Chapter Thirty-Nine
Whatever sleep Dame got that night didn’t make her feel any better. She woke up before her alarm and shuffled through a lukewarm shower and a cold bowl of cereal. She was dreading work. It would be full of people she didn’t want to see and missing all the people she did want to see. It was still early by the time she pulled on her boots and coat, and she knew that, before she made another trip to the Clamshell, there was something else she should do.
When she arrived at the hospital, the room smelled of chemical cleaners and something a little too human. Somewhere, the beep of a heart monitor kept a steady pulse. Meera was in the corner, conked out in a chair that — even by hospital standards — looked wildly uncomfortable.
“I’m not really sure how she’s doing that,” a voice said. “At home, she needs, like, four or five pillows to fall asleep. Minimum.”
“Jesus, Lewis.” Dame’s eyes stung with tears. “Is that you under there?”
He was sitting up in bed. His head was wrapped in bandages and there was a patch of gauze over his left eye. What she could see of his face barely looked like him at all.
“Yep. Me and five milligrams of morphine.” He pointed at his IV. “The drugs in this place are pretty great.”
She sat down on the edge of his bed and sniffed. “I’m so sorry. About all of this.”
“Hey, you weren’t the one who did this to me.” He paused. “I mean, unless you were. I really don’t remember all that much.”
Dame managed a little smile. “I brought you some breakfast.”
She reached into her backpack and took out a small pastry box.
“Oh, wow.” His one visible eye widened. “Cannoli?”
Dame nodded.
“From Georgio’s?”
She nodded again and put the box on his lap. Lewis lifted the lid and then immediately filled his mouth with fried dough and ricotta.
“God,” he said, still chewing. “That’s almost worth having my head bashed in.” He offered the box to Dame, but she shook her head.
“So” — Lewis swallowed his food — “I guess you already know about the Atkinson.”
“Yeah.”
“I heard it on the radio yesterday. Thought I was having another weird morphine dream.”
“This is all starting to feel like one.”
From the chair, Meera muttered something incomprehensible, then started snoring.
“She’s pretty furious with me,” Dame said.
“Well, fury is kind of Meera’s go-to emotion.”
“She thinks I should let the police handle it from here.”
Lewis shrugged. “She’s got a point. I mean, this isn’t exactly what you signed up for, is it?”
“You agree with her?”
“Come on, Dame. When do I ever agree with Meera?” He tried to sit up a little more and winced. “Look, it might just be the morphine and pastries talking, but you’re the only person I know who could make sense of this mess. And if there’s a chance you could get the guy who did this” — he drew an invisible circle around his face — “I say you take it.”
“I don’t know. All I seem to do is make things worse.”
“Well, whatever you do, just be careful, okay? I don’t want Meera mad at me, too.” He took another bite of cannoli.
When Dame finally got to work that morning, her meeting with Sharon Fischer hung over her head like bad weather. Alone in the office, she slogged through the Atkinson paperwork, ate her reheated lunch, and obsessively watched her phone for a message from Meera that never came. Even Peggy seemed to steer clear of her. She didn’t suddenly materialize in the office with pastries or pie or even a few kind words to improve Dame’s mood.
At lunch, she texted Gus. Hey! Can I see you tonight?
Can’t, he wrote back. Already have dinner plans.
I could stop by after …?
Sorry, he replied.
What about later this week?
She watched the indicator dots bubble across her screen for a moment and then disappear. Dame waited a minute, then two, then five. An hour later, there was still no word. As the day limped forward, her brain invented a hundred perfectly credible reasons why Gus hadn’t responded. None of which she could bring herself to believe.
At five o’clock, Dame took the elevator six floors down to the Municipal Review Board. Fischer’s door was open when she got there, and the woman was straightening little things on her desk — lamp, picture frame, blotter. In the remaining daylight, the office maintained its dull austerity.
“I hope it isn’t too much of an inconvenience to stay late, Ms. Polara,” she said. “I understand this must be a challenging time for you.”
“It’s fine.”
“Please. Come in and shut the door.”
Dame did as she was told.
Fischer gestured toward the chair opposite her desk, and they both sat down.
“I often do my best work this time of day.” Fischer looked out the window. “It’s quiet. And there are fewer interruptions.” She smoothed her skirt along her thighs. “I often work on Sundays, as well. I know there are those who believe it should be a day of rest, but I find putting in a few hours on a Sunday to be incredibly restorative. It prepares me for the challenges of the week ahead, and allows me to rest easy at night.”
“Sounds like you’ve really nailed that work-life balance.”
“Yes, well, you can imagine my frustration then, when I returned to my office this past weekend to find my filing cabinet disordered and my personal photographs askew.”
It was becoming pretty clear that this meeting wasn’t about the Atkinson Theatre. “Maybe you should have a word with the cleaning staff.”
“Unfortunately, I suspect it was someone with more sinister motivations. It seems a rather important piece of technology is now missing from my desk drawer. A USB drive containing some particularly sensitive information.”
