I call AmberLea and ask if she can come half an hour earlier. Then I get busy. By the time AmberLea pulls up in the Cayenne, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. She’s texting as I hustle out to the car, so she doesn’t notice at first. I close the door and pull the scarf away from my face. “AAAGHH!” She bounces back in her seat. “What the—Spence?”
“Does it work okay?” I pat my new beard and mustache, partly to make sure they’re still in place. “Do they look too fake? They cover up my scrape.”
“What the—geez, no. They’re good. I wouldn’t have known you. Are those from your grandpa’s cottage?”
“Yeah. The boots and hat are my dad’s.” I’ve got one of those blue Greek fisherman caps on too. It’s a bit big.
“What’s all this about?”
“I’ll tell you as we go.” I give AmberLea the address and she punches it into the GPS. Roz Inbow was right: her place isn’t far away. We do a slow drive past, and AmberLea pulls around the corner. She stops but leaves the motor running.
“You don’t have to do this,” she says. “I could. I don’t mind.”
“I know,” I say. I remember AmberLea decoying the cops at the rest stop last summer. And Dusan yesterday. “It’s not that. I just feel like I have to do it.” I take off my glasses and substitute a pair of Jer’s aviator shades—the only style he’ll wear. This pair is mirrored. “How’s this?”
“Good,” she says. She tucks some hair up under my hat. “Excellent. Go for it.” Then she says, “I’ll keep the engine running.”
I give my beard-and-’stache combo one more pat, climb out of the Porsche and head back along the sidewalk. I’m stiff as a board from yesterday’s skiing, and I’m not used to cowboy boots. Like the cap, they’re a shade big. The heels make me feel as if I’m going to tip over. The fisherman cap sloshes around a little. I wish I had my glasses on, even if they are weak. Go slow, I tell myself. Act confident. Bond. I try to lean back, hands in the deep pockets of the curling sweater. There’s a curling stone in my stomach. There’s also a patch of ice on the front walk at Roz Inbow’s. I skid but hang tough. Why aren’t there treads on cowboy boots?
The house is a little bigger than ours and ten times tidier. My boots clomp on the wooden steps. I press the doorbell with a black-gloved finger. Deb’s gloves. It’s cold, but a drop of sweat slides from under my hat and nibbles the glue at the top of my beard. I manage to swipe it away and give the beard a quick pat before the door opens. I stuff my hands back in the sweater pockets. And now here’s Harv the Smurf Cop, barefoot, in jeans and a gray Toronto Argonauts sweatshirt. This morning he seems even bigger, because the doorsill he’s looming over is a few centimeters higher than the porch. His chin is even bluer. Harv does not seem to be the type who wakes up cheerful. He gives me the once-over. “Yeah?”
“David McLean,” I say, giving him the mirrored aviators back. Only it comes out “Dive-id McLine.” I seem to have acquired a new accent. “Yew ’ave somfing fer me.” I don’t know where this is coming from, but I’ll run with it.
Harv’s hands are empty. He folds his arms across his chest and says, “I’ll need some ID.”
I don’t move either. “Dowent be ridicooless.”
“This how CSIS operates these days?”
“D’yew hev a list of stewpid questions, Harvey, or do they just come to yew?” What am I saying? I seem to have gone on some kind of Cockney kamikaze automatic pilot. Harv’s blue chin juts out. His nostrils flare and his chest inflates. More sweat runs into my beard glue. I can feel it loosening. Harv stares at me. Before I get an instant shave or he can mush my ears into Jer’s boots, I hear myself say, “Now stop muckin’ abaowt and gemme that case. I’ve got bedder things to do than mess wit you, unnerstan?” I recognize the voice: I’m not a Bond, I’m channeling Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File. Why? Go figure. All I know is, it works: Harv goes purple above his blue chin. Then he snorts and steps back into the house. As soon as he does, I slap my drooping beard back into place. He’s back with the laptop case. “Givvid ’ere.” I hold out one black-gloved hand. “An turn aroun’.”
Harv snorts again and does his eye roll. He hands me the case and turns his back. I unzip the case, pull out the calendar, check for the music, then slide the papers inside the curling sweater, pinning them there with my arm. I zip the case shut. “Now, turn aroun’, tike the case and go beck in the haowse. There’s a good lad.”
Harv turns around and jerks the case out of my hands. “Bleep you,” he says.
“Tut, tut. You need to work on your bedside manner, old son. Almost a pleasure doin’ bizness wiv you, Harvey. An’ just to show there’s no hard feelin’s, you might wanna hev a look in the Baby Breeze Motel, las’ unit. They’ve got an indoor garden there you’ll love, and the handcuffs you lost. Just watch out for the alligator, heheheheh.”
Harv slams the door. My mustache falls off.
I make it back to the car without skipping for joy or falling over. One would be tough with sore muscles and in cowboy boots, the other not so hard. “Your mustache is crooked,” AmberLea says.
“Doesn’t matter now. Let’s get out of here.” I peel it off, and we peel away.