More curious than concerned, I asked, “What’s in the file? What’d he do?” Guy from home, vaguely familiar, normal interest, but casual.
Clarke was browsing. “Hmmm … some minor shit back in the eighties, selling dope back in … where you guys come from, Tony.”
I shrugged, and Clarke looked back at the file.
“Sentenced to three years in 1992 … holdup in a convenience store in … Toronto. Hey, looks like he walks into a little 7-Eleven, hand in his pocket, threatens the owner—some Lebanese guy—who hands over a wad of bills. Strickland runs for it, storekeeper in hot pursuit, armed with a bayonet … catches him a block away …”
“Don’t fuck with the Lebanese. Guy probably from the civil war. Strickland’s lucky.”
Clarke laughed.
“Now,” he said, flipping through the document, “doing eight for a bank job last year, Bloor West. Taken down two hours later counting his haul in a Lakeshore motel room. Don’t fuck with the banks, eh?”
I laughed, and thought no more of it.
Then Clarke brought his name up again, two years later.
“Christ,” I said. “What’s with this guy?”
“You must know him pretty well,” Clarke said.
“Don’t you think I’ve got enough to do without taking on one of your Millhaven problems? And for the record, I don’t know him at all.”
“You’re mentioned in a profile report as a possible personal contact. You know his home life.”
We were all around the boardroom table, case managers and support staff from around the region, five institutions from minimum to max. Meetings bored me and I was doodling an AK-47, trying to ignore what my gut said was an entanglement I didn’t really need.
“He might be worth a visit,” Clarke said.
Strickland had potential to reoffend but there was hope for him, Sophie said. She was the psychologist. Earnest Sophie. I used to ask myself, How did she get in here? Too pretty and too soft.
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re all thinking: Two guys from the boondocks, two guys with murky origins and all the psychological and social hang-ups associated with adoption—a perfect therapeutic fit. Is that what I’m hearing?”
Sophie sighed. “I can’t imagine what you’re hearing. What’s being said is that there’s a chance you might be able to give a little bit of support to this guy. I think there’s something decent in the core of him.” This was the same Sophie who had brought one of our meetings to a halt with the stunner: Evil is an adverb.
But I never forgot those words, or her smile, the flicker of the deep blue-hazel eyes dancing on my face.
“You’re laughing at me,” she’d accused.
“I would never laugh at you.”
It was Sophie who talked me into seeing him.
Looking back I can understand how Dwayne Strickland could charm Anna and Sophie, or any woman, really. To them he’d represent a wealth of possibilities for improvement. The nurturing instinct: take bad boys and make them good men. To me he was just another good-looking, fairly articulate young con. There are lots of them inside, contrary to popular belief. They don’t all have low foreheads and knuckles scabbed from dragging on the ground. Of course there are the losers and the predators, more than a few lost causes. But what kept me in the system for so many years was the obvious potential that I saw in so many like Dwayne Strickland, the possibilities of “rehabilitation”—a word that makes me sick and angry now that I’m out of it. Strickland was bright and presentable enough to have had a shot at making it in any walk of life, but maybe he’d wanted too much too soon, and maybe he was not quite so clever as he thought he was.
I met him for the first time just after the first 1998 riot. Millhaven went through a bad stretch in the late nineties, inmate agitation for reforms exacerbated by ineffective management. They were rough times and maybe that’s why I finally succumbed to his requests to see me. Nothing to lose, I thought.
I arranged to meet him in a quiet corner of the woodwork shop where we wouldn’t draw too much attention.
“I don’t remember you from home,” he said. “I only heard of you from my ma. She told me that you came to the house a couple of times, looking for me. The teachers mentioned you, what you did for a living. So I guess I ducked you.” He was smiling.
“So why did you stop ducking?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A couple of years ago I had a letter from the priest, Father MacIsaac. Said maybe I should contact you if I ever needed anything. Somebody to talk to. He said you went by ‘Breau.’ ”
“Growing up I used my adopted name,” I said. “MacMillan. I guess there was confusion when I changed it back.”
“Ah,” he said. “I remember hearing that. We probably know a lot of the same people.”
“I’m sure we do.” Of course I’d always been aware of him, even before the crime wave. Someone else adopted in the place. Someone’s sister’s cousin’s bastard being brought up somewhere decent. “How do you like the wood shop?”
“A Unit is too fuckin close. Every minute of every day is a problem. Going to work, going to eat, going back to my house for counts.” He was talking about a reception range, basically a holding facility where inmates were assessed for the most appropriate incarceration.
I shrugged. “They’re just here for processing, just passing through. What’s your problem?”
“They try to talk to you, man, but you don’t know who they are. Seen talking to the wrong guy here and you’re dead meat.” There was a loud clang and he cringed.
I liked the woodworking shop, the way the fragrances of sawdust and glue and machine oil overwhelmed the disinfectant and the staleness of old cigarettes and bodies. But always loud sounds clanging off the tile and steel and concrete surfaces, inescapable. Loud ego voices, reminding us of where we were.
“So what year did you leave?” he asked.
“In ’65,” I said. “Went to university.”
“Wise choice.”
