Lindstrom's Progress

by Moss, John

  Instead of creating a barrier between them, her openness set them at ease. They began to chat the way people do on a first date, revealing and concealing, shaping their stories. All the while they talked, Harry compared her to the pictures behind her. Her appearance echoed Madalena’s great-grandmother and Lena herself, yet she was almost their mirror opposite. The same copper red hair but not flamboyant. A dusting of freckles, upturned nose, full cheeks, revealing brown eyes. Louche was not a word that came to mind on meeting Joan DeBrusk. Bonny, perhaps. Guileless.

  Harry was quite taken with her.

  They were relaxed with each other.

  The southern skyline began to emerge in the fading darkness.

  Joan got up and checked the little girl, then returned to the sofa.

  “So, Harry. Are you going to tell me?”

  “What?” He knew where this was going.

  “I grew up on the outskirts of Timmins. My father worked at a mill and hunted. Mostly small game and moose. My mom grew vegetables and herbs. I wasn’t much in the garden, but I’ve hunted all my life. I still go north and hunt with my brothers. I don’t like killing, but sometimes you have to. Sometimes it’s necessary.”

  No, he did not know where this was going after all. He had assumed she would question him about the girl who seemed to have called herself Lucy, about why he thought she was there. What then was she after? Was she offering her own story as an incentive to tell his?

  “My dad was a hippy,” she said. “Both my mom and my dad.”

  “Americans?”

  “Wannabes. They wished they’d been born in the States so they could have been draft dodgers and left. They were just your regular back-to-the-earth fugitives from a fifties’ childhood about ten blocks from here.”

  “Rosedale?”

  “Close but not so rich. The Beach.”

  “The Beaches?”

  “If you live there, it’s singular. After they retreated north, they never came south again, not even for funerals. They were born on the same day of the same year. For their fiftieth birthday, they killed themselves. Crashed and burned; a car accident. We split the insurance money among the twelve kids.”

  “And held their funeral in Toronto.”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  Irony, narrative inevitability, karma, closure.

  “So, now tell me yours,” she said.

  “My story?”

  “What’s Harry short for? Henry, I suppose; you’re not a Henry. Harold, perhaps.”

  “Just Harry. What about Joan? Named for the Maid of Orleans or for the first and only female pope.”

  “No, for Joan Jett.”

  “And the Runaways?”

  “The Blackhearts. My parents loved ‘Bad Reputation.’”

  Too esoteric for me, Harry.

  And suddenly Harry wanted to talk about himself. Over the next hour he told her about his kids, about the accident in Algonquin Park when Matt and Lucy and his wife perished in the Anishnabe River on a family canoe trip, smashed lifeless in The Devil’s Cauldron. He talked about his own unbearable survival and the gnawing undiminishing dread of not recovering Karen’s body. He described meeting Karen at Cambridge, where she had lectured during the summer he completed his doctoral work in philosophy. He talked about their courtship, about their trip to Vienna. He told her about his older brother who drowned playing pond hockey when they were kids, about his family roots in Waterloo County and about his itinerant parents, about growing up in Nanaimo and Trois Rivières and Fredericton, about his beloved Aunt Beth, about his parents dying, leaving him orphaned in his late twenties.

  She asked him about philosophy, about what a philosopher does, apart from trying to lose himself thinking—or find himself. He insisted it often amounted to the same thing. The Buddhists had it right all along.

  “And what about God?” she asked.

  “What about God?”

  “I told you before, I grew up bush Catholic,” she said. “I don’t really believe in religion, but we went through the motions. I can’t quite shake God from my psyche. He’s in there, somewhere, lurking in the rafters, watching and waiting.”

  “Sounds oppressive,” said Harry.

  She offered a broad grin that he found oddly unnerving. Awareness of mortality? What could be more oppressive than that. He wondered if she had studied Heidegger at Huron College.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I never really believed in God,” he said. “After the accident I thought of God as my adversary, until slowly I came to realize that an abstract deity had become real because I clothed him in the flesh of the loved ones I’d lost. I woke up one morning and declared him extinct.”

