The Weight of Stones (9 page)

They moved away from the high-rise hotels, the Marriotts and the Deltas, past the industrial strips and storage units and all-night gas stations glowing like space stations, until finally the driver pulled into a two-level complex called Grand Motel. A big sign on the road promised cable TV and free local calls. It was a dive. She could already envision the polyester floral print comforter, the hideous artwork hanging crooked above the bed with the abused mattress, glasses with water stains turned upside down on the bathroom counter, the cheap rectangle of soap loosely wrapped in paper. The driver eased the car around the lot, reading the numbers on the doors. She watched him the whole time, waiting for him to let her in on the joke. This wasn't the kind of place she was used to. He stopped in front of Room 14.

“What is this?” she said.

“This is the place. Luc set it up.”

“Perfect.”

She wondered what Duguay would think of them sending her here to this place. Would he care? It didn't matter anyway, because Duguay wasn't here now, as Luc and the others had made clear. It was funny with these men, with their blue tattoos and thick arms, their big talk and swagger. All the talk of loyalty, brotherhood, death before dishonour. How quickly they forgot. Duguay wasn't inside a day before Luc and the others were already jostling for control.

“Are you okay?” Gerry said.

She didn't say anything. She had a bad feeling, which was unusual. Perhaps she wasn't drunk or high enough. That could be it. Three months—ninety-six days to be exact—off the rock, and nobody had a clue as to the true depth of that single achievement. Fucken Jezus. Like winning every award in the world all at once. At least
she
was proud of it, proud of herself. Everyone underestimated her. They didn't know that she was going with the flow until she could save enough money to get out. It wasn't her life, wasn't her future. Just a means to an end. She was resilient and had more guts than anyone could ever know.
Fuck them all. They'll find out one
day when I'm long gone...

She longed for a joint now and hoped whoever was inside Room 14 was a partaker. It would mellow her out, soften the rough edges of the night. Or another drink at least.
Something
. She fumbled in her purse for her cigarettes and lit one. She blew a line of smoke from the corner of her painted mouth directly at Gerry, who sat at the wheel with a pained look on his face.

“Sorry, eh,” he said.

“It's okay,” she said to him.
How, typical girl, soothe the
asshole who drove you here to get laid by a stranger.
“It'll be fine,” she said. “That's me. F.I.N.E. Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.”

“What's that?” he said.

“Oh, just a stupid saying they had in the detox,” she said.

“Be careful,” he said.

She got out, put her mask on and went right up to the door. She knocked three times as Gerry moved around the corner. She knocked again and heard some noises from inside the room, something being knocked over, someone swearing at themselves, and she closed her eyes for a second and hoped with all her heart that the customer was drunk, too drunk.

Afterwards, the girl with the black hair stares at herself in the fogged mirror of the motel bathroom. Her face distorted by the steamy glass, she appears as a ghost to herself. And she
is
a ghost. It's how she feels inside most of the time. Just the trace of a girl, a charcoal sketch. She is an outline.
I've been
waiting,
she thinks,
for someone to come and colour me in…

Nine

T
he ringing of the phone on the night table tore McKelvey from the ether of a restless sleep. It was dark yet, and his fumbling hand set the clock radio blaring, a disembodied voice on the AM talk news station ranting about the Maple Leafs' final games to be played that year at the historic Gardens. He flicked the light on and hit the radio with the flat of his palm enough times to make it stop. It was only then that he realized Caroline was already up and out of bed. A return, perhaps, to those darkest days when McKelvey had woken to an empty bed and found her sitting in the living room staring out the bay window at nothing at all as the sun spread like honey across the darkened street. Now she came in from the kitchen, dressed in her robe, her hair tied back. She watched him and waited.

He grasped the receiver and made a noise. It was Aoki. That simple fact promised bad news. He made a motion with his hand to indicate it was about his work, and Caroline receded. He felt as though he were watching everything unfold in a Sunday night movie, looking down at his bloated body sitting on the side of the bed, hair tousled, face wrinkled by sleep.

“I wanted to tell you before you heard it on the news,” she said. “The star witness Marcel Leroux was found hanging in his segregation cell late last night.”

He cleared his throat. “I see.”

“I'm sorry, Charlie.”

How many times had he heard this same phrase? He couldn't stand to hear it any more.

“So,” he said, “what happens with the Duguay trial? Everything was on Leroux.”

“I'm not sure what their plans are at this point,” she said.

He made a noise with his throat again, holding it in, and said, “Well…”

“But no, it doesn't look good. Without Leroux, there isn't much of a case. His lawyers will have a motion for dismissal drawn up before court's open today.”

“I appreciate you calling like this, Tina,” he said, nodding. Nodding, for he saw things laid out clearly now. How he had been a fool to place his trust in the system, when he knew what he knew. For the system
was
broken. He was part of the system, he was the system, and yet he knew in the deepest parts of his heart that it was a ruined machine. He had lost faith. It was not an easy conclusion to reach. But it was what it was.

“You're off today, so take some time, Charlie. Do something with Caroline to get your mind off all of this stuff,” Aoki said. “I'll let you know as soon as I hear from the Crown. Okay?”

