Now he fiddled with the radio, tuning through the static. Pop music, country music, the voice of a young woman talking about the latest thing in cellphones, a card that allowed you to load time on your phone with complete anonymityâperfect for pimps and gangbangers... He paused while a reporter told his unseen listeners how a reputed member of the Quebec Hell's Angels had been implicated in the beating death of a bar owner in Saint-Jerome. “Serge Gallant, a member of the Rockers, has been charged...”
Poor bastard probably refused to let
the bikers deal dope in his establishment,
McKelvey thought. A scourge, that's what they were. Uneducated, uncouth, the new bikers resembled very little the professional members of the traditional mob. Back then, things had been so much simpler. The mob only killed the mob. Regular citizens never had to worry about being drawn into the world of organized crime. Now every immigrant faction had its own gang. Vietnamese triads, the Jamaican posses, the Somalian street crews, the Bloods and the Crips up at Jane and Finch, and always the bikers. It was to the point where the regular citizens couldn't go to a night club without wondering if there would be a shooting, a revenge killing, a stray bullet in the spine while you were two-stepping with your lady. When the smoke cleared, there wouldn't be a single goddamned witness; the affliction of momentary blindness could save your life.
Then he spotted the truck pulling into the lot and confirmed the identity by the personalized plates: Tilman58. Every man had his habits. He watched as the driver got out of his truck and shuffled in his untied work boots over to the back door, which was propped open to let in the air. McKelvey waited a minute or two then got out and followed him in, taking a seat in a far corner. The bar was a workingman's hangout, a plain little American-style gin mill. Dart boards and a pool table, the round wood tables scarred from cigarettes, dented with rings from mugs and shot glasses. McKelvey ordered a draft beer, which tasted stale, and he watched Tilman sit at the bar and bullshit with some other working men. The man drank three pints in less than an hour. He was a professional.
The job hadn't left him, so McKelvey noted every detail for later recall or testimony. Tilman was in his mid-forties, with a narrow, pock-marked face, and a balding head with a long strand of hair saved for a combover. McKelvey felt odd. Lightheaded. His body tensed, slick with sweat beneath the shirt and the jeans. He could feel his heart working hard in his chest. He sat there, playing through how things would happen. He was going to do this. Yes. For Tim. For Tim's
wife.
He saw himself, and his wife, all those who had been hurt by Gavin's death. He saw each of them in his mind's eye in their various forms of torment. As though they had been poisoned by grief. The silent promises, the pledges, the crying, and he knew this would be easy. Anything would be easy when held up against this thing which they had just come through...
At last the man's seasoned bladder put the plan in motion. McKelvey waited a beat then stood slowly and followed Tilman into the washroom. The room was grungy, dimly lit. Graffiti scrawled on the two cubicles, a battered metal condom machine fastened to a wall. The room reeked of piss and sweat, a deep funk. Tilman was standing at a urinal, head forward and eyes closed as he relieved himself. McKelvey walked up to the other urinal and pretended to unzip. He hauled a deep breath, steadied himself.
“Friggin' beer goes straight through you,” McKelvey said. “It's like paying to piss all night.”
Tilman made a noise with his throat, some sort of guttural acknowledgment.
“I shouldn't even be drinking. I got a suspension last month,” McKelvey added.
Tilman zipped up and took a step to the stain-splattered mirrors, the counter drenched in water and old soppy paper towels. He began to run fingers through his thin hair, adjusting it.
“Just stick to the speed limit, man,” Tilman said. “Pigs got no reason to pull you over.”
McKelvey pretended to zip his pants as he stepped just behind Tilman now, putting in place the sequence of events like watching a film, how this thing would happen frame by frame, and he stepped outside of himself, his hand sliding into his coat pocket and bringing out the piece of broom handle, bringing it straight out and up with all of his weight behind the thrust, the handle digging into Tilman's kidney like a jolt from God.
