Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery (8 page)

Martin looked up from his notebook. “Isn’t that how you described the incident at work when you hit the filing cabinet? You said you yelled at your superior without meaning to.”

Dan shrugged. “Okay.”

“Would you say this is a common response you have in tense situations?”

“This wasn’t a tense situation. I was walking in my front door.”

Martin was rapt. “Tell me what happened. Does the dog have a name?”

Of course the fucking dog has a name,
Dan thought. “It’s Ralph,” he said slowly.

“Ralph,” Martin repeated, making it sound like a foreign word. “Is Ralph a male? May I refer to Ralph as ‘he’?”

“Sure.”

Dan rubbed his temples. A nice fat glass of Scotch would drown out how much he detested sitting here with this emotionally repressed insect dissecting his every thought and word, as though using the wrong adjective to describe a reaction or labelling a dog by the incorrect gender might be a crime.

Martin pondered his words as Dan explained how he’d yelled at the dog.

“When you think about what Ralph did now, in this moment, how do you feel?”

“I don’t feel anything now. At the time I was pretty pissed off,” Dan said. “I’m sure he does it on purpose.”

Martin made an elaborate note in his book. He looked up. “Of course you realize a dog isn’t conscious of its actions the same way humans are?”

Dan shrugged. “Actually, I’m convinced he does it to annoy me. It’s a big ‘Fuck You’ when he does it at the front door. When it’s an accident, he tries to hide it in the basement.”

The pencil jogged around the page. Martin looked up. “Do you know that for a fact or do you just imagine you know what the dog’s motivations are?”

“He’s a smart dog and he’s been through obedience training. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Can we talk about how Ralph might feel in these circumstances?”

Martin looked over his shoulder as though conferring with the Mondrian. Maybe it talked to him, Dan thought. Maybe it prompted him on what train of thought to follow.

“How would I know what the dog feels? Do dogs even feel?”

Martin tented his fingers again and leaned back. “Try to imagine what it might be like for Ralph. You said he does it to annoy you. Why do you think that is? Was he feeling neglected? Had he been left alone without access to a place to defecate?”

Dan tried to imagine Martin bending and scooping up Ralph’s big turd with a teaspoon, balancing it as he made his way across the office to a wastebasket.

“My son said that even dogs need love.”

“Good!” Martin said decisively. “And do you agree?”

“He’s probably right.”

“So how did Ralph respond when he perceived himself to be neglected? When you didn’t give him the love and attention he wanted?”

“You just said dogs weren’t conscious in the way humans are. How could he ‘perceive’ anything?”

“Unconscious perception can be even stronger than conscious perception. If you believe the dog was ‘acting out,’ then clearly the dog perceives when it’s been neglected. Do you see?”

In Dan’s mind, he saw Martin’s hand tremble and drop the turd. It landed with a soft thud and rolled across the carpet, leaving a faint brown trail. “This is really stupid.”

Martin untented his fingers. “Is it stupid, Daniel — or do you perceive it to be stupid?”

“Either — both — Martin.”

“And why does stupidity, perceived or otherwise, justify your anger?”

Dan felt his face flush. “Because it just does.”

“Was your father a stupid man?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Can we change the subject?”

Martin stared like a man watching something squirm at the end of a hook. “Don’t you think we should explore what made you so angry about the dog’s disobedience?”

“No. Let’s change the subject.”

Martin made a few more scribbles in his book. “Fine,” he said. “I understand that you don’t feel like being challenged on this issue today.”

Dan’s teeth were clenched, but he kept his voice low. “Look, Martin, you don’t have to tell me that you understand or that you don’t understand. I don’t care. I just don’t want to talk about the fucking dog.”

Martin paused then said, “All right. Can you tell me at least why you don’t want to talk about it?”

Dan looked out the window over the rows of roofs. The clouds folding into one another. The oncoming darkness. “No.”

Martin scribbled another note. “Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Have you felt violently angry at any time in the past week?”

Dan turned his gaze to him. “Other than right now?”

Martin eyed him warily. “Yes. Other than right now.”

