Oasis of Night (46 page)

 

 

F
OR
A
long time, things were quiet around town and around the
Heartache. Chris got out of hospital and came back to work, along with a few new scars. Tex stayed on in the kitchen, but Anita found herself in the family way and had to get married, which left me with one waitress. I put a want ad in the local papers, but it was hard finding decent staff, and the idea of training another girl to do what Anita could do with her eyes shut was a ready-made headache.

Toward the end of November, it started to get cold and the rains were unrelenting—until they changed into snow. By the second week of December, we had enough snow underfoot that it was starting to look like Christmas, and I was busy getting the Heartache ready for the holidays. Chris and Tex moved the piano out of its usual corner and put up a tree, which we decorated with the usual tinselly frou-frou, and I strung a few lights around the windows. It was bitterly cold, which was good news for me as it drove people indoors; I added some cakes and muffins to the menu and ordered in as much strong English tea as the ration board would let me.

“Hey, Jack, would you take a look at this?” Tex handed the
Daily News
to me across the bar. I'd been attempting to fix a leaky tap that dripped incessantly, but so far all I'd done was make the problem worse.

“What is it, Tex? I'm kinda busy.” I was trying to keep tension on the pipe wrench I had fastened around a leaking copper washer; if I could just twist the little sucker into place….

“Isn't that your friend? The sergeant?”

I leaned over to peer at the photograph on the front page. There was Rick Callan, standing on the steps of the Knights of Columbus hostel on Harvey Road. He was flanked on either side by smiling government officials, one of which was shaking his hand. SERGEANT NAMED HOSTEL CHARGE OFFICER, the headline read. “Looks like he's gotten himself a promotion, or at least a change of orders.”

“Well, good for him.” Tex tapped the photo. “You seeing him tonight?”

I grimaced. “No.” I twisted the wrench, felt the washer give a little. “No, that was over ages ago.”

Tex watched me working on the faucet. “Still hung up on Sam, huh?”

I glanced up at him. “Something like that.”

“Think you'll ever see him again?”

I shook my head. “No.” The wrench slipped off the washer and clattered on the floor. “Fuck.”

“I got it.” Tex handed it to me. “Have you tried writing to him?”

“Who?” I cranked the wrench closed over the washer and started the whole process over again. “Sam? He wouldn't want to hear from me.”

“How do you know?”

I glared at him. “Is this going to be Twenty Questions? Because there are some dirty glasses in the kitchen—”

Tex threw up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, okay. I won't mention it again.”

“I'd appreciate that.” I leaned on the wrench, easing it forward, and felt the corroded washer give way. Tex had left the newspaper on the bar, and I found myself drawn to the photograph of Callan on the hostel steps. Something about it bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. The hostel was the sort of place you see wherever American servicemen are stationed: a combination dormitory and social club with a reading room, a restaurant, toilets and showers, a recreation room with various games, an auditorium for dances and variety shows, and a dormitory upstairs. From what I'd heard, the food was okay, and the entertainment was generally good, and if you were too tanked to stagger home, you could always crawl upstairs and sleep it off.

A shadow fell across the bar, and I found myself looking at a small man, perhaps five feet in height, with protuberant blue eyes set flat in his face and a wide, almost piscine mouth. His brows were thin and arched and so fine they appeared to have been drawn on his forehead. There was something wrong with his features—no, with the face generally—that I couldn't immediately identify. “Can I help you?”

“This is the Heartache Cafe?” His voice was low, cultured, with what sounded like an eastern European accent—Bulgaria, maybe, or Rumania.

“Yeah. What can I get you?”

“I would like a cold glass of lemonade. Please serve me at that table over there.” He pointed to a table in the far corner of the room, partially hidden behind a huge potted fern.

“Cold weather for lemonade, don't you think?” I didn't usually keep any in the fridge, not this time of year, but if he wanted it, I'd make it for him. “Don't you want a cup of coffee instead?”

His strange, flat eyes focused on me, and I had the impression of gazing down a tunnel. “I never consume hot beverages.”

