When I got back to the New Beijing Inn, I reached for soap, a washcloth and the shower. Shortly after that, I was in a deep sleep, more like oblivion than a real snooze. And that’s the way I stayed for the next hour and a half.
TWENTY-FOUR
Thursday
I attended to my chores all the next day. Ted Thornhill stopped me in the hall and asked me some probing questions about what I was doing there. He was leaning over me a little like an unhappy bank manager, and talking a little louder than necessary, when I decided that I had no reason to live in fear of the CEO of NTC. I put him to bed by dropping Hamp Fisher’s name. Somehow, I brought up the fact that I’d rather be back on Lake Muskoka on the deck of Wanda III and hearing stories about my old friend, the director Jim Sayre, from the matchless lips of Peggy O’Toole. That did it. That ended any idea of starting a range war with the kid from Grantham.
Sally brought me lunch. She knew how Vanessa moved from meeting to meeting without taking nourishment. She told me that Crystal’s ex-husband had spent last evening talking to Gordon, her soon-to-be ex. After a bottle of Chivas Regal, Gordon was seeing the whole matter of his fractured life in a new and more law-abiding light. He promised not to harass her from now on.
In the course of the day I made three trips to the drugstore for Vanessa, and working with Sally and George Brenner, helped create a CV for that parking attendant and man of all work.
At about 5:30 in the afternoon, I caught a cab and let the driver take me south on Spadina, past the collection of police cruisers still parked along Clarence Square to the placid, cooler lakeshore. There were four men and a couple of women sheltering from the late-afternoon sun in the ROYC shelter at the foot of Spadina Avenue. Ray Devlin wasn’t any of them. I watched the ferry grow bigger as it approached the dock, wondering what I would do if Devlin failed to appear. This was turned into an idle speculation by Devlin’s sudden arrival in an orange-andblack taxicab. “Sorry I’m a little late,” he said, shaking hands with me. “Do you mind if I continue reading this brief? My girl just handed it to me as I went out the door.”
“Sure, I don’t mind. Wish I’d brought along something myself.” Devlin sat down inside the shelter for three or four minutes while the ferry arrived and made itself fast to the bollards. Then he got up, had a card punched and went aboard. I followed, giving up real money to the purser, if that’s what he’s called, and found a seat below decks. Ray continued to study the brief he was holding, but it didn’t make him safe from interruptions. A woman said she’d seen him on the news that afternoon. A man asked if he had had much luck with a certain anti-fouling paint. Ray gave him a short, crisp answer, which discouraged further commerce.
The trip across to the Island took about fifteen minutes and ended when we reached the dock in front of the impressive, white-and-blue-shuttered ROYC clubhouse. Here, for the first time, I saw that the initials stood for Royal Ontario Yacht Club. There was a plaque. Inside the door were photographs of commodores of the past wearing their yachting caps, paintings of yachts and their crews, a few cabinets dedicated to silver cups in annual competition and time-oranged oars hung up on the walls as decorations in commemoration of something or other. The people I saw were older than the people passing the window of the James Joyce pub. They were wearing English sweaters or club blazers. The dress code probably frowned on sandals and T-shirts, but the moment that notion crossed my mind, I saw three teenagers in sandals and T-shirts. I recognized the fact that I had to overcome a certain bias against people who could afford to own and operate boats out of this place.
I looked around for Devlin for a few minutes without any luck. He was probably making contact with his crew. They may have taken the ferry before ours. I also couldn’t find any sign of Boyd or Sykes. If they were prepared to protect me from Devlin, as Chuck Pepper had protected me from Ken Trebitsch, they were well disguised. I walked out on the well-rolled lawn, examining closely the members and their guests with their drinks and snacks. A suspicious-looking gull was watching the marina, where boat crews were busy getting a large assortment of boats ready for sailing, or battening them down after bringing them back up the cut to the club. There was a stiff breeze blowing. Anyone venturing out that afternoon wasn’t going to have to use auxiliary motors. As far as I could see wind-filled sails dotted the bright blue water. Spinnakers were deployed on some boats, giving the crews a good run for their membership fees. As backdrop to all this, the city’s silhouette loomed with its office and communications towers. The SkyDome’s open roof turned that stadium into an oyster on the half-shell.
A hand on my arm made me turn suddenly. “I’m sorry, Benny, but none of my regulars is here this afternoon. Philip Rankin told me he’d be here for sure. Nick Trench is always here looking to crew for somebody. Bill Keiller’s often agreeable. But I don’t see any of them. Say, I don’t suppose that we could manage with just the two of us?” Devlin had shed his city clothes and was now wearing an ROYC-approved sailing outfit: white shorts and light yellow nylon slicker.
“Raymond, I don’t know your yacht, but most of the boats I’ve been on can be handled by two. Where is your boat?”
“She’s in the last slip at the north end of the dock, the Sir Ed Cook, spelled ‘Coke.’ I’ll have another look around in case I can find somebody wanting to crew. Tell you what,” he said, “you start off, begin taking the wrappings off, while I get my flask refilled. There’s a stiff wind out there this afternoon, and I know there’s not much to drink on board. Here’s the key to the hatch. Once that’s open, you can find yourself some clothes and shoes that will make you more comfortable. All that gear is stowed forward. Okay?”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Devlin laughed and retreated back to the clubhouse. I tried to catch the sharp eye of a gull that had followed me from the clubhouse lawn. It gave no sign that it was working undercover. Very professional.
I walked down to the end of the dock, which was connected to smaller wooden docks, which in turn created the slips where about fifty or sixty small craft of all kinds were tethered. The yacht seemingly at the end was bigger than any I had ever been aboard, barring one owned by an east-coast brewer. But on that one I’d had to line up, and velvet ropes prevented unimpeded exploration below decks.
Next to this, but masked by the larger boat, was moored a much more reasonably sized vessel. Across the stern of the white hull, the words SIR EDWARD COKE TORONTO were painted in bold golden capitals. I struggled aboard, feeling, as I always did, heavy and awkward. I tried the key that Devlin had given me, and the hatch opened easily on well-lubricated tracks. I opened it fully, and went backwards down the inside ladder, turned and headed towards the front. Here, as instructed, I found an assortment of boating wear. Most important, I found a pair of soft running shoes that almost fit.
Back on deck, having brought some of the running tackle with me, I began unbuttoning the boom cover. When I’d removed it and stowed it below, and was wondering what to do next, Ray Devlin appeared with drinks and snacks. “Ahoy!” he shouted, slipping into the mock nautical banter that I had initiated a few minutes earlier. “The wind’s getting stronger. We’re going to have us a real sail, Ben.” Coming aboard, he saw what I’d started and lent a hand to complete things. He opened a hatch forward to let in some light, and began running the sheet lines through the left- and right-hand cleats and then hitching them up to the boom. Meanwhile, I took the sails out of their plastic bags and began slipping the toggles into the slot running up the mast. Devlin clipped a line to the top of the sail and made it ready for hoisting aloft. We managed the foresail in similar fashion, not talking, not getting in each other’s way.