“That’s too bad. Did you check the lost and found?”
“No, Ms. Polara, I haven’t checked the lost and found. In fact, I’m quite confident that you broke into my office and stole the drive.”
Dame played it cool. “I’m sorry, Sharon, but I don’t know anything about that.”
Fischer stood up. “I have no intention to debate what you know and don’t know.” She walked across the office and opened her door. “Instead, I’ve arranged for someone else to discuss the matter with you, on the off-chance you might be more forthcoming with him than you would be with me.”
Anton Felski stepped into the room. The pastel satin of his Dolphins jacket looked cartoonish against the dull-coloured paint.
“I believe you’re both already acquainted?” Fischer said.
“We go way back” — Felski smiled — “don’t we, sunshine?”
Dame frowned.
“I’m going to leave you two alone.” She nodded to Felski. “Oh, and Ms. Polara?” The Fish pointed toward a long cardboard tube leaning against the wall. “When you’re finished, be a dear and return the Atkinson blueprints to Archives. I believe they’re still signed out in your name, and to be honest” — a shark’s grin spread across her face — “I really can’t stand the place.”
Fischer shut the door behind her and Dame stood up to face Felski. His ear muffs were around his collar and his head looked strangely narrow without them.
“Well, here we are,” he said, “just a couple of old pals working for the city.”
“Nope,” Dame said, moving to get past Felski. “Whatever this is, I’m not doing it.”
“Easy, there. Slow down.” Felski stood in her way.
“Or else what? You’ll put me in the hospital? Like you put Lewis in the hospital?”
“Hey, I just want to have a conversation. No need to get riled up.”
Dame stood still, her fists clenching and unclenching.
Felski continued, “I wanted to compliment you on these.” He half unzipped his jacket and removed an envelope. From it, he slid out a black-and-white photo: Howlett and Aki. “This is good work. I mean — not exactly a money shot — but you got them both on the bed, at least.”
“Those are mine.”
“Mine. Yours. That kind of thing never really seemed to bother you before, did it?” He slid out another picture and admired it. “I imagine our friend Ray Hobart would be willing to pay a few extra bucks for these. Way I see it, he still owes me a little severance pay.”
He put the photos back into his jacket. “Secondly, our mutual acquaintance — Ms. Anal-Retentive there — she really wants her doohickey back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Be smart, Dame. You think someone that uptight wouldn’t be running a nanny cam in her office twenty-four seven?”
She scanned the room and looked at the dead-eyed teddy bear. Fuck. How could she have been so stupid?
“So, here’s what we’re going to do,” Felski continued. “I’m going to give you one day to cough up the doohickey, otherwise, I’m going to have to come look for it, understand?”
Dame shook her head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
“Now, I’m guessing it’s not at your apartment, because — as you’re probably aware — I had myself a poke around the other day. But, if for some reason you can’t produce it by tomorrow, I’m going to have to assume it’s at your old man’s place. From what I gather, he still lives in that shithole over on Jameson, doesn’t he?”
“You stay away from him.”
“Now, I know poor Dodge is suffering from some kind of” — he tapped his temple — “mental deficiency these days. Think I’ll have to jog his memory a little? Help him remember where you put it?”
“If you touch him, I swear to fucking Christ —”
“Hey, hey,” Felski soothed. “Don’t get all excited. Just be a good girl and give back what doesn’t belong to you. Then we can put all of this ugliness behind us.”
Dame’s eyes ached.
“Look, I’ll make you a deal,” Felski said. “You bring me the doohickey and I won’t touch a hair on your old man’s head. And just to prove I’m not such a bad guy, I’ll even throw in the photos of Hobart’s wife and Mr. Producer Man. How about it? Tit for tat. Everybody wins.”
Dame took a deep breath. “Where?”
Felski walked past Dame and fingered the objects on Fischer’s desk. “How about the City Coffee on Queen West. You won’t even have to leave the comfort of your own neighbourhood.”
“When?”
“Let’s say tomorrow. Seven o’clock? We can skip the dinner rush.” He picked up a picture in a frame. “And I imagine you’ll be smart enough to come alone.”
Felski looked down at the framed picture in his hands. “Good lookin’ kid she’s got.” He handed it to Dame as he made his way toward the door. “Must’ve been adopted.”
For almost a full minute, she stood alone in the centre of the room, wanting desperately to smash everything to pieces. When she finally got a handle on herself, she looked down at the picture of Fischer’s son.
Felski was right. The kid was cute. But more than that, he was familiar. She adjusted her glasses. The picture was an elementary school photo, and Dame could tell by the kid’s haircut and fluorescent T-shirt that it was more than thirty years old. The frame itself was a little unusual, especially for Fischer’s office. Dame would’ve expected something plain and modern, but instead, it was a folksy piece of maple with a swan carved into the right-hand corner of the wood.
No. Not a swan.
A goose.
Dame’s eyes went wide. She picked up the blueprints and walked out of Fischer’s office as quickly as she could.