by John Farrow
Two raps, a pause, two more raps, a second pause, one final rap.
As always, secret code.
His one irritation about living in close proximity to his mother was her tiresome habit of visiting him soon after he arrived home. His complaints had caused her to delay her entry by a few minutes, but she could not resist coming up the stairs and sharing a word within the half-hour.
“Hi, Ma.”
“Andy! You were up early this morning!”
“My prerogative, Ma.”
“Where were you off to?”
“My business, Ma.”
“I’m just making conversation.” She was entering deeper into his apartment, scanning, sniffing slightly, curious as to whether or not he was alone.
“You taught me to be secretive, Ma. Don’t complain about the results.”
“Secretive about secrets, Andy. Not secretive for the sake of being secretive.”
Never a tall woman, she seemed to be shrinking daily. Andy had wondered if the process would ever stop, or would she continue to shrivel until, one day, he’d be unable to find her amid her pillows and sheets unless she spoke up. Around the house, she tended to wear her bathrobe over her nightdress, and only when special guests were coming over did she bother to put on a proper outfit and don her cape. Mrs. Stettler was interested in the occult, and had belonged to a secret spiritual group while her son was growing up. Covert knocks and coded rings on the telephone, abrupt moves in the middle of the night and a strict prohibition against outsiders coming into the house had defined his childhood. The techniques came naturally to him now. He could lead a double or a triple life, deceive as easily as breathe. In her dotage, Mrs. Stettler restricted herself to reading tarot cards and hosting the occasional midnight seance. To her friends she was a harmless daffy duck, but her son had taken up the mantle of the secret life. Even she did not know what he did for a living, or how he managed in the world.
“Ma, I’m heading out soon. Is there something you wanted?”
“The TV Guide, dear. I’ve misplaced mine.”
He smiled. She always had an answer, one that never sounded as though it had been divined on the spur of the moment. He had inherited the knack. Andy always had an answer, too.
After sending her on her way with the magazine and wolfing down a quick bite, he headed out for his squash club. This was a lengthy jaunt, for he preferred to live among a mix of French and immigrant populations while socializing in the more affluent English neighbourhoods farther away. He had to drive across the northern rim of the city into the western sector and get off the expressway in a community of shopping malls, bungalows, and split-level homes. Werner Honigwachs was waiting for him when he arrived, and the two shook hands.
“I got a call from Lucy,” Honigwachs told him.
“Already?”
“She’s hot to trot. She thinks I should hire you.”
The two men chuckled.
Honigwachs carried himself with a presidential air. He had a round face, with eyes set wide apart and the cheekbones unusually broad, flat plateaus. Although somewhat small, his nose was distinctive, the tip pushed slightly to one side. His black hair was trimmed to perfection, his fingernails equally well manicured. Trappings of his success were in evidence. Rolex watch. A substantial gold wedding band on one finger, on another a hefty topaz stone nestled in a bed of diamonds on a white-gold ring. The suit was a striped executive grey, a superb fit. Solidity exemplified his appearance, the large, square shoulders sloping to a heavyweight’s chest. That he looked after himself was apparent to Andy, for his body type would noticeably sag if he let himself go. He was a six-footer, around two hundred pounds.
“She told me I had to get through the weekend first, prove myself.”
“The weekend won’t be easy,” Honigwachs cautioned.
“I can handle it. The worse it is, the better for me. A little sympathy will help seal the bond between me and Lucy. You were right, Werner. She’s a babe.”
“Did you meet anyone else?”
“Nope. Wasn’t introduced. She did leave to talk to someone—”
“Randall Largent,” Honigwachs interjected.
“He’s the guy onside, right?”
“Get that straight. Randall Largent, wild white hair, looks like a mad scientist. It’s a studied look, incidentally. He’s neither mad nor much of a scientist. Yes, he’s the one onside. His partner is Harry Hillier, short, stooped, bald on top, baritone voice—he’s not onside. Harry knows nothing about you.”
“Largent knows.”
