Cipher

by John Jantunen

  Bob loved football almost as much as he revered the principles of law and order and I know that, even if it hadn’t been him who’d made the call, he still would have asked Curtis to wait while he told the uniform at the desk to track down a camera. And that even if it was only a diversion meant to keep him there a few moments longer, his enthusiasm was real and also contagious so that within minutes, no more than the three I waited upstairs for the call, everyone in the building was crowded around Curtis while the uniform, the one who hadn’t called me, was holding up the camera he’d borrowed from forensics.

  The picture he took hung in Bob’s office for as long as he was an investigator, then moved upstairs when he was promoted to superintendent and shows as giddy a bunch of police officers as I have ever seen. Curtis for his part, looked exactly how one would expect a soldier returning from war to look: beaten and bruised, his downcast eyes betraying his discomfort with the jubilation. After it was taken, I understand, Bob made a short speech about what it meant to people like him that Curtis would choose to wear a uniform and serve the greater good when so many others with his particular talent chose fame, fortune and a lifestyle that bordered on being criminal. He finished by calling Curtis a Goddamned Hero, who done us all proud and it was then, my three minutes up, that I phoned the front desk and heard the applause that made me redial and made the woman who answered say, “It’s Curtis Mays!”

  I add the exclamation mark now, a period suddenly seeming insufficient to capture the mood, because, on reflection, I am certain that the woman who answered the phone was Constable Gillian Drescher; the same officer, seen in the picture over Bob Hammond’s desk for as long as he sat behind it, whom Curtis cradled in his arms, her legs kicking into the air, free-spirited as if they were bare and not covered by heavy leather boots.

  Before she donned a uniform, Constable Drescher was a cheerleader at Campbell Collegiate (and also a star forward on the girls’ field hockey team, a fair soccer player and a second-string basketball guard). Not being the head cheerleader she didn’t get to be in the infamous picture taken during her senior year that graced the cover of the Twelve Months of Curtis Mays Calendar, the initial print run selling out in the first day — all proceeds to The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Saskatchewan — but which the school board refused to sanction for a second printing following a tidal wave of complaints from church groups about the way it sexualized youth in a manner not befitting Christian society. In the original picture, orchestrated by Desmond Leaks, Curtis stood surrounded by his team, all of whom were in full uniform while he was naked, the full extent of his nakedness concealed only by the head cheerleader cradled in his arms much like he would later cradle Constable Drescher, except that the cheerleader’s feet were indeed bare.

  Having captured one moment from her past and bent it to her will, Constable Drescher was feeling pretty good about her chances for bending others to her favour. After Curtis lowered her to the ground, she whispered into his ear the same thing Katie Stockton, head cheerleader, was rumoured to have whispered to him four years previous: “I’m not wearing any underwear either.”

  Catching him in the fold as they did, the words had a disorienting effect on Curtis. Had Bob Hammond not appeared at Constable Drescher’s side, it’s likely that he would have reacted the same way as he did with Katie Stockton and would have led her to a stall in the men’s bathroom so she could perform fellatio on him (although it’s not quite as certain that the assembled officers would have, like his teammates, gathered around the stall, chanting his name, adding rhythm to the thrust of his hips).

  But Bob did appear at her side and, quick to demonstrate the powers of observation that had made him a star within the Regina Police Services, he whispered low enough so that only she could hear, “You’re making a fool of yourself.” Constable Drescher backed off and on cue the uniform who’d been manning the front desk appeared at her side to ask her to cover for him while he returned the camera.

  These two actions reclaimed the moment for Bob, allowing him to give his speech without further encumbrances. Once again I would like to affirm my belief that neither was a calculated move, an attempt by Bob to lead Curtis in the direction of his choosing. That after he said what he had to say and the applause had died down enough for him to tell the assembled officers to get back to work, his tone suitably jovial, lines cracking the skin around his eyes making the comment seem doubly good-natured, he had no ulterior motive for isolating Curtis, except, perhaps, to have a few moments alone with him, who, it was true, he’d always wanted to meet.

  From the window by the water cooler, I watched Bob lead Curtis to the sidewalk in front of The Ripper. A minute or two passed. Curtis shook his head a few times, maybe afraid to betray the reason that had brought him to the station, maybe just being humble in the face of such adulation. Then Bob left, neither his wave nor the way he took the stairs two at a time serving to further incriminate him.

  Confounded again, no answers forthcoming, the matter of Terrence even further muddled within his ever more muddled thoughts, Curtis turned back to the building as if locked within its brick and mortar was the secret to his confoundamnation.

  “I saw you standing there,” Curtis said to me. (This years later when we’d almost run out of things to say to one another so that the time passed slowly, which suited me perhaps more than him.)

  “Where?”

  “In the window. The day I came to the station.”

  “Ah.”

  “I thought you were a ghost, did I ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “Seemed that way. We’d only met twice before. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d thought the same thing both times but when I saw you at the window, I knew you were my guide.”

  “Your guide?”

  “That I was dead, you know. And you were there to lead me to the other side.”

  “Ha.”

