Slow Recoil (25 page)

While the global positioning system technology had been tested and toyed with by the U.S. government since the late 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that the technology was made available for non-militaristic purposes. With each generation, the technology improved, allowing users to draw an ever closer bead on the exact latitude, longitude, altitude and time of a tracked object. Or, in the case of Maxime, the subjects he followed. The first GPS tracker he had employed during his undercover days following the murky arms and drugs dealers was not provided or even authorized for use by the police force. He had purchased it on his own, seeing this as the future in terms of surveillance tools. The model he had with him now would allow him to trace a subject to within roughly half a block. One day in the not too distant future, he believed the technology would be refined to the point where the subject's exact and precise location would be known to within an eyelash. Good for dropping bombs and finding errant husbands.

Maxime got out of the car, and with his hands tucked inside the pockets of his black leather jacket, he moved down the sidewalk towards the white Corolla. It was a beautiful late summer day, clear sky and warm. In fact, Maxime felt a little conspicuous in his leather jacket. He had come to the country prepared for the worst, all these stories you heard about Canada. Ice floes and Eskimos. He felt foolish now, for he had left his short-sleeved shirts at home. He had even purchased a new black wool toque, which was packed in his bags at the hotel. As he walked towards the Corolla, his mind drifted to his wife and his unborn child, and he thought:
If it's a boy, then, yes, it will be
Gabriel. After the angel.

TWENTY

M
cKelvey was buttering a toasted slice of Wonderbread— the last piece of bread in the cupboard—when the phone rang. He grabbed the receiver and, on instinct, barked: “McKelvey.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” the male caller said. “I must have the wrong number.”

McKelvey's mind clicked. “Wait,” he said. “Who are you looking for?”

“Leyden, Dick Leyden,” the caller said.

“You've got him,” McKelvey said. “Sorry, I'm just answering my friend's line. How can I help you?”

“It's Peter Dawson calling. I'm the executive director of Bridges. I got a message from one of my volunteers that you stopped by and had some urgent business.”

“I appreciate you calling back so quickly. I'm working on a case that involves a woman named Donia Kruzik. Does that name ring a bell?”

“Perhaps. I think so, yes,” Dawson said. “Yes, I remember her. She came to Canada about a year ago. Is she in some kind of trouble?”

McKelvey glanced at his watch. It was closing on noon. After Hattie had left for work, he had drifted off again, his body and mind exhausted. It seemed he closed his eyes and disappeared.

“Listen, if you've got the time, I'd like to buy you lunch and ask you a few questions. I can't really talk about it over the phone.”

“I'm not sure how I can help. Much of the information we collect is protected by privacy laws, you understand.”

“I understand,” McKelvey said. “Even some background on the centre and what you do would be helpful.”

McKelvey hoped the man's dedication to his work, as the volunteer had suggested, would be sufficient motivation to get him out on the long weekend.

“I could do that, I guess,” Dawson said. “I'm heading down to the Eaton Centre to do a little shopping this afternoon. I could make time for a coffee.”

“Just name the place,” McKelvey said.

He hung up and turned back to his piece of toast. It was cold now. It looked utterly pathetic sitting there on the kitchen counter, a pad of unmelted butter at its centre. He couldn't eat now anyway. His body thrummed with the surge of energy that came with each new possibility, each tiny crack that might bleed a little light. He took the piece of toast and tossed it in the garbage on his way to the bedroom to throw on a shirt.

McKelvey removed his black sports coat and hooked it over his shoulder with his forefinger. He stopped walking long enough to light a cigarette, his first of the day, and he smiled as he remembered Hattie's joke about the cigarette after sex. It was too bad about the two of them, he thought. He knew that she wanted him to want her all the way, to live with her without concern for titles or legalities. They had tried it for awhile, it was true, this idea of modern co-habitation. But the thing was, he was getting old. And it was getting too hard to fake, this endless energy, this enthusiasm for new things, new foods, whatever. That was the cold, hard truth, and it made him think of the last time he had seen his father. McKelvey's mother had died a few months earlier, and McKelvey had gone up north to see if his father was planning to sell the house and move into a senior's home. Of course he knew the answer to that question before he even got behind the wheel of the car to make the eight-hour drive. Caroline had said it was what any good son should do, so he had done
it. Images of the old man sitting at the cluttered kitchen table, dust dancing in the sunlight streaming through the window, bony cigarette-stained fingers curled around a half bottle of beer, bits of the label peeled off. The silver hair on top of the old man's head was tinted with yellow, and it was uncombed, his undershirt was dirty, and his muscles, which had once been toned and tight as snakeskin, were slack and soft as baby's fat. McKelvey remembered feeling absolutely staggered by the sudden advance of years in his dad, this shovel in the face. He just stood there, couldn't say a word. There was something terrifying about realizing the truth of mortality.

Now he smoked and walked. The morning chill had burned away beneath a brilliant sun, and now, at noon, the day was fully in bloom—perhaps even a record temperature for this time of year. He walked the few blocks up Yonge to Dundas, the hub of the city. If New York had Times Square, then Toronto had Yonge-Dundas. It sat at the crux of what was probably the country's busiest intersection, right across from the Eaton Centre, which was without argument the country's busiest shopping centre. The five-storey mall drew more than fifty million visitors each year.

The public square was right now under construction as part of a massive urban redevelopment plan to return the area to its former glory as a focal point for open-air concerts, exhibits, receptions, community celebrations. The winning bid for the redevelopment included plans for a large open court comprised of granite slabs, twenty fountains, water and lighting effects, a canopy shelter. While McKelvey's first reaction to news of the upscale redesign was one of trepidation—who wanted some goggle-eyed, sandal-wearing architect to determine the course of the city's very heart, after all—but now, as he passed by the work site, he figured it deserved some benefit of the doubt.

