by Ingrid Betz
Verena nodded, hearing echoes of her own father. Wolf studied her from under brows that in twenty years’ time would be called craggy. He had blue eyes. Not the violets-in-the-snow blue of Asher’s eyes, but the hot blue of cornflowers in the sun, a shade she didn’t care for.
“You haven’t been in Canada long, have you?” he said.
“Four years.” She was curious as to how he knew. “Because of my accent?”
“Partly. Francine told me you’d come to London with your father.”
“He’s dead now.”
Wolf shook his head, a shorthand gesture of sympathy. “He didn’t have much time to enjoy the new world.”
She did not have to answer, she thought. Yet it seemed important to set the record straight. “With him it was more a case of needing to get away from the old one.”
“Ah. Serbia and the aftermath of the breakup. You lost much?”
“Everything.” Including her parents, in the end.
“I’m sorry…” he said.
She shrugged. “It’s not so bad, life with nothing. Nobody. It’s simpler.”
“Still. You need to live.” He eyed the jacket she’d hung over the back of her chair. “Leather like that doesn’t come cheap.”
She looked around; the kitchen was busy tonight. “I’m not helpless. I earn enough for what I need.”
He swallowed the last of his coffee. “But you must miss home?”
Home was a concept she preferred not to dwell on. With home came attachment and with attachment came loss, came grief, and disorientation. “I left already years ago. My parents sent me to a boarding school when I was ten. That international one in Germany.”
“Salem?” he asked, and she nodded. A waiter rushed by with an armful of laden plates. “The school that ‘builds character through Spartan living?’” he quoted, and she laughed her abrupt child’s laugh.
“You don’t need to use that tone. If I miss being anywhere, it’s there.”
“You’re kidding!” He looked his disbelief. “I gather they’ve changed, but they used to be famous for having all the luxury of an army boot camp. Five mile runs at dawn. Communal showers. Unheated dorms. Work details. Deprivation in every sense of the word.”
Her quiche arrived, and tea in a white china pot. Wolf signaled for a refill of coffee and Verena was both annoyed and obscurely pleased. “You’re forgetting academic excellence. Music. The arts.”
“And personal freedom. What about that?”
“We lived by the honour system.” Over his shoulder, through the windows of the Tuscan villa, she saw again the big square room she’d shared with three other girls. The wooden bedsteads with springs and a mattress that you could pull down at night and swing up to conceal behind a curtain during the day. Two drawers at the top held your clothes, while the surface was for books, and personal mementos if you had any. Next to each bed, a desk and a chair and a locker just wide enough for a few coat hangers gave each girl a semblance of privacy. “We had our school uniform, our books, and our ideals. Nothing else was necessary. It was like…” Verena’s gaze brushed his face and veered away again. “…Like being in religious orders.”
It was his turn to laugh. “You’re a funny girl. A loner too, I bet.”
A loner like the tiger barb. Her report cards must have made similar assessments because her mother used to question whether the school could be doing her any good. But her father didn’t see a problem. “Leave it, Irene. Better she learns early that she has only herself to rely on.” She had pitied her mother but adored her father.
She sensed Wolf regarding her with heightened interest. “Why do I get the feeling you could have been named Ulrike? Sabine or Susanne?”
A trickle of cold chased down her spine. She stared at him, not certain he was aware of the significance of the names he’d picked. They belonged to the first female German terrorists, members of the Baader-Meinhof gang responsible for the murders of members of the capitalist elite in the 1960s.
“If I’m not mistaken there was a Verena, too.” He considered the ceiling. “Teutonic for ‘sacred wisdom,’ isn’t it?”
“Is that what they teach in physiotherapy classes these days?”
“Looked it up on Wikipedia the day I met you.” He hitched his chair closer to the table and leaned forward. “What else do you do? Besides teach aerobics to overweight old biddies?”