He looked away, couldn’t hold eye contact for more than a few seconds. He had stood out in the village in a way I never did. I just folded in, Tony MacMillan from up the mountain road, almost like I belonged. He was different. After the store incident, there was a car accident, a sixteen-year-old Strickland driving crazy, two young people dead. People saying: after all the old MacInnises did for him, he never even took their name. What the hell kind of a name is Strickland anyway? Adoption, always a crapshoot, never knowing what you’re getting.
Sophie the psychologist had warned me. Issues about rejection, alienation, also guilt that had morphed into deep-rooted, textbook anger. Aren’t they all textbook angry, I had said.
To Dwayne I pretended ignorance. “I don’t remember any Stricklands around home.”
“There aren’t any. I was raised by the MacInnises. Shore Road. But I guess you’d know that.” He coughed, fished for a cigarette.
“You can’t smoke here,” I said.
“Right,” he said, staring at the floor, palming the cigarette.
Something else remembered: He cleaned up his act after the horrific accident, took a trade at the community college in town, small engines someone at the store had said; the store, the clearing house for news, better than the radio. Plans to open up his own shop on the old place. Growing dope on the old place more like it, someone else had opined.
Then he went away.
“Pretty common name, MacInnis,” I said.
“Our MacInnises were called Big Rory’s,” he said, and I laughed.
“Big Rory’s—long time since I heard that.”
“After some old-timer called Big Rory, I guess. You know them?”
“I went to school with the older ones, Margaret and Jimmy. But I haven’t seen them for years.”
“Maggie’s married in Boston. Uncle Jimmy lives in Sudbury, shaft contractor there, did very well in the boom times. Drives a Lincoln.”
“You worked in the mines?”
&nb
sp; “No. I wish.” He laughed.
I knew but asked him anyway: “How did you end up in the ‘haven’?”
He shrugged. “I won’t make any excuses. You can read about it.” Good answer.
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m in substance abuse, anger management, trying to finish high school. Maybe start working on a degree.”
“I heard you had a trade.”
“A while ago. Small engines. Did nothing with it.” He shrugged again. “You know the way it is at home. Hard to get anything going. Nobody wants to pay for anything. Fixing lawn mowers for fuck all. Eventually took off for Toronto. Land of opportunity.” He spread his arms wide. “And here I am.”
“Well, keep at it,” I said. “The studies. The shop. There’s decent money in the shop.”
“Just FYI,” he said, now looking around nervously. Then he had the cigarette in his mouth, hands cupped around a flame. Dropped an extinguished match, exhaled a billow of smoke straight at me: “There’s talk of another smash-up. The warden started confiscating money from our welfare fund, for broken food trays. The food here sucks. They wheel it over in metal carts from next door at Bath. Garbage by the time it gets to us. Guys have been breaking the trays, to protest.”
I nodded at the cigarette, smiled. “You’d better be careful with that.”
“I’m always careful,” he said. “The secret of survival.”
“Good to know.”
“Maybe you should pass it on. Any night now. They’ll know who—the gang on J.” He was rock steady, now held eye contact, bold and brave. A calculated risk, I thought—a small investment. He drew deeply on the cigarette, looked away, then pinched the ember, pocketed the butt.
I said nothing and he seemed puzzled, wondering if I’d paid attention. Which is how you deal with them, how you both survive. I left him there.
“Where’d you get this, Breau?” I was standing in the doorway at Institutional Protective Security. The IPSOs, as they’re known. The officer was looking skeptically at the typed-up page I’d handed him, a copy already in my files.
“Confidential source.”
“Come on, Tony. Give. We need to know how credible this is.”
“Can’t. Confidential. But I have reason to believe …”
“Just tell us if he’s one of yours.”
“I can’t do that …”
“Well just confirm that it’s from a con in Millhaven …”
“Confidential source,” I repeated.
“We’ll take it under advisement,” the officer said as he turned away.
And Millhaven blew up just the way Strickland said it would. First the inmates blocked access to the ranges with those steel food carts they were complaining about, then they sabotaged the mechanism for the cell doors, making it impossible to close them. It went on for days, smoke and water, noise and violence everywhere as it spread to all the other units, except A. They tried to break into A, but the guards drove them back with pepper spray and fists and boots and batons. Then they managed to get into the pharmacy. It was on day three that two psychotic inmates stoned on Percocet killed the Italian. There was no reason in particular. Someone found him annoying. Someone thought he was a rapist. He was a from-Italy Italian, no friends in the joint. So they killed him slowly, carving on him for most of an afternoon. Finished him off when they heard the emergency response team breaking in. Had a pillowcase over his head so he couldn’t see who did it, just in case he survived.
After it was over, the IPSOs wanted me to sniff around since I had such super confidential sources there.
Sophie had set up the second meeting in her Millhaven office. No eyebrows raised, no questions asked. Strickland off to see the shrink. He was surprised and obviously frightened to find me there.
“I need to know who did the Italian,” I said. I kept my voice low.
“Why do you care about the Italian? He was a fuckin skinner. Anyway, you had your chance. I warned you.”
“He wasn’t a rapist.”
“Yeah? How would you know?”
