The God Game

by Jeffrey Round

  Among the subjects, a single woman stood out from the group, as though to belie the myth that Canada’s founders had been only men and moose. This, the guide informed them, was Laura Secord. While Paul Revere had been warning of the impending approach of the British south of the border, a lowly Canadian cowherd had risked her life to warn of marauding Americans to the north as they spread their war of aggression.

  “But I don’t understand,” spluttered a white-haired senior who had earlier declared himself a visitor from New York. “Why is the war considered an act of American aggression?”

  The guide answered calmly. “Because the U.S. declared war on Canada.”

  “But that was because the British burned Washington!” the man huffed.

  “It’s true the British burned Washington, sir,” the guide said. “But that was in retaliation after the Americans burned our parliament buildings.” She smiled, gleeful at her small rebellion. In her mind, it was tit for tat. Aggression made easy.

  “That’s not what I was taught in school!” the man protested, stupefied by this seditious refutation of sacred truths.

  And that, Dan thought, is the nature of politics.

  Mindful of the pitfalls of history, the guide shepherded her flock down the hall. Dan lingered to admire the portrait of the daring Secord, waiting till the guide’s voice passed out of hearing. Alone, he glanced over to the assembly chambers. The door was unguarded. He slipped into the gallery during a pause in the proceedings and took a seat.

  Pillars reached up grandly, forming arches on all sides. From below they resembled oversized molars whose roots extended down to form a giant mouth. Which, in essence, was what the assembly was, Dan thought. A giant mouth that never stopped talking.

  The gallery’s partitions had been decorated by a gifted carver. Bats, wolves, and foxes gambolled about, a sly nod to the true nature of the political animal. While unwary visitors expecting an air of decorum might have been surprised by the gruff voices emanating from the floor, Dan was well aware that political discussions were not infrequently conducted like hockey games, one of the nation’s favoured pastimes after drinking beer and complaining about the weather. Violence and vitriol were common, the participants treating each other like the bitterest of enemies until the need for compromise arose and something like détente occurred. It was as hypocritical and dishonourable an occupation as any to be found among human affairs, so who could resist?

  Dan kept his eye on the House Speaker, the same one whose antecedents had been historically prone to execution. Forced to give up party interests, he came dressed for the part in a black-and-white harlequinesque veneer of neutrality. A fitting ensemble for the house dealer. Look at me, ladies and gentlemen of the assembly: nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves. Nothing but impartiality here! The symbolic mace was always at his side. No House business could occur without it. Perhaps the Americans had thought they’d successfully stalled the government for the hundred and twenty-two years it was absent. Fortunately, there was a spare.

  The Speaker recognized Alec Henderson, minister of educational reforms, Peter Hansen’s boss. The minister waited for the room to settle before introducing his bill: the new proposed sex-education curriculum, a subject cutting right to the heart of the bigoted and intolerant. In its initial stages, with the potential for controversy spread across its pages, the bill’s contents were as likely to offend one group as another, while the minorities it was designed to protect — progressive folk, women, and that subversive LGBT crowd fomenting change and rocking the foundations of civilization in their pursuit of equality — had been cast as villains in the drama. Nothing new in the annals of politics.

  Demurely attired, Henderson stepped up to give the galley a view of the Sensible Moderate Advocating Change. Am I not a reasonable man? he seemed to ask, clutching his vest at the arm pits, the very vision of normality despite the load of treason he carried in his folder.

  He addressed the room in his real voice, his true voice, its inflections ringing with virtue and justice. Though perhaps it was just one of the many voices he was said to possess — who could tell? Meanwhile, he was still that same politician who never stopped ticking off the potential votes of everyone he met, like a real estate agent who can’t help evaluating the worth of every house he enters. Naturally, there was always the next election to consider. Sell your soul for a good price, but always include a buy-back clause. You can screw the voters today, but never forget they still need to love you tomorrow.

  A basso-continuo murmuring could be heard from the galleries, where a sour and unpleasant lot had gathered to hear him speak, pushing their own interests in the guise of public concern.

  “What if we don’t want this filth foisted on our children?” demanded a woman who looked as though she’d given up a round of afternoon cosmos to be there.

  Henderson’s smile was gracious, expressing his sincerest sympathy and understanding. It should have been — he’d practised it enough. “No one will be forced to take this course. Your child can simply opt out of the scheduled period.”

  “And then they’ll be picked on and bullied by the other kids for not taking it!” someone else shouted.

  The Speaker clacked his gavel, eyeing the insurrection. “The minister of educational reforms has the floor,” he reminded them, though they were all well aware of the fact.

  “Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Henderson said, managing to sound as though he had never at any time transgressed those very same rules of conduct himself.

  Dan was impressed as the minister stared his critics down. His shrug could have been an apology or a dismissal. “Although I understand your concerns, the fact is you can’t have it both ways. If you don’t want your child to take the course, it shouldn’t prevent someone else’s child from having the option to attend.”

