“At the hotel?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever seen me before?” asked Miranda.
“Sure, three-four nights ago, table by the wall. Dom Pérignon. You got drunk.”
“Did you know I was a cop?”
“No. You were some guy’s date.”
Miranda flinched. “And the others?”
“The guy who brought you, I don’t know. He was smooth, I’d say computers, maybe a stock analyst. Too calm for a broker. A tax lawyer, maybe.”
“Well, thank you,” said Miranda. “And the other one?”
“Never saw him before. Never saw any of you before.”
“What can you tell us about him, the third person?” asked Morgan.
“Nothing.”
“Think.”
“Nothing.”
“We’re not with Immigration.”
“Oh, come on, man. I didn’t see anything. He was just a guy. Mid-thirties, well dressed. He didn’t pay. The other guy paid, the guy who brought her.”
“Me,” said Miranda, exasperated with having to establish her presence again. “We came together, he didn’t bring me.”
“He paid. Big tip. Not too big, big enough.”
“The third person, the other guy, tell us more?”
“There’s nothing more.”
“Immigration …” said Morgan.
“He was Lebanese.”
“Good,” said Morgan. “How do you know? Did you know him?”
“No, he’s not from here. I’d have seen him around. Ethnics, you know, we stick together.”
“How do you know he was Lebanese?” Morgan repeated.
“I speak the language. I know.”
“Did the other guy speak Lebanese?”
“No, the Lebanese guy, he just said a few words. To me.”
“He knew you were Lebanese?”
“He knew I wasn’t Giovanni. I was just part of the ambiance, man. We didn’t have a relationship.”
“You’ve never seen him before?”
“Like I said.”
“Thanks for your help,” said Miranda. “Do you think you could give the police artist a description?”
“Yeah,” said the man. “But it would, you know, be generic. He just looked like a prosperous Lebanese guy about my age in good condition.”
“Did you go to university?” said Miranda.
“Yes, in Beirut, engineering.”
“Get legal,” she said. “Do what you’re trained for.”
“I make more money as a waiter,” he said with a shrewd grin. He smiled. “So you’re not going to turn me in?”
“No,” said Morgan.
“Thanks, man. Yeah, and he wore a big ring.”
“A big ring?”
“Like a sports ring, like if he won the Stanley Cup or the Boston Marathon.”
“A lot of gold, no diamond,” said Miranda.
“Yeah, like that.”
“We’ll be in touch,” said Morgan.
3
Strange Bedfellows
Morgan telephoned Miranda in mid-evening to see how she was doing. She was touched and a little irritated by his concern. It was warm but she was wearing flannel pajamas, purple moose printed on white. Morgan was in boxer shorts, which he wore as pajamas, and a T-shirt from Home Hardware.
“You want me to come over?” he said.
“I’m watching Buffy reruns.”
“The Vampire Slayer? Good grief.”
“It’s not hepatitis, it’s postmodern.”
“Postmodernism is over, Miranda. Before anyone figured out what it was. ”
“You watch Survivor.”
“For the organized spontaneity.”
“Have you ever watched Buffy?”
“Not without feeling guilty.”
“For what, Morgan? Sex and death, short skirts?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
They bantered for a while, then Morgan signed off and returned to his book, letting Miranda get back for the closing credits of the best show on television; she admired the moral complexity.
It is a lot easier to be right than good, in a world where irony is how things actually are.
Morgan was reading wine books. He was trying to find information on Philip Carter’s Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Even Hugh Johnson didn’t list it.
The label was puzzling. Like the better French wines, it stated in small print, Mis en bouteille au château, and there was a pen-and-ink sketch of a generic chateau. The agent exclusif was Baudrillard et fils, Avignon, but the chateau was not actually named. The odd spelling on the label, ChâteauNeuf, one word, capital C capital N, was peculiar, but led nowhere. The vintage was signified on a separate neck label, 1996.
It was not one of those frou-frou bottles, with the glass melted into a languorous shape, covered with fake dust as if it had been mouldering deep in the cellars for an age, like some of the more urgently marketed Châteauneuf-du-Pape found in upscale wine stores throughout Canada and the States. It was a fine wine, presented in a bottle as sleek and muscular as the wine it contained.
The grapes were unidentifiable. The wine was a blend of the pliant and the austere, sun-rich from the stony hardscrabble southern landscape, suitably named for the doughty popes of Avignon who made it their favourite drink.
Having been opened for three days, it was beginning to take on a madeirized note, but Morgan swirled a bit in his glass and found the air cleaned it up.
Suddenly, he recognized a taste, a hint on the nose, of something strange but familiar. Not Châteauneuf-du-Pape, something else. At a wine tasting once, a blind tasting, they had been given a mystery wine. No one guessed it, and it turned out to be a Cabernet Sauvignon from Lebanon, with just a touch of Merlot to soften it, and, if he remembered right, a bit of Cabernet Franc for the spice.
Morgan had attended a couple of tastings organized by the Opimian Society but found them frustrating because, while he had the nose to appreciate the flourishes in their esoteric discussions, he lacked the resources to buy their selections. He was sufficiently discriminating that he remembered the mystery wine. That pleased him.
Miranda was searching a long shot on the news of black-bearded men thronging the streets of, she wasn’t sure where, angry and relieved there wasn’t a woman in sight, when she was startled by a knock at the door. It must be Morgan; he had slipped by the security door without buzzing. She was pleased. She knew right now he needed her as much as she needed him. It’s funny, she thought, how men feel violated when someone close to them has been damaged. It was flattering but oppressive, like they should be able to control the world.
She opened the door.
A young woman stared through her, wavered, then collapsed. Her legs splayed awkwardly