“And what market is that, Charlie?”
“Cynicism,” he says. “You know, courting the general belief that things can and will get worse.”
“Or maybe it’s realism based on experience.”
“You win,” he says.
“Nobody wins.” She flashes her second smile of the day. “That’s the whole point. Listen, not that I’m not enjoying our philosophical debate — because believe me, mental stimulation is on short supply around here — but I wanted to tell you about Eddie Nolan. He’s the town cop. Or the best cop, anyway. Chief Gallagher wants to be mayor, and Pete Younger is just a kid full of high octane piss and vinegar. Eddie was in here yesterday asking about you.”
“Asking about me?”
McKelvey shivers, wonders for a moment if the Toronto cops have called up here, sniffing after him. Has the Crown attorney found some new angle on the warehouse shootings? Are they filing charges? This is the life of a man with ghosts trailing him.
“He said he heard from Carl Levesque that you were up here, and that you were a Toronto cop, a detective. He said he’d want to look you up and get your opinion on some things. He got hurt a couple of weeks ago, hit in the head with a shovel, the poor dear. The kid has had a tough year. His mother died about a year and a half ago and his father has that Alzheimer’s that comes on so fast. Ed looks after him and holds down his job.”
“I heard about that incident,” McKelvey says. “Some teenager went off on him.”
“Not the first ‘incident’ around here. They burned down the bleachers at the sports field this fall. Vandalism is something fierce. And the dropout rate. You see kids just hanging around the convenience store, the arcade, Christ, even the laundromat. Drugs are the issue if you ask me.”
“Show me a town or a city that doesn’t have its share of drugs.”
“Didn’t used to be like this. Bad combination — drugs and boredom. Life in a northern town. Anyway, Eddie’s uncle was friends with your father. He said they worked together.”
“Everybody worked with everybody’s father around here.”
“Touché, Charlie.” She gives him a look, just for an instant, and their eyes lock in a way that does something to McKelvey’s stomach. It’s a feeling he can’t quite describe, but he knows one thing: it hasn’t changed since he was twelve years old.
Back at the empty house, McKelvey sets out to find something that he is not sure even exists, or if it does, where he will find it. This notion runs through his brain like a mushroom bullet, destroying rational thought. He gets down on his knees and uses a key to unwind the screws on all the heater vents. He snakes his hand around in the empty spaces behind the wall, pulling out cobwebs and dust. He sits there on the floor with his back to the wall, and he closes his eyes. He wants to see himself as a child again, see his father moving around this house, the places he might have considered safe or sacred. What is it he hopes to find? Some clue or remnant from the past, this idea that his father participated in the violence around that infamous strike in the 1950s. The explosion at a storage shed on company property, the death of a scab worker. It is a far stretch, he decides, that his father penned any sort of confession and tucked it behind the wall, a telegraph of truth from the past.
Late in the afternoon, with the sun high and glowing behind a hazy film of cloud, a black police SUV ambles up the laneway. McKelvey watches from the kitchen window. He is dressed in faded jeans and a black T-shirt with a white logo for Garrity’s Pub, dark denizen where he spent long hours and small millions, merciful flow of cold beer on tap, sacred amber Irish whiskey on crackling ice. He has not had a drink in forty days as of today. He can’t remember the last time he went forty consecutive days without a drink, but it is likely going back to his teenage years. Forty days. It is biblical, epic in proportions. Strange how the thought crosses his mind just now with a fleeting message of promised relief, satisfaction, contentment, and ease: go ahead, Charlie, it couldn’t hurt …
McKelvey watches as the tall and broad-shouldered constable steps from the vehicle. This would be Ed Nolan, as Peggy forewarned. The man appears to be in his late twenties, square-faced, strong-jawed. He reaches back into the cruiser and pulls out a tray with two coffees. He tucks a file folder under his arm and comes to the door. McKelvey doesn’t wait for the knock. He holds the door open wide, cold air rushing in, his breath coming back out in a cloud.
“Constable Nolan, I presume?”
Nolan smiles, nods once.
“Can I bother you for a minute, Detective McKelvey?”
“You got a warrant?” McKelvey stares with a straight face. It stops Nolan in his tracks. Then McKelvey smiles and says, “Come on in. And it’s just Charlie, please.”
Nolan sets the coffees down on the kitchen table and pulls off his gloves, unzips his coat.
“I’m Ed Nolan,” he says, and they shake hands. “Small force in the middle of nowhere, we do a lot of things without waiting for a warrant from the circuit justice.”
“I can imagine. It’s all just paperwork anyway.” McKelvey motions for Nolan to take a seat. “I made my way into more than a few rooms just by bluffing, holding up a folded piece of paper. I never implicitly said it was a warrant, and they never asked to see the paper, so it was a bit of a grey zone.”
“Things are a little more black and white up here,” Nolan says, and lets out a long breath. He reaches up and gently removes the black wool toque, revealing a wrap of bandages around his short blond hair that sprouts from the top of the coil.
“I heard about that kid who hurt you,” McKelvey says. He reaches out and takes one of the Coffee Time coffees, knowing full well it will taste like shit and kill his stomach, but still he will drink it. It was, he imagines, poured by Peggy.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I heard you were in town. Big-city cop and everything, I could sure use some of your experience right now. This Lacey kid, Travis Lacey, is a solid A student. Or he was. Up until two months ago, anyway. It’s as if he changed overnight into this psychopath. Parents say he stays up around the clock playing video games in the basement or he’s out with this group of friends, staying out all night.”
“Sounds like a teenager,” McKelvey says, remembering his own boy, Gavin. But he also remembers how his boy, somewhere and somehow, slipped across an obscure line. Stumbling from normal teenage angst to a world of hardcore drugs and, eventually, street gangs. Bullets, blades, and bullshit.
“For sure. We all goof around a little, blow off the testosterone.” Nolan takes the lid off the other coffee and blows across the top. “I know all about that. I left Saint B when I was seventeen, felt like I was suffocating. I found my share of troubles before I got my head on straight.”
“I did the same, Ed,” McKelvey says. “Train used to run more regular in my day. It was easier to escape.”
“I visited Travis down at Monteith. Poor kid is scared out of his mind. And he’s coming off this shit, coming off hard. Said he’s been smoking meth. I couldn’t believe it. Meth in Saint B. How could we not know? I know who deals pot, hash, who has pain pills from time to time, who can get blow in for the shift workers when they want to celebrate something. But meth?”
McKelvey takes a sip of the coffee, then pushes it away.
“Would