Seven

Now Auditioning

Dan felt a profound ambivalence for the gay ghetto at Church and Wellesley. On the one hand, it was where he’d first been accepted when he came to Toronto; for that, he felt a loyalty verging on heartfelt gratitude. Then the other hand rose up and, with it, his disillusionment came into focus: it lacked pride. The kind of pride he felt a gay ghetto ought to have, though maybe the primary word here was “ghetto” and not “gay.” He’d been to other gay neighbourhoods; few of those had impressed him either. They struck him as being caught between lacking self-respect and not trying hard enough.
We can do better,
he thought.

Maybe it was the city encroaching on the ghetto that stopped it from being more remarkable. You couldn’t make people respect invisible boundaries, lines drawn in sand, but Church Street always felt unnecessarily tawdry and sad, with its dilapidated awnings and faded storefronts, like a dyspeptic drunk. As though it would rather be something else, but couldn’t decide what. Nor could Dan. He’d taken his time coming out, not because he was ashamed of being gay but because he couldn’t identify with so many gay men and women. It baffled him why they accepted second-hand treatment at the hands of others. It was as though they derived their identity from the fact that they’d been denied by the rest of the world.

And so with the ghetto. He’d never choose to live there. It wasn’t the urge to band together that bothered him so much as their willingness to accept this small bit of turf as all they could have. He often felt sold out by his own kind. Coming to Church Street only exacerbated the feeling.

He headed south along the east side of the street, past a roving pack of club kids, tattooed, coiffed, and spouting song lyrics. Cocky with their twenty-something-ness. The darkened glass of Byzantium superimposed Dan’s reflection over a pair of diners, an Asian kid and a white kid sharing a jocular moment with their waiter. The Asian boy speared Dan’s stomach with a fondue prong and leaned in for a bite. Further along, the windows at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library shouted with book titles and magazines he’d never heard of because being hip took too much energy. If he needed to know anything current, Donny or Ked usually filled him in.

The Black Eagle wasn’t known for being a hustler haven. It was primarily a leather bar, a netherworld of S&M accoutrements catering to a clientele that identified with a vaguely threatening, power-oriented sexuality. Skinhead and biker looks were popular. Dan’s ruggedness fit right in. He’d once gone home with a man he’d met on the upstairs patio, only to discover his apartment decorated with Nazi paraphernalia. He hadn’t stayed long enough to find out if it was a joke.

The out-of-work bodybuilder planted outside the front entrance threw Dan a smile. Steroids had given him pectorals a drag queen would envy, while anti-virals had finished off the effect by reinventing his face. Dan always felt he’d passed some sort of mutation test by coming here. He pulled out the picture of the runaway.

The man looked it over and smacked one fist into the other. “Kid like that comes in here and we’d kick his ass out in a second,” he said. “Don’t need that kind of trouble — those kids have their own places to go to anyway.”

“What about in the daytime when no one’s on the door?”

The bouncer tilted his head toward the entrance. “Ask Charlie. He’s on the main floor.”

Dan went in. The interior carried an aroma of stale beer and body odour while suggesting scenes of torture and imprisonment rather than anything overtly erotic. In fact, a little sex appeal would have cheered the place up, but the premises evoked an aura of pain inflicted in lieu of pleasure. Dan considered physical abuse the dull side of the sexual imagination. He’d stopped going there when one too many pickups expressed disappointment at his gentle touch.

“Do you want to strangle me a bit?” one suggested, after a few minutes of foreplay. “It might make it more exciting. Besides, you look the type.”

“I’m outta here,” Dan said, the door slamming behind him before the man could even protest.

“How come a big hunk like you is so sweet?” another asked, clearly disappointed at not having his endurance limits tested. “I was hoping for a little abuse.”

Dan flexed his biceps. “Who said abuse was free? Usually I get paid to hurt guys like you.”

The man pulled a face. “I’m only thirty-three. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to pay for sex!”

Dan retrieved his underwear and pulled it on. “Ever been to a bathhouse?”

The man gave him an odd look. “Of course.”

“Then you’ve paid for sex.”

In the bar on the main floor, heavy metal music ground through the speakers. The place was empty apart from a shirtless bartender who looked like a double for Jim Morrison right before his drunken downward spiral. He looked Dan over approvingly.

