by André Alexis
As he walked away from Delmer, Alexander von Würfel experienced a sort of communion with Robert Azarian, seeming to recall the man’s features and voice, though he’d seen him only briefly, two or three times, a long time gone. He felt as if he and Azarian were now bound in a spiritual sense. It was suddenly clear to him that he was accomplishing Azarian’s will by working this puzzle out.
– I’ll get there, Robert, he said aloud.
His words were a brief warmth in the cold air. The sun was out. The sky was blue. The leaves had changed colour, making all of Mount Pleasant Cemetery more picturesque than it usually is. Pleased with the arrangement he’d made with Mr. McDougal, Alexander von Würfel stopped at the cemetery’s glass-roofed conservatory to admire the plants within.
1 Errol Colby Goes Too Far
Errol Colby would have preferred to have as little to do with Tancred Palmieri as possible. He’d had what could be called a premonition, a feeling that Tancred was dangerous, and it nagged at him.
He hadn’t wanted to be better acquainted with Tancred. Willow Azarian had forced his hand. It was Willow who’d told him about her father’s ‘treasure,’ and it was she who’d told him her secret: she’d got a promise from Tancred to steal the clues to her father’s fortune. Though Willow had been out of her mind when she told him, he’d believed her. From that moment, his and Tancred’s acquaintance became inevitable because, more than anyone else, Colby believed in the fortune that awaited him and believed it was his due.
There were reasons to believe. Though Willow had been a junkie, she’d been a rich one, and Colby had seen very few of those. In fact, Willow had been the only wealthy person he’d known at all. As such, he’d respected her. Certainly, his respect had been tempered by reality. He’d seen the woman so out of it she could not sit, stand or fall down. He’d seen her piss herself a number of times or accidentally burn the clothes she was wearing with cigarettes. Once you’d seen someone in that state, it was not easy to maintain respect. But then again, Colby had been born poor, and part of the burden of poverty – at least, for him – was a gnawing, resentful esteem for the rich. Despite having seen Willow at her worst, despite knowing she was a junkie, he could not shake the foul habit of admiration. So, where Willow was concerned, he was not as skeptical as he would otherwise have been.
Not that Colby was a thoughtful man. Thoughtfulness was a luxury for those with money.
He was born in Jamaica of Jamaican parents, moved with his family to Canada at the age of four and was raised in government housing at Jane and Finch. Most of the kids he’d grown up with now worked the same side of the street as he did. They were dealers or small criminals and most of them were worse off than he was. He’d been to jail twice, both times for under a year. It was a point of pride that he’d never served real time. Given his childhood, you could even say he was doing well.
Childhood? Now, there was a misery all its own.
A father who hated the sight of him – hated the colour of his skin – and a mother who – alcoholic and strange – accepted his whiteness but rejected him as she rejected all of her children. It was hard to say which had caused more damage – the cold, distant planet or the fiery one nearby. With both, avoidance was safety. But perhaps his mother just shaded it because when she was drunk, she was self-pitying and hateful, and it was best to stay out of the house until she passed out.
And yet, he had been loved. He and his siblings had relied on each other for the affection and guidance they needed. At times, it seemed as if he, his two brothers and three sisters had only each other in the world. He, the youngest, grew up with brothers who would fight for him and sisters who looked out for him while he did the only thing his younger self could: he loved his brothers and sisters unconditionally. But then, his oldest brother, Horace, was shot to death and his brother Simon was jailed for murder. All three of his sisters got married and though two of them stayed in the neighbourhood, it meant his siblings had all left home by the time he was twelve. He was the one expected to care for the father who despised him and the mother who, though diabetic and, by the time Errol was last one left in the nest, one-legged, still drank herself into a state once or twice a week. Only once or twice a week? Yes, and that was progress. Before she lost her leg, Errol’s mother was drunk most nights. His father, too. Both of them were so often soused, it made you wonder where they got money for the parade of twenty-sixers (rum, gin and Scotch) and if alcohol was the only thing that kept them together.
