Authors: Anthony Bidulka
wait any longer. He couldn’t afford to play this
dangerous game at the risk of a similar bouquet
showing up at his home or something worse hap-
pening. And I can’t say that I blamed him.
“I’ve made a move,” Daniel announced. “I
know I should have waited until I could talk to
you about it, but…well, I did it anyway, because I
know it’s the right thing to do.”
I exchanged glances with a silent Herb Dufour.
His heavy jaw moved slowly from side to side.
Obviously whatever Daniel had done did not sit
right with his business partner. Daniel handed me
another piece of paper across the desk.
I took it and read:
334 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
Dear Loverboy,
I have received the flowers. In return, I am will-
ing to send you one payment of $10,000.00. If I
hear from you again, even once, after your
receipt of this payment, I will immediately call
the police and reveal to them and anyone else
necessary the details of the events of this black-
mail scheme. I will, at risk to my own personal
reputation, career and marriage, most happily
ask them to pursue you, apprehend you and
incarcerate you to the fullest extent possible
under the law, which, after all, is on my side.
If you are agreeable to this arrangement, send
me a letter with the appropriate details.
D.G.
While I reread the letter a second time, Herb
Dufour came to life. “Russell, you have to tell him
how dangerous this is. The blackmailer will not
accept this. There’s no reason for him to be open to
negotiation. He set his price.” He turned to
Daniel. “Daniel, you’ve got to pay it. If not, he will
take your ten thousand and come back for the rest
of it, if not right away, eventually. Or, even worse,
he’ll accept the ten thousand and spill the beans
anyway because you didn’t meet his original
demands.”
“Why would he do that?” Daniel shot back.
“What good would it do him?”
“Oh come on, Daniel,” Herb said, “this is a
blackmailer we’re talking about. He doesn’t live
life by any moral code of ethics we’d recognize.
He’d do it for sport, to see you ruined, humiliated,
Anthony Bidulka — 335
while he laughs all the way to the bank with your
money. He’s not going to buy your bluff.
“Russell has been at this for less than two
weeks. Give him a chance to find this asshole.
When we know who he is
then
we can figure out
how to deal with him, maybe get your money
back.” Herb shifted in his seat and brought the full
power of his attention to bear on me. “You must
have some idea. Who is this guy? Who the hell are
we dealing with?”
In a sudden motion Daniel stood up behind his
desk. With a bang he slammed both palms down
on its surface and leaned towards us, staring at us
with an unflinching gaze. He calmly spoke the
words, “I—am—not—bluffing.”
A hollow silence filled the room. Daniel
straightened up but did not sit down. This had to
stop. We were getting nowhere. “Daniel,” I said,
“could I speak to you alone for a moment?”
Herb did not wait for an answer. He jumped
up from his chair and headed towards the door
where he stopped, turned and said, “You’re mak-
ing a big mistake.” And with that he was gone.
Daniel fell to his seat like a boxer returning to
his corner of the ring after a punishing ninth
round. With his hands against his face, steeple
fashion over his nose and mouth, he gazed at me
and asked, “Do you think I’m making a mistake
too?”
“I don’t know, Daniel. I wish you had waited to
talk to me first, so we could have decided together
whether or not it was the best strategy at this stage
of the game. But what’s done is done. What we
336 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
need to do now is focus on the right next move.”
He let out a big sigh. “Thank you, Russell.”
“For what?”
“For everything,” he said. “For everything
you’ve been doing for me. I know I haven’t been
the easiest client to deal with. But through all of
this, the one thing I’ve come to rely on is you.
That you are looking out for my best interests.
Even when I’m not always sure myself of what
those are.”
“You’re welcome” seemed insufficient. I nod-
ded. I looked closely at Daniel. His perfect hair.
His perfect suit. His perfect pinky ring. But under-
neath it all, this was a man whose whole life,
whole being, was slowly being recast. He was
becoming someone different from the man I first
met. Someone he himself was having a hard time
recognizing, a hard time living with—at least for
now.
I spent the next few minutes telling him about
the damage to my car and the stink bomb sent to
my home. At first I thought the two unfortunate
incidents were simply that. But no more. The van-
dalism and stink bomb were meant to send me a
message. They were thinly veiled threats meant to
say, “Yoo hoo, I’m still here, I want my money and
you’d better stay out of it.”
We needed to come up with some new possi-
bilities. I goaded and pressured and urged Daniel
to think of someone else, someone he might have
missed or discounted for whatever reason, some-
one we could look into, a family member, an
employee, a business colleague or long forgotten
Anthony Bidulka — 337
acquaintance, perhaps another sexual partner
he’d failed to mention. But he came up with noth-
ing. And as I left the DGR&R building the same
feeling I’d woken up with came back to haunt me.
I had all the pieces but they frustratingly refused
to fit together.
“Even if you run really fast on a treadmill, you still
don’t get anywhere.”
Errall had caught me slumped over my desk,
staring at my computer screen. And she was right.
