Caught (13 page)

He was told the call had come through. Hearn had phoned Slaney and they’d traced the number and got his address in Vancouver.

Chunk of Change

Slaney took the
subway and then a bus to the suburb of Pointe-Saint-Charles, and then walked the suburban streets of Montreal for more than an hour before he found the two-storey strip mall with the dry cleaning outlet. He pressed a buzzer several times but nothing happened.

Everything was closed and just a few bare bulbs burned over the doors down the front of the building. There was an antique shop on one side of the dry cleaner’s with the same ceramic washbasin and matching chamber pot that Slaney’s family had when he was growing up. Slaney was able to see the price of the piss-pot by cranking his neck to the side and it made him swear out loud.

The place on the other side of the dry cleaner’s sold sports equipment. Tennis rackets and water skis, a mannequin in a gold lamé bikini. Slaney was staring at the mannequin with his finger on the buzzer when the door of the dry cleaning outlet swung open.

Stop with the goddamn ringing, Lefevre said. You want to wake my wife? Lefevre had a hard round potbelly and sagging breasts and he was very short.

He brought Slaney through the shop floor. There were racks of white nurses’ uniforms, evening gowns, tuxedos and army fatigues. The clear plastic sheaths over the clothing rippled in the breeze from the front door. The scent of chemicals and scorched cotton.

They took a cobwebbed staircase at the back, each wooden step so damp and rotted Slaney felt the give underfoot. Lefevre’s weight caused him to wheeze and huff and lean for long moments against the rickety stair rail as they descended.

They passed through a maze of concrete walls weeping condensation, corridors that twisted under the stores.

Piles of junk encroached on them in places, spilling over, like in the illustrations of pirate caves in storybooks. Engine parts, cooking pots, broken furniture, and old calendars with faded porn stars; mannequins in fur coats, sequined show dresses, feather boas, and studded black leather get-ups that Slaney had never seen the like of before.

Finally Lefevre stopped before a door of heavy steel that appeared to lead into a walk-in safe. He took a ring of keys from his pocket. He unlocked the door and ushered Slaney inside and the door slammed shut behind them. They stood for several minutes in absolute darkness and Slaney remembered he was supposed to use his intuition and he felt certain he was about to get a knife through the ribs and he stepped sideways, about a foot, crashing into a coat rack that swayed and staggered until he caught it.

Lefevre thrashed his arms around and swore in French. Slaney heard a chain pulled taut and let go and the light bulb hanging in the middle of the cramped office came on and swung hard, making their shadows stretch across the ceiling and sink back into their shoes as if they were knocking each other down and bouncing up for more.

Lefevre forced his bulk between the desk corner and a filing cabinet until he was stuck. He tried to heft the mound of his gut, using both hands, over the corner of the desk and finally told Slaney to help him for the sake of Jesus Christ and for the sake of all the fucking saints in heaven. He asked Slaney why he was just standing there like a useless bastard. He asked other things in French that didn’t seem to call for an answer.

Slaney grabbed the heavy desk and dragged it to the side and the man fell into a swivel chair behind it. The chair creaked under his weight and the casters sent it lurching sideways over the concrete floor.

Lefevre’s face was as grey as newsprint and he was working hard to draw breath. He held one hand, girlishly, over his heart and pointed a finger toward the corner of the room with the other, unable to speak.

Slaney got the bottle of whisky and a glass off the filing cabinet. The glass had a picture of an airline stewardess on the side of it. Slaney poured some and glanced at Lefevre, who rolled his finger in a circle, so Slaney kept pouring until the whisky threatened to spill over the lip. As the whisky filled the glass the uniform of the airline stewardess became transparent and she was naked. Slaney put the drink down on the desk.

My doctor says I have emphysema, Lefevre said when he finally spoke. From which you don’t come back.

He fished in his breast pocket with two fingers and found a white tablet and dropped it into the glass and it fizzed on the bottom and Lefevre drank it down and hammered his chest with his fist, his eyes bulging, a white foam creeping into the corners of his lips.

He drew his chin down, making three distinct folds of his jowls. His neck was spilling out of his tight collar and a slow snarl stole over his broad face until he managed an expulsion of swampy air. The glass touched down on the desk and the airline stewardess’s uniform faded back.

