The motel alarm clock woke me before the sun and told me my eyes had been closed for four hours. The sleep felt longer; it felt like the kind of sleep you wake from to find the day half over. I showered and changed my clothes. I dug lightweight olive pants with deep pockets and a grey T-shirt from my bag. I also pulled out a thin blue shirt to go over my T-shirt. The shirt was not necessary in the early September heat, but it buttoned down the front and hung loose, making it perfect for concealing a stolen gun. I left the keys on the night table and was on the road before the water I had splashed on my face dried in my hair.
The road through Quebec was straight for hundreds of kilometres. I drove beside Johnny's powered-down cell phone thinking about home. PEI had always been the island. The rental house was just that, a house. Neither could take the place of where I had grown up invisible to everyone.
Hours after I left the motel, I found myself fighting my way through Montreal traffic. The barrage of cars felt like a scene from Star Wars — the one where the kid makes a run at the death star through a sky full of spaceships and laser beams. Vehicles came at me from all angles, most a high-speed blur. I was grateful when a break in the tension came in the form of a small traffic jam. As I sat in the still car, watching six construction workers watch two others work, I decided to power up the phone. It chimed to life and showed it still had half of the battery left. I dialled the number Paolo left me and was left speechless when he himself answered. Any other time I dealt with him, I had to work my way through layers of intermediaries before I could even leave a message.
“You around tomorrow?” I asked, looking at the time on the dashboard clock in the early afternoon sunlight.
“I got some things to do, but I can move them around.”
“You want to see me then I name the time and the place.”
“And the time is tomorrow. So where is the place, figlio?”
I hung up the phone without answering and powered it down. I thought back to all of the dinner-table conversations I had with my uncle. He taught me to read between the lines of books, to use the language to decode what was underneath. It wasn't long before I could do it with people. Using what they said and sometimes what they didn't to decipher what was going on under the surface. Paolo answered the phone himself and he was willing to meet whenever I wanted; he was even willing to adjust his schedule to accommodate me. This was unlike any interaction we ever had before. Paolo was the top of the food chain; he had people answering his calls so he didn't have to get his hands dirty dealing with the mundane. His people understood what he wanted and showed their capability, and worthiness of advancement, by handling the small day-to-day matters. No one was managing me. I got through on what sounded like a personal cell phone — something I never knew Paolo had. The more telling part of the call was his willingness to meet me. Out of principle, Paolo never accommodated anyone. He loved to think of himself as the king of the jungle; he saw himself elevated above all others. He would never obey someone else's schedule; it didn't fit with the personality of a methodical sociopathic kingpin. If Paolo was out to kill me, he never would have changed his methods; he would have seen that as beneath him. He wouldn't try to fool me in order to kill me; he would have kept things as they were and sent men to make it happen, more men after that if necessary. Paolo was into something deep, something big enough to change him, something he needed to see me about. He needed to influence a situation without being directly involved. Using someone who crossed him and left the city two years ago would do just that.
By four p.m., I was entering the outskirts of Toronto. I avoided the 407 highway and its camera tolls even though the road was newer and empty. I was leaving nothing to chance coming home. I was in the city by 5:30 and at a Mediterranean restaurant on Upper James Street by quarter to six. I chose to stop on the Hamilton mountain because most of the action in the city took place downtown away from the bright lights of chain stores and their younger clientele. The restaurant had a sign up that read “New Management.” I figured it must have once been a lousy dive and someone must have still believed it could make a comeback. I could tell that the owner and I were the only ones who thought so when I walked through the smoke-grey glass doors into the vacant dining room.
The restaurant smelled wonderful, and I wondered what gruesome hidden secrets caused the management turnover. I took a seat in front of the dark-tinted glass so that I could see outside without being observed from the parking lot. I ordered gyros and ate them with water. The owner was pleasant and chatty, but both qualities faded as I ate in silence. The place stayed empty for the twenty minutes I ate; there were no other staff — just the owner and me. He was a short Arab man with a stubbly shaved head whose body shook from time to time with uncontrollable spasms. With each episode, he seemed to grit his teeth in an attempt to will himself to regain stillness. He was washing a plate behind the counter when I yelled out to him.
“Slow night?”
“No sir, it's off to a very good start.”
I figured I was the beginning of a dinner rush in his mind. “How many do you get for dinner?”
There was a spasm then an answer. “Very many, sir.”
It was clear the owner was an optimistic, glass-is-half-full sort of guy. “How many people are working with you tonight?” Optimistic owner or not, on his budget he had to be a realist.
He paused and looked away from me then down at the plate he was washing. His answer was sad, “Just me, sir.”
I didn't feel bad for cracking his optimism; what he told me was good. “What's your name, pal?”
“I am Yousif, sir.”
“Yousif, I think I'm going to get someone else to come down and sample some of your wonderful gyros,” I said as I powered up Johnny's phone.
Yousif's optimism seemed to return; he spasmed then smiled. “Very good, sir,” he said.