After the Horses

by Jeffrey Round

  Quebec had long held a fascination for Ontarians — Torontonians in particular. It was the “forbidden” land. Montreal had a rep for being Canada’s party destination, compared to staid Toronto the Good. When Dan thought of Quebec, however, it wasn’t Montreal that came to mind first. But then he’d never really been a party boy. A friend once said of him, Dan’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t know how to party. Dan’s response had been pointed: “Party” isn’t a verb. Not entirely accurate, given the evolution of language, but his friend had been too intimidated to argue. Which seemed to settle the matter.

  For Dan, Vieux-Québec was the province’s real destination, taking its name from the Algonquin Kébec, meaning “where the river narrows.” He loved to approach by car and sit gazing up at the promontory. Cap-Diamant. Cape Diamond. There, above the narrowing banks of the St. Lawrence, stood one of North America’s oldest and most elegant cities. Explorer Jacques Cartier built a fort there in 1535, but decided it was less impressive than the site that would later become Montreal, and so sailed on. It remained French territory until being ceded to England at the end of the Seven Years’ War, igniting a cultural feud that continues to this day.

  Dan understood the resentment Quebeckers felt toward the rest of Canada. They had every right to feel slighted by how their causes and beliefs were overlooked and trampled on by the largely unfeeling English majority. In fact, he had every sympathy for the Quebec cause. Except one: the French weren’t there first. To his mind, the issue of Aboriginal sovereignty had never been properly accredited. After five hundred years of neglect, the land’s original owners deserved better.

  He pulled into town and quickly found his hotel. The room was comfortable and, to his regret, thoroughly modern. There was nothing of old Quebec here, nothing linking it with its history and heritage. Still, it would afford a peaceful sleep when the time came. He unpacked, hung up his clothes, then went out and found a crêperie with a low ceiling and stone walls. A fireplace crackled quietly in the corner. Real wood. Quebeckers went in for veracity. No fake fireplaces or gas lines for them.

  He indulged with a single glass of cider, remembering his promise to his son. You were honest only if you kept the faith when no one was watching. His crêpes arrived on a long plate that neatly accommodated the crisp rolls bursting with melted cheese and ham slices wrapped around asparagus spears. Screw the partying, Dan thought. This is really living.

  Twilight came on as he finished his coffee. Out on the street again, he glanced up at the Château Frontenac, that stone emissary from another century, massive and upright. Light illuminated its spires like a great cathedral left over from the French Revolution. None of that chrome-and-green-glass condo crap going up everywhere like a creeping mould that’s only going to get worse over time, Dan thought. Maybe he’d been born a few centuries too late. Perhaps all his malaise and discontent in life amounted to that.

  The cobblestones felt at once familiar and strange as he made his way up and down hills, marvelling at the buildings set aglow in the fading light, their colourful interiors at odds with the stern grey exteriors.

  In the Faubourg Saint-Jean, he found the sign: Club Le Drague, its exterior adorned with a Quebec flag. He bypassed the outdoor terrasse and stepped inside. He could have been standing in any bar in Toronto, with a basement disco and a glittery stage pour le travesti. No matter the language, gay bars were the same the world over.

  Dan ordered a soda water with his minimal French — just enough for obtaining food, drink, lodgings, and getting the boys to show an interest. Even the smallest effort helped keep things on the friendly side here. Where Montreal was largely a French-English compote, Quebec City was the bastion of separatist thinking. No surprise in a province where English was not even acknowledged as an official language. Better to supplicate than butt heads unnecessarily.

  The bar smelled of beer and cigarettes. Donny would be proud to know there was one last bastion of the Empire that hadn’t succumbed to a cowardly intolerance for the weed. Dan took his drink to one corner and sat watching the crowds come and go.

  The men were particularly striking, he noted. Many had beautiful eyes. A few of the twinks looked him over. Then, deciding he was either too dangerous or too anglo, they passed him by. A leather man glanced his way as well, but there was no mutual spark compelling either party to cross the national divide. Such were the mysterious ways of cruise bar protocol.

