A Murder of Crows (27 page)

For a moment the line stopped, and right in front of Decker stood a late-middle-aged couple who wore their grief in the deep lines of their faces—faces that Decker was pretty sure belonged to the parents of Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz. The resemblance to the mother was startling.

“I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Rabinowitz.”

The older man looked at Decker. “He was a good boy. A very good boy.”

“I'm sure he was,” Decker responded.

“He was our reason . . . ya know?”

Decker didn't know but was grateful that the line of mourners began to move again before Mr. Rabinowitz could clarify that Grover Cleveland was their very reason for living. From the man's large strong hands Decker assumed he was a blue-collar worker—perhaps a warehouse worker—not a scientist like the son of whom he had clearly been so very proud.

The last of the mourners finally passed and Decker and Viola Tripping stepped out into the aisle. Once he did, Decker saw Yslan standing to one side. He threw her a questioning glance and she mouthed the word “nothing.”

High above Walter saw the man with the dwarf girl and again wondered who they were. Then he settled in to wait. He was good at that—he'd waited all his life for rich people to finish this or that.

Outside the church, government-supplied limousines picked up the mourners and drove them away.

Suddenly Decker felt someone looking at him. He turned. A tall man with long grey hair wearing a very expensive suit was openly staring at him.

Then Yslan was at his side and between him and Viola Tripping. “Hey!” Decker protested.

“Viola needs to come with me,” Yslan said.

“Just a second,” Decker said, stepping in front of Viola. He was standing three steps down from her on the church's front steps, so they were eye to eye. “What did you mean about the president's death aura?”

“Someone's going to be killed—soon.”

“Who?”

“Someone with a huge aura. The president's carrying that aura.”

Yslan stepped in and said, “She's exhausted, Mr. Roberts. This chitchat can wait.” She turned the girl/woman and marched her quickly back toward her locked and windowless room.

As Decker watched them go he wondered if the huge aura Viola saw the president carrying had anything to do with the president's
lying when he said it was “a day completely devoid of joy.” Was there something good in this day? If so—what?

It was May 1, 2011. Navy SEALs were taking their final practice run in their mock-up of a certain Pakistani compound, completing the end of a nine-year search. The final sighting of bin Laden in his lair had been relayed by the watchers to the SEALs, who had passed it on to the president. For both the Seals and the president of the United States, May 1, 2011 was not a day “completely devoid of joy.”

Mr. Bin Laden had one day left to live; the countdown was nearly over.

Cussed when she saw the photo of Decker and Viola Tripping on the front page of the
National Post
. Then she yelled at the photo, “Decker, phone home!”

She tossed the paper aside and noticed the mess of her apartment. How the hell had it gotten so out of control? It never used to. But even as she wondered where she had put the vacuum cleaner she forgot about the apartment's disarray and turned her powerful mind to the professional problem at hand.

Why the hell had the CBC insisted that she cut any reference to the Hung Boy in the sixth episode of the documentary series that she and Decker were working on?

She reran the meeting at CBC in her mind.

She'd stared in disbelief at the pin-striped CBC executive across the desk from her. No doubt he lived in Riverdale. Trish often thought that if you fired twenty shots at random in Riverdale you'd rid the world of at least ten of these stuffed-shirt bureaucrats who spent their time at the public tit while claiming they were protecting Canadian art. Then she'd looked to Erika, the CBC-appointed show runner.

Erika shrugged then looked away, as if something in the atrium was of more interest than the show that they'd been working on for almost eighteen months.

“So it's settled,” pin-stripe said and picked up a file from his desk as he made the traditional motions to indicate (a) that the meeting
was over and (b) that Trish should get out of his office—that he was a busy man, a “doer” and this bit of biz was done, done, done.

When he glanced up he was surprised that Trish had not moved; and more, it looked like he'd need a forklift to move her from her seat. He'd opened his mouth, but Trish beat him to the punch.

“Why? Just tell me why you want the material on the boy who was lynched in the Junction cut from a documentary series about the Junction. Just, in twenty words or less, tell me why.”

After a sigh clearly meant to indicate that such explanations were beneath him, he said, “It's gratuitous.”

“The racist crap we found, the anti-Semitism we uncovered, the presence of over fifty percent of the prison halfway houses in the city and the out of control violence of the thirties—those weren't a problem, but this one gay boy's death—his murder—is a problem?”

“The dead boy's cut. Got it?”

She always hated the way CBC bureaucrats pretended they were Hollywood moguls. These guys were grant writers, not producers.

Trish turned again to Erika. “Anything to say about this, or did you already know? Fuck, you already knew.”

“Language,” pin-stripe interjected.

“The buyer's always right,” Erika said.

“What CBC hymnal's that from?”

“What?”

“Erika, what if the buyer's an idiot?”

Pin-stripe almost rose to the bait, then turned away.

Something in all this struck Trish as particularly odd. She wished that Decker were here—he was good at reading stuff like this.

“Well?” pin-stripe asked.

Trish rose, turned on her heel and left the office without agreeing to cut anything.

She'd placed more than a dozen phone calls to Decker, none of which had been returned. She needed his help to find out why CBC wanted the dead gay boy cut from the show. What issue could they possibly have with the fact that a gay boy had been lynched in 1902 across from the library in the Junction—and that his murder had
never been transferred to the police blotter of the Toronto police force when the Junction, suddenly and for no discernible reason, joined the big bad city?

She looked at Decker's photo in the newspaper again and muttered, “Come on, Decker. Decker phone home.”

Stared at the photo of Decker and the tiny woman on the front page of the
Toronto Star
and wondered who the small creature was. Then he wondered if Decker was okay. Helping at Ancaster College was a far cry from going on truth-telling sessions. And breaking into PROMPTOR was exposing both of them to scrutiny in a way that they'd never been exposed before.

