Bryant’s secretary snapped closed the buttons along a line of filing cabinets. I hoped the keys were inside one of them. It was with little enthusiasm that I glanced at the transcript.
The medical evidence presented at the inquest showed that Jack Dowden had died of injuries consistent with being leaned on by a ten-ton truck. Three men on the site saw the truck roll from a parked position and catch Dowden by surprise against a wall of concrete blocks. I noted the names of the witnesses, recognizing, in passing, the name I already knew: Brian O’Mara. The other two were Tadeuss Puisans and Luigi Pegoraro. They gave the alarm, and that brought the doctor, Gary Carswell, to the scene. He examined Dowden and declared that in his opinion the man had suffered a crushed ribcage and possibly a broken spine. Dowden had lost consciousness immediately and died almost at once. The medical examination dressed up the doctor’s guess in finer words, but the diagnosis at the scene of the accident was upheld.
The inquest added details to the clipping that Irma Dowden, my fibbing client, had shown me, but the facts remained the same. The false date was the only lie I had caught her in so far. And Dowden was still just as dead.
I was curious about the company doctor. What was Carswell doing at the yard on the day of the accident? It was just a little too neat. I was beginning to think like my client. I looked deeper into the transcript to find out.Q. Dr. Carswell, how did it happen that you were at the yard that morning?A. I had arranged to see Norm Caine. We were going to have a bite of breakfast together. But he wasn’t there.Q. Do you have a regular association with Kinross?A. Primarily I’m in private practice here in the city, but I also have a part-time association with Kinross, where I act as a trouble-shooter for the company in the whole area of ecological concerns. I’m gravely involved in the issue of disposal of toxic wastes. I’ve been called an expert in the field, although I make no such claim myself. Some say I’m an apologist for the company. That is nonsense, of course. I also attend to the full range of medical matters involving the workmen during my visits to the yard.Q. When did this association begin?A. Early April of this year …
Walking back to my office, I got to thinking about the sort of mess I was getting myself into. Dowden had been hauling hazardous toxic wastes in his truck. How close did I want to get to that? Toxic wastes make me nervous. I can take all the areas of family law and never lose a night’s sleep, but the moment I get involved in our polluted environment I begin tossing and turning all night. It’s a bit like all those requests for charity I get in the mail. They are all worthy causes, but I can’t afford to support them all, so how can I choose? Maybe I am getting too old to be involved in a subject that affects the future of the planet. I remembered a series of articles in the Beacon last year. They were calculated to keep me awake all night. The writer told how toxic wastes were being mixed with fuel and moved across the U.S./Canadian border. That was when a provincial investigation started to probe the behaviour of the firms involved. Dr. Carswell joined Kinross in April? Yeah, the timing was about right.
I recognized that any illegal activity involving the disposal of hazardous chemical wastes was a worthy subject for investigation, but with the full resources of the province of Ontario on the trail of wrongdoers, what did they need me for? I was just a little guy trying to make a living. Wasn’t Environment Front the organization that blew the whistle on all aspects of pollution? Weren’t they committed to saving the planet? They are the guys who should be getting Kinross to clean up their act. How can I make them ozone-friendly overnight? I’m a one-man operation. Another thing worried me. It was a question of mental health. I had to protect myself from knowing chapter and verse on the dumping of toxic industrial wastes. Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when the facts can be detected in so many parts per million in my drinking water.
At the corner of James and St. Andrew, I ran into Chet Bryant on his way back to his office. There was a sweet smell of a friendly drink on his breath. Since he towered above me by a full foot, I wasn’t about to mention the old-fashioned boozy way Grantham still carried on business. The wheels of Grantham had always been set in motion in a back room at the Grantham Club and it looked like things weren’t about to change. I reminded him that I’d just left his office.
“That’s right. Why the hell are you getting into that old case?”
“Just a little research I’m doing. Nothing to get excited about.” Chet nodded without believing me and kept his eye on the changing stoplights over my shoulder.
“Sure, sure,” he said. “For an old file, that one’s been getting a lot of action lately.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, Thelma-that’s my secretary-said that one of those Environmental Front people was in to see it a couple of days ago.” The light must have changed, because Chet beamed down a big smile and challenged me to have a good day. Since it was already getting dark, I couldn’t see how I could improve on what I’d already had. He was half-way across the street before I decided that no answer was expected. That’s when I climbed up the twenty-eight stairs to my second-floor office and made my call to Dr. Carswell.
I made two other calls while waiting for Dr. Carswell to catch up to his accumulated messages. The first failed to find my client at the number she’d given me; the second failed to find anybody at Secord University’s History Department where Anna Abraham worked. No answer got me off the hook as far as dinner was concerned, but it did nothing for that part of me that wanted to hear her voice. Anna was becoming an important part of my life, and I hadn’t heard from her since Saturday night. I didn’t like calling her father’s place up on the escarpment above the city, because I didn’t want to imagine the expression on Jonah Abraham’s face if he took the call. Abraham and I weren’t in the same tax bracket for a start. He’d been a client of mine, which didn’t make things any easier. The fact that I knew the father before I met the daughter confused things. I didn’t like to mix business with pleasure. I’m sure he felt the same way, and I don’t think he liked the idea of his only daughter being my idea of pleasure. I resolved to try her later in the evening, in spite of my reservations.
I was on the point of going out for cigarettes, when I caught Dr. Carswell calling back. I jumped in before my answering service could take the message and garble it. I wonder whether they have a scrambler specialist on the payroll, somebody who can make Henry Gibson into Henrik Ibsen without even trying. I explained to Carswell who I was, and that I was looking for information and checking some facts. He agreed to see me after his last patient at six-thirty that night. Good, I thought, at least I’ll be able to talk to him before I make a call on Irma Dowden. At least I’ll have been able to add something to the facts in the clipping. That would show I’d been working.
There was over an hour, nearly two hours to kill before setting out to see Carswell. I spent the first half-hour paying bills to the various oil companies that fuelled my car. I began feeling guilty about tapping limited fossil fuels and helping to wipe out the remaining Indians along the Amazon. Was I aiding and abetting in the destruction of rain forests somewhere, or perhaps killing North Sea seal pups? Once you dip into the question of pollution, you soon discover that it’s all around you and that you are the chief villain. I needed to confess to having stuck gum under my desk at Edith Cavell School, to not bundling and salvaging my collected newspapers and to using leaded gas in my car. I was a mass of vices calculated to destroy the ozone layer and speed along the disastrous results of the greenhouse effect. I looked at the yellow patch of ceiling above my desk, my own area of peak pollution. I resolved to put a piece of time away to begin thinking about cutting down on my tar intake. I made an appointment with myself to consider a plan to bite the bullet. I frightened myself out into the street and lighted up a Player’s until all was right with the world again.