intimacy, Hornsmith extended an invitation for Sunday supper at his house. Probably, he’d felt the need to present a picture of his familial status. Sell me on the idea that he was normal. That was how I discovered he had a wife and kid — I met them.
The wife, Katherine, had served beef stroganoff. We ate in silence. The kid, a sullen teenager named Sean with furious red boils on his skinny neck, texted messages to his real life throughout the meal. The click-clack of the little keyboard on his iPhone echoed off the white dining-room walls. Katherine sat straight, her humourless lips taut even while she chewed. Her fingers white-knuckle-wrapped around her knife like she was fixed to keep from violence. Hornsmith slurped egg noodles, expressionless. Paterfamilias.
Afterward, wife and son had attended to the cleanup while we drank Cragganmore in the book-lined living room and listened to Robert Preston belt out “Seventy-Six Trombones” on a vintage turntable. Hornsmith lit his pipe. He gazed through the smoke into the middle distance.
“We don’t always understand one another,” he said over the din, “but without them I’m certain I’d go off the rails.”
Unlikely. He was already off the rails. Presented well. But right off the rails.
“You’re a lucky guy,” I said for lack of anything better to say.
Supper was never spoken of again.
While Hornsmith never mentioned her, since I knew of Katherine’s existence, for about a week I struggled with the temptation to tell her Hornsmith’s terrible secret. To vanquish the loneliness of knowing. In the end, I told myself that she must know already. Something like that couldn’t stay hidden between a man and his wife. And if she didn’t know, it wasn’t my obligation to tell her. It was one thing to carry his secret. Something else to bring it into the light. If Hornsmith meant to get exit-ready, he needed to make peace with his world. I’d carry his secret. Not square it for him. So, I remained silent.
The mother-in-law was a whole other deal. Hornsmith liked to talk about her. Grandmother Mathews. She lived on an estate near King City that she never left. Hornsmith said she was loaded. Horses in heated barns. Range Rovers in shady laneways. Mexicans in the garden pruning roses. Trust funds. That kind of loaded. The truth turned out to be different.
He claimed she called his house with daily opinions on family business, like when to buy a new dishwasher, what type of energy-saving bulbs to use, and who to vote for. She phoned in lectures on diet and exercise. She ranted against the pope. She raged about the man on TV who barked the six o’clock news — the one with the hair.
He’d say: “Grandmother Mathews thinks the government should get serious about cap and trade because there’s money in it. She’s so politically aware.” Or “Grandmother Mathews told us we should hold off refinancing our mortgage because interest rates are about to drop again. She’s so financially astute.”
Disconnected, useless snippets soaked in reverence, under-coated with something like fear. She played large for him, but I never learned what the old goat had over him, because when I finally met her, she’d been dead a couple of days.
We were at the office when the call came. For a change, Hornsmith listened more than he spoke. He said, “Yes, yes,” in a tone that diminished as the call went on. By the end, he was slumped low in his chair. All he could say was, “Oh, oh,” and finally a single wordless sound sucked
from his throat like a pole pulled from a wet mudhole.
Afterward, Hornsmith laid it out: Grandmother Mathews had had a mole on her forehead that, after seventy-two years, she’d wanted removed. Someone had told her that left untreated, it would lead to cancer, which would eat into her brain, which in turn would lead to certain madness, followed finally by a slow, painful death.
Without a word to her family, she’d checked into Dr. Courtney’s exclusive clinic in the Caledon Hills where people went for their cosmetic surgery. It had its own helipad so clients could avoid the hour’s drive up the 400. Private bedside elevators delivered personal, on-call nutritionists, doctors, and therapists of all stripes to help with the restoration and rejuvenation of the body. At a price.
Distracted by Grandmother Mathews’s chatter, the admissions nurse had forgotten to check a box, so no method of payment was secured. It turned out Grandmother Mathews was a roller. It turned out Grandmother Mathews grifted like her son-in-law. It turned out she was broke.
