by Moss, John
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“Someone I know.”
“And he knew about the girl in my apartment?”
“Not at all. How could he?”
“But he knows you know Detective Morgan?”
“He might. It’s not a secret.”
“That you’re dating.”
She offered an apologetic smile. “That’s none of your business, I’m afraid.”
“You passed on a message.”
“From Mr. Sakarov? Just that he said he’d be in touch. Is that a problem?”
“When did he tell you?”
“Yesterday, I think. No, the day before. He came in and dropped off a donation.”
“Really? A big one?”
“Again, I don’t see how that is your business, Dr. Lindstrom. A generous donation. Two thousand in cash.”
“He’s done this before? Always in cash?”
“Yes he has. And, yes it is.”
“I’m confused, Joan. Did he say, if you meet a man by the name of Lindstrom, tell him ‘hello.’ Or perhaps, if a strange little girl turns up in a condo by the harbour, give the owner my regards.”
“Something like that.”
Harry waited for an explanation.
“I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear. There’s no conspiracy. He asked quite conversationally if I had ever run into an old friend of his by the name of Harry Lindstrom. I said no, although I recognized the name. He said, ‘Well, you move in the same circles. I think he knows your friend, Morgan.’”
“So, he knew about the connection between Morgan and you.”
“Like I told you, it isn’t a secret. I suppose David was here one time when Mr. Sakarov dropped in.”
“David?”
“Morgan.”
“Is that his first name? I just know him as Morgan.”
“Most people do. So, Mr. Sakarov asked me to look out for you. He’s trying to find you.”
“He knows where I live.”
“Well, whatever. I don’t know. You can imagine my surprise when I turned up at your place later the same night.”
“And you didn’t think to comment on the coincidence.”
“No, I did not. I had other things on my mind. Namely, the welfare of a lost little girl who mysteriously appeared on your sofa. Perhaps I should be the one interrogating you.”
When Harry left, he went straight to the King William. He was angry. It seemed there were no limits to the Russian’s capacity to manipulate the innocent or destroy the righteous. Lena was dead; Joan was compromised; Lucy was the currency of Harry’s exchange with the devil.
It was time to look the devil in the eye.
He and Sakarov had been circling each other, both of them wary about closing in for the kill. Harry’s defence was Sakarov’s ignorance about how much he knew. Sakarov’s defence was unmitigated brutality.
Sakarov owned a condo on an upper floor. It was registered in his own name: he clearly felt safe in Toronto. The hotel concierge who doubled as security was helpful. Dimitri Sakarov was away for a few days, visiting friends in Muskoka. For a villain, Sakarov was surprisingly accessible. After a little strategic negotiating, Harry got the name of the cottagers, some people called Fearman, and an address near Port Carling.
It was well past eight but still light. He walked over to Union Station and rented a car. He figured he could be at the cottage before midnight.
Driving up Highway 400 in a Ford Explorer, which far more horsepower than he needed but the only vehicle available, he tried to assimilate his experience with Joan DeBrusk. He found people suspicious who appeared untouched by the world’s depravities. She seemed genuine, possibly too genuine. Just past Major Mackenzie Drive, a blue Corvette Sting Ray cut him off. He had to swerve to avoid a collision and almost crashed into a silver BMW Z4 coming up on the inside. He braked and dodged. His heart raced. Adrenalin pumped through his system. Survival response shifted to anger. He speeded up until he could see inside one car a kid, steering with a wrist draped over the wheel, and inside the other, another young driver slouching in the identical posture. They slowed until he was nearly between them, then each gave him the finger and they swerved in, so that he had to brake hard to miss being hit.
They honked derisively and gunning their engines took off. He watched as they wove in and out of traffic, which was surprisingly heavy given how late in the evening it was. They were causing mayhem on the road, endangering lives in a cavalier game of testosterone overkill. Harry increased his speed while telling himself to slow down. When the Corvette and the BMW were just about out of sight, a service centre loomed ahead and he saw them swerve across three lanes and pull in. Harry followed, a few cars behind. They had parked in an open area, putting their cars on display, one in front of the other.