They never drank on Sundays. Sundays were different. Sunday was the day Mr. and Mrs. Colby attended mass and lived, for twenty-four hours, as if they cared about God. It was a day of nervous peace. And as he grew older it seemed to Colby that Sunday was the worst of days. Being devout on Sunday was how his parents convinced themselves they were responsible people and good parents, though they were irresponsible and some distance from ‘good.’ Sunday was also their sword. On the Sabbath, they forced their children to church, cuffing the kids to keep them quiet, listening to hymns at home on a stereo whose speakers were so blown that, even at low volume, it was like listening to saintly tractors. No one who knew him would have been surprised to hear that Errol Colby loathed Sunday.
(His feelings about ‘God’ were even less nuanced. ‘God,’ in whatever form or version you liked, seemed to him an obvious and ridiculous device, something used to gain an upper hand. Even the so-called meek, with their mewling piety, were out for unearned juice. In fact, the only times he grew irrationally angry were those when junkies dared to mention God in his presence. Any who did would find him dry for weeks.
– It’s okay, he’d say. I’m sure God’ll comfort you.
None of them mentioned God in his company twice.)
No doubt, given his origins, he was doing well. Yet, he was at the mercy of those who supplied him and he resented giving his money to those whose territory he worked. He resented having to live at home. (He was twenty-two. He’d lived with his parents his whole life.) Most of all, he resented junkies. It was like social work, this helping the weak to die. Were it not for the money it cost him when one of his regulars croaked or hit the skids, he would have missed none of them had they all vanished from the earth, Willow excepted.
Willow was a different matter, because along with Willow came Willow’s dreams, and Colby was susceptible to them. Convinced that Willow’s father had left a hidden fortune behind, he could not stop himself from daydreaming about its value. Robert Azarian had been a billionaire. It was a matter of public record. At his death, the National Post had reported his estimated worth to be somewhere around five billion, putting him among the wealthiest Canadians. It was obvious that such a man not only could have left a billion behind for each of his children but that he should have. Hundreds of millions was nothing to a man with five billion. It was almost a slap in the face, difficult though it was for Colby to accept (or even understand) that hundreds of millions of dollars could ever be paltry or unfair. So, when Willow had suggested there was a ‘finder’s fee’ for anyone who helped her find ‘the rest of her inheritance,’ he’d been very interested. Tancred is whom she’d had in mind for the fee, it’s true. But still. Now that she was gone, why shouldn’t he be the one to find the rest of her money?
And what would he do with millions? He’d give up dealing. That was certain. He wasn’t one of those who loved the life. His self-esteem did not entirely depend on the misery of others. He would travel, maybe leave the country, maybe move to New York or Paris or Rome. Not that he knew any of those cities. He’d never been out of Toronto. The closest he’d come to travel was one day when he’d taken the subway to its farthest point east (Kennedy) and its farthest point west (Kipling) to see what was there. He had found, at the edges of his world, nothing but a brick-and-steel desolation that seemed to go on forever. It was one of his greatest hopes that New York and Paris, London and Rome were as wonderful as those who’d come from them inevitably said they were.
Not surprisingly, all of
this – his home, his albinism, his longing for money – influenced Colby’s feelings about Tancred. He hated the man. To him, Tancred was no better than any of the hustlers in Parkdale. But he carried himself as if he were, as if what he did were somehow noble, while dealers like him and Freud worked the gutters. Other people liked Tancred. For Colby it was unpleasant to watch the whores make eyes at him and tell him their life stories, giggling like virgins while he pretended to care about all the abuse they’d suffered. He wouldn’t even sleep with them! He remembered one of them saying
– Your dick’s not made of glass, is it? I won’t break it.
And Tancred had said something about how he was in love with a woman and how even if she wouldn’t know he’d cheated, he would. Love? Oh, please. The people who used that word most were Mr. and Mrs. Colby, his parents. He doubted Tancred had any idea what it meant.