“Largent knows and I know. Period. To everyone else you’re a lab rat coming in from the cold.”
“Except for Lucy. I’m the man of her dreams.”
“So soon?”
“I got that feeling.”
Werner Honigwachs whistled. “You work fast. Come on, let’s grab a court.”
Andrew Stettler trailed along beside his new client. He decided to forgo discussing his one slip that morning. He had mentioned to Lucy that she was going to give him an enema when he had had no way of knowing that information beforehand. He had passed it off as a fluke, a coincidental remark. For Andrew, as a professional industrial spy, the goof was worth noting. Mistakes could be dangerous. He was playing a part again. The time had come to step into the role. Play it smart, and play it for keeps.
Two and a half days later, early Saturday morning, December 11, 1998
The fluid that Andrew Stettler and the other lab rats were required to drink was a clear, sour-tasting concoction that caused horrific eruptions to assail the intestines. The ordeal was no fun for anyone. The lab rats were seated on pots for hours, evacuating their bowels without respite, while the technicians endured the moaning, the stench, the mess and the sadness that accompanies the humiliation of others.
A few volunteers were instructed to drink slowly, others more rapidly, the results observed and recorded. Among those who drank quickly, Andrew Stettler was one who also vomited frequently, sometimes simultaneously with diarrheal spasms.
Later, in the still of the night, Lucy visited him as he rested on a cot.
“Did I pass?” he wanted to know.
“How are you holding up?”
“My body is Jell-O, my mind mush, my insides feel like cold porridge. I’m fine, thanks. You?”
“If it makes you feel any better, the stench made me nauseous, too.”
He smiled faintly. “Yeah, I feel a lot better. Tell me something. You’ve turned over police cars, had your picture taken carrying an assault weapon, for your job you get to torture men you should be dating. What makes you tick?”
She was impressed that he still had a sense of humour.
Lucy pulled up an aluminium folding chair and sat down by his cot. They were speaking quietly, respectful of the other lab rats sleeping around them. “If,” she said, “you get the job, you know, the one in security, and if the job required stealing a truck—”
“I get the feeling sometimes you’re not kidding me. Go on.”
“And if—I’m being hypothetical here—if we need to steal a truck—I’m just saying if, I’m just giving you a puzzle—we’ll need a driver.”
“I’m your man. I can drive.”
“No,” she told him. “You’re supposed to be the man with solutions, remember? Hypothetically, we’d need a driver who’s not connected with either Hillier-Largent or the other company. You’re already connected to us. You’re drawing a paycheque for this weekend. We need someone totally unconnected—”
“No big deal.”
“—who’s Hiv-pos,” she added.
“Whoa, that’s a complication.”
“Possible?”
Andy tended to the rumblings in his stomach a moment, wincing as a constriction worked through him. “Not only is it possible,” he said, “it’s easy. I know exactly who to call.”
“Really?” She was impressed again.
“No problem.”
“You know an HIV-positive
car thief?”
“Doesn’t everyone? But seriously, his name is Luc Séguin, and he’s not a car thief. He’s a truck-jacker. Born to the trade. Third generation, he says.”
“Get out of town! You know him?”
“That’s my job. At least, I can make it my job.”
She nodded, thinking about that. “Is he gay, this Luc?”
“Does it matter?”
“I was just wondering.”
“He got AIDS in prison, from drug use, that’s what he tells people. I know him well enough to say that he likes women, but things can happen inside. Who knows?”
The next growl through his gullet was a noisy one, and they both laughed a little. She touched his bare forearm where it emerged from the sheets.
“Why do you need someone with AIDS?” Andy asked. When she didn’t answer right away, he added, “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
Lucy took a moment to consider whether or not she should answer. “The driver will see a few things. He’ll meet people who are sick. It’ll help if he’s one of them. I can trust someone more if he’s in the same situation as the people he’s helping out.”
“This is about helping people?”
“It is for me.” She tapped his forearm. “I’m going to set up that meeting with you and Werner Honigwachs,” Lucy promised. “I think you’ll get the job, Andy.”