  “One morning?”

  “As arbitrary as that. It was liberating. I accepted him, it, or her, as a construct to fulfill human desire, to counter our fears, impose moral order, shore up our dreams, and here I had given him being in the bodies of the dead.”

  “And what about goodness, Harry? Can you be good without God?”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “Isn’t it sometimes hard for you to separate good from evil?”

  “Isn’t it hard for you?”

  “At least I can turn to my confusion for guidance and comfort,” she said. “I’m an optimistic agnostic.”

  That’s a phrase people write but don’t say, Karen muttered, unless they’ve been overthinking the subject.

  “I suppose like most Catholics,” she continued, “I find God is irrevocable in my life, whether I want him to be or not to be.”

  “And Shakespeare is irrevocable in mine,” said Harry.

  “So God is dead,” she said, missing or ignoring his deference to Hamlet. “That’s what you believe?”

  “That’s what I think; there’s a difference. Yes, he is. Although, as Nietzsche observed, in death he casts a long shadow.”

  “Nietzsche or God?”

  “Both,” he declared. She was quick. “Well argued,” he said. “Let’s call it a draw.”

  Dawn was spreading over Lake Ontario and filling the picture window with a vast play of pale and colourless light.

  “A draw,” she said. “Do you really imagine the God I’m agnostic about would settle for that. A rhetorical compromise?”

  Was this a metaphysical interrogation? he wondered. Or simply killing time.

  Or a confrontation with doubt? There can’t be many people in her life who’d be willing to talk about these things.

  Morgan, perhaps?

  He’s too wrapped up in an existential quest to prove he himself exists, never mind God.

  “For me,” Joan continued, “it’s quite simple. Only the words are complex. Whether He exists or not, I need him. I want to be a good person, Harry. I think that’s what most of us want. Good is good, evil is evil. You’ve got to choose sides.”

  “Manichaeism; it makes life more coherent than it really is.”

  “Unless it really is.”

  She let the thought dangle. She was beginning to make him uneasy. She sounded like a religious zealot, yet she denied religion. What then? What was the source of her moral serenity? In his experience the kind of peace she projected came through conviction, corruption, or ignorance.

  Joan DeBrusk got up from the sofa, glanced at the Klimts, then back at Harry.

  “We’ll sort all this out,” she said as he rose to his feet.

  “Where will you take her?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s in the system now. At least this one will be safe.”

  “This one?”

  “You did the right thing, Harry.”

  “Calling you? It’s not like I had a choice.”

  Her face lit up with a big open smile and she disappeared into the bedroom, coming out in a few minutes with the little girl in tow.

  He walked them into the foyer.

  “Did you know there’s no thirteenth floor in this building?”

  “Yeah,” he said, embarrassed and strangely uneasy
.

  “That makes you lucky, I guess. You take care, Harry.”

  Harry hunkered down to the little girl’s level and looked into her dark blue eyes. He tilted his head and mouthed the words, Goodbye, Lucy. He was surprised to feel his eyes welling with tears. He stood up quickly.

  The three of them listened to the whirring of the elevator rising on its tether. When the doors opened, Joan DeBrusk took the little girl by the hand and moved partway in, then she turned and tilted her head to kiss Harry on the cheek. It seemed a charming and very spontaneous act.

  “Mr. Sakarov will be in touch,” she whispered.

  She stepped back into the elevator and the door closed between them.

  11 TAKING STOCK

  Harry backed away from the elevator. Feeling behind him for the open doorway, he retreated into his apartment. He turned and pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the closed door, trying to quell a surge of revulsion. He banged his head softly against the wood. He felt heartsick for Lucy, enraged at his own naïveté, baffled by Joan DeBrusk.

  You’re thinking of Shakespeare, Harry.

  No, I’m not. Not even remotely.

  “O most pernicious woman … that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

  Karen, not now.

