He responded moments later, asking if I could fly up to Toronto the next day. He said he’d make a booking at a hotel. I knew the one—a shabby place on Jarvis Street.
In and out, short agenda. No point getting the girls involved, he said.
* * *
—
The hotel reminded me of that dreary apartment building years before, and the delivery of laundry, and Mike’s casual indifference to the conventions of the laundry trade.
Allan brought along a dour-looking man about our age, but he didn’t introduce him.
Immediately after shaking my hand, the stranger headed for the bathroom. He didn’t close the door. I could hear the clank of the toilet tank and the swish of a shower curtain.
–What’s he looking for? I asked.
Allan whispered, Don’t mind him.
Later, the stranger asked to see the business cards the cops had given me and noted down their names. Then he asked a lot of questions. Eventually I asked,
–Are you by any chance a lawyer?
–Why do you ask?
I decided not to answer. Allan, throughout this exchange, was sitting silently on a bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
–So, what did you say about Albert Rose?
–That he was a client, I said.
–And what if they come back?
–I’ve done my job. I’m not concerned.
–We hope.
Allan stood.
–So, what was all this about, Al?
–Due diligence, Byron. You know about due diligence.
* * *
—
As it turned out, my return flight was delayed. I called Allan.
–Let’s have a drink. Just the two of us.
–How long is the delay?
–They’re saying three hours.
–I’ll meet you at the airport hotel. In the lobby bar.
* * *
—
We had a history of cryptic conversations, Allan and I. Maybe it was the crucial factor in the long survival of our friendship, our ability to communicate through a kind of mental telepathy. We didn’t have to say much to understand each other. For long periods of time we didn’t have to say anything at all.
–This was a long trip for not much, I said after we sat down.
–It was important anyway. I’m familiar with those cops and I needed to hear what they’re up to from you face to face. Phones are tricky nowadays.
–What are they up to?
–Right now, just fishin’.
–Tell me I’m delusional, but I think I might have just met Albert Rose, I said.
He was staring around the almost empty bar.
–One of them, anyway. What did you think of him?
–Where did you find him?
–You guessed it. He’s a lawyer. Or was. Got into some trouble with the Law Society over a trust account. I give him work sometimes. He used to be a cop too, or could you tell?
–Bent?
He held up a hand, thumb and forefinger almost touching.
–Give him a little slack. He’s a bit paranoid, in a creative way. Checking out the bathroom was a bit over the top, though.
–No kidding.
–But Byron, this is good.
–How so? We have cops poking into things.
–They came, they sniffed, they went away. You handled it perfectly.
He shifted his weight in the chair. Signalled for two more drinks.
–I’ve got plans to keep you busy for a while.
–Happy to hear that.
–Albert and the other Alberts…we’re going to be buying them out.
–Buy them out? I thought the whole point was that they weren’t in.
–Okay. Pay them off. They’ve done their thing as stand-ins for you and me.
–Do they know that?
–I’m tired of all the Alberts. I’m going to try the big leagues for a while. We’ll be placing our holdings in a new company, and then liquidate. We need cash. We’ll be getting into major real estate development. We need bigger players.
–What kind of major real estate development?
–Office towers. High-rise condos. Some high-volume parking plazas. So, you’re going to be busy with a lot of paperwork. After this, we’ll be able to retire.
–What would you do if you retired?
–I’d dedicate my time to golf. Maybe design my own golf course, a layout that would always let me win.
–A mini-putt, perhaps.
–Ho, ho, Byron. You missed your calling. But we should make more time for fun. Life is short.
–So I hear.
He was smiling, stroking his sweaty glass with a forefinger. There was soft music, the sound of glasses tinkling at the bar. I was thinking about money, real estate, flipping property, doing mental math.
–So, you’re on top of all this, Byron? Where we’re heading, long term?
–No.
–Good. Just remember, the secret of survival is mobility. Keep moving. Keep the enemy confused. I’m working on some joint ventures.
–With anybody that I know?
–Unlikely. They’re foreigners.
–How foreign?
–Very. Think of these arrangements as friendly one-night stands. Transactional. Among adults. Win-win for everybody.
–Good to know.
–I could use you up here full-time.
–When the time is right.
He stood. We shook hands and hugged. I left.
* * *
—
The transition happened slowly, and from my point of view seamlessly, over about two years. The people I’d been setting up as principals until then had been nobodies, literally. They proved easy to get rid of. Albert Rose simply disappeared, as did a number of other obscure personas and made-up identities, along with the disposable companies I created for them.
There were no self-aggrandizing announcements as the business grew. No press releases. The properties were modest, compared with the megaprojects then disfiguring the Toronto and Vancouver skylines. Hardly anyone that mattered seemed to notice what we were up to.