The man let out a wild noise, the yelp of a wounded animal, his body twisting sideways in agony. McKelvey grabbed the man's collar and swung him around, bringing the broom handle up again, this time burying it deep in the soft round stomach. A whoosh of sour air exploded from Tilman's mouth as he struggled to comprehend, to keep his footing, red eyeballs stretched wide in surprise. McKelvey took hold of the collar again, tightly, this time driving the head down towards the urinal, pushing the man's face into that porcelain bowl with its glued pubic hair and the old deodorant puck half dissolved from the piss of countless patrons. Tilman's mouth bounced off the porcelain with a sickening smack, and McKelvey saw an explosion of blood, his own jaw clenched to the point of aching because it felt good, and it was all he could do to stop himself, to rein this thing back in.
“...what'd I do to you?” Tilman sputtered, teeth stained red.
McKelvey said, “It'll come to you,” and he left the man slumped against the wall. He walked briskly out through the bar, walking with his head held high, with a sense of purpose. He understood this atmosphere, understood that witnesses rarely were able to recall with any vivid description a suspect who did not draw attention to himself in some spectacular way, in fact simply blended into the world around him, his cap pulled low. In the parking lot McKelvey gripped the piece of broom handle and smashed the left side brake lights on the blue Ford pickup with the personalized plate. It took four or five hard shots before the plastic finally gave.
He got in his truck and pulled away from the street just as he spotted Tilman stumble through the back door, a line of blood running down his chin, staining the neck of his shirt. The sort of man, McKelvey knew, who would go looking for some payback. In fact, McKelvey was depending on this vengeful streak within the man's makeup.
McKelvey sped away, taking a left then a right, then ducking down a side street. His breath coming hard now, everything around him soft and muted as in a dream. He used a payphone outside a corner store to report the vehicle and its drunken driver to the police.
“Guy's just pulling out of Clyde's,” he said. “Blue pickup, personal plate, Tilman58.”
“Can I get your name please sir?” the operator asked.
“He's drunk and he's dangerous,” he said, and hung up.
He jogged back to the Mazda. As he pulled away from the curb, he glanced in the rear view and was startled by his own image. He wasn't himself, not then.
Who the fuck are you
?
M
cKelvey pulled into the driveway, ran up the steps, and made it to the bathroom just in time to vomit in the sink. Stooped over, hands gripping the sides of the vanity, his stomach clenching and releasing like a bellows, spewing his poison until he was an empty vessel, nothing left but the dry heaves to wrack his body in rivulets. He began to shake and had to wipe away a line of acidic bile that hung like a newly spun spider's line from his chin, a moist and glittery silver.
He splashed cold water on his face, and it stung, hot then cold.
Christ almighty.
He raised his head level to the mirror, his eyes red, unfamiliar. He wiped the water from his face and waited in the silence for an answer, a clue to the future trajectory of his life. An arc rising, soaring, then falling back to earth. He held his breath, listening to the silence, then the sounds came on: the rush of blood in his inner ear, the slow drip of water from the tap, the drops exploding like thunder against the porcelain.
He towelled his face as he moved to the kitchen in search of a drink to calm his nerves. As he passed by it, the phone on the wall rang, startling him. He snatched the receiver and spoke.
“McKelvey.”
“What are you doing?” Hattie said. “You sound like you've been jogging or something.”
“Square dancing,” he said.
She laughed and said she was on her way over. She had some news she thought might be of interest to him. “A juicy bit,” is what she called it.
“Might not be a good time,” he said, “I was just getting ready to jump in the shower.”
“Oh, I don't mind,” she said and hung up.
McKelvey raced back to the bathroom, jumped in the shower, and scrubbed the guilt and the sweat from his body, scrubbed away the residue of his criminal activity. He bowed his head, put his palms to the tile wall, and clenched his eyes shut.
What is happening to me?
he thought.
I'm supposed to
be the law... I
was
the law for the better part of my life... Am I
lost, or am I found? Was this within me all along, waiting for me
all these years?