“Your funeral,” I muttered. I went into the kitchen and told Tex to make a pitcher. The little guy with the fishy face was looking through the copy of the
Telegram
I kept for customers: licking his thumb and finger before catching hold of the page, then turning it slowly and deliberately, like a child might. It was a disconcerting spectacle. I laid the lemonade down and turned to go.

“Mr. Stoyles, is it not?”

“Yeah?”

“I am….” He paused, reached to sip the lemonade delicately. “How to put it? A stranger to your town. I wonder if you could direct me to… ah, Parade Street?” He folded his hands on top of the table and gazed at me, and I realized, with a start, that he had no eyelashes.

“Parade Street? You want the top end or the bottom end?”

This seemed to amuse him, although I had no idea why. “The bottom end, if you please.”

I thought about it for a minute. “Let me see… best way is to turn left out of the door. Keep going till you see Bowring Brothers up ahead, on your right. Before you get there, you wanna turn left onto George Street, then on up Bates Hill. Turn right at the top of Bates—that'll be Queen's Road. You're gonna walk up there till you see a long, steep hill with a cathedral at the top—that's the Basilica. Go up to the top, turn left and you're on Harvey. Keep walking till you see the Knights of Columbus hostel. Parade's just around the corner.” If I kept this up, I might as well get a job as a tour guide.

“Thank you, Mr. Stoyles. You are most kind.”

Just then a group of lady Christmas shoppers blew in through the door, and I went to see to them. When I turned back, the little man had gone, leaving most of his lemonade untouched. I didn't have too much time to think about him, however: the parade of Saturday shoppers kept us on the hop till well past five and it was five thirty before we started dressing the tables for the supper crowd. I'd taken a handful of reservations for dinner, but knew the following week would probably be busier. Besides, the popular local band known as Uncle Tim's Barn Dance was playing at the K of C hostel tonight, and they were supposed to be a real big deal. Around nine, Tex asked me if he could use the phone in my office; he was in there a good half hour, and when he came out, he seemed more preoccupied than usual. I didn't have time to question him about it: we had a sudden, last-minute flurry of customers and from then until closing, the only things I thought about were seating arrangements, drink orders, and the customary gratuities. It was eleven on the dot when I closed and locked the front door, and turned the sign in the window. “God, I feel like I've been run over by a train.”

Chris lifted a fresh pot of coffee off the burner and poured us all a cup. “Here you go, boys. A good night's work in anybody's books, I'd say.” The radio behind the bar was tuned to a local station; tonight they were broadcasting live from the K of C hostel and just then some guy was giving his all to “Moonlight Trail.”

“Goddammit, I hate that song,” Tex moaned. “And he's murdering it. Why the Sam Hill do they try and sing country songs around here anyway? It's not like—”

Chris shushed him. “Jack, turn it up.”

I got up and twirled the radio knob, but there was nothing on except static—a faint crackling sound, very dim and faraway. It was almost like the signal had gotten interrupted between there and here. Then we heard a series of thumps, a girl screamed, and far away in the background, I heard a man yelling there was a fire, the building was on fire, and then the signal died.

We stared at each other, wondering if what we'd just heard was real, wondering if we ought to go and do something. Rick, I thought, Rick Callan was there, and he would know what to do. Rick was good at taking care of things. He would have matters under control immediately, and the band would come back on and everything would proceed as normal. This wasn't Brooklyn or the slums of Philadelphia; this was Newfoundland, and it was safe and there was nothing here that could hurt anyone….

The man with the face.

“Huh?” Chris was looking at me strangely. “You say something, Jack?”

“The man… lemonade. The man with the face, he had no eyelashes.” No lashes, and no eyebrows, either. They'd been painted on, drawn on, something. The skin of his face was too tight, and shiny, as if…. “He was here. This afternoon. He sat in here. He asked me for cold lemonade.”

Tex nodded. “Yeah, I remember him. Lemonade. You think…?”

