Why Men Lie

by Linden MacIntyre

  She poured another glass of wine and realized her hand was trembling.

  There was a light knock on her front door. She jumped, the wine splashed, she brushed it from her lap. Then she heard the key turning in the lock.

  17

  “I’ve always been kind of private,” JC said. “Maybe to a fault.”

  “Maybe?” she said, with no effort to hide her sarcasm. “I respect privacy. I admire privacy. But if someone knows an airplane is going to blow up, privacy might be inappropriate.”

  “Of course,” he said, annoyed. “Everything makes sense in retrospect. Almost everything.”

  “Why don’t you just walk me through it,” she said.

  He’d flagged a cab on Dundas, where normally he’d have had to wait at least ten minutes. The cab was instantaneous, a miracle, a promising beginning. But at the shelter, the only people he could see were two young European backpackers who’d mistaken it for a hostel. Duncan was giving them directions to a cleaner, safer place.

  Duncan told him he had tried to keep Tammy there, but the boyfriend, Robert, seemed jumpy, kept watching passing cars, looking at his wristwatch. Finally he said that he was leaving and she was coming with him. And they struck off down the street, agitated, Duncan thought.

  JC wandered around for half an hour before he realized that he was wasting valuable time. Honestly. Why was he so determined to make an effort to locate someone he didn’t know when he had no credible reason to believe that she was in Toronto anyway?

  The answer, he finally admitted, sitting on a bench in a small parkette next to the family courthouse on Jarvis, was guilt. Guilt, he’d long believed, was fear disguised as empathy, a fear of consequences and, thus, essentially a form of selfishness. He had become the absent man he loathed and feared and longed to know.

  “Did you ever find out where your father went?” Effie interrupted.

  “No,” he said. “I never really tried.”

  He left the parkette. He walked back to the shelter. Duncan offered a nightcap. It was about ten thirty, give or take. They talked, poured a second nightcap, then a third. The talk was about memory and guilt, the toxicity of violence. Duncan was intrigued that JC had never married, never settled down. And JC explained, more clearly than he’d ever done before, his deepest fears.

  Duncan grew quiet then and they just sat. He remembered that it was about two fifteen when he woke up on Duncan’s chesterfield, head throbbing, damp face stuck to vinyl.

  The outside air refreshed him, the cool dampness and the quiet rumble of the city, the persistent hum of the vast vending machine they call Toronto. He walked in the general direction of Walden, still drunk, savouring the emptiness.

  And then the streets, it seemed, were teeming with activity. Flashing lights, pounding feet, darkened figures hurrying around him. He reacted from his long experience in journalism, tried to blend in with all the shadows. But now he was the centre of attention, his name proclaimed, his face shoved against a wall. A confusion of voices. Then the back seat of a car. The flat radio commentary mentioned him by name, described him. Caucasian male, middle-aged … he suddenly remembered Sam, became Sam. He became an observer from the inside of a crisis. This was a story, he thought. This was Sam’s story.

  “Sam murdered someone,” Effie said. “Let’s keep that straight.”

  “Not the Sam I know,” he said.

  He decided on the spot: let the scene play out. He would study cop tactics, internalize their attitudes, their false aggressive certainties. He would save exculpatory information for later. He wanted to feel the feeling.

  “The feeling?” Effie asked.

  “Impotence,” he said. “The impotence of custody, the debilitating effect of the suspicion and the contempt of strangers wearing uniforms.”

  But then the cops told him that the Robert he’d been looking for was dead. Someone had told them he’d been hunting Robert. It had to have been Tammy.

  “She had my card. She didn’t like me. Practically ripped my face off with her nails the first time I confronted her.”

  “You blamed Sorley.”

  “I lied. Don’t ask me why.”

  Tammy obviously gave the business card to the police. Told the cops that JC had been acting kind of crazy, a maniac, potentially. They found the utility knife he carried in his pocket, asked him to explain.

  He feigned disbelief. It was a household cutting tool, innocuous, forgotten after some domestic chore. It was going to the lab, they told him, for analysis. Did he want a lawyer? No. Okay, then, maybe he’d like to do everybody a favour now by cutting to the chase. Cut your losses. The truth, please and thank you. It was the power of their self-confidence that came closest to unnerving him. He had to remind himself: I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anybody. And then he recalled his own—perhaps cynical—belief: it doesn’t matter if you did or didn’t. If there is evidence that seems persuasive, you will lose what will, in essence, be an argument among disinterested lawyers.

  That was a distressing moment.

  So they had his little knife. Then a skinny cop came in and sat for a while. Asked the other two to come into the hall with him to talk. And when they came back, they seemed genuinely pissed off. It didn’t seem to be an act.

  “They asked about you and Duncan, and I realized you had told them I’d been with him and that you had probably told the truth. That I’d headed off at about nine. So I told the truth then too. Even the part about my half-hour search for Robert.”

