Chapter Nineteen
The next day at work, Peggy stopped by the office.
“Dame, any chance you’ve returned the Atkinson blueprints to Archives?”
“Uh, no.” Dame turned around in her chair. “I was going to do that this afternoon.”
Peggy leaned against the door frame. “Sharon Fischer wants to take a look at them. Could I get you to run them up to her?”
“The Fish?” Dame caught Meera rolling her eyes. “That’s worse than going to Archives. Couldn’t we just scan them and send her an email or something?”
“Sorry, hon. She wants the real deal. You know how she is.”
“Okay.” Dame dragged a cardboard tube out from under her desk. “No problem.”
Peggy waited and walked her to the elevator.
“How are things going with the Deputy Speaker?” Dame asked.
“Not well. Apparently, he’s been seeing Alicia Patterson in Waste Management.”
“Sorry, Peggy. That’s really” — she cleared her throat — “shitty.”
The silver-haired woman snorted. “It’s probably for the best. That man didn’t know devil’s ivy from a Christmas cactus.”
Dame smiled.
“What about you? Have you thought any more about applying for that job with the MRB?”
“A little. I wouldn’t have to work alongside the Fish, would I?”
“Probably not. I think Sharon’s days at the Municipal Review Board are numbered.”
“Huh.”
“You know, I looked into it. You’d be making almost twice as much as what you’re making now.”
Dame stopped and looked at Peggy. “Twice?”
“You’d get full benefits — including dental — and, you’d never get stuck doing private eye work again.”
Dame took a deep breath. “That does sound pretty great.”
“Apparently, they’ve been talking about designating all of West Queen West — even parts of your neighbourhood.”
“Really?”
“Think of all the good we could do. The two of us working together? As a team? We could save this city from itself.”
“The MRB has been making a lot of questionable decisions lately.”
“If you’re serious,” Peggy said, “City Hall likes to fill these positions internally. But once it’s posted, there’ll be a lot of competition.”
“So, I guess the clock is ticking.”
Peggy smiled. “Isn’t it always?”
When Dame got to Sharon Fischer’s office, the door was already open. The Fish was sitting at her desk, typing furiously into her computer. She barely seemed to register Dame when she knocked on the door.
“Just a moment.” Her fingers clattered away at the keys for another few seconds while Dame stood, cradling the cardboard tube. Finally, Fischer looked up from the screen. “Ms. Polara,” she said. “Are those the —?”
“Atkinson blueprints.”
“Yes. I heard you discovered some rather thrilling history.” She cleared her throat. “A heritage basement, was it?”
“Take a look for yourself.” Dame held out the tube. “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.”
“Put it on my desk, would you?” She patted the wood in front of her and turned back to her computer screen.
Dame took a deep breath and crossed the room. Fischer’s office was impressively large and featured a fresh coat of Casual Khaki. Dame couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to work out of a place like this — two windows, a half-decent view of the skating pavilion — the decor was godawful, but it wouldn’t be hard to redecorate.
Fischer’s enormous desk was immaculate, save for a scattering of file folders that matched the beige of the room and a leatherette day planner beside her computer. As Dame put the blueprints down, she noticed a bright turquoise business card clipped to the front of the planner. “Anton Felski,” it read, “Discrete Detection.”
Fischer stopped typing. “Was there something else?”
Dame shook her head. “Uh, no.”
She made for the door and felt Fischer’s eyes on her until she left the room.
It was getting colder as Dame walked west on Queen. The sky was steely and spitting rain, and damp yellow leaves clung desperately to their dark boughs. Her first weekly update with Ray — the one she’d been dreading all afternoon — wasn’t for a couple hours, and Dame figured she still had enough time to check in on Dodge.
She was thinking through reasons why someone like Sharon Fischer might hire someone like Anton Felski, when she noticed a young family struggling their way out of a restaurant. They were bundled up and miserable with the weather — the baby fussing in his father’s arms, the mother dragging the empty stroller down concrete steps. Dame smiled to herself as the little unit soldiered out into the evening, but her smile soon faded when she recognized the familiar Expos cap.
