by John Moss
“You know the menace in Clint Eastwood’s voice?” he whispered. “It was something he picked up watching Marilyn Monroe movies.”
“I expect that’s a rumour, Morgan. He probably watched her movies for other reasons.”
“Maybe so,” he said, reverting to his normal voice, “but the point is, you never know the source of illusions.”
“If you did, they wouldn’t be illusions. You’re thinking of Ross?”
“And of Gloria Simmons. Maybe Ross is not as dangerous as he seems. He works at it, like Eastwood. It’s his stock in trade. And maybe she’s more dangerous. Not the voluptuous waif, more the ingenuous femme fatale.”
Msgloriasimmons, ingenuous? Doesn’t that mean innocent? Not likely, Miranda thought. Around that woman, death is contagious.
Miranda had only spoken briefly to Morgan since their phone conversation in the early morning. Both had spent the day catching up on sleep. Thomas Ross had called Morgan after lunch to suggest a meeting with Gloria Simmons at her place in Trafalgar Mews. It seemed inevitable that the four of them would get together, since they had much to sort out. Morgan called Miranda and they agreed to the meeting. Gloria Simmons’s place seemed a reasonable locale.
Whatever the connections between the gorgeous blonde Inuk and the stunning Englishman, the D’Arcys were at the heart of the matter and the D’Arcys were dead. It was possible that Ross might somehow reveal the extent of Gloria Simmons’s involvement, if only through his compulsive need to play centre stage. The beautiful people were on different sides of the Baffin project, supported opposing factions on Rapa Nui by virtue of their conflicting interests in Chile, and had a history that involved pearl earrings. It was worth a try, meeting together. Normal procedures didn’t seem adequate. Better they keep things social and avoid Police Headquarters for the time being.
“I suspect you’re partly right about Gloria Simmons,” Miranda cheerfully conceded. Morgan was not the best judge of women, especially beautiful women. “As for Ross, trust me, he’s dangerous.” For an instant, it crossed her mind that she was not always the best judge of beautiful men. “Morgan, the only way he knows about the Gibraltar coordinates is if Matteo told him before he died.” She shuddered with dread at the horrific possibility that Matteo had been tortured, and then shuddered with rage to think that Ross might have been present.
But if Matteo broke, the Carabinaros would also know the coordinates. Most likely Matteo took Ross into his confidence. “Matteo would have counted on Ross to track down whatever is hidden in St. Michael’s cave. Not because he gives a damn about island sovereignty, but because he’s paid by the fascists and they want the insurrection to succeed.”
Morgan protested. “What difference would it make? Whatever’s hidden on Gibraltar is probably irrelevant by now. Ross found the coordinates too late.”
“I don’t know,” she responded. “I imagine Baffin is only a setback for the Pinochet bunch, not the end of the line. The junta might appreciate an insurrection now more than ever.” She paused. “I really am not a fascist, you know. I shouldn’t feel the need to tell you that.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t feel it? Or shouldn’t need to?”
Morgan smiled. Miranda’s hazel eyes gleamed. He knew she was conflicted as much by her role in translating the island’s secret as for the repugnant political bedfellows her intimate connection with the rebels implied. He wanted to reach out and touch the auburn highlights in her hair, but tousled his own, instead.
They walked along to number 19. The door had a deep blue sheen and imposing brass fittings. Morgan knocked. They waited. He tried the doorbell and they could hear chimes inside. The snapping sound of an electronic lock clicking open welcomed them in. The foyer was small and immediately in front of them were narrow stairs leading up to the principal living area. They opened the door at the top of the stairs and were confronted by a smiling T.E. Ross, who faced them from behind a counter separating the kitchen from the living room. Despite the time of day, the curtains were drawn and several lamps were on, casting a mottled patchwork of shadows and light.
With Morgan by her side, Ross didn’t strike Miranda as quite so outrageously handsome.
“Come in, come in,” he called out to them cheerfully.