“That’s great. I’m sorry it won’t be for your company. It would be fun working together.”
Lucy whispered, “Don’t be so sure it won’t happen.”
“So many secrets,” he whispered back. “You excite me, Lucy.”
Smiling, she left him to his rest and his rowdy intestines.
3
EYE TO EYE
Nine days later, Monday, December 20, 1998
Lucy Gabriel stood by the side of the road near her home, her breath visible in the cold. The small bag she had packed rested at her feet. She was wearing cowboy boots, tight-fitting blue jeans that accentuated her long legs, and an old suede jacket. She kept her hands stuffed in the jacket pockets, her neck scrunched in the lambswool collar that once upon a time had been white but now was grey.
An old jalopy, hiccupping black smoke and looking shabby from a distance, as though its fenders had been banged into place that morning, puttered up, with Andrew Stettler slumped down in the front passenger seat, his raised knees pressed against the dash. Up close, the car reminded Lucy of the relics littered across her reserve. She looked at the sky, sighed, then tossed in her bag, piled into the back seat, and, leaning forward, received a peck on the lips from Andy. She held out her hand to shake the driver’s.
“This is Luc Séguin, the guy I was telling you about,” Andy said. To Luc he added, “Told you, man, she’s a babe. Just don’t treat her wrong. If you do, she’ll overturn your car and stomp on it.”
“I seen that picture in the paper,” Luc said. He had a scratchy voice. “That’s why I brought a wreck.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Lucy said.
“Likewise, lady.” He put the car in gear, which didn’t seem so easy, and they drove on through the Kanesetake Reserve.
“Did you talk to your Warrior brothers?” asked Andy. He was sitting sideways and speaking to her through the gap in the front bucket seats.
“I wouldn’t call them my brothers, exactly.”
“You don’t get along?”
“We don’t see eye to eye—let me put it that way.” She shrugged a shoulder.
Andy and Luc exchanged glances. Lucy guessed that Luc Séguin was around fifty-five. He could have been even older. His weathered skin was oddly pale, his blond hair trimmed right to the scalp. He was gaunt, and looked worn. Worn out, perhaps. She didn’t know how ex-cons were supposed to behave, but he was measuring up to her vague preconceptions. His quiet felt more absent than solitary, as if he was accustomed to being in one place while mentally residing somewhere else.
“That surprises me. What do you mean?” Andy’s tone had turned serious.
Lucy rotated her head, stretching her neck and easing an inner tension. The subject was no big deal to her, always more interesting to white people than her own. “If the mayor of some dinky town wants to take our land, if cops attack, if the army surrounds us and tries to cut us off from the world and starve us out, then you better believe we’ll fight alongside each other, one Indian will die for another. But if the Warriors get an idea into their heads to turn the reserve into a gambling den, if they want to sell dope and weapons to the gangs, if they plan to educate our kids to be hewers of marijuana plants and drawers of cards from the bottom of the deck, that’ll provoke a difference of opinion around here. Believe it. I’ll fight alongside the Warriors if we’re attacked. If they try to impose their will on the rest of us, I’m not afraid to kick Warrior ass.”
They were driving through the reserve, where the homes were tidy and plain. A few showed the flag of the Mohawk Warriors, and a number of huts advertised cheap cigarettes and booze, smuggled in from the United States for sale to whites from the city. These were small enterprises, but big business was involved, and big business did not always play by the rules either. Tobacco companies manufactured Canadian brands in Puerto Rico and used Indians to smuggle them into the country through New York State, where their reserves crossed the Canadian border, undercutting high cigarette taxes intended to discourage the young from smoking. Tobacco companies believed in supplying their product at a reasonable cost, while the Warriors believed in doing good business.
Andy was shaking his head in admiration. “You never cease to amaze me, Lucy. I never pegged you as a politician.”
“I believe in what’s right.”
The comment had Andy chuckling. “How about that, Luc? Ever worked on the side of truth and justice before?”