  Was he absolutely certain that it had been a half-hour? Maybe it had been a full hour? And he knew that they were looking for “opportunity.” Tammy gave them “motive.” But there was Duncan. Duncan would have seen him, half-hour or not, and would have seen that he was unruffled, no signs of violence. Duncan was the ace in the hole.

  He played the card eventually. He’d been with his friend, the priest, for hours. The priest would verify his innocence.

  Okay, so where can we find this Father Duncan? Well, he was out of town. That was another moment of uneasiness. What if something happened to Duncan? Plane crash. Car accident. Sudden heart attack. You hear about these things.

  “By the way, when is Duncan due back from Nova Scotia?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” Effie said.

  “You haven’t talked to him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, hello.”

  “I wasn’t sure what to tell him.”

  Of course the cops also wanted to know about the missing granddaughter, and how JC knew that she was in Toronto.

  He didn’t, really. Her mother thought so. That was all.

  They said they’d check it out. There was a registry of missing persons, nationwide. Then came the first genuine shock.

  “The head guy, lead investigator or whatever, comes back and says, ‘There’s no missing granddaughter.’ ”

  “No missing granddaughter?” Effie said.

  “He says, ‘What do you have to say to that?’ ”

  “I said, ‘Obviously nothing. If that’s true, I’m an idiot.’ ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘So maybe you went out and dumped some poor asshole for no good reason. Pretty shitty, eh?’

  “I asked what, if anything, they’d found out about the kid, and that was when he told me. Yes, she’d been reported missing over a year ago. But she’d showed up at her mother’s place just before Easter. Fit as a fiddle. Never been to Toronto in her life. Never left Nova Scotia. Case closed. And the cops are looking at me as if I was supposed to know.”

  Effie sighed. “I’m not surprised. I can’t believe nobody thought of telling you.”

  “Why would they?” he said. “You have to remember. For them I’m not real, never have been. It wouldn’t occur to them to tell me.”

  She studied his face and knew that they were at the outset of a conversation that could go on and on and on, perhaps forever.

  “I don’t even know what she looks like. I saw a picture, from three years ago. Coming back on a plane fr
om somewhere a while back, there was a teenage girl sitting beside me. You know how they all kind of look alike. Pink hair and punctures. I was thinking, What if that was her? My own granddaughter and I don’t even know what she looks like. We could be sitting together on an airplane and not know. I hadn’t even known my own daughter. And that’s when I decided to do something.”

  “We have to find Duncan,” she said.

  She watched him as he slept. “Just let me rest my eyes for a minute,” he’d said. Then he was out. He lay there still and silent, mouth slightly open, a hand resting on his crotch, barely breathing. Even though the room was warm, she fetched a blanket and placed it over him. His hair was damp, face pale.

  How well do you know James Charles Campbell? How well did anyone know anyone?

  She remembered years ago, a night when Sextus brought his buddies home—JC was asleep like this and someone borrowed her lipstick, approached him stealthily, smiling, nudging. But the prankster had barely touched JC when he was on his feet, hand raised to strike, a strange expression on his face. He was a stranger in that disembodied moment. And she was shocked by the instinctive violence and felt a sense of loss until the next time that she saw him and was able to recover the reassuring feeling of familiarity.

  Older people would remark, “This one is Angus MacAskill’s daughter,” their insinuation clear: we know him and therefore we know you. But what did they know of him? Familiarity is not the same as knowledge. But sometimes it’s the best we can hope for. We can only love or hate what the other seems to be.

  He coughed, then groaned. She thought of Sextus. He could help.

  His phone rang six times before Sextus answered it.

  “I have to find Duncan,” she said. “Have you by any chance seen him?”

  There was a silence.

  “I’m great,” he said at last. “And how about yourself?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit frazzled. There’s been a death. Duncan will want to know.”

  “A death? Anyone I know?”

  “You don’t know this person.”

  “Well, I saw Duncan this evening, briefly. He dropped by. He said he was on his way to visit Danny Ban. I can get a number.”

  She called Danny and he told her Father Duncan had been there a little earlier and they’d had a great visit. A few drinks and lots of reminiscence.

  “But he isn’t there now?”

  “No,” said Danny. “He left about two hours ago.”

  “Did he give any indication of where he might be going?”

  “No. But himself and Stella left at about the same time. She might know.”

  Stella answered on the second ring. “Yes,” she said, as if completing a response to someone else. And when Effie asked if Stella had any idea how she might get in touch with Duncan, Stella simply said, “Hang on a minute.”

  Then it was Duncan on the phone. “What’s up?”

  She tried to be brief and undramatic. Tammy’s boyfriend, the guy named Robert, had turned up dead.

  “You’re kidding me,” said Duncan.

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “When? How?”

  “Someone killed him. Friday night.”

  “Friday night? I saw him Friday night.”

  “We know. The police have been questioning JC. They think he had something to do with it.”

  “JC was with me most of Friday night.”

  “Yes. The police need a statement from you.”

  “Sure. I’ll call them.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “How can we reach you if we need to?”