Both of them slipped off their shoes and parked them neatly inside the door. Canadians did that. Miranda sighed, looking at her wedge-heeled, open-toed slingbacks whose architectural design carried her weight with felt grace. It was midsummer and there was no slush or snow to track in, but northern habits had become custom, a mark of respect distinguishing friends from other visitors. Professionals on duty, whether doctors, morticians or police, kept their shoes on; service people usually carried slip-overs with them. Friends walked about in socks or bare feet. Canadians were notorious for clean floors.
In spite of the motley gloom, it wasn’t until the door closed behind them that they both sensed something was wrong, followed immediately by the resonant clickety-click of oiled steel as their host’s arm flashed a lever-action Winchester 73 and jumped a cartridge into the firing chamber. They found themselves staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.
Out of their line of vision when they had entered, Gloria Simmons was seated with material of some sort bunched around her ankles. She seemed inordinately still.
“I’m glad you could make it.” Ross motioned them into the centre of the room and spoke in a quiet, conciliatory voice. “Detective Morgan, you know the drill. Drop your pants. This time it’s not shaving cream.”
Miranda looked from one man to the other, bewildered by their private joke, angry that her partner seemed at a disadvantage.
“Miranda, I’m afraid I have to ask you to do likewise. Place your purse on the table. Just so. Now, since you’re wearing a dress it will have to be your underwear pants.”
Underwear pants, thought Miranda. Canadian childhood redundancies like bare-naked, or great big huge and little tiny wee. Not very menacing. But Morgan, exasperated, started to unbuckle. Miranda glanced over at Gloria Simmons and recognized the material around her ankles as the skirt to the Armani suit she had been wearing that morning. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Miranda could see the woman’s hands were bound. Her demeanour was determinedly stoic, verging on contemptuous indifference to their common plight.
“No,” said Miranda. A no without qualifiers is difficult to argue with. Morgan zipped up his fly.
A suppressed grin spread across Ross’s face. “First time I’ve been refused. Well, sit down, the both of you, over by Ms. Simmons. Let me turn up the light, but I believe I’ll leave the drapes closed for now. The four of us have a lot to discuss.”
Miranda and Morgan both remained standing.
Miranda made eye contact with Gloria Simmons, who showed no sign of recognition. She looked around the room. It was filled with soapstone sculpture, some were stolidly solemn and highly prized, dating back to the 1950s, and some were recent acquisitions that verged on abstraction, all of them small enough for one person to handle. There were carvings made from segments of caribou antlers and a pair of glowering two-faced carvings made from bowhead whale vertebrae. Miranda was impressed. She glanced back at Gloria Simmons and realized her assessment was being monitored. The woman permitted herself a hint of a smile.
“Don’t you think perhaps Ms. Simmons might be allowed a little more dignity?” said Miranda, and without waiting for an answer she placed herself between Ross and the woman and helped her with her skirt. Then she turned to face Ross and scolded, “You’re a silly bugger. If you were going to kill us, there would surely be better ways than using an old hunting rifle. I imagine you found it here, you didn’t even come armed, and this business with the dropped trousers, that’s childish in the extreme. God, Thomas, I have no doubt you’re capable of murder. And by the way, thank you for the Island Queen vacation, thank your people for that, and thank you for the Wonder Woman comic, I’ll return it to Morgan, it was his in the
first place. But what is it you’re after, Thomas? Morgan tells me you already have the mystical coordinates. What more could you need?”
Thomas Ross compliantly lowered his head. Then he raised it and suddenly jammed the Winchester barrel into Miranda’s gut with such force that she doubled over and dropped, and in a continuation of the same movement, he swung the barrel up sharply and across, catching Morgan on the side of the head.
Gasping for breath, Miranda crawled to Morgan, who had collapsed against a sofa and slid to the floor. She pressed the heel of her hand into his jaw, stemming the spurting blood. She took her hand away tentatively. The blow hadn’t opened the carotid artery; the spurting was from the pressure of the blow itself exploding an ancillary vessel. She glared up at Ross and slowly rose to her feet. She squared off with him, just out of range if he decided to use the Winchester as a club again. It had not occurred to her to carry her Glock in a body holster. It didn’t go with the outfit. She glowered, then shrugged. Expect the unexpected. Of course. The last thing she had anticipated from Thomas Ross was violence of his own accord; therefore she should have known it was coming.