“That's right,” he said, but his mind was already gone, already thinking ahead.

He hung up, fell back on the bed and closed his eyes in an effort to regain his focus.
Breathe, Charlie. Inhale, exhale.
The line of fire was stoked in his belly once again, rising like liquid flame.
Jesus Christ almighty.
He sat up and looked around the room, searching for something, anything. It was a necessity. Bottled up, a gas threatening to erupt. His hand grasped the clock radio, and he hurled it against the far wall, hurled it hard. It exploded in a spray of plastic shrapnel and electronic bits, coloured wires hanging, and the sharp sound sent Caroline running back into the room. Her eyes moved between the dead appliance and the dent in the drywall, and finally settled on McKelvey, sitting there on the edge of the bed. He just looked back at her. The room was silent. She turned away, and he dropped back to the mattress, exhaling the poisoned breath of his life.

The witness Marcel Leroux had been found hanging in his cell, true, but he had not died. Not right away. His throat was a purple bruise, his brain destroyed by lack of oxygen. Officials began the difficult task of locating next of kin. His nearly lifeless body was removed from the jail in Owen Sound where he had been housed in secrecy awaiting the trial. McKelvey listened to the news as he drove his little truck to a coffee shop around the corner from the police headquarters. The all-news station reported there would be a significant and far-reaching investigation. How the witness had come to do the job—uninterrupted—was beyond fathoming. A so-called expert on organized bike gangs was explaining to the news reporter that Leroux was a “pioneer”, the first member of the Blades to turn against his brethren. While the organization had deeper roots in the southern United States, they were new kids on the block up north. Eventually, the expert said, every organized crime faction must face this cold hard reality; personal survival trumps loyalty. The Hell's Angels had had their sellouts, and the Mafia, too. It was only a matter of time.

“I would imagine,” the expert said, “it finally dawned on Mr. Leroux that, once he testified and was sent to prison as part of his plea bargain, he would require protective custody twenty-four hours a day. He would always look over his shoulder...”

Now it was Duguay who would be looking over his shoulder, McKelvey thought as he parked and walked up the sidewalk. The coffee shop was always busy with cops and office workers from the nearby towers. He breathed in the rich scent of freshly ground beans, soil and wood, the flash of chrome and hissing steam. Young men and women of university age joked and moved like dancers behind the counter, repeating orders in their sing-song voices. McKelvey spotted Hattie at the back, seated at a round table. She gave a wave when she saw him, and he made a drinking motion as he went to the counter. She held a mug aloft and shook her head. He ordered a large black coffee, bold as the law would allow, then went to the milk stand and poured a little sugar in, stirred and stirred. He took a sip as he negotiated his way to the table. Someone recognized him, an old duty sergeant, and McKelvey nodded in return.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said and took a seat.

“Any excuse for a coffee,” she said.

He took a mouthful and waited for the furnace working in his belly to respond. It was quiet. He said, “Funny, I've never seen you drink anything but coffee. I thought all of you people from the east coast were tea drinkers. Like a religion or something.”

She told him she was an unrepentant four-cup-a-day coffee drinker and how her mother completely ruined her for tea, practically pouring the stuff down her throat three or four times a day. They drank tea with breakfast and supper, they drank it to cure the common cold, hangovers, athlete's foot and unemployment. They simply guzzled the stuff, and “no excuse for a cup was ever too shady,” she said.

McKelvey was tired, and he knew he looked worse than he felt. Hattie had said as much. “Look like a drunk with a hangover and a bad cold,” was how she had put it. Now the coffee shop began to bulge with the lunch crowd, and they ordered pre-wrapped deli sandwiches and more coffees. McKelvey picked at his roast beef sandwich but couldn't muster an appetite.

“Are you okay? You're a little pale,” Hattie said, working on a mouthful of egg salad.

“Just some heartburn,” he said.

“Did you get the flu shot this year?” she asked.

“Come on, Hattie, what are you, my mother?”

“I wish you'd call me Mary-Ann sometimes,” she said and licked at a dab of egg at the corner of her mouth.

“And yet you call me ‘McKelvey'. Always have,” he said.

She shrugged and smiled. With her red hair and freckled cheekbones, she struck McKelvey as the sort of woman who forever remained a little girl at heart. Despite her best attempts to alter perceptions, despite even the fact that she carried a gun and was a damned fine shot on the range, she hadn't let the job completely snuff that softer side buried in there. He wondered if she struggled at times with the evil things men do within this world of violent crime. And it
was
men, almost entirely. McKelvey could see her clearly as a precocious eight-year-old with pigtails asking a million questions and driving her parents around the bend. She had been a tomboy, he bet. He saw her wearing a dress with a tear in it from a nail down at the dock, watching her father fix the netting on the boat, or simply waiting for him to come back from the sea.

“It's more acceptable to call a guy by his last name,” she explained. “It doesn't take anything away from his machismo. In fact, I would argue that it adds to his image as a gruff, unemotional male. Like in team sports, everybody calls out the player's last name. For a woman, on the other hand, calling her by her last name erodes a little of her...I don't know, her
femininity.”