  Curtis smiled but didn’t laugh, and instead worked at removing the label from his beer bottle with a fingernail, slow and steady like a snail climbing a razor blade.

  “So when I heard the car pull up behind me and I turned and saw it, as black as …”

  And then he did laugh, his fingers jerking so they tore the label, the paper too wet with condensation to make a sound.

  “God, what a damn fool.”

  Precisely what I was thinking when I saw the car pull up. He turned to it, the driver circling around front so that he could open the back door. Knowing who the car belonged to, I also thought of death, and I prayed to Ruby Yee that it would be a merciful one.

  thirty

  He recognized the driver at once. The man stood by the rear door, not making a move, as Curtis walked towards him. He was as big as a linebacker, his bulk straining against his black suit. He’d played against him, he was certain, and from the way he sucked at his teeth when Curtis approached, never once meeting his eyes, he knew he’d taught the man, then a boy, a lesson he’d been trying to forget ever since.

  “Mr. Mann would like a word with you.”

  Curtis bent low so he could peer into the back seat and see that it was empty.

  “Where is he?”

  The driver shrugged (his shoulders as big as a vein of coal so even from where I watched I could see it) and Curtis made a move for his bike.

  “I’ll follow you.”

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  Casting one last look back at the building — at the ghost in the window, his guide, sending him on his way — he slid into the car. The driver shut the door and returned to his seat in the front. I watched, never once making a move, fearing that they were right, that there were some things worse than death, and that Lawrence Madding had found this out firsthand (and then foot and leg and arm). And I hoped that he and I were as different from Curtis Mays as a vine was from a snake and that maybe that would
mean the difference.

  “You missed him.”

  Such was my focus on the car pulling away that Bob Hammond had already filled a paper cup with water and had taken a sip before speaking.

  “But then you were never much one for football.”

  He crumpled his cup and leaned over so he could drop it in the garbage, a move that brought him within whisper distance of my ear.

  “Careless.”

  I nodded, scanning the streets below for any sign of the car but it was gone. Unable, then, to give him the full benefit, I understood what Bob’d meant. Word had clearly leaked back about my visit to the stadium and then to Halton Brothers and maybe even about how I’d followed him to the hospital when he visited Scorch, and that I was the one who’d involved Curtis from the start, and that he would hold me personally responsible for whatever happened next.

  Curtis, in the back seat of Lester Mann’s shuttle car, also thought of the stadium and of Walter Hering and the Halton Brothers and of other things I could only guess at. But where they were wound together in my mind — inseparable from the sharp pit growing just above my belt that stole the air out of me every time I took a breath — the stadium, rising out of the ground ahead of the car as it crossed under the railroad tracks, swelled in his mind, blotting out the rest. It spoke only of his futurebright. Where, a moment ago, he’d been filled with dread at the sight of the car, he felt hope stir again (such are the vacillations of a youthful mind, not yet hardened by the steady assault of days, one after another, ants streaming into a past without end).

  They were going to build a new one just for him, so said his father and his coach too, and here it was. He’d been there once before, of course, his second day back, but now he’d go inside, he’d meet the man responsible for it, he’d take his place at his side. And so the pattern re-emerged. He’d see his father again but he’d bring him news, something concrete.

  “I spoke to Lester Mann today,” he’d start when they were sitting in the kitchen. His mom would be fussing with coffee and cake on the counter, giving the men their time before she intruded with silly questions that only a mother would ask.

  “Lester Mann, huh? Not bad, not bad.”

  Kelly’s hands would be folded over one another, twisting, like they were working out a puzzle while he sat there, nervous. The same way Curtis, nine or ten, had seen him when it was his dad’s turn to read in front of the church, not believing that he could be so wound up over such a small thing. This time it’d be up to Curtis to calm him like his mother had before, but with words, a plan and him a part of it, instead of a glass of warm milk and a steady hand on his shoulder.

  The car circled to the rear of the stadium. The heads of stallions on the doors were solemn and angry as they passed by, ominous it seemed, so that by the time the car stopped in front of a large sheet of corrugated metal Curtis wasn’t so sure anymore what he felt. The rippled span of metal rolled up, out of sight, and the car drove forward into darkness. In the splash of light before the door closed again, Curtis saw that they were in a garage but how big it was exactly, Curtis couldn’t fathom: the walls were hidden in shadow. At the count of two, the car stopped (everything now marching to the beat of numbers rolling through his head, another trick they’d taught him, telling him that counting off the steps oriented you in your surroundings, so you always knew exactly how far you were from the way out, but really it was just to keep your mind from worrying about what lay ahead). Now so dark that Curtis couldn’t see the driver and the last traces of light, spots in his eyes, scattering.

  The count of three: the driver’s side door opens then closes again.

  The count of six: nothing beyond his breaths save a click and a whoosh of air, the faint odour of gasoline and oil and long-dried cement.

  The count of ten: waiting (and then one more for luck).

