by Howard Engel
“Who?”
“You know—Lorca, Norrie’s friend.” I heard the door open and close just as I slipped out of bed and put warm feet on a cool floor.
“You have strange visiting hours,” I said as I reached for my pants. I hadn’t brought a bathrobe with me. I lit a candle on the night table and pulled the bed together to hide the snakes and the chase through the woods. The candle sculpted Lorca’s cheekbones dramatically. She leaned against the doorpost. “What’s this all about?”
“You don’t have a drink by any chance, do you?” she said as she pulled a chair around from the kitchen table.
“Sorry, I’m all out. How would you like a lake trout fillet instead? I may have some shampoo or hair conditioner.”
“Skip it. I hope you’re not mad at me for going through your wallet? I didn’t tell anybody.”
“That’s nice to know. What’s eating you at this time of night?” Lorca was wearing tight jeans, a white T-shirt, and a green plaid shirt over it with the sleeves half-rolled.
“Nobody knows I’m here, if you’re worried.”
“What’s happened up at the Woodward place?”
“Norrie’s getting ready to leave.”
“That’s not exactly news.”
“He wants me to go with him and I don’t want to go.”
“Where’s he planning to go?”
“He has some sort of idea to live on a boat for a while. I’d hate that. I don’t want to waste years of my life on a Goddamn boat, never seeing people, never getting ashore because the cops are waiting with subpoenas and warrants. I hate that stuff.”
“But you don’t know yet whether he has to do that kind of a flit. The Supreme Court may rule in his favour.”
“Okay, if that happens I’m happy. I don’t mind living in San Clemente or Vegas. I mean, I know all those people. But I don’t want to become Mrs. Arthur Shipley for the rest of my life. I’m too young to be buried alive running around the Mediterranean Sea. I mean, I can’t even talk to the people. Who would I talk to? I don’t know Greek or Italian or Spanish. I don’t even know any French, except for the names of perfumes.”
“You’ve got troubles all right. So Shipley’s the name on Norrie’s new passport? It didn’t take him as long as I thought.”
“He got the birth certificate almost by return mail. That helped.”
“The Canadian passport is one of the most esteemed the world over. All sorts of people go to great lengths to get one. Tell me, Lorca, what if Patten just goes back to the States?”
“I’ll go with him. I mean, I love Norrie. He’s been real sweet to me. Don’t get me wrong. I like going to the big rallies and seeing Norrie out there and helping so many thousands. I mean, he is truly a great man. But if he’s going to go off and live on a boat and get the news on the radio forget it. He doesn’t need me. I’d rather just get a job somewhere. I was a receptionist once, I can do it again.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“You’re making fun of me, Mr. Cooperman.” She was resting her chin on the palm of her hand with the elbow supported by one faded blue knee. I pulled out a cigarette and lighted it in the candle flame. I tried to look serious.
“What does the name Aline Barbour mean to you?” I couldn’t miss the reaction the name had on her—a slight tightening of her mouth, a small change in her posture.
“I don’t think I know the name. Is she one of the guests at the lodge? I haven’t had a chance to …”
“I thought you wanted help? If I’m going to help you I need to know you’re being straight with me. I know you know what I want to know.”
“Just because I don’t want to run away with Norrie and live on his boat doesn’t mean that I’m going to turn State’s evidence, or whatever they call it up here. Norrie trusts me.”
“Okay, so trust him back. Just tell him you’d prefer to live in San Clemente and hear from him regularly by mail. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“You’re making this hard on me, Mr. Cooperman. I don’t like telling tales out of school.”
“Don’t say another word. I’m on your side. Mum’s the word.” She got up from where she was sitting and began walking around the darkened cabin. I could see her silhouetted in the doorway, and later hear a match strike. The flare of her match caught a white mask-like face for a second. She threw her shadow around the room like a sail in a heavy gale as she shook out the match, then the dark returned, darker than ever.
“There’s a ride back to Toronto with me, when I’m finished up here,” I said to the red end of a suspended cigarette. “And I’ll be finished the moment Norrie leaves. Now why don’t you tell me about that revengeful bitch.”