  Cries of assent came from his side of the scrum. While he had the room’s attention, he would ride the wave of public opinion. He was the man with the silver tongue and the populist views. A man of the people. That night, his party would parade him through the streets, held aloft on their shoulders. In another age, dissenters might have carried him straight to the gallows. Views that made you a reformer a century ago might have been those of today’s knee-jerk reactionary. Meanwhile the crowd railed, their voices pressing in from all quarters, replete with the echoes of history: Free the slaves? Unheard of! Women’s suffrage? Madness! Same-sex marriage? The end of civilization! What further lawlessness and insanity will be thrust upon us tomorrow by this reckless government?

  “Yes,” Henderson assured a questioner, “the bill is intended to be fair and unbiased. It’s based on an in-depth survey of more than four thousand parents whose children are in the current school system.”

  “And just who,” someone demanded, “were these four thousand parents and how were they chosen?”

  Another shrug. “They were chosen at random with a lottery-style method of selection,” came the minister’s long-suffering reply.

  It was a reply evincing fairness enough to satisfy the harshest critic. But the voices of dissent were everywhere. A funereal-looking man with a cravat spoke up. “My constituents expect me to stand up against this sort of immorality. I need to give them the representation they asked for with their vote. Why else do we elect officials but to speak in our name?”

  Henderson turned to the robed harlequin. “Exactly my point, Mr. Speaker. The people have elected us to speak for them and that is precisely what we are doing!”

  The crowd was in an uproar: This is against our religious teachings! … We don’t want these things discussed in our schools … Yeah, well, my taxes pay for your kid to go to school and I don’t want them learning hatred and prejudice … Then why don’t you start your own school? It was a textbook lesson on intolerance brought over lock, stock, and barrel from the Old Country. Never mind that they’d all been killing each other for centuries in
the Old Country. If they had their way, that tradition would continue, too.

  “I will have order in the House!” the Speaker cried at last, glaring out over the room even if deep down he didn’t give a damn if they tore each other’s eyes out, bored as he was with this farce of decorum and manners flouted by contrary schoolchildren.

  Dan checked his watch. It was time for his meeting with an old friend.

  Five

  House of Rumours

  To Dan, Will Parker had been an almost mythic personality, revered by many for his social activism but known by very few. Their paths had crossed often during Dan’s early years in the city, both of them drifting in and out of various LGBT organizations, the first being the Suicide Prevention Hotline for which he and Will went through training together. When it came time for the real thing, Dan had been in awe of how Will instinctively filtered out the noise to get to the root of a caller’s issues: coming out to family, suicidal urges, AIDS scares. Will seemed to have it all down pat, carrying a suitcase full of advice in his mind. The ease with which he discussed these and other topics was inspirational.

  If Dan had to sum up what set Will apart, he would have said Will made you feel as though he knew you intimately after only a few minutes of chatting. Having compassion at his fingertips and an ability to share his convictions were Will’s trademarks. He knew the stats on poverty, child abuse, sexual assault — social inequities of every variety — and he could quote them at will. Dan tried looking them up once and found them current and accurate. For a while, Dan had thought he might be falling in love with Will, but Will had taken that in stride as well.

  “I don’t have time for an affair, Daniel,” Will told him flat out. “There are a lot of things I want to achieve. My personal life is secondary to those goals.”

  A man with his priorities in order.

  Serious in outlook and committed in his actions, Will was a new-world cowboy with the unruffled calm of a priest. Although he claimed to be bisexual, Dan knew no one who had actually dated him. He was a mystery, aloof but kind. An icy exterior with a burning flame at its centre. Getting to know him was a challenge. Gentle reserve was his default mode, and helping the less fortunate was his only passion. Dan had expected him to go into medicine, but it was no surprise either that he’d ended up studying law and getting involved in politics, trying to make a difference.

  These were Dan’s memories as he left the assembly. He hadn’t long to wait for the reality. Once outside, he turned and there was Will. The years had been more than good to him. He looked lean and extremely fit, with a touch of grey around the temples.

  His smile caught Dan off guard. Not so serious now, it seemed. “Daniel, it’s great to see you. Good of you to make yourself at home in our hallowed halls.”

  Will indicated the way. They fell into step, heading away from the assembly.

  “I took the tour to see what it’s all about before we met up,” Dan said.

  “And what did you learn?”

  “That politics and high school are not far apart when it comes to the participants. The only difference is their relative ages.”

  Will laughed. “You’re not wrong. Sometimes I think this place is a distillery for deviant behaviour.” They reached the end of the corridor. Will stretched an arm in the direction of the next wing. “I’m just around the corner.”

  He opened a door and led Dan into a hushed interior that suggested arcane matters and state secrets were regularly discussed here. The furniture was old, intricate, and uniformly made of wood. An auctioneer might have a field day trying to scry the provenance of the pieces before laying them out on the auction block. Dan ran a hand over the grain of a writer’s desk with a fold-up top that was stately and demure as someone’s kindly grandmother. Shelves were crammed with volumes of legislative history and legal tracts, the makings of civilization great and small. From atop an imposing shelf, busts of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Plato cast discerning gazes over the room. The father of modern Canada who had tossed the state out of the nation’s bedrooms, and the man who had laid the foundations of western civilization after declaring love a mental illness were contentedly seated together. They would have good conversations, Dan thought.

