Blindshot Page 17
Catherine smiled at George and the other guests. She wasn’t used to this sort of recognition.
“Thank you, George, that’s very kind,” she said. “We are thirty-seven engineers in my division, so I’ll take no more than one-thirty-seventh of the credit. The key was our collaboration, with everyone here at this table, and putting together that ginormous winning proposal to the GPO. That was … well, awesome! Absolutely awesome—and here we are! So, thanks to you all!”
Everyone at the table drank another sip in celebration of Catherine’s words. Kevin accepted a quick refill from a passing waiter and chugged the glass down. This time, the entire group noticed. An awkward silence took hold. George took a deep breath and said nothing.
Catherine broke the silence. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, reaching for her purse and slinging it on her shoulder. She moved toward the washroom but deliberately brushed against Kevin. “Do you have a second?” she asked him softly. Kevin stood up, not so elegantly, and followed Catherine.
Once around the corner of the hallway to the washrooms, Catherine stopped and waited for the tipsy Kevin to practically bump into her. He steadied himself and stood close to her. She could tell he had no clue why she had convened this intimate huddle.
“Relax, Kevin, I’m not making a move on you.”
“A guy can hope,” Kevin blurted out. He saw the seriousness in her eyes and immediately did his best to straighten up. He gulped air.
Catherine began. “What the hell is going on, Kevin?”
“What?” he responded, blankly.
“What?” she asked back, surprised at his cluelessness. “Okay, look, you’re an ass most of the time and I’ve come to expect that from you, and so has pretty much everyone at the firm, by the way, but what’s going on tonight? This isn’t like you.”
“The whole thing’s fucked,” Kevin said, as if she should know what he was talking about.
“What whole thing?” asked Catherine.
“The Larivée Tech Park project!” he stated. “Fucked.”
“How can that be?” asked Catherine. “We’ve been working on it for over a year! What are you saying?”
“You have no idea, do you?” asked Kevin.
“No idea of what? What’re you talking about?”
“Most of the partners were briefed but you weren’t, cause you’re not a partner, but you will be. A partner I mean, and then briefed. The due diligence on the merger was fudged. Really fudged.”
“With regard to what, exactly?” asked Catherine, alarmed.
“Atelier Arsenault. Which we merged with, which we bought, not just the assets but everything!”
“What does that mean?”
“Atelier Arsenault wasn’t clean. They had irregularities in their books, but my great leader of a father had an understanding with Gilbert Arsenault and followed through with the acquisition anyway. They ignored it all, but you can’t do that. You can’t do that! An entire history of payments made to obtain preferred positions on public contracts. They’re on the books! Do you believe it? So, what does it mean? It means that word spread, people know, not all nice people either, and we’re about to be up to our ears in legal proceedings, unless a miracle happens.”
Kevin froze, standing motionless. He couldn’t talk anymore. His emotions and panic had hit a wall deep inside him. He stared at Catherine for a reaction but she backed away.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I need a drink,” she said and strode off.
Catherine sat at an upper-level bistro table in La Table noire, downing her third Scotch. She had returned only momentarily to the Mulroy Arsenault group, at the lower level, just enough to see her colleagues off, displaying a neutral, professional expression as well as she could. Then, she had walked up the spiral metal stairway to the mezzanine bar and ordered the best single-malt Scotch available. Twelve-year-old Glenfiddich would do. She stared out of the wide window at the city lights sparkling like a Christmas display. She looked toward Mont Royal and searched for the lighted cross. Perhaps, she thought, if she strained her eyes, focusing on the cross really tightly, she would discover the miracle Kevin had been looking for at the bottom of his glass.
Catherine thought of her late father, who had supported her choices at every turn, but had been blunt with her about education in architecture and about her career.
“Every architect I know is miserable, broke and pale as blank paper because they’re underpaid for the time they put in and never get out for air and sunlight. But, if that’s what you really want to do, I’m behind you!” he told her in his stern but somehow comforting voice. George Mulroy reminded her of her father. Something about the white hair and the seasoned face. Fewer flashes of her mother’s wisdom came to her, as Catherine’s mother had rarely expressed her opinions. She mainly smiled, worked hard, and took care of Catherine and her father. She had died young, of ovarian cancer, long before Catherine had made any career choices.
Kevin returned and sat with her, two glasses of ice-water in hand. He put one in front of her.
“Thanks, Kevin.” She gave him a wry smile and took a sip of water.
“Making amends,” he clarified. “Alright with you?”
“I’m sorry if my reaction wasn’t very compassionate. I have a lot, we have a lot, invested in this project and in this firm. I’m not a partner yet, but sure as anything thought I would be one day. If Atelier Arsenault, which we acquired, is nothing but a Trojan horse, filled with liability, that changes everything.”
“I know.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Kevin, you have to talk to your father.”
“You think I haven’t? My own father, the great George Mulroy, who constructed the most important buildings of the city, will be better known, in the end, as the builder of a great, big, legal fuckup. Nice legacy.”
Catherine pondered that thought. “I’ll talk to George myself,” she said.
