Barrington Street Blues (28 page)

“Oh?”

“Why don't we have a nightcap at my place, and I'll fill you in.”

Here it was. I wanted to find out anything I could about Fanshaw, but a stint in Felicia's condo was the price to be extracted. Sighing inwardly, I said: “Sure.” I drove towards my fate like a hostage in a carjacking incident.

“Have a seat and relax,” she purred when we were inside. “I'll fix us something to drink.”

I sat on a crimson crushed-velvet love seat and looked around. The living room was done up in a mix of traditional and modern furniture, all of it top of the line.

Felicia returned with a multicoloured drink of some kind and leaned way over to hand it to me. “What is this?” I asked her.

“It's a secret potion, Monty, what do you think? Actually, it's something I learned to make when I vacationed in Haiti last year.”

Chances were it had nothing to do with Voodoo, but it didn't look like my kind of libation.

“Have you got a beer?”

“Boring! Oh, all right. Keith's?”

“Perfect.”

She poured me a beer, came back, and curled up beside me on the love seat. Let the haggling begin.

“What did you think of Ken and Bunnie's house?”

“Big-Pot-at-Bingo Baronial.”

“Isn't it! They're so tacky. I've tried to guide them, gently, but they don't take the hint. I guess when you grow up with nothing, that's the way it is.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But they're wonderful people. Great friends. Not everyone would agree.”

“Is that right?”

“There's no accounting for friendship sometimes, wouldn't you say, Monty?”

“There's something in that, I suppose.”

“For instance.” She leaned in close, making contact on a number of fronts in the process. “I have some real dirt on your friend Ed Johnson. And if you —”

“I don't want to hear it.”

She looked at me in genuine surprise. “Sure you do.”

“No. I don't.” I twisted away to place my glass on the table beside the love seat, moving slightly away from her as I did so.

“I'll bet Johnson would be all ears if I said I was going to tell him tales about you.”

“There are no tales about me . . .” No tales that I would want to reach the ears of Felicia or anyone else involved in the legal system here or abroad.

“That's not what I heard, you outlaw!” She wagged her finger at me like a cartoon schoolmarm. I said nothing in reply, and she finally relented. “Okay, we'll leave your misdeeds for another day. Or another night. Now, you say you don't want to hear a word against Ed Johnson. But surely you want to hear about the Fanshaws. Everybody wants to know about them.”

“I don't care about the Fanshaws. Say whatever you like.”

“But you do care about Ed. Isn't that sweet? I'm sure he'd be touched.”

“I'm sure.”

“Well, anyway, Ken Fanshaw is lucky to be where he is, even if
you and I agree his house is hideous, because if he hadn't been a very clever little operator, he might be serving time in prison instead of hosting parties and heading up charity wingdings.”

“Why? What did he do?”

She smiled and reached up to brush a strand of hair behind my ear, again moving in overly close to do so. Were her arms shorter than normal?

“Why don't we get comfortable and discuss this on a more level playing field, as they say?”

“Oh, I think we're fine here.”

“Playing hard to get, are you? I like that in a man. A nice change from the way they usually behave, charging at a girl the minute the door is closed.”

“Fanshaw? You were saying?”

“He's not hard to get, let me tell you! The question is, who would he like better, me or you?”

“I don't see much of a future for me and Ken. Our decorating styles would clash frightfully, and that alone would drive us apart.”

“Ha ha, very amusing, Monty. Anyway, about Ken. He likes a little snort once in a while. And I don't mean that the way our fathers did. We're not talking a shot glass full of Scotch.”

“Right.”

“I have it on good authority that Ken financed a big shipment of cocaine. The stuff started to make its way around the streets, and the police caught Ken's co-conspirator for trafficking. Ken paid him handsomely to take the rap and keep his mouth shut. Ken put the guy's money in an account for him, gave him the papers; it was there waiting when the guy got out of jail.”

“Who was the co-conspirator?”

“I have no idea.”