He studied the photo carefully. Was it a girl or a very small woman at Decker's side?

He pulled his desk light closer and bent it down toward the photo.

The girl/woman drew his eyes. There was something about the way she held her body. But what? Then he understood: it was the same way his own daughter in far off Portland, Oregon, stood—after she'd been crying.

Was looking at the photo on the ninth page of the
Globe and Mail
. Theo was naturally surprised to see Decker in the midst of a U.S. calamity. As he folded the paper he thought of his friend.

“How much do I know about you, Decker?” he said aloud to the thousands and thousands of books in his used-book shop.

Then he smiled. “Not much, I guess. Not much.”

The phone rang and he picked it up. “Pizza Tarantino—viscera on the side, viscera on top, your choice, heart attack discount available upon request.”

“Hey, freak face, has Decker called you?”

“Nice to hear from you, too, Trish.”

“Yeah. Have you heard from him?”

“No. Did you try Eddie?”

“The other freak face. Yeah I tried.”

“And?”

“Yeah, he's spoken to him but that's all he'd tell me.”

“Then leave a message.”

“I did. Twelve to be precise.”

“Well then . . .”

Trish Spence had hung up.

Looked at the image on his iPhone in the wood-panelled bar of the spooky old CPR hotel, the King Edward, on King Street in downtown Toronto—and smiled.

He hadn't filed a story for the
Times
in almost eight months. Nor had he returned phone calls from his Princeton friends. Or from anyone. He just sat in the bar every day—and waited.

And today that which he was waiting for—really from the time he'd last seen Decker in Cincinnati in the old synagogue some sixteen months ago—had come back to him.

He allowed his index finger to trace the lines of Decker's face and said aloud, “Hello brother, welcome home. So very nice to see you again.” And finally he didn't feel so profoundly alone—such a freak—a man with a brother is never really alone.

Saw a reproduction of the photo on the
National
news as she finished closing up her restaurant. It gave her a start. Her old boyfriend looked older—much older—and stooped. As if he were
carrying something heavy on his back. She glanced in the mirror and saw her own image there—older, much older, and not just a bit stooped herself.
Damned time,
she thought.

Saw the image of Decker and the tiny woman on the wall TV between the beefy shoulders of two bare-chested, tattooed fellow inmates. Then one of them reached up and turned the channel to cartoons or professional wrestling—what was the difference? But Martin had seen enough to know that if the camera had panned in all likelihood Special Agent Yslan Hicks would have come into view. That would have been an unexpected treat. Then he thought of the tall man and the tiny woman—these two . . .
Two whats?
he asked himself. But he knew the answer to his own question before he'd completed it.

Two more of his kind. Two in the clearing—not at the crystal palace but in the clearing, like him.

He smiled and plodded his way back to his cell. He took out his calendar, which he'd already annotated using the pi ratio to find relevant days. The previous one had been the day of the blast at Ancaster College. He flipped the page to May. And there it was, only one day away—May 2, 2011—and it was a quadruple helix day. Something big was going to happen on May 2, 2011.

He checked his stock market tables—nothing there for tomorrow. So it had to be something else in the events of men—something big, something really big.

DECKER'S MARINE OPENED THE BASEMENT DOOR OF THE CHURCH
and indicated that Decker was to enter.

Decker hesitated, then stepped through the door with a “Yes, boss, yes” that he didn't complete before the door slammed shut behind him.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness of the place. He found old churches pretty creepy but as he looked around he realised that old church basements were even creepier, and this one's obsessive symmetry—well, was just plain odd.

The wide space was unfurnished and spotless, and like all good Calvinist buildings, perfectly symmetrical. Its walls were nothing more than mortar and raw fieldstone holding back the earth, but the stones were meticulously stacked—and matched the pattern of stonework on the opposite wall.

The floor was mostly compacted soil, although one area dead centre along the north wall did have a cracked cement slab upon which sat a huge rusting oil furnace that was shut off at this time of year. The thing was as big as three Cadillacs stacked one on top of the other. On either side of it were twin cement industrial sinks at which two fingerprint techs were plying their craft on a mop handle.

Over their heads dead centre was the grated entrance to the brushed-metal ductwork that bisected the ceiling. The grating sported the clear markings of recent welding.

Decker walked to the centre of the room and turned slowly to take it all in—the door, the furnace, the sinks, the ductwork, the
stairs on the far side leading up to the chapel in perfect balance with the exit door—and immediately sensed that something was out of place, although as he rescanned the area he couldn't say exactly what.

Yslan came down the stairs from the church with two men at her side. One was a square-shaped Slav. The other was dressed like he came out of the film
Men in Black,
so Decker assumed he was a security officer of some sort.

Yslan quickly introduced them to Decker, although she didn't bother introducing Decker to them—which was just fine with Decker.

“Both these men saw Walter Jones in the church before the president spoke.” Then turning to the men Yslan said, “Tell me again about the last time you saw Walter Jones.”

Decker listened closely, periodically closing his eyes. He only asked one question; “After the gratings on the ducts are welded shut, is there a way to get into them?”

“Nope—or out for that matter. A good weld—and we do the best—is stronger than tempered steel.”

Decker nodded and glanced at the duct cover over the sinks and understood what had disturbed his sense of semblant order in the first place. The place was so orderly—everything in its place. Everything complete, balanced, except the welds on the grating over the duct entrance—and the grating itself. There were four screw holes in the grating, but only three screws.

For a moment he stared at the thing and thought,
There's a mass murderer up there. Walter did come to see the funeral.