Balsam Sirens

by Keith Weaver

  I called Jocko. Even though I used as much diplomacy as I could, I still had to hold the phone away from my ear as Jocko vented his indignation, but the offer of a lavish fee for fifteen minutes of work was oil poured generously onto Jocko’s troubled waters. Jocko put me on hold briefly, but we had the information we wanted in less than ten minutes. I jotted a page of items in my pocket notebook.

  Mike looked at me as I ended the call.

  “Young nephew is up to his armpits in gambling debts”, I said to Mike.

  Mike nodded, looking pensive, but my bet was that he was thinking at a mile a minute.

  “Okay. Here’s what I think we need to do”, Mike said, and he outlined his plan. I agreed and Mike drove to a small street off Eastern Avenue that had been renovated to a seriously upscale level. Mike parked midway between streetlights.

  Consulting my pocket notebook, I made the call.

  “Yeah!”

  “James Donaldson?” I responded.

  “Who’s this?”

  “My name is Mark Whelan, Mr. Donaldson.”

  A generous measure of suavity, similar to what I had observed at Clarence and Donaldson earlier that day, immediately flowed from the telephone.

  “Ah! Mr. Whelan! It might be late but it’s a pleasure to speak to you nonetheless. What could I do for you?”

  “I think we both know why I’m calling you, Mr. Donaldson”, I said.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, Mr. Whelan. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve had a long day.”

  “Cut the act, Donaldson. I know what you’ve been up to. Either we discuss a way for you to come clean, or I go straight to the police. Tonight.”

  “You’re speaking in riddles, Mr. Whelan. And your tone surprises me. I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m going to hang up now”, and the line went dead immediately.

  It took less than ten minutes. Donaldson emerged from a house sixty metres up the street, threw a large bag into the back seat, slid behind the wheel, drove to King Street, and turned left.

  “Any bets he’s headed for the airport?” I asked.

  “No point in betting on a sure thing. Time to call Jocko again.”

  I made the call to Jocko, described what had just happened, and asked him to get in touch with his contact immediately. But I also asked Jocko to check on some travel history for me.

  Thirty-eight

  We assumed there would be no rush in dealing with what remained to be done, and it turned out that we were right.

  Mike drove me back to our condo and then went home himself, but we agreed on an early start in the morning. I spent a couple of hours that night explaining everything to Andrea. She was aghast. There was no question that it made me feel unclean, and Andrea eventually said, with great reluctance, that she also could see no better way for the whole affair to have been wrapped up. But she did end in one strong and heartfelt statement.

  “I dearly hope that nothing like this ever, ever happens again.” It was part wish, part demand, and part threat.

  Given the drained look on Andrea’s face, I was a bit surprised when she agreed to join me over an Armagnac. She even smiled weakly at me over the top of her glass as I wished for a brighter tomorrow. Half an hour later we had both fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  It was just before eight o’clock the next morning when I joined Mike in his car, not having had breakfast or coffee but after writing a longish note to a still sleeping Andrea.

  Mike and I arrived at Bent’s office just as he was starting his day, and he was surprised and not really pleased to see us.

  “We need to talk, Bent”, I said without preamble, Mike and I having agreed that he would be a silent presence.

  Cromarty looked pointedly at his watch.

  “We need to talk now, Bent”, I said more forcefully. “Can we use that interrogation room over there?” I began moving toward it before he had responded.

  “Hang on, wait a minute”, Cromarty said, rising from his seat, evidently irritated.

  “Okay. We can talk right here in the middle of your office if that’s what you prefer. Arthur Donaldson is the wrong man to go after in the Dickson case.”

  I knew that Cromarty would not want me to start broadcasting information around the squad room about wrinkles in his case, and he moved quickly to usher us toward the interrogation room.

  “I’ll give you a minute, then I’m going to have you thrown out. I don’t have time for this. The Dickson case isn’t the only one I’m working on.” Cromarty gave me a meaningful glare before continuing. “So you think Arthur Donaldson is the wrong man. Okay. I’ll humour you for a few seconds. Who’s your choice?”