  He was frustrated. There was nowhere to turn, no one to confide in. Morgan was right about Miranda. She would be obligated to deal as a cop with anything Harry might want to tell her. Morgan himself was a good man, but Harry didn’t know him that well. Harry needed a confidant who was not bound by legal niceties.

  That left Karen.

  But Karen was dead and quoting Hamlet.

  For the first time in nearly four years, he felt anger toward her, anger because she had left him, anger the living feel for the dead because they’ve departed, anger that until now he had refused to allow any place in his grieving; anger, which he could not separate from love, from sorrow, from remorse or despair.

  Walking back into the living room, The Forces of Evil caught his eye.

  His anger elevated to fury when he shifted his focus to Lena. How had that woman got him into this maelstrom of—he grasped for the words—this pernicious maelstrom of virulent indeterminacy?

  Say what! Talk about sesquipedalian.

  I wasn’t.

  Your thinking is recherché, dear Harry. You’re obscuring what you think with big words.

  Nothing was what it seemed! Nothing was clear!

  The unspeakable exploitation of children was an abomination, but how could he possibly stop it? What sort of an alliance did he have with a dead woman that would empower him to have any impact at all, a woman who invaded his soul and taunted him from the stillness of her likeness on the wall?

  Joan’s whispering of the Russian’s name left no doubt he had to find Lena’s files. What he did after that would depend on his capacity for moral compromise.

  He broke his gaze from the eyes in The Forces of Evil. He looked frantically around the room for a moment, trying to find Karen. Then he stared out over the harbour, knowing he was alone.

  The two women who defined Harry’s world were both dead. He was angry at them, the woman he knew and the woman he didn’t. He started to laugh. He was beginning to see himself as a character in a Robertson Davies novel, fifth business in a literary romance.

  If you’re too vapid to be the protagonist in your own story, you’re in the wrong genre, Harry.

  Feeling absurdly elated by Karen’s quip, Harry made a breakfast of stale bagels, revitalized in the toaster and lightly buttered, and a glass of orange juice the carton assured him was not made from concentrate. He ate standing up at the counter, then took a coffee onto the balcony and leaned against the rail, gazing over the water. Saturday sailors were out in full force. Dinghies were scurrying in swarms around a course over by Toronto Island. Larger yachts were tacking back and forth, making for the eastern and western gaps. A tall ship was manoeuvring under full sail, trying to catch enough breeze to escape into open water.

  Joan DeBrusk fooled you, Harry.

  Yes, she did.

  Maybe she didn’t understand the impact of passing on the Russian’s regards.

  She saved her message till the last possible minute. It was the delivery that made it so powerful.

  The little girl, she’ll be safe.

  She’ll be okay. As Joan said, Lucy is in the system.

  Joan DeBrusk is the system.

  From Sakarov’s point of view, her loss is collateral damage. She’s a write-off. She’s served her purpose.

  To get at you.

  Letting me know the extent of his power.

  So what’s he up to? You don’t have Madalena’s files.

  Maybe I do and don’t know it. I’ll find them.

  Perhaps that’s where the gatekeeper comes in.

  He agreed. How could he possibly authenticate the charges Lena had taken seven or eight years to accumulate? She must have cached her documents online so they couldn’t be erased. Denied but not erased. Once unleashed in cyberspace, they would be there forever.

  Lives will be destroyed, Harry. You believe in the rule of law.

  Not when it protects the guilty and devastates innocent lives. The law works best for those who hold it in greatest contempt.

  You don’t believe that.

  Maybe not.

  He was sickened by the moral dilemma. Was he afraid of mistakes or of repercussions? How far could he trust Lena’s research? Fear of the law wouldn’t dissuade him. The fear of being wrong might.

  There was a polite cough in the balcony doorway behind him. He was momentarily flustered. It was all he could do not to wheel around and strangle the little bugger. But he didn’t. He grasped the railing and, without turning, quietly declared, “Simon Wales, one day your habit of transcending the limitations of locks will get you into serious trouble.”