She put her hood up over her head, but it was too late. Rachel had already spotted her and alerted Adam, who was busy clipping their child into the stroller. They stood there, bracing for Dame’s arrival and the inevitable confrontation. Even the cherubic infant seemed to eye her with suspicion as the length of sidewalk between them got shorter and shorter. Dame searched the street for a way out, but she was penned in by traffic and storefronts. She was having trouble breathing now, her stomach churning, her heart jackhammering. For a desperate moment, she considered swallowing her pride and turning back the way she came. But then, she saw a sign from above: a sign that read “Sodapop Tattoo.” She hung a quick left.
When Dame walked inside, the woman behind the counter glanced at a watch strategically strapped between the artwork on her hand and the artwork on her wrist. “Did you have an appointment?” she asked. “We don’t usually do walk-ins.”
Along with a number of other safe and sterile tattoo parlours, Sodapop had cropped up a few years back to meet the growing demand for permanent ink. But Dame remembered a time when the location was a nameless dive that didn’t card its underage patrons — if those underage patrons were smart enough to sneak in by the back alley.
“Actually,” Dame said. “I was hoping for more of a walk-through.”
As she left the alley and turned back onto Queen, Dame could see the little family, making their way down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. Adam was pushing the stroller and Rachel kept her hand on the small of his back.
Seeing the three of them together, Dame had an acute understanding of what she’d lost. Adam was supposed to be hers. That child was supposed to be hers. And knowing they weren’t, Dame never wanted to see them again. She wanted to burn them completely from her memory.
“Dodge? Have you eaten yet?” Dame stood at the doorway of her father’s apartment. “I thought maybe we could order a —”
She stopped for a moment and listened. She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like someone besides her father was in the apartment. When Dame walked inside, a woman was sitting at the kitchen table across from her father. Between them were stacks of playing cards.
“Oh,” Dame said. “I didn’t mean to —”
Dodge looked up at his daughter. He fumbled for words that wouldn’t come.
“Hello,” the woman said, standing up. “I’m Fatima. From the Homecare service.”
She was short and broad, and her hair was pulled back into a tidy bun. Dame adjusted her glasses. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you worked so late.”
“We don’t usually. But David is quite” — she looked at Dodge — “convincing.”
Dame also gave Dodge a look. “He is, is he?”
“Yes,” she said. “Especially when he thinks he’s winning.”
“Oh well, don’t let me interrupt you,” Dame said. “I was just —”
“No, no,” Fatima said. “I should really go home and feed my cat. He pees on the couch when I come back late.”
She scooped up the cards, wrapped an elastic band around them, and left the deck on the table. “You better practice up, mister sir,” she said to Dodge. “Next time, I won’t go so easy on you.”
A moment later, she was out the door, and Dame had taken her seat across from her father. “And here I thought I was your euchre partner.”
Dodge smiled self-consciously and struggled to pronounce a word. His attempt yielded only a rumbling cough.
“I know, I know,” Dame said. “Bambina.”
He shook his head. “Friend.”
Dame nodded. “You know, another friend of yours offered me a job the other day.”
Dodge gave her a quizzical look.
“There’s an opening at the Municipal Review Board. I’d get to work side by side with Peggy and make some really important decisions. Apparently, the money is really good, and” — she could see something happening on Dodge’s face: sadness or anger, she couldn’t be sure — “the benefits are supposed to be —”
The old man stood up abruptly. He crossed to the kitchen and took a stack of coffee filters out of the cabinet. He fit one into his coffee maker.
“Dodge?”
He grabbed the can of Maxwell House on the counter and started spooning coffee into the machine.
“Dodge, if you’re making some for me, I’m not —”
“Don’t.” He turned around so quickly that some of the coffee grounds spilled onto the floor.
Dame stood up. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t take the job? Why not?”
She waited patiently as Dodge filled the air with broken words.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I just — I don’t understand what you mean.”
A heavy silence hung between them. Dodge filled the coffee carafe with water and poured it into the coffee maker.
Dame looked at her watch. “Should I order us something to eat?” she said finally. “I need to get home by eight o’clock, but maybe —”
He shook his head.
“Do you want to watch a show or something?”
He shook his head again.
“Okay. Well, I guess I should hit the road, then.”
There was something he wasn’t telling her. Couldn’t tell her. And a part of her wondered if he’d find a way to do it, before he lost his words completely.