“How very predictable you are,” she said, conceding the opposite.
He seemed momentarily confused, then replied with an air of refined condescension, “Restrained brutality, my dear Miranda? Think of it as a social necessity. Instant clarification of where we all stand.”
“I expected better.”
“You presume on our relationship.”
“I didn’t know we had a relationship.”
“Friendship, my dear, but friendship does have its limits.”
“I’ll try to remember that, should I ever be holding a gun on a friend.”
He turned away, restraining a hint of an appreciative grin. “Detective Morgan, sorry, old man, that was rather abrupt, but as you can see I’m quite serious.”
Morgan had risen unsteadily to his feet; the three of them were now positioned in a curious standoff, given one had a gun, but a gun he had used as a club.
“Morgan,” said Miranda, “hand me my purse.”
“Not bloody likely,” said Ross.
“For goodness’ sake, Thomas, I have to go to the bathroom. Your gun butt has prompted activity in my lower region, if you know what I mean.”
“Sorry,” said Ross. “No purse.”
“Well, I’m going to the bathroom. What do you suggest I do, improvise?”
“No purse, no bathroom. No handgun, Miranda.”
“Oh, dear, is that where I put it. In my purse. Well, never mind.”
Ross swung the rifle barrel slowly back and forth between the detectives, then suddenly cranked the lever action open and closed, spewing a live cartridge onto the carpet. “If I have to, I will,” he declared.
“You’re not on home territory, Thomas Ross. I’d be very careful about what my next move was, if I were you.”
“Let us sit down and be civilized about this,” he said, motioning her to help Morgan, who was struggling to remain standing. “It is home territory, actually,” he said, and his Oxford accent wavered and collapsed into a flat Torontonian inflection. “I grew up in Parkdale. Did you know that when they built the insane asylum, 999 Queen Street was set among fields and orchards? Parkdale grew up around it.”
“Rove McMan said you grew up in England, in a village called Abington Piggotts near Cambridge.”
“That’s where he prefers to imagine I’m from. Just as you’d like to think I’m an Oxford graduate from Sloane Square. Mr. Morgan would prefer I’m from Parkdale, I think.” He turned to Gloria Simmons and caught her attention with a wave of the gun barrel. “Where would you like me to be from, Ms. Simmons? No, you don’t care. That is your problem — you really don’t care.”
Morgan tried to focus against the pain swarming through his head. In small, tearing movements he tugged his shirt collar away from his neck, breaking the bond of congealed blood binding cotton to skin. He could feel a warm trickle from the newly opened wound. “So, Thomas,” he said, wincing as he suppressed the pain. “Should we call you Thomas? You seem to have surrounded yourself with a tumble of names. Personally, I like Terrence. I saw Terrence Rattigan’s Ross in the West End years ago. You have the floor. Where should we start?”
Thomas Ross sat down opposite the other three and laid the Winchester across his lap. “I saw the Rattigan play, also, a revival, at the Haymarket,” he replied, balking at letting Morgan take the lead.
“Down from Piccadilly Circus.”
“Yes, of course,” he said peevishly, reverting to his Oxonian demeanour. As he continued, his words took on the pained enunciation of the educated English who swallow their vowels. “Communed with the fellow at his tomb in St. Paul’s. I don’t suppose you’ve read Seven Pillars of Wisdom?”
“Which edition?” Morgan asked. Pressing his advantage, he said, “Lawrence isn’t buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral, you know. You were communing with an empty crypt. His body fetched up in a little village called Moreton, in Dorset.”
Ross smiled in begrudging admiration and changed the subject. “You must be wondering what I have against Gloria Simmons and why I am destined to be the instrument of her ultimate undoing.”
“Are you?” said Morgan. “Destined?”
“Yes, on this otherwise very fine evening.”
“Retribution?” Miranda suggested, as she struggled to reassess his position in the moral universe — if there was such a thing as a moral universe, or a moral position in relation to Ross.
“Indeed, you might easily call it retribution. I would call it justice. Ironic, isn’t it, a renegade like me meting out justice to a member of the bar?”