None of that mattered, though. His feelings didn’t matter. Tancred was his ticket out of Jane and Finch. He would have to deal with the man. Unfortunately, Mr. Armberg was not convinced that Tancred had been the least bit intimidated by their little interview.
– You won’t get anything from him without force, Mr. Armberg had said.
As if he’d known Tancred would go into hiding.
They hadn’t been able to find Tancred for days. Which meant that the second part of Mr. Armberg’s thought was likely true as well.
– If you’re going to threaten someone like Palmieri, you got to be ready to carry through.
Here Mr. Armberg would not go. He’d done what he had for Colby’s sake – that is, out of consideration for a young man who was the only creature on earth who valued him as much as he valued himself. He would not help them rough up Tancred or Olivier, because he simply did not believe Willow’s ‘ravings,’ did not believe anything lay beyond the so-called clues Robert Azarian had left behind. Hurting people was not a problem, but one had to have a reason.
– I’ve got principles, he’d said.
Which meant that Colby would have to do the roughing up himself. No, not himself. The roughing up would be done with Freud. But now, of course, they couldn’t find Tancred. He and Olivier both seemed to have vanished.
Really, he should have left the Azarian thing alone. He should have dropped it. Let Tancred go on this wild goose chase by himself. None of his friends would have cared or minded. The world would have carried on spinning.
Yes, but he would have been miserable. It would be excruciating not to know the end of the story, not to know the reward that waited once the puzzle was solved. Was it cash? Jewels? Stocks and bonds? And why should he, Errol Colby, be cheated out of a share?
What was so special about Tancred Palmieri, anyway?
Colby assumed there was nothing special about Tancred, an unsound assumption that led him to a dangerous question: why shouldn’t he steal the Azarian mementos himself? Willow had, fuzzily but repeatedly, described her father’s mementos to him. He knew what to look for almost as certainly as Tancred did: a poem, a painting with Romans in it, a silvery model of a fancy building and a bottle of something called aquavit. That left Willow’s screen, of course. It was strange, given his connection to her, that Willow’s should be the heirloom he knew least. She’d never even properly described it to him. But he’d worry about that when he had to, if he had to. Given how Willow had spoken of Tancred, he suspected the man had hold of it already.
Furthermore, he’d done a little breaking and entering himself. He could devise a plan of attack as well as the next person. Then, too, when you thought about it, all he had to steal was one of the pieces. If he had one, Tancred would be forced to co-operate with him. His biggest problem, really, was time. He ought to have thought of this before. Palmieri was no doubt well along with his thieving. Which meant he’d have to get on with it, if his plan was to have any hope of success.
As Tancred and Olivier had before him, Colby cased the houses from which he’d be stealing. He wanted to know, as the two before him had, the layouts, whether or not there were alarm systems, the best points of entry for him and Freud – if, that is, Freud could be persuaded to help. He also needed to know what was left, which pieces, if any, Tancred hadn’t yet taken.
For two days, Colby left his regulars in Freud’s paranoid care. On the first day, he diligently scouted the four neighbourhoods he’d be working: Rosedale, the Annex, Moore Park, the harbourfront. On the second day, he dressed in good clothes and knocked at the home of Willow’s sister, Simone Azarian-Thomson.
– Yes? said Mrs. Azarian-Thomson, answering her door.
– Good morning, Madam, said Colby. My name is William Sanger and I’m here on behalf of the Save Our Children Foundation.
Colby thought he heard men’s voices from inside the house, but he carried on, feeling that the important thing was for him to get inside for a bit – to get a good look around – and it made no difference who saw him, as they would never see him again.
– We’re a non-profit organization, he said, that’s trying to end child poverty.
– Are you? asked Willow’s sister. That’s a good cause.
– I wonder, said Colby, if I could have a few minutes of your time?
