Face/Mask (29 page)

“It’s a kind of meat dish...the Arabs make.”

“How come your gramma cooked Arab food, mom?”

Terry’s face reddened but she didn’t answer, keeping her eyes on her husband. Janus realized that she was waiting until she was sure of his own attitude before saying anything. It saddened him to know that his mood swings were such that his wife was a little bit afraid of him.

“Because her grandmother was Syrian, Francis.”

“Syrian? Isn’t that-”

“Arab, yes,” Janus answered for his wife who continued to look at him silently.

“I didn’t know that,” Francis complained.

“Neither did I, Frankie. Until yesterday, that is. Funny, huh?”

“She died before we met,” Terry finally spoke up. “It never came up…after that.”

“What was she,” Richard asked. “Catholic or Orthodox?”

Janus laughed before Terry could answer. “She wasn’t Christian, Richard. She was Sunni.”

For a moment there was silence around the table. All eyes were turned toward Terry, who was blushing furiously and struggling to keep the tears from her eyes. After a few seconds, Rollie spoke up. 

“What’s Sunni?”

“Shut up, Rollie,” Richard snapped at him.

Terry reached out and squeezed her oldest son’s arm.

“Don’t. He’s right to ask. It isn’t such a big deal…now.”

She turned to Rollie and spoke softly.

“She was a Muslim.”

“Like the ones on the news?”

She cleared her throat and glanced at Janus who leaned back in his chair, letting her say what she had to. “No, not like them. Anyway, she
was
. Past tense. She converted to Catholic when she married my grandfather.”

Rollie, always wanting to understand how everything worked, needed more details. He asked, “Did she have to convert?”

“No, sweetie, she wanted to. There was a big ceremony at the village. I saw the video. You know, boys, in 2D like the movies Uncle Joe showed you. The archbishop came down from Trieste to baptize her. Her parents were very angry though. They refused to come to the baptism, or to the wedding.”

Richard lifted his hand like he was in class. When he spoke, it was with a nervous tremor in his voice.

“Aren’t you supposed to report this?”

“Yes,” Terry answered patiently. “It’s on the census forms your father makes me fill out every three years. I’ve reported it ever since the law changed, which was well before we were married, by the way.”

She was looking at Janus who decided to ask the one question that had been on his mind since his meeting with Joe. He was barely able to suppress the frustration in his voice when he spoke.

“How could you not tell me this?”

“How do you think you passed those lie-detectors?”

Janus was taken aback by the coldly-calculated logic that lay behind her answer. She looked at him straight in the eyes, wearing an expression of determination he wasn’t used to seeing. He realized that she hadn’t just lied
to
him; she’d lied
for
him. He took another deep breath, understanding that he had no reason to be angry at his wife.

“OK,” he said, beginning to relax. “Is that everything you have to do? Report it?”

“Yes, my dear. One grandparent, you only have to report it on the census forms. Two grandparents and they have a whole hearing on you.”

“What if it’s both your
parents
?” asked Francis, who was leaning close to his mother.

“Then you wouldn’t be born, because your daddy here would never have met a girl from the Laval camp, and that’s definitely where I would have been living.”

Francis turned to his father. “Is that right, dad?”

“I’m afraid she’s right.”

“But Dad-”

“Don’t look at me, Francis.” Janus felt himself blush, thinking of Sahar. “I don’t make the rules. I only live by them.”

Later that night Janus closed the door of his basement office and made the call that he’d been dreading. When Walid answered it was obvious the man had never doubted that Janus would call. Janus kept his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and Walid often had to make him repeat what he said.    

“Normand Leblanc,” Janus said. “He’s a section head where I work. At Municipal Infrastructure.”

“Where you work? A section head?”

“Yes, section head.”

“That sounds like a fairly important position.”

“It’s one step below mine,” Janus.

“And what’s his name again,
Monsieur
Janus?” Walid asked.

Janus squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back in his chair. His wife and children were asleep, but he’d hardly slept in the three days since meeting Walid at the dogfights. His decision to finally give him Leblanc’s name was due as much to his overwhelming fatigue as to his desire to help Joe.

“Normand Leblanc,” he answered. “L-e-b-l-a-n-c.”

Janus had wracked his brain trying to come up with some other name, or other information, that would suit Walid’s purposes. The fact was that his lifestyle didn’t put him into contact with many people who’d interest Walid. Other than Leblanc, of course, who paid off his gambling debts by awarding city contracts to his underground friends.

Janus hoped that Walid had meant it when he said that Janus was on the list of friends he’d never betray.

Not that it’s so hard to betray friends or family once you put your mind to it
.

“And this Leblanc,” Walid asked, “he is in charge of sub-contracting some of the work your department does?”

“Not really in charge. He studies the bids and makes recommendations, but usually his opinion is followed. Nobody really questions his paperwork.”

“And the contracts he can give to my friends, they are lucrative, yes?”

“Annually, they can run into the low seven figures.”

“Well, that is interesting,
Monsieur
Janus. And you think he will let my friends have some of these contracts when we tell him we know about the money he has lost at the dog-fights?”

“He won’t have a choice, will he? I know for a fact he owes a lot of money there.
A lot
. It’s a situation which has made him vulnerable to outside influences, if you see what I mean. A situation that forced him to compromise…” Janus paused, wondering if this was the lowest he’d ever sink, before continuing.