I did feel like I was exerting myself like crazy, but
getting no further for it. I was thinking about my
case and the frenzy of dead ends, suspects that
weren’t suspects, and the growing pile of stuff in
the Herrings file. I wordlessly raised my chin off
my forearm and looked at her. It had been a while
since Errall had made the trip upstairs and
stepped foot into my office. It was after four in the
afternoon and I’d forgotten to turn on an over-
head light. The room had become dim as the churl-
ish grey snow clouds congregated over the city,
effectively blocking out the sun.
“I was wondering how Brutus was? Is he doing
okay?” She had ended up in front of the balcony
doors gazing out at the encroaching storm. She
stood with her back to me, hands on slender hips.
“You didn’t come over with Kelly when she
was checking on my mom while I was away?”
Her head swivelled towards me, a surprised
look on her face. Did she even know about this?
Didn’t Kelly tell her?
338 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
She turned away. “No. I didn’t,” was her only
answer.
I let her off the hook. “He’s doing great. Barbra
loves the company and so does my mom.” I decid-
ed not to tell her about the sleeping in the bed-
room thing. It would only make her feel guiltier
than she obviously already was. “You know you
and Kelly can come over to see him anytime?”
“You know what?” she said, approaching the
desk. “The real reason I came up here was
to…Gawd, I don’t know, I guess to get some adult
conversation about anything other than this. I am
sick to death of thinking about it. Sick of it.”
That much was obvious. I changed tack. “So
work is busy?” I asked, somehow glad we had still
not switched on any lights.
She grimaced and sat down. “Actually no.
Most of my clients have either gotten ‘nice’ for the
holidays and don’t want to sue each other, or else
they’ve left town. I’d be working half days just
like everyone else around here seems to be doing
this week…except, well, home’s not a great place
to be right now, so…How about you? You were
looking mightily perplexed when I came in. Give
my brain something to do. Give me an update.”
Since moving into PWC, Errall has acted as
my business and personal attorney. That arrange-
ment of legally bound confidentiality allows me to
talk freely with her about my clients. It’s at times
like these where my relationship with Errall
becomes something much different from our
usual state of agreed-upon acrimony—something
neither of us cares to inspect too closely. So I glad-
Anthony Bidulka — 339
ly gave her a rundown on what had transpired
over the last couple of weeks. A cathartic experi-
ence.
“And you have no other suspects?” she asked
when I was done.
“No solid ones. And none endorsed by my
client. He’s having a hard time accepting the fact
that Loverboy might be someone other than
SunLover or James Kraft.”
“Could he be right?” she asked, her sharp blue
eyes glinting like sparks in the almost-dark room.
“Well,” I began, rolling the possibilities again
through my mind, “James was the one Daniel had
pegged as the most likely candidate to be
Loverboy. But when I met him in New York, he
seemed genuinely in the dark about any blackmail
scheme. And living there would have made it dif-
ficult for him to perpetrate the crime. There was
the threatening note
hand
-delivered to Daniel’s
office. And then this morning, the bouquet of
flowers from Loverboy—well after James’ death.”
“Those could have been sent from anywhere in
the world and ordered at any time, even before
James died. Did you check the florist?”
“There was no way to identify which florist
was used—if at all. As far as we know, Loverboy
himself could have purchased and delivered the
flowers.”
“What about an accomplice?”
“I’ve thought of that too. But the more I think
about it now, the less likely I think it is. It seems
pretty risky to carry out a blackmail scheme and
then leave town and have a buddy handle all the
340 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
cash. I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right to me. I think
Loverboy, whoever he is—or was—acted alone.”
“You have circumstantial evidence, but no
proof, Russell. James Kraft could still very well be
your Loverboy. Everything that has happened
since could have been arranged by him before his
death.”
“Except the stink bomb and my car getting
trashed.”
“He coulda hired that out…and besides, we
don’t even know for sure if that has anything to
do with the blackmail. There was no note making
a threat or claiming responsibility with either one,
right?”
I nodded my head.
Errall opened her mouth to say something but
I saw her catch the words before they left her
throat. We both knew why.
“Could it be him?” Errall whispered in the
darkness.
“Could Anthony
actually
be
Loverboy?”
I wanted to chastise her for even suggesting
our friend could have played such a heinous role.
But I couldn’t. For I was wondering the same
thing.
She took my silence as tacit permission to go
on. “Unlike James Kraft he was physically present
throughout the blackmail period,” she said. “And,
he has nothing to lose.”
I stood up. Now it was my turn to stand at the
balcony door staring out. “That’s where you’re
wrong,” I said, placing my hand on the back of my
neck, rubbing the lumps of stress that had grown
Anthony Bidulka — 341
there. “He does have something to lose. Jared.”
There was quiet behind me. I didn’t turn around.
I couldn’t bear for us to be talking about this; I
couldn’t bear to look at her while these words
came out of my mouth. “It would however
explain all his money,” I admitted. “People have
always wondered where it all comes from. It can’t
just be from the stores. They do well enough, but
not that well. It’s retail for Pete’s sake.
“Maybe he operates a whole blackmail ring,
with several men on the hook. A few thousand