Face/Mask (23 page)

In the meantime it was clear that the only thing holding them back now was finding the money. He wasn’t sure how, but in the 24 hours since they’d left Silver’s office the idea of bribing cops and prosecutors had become acceptable. Janus went downstairs to his office and closed the door. He needed time to think about what they were considering.

There were many risks in Silver’s plan, but Janus saw no other choice. When he’d needed money two years earlier, Joe had been there to help. Now it was Janus’s turn to help him. He was back to where he’d been at the time: desperately looking for a way to raise fast money.

Joe Pizzi sat on the edge of a cot in a narrow cell that was cleaner and more comfortable than he expected. He’d been given three meals each day since he was arrested, even when they brought him to court. Surprisingly, none of those meals contained any mouldy bread or wormy fruits.

They call this a jail,
he thought with a sarcastic smile, although he knew that matters were going to get worse for him soon. Still, next to the rat-infested hole the
carabinieri
had put him in back in ’31, this was the lap of luxury.

He worried about not having had any contact with Antonio since his arrest. Aside from being concerned about his friend’s fate, he wished they’d had the opportunity to get their stories straight. Eventually, the RCMP agents assigned to him would question him about what he and Tony had been involved in. Holding up under their so-called enhanced interrogation techniques would be hard enough for Joe, but not knowing what answers his friend had given them would make things that much harder.

He breathed deeply, trying to slow his racing heart. The last time he’d been in a similar predicament he was a younger man, and even then he’d constantly thought he was on the verge of dying, or worse, breaking. He doubted that he could hold out very long this time, but he was determined to try. He hoped that if he held onto one minor secret for as long as he could then when he finally broke down and confessed, his interrogators would think he had nothing else to say, and they would stop torturing him.

The story that he’d admit to was a simple one: he was an old man from Italy looking for the companionship of his countrymen, and had been happy to buy fresh groceries at prices that weren’t inflated by administration stamp taxes. He’d express deep regret for having bought anything on the black market, which he knew was considered a serious offence by the administration. He’d even beg for forgiveness.

He would admit to these offences when the pain became unbearable, and maybe not even then. That was the only way his confession would seem convincing, hopefully leading them to believe that this was the limit of his illegal activity. He was, in outward appearance, a pleasant, mildly-addled old immigrant. With luck this would serve to add credence to his story.

He stood up to cross his cell and looked out the window at the prison yard four stories below.

Windows. These Canadians have a lot to learn about building prisons.

September 22, 2039:

Sahar came back to the bedroom, carrying the small silver-plated tray on which she served the coffee. She wore nothing but Janus’s white shirt, several sizes too large and hanging unbuttoned. His thoughts were, once again, focused on his troubles rather than her.

“Can you not pay one of these men a little at a time?” she asked.

“I don’t think there are many cops who take bribes on credit.”

“No, even I don’t give you credit,” she said with a mischievous smile. Janus’s dark face made it clear that her humour was misplaced, and she blushed, silently returning to pouring their coffees.

“The point is I have no idea how to get the money to give the man a fighting chance.”

“Allen, my sweet. You still have not explained to me why you must give him this fighting chance. Are these problems that he is having not what you wanted?”

Janus looked away and said nothing. There was no point in trying to explain his motivations to her again. He wasn’t all that clear on them himself. He only knew that if he didn’t do everything he could to save Joe it would be impossible to live with himself, let alone his wife.

“I don’t think you really understand what happened and I can’t explain everything now,” he said. “The immediate problem is I don’t know where somebody who needs this kind of money would even look for it.”

“If you were Muslim then you would know that bribing policeman is a fact of life. You would know people who could get you money for bribes, and who would not ask for your house and children in return. You would have their com-numbers memorized too.”

“Well, here’s one time I regret that I’m not a Muslim.”

“But Allen,
I
am Muslim. Why do you not ask me for my help?”

Janus had never thought of that. When he’d first met Sahar he’d thought of her merely as someone to fulfil his sexual fantasies. It wasn’t long before he saw that she was also a good and caring listener who was unlikely to reveal any of his secrets to anybody he knew. He knew nothing of her life and experiences apart from her involvement with him. What she said made perfect sense.

“You know someone who can lend me that kind of money? Off the books?”

“I do, Allen. In life we all need someone like that sometimes. He is a man who helps many people in our community find things they need, including money. His name is Walid.”

“And he doesn’t loan it out at ten percent a week interest?”

“Allen, usury is a very grave sin for Muslims. Such a thing would not be part of the terms he asks you to agree to.”   

Janus thought there might just be a solution for his troubles after all. He would worry later about the terms that this Walid would insist on.

Richard tried to concentrate on his social studies homework, but it was in vain. The previous week’s arrest of his great-uncle Joe made everything else seem irrelevant. How was he supposed to pay attention in class or even chat about girls with his classmates when he’d just had first-hand experience of the power of a police-state?

As far as Richard was concerned the men who’d come into his house to arrest Joe were no different than the fascists the old man had told him about in Italy. Canada had its own Black-shirts now, just better dressed.

