Tampered

by Ross Pennie

  Four of Camelot’s Mountain Wingers were seated in wheelchairs, terry-cloth bibs tied around their necks. They lived in the eight-bed infirmary on the second floor and were allowed out of the locked ward only on special occasions such as Sunday brunch. They ate puréed meals out of plastic bowls and were never given knives or forks. Around them hovered uniformed staff with the gentle movements, rich black hair, and almond eyes of Filipinas. Watching the aides spoon beige mush into the toothless mouths, Zol shuddered. He’d promised himself he would jump off the Skyway Bridge and into a watery grave in Hamilton Harbour the instant he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, or anything like it.

  “I’ll grant you that,” Phyllis admitted. “Arthur’s playing is almost like magic.”

  “Of course it is,” Betty said. “It lifts the heads of those dear souls like sunflowers tipped toward the noontime rays. They wave their arms, tap their feet, and sometimes sing along.”

  “Hardly,” Phyllis corrected. “It’s really just muttering.”

  “When they hear that music,” said Betty, “their faces get so bright you’d almost swear they could partake in intelligent conversation. Until . . .” A look of sadness misted her eyes — or was it fear? “Until it’s time for Art to stop playing and Gloria locks the keyboard.”

  Two men in dark business suits caught Zol’s eye from the far side of the common room. Betty and Phyllis had their backs to them, thank goodness. The men were pushing a gurney, their passenger draped head to toe in a white sheet. To the right of the men, the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows lit the room and flanked the side door to the parking lot. A black Craig & Lafferty van was waiting on the tarmac by the exit, its rear doors yawning.

  Once they’d negotiated the awkwardly narrow side exit and wheeled their client to the van, one of the men tapped the gurney with his foot. The wheels didn’t fold as they were supposed to. He tried again. Still, the undercarriage didn’t give. The other man tried with a swifter kick but the wheels didn’t budge. The two men kicked together — at the wheels, the frame, the mechanism beneath. The stretcher rocked back and forth. The corpse’s legs slid off and pitched precariously toward the ground. Suddenly, the undercarriage collapsed, and one of the men caught the body just in time. They hoisted the gurney and flung their reluctant cargo into the van, then jumped inside. The driver slammed his door, and the vehicle careened down the street.

  Zol dabbed his mouth with his serviette, then wiped the sweat from his forehead. He stared at the bits of cold egg and charred bacon on his plate, his stomach in complete revolt. Betty and Phyllis started at the sudden chime from Zol’s belt. He grabbed his BlackBerry, ready to silence it. Whoever was calling could leave a message. He hated cellphones in restaurants. Nothing in public health was so important it couldn’t wait fifteen minutes.

  But the phone’s display said Peter Trinnock was calling. That was strange. Zol’s boss never worked weekends. He golfed a lot, skied a little, and often got heavily into the sauce. If he wasn’t on the slopes today, enjoying March’s last few weeks of spring skiing, he’d be into his third martini by now.

  Zol excused himself and strode toward the common sitting room.

  “Damn it, Szabo,” Trinnock said, “where are you?” Zol pictured his boss’s piggy-eyed gaze, the veins on his cheeks flaring like a tangled nest of spiders.

  “Brunch with my ex’s granddad. Camelot Lodge.”

  “Then you know.”

  “Know what, sir?”

  “About the Prime Minister’s aunt. Nellie something.” Zol heard the shuffle of papers next to Trinnock’s phone, then the yapping of a small dog. Trinnock cursed through a partly muffled mouthpiece, “Muzzle the damn dog, Marion. I’m on the phone.” He paused and took a loud gulp of something that sounded more like beer than martini. “Nellie Brownlow, that’s the name,” Trinnock continued, his voice again loud and clear. “Died this morning. At that Camelot place. The Prime Minister’s Office just called. The Prime Minister is very upset. The woman was his favourite aunt. It seems she got caught up in your epidemic. Stricken with diarrhea several times since Christmas.”

  Bile burned the back of Zol’s throat. The Prime Minister’s Office never interfered with health unit matters. “I’ll . . . I’ll look into it right away.”