  Harry settled into one of two Muskoka chairs and indicated Simon should join him. He was wearing a different dark blue linen suit. He set a brown leather briefcase beside his chair. He sat down and pushed his hair away from his eyes, then kept his hand across his forehead to counter the glare from the morning sun.

  “What time is it?” Harry asked.

  “Elevenish,” Simon responded, squinting at Harry’s watch that was tilted obliquely to his line of vision.

  “Already! And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I’ve found Rachel Damboch.”

  “Good, well done.” Harry was genuinely pleased.

  “I’m afraid nothing much turned up about the Findlays.”

  “Who?”

  “The couple who jumped from the roof of the Kressler Hotel.” His voice betrayed a slight quiver of emotion, as if they were people he had known in a previous life or had read about in the gossip columns.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember asking.”

  “But I believe you have an interest,” Simon responded.

  “Have you been reading my email?” Harry asked.

  He hadn’t emailed anyone about the incident. He had briefly discussed it with Miranda and Morgan.

  “It was in the Globe.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “You were staying at the Kressler Hotel when they died. They were Canadians. I assumed you were involved.”

  “Involved?”

  “Curious, then. Their names were Doris and Melvin.”

  “And the child?”

  Simon’s silence expressed a moment of confusion before he responded. “There was nothing about a child.”

  Miranda didn’t know about him either. It was as if the little boy never existed.

  “And Dimitri Sakarov,” said Simon. “I know where he’s—”

  “Who the hell told you about Dimitri Sakarov? I didn’t tell you about Dimitri Sakarov!”

  “I thought you’d be interested.”

  “Bloody hell, of course I’m interested. But you’re way ahead of me, here. I wasn’t planning on br
inging his name into the discussion just yet, not until I gave you a trial run, tracking down Rachel Damboch. You’re a scary kid, you know that.”

  Harry had been Googling Sakarov. Simon Wales was monitoring his computer activities. Okay, that’s why he was hired, to do things most people can’t.

  No one keeps secrets from research assistants, Harry.

  “So you want me to start with Damboch?”

  Harry adjusted his chair to get a better perspective on Simon Wales, who seemed on the verge of a smile. Two nights ago they had discussed Madalena Strauss and her ongoing investigation. Harry had told Simon that she insisted her files would be passed on to him. He had no idea how or when. He guessed they were out there in cyberspace. Although he told Simon about the murder of Dietmar Henning, he was skimpy on incriminating details, and he had carefully avoided talking about Lena’s torture or anything else that might implicate Sakarov. There was no point in casting an aura of fear over their inquiry. That was before the girl who called herself Lucy appeared in the dead of the night.

  Simon Wales got up and went into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two glasses of Perrier, each with a thin slice of lime. He handed one to Harry.

  “You’ll make yourself sick,” Simon said. “I told you about the mayonnaise.”

  Harry looked at him quizzically.

  “The sandwich in your garbage. I see you had a few bites before you thought better of it.”

  “You’ve gone through my bloody garbage?”

  “Just now.”

  If his response was meant to justify snooping by suggesting it was a spontaneous act, it didn’t set Harry at ease. But that clearly wasn’t the young man’s intention. A dark linen suit reinforced by a striped necktie and black lace-up shoes in the midsummer heat was meant to be disconcerting. His way of dressing, like his refusal to smile as a social convention, was a curiously effective instrument of projected power. Sprung steel was the expression that crossed Harry’s mind.

  “So I’ll start with the woman.”

  “Do.”

  Harry sipped his Perrier. Simon talked.

  Rachel Damboch was born in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1928. Her father, Arthur, worked underground in the Falconbridge Nickel Mine from the spring of 1919, following his discharge as a “Stormtrooper” from the Canadian Expeditionary Force, until 1939, when he lied about his age and enlisted again. He died in the Dunkirk retreat on May 25, 1940. Her mother, Edith, worked as a cleaner at Falconbridge until she died on the job in 1948.