by Moss, John
Morgan had driven to the Port Carling cottage to interview Sakarov. The big man had been affable and obtuse. Suffering from gout, he declared, accounting for his invalid status on a sturdy chaise longue on the cottage verandah. Sakarov’s alibi pleased Joan. She could not be held accountable for shooting him if he hadn’t been shot.
No one offered an alternative explanation for Simon’s death. He had apparently appeared at Harry’s condo and bled out before he could account for what happened. The case would remain open, Miranda explained. He was a well-dressed street kid, but with no witnesses, no forensic evidence, and no plausible alterative scenarios, it was likely to remain unresolved.
Neither Lena nor Harry had any desire to pursue the matter of their confinement at the King William. The police accepted Harry’s explanation that his door had been battered down during a failed break-in attempt and he gave the names of the investigating officers. He was told to get it fixed and have his security system upgraded.
The bruises on Simon’s neck had clearly preceded being gutted by a shattered drinking glass and were acknowledged in the police report as evidence of an earlier altercation. They thought perhaps he’d been assaulted in a bar-room brawl. Simon! Neither Joan nor Harry could tell the authorities much about him. They didn’t know his real name. They said nothing about his infancy on the Black Sea, nor about his being a Findlay from Oakville. When he died he was Simon Wales.
Over the next few days Harry got used to seeing Madalena Strauss wandering around his condo in casual dishabille. Her sexuality was enhanced by the erotic hauteur of her great-grandmother’s pictures on the wall, but Harry felt certain the intimacy was not an invitation. She made no advances toward him and he assumed none toward her. They settled into a comfortable arrangement. Sometimes he talked to her about Simon, who had been an incomprehensible phenomenon in his life—he had appeared fully formed. For a brief time he had been Harry’s closest living friend. Then he ceased to exist. From being he disappeared into Heidegger’s nothingness.
Talk of Heidegger made Lena physically ill. If it was meaninglessness he wanted to discuss, she insisted they look to Sartre. At least he wasn’t a Nazi. She quoted Schopenhauer. “We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.” Sometimes she quoted Nietzsche. You can always fall back on Nietzsche, she said, for pointlessness and dread. Simon’s death was usually the agent of their discourse that took Harry back to the days, the life, before the incident on the Anishnabe when everything changed. Often, Simon got swallowed up in their talk. Esoteric words subsumed the reality that he had ever been. These exchanges, more than existential despair, made Harry uneasy. Then, especially, he wanted to hold this strange woman in his arms. But he didn’t.”
And then one day, after about two weeks, she disappeared.
He had been out shopping for a few groceries and when he returned she was gone. Her small travelling case was missing. The only evidence that she had been there was the lingering indefinable feminine scent that reminded him of Karen. And he discovered she had left him a magnum of Dom Pérignon in the fridge. And the Klimts on the wall.
In retrospect, he realized, they had spoken very little. She was recuperating from her bruises and wounds. She refused to discuss her files, telling him they would talk, all in good time. They watched television together, ate their meals together, mostly prepared by Harry, and took long quiet walks along the waterfront in the early evenings. Sometimes Joan dropped in and the three of them chatted about nothing. They read a lot, occasionally aloud to each other. They might have been a married couple in their sixties, not two strangers decades younger who were bound by the suppression of terrible secrets.
Toward the end of August, when the nights were getting cooler, Harry spent a lot of time on his balcony in the evenings, letting the chill of the onshore breeze sweep over him while he drank coffee or cognac and tried not to think.
Karen had been largely absent during Lena’s stay and after she’d gone Karen remained deep inside his mind, hardly a presence at all. He needed his solitude and she left him to it.
He wasn’t worried about Lena. Madalena Strauss could look after herself. She would do what she had to do. As far as he was concerned, he had been removed from the equation. He would enjoy the Klimts. Another case would come along. He was prepared to move on. In spite of explosive revelations that might come from her in the future, Lena was history.
Sometimes the past is prologue; sometimes it is simply the past.
Quoth the raven.
Ah, the voice of doom and gloom. Where have you been, Sailor?
You had other distractions.
Which made me realize how much I missed you.
No, Harry. You’re getting used to it.
Never.
You figure she’s returned to Vienna?
Back to Austria, for sure. Probably not Vienna. Not if she planned to stay dead.
It’s a big city.
Not old Vienna, not with flaming red hair.
She’ll dye it.
Never, Karen. That would be like erasing her identity. It’s her genetic connection with the women of her past.
Or a fetish. Do you think Sakarov will go after her?
He knows she wants him dead. It’s a Mexican standoff. Back to where they were before I came into the picture.
You miss her, don’t you?
Of course.
You’ve always got Joan.
Much too young. Too sweet.
She wasn’t too young for David Morgan and he’s ten years older than you.
Apparently. But I’m not looking.
Maybe you should be.
Karen, go away.
And strangely, she went.
Harry walked out onto the balcony, swirling his cognac and drinking in its generous aroma while his eyes scanned the distant horizon where Lake Ontario merged with the late evening sky.
Being alone suited him at the moment.
He sipped his cognac.
Beethoven’s Fifth struck up in the room behind him.
