The Black Box: A novel

by Cliff Jackman

  THE BLACK BOX

  Cliff Jackman

  Manor House

  CIP info to come

  Until recently Enron's attitude, expressed with barely concealed disdain, was that anyone who couldn't understand its business just didn't "get it." "Our business is not a black box," Jeff Skilling told me. "It's very simple to model." And at the time, many Wall Street analysts who followed the company were content to go along. Now that it's clear that the company wasn’t what it appeared, the new cliché is that Enron's business was incredibly complicated - perhaps even too complicated for its founder Ken Lay to understand. Which leads to a basic question: why were so many people willing to believe in something that so few actually understood?

  Bethany McLean

  Au fond, tout les films noirs ont la même signification: il n'y a rien de plus solitaire dans ce monde que d'avoir une mauvaise conscience.

  Jean-Pierre Melville

  Dedication

  On August 25, 2011, Bruce Goldstein was found dead in David A. Balfour Park beneath Glen Road Bridge, his broken body crumpled up like a piece of paper someone tried to throw in a garbage can, but missed. Brucie had been just short of his eighteenth birthday, and by all accounts he’d been a well-liked, happy kid. The fall had killed him but his father didn’t believe it was a suicide and so he asked me and Dean to look into it. This is the story of what we found.

  I decided to write this book for a few reasons. Money, first of all, I guess. Who doesn’t like money? It’s also a chance to set the record straight, since a lot of that media coverage was total bullshit. And although you might not know it by looking at me, or by talking with me, or even by hanging out with me for years, I have always been something of a writer. I kept a journal my whole life and it’s pretty bitching to get to publish a book.

  But the more I stare at this screen, the more I think that the real reason I’m writing this book is to get something out of me. Like, if I tell this story, I might be able to make sense of some of the things that people did, including me, that I can hardly believe. Dean says what everyone really wants is to be understood. Of course, he also says no one understands anyone else, the gloomy bastard.

  A few years back, believe it or not, Dean and I investigated a different mysterious death back in California. I’m not going to get into that here, but let’s just say it didn’t end well and I thought Dean had been hurt so bad he would never recover. I was wrong. When I saw Dean again in September 2011, he seemed like he’d come all the way back. But now, after Brucie, things are tough for him again.

  I think he’ll get better. I’m just not really sure that’s for the best. Maybe it would be better if our broken hearts never did mend. Otherwise, we’re like that guy who pissed off Zeus, getting our guts ripped out, having them grow back, and getting them ripped out all over again the next day. Dean doesn’t know how to live. He only knows one way to roll, in his heart, and it’s a bruising way to go. This book won’t make things easier for him, but it’s in his honour. I feel for you buddy. Hang in there.

  1

  It’s tough to know exactly how to start. I’m not in favour of just giving everyone’s life history. So here’s my thinking: I never would have got hired to investigate Brucie’s death if I hadn’t bumped into Dean at the Duke of Devon. And I never would have been at the Duke of Devon if Mikey Gottlieb hadn’t taken me out for drinks. And Mikey wouldn’t have taken me out if I hadn’t busted Martin Cole on the Slip ‘n Slide. So I’ll start with that.

  Picture me wearing a cheap tan suit with a rumpled blue shirt and a tie with a monkey on it. I’m black, I’ve got a shaved head, and (let’s not kid ourselves here) I’m pretty fucking fat. I’m sitting behind the wheel of my Hyundai Accent on a rural road in Oro-Medonte. The packaging from a combo meal at Harvey’s is in the backseat, next to my crumpled copy of Half-Blood Blues. I’m bored, and I’m already kind of hungry again. Mostly I’m playing Angry Birds on my iPhone, but every now and then I lift my head to watch the house.

  It was a little raised bungalow made of pink brick. The grass on the front yard was long, approaching hay field territory. An elderly deck, made of cedar so neglected that it had turned a rotten shade of grey, jutted out from the side and an old car was parked on the lawn. Through the windows I could see that the interior was crowded with stuff.