“Comforting,” said Kevin, imagining the battle. He looked like a scared little boy. “Shit,” he added uselessly, shaking his head.
Catherine took a deep breath, then gathered her purse. “Look, uh, dinner was great,” she ventured with a forced, oversized smile. “I have to go. I’m hoping my sons are still up, playing their video games, shooting aliens. I’ll get to hug them, if they are, and have the chance to feel the world is a wonderful place, which it isn’t. Is it?”
“We’ll talk,” offered the wiped-out Kevin.
“Talk,” Catherine repeated. “Yes, that we can do. That’s easy to do. Talk.”
As those words came out of her mouth, Catherine spun on her heels and left the restaurant, turning a few heads as she did so. Kevin, alone at the table, watched her go and waved for the bill.
Catherine climbed into a cab and leaned back, thinking of the dinner. She was only twenty minutes from home. She had hoped, in the back of her mind, that answers would come during dinner to other pressing issues in her life, but they hadn’t. Though hours had passed since the call from the school principal, Mrs. Gargiulo, Catherine was still incredulous about what her boys had done and of their two-week suspension—which she had managed to barter down from four weeks each, which would have been disastrous for their academic year. Two weeks would be more manageable, but still difficult. A question remained. How should she discipline her sons? The time since their father’s death had been hard on them, and on her, but overall, she was proud of how they had coped.
As a parent, she wasn’t always sure she was doing the right thing, but whatever it took, she was there to support them.
Catherine had been shocked by the principal’s phone call, but more by how things had deteriorated with her boys. She wasn’t upset that they had stood up for themselves. Sometimes you have to. But they hadn’t come to her first to discuss their options. Luckily, the other boy involved had a long, horrible track record, while
Jack and Noah’s misbehaviour went back no farther than Paul’s death. Mrs. Gargiulo had let Catherine know of her empathy, and she showed leniency, even compassion. Catherine had let her know that was appreciated and said she would discipline her sons. But how?
Catherine had taken a few moments to talk with her boys after school, wanting to hear how they justified what they’d done. Each had a few different reasons, and Catherine listened to every word, deciding it all came down to one big question.
“Why didn’t you come to me first?” she asked.
Shrugs replaced words. Shoulders went up and down. Chins dipped.
“This is unacceptable. You’re lucky the school showed understanding. And the parents of that Stavans boy aren’t pressing charges. Can you imagine what I would do if I learned anyone had tied you up? You have no idea!”
Two sweet pairs of eyes stared back at her, blinking, waiting for the worst, like lion cubs waiting for a hard lesson. “You’re staying home for two weeks! No friends, no video games, and no going anywhere!” She knew that video games were the hardest to put a stop to. After a few days, she wouldn’t be able to stop them from getting back into their virtual races and battles. She considered telling them their father would not be proud of them now, then thought better of that.
“Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”
Noah shook his head, and Jack spoke up, softly but determined. “I want to go to Valhalla for the two weeks.”
The request lit up Noah. “Yeah, me too!”
“No, no, no.” Catherine was surprised by the request. “What do you think, I’m going to reward you with time at Valhalla?”
“I want to get away. I don’t like it here,” said Jack. “Valhalla is better for us!”
Catherine looked at him. “Not two weeks,” she said. “No way. A few days, maybe. I’ve got so much to work out at the office. This is a really intense time for me. For the firm.”
“We do understand, Mom, we do,” pleaded Jack.
“I won’t be there very much, and I can’t see that I could drive back and forth that often. Certainly not every time you want someone to cook for you.”
“That’s fine,” said Jack, adding a little bit of weight to his voice.
“Noah, what do you think?”
“We can feed ourselves.”
“I know you can,” said Catherine. “That’s not my question.”
“Leave us there two weeks,” said Jack.
“I can’t do that. No parent would do that. Not with kids who are tying up other kids at school!”
“What difference does it make where we are, Mom? You’ll have no time for us anyway.”
The logic and bluntness of her sons’ words cut deep. “If you stay here in Kirkland, I could hire Wendy Miller to come and cook for you,” Catherine suggested.
“All she knows how to make is mac-and-cheese!” Noah grumbled. “We can make our own macaroni!”
“Mom,” said Jack, with serious tone, “We want to go to Valhalla.”
“I don’t know. What if someone breaks in again?” said Catherine.
“Mom, we were broken into because we weren’t there! And, you’d forgotten to lock the back doors! It won’t happen again. We’ll keep the doors locked. That’s not a worry! We want to go!”
Jack gave her his biggest, bluest blues.
“A few days, that’s all,” said Catherine. “But I’ll come now and again. I’ve got a lot to straighten out at work, but I’ll find a way.”
There was something viable in the idea of her boys spending time at the Beaufort house, which had been fixed up again. The boys jumped at her neck with happiness.
Traditionally, Valhalla was the family safe house, the place of retreat and protection. The place to re-energize and see the world for what it was. Valhalla might be exactly what her boys needed, and Catherine would go as often as she could. The boys could take care of themselves. They weren’t babies anymore.
