The Illegal (25 page)

He explained that he had just completed the core of his workout by running intervals on the track around the park reservoir. At first she felt a flash of anger—how dare he call her out for a run that was to be only his warm-down? But they kept running, and she liked his smile and that he asked her about her running history.

“Funny how my workout is your warm-down,” she said.

“Where I come from, I could not even make the national team.”

“And where are you from?” she said.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.”

She didn’t want to tell him that she was a police officer, particularly not if he was going to hold back himself. Nothing turned some guys off faster than hearing she was a cop. A lot of guys were intimidated by a black woman with a decent job. And she wasn’t interested in that kind of guy.

“Do you have family here?”

“Yes, I grew up in AfricTown. My father was a black man from Brazil,” she said, “and my mother is mixed, Portuguese and black.”

Candace told him that she grew up with her brother and grandmother in AfricTown and that people assumed her mother was part black because what the hell else would she be doing raising kids in that part of the city. But the truth was that AfricTown was all she could afford, and at least in that part of Clarkson, her kids would not stand out or be teased about being mixed. Candace’s mother became the secretary at her high school, which Candace hated, because she knew everything about every boy that Candace even looked at. Candace told Keita that she’d had a little scrape with the law when she was a young teenager.

“Folks said I had quick hands, and I became a little too adept at the art of pickpocketing. Social worker got me off. Tough as nails, but heart of gold. She read me the riot act and scared me. So I joined the cross-country team and started studying in earnest.”

“And what do you do now?” he said.

“I’ll tell you about it,” she said, “when you tell me more about you.”

After the run, Keita took her to Tim Hortons and bought her a coffee. She offered to cook him dinner. He said he would be delighted to join her—but what about clothes? Well, she said, she could drive him home, wait for him to change and then drive them back to her place. But he said it would be better if she gave him directions and he came back in two hours. And this he did, exactly as promised.

S
HE SERVED HIM SPAGHETTI, WITH HOMEMADE SAUCE MADE
from tomatoes that she had grown in her own garden. And salad. And bread with cheese. And fruit. She figured that a serious marathon runner wouldn’t go in for crappy desserts. He ate it all. When they finished, she sat beside him on the couch and put her hand on his forearm. It was all the encouragement he required. He stood to take her into his arms, and Candace took him into her bed.

When Candace woke up in the morning, she discovered that he was gone. She had no idea where he lived, or how to reach him.

G
ETTING TOGETHER WITH
C
ANDACE HAD BECOME A PROBLEM
he couldn’t ignore.

Yes, she had made him feel that taking her out on a run and then for the coffee and then coming home to her meal and her arms was the most natural thing in the world.

As they ran, he had found it difficult to think of anything but her body. Her sounds, too, had intoxicated him. Her breathing quickened in the final kilometres of the run. She kicked up the pace to 4:00 per kilometre, and as she pushed close to her limits, working on hills, she panted and gasped, and he could not stop imagining the sounds she might make if she were spending herself on him.

When they tumbled into her bed, all he knew was that he had never felt so hungry in his life. And her hunger had met his.

While she slept, he had washed up for her while fantasizing about the next time that he might touch her again. Occasionally he poked his head into the bedroom to hear her gentle snores. But people in this country had so many things. He had no idea where to put away her knives and forks. Frying pans. Pots. As he was looking for a place to put the glasses, he opened a bottom drawer and noticed a thick telephone book and, behind it, a police badge. He turned over the badge.
Sergeant Candace Freixa / Clarkson Police Department.

He left quickly, quietly opening her front door. He jogged the ten long kilometres back to Ivernia’s home, looking over his shoulder the whole way.

A
S
C
ANDACE ENTERED THE KITCHEN THE NEXT MORNING,
she noticed that Keita had washed her dishes before leaving. What other guy would take her for an easy run, listen to her gab about her youth and mother and father, invite her out for coffee, love her utterly and then do the dishes? He had put them away in ridiculous places in her cupboards—forks, knives and spoons in the middle of a frying pan in a cupboard meant for plates. She’d tease him about that, next time. She took a step toward the coffee maker and saw that a drawer had been left open. The one with her badge.

I
F
D
ARLENE COULD JUST EARN A FEW THOUSAND MORE
dollars, she would disappear and never be found by anybody who might like to do to her what they had done to Yvette.