To delay the inevitable presentation of the bill, after the mole procedure, she’d said that she liked the clinic so much she planned to stay. Right there, in the recovery room, she talked Courtney into a complete renovation. Grandmother Mathews was a name-dropper. Grandmother Mathews was a fast talker. Grandmother Mathews mined the Hornsmith connection. As long as she was in the clinic, under the knife, no one questioned her financial status. She knew Hornsmith. Hornsmith knew Courtney. Courtney was in business with Hornsmith. It was all in the family.
The following weeks must’ve been traumatic for Grandmother Mathews as she became younger and poorer while the knives and acid baths peeled away the characteristic folds and wrinkles that had shaped her over the years. Then, late one night, when Grandmother Mathews had been whittled down to about eighteen years old, she died of septicemia. Even worse, to Hornsmith’s distress, she was penniless. There was no estate. No life insurance. No inheritance. No money.
The news was a calamity for Hornsmith because the clinic wouldn’t release the body until her bills were paid. Meanwhile, his wife, misinformed at the best of times about the family finances, had started to line up the finest funeral money could buy.
“Do you understand what this means, Latour?” Hornsmith said. “Forehead, neck, face, tits, stomach, the whole thing. At an unfixed price. Plus the funeral. This could cost tens of thousands. We need to get to Courtney. We must work something out.”
“I thought we’re suing him for breach and loss of business,” I said.
Hornsmith almost fell from his chair in his haste to reach for the phone.
“We need a ceasefire to get the bodies off the field. There’s no time to lose. Soon the bills will come flying. None of us knew she couldn’t pay.”
Courtney agreed to meet us at his Caledon Hills clinic with the memory foam beds and fireside leather sofas. Over the phone, Hornsmith said nothing about the money. Said only that he wanted to claim the body and make arrangements. Said he was sick with grief. Courtney expressed condolences. He offered to do whatever he could to make this tragedy easier for the family. Courtney didn’t say a word about the money, either.
The afternoon disintegrated into a thunderstorm. Explosions of white lightning filled the sky. Thunder like distant cannon fire underscored the assault of rain hammering the roof of the Buick as we ploughed north along the 400 around slow trucks with red and yellow hazard lights ablaze. Past stopped cars that had lost the nerve to continue through the maelstrom. In places, water flowed axle deep across the highway. I was at the helm, white knuckled; Hornsmith was crumpled in the passenger seat, too distraught to drive. With the silver flask from the glove compartment, he washed down a couple of pills fished from his shirt pocket. Oblivious to the chaos around us, all he seemed to care about was the business with Courtney.
“My body betrays me,” he said, “but before my mind goes, I’ll make Courtney take this real estate deal.”
The real estate deal. He wasn’t even thinking about the fix he was in over the old lady, except perhaps how to twist it around to suit his own agenda. The Hornsmith agenda. He slumped back into the seat to savour the dope jolt. Inside the car it was warm and dry. “Come Fly with Me” played on the radio, sweet and low under the relentless rain.
“The swine won’t escape,” he said so quietly it was almost to himself.
I wasn’t so sure. Now that Hornsmith owed him money, Courtney had leverage. If Courtney smelled blood, our whole enterprise would likely go to rat shit. Courtney would kill the book deal for sure. Courtney would weasel out of the spa business. Hornsmith would be snookered.
After a hectic hour of deadly rain-soaked traffic on the highway, the last bit of the drive was a tranquil relief. The storm abated, and a cool, dense mist settled over the world. The clinic lay nestled in a secluded host of ancient pines at the end of a laneway that crossed over a manicured estate of a few hundred acres. Through the fog, we glimpsed meadows, stone fences, and pruned trees.
Security cameras were burrowed in the bushes. At the main building, a sleek limestone bunker designed to blend in with the landscape, a valet dressed in blue scrubs whisked off the car. We were directed toward an elevator that took us one level below the surface, into the mechanical workings of the place. Courtney, we were told, was already downstairs.
