Читать книгу The God Game - Jeffrey Round - Страница 12

House of Rumours

To Dan, Will Parker had been an almost mythic personality, revered by many for his social activism but known by very few. Their paths had crossed often during Dan’s early years in the city, both of them drifting in and out of various LGBT organizations, the first being the Suicide Prevention Hotline for which he and Will went through training together. When it came time for the real thing, Dan had been in awe of how Will instinctively filtered out the noise to get to the root of a caller’s issues: coming out to family, suicidal urges, AIDS scares. Will seemed to have it all down pat, carrying a suitcase full of advice in his mind. The ease with which he discussed these and other topics was inspirational.

If Dan had to sum up what set Will apart, he would have said Will made you feel as though he knew you intimately after only a few minutes of chatting. Having compassion at his fingertips and an ability to share his convictions were Will’s trademarks. He knew the stats on poverty, child abuse, sexual assault — social inequities of every variety — and he could quote them at will. Dan tried looking them up once and found them current and accurate. For a while, Dan had thought he might be falling in love with Will, but Will had taken that in stride as well.

“I don’t have time for an affair, Daniel,” Will told him flat out. “There are a lot of things I want to achieve. My personal life is secondary to those goals.”

A man with his priorities in order.

Serious in outlook and committed in his actions, Will was a new-world cowboy with the unruffled calm of a priest. Although he claimed to be bisexual, Dan knew no one who had actually dated him. He was a mystery, aloof but kind. An icy exterior with a burning flame at its centre. Getting to know him was a challenge. Gentle reserve was his default mode, and helping the less fortunate was his only passion. Dan had expected him to go into medicine, but it was no surprise either that he’d ended up studying law and getting involved in politics, trying to make a difference.

These were Dan’s memories as he left the assembly. He hadn’t long to wait for the reality. Once outside, he turned and there was Will. The years had been more than good to him. He looked lean and extremely fit, with a touch of grey around the temples.

His smile caught Dan off guard. Not so serious now, it seemed. “Daniel, it’s great to see you. Good of you to make yourself at home in our hallowed halls.”

Will indicated the way. They fell into step, heading away from the assembly.

“I took the tour to see what it’s all about before we met up,” Dan said.

“And what did you learn?”

“That politics and high school are not far apart when it comes to the participants. The only difference is their relative ages.”

Will laughed. “You’re not wrong. Sometimes I think this place is a distillery for deviant behaviour.” They reached the end of the corridor. Will stretched an arm in the direction of the next wing. “I’m just around the corner.”

He opened a door and led Dan into a hushed interior that suggested arcane matters and state secrets were regularly discussed here. The furniture was old, intricate, and uniformly made of wood. An auctioneer might have a field day trying to scry the provenance of the pieces before laying them out on the auction block. Dan ran a hand over the grain of a writer’s desk with a fold-up top that was stately and demure as someone’s kindly grandmother. Shelves were crammed with volumes of legislative history and legal tracts, the makings of civilization great and small. From atop an imposing shelf, busts of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Plato cast discerning gazes over the room. The father of modern Canada who had tossed the state out of the nation’s bedrooms, and the man who had laid the foundations of western civilization after declaring love a mental illness were contentedly seated together. They would have good conversations, Dan thought.

“You’ve done well for yourself.”

Will nodded. “If this is the sort of place you want to end up in, then yes.”

“You didn’t?”

“It’s not what I envisioned back when I was a young student leftist trying to reform the world. I had more radical things in mind then, though they stopped short of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.” He winked. “I’m sure you’d agree this is what we called ‘selling out’ back in our younger, more idealistic days.”

“Then you’ve survived the transition nicely. Maybe we should have called it ‘buying in’ instead.”

“A diplomatic answer,” Will replied. “I’m surprised myself at how long I’ve stayed. Some days the level of duplicity is mind-boggling.”

“You’re the only lawyer I ever trusted, because you could still be shocked by bad behaviour. That and the fact you once refused a client you knew was guilty.”