Darlene wasn’t stupid. She had eyes and ears. She knew the score. She’d seen Yvette after the prime minister left. While they had tea in the staff room, Yvette told her the whole story. Yvette was rattled and said she wouldn’t mind spiking her tea with rum. But neither of them had any. There was a no-smoking rule in the Bombay Booty, so Darlene had slipped out the back door of the brothel and was standing in the dark in a grove of trees, about to light a cigarette, when a vehicle marked
Reliable Security Services
pulled up and stopped just a few feet away.

Darlene closed her cigarette lighter and watched Lula walk over to the driver. They were so close that if Darlene had emerged from the trees, she could have touched them. But she stayed right where she was. Still, she saw that Lula leaned over and spoke through the window. And that a man got out of the car, dressed in a security officer uniform and wearing handcuffs on his belt. Lula pointed him to the stairs at the back of the building. Darlene held perfectly still as they walked right by the place where she was hidden.

“Yvette Peters,” Lula said, “you hear? Don’t let her out of your sight until she’s on the plane. Yes, the usual authorization.”

D
ARLENE DIDN’T HAVE A BOYFRIEND, BUT SHE DIDN’T HAVE
a pimp either. That was one of the perks of working at the Bombay Booty. Lula took care of everything. All Darlene had to do was satisfy the men who came into her bed, act like she enjoyed it and keep her mouth shut. Outside work, Darlene had her routines. After her Tuesday and Thursday morning workouts, she would stop in at the Bleeding Heart grocery store in south Clarkson—the neighbourhood was falling apart because it was by the railway tracks bordering the city, and thus close to the route taken by people walking to and from AfricTown—and buy herself a package of Smarties.

Darlene was shaking the Smarties out of the package into her hand and turning right on Liberation Street when she sensed that she was being followed. She sped up, turned the next corner and ran. A car shot ahead of her, blocking the intersection ahead, and a black man with a gun on his hip jumped out.

“Easy way or hard way, honey. You decide,” he said.

“Who are you?”

The man pulled a purple pistol from his belt. The neighbourhood had gone so far to seed that he didn’t seem to care that they were in broad daylight.

“The fuck you doing?” Darlene said.

“Pointing a Ruger .22 calibre semiautomatic pistol in your general direction,” he said.

“Put that thing away,” she said.

“The easy way is that you stand real nice and answer my questions, and the hard way is that I shoot you now. Stand over there,” he said, motioning to an office building with a brick exterior.

“No need to get excited,” she said.

“Do it,” he said, pointing the gun at her.

Darlene stood with her back to the building. He aimed above her head and shot off a bullet at the wall. A spray of crumbling brick fell over her.

Darlene flinched. “No need for that,” she said.

Now he opened the trunk of his car and pointed his pistol at her.

“Hard or easy, Darlene Wood. You decide.”

He knew her name. “Easy,” she said. “Let’s go easy.”

“What happened to Yvette Peters?” the man asked.

“First, just tell me who you are.”

“Saunders. Now talk. What do you know about Yvette?”

“She was my friend. I’m sure you know where we work. Here one day, gone the next.”

“Who did her in? How did she disappear?”

“How do I know how my best friend ended up dead in a country she’d never fucking seen before?”

“What did you last talk about?”

“How much we loved sex.”

“I’m running out of time.” He stepped in close, grabbed her forearm and squeezed. It hurt like hell.

“We talked about who she was going to see that night.”

“And who was that?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes we imagined the guys we would be doing. Would they have big dicks or small? You, for example, surely have a tiny dick, to leave room for such a big asshole.”

He punched her in the mouth. Darlene bled from the lips and tongue, and one of her teeth fell out.

“One more wisecrack and you die.”

“All right,” Darlene said. This time, she believed him.

“Did you hear anything about what happened when she was with her last customer?”

“No.”

“The last customer—a man I happen to be representing right now—thinks he saw a recording device in the room.”

Darlene shook her head.

He twisted her arm again. “I can kill you here, fast. I can do it nice and slow in your living room. On your red couch. 201A Stewart Street, right? You’ll find your place a bit messed up. If you ever make it back there. Nice hiding place, for the money. Under the mattress. Very original.”

“Okay, okay. Let go and I’ll talk.”

He let go.

She was feeling cold, suddenly, and her entire body was trembling, but she was trying hard not to show it.