  “James Donaldson”, I said. “The nephew.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “My best judgment. Come on, Bent”, I said in response to his dismissive scowl, “old Arthur Donaldson doesn’t know the first thing about the underworld. Sure, you have some evidence that seems to point toward him, but the nephew is not only savvy, he’s also a slippery fish.”

  “And where’s your evidence?” Cromarty countered.

  “I don’t have any, and you know very well that I can’t be poking around in something the police are actively involved in. I’ve had ongoing business dealings with Arthur over the past few weeks, and in the course of that I’ve seen his nephew James up close. He’s not the clean-as-a-whistle Ivy League type that he likes to present. I think you’ll find that he’s the one behind all this.”

  “Really? And the solid evidence we have that says otherwise?”

  “It’s just all a fit-up for Arthur.”

  “Okay. Your time’s up”, Cromarty said as he rose from his chair. “Just one more thing. Dickson is locked up. Why are you persisting in this?”

  “That’s simple, Bent. Sure, Dickson tried to kill Mike here. And he and his goons abducted both Andrea and me. And if the buck stopped at Dickson, everything would be fine. But if it doesn’t, nothing is fine. So I suggest that you look at it all again, more closely.”

  At that point, Cromarty herded us out, evidently still not the least convinced.

  Back in Mike’s car, we discussed the situation. We agreed that we had now done all that we could. We also agreed that the risk was probably past, and if that was the case we would know within the next couple of weeks. But if not, well …

  “How about some breakfast at our place, Mike?”

  “Sounds first rate to me. Let’s go.”

  When we arrived at our condo, Andrea was up, looking rested and more relaxed than she had been for some time.

  “Mike’s come by for some breakfast”, I said.

  “Is it all finished now?” Andrea asked me.

  “Yes. Finished.” I replied. In response to Mike’s quizzical look, I added “Andrea’s in the picture, Mike.”

  “Sit down, both of you”, Andrea ordered. “Black coffee?”

  “Yes, please”, I answered, “but I have to –”

  “No! My kitchen! I’m making breakfast! And you’re both getting ham and eggs, sausage, home fries, and brown toast. Here’s your coffee.”

  Breakfast included the cooking and eating of it and the cleaning up afterwards. All three of us pitched in on the clean-up, and by then the general mood had swung strongly upward. There were even outbursts of laughter. The pressure had been released, and we could climb out of the pressure cooker.

  We looked around at a clean stove, clean table, and dishes draining in the rack, and we were all visited by that feeling one has on finishing a cracking good book that has your adrenalin pumping over its last forty pages, but then it’s over. Mike broke the silence.

  “You going back up to Largs now?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it”, I said uncertainly.

  “Yes. Definitely. In fact, right now”, Andrea pronounced.

  “Mind if I come along?” Mike asked. “Thing is”, he continued, “it’s been a long time since I just flopped and did nothing. And business is slow right now. Jus
t a few days?”

  “Okay”, Andrea said decisively. “Off you go to your place, get some clothes, and be back here in twenty minutes. That’s when we leave.”

  Mike cast a glance at me.

  “Don’t look at him”, Andrea barked. “He’s just the cook. Off you go to your place.”

  “Bugger that!” Mike countered. “We’ll stop at Lindsay, I’ll buy some T-shirts, shorts, swimming gear, socks. Let’s go!”

  Including the stop at Lindsay, where I stocked up on wine while Mike fretted over what colour underwear to get, it was three and a half hours later when we pulled into Largs. We got Mike settled in the spare room, Andrea headed straight for the infinity pool, and I did my triangular swim and had a long-delayed commune with Balsam Lake, the great water spirit of my youth.

  I had just towelled off and was sitting at the picnic table soaking up sun when my cellphone buzzed.