I didn't have time to answer him because somebody was pounding on the door. Dan O'Hagan, my old pal from the
Telegram
, was there, his cameras slung around his neck like bandoliers. “The K of C hostel's on fire! I'm going up there now. Come on! They might need help.”

We threw our coats on and followed him out into the freezing cold. There were hardly any people about, and the only cars we saw crept along at a snail's pace, their headlights showing just a thin beam through the slits in the blackout covers. The cold was already biting my nose and the tips of my ears. I'd shoved my feet into winter galoshes but my toes were numb, and my fingers tingled painfully; it hurt to breathe. “Dan, slow down.”

“Come on.” Tex caught hold of my sleeve and towed me forward. “You stand around too long, you'll freeze in place.”

We had just reached the top of Long's Hill when we saw the blaze: red, enormous, leaping up into the blackness of the winter night. My heart lurched. Rick Callan was there. Rick Callan was in there. I waded through ankle-deep snow, crossing as close to the hostel as I dared. At this proximity, the heat was intense, searing my naked face, burning my lips and eyelids. A line of fire hoses had been linked to the hydrants and ran across Harvey Road and up Parade Street, and a group of firemen were doing their valiant best, but it was already too late. The building had by then been reduced to a pile of flaming rubble, burning with the intensity of hellfire. It was no use. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do—not now, not ever again.

 

 

“I'
M
SORRY
to have to do this, Jack. We tried to locate someone else who could positively identify him, but most of his friends all died in the fire.” Picco's hairline was singed, and his eyebrows were completely gone, but he was otherwise unscathed. Fort Townsend's proximity to the hostel meant a great many Constabulary officers turned out to assist during the fire; Picco had been one of them. “You can take a minute if you want. There's no rush.”

“No, it's fine.” I swallowed hard. The room—an empty parade hall in the CLB Armoury building—had been pressed into service as a temporary morgue, the city morgue having been overrun with corpses of the recently dead. The bodies here were laid out in neat rows, each one covered with the requisite white sheet. “I'm all right.” Picco peeled back the part of the sheet that covered the head, and I looked, then nodded, and stepped away. Callan's face was as unblemished as it had been the last time I'd seen him alive. “How did he…?”

Picco replaced the sheet. “I don't know, Jack.” He sighed. “The body isn't burned as badly as some of the others. He may have been hit by falling debris. He was found outside the structure, lying face-down on the ground; two soldiers took him to a medic, but he couldn't be revived.” His pale eyes searched my features—for what, I didn't know. I felt nothing even remotely like grief, or sorrow, or regret, or any of the things you usually felt at a time like this. I felt nothing, nothing at all, as if some invisible force had come along and stolen my capacity to react to something like this. “I'm sorry,” Picco added. “I know he was your friend.”

“Yeah.” The room was of necessity cold, and I shivered. “Yeah, he was. Come on. Let's get out of here.” We went out to where Picco's car was parked. I'd walked up from the Heartache, despite the cold, and he had offered to drive me home. The first of the funerals for the fire victims would take place today, and local churches had pushed aside whatever holiday season business they might otherwise have had to make room for the dead. It seemed to me that I spent an inordinate amount of time doing that myself. First with Judy, then with Frankie, then with Sam's wife Tareenah and now there was Rick. Maybe I was a bad luck charm, a jinx or something: brush up against me and you die.

Picco stopped for the traffic cop at the intersection of Duckworth and Prescott. “You all right?” He reached across and touched my arm. “I'm sorry, Jack. I really am.” He sighed. “Listen, I'm not supposed to tell you this, so if you say anything to anybody I swear to God I'll gut ye.” The cop waved us through and Picco's car tipped down over the hill, turning right onto Water Street. “There's significant evidence to suggest the fire wasn't an accident.”

I might have said something, but I'll be damned if I remember what it was.

“A Bulgarian agent was put ashore in Conception Bay back in October. You remember that night I found you and Callan out in Topsail?”

“Yeah, I remember. I felt like you were my mother, and I had to hide my dirty magazines under the mattress.”