“Can’t say so.”
“Get used to it,” Lucy told him. “You are now.”
“The last time I checked, Lucy, hijacking trucks was not considered right.”
“We’re in this to save lives.”
“How about that, Luc?” Andy pestered him. “You’ll be a national hero.”
“That’s all right.” He steered calmly through the swoops and curves of the country road. “Can maybe I ask you something about the Warriors, lady?”
“Ask me anything you want, Luc.”
“Will they open the border to us? You’re not seeing eye to eye with them, like you said, it makes me wonder about that there.”
“That’s a good question,” Andy put in. “Will they?”
“No problem, guys. It’s a business deal. We cross the border back and forth, they acquire a shipment of cigarettes. It’s got nothing to do with being a Warrior or seeing things eye to eye. It’s pure business.”
Andy, for one, seemed satisfied. He twisted in his seat and faced forward. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want politics mixed up in any of this.”
“Amen,” Luc said. He downshifted as they entered a hamlet and a reduced speed zone.
“Everything’s politics,” Lucy murmured to herself.
“I heard that,” Andy warned her, and reaching back between the seats he grabbed her knee.
They left the reserve and crossed over a bridge downstream at the busy rural town of Hawkesbury, then drove south cross-country into Ontario, keeping to the rural back roads. After an hour they passed into Indian land again, onto the Akwesasne Reserve. The name means “Land Where the Partridge Drums,” referring to the birds’ habit of drumming on rotted logs. As if in kinship, Warriors there had a reputation for warfare. The boundaries for the reserve crossed both the St. Lawrence River and the Canada-U.S. border, a quirk of geography that was proving to be a headache for the authorities and a boon to native enterprises, especially criminal ventures.
At a roadside shack that sold cigarettes, Lucy got out of the car and walked inside. She returned about five minutes later with a hand-drawn map. “Keep going this way for a bit. I’ll tell you when to turn off.”
&
nbsp; After they turned off, the road narrowed and wound through trees. The forest became more dense and wild, and before long they glimpsed the frozen St. Lawrence River through the trees.
“Here!” Lucy called out. A small orange ribbon fluttered from a tree.
Luc had to stop and back up, then make a second turn, down toward the river.
At the bottom of the road they stopped at a command post. A Mohawk took one glance at the two white guys in the front seat and went back inside his hut, returning with a semi-automatic rifle in one hand, the barrel pointed at the ground.
Luc rolled his window down to talk to him, and the man leaned his weight on the doorframe, “Yeah?” he asked.
Lucy spoke to him in Iroquois from the back seat. When she was finished, the guard grunted, issued instructions, and waved them through.
“What’d he say?” Andy asked.
“Drive fast, follow the trees. When we get on the river, on the ice, stop for nobody, especially not Customs agents or Mounties, until we reach the other side. The river’s frozen, but there could be holes. You need speed to cross the holes without sinking. Step on it, Luc.”
Fast was a relative term, and Luc had no guidelines other than the issue of maintaining control over his junkheap on bare ice. For the sake of traction he accelerated slowly, despite Lucy’s vocal whipping, and when he hit fifty miles an hour everyone believed he was doing fine. They followed a route marked by pines stuck in the ice. A pair of snowmobiles appeared to be in hot pursuit, and they were gaining, and from down the lake a four-wheel drive on a crossing lane also was overtaking them. Luc edged it up to sixty, bending his weight over the wheel to maintain control. His whole body shook wherever the ice was rippled. About halfway across, a vehicle approaching from the other side passed them at what had to be close to ninety, and that’s when they knew that they were way too slow.
Luc pressed his foot to the floor. The relic fishtailed on the ice. The doors and side windows rattled, and cold air rushed through a small gap in the floorboards with a flurry of snow, and the springs in the seats shook. Luc had the car up to seventy-five when he said, “Oh, shit.” The embankment on the other side suddenly loomed ahead, a white mound on a white river, and he hadn’t left himself room to stop, not on ice.