  “You’ve dropped the ball on this one, Szabo. The guy from the PMO is saying people are dropping like flies at that Camelot place and that our Hamilton-Lakeshore Health Unit is asleep at the bloody switch.”

  “We’ve been doing everything possible to —”

  “There are other Party favourites living at that place. The Brownlow woman wasn’t the only one. They may be retired, but they’re VIPs all the same.”

  Zol glanced at his table. He hardly needed reminding about Camelot’s connections to the country’s ruling federal party. Betty, Earl, and a couple of sisters named Maude and Myrtle were living examples. Art stayed away from anything political, and Phyllis reckoned that all politicians were tarred with the same unsavoury brush. She loved it when the press discovered any of them in flagrante delicto and their careers got ruined.

  “Any more of them gets wheeled out in a bag, an RCMP goon squad will be breathing down our necks.” Trinnock downed another noisy gulp. “That’s your neck, Szabo, now that the PM knows your name.”

  The Prime Minister?

  The RCMP?

  Zol imagined beer-bellied thugs in Kevlar vests waving fifty-thousand-volt Tasers.

  He swallowed hard.

  The force’s boy-scouts-in-scarlet image had been shattered when shocking videos of RCMP brutality were broadcast to the world via the Internet. A brave guy with a video cellphone had recorded the nation’s finest zapping a confused, unarmed traveller with a Taser at Vancouver airport. The guy died, right there on the screen. The scenario and the attempted cover-up had seriously jaundiced Zol’s view of policing. Zol was sure many others felt the same way. The national anthem boasted that the True North was strong and free, but nowadays it felt like its citizens weren’t safe if the RCMP took a sudden, arbitrary disliking to them.

  “Does someone in the PMO suspect foul play?” Zol asked.

  “You know these political types. Don’t trust anyone. Which means you’ll have to do better. Considerably better. And with due speed.” Trinnock’s English accent intensified when he got angry. “Shall I call in some assistance? Dare I say, our friends from Toronto?”

  Ice filled Zol’s veins. He pictured Wyatt Burr, the “consultant” who’d swaggered in from Toronto on his high horse and royally screwed up Zol’s last big case. “I’d rather deal with our local experts. If you gave me the go-ahead to hire a couple more brains, I could —”

  “Get the bloody thing fixed, whatever it takes. And keep us out of the papers.”

  CHAPTER 2

  That evening, Max slurped from his Star Pirates mug at the kitchen table. “Can we have chicken noodle soup for supper every night, Dad?”

  Dread hung over Zol, an anvil cloud that had hovered since Trinnock’s noontime call. Such a reversal from yesterday’s fun and adventure when life seemed full of promise. Zol and Max had taken Colleen and Max’s school chum Travis to the Toronto Zoo for a Saturday filled with nothing more serious than home-cut fries, double-chocolate ice cream, and jokes about elephant poop.

  Colleen Woolton first shined into their lives four months ago, and the bloom on their threesome was still in full glow. Every day with her was a treat. Quick and compact, with a long golden ponytail, Colleen radiated Rapunzel’s innocence and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s kindness and wrapped them up with Barbarella’s late-night passion. He closed his eyes and tried to let himself be stirred by the memory of the jasmine on her skin and the music of her soft South African accent whispering at his ear, but he was struck by recurring apprehension. Female anger and contempt seemed to evolve inevitably from early bliss. He wondered whether he possessed a flaw that drove women to nastiness. Alone in the dark he found himself desperate for things to be different this time.

/>   “Dad-dy?” Max called. “Are you dreaming again?”

  Zol forced a chuckle through his fears as he remembered Max giggling about oversized penises and excrement. The nine-year-old commanded an impressive knowledge of zoology — the finicky diets of aardvarks and the muddy habitats of tapirs. Did he learn those things in school, or was the Internet providing him with more than an unlimited repertoire of video games and downloads?

  “Um . . . What’s that, Max?”

  “I said, can we have chicken noodle soup for supper every night?”

  “Don’t you think you’d get sick of it?”

