A City Called July (22 page)

“How do you know anything, Benny? You just think you know people, that’s all. People don’t change when you’ve known them, just because other things change.” He was now looking along towards the Hôtel Dieu Hospital, and added, “My mother died in there. Three years ago. My old man’s drinking had a lot to do with it.” He was moving away from the target area. Is it something about cars that makes people ramble in their thoughts? I thought about that myself for a few blocks, sparing a moment to Wally Moore as I passed Montecello Park.

“You knew Pia Morley pretty well. Do you think she’s changed much?” I thought I’d slid her name into the conversation with skill, but Alex’s head spun around like I’d pulled out a fingernail.

“Huh? Pia? She doesn’t have anything … You don’t think I’ve been talking about …? Benny, she doesn’t know anything about this business. Keep her name out of this.”

“I told you I’m not interested in names yet. I meant it. But she does own an initialled Dunhill. Probably just coincidence. Doesn’t matter. When did this unnamed female friend call you?”

“Saturday morning. As soon as she told me, I got dressed and picked it up. It was on the coffee-table. I didn’t like to leave … Nathan like that. But I could see there wasn’t anything I could do.”

“You returned the lighter?”

“Yeah. Must have been nearly noon.”

“Did she explain herself?”

“Didn’t want to talk about it. She thanked me and said she’d call me in a few days. That’s the truth, Benny, I just acted as a messenger boy.”

“For auld lang syne, right?”

“Yeah. For auld lang syne.”

“One more thing, Alex. Why is your father frightened?”

“What do you mean? I haven’t noticed …“ He broke off like he’s just discovered he was talking to himself. His expression shifted and he changed the chewing rate of his jaw on a wad of Spearmint “Come to think of it he has been acting strange. And jumpy, like the last thirty seconds in the penalty box. I wonder what’s got into him.”

“Could it have anything to do with Pia?”

“Naw. He didn’t like me running around with her years ago, but he took that out on me not her. He always liked her. He’s got good taste, the old man.” Alex smiled at me and we started in talking old times again. He remembered the time I played the guard in
The Valiant,
a one-act play in which I said “Yes, sir” seven or eight times and then went offstage to be ready for my curtain call.

After I dropped Alex, I returned to Martha’s house in the west end. On the way I bought a dozen eggs at Carrol’s grocery store and a few other things including Martha’s favourite brand of instant coffee. She was nowhere in sight when I plunked the two bags of groceries on the counter. I washed out a few dishes and dried them while my eggs bubbled on the stove. I found the toaster and was nearly in business when Martha came in the door with bundles of her own.

“Okay, I always knew you could boil eggs, how are you at making a martini?” She told me what to do, and didn’t complain when she tasted my maiden effort. “I usually make a whole jar of them and keep ’em in the freezer. If they freeze, I know I used too much vermouth.”

I made two sandwiches, toasted on white, and washed them down with coffee. I stayed away from the martinis. In fact, I didn’t really need to eat at all, I was still stuffed from Nathan Geller’s funeral.

When I’d cleaned up the kitchen, including Martha’s discarded coffee mug from the morning and her ashtrays, I went into the bedroom to change out of my good suit. I wore it for funerals and weddings. For bar mitzvahs I had developed a more informal approach. I intended to make a fast visit to my office to see whether anything negotiable had come through the letter slot since I’d last looked. But as I was cruising with the one-way traffic on St. Andrew Street prospecting for a parking spot under a street light, I saw a familiar shape walking along the sidewalk in the same direction as the cars. I was having trouble finding a parking spot anyway, so I didn’t mind the distraction. I think I’d done away with the notion of parking behind my office. Too many dark places and long shadows back there. And there was the alley to negotiate coming and going. No, better to stick with old Luc Bolduc ambling along the south side of the street with a small case of beer in his hand. The light turned red against me so I stopped and watched him move east up St. Andrew.

