“Yes. I’m a block away from there.”
“Can you manage to get there? I can be there in five minutes.”
“Okay — yeah. Thanks. I really appreciate it, Dan.”
Dan arrived with Ked in tow. The shop was garish at that hour. Table surfaces reflected the glare of nighttime windows. Fluorescent fixtures lit up over-sized posters for coffee and bagels, making the racked donuts glow with a blue tinge. Coloured sprinkles and powdered sugar vied with sticky glazes for counter appeal, finding none. A sleepy-looking employee roused himself and approached the register, his hair weirdly illuminated by the light.
“Good morning,” Dan said as cheerily as he could manage.
The boy mumbled a few words that vaguely resembled English. Whatever the intended meaning, the sentiment was clearly not welcoming. He wiped his hands on an apron that looked like it had done time in an abattoir. Dan ordered three donuts and a cardboard container of milk for Ked, who looked at him strangely.
Dan frowned. “What? It’s good for you.”
Ked rolled his eyes. He picked up the tray and went off to a table in a far corner, slouching into the seat.
Dan looked around. One table over, an old Asian man picked at the crumbs on his plate. Or someone’s plate. At the far end of the shop, a serious young woman in a beret conferred in quiet tones with a man in a thirties-style suit. Bonnie and Clyde in an idle moment. Dan and Ked were the only other customers. In the daytime, the place bustled with immigrants who didn’t share the North American disdain for cheap coffee and lacquered tables. At this hour it looked more like an Edward Hopper study for the lost, the lonely, and the rebellious.
Steve came through the door and stood blinking in the light. Whatever he’d undergone in the four months since leaving Glenda, it didn’t look good on him. A cup of tea might have served him in good stead. Dan could have gone for something with a bit more bite.
Ked waved at Steve and turned back to his Game Boy. Steve mumbled an elaboration of his apology for calling so late. Dan let him ramble on about the break-up with Glenda. Steve’s hands fidgeted as he related the events that had brought him to his current state. He seemed to be rehashing things to find their meaning or else to locate himself in time, as though he’d gotten lost a few months back.
A moment of silence passed. His tale seemed to have run its course. Steve’s hands relaxed as his eyes took on a vacant stare.
“I’m sorry for what you’re going through,” Dan said. “Is there something I can do to help?”
Steve blinked. “I just thought … I better talk to someone. You were the only one who came to mind. I mean, apart from those pathetic help lines you hear about.” He smiled weakly.
At least he hasn’t lost it completely, Dan thought. They’d always been friendly, sharing day-to-day concerns across the adjoining fence, but Dan never assumed he and Steve were anything more than neighbours. Over the past year, Steve had brought news of his ongoing arguments with Glenda in what would eventually become a lasting break-up. At the time it felt like simple domestic griping, one man to another. To Steve it had obviously meant more.
“Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I used to look over and see the light in your study. That’s why I remembered you stayed up late.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I just wanted to talk to someone.”
Dan tried for a reassuring tone. “It’s all right. I’m glad you called. But I think there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? Talk can always wait till the morning. Something happened tonight, didn’t it?”
Steve’s face twisted in an odd half-smile. “What do you mean?”
Dan leaned closer. “I think you were afraid of yourself. Afraid you might do something. You reached some sort of breaking point tonight, didn’t you?”
Steve’s lip trembled. A tear splashed onto the table. “Does she want me to kill myself? Why won’t she even talk to me?”
Dan put a hand on Steve’s forearm. “It’s okay.”
“I did everything for her. Why wasn’t she happy?”
In the corner of his vision, Dan saw the old man wander over to another table and start on the crumbs there. He signalled to Ked to give the guy a donut.
Steve shuddered. “I know why,” he said at last. “Because she doesn’t need me any more. She used to need me. When we were in college together we were terrified of the future. We lived in this one-room dump. We used to cling to each other every night, saying how awful life was. We really needed each other then.”
“Then what happened?” Dan said.