  He trailed downstairs to le disco. It was too early for dancing, apart from a few introverts who preferred their own company, twirling in self-absorbed ecstasy. The DJ warmed up his skills as the lights spun, but the room was largely empty. Neverland had never looked so lonely.

  Dan felt a buzzing in his pocket. He pulled out his cell and saw Ziggy’s name: I know I promised not to stalk you, but I just wanted to say you’re a nice guy and I’m thinking of you. Maybe we can meet up later this week? Now that the Saddle’s closed, I hang at the Beaver Club. It would be a nice surprise if you showed up.

  Dan texted back: I’m out of town right now. When I get back, I’ll look you up at that club! He thought it best to leave things vague. He knew the obsessive tendencies of teenage boys to form crushes on anyone who paid them attention. Even with a promise not to stalk him, Ziggy could turn out to be a problem.

  He was making his way back to the bar when a good-looking guy caught his attention: dark and steamy. Just his type. Dan watched for a moment, trying to read his body language, till the man turned away. No use chasing him. He was just another pretty face in the second of Canada’s two solitudes.

  He was getting ready to call it a night when a burly bear in leather chaps and harness passed, a pitcher of beer in either hand. In his haste, he bumped Dan with his elbow, spilling his drinks. Dan reached out to steady him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Calice! Maudit anglais,” the man growled.

  Dan caught the expletive, but he wasn’t taking the bait. “Pardonnez-moi,” he said to mollify the man, though he wanted to say it wasn’t his drunken clumsiness that had caused the accident.

  The man stopped. “Why do you fucking English have to come here? Don’t you have enough places to go? This is not your province.”

  Dan stared him down. “Plains of Abraham. We won, you lost. As for land claims, the Natives were here long before the French or the English.”

  Dan thought for a moment the man was going to throw the beer in his face, but instead he broke into a big, toothy grin.

  “Ah! Fuck you, Anglais,” he said, moving his bulk smoothly along to his group of friends, who looked back and hooted with laughter as he related what Dan had said.

  Dan turned and got another glimpse of the face he’d seen earlier. Was he being cruised? The man was on the small side, but definitely Dan’s type: dark and masculine. He caught Dan’s eye then turned away. Apparently the attraction wasn’t mutual. When Dan looked again, he’d vanished.

  He finished his soda and left, wandering along the streets. He put his mind to the task ahead. In the morning, he’d visit the Sûreté and follow up his inquiry into Lonnie. One way or the other, it would bring things to an end. If it was an unproductive search, there were no other avenues for him to take. In the meantime, he was in one of his favourite cities, enjoying its sights and sounds.

  There were two of them waiting outside his hotel. Something about their size and how they carried their bodies, as if they wore armour, told him these were no ordinary tourists. They reminded him of men surreptitiously photographed around the grave of some recently buried Mafia don. Paying their respects. Dan knew respect had nothing to do with why they were there.

  He turned and started walking away, but they’d seen him. Fighting an impulse to run, he slipped across the street. Clip-clopping hooves rang out on the cobblestones as he ducked behind a calèche carrying a middle-aged couple whooping it up like newly-weds. By the time the carriage passed, his followers had separated. One of them, Dan presumed, had gone down a darkened side street.
The other was heading directly toward him.

  He thought of dashing back to the hotel, but they could still catch him in the lobby. There might even be someone waiting for him in his room. Instead, he headed back toward Le Drague. Nothing like a few outraged drag queens to protect a fellow gay, but that would put others in danger and Dan wouldn’t consider going inside. He turned a corner and dashed up a hill. A few seconds later, his follower emerged right behind him. The lamps threw shadows all around. People were milling everywhere. Dan sprinted away from the crowds.