He waited until the young men stepped clear. Then from a few car-lengths away, he gunned his Ford Explorer into the driver’s side of the blue Corvette, crushing the door panel against the frame. He squealed into reverse, then forward again into the driver’s side of the BMW, collapsing the door into a twisted mass.
He backed away and nonchalantly got out of the Explorer to assess the damage to his own vehicle. Hardly a scratch. Chalk one up for the Ford! The drivers of the damaged cars ran over to him, swearing wildly, but stopped a few paces short. They weren’t sure what this deranged idiot might do next.
Harry smiled.
A small cluster of onlookers began to applaud. Harry bowed. The applause grew. An OPP officer sauntered onto the scene.
“Is there a problem, here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Harry. He turned to the young men. “Is there a problem?”
“Is there a problem?” the cop asked them.
“No,” said the fat one with the beer belly.
“Not really,” said the one with pimples and a lip-beard. “My dad’s going to be pissed off.”
“Should we call them?” asked the officer. “We’ll call both your fathers.”
“No,” said the Corvette and BMW drivers simultaneously.
“Looks like you guys sideswiped. Lucky no one was hurt,” said the cop.
Sideswiped, both on the driver’s side. Harry smiled. Coming from opposite directions.
The OPP officer gazed around at the small crowd that had assembled.
“Is there a problem?” he asked them collectively.
No one stepped forward. Several smiled and gave Harry a thumbs-up.
“Fine, then,” he said to Harry. “You have a good evening, sir.”
And Harry drove off, pleased with the Explorer. He doubted he’d have to make an insurance claim but, if he did, he’d happily cover the deductible.
Do you feel better, now, Slate?
Yeah, Sailor, I do.
Pavement hummed beneath the tires. His left eye squinted against the glare of the setting sun cutting across the hood. He glanced up at his reflection in the rear view mirror.
Was that an exercise in relieving frustration, Harry?
The best explanation is no explanation at all, he thought.
Maybe I should be applauding a random act of vigilante justice?
I’m not sure it was random. Arbitrary, perhaps. We are defined by arbitrary gestures.
Good grief, you sound like Kierkegaard more than Dirty Harry.
Harry thought about this for a while. He veered off the highway into Bracebridge, then took the turnoff for Port Carling.
It wasn’t road rage. He addressed his silent words into the darkness. It was calculated. I was prepared for the consequences. It was necessary.
For whom?
Sometimes you have to fight back, you know. Kicking against the pricks. For the most part, we suffer the insults of daily life and move on. Sometimes we shouldn’t.
Aren’t you smug!
Yes, I am.
The weathered outcroppings of Precambrian rock gave way to the forced domesticity of lawns and sidewalks and Harry slowed the Expl
orer to a crawl.
The village of Port Carling rose up from the banks of the Muskoka River around a large lock built for the old steamboats to pass through between the Muskoka Lake side and Lake Rosseau. He knew he was close to the Ghiberti cottage where a girl from Gimli, Manitoba, had been murdered the previous winter. Having resolved the mystery of her death made it no less sickening for Harry to think about, yet the drowning of the oldest Ghiberti daughter two decades earlier seemed more horrifying—the first in a series of family tragedies that only ended when there was no one left to die.
He rolled down into the village to ask directions, but nothing was open, so he followed the highway up the other side until he found a 24-hour Esso station. The night attendant had never heard of the Fearmans, but when Harry said they were on an island you could drive to, he was directed back through Port Carling to a road that would take him past a small Wahta-Mohawk settlement where people traded birchbark trinkets and coloured quills in exchange for hard cash. Beyond that, he would find a signpost with twenty or thirty names posted on a schematic map.