“I heard the conversation was taped,” she said.

“Who has it?”

“I don’t know. Some guy took it.”

“What guy?”

“Don’t know his name.”

“What did he look like?”

“Don’t remember.”

Saunders pressed the pistol against her temple. The cold metal dug into her skin.

“I heard it ended up with that marathon guy. The black dude who won the Buttersby Marathon.”

“Name?”

“Keita Ali.”

“From where?”

“Zantoroland.”

“Illegal?”

“How would I know? I didn’t ask for his passport.”

Saunders pointed his pistol at her again. “If this doesn’t add up, I’ll come back for you, put this in your mouth and pull the trigger.” He closed the trunk of his car, got in and drove off.

Darlene did not go home. She was no fool. She waited for the car carrying Saunders, his gun and his fist to go out of sight. Then she took a taxi to a women’s shelter in a far end of town. She didn’t plan to stay there long enough for anyone to find her. Darlene was sorry to have given up Keita Ali. She had no way to get word to him. Maybe they wouldn’t catch him.

She hadn’t had the chance to go beyond Grade 9, and she’d wasted her teenage years working for Lula, but all that was about to change. Darlene Wood could take a hint. She would leave town as fast as she could.

A
S HE DROVE TO WORK,
R
OCCO DRUMMED HIS
fingers on the steering wheel. Diminishing returns. A simple economic concept. You had it good, once, but things got less and less pleasurable with every passing day. That pretty well summed up what Rocco felt about his job. Minister of immigration! He had had more control over his life running a used car business. And given the way the Prime Minister’s Office ran the show, micromanaging every hiccup, Rocco had had more influence on the country selling cars too.

What kind of prime minister would try to frame one of his own cabinet ministers? The visit to AfricTown had been a set-up, for sure. The PM had intended to see Rocco stung in that police raid. Had Rocco been caught with his pants down in AfricTown, his name and face would have been splashed all over the media, he would have been criminally charged with “being party to an act of prostitution,” and he would have been fired from cabinet and bounced from government.

Now that Rocco knew that a certain “Mr. Big” from the governing party had been to the Bombay Booty on the night the girl disappeared, he believed that his own arrest—had it taken place—would have been a way to steer attention away from the teen prostitute who died in a Zantoroland prison. Or to frame
him
as Mr. Big. There had to be more to the story, but no one was talking.

J
OHN
F
ALCONER KNEW JUST HOW TO READ THE GUY.

“Not you again,” Minister Calder always said when he saw John in the government parking lot. But John kept coming, and each time, the minister relented, let him come upstairs and gave him details for the documentary.

“It’s just a school assignment, right?” the minister would say, while John filmed him. “I can give you five minutes and not a second more. I have a meeting.”

Five minutes always led to fifteen. In John’s opinion, the minister of immigration had nothing to do but attend meetings. It was harder to be a Grade 9 student. The minister always offered him candies and soft drinks, and showed him charts. How many refugees were estimated to have come in the country illegally over each of the last five years. How many illegal ships were impounded. How many ship captains had been arrested for trying to dump Illegals on the shores of Freedom State.

“So why do you think they keep coming here, from all over the world?” John asked.

“Because they have it made in Freedom State. Services, electricity, clean water, a booming economy. They have every opportunity to abuse our generosity.”

“The children in AfricTown, attending substandard schools or no schools at all, and sleeping in garages and on the street—are they abusing your generosity?” John asked.

“Son, that’s what you would call a bleeding heart question. You would have to talk to their parents. Why did they bring them here? Why are they working illegally in an underground economy, not paying taxes and not registered as citizens of this country?”

“But why would you fault a child for what their parents have done?” John said.

“I’m not faulting any children, but their parents have to take responsibility for their actions. The Family Party is about family
responsibility. We are for minimal government but for maximum family responsibility for their own matters.”

On the morning of the fireside consultation, John was waiting as usual at the side of the parking lot, out of sight, in the shadows under the fire escape. He had decided to ask if he could shadow the minister for the day and then stay on for the fireside consultation. The poor man could not say no—at least not to John. Maybe that’s what it took to become a good journalist. You kept at the story until people gave you what you wanted, or relented and finally told the truth.