  “Call me here.”

  Effie said nothing.

  “Okay?” Duncan said. “I’ll call them in the morning and make some kind of an arrangement. Do you have a number?”

  “Yes,” she said. She fetched the homicide detective’s business card, read off the name and telephone number.

  “I’ll tell JC,” she said.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Okay. Good night.”

  “You are coming back?”

  “Of course.”

  “So when will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Good night, then.”

  She just stood there, studying the silent telephone. When or how can we be sure we know another person? She turned and approached the sleeping form now snoring softly on her sofa. She placed a hand upon a cheek that was rough with bristle. He jerked awake, confused and vulnerable and unfamiliar.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said.

  The phone rang early. The friendly caller asked if JC was there.

  “Who’s calling?” she asked.

  “Tell him Jim, from the office.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face and skull. Laughed briefly into the telephone. “What else does it say?”

  Then, “Okay. I’ll be there shortly.”

  He stood, stretched, yawned. “The Sun has a story, ‘TV producer questioned in Borden murder.’ I have to go to the office.”

  “That isn’t good,” she said.

  “Nobody believes what they read in the Sun. ”

  “When will you be back?” she asked JC as he was leaving.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” he replied, unconvincingly.

  When he was gone, the silence of the house dropped around her like a shroud. It was another hot day with oppressive humidity. She felt a momentary irritation at the thought of Duncan far away in cool Cape Breton. Duncan and Stella. She was mildly disappointed in herself because she found the situation distasteful. Why? What disturbed her? Her brother, the priest, stolid in his certainties, now seemingly adrift on currents that she knew well, the oceanic swells of need and normalcy.

  And then she was angry. She had needs. But my needs, she thought, are always … subsidiary. I am a subsidiary. And she felt the tears and hated them. Who would notice if she climbed in her car and drove away, never to return? But drive where? She didn’t want to think about it.

  She called Cassie’s cellphone. There was no answer.

  She dressed for the hot day outside, but before she left she wrote a note, just in case: “I’ve gone shopping.”

  Sweat was trickling down her spine by the time she got to Bay Street. She descended to the underground concourse. It was cooler there, but she was quickly overwhelmed by hordes of aimless shoppers and appalled at being one of them. She found herself at a Starbucks, not sure why, even mildly repelled by the prospect of hot, bitter coffee. But she ordered one anyway.

  “Large,” she said.

  “Grande or Vente?”

  “Just give me large. I don’t speak Starbucks.”

  The server rolled his eyes. She glared.

  She sat at a small round table, nursing the coffee. Any normal summer she would, by now, be settled in at home. The Long Stretch. How easily she thought of it as home now that she’d reclaimed it. This year she was stranded in Toronto, waiting for JC.

  “Just give me a few more days,” he’d say. June had disappeared like that, and now July was compromised. For what? To find a runaway granddaughter who wasn’t missing after all.

  Then Molly was in front of her. “How are you?”

  Effie mustered a smile. “Fine,” she said. “Sit down. Where did you drop from?”

  “I was on my way home,” Molly said. “How’s he bearing up?”

  Effie shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

  “You haven’t spoken to him?”

  “No.”

  Molly sat. “I was hoping he’d have talked to you by now.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “You haven’t heard about the meeting?”

  Effie shook her head.

  “The word is that they’ve given him a warning. The complications in his personal life are getting in the way of the job.”

  “So what does that
all mean?”

  “It means he could lose his job.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Effie said.

  “He’s asked me to look in on the cat. You know what that means.”

  “He asked you?”

  She shrugged. Then she was gone.

  Her coffee was now lukewarm.

  “May I?”

  She looked up. She didn’t know him right away. “That was the TV lady, from the news,” the man said. He was smiling.

  Effie nodded. Then she was afraid.

  “Molly something,” he said. “I don’t watch much television. But I’ve seen her picture on a bus.” He set his coffee on her table. “You don’t remember me? It’s Paul.”

  He extended a hand. She stood quickly, spilled her coffee.

  “I told you, stay away from me,” she said. And she turned and ran.

  She closed the drapes and sat in the cool darkness, arms folded tightly. JC called an hour later.

  “I’ve been wondering where you got to,” she said. “I have to talk to you.”

  “I’m at home. I had to check the mail. You won’t guess who I just saw on the street.”

  She waited.

  “The dude who put the boots to me at New Year’s.”

  “Oh.”

  He laughed. “I was going to say something, but I realized that he didn’t recognize me. So I just watched where he was going.”

  “And where was that?”

  “The place just a few doors down. Where the gay fellow lives.”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t feel anything when I saw him. No resentment, no embarrassment. I must be better.”

  “Why would there be embarrassment?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “I guess it’s a guy thing.” He laughed. “What have you been up to?”

  “I was out for a while. Look, I really want to talk to you. There’s some guy—”

  “Him again? Can’t it wait till I get back? I have to go away for a couple of days.”

  “JC, please. I want to go home … I just have to get away from this place.”