“Yes, well there’s crime and then there’s crime. Stealing pensions from old ladies and labourers deserves to be punished. I couldn’t use my talents to free someone who clearly admitted his guilt but wanted a loophole to squeeze through.”

“Is he still in jail?”

“Last I heard,” Will said. “Probably why I’m still alive. If he’d broken a law I personally disapproved of then I’d have thrown myself body and soul into his defence. But nothing like that here, of course. I just advise and adjudicate a lot of musty, fusty old laws someone wants upheld or, with luck, dispensed with when their time has come. There’s a lot of dead wood. Ministers wanting things on the books that will allow them to repeal gay marriage, for instance. It won’t happen at this level. It’s up to the feds, though it’s not proving a popular fight. Times have changed, but I wouldn’t put it past the prime minister to try to sneak it back into parliament. The last time he did, it got rumbled pretty quickly, but we have to be vigilant. That’s the price of freedom. Isn’t that what they say?”

“Truer words,” Dan said with a nod.

Will leaned forward over his desk. “It’s good to see you again, Dan. Life treating you well?”

“Very well, in fact. My son’s in university in B.C. He’s about to graduate.”

“Terrific! Kedrick, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Good memory. On top of that, I’m about to get married. His name’s Nick. He’s a police officer.”

“Well, congratulations, then.” Will gave him an appraising look. “I assume he’s stellar material like you.”

“Thanks. He’s a really decent guy, the sort I thought I would never meet. So far he hasn’t been scared off by me. How about you?”

“Six years of marriage. A wife and two kids.” Will looked at Dan. “I know what you’re thinking: I went the safe route.”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all. I was remembering how I envied you for having the choice. I also remember thinking that dating you would mean there’d be twice the competition.”

Will laughed. “True enough.”

Dan’s eyes roamed the desktop. “Any photos?”

“No. I keep my private life private. Just the nature of the business here.”

“Understandably.”

“So. To what exactly do I owe the pleasure?”

“Peter Hansen and Tony Moran.”

Will gave him a quizzical look.

“Do you know them?” Dan asked.

“Yes, of course. Peter I know personally. I’ve met Tony at one or two social functions.”

“Then you may have heard Tony has disappeared. I’ve been hired to find him.”

Will’s expression turned serious. “I’d heard he was missing. Is he in danger?”

Dan shook his head. “No immediate danger, at least according to Peter. It seems Tony has a gambling problem.”

Will shrugged. “Rumours are rife. One can’t help overhearing them in this place.”

Dan half expected him to quote statistics on recovering gambling addicts, as he might have cited other demographics in the past. “I don’t think it’s a question of money borrowed from questionable sources or anything like that. At least not as far as I know.”

“That’s good, then. I had a client once who lost everything to some unscrupulous sorts who loaned him the cash. In the end, there was nothing he could do but sign over everything he owned. I wasn’t able to save him. There was no question of violence against him, just compulsive behaviour that led to significant loss. I heard he made it back in two years and lost it all over again. It’s a significant illness.”

“I know a thing or two about addiction.”

Will regarded him shrewdly. “You’re quite the drinker, as I recall.”

“Was. Past tense.” Dan nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know a journalist named Simon Bradley?”

Will’s mouth twisted into a hollow smile. “The muckraker. Of course. And not half the journalist his grandfather was, unless you count digging up scandal as journalism. I’ve had to threaten him with legal action on behalf of the government more than once. He always skirts the edges of what’s legally acceptable with his reporting and his dubious sources. What’s he done now?”

“Nothing so far as I’m concerned. But he seems to think Tony’s disappearance is connected to John Wilkens’s death.”

“The MPP who committed suicide? How?”

“Bradley thinks Wilkens was murdered.”

Will’s expression darkened for a second, then he shook his head and laughed. “That sounds like Bradley all around. Trying to make something of nothing.”

“Is there any chance Wilkens could have been murdered for a cover-up?”

“Cover-up of what?”