“When was this?”

“A few years ago.”

She went to the kitchen and came back with another beer. The narrative resumed. “Now Bunnie, believe it or not, doesn't know any of this. Bunnie's in line to receive a not inconsiderable sum from her father whenever he kicks the bucket. The father's nothing but a sawmill operator. But guess where?”

“Where?”

“He is the owner of lands contiguous to and abutting on the Bromley Point development.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I'm sure Ken is fond of Bunnie but, well, he sees dollar signs too, and he knows his future is with his wife, come hell or high water. So, as I say, Bunnie doesn't know about some of Ken's little peccadilloes, and I would be the last one to let anything slip.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You like music, don't you, Monty?”

I wonder if anyone, anywhere, has ever said: “No, I don't like music.”

“Yes, I do,” I answered. She uncoiled herself from the love seat and went to the stereo, where she bent way over and searched for something to evoke the mood she wanted. If it was “Bolero,” I was out of there. But it was something Middle Eastern: seductive but not cheesy.

“You like?”

“It's good.”

“I'll be right back.”

When she appeared again she was in a short, translucent nightie in what struck me as a most unappealing shade of peach. But colour was hardly the point. She leaned over me yet again and tried to draw me up by the hand. “I'm going to bed. Are you coming with me? I promise you delights you've never even imagined!”

What? She had body parts other women didn't have?

“See anything you like?”

“Of course I do. You're a babe, Felicia, but I'm leaving.”

A look of anger flashed across her face but was quickly masked. “Maybe you'd prefer Ken,” she suggested in a needling voice.

“Nope. Ken's the last thing on my mind right now.”

“So tell Felicia: what's on Monty's mind right now?”

“Work. And the two of us sitting across from each other in the boardroom.” And a whole lot of aggravation I didn't need. And Ed Johnson's laughing face if he could witness this little tableau.

“That just adds to it for me, Monty. Well, you'll certainly have a graphic picture of me when you see me in the boardroom. I'll just have to use my imagination about you, unless —”

“I look like everybody else. Now let me up. I don't want to have to manhandle you out of the way.”

“Go ahead!”

After a brief skirmish I made my escape. I put the image of Felicia in her jammies out of my mind and turned my thoughts to Fanshaw and the drug venture. I told myself I would do some digging in the court office in the next couple of days, but researching every trafficking conviction in the past few years was a daunting prospect. I could certainly check Corey Leaman's incarceration history, and made a mental note to do at least that. What were the odds that, of all the drug dealers in the city, Leaman was the one who had hooked up with Ken Fanshaw?

†

It was my week to have the kids, so they arrived on Sunday. I managed to be unavailable when MacNeil dropped them off and I emerged only when her car pulled out of the driveway. Not for the first time I wondered about getting Tommy a good used car so the kids could come without their mother, but I dismissed the idea as something that would set a bad example for my son.

“Hi gang!”

“Hi, Daddy!” Normie reached up, and I lifted her into the air.

“How's my girl?”

“Good. What sharp whiskers you have today!”

“The better to scratch and scrape you with, my dear!”

“I get first dibs on the keyboard,” Tom announced, which was enough to propel his sister out of the room and down the stairs. We heard her playing “Big Teddy, Little Teddy.”

My son looked me in the eye. “How long are you going to keep this up, Dad?” I didn't insult him by pretending I didn't know what he meant. “You're going to have to deal with her some time, so why not get on with it?”

“Tom, I'm sorry, more sorry than you can imagine, that you have to see all this going on. But I just can't handle it. I think you're old enough to know what this must be like for me. What would you do if Lexie told you she was pregnant with some other guy's baby? How
long would you stick around? I wish I could just shrug it off and go on the way we were before, but I can't.”

“I know, I know. But I don't think she exactly planned this. You weren't around; you two had split up. So she had a boyfriend. Just like you've had other people in your life. More than she's had, I bet. And this happened. I wish it wasn't happening but it is.”