“I know for a fact. He was an okay guy. So just tell me what you know.”
“You’re trying to get me killed.”
“Nobody knows you’re talking to me.”
“I’m no fuckin rat, man.”
“I’m not asking you to rat.”
“Even if I knew for sure I wouldn’t tell you,” Strickland said. “I was hiding under my blankets.”
“Did you know what was going on?”
He laughed. “They were skinning him alive. What do you think?”
“Who did it, Dwayne?”
“Can I go back now?”
I sighed. “If you change your mind, get the word to Sophie. She’ll pass it on to me.”
“If I change my mind you’ll know because I’ll be a corpse.”
Come on, Tony, I said to myself. Enough with the navel gazing. Time to face the day. Through my dormer window I could see the sun climbing up the slippery slope of the sky. It was nearly nine o’clock. I got up, pulled on a pair of sweats, resolved again to start an exercise program, maybe take up running once again, maybe buy a bicycle, get some weights for a bit of upper body. Upper body used to be impressive, bench press two hundred pounds, no sweat. I filled the kettle. Remembered how I once was passable at judo.
At 9:15 I called Sullivan’s office but he wasn’t there. I left a message, asking him to call me back. Then I put a jacket on, found my car keys. I’ll soon be like the rest of them, I thought. Gravitating to the store for the coffee and the gossip. No goddamned way. Kill me first.
I noticed Neil MacDonald’s Lexus parked close to the door. He still had a Massachusetts plate on the front, a little status symbol that said a lot about his ego. A Bush-Cheney bumper sticker prominent on the back.
Neil was on the way out as I was entering. I nodded but he asked me to step back outside for a moment. “You and I should get together, have a beer someday. There’s lots to talk about,” he said.
“Where are you living?”
“I thought you knew. I opened the Seaside B and B a year or so ago.”
“So you’re living there too?”
He nodded.
“I hear it’s quite the posh establishment. How’s business?”
“Slow,” he said. “But it gives me something to do. You bought an old place on the Shore Road?”
“Years ago.”
“You were a prison guard in Ontario?”
“Prison guard, parole officer—‘case manager’ they call them nowadays. Part of the system. But I’m out now.”
“I got to hand it to you,” he said. “Jesus, working among that crowd.”
I shrugged. “No worse than your job, I suppose.”
“I always thought you wanted to be a cop, like I did. I remember, you were saying that after the Mountie came to grade eleven and gave the talk about careers.”
“How did you get into it?”
“After the war, I was released in California. I liked California. The weather, eh. Took out citizenship, but after a while I wanted to be closer to home. Moved up to Boston. Bunch of relatives there. Then got on the police.”
“And how was that.”
“A living,” he said. “Quite a good living, actually. I’m comfortable. And what about yourself.”
“Getting by,” I said. “Took a package and a pension.”
“Aren’t you a bit young for that?”
“Burned out, you could say.” I tried to laugh. “It was complicated.”
“Same for me,” he said grimly. “But a different kind of complicated burnout. Burned by a gang of niggers …”
“Please,” I said, holding up a hand.
He laughed. “You know that’s what they call each other.”
“Just humour me,” I said.
“Tony,” he said. “I got a bullet four centimetres from my spine. It’ll go into the grave with me. That’s my permit to use any fucking word I want, okay?” He shook h
is head. “Fuck me. So what burned you?”
“Ah well. It’s a long story.”
“Bad guys got to you?”
“Actually, no …”
He was waiting. I looked away. Enough said. He cleared his throat, pulled car keys from a pocket. “By the way, we should talk sometime about that quiff Strickland.”
“What about him?”
“About what if he gets off.”
“What’s it got to do with us?”
“You know what was going on there, don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“Well I’ll tell you. And it’s from a solid source. He was exploitin’ the young folk. Drugs. I understand they found porn there. Christ knows what he had in mind for the poor kid that died before he got at her …”
“Neil, Neil,” I interrupted. “You know better than this. You’re trained …”
“I’m trained to put two and two together.” He hesitated, gave a kind of laugh. “You’re always fuckin with me, Tony. Just tryin’ to get a rise out of the old cop. But I know where your heart is. I know you as well as I know myself. What was it old Abe Lincoln said? We hang together or we hang separate.”
He walked away shaking his head and climbed into the Lexus, peeling rubber as he drove away.
Sullivan called five minutes after I got home from the store. “Mr. Breau?”
I hesitated. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”
“Good,” he said. “What’ll I tell Dwayne?” And in a flash Strickland’s face was there in front of me, pale and frightened, and he was saying You owe me, man, and then Sophie’s voice, dear Sophie who was always too persuasive: I think you owe him that much, Tony.
“Okay,” I said. “You tell Strickland that I’ll be down to see him tomorrow. You make the arrangements to get me in to see him. Tell him I’ll be there to listen … nothing else.”
The sense of self-betrayal was instantaneous.
“Thank you,” said Sullivan, “he’ll be pleased.”
That night, I called Anna. I figured it would be useful to get some advice from her before seeing Strickland, as in the end she got to know him better than I did. We hadn’t talked for ages and she sounded wary when I mentioned him. “I’m surprised he ended up back there,” she said.
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