“I don’t know. Life was getting better. Things were getting easier. Or I thought they were. I worked hard to give her everything she wanted. Then one day she asked me to leave. She said it wasn’t working for her. All this time I thought we were happy....” His voice broke on the final syllable. He reached for a napkin and swiped at his eyes. “I gave her the house. Did she tell you?”
“She asked you to leave and you told her she could have the house?”
Steve nodded.
“And she took it?” Dan asked, incredulous.
Steve nodded again. Of course she damn well took it, Dan thought.
“I just ...” Steve shuddered. “I just want her to be happy.”
She is happy, Dan thought. Now that you’re out of her life. He envisioned Glenda raking leaves in her cocktail outfit, just one of a million reasons why he hated the city. Toronto had changed in the years he’d lived there. When had the horrible, selfish hordes moved in and taken over? He thought of the sour contempt with which his fellow citizens viewed the rest of the country, the smug satisfaction they exhibited over their meagre little domain. His neighbour on the other side was no better: a patronizing boor who treated his wife like a piece of real estate, interrupting her whenever she spoke, which was seldom, and raising his voice through the roof the moment he set foot in the door. In the warm weather you could hear him talking non-stop, morning to night. He spoke to Dan with half-disguised contempt, as though he were only being nice to the queer-next-door for form’s sake. On the other hand, guys like Steve were a little too nice. “Is there any chance you could —?”
“No. She doesn’t want me back.” Steve’s words slurred again. He seemed to be concentrating to counter the effects of the tranquillizer. “What did I do wrong?” he asked, like a chastised child.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. People grow apart for a lot of different reasons.”
“I know.” Steve blew his nose on the napkin and looked up. “I just never thought it would happen to us.”
“I think you need to accept it for now, and go on with your life. Maybe things will change, but you need to get on with things. Are you working?”
Steve shook his head. “No — I’m too much of a mess. I haven’t been able to concentrate since this happened.”
Dan looked over at Ked, who’d fallen asleep in the chair after giving the old man a donut and the carton of milk. Bonnie and Clyde were holding hands across the table, still speaking in whispers, planning their next heist. The store clerk had disappeared behind his counter.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “It was selfish of me to call. I didn’t realize you had Ked with you.”
“I’m glad you felt you could call me.” Dan squeezed Steve’s forearm. He was thinking that next time he might not get a call till it was too late. He’d hear from Glenda over the fence how poor Steve had killed himself out of grief, trying to sound as if she cared.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about those sleeping pills,” Steve said, confirming Dan’s fears. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but something made me do it.”
“Calling someone is always the right thing to do. Promise me you’ll call any time you feel things are getting out of hand. I’d like to think you’d do the same for me.”
Steve smiled ruefully. “Yeah, right — like you’ve got problems, Mr. Everything’s-Under-Control.”
Dan wondered if that was really how he appeared to peopl
e who didn’t know him.
“I think I’m all talked out.” Steve yawned. He seemed calmer, a different person from the man who’d walked in the door an hour earlier. “I think we’d better get some rest.”
“Are you sure?” Dan said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
“Thanks. I’m sure.”
They left the donut shop and walked up the street. Ked faltered behind them, as though he couldn’t coordinate his footsteps.
“I want you to promise me you’ll talk to your doctor about this,” Dan said. “You do have a doctor, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Talk to him. Make an appointment today. Maybe a month or two on anti-depressants would help.”
“I will,” Steve said gratefully. “I promise I will do that.” He was nearly Dan’s age, but over the last hour he’d assumed the role of dutiful son.
They reached Dan’s car. Ked slid into the backseat and lay down without a word.
“I can give you a lift if you want,” Dan said.
“I’m only a block away.” Steve waved in the direction of Donlands.
The storefronts along Danforth were taking shape, losing shadow in the coming light. A car slid past, somnolent in the pre-dawn hush.