“Hi there.”

“Evening,” Dan said, to put things on a formal level. “You Charlie?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

Dan pulled the picture from his case and laid it on the bar. “Ever see this kid in here?”

Dan could see him calculating whether he was a cop. The bartender shrugged — it wouldn’t matter either way so long as the kid wasn’t in there now. “He looks pretty young. I doubt I’ve seen anyone under twenty in here yet.”

A few doors up the street an early crowd had gathered in Woody’s. Heads turned at his approach. Woody’s was an upscale pub, a preppy bar for kids with clean good looks. Dan seldom rated more than a passing nod from this crowd. From experience he knew he looked like one of two things: rough trade or a hustler on the make.

Inside, he almost ran into a drag queen. Bricklayer hands and Maybelline eyes. Forget-me-not blue. She was Anybody’s Girl. She looked at Dan and flashed a smile:
Our Little Secret
. Dan smiled back. Why be unfriendly?

Cosy and comfortable, Woody’s favoured décor over theme. Drag routines on slow nights and amateur strip shows mid-week, the bar managed to keep its clients happy without leaving them awash in Gwen Stefani and Britney Spears videos. For a while it was known as the bar in the American
Queer As Folk
series. Woody’s also held a record for selling more beer than any other bar its size in the city. Despite this, breweries were reluctant to make a showing at Pride in the years before it became a sell-out and everybody wanted in on the advertising opportunities. Woody’s stood up and got counted. “No Pride, no beer.” It became a mantra repeated cheerfully to every brew-master within hearing. Next Pride Day, all but the most uncooperative contributed to Woody’s float. You might not wring respect from a bigot, far less a corporation, but money had a way of leaping over personal qualms and setting its own rules. That move had earned the bar Dan’s everlasting respect.

By light of day, the glamour faded and Woody’s became just another dingy pub with a surprisingly small stage considering the number of drag queens who managed to crowd onto it any given Sunday. The interior was always dim, as though the aura of false twilight it carried was a prize feature. Dan padded through the wood-lined interior to see who or what lay inside.

A bartender called out hopefully. “Hey, sexy dude.” It was probably the same name he had for half the guys who came into the place. He was short, twenty-two-ish, and filled his Baby Gap T-shirt in a way that left few questions unanswered, at least about his top half. “Good to see you again!”

Dan walked up to the bar and sat, knowing the last time he’d set foot in the place this particular bartender probably hadn’t even applied for a position or slept with the right someone to get it. Or maybe even graduated from high school. “A pint of Rickard’s Red,” he said.

The boy pulled the tap, watched disinterestedly as the glass filled, flicked off the head, and pulled the tap again. He slid the glass forward. Dan slapped a ten on the counter, Sir John A. side up. There he was, father of the country with his steadfast stare, snowy curls, and not a hint of the alcoholic about him. Dan pushed the change back and took the top off his drink.

“I’d like some information,” he said, retrieving the photograph from his briefcase. He flashed it at the bartender. “This kid ever come in here?”

The boy picked it up and looked it over carefully. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I go for blondes, so I may not have noticed him even if he was right under my nose.” He grinned. “Sorry.”

Dan tried two other bartenders. No one gave him a positive ID. The tattooed bald-headed guy at the front bar just shrugged. “I see fifty variations on this kid every time I work a Saturday night,” he said, looking back at Dan. “Now
you
I would remember. In fact, I do, though you haven’t been in for a while. You’re a Scotch drinker.”

Dan smiled. “Only on a rough night,” he said.

“Best kind of night there is. I didn’t know you were a cop.” His face suggested he might be willing to be handcuffed and frisked at a moment’s notice.

“I’m not. Sorry to disappoint you.”

The man’s expression hovered between mirth and skepticism. “I doubt you’d disappoint anyone.” He waited a beat, but Dan didn’t pick up his cue. “Come back in sometime when you’re looking for someone a little older — say, my age. I’ll be willing to help in any way I can.”

Dan laughed. “I’ll keep it in mind, thanks.”

