“And your lawyer had to disclose to the Crown, is that it?” Pásztory lit another cigarette from the butt of its predecessor.
“All I know for sure is that we walked into court with no surprises. I can still hear the horse-laugh we got as every one of our witnesses failed to appear.”
“Sounds like a nightmare.”
“I’m just telling you this to warn you so you won’t have a nightmare of your own.” Pásztory had been lowering his voice steadily as we talked, as though the listening walls were moving closer. Half the time I could hardly hear him from across the table. It was his way of making sure I knew that this was inside information. I had to piece together the sense of what he said from the general flow. “These guys,” he went on, “are playing with big bucks. With little or no yelling from the public, they’re making huge profits and not taking responsibility for getting rid of the garbage reasonably.”
“Are you saying that nobody cares?”
“The only issue the average Joe Citizen gets excited about is when somebody plans to dump waste near him. Then he yells his head off. The papers pick up the echo and the idea dies. Now Kinross and M-F, they don’t make the average Joe Citizen mad because they don’t build dump sites. They dump at midnight or while Joe Citizen is watching the news on TV after the hockey game.”
“So they stay clear of controversy.”
“Completely. Their PR is great, their image is dust-free and untarnished. It makes me sick.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked.
Pásztory grinned as though my question was a good one. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, lowering his voice a notch or two, “when I leave you, I’m going off to meet the AV. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.” The AV, I wondered. What was an AV when it was at home? I’d have to look that up. I’m not up to date on all of the fancy initials they used in modern business. I didn’t have the training. Then I remembered something.
“You told me that there was something in the Kinross yard you wanted me to see,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t say it was in the Kinross yard, but you’re right. That’s where it is all right.”
“We can’t just walk in there.”
“When you leave here, take a peek through the fence beside the first of the Quonset huts. It’s so unusual, you’ll spot it in a-” He stopped talking suddenly. He held his coffee cup where it was, near his lips, but had stopped sipping between sentences. “I gotta go,” he said, looking over his shoulder. He replaced the cup in the saucer, spilling and slopping some of the coffee on the table. “You were right about this place after all,” he said. He threw a two-dollar bill on the table’s vinyl top and got up to go. “Talk to yuh,” he said and walked straight to the door and through it.
I turned around in my seat to see what had touched Pásztory off like that. The only thing odd I could see was a group of three men wearing yellow hard hats standing around a table and choosing who was going to sit across from whom. I was about to pass from them for another source of bother. Then I looked at the hard hats again. Two of them were strangers to me, but the one who finally sat looking in my direction was far from a stranger. Under the plastic helmet I recognized the features of Dr. Gary Carswell.
EIGHT
I’d be a bad witness on whether Dr. Carswell recognized either Alex Pásztory or me. At least he didn’t knock the dishes off the table and get suddenly to his feet with the whites of his eyes enlarged like Don Webster in the Grantham’s Players’ Guild production of Macbeth. When Don, as Macbeth, saw Banquo’s ghost, he let everybody in on it. At least Carswell was keeping it to himself if he spotted us. The yellow hard hats remained on the heads of the doctor and his friends. Coffee came for them and occasionally I heard a loud laugh from their booth. While I tried to think what to do next, I paid my check, adding another dollar to the two Alex Pásztory had left behind. The waitress swept the money away without a word; I’d had my fifteen minutes and it was time to move on.
After leaving the restaurant, I walked in front of the truck that had been blocking the view across the road. At least here I couldn’t be observed by Carswell. Once again I was face to face with the Kinross yard. It hadn’t changed much. The same chain-link fence surrounded the enclosure. Three strands of barbed wire formed the icing on the cake. An illegal entry would have to be premeditated. Something with a ladder, I thought, and a mattress.
The gate, in its open position, swung back and stood twice as high as the wire fence. The crossbar at the top was as high as the very largest trucks. Inside the gate, a small security hut looked unpainted but strategically well place to cause as much trouble for people like Alex Pásztory and me as possible. Beyond the hut, the private road ran past a small administration building. Further along, there were warehouses, garages and Quonset huts. A line of heavy trucks stood guard on one side of a wide tarmac like they were armoured tanks. There was little human activity as far as I could see. I walked along the road, on my side, until I was across from the first of the Quonset huts. By now I was far enough along the Scrampton Road so that I didn’t have to worry about being seen from the Turkey Roost. I crossed to the other side and approached the fence.
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for. Alex hadn’t had time to give me any hints. There was nothing on the metal sides of the hut itself except the texture that weathered aluminum runs to. Along the narrow passage between the hut and the fence, there was a pile of discarded junk: pine boards, rusty metal stakes, a roll of snow-fencing, another of rusty wire fence, an oil drum with more garbage in it. Then I spotted something odd. A large seven was leaning against the drum. The numeral seven! On the ground near it were two metal arms, one larger than the other. Although they were face down, I could see that they were the arms or hands of a large clock. Made just like the hands on an old-fashioned watch, they would need a clock face of at least fifteen feet across to operated. A large seven and two hands of a giant clock! What the hell was I supposed to make of that?
* * *
Brian O’Mara’s car was still warm in the driveway when I touched the hood on my way up to the porch of the small one-storey house about half-way up Junkin Street. The house was stucco with a pebble-dashed finish common to houses built during the Depression. An overweight woman with her hair under a net came and opened the door, giving me a glimpse into a living-room with a flight of plaster ducks hanging on the wall I could see best. The television was blaring unseen in another corner.
“Yes?” she said. I could tell she was not going to be helpful. I told her who I was. “He’s not back from work yet,” she said, trying not to look at the car in the driveway. “I don’t know what time he’s coming home tonight.”
“You told me he gets off at four,” I reminded her.
“Well, yes, that’s true. But tonight, I don’t know what’s happened to him.”
“I hope it isn’t anything serious. Nothing as bad as what happened to Jack Dowden, for instance.” She took that as though I’d hit her in the midsection when the referee was turned away. She let her mouth sag open.
“Well he ain’t here. That’s all.”
“May I wait?” I said, speaking correctly after her “ain’t.”
“I don’t know when he’ll be back,” she protested, trying to end the conversation with the door. I held it from slamming with my foot. “He ain’t here and I don’t know when he’ll be back!” she repeated.
“I just want to see him for a few minutes, Mrs. O’Mara. I know he’s in there!”
“I swear to God he ain’t!” she said. Almost at the same moment a short, burly silhouette moved in behind her. He was wearing an open plaid shirt over a T-shirt and carrying the sport section of the Beacon.