Slow Recoil (12 page)

“My father was in his late twenties when he volunteered to fight in Korea,” McKelvey said. “Never really talked about it much, but I know it had at least one lasting impact on him. He swore he'd never eat Chinese food in his life. And he didn't. Not even an egg roll. Wouldn't even set foot inside a Chinese restaurant.”

Yes, the taxi bills were mounting, but he wasn't hard up. The pension he drew was sufficient to cover his modest living expenses, his draft beer at Garrity's, a pack of cigarettes rationed to last the week, the two sacks of groceries he lived on. The splitting in half of his lifetime with Caroline—the house they'd bought in that neighborhood known as “The Beach” long before it was trendy and overpriced, the retirement savings plan the police association representative had convinced him to buy into in his early twenties, every shred of their lives auctioned off—it had allowed him to pay cash for the small condo and still put some money aside in a trust fund for his granddaughter.

Still, he had already totaled close to a hundred and twenty dollars in taxi fares working on this Donia Kruzik angle. He gave Hassan the address for the garage over in Rexdale and sat back, watching the traffic on the Gardiner Expressway as they headed west then northward on Highway 427, crossing Highway 401—the busiest highway in the country. He wondered what he was doing. That simple, just a question in a moment of honesty. So, Charlie, what are you doing? He heard Hattie's words about him hanging a shingle, wearing a fedora, all that shit. Like he thought he was some sort of private detective. Not even being paid, for god's sake. So what did that make him? Something even more pathetic. Everything everybody had said, everything everybody was still saying about him, was probably true in the end: this was killing him.
Retirement.
And yet he was too old to go back. They wouldn't have him anyway. Not after Duguay. Having come out of that by the skin of his teeth, the grey area of the unregistered handgun he'd kept locked up all those years. The fact that Duguay had entered his home armed and with the intent to cause injury was his out in the eyes of the law. Self-defense, plain and simple. But his boss, Detective-Sergeant Tina Aoki, knew the truth. And so did Hattie. Hell, everybody did. Charlie McKelvey had lost his way somewhere in there. After Gavin. Took a few wrong turns, got blinded by his grief and his guilt—that was the truth of it, his guilt in turning the boy from their home, and the end he met out there on the streets. In the end they let McKelvey slip away without a parade or a retirement roast at the steakhouse.

Did it matter that he had no plan formed here? Did it matter that he was simply putting one foot in front of the other? What was he supposed to be doing, anyway? Fly fishing? God, how good it felt to live like this again, to wake and already find yourself in motion—
Propelled.
There was a trajectory here, an arc across the skyline—he would land, eventually, or crash, but why worry now? He had an engine again, all systems firing—the rush. That big bastard in the apartment had knocked some sense into him. Brought him back to life. Means to an end.
I'm coming. I'll find you…

They rolled past Mimico Creek to the right. The Woodbine Racetrack was to the left, where horses ran and troubled men lost their paycheques to whims of chance on the legs of pure muscle and momentum. He knew a few horse betters, this sub-genre of the gambling world. They were a class unto themselves. Old guys like Priam Harvey, who could quote Faulkner in one breath then in the next piss his pants sitting at the barstool while circling his picks in the racing form. They were for the most part honestly dishonest men who from time to time gave up the name of a fence or a guy who might be in deep on the ponies, motive enough to rob a mini-mart. You might want to talk to so-and-so, they would say.

They turned onto Rexdale Boulevard, headed east. They were in the midst of low-rise, congested industry. Garages, industrial units, tool and die shops, minor manufacturing—places around here made fasteners, brass and copper works, plastic and composite moldings for some unknown supply chain. Named for the developer Rex Wesley, Rexdale was low income, blue collar, salt of the earth. The homes were older and smaller, and the men went to work, for the most part, with lunch buckets instead of leather briefcases.

“Do you like me to wait?” Hassan said. He had pulled off Rexdale Boulevard onto Brydon Drive. He parked the car a dozen metres down from the garage, concealed against a hedge line. McKelvey liked the man's line of thinking.

“Ten minutes tops,” McKelvey said.

Hassan nodded and adjusted the dial on the radio. The disembodied voices of talk radio filled the car. Someone was calling in and saying how Canadian troops should be
peacekeepers,
not
fighters.
The host cut right in, and said, “Listen, this peacekeeping racket is a myth that we've all bought in to. Plumbers are trained to plumb and combat soldiers are trained to fight…”

The garage was showing its age, probably constructed in the late 1950s or early 1960s. White stucco siding and a red metal roof. McKelvey went into the small office attached to the four-bay garage. There were guys in the bays working beneath a couple of vehicles up on hoists. In the office were two waiting chairs set against the window, a desk facing them stacked and cluttered with invoices, and an old Coke machine against a wall with a handwritten note taped to it:
Quarters Only—No Loonies.
Behind the desk was a shelving unit with different brands and grades of motor oil, all of them covered in a thick coat of dust. There was nobody in the office, so McKelvey went to the door that opened onto the bays and stood there for a minute until one of the mechanics, a guy in his forties, stopped his work. He came over to the doorway, wiping his hands on a brown rag.

“Can I help you?” the man said. He had an accent. Eastern European.

McKelvey fished out a business card and handed it over. The mechanic stuffed the rag in the back pocket of his blue coveralls and took the card with his grease-stained fingers. He studied it a moment then moved past McKelvey into the office.

“No holdups here,” the man said. “Maybe you are thinking of Mac's Milk down at the corner. Gas station there gets hit two times a month.” He started to look through the invoices and work orders on the desk as though he had suddenly remembered a crucial piece of accounting.

“You the owner?” McKelvey said.