I look at you, Lefevre wheezed, and I see myself. He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded emphatically. He had loosened the tie and was struggling with the button at his neck.

I see myself, Lefevre practically shouted. I see myself forty years ago. Have a drink.

I’m fine, Slaney said.

Please, Lefevre said. Help yourself. Slaney took down the other glass from the filing cabinet. There was a tiny spider stuck in the tacky, dust-furred film at the bottom of the glass. Slaney poured the whisky and he took a swallow.

I hear things, Lefevre said. He pulled open a drawer beside him and offered Slaney a cigar.

I don’t trust hearsay, Slaney told him.

You should be moving around, the man said. He slipped one of the cigars under his nose, inhaling deeply. Slaney watched him and did the same.

Then Lefevre bit off the end and spit it on the floor.

Slaney bit off the end of the cigar he had and also spit.

You’ve been at the same location since you got here. This is what I’m hearing, Lefevre said.

I’ve only been here three days, Slaney said. But he was astonished that Lefevre knew where he was staying.

We’re all involved now, Lefevre said. I’m involved, your friend Hearn, I believe he goes by the name Barlow? There are a few major investors in this enterprise.

He waved his cigar in a circle toward the ceiling to indicate all the people who knew about the job. The people Hearn had involved.

I’m wondering if this venture is compromised. I’m speaking aloud here.

Yes sir, Slaney said. He pushed his chair back an inch. He didn’t like how thick the door to the room was. He thought soundproof. Slaney wished he knew more about who was involved. Where they were getting the rest of the financing.

I’m thinking your friend Hearn may have drawn undesired attention, Lefevre said. He opened the desk drawer again and took out a pistol.

You come out here on your own, Lefevre said. You don’t know me. You walk into a meeting like this? Know what you’re dealing with beforehand. Hearn has left you in a vulnerable position.

Lefevre let the gun glint in his open palm, as if testing the weight of it while he talked. It was a snub-nosed pistol with pearlized plates on the handle and it looked pudgy and coy in Lefevre’s hand. He pointed it at Slaney and gestured for him to lean forward. The light bulb overhead had stopped swinging and Lefevre’s shadow reached to the ceiling.

If my wife finds out about these cigars, he said. He pulled the trigger on the little gun and there was a crack and a flame burst out and he lit Slaney’s cigar and he lit his own.

The smoke made Slaney light-headed and the perfume of it was earthy and floral and he thought of Colombia, an afternoon when he and Hearn got drunk in a bar and two girls joined them at their table and took fans from their straw purses and snapped them open in unison and the fans fluttered so fast they were soft blurs hovering in the dense heat.

Hearn had led one of the girls to the dance floor. They’d stood a couple of inches apart, straight and still. There was no music. Just the clink of glasses as the bartender tidied up and the sound of the surf. But Hearn and the girl were listening hard and then they were gliding all over the dance floor. Hearn twirled her and she spun out and curled back and her skirt flicked up. The girl left at the table with Slaney suddenly turned her fan on him and the cool breeze tickled him all over and blew his curls back off his face.

The same room since you got here, Lefevre said. How do I know this? Again, I am speaking aloud here. I am airing my concerns.

There was the old woman who lived across the hall from Slaney’s bedsit on de la Montagne and she had given Slaney money from a beaded change purse, each of the three mornings since he’d arrived, to buy her a pack of cigarettes. Some of the beads hung on loose threads, this purse she had was threadbare, and her hands shook, pressing the coins, one at a time, into his hand. Slaney wondered if someone had questioned her.

You come here for advice, Lefevre said. And I see myself. We are the same. I’m telling you for free. I hear rumours. I speak as a friend. This is a friend speaking to you now. Why not? I am saying if I were you. This is talk I’m hearing.

Slaney said, I don’t pay attention to talk.

Pay attention, Lefevre said.

People just want to hear themselves, Slaney said.

You listen, the man said, you learn.

Slaney took a moment. Thank you, sir, he said.

You play your cards, and you end up like me, the man said. He waved a hand again, to take in the office and the dry cleaning establishment upstairs, the street and the apartment with his wife above the outlet.