“You were listening? You bastard! I have nothing but contempt for you.”
“The offer stands. I’ve been called worse. I used to be in the divorce business. Murder’s clean by comparison. Less personal, somehow. Aline’s up here for a reason. She’s not just diving for clams and working on her tan. If she’s planning a big surprise for Patten, the more people that know about it, the less chance it has of succeeding. I’m going to put the kettle on. Will you stay and have a cup of tea?” I couldn’t see her face, but I saw that she was drawing thoughtfully on the cigarette, and I heard her release the breath. I brought the candle in from the bedroom and set it down on the pine table. When I wobbled the kettle, I could feel it had enough water left. I lit the gas burner and set about finding mugs and teabags. I didn’t look at Lorca; I kept my head aimed at the kitchen counter. It was a ploy to make her talk. If it worked I’d know more about Aline; if it didn’t it would be a long time before the kettle boiled.
“Aline used to know Norrie a long time ago. Before I came along. I never met her, but I heard from the boys. She was with him maybe five years. But that was ten years ago. I’ve been with Norrie nearly three years, on and off. We split up one time when he was getting a little too ecumenical with his relationships. I put a stop to that. I moved to Washington and let Van show me around.”
“Who’s this Van I’ve been hearing about?” I asked innocently.
“Van? That’s Senator Gideon Van Rensselaer Woodward. From Vermont. It’s his cabin we’re staying at. He doesn’t come up any more, not since he lost his son.”
“Did Patten meet the senator up here in the park?”
“Sure. He practically adopted him. He was the same age as Gideon Jr., but he was much more at home in the woods. He taught young Gideon all about fishing and trapping and things like that. That’s how the senator got to take such a fancy to Norrie.”
“So later on, Patten followed Woodward to Washington.”
“That’s where everything started. That’s where Norrie saw the blinding light.”
“How long after the kid, Junior, died?”
“He was a teenager—seventeen, eighteen, something like that.”
“Same age Patten went to Washington. Interesting.”
“The senator thinks the world of Norrie. Norrie helped Van get on his feet again after his kid’s death. So what if he helped Norrie when he began his ministry?”
“So what, indeed, Tell me, Lorca, about Aeneas Du-Fond.”
“Who? I never heard of him,”
“He’s lying dead in the morgue at Huntsville. He’s the Indian who was murdered.”
“That’s right. I remember. He came to see Norrie.”
“And he gave something to him and asked him to do a favour. What was it he gave Norrie and what was the favour?”
“It was a lump of gold. I mean it looked like gold. He came to see Norrie the day it rained last week. Was that Thursday? He came in his canoe about an hour before it got dark.”
“Why did he give it to Norrie?”
“Because he wanted Norrie to have it assayed to see if it was real.”
“And was it?”
“Ask him yourself. How should I know? He gave it to Ozzie Prothroe to look after. Ozzie’ll be back tomorrow.”
I got the teabag out of
the first cup and into the second. I added a squirt of condensed milk from a small can with gummy-looking holes punched in the lid. We sat down with the candle between us. Her eyes were very blue, her hair was very dyed. In the candlelight it looked black, but by day it looked like antique furniture, a little darker than chestnuts. I was looking away, conscious that I’d been staring, when a new source of light entered the room. A moving yellow circle bobbed on the dark screen door, like a drunken full moon. I heard a voice in something like a stage whisper.
“Benny? Can I come in?” It was Aline Barbour. When the door slapped shut, I found that I’d stood up without thinking. It wasn’t because I was confusing Aline with the Queen Mother. There were natural laws affecting the behaviour of men in the company of one woman when another comes into the room. It isn’t a question of form; it’s more basic than that. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were—Oh, it’s you! Well, isn’t this cosy. He give you the evening off?”
Lorca recognized the manner if not the face at once. But even that wasn’t long in coming. She took in the jeans, turtleneck, and denim jacket as well as the fresh makeup Aline was wearing. Lorca didn’t move, none of us did, until Lorca’s hand went to her face.
