“You’re crazy, Larry.”
“That’s exactly what you said the last time.”
“Okay, okay, let’s go. We’ll take your car.”
JIM WAS WAITING on the shore when Moses came in to beach the canoe. “How could you do this to me, Moses?”
“Hasn’t she come back yet?”
“You better believe it. With some cock-and-bull story too.”
“What did she say?”
“She went out for a drive and parked on the Kedgewick road, leaving the keys in the ignition, and walked down to the river to snap some pictures of the sunset. When she got back some no-good Micmacs had made off with her ear. Goddamn it, Moses, I hope you enjoyed yourself, because this could cost me my job and maybe two hundred other jobs for the people around here.”
“There weren’t going to be any jobs. They had no intention of building a factory here or in Ontario, but it got them a free fishing trip with all the trimmings. Last year they pulled off the same scam in Mexico and went bone fishing for a week without it costing them a dime. Where are they now?”
“Fat boy and his mommy are in the lodge and the men are out looking for the car. Darlene’s with them.”
“They’ll run into Gainey on the road and he’ll show them where it was abandoned by those no-good Micmacs who took it for a joyride. However, there is a problem. No keys. Barney will have to jump the wires.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. He’s top rod. The son of a bitch weighed in some five pounds better than you did.”
“Shall we check it out?”
“Damn right.”
So they slipped into the ice-house where Barney’s catch lay in a row on last winter’s shrinking snows, and Jim knelt to probe their bellies one by one. “I’m going to have to fire Armand,” he said.
Then the cars rolled back into camp, the Cadillac followed by the Mercedes. Darlene jumped out, not looking right or left, but running to her bedroom, pursued by Barney.
“Is he going to beat up on her?” Jim asked.
“Just check her out for bruises.”
Mary Lou had poured herself a beer in the dining lodge. “They didn’t steal anything or do any damage. Even Barney’s camera was still on the front seat. Isn’t that nice?”
Moses was drawn to the radio. The late news. Watergate again. The tape that had been mysteriously erased. General Haig, speaking at a press conference, suggested that there was a sinister influence at work in the White House. Moses was still pondering that, dismissing his initial gut reaction as crazy—well, at best unlikely—when Barney came striding into the lodge. “The best man won,” he said, “or haven’t you heard?”
“Congratulations.”
“Fuck you too,” Barney said, and when the telephone rang he lunged for it. “Yeah, right. Sure he’s here. He’s been here for days. It’s for you, Moe. Your boss wants you to file a report on me. Boy, did I ever have you figured.”
Moses took the call in the kitchen.
“Moses, this is Harvey Schwartz. Mr. Bernard has died. No matter what you think, he was a great human being. I say that not because of my unique relationship with the family but from the heart.” Harvey told him what had happened. The raven, the harpoon. “In your opinion could this have been Henry’s doing?”
“Henry wouldn’t besmirch himself doing such a thing.”
“If it wasn’t Henry, who was it, then?”
“Henry would quote Ben Sira to you. ‘Seek not things that are too hard for thee, and search not things that are hidden from thee.’ Was there a ‘gimel’ carved into the harpoon?”
“Yes. Now tell me why anybody would commit such an obscene act?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Harvey,” he said, hanging up. Then, his heart thudding, Moses went to pack. The ravens gathering. A sinister influence at work in the White House. A “gimel”. I’m crazy, Moses thought. But he had already decided to fly to Washington. What else could he do?
The next morning Jim and Moses stood by the dining-lodge window, sipping coffee, as they watched Barney pose for picture after picture with his catch.
“He belongs to some kind of sportsman’s club back in Chapel Hill,” Jim said, “they meet once a month, and when he gets back he shows them his slides. This time he’s going to boast about how he came out here, fishing salmon for the first time, and came out top rod. The least you could do is cancel your cheque.”
Moses left Vince’s Gulch after breakfast, stopping at the post office in Campbellton to mail a small box to Chapel Hill.
“You’ll have to fill out a customs declaration,” the clerk said, taking the box. “Hey, this is awful heavy.”
“It should weigh exactly five pounds.”
“What’s in it?”
“Pebbles.”
“Pebbles?”
“Pebbles.”
Four
Harvey, an insomniac, could sleep comfortably these days, knowing it was not a total waste of time. Even while he drifted off, ostensibly an idling engine, his stocks were working in overdrive for him. His burgeoning shares in Acorn and Jewel. His fattening private portfolio.
Harvey’s day started out like a bell-ringer. Becky didn’t make one rude remark to him at breakfast. Picking up the front section of the Gazette at the table, he saw that it was Watergate, Watergate, Watergate everywhere. Harvey, as usual, waited until he got to the office to read the sports section. Bad omen. Turning to the box scores, he was brought up short by an item on the opposite page:
I WAS JAILED
BY MISTAKE
MAN SAYS
A Montreal West man who was thrown into jail when he went to bail out his brother-in-law has filed a $200,000 lawsuit against three Montreal Urban Community police, a provincial policeman, the MUC and Quebec’s solicitor general.
Hector Lamoureux is claiming for moral damages, humiliation, loss of freedom, anxiety and anguish after his illegal arrest and more than 48 hours behind bars. His problem began—
Miss Ingersoll buzzed to say Lionel Gursky was on the line from New York.
“My father’s only been in his grave for a week,” Lionel said, “and it’s started again.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I’m talking millions of dollars in shares, all of which were acquired in Montreal this time, through Clarkson, Frost & McKay. Isn’t Tom Clarkson a neighbour of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’d just better find out who his client is and what he’s after and call me back.”
Harvey had now been rooted in his house high in Westmount long enough for him to have grown familiar with his street. Its rhythms, its moods. Eight o’clock every morning, rain or snow, as his chauffeur backed his Mercedes out of his garage, the Jamaican Clean-Up Brigade, eyes swollen with sleep, began to lumber resentfully up the hill. One sullen, parcel-laden cleaning lady following another. And if Harvey was early starting out for the office he was bound to run into the Italian gardeners, a ferocious swarm, blasting compulsively on the horns of their pickup trucks as they swooped from house to house, ploughing the driveways clear of snow in winter and laying in beds of impatiens and petunias in summer, bellowing each to each, no matter what the hour, over the roar of their power mowers or snowblowers.
Further down the street was that most esteemed of Belvedere residents, Tom Clarkson, with his second wife, his surprising bride of a month, a girl called Beatrice. Tom was tall and thin, almost delicate, with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes. He had about him the manner of a man who would have been disappointed rather than angry with a maître d’ who didn’t show him to the best table. He served on symphony and museum boards because it was clearly his duty. He was also a collector: jade, nineteenth-century porcelain.