In the basement, a breathless porter behind a cart full of medical supplies confirmed we were on the right path. His rubber-gloved finger pointed down the hall. “Keep going to the end,” he said with a heavy sigh, as though he’d been lifting weights instead of parking a cart. “You can’t miss it. Right next to the loading dock.”
We walked on through a long maintenance corridor lined with overhead ducts and pipes stamped Caution: High Voltage and Warning: Steam Under Pressure, past an industrial kitchen and a laundry room to a solid steel door marked Visitation Room. Courtney waited for us under the cold white light of this unfurnished concrete tomb. Beside him was another vault-like door next to a large double-paned window that looked into a smaller, dimmer chamber. Once we were in, Courtney flipped a wall switch, and the adjacent chamber lit up.
“She’s here,” he said. “You may go in if you like.”
Hornsmith heaved open the heavy door to the next room. We followed him in. It was as cold as a meat locker and smelled of solvent. A metal gurney with a draped body stood under pooled lights. Courtney closed the door behind us. Sealed inside, there was no way out. We shivered around the body. Hornsmith pulled back the shroud to reveal Grandmother Mathews’s pale-blue face, serene and smooth. A few fresh scars behind her ears. A slender grin creased her lips.
Hornsmith studied his dead mother-in-law. He brushed a stray hair off her cheek. Traced a finger along a bloody line stitched under her chin. He lifted the covers and peeked at the rest of her naked splendour. Flat stomach. Firm breasts. He nodded, seemingly in appreciation of the handiwork. Our breath hung in the frozen air.
“All right,” Hornsmith said, “let’s get her to the autopsy.” His words rang off the white-tiled walls.
Courtney coughed as though the top of a ballpoint was lodged in his windpipe.
“What are you talking about?” he said when he could breathe again.
“She was a demented old woman who couldn’t fend for herself,” Hornsmith said. “We need to know what transpired to determine what action to take against the clinic. I want her cut open. Let’s find out.” So much for the grief-stricken son-in-law. He was all business.
Courtney’s hands trembled in the cold. “First, there’s the small matter of her expenses,” he said.
“Indeed,” Hornsmith said, with the shroud poised to cover the body, “the result of aggressive sales tactics on a lonely, incompetent old lady.”
They stood on opposite sides of the gurney. Hornsmith leaned over like he might lunge at Courtney who, to his credit, didn’t flinch.
“That’s outrageous,” Courtney said. “Mrs. Mathews came here of her own volition. She was completely of sound mind.”
“She should never have been admitted in the first place. And now, under your care, she’s dead.”
I had no dog in this fight. Grandmother Mathews on the slab meant nothing to me other than the fact that the sooner Hornsmith settled the matter, the sooner we could get back to a warm room and our own business. If Courtney could be swayed.
“Fatal post-op infections are extremely rare, but not unheard of. She signed the waivers. She knew the risk.” Courtney’s breath erupted in shots of steam as his patience with the matter shortened. “We’ll go after her estate for the money and we’ll win, even if you don’t co-operate.” He leaned against the gurney, which rolled into Hornsmith’s leg.
Hornsmith pushed it back and said, “We’ll produce doctor’s evidence of her dementia.”
They were practically nose to nose over the body. I tried to move out from between them in case it got to blows. My torso ached from the cold. My feet felt lifeless.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “let’s go back into the other room and talk this out under warmer conditions.”
Hornsmith straightened up, his fists tucked into his armpits for warmth. He stared at Courtney like he planned to eat him.
“I’ll get to the point,” he said. “You stay in the Washington real estate deal and we’ll forget about the book. And the Mathews bill goes away. There’s no estate, anyway. She’s dead broke.”
Courtney tweaked to the proposal. He smiled and shook his head. “Pass. Pay her bill. Forget about our other business and be grateful there’ll be no further repercussions.”
I was impressed. The weasel had pluck. He seemed to understand that he could maybe get out from under Hornsmith’s grip. But Hornsmith, frozen and dope addled as he was, still dealt in petty greed and fear. He leaned on the gurney, his jaw outstretched. Frosty beard bristling.
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