Mr. Robinson, his teacher, had once eloquently described how a police-state behaved, even if such discussions were not part of the authorized curriculum. After class, talking to a small group of students, Mr. Robinson had taken the time to tell them what was really going on in their world. He was old enough to remember when arrest warrants and probable cause were more than just empty words. He’d even admitted to having been arrested once, years earlier, while demonstrating against a fracking operation that was adding to the toxic waste in Quebec’s northern lakes and rivers. Richard wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it, but he thought a look of fear had flashed across Mr. Robinson’s face when he recounted the story.

Now Richard sat in the local library, next door to an RCMP neighbourhood station, unable to concentrate on security issues in the modern age.

“It’s all bullshit, anyway,” he whispered a bit too loudly, drawing glares from two girls studying at his table. He reopened his text on the P-screen and pretended to read it, knowing full well he would find no truth in its words. Mr. Robinson had explained how subtle changes were made regularly to school texts. This was done to hide the fact that the administration needed to keep the war on terror going because this allowed it to enact pretty much whatever policies it wanted to on the home front. Few people today were willing to make the connection between this ongoing war, with its high cost in lives and natural resources, and the pollution that was killing so much of the planet.

Richard didn’t know why he’d been drawn from the beginning to his teacher’s extra-curricular talk, or why he took it for granted that what the man said was true. His father would have pooh-poohed any such conspiracy talk, but his dad worked for the administration, after all.

On the other hand, what happened to Uncle Joe confirmed Mr. Robinson’s gloomy warnings. Richard had been shocked enough that Uncle Joe was arrested and treated like some sort of terrorist. What had truly surprised him was when his father told him they’d have to borrow a large amount of money to bribe administration officials. The hypocrisy of the situation sickened him, and convinced him that even those who spouted slogans about security were only interested in lining their own pockets.

Considering all that had happened his father might even
understand why Richard planned to meet with Mr. Robinson and a handful of others the following night. It would be the first time Richard met with the group that he’d jokingly nicknamed The End of the World Gang. Mr. Robinson, in the cryptic way he so favoured, had hinted that this was much more than just a gaggle of radical students, or unhappy intellectuals, although Richard had little expectation they could achieve any real changes.

Still, it would be good to talk with these people who had an interest in taking their country back from the corrupt militarists and industrialists. Richard wished he could let Uncle Joe know what he was getting involved with. He was sure the old man would be proud of him.

Allen Janus stood on the sidewalk outside the
Café Liban
, feeling vaguely guilty about being there. The few other men on the street wore the same long plastic coats and bulky air-masks as any man he might have seen walking down his own street. There was no way to tell if they were Arab, English or French. He remembered Sahar telling him once that religious conservatives in her community had wanted women to cover themselves up completely when they went outside. God had played a joke on them, though, and now everyone had to be covered up.

When Janus approached the restaurant door it swung open, as if he were expected. A group of men stepped out into the evening gloom, laughing out loud and singing in an Arabic dialect that Janus didn’t recognize. Once they were through the door began to swing shut, and Janus reached out to hold it open. He hurried inside, before any lingering doubts could convince him to turn around and go home. He stood in a wide entrance, waiting for the outer door to seal and the disinfecting beam to run over his body. From an old speaker placed above the inner door came the soft sound of strings being strummed rhythmically on an
oude
. He thought he recognized the melody from Sahar’s apartment, and smiled at the realization that he’d become familiar with a culture that had once been so foreign to him.

The inner door slid open on its own, inviting him inside. He walked into a hall and to his left there was a coat check with nobody behind the counter. Behind the counter he saw a number of coats and masks hung up on hangers, but he didn’t feel comfortable leaving his own items unattended. He removed his mask and coat, draped them casually over one arm and headed toward a curtained archway from behind which he could hear the
oude
playing.

Past the curtains there was a larger room that held a dozen tables with a few wooden chairs around each one. At half of these tables there were one or two men sitting, sipping tea or coffee, many of them puffing on water-pipes. A cloud of hashish mixed with apple and cinnamon wafted up to the low ceiling of the restaurant. On a small stage in the corner a man who could have been any age from forty to seventy sat on a high stool fingering the delicate stringed instrument, playing the melody that Janus had recognized.

A tall thin man with grey hair hanging loosely below his ears got up from the closest table and stepped toward Janus.

“
Je peux vous aider?
” he asked in a Parisian accent.

“
Oui, une table,
please,” Janus answered haltingly.

“You prefer English,
Monsieur
?”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“
Ce n’est pas une problème. Par ici, s’il vous plait
.
Vous êtes Américain
?”

“What? No. I’m originally from Ontario.”

“
C’est la même chose,
” the man mumbled to himself, with a smile that Janus didn’t think was particularly friendly. “
Votre table, monsieur
,” he said, leading Janus to an empty table about half way to the stage. “
Ça vous convient?
”

“It’s fine,” Janus answered, sitting down.

“
Quelque chose à boire?
” the man asked, while placing a small menu on the table in front of Janus. “
Pas d’alcool, bien sur.
”

“I’m sorry?”

The man screwed up his face as if translating was going to be a terrible effort. “There is no alcohol,
monsieur
.
C’est la loi ici
.”

“Of course. I’ll just have a coffee, please.”

“
Canadien?
”

“No, Turkish please. No sugar.”

The waiter gave a small bow and turned away. Janus smiled because the man’s expression showed that he hadn’t expected a Canadian to order the strong, bitter coffee that was the staple of the Middle East.