The minister pulled up at his usual time: 7:10 a.m. He opened the door, got out, grabbed his briefcase, and was about to lock his car when a tall man crossed the parking lot with the purpose and speed of a linebacker. John had seen that man before. Anton Hamm. The sports agent. The minister was six feet tall, but this man dwarfed him. He was almost as tall as the prime minister. But Hamm was younger and more athletic, with a bullet-shaped head. He wore a suit but moved like a runner. He looked like a brute. John turned on his camera.

“Mr. Minister,” Hamm said, standing so close to Calder that the minister had nowhere to go.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Calder said. He tried to move, but the big guy pinned him against the car.

“Name’s Anton Hamm,” the big man said. “I have a pressing question.”

“If you will give me some breathing room,” Calder said.

Hamm backed away a few inches. “Tell your people that I want my payment, and I want it now.”

“I don’t follow,” Calder said.

“Sure you do. Your people have had me do some favours. You know what I am talking about. We had an understanding. I haven’t heard from them lately. And I want my payment.”

“What is the nature of your understanding, and with whom?” Calder said.

Hamm stepped closer and seized Calder’s arms. “Mr. Minister, don’t fuck with me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Deliver the money, and you’ll have nothing to fear.”

“Are you threatening me? Look at me,” Calder said. “Look me in the eye. Go ahead. Do it. Now listen. I have no idea what you are talking about. You seem to be onto a scam, but it doesn’t involve me. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Fuck this,” Hamm said.

John filmed the former shot putter in the suit running back across the parking lot and out of sight. And then he swung the camera back to the minister, who was straightening the arms of his jacket. This was not a good time to approach him, John could tell.

J
OHN RETURNED A FEW HOURS LATER, WHEN THE MEETING
was scheduled to start and others began arriving. While the minister was shaking someone’s hand, John called out with nonchalance, “Minister, I’m just here for the school assignment and will stay out of the way.”

The minister frowned, but he was soon locked in conversation with a police sergeant who introduced herself as Candace Freixa. He was saying he was sure they had met before, and she said, yes, briefly, during the Buttersby Marathon. He asked how her race had gone, and she said very well. He asked if he had been passing her or she him, and she smiled and said she wasn’t entirely sure. And what did she run that day? he asked. Oh, she didn’t remember, she said.

“Sure you do,” he said. “Every marathoner remembers their time.”

“Two hours, fifty-eight minutes and forty-seven seconds,” she said.

“Wow, you really took off on me. It’s amazing that you finished under three hours. Who does that? You must have been blood doping,” he said, stepping closer.

She pulled back.

In fairness, at least the minister had not slept with Darlene in the Bombay Booty. John had to give him that much.

He sat on a couch at the back of the room as the minister gathered the committee members in a seated semicircle. They made their introductions. John gave his name, his school. There was a murmur when he said Clarkson Academy for the Gifted.

“Best school in the country,” the minister said.

Ivernia Beech looked at John. “Well, don’t hide in the corner. Come sit beside me.”

John shrugged and moved to sit with her. She shook his hand and said she hadn’t seen him since the prize ceremony for his essay. He smiled and asked if he could interview her for his documentary. She flicked her fingers as if to chase off a fly.

“I’m too old to be on camera,” she said. “Nobody wants to see the wrinkles on this face.”

“I do,” he said. “I really do, and you could make a difference in my life.”

“Well,” she said, “you never know. Maybe something good will emerge from this meeting.”

The discussion started. A black businessman said that Freedom State was the best country in the world and that he had never experienced discrimination. He said Illegals should not be given a free ticket to take advantage of the rules of civilized society. A woman who said she was head of the chamber of commerce basically said the same thing. The others all reiterated that something had to be done about Illegals, who were taking over the country.

“And AfricTown,” one of them muttered. “It’s a disgrace.”

“Bulldoze it and see what comes out,” another said.

Candace Freixa, the police sergeant, let out a cough to redirect the conversation. Every person in the room looked to her. She said quietly, “You are speaking of my home. I was born in AfricTown and grew up there, and many good people gave me a helping hand.”

Silence fell over the room, until the minister cleared his throat and asked Ivernia for her thoughts.

“I am a widow, eighty-five years old, born and raised in Freedom State.” She went on to say that she didn’t understand why these people had to be referred to as Illegals. “To identify a human being as illegal is to diminish his or her humanity,” she said. “Why don’t we call them people without documentation?”