He ran into the same story all up and down the strip. Either no one recalled the kid or they recalled a hundred just like him. He was about to give up when he saw a slim figure up ahead. For a second, Dan thought it might be Richard Philips. The boy sauntered past Starbucks and stopped to check his reflection in the storefront of Eyes On Church.

He had the same wary eyes and disappointed mouth as Richard. His scrawny build and jerky walk cut a swath ahead of him, while his hands busily defined the air. Even at a distance Dan could see the wear and tear he’d picked up on the streets. But it wasn’t Richard. Just another street kid with ill-fitting jeans and a growing attitude. At fifteen, he’d be considered desirable by a certain crowd. That had probably been enough to make him head full-tilt down the wrong road. From the looks of him, he was now seventeen or eighteen. By twenty he’d be too disease-ridden to sell for over-ripe fruit, though there’d always be some fetishist willing to use him as a human ashtray in exchange for a place to stay when no one else wanted him. Still, he wasn’t Richard. But give it a few years and he would be.

The boy had seen Dan. He turned and headed over. If Dan had been as forward during his time on the street, who knows where he’d be now?

“Hi, sir,” the boy said. “Have you got the time?”

“Sure, I’ve got time,” Dan said.

The boy’s eyes darted up and down the sidewalk while he talked, as though afraid he might miss something. The jerky mannerisms continued. His pupils were so black, Dan felt it was like looking into a void. He had that intense sexual vibe street kids seemed to exude effortlessly, their inner antenna always attuned to someone else’s desire.

“Let’s go somewhere,” the kid said, cocky now, as though he’d just lucked into a good thing.

“Not that kind of time.”

The eyes turned suspicious. “What do you want then?”

“I’d like to talk.”

“What about?”

“You legal?” Dan asked.

“I got ID,” the kid said, puffing up his scrawny frame.

Dan resisted the urge to laugh. “I just wondered if we could go into a bar to talk.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.” The boy led the way.

They wandered into Zelda’s — probably the only trailer park–themed restaurant in the country. At the door, Loretta Lynn’s transsexual cousin met them in a red-and-white gingham dress with a large bow on the back. She showed them to a table before flouncing away to feed her flock.

The boy eyed Dan. “What’d you want to talk about?”

“What’s your name?”

The eyes narrowed. “Grady.”

“Hi, Grady. Mine’s Dan.”

They shook. The boy smiled. This might be going somewhere after all.

“What are you drinking, Grady?”

The boy cocked his head as though it were an odd question. “Whatever.”

Dan handed him a ten-dollar bill. “Go get yourself a whatever and keep the change. But make sure you come back and talk to me, right?”

The boy walked off to the bar. Dan didn’t bother to watch. He knew the kid would be back. He was the only source of available cash at the moment.

Grady came back with a local beer, bill still in hand. “You said I could keep the change, right?”

Dan nodded.
Smart boy,
he thought. “It’s yours.”

The boy sat next to him and leaned in close enough for Dan to smell his body odour. Pungent, but it had an appeal. He rubbed his knee against Dan’s. “So what do you wanna know?”

Dan fished out the photograph of Richard Philips. “I’m looking for this kid,” he said.

The boy took the photograph and scrutinized it. Dan saw something in his face when he looked up. “He in trouble?” Grady said.

“He’s not in trouble for anything he’s done, but he might be in trouble wherever he’s headed. I’m trying to find him to see if he needs help. I’m not asking you to rat on him.”

The boy nodded and looked back at the photograph, running his tongue over his lower lip.

“His name’s Richard,” Dan said. “If that helps.”

“Uh-huh. Maybe it was. His name’s Lester now.” The boy grinned. “If that helps.”

Dan handed over another ten. “It helps a lot. Do you know where he is or where he might work?”

Grady pocketed the bill. “You sure you’re not a cop?” he said, eying Dan squarely.

“No. I’m not a cop. And the boy’s not in trouble, as I said.”

“’Kay,” the kid said. “I don’t wanna rat on anybody. So yeah, I know a bit about Lester.”

“How do you know him?” Dan asked.

Grady took a long drink and set the bottle down with a satisfied sigh. He looked around the bar as though afraid of being overheard, but his volume increased rather than diminished. It was probably how he advertised, Dan realized.

“We worked together — not long ago.”