Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery (4 page)

“No. She doesn’t want me back.” Steve’s words slurred again. He seemed to be concentrating to counter the effects of the tranquillizer. “What did I do wrong?” he asked, like a chastised child.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. People grow apart for a lot of different reasons.”

“I know.” Steve blew his nose on the napkin and looked up. “I just never thought it would happen to us.”

“I think you need to accept it for now, and go on with your life. Maybe things will change, but you need to get on with things. Are you working?”

Steve shook his head. “No — I’m too much of a mess. I haven’t been able to concentrate since this happened.”

Dan looked over at Ked, who’d fallen asleep in the chair after giving the old man a donut and the carton of milk. Bonnie and Clyde were holding hands across the table, still speaking in whispers, planning their next heist. The store clerk had disappeared behind his counter.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “It was selfish of me to call. I didn’t realize you had Ked with you.”

“I’m glad you felt you could call me.” Dan squeezed Steve’s forearm. He was thinking that next time he might not get a call till it was too late. He’d hear from Glenda over the fence how poor Steve had killed himself out of grief, trying to sound as if she cared.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about those sleeping pills,” Steve said, confirming Dan’s fears. “I didn’t want to disturb you, but something made me do it.”

“Calling someone is always the right thing to do. Promise me you’ll call any time you feel things are getting out of hand. I’d like to think you’d do the same for me.”

Steve smiled ruefully. “Yeah, right — like you’ve got problems, Mr. Everything’s-Under-Control.”

Dan wondered if that was really how he appeared to people who didn’t know him.

“I think I’m all talked out.” Steve yawned. He seemed calmer, a different person from the man who’d walked in the door an hour earlier. “I think we’d better get some rest.”

“Are you sure?” Dan said. “I’m not in a hurry.”

“Thanks. I’m sure.”

They left the donut shop and walked up the street. Ked faltered behind them, as though he couldn’t coordinate his footsteps.

“I want you to promise me you’ll talk to your doctor about this,” Dan said. “You do have a doctor, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Talk to him. Make an appointment today. Maybe a month or two on anti-depressants would help.”

“I will,” Steve said gratefully. “I promise I will do that.” He was nearly Dan’s age, but over the last hour he’d assumed the role of dutiful son.

They reached Dan’s car. Ked slid into the backseat and lay down without a word.

“I can give you a lift if you want,” Dan said.

“I’m only a block away.” Steve waved in the direction of Donlands.

The storefronts along Danforth were taking shape, losing shadow in the coming light. A car slid past, somnolent in the pre-dawn hush.

“You should see this place,” Steve said. “It comes fully furnished with artificial flowers. Did I tell you? It’s like a hotel lobby. It’s sort of wonderful and horrible at the same time. You’ll have to come over some night. We’ll put down a bottle of wine.”

For an instant Dan glimpsed the old Steve — friendly, chatty, kind. He was a good person. Someone who should never have to feel alone, with no one to help him sort out his problems.

“I’m always up for a drink and a chat.”

Steve shook Dan’s hand. “Thanks,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Dan. I feel much better. Truly.”

“Good. Keep in touch so I know things are all right. I’m home tonight after work and I’ll be in the office Friday morning, but I’m gone for the weekend.” Dan pressed a card in Steve’s hand. “Here’s my cell number. If you need to talk, just call me. Any time. I’m there for you.”

He watched Steve walk away, then got in the car and started the engine, hoping he could still catch an hour’s sleep. He turned to see Ked slumped in the back.

“How ya doing, kiddo?” he asked. “Gonna make it?”

With eyes closed, Ked nodded his head against the seat. “I love you, Dad,” he said softly.

Four

Dreams and Schemes

Sometimes going back to bed for that extra hour was the right thing to do and sometimes it was the wrong thing. Today it had been the wrong thing. Dan fumbled with a dull razor and dressed without realizing he’d put on mismatched socks. At nine o’clock, he spilled half a cup of coffee on his shirt. By ten, the entire day looked like it would be out-of-kilter. His reading glasses felt like a giant pair of daddy-long-legs straddling his head as he finalized the reports on the missing Kitchener woman with her fondness for jewellery and the young Serb who’d placed his faith in God and had the misfortune to come to Canada looking for work.

