River City (82 page)

“Yet, the man on the street is accommodating violence.”

“The man on the street is undecided. That in itself is worrisome. But the man on the picket line, the union man, the man in the tavern, the man whose politics are suddenly moving from prehistoric worship of a king, and when there was no longer a French king, the Church, that man is accommodating the idea of violence. I would say the romance of violence.”

“Why romance?”

“Kids today,” Father François opined, “not to sound like an old fart, but, I guess I am one now—kids today believe that victory can be won through violence. Mao is telling them so, and some are listening.”

“Victory,” Trudeau scoffed. “We create new victories every day. As I said a while ago—the press loved this one—the universe is unfolding as it should.”

“The flower child in you, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“Or the priest in me. Yet it’s true. We don’t hold the future as a vision in our heads, we create the future through our daily lives, one day and one idea at a time.”

“Some more so than others,” Father François said. Trudeau looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Some of us are able to create the future a day and an idea at a time more than others are able to do.”

The prime minister leaned forward a touch, placing his palms down on the narrow armrests. “We’ve arrived at the nature of your grievance.”

“Sir? My grievance?”

“No one enters this office without one.”

Although he had run this conversation through in his head countless times already, the priest took a moment to consider his words. “Mr. Prime Minister …”

“Yes, Father?”

“I’ve had a visit from an officer of the law.”

“I see. I presume you understand that the Mounties sweep my office on a regular basis, searching for listening devices.”

“I would presume as much. The Russians have spies everywhere, we’re told.”

“Never mind the Russians, although they’re bad enough. The Americans worry me the most. Well, actually, do you know who worries me the most?” Father François mouthed the words,
The Mounties?
“Right you are.”

The priest nodded. He understood. “I intend, sir, to be circumspect. You will recall an implement.”

“An implement,” Trudeau repeated. “You’re referring to a certain farmer’s shovel?”

“Correct. An officer of the law visited me with respect to a farmer’s shovel.”

“Why you?”

“I have known a variety of people who have shown an interest in the shovel over time. Including yourself.” “Me?” the prime minister inquired.

“That’s correct, sir. Not that anyone, to my knowledge, is pointing that finger. Rumours persist, on the other hand.”

“Rumours. Yes.” The PM eased back in his chair. “Apparently, I’m homosexual now. Have you heard that one?”

“Khrushchev’s your lover, I’ve been told.”

They both laughed. “Nikita’s not really my type. Others say I have a thing for Fidel. At least no one’s put me in bed with Reagan.”

“I’m glad, sir. Some people, however, have said that you have a passion for that farmer’s shovel. That story goes around and around.”

“Nothing I can do about it. That thought’s been on the Ferris wheel.

What’s new?”

“A new detective is on the case. A young man. He paid me a visit.” “Fresh legs.”

“A fresh mind, I’d say, sir. A bright young lad. Also of interest, I’ve learned that the deceased …” Father François paused to allow the PM a moment to catch the reference.

“The first?” the PM asked.

“Yes, sir. Among his, ah, other talents, shall we say—”

“What shall we say?”

“He also worked for the police.”

The PM nodded, comprehending. “That explains the unending enthusiasm.” “Correct, sir, among other contributing factors of which we’ve always known.”

“Such as?”

“It’s a big case. Monumental, I’d say, in a policeman’s career.”

“Of course. Yes.” Trudeau tapped his fingers on his blotter. “Father, this is why you’ve come?”

“I’ve corollary interests, shall we say. A pair. Like bookends.”

Trudeau waited. Father François knew the truth, knew for a fact while others were left merely to speculate. Not that the priest could prove anything—it would be one man’s word against another’s—and the cleric was also culpable, as the entire affair had begun as his idea. Still, he was in the know, and so both trust and suspicion necessarily passed between the two old friends.

“Although I’m a priest, you know me to be a modern man, Mr. Prime Minister. Yet all of us, modern men in particular, are complex, often contradictory. We’re an odd species. I’m an advocate for logic, philosophy, theology, symbolism and even, to a guarded degree, magic.”