The Toronto protest rally flashed through her mind. But he couldn’t possibly know about that. She frowned. “Why should I be doing anything else?”
“Because you can’t make enough to live on, the hours you work. Sometimes for days you don’t come in at all.”
“That’s my business.”
“Let me guess. You’re living with somebody. Some sugar daddy who pays for extras. Like that leather jacket.”
“It happens to have been my father’s.” She ate her quiche. “Keep on fishing and jumping to stupid conclusions and I’m moving.”
“Sorry.” He held up his hand, palm outward. “That was out of order. All the same…” He lowered his eyes pointedly to the curve of her breasts under the black turtleneck. “I find it hard to believe you’re not spoken for. A girl with your looks. Tell me.” His voice dropped to a confidential level. “Any truth to the rumour that aerobics instructors are great in bed?”
She gave him a blank look. “What do aerobics have to do with sex?”
“God. You’re not for real. Nobody can be that innocent. How old are you, anyway?”
She caught the eye of the passing waiter and nodded. “Twenty-one,” she said.
He laughed. “And I’m forty-two. So you’re not seeing anybody?”
“No.” Only Asher, in her head.
“Come on. Doll like you.” He reached out to touch her hair. She hadn’t bothered to plait it and it hung free about her shoulders, the ripples catching the overhead light. She twitched his hand away and felt in her pocket for her purse. “I said, no.”
“That could change, if you gave it a chance.”
The waiter dropped their bills on the table. Wolf made a grab for both of them but Verena was too quick for him. She put down the money she had ready and stood up. Shrugging on her jacket, she tugged her hair out from under the collar and started down the aisle.
Wolf was right behind her. “Listen. I have an idea. Come with me to Chaucer’s Pub. They’ve got a jazz combo playing tonight.”
“I can’t stand jazz.” Heads turned as they passed.
“Wait, please! A movie instead?”
“Aw. Give the guy a break,” said a voice from a table full of students and everybody laughed.
What was it Borrowman had instructed her? “For God’s sake keep a low profile” and here she was causing a public scene. Verena pushed open the door, face averted. As a child she’d learned the trick of imagining herself invisible to escape unwanted attention.
Dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk, Wolf fell into step beside her. “At least let me walk you home.”
Darkness had fallen and it was starting to rain. Fat drops bounced on the pavement and umbrellas unfurled on either side of them. She walked faster.
“What’d I do? What’d I say that was so terrible?” Light from the shop windows lent him a youthful George Clooney kind of good looks.
“Nothing. Leave me alone.”
“Tell me, so I can apologize.”
“Get away from me or I’ll call the police.”
He laughed. As though he knew that involving the law was the last thing she’d do. The light changed to red as they reached the intersection of Dundas and Talbot. Instead of stopping, Verena broke into a sprint, taking a zigzag course between the cars beginning to cross. Motorists sounded their horns.
“Hey!” she heard Wolf shout. She regained the sidewalk and kept on running. At the corner of Ridout she glanced back ov
er her shoulder. Dancing patterns of light and shade made it difficult to tell whether Wolf was one of the figures behind her.
She ran past the dark wall of the art gallery and the empty parking lots lining the long slope to the Lombardo bridge. Breathing hard, she slowed to a walk. The headlights of oncoming cars glittered in the rain. A dank breeze blew up from the Thames. Water flowed black between the banks. On the bridge she began to run again because she had a fear of being trapped between the waist-high walls. A pickup truck slowed down beside her and a head in a baseball cap leaned out. “Want a lift, darling?” She stared straight ahead and kept on running and the truck rattled by, so close that she could feel the draft.
Verena had reached the pavement in front of her apartment building when she became aware of pounding footsteps behind her. Wolf was cutting diagonally across the intersection of Springbank and Jerymin. He had staying power, she had to give him that. She stopped to face him. At the curb he bent double, bracing his hands on his knees. His breath came in rasping gasps. “What the hell … did you … do that for?”