  I spent a lot of time in houses like that growing up. The piles of magazines, old sports equipment, Tupperware. Being poor in America (or Canada, I guess) doesn’t mean you don’t have lots of stuff. Instead, it’s like you can’t get rid of anything; like you’re drowning in junk.

  The lawyers I work for don’t have a lot of sympathy for people like the Cole family. They talk about how their behavior drives up everyone’s premiums, and so on. And I suppose there’s not much you can really say about that. Still, I can’t help but sympathize. When you’re choking on a wave of crap like that, you do whatever you’ve got to do to get from out under.

  The sliding screen door that opened onto the deck banged open and the family barged out. I waited in my car, half-hidden from their view by the big weeping willow on the edge of their property, until I saw Martin was out with them. The big guy was skipping as nimbly as a ballerina. I got out, bringing my camera with me, and moved over to the fence line as stealthily as I could.

  Martin Cole was fatter than me, with orange hair that was fading into grey. Thick glasses were perched on his nose and he gave off the proud, aggressive air of a little fighting dog. He was moving without the pain and difficulty that had characterized his appearances in court, and shouting and waving his hands at his numerous chubby children.

  As best as I was able, I hid my fat ass behind an old fence post. Then I took out my camera and started recording video, while taking still pictures at the same time.

  All of the Cole clan was dressed in swimsuits, which I thought was odd, since they didn’t have a pool, and the nearest body of water was Lake Simcoe, a good drive away. But then the two eldest Cole daughters came out carrying a rolled-up yellow plastic sheet, and I started to giggle.

  Martin, you fucking idiot, I thought.

  They unfolded the Slip ‘n Slide so that it ran down towards me. One daughter sprayed it with water from the hose until it got nice and slick, and the kids started hurling themselves at it so crazily that I kind of worried that one of them would suffer a spinal injury for real.

  Martin was last. His kids were dancing around him, giggling and shrieking and shoving him with their wet hands, while Ron ran back and forth dodging them. Finally he sprinted towards the strip of yellow plastic, flopped down face first, and shot towards me like a bullet. My finger was clicking on the button like mad, and if you look at the photos in sequence, you can see his expression change, from happiness to surprise to shock and to anger, as he saw me watching him.

  I’ll give the fat bastard credit. He was pretty quick to bounce up to his feet, especially for someone who allegedly had such a nasty case of fibromyalgia and whiplash. And then he ran towards me, roaring like a bull, his orange mullet bouncing on the back of his neck, and his red fat body glistening like a sea lion that had flopped out of the ocean onto a rock. Behind him followed the screaming horde. It was like I’d disturbed some redneck version of the Wild Hunt.

  So I started backing up towards my car, but I kept the camera on old Martin. How could I not? I’d come here to film him behaving in a way which was inconsistent with his claims about his injury, and this certainly fit the bill.

  “Get off my fucking property, you nigger!”” he shouted.

  “Hey!” I said. “Watch your mouth.”

  “Get off my property!”

  “I’m not on your fucking property,” I said. “I’m on the road!”

>   Now he was right up in my face, filling my little viewfinder.

  “Gimme that camera,” Martin said.

  “Fuck off!” I said.

  “I said give it to me!” Martin shouted, and lunged. I pushed at him, and turned away, sheltering the camera with my body, but he was a powerful, almost athletic dude, and I’m not sure I could have taken him even on my own. When all of the kids arrived, boys and girls, and started kicking and punching and slapping me, it wasn’t much of a contest. Ron yanked the camera away, threw it down on the ground, and stomped on it with one bare (but exceedingly calloused) foot.

  “Hey motherfucker,” I said. “You’re going to have to pay for that.”

  But then I saw Martin’s wife running over. She was a big old girl, and she was jiggling every which way with the effort. Above her head she was carrying a shotgun like a Zulu matron with her husband’s spear.

