Slow Recoil - C.B. Forrest A Charlie McKelvey Mystery

Скачать книгу

rush of dope to his head, the effect of which always seemed compounded after a couple of pints of beer, as though the cigarettes knew his defenses were already weakened, so they took the opportunity to carry him across the threshold. He coughed a little and cleared his throat. It was the third and final allotted ration in what was his latest scheme to maneuver within this habit, for breaking it all together seemed utterly futile. Old dogs and all of that business. He had become, in his advanced years, a proponent of compromise.

      He walked the three or four paces to the door of his condo building. An attractive woman in her early forties walked by in a group of mixed company, and she caught McKelvey’s eye. A nice red dress that fit her well, fit her very well, a white sweater tied across her shoulders to guard against the evening chill. They gave each other this shy little smile, kids flirting in a schoolyard, and McKelvey shrugged as she walked on past, shifting her eyes to the sidewalk when she could no longer hold his gaze. He pinched the glow from the half-finished cigarette, dropping the ash to the sidewalk, twisted the end and put the remainder of the smoke in his shirt pocket. There was a measure of consolation in knowing he would start the next day up half a cigarette in the debit column. It was all just games that grownups played, this mental masturbation. One had to be grateful for the small mercies won or awarded in a day.

      McKelvey climbed the stairs. Each unit had its own landing and a small velvet-topped bench against the wall in case someone was waiting for you and for some strange reason you didn’t want them in your house. It was a new building and they were collectively the first tenants. There was the old Italian, Giuseppe, on the main floor, a former member of the resistance in Italy during the Second World War, the Resiztenza. McKelvey had tried to tell the old man to stop using a stone to prop open the inner door of the building, saying it defeated the purpose of a so-called secure entrance. The old man shrugged and said he could never remember to bring his keys with him when he limped up to the St. Lawrence Market to buy his coils of sausage. On the second floor was a young gay couple, Chad and Russell, both of whom appeared to be lawyers or perhaps financial traders, always dressed in these expensive suits and ties. On the third floor, just below McKelvey, there was a divorced woman in her late thirties or early forties who made Hattie a little jealous because she was cute with her short hair, and she sometimes smiled at McKelvey. It had been an adjustment to leave The Beach, the old neighbourhood off Queen East and Gerrard with its converted cottages and the boardwalks, the first home he had made for his wife and his son; he accepted the fact it was a geographical cure of sorts, the shaking of ghosts. It had been an adjustment, but he was getting used to it. The people in his building were as good a collection of wayfarers as he could imagine.

      Now McKelvey stood in front of his door for a moment to catch his breath, embarrassingly dizzy from the short climb. Stars and pins of light across his vision. He sat on the little red bench, the first time he’d used it in almost a year. It struck him that he had forgotten to eat lunch. A slip, perhaps, a sort of backsliding to old ways. It began with forgetting to eat. Then it was the laundry, or lack of it, wearing the same pants three days in a row, the stubble on his face coming in thick and silver. That living with Hattie had kept his life on track by offering a division of workable quotients seemed glaringly obvious in moments such as these. Living with someone gave reference to each part of the day. They became your gyroscope. There was the time you got up, the time you ate breakfast, the time you went to bed, the time you swept the hardwood, cleaned the toilets. Left to his own devices and vices, McKelvey had only himself to worry about. And therein lay the problem, at least according to Hattie.

      She said, “You’ll jump in the harbour to save a stranger, but you won’t take the time to fucking feed yourself. God, Charlie, what am I going to do with you?”

      He unlocked the deadbolt and stepped inside, the smell of the six strips of bacon he’d fried that morning still heavy in the air. The light was flashing on his answering machine across the darkened room. He drew toward the beacon like a ship guided to a distant shoreline.

      The first message was from Jessie Rainbird, the mother of his granddaughter and the last person to love his son. A runaway from Manitoulin Island, the girl had seen more than her fair share of life and all of its darkness on the streets of the nation’s largest city. She had grappled with the curse of addiction, and the myriad lessons it brought. He knew there were times when the pressure of straight life and the memories of Gavin came back to her, a haunting refrain. He knew also that she stumbled sometimes but always managed to pick herself back up. He was proud of her and had come to love her in a way he had never thought possible—they had a history, this girl and McKelvey, and he knew without doubt he would always come through for her.

      Jessie’s year-long hairdressing course was wrapping up now, and she was planning to head back to her Aunt Peggy’s place on Manitoulin Island to take a break and contemplate her next steps. She said in the message that she wanted to bring Emily over for a visit before the two of them took the Sunday morning Greyhound up Highway 69. Before signing off, she admonished McKelvey for the Coca-Cola he had served the curly-haired Emily the last time she had left the child in his overnight care while she went out with some classmates.

      “And no Krispy Kreme donuts, either,” she said. “She’s turning three, Charlie.”

      He smiled as he made a mental note to buy groceries in advance of Saturday to supplement the jar of mayo and the heel of dark orange cheddar cheese in his fridge. The smile faded as the next message came on. It was Tim Fielding, the young widower he’d met at the men’s grief group up at St. Michael’s Hospital. There solely to satisfy his wife’s desire to see him progress within the realm of healing from grief and trauma, McKelvey had somehow ended up befriending the young man. And it was through tagging along while Tim got a tattoo in memory of his wife that McKelvey had made the strange discovery of Jessie Rainbird. That Polaroid photo of Gavin and Jessie tucked within the pages of a portfolio at the tattoo shop, the fated young couple there to get matching tattoos. The young girl pregnant. Lovers from the street. Everything had unfolded out of that moment of sheer serendipity. And it was for this reason he felt his relationship with the young man was meant to be.

      “Charlie, it’s Tim. Tim Fielding. I’m sorry I haven’t called in a while. Listen. I need your help with something. Please give me a call. The number’s the same. I really need your help, Charlie… someone’s gone missing.”

      It was the sound of Tim’s voice that did it. There was something there, a desperation. Someone’s gone missing. Surely to god the man knew enough to call the police. As a retired detective with the Metro Hold-up Squad, formerly of the Fraud Squad and a lifetime in patrol cars across four divisions, McKelvey certainly had connections and numbers to call, names to drop—the fraternity of the police lasted for a lifetime, after all. But he wasn’t on active duty. And the connections he did have were growing fewer and farther between as new-generation careerists on the force tried to distance themselves from his maverick investigation of Pierre Duguay and all the fallout that had come from it—the files opened by Professional Standards and the Special Investigations Unit. For McKelvey had been correct in his hunch that the lead investigator on his son’s case was off the mark. That Detective-Sergeant Raj Balani had turned out to be truly dirty—that he was on the payroll of the bikers and directly implicated in Gavin’s murder because the boy had recognized the man hanging with the biker Marcel Leroux—well, it was a black eye for the force once the story hit the press. A crime writer with the Toronto Sun apparently had a book in the works. He’d called a few times, but McKelvey had yet to return the call. There was nothing to say; what was done was done.

      He flicked the desk light by the window overlooking the alley and the brick face of an old warehouse preserved in its original character. In this neighbourhood you could turn a corner and walk straight into 1923, half expecting to see old-world mobsters with tommy guns, scuttling barrels of illegal whiskey on the flatbed trucks. He thumbed through his small black address book, most of the entries long ago scratched out. Mutual couple friends, well-meaning folks who had simply drifted away from he and Caroline in the dark days and months that followed the murder of their boy. It was the sort of extraordinary event that made people look a little too closely at themselves, into the fragile nature of this strange arrangement.

      He glanced at his wristwatch and saw that Tim had left the message just over an

Скачать книгу