“She screwed up your Baffin deal,” said Morgan. “Is that something to die for?” He wasn’t sure whether Ross was threatening for rhetorical impact or playing the role of amiable assassin.
“Yes, she did do that.” He turned to Gloria Simmons. “Please feel free to interrupt at any time. It’s your life under review.”
“You can take back your earrings,” she said.
“Really. They’re quite lovely, you know. Very expensive.”
“I prefer the subtlety of Detective Quin’s.”
He turned to Miranda. “Now, Miranda, you must wonder why I did not join you on the Island Queen. How awkward, had the news made its way to the bridge that I was both dining at the Captain’s table, a bon vivant with a beautiful companion, yourself, and dying or dead in the Arctic wasteland.”
“How in hell can you afford your own suite on a cruise ship?” Miranda asked him, not unappreciative of her own small benefit from the demise of Harrington D’Arcy, nor surprised that he knew about it as a story in progress.
“It’s not as expensive as you might think. About the same as a Manhattan condo, and it’s a tax write-off.”
“You pay taxes?” she asked incredulously.
“Here and there, as the occasion demands.” Ross looked over at Morgan who seemed to be uncomfortable with their banter. “You were up there yourself. In the Arctic wasteland.”
“It’s actually very beautiful,” said Morgan. “You ought to visit someday. And go whale-watching.”
“With Pauloosie Avaluktuk,” said Miranda. “The outcome is preordained.”
Morgan smiled, then his features hardened. There was something in her voice that caught him off guard. She could see he was puzzled by her insinuation that the Inuk guide might be part of a larger conspiracy. She gazed at him though lowered eyes, feeling awkward but a little bit pleased. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Please explain for us all,” said Ross, happy to be in the midst of shared revelations.
“Yes, do explain,” said Gloria Simmons, as if she were inviting Miranda to pass the biscuits and tea.
“Morgan, Msgloriasimmons is a trained pilot and a trained navigator.”
When Morgan realized that was a statement, complete in itself, he turned his gaze inward. Like a collapsed house of cards in reverse slow
motion, the episodes of his shared adventures with Gloria Simmons reformed as a narrative that was both shocking in its diabolical complexity and painfully simple in retrospect. He had been in grave danger, not only from the crash landing, physical deprivation, haunting isolation, and summer sleet, but from the woman who had made it all seem an exhilarating adventure.
“Morgan,” Miranda continued, “your lovely friend crash-landed the plane precisely where Pauloosie Avaluktuk had stranded the three men. Think about that. It was fifty kilometres distant from where he was picked up, where his boat supposedly rammed the whales.” Miranda watched Morgan as he assimilated her revelation, then glanced back at Gloria Simmons, who seemed imperturbable.
Morgan rose to his feet and moved close to Gloria Simmons. He leaned over to whisper in a voice loud enough the others could hear. “You knew exactly where they would be. You would have killed me, too, if I had caught on.”
“But you didn’t,” she said.
“You didn’t!” exclaimed Ross. “I’d love to know how she did it, with you right there on the spot.” Miranda, Morgan, and even Gloria Simmons glowered at him, the menacing interloper. “Do carry on,” he said, glancing at Miranda. “It seems we may all be on the same side, after all. Not you, of course, Ms. Simmons.
Miranda felt more tentative as she proceeded, “To understand what went on, you need to know that your Gloriasimmons, Morgan, she and Maria were lovers.”
Again, cards splayed at random in Morgan’s mind began in slow motion to assume the shape of an edifice, only this time it was not a new reading of old events; this was the original narrative, seen clearly for the first time.
Suddenly, he was ahead of her. “You remember,” he said, addressing Miranda as if the other two were a negligible presence in the room, despite one being bound at the wrists and the other holding a Winchester 73 poised to explode in their direction, “you remember McMan said Maria left the island with D’Arcy, she deserted her betrothed —”
“Te Ave Teao.”
“Yeah. And heartbroken as he was, the man accepted it all with good grace. He knew she was a lesbian, they had no future together, and they both knew that D’Arcy was essentially asexual and was very fond of her, a wealthy man already, a good contact with the world beyond the borders of Chile, a man whose soul was already embedded among the ancestral bones of the Rapa Nui.”