  There was a great deal of background noise, but the message came through clearly enough. I agreed most willingly to Kate’s self-invitation to dinner later in the day. Kate said “I’ll see you there” at about the same time as her plane roared past us out over the lake. Andrea’s eyes sprang open, but I told her to relax, that Kate wasn’t about to land, and relayed the arrangements made for that evening. I didn’t mention that Kate had asked if we could have prime rib for dinner.

  Things settled down then to one step up from somnolent. Andrea continued to unwind in the pool. Mike had dragged a large chaise longue down close to the lake and was lying immobile behind his sunglasses. By two thirty, Andrea had gone inside to lie down and get rid of the prune wrinkles from her long soak, and Mike had dragged his lounger into the shade. I dressed and took myself off to Wally’s place to see if he could provision us for the evening’s feast. To my delight, he had an excellent prime rib, a little too big for four of us, but I took it anyway. After picking up the vegetables we would need, I walked back home, put everything in the fridge, then worked out the timing for getting dinner ready.

  Kate arrived at about six o’clock, when the meat and vegetables had only about another half an hour left of their slow roast in the barbecue. The evening was the usual random romp through that delightful mental landscape that emerged when we four got together. The time flew. Kate, having arrived by car, agreed readily to spend the night with us, and even though Andrea, Mike, and I had spent a day of almost zero stress and less effort, by eleven o’clock we were ready to turn in.

  Of our originally planned two weeks at Largs, Andrea and I had less than a week left. Her business partners, well aware of what had been happening, didn’t hesitate at all when Andrea said she wanted more time.

  And we made good use of it.

  We relaxed. We went for walks. We did a fair bit of impromptu and desultory socializing with people in Largs. But we did more than that.

  We talked. Often well into the small hours. Sometimes there were three of us. While Mike was there, he proved to be an acute and sympathetic listener. Kate dropped in fairly regularly. And then there was John Woodhouse.

  Naturally we discussed what had happened and why. It was in one of these three-way discussions that Mike prodded us, obviously interested to be sure that we really had come to terms with what had happened and that loose ends had been dealt with. Mike did this in his usual way: head on and after few preliminaries.

  “I guess that we have Cromarty to thank, when it comes right down to it”, Mike said.

  “How do you work that out?” I asked.

  “Well, we were focused almost entirely on Dickson, why he was so obsessed with the treasure, and what made him so certain that it was there. It was only when Cromarty broke his news that the police considered Arthur Donaldson to be the real kingpin that we were nudged into a different line of thinking.”

  “Well, no, Mike. It wasn’t that simple. You and I began wondering whether Dickson as kingpin really was the full story not long after Dickson was hauled off in chains.”

  “You’re rewriting history again, Mark. What we really were concerned about was how ragged the story was and whether we’d missed anything. The whole ‘Third Man’ thing was just one possible missing piece.”

  “That’s not the way I remember it, Mike. But just suppose that you’re right. Where does this discussion lead?”

  “Well, it forced you to assess Arthur Donaldson as an archcriminal, and for him that role was just a ridiculously bad fit. So then you focused on what else might be going on. The key here is the evidence Cromarty said he had, something that pointed straight at Donaldson. We know nothing about this evidence, although we can surmise that it was probably unearthed by some accounting sleuth. The real point here is that Cromarty wouldn’t take such a strong stand unless he had something solid, and so we couldn’t deny that there was something there. You believe that Donaldson is incapable of that sort of chicanery, and that led you to the conclusion that the most likely person was the nephew, James. That’s when and why our whole focus changed. Jocko’s information was enough to shore up that view.”

  “I don’t understand, Mike”, Andrea said. “Where are you going with this?”

  “It’s mostly for the benefit of the redoubtable Mark Whelan. He had a career in the police, and he came away from it with some excellent knowledge and street smarts, but those skills are getting a bit long in the tooth now. He has a lot of really good nuts-and-bolts experience with everyday human failings – lipstick on shirt collars, torn stockings retrieved from unlikely locations, condoms found in the jacket pockets of men whose wives are on the pill – but that doesn’t translate too well to serious firefights and dealing with unpleasant heavies. I want Mark to understand that what we did, and the way we did it, was dangerous. I want a debriefing.”

