“The Internet, that's where the next big money is coming from,” Duguay said, washing his food down with a splash of ouzo. “I know a guy down in Virginia, he set up a room with a bunch of computer hard drives and put up websites. He pays strippers and whores to screw on camera, and guys all over the goddamned world pay to watch. I mean these assholes are willing to give their fucking credit card numbers just to see some tits and ass in the privacy of their own home. You can turn around, sell their cards on top of what you're bringing in from the site. It's the way of the future, man. Who needs all the heat with dope and guns if you can sit back and run a business from your fucking bedroom?”
“Sounds like easy money,” Danny said.
“The best kind,” Duguay said, and smiled. He raised his glass, and Danny raised his, and they clinked. “To new horizons, man.”
I
t was a strange period, a time of significant adjustments, during which McKelvey came to certain resolutions. These were the variety of conclusions a man arrived at when he stood still long enough to face the truth of his mortality. Beyond the scope of a mid-life crisis, this was constitutional, akin to a government reopening laws and charters, setting a course for a new era. It swept a man along on its own energy, the stark realization that he might leave this place before his work was done. It reminded him of a poem the teachers had his class memorize back in grade school, about a man walking in the snow, miles to go, miles to go. He couldn't remember much of it, just those lines. He felt he could relate to that sort of propulsion.
On the morning he was discharged, McKelvey stood in the washroom of his hospital room looking at the sudden transformation of his face. Much of the weight gone from it, a new cut of sharper angles, lines now visible around the eyes, and he understood he had been re-born, he had been delivered another chance to make peace with himself, settle the score with his son's killer. He needed to get in shape and stay in shape. He needed to close his eyes to all else, put blinders on to block the periphery. One foot in front of the other. Follow the fading line to its end point. It was, in the end, all there was to do.
In the time between his discharge and full recovery, his wife returned twice to their home. The purpose of the first visit was to check in on him following his release from hospital, but Caroline stayed longer than she had planned. They fell into a quiet and comfortable routine. She prepared food for him, moved about the house doing this or cleaning that. They rarely spoke, but it was okay. He slept, and she read in bed at his side. There was something indestructible about Charlie and Caroline. And he thought,
it doesn't matter that she won't stay, because we
remain forever.
He understood with a sense of sufferance that he would not take another wife. These days spent together as old friends were to be among the final memories McKelvey would carry with him.
There was a month between visits. During this time he adhered to the strict nutritional guidelines as set out for him by a platoon of doctors. He stood at the kitchen counter to slice and dice fresh carrots, turnips, onions, the mysterious eggplant, items he had barely considered in his previous incarnation, items he passed by in the grocery store because he felt they were the tools of the trade for those earthy “hippies” who seemed always to be vehement recyclers and drove bicycles to work even in the snow. He became acquainted with a broad selection of herbsâ oregano, rosemary, dill, garlic. He gave up coffee and cigarettes entirely; a recorded miracle. There was a desire here to see how far he could run with this new life, take it to the limit. When the doctor allowed it, he began a careful regimen of sit-ups, pushups, small hand weights of fifteen pounds, twenty pounds. He embarrassed himself on the first attempt, lifting his body from the floor a mere six, seven times. But he could feel the strength returning, flowing back into his body. He lost four inches around his waist and had to buy new pants. There was a notion of early man morphing, evolving, crawling from the primordial ooze to stand upright and beat his fists against his chest.
The longest days of winter came to pass, and with it the arrival of a new century. There were no computer meltdowns as the doomsayers had predicted; the world simply sighed and shuffled forward. Now and then Hattie would stop by for a visit, and she would laugh when he poured himself a tea, taking great satisfaction in watching McKelvey perform the brewing ritual as though it were a religious ceremony. He seemed so centred, so calm. There had been a shift in polarities.
“Chamomile,” she said. “My god, it's the seventh sign. What's nextâlocusts?”
She always made him laugh with her unpretentious ways, the ways of a Maritime girl.
“You have such a nice smile, Charlie,” she said. “You should use it more.”
He shrugged, held the cup to his lips and sipped.
“And you've lost weight. God, you must be down to what, one ninety?”