The minister said that it was not for the committee to challenge the basic vocabulary used by the government of Freedom State. They were there to address the problem of illegality in the country.

Then he gave a slide show—basic statistics about tax revenue loss, economic stress and criminality associated with Illegals in the country. He and the others then spent half an hour going over all the problems—the boats laden with refugees and the difficulty of securing agreement from countries to which Freedom State wished to deport Illegals. The minister checked his watch, said they would have to wind up soon, picked up his phone and spoke with June, who came in a few minutes later with a tray of cookies.

The minister said he wished he could run as fast as that black runner who went by the alias Roger Bannister.

“What made you think of him?” Ivernia asked.

“Probably an Illegal,” the minister said. “But don’t get me wrong. I admire the guy. He’s one helluva runner. He high-fived me on the big hill at the Buttersby Marathon. I was running down, and he was on the way back up, and still he was going twice as fast.”

One of the other committee members cooed about how cool it was that a minister of the Freedom State government was fit enough to run a marathon, and in a very respectable time too.

“Strangest thing in that race. Heard a white runner giving the black guy the gears, calling him the
n
-word.”

“Really?” someone said.

“I’m not for rude and insulting language,” the minister said. “I have nothing against this fellow. I wish him well. But I should point out that few valid refugees come to Freedom State. Most Illegals are economic migrants. They want a better life. I can’t blame them for
that. But if they want to come here, they should get in line just like any other immigrant.”

John stepped in. “Mr. Minister, just how many immigrants did Freedom State accept from Zantoroland last year?”

“Well, as I think you know, we have closed legal immigration from that country because we have so many troubles with Illegals.”

“So they can’t really come in any legal way, then,” Ivernia said.

“For now, no.”

“Mr. Minister,” Ivernia said, “some of your so-called economic migrants are in great danger. When you are deporting people you deem to be illegal, you might be sentencing them to death. I wish you would think about that when you sign your deportation orders.”

The minister looked vaguely alarmed. Three other people rushed to his defence, saying Ivernia was being harsh and there was no reason to personalize the situation.

“You want impersonal? How’s this? If you want to increase tax revenue, declare a general amnesty and regularize the situation of people without documentation, then bring them into the national economy—entitling them to work and obliging them to pay taxes.”

“Economics are never that simple, Ivernia,” the minister said.

Ivernia stood. All eyes turned to her. She pointed shyly to the bathroom and said, “When you reach a certain age, some things can’t wait.”

R
OCCO HAD SAID GOODBYE TO EVERYONE BUT
C
ANDACE BY
the time Ivernia Beech emerged from the bathroom.

“You should check under the sink in there, Minister,” she said.

“Why?” Rocco asked.

“You may find an Illegal,” the woman said, and then she too was gone.

Rocco grimaced, but when he saw Candace laugh, he tried to act like he appreciated the old woman’s humour. God, was that running cop beautiful.

“Candace, I’ve got a few things I’d like to talk to you about. How do we integrate the police force into AfricTown, that sort of thing. Do you have time for coffee?”

“Sorry,” Candace said. “Got another meeting.” And she was gone. That fast. As if she couldn’t stand to be in his presence.

Alone again in his office, Rocco felt deflated and lonely. He’d just been blown off by a hot woman. And earlier today, he’d been shaken down by a thug, which was humiliating and troublesome. What scam did that idiot think the minister was into? And since Rocco knew it wasn’t him, who
was
behind the scam? He could report the assault to the police, but that would bring him more aggravation than benefits, and it would lead the PM to question Rocco’s ability to manage his affairs. For now, Rocco had better just sit tight.

He locked himself into his marble-floored bathroom, donned his exercise gear and rowed for thirty minutes. Exercising got him wondering again who that mystery runner was. If he were truly an elite marathoner, he’d be running the Chicago Marathon and the Boston Marathon—he wouldn’t be pissing away his time in Freedom State. So what was he doing here, anyway?

His cellphone rang. He ignored it and kept rowing. Part of him wanted to have a beer with the guy, ask how he trained, and find out what had brought him to this country. The phone rang again. Finally, Rocco got up to answer it.

“Calder,” he said, wiping off the back of his neck.

“Mr. Calder. My name’s Darlene. We met in AfricTown. I helped you get out. You said you would help me.”

“I can’t talk at work. I’ll call you back.”