He scanned the Canadian Press site: no bulletins from Garibaldi Island, no interviews with smirking staff at the Chateau, or its pompous desk clerk, Fortesque. He’d sidled up to him calmly, explained he’d dropped a gold cufflink in Mr. Stonewell’s suite. The matter went all the way up to the hotel manager, who told Thiessen, with great aplomb, he was immeasurably pleased to help the honourable minister any way he could.
A surly security officer had accompanied Thiessen to the suite, breathing down his neck as he fumbled under the bugged table, pretending to look for the alleged cufflink. The mini-recorder hadn’t dropped to the floor, nor was it still stuck to the underside of the table.
Frantic, he crawled about on his elbows and knees, checking under every piece of furniture. Gone. It was gone. Not found by housekeeping obviously, because the room hadn’t been done yet. The security guy watched with narrowed eyes, saying nothing, unwilling to restrain the country’s highest law officer from going through drawers, closet, wardrobe. Unable to suppress a grin as Thiessen got his prints all over the hookah pipe, then wiped them with his shirttail. He’d recoiled at the sight of a used, leaking condom beside the bed.
His quest failed, he’d fled the Chateau, entertaining images of Stonewell striding into the Ottawa Citizen newsroom, the political editor listening raptly to Thiessen’s taped voice. Boy, I’ll bet you must know some stories about the old shyster. Or worse, far, far worse: Normally I don’t toke up until after dinner.
Thiessen had spent that afternoon in near paralysis, weighing options: should he hang around the hotel waiting for Stonewell? Then what — confront him? Or should he call Crumwell? Have one of their goons take Stonewell down in a back alley? In the end, he couldn’t bear to see their incredulous faces, to hear their icy tones of contempt. In the end, he did nothing, because anything he tried would only make things worse.
So he simply prayed that these Gulf Island loadies would shrug the whole thing off, see it as a joke, garbage the device. He’d got along with Stonewell, hadn’t he? He and his pal had been well looked after, they weren’t the kind of guys to repay generosity by causing a stink. Surely if they felt otherwise, the story would have already broken. After all, three days had passed.
Maybe he’d skate through this. The national press could easily miss the story — the election had scattered them across the country, and they weren’t doing much but collecting snippets about how prominents were spending Christmas. Charley Thiessen, for instance, would be at home “sharing this blessed time with my loved ones.”
It was a blessed time, damn it. It was a good-news Christmas Day. Look at that job the flyboys had done in Igorgrad — they pitched a perfect game. Yes, sir, the Conservatives were back and the maple leaf flag was flapping proudly in the Thiessen front yard. Nothing to worry about.
His wife: “Charley, get off your lazy duff and sharpen the carving knife.”
An overpowering aroma from the kitchen informed him they’d taken the turkey out. His stomach looped like a cresting wave. He bolted for the bathroom.
Bulked up with pillows, in a red suit smelling of mothballs and a beard you could hide a small human being inside, Abraham Makepeace was holding Stoney at bay. “This here government post office does not open on Christmas Day.” To Stoney, this smacked of bureaucratic fanaticism. There it was in his box, the overnight Express Post envelope, just a reach away, but this Santa Claus masquerader was protecting it like it was his virgin daughter.
“Honest, I couldn’t make it in yesterday, I got caught in the Christmas rush.” Crush was more like it, at the Honker’s annual all-day, all-night, wall-to-wall Christmas Eve ape-fest. Stoney finally managed to fight his way out of there today at noon, with Hamish McCoy, both still half in the bag, and they drove straight here to enjoy the shopkeeper’s traditional Christmas ration of a few tots to thank his customers for letting him rip them off all year.
“Her Majesty does not work on the day of the Saviour’s birth, and nor does her servant Abraham Makepeace.”
This was wildly unreasonable. It wasn’t as if the General Store was closed. The porch was packed, all the regulars plus the several survivors of Honk’s drunkarama, as sleepless as Stoney, but just as game to make it through this festive day.
“It’s the time of giving, Abraham.”
“I am giving. Three kegs of aged rum. Organic, made locally with them sugar beets the Frannery boys are growing. Have another.”
“Have a heart. I better explain. It’s from my dear old granny in Ottawa, she promised to send me a locket with her picture in it. She ain’t got much longer. Please, Abraham, please let me see her smiling face one more time.” He wiped an eye. “Give me that for Christmas Day.”
Makepeace jiggled his pillowed false front and went, “Ho, ho, ho. That’s the best one I heard all year.”
“I’ll donate two days’ free work on the new tavern.”
“I’ll give you this here package if you promise not to.” He gave forth another ho-ho-ho and pulled out the fat, padded envelope.
Stoney scuttled off with it, pausing to lace his mug of rum with enough coffee to keep him ambulatory until the Reverend Al’s annual punchbowl party. He put two fingers to his lips, a signal for McCoy to join him outside to sneak a joint. The old Newf was just back from his triumphal three-month tour of Berlin.
“Oi still got no grasp on why them Ottawa fellas gave you the keys to the city, and you ain’t gonna persuade mesself you been recognized as a top business enervater. That’s a load of hugger-mugger.”
Stoney had told McCoy the whole story, the two nights as a guest of the government, how they were supposed to pick his brains about how to run the country. But that never happened. All that happened was some glad-hander calling himself Charley asked a lot of questions about Garibaldi, then took off after a couple of drinks, looking unstrung.
Stoney originally thought Charley was a lawyer, but the way Arthur Beauchamp’s name kept coming up, he reckoned he might be a copper. A bon vivant with the chicks, he’d said, which led Stoney to worry he had something on Arthur, a sex crime. It was hard to see Arthur going to such extremes when he had his pick of the island’s hotties.
He lit up, passed the bomber to McCoy. “Let’s have a look at this gizmo.” He began wrestling the tape off the package. “Man, if I hadn’t tripped over the duffle bag, I wouldn’t never have seen it, but I’m on my ass under the table, and there’s this ugly black cockroach, eh? Staring at me with a blinking green eye.”
He and Dog had had been too wiped to figure out how the device worked. So they’d couriered it to Hot Air Holidays, Rural Route 1, Hopeless Bay.
It was obviously some kind of bugging device, so he and Dog assumed Charley was a narc, this was a sting, they’d been ratted on. They didn’t go to the ballet that night, donated the hookah and the leftover ten pounds of dope to a grateful street person, cleaned up the room, and waited for Charley to lead in a SWAT team to take it apart. Yet that hadn’t happened, or Stoney wouldn’t be standing here on Christmas Day smoking a doob with Hamish McCoy.
He wished he wasn’t so hammered. Events had turned all boogly-woogly, he was maximally confused. He’d hoped the weed would lead him to some inspired answers, but that wasn’t happening.
He fiddled with the recorder. “See, I press rewind, then play, and nothing happens.”
“I’m gonna tell you again, b’y, you wanna deep-six that there item, it’s stolen government property. Them narcs are gonna be climbin’ all over your arse, oi’m surprised they ain’t already slapped the darbies on. You’re askin’ for heat, b’y. Meanwhile, oi’m freezing me nuts off.”
He flipped the roach and went in. Stoney stayed outside awhile, contemplating McCoy’s disagreeable scenario. No way was he going to let the paranoid little bugger get to him. On reflection, Charley couldn’t have been a cop. He wasn’t smart enough. Yeah, he was probably only a lawyer, making friendly talk, squeezing out a little gossip on a famous personage to pass on to his wife and mistress. After all, Stoney had been chosen as one of an elite group of small businessmen, he had paper to prove it, a government letterhead.