  “Why are you attacking me like this, Mike”, I spluttered. “Why do you think that –”

  “Mike is right, Mark! Can’t you see that?” Andrea was distressed, almost pleading.

  Andrea shook her head. “Maybe you never could see it! But you’ve always been too confident, too wrapped up in yourself, too …”

  I was in turmoil, but before I could say anything further, Mike rose, wine bottle in hand, and came over to sit between us, pushing us apart by his sheer physical presence.

  “Time for a pause and a drink”, Mike said quietly, filling our glasses.

  “You are two of my favourite people. You’ve just been through something that nobody should have to endure. But it happened. Now we need to understand it. Did it happen because of anything we did or didn’t do? Could we have avoided it? Did we just narrowly avoid it being something much worse?”

  There was a pause here while Mike looked at us in turn. Andrea was now looking concerned, stricken, and withdrawn. I was still seething from Mike’s unexpected broadside.

  Andrea was the first to get her voice back.

  “Tell me first, please, either of you, that this really was an outlier, something we might expect will never happen again.”

  “That’s reasonably easy”, Mike said, jumping right in. “It was indeed an outlier. Many policemen go through entire careers without ever having to draw their weapons, let alone shoot at somebody. But I think all policemen are very much aware that the potential for that sort of thing is always there and can’t be avoided if you want the job. It’s far less likely that PIs will be caught up in something like that. So, to answer my own questions, I don’t think this was caused by anything we did or didn’t do, and I don’t see how we could have avoided it short of just ignoring George and probably throwing him under the bus, but yes, something much worse might have happened.”

  This had the effect of cooling things down somewhat.

  It also made me aware that there was a chasm open at my feet, a chasm that might have been there for some time. I had pretty much failed utterly to consider seriously the effect that extremes in my working life could have on Andrea because I had made the assumption that my work could never lead us into this sort of danger. This realization was so sudd
en, so cold, and so blunt that it left me speechless. I looked up and realized that both Mike and Andrea were regarding me expectantly. I looked back at them. I shook my head. My mouth worked. One hand made ineffectual motions in the air. I had a great deal of personal work to do.

  Over the next two hours, Mike showed great skill and sensitivity in carrying out his debriefing. Andrea and I went to bed, but I felt completely disoriented. At about four am, I fell into a deep sleep, and when I awoke just before nine, I found Andrea looking at me calmly and sympathetically.

  We had not come off the rails.

  Thirty-nine

  Breakfast outside, sunshine, birdsong, and the quiet lapping of Balsam Lake brought the three of us together.

  Cromarty called later that day with news that had taken him, Cromarty, a while to digest. A body had been found. It had been shot once, execution style. The details had entered the police system, had worked their way through channels, and then a sharp-eyed detective in Cromarty’s office had noticed the name “Donaldson”.

  James Donaldson’s body had been found in a drainage ditch behind a small shopping plaza on the outskirts of Milton. Not only had there been no effort made to conceal the body, but it appeared to have been placed where it would be found soon.

  At the risk of being accused of interfering, I placed a call to Arthur Donaldson. Yes, he had heard about his nephew James. Yes, he admitted, after a lot of coaxing and cajoling on my part, James had been embezzling money from the firm, but James had disguised it well. Arthur was appalled that clients might learn about the fraud, so he made up the financial diversions from his own private funds. Drawing on the information I had got from Jocko, I asked about James’ gambling. Arthur had been unaware of this. I didn’t relate to Arthur my sense of what really had happened to the money James had pilfered, and I said that I would be happy to stand by him as the police carried out their eventual forensic audit.

  The rest of that day the three of us spent in discussion. Mike and I worked our way through what we understood or could surmise about James Donaldson and his role in the whole affair, and as we stepped through what had happened, we laid out the details for Andrea.