When he arrived at the Fearman turnoff, he doused his lights and let the Explorer roll down the long lane. The Fearman cottage emerged among towering pines against a backdrop of black water glistening from the broken moon. He braked and turned off the ignition. There were lights inside, although the wrap-around verandah was dark. This was a grand summer mansion in the old Muskoka tradition. Stacked fieldstone supported walls of narrow clapboard rising two and a half stories to roof planes slanted in a Victorian riot of geometric patterns and clad in cedar shakes—eight or ten bedrooms, a dining room, an intimate ballroom, a living room with a cavernous fireplace and a sizeable portion of a glass-eyed moose over the mantle, looking like he had burst through from the room behind; a kitchen designed for a chef; four bathrooms, one with a hot tub; a boathouse with an apartment in the loft and three slips to accommodate a classic launch for lake travel, a high-tech outboard for water skiing, and a small outboard for fishing, as well as space for a rowboat, a sailing dinghy, and an old-fashioned cedar strip canoe.
The small boulders marking the drive were not whitewashed. Old money. Aunt Beth always said, the nouveau riche paint rocks and plant petunias. Harry was comfortable with old money.
God knows why? Your family were paupers.
Only my parents. The antepenultimate generation were prosperous manufacturers. My great Aunt’s generation. She was born with good taste.
I know what antepenultimate means, Harry—third from the last. But you’re not the last.
I am now, he responded sadly.
Harry, don’t. You can’t grieve forever.
Of course I can.
He gazed out through the trees, past the cottage, and with his window rolled down, listened to the sounds of the lake.
Harry, why are we here? You’re not going in. Either you’ll be killed or considered a boor for not calling ahead.
He’s come after me. I’m going after him.
Sounds good. Like, he’s closing in on you and so you’re making yourself available. I like you better when you’re logical, not jumping from the gallows to test the strength of the rope.
Harry smiled to himself. Sometimes it was like she was sitting in the darkness beside him.
Let’s get a room for the night.
He realized he wasn’t sure what to do next. Since he had returned to Toronto he didn’t know who was in charge of his life, but it didn’t seem to be him. Maybe he really was putting his neck in a noose.
Suddenly he felt the powerful presence of Madalena Strauss. And Harry knew he had no alternative. He was caught up in the deadly struggle between Lena and Dimitri Sakarov. It was too late to step aside.
You can’t unknow what you know; you can’t undo what’s been done.
He opened the car door very slowly and stepped to the ground, which was resilient beneath his weight from generations of dried pine needles. He closed the door gently and pressed the lock button on the key fob. To his astonishment, the headlights flashed, filling the surrounding stand of pines with bolts of illumination.
So what’s our next move, Harry?
Floodlights suddenly filled the woods, extinguishing the moonlight. Before he had time to think or flee, he was flanked by two very large men with bulging muscles who didn’t smile.
They didn’t touch him, but together the three of them walked down to the verandah and around to the lake side where Harry was pushed forward in front of two other men who were sitting in Muskoka chairs, smoking Cuban cigars. Their chairs were at a conversational angle, so they could gaze out over Lake Rosseau while they chatted and see the distant lights of Windermere on the far shore. Harry obscured their view.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Lindstrom,” said Dimitri Sakarov. “This is Conrad Fearman.” Fearman was a fleshy man, past middle age, with wet eyes, a large nose, a thin mouth, and teeth implants too perfect to be real. “Conrad, this is the private investigator I told you about. Dr. Professor Harry Lindstrom. We met in Vienna. He gets around a good deal, don’t you, Harry?”
“Sakarov,” said Harry, ignoring Fearman.
“What can we do for you, Harry?”
Groping for words, Harry snarled like a schoolyard bully. “You are a vicious guttersnipe bastard pervert.”
“Is there a particular charge or is that a blanket judgment?”
Sakarov’s condescension gave Harry the incentive to collect himself. “You tortured and raped Madalena Strauss.” Levelling the charge to the man’s face made his crimes seem as horrifically visceral as Lena’s own battered flesh. Sakarov smiled.
“Very direct and to the point, Professor Lindstrom. But no, I did not.” Sakarov turned slightly in his chair to address Fearman. “Harry was a philosophy professor before certain unfortunate events.”