Shadows passed over the frosted glass with the mumbled goings-on of morning voices outside Dan’s office. For a firm that performed feats as miraculous as raising the dead, it might have had a colour scheme to match — beatific tropical shades, joyful rainbow hues. Instead, the offices were battleship grey — dull and cheerless as a December morning. Still, Dan consoled himself it was nothing so invidiously depressing as bubble gum pink or mustard yellow. It was simple, utilitarian, functional. Perhaps that precise shade of grey had been chosen to remind them of the dreary perseverance with which so many of the firm’s clients spent their days.

After fourteen years, Dan was one of the senior investigators. Some came and went in the space of a few years after finding more prestigious placement, while others burned out from the perennial themes of human misery that befell so many whose lives they tracked and whose stories were all that was left to record.

Dan had an impressive record of finds behind him and no reason to leave. There were always bigger firms and more prestigious appointments, but he’d made a decent life for himself and Ked. And he hadn’t lost interest in his work, which had always been his biggest concern. He didn’t need to feign enthusiasm or be admired. He was, despite the predictions of others, unaccountably successful. After all this time watching the others come and go, he had to ask himself: what else was there for him to do?

Dan was on his third cup of coffee, but the caffeine stubbornly refused to kick in. What he really wanted was a drink, but it was only ten thirty — far too early. A bottle of Scotch lay wrapped in a Sobey’s bag in the bottom of his desk. He’d hidden it like a schoolboy tucking cigarettes and condoms in the back of his socks drawer. In his mind’s eye he watched little feet duck outside and scrabble around the corner to the bar. Let them stay there then.

He tried Bill’s number and got the answering service. Bill never slept in, even after a late night, which meant he’d already left for the hospital. If he’d made it home the night before.

“Hiya,” Dan said into the phone. “We missed you last night.” His voice was gravely with fatigue. He tried to make himself sound jovial. “Give me a call about the weekend. I still don’t know who’s driving.” The plan had been to drive to Glenora on Friday and stay overnight with Bill’s friend Thom, the groom. As usual, Bill had been so hard to pin down that basic questions like whose car they were taking were still up in the air. “I’ll wait to hear from you. Ciao.”

He took another hopeless sip of coffee and opened the file on Richard Philips, the missing fourteen-year-old. The boy’s birthdate caught Dan’s eye — he was exactly one year less a day older than Ked, which meant that he was now a fifteen-year-old runaway.
Happy birthday, Richard
.

He read on. The boy had been missing for two months. There’d been no body recovered and thus no closure. At the end of August, an anonymous caller phoned Toronto police to say the boy was fine, giving details only someone close to him would know, and adding that Richard had no intention of returning home. He’d been labelled a runaway, plain and simple. Until the police had anything further to go on, the case was shelved.

Dan flipped through the pages to the transcript. The call had been traced to a diner on Church Street in the heart of the gay ghetto. That narrowed the possibilities drastically. Unless a kid had friends to turn to in the city — preferably with money — then hustling was a likely avenue. It was a choice Dan wouldn’t wish on anyone, but it was a direct source of income if a kid decided to disappear. It happened often enough, though the parents just couldn’t understand why their kids would choose sex with a stranger over the “love” they found at home. Dan could.

He’d had plenty of time to think about it before leaving Sudbury at seventeen. The issue had been simple — why stay where you weren’t wanted? He’d said goodbye to his aunt and cousin the night before, then told his father at breakfast he was leaving. Gaunt and grey-faced, the man grunted a response — whether in acknowledgment or disbelief, Dan couldn’t tell, just as he could never tell what any of his father’s cryptic communications meant.

After an exhilarating day hitchhiking, Dan found himself in Toronto with an empty belly and no bed. He bought three chocolate bars from an all-night grocery and slept on a park bench the first two nights, amazed by the shadowy forms flitting past till the early hours. Now and again, one of them crept close to investigate while Dan held his breath until they left again. It seemed the city never slept — and he had barely. The Yonge Street Mission took him in the third night. He tried pan-
handling when his funds ran out, but the people he asked seemed more intimidated by him than sympathetic.