“I was exercising my personal freedom.”
“Very … funny.” He straightened up and glared at the building behind her. “That’s where you live? In a dump like that?” He started forward; his hair had turned dark in the rain. “Let me come in a few minutes to dry out. I’m soaking wet.”
She backed away. “Did I ask you to follow me?”
“At least give me your phone number.”
“So you can harass me?”
“I’ll give you mine and you can call me instead. How’s that?”
“I’m not interested.”
“You’re lying. You are … you were. I could tell…” He yelled as a passing van sprayed him with muddy water. Verena laughed, seeing him dance on one foot and swipe at his jeans.
Wolf swore. “You’re vicious, you know that? Borderline psychotic, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Vicious. Psychotic. Not even Asher had ever called her anything quite so unambiguous.
“Go home,” she said.
“Can’t we at least part friends?” He moved closer and caught hold of her arm. She flinched and pulled sharply away, unable to conceal a sudden panic. He stared. “What is it with you anyway? What is it you think I’m going to do to you?”
“Verena? You need help?” came a voice from the shadows.
She swung around to see John Borrowman uncoiling his long frame from behind the wheel of the Volvo. She hadn’t noticed the car at the end of the row of parked vehicles.
“What’s going on?” he exclaimed. “Who’s that with you?”
“Nobody. He’s just leaving.”
“You told me you weren’t seeing anybody,” growled Wolf and she laughed at the accusation in his tone. “Now you know better, don’t you? Go home,” she said again.
Reluctantly he started across Jerymin Street. Pivoting on his heel, he cast a backward glance. “Don’t think I’m giving up.”
Borrowman joined her on the sidewalk. “It’s that Wolf Dietrich fellow from the Studio, isn’t it? The student.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Verena.
“You’ve been out with him?”
She shrugged; she didn’t owe Borrowman any explanations. “He followed me home. Are you coming up to the apartment?”
“That won’t be necessary. Anyway, it’s late,” said Borrowman awkwardly. Shoulders hunched, he plunged his hands in his pockets. “I just came by to let you know the police won’t be laying charges. Seems they don’t have enough to go on. Somebody in a watch cap, the parents claimed—old, young, male, female—they weren’t sure of anything.”
“And the boy?”
“He’s back home. He’ll be fine.”
“Ah.” Verena sensed her punishment was over. She walked with him to the car. “And Asher?” she said carefully
“We talked. He feels it’s too early for him to come back. Elaine would make his life a misery. I gather he’s worried she’ll blow the whistle on some of his activities. The timing couldn’t be worse.” Borrowman gave her a mournful look as he opened the door of the Volvo. “St. Denis tells me the poaching’s become so brazen, it’s beginning to hurt the tourist trade. The Ministry is short-staffed since the latest budget cuts and they say there’s nothing they can do. ”
She waited while he lowered himself into the driver’s seat. She had the impression of pain.
“Which leaves it up to the Cell to act,” he said.
The Cell, where the only person he had to deploy, as he liked to call it, was a borderline psychotic. Verena had no idea if the term was the correct one for her. But she liked the ring of it.
“Poor Dad. What are you going to do?”
15.
THE BIRD IN THE SECRETARY’S OFFICE warbled and chirped. One of those small yellow featherballs with two stick legs attached—a canary, or was that a budgie, Peter Cormier wasn’t sure. He watched it hop fussily from one perch to another in a multi-tiered wooden cage constructed to look like a Chinese pagoda, while he waited for David Chang to see him.
Behind the desk the secretary tapped busily on the keyboard of her computer. Eye candy for sure, thought Peter, transferring his attention from the bird to the woman. With her shiny black hair and dark eyes, she reminded him of the girl in a movie Darlene had once dragged him to see, one with dragons and tigers in it, and people rising light as balloons into the air to skewer their enemies.
“It won’t be much longer,” she said, catching his look with a sideways glance.
“No problem,” he said.