The Eaton Centre had just opened its doors for the holiday weekend crowd, and the place was already filling with tourists and locals both, employees and cleaning staff, those using the centre as a cut-through between Dundas and Queen Streets. McKelvey took the escalator down to the food court level. He was immediately assailed by the strange perfume of sickly sweet cinnamon buns mixed with the fecund scents of freshly brewed coffee, cheesy pizza, pretzels, buttery popcorn, deep fried fish. It was no wonder young people were getting so fat. He saw teenagers hanging around the doors to the mall, pot-bellied and stoop-shouldered as though they were in their late sixties, for Christ sake, stumbling around with gout from a lack of vegetables and fruit. They thought poutine was one of the seven food groups.

He and Dawson had arranged to meet at the Starbucks Coffee island just past the water fountain at the mouth to the south food court. Before McKelvey could tell him that he had his picture from the annual report, Peter Dawson had provided the helpful piece of information that he was “tall and skinny and will be wearing a plaid British wool driving cap”. McKelvey joined the queue for coffee and again took note of the number of young teens buying these silo-sized concoctions of froth and whipped cream and drizzled chocolate with a fucking cherry on top.

“Medium coffee, please,” he said to the young server.

“Would you like to try our new pumpkin spiced latte?”

“Pumpkin
what
?”

The server must have seen the look that Hattie was always telling him about, this scrunch-faced, slit-eyed squint that came so naturally in moments of confusion or frustration or condemnation.
When you do that to your face,
Hattie had told him,
it makes people literally want to run the other way.

“For Halloween,” the girl shrugged. “Never mind. Mild or bold for your coffee?”

“Bold, I guess.”

With the complicated transaction complete, McKelvey went to the condiment stand and stirred in a shot of cream. It was eighteen per cent, thick as yogurt, but the doctors were nowhere in sight. As he turned, he caught view of a man standing off to the side. Peter Dawson. And he wasn't kidding, McKelvey thought. The man was six-six, a hundred and fifty pounds, this plaid wool cap on top of his head as though to guard against the weather patterns at that altitude.

“Mr. Dawson,” McKelvey said and went over.

“Mr. Leyden, I presume,” Dawson said, and they shook hands.

The joke had gone far enough. McKelvey was wishing he hadn't kept on with the play on Leyden's name. Too late now to turn back without drawing suspicion.

McKelvey said, “Can I buy you a coffee?”

“Sure,” Dawson said. “I might try one of those new pumpkin lattes, actually.”

McKelvey got in line again as Dawson went and got them a table in the food court. The same server came to the counter, She smiled at McKelvey.

“Pumpkin spiced latte,” he said through gritted teeth.

“You changed your mind, that's great,” she said, grabbing an empty cup and marking the order on the side with her grease pencil. “Room for whipped cream?”

“Of course,” he said. “As much as you can fit.”

McKelvey took the drink over to the table. Dawson thanked him, removed his cap and ran a hand over thin reddish-brown hair that was halfway gone. He leaned in and drew a mouthful of the whipped topping then licked his lips. There was no way, McKelvey thought, for a man to drink a drink like this without looking ridiculous.

“Thanks for taking a few minutes,” McKelvey said.

Dawson nodded. “I hope you don't mind me asking, but can I see your business card? I mean,
if
you're an immigration lawyer.”

If you're a lawyer. McKelvey saw that he needed to show a little goodwill in the domain of truth. That, or risk the man closing up entirely. He said, “I'll be honest with you, Peter. I'm a former police officer.”

Dawson nodded as though he had come prepared for this information. “Then I'll be honest as well,” he said. “When Pamela called me and gave me the message, well, I'm not twenty-two years old. I figured there was something else to it. I thought maybe it was taxes, some audit of our funders by CSIS. You know, in the wake of 9/11 and everything. So what are you doing exactly? What are you looking for at Bridges?”

“I have reason to believe Donia Kruzik was murdered. A friend of mine was seeing her. He was worried about her,” McKelvey said. “She just stopped calling, disappeared. I went looking for her on behalf of my friend. She was gone, but someone was in her apartment. Things have become increasingly complex from that point on.”

Dawson drank some of his latte and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He was fair-skinned, lightly freckled, and his cheeks were a little scarred from teenage acne. He seemed innocuous. McKelvey saw the man at the front of a Rotary Club meeting with a name tag taped to his suit coat.

“This is that case that's all over the news, isn't it? I mean, they haven't released the woman's name, but that's why you're here, right?”

McKelvey nodded. He took a drink of his coffee and watched the man's eyes for signs of where this was headed. The man had no obligation to sit here and talk to a civilian.

“I should be speaking to the police, in that case,” Dawson said, as though reading his mind. “I mean, whoever is handling the investigation. To keep this above board.”

“I can put them in touch with you,” McKelvey said. “I'm just hoping for some basic background information. My friend is in a real jam here. Time is of the essence.”

“I don't know much about that particular client, Mr. Leyden. What I can tell you is that Davis Chapman was her intake volunteer. And he was our most senior volunteer, in terms of career and background experience. Most of our team members are third or fourth-year university students.”

“You said ‘was'. He no longer volunteers?”

Dawson sat back. He shrugged and his head tilted to the left. His body language told McKelvey to keep picking. The man wanted to let go of something.
“He works for the government. He travels a lot,” Dawson said.