“Magic,” echoed Trudeau.

“You have accomplished so much, Pierre. Your success has done nothing to diminish, in my mind, the power of an icon.” He shrugged. “I’m in the Catholic Church—”

“Many have wondered how, given your ideas.”

Father François smiled, in a way that suggested cunning rather than a happy moment. “The power of an icon,” he said. “I have never promised what
I am unable to deliver, but I have always been attached to a certain understanding, a willingness on my part, an accessibility granted to me by God and through my associations.”

“An accessibility.” Speaking in code took a toll on the prime minister’s famous impatience.

“Here I am, after all, seated in this august room.”

Trudeau nodded. Smiled. “No one enters this office without a grievance, Father, and no man enters this room without wanting something from me.”

“Where will it go, sir, when your work here is done?”

“Our farmer’s shovel?” The prime minister gazed across at his visitor. He was not sure yet if he was being judged, courted or threatened, and he realized he might never know that answer. “You have a suggestion?”

“In the past—at the pertinent time, shall we say—the Church was undeserving, in my opinion, of a good man’s philanthropy. But the Church has been dissected since then. Torn down. Its prestige and authority and a goodly measure of its wealth—locally, at least—stripped away. We’re becoming a different Church. We have a long way to go, and our worldly destination will perhaps forever remain unknown, other than the gates of heaven. So I’m suggesting to you that, given your own faith, given all that you have achieved, and deservedly so, that you might consider an act of philanthropy when that day, in a distant future, arrives.”

The man who bore the responsibilities of a nation in a time of increasing and vexatious tension mulled over the conversation. He kept wondering why the priest was making such a proposal now, wondered also if, in future, he shouldn’t accept the advice of his office secretary more readily. “Father, you mentioned bookends. You have another thought?”

“You asked what word I’ve heard amid the clergy. From within and without, Mr. Prime Minister, dark matters have come to my attention. Which, in truth, is what brings me here today.”

“Ah.” Now, perhaps, they would get somewhere.

“Our old cronies,” the priest began.

“Which ones?”

“I’m remembering the Russians, sir, and the Americans.”

The potential for hidden microphones, yes. The potential to be betrayed by your friends. Trudeau nodded to indicate that he understood, although he still didn’t know what was meant by “cronies.”

“As young men, we were aware of them. I’m being facetious. A certain order, sir, an adversarial force.”

The Order of Jacques Cartier.
All right, he understood the reference now. He felt his skin tighten on his bones, as though an invisible hand was cinching him up.

“They persist, sir. They continue to look for a way to take advantage of the times. They would hope for chaos, revolution, an opportunity to contribute further to the chaos, in the hopes of creating a power vacuum that they might rise to properly fill. I’m here, sir, to make the point that our infamous shovel must be used to dig the proper field. The right trench. It cannot be passed around for any man to dig whatever well he chooses.”

Father François feared Trudeau might sell the knife, perhaps as a way of unloading a political liability, either now or in the future, to clean up his legacy. In the wrong hands, Cartier’s dagger—whether because it did possess an intriguing magical influence or merely due to its symbolic majesty—might readily encourage retrograde thinkers. The knife had been in the wrong hands when Trudeau had bought it, but it had been too hot for those in charge at that time to handle. Apparently, they had been disorganized then, in desperate need of money, or they had feared what they possessed, or who knows what chaos had existed within that tribe. Perhaps the ascent of an often-unemployed lecturer to the office of prime minister had opened their eyes to the relic’s potential properties. In any case, this secret band of adversaries knew to whom they had sold what they had sold, and now a fresh contingent of like-thinking foes wanted the knife back. Father François was here to issue fair warning, and to plead that its line of descent be carefully selected.

“If I respond, would you take the information somewhere?”

“Well, not to the Jesuits, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“Neither to the Dominicans.”

“My Sulpician friends, on the other hand—”

“—might continue to be friends.”

With a slight bow of his head, the celebrant indicated that the PM understood his position.