He was amazed, actually, at how quickly events had moved since he’d first set the wheels in motion. Beginning with Kim. It was surprisingly easy: the pharmacist himself started the ball rolling when he remarked on the fact that Marigold was back from her canoe trip. “That’s quite a sunburn she picked up,” he said, peering sympathetically through his bottle-glass lenses over soup and a bagel at Tim’s. “I could have prescribed her something.”
Sunburn wasn’t the half of it, Peter declared and went on to describe in broad strokes what had befallen Marigold up north. From mention of bear cubs being poached to the fact that a Chinese company was involved, it was a simple step further to quiz his friend about the use of bear parts in Chinese medicine. Kim was noticeably uncomfortable with the subject. He toyed with his spoon while he reluctantly listed a number of possibilities: paws, penises, gall bladders, bile. Bile? Peter pricked up his ears.
“I’ve been reading up on bear bile on the internet. It’s big right now, isn’t it?”
Kim nodded. “Although as far as I’m concerned, milking bears for their bile is a primitive practice that should have been outlawed years ago. The ingredients can just as well be produced synthetically.”
Intrigued, Peter listened to confirmation of what he’d read. How bile had gone from being an ancient Chinese eye remedy to use in an increasing array of modern products. It was now showing up in everything from wine to hair shampoo, claiming to invest each with magic properties of health and healing.
“Lucrative, in other words?”
“Highly. Unluckily for bears.”
Peter chewed thoughtfully for a while. Kim’s uncle, he mused out loud, the one who owned a Chinese medicine store in Toronto, he’d stock products containing bile, wouldn’t he? When he could get them, Kim said. Apparently demand often outstripped supply, in spite of the introduction of bear farming to counter the decimation of the Moon Bear population in Asian forests.
“Would the bile of Ontario black bears work as well?”
“No reason why it shouldn’t.” Kim shrugged. “You’re thinking of those cubs?”
“It would explain things. According to the local Mountie, there’s been a noticeable upsurge in live poaching lately.”
“I suppose, from a pharmaceutical sta
ndpoint, any slight difference in bile—the potency, say—could be compensated for in the processing.”
“This processing. They’d need a lab for that, wouldn’t they?”
“Just your basic kind of set-up. I doubt they’d try and turn out any of the more complicated products to begin with.” Kim looked at him, the familiar twinkle absent from his eyes. “Peter, you’re not thinking of getting mixed up…”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m pretty desperate at the moment.” He had forced a laugh at that point, leaving it up to his listener to decide just how desperate. “It strikes me, an accredited lab has a lot to offer to an organization starting up in a foreign country. Including in a case like mine, discretion. Which might just be an important factor to whoever is behind the operation.” He shrugged and chased the last crumbs on his plate. “Pure speculation, of course. The poachers haven’t actually been identified yet. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with them even if they were.”
Peter had left it at that and gone on to talk about other subjects. How the annual hike in municipal taxes would affect business, and whether the tenant in the end unit of their mall—a video rental store—was about to declare bankruptcy. He didn’t want to overdo his interest in the subject of bear bile production. Kim, he noticed, was having trouble finishing his bagel.
Three days later, Peter received a phone call. It was Kim’s uncle, Dao Peng, calling from Toronto. Would Mr. Cormier be interested in a meeting? Seeing he’d professed an interest in a certain product, and they were to some extent in a similar line of business. Saturday evening, say? The store would be closed to the public at that time; he should ring the bell.
He met not only Kim’s uncle, but the head of The Happy Long Life Mushroom Company. Not that he’d been immediately introduced. For a good fifteen minutes the man with the tough peasant’s face sat in a darkened corner of the store and simply watched and listened while the other two men talked. Dao Peng, who looked like Kim twenty years down the road, was courteous but wary as he showed him around the store. He didn’t ask him into the office, a crammed shadowy space Peter glimpsed through a partially open door at the back.