by Bruce Geddes
Now he was showing off. I had never spoken of Inés to Forzante. My mother had rarely even mentioned Allistair Forzante since she moved some twenty-five years before. Forzante’s depth of knowledge was remarkable and not unintimidating, even if he wasn’t entirely up-to-date. Though it was possible, I thought, that the man with the Blackberry would at any moment relay news of my collapsing marriage.
Their ten-minute break done, the band returned. With the drummer tapping out the rhythm, they started the next set with the ‘Do-Run-Run’.
“Tony told me he’d had a difference of opinion with you guys.”
“Is that what he called it?”
“What would you call it?”
Forzante grinned tightly and wheezed. A piece of snot flickered at the dark opening of his nostril. The man with the Blackberry looked up from the screen and reached for a handkerchief.
“I don’t know. Treason, maybe.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Sabotage, then,” Forzante said. He drained his cocktail and held it out for a refill. The man behind the wheelchair hesitated. “Hey, it’s my birthday!” he said. The Blackberry man nodded and Forzante had his next drink.
“Tony’s little demonstration for Wally Del Col cost us at the table with Krulls. It cost everyone. He could have gone on a hunger strike, starved himself like those poor Irish slobs. Or chained his butt to the fence outside. We could have supported him then. But instead he shuts down the line. We would have taken care of Wally. He should have known that.”
“He was just doing what he thought was right.”
“Right for who?” Forzante said. “You have to pick your battles. You know who taught me that? The late Gord McKitrick.”
I was glad he mentioned my father because it reminded me to temper my aggression. “And besides,” I said. “That’s not why he did what he did to the UCF Building.”
“How would you know what that guy was thinking? He lives in a different world these days.”
“I’m pretty sure I know what he was thinking on that one.”
The singer concluded her song, elongating the final note so long that people stopped dancing and waited on the dance floor, hands spread, ready to clap once she put space between the mic and her face.
I had plenty more to ask Forzante, a list of questions piling up on my tongue. But before I could form the first one, the singer and all the guests at the party had turned their heads to a commotion coming from the direction of the kitchen door. Pots banged and rattled against the floor. Glasses smashed. Whoops, howls, and then a single clown wearing cheap furry green hair, a red nose and baggy red trousers, burst through the double doors and rushed towards the stage. For a larger man the clown moved fast, savagely yelping and squealing, pushing aside chairs, knocking glasses and dishes from tables. Caught in the confusion, the band let their instruments rest and traded looks as though they had missed something in the program. I was confused about it myself but then I looked at Forzante, who gulped a breath of air, his face instantly ashen. It was then that I realized the clown was an unwelcome intruder.
Forzante’s man pocketed his Blackberry. The assistant devoted to driving the wheelchair stepped from behind it, his hand reaching inside his jacket, ready for action. The clown rushed to within ten feet of the head table and stopped, a goofy smile wiped in red on his face, his eyes blackened, as a character in a horror movie. The assistant stepped toward the clown, nothing threatening, probably thinking he would lead the interloper quietly from the room. But seeing him approach, the clown reached into a billowy sleeve and pulled out a knife. He unfolded the blade and held it in a backward fist.
Muscles steady, I pushed back from the table, the chair legs sounding a strain against the riser’s planks. Things were moving fast. The details accumulated.
The bouncing, knife-wielding clown, hyper with violence and danger.
The guests at their tables on the floor, laughing, clapping, spitting mists of Special Old, still unaware that the clown was not on the agenda.
Forzante’s men, poised like wrestlers in the ring, waiting to lash out.
Forzante in his chair, his head thrust forward as though trying to pull the rest of his body behind.
The clown turned his back to the head table and on the next beat bent over and then thumbed the elastic bands of his oversized pants and yanked down, his pale ass high and angled at Forzante. He remained still long enough for everyone at the head table, their bodies recoiled, their faces scrunched to read the initials A.F. written in what looked like smeared shit, one letter per cheek. With another whoop, the clown turned on his spot, bent again and gave the rest of the room a view.
Shouting, gesturing madly, the Blackberry man summoned extra hands, looking from side to side in anticipation of their arrival. The clown hoisted his pants and then paused for a moment, crouched and gathering energy. He charged the stage, throwing the knife to the floor as he reached the risers. Using a chair as a boost, he leapt onto the table in front of me, bounded across it in two steps, and jumped to the floor again and just as I had risen from my seat, a stupid smile still traced on my mouth, I saw something I recognized about him. The thickness of his neck, the stray curls of hair from under his green wig, hair the colour of something deep fried.
I don’t know if I had yet recognized the clown as Tony when he hit me. It was a straight, hard jab to the middle of my face, his fist covering a remarkable amount of territory. But I do remember this: I was able to remain on my feet long enough to see a look of sad relief on the clown’s face, like a repentant parent after a well-deserved spanking. And then he shot off again, knocking over dumbfounded, slow-footed security guards, rushing for the exit.
And then I was falling to the floor, thinking I had earned an excuse to finally get out of there.