  “Never in a million, zillion years.” Max looked at the empty place setting beside him. “Where’s Colleen?”

  “On her way. She had to work a bit late.” Colleen had been delayed on a surveillance job. In true private-investigator fashion, she was tight-lipped about the details of her work. Zol knew not to ask but worried about her safety, despite her insistence that her clients were normal people with very ordinary problems, not gun-toting gangsters. “She’ll be here soon. Ready for your next course?”

  “What is it?”

  “Another favourite of yours. Chicken pot pie.”

  Max made a face.

  “Hey. We made it together. You chopped all that celery and cilantro.” Max was becoming a whiz with his own kitchen knife — just the right size for a nine-year-old.

  “Can’t I just have chicken noodle soup? You said that’s all you’re going to have.”

  “If you’re going to reach a million points on your new game gadget, you’ll have to fuel up with high-test chicken pie.”

  Zol downed the rest of his soup, then pulled the pie from the oven. The doorbell rang, and Max shot to the front door with the speed of a Star Pirates lightsaber. The treatment he had received three months ago for his spastic left arm, the only part of him that cerebral palsy had made stiff and awkward, had improved his confidence. Having two upper limbs that functioned almost symmetrically made the boy feel like everyone else in his class. He was no longer the kid with the “special needs,” a moniker that had rankled no matter how politically correct his teachers had been in handling him. Of course, Max had never needed handling.

  Max’s treatment, given by injection, wouldn’t last forever. It needed repeating every year or so. Zol worried that the medication’s potential toxicity, which had come to light since Max had received it, would mean he’d be denied another dose when the current one wore off. Then what?

  But life was like that, wasn’t it? You couldn’t store the good times in the bank. You had to spend them while they lasted. Single parenthood, made possible by Ermalinda, Max’s nanny from the Philippines, was a happier state than Zol would have anticipated, except for the gnawing loneliness and the guilt that Max might never know the warmth of a loving mother. Zol’s marriage to Francine had lasted only twenty-three months, and less than half of that he could remember with anything approaching fondness. Was that the way it was going to be with Colleen? Would the smooth sailing they were enjoying be counted in months? He hoped not. Max was wild about her. And so was Zol.

  Max bounced from the front hall into the kitchen, leading Colleen by the hand. She gave Zol a soft kiss on the lips.

  “What’s that new scent?” Zol asked as he took her coat and she set her Nikon on the desk.

  “Can you guess?” she said.

  “Let’s see . . . there’s a blend of floral and citrus — orange blossoms, I’d say. Vanilla. And another spice, clove. And . . . oak moss.”

  She only used a touch of perfume, savoured best during intimate embraces.

  “It’s lovely,” he said, meaning it. And so was she. A batik silk scrunchy at the nape of her neck encircled her long, sandy-blond ponytail, which cascaded over her left shoulder.

  “Oak moss? Heavens, you have such an imagination. I’ll have to remember that one.”

  “Are you starving?”

  “Haven’t eaten since breakfast.” She scanned the kitchen. “That pie smells too delicious. Is that one of your creations, Max?”

  Max grinned, then pierced the crust with his knife.

  “Let me heat your plate,” Zol told Colleen.

  “I don’t need it heated.”

  “Sorry, I can’t serve a home-cooked meal on a cold plate. Goes against all my instincts and training.” His appetite suddenly restored, he put two more plates in the oven and cleared the remains of his chicken noodle soup from the table.

  Max gobbled his dinner and asked to be excused — to the computer room, of course. Zol redirected him to his bedroom where his math homework was still waiting. Colleen perked Max up with the reminder that she’d be taking him for ice cream later, while his dad went to his meeting with people from work.

  “Then you’ll read me a story?”

  “Certainly,” Colleen said, her eyes crinkling warmly.

  After Max shuffled off, Colleen eyed the Star Pirates cellphone consigned to the top of the refrigerator. Almost out of sight but certainly not out of mind. “How did it go? He seems to have taken it very well.”

  “The birthday party got him refocused. The tears didn’t last long. He loves bowling.”