Catherine could not even begin to imagine everything that would go wrong.
Jack was sprawled like a cat on his dad’s favourite chair in his Kirkland office, leafing through a small book. The office had turned into a storage space for things too sentimental to discard, and the desk was stacked with photo albums, business books and used notebooks. One day, this would be a guest room or an office for the boys, when Catherine got around to that.
Noah joined his brother and flopped onto a pile of cushions, iPad in one hand, a cheese sandwich in the other.
“Want a bite?” he offered.
Jack was silent, absorbed in the book. This was like something Noah would do. Jack read little. Noah shoved the whole sandwich into his mouth.
“Listen to this,” said Jack. “‘Fighting with a large army under your command,’” he read, “‘is no different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.’”
Noah nodded in agreement.
“Give me a bite,” said Jack.
“Too late,” Noah mumbled.
Jack got up to find a snack, tossing the book into Noah’s lap. It was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
To Tom, nothing in the past year had been predictable. His renovations hadn’t advanced as much as he wanted, mainly because he himself had procrastinated. The re-zoning permit had still not been authorized. Communications with the Mayor and Council were sparse and ambivalent, which Tom figured was a stalling tactic. His home was functional and that was perhaps enough, for now.
The Carignan family had not needed his protection at their Chemin Van Kleet house. They had barely visited Beaufort in the past year, so far as Tom was aware, and Tom couldn’t blame them. Occasionally, he went by the house to see if all was secure, and it had been, but he wondered why they didn’t put the property up for sale and be done with it. Paul Carignan’s case remained unsolved, without any leads at all, and had officially been closed by a firm directive from the Chief of Police.
Late last fall, Tom’s nameless Australian shepherd had gone missing. As the winds grew colder, Tom looked all over the county for his buddy. As this happened after his altercation with Jeffrey Lennox, Tom suspected the worst, but he had no proof. He had no news until a neighbour, Yuri Premisov, a computer systems analyst who owned a chalet half a kilometre away, knocked on Tom’s door and then led him to the truck, where Premisov lowered his tailgate. There was the poor dead animal, who must have been hit by a vehicle or some other blunt object. Premisov expressed great sorrow but had thought it best to return the dog’s body to Tom as he had found it.
“Better for burial and, how you say, closing, uh … closure,” said Premisov in his Ukrainian accent. “I’m very sorry for you,” he added. “He was a good dog.”
“Thank you,” is all Tom could muster, taking his dog in his arms and going to his porch. With a wave, Premisov drove off.
Tom lay the animal down, grabbed a shovel from the porch, and headed for the back of the property, where an ancient cemetery had long ago crumbled. There he dug a grave for his non-christened best friend.
Later that night, Tom had gone to Auberge du Lièvre, where he knew Lennox was having dinner. He was prepared to yank Lennox out to the front yard of the restaurant and smash his brains into the cold ground, but Anne Desaulniers intercepted him, sat him down at a table in a corner of the dining room, and got him to tell her what was up. She knew Tom, from his uniform and official functions, but they had never spoken. He knew her as Paul Carignan’s former girlfriend, daughter to the owners of the inn. So he sat there, staring angrily at Lennox, who ate voraciously alongside Keith and Maureen Davis. None of them seemed to be aware that Tom was there.
“Have you eaten dinner?” asked Anne.
“What?” asked Tom, caught off guard, still nursing a swollen desire to leap at Lennox and rip out his jugular.
“Are you hungry?”
“Now, wouldn’t you rather eat than deal with him?”
“I smell oranges?” said Tom, trying to ignore the aroma of pork chops, sauce and sautéed vegetables.
“We broil the cutlets with onions and oranges. Try it.”
Tom couldn’t remember if he had eaten at all. “Why are you distracting me from my business?”
“I saw you come in and wondered whether you’d walk over there and arrest him, or maybe kill him right there in my restaurant. I mean everyone in town seems to have some problem with this jerk or one of his friends,” said Anne. “Don’t they?”
Tom picked up a fork. “Was I that obvious?”
“Well, next to having sirens blaring, yes. I grew up in my parents’ restaurants and inns. Out there,” she said, pointing to the night, “I’m not so talented, but in here, this is my domain. When someone walks in, I can tell what they’re looking for.”
She smiled. A silence came between them. Her patience was soothing. She didn’t seem to need him to talk. He tried eating. After swallowing his first bites, he took a deep breath. His intensity and frustration were more palpable than the sweet aroma of the meal. He tried to let it flow out from him, to compose himself. His hands shook from the effort. Anne reached over and touched his rough-skinned hand. Hers was warm and soft. He blushed like a boy, and she smiled, taking her hand away.
“Deal with him another time, another place, not my family’s restaurant, please?”
He agreed, nodding.
Anne sat with him through his meal, then saw him out and invited him to return the next night, which he did. They talked this time, telling each other of how life had brought them to Beaufort.
“Come back tomorrow night again,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” She touched his rough hand briefly, before pulling her hand away.