Harry didn’t hear music as anything other than the arbitrary arrangement of noise. He could never figure out what moved others to ecstasy or despair that for him seemed random and vaguely intrusive. To sceptics, who insisted he just needed proper training, he used the analogy of trying to make a person who was blind since birth imagine the colour purple. But he insistent opening of Beethoven’s Fifth was one of the few chords of music he recognized. It was his default ringtone.
He picked up:
“Harry? Is that you?”
“It must be. What can I do for you, Morgan?”
“Have either of you seen Joan?”
“Lena’s not here. She left a week ago. And no, I haven’t seen Joan.”
“She’s not in her apartment. She didn’t report for work at Social Services and she hasn’t turned up at the Children’s Centre.”
“How long?”
“Two days. She’s disappeared.”
“If she turns up I’ll give you a call.”
“You miss the point, Harry. I want to hire you.”
“You’re kidding.” Silence. “Sorry, you’re serious.”
“I think she might be in trouble. I checked out your big Russian friend at the King William. He wasn’t there. He’s the only enemy she has in the world and that’s just because, rumour has it, she shot him. She’s a sweet kid, Harry. That’s her fatal flaw. She’s too nice. To everyone.”
“Is that what happened with your romance?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“If you’ve hired me, I get to ask questions.”
“Mind your own fucking business.”
Harry had never heard Morgan swear. He had never even heard of an instance where Morgan was said to have sworn. He smiled to himself and mumbled into the phone a few expletives about swearing.
“That’s okay,” Morgan said. He seemed flustered.
“I wasn’t apologiz
ing. Your relationship actually is my business—unless I’ve already been fired.”
“It didn’t last. I had lived a full lifetime before she was born. She told me it didn’t matter. That’s when I knew we were wrong for each other. It didn’t matter to her. It mattered to me.”
“How so?”
“I remembered the moon landing. She read about it in books. I was just little, but I remembered Neil Armstrong screwing up his lines. That confirmed he was like the rest of us and that made him a hero. By the time she came along he was mythic. He’d already become as unreal as Columbus. I remembered the Manson murders that same summer. She thought Manson was a gender-baffled rock star. And so on. There was a fundamental gap in our cultural experience. That’s more than you want to know, right?”
“Just enough. I’ll get onto it in the morning. Does she have a passport?”
“Yeah, we went diving in Bonaire last year.”
“One last question. Why me? You’re a cop.”
“That’s why. Because I’m a cop. I just want to know she’s okay. She lives in a very sordid world, Harry.”
“Dealing with messed up kids?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I have something. You relax. I’m sure she’s okay.”
“I’m not. I won’t. Call me.” Morgan clicked off.
Well then there now.
Yeah. Glad you’re back.
What have we got?
Hard to say. He’s worried.
She couldn’t have gone with your friend from Vienna, could she?
Not together. Morgan would have noticed if Joan had been away for a week.
He keeps a pretty close eye on her.
The niceness that ended their romance puts her in jeopardy in a fallen world. He’s concerned for a nice friend.
Don’t kid yourself, Harry.
Maybe there’s a bit of residual longing.
The way you love me.
Karen, don’t.
Only she’s alive, Harry.
Let’s hope so.
Harry slept well. He wasn’t worried about Joan DeBrusk. She was an incidental participant in the heinous affairs of Dimitri Sakarov and even less compromised than himself by the poisonous relationship between Madalena Strauss and the Russian from rural Saskatchewan. She probably wanted to be alone for a while. Her innocence had been tainted and she needed time to re-purify.
He wakened to Billy Joel’s song from the seventies running through his head: “Only the Good Die Young.” He couldn’t capture the music, of course, and the irony evaded him. He noticed an unusual odour hanging in the air.
He smelled pot and tobacco. Sakarov had let himself in.
God, Harry. Why didn’t you get deadbolts installed when they repaired the door?
I did, I forgot to use them.
Nobody seems to knock anymore.
Or bother to buzz from the lobby!
You might as well get dressed. He’ll wait. Lord knows how long he’s been out there.
Harry got dressed and even took time to shave, then he walked out into the living room. Sakarov was sitting in the big easy chair.
“Good morning, Harry.”
Harry made himself a cup of Nespresso. He didn’t offer one to his visitor.
“Now, Harry, sit down. You will be pleased to see I have recovered quite nicely. So, we need to talk about your friend, Miss DeBrusk. She is a lovely young woman. I hope she does not worry too much about shooting me. It was a misunderstanding.”
“What do you want?” Harry demanded.
“It is what you want that brings me here.”
“Really? What do I want?”
“Miss Joan DeBrusk. She has disappeared,” said Sakarov.
“Has she?”
“You know that, of course. Her friend Detective Sergeant Morgan is looking for her. I imagine he has hired you to find her for him. Yes?”
“I’m listening.”
“Good. She has gone to Austria, I believe.”
“You kidnapped her?”
“Oh no, Harry. She kidnapped herself.”
Harry refused to respond.
“She has gone to Vienna. She will die in exactly two days. It will be a merciful death. Torture would serve no purpose.”