Fearman’s eyes darted from one to the other in an expression of detached amusement.
Dimitri Sakarov turned back to Harry, which is to say, he pivoted his head, drawing the folds of fat around his neck into alignment.
“I understand your friend with the flaming red hair has met an unfortunate end. My condolences.”
The fat man took a deep drag on his cigar. “My compliments to Fidel, dead though he is,” he said to Fearman out of the side of his mouth. “An excellent cigar. Would you like a cigar, Harry? Oswaldo, get Dr. Lindstrom a chair and a cigar.”
One of the goons arranged a Muskoka chair in front of the two other men so they could look at Harry or around him at the starlit waters of Lake Rosseau. When he thrust a cigar in front of Harry’s face, Harry waved him away.
“Fidel would not be amused,” said Fearman. “Would you like a drink? No? Well, then, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
That was the second time Harry had heard that expression the same night. Joan DeBrusk had used it under much different circumstances.
Harry said nothing.
“I gather you received my message?”
“Your threat.”
“Hardly a threat, Harry. More of a reminder. She was a sweet little thing, wasn’t she? I called her Lucy. I thought you’d appreciate the gesture. I understand she is in the system, now. You have done your good deed. Perhaps it is time to retire.”
The Russian used the past tense to describe the little girl. He was finished with her.
Harry realized Sakarov had lost his Russian accent. No doubt he was fluent in Russian, given what Simon Wales had turned up, but he spoke English like a native Canadian. Somehow, that made him more sinister.
“Mr. Fearman is in the hotel business, Harry. As am I, although I’m sure you know that. Your young man will have discovered my business interests by now. All quite legitimate, I assure you.”
He knows about Simon Wales. He has access to Joan DeBrusk. He knows your past, Harry. He knows about Lucy and Matt. He knows what your connection is with Madalena Strauss and her project, perhaps more than you do. He knew you were coming here tonight. No wonder the concierge at the King Will
iam was so forthcoming. So, now what, Humphrey? We’re in a hell of a bind.
She seldom called him Humphrey. It was less ironic than calling him Slate. At the moment, there was no irony at all.
“Will you stay the night?” Sakarov pivoted his head over his neck fat and addressed Fearman. “Conrad, could we set Mr. Lindstrom up with a bed? Perhaps down in the boathouse with Oswaldo and Gregor? I’m sure Harry would accept your kind invitation. He is a gentleman. After six years at Cambridge, one is either a gentleman or exceedingly boring.”
“Or both,” said Fearman. “I spent a few years there, myself. King’s College.”
As if in response to his congenial tone, two little girls of about six and eight appeared at his side.
“What are you doing up so late, my darlings? Where’s Nanny? You should have been in bed hours ago.”
“We couldn’t sleep, Grandpa,” said the older of the two girls with a lilting cadence that struck Harry as vaguely Irish. “Nanny’s gone off somewhere. I think she’s skinny dipping with cook.” She smiled. “Will you please come and read us a story and tuck us in?”
“And snuggle us, please,” said the younger girl. “I’m scared. There’s an owl outside my window.”
“Is there really?” Fearman said, reaching out his arm and pulled them close, one against the other. “Listen,” he whispered. “You can hear an owl from here. Maybe it’s your owl’s friend. Listen.”
On cue, the owl hooted.
“See,” said Fearman. “My owl is calling your owl. They’re sisters, I think. Their names are Marissa and Colleen.”
“Grandpa,” the younger one squealed. “That’s our names, too. I’m Colleen.”
“Then you must be Marissa,” he said, drawing the older girl down to kiss her on the forehead. “Off you go. We have grown-up business to do. I’ll read you an extra-long story tomorrow.”
The girls went off hand in hand, disappearing through the French doors into the cottage.
Harry realized he had been monitoring their relationship with Fearman, looking for indicators of abuse. They seemed to be happy kids. He seemed to be a warm and attentive grandfather. Harry felt oddly relieved, if a little surprised. He had assumed, by the company he kept, that Fearman must be a monster.