The old lady in the room next to Slaney’s with at least four cats, there might have been more. The first morning she had opened the door a crack with the chain across and looked out at Slaney. She had been startled and afraid.

But then she beckoned to him from the doorway and he spoke to her about the heavy rain and asked how she’d slept and she listened, standing sideways, her ear to the door, like a priest hearing confession, though it turned out she didn’t speak English, and then she closed the door and shuffled away and he’d waited.

She’d shuffled back, these slippers she had, they were a men’s size ten, Slaney figured, and they were fur-lined and the cats were mewling and surging between her feet. He heard the chain unslide and she handed out the money and closed the door. Once Slaney heard some visitors. It sounded like a couple of men, low tones murmuring through the door.

Your partner has a mouth, Lefevre said. This is why I am saying keep moving. This I tell you because I look at your face, your eyes, and I see we are the same, you and me.

Slaney shifted in his chair. One of the legs was shorter than the others and it tipped under him.

I have word the cops know exactly where you are, Lefevre said. They will pick you up tomorrow. This makes investors nervous.

Nervous I can understand, Slaney said. He could smell dry cleaning chemicals, a bleaching taint of citrus, bitter fumes seeping through under the velvety stink of the cigars. His mouth was smackingly dry.

You don’t make this kind of return on your money without nerves, Slaney said.

I like you, Lefevre said. My wife would like you. We tried for children, but sometimes this doesn’t happen. The problem is not on my side. I can hear Monique now. He’s just a boy, she’d say. If she met you, she’d say, Jean-Marie, he’s just like you. She’s very tiny, Monique, but don’t cross her. Once she hit me in the face with a cast-iron frying pan. She would take a shine to you.

I’m sorry I won’t get an opportunity to meet her, Slaney said.

Don’t go back to that room, kid. Sleep on a bench somewhere. You think I’m joking. I’m not joking.

I didn’t think you were joking, sir, Slaney said.

Let me ask you, he said. Can Hearn be trusted? The ash on his cigar grew as he spoke. His index finger hooked over the top of it, his thumb underneath. He was both wedged and slumped in the chair now. It was listing to the side. He put his wet purple lips over the end of the cigar and he squinted his eyes philosophically at Slaney while he inhaled. Each hairy black crumb of tobacco burned orange.

Because the rumour is, he can’t be trusted.

The phone rang in the quiet of the office and Lefevre let it ring. It rang for a long time and he and Slaney observed a silence until it stopped.

Was that your wife? Slaney asked.

My wife is one of these people, she doesn’t take no. You have a girl?

I had a girl, Slaney said. Lefevre opened the drawer again and took out a black vinyl banking sack.

Slaney unzipped the bag and saw thick stacks of twenties and fifties and stacks of one hundred dollar bills with elastic bands and he removed the piles of money and counted them. He put each bundle back in the sack neatly as he finished with it and when he was done he zipped the bag and patted the side of it.

What did you come up with? Lefevre asked.

There’s twenty-five thousand dollars, Slaney said. Lefevre slammed his hands down on the table.

That’s exactly right, he said. The slamming caused another coughing fit. Lefevre’s eyes watered as he hacked. His mouth hung open and his tongue didn’t look good. His shoulders curled in and he was humbled and Slaney thought heart attack.

The wet coughing turned soundless and dry and there was an ugly straining for breath. Slaney thought mouth to mouth. He wondered if Lefevre would die in the chair and whether he would be able to get the door open. Would he pull the man’s carcass up over the staircase, or go upstairs and bang on every door yelling for a woman named Monique who might clock him with a frying pan?

He jumped out of the chair but Lefevre held up his hand to keep him away. Finally he managed to gasp in a hard, rattling stream of air.

They say with emphysema you just get worse and worse. There’s no light they can offer you. It’s all doom and gloom. I don’t give a good goddamn what they say. I’m healthy as a horse.

You look good, Slaney said.

It’s the wife’s cooking, Lefevre said. She’s trying to poison me. She thinks I don’t notice.

I should get going, Slaney said.

She brings home a brochure and wants me to consult a quack. This is a guy they heat rocks and lay them on your back under glass cups. I say to her, Monique, ease up on the arsenic.