  Zol had opened Max’s monthly cellphone bill on Friday. Sixteen hundred dollars in new charges. Convinced there was a clerical error, he’d phoned the company immediately. Eventually, a live voice came on the line. There was no mistake, the woman said. The charges were real. The service would be cut off if the balance wasn’t paid by the due date.

  Zol gave himself a day and a half to cool down before the inevitable confrontation. He and Max had their heart-to-heart this morning. Through sobs and tears, Max admitted that he and his friends had downloaded “a few” Internet videos from YouTube. He caught the significance of the sixteen-hundred-dollar charges when Zol explained the same amount of money could have taken the two of them to Disney World for a week. Did that mean he’d never, ever get to go to Disney World, Max had asked, sobbing heavily. Zol hugged him and reassured him that Disney was still a possibility, but only for boys who learned their lessons about their cellphones, and for a certain boy who didn’t whine, not even once, about his phone being off limits for the next month.

  Zol and Colleen finished supper. Zol cleared the table, then Colleen handed him his scarf at the front door. She wished him good luck with the Camelot situation, then closed her eyes and kissed him. Her tender, lingering embrace held the promise of many more. He squeezed her hard and finally let her go.

  Alone in the car, his stomach in knots over the Prime Minister’s unexpected scrutiny, Zol thought of Art Greenwood’s mantra: Make every week count, son. Art said not to worry yourself sick over any single day, but aim instead for a major satisfaction every week.

  What Zol wouldn’t give to get the gastro corked at Camelot Lodge in the next week.

  CHAPTER 3

  Zol pulled open the door of the Nitty Gritty Café, his office-away-from-the-office, across the street from the health unit on Concession Street. He stamped the March slush from his shoes on the way in.

  In the back corner, Natasha Sharma and Hamish Wakefield were already at the table permanently reserved for health-unit staff. Here, amid the Andean décor — Machu Picchu travel posters and woven blankets — Zol and his closest colleagues did their best brainstorming and troubleshooting.

  Natasha was skimming the froth from her latte. The young epidemiologist put down her spoon and rose from her chair as Zol approached. Her engaging manner and obvious skills made her the cornerstone of the health unit’s Communicable Disease Division. She had an uncanny knack for finding the one smidgen of evidence that explained an outbreak of food poisoning or a cluster of unexplained deaths. She always smelled deliciously of sandalwood, and Zol knew she had a morbid fear of foam clinging to the down on her upper lip.

  Hamish was frowning at his hands and rubbing them with a paper serviette. A sticky spoon protruded from the honey jar beside his mug of green tea. Hamish hated unresolved stickine
ss and tolerated it neither on his fingers nor in his clinical cases. He’d confided to Zol that things were sticky on the home front as well. Boyfriend trouble. Hamish had been out of the closet for only a few months, and the bloom was off the rose of his first love affair.

  Zol greeted his associates and thanked them for coming at short notice on a Sunday evening, then settled in a chair and pulled out the loonie he always kept in the pocket of his blazer. The one-dollar coin was not for spending but for fingering whenever life’s tensions mounted. It was much cleaner than his father’s chewing tobacco and didn’t cause cancer.

  “We can’t let this go on any longer,” Zol told them. “Dozens of diarrhea cases in the past two months, and three deaths in the past two weeks, the latest one this afternoon. We have to give Camelot our full attention. Hamish, I need you in on this.”

  “Old people do die, Zol,” Hamish said, passing his hand over his perfectly squared blond flat-top. “How bad is the gastro? Are you sure the deaths are related to it?”

  “When the Prime Minister’s favourite aunt dies during an unresolved epidemic, everything is related.”

  “Her death is more important than any other?” Hamish said.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Zol said. “But it’s turned on the heat. The Prime Minister now knows my name. I can’t tell you how creepy that feels. At least the boss is giving me carte blanche to get this solved as soon as possible. And that means bringing you in as my number-one consultant.”

  “Whatever you need, just say the word. Only you’ve got to keep Peter Trinnock away from me. His eyes give me the creeps. Why are they always bloodshot? Anyone ever check his thyroid? Maybe he’s got Grave’s, or is it Sjogren’s?”