I used high-end lawyers from established firms in Nova Scotia and Toronto, solid outfits that were considered to be terminally dull. I deliberately avoided my old law firm. No point risking familiarity.
I knew the files. I knew the endgame. Money coming out of Nowhere, going into Nowhere. Real properties bought and sold by unreal entities.
It was actually fun to work with the other lawyers, putting up with the condescension the elite reserve for people who seem to have no grand political or public profile. Especially from some of the older ones, in Halifax, who vaguely remembered my humble origins in the profession.
Annie, on the other hand, had their full attention any time she spoke. I believe they deduced that if Annie was my wife and partner, there must be more to me than was obvious to them.
Half the time, I barely understood what she was going on about.
One meeting in particular stands out. Allan was there, which was unusual. He introduced himself as my assistant, both of us enjoying the theatre of it all. I was playing the star. The boss. And I looked the part. Allan had instructed me beforehand to get a suit made, something that actually fit me for a change, and to get a city haircut. Maybe let the whiskers grow for a day or two.
We had three other lawyers on our side of the long oval table. After I introduced our team and we got down to business, Annie did most of the talking. On the other side of the table were bankers, brokers and lawyers, and an observer who didn’t introduce himself but spent a lot of time scrolling on his phone. Obviously a flunky, but there was something in his bearing that roused my curiosity.
I excused myself
before the meeting ended, saying I had a plane to catch. The remaining business was for Annie and the other lawyers. Allan, my so-called assistant, stayed behind to monitor.
Passing by the man who hadn’t identified himself, I overheard him talking softly in a foreign language into his phone. I had seen enough spy movies to recognize that he was speaking Russian. I paused. He turned his head, looked up, stopped talking.
I fished my cellphone from an inside pocket, said “Hello” into it, walked two more paces, stopped. Started talking to myself. The mystery man resumed his conversation. I pretended to be ending mine, held my phone out as if checking messages, reversed the selfie camera and took a picture of the man behind me.
And left.
Later, I e-mailed the photograph to Annie: Do you know this dude?
He never introduced himself, she replied.
Maybe you should keep an eye on him.
* * *
—
One thing I will not forget. Allan called me at the farm, late on a sultry August evening not long after that meeting. He was in unusually high spirits, told me to clear my schedule for the next week.
–We’re going to step away from work for a few days, mate. We’re going to be young again.
–Sounds good, I said.
–Peggy and I are coming down there. She’s going off to do her thing and you and I, my friend, are going to play golf. Non-stop. Every day while I’m there. Until we’re sick of it. Pick a golf course and book us into a hotel.
I remember thinking, Fucking golf, again?
20.
In retrospect, it feels as though I procrastinated for weeks before I finally retrieved the mysterious memory device Allan had stuffed into my pocket in Toronto. I knew that I should just plug it into my computer and deal with what was there. I didn’t. It can wait, I thought. I was dreading another brush with his mortality and, to be honest, my own.
The most pressing business waiting for me on my return was a DUI charge against a prominent local doctor for whom I’d once handled a relatively friendly marital breakup. I eventually handed his file to one of my former colleagues in Halifax, a litigator with the kind of pit-bull tenacity that is required in such no-hope cases.
Another problem involved an insurance claim for which I had almost missed a filing deadline. My cranky client was threatening to report me to the bar society on account of it. These and other chores required most of a week of concentration and telephone tag at the expense of other things. Like looking at Allan’s ominous thumb drive.
And then there was a reminder from the post office that I had a package waiting there.
It first occurred to me that I was bored while I was driving to town to fetch the package. Town people used to make a joke about country living: you might not live longer in the boondocks, but it will definitely seem longer. But what I was feeling wasn’t funny. It was like a numbness spreading in my core.
It was late afternoon. The sky was dense with cloud, but there was a space between the bottom of a cloud bank and the crest of the horizon and it was suddenly ablaze. I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road to watch as the sun descended from the clouds and then melted on the burning sea.
The spectacle has always defined this place for me, the clarity of light, the infinity of sea. Could I imagine life without it?
Not easily. But for the first time ever, it didn’t seem impossible.
* * *
—
When I turned up at her wicket, the clerk in the post office observed that I had been away. I nodded, annoyed. Yes. I’d been gone. Briefly.
–Anywhere interesting?
–Just Toronto, I said.
–Ahh, she said.
She was studying the package as she handed it to me and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d asked me what was in it.
It was only when I had it in my hand that I remembered the genetic test kit that I’d impulsively ordered online before I’d gone off to Toronto. Then I remembered why I’d sent for it.
