The Glass House (19 page)

“YES, HIS FINGERNAILS WERE PAINTED
black and he was missing the baby finger off both hands,” Trish said to the Public Broadcaster vice president. Over his shoulder she saw the CN Tower and wondered for the umpteenth time what the point of that thing was. Part of this city's obsession with being world class, she assumed. Whatever that was. She felt it was like previous governments' arts councils that backed new plays—as if money could provide the depth needed for art. Then of course to control the money they'd established a bureaucracy of the world's most unimpressive people. People who did not threaten the real power—the hidden power.

She watched the CPBC exec, a charter member of the “unimpressives,” hit two buttons on his remote. The two flat-screens behind him came alive with a reality series called
Hoarders.

Trish blanched

The man smiled, then said, “Your first six episodes did okay, but in the new season, the hanging boy with eight fingers, be they painted or not, is out.”

His pronunciation of the “ou” in “out” was even more deeply Canadian than usual—pure Ottawa Valley.

“But—”

He turned up the volume on the
Hoarders
show and smiled openly. “No but. No hung boy in your doc—”

“Hanged boy.”

“Yeah, well, no hanged boy either.” A moment of silence followed. He clearly hoped that she would take the hint and leave. She took the hint—but she didn't leave. Finally he said, “Do you really want to change the title for the second season?”

“Yeah, to
At the Junction.
”

“Good name, but wasn't it
In the Junction
?”

“It was, but now it's
At the Junction.
”

“Did I think that up?”

“No.”

“Well be it
In the Junction
or
At the Junction
, there's no hanged boy. Got it?”

This time Trish took the hint and left.

She didn't remember coming down the stairs or hailing a cab, although she did remember how shocked she was when she opened the door to her condo and saw that the newspapers that had somehow occupied every chair, every table, every counter and every available space on her hardwood floors had doubled in size.

She slammed the door and headed to a bar. She needed a drink. She also needed to talk to her other researcher for the show: Decker Roberts.

She tried his number for the third time that day and got his usual message: “Do not leave a message. If I want to get in touch with you, I will.”

She took a breath then shouted, “Decker, phone home! Or I'll castrate you and feed your manhood to the Public Broadcaster—it'd be a first for them. Not the castration—the manhood.”

She hung up, and the loneliness descended on her yet again as the image of the eight-fingered boy hanging from the lamp post on Annette Street across from the library in the Junction filled her mind.

Then over it the face of the CPBC exec—what was his name?
Andrew Parees. A thought occurred to her:
Is this somehow personal? What does the hanged boy have to do with Andrew Parees?

Well nothing, since the boy died many, many years before Andrew Parees was born.

—but not before his grandfather was born.

Who exactly was Andrew Parees' grandfather?

And what could he have to do with a gay boy with four painted fingernails on each hand—hanged from a lamp post at the corner of Annette Street and Mavety in the Junction area of Toronto a mere six months before the Junction inexplicably joined the city of Toronto, which then became the only murder that was not transferred to the Toronto Police Service blotter from the Junction? That just disappeared?

Again she swore at Decker. “Fuck, you could help me with this shit!”

EDDIE HELD MARINA'S HAND AS
they entered Theo's world—thousands of volumes of fiction, nonfiction and porn stacked to the ceiling in every available crevice of his Junction used books shop.

“Thanks for coming,” Theo said between coughing fits.

“You should have that looked at,” Eddie said.

“Doctors! Blah!” Theo replied. Looking at Marina, he bent forward. “And who is this pretty young lady?”

Marina clutched her father's hand more tightly and tried to bury her head in Eddie's side like a five-year-old.

Theo looked at Eddie, who said, “Marina. Marina's her name, and she's still a little shy.”

Theo said, “Sure—that's no problem, young lady. Be as shy as you like. Do you like books?”

“Picture books,” Marina said directly into her father's side.

Theo took a quick look at Eddie. “How old are you, Marina?”

“She's fourteen,” Eddie said.

Theo suppressed his surprise.

“She's on her own path, Theo—her own path.”

Before Theo could question this cryptic statement, Trish strode into the bookshop. At over six feet she often strode rather than walked.

She looked around her at the stacks and stacks of books and had to resist shivering. Her own hoarding instincts had increased exponentially, to the point that there was nowhere to sit anymore in her large three-bedroom condo.

“Something wrong, Trish?” Theo demanded.

“Nope. Love what you've done with the place. It has a definite art dreco vibe. Quite the mess-en-scène.” Then she asked without segue, “Where's Leena?”

“I called her, like you asked,” Theo said.

“Wanna explain what we're all gathered here for, Trish?” It was Eddie.

“For Decker, I assume.” They all turned to the door where Leena was standing, all five foot nothing of her, her once beautiful face now permanently etched with sorrow.

“Hey, Leena, long time.”

“Yeah, Eddie, long time. Is this—”

“Marina. Yes, it's Marina.”

“Welcome to the Junction, Marina.”

“So we're all well met, as the Bard so aptly put it,” Theo said just before another coughing fit took him, through which he managed to ask, “What's up?”

“Where's Decker?” Trish demanded.

“He's off the grid, Trish,” Eddie said.

“But you know where he is, Eddie. You always know where he is.”

“Not this time. No transponder. No cell phone. No contacts.”

“For how long?”

“Sixteen days and counting.”

“And when's he coming back on the grid like a normal human being?”

“I've got no idea, Trish.” Then he added before she could question him further, “None, nada, pas de chose, not a wink.”

Marina giggled.

Eddie smiled at her.

“Is he okay?” Trish demanded.

“He's Decker. He's never okay,” Eddie said.