A kid at the mission told him about hustling. There was money to be made, he said, as long as you could stomach the sex. That wasn’t a problem. Dan had already experienced sex with older men. He recalled the snuffling, grubbing hands that pawed under his T-shirt and down his sweatpants in the shadows beneath the railway trestle back home. Apparently he had what they liked. He got a reputation for an ability to time his orgasms with passing coaches, earning him the nickname Train Trestle Danny.

When he arrived in Toronto, he was already an adult in body. One Saturday in July he stood on a deserted corner in the downtown strip known as Boys Town. For once he was lucky — in a relative way. The man who stopped his Mercedes to chat up the ungainly teenager with the adult’s body had been kind and not unattractive. He reminded Dan of his grade nine shop teacher, Mr. Dalton, a gruff man with hairy arms and shirtsleeves permanently rolled back. Dalton had been an erotic fixation for Dan, who conjured the man’s image to trigger his masturbatory fantasies.

Dalton’s look-alike invited Dan to his home in Leaside. Dan thought he was talking about a place outside Toronto, but the man assured him it was only a fifteen-minute ride to where they were headed. Money was never discussed. Dan was too nervous to bring it up, and the man had an assuredness that said he knew what he was doing.

As they drove along the tree-lined streets, Dan was struck by how little the neighbourhood offered the casual viewer. He wondered who lived behind the tidy, curtained windows where light spilled over the sills like the first star at twilight. He considered how much you’d have to earn to live there. Certainly more than he’d ever make.

Dan hadn’t minded the sex. The man — Bob Greene — was courteous and hadn’t asked Dan to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with. Afterwards, Dan pocketed the fifty dollars, blushing at Bob’s compliments. It was the first time anyone had made him feel attractive.

Bob was experienced at picking up boys. He knew life on the streets was anything but glamorous, and could be hazardous. He also knew hustlers came in two types: the ones you could trust and the ones you couldn’t. Most fell into the latter category sooner or later. Bob knew Dan was new at the game. But he was polite and eager to please. The next morning, when Dan didn’t seem in a hurry to get back on the streets, Bob invited him to stay for the day.

They spent the morning by the pool. In the afternoon, they walked around the neighbourhood. To Dan, Toronto was Yonge Street — the Eaton Centre and downtown strip with its sex shops, sporting goods chains, and fast food outlets. Beyond that, it seemed to sprawl without boundaries. You could walk all day without reaching the end of it. Here was another gleaming new part of it. With its staid brick homes and sturdy elms, Leaside represented the kind of family environment Dan had never known. It was a world away from the bleak mining town where he’d grown up.

Two months later, Bob picked him up on the same corner. Only this time, Dan didn’t leave again for quite a while. The invitation to live in a place with a pool rather than the over-crowded mission was more than enough of an enticement. He stayed with Bob for three years, finishing high school while they lived together. Bob put Dan in charge of his domestic finances, along with housekeeping duties. They’d been more like a couple than an older man and younger hustler. Even then, Dan hadn’t admitted to being gay. Sharing Bob’s bed for three years hadn’t changed that. It was only when Bob died unexpectedly — an epileptic seizure in the shower one week shy of his fortieth birthday — that Dan realized he’d loved him.

In a way, their last year together had been more like father and son than anything Dan had ever known. It would be another five years before he got up the courage to go home and confront his real father face-to-face. By then he had his own son.

Dan looked over the missing boy’s photograph, scrutinizing the features. He wasn’t attractive, but he wore an air of toughness — probably as a result of the schoolyard bullying — that would go a long way to make up for not being a pretty boy. To survive on the city streets, you needed one or the other.

Dan wondered what the parents were hoping for, information on their son’s whereabouts, a reassurance as to his mental and physical well-being, or the whole Corpus Christi? Usually they wanted their children back, even when it wasn’t in anybody’s best interest. In this case, it was too early to tell.

