block come to carve out a little corner amidst the Asian street gangs, the Jamaicans, and yes, always the Hell’s.
And it was Duguay, McKelvey knew, who was responsible for his boy’s death. Duguay, whose method of operation was to get his hangarounds and foot soldiers to befriend and recruit street kids to peddle his crack, run his errands, get his army of the lost moving across the landscape of parks and transit stops, malls and arcades. It was what he had done in Montreal, how he had ended up in Joliette for a number of years. He had recruited McKelvey’s boy, who exchanged the roof over his head for a fetid bed of rags beneath the Gardiner Expressway, the dangerous missions and shelters. Exchanged school textbooks for a goddamned squeegee rag and a bucket. Doc Martens and black eyeliner, a dozen pieces of steel attached to his head, tattoos, a whole warped and negative outlook on the world.
Then, just as McKelvey had prognosticated and warned, his boy had died alone, his body left in a vacant lot beneath the expressway. A piece of garbage tossed from a passing vehicle. That’s all.
“How is Caroline?” Aoki said, leaning forward.
He blinked, brought himself back. He said, “Fine. She has good days and bad days.”
“And you?”
He took a sip of coffee, shrugged and smiled.
“You’re always fine, right Charlie?” she said. “Good old Charlie, straight as an arrow, cool as a fucking cucumber.”
“Go easy,” he said, “my neighbour already chewed my ass this morning.”
She said, “You stopped seeing the department psychologist, I understand. That’s okay, though, because between you and me, I don’t think she’s very good at her job. She’s got nice hair, but she’s a bit of a twat. That would be my reasoning. So what about you, why did you stop going? You got everything sewn up?”
He sighed, fumbling to put into words how he felt. How did he feel about sitting in a closet-sized office, opening up to a woman practically young enough to be his daughter? Felt. Feel. Express. Breathe in, breathe out. Let’s hold hands and explore the stages of grief, Charlie.
“You can only talk about things for so long,” he said.
“Sounds to me like you didn’t do much talking.”
“You get to the point where it starts doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. At first, sure, it makes you feel a little better, spilling all this poison. But then they want you to keep digging deeper and deeper...and there’s nothing else down there. There’s nothing there. You’ve scooped it all out, everything, and now you’re just...empty.”
Like cleaning a Halloween pumpkin, he wanted to explain. But in picturing that, he was reminded of the years he and Gavin had carved pumpkins a day or two before Halloween, trying to find new ways to smear the greasy pumpkin guts on each other. He saw the various farmers’ fields and Sunday markets they had visited in search of the annual pumpkin. The smell of those slippery insides, rich, fecund scent of fall. And then he didn’t want to think about that any more. He blinked and saw that Aoki was still talking. Her mouth was moving as he brought himself back into the conversation, like flipping to a channel midway through a show.
“...other things that you can look into, like out-patient counselling and...”
His mind suddenly flashed with an image of old Seeburger standing there like the king of goddamned Kensington, and he gritted his teeth and imagined tying those dogs from hell to the back of his truck and taking them for a run all the way to the Humber River.
“You should take advantage of the employee assistance folks,” Aoki said.
“I’ll see about all that,” McKelvey said, nodding.
“I hope you do.”
He shifted his weight, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “So.”
She reached for a paperclip and began to uncoil it. Not a good sign. He knew her too well and recognized the mannerisms. “I spoke with the Assistant-Crown attorney, Laura Wright. She understands your personal interest with regards to this particular suspect. They feel the best shot at a conviction against Duguay is with the charges he’s currently sitting on.”
“I see,” McKelvey said.
“People here don’t want to see what happened in Quebec a few years ago, when that little boy was killed in the car bombing. There’s pressure on the mayor, the chief, on all of us,” Aoki said. “The joint task force logged an incredible amount of time getting one of them to roll over. They got Marcel Leroux by the balls, caught red-handed with a couple ounces of coke shoved down his cowboy boot leaving the Dove strip club. He’s been persuaded to testify against Duguay on the extortion, money laundering and organized crime charges. With Duguay out of the picture, the local chapter of the Blades will suffer a major loss in their command structure. The task force can use the momentum to effectively shut them down before they even get a foothold. And with Duguay’s record, he’ll pull a dozen years at least. It’s a simple cost-benefit scenario.”
“They’re not willing to take a closer look at the file I pulled together?”
“Charlie. You’re a respected investigator on my Hold-up Squad. I think you’re a very fine cop. But you’re not a homicide investigator. You have to trust that your colleagues are as good at their job as you are at yours.”
“I’m just saying, boss, what I’ve been saying all along. I don’t think Balani and Gilmartin made the right connections here from day one. I know what I know because I went down there and talked to these kids. For hours. I know Gavin was selling dope for the Blades. Out of Moss Park there, and the Eaton Centre, the Yonge Line. That new apartment he was in up off Jane Street, it was a drug house for the bikers. Crack, E, weed. Duguay was known for getting guys like Leroux to get the street kids in on the hustle,” he said. “All we need is one of them to come forward and say that, yes, they saw Duguay with Gavin on the night he was killed. It’ll take some coaxing. They’ve got their street code. Just get him positioned there at the scene, and we can make the rest of it work.”
McKelvey wanted to mention also the evidence of a woman in Gavin’s apartment, a bag in the bathroom with a brush and makeup, items that disappeared from the time they were tagged and the time he checked the evidence lockup. Trying to match the inventory sheet with the physical property, coming up empty. A small thing, perhaps, but still. It was something he’d mentioned to Balani more than once. The senior detective brushing it off—stick to your holdups, McKelvey, stick to your old lady muggings...
“I wanted to talk to you about something else,” Aoki said. “An offer. After your current files are closed up, I’m going to ask you to consider taking the department’s early retirement package. I spoke with the head of HR last week, and he said with your years of service and accumulated lieu days, you could leave with almost a full year’s pay before your pension would kick in. That means full benefits, everything.”
An old rotted dory finally cut from its dock, he understood for the first time that without this place to come to, without something to keep his mind in check, he was a man adrift. Lost and perhaps dangerous. What would he do with his days? His mind flashed with an image of Charlie McKelvey dressed in a blue vest and polyester slacks, smiling as he passed shopping carts towards customers...a big round button on his chest that declared: “Have a Nice Day!”
“I