In the silence that followed Eddie's undeniable truth, Marina said, “I like Mr. Decker.”

“Me too, sweetie, but Mr. Decker is on a path of his own.”

“Like me?” she asked, a surprising brightness in her voice.

“Yeah, kiddo, that's right—like you.”

CROSSING THE CANADIAN BORDER AFTER
dark on a viciously cold Manitoba night can have its own special difficulties—especially if the people in the car don't have passports.

A freakishly early storm brought snow that swirled, obscuring the licence plate of their stolen car, which helped a bit, but the young Canadian border guard held out his hand for passports. Viola used her sweetest smile and said, “My dad and I forgot them at home. I'm sorry.”

Martin Armistaad raised his shoulders in a “silly-me” gesture as he reached into his coat pocket and felt the sharp point of the would-be architect's compass beside the stupid tooth he'd kept. His fingers moved the tooth aside and opened the instrument—its point ready to do damage if needed.

Then Viola reached out and touched the young border guard's hand. She was surprised to feel the weakness in him. She couldn't name the disease, but his heart was weak—very weak. She looked into his eyes and said, inside his head, “
Don't worry, it will be over soon. You'll never get to the forest, let alone the clearing, but you will sleep dreamless sleep until it all starts again. Your family will miss you, but they will be okay—promise.
”

The young border guard withdrew his hand and waved them through.

They crossed from North Dakota into Manitoba then turned east—towards the Junction.

Soon after, Hendrick H. Mallory called the young border guard and assured him that he had done the right thing in allowing the car to pass.

The young border guard was surprised when he found himself saying, “I'm sick.”

And I'm sure that meeting number three and number four couldn't but advance your illness,
Mallory thought.

“She said something about a clearing and a forest.”

“And a glass house?”

“No nothing about a house. What's a glass house?”

“Just a dream some of us have, son, nothing to worry yourself about.”

LATER THAT NIGHT, BACK IN
Theo's crowded office with Marina safely asleep amidst a pile of picture books, Trish broached her concern. She laid out the whole sordid tale of a young gay man being hung in 1902 outside the library on Annette Street whose death wasn't even investigated and the Public Broadcaster's refusal to have it in the documentary that she and Decker and Theo were working on.

“Okay, so the Public Broadcaster is afraid of controversy, so what, big surprise,” said Leena.

“It's not just that,” Trish said.

“Then what is it—and what do you want from us?” Leena asked.

For one of the first times in her life, Trish really didn't know what she wanted. She'd been propelled forward by a force that she didn't really understand. That she actually thought didn't exist.

“First off, help me find Decker.”

Everyone promised to get in touch with Trish the moment Decker contacted them. Trish thanked them, then asked Theo, “What more have we learned about the boy?”

“The one who was hanged?”

“Who else?”

“Besides the fact that his nails were painted black and he was missing the baby fingers from both hands and that his case
magically disappeared when the Junction joined the big bad city in 1902?”

“Yeah, what else?”

“Working at it.”

“And?”

“Well, I may have something.”

“From the archive?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

Theo put a photo onto the pitted table that he used as a desk.

“And this is?”

“A wide-angle shot of the Junction's potter's field.”

“The Junction had a pauper's graveyard?”

“Well, that poor boy didn't hang on that lamp post until he rotted. Eventually someone cut him down and they threw his body somewhere.”

“You mean buried somewhere?”

“Yeah, I guess I do, but paupers are usually just thrown away.”

“Usually?”

“Yeah. But look at that photograph.”

“Why?”

“There's a gravestone way in the back.”

“Paupers don't usually have gravestones.”

“But this one did. How did you find this?”

“I know it sounds weird, but I kinda stumbled on it in the Junction archives in the basement of the library. I'd gone over every inch of that damned place time and time again and found nothing. Then yesterday, after we spoke, I found it. Shit, I almost stepped on it. It was there right out in the open—in front of my stupid face.”

“When exactly was this?”

“After we met in the archive.”

“Yeah, but what time exactly?”

“Around ten thirty in the morning.”

Right after I left the CPBC office fighting for the inclusion of the hanging boy,
she thought.

“Why does the time matter?”

“Maybe it doesn't. You said paupers don't usually have gravestones. But this one did?”

“Yeah, look—here's a blowup of the gravestone, best I could do. The first name and dates are obliterated and I'm having trouble making out the last name. Maybe Barees or Harees or—”

“Or Parees? Theo, could that name be Parees?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Holy shit!”

“What?” Eddie asked.

“The CPBC guy's last name is Parees.”

OCEANSIDE IS A WORKING-CLASS MARINE
town. Camp pendleton is just up the road. It was the kind of place Yslan used to like. Used to feel right at home in. But as she and Emerson made their way to the hospital, she had a strange sense of all this being foreign. Of her being unwelcome here. All those young men with close-cropped haircuts and their already pregnant even younger wives gave her the creeps.

The scene at the hospital was eerily reminiscent of seeing Harrison. How long ago had that been? She was shocked when she realized it was only a few days ago.

The doctors who worked on Dr. Chumley were as baffled as the ones who had treated Harrison.

The prognosis was just as terrifying.

“Why are we here?” Emerson asked as he averted his eyes from Dr. Chumley, who was strapped into a wheelchair.

For a long time Yslan didn't answer, just stared at the catatonic figure. Finally she said, “Due diligence.”

Emerson shrugged and said, “Okay. So we've been duly diligent.”

As if coming out of a trance, Yslan shook her head, then said, “Let's get back to San Francisco; that's where the trail leads.”

“Right.”

“Can we get a flight?”

“There's one from the airport off Palomar Airport Road in twenty minutes. I'll make a call.”