“Turn off that Goddamned light,” she said. Aline didn’t flick off her light at once. She lowered the beam to the table first. I was still finding my tongue. I felt like Archie in the comics telling Veronica and Betty that he could explain everything. But neither of them was looking at me. I could have done a handstand on the table and it wouldn’t have sliced through the daggers running between them.
“Sit down and have some tea,” I said when I could manage to put words together. Aline didn’t budge.
“With her? With Norrie’s incumbent? Don’t make me laugh!”
“We’ve been having a talk,” I said, reaching.
“Is that what you call it now? I’m sorry I intruded.”
“Shut up, Aline, and sit down. Do yourself some good.”
“And interrupt this charming spectacle? Certainly not. I’ll bet the maid doesn’t get a night out more than once every two weeks.” Her eyes were black with anger, and I knew that it didn’t have anything to do with me or this afternoon. Norrie Patten was the third person in the room not me.
“So this is Aline Barbour?” Lorca asked, scanning the figure facing the end of the table, whose face was thrown into high relief by the stub of a candle. “I’d heard that you were good-looking. but now I can see you’re fading away. Norrie likes them young, like me. I guess you know that.”
“You’ll never trick him into a run-of-the-play contract. He doesn’t work that way. You’re all washed up. The only thing is, you don’t know it yet.”
“You Goddamned bitch,” she said flatly, even dully, as she lifted her raised cup in her hand and flung it in Aline’s face. The cup bounced off her raised elbow, but the tea reached her face. She screamed. It must have been shock. It couldn’t have been that hot.
“Get the hell out of here, both of you!” I heard myself shouting, and then heard the hills across the lake yell at them too. “Get out of here, Aline. Just turn around and get out!” I threw her a damp towel from the back of a chair. She turned and went without saying anything. But I could hear her sobbing as she made her way across the field with the aid of her flashlight.
“Well you’ve picked yourself a good enemy,” I said. “Norrie’ll love you for this. What’s to prevent her from going off to get the cops? There’s a reason for all the secrecy, remember?”
“Oh, Benny! What am I going to do? Norrie can’t find out. He can’t! And that woman! She’s got to be stopped! We’ve got to do something!”
“‘We’?”
“Well, yes. You and me. We have to stop her.”
“Look, Lorca. I’d do a lot to please a lady, but I’m not going to try to get between Aline Barbour and Norbert E. Patten without knowing a lot more about them than I do now. A man’d have to be crazy to get involved. Now, I’m all for watching what happens, but I won’t be pushed into the ring with them, not for all the gold in the local gold mine.”
“But I don’t know anything! I’ve told you all I know.”
“Where did they know each other?”
“I told you I don’t know! Why won’t you believe me?”
“There has to be something you remember. Some scrap. Something unconnected with anything else. A fragment, a name, anything.”
“There is a name. I’m not sure where it fits. I heard Norrie say it once, almost to himself. John Malbeck. It’s somehow tied up with Aline Barbour. Don’t ask me how.”
“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. Try to remember anything else. Get back to the cottage now. I’ll think of a reason to drop in tomorrow. Something short of having another shipwreck. Does that make sense?” Malbeck? The name was lurking somewhere.
“Yes. Sure. But please don’t forget what I said. I don’t want to get trapped into an extended cruise. You understand?”
“You have my sympathy, Lorca. You really do. If worse comes to worse you can always bury your passport, can’t you?”
“Benny, I never thought of that. You’re right. There is a bright side. I could be a stateless person.”
TWENTY-THREE
Joan Harbison was still cool when I saw her in the morning. She talked to me about the fine weather and about the fact that an OPP bigwig from Toronto had been asking her questions and pacing off the distances from the culvert to Aeneas’s campsite. She knew he must be a big shot because Harry Glover left his cap on and his shirt buttoned. From the dock, where I went to take a fast swim, I couldn’t see a cop car in the parking lot, only the regulars frying in the early sun. I could almost smell the rubber sizzling.