“One eighty-eight, actually,” he said. “I was pushing two-fifteen.” She smiled. “I know you were. You look good.”
They would talk about work, but only in a peripheral sort of way. McKelvey seemed to show a lack of interest in staying abreast of the police work that continued despite his absence. But Hattie knew McKelvey followed the Duguay proceedings in the newspaper, saw the articles he clipped and set aside.
“Leroux's family authorized it,” she told him one day towards the end of February. “They're pulling the plug. It's official.” She searched his face for a sign, anything, but it was blank. “I guess that ends that,” she said. But she didn't really believe it.
When Leroux was declared dead, finally and completely dead, the charges were stayed against Duguay, and the man was released to the world. The
Sun
ran a photo of Duguay on page three. “Blade walks free,” the headline declared. There was Duguay, coming out of the court dressed in a nice suit, one of the city's notorious defence attorneys at his side. McKelvey cut the photo out, folded it in half, and tucked it inside his wallet.
She said, “You've got it for this guy, don't you?”
“These idiots think they're classy like the old-style mobsters,” McKelvey said. “They don't see themselves for what they really are, which is a bunch of low-lifes. They've got no honour, they've got no plan. It's all about what they can get right here and right now. Duguay thinks he's Al Capone, waltzing out of court in a thousand dollar suit...”
Hattie stirred sugar into her coffee and let McKelvey's harsh tone simmer. She felt the sting and the choke like a lingering vapour. Sometimes it happened, she knew. A cop came to a point where he couldn't get past something, he couldn't let go of a perp or a case or a victim. Happened to the best prosecutors, too. Something got
stuck
and just kept looping. She understood that, for right or for wrong, McKelvey had fingered Duguay and Leroux for Gavin's death. Now Leroux was dead, and Duguay was a free man. She did not want to listen to the whispers of those who spoke of other motives at work here, a foreshadowing of darker things to come. She wanted to believe in McKelvey and in the way that she saw him.
When Caroline returned for the second and final time, it was with a moving truck. There was an understanding of conclusion here, a quiet acceptance of the facts. They went to the lawyer together and worked out the details. It was a legal separation; divorce was not mentioned. McKelvey wanted to give her everything, but he knew Caroline wouldn't take more than her fair share. The retirement savings were figured out, and they came to an agreement on the home they had paid off together; for the time being McKelvey would rent the home, with the funds being deposited in a separate account to be calculated and halved upon the sale of the home at a later date. It was all very business-like, as though the two of them were almost irrelevant in the whole process of valuing savings accounts, RRSPs, mutual funds, capital assets. They were a corporation. Charlie and Caroline Incorporated. McKelvey couldn't bring himself to make eye contact with his wife as they signed reams of paperwork.
He could see the change in her. Caroline looked young again, the darkness gone from her eyes, a burden lifted. She was dressed in new clothes. Her hair was done. It was a geographical cure, McKelvey believed, this transfer to the west coast, but who was he to judge? It was a strange and sad irony, though, both of them standing there in the living room looking healthier and altogether more content than they had in years, that their mutual regeneration was made possible only through separation.
“I have an interview next week,” she told him, “for a job in a women's shelter. I'll be doing public outreach again, and helping out with the administration.”
“That sounds great,” he said. “They'd be lucky to have you.”
He wanted to reach out and touch her glowing face, touch it perhaps for the last time. They would promise to stay in contact, to call now and then, write letters, but he had no long range plans; he just wanted this done. Like ripping a bandage from the flesh, do it quickly and don't think twice.
He said instead, “Listen, I want you to know I don't hold any of this against you. I mean, you leaving.” He paused, unsatisfied. “No, that's not what I meant to say.”
But Caroline reached out and touched his face, and she said, “Shhhh, Charlie.”
She was crying, and he gave her a hug, rubbing her back. He smelled her perfume, her hair, and he tried to recall the last time they had made love. He wanted to preserve a date, a context, but his mind came up blank. They stepped apart.
“It's nobody's fault,” she said, which he accepted as a small kindness. “I justâ¦I couldn't breathe, Charlie. I was suffocating...”