He was towelling himself dry as the doorbell rang. He stood there for a moment and took a couple of deep breaths. He tied the towel around his waist and, a little embarrassed, opened the door for Hattie. She was dressed in new jeans and a sweatshirt. She was beautiful standing there with her toes pointed together, a tomboy come to call on McKelvey to go frog hunting, her red hair pulled back into a thick ponytail, unruly strands making their escape. McKelvey thought she might even have been wearing some makeup. There was a faint black line beneath her eyelashes. He thought she looked like a million dollars.
“Come in,” he said, “I'm just getting changed. Go ahead and sit down in the kitchen. Well, there's no other place to sit, actually. I'll be out in a minute.”
“When are you going to buy some furniture, McKelvey?” she said.
“I was thinking I might take up woodworking, build my own,” he said. “You know how retired people are supposed to have all these hobbies.”
He heard her laughter as he turned into the bedroom. He tossed the towel to the floor and picked up a pair of boxers from the bed. He was standing there, in the middle of the room, one leg in his underpants, when he froze. He heard the door open quietly, or perhaps felt the presence first, and he turned to see Hattie standing there, a girlish grin on her face, staring at his naked ass. His face rushed with blood, his heart in his mouth.
“My god, you're so
bashful,”
she said, taking a step inside, standing with her back to the door now. “That's what I like about you. You're old-fashioned. Even your underwear is old-fashioned.
” He put the other leg through and stood there, half-naked before her. He snapped the waist on the shorts and shrugged. He gave her a smile, a boy's grin beneath a head of curls.
“They're just boxers,” he said.
“Yeah, like my dad would wear. We'll have to get you some Calvin Kleins or something.”
They looked at one another. The tension which had truthfully existed between them from the moment they first worked together was out there now in the three feet that separated them. McKelvey felt himself stir, his cock beginning to flow with life, with possibility. He was standing in the centre of the master bedroom, the bedroom he had shared with his wife, and it felt like cheating. He grabbed a pair of khakis from the bed and slipped them on.
“Come on,” she teased, “don't spoil all my fun.”
“Hattie,” he said.
He moved to the door, but she didn't budge. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to him, waiting, expectant. “Cost you a kiss,” she said.
He exhaled and realized he was shaking inside. Like he was fifteen again, slow dancing in the school gymnasium with Wendy Parker, smelling her lip gloss and wondering when he would get a chance to taste it.
“Fair trade,” he said, and kissed her quickly on the mouth.
It was strange at first, because they were friends and colleagues, then they kissed again, and it was good. He put a hand to the base of her back and pulled her to him, to his mouth. Their tongues touched, and she tasted like coffee. Her hands moved across his naked back, and he felt himself fully involved. The room spun in slow circles, and he pulled back.
“Let's have a drink,” he said. “Some wine. First, I mean.”
They stepped apart, and Hattie fixed her hair as she followed him back to the kitchen. She sat at the empty table while he got half a bottle of red wine from a cupboard. It was all he had, and he told her so. That and a little rum or gin that had been hanging around since some Christmas he couldn't recall.
“I'm a Maritime girl,” she said. “I grew up drinking wine made in a bucket and Schooner beer. I can roll a pretty good cigarette with Drum tobacco and Player's papers, too. My dad and his brothers, they were all fishermen. When they worked, they really worked, but when they didn't work, which was often, they were prone to drinking and playing the fiddle. In fact, I bet I could beat you in both arm wrestling and beer guzzling, perhaps even farting and horking.”
He poured them each a glass and sat beside her. He felt flushed from the day's activities. He felt like a husband hiding a secret life as they sat there drinking the wine.
I'm a criminal,
Hattie,
he heard himself telling her.
I assaulted a guy tonight...
“I know what you're up to,” she said, as though reading his mind.
“Oh yes? And what's that?”
“Don't treat me like that, Charlie. I know what you've been working on, where everything is headed. Why do you think Aoki asked me to follow you around?”
This caught McKelvey completely off-guard. He raised his head and turned to look at her.
“She got you to fucking spy on me?”
Hattie's face softened, and she smiled benignly. “Don't look at it that way. She's worried about you. What you might get yourself into. I am, too, to be quite honest.”