Trudeau thought about it awhile. Possession of the dagger was a burden. While he could never proclaim its mystic power, he could not deny his extraordinary and improbable rise to power, and so would not dismiss its potential for magical properties, either.

“When that time comes,” he told Father François, “your proposition will be fairly considered, and at this moment stands in good stead.”

Gobbledygook. They were suggesting a transfer of power back to the Church once Trudeau’s political days were done—such was the perceived importance and vitality of the relic. The matter of its illegality, or of Trudeau’s questionable ownership, would never be broached between them. Yet Father François had also delivered a more important message—namely, to be circumspect. The array of forces aligning against him might be more diverse, and more concealed, and better organized, than those represented by idiot bombers.

“Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for your time. You’ve been most kind.” “Good to see you, Father. Someday, again, we might bump into each other on the streets of Montreal.”

“Hopefully in peaceful times.”

After the priest’s departure, the PM’s secretary reclaimed the room. “Well,” she recited, for she had probably been rehearsing her remarks the whole time she’d been gone, “may we return now to affairs of state?”

“I thought it was lunchtime?”

“Your luncheon will be with the commissioner of the RCMP, remember?”

“Ah. The commissioner. Good man. We’ll want to discuss that bombing.”

“Yes, Prime Minister, you may wish to discuss the bombing, if that does not conflict too much with chatting with your old friends.”

She was adjusting the curtains to admit more light, another of her habits that expressed annoyance.

Having spent hours alone during the day, taking a long hike with Ranger and napping in a park bundled in a bulky sweater under a warm sun, Anik Clément had returned home to sequester herself in her bedroom. She left for dinner at a fast-food restaurant, where she’d enjoyed silly banter with a pair of local characters in rags, then back to the house. She still did not speak to her mother. Finally, after she’d heard Carole depart the washroom and enter her own bedroom for the night, she came out from under the covers. She lit a candle in her room, watched the flame awhile, then changed into her pyjamas and crossed the hall to brush her teeth. Done, she tapped lightly on her mother’s bedroom door off the kitchen. Anik tiptoed inside and crawled in next to her mom, who was sitting up with the reading light on, a book in her lap.

They lay there, together like that, mother and daughter, silent.

Finally, Anik asked, “Why, Mom?”

She couldn’t hate her for life. She was her mother, and they were close.

“Two reasons,” Carole said. She’d prepared her explanation.

“The men who came to our house, my babysitters,” Anik interrupted. “Did you put them in jail?”

“If I thought somebody was a good guy, I gave him a pass. I wasn’t all business. Your babysitters got off scot-free.”

“Some of them went to jail.”

“Not on account of me.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“I’m not lying to you, Anik.”

“You’ve lied to me all this time, Mom. For God’s sake.” She closed her book and put it aside. “If it was you, exactly when would you tell your daughter that you were a police informant?”

Anik didn’t think she’d ever be in such a position—that was the difference. “Why?” Anik asked again. “Two reasons.” “I’m listening.”

Carole took a breath. “Primarily, to help the police find who killed your father.”

Anik nodded. She liked that answer. “What else?”

“To make money.”

“Aw, Mom.”

Anik made a move to crawl back out of bed, but Carole restrained her with a gentle hand on her wrist. At that moment, Ranger joined them, but he was weary and he curled up at the foot of the bed.

“I was a woman who had to support a daughter after suddenly losing her husband. Back then, the union busters tried to prevent me from working. Do you understand? Life was hard, Anik. I wasn’t sending good men to jail. I was preventing crimes from being committed, seeing that the worst guys got sent up. A killer, once, and some mean guys. Some shithead was going to pull a bank job? Something would go wrong. Cops would accidentally bump into him. Armand was very good at that—he made everything appear like a fluke. Okay, okay, I was a snitch, but I was not a scab. I never squealed on the more decent guys. I just made life hard for the real bastards.”

Anik tried to process all that. “You always used to say that Dad had his rationale for doing what he did. He never really hurt people, he just knocked them around a bit. He never really interfered with elections, he just made people appreciate the vote more.”