  “Oh shit,” I said, and shoved everyone away with a burst of panicky strength and got back in my car. The kids were smacking the windows with their hands when I turned the key in the ignition and jumped on the gas. I took one glance over my shoulder to make sure I’d hadn’t run any of them over and then I gunned it as hard as you can gun a Hyundai.

  Thankfully, they didn’t shoot at me.

  I only drove for about five minutes before I had to pull over. The suspense was killing me. I brought up my laptop from the back seat and checked the folder that I kept my videos in. Modern technology is certainly amazing. Everything was safely in the cloud.

  When I saw the picture of Martin staring at me in dismay from the Slip ‘n Slide, I started to laugh. The video was even funnier, and I laughed harder. Not a bad morning’s work, really. I was still giggling when I drove down the 400, slick with well water and hillbilly sweat. I pretty much laughed all the way back to the city.

  2

  Mikey looked up when I came in his office. He was a good looking kid, mixed race, with a Jewish dad and a black mom. His skin was light brown and he had a big afro (or jew-fro, I guess). The cuffs of his blue, tailored shirt were rolled up, displaying his Seiko watch, and he wasn’t wearing a tie. His office was as bereft of decorations as a prison cell, but the view from 18 floors up wasn’t anything to sneeze at, not for a country boy like me anyway.

  “Terrell,” he said, “I’m right in the middle of something.”

  “Oh bullshit,” I said. Junior lawyers were always right in the middle of something. I closed the door behind me, pushed some boxes off the spare chair onto the floor, sat down and opened my computer. “You seriously have to see this.”

  “Terrell,” Mikey groaned in his Eeyore voice. “I’m getting totally slammed here. I’m going to be here all weekend.”

  “Just check this out,” I said. “God. It’s only going to take five minutes.”

  I booted up the video.

  Mikey sighed, and asked: “What file is this for?”

  “Cole,” I replied.

  The look on Mikey’s face slowly changed from one of deep mourning to one of bemusement.

  “A Slip ‘n Slide?” he asked, looking at me with the wide eyes of a kid who just got a Nintendo for Christmas.

  “Just wait,” I said, giggling. On the corner of his desk there was a plastic jar bearing the Blue Jays logo that contained a pint of sunflower seeds. I helped myself.

  We got to the part where Martin Cole charged me. Now Mikey had thrown his head back and his eyes were as wide as they could get. I started laughing uproariously and spitting seeds and shell all over the ground.

  “Oh my goodness,” Mikey said. “He used the n-word.”

  “I know, right? What a bastard.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Mikey said, grabbing his fro with both hands.

  “Check out some of the still shots.”

  We worked through the pictures of Martin on the slide, till we got to the one where he was looking at me in shock.

  “I want to make that my desktop wallpaper,” Mikey said.

  “So there you go,” I said. “You got anything to drink here? Do you still have that scotch?”

  Mikey looked at me for a moment, and said: “Well, fine. Let’s go get a drink.”

  “I thought you had work.”

  “Oh, fuck it,” Mikey said. “I’ll be in all day tomorrow anyway. Everyone’s down at the Duke.”

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “The Duke of Devon,” he replied. “Let’s go now so we can get a seat on the patio.”

  It was 4:30 on a Thursday in mid-September, and the sky was blue as a baby’s eye, so we definitely had to get moving if we wanted to sit outside.

  A very pretty dark-haired girl, big chested, smiled at us as we came out of Mikey’s office.

  “What were you two laughing about?” she asked.

  “Come to the Duke,” I said. “We’ll tell you all about it!”

  Once we were in the elevator, I asked:

  “Who was that chick?”

  “Desiree,” Mikey said, and shook his head and rolled his eyes comically. “She’s killing me!”

  “Is she a student?”

  “Yes,” Mikey said, and then added in a dejected tone: “She’s engaged.”

  “Well so what?”