“I'll try, Tom. I know I have to come to terms with it, but —”

“You just did that to get rid of me!” Normie was back. “You wanted to talk to Daddy without me listening in!”

“Well, you're here now, sweetheart.”

“Tom wants to invite Lexie over for dinner. Can I invite somebody too?”

“Sure. Who would you like?”

“Kim.”

“All right, give her a call. We'll pick her up. How's it going otherwise, Tom? How's school?”

“Great. Do you think there's such a thing as a just war?”

“No idle chat from you today. Are you talking
jus ad bellum
or
jus in bello
?”

“Huh?”

“You haven't looked into it yourself then, I take it.”

“I have to do a paper. It's my final, due tomorrow.”

“And you haven't started it?”

“Well, I thought you mentioned this topic one time and —”

“No doubt. I did a major paper on it myself in university.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought. Do you by any chance —”

“Still have a badly typed copy of it with no updated references to all the unjust wars that have been waged since I was a college student? Is that what you're asking?”

“Uh . . .”

“Get to work! I'll look at it when you're done.”

“That's what I thought you'd say. Can I use the car to pick up Lexie?”

“Sure. And get Kim while you're at it. But hit the books first. I take it you have books.”

“A few. Well, more like articles.”

“Get at it.”

“Okay.”

Normie sweet-talked me into renovating her bedroom. We cleaned off an old desk and bookcase, and hauled them up from the basement, transferred a worn Aubusson rug from another room, and moved her bed under the window overlooking the water. Then she went downstairs with me to help prepare a dinner of steamed salmon and boiled potatoes. Tom went out to collect Kim and Lexie, and we all sat down at the table when they returned.

“Not sitting for Botticelli today, Lex?” She could have, with the long golden curls and amber eyes.

“I might as well have, Mr. Collins, considering how long I sat and waited for Tom!” She gave him a stern look over the tops of her tiny rimless glasses.

“I'm sorry, Lexie. I got all caught up in this paper I'm doing. You're lucky you're finished with high school.”

“Wait till you get into university before you say that.”

“Dad, you have to help me. I don't have enough material. This paper is in lieu of an exam, so it's really important. I'll make it up to you, Lexie, I promise.”

I looked at the little girl sitting across from me, gnawing on her flaxen braids: “Kim! Are you an expert on ‘just war' theory?”

The child stared at me wide-eyed. “I don't think so.” Her eyes darted over to my daughter. “Did Miss Dunphy teach us that?”

“No, we haven't learned it yet,” Normie replied.

“All right, Kim, dear. You're off the hook. I'll help you, Tom. Eat up, everybody. I slaved away all by myself to put this meal together.”

“You did not! It was me as much as you! Don't believe him, Kim!”

Dinner was fun and I thought, for the millionth time, how much I loved the company of my children. As bad as it was sharing them week on, week off, it could have been worse. MacNeil and I had been civilized about this at least. I was thankful that I had limited my drinking the night before, and was feeling chipper.

It was nearly ten before Lexie and Kim went home, and Tom was back at work. I joined him at the dining room table and tried to make sense of the notes and academic articles he had amassed. “Don't you have Walzer?”

“No. Somebody else had the book when I tried at the library
downtown. And the school library didn't have it at all.”

“And where are these quotes from? Looks like St. Augustine, but where are the references?”

“I took these quotes secondhand.”

“You're usually a little more organized than this, Tommy. Your work has always been top drawer.”

“I know.”

“Is anything wrong?” Such as the latest disaster on the home front? “No! Nothing's wrong.” A loyal son. Should I keep at him about it? I decided it might do more harm than good. “I just kept putting this off,” he admitted.

“What you need here are the original references from Augustine.”

“Where am I going to get them at this time of night?” “Hold on.” I went to the phone and dialled a number. Only when the phone was ringing did I remember that things were a little frosty last time I saw my friend Burke. Well, I would act as if nothing had happened; more than likely he would too.