30
In addition to breaking skin on my nose and inner lip, Tony’s punch also dislodged an incisor, something I discovered several hours later when I woke on a comfortable bed in a strange room. I touched the broken tooth with my tongue and then with two fingers explored my swollen, lacerated, and bruised face, the cuts now held shut with butterfly bandages. I rose from the bed, disturbing the pain in my head. In a pair of pyjamas that weren’t mine but fit me well, I shuffled to the window, pulled the blind aside and squinted against the sun as I looked at a familiar park bench and then remembered that I had been driven over to Allistair Forzante’s place and offered a place to sleep.
My clothes from the previous night had been cleaned and pressed, the jacket, pants, and shirt on hangers hooked to the top of a closet door.
In the middle of slipping on my first sock, there was a knock on the door. Forzante’s Blackberry-fiddling assistant entered. He was different from the previous night, his face altered by the addition of thick eyeglasses.
“Mr. Forzante is waiting for you,” he said.
“I really should get going,” I said.
“Of course,” he said. “Mr. Forzante is waiting in his study.”
I followed the assistant downstairs, each bounce shaking the pain, first the nose, then the tooth, then something harder to locate in my head. Another Forzante assistant rushed past us, carrying a ratchet and when I entered the study he was working on one of the wheels of his boss’ chair, Forzante grumbling.
“How many times have you done that? And you still can’t get it right.”
I sank into an overstuffed two-seater. A maid arrived with a tray of coffee and asked me what I’d like to eat.
“I’m okay, thanks,” I said.
“Don’t be shy, Tricky. The girl makes a terrific western. I’m having one myself.”
“Really, I’m not so hungry.”
“You have to eat. Make it two westerns, Stella.”
The woman left the room. Forzante dismissed the other two assistants.
“At my age, with my schedul
e, I need the extra help,” Forzante said. “It costs the union a little more money but there’s a recession on. You can’t just lay anyone off, can you? Of course you can’t. How’s your head?”
“Sore. I’ve lost a tooth.”
“That guy still knows how to punch,” he said. “The doc says it’s probably a minor concussion, though. He might have gone easy on you.”
Forzante looked tired. Maybe he had been up late with me, making sure my pupils still responded. Or maybe he’d been shaken up by the clown. Even if it had only been a juvenile prank with little real harm done, the clown’s dance and display had been the surprise climax. Like a drunken father-of-the-bride speech at a wedding, it would be on the minds and lips of everyone who saw it, the main topic of discussion on the ride home and again this morning over coffee and toast.
The maid arrived with the sandwiches and set them on a coffee table made from the insides of an old car engine. The assistant with the Blackberry followed her in. Forzante nodded and the man floated across the tiger print rug to deliver a message in his ear. I sipped from a glass of orange juice, fresh squeezed, I thought, even out of season, and touched one of my wounds, rubbing at the itch caused by the bandage.
“Looks like they’re shutting down Kipfer Air,” Forzante said. “A hundred and forty-four jobs. Guess where they’re going? China. Eighteen cents an hour. Christ.”
“Seems like a lot of bad news comes out of Wanstead these days.”
“You listen to that Toronto press gang too much,” Forzante said. “Bunch of armchair socialists wearing Italian shoes and driving their kids to soccer games in four-wheel drive Korean shit-boxes. Soccer! For Christ’s sake.”
“It’s not that bad then?”
“Oh it’s bad. It’s bad. But I’ve seen worse. ’73. ’92. In ’81 we had twenty-five percent out of work.”
“It seems different this time. It seems like you guys are giving up a lot.”
“You think I need reminding? Concessions, everywhere concessions. I’ll tell you what concessions are like: Concessions are like getting fucked in the ass and then getting a bill for the lube. But I don’t forget what we’ve given up and I plan to get it all back. It’s no different. Globalization and whatnot. Free trade. You can never step into the same river twice but, what the fuck, your shoes still get soaked, right?”
“What happened with Tony, Al?”
“Langlois? You want to know what happened with Langlois?” Forzante sipped from a glass of orange juice, his hand fighting a tremor. “He tried to burn down our building. No different than burning down this house. And then he lays you out flat! At my own goddamn birthday party! People used to have more respect.”
“But why? He must have had a reason.”
“To hit you?”
“I know why he hit me,” I said. “I was wondering about what he did to the UCF building.”
“Why? Because he’s a bastard. It pains me to say it because I know he’s your cousin. But the man might as well have tried to kill me. No better than the boxer who shot down Charlie Brooks back in ’77, may he rot in hell. The boxer, I mean, though old Brooks wasn’t without his faults. Why do you think I have the extra security? Look at what he did to your face! I’ve known you since the day you came out of your mother. You should remember that.”
I tensed my brow, trying to keep focused. “What if he wasn’t trying to burn the building down? What if he was trying to break into the place by blowing the lock?”
“Then I’d say he needs to find a new line of work. He doesn’t have the skills a man needs for a life of crime.”
“I know he’s changed, Al. I know he’s had some mental health issues. But you have to figure he’d have a reason to want to get in.”
“‘Mental health issues?’ Thank you, Dr. Phil. Mental health issues. No, that guy is a full-scale nutbox.”