The instructions seemed to me to be nonsensical. And yet I followed them precisely. I filled out all the forms and provided credit card details. I refrained from food and drink for hours. I postponed brushing my teeth. Then, with some difficulty and not without spillage, I drooled saliva into a small vial.
Could it be so simple? I thought of Mom and her slow decline and our denial of all the signs we saw before us. And now Allan. It was at this moment, thinking about Allan and the state he was in, I remembered the USB drive he’d slipped into my jacket pocket.
When I opened it, I was almost relieved to realize the file made little sense to me. At the top of a single page, in boldface: TPWC. And then, single-spaced, in three parallel columns, short lists of numbers. Fifteen in all. It could have been a secret code. But they looked like bank accounts. But where? He had written at the bottom of the page: In time, all things are made transparent. AND GURTH WILL HAVE HIS PAIRINGS.
Where had I seen that enigmatic line before? Gurth? And then I remembered: in a stairwell outside the dining hall at the university, many years before, and Thomas Carlyle, the book I’d been studying the first time I’d had a conversation with the Great Chase.
TPWC. The pigs were Cedric’s!
I took the obscurity of his message as an excuse to ignore the thing, for a little longer. I was sure I still had that book somewhere, The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle. I’d have to track it down.
Allan wasn’t just playing mind games with our wives, he was messing with my head too. I shut down my computer, slipped the USB drive into a drawer. A memory that was meaningless for now, deferred.
* * *
—
When, two days later, I handed the return envelope with my DNA sample to the woman in the post office, she examined the address and remarked,
–My daughter did this once and found relatives in Australia.
–Did what?
–Went looking for her ancestors.
–Great. And did she get in touch with the Australian relatives?
–She tried, I guess. But they never responded.
On the drive back, the narrow, darkened road to Malignant Cove felt dangerous. Pretty houses partly hidden by the trees now seemed melancholy.
My annoyance with the woman in the post office slowly turned to empathy. People who are nosy are basically bored. I had known her forever. But now I knew about her. She was obviously lonely, and her response was curiosity about other people. Is this what lies in store for me?
I need a change.
I was suddenly intrigued by Allan’s compulsion to dispose of everything. It’s a reality we all must face—decluttering, they call it—something I learned about in my law practice, helping people with their wills, helping them dispose of their possessions.
Our wives think he’s going crazy. Perhaps he’s just decluttering on a grand, outrageous scale. If we’re wise, we control the process while we can, or someone else will do it carelessly when we’re no longer competent. Considered in this new light, I, unlike Annie and Peggy, didn’t feel particularly threatened by this winding down of his affairs. Of our affairs.
Back at home, I rang Allan’s number. Peggy answered.
–He’s asleep, she said quietly.
I told her I had made up my mind—I would move to the city and stay there for as long as it might take to put our business on a safe and solid footing.
–That’s brilliant news. Do you know when?
–I have some things to deal with here. But soon.
21.
I knew I should be packing for what might be a long-term absence. But there really wasn’t much to pack. Clothing. A few files. Some books. The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle, for one. Which reminded me—where did I put Allan’s thumb drive?
Because its existence was supposed to be a secret, I’
d taken pains to hide the goddamned thing. And now, in my distraction, I’d forgotten where it was. He had slipped it into an inside jacket pocket. I was sure of that. But what jacket? And then what?
I vaguely remembered having placed it in a drawer. I ransacked the kitchen before concluding logically that I would have put it in my desk. Of course.
But during the brief walk from my kitchen to my office, I found myself standing staring into a closet upstairs without knowing how I got there. There is now a blank space between remembering the desk and realizing I was now standing, confused, upstairs in what had been my mother’s bedroom.
Why was I standing in a trance in my dead mother’s bedroom? Fucking idiot. This, I find, is what happens when systems fail unexpectedly—I lash out, mostly at myself. And then I noticed a stack of photo albums and several shoe boxes on a closet shelf above the hangers.
A more superstitious person might have been inclined to think that she had, somehow, led me there. I dismissed the idea. I shut the closet door, turned to leave. Stopped.
I’d once spent an afternoon snooping in here at a time before the past had any meaning. I recall reading letters written by my mother’s friends. Unrevealing letters to my mother from my father. But now I also remembered an old newspaper clipping among the letters.
I rummaged through the shoe boxes until I found it. There was my father’s name above a larger headline: acquittal in assault.
My father had assaulted someone. This was explicit. But whom? The victim’s name had been omitted from the story because my father’s lawyer had argued it could reveal the identity of an innocent third party. A minor.
I recognized the lawyer’s name—he was long deceased. The judge had heard his arguments in camera and had ultimately directed the jurors to return a verdict of not guilty.
I sat down on the bed, mystified.
Who was the innocent third party?
The minor?
For God’s sake, idiot, just face it.
The Winter Wives Page 14