He watched the mechanic. Wide neck and big hands, thick dark hair greying at the sides. His face reminded McKelvey of one of those dogs, the kind with the face pushed in a little.

“Owner, yes. Jarko Automotive. You see the sign, yes?”

“You own a silver 1995 Honda Accord?”

McKelvey watched for it. It was there. Taken by surprise. It was a lifetime of questioning suspects, knowing what to look for. The eyes, the small gestures.

“I have a few cars, loaners. For my customers,” Jarko said.

“How about a silver 1995 Honda Accord?” McKelvey said. “Plate number APVB 319. I can come up with the Vehicle Identification Number if that helps jog your memory.”

“I have to check, you know, my files. Some ownerships, they are in my lock box. I need to look around. So much paperwork, it takes time.”

“I'll wait,” McKelvey said, and moved to sit in one of the chairs by the window.

Jarko put his big hands on the desk and leaned forward. He stared. He wanted to react physically right here and right now. McKelvey could sense it. “Why you want to know about this car?”

“Do you know a woman named Donia Kruzik?”

Jarko straightened up and folded his arms across his chest defiantly. He shook his head, but McKelvey had seen all he needed to see.

“I don't know what you want,” Jarko said, finding his legs now, “but maybe you should talk to my lawyer. He knows my business, maybe he help you with all of your questions about cars. You have warrant?”

McKelvey smiled. “Warrant? Why would I need a warrant? I'm just asking you a few questions. You own the vehicle or you don't. You know this woman or you don't.”

“You didn't show me your police identification. Your badge number.”

McKelvey raised both hands, palms out. He said, “Hey, I'm just a guy asking a few questions is all.”

“Please, I will ask you to leave my business,” Jarko said.

McKelvey nodded and took a few steps to the door. He turned and said, “Listen, you wouldn't happen to come across any used Mazda pickup trucks in your line of work, would you? I've been looking everywhere.”

Jarko's face folded in on itself, flesh and wrinkles. He squinted and shook his head.

“Guess I'll find what I'm looking for eventually,” McKelvey said. “Always do.”

EIGHT

J
essie Rainbird covered her mouth that Saturday evening when the door opened to reveal Charlie McKelvey in all his bruised and swollen glory. He smiled to mask the fact he felt like Toronto's beloved George Chuvalo after going fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali. Busted up, but still standing at the final bell.

“Jesus, Charlie, what happened to you?”

McKelvey looked down at Emily standing there with a stuffed giraffe clutched under her arm, her eyes wide. Then she grabbed Jessie's pant leg and began to cry.

“Shhhh now,” he said, smiled, and got down on a knee. “Grandpa's getting clumsy, that's all. He fell and got a booboo.”

This seemed sufficiently probable to the little girl. She shook off the initial fear and wandered past them into the back room, where she knew McKelvey kept a stash of books and toys that Hattie had helped him pick out.

“Charlie, honestly. What happened?” Jessie said, setting her suitcase down.

“It's a long story. Honestly, it's nothing. Do you want a coffee? Tea?”

She watched him move to the kitchen island as she took a seat at one of the breakfast stools and stared at his back until he could feel the heat of her eyes drilling into him. He set the kettle on the stove. He turned to her, a lopsided smile on his face.

“Besides my aunt Peggy, you do know that you and Caroline are Emily's only real family?” Jessie said. “She's going to need to have family in her life. I don't want her growing up the way I did. Bounced around. Alone.”

“Message received.”

“Whatever you're doing, promise me you'll be careful.”

He raised two fingers. “Scout's honour, Jess.”

“Speaking of family, I just talked with Caroline last week. She's thinking of coming out this Christmas to visit, or maybe even in the fall. She hasn't seen Emily since last spring. She was asking about you. You know, how you're doing and all that.”

“Still checking up on me,” he said.

“She still loves you, Charlie. Men just don't get it. She asked me what I thought of the idea of her moving back to Ontario permanently. I think she's had her fill of the west coast. She misses the city. She misses you.”

“Caroline never did like the rain.”

“You're impossible,” she said. She smiled and shook her head. “Shit, never mind.”

McKelvey looked at this young woman, the last soul to love his son—how close they had come to carving a life away from the drugs and the streets and the violence—and he was suddenly overcome with a desire to give her the keys to his home, access to his savings and pension. She could make a better life for her and the little girl with the meager bones of his own corpse.

After dinner, Jessie cleared the plates while McKelvey gave Emily her bath. He was unpracticed and over-cautious in his handling, his big hands fumbling as though it wasn't a child in the water, but rather a model ship he was attempting to fit into a bottle. He was soaked and had to change his shirt by the time they were finished. The girl giggled when he took a handful of bubbles and spread it across his chin like a beard.

“Santa Claus,” Emily laughed.

He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at her. Jessie watched them laughing and playing from just outside the door.

He said, “Grandpa loves you, you know.”

When Emily was in her pajamas and tucked into bed in the spare room, he leaned over and kissed her forehead and breathed in the smell of Johnson's No Tears shampoo. Straightening, he looked down on her for a moment and saw that she was looking more and more like her mother, the olive complexion and the coal black hair. But there was enough of his son mixed in there, too, the set of the eyes and the line of the mouth. In a world that short-changed you more than it overpaid, McKelvey felt a rush of gratitude for this living reminder of his boy. “Sleep tight,” he whispered and closed the door with the night light plugged in.

He found Jessie flipping through the channels in the living room. When he came into the room, she clicked the TV off and set the remote aside. She had showered while he read to Emily. The little girl could listen to three or four books before she fell asleep. He saw in this a resilience or stubbornness, and it was something he could name and appreciate. This was the blood of his blood.