“Joan, how well do you know David Kipp?” Joan lost a beat as she stirred the contents of a can marked “Williamsburg White.”
“Oh, not so very well. He spends most of his time watching birds. He’s never without his binoculars. He’s from New England. He looks after his kids. What else? He brought me this whiter-than-white paint.”
“Then he’s been up here before?”
“According to Cissy, he and his wife used to be regulars. But she’s been unwell for some years now. Mental, she said, but I didn’t go into it. I’d never seen him before this summer. The paint was a goodwill gesture to the struggling new owner. Cissy said that they used to be very fussy about their food. She said that Michelle once made a fuss about Onions’ not stocking a brand of yoghurt she liked. Can you beat it?” She still wouldn’t look me in the eye. She had a strip of paint on her cheek. Apart from that, she was making a good beginning at the deck chair she was painting. “Why do you ask?” she said not looking up.
“I just had a run in with him. He seems to take himself very seriously.”
“Oh, he’s a fanatic! I like to see lots of people around me when he comes into the Annex.”
I watched her making long strokes with her paint brush along the slats of the chair. I liked the calm it seemed to write on her face as she dipped the brush into the can and carefully removed the excess from both sides of the brush before continuing. I thought a moment about Tom Sawyer whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence, then I went for my swim.
I made it to the raft in about fifty lazy strokes, then hauled myself, walrus-like, out of the water, and flopped on the belly-warming canvas. From this happy position I saw David Kipp come out his door to retrieve some towels and bathing suits from the line. Everything on the shore looked hazy and moved at half-speed. I rolled back into the water again and kicked my way down to the mollusk-strewn bottom. I swam a few metres observing the shadow of the raft. A chain attached to one corner of the raft arced down to a millstone or other heavy weight half-sunk in the fine marl and sand. I swam closer and got a surprise. The anchor was a circular flat stone with an equilateral triangle cut into the nearly buried face of the stone. I rubbed away the fine mud that covered part of it and found myself looking into a rough relief etching of a goat with monstr
ous horns. My lungs were beginning to crack, so I forced my way up through the warmer water at the surface, breathing in a mouthful that was mostly air.
When I stopped coughing, I went down for another look. There was no mistake: the stone anchor was the altar stone I’d seen in Dick Berners’s crude painting in Aeneas’s room in Hatchway. I kicked my way up once more, thinking that the stone was about four metres below the surface. Something was making me feel good. Maybe it was thinking metric so early in the day.
Half an hour later, I was sitting in the Annex with Harry Glover. His shirt was wet under the arms, unbuttoned. There was no sign of his cap, so I knew his superior officer was probably on his way back to Toronto. He didn’t smile when I came in and found a place to sit down. We both knew this wasn’t a social call. How is it that some cops can do their jobs and remain human at the same time? Glover looked worried, tired, and cross, like he’d just had a bad half-hour with his boss and he was going to see if something good could be salvaged by passing on some of the heat to me.
“Ain’t it nice to get paid for taking it easy when the weather is as good as this? Why I hear it’s a real sizzler in Toronto today.”
“You keep putting me in Toronto, Harry. It’s Grantham, remember. We get the breeze off Lake Ontario and the spray off Niagara Falls.” I gave him a glance that I hoped he’d take as wondering whether he was going simple on me.
“That tip about Mr. Westmorland paid off. I had me a long heart-to-heart with the head of Security in Ottawa. It’s Desmond Brewer all right. No mistake about that. And George McCord knew all about it and was trying to make hay while the sun shines. He didn’t get far. But it doesn’t look like Brewer killed him just to shut him up.”
“It’s nice to be sure. How do you know?”
“Well, I mean, an Ottawa type like that? A bureaucrat? Hell, he’d get lost in the bush ten minutes after leaving the lodge. He’s a tenderfoot if I ever saw one.”
“Think again, Harry. This tenderfoot goes white-water canoeing when things get dull at the Treasury Board. Maybe he used to be a mountain climber like the former prime minister. Don’t write off all the Ottawa mandarins as cream puffs. I’m not saying he did it, but right now we don’t know.”