“You should see this place,” Steve said. “It comes fully furnished with artificial flowers. Did I tell you? It’s like a hotel lobby. It’s sort of wonderful and horrible at the same time. You’ll have to come over some night. We’ll put down a bottle of wine.”
For an instant Dan glimpsed the old Steve — friendly, chatty, kind. He was a good person. Someone who should never have to feel alone, with no one to help him sort out his problems.
“I’m always up for a drink and a chat.”
Steve shook Dan’s hand. “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Dan. I feel much better. Truly.”
“Good. Keep in touch so I know things are all right. I’m home tonight after work and I’ll be in the office Friday morning, but I’m gone for the weekend.” Dan pressed a card in Steve’s hand. “Here’s my cell number. If you need to talk, just call me. Any time. I’m there for you.”
He watched Steve walk away, then got in the car and started the engine, hoping he could still catch an hour’s sleep. He turned to see Ked slumped in the back.
“How ya doing, kiddo?” he asked. “Gonna make it?”
With eyes closed, Ked nodded his head against the seat. “I love you, Dad,” he said softly.
Four
Dreams and Schemes
Sometimes going back to bed for that extra hour was the right thing to do and sometimes it was the wrong thing. Today it had been the wrong thing. Dan fumbled with a dull razor and dressed without realizing he’d put on mismatched socks. At nine o’clock, he spilled half a cup of coffee on his shirt. By ten, the entire day looked like it would be out-of-kilter. His reading glasses felt like a giant pair of daddy-long-legs straddling his head as he finalized the reports on the missing Kitchener woman with her fondness for jewellery and the young Serb who’d placed his faith in God and had the misfortune to come to Canada looking for work.
Shadows passed over the frosted glass with the mumbled goings-on of morning voices outside Dan’s office. For a firm that performed feats as miraculous as raising the dead, it might have had a colour scheme to match — beatific tropical shades, joyful rainbow hues. Instead, the offices were battleship grey — dull and cheerless as a December morning. Still, Dan consoled himself it was nothing so invidiously depressing as bubble gum pink or mustard yellow. It was simple, utilitarian, functional. Perhaps that precise shade of grey had been chosen to remind them of the dreary perseverance with which so many of the firm’s clients spent their days.
After fourteen years, Dan was one of the senior investigators. Some came and went in the space of a few years after finding more prestigious placement, while others burned out from the perennial themes of human misery that befell so many whose lives they tracked and whose stories were all that was left to record.
Dan had an impressive record of finds behind him and no reason to leave. There were always bigger firms and more prestigious appointments, but he’d made a decent life for himself and Ked. And he hadn’t lost interest in his work, which had always been his biggest concern. He didn’t need to feign enthusiasm or be admired. He was, despite the predictions of others, unaccountably successful. After all this time watching the others come and go, he had to ask himself: what else was there for him to do?
Dan was on his third cup of coffee, but the caffeine stubbornly refused to kick in. What he really wanted was a drink, but it was only ten thirty — far too early. A bottle of Scotch lay wrapped in a Sobey’s bag in the bottom of his desk. He’d hidden it like a schoolboy tucking cigarettes and condoms in the back of his socks drawer. In his mind’s eye he watched little feet duck outside and scrabble around the corner to the bar. Let them stay there then.
He tried Bill’s number and got the answering service. Bill never slept in, even after a late night, which meant he’d already left for the hospital. If he’d made it home the night before.
“Hiya,” Dan said into the phone. “We missed you last night.” His voice was gravely with fatigue. He tried to make himself sound jovial. “Give me a call about the weekend. I still don’t know who’s driving.” The plan had been to drive to Glenora on Friday and stay overnight with Bill’s friend Thom, the groom. As usual, Bill had been so hard to pin down that basic questions like whose car they were taking were still up in the air. “I’ll wait to hear from you. Ciao.”
He took another hopeless sip of coffee and opened the file on Richard Philips, the missing fourteen-year-old. The boy’s birthdate caught Dan’s eye — he was exactly one year less a day older than Ked, which meant that he was now a fifteen-year-old runaway. Happy birthday, Richard.
