“Down, boy,” Charlie said, looking around the mass of fur for oncoming traffic and trying to ignore the smell of putrefying meat coming from Teddy’s panting mouth.
Chapter 5
Charlie lay in bed staring at the slow rotation of the ceiling fan blades, the only sound a low, rhythmic murmur from the large mound of golden fur curled up on the floor by the side of the bed. After an uneventful ride home, he had introduced the dog to his temporary home, and it had seemed content to sniff around. It was only when Charlie decided to go for a swim and tied the dog’s leash to the railing by the back door that all hell broke loose. Teddy had barked non-stop for fifteen minutes, destroying the peaceful dip that Charlie had in mind, and forcing him to retreat inside before the neighbours sent out a hit squad. He wondered what other traits, apart from maniacal barking, the Stewarts had neglected to mention.
Charlie sighed as he caught sight of the time on his clock radio: it was past one in the morning and he was wide awake. He switched on the reading lamp and reached for the home repair book he had picked up at a second-hand bookstore in Ottawa, just after moving into his apartment. Charlie had never been particularly handy, and hadn’t bothered to acquire any do-it-yourself skills in his years with Sharon. It had never really mattered to him before, and even Sharon’s occasional teasing hadn’t fazed him. But her ditching him for a younger man had made him consider his un-handiness in another light, perhaps as a sign of a more fundamental deficiency in his manhood. He scanned the index and flipped to the section on electrical fixtures, and he was intrigued by the instructions for basic wiring, and the importance of the grounding wire. No wonder he had almost burned down the house in Ottawa, he thought. He looked at the diagrams and wondered whether he should take a shot at fixing the light in the basement. It looked pretty easy in the pictures, and he knew where the main switch was. There would be enough light down there during the day to work. What the hell, he thought. He had nothing planned for the morning.
He skimmed through a few more sections of the book before setting it back on the night table and switching off the light. He found himself comforted by Teddy’s deep, rhythmic breathing, and decided that maybe having a dog around for a couple of weeks wouldn’t be so bad. After all, apart from a collegial friendship with Landon, who was more than twenty years his junior, Teddy was all he had. Lying there in the dark, it occurred to him how alone in the world he really was. He could literally slide off the face of the planet and who would care? Not Sharon, that was for sure. He wondered whether she would have even the slightest twinge of remorse on reading his obituary broadcast over the departmental email system. Colleagues will be saddened to learn of the passing of Charlie Hillier, a … He couldn’t even imagine the text that would follow. On paper — and in all honesty, in reality — his career over the past twenty years sounded dismal, and he could only hope the communications people who wrote those things were pretty creative. He considered his legacy beyond work and felt even worse. Charlie leaves behind ex-wife Sharon … No, they didn’t usually mention ex-spouses, especially ones whose extramarital closet-humping had been so spectacularly discovered. And with no kids to mention, who was left? Charlie leaves behind Teddy, a Labrador retriever he babysat for a couple of weeks before he weighted himself down and wandered into Havana Bay….
Charlie rolled over and cringed at the grating squeak from the bed frame as his weight shifted. It was annoying at the best of times, more so in the midst of a sleepless night. Even the dog had stirred, but as it put its head back down and resumed snoring, Charlie’s thoughts turned to Sharon. As much as he hated her for what she had done, he couldn’t help missing her, and wondering if everything would have continued as normal if it hadn’t been for that stupid Christmas party. Maybe he just needed to get laid, to give himself a little perspective. Since the split, Charlie had had precisely two sexual encounters, neither of which had been particularly satisfying for anyone involved. He rolled over again in frustration, eliciting the same metallic screech. This time it travelled from his ears down the length of his spine.
Bolting out of bed, Charlie dragged the metal bed frame sideways a couple of feet, creating another grating noise that could only be bad news for the hardwood floor, but he was beyond caring. He fell back on the bed and rolled around heavily before satisfying himself that the squeak was gone. On his back again, he closed his eyes to the big fan blades, but it was hopeless. He got up and walked over toward the bathroom, but didn’t get more than a foot before stubbing his toe on something hard and sharp. A stream of expletives emerged from his mouth, as he looked down and spotted the protruding edge of a floorboard. Charlie clutched his bleeding toe and hopped the rest of the way to the bathroom, wincing in pain.
It took him a while to staunch the bleeding and apply a bandage, and when the pain had subsided to a dull throbbing, he came back out to investigate the floorboard. He realized that it had been covered by the bed, but now lay on the direct path to the bathroom. Charlie stood there and sighed, considering whether he might be better off just putting the bed back to its original position. But the board was obviously the source of the squeaking.
Eeny, meeny, miny, mo …
With his toe still throbbing, Charlie made his choice and was about to start dragging the bed back when a thought occurred to him. He set off in search of his toolbox and returned a few minutes later to find the dog awake and looking at him with an air of puzzlement.
“Sorry, Teddy. This won’t take long.”
He opened his home repair book to the section on flooring, but was disappointed to find no quick fix. Rather, the only proper solution for a warped board seemed to be replacement, and in order to do that, he would have to pull up two other rows of planks, back to the wall, and he didn’t have a replacement board anyway. It occurred to him that he might be able to switch boards, relocating the warped one closer to the wall and out of harm’s way, but it all seemed like a lot of work. He sat staring at the floor for a while, then at his home repair book and, finally, at the clock.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” he said, as the dog wagged its tail, but he decided to see how easily he could pry up the moulding and was surprised when it came free on the first try. Within minutes, he had pulled up the first row of planks and, as he made his way back to the area of the warped floorboard, he noticed something odd. Instead of the white plastic underlay that he found everywhere else, there appeared to be a dark spot as he approached the warped board. He had to remove the third row to be sure, but he soon found himself staring at a hole about a foot across. Instinctively, he reached in and retrieved a plastic bag wrapped around something heavy and rectangular, about the size of a large brick.
“What have we got here, Teddy?”
Charlie carefully removed the plastic cover, to reveal another layer of clear plastic, around something off-white in colour. He used his screwdriver to puncture the plastic lining, and froze when a puff of powder emerged from the hole in the tight wrap. After a few seconds of staring at the package, Charlie wet his index finger, dabbed it in the powder, and placed it in his mouth. He felt suddenly dizzy.
What the fuck are you doing?
He rushed to the bathroom and rinsed his mouth with bottled water, then swallowed a couple of mouthfuls to try to dilute whatever he had ingested. As he stood over the sink, he looked into the mirror and saw the terror in his own eyes. Cuba was no place to be caught with a couple of pounds of narcotics in your possession. He returned to the bed and stared at the plastic-wrapped brick. Despite the fact that he wouldn’t know cocaine from baking soda — his big screen–inspired taste test being of no help — he knew this had to be coke, or possibly heroin. And this was no recreational-use baggie, either. He picked up the brick and guessed its weight at a couple of kilos before setting it back on the pillow as though it were infected with the Ebola virus. His first thought was to call the embassy’s head of security, or the police, or both, right away. That was what you were supposed to do, right? Then again, it was almost two in the morning. It could probably wait until first thing tomorrow. As he sat there staring, he realized that his hands were shaking.
Charlie headed toward the bedroom door; then, fearing Teddy might try to eat it, he returned for the brick and took it with