“I didn't come through for you, and I am sorry for that,”
he said.
“You need to look after yourself, Charlie. You're so angry, so filled with hatred. Treat yourself with love and kindness. You need to get some help with all of this. It's too much to carry around. There's no shame in admitting that. But even as I say that, I know it doesn't come easy for you. I know that, charlie.”
She went to pack the last of her things. The two young movers busied themselves removing furniture and boxes.
McKelvey made them take more than his wife wanted, until there remained little more than the kitchen table and chairs.
The master bedroom was stripped except for the bed itself.
McKelvey stood in the middle of the living room once the movers were locking up the gate on the truck, and he nodded his acceptance of this new world order, this cosmic ripple.
“So what now, Charlie?” Caroline said.
She startled him, coming up from behind. He turned and saw her standing there, a final box at her feet. It was marked “Books”. He smiled and felt something catch in his throat. He almost cried, but he didn't. It was over before it began.
“I used up all of my sick time and vacation days. So I guess I'll retire,” he said with a shrug.
“Oh, I'll believe that when I see it,” she said. “Promise me you'll take your medication and stay on the diet. You know how you drift away from things after a while.”
She went to touch his face again but stopped herself. Old habits.
“I'll take a trip out that way next summer, stop in and visit,” he said. “If that's okay.”
“That would be nice,” she said. “That would be just fine.”
They looked at each other. They both smiled sadly, understanding they were too old to pretend. He stood at the living room window and watched as her cab pulled away. She did not turn back as he thought she might, a last little wave. Then the moving truck revved, shifting into gear with a guttural moan, and disappeared down the street, taking a good portion of his life with it. McKelvey experienced no pangs of regret or longing for the items in the back of that truck; it was just
stuff.
What was gone was his wife. His wife and son. His family. Everything he had worked for all these years, all those midnight shifts in the cold patrol cars, all the arguments over bills, the vacations and the Christmas mornings, all of it gone with the flicker of the brake lights on the moving truck.
Like a snake shedding its skin, he moved through the house to the garage, and pulled an old chair up to the high shelves along the wall. He reached with his hand, adjusting the rags and the oil cans and the garden fertilizer, until his hand found a small grey lockbox and pulled it down from its hiding place. In the kitchen he set the box on the table and opened it with a tiny key on a string that he kept in the bottom of his underwear drawer. The box was filled with newspaper clippings in which he was quoted in court, a few old photos, and at the bottom, wrapped in an old tea towel, there was a small .25 pistol. Black, what they used to call a lady's gun. Something he'd kept hidden from Caroline for years and years. The black metal pistol had belonged to a friend. He had kept it while the license was sorted out for the guy, but somewhere along the line it had become his property. It rested in a leather holster that you slipped onto your belt, the little bundle wrapped in the old stained towel. He unwrapped the gun, weighed it with his palm, this tiny weapon, then set it aside. With his green tea steaming, he sat alone leafing through the old clippings about armed robberies, arrests, acquittals. The story of his life set out in fading newsprint.
T
he air tasted in the back of Pierre Duguay's throat like crack cocaine. Its chemical residue clung to his tongue like baking soda and burnt plastic, and he hadn't even partaken. It was just after six o'clock in the morning, and Duguay was staring at the bedroom ceiling in the apartment unit located above the Dove Gentleman's Club. The sun was breaking open, spreading across the eastern horizon the colour of burnt marmalade. But in here it was still midnight. In this place it was perpetual midnight. The windows were covered in tinting, and the blinds were drawn. There had been a party, a series of never-ending celebrations following his release. His townhouse had been leased out during his confinement, so he was here like a kid starting all over again. Something he'd been doing his whole life, starting over again once the cuffs came off and the gates opened up. His throat burned from too many cigarettes, and his lungs ached from the abuse. On mornings like this, he felt the full weight of his age, the consequences of a lifetime lived on the fringe, the unpaid bills from his youth now stacked and awaiting payment. This year he would turn thirty-eight, a milestone in terms of morbidity rates in his profession. His father had made it to thirty-four. In this way he was already something of a generational success story.