– Would you like to come in?
– Thank you very much, Colby said.
Oddly, given his good instincts, he did not feel the least bit uneasy. He entered Mrs. Azarian-Thomson’s home, pleased with how smoothly things were going. As they walked into the living room, however, he saw there were two policemen. One, unfortunately, was Detective Mandelshtam.
– Errol, said Mandelshtam. What are you doing here?
– Errol? said Willow’s sister. I thought it was William.
– I misspoke, said Colby.
A more ridiculous answer he could not have devised if they’d given him weeks to think about it. If he could, he’d have sunk into the carpet.
– So, what are you doing here? Mandelshtam repeated.
– He’s working for charity, said Mrs. Azarian-Thomson. Just like the man I was telling you about. Maybe they work for the same charity.
– Tell me about it, Errol, said Detective Mandelshtam. I’m interested in this new leaf of yours.
2 A Digression (with Simone Azarian-Thomson)
Tancred, having abandoned his own apartment, was now staying on Winnett with Olivier. He spent time contemplating the two Azarian mementos he’d brought together – those belonging to Willow and Gretchen. Willow had paid a year’s rent on the loft. So, he had leisure to gaze at them and think, to look for a connection between them: an idea, a logic that would make the next (missing) piece in the sequence both necessary and superfluous. Necessary, in that it would be a confirmation that he’d grasped the true thought behind the clues. Superfluous in that, if he had grasped this thought, the remaining pieces would add nothing essential.
Ollie was, in his way, helpful. He was good at these sorts of games. But he’d recently rediscovered an interest in Buddhism, so he could not be counted on to think, as opposed to meditating. He’d sit on the floor before the model of Fallingwater or the Japanese screen, his ability to sit still in itself admirable. Once, after hours of looking at the screen, he’d calmly said
– There are willows in Psalm 137, with harps on them
before returning to silence. A gnomic pronouncement: just on the edge of sense, frustrating because it led Tancred nowhere definite.
When the time came to steal the painting from Simone Azarian-Thomson’s home, it was a relief for Tancred to think about concrete matters. He’d seen the painting while casing the home. It was four feet wide and three feet tall, an awkward size. It looked heavy. Its frame – a dark hardwood – was, in front, unexceptional: six inches wide all around. But it was also six or seven inches thick and had a backing that made it seem as if the painting was in a kind of box rather than simply framed. The painting would be difficult for one alone to carry, no doubt about it. And, it seemed to Tancred, the work would be better done in daylight when you c
ould see where you were going, though daylight, of course, would bring other difficulties.
The painting’s size and integument were not its only awkward aspects. Its frame contained a motion detector and audio speakers. Whenever anyone approached, the painting would play the first Prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. That is to say, the painting was ensconced in a kind of music box. And the music was not exactly soothing. The painting played Glenn Gould’s recording of the work. So, not only did a piano sound when one got close but, as well, with Gould’s constant humming, it was as if a vagrant entered the room at the same time.
Finally, there was the painting’s subject matter. It was both a double portrait and a landscape. Occupying two-thirds of the painting were two men in Roman togas, side by side. The men were on the summit of a green hill. The one on the left was shorter, bearded, wore a golden laurel wreath and in his right hand held a violin by the neck. The man on the right was grey-haired, his tunic was short, his thighs pale, and on his left shoulder there was a rather large raven, painted in three-quarter profile. The third of the painting not devoted to the men – that is, the third on the viewer’s right – depicted a burning city: Rome. The conflagration was skilfully done. One could see, though the city looked to be some distance from the hill where the men stood, a number of fleeing figures, their robes in reddish-orange flames. It was like an ancient nightmare, not the kind of thing a loving father would leave as a memento, you’d have thought. On the other hand, the painting had been done by a talented artist. It was as striking as it was odd. If it were stolen in daylight, it would almost certainly be memorable to any passersby who saw it. So, they would have to cover the painting with canvas.