  “Oh no,” Mikey said, “not with this princess. Her wedding is going to cost $100,000. She is in my office talking about photographers every day. You need some serious dinero to get with that girl.”

  “Hey man,” I said. “Anything’s possible.”

  We came out into the sunshine and started heading south- east. Even though I come down there a lot, I always feel a little weird in the financial district. The buildings are so tall you feel like you’re at the bottom of canyon, or maybe even under the sea. Unless it’s noon it can be tough for the sunlight to get through, so you can be cold in the middle of the day.

  We walked through the TD Centre, three tall black metal buildings built around a courtyard. Since it was the southernmost of the main office buildings, the patio we were going to (on its south side) caught the most sun.

  “How are your investments going?” I asked. “Maybe you’ll be able to afford to steal this chick away.”

  “Don’t ask,” Mikey said. “I thought I was going to get my money out of Edenfree. But the OSC just cease-traded it again, so I’m fucked, basically.”

  “Well, you can always go back to poker,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Mikey said. “I might as well.”

  The Duke of Devon was mostly underground, in the system of underground hallways and stores that connected all the big buildings in downtown Toronto, but its patio poked above ground like the observation deck of a submarine. I didn’t much care for the bar, with its nine dollar pints of London Pride, huffy waitresses in tartan skirts, and douchey suit-wearing clientele. But you can’t get lawyers to walk more than thirty seconds from their offices, and anyway, it was a nice day to drink outside. We told the hostess we were meeting some friends, waved to Mikey’s buddies, and made our way to the bar.

  “I got this one, Delacroix,” Mikey said and motioned to the bartender. “Two boilermakers, please.”

  “Aw nasty,” I said.

  I think it was like 36 bucks. Mikey paid, and we pounded our shots of JD, clinked our bottles of Bud, and turned around to find our seats.

  And then I saw Dean.

  3

  I hadn’t seen Dean for eight years, not so much as a picture on Facebook. He looked older. A lot of grey was mixed into his dark hair, which was shorter than I remembered. His face was lean and there were deep lines around his eyes. And his clothes! I’d never seen Dean in a suit before, but there he was, dressed to the nines, tie and all, never mind that it was Thursday and he was on the patio.

  The other people at his table were very young, some of the youngest at the bar, and they were all dressed up too. A couple pitchers of beer sat between them but Dean was drinking a Bloody Mary.

  One of the young guys Dean was sitting with, a husky kid with curly
blond hair and beard, noticed me gawking and pointed me out. Dean turned around and looked at me. For a moment he didn’t do anything and I felt this terrible disappointment. He’s going to pretend he doesn’t remember me, I thought.

  But then his face changed, and he jerked in his seat and knocked his drink over. Tomato juice ran across the table and the kids all jumped out of their seats. Dean didn’t move. He kept staring at me.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “You know that guy?” Mikey said, at my elbow.

  Dean stood up. He noticed the spill by now, and looked around for something to clean it with, but the waitress was already on her way, and so he headed over to me.

  “Terrell?” he asked.

  I still didn’t know whether he was happy to see me.

  “Dean?” I asked.

  And then he grinned, and all the eight years fell of his face.

  “Dude,” he said. “What the fuck?”

  I started laughing and hugged him and lifted him off the ground. When I put him down he was still staring at me, with that look of wonder.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I live here!” I said. “I’m a private detective.”

  “What?” he said. “No way!”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’m an articling student,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I went to law school down in California. I wrote the bar and practiced for a couple of years. Then I wanted to make a move. I know a lawyer up here at a pretty good firm, so they’re taking me on.”

  “Which firm?”

  “Stewart Brubaker Phillips.”

  “Wow! Congrats. That’s the big time.”

  “I’m going to go sit down,” Mikey said when it became clear an introduction was not forthcoming, and left.

  I was so excited that I leaned forward and hugged Dean again. He laughed.

  “Let’s get a drink,” I said. “Man I can’t believe it’s you.”