“He’s deep in debt. He had no choice,” he added weakly in his friend’s defence.

“
Bien oui
,” Walid replied. “A man may do things for money that he would never consider doing otherwise.”

Son of a bitch is actually mocking me
, Janus thought, knowing full well that he deserved Walid’s scorn.

“He won’t want anyone to know how he’s been paying off his debts. So you can use that to pressure him. But you have to promise to not let anyone else know what he’s done.”

“
Monsieur
Janus. We are looking to make a profit, not destroy a man’s life.”

Janus didn’t mention to Walid that Leblanc might already be facing the administration’s expected audit. The audit would probably uncover Leblanc’s corruption without Janus’s help, and that fact helped him rationalize giving his friend’s name to Walid. If all Walid did was get some contracts for his people, then Janus could tell himself that he’d done nothing to hurt his friend. It wasn’t as if Walid would be asking Leblanc for the blueprints of the electrical grid...at least not as far as Janus knew.

The idiot hasn’t even slowed down with his gambling despite all his fears of discovery. Why should I be so worried about him when he’s done nothing to help himself?

Leblanc was going to get a black mark on his record, and fired, with or without Janus’s help. And what if he was fired? Was that as bad as the years in jail and deportation that awaited Joe?

“You will flash-text me the details I’ll need,” Walid said, interrupting his thoughts. “Upcoming work, submission forms and so on, yes?”

“You’ll have everything a few minutes after you hang up. As for the money...”

“Don’t worry,
Monsieur
Janus. It will take me a little time to look into what you’ve given me, to weigh it, if I may use the expression. But I believe you have adequately satisfied our needs. For now, of course.”

“For now? Why only for now?”

“
Monsieur
Janus
, soyons sérieux
.  You are getting two hundred thousand dollars, interest-free, with a very generous reimbursement schedule. This Leblanc fellow proves your
bona fides
, of course. But we may, in the future, require more from you. You understand this,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Excellent. So, we will speak tomorrow evening, yes? And you will have all your money, be assured of that.”

October 3, 2039:

Terry sat at the small window in the downstairs bathroom, blowing cigarette smoke into the vent which led outside. Janus had installed the vent years earlier so she’d have a place to smoke when the air was too bad to step out onto the back stoop. The small rattling sound let her know the fan was functioning, blowing her cigarette smoke out without letting any of the foul night air in.

She’d quit smoking after getting pregnant with Francis, their second child. After Joe’s arrest she’d bought a pack at the administrations supermarket, shocked at how expensive it was, and then kept going back for more. She’d been spending much of the last few days in this bathroom, her one private space in the house, and smoking more than she had years before. Allen never criticized her for it, understanding that it helped her cope. She felt trapped, helpless by what had happened to her uncle. Life had been far from perfect before, but Allen’s position had allowed her a certain feeling of security. Now her safety net had been pulled away.

Not even Allen’s administration job could have stopped the police from acting once they suspected someone of aiding terrorists.
That’s fucking crazy
, she thought, allowing herself an expletive she’d never have voiced aloud.
The man just bought some fresh lamb!

The court wouldn’t even give details of what he was suspected of. The administration only had to raise a red flag and the security apparatus went into full damage-protection mode. Redacted police reports. Unnamed informers. False witnesses, she had no doubt. She half-expected her uncle to be spirited away to some foreign jail where he could be tortured. Rendition, Richard had called it, before explaining that under the Enhanced Homeland Security Act it was no longer necessary to send prisoners to foreign countries to be tortured.

Great country,
she thought as she lit her fifth straight cigarette.
Now we do all our torturing in-house. No more outsourcing our good jobs!
    

She tried to think of anything other than her uncle, but there was little to cheer her up. She still spent her days at the Chest Hospital, trying to do some good for others, but there was nothing to be happy about there. At times the suffering was overwhelming. She thought of Lyne St. Pierre, a patient she’d been spending time with who’d died at the beginning of the week. She’d only been twenty, just a bit older than Richard, yet at the end her body looked like it belonged to an eighty year old.

Cancer of the oesophagus. The young woman had been fighting it since she was sixteen, and the battle had taken quite a toll on her. To make things worse, her body had become extremely susceptible to the myriad microbes that infested the hospital’s air vents, despite the best efforts to keep the premises sterile. The microbes had infected her lungs, so that in her final days she was drowning on the inside.

Christ, stop it
.

But her thoughts would only latch onto whatever was dark and depressing, finding futility instead of hope for improvement in the world around her. People were dying horrible deaths from the garbage they breathed, yet the administration wasted its dwindling resources prosecuting old men for shopping at unauthorized merchants.

She was certain that those terrorism charges were unfounded. The
Cons
must have thrown those in because they were too embarrassed about arresting an old man for buying unstamped food. She knew that what Uncle Joe had done wasn’t strictly legal, but she never considered it to be a crime. She’d let him go on his shopping trips to Little Italy where he could meet people from back home. And she’d been happy to eat his lovely roasts, never thinking about the consequences if he were caught.

She blew her nose in a few squares of toilet paper which she balled up and tossed into the toilet bowl. Several wadded up sheets floated in the bowl, but she wouldn’t flush it yet, a habit formed by years of administration warnings to preserve water. She looked at her face in the mirror, her reflection wearing wrinkles she was sure hadn’t been there a week earlier. She tried to put on a happier expression for the kids, although she doubted they were fooled.