Teenagers could be surprisingly elusive once they connected with other runaways to help them stay invisible. There was no paper trail of credit card purchases or personal cheques cluttering things up. No Welfare files or ROEs pinning them to specific addresses. Hand-to-mouth was a tough game to play, but it kept them off the radar. Sometimes Dan got lucky when a kid was picked up for shoplifting or vagrancy, though they often lied their way out before he got to them. A twelve-year-old he’d been searching for had stood in a police station two feet from a picture tagging her as a runaway. No one had noticed. Dan found this out later when she turned up half-dead of a drug overdose, alive thanks to emergency resuscitation procedures at the hospital after someone threw her into a cab along with a twenty-dollar bill and closed the door.

He scanned Richard’s photograph into his computer and printed a dozen copies, jamming them into his briefcase. He’d put out a few calls — nothing official, just a guy making inquiries around the gay community. Maybe Family Services or Child Find Canada had come across him, though the police would have contacted the brigades of bespectacled middle-aged women wearing their all-weather skirts, hand-knitted sweaters, and freshwater pearls who tirelessly followed up unlikely leads and telephoned to tell you if they’d heard anything, anything at all. If the kid were still in town, someone would come across him sooner or later. Sooner was always preferable.

He’d take the picture around the bars before going home tonight. The bouncers were scrupulous in keeping out underage kids in the evenings, but it was possible for a kid like Richard — half-man, half-boy — to sneak in undetected in the afternoon, especially if he was looking for a daddy. If he had, the bartenders would have noticed.

The phone rang. It was 55 Division calling to say the coroner’s office had a possible match for one of his cases and could he come down for a look. They all knew him by name, though most of them called him Sharp, never Dan, except for a couple of female constables he suspected of hitting on him.

He was put on hold. One of his co-workers entered and slapped a photo on his desk. He pointed at the subject’s face, an old sharkie they’d been tracing for a dog’s age. The man made a cutting motion across his neck. Dan put a hand over the receiver.

“Confirmed?”

A stiff nod. “Just came in. Nasty stuff — looks like gangland. I’ve got the deets when you want them….”

Fifty-five Division came back on the line. Dan held up a finger while he wrote down the specs. When he turned around, his colleague was gone.

The wall clock crept around to eleven. The numbers swam in his field of vision. It was going to be a long, slow morning. Dan rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t hit forty yet, and genetics said it was only going to get worse. Maybe he should stop while he was ahead. Take up a kinder, gentler career. Whatever that might be.

Bob had left Dan enough money to finish university, but Dan balked when it came time to choose. He’d wanted a career that sounded impressive and might be helpful to others. But what was that? Bob had listened thoughtfully while Dan ran through the possibilities: doctor, lawyer, maybe even a minister. But, as Bob pointed out, Dan got faint at the sight of blood, hated debates, and didn’t believe in the existence of anything that could vaguely be construed as God-like. That seemed to cancel out his hopes in those areas.

“Go for the money,” Bob advised, “but make sure it’s something you enjoy. Forty years is a long time to do something you don’t like.”

Bob tried to steer him toward a vocation where he had aptitude as well as interest, but this proved elusive. Dan had mechanical skills, but the usual choices — plumbing and engineering — held little appeal. And while he had a love of cultural things, music in particular, he had no real artistic inclinations. What Dan knew and seemed to grasp instinctively was other human beings — how they interacted, what motivated and intrigued them. Human resources could always use good people, Bob argued, but discouraged Dan from a career that would cement him in the business world. He was too bright and restless to get bogged down in the corporate mentality.

At the time, it made sense for Dan to attend the University of Toronto and stay with Bob. But then Bob died and his nieces and nephews sold the house. His future uncertain, Dan enrolled in a smattering of courses, hoping to ferret out his interests and potential skill sets shotgun style. He excelled in psychology and sociology but found the disciplines too wide-ranging to hold his attention for long. If he’d been asked what interested him most, he would have narrowed it down to the well-being of other people, but that hardly sounded like a career.