  On the next block, he stopped and leaned into the shadow of a doorway, hands pressed against stone. When his pursuer passed, Dan lunged for him, grabbing his neck with one hand and his crotch with the other. Fists came up, but Dan was in snug. The man struggled for all he was worth. For a second, Dan thought he was prepared to risk the crown jewels. Then again, they were in the rebel province of Quebec and sovereignty didn’t have much sway here.

  A fist landed against his throat, winding him. Dan’s grip loosened and the man wrenched himself free. A knife flashed, shiny and seductive, released from the folds of a suit. Dan leapt aside.

  Before he could strike again, a door opened on the man’s right, releasing a noisy gang from the bright interior of a pub. One unguarded glance over his shoulder was all Dan needed. He kicked out and landed a solid blow against his ribs. The knife clattered away as the man doubled over.

  Dan watched him lurch down the alley and disappear around the corner. There was no use pursuing him. His partner was still out there somewhere. It would just be asking for trouble.

  “Stop following me,” he spat out uselessly.

  A crowd had formed across the street. Someone was punching numbers into a cell phone. Dan heard the word police, which sounded pretty much the same in either language. His pursuers were gone. Dan doubted that would be the end of them, but it would buy him time.

  He turned and headed back to the hotel, making his way through the crowds. As he reached the corner, he found himself facing the dark man he’d seen in the bar. It hadn’t been a mutual appreciation society after all, but Dan was determined he wasn’t going to stop him from entering his hotel.

  “Your buddies just left,” he said, grappling with the newcomer.

  With his head butted against the man’s shoulder, and legs entwined, Dan tried without success to force him down. His opponent was small, but wiry and supple. The coupling felt like a form of intimacy, their tangled limbs somehow making them complete. The other fought back expertly. This was a man who knew how to defend himself, Dan thought. Military possibly. Maybe police. It was the latter that worried him most.

  Dan squeezed him tightly, pulling them together lest this man produce a knife, too. His opponent drew his arms in close then thrust his shoulders forward explosively, literally knocking Dan aside and forcing the breath out of him. He hit the ground in a low roll, instinctively protecting his vitals from potentially damaging kicks, then lay dazed, waiting for the other’s next move.

  “Asshole,” the man spat out as he walked away.

  Not French, at any rate.

  Nineteen

  The Grain Silo

  Dan strode through the lobby and headed up the stairs. Throwing his belongings together, he took time to check his face in the mirror, daub the gash on his cheek with toilet paper, then quit the room. Out in the street, he tossed the key into a mailbox and made his way to an ATM.

  Cash in hand, he headed down the road to a small hotel he’d spotted on his arrival. A light gleamed in the front window, the vacancy sign still lit up. A lucky thing, Dan knew. At that time of year, most hotels were booked well in advance in the tourist quarter.

  The old man who greeted him didn’t hesitate to take his cash. He wrote out a receipt and showed him to a room. Now this is more like it, Dan thought, gazing around with admiration at the stone walls and wood beams. Pure Vieux-Québec. Probably owned by a descendant of one of the original habitants. It would suit his needs, but he couldn’t stop and admire it for long. He’d finish his business and head home. Whatever his pursuers wanted from him, they would have it one way or another. But they’d have to find him first.

  He kicked off his shoes and put his feet up on the bed, casting around for something on television he could understand. It turned out not to be a problem. With cable, there were far more English stations than French. One more reason for them to hate us, Dan thought. But god forbid they separate and get swallowed up by the U.S. Then they’ll really have something to scream about.

  He settled in with good, sensible Jamie Oliver, righting the nutritional wrongs of the world one social class at a time. There was no sense going back out and showing his face on the street again tonight.

  Sleep did not come easily. Wary of every sound outside his door, he finally nodded off before dawn. When he woke an hour later, his back felt as if it had been split open, with a rib or two puncturing his lungs for dramatic effect. That he’d hate to die in a Quebec hotel room was all he could think.

  He called the Sûreté to confirm his meeting then packed and left. The chief of police was as old and wrinkled as a desert tortoise. He looked Dan over with jaundiced eyes as he opened a musty-looking file. Judging by its condition, it may well have predated computers. Dan watched as he turned the pages till he came to the one he was searching for, stabbing it with his forefinger.