He read on. The boy had been missing for two months. There’d been no body recovered and thus no closure. At the end of August, an anonymous caller phoned Toronto police to say the boy was fine, giving details only someone close to him would know, and adding that Richard had no intention of returning home. He’d been labelled a runaway, plain and simple. Until the police had anything further to go on, the case was shelved.
Dan flipped through the pages to the transcript. The call had been traced to a diner on Church Street in the heart of the gay ghetto. That narrowed the possibilities drastically. Unless a kid had friends to turn to in the city — preferably with money — then hustling was a likely avenue. It was a choice Dan wouldn’t wish on anyone, but it was a direct source of income if a kid decided to disappear. It happened often enough, though the parents just couldn’t understand why their kids would choose sex with a stranger over the “love” they found at home. Dan could.
He’d had plenty of time to think about it before leaving Sudbury at seventeen. The issue had been simple — why stay where you weren’t wanted? He’d said goodbye to his aunt and cousin the night before, then told his father at breakfast he was leaving. Gaunt and grey-faced, the man grunted a response — whether in acknowledgment or disbelief, Dan couldn’t tell, just as he could never tell what any of his father’s cryptic communications meant.
After an exhilarating day hitchhiking, Dan found himself in Toronto with an empty belly and no bed. He bought three chocolate bars from an all-night grocery and slept on a park bench the first two nights, amazed by the shadowy forms flitting past till the early hours. Now and again, one of them crept close to investigate while Dan held his breath until they left again. It seemed the city never slept — and he had barely. The Yonge Street Mission took him in the third night. He tried pan-
handling when his funds ran out, but the people he asked seemed more intimidated by him than sympathetic.
A kid at the mission told him about hustling. There was money to be made, he said, as long as you could stomach the sex. That wasn’t a problem. Dan had already experienced sex with older men. He recalled the snuffling, grubbing hands that pawed un
der his T-shirt and down his sweatpants in the shadows beneath the railway trestle back home. Apparently he had what they liked. He got a reputation for an ability to time his orgasms with passing coaches, earning him the nickname Train Trestle Danny.
When he arrived in Toronto, he was already an adult in body. One Saturday in July he stood on a deserted corner in the downtown strip known as Boys Town. For once he was lucky — in a relative way. The man who stopped his Mercedes to chat up the ungainly teenager with the adult’s body had been kind and not unattractive. He reminded Dan of his grade nine shop teacher, Mr. Dalton, a gruff man with hairy arms and shirtsleeves permanently rolled back. Dalton had been an erotic fixation for Dan, who conjured the man’s image to trigger his masturbatory fantasies.
Dalton’s look-alike invited Dan to his home in Leaside. Dan thought he was talking about a place outside Toronto, but the man assured him it was only a fifteen-minute ride to where they were headed. Money was never discussed. Dan was too nervous to bring it up, and the man had an assuredness that said he knew what he was doing.
As they drove along the tree-lined streets, Dan was struck by how little the neighbourhood offered the casual viewer. He wondered who lived behind the tidy, curtained windows where light spilled over the sills like the first star at twilight. He considered how much you’d have to earn to live there. Certainly more than he’d ever make.
Dan hadn’t minded the sex. The man — Bob Greene — was courteous and hadn’t asked Dan to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with. Afterwards, Dan pocketed the fifty dollars, blushing at Bob’s compliments. It was the first time anyone had made him feel attractive.
Bob was experienced at picking up boys. He knew life on the streets was anything but glamorous, and could be hazardous. He also knew hustlers came in two types: the ones you could trust and the ones you couldn’t. Most fell into the latter category sooner or later. Bob knew Dan was new at the game. But he was polite and eager to please. The next morning, when Dan didn’t seem in a hurry to get back on the streets, Bob invited him to stay for the day.
Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery Page 4