When the light changed, he was passing the Capitol Theatre. I crept along at less than fifteen miles an hour until the car behind me honked. I let him by and turned down Chestnut Street. I pulled over next to a union headquarters, turned off my lights and locked the car. Bolduc was still in sight when I regained St. Andrew Street on foot. I stayed well to his rear, wondering whether this was one of the cases he had hidden under the front porch of his house on Nelson Street, or whether this was a second lot to be used for some other purpose. He walked past the Presbyterian church and the Lincoln Theatre and continued along towards the point where St. Andrew ends abruptly by sending out three streets like branches from the main trunk. Queenston continued the curve along the canal, while Geneva and Niagara started off in two straight lines that would both finally stop at Lake Ontario.

Between Geneva and Niagara, not far from Etherington’s Carpet Works, lay the site of the new fire hall. It was a triangular piece of land surrounded by a green wooden fence. On the Geneva Street side there was a high gate, hinged on a stout post that rose high enough to attach a wire which supported the swinging end. Bolduc walked directly to the gate and fitted a key into the lock in the chain that held the gate closed. He slipped through, closed the gate again, but did not reattach the chain. As soon as he was out of sight, I crossed the street and approached the gate.

There was one street light near the entrance, and from this bright spot, the shadows began. I crept through the space between the fence and the gate without either moving the gate or even sucking in my breath. Inside I was in the lee of the light. Only the unshaded light bulb now burning in the construction hut competed with the shadows of scaffold and fence.

To an architect or an engineer, a building site has a logic and a geography to it that make sense, but to me it just looked sloppy. I recognized the construction hut on the ground level and the ramp that led down a steep grade to the bottom of the excavation. Here and there stakes were planted with the tops painted red. In one place the stakes even had string running between them. It was loose and looked about to be blown away. Would that matter? I didn’t know. From where I stood looking down I could see a little more logic showing. On the right were wooden forms filled with metal rods waiting for the cement trucks to arrive in the morning. Next to these stood several footings with the wooden forms still intact, but with hardening cement oozing through cracks in the wood. Beside these stood columns rising from the footings that had been poured some time ago. Here the wooden frames had been removed, and on the cement, when the available light hit the curved surface at an oblique angle, I could see the grain of the wooden frames etched into the cement surface.

With a light burning in the hut, I felt free to move about. I knew that if Bolduc was inside the hut he was concentrating on his beer, and the light in the shack would turn everything out here into blackness. I worked my way down the mud ramp and came to the bottom of the excavation. Here I got a new perspective on the footings I’d been looking at. I mean, if you’re walking around at night in an excavation, what are you going to look at? I must have been thinking about that, or about some other deep thought, when I blundered into a stack of steel rods. They seemed to jump out at me. In changing directions, I hit a wheelbarrow and it fell over on me, emptying itself of some noisy pieces of metal. I cursed under my breath, and ran through a puddle down one of the unused footing frames.

“Hey, down dere! Wally? Is dat you? I got a beer for you, you old son-uh-ma-gun.” Bolduc shouted down the ramp and sent his flashlight beam into the shadows where his voice melted. “Son-uh-ma-bitch, Wally, it’s me. Don’t be scare.” He was coming down the ramp. I pressed myself as close to the curved piece of wood as I could. My wet foot felt almost chilly, as Bolduc came closer.

I hadn’t tried to imagine what Wally Moore had been doing down in the excavation the night he lost his discharge pin. Was he sleeping off some Old Sailor close to my hiding place? Did he have some nook that he preferred? As I looked around the end of the frame, I could see where Bolduc’s light was picking out muddy cementtruck tire marks, piles of lumber and pipe, my overturned wheelbarrow. He made his way directly to a spot where a canvas tarpaulin was stretched between two piles of lumber. His light picked out some old clothes, pieces of blanket and newspaper. It looked like a downy kip from where I was watching. Except in the worst of the winter, Wally could have made himself comfortable. He didn’t have exacting requirements as far as I’d heard.

“Well, bugger you, Wally. I’ll drink de beer my own self.” Bolduc turned and began making his way back up to the ramp. The street light poked bright fingers through holes in the fence, and the moon could be seen looking up out of a puddle and shining on idle machinery, oxyacetylene tanks, power generators and stacked piles of picks and shovels. The place already smelled like an underground parking garage Bolduc’s feet shuffled in his dirty yellow boots. Then he stopped. I looked out again to see why Bolduc was shining his light at one of the new cement footings. The light hit the curved surface just above his head. He slowly approached the column like the column might back away or run off if he came on too fast. He kept the light on the same place. “Son-uh-ma-bitch!” Bolduc said, and dropped his flashlight in the mud.