  “You’ve done well for yourself.”

  Will nodded. “If this is the sort of place you want to end up in, then yes.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “It’s not what I envisioned back when I was a young student leftist trying to reform the world. I had more radical things in mind then, though they stopped short of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.” He winked. “I’m sure you’d agree this is what we called ‘selling out’ back in our younger, more idealistic days.”

  “Then you’ve survived the transition nicely. Maybe we should have called it ‘buying in’ instead.”

  “A diplomatic answer,” Will replied. “I’m surprised myself at how long I’ve stayed. Some days the level of duplicity is mind-boggling.”

  “You’re the only lawyer I ever trusted, because you could still be shocked by bad behaviour. That and the fact you once refused a client you knew was guilty.”

  “Yes, well there’s crime and then there’s crime. Stealing pensions from old ladies and labourers deserves to be punished. I couldn’t use my talents to free someone who clearly admitted his guilt but wanted a loophole to squeeze through.”

  “Is he still in jail?”

  “Last I heard,” Will said. “Probably why I’m still alive. If he’d broken a law I personally disapproved of then I’d have thrown myself body and soul into his defence. But nothing like that here, of course. I just advise and adjudicate a lot of musty, fusty old laws someone wants upheld or, with luck, dispensed with when their time has come. There’s a lot of dead wood. Ministers wanting things on the books that will allow them to repeal gay marriage, for instance. It won’t happen at this level. It’s up to the feds, though it’s not proving a popular fight. Times have changed, but I wouldn’t put it past the prime minister to try to sneak it back into parliament. The last time he did, it got rumbled pretty quickly, but we have to be vigilant. That’s the price of freedom. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Truer words,” Dan said with a nod.

  Will leaned forward over his desk. “It’s good to see you again, Dan. Life treating you well?”

  “Very well, in fact. My son’s in university in B.C. He’s about to graduate.”

  “Terrific! Kedrick, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Good memory. On top of that, I’m about to get married. His name’s Nick. He’s a police officer.”

  “Well, congratulations, then.” Will gave him an appraising look. “I assume he’s stellar material like you.”

  “Thanks. He’s a really decent guy, the sort I thought I would never meet. So far he hasn’t been scared off by me. How about you?”

  “Six years of marriage. A wife and two kids.” Will looked at Dan. “I know what you’re thinking: I went the safe route.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was remembering how I envied you for having the choice. I also remember thinking that dating you would mean there’d be twice the competition.”

  Will laughed. “True enough.”

  Dan’s eyes roamed the desktop. “Any photos?”

  “No. I keep my private life private. Just the nature of the business here.”

  “Understandably.”

  “So. To what exactly do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Peter Hansen and Tony Moran.”

  Will gave him a quizzical look.

  “Do you know them?” Dan asked.

  “Yes, of course. Peter I know personally. I’ve met Tony at one or two social functions.”

  “Then you may have heard Tony has disappeared. I’ve been hired to find him.”

  Will’s expression turned serious. “I’d heard he was missing. Is he in danger?”

/>   Dan shook his head. “No immediate danger, at least according to Peter. It seems Tony has a gambling problem.”

  Will shrugged. “Rumours are rife. One can’t help overhearing them in this place.”

  Dan half expected him to quote statistics on recovering gambling addicts, as he might have cited other demographics in the past. “I don’t think it’s a question of money borrowed from questionable sources or anything like that. At least not as far as I know.”

  “That’s good, then. I had a client once who lost everything to some unscrupulous sorts who loaned him the cash. In the end, there was nothing he could do but sign over everything he owned. I wasn’t able to save him. There was no question of violence against him, just compulsive behaviour that led to significant loss. I heard he made it back in two years and lost it all over again. It’s a significant illness.”

  “I know a thing or two about addiction.”

  Will regarded him shrewdly. “You’re quite the drinker, as I recall.”

  “Was. Past tense.” Dan nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know a journalist named Simon Bradley?”

  Will’s mouth twisted into a hollow smile. “The muckraker. Of course. And not half the journalist his grandfather was, unless you count digging up scandal as journalism. I’ve had to threaten him with legal action on behalf of the government more than once. He always skirts the edges of what’s legally acceptable with his reporting and his dubious sources. What’s he done now?”

  “Nothing so far as I’m concerned. But he seems to think Tony’s disappearance is connected to John Wilkens’s death.”

  “The MPP who committed suicide? How?”

  “Bradley thinks Wilkens was murdered.”

  Will’s expression darkened for a second, then he shook his head and laughed. “That sounds like Bradley all around. Trying to make something of nothing.”

  “Is there any chance Wilkens could have been murdered for a cover-up?”

  “Cover-up of what?”