  Curtis swung his legs out into the garage. He grabbed the handle on the door and pulled himself out into a light as bright as a candle is to a moth. Standing in its glare, dazzled, he looked at the ceiling but could see nothing beyond the glare. The car door closed behind him and he turned to the driver, now walking away, keys jingling in his hand, the light following him, or so it seemed. Submerged again in the darkness, Curtis took a step and the light jumped ahead along with him. The driver, an island of illumination in the distance, drew him across the garage.

  Twelve strides, and the man was gone again. Curtis looked back and saw the light disappearing a footstep behind him. He looked up at the ceiling. The glare blocked its source but at the edge of it he could see rows of miniature lights, LEDs hooked to motion sensors, he guessed. He stuck his hand out to test them and they shone briefly then shut off again as soon as his hand was past, like ripples in water, so that it was impossible to see anything beyond the small pocket of brightness. A most wondrous contrivance, no expense spared, meant to make him feel like what he was: a star.

  Twenty-three strides, walking straight, and a door opened: a square of yellow, warm, unlike the fluorescent glare tracking him across the garage. Seven more strides and he was inside the elevator, the walls forged in stainless steel. He turned back to the garage and there was the driver again. As the elevator doors closed the light winked off, taking the man with it. A gentle pressure in his stomach told him that he was moving up, and the thought came to him that he was wrong about the driver. He’d never played against him. He knew him from somewhere else, from not so long ago. Maybe the service or …

  Then, one floor to the next, nothing to mark the time but the count of six and the hum of the elevator’s motor, it came to him: he’d seen him in the cabin behind the ranch house, holding a can of gas and a match. He was the one who’d set it on fire.

  thirty-one

  Floating up, his feet on solid ground and not shifting sand, Curtis felt like he was drowning again. He counted to keep himself from gasping. At six the doors opened and he thought of the gun, locked in his bike, useless to him. He took a deep breath, exhaled then, drawing in a second, stepped into Lester Mann’s stable.

  Not having access to footage from Clayton Farber’s surveillance cameras, I can’t, with any degree of certainty, say that he was a different man than when he’d got on the elevator. Did he swagger or amble? Did he, as was his fashion, nod when Lester Mann introduced himself, saying nothing in return?

  When I asked him about his visit he clapped his hands together and said boom, or rather made the sound of boom without letters to get in the way.

  “Worlds colliding, you know what I mean?”

  I told him I did.

  “I’d given up on Terrence by then, really. The whole thing made my head ache. I just wanted out of it. I wanted to go home, eat a plate of my mom’s apricot pancakes, sit under a tree in the backyard, drink a beer, fall asleep. I was a wreck. There was a pain in my chest that I was pretty sure was a busted rib. I could hardly see through my left eye, it was all blurry. I had a tooth that was broken off and it sent electric shocks through me every time I took a breath. And here was Lester Mann, shaking my hand (God, did that hurt beyond measure, I remember, it felt like the last straw, that I’d crumple right there). Then he was introducing me to his son and asking me if I wanted something to drink, like he couldn’t tell I was about to fall over. All of a sudden then he just sort of … froze. He stood there staring at me and time seemed to bend around us, if you know what I mean, and I was powerless to move under his gaze. How long we stood like that, I couldn’t say. Then a twitch, like, spasmed through his neck and it broke the spell. He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder and led me to the bar.

  “‘Sorry if I seem a little distracted,’ he said while I sat on one of the stools and his son poured us a couple of drinks. ‘But I’m sure you can understand, with my family’s recent tragedy …’

  “He cast me a sideways glance and I guess he must have seen a look short of recognition because he trailed off.

 
“‘You haven’t heard,’ he said. ‘No one told you.’

  “I shook my head. What could I say? Nobody had. I think they were all afraid that I’d get in the way, somehow, of what was … meant to be. Clive had been the closest, he’d almost told me, out of love for Terrence, but even that wasn’t enough. So it was up to Lester Mann.

  “He drained his glass in one swallow. When he turned to me again, I could see that it pained him to know that his grief had a limit and that maybe it was standing right there in front of him.

  “‘It was my granddaughter,’ he explained. ‘She was … taken. Kidnapped. Then … murdered. Her death …’ But the words weren’t there and he looked to his son, desperate, I think, for some sort of affirmation or consolation or something else … I don’t have the words for it. Whatever it was, his son couldn’t give it to him. He turned away and Lester just seemed to kind of deflate, you know. All of a sudden, he looked tired and old, worn out.

  “‘It’s been a terrible burden,’ he said. ‘For all of us.’

  “The way he looked at me then, I’d seen it before. It was the same way that Terrence had looked after I’d … before he’d … for three years that look had been with me, my silent companion, there whenever I closed my eyes or when I opened them. Would have thought I’d figured out what it meant, in all that time, but I’d be lying if I told you I did. Maybe he was asking for my blessing, Terrence and Lester Mann too, or maybe he was pleading with me to stop him. Either way, I guess, it doesn’t matter now.

  “Both times the look passed, and Terrence did what he did and Lester Mann poured himself another drink.

  “‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t let personal matters interfere with business.’ He raised his glass to his lips then lowered it again and said all coy-like, ‘So Roy’s promised me that you’ll be playing for our side this season.’

  “‘That’s the plan,’ I told him, though even then I had my doubts.