  “Ici.”

  Dan saw a handwritten coroner’s report in a script that might have been made with a quill pen. He followed what he could make out with his limited French.

  He looked back up at the man. “Mort?”

  “Oui, il est mort, bien sûr.”

  “Quand?”

  The man frowned and looked down at the report. Surely this idiot Englishman could figure that out.

  “Le quinzième mai, deux mille trois.”

  He looked back up with bleary eyes. Dan could practically smell the alcohol on his breath. The man should have been packed away in mothballs and put in a closet, not left sitting at a desk in some backwater provincial police station.

  Fifteenth May, two thousand and three.

  Dan thought back and felt a chill. That was pretty much when Domingo had started saying she knew Lonnie was dead. He’d been sitting here on some police shelf all that time, waiting for someone to find him. Dan fought a sense of rage over the carelessness of such things. Probably no one had entered it into the police files.

  He looked at the report and saw a first name only: Lonnie. Someone had added a blurry Polaroid of a boy turned away from the camera, looking back over his shoulder with a wide grin. Elfin. That was exactly how Dan remembered Lonnie. He’d found what he was after.

  He wanted to ask what happened, but his French wasn’t honed enough to extract such answers with precision. Instead, he tried to convey what he could with facial expressions. He shook his head and tried hard to look chagrined. Chagrin. It was a French word. Surely this old codger would understand that.

  “C’est quoi?”

  The old man looked at Dan as though he were the daft one.

  “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?” Dan managed.

  “Ah!” Enlightenment shone in his eyes. “Il est tombé.”

  “Tombé. He fell?”

  “Oui.” The man used his hands to indicate someone climbing then falling in space. He pointed to a grain silo in the background of the photograph. “Suicide,” he pronounced slowly, the word taking on a cultivated gravity in French.

  Dan picked up the image and examined it in his hands.

  He turned to the officer again. “L’addresse?”

  “Oui, oui.” The man made a snuffling sound, swiped at his nose, and then handed Dan a form with the address of the mortuary.

  “No, the other.”

  The man glared as though he were speaking a Martian dialect.

  “L’autre addresse,” Dan said. He pointed to the silo. “Je veux aller ici.”

  “Ah!”

  Again, the look of recogni
tion passed over the man’s face. He bent and wrote something on the form and handed it back. Dan took it and thanked him.

  “Bien sûr,” he said with a shrug, as though he expected no less.

  At the mortuary, Dan was thankful to be greeted by a bilingual attendant who seemed to bear no grudge against him for asking his complicated questions in English. He’d anticipated more trouble on this end. Getting information was one thing, but asking for a cremation was quite a different set of affairs. He handed over his investigator’s licence for identification. The attendant looked it over, glanced at Dan again, and then handed it back with scarcely a flicker of interest.

  Dan signed a form and answered a few questions. Yes, a plain metal box was adequate. No, he would not mind coming to pick up the remains himself. Tomorrow morning was fine. Business concluded, Dan thanked the man and left.

  On the way back to his car, he passed a florist and ducked inside. It was threatening rain as he drove past the Plains of Abraham, those tumultuous fields where the destiny of the country had turned decisively two hundred and fifty years earlier. On the outskirts of town, he parked and approached the silo. It looked tranquil, not the sort of place you might expect to find death. Then again, it was exactly the sort of place you might decide to kill yourself if you were determined to do so. From pain to peace in one short step, but with a world of difference between. Dan well knew the seductive urge. He’d never do that to Ked, but he often thought of the peace that would follow, a respite from the relentlessness of his dreams, should he ever get so desperate. People did all the time.

  He stood looking up a sheer wall of cement. The handle on the door was rusted shut. That wouldn’t stop him. He’d come this far. He put the flowers down and looked around for something to pry it open. Around back he found another door, this one red and covered in dents. It opened to his touch.