For a moment, I couldn’t see what was going on. The fallen flashlight pointed straight at my hiding place. When I next dared to look out, Bolduc was dragging a wheelbarrow over to the footing. Back near the base of the ramp he uncovered a long shallow trough. The tarp made a slapping sound as he flicked it back. Then, muttering just audibly, he took a spadeful of the cement from the trough and applied it to the footing while standing in the wheelbarrow. With a plasterer’s skill he smoothed off the new cement on the old, so that the added part blended in as well as possible with the lighter dried concrete. When he had finished, he stepped out of the wheelbarrow and surveyed his handiwork. He returned the spade to a pile of tools, re-covered the cement trough, and retreated back up the ramp, still grumbling to himself. I heard the door of the construction hut open and close before I dared come out of hiding. Before I did, I listened to the distant sounds of traffic and the snapping of plastic sheeting in the wind somewhere above me. Water was dripping behind me. They were the sounds you only hear when it’s quiet.

I crept out of hiding. Bolduc was still inside. Occasionally I’d hear him banging around up there. I went over to the column that he had been working on. Except for his bit of redecorating, it looked like the rest of the columns rising from the footings. I found a stick and began to clean off the newly applied cement. What was Bolduc up to, I wondered. Was he trying to hide cracks in the structure before an inspector catches them? I couldn’t guess, and further speculation was stopped when I literally got an eyeful of fresh cement. I dabbed at it with a moderately clean handkerchief until the tears stopped.

It took about two minutes to clean off the cement. When it became fairly clean, I polished the surface with an old vest found in the pile of rough bedding in Wally’s nest. It did the job all right, but I wasn’t in a position to see what was to be seen. The light available didn’t tell me more than the fact that there was no gross or obvious flaw in the column. I lit a match and cupped it in my hands. The brightness nearly made me fall off the wheelbarrow, but I held on to my balance and the match. I ran the light up and down the darkened wet portion of the surface. At first I saw nothing. Then I found a square darker area about a half inch on all four sides. There was a pattern in the centre. I rubbed the square with my fingers until the match burned down to my fingernail. The second match showed that the square I was looking at was red, that in fact it was a gem stone, a polished gem, probably a ruby. While I was trying to understand how a ruby, a ruby with some regular marking on it, had found its way into a cement column, I could see two more things which answered my question and made me forget about the match burning dangerously close to my fingers. The ruby in the column was set in a ring and the ring was worn on a finger.

NINETEEN

I climbed slowly out of the wheelbarrow, my head a little light on my neck. Somewhere in my brain I was going through the words to that old campfire song “The head-bone’s connected to the neck-bone, the neck-bone’s connected to the shoulder-bone …” Whoever it was, he was in that column. All of him, part of him. I didn’t want to think about it.

From the construction hut, I could hear Bolduc crashing around. Somehow I didn’t care whether he heard me any more. I had some questions for him that were forming in my head. I climbed the ramp.

Back on ground level, the increase in light at first startled me. The night sky was looking magenta behind the dark silhouettes of the scaffolding and surrounding fence. Far away I could hear the thud-thud-thud of drop-hammers in the steel plant several miles away. I could smell the paper-mill on the night air. Was Alex Bolduc working his shift? Was he worried about being involved in Nathan’s death more than he indicated?

I crept over to the side of the shed and looked through the window. Inside, on his hands and knees, Bolduc was putting his case of beer through a hole in the shed’s floor. It was a good hiding place, and judging from his motions alone I could see it was one that he’d used many times. The hole was slightly larger than the case of beer, and hidden under a work-counter against the far wall. Once the beer was beneath the floor, he moved a heavy tool box over the hole. Normally, when the tools were needed, the box could be pulled directly out from under the counter, still masking Bolduc’s secret.