“Bradley thinks it has to do with the power plant cancellations a couple years back.”

“That issue is dead. What happened was disgusting, but as far as I know it’s all come out in the wash.”

“Bradley thinks otherwise. And he believes it got John Wilkens murdered.”

Will glanced off, as though gathering scraps of thought in the dark corners of his mind. “It’s politics,” he said at last. “It’s a nasty business. Many have killed for it and many more have died.”

“So it’s possible.”

“Possible, yes. Likely, no. Wilkens was suspended for suspected misappropriation of funds. The allegations against him were pretty serious. Everyone seems to think he committed suicide to avoid the charges that no doubt would have been coming his way down the line. I’ve been looking into some of them, in fact. I can’t discuss —”

Dan put up his hands. “I’m not asking you to do that. I was just wondering what you might have heard.”

“I can’t think of any connection between Tony Moran and John Wilkens, except that John was the opposition critic for Peter’s boss, Alec Henderson, as you’ve probably discovered.”

“I had.”

“Other than that, I doubt there was much opportunity for their paths to cross. John was old money and a long-time Conservative with an attractive wife. Tony and Peter are working-class boys, openly gay, and pretty far left as Liberals go. I always wondered why Hansen wasn’t with the NDP. In any case, the abyss between them and John would have been very wide.” He paused. “Funny thing, though. John was said to be a likely candidate for House Speaker if the Conservatives ever got back in power. It shows a willingness to put aside his own views in the interests of impartiality. Maybe that indicates an ambivalence in his political views. Who can say how deep his convictions really were?”

“Have you heard of any behind-the-scenes shenanigans by people trying to fix elections?”

Will’s expression was incredulous. “Fix elections? You meaning rigging ballot boxes and such? That’s Third-World politics, Dan. It doesn’t happen here.”

“What about people hired to help swing votes by the manipulation of media buzz, and so on.”

Will laughed gently. “That happens all the time. They’re called opinion makers. Sure, there is always something afoot. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,’ as they say. It’s completely legal, so long as you don’t say anything untrue about the candidates. If you do, you’re going to be facing libel charges. Probably from me.”

Dan shook his head. “What about someone hired to damage political careers? Making sure candidates are sidelined for one reason or another?”

“Hired by whom?”

“I don’t know. This is the theory Bradley’s working on. He tells me there’s an individual who can make things happen to promising candidates, who then quietly or otherwise fade from prominence. He calls him or her the Magus.”

“Like some sort of mysterious conjuror? C’mon! You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“A fixer, in other words. Someone who can make or break a promising career.” Will shook his head. “While it sounds good on paper, it doesn’t work that way in reality. It’s the popular vote that counts. Look how many people voted for Mayor Ford in the last election. Even after that crack-smoking video surfaced, the man is still popular. There’s no accounting for stupidity, Daniel. You know what they say: people get the government they deserve. All we can do is put up a better candidate and hope good sense will prevail next time.”

“One would hope.”

Will glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry to cut things short. I’ve got a caucus meeting in five minutes. One of the parties is hiring a campaign strategist for the upcoming election. Apparently my opinion is important.” He smiled. “My mundane life. You know how it goes.”

Dan stood. “Thanks for your time, Will. I appreciate your candour. You were the first person who came to mind when I heard Bradley’s allegations. I also thought it would be good to catch up.”

“I wish you luck in finding Tony. For what it’s worth, and totally off the record, I never believed Peter and Tony would last. I always felt Tony was too lightweight for a political spouse. Maybe he’s just trying to get away.”

Dan nodded knowingly. “And taking the bank accounts with him. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“And for what it’s worth …” He held Dan’s gaze. “I don’t think John Wilkens was murdered.”

“I didn’t take the allegations too seriously. I just wondered what you thought.”

Will held out his hand. They shook.

“Watch out for Bradley. He’s trouble. In the meantime, if I hear of anything, I’ll let you know. You know what they say — the walls have ears. Doubly so in politics.”

“Thanks. I’ll do the same.”