Harry refused to bite, although his guts were churning. He waited.
“Unless,” said Sakarov. “Of course, there is an unless. You see, I have an advantage over people like you and Miss DeBrusk. I am a man quite comfortable with the consequences of bad behaviour. All I had to do was tell the young lady her charity centre would be incinerated with children inside if she did not go to Vienna. Or if she informed Detective Morgan of where she would be. And just like that she is there! Now, I must direct you to do the same thing.”
“You have a limited imagination. Killing innocent kids is the same threat you used with Madalena.”
“I do not need imagination, Harry. You know about the nursery school in the 13th District? That is good. You will track down Madalena Strauss for me, Harry. You have forty-eight hours. If you do, Miss DeBrusk will be free to come home. If not, she dies.”
“Why send Joan to Vienna if you’re threatening her children here?”
“Because that is where you will start looking for Fräulein Strauss. That is where Miss DeBrusk is far from her friends in the Toronto Police Service. Vienna is a beautiful city in case she gets bored while waiting for her expiration date to fall due. She can visit the museums and shop in the Graben.”
“Does she know there’s a time limit on her life?”
“We all have time limits, Harry. Hers is predetermined and depends on the efficiency of a mutual acquaintance—that would be you.” Harry was struck by how his Russian accent kept creeping into his voice although his syntax was North American. “No, she does not know. There was no point in making the situation more complex than it is. She has enough to worry about.”
“And what makes you think I’ll exchange Lena’s life for Joan DeBrusk’s?”
“You have no alternative. Trust me, Harry. If Fräulein Strauss survives, Miss DeBrusk and her children at the Zylberman Centre will die. On the other hand, if we kill Fräulein Strauss, the children in Hietzing will survive as will Miss DeBrusk and her children here. We will all be happy.”
“Except, of course, Madalena Strauss, who will be dead.”
“She is already dead, Harry.”
“You are a miserable scum-sucking tub of guts.”
“Ah, Harry. You are channelling Marlon Brando. I am flattered. But do not let things get personal. Our differences are purely business; we should keep it that way.”
“I don’t kill people.”
“Really? I have heard otherwise.” He paused, apparently to let the ironic cruelty sink in. “No matter. You find her for me, and I will kill her.”
“Why didn’t you kill her when you had the chance?”
“When was that?”
“In her apartment on Marchettigrasse.”
“You are very naïve, Harry. I have never been to her apartment.”
“I witnessed the damage you inflicted firsthand.”
“Well then, there is no telling you otherwise. I had no reason to kill her. When she arranged her own death in order to assassinate me, then it became personal. Everything changed.”
“You were not her primary target. She wanted her files released.”
“She came to kill me at the King William.”
“How? You had the gun.”
“No, she had the gun.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It was her gun. The weapon I used to subdue you, Harry. The weapon Miss DeBrusk used to attack me. It belongs to Madalena Strauss. You did not know that? I am surprised.”
“Where would she get a gun in Toronto?”
“Where would she get a corpse in Vienna? She is a resourceful woman. She lost her gun when my associates, I suppose you would say, rescued me. It was hers. Do not trust her, my friend.”
>
“We are not friends.”
“Perhaps you are right. Do you know she grew up in an institution for mental defectives? She does not think like other people.”
“It was a school for autistic children.”
“So you know things about her. Good. You will find her for me. You have forty-eight hours. That is two days. That should be enough. You had better get moving. It is already past noon in Vienna.”
Harry rose from his chair and walked into the kitchen. He made himself another coffee, moving up in strength from Roma to Arpeggio. He returned to the sofa, setting his cup gingerly on the table, still rickety after Simon collapsed it.
“I admire your paintings, Harry. They are excellent likenesses of Fräulein Strauss. In the manner of Gustav Klimt but not so good, I think. Well, to business. We had an arrangement, you and I. You were to keep me informed of her activities. You did not do a good job, but now you will find her, yes? You have two days. Otherwise, Miss DeBrusk will be exterminated. Perhaps raped. Perhaps not. We shall see.”
18 FAST TRAIN TO SALZBURG
The quickest route to Vienna was a daytime flight through Frankfurt. Waiting at Pearson for take-off, Harry could measure the wasted time by the thudding of his heartbeat. He had decided not to tell Morgan what was happening. The last thing he needed was an enraged cop as a sidekick. When he reached Frankfurt, he felt icily calm. The terminal stank of stale tobacco smoke. He was relieved the stopover was brief. In Vienna he checked into the Kressler Hotel. The night concierge, Heinz Ichstadt, recognized him and looked flustered. Harry ignored him. It was Friday evening. He had thirty-six hours to go.
He grabbed a quick bite along the Kartner Strasse pedestrian walk and went directly to the Polizei Zentralkommando on Herrengasse. Frau Detektiv Honsberger was on duty. Her blue hair had been modified to a purple that in the artificial light of the police station looked like a potpourri of dried crocus petals. Her silver tooth gleamed as she explained to Harry that Madalena was dead.
“Well, if she wasn’t, where would she be?”
“With Elvis Presley, I expect.”
“Frau Honsberger, this is extremely important. Please help me.”