“I don’t think that’s true. We all change. Adjust when we need to. Or forced to. But not that much.”
He picked up a wedge of sandwich. A dice of tomato fell on his lap. Forzante ignored it. “I don’t like your tone, Tricky. I’m your godfather, don’t you forget. That Newsys account is supposed to make your career. And you’re fucking the dog on it. You ever hear of gratitude? I’m glad your father isn’t here to see this.”
Forzante took a bite of his sandwich and chewed vigorously. I took some strength from his silence and then stood and started pacing the room like a movie detective sorting things out. “I’ve heard some things,” I said. “That maybe Gord was making a play for the head of the union.”
“Where did you hear that?” Forzante said. “I don’t know where you heard that. I gave birth to my union, goddammit. The fruit of my loins. I have always had the members’ confidence.” Bits of egg flew from his mouth. “There has never been a threat to my authority.”
“But if there was,” I said. “If there was a threat, do you think it might be related to why Tony tried to break into the UCF Building?”
“Who the hell knows? And besides, it wasn’t a break in. It was arson. There was gun powder residue everywhere. Goddammit, Tricky, some lawyer you are if you can’t tell the difference between a break-in and arson.”
Forzante lifted a foot to the glass top table and, forgetting that the brake was set, tried to push back. Looking at the old man’s loosened collar, the detailed stitching, I felt the pain in my head fading.
“What about the criminal investigation in the mid-seventies?” I said. “The fraud. The allegations of kickbacks.”
“I don’t believe my ears. Where are you getting all this stuff? Fraud? That was nothing. It never went to trial. A lying cop. It happens. Forgive and forget.”
“Was the cop paid off? How did you keep it out of the Echo? Why didn’t I hear about it when it was happening?”
“Goddammit, Tricky. What would you know about any of that? You were a child. Why don’t you just leave the past alone? You’ve been taken good care of. Your mother, too. Why don’t you accept it with just a drop of humility? The higher the monkey climbs, Tricky. You ever hear that?”
“Sure.”
“You’d do well to heed the advice.”
“All of a sudden there are so many holes,” I said.
Forzante looked at me with intent. “So the fuck what? Ignore them. This is what I’m telling you.”
“I’ve been trying to ignore them,” I said. “But they keep demanding to be filled. It’s not my choice. Trust me. Tony didn’t want me to be his lawyer. He has this theory.”
Forzante nearly exploded from his chair. The metal bits rattled. “I am telling you this now: It was a fire,” he said. “Phil! The cops said it was arson. I made sure the most senior guys investigated. Not very skilful, but they know better than you. Langlois is out of his head. You need to get him locked up. His mother is useless. You’re his family, you should be fixing this! Phil!” The assistant with the Blackberry rushed in.
“Where’s Phil?” asked Forzante.
The assistant looked momentarily confused.
“Phil Hobson? He went home after the party, Mr. Forzante. Would you like me to send for him?”
“Fuck no. I want some more sandwiches. Turkey. Roast Beef. Get me some pickles. And give me one of those pills.”
“Right away, Mr. Forzante.”
Forzante looked at me and bit his lower lip with his tiny sharp teeth. “Forget the sandwiches,” he said. He grappled at the wheels of his chair. But the brake was still engaged. “Can someone fix this damn thing? I’m tired. I’ve been up all night. Get someone to drive McKitrick here to his hotel. I’ve got to go to bed.”
31
Seeing my chopped up, bruised face later that morning, Louise panicked.
“What happened?”
“An accident,” I said. “Is Tony here?”
“He’s not with you?”
“No.�
��
“He didn’t come home last night. I don’t know where he is! He was supposed to take me shopping two hours ago. I thought he was with you.” She was dressed to go out, wearing dirty white sneakers and a coat that was too heavy for June. A canvas handbag dangled from her forearm.
“I just came down yesterday afternoon.”
“I always go shopping on Sunday morning. Always. It’s not so crowded,” she said. “You weren’t with him last night?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“Not really.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? They don’t let me drive because of my eyes. Tony takes me every Sunday. It’s the only thing I ask. Every Sunday. Then you show up and he does a Harry Houdini. Just like his vagrant father. What am I going to do? Where could he be?”
I thought of a wasted clown, showered, scrubbed, sprawled on a sofa or armchair, dozing off his triumph. “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said.
“Who’s going to take me shopping? I’m old. I’ll starve.”
“He’ll probably show up any minute. I was hoping to see him myself.”
“Not until I do my shopping you won’t.”
“Of course not.”
I looked at my watch. Depending on how late the victory party lasted, Tony could be hours. Louise paced in her filthy shoes, pausing as she reached the edges of her front porch to peer in each direction down the empty street.
“Say, Aunt Louise,” I said. “I have a car here. Why don’t I take you shopping?”
“You?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
“What kind of pleasure?”
“I only meant that I would be happy to keep you from starving this week.”
“Good. Because Tony told me your woman left you. But I’m an old lady.”
Strolling up and down the aisles of Bob and Lynn’s No Frills, Louise’s mood softened. A sale on canned tomatoes piqued her excitement.