The square at city hall is wall-to-wall people, or sidewalk-to-sidewalk, I guess. Most of them are Tweeners with cold-looking parents. The decorations still flutter, but now the stage is up and lit, and music is pulsing from banks of giant speakers as one of the opening acts plays. Multiple video screens crosscut shots of the crowd with the band. The only morsel of space is the skating rink, where people still wobble and glide the way they did the night Bunny was snatched. Is it good luck or bad that the whole thing is finishing where it started? I’m as wired as any Tweener.
Tina has passed on the concert to have dinner with friends. We’re supposed to meet her later. AmberLea, Toby and I make our way to the backstage check-in. The whole area is cordoned off with traffic barriers, cops and police tape. Our All Access badges are ready and waiting, and we glide through without all the screening. By now the security guys know us, especially Toby. This is good, because as we get to the check-in, it occurs to me that it might be hard to explain why I’m carrying an automatic pistol, especially when I don’t quite know either.
Backstage is a canopied maze of RVs, equipment trailers, port-a-potties, you name it. Lights are strung. Bunched cables snake everywhere under protective rubber ridges. Impossibly hip and capable-looking people in headsets and AT hoodies bustle purposefully. Heaters standing near the canopy’s ridge poles waft some warmth into the freezing night air. “That’s Aiden’s.” Toby points to the biggest RV. “We won’t bother him now. That one is for the band, that one the dancers. Hospitality’s in that one.” He points to an RV with tables, chairs and heaters outside its doors. People are clustered there, talking and chowing down.
To one side of Aiden Tween’s RV stands a big circular tent, made of different colored strips of heavy material. “What’s that?” AmberLea asks.
“It’s a yurt,” I answer, beating Toby to it for once. “Made of felt. From Tibet. My dad’s in one right now. Not this one,” I add.
“Aiden always has the musicians and dancers gather in there with him for a togetherness and focusing moment before the show,” Toby says, topping me anyway. “Dope carpets inside. Handwoven, like the ones my uncle collects.”
I liked it better when Toby was busy somewhere else. All I can say is, “Let’s eat.”
The hospitality spread has vegan, gluten-free, organic, local and also, fortunately, bad-for-you food. I grab a pizza slice and a hot chocolate, and we find seats by a heater. It feels good to sit; the cowboy boots are chafing again. As we eat, a blond woman walks by to another table, with a drink and something on a paper plate. She’s wearing a tan knee-length parka and a purple-and-gold scarf. A leather messenger bag is slung over her shoulder. It’s the woman I almost bumped into in the hotel lobby.
But now it all comes together: she’s also a skier with a black mustache and a bearded blond hippie on the Queen streetcar. “Dusan,” I breathe.
“What?” AmberLea’s chin disappears.
“Over there. No, don’t look! She might spot us.” I tell them what I’ve just figured out. “She’s SPCA, and she’s here. What’s going on?”
“She’s the translator,” Toby says. “I saw her yesterday. They called and she showed up after you’d left. She translated the words to the anthem from Pianvian to English and then Aiden invited her to the show tonight.”
“She knows where Bunny is. I’ve got to find out.”
“How?” says AmberLea.
“Maybe she’s got something,” I say. “Some clue. In that bag maybe. That’s where I found the bullets, remember? We have to get it.” My knees have started bouncing like crazy. AmberLea puts a hand on one to slow me down.
“Okay,” says Toby. “Our advantage is she doesn’t know we’ve figured her out. How do we separate her from the bag?”
“I’m on it,” says AmberLea. She pulls out her cell phone and tells us what to do.
A minute later we all take off our coats as if we’re settling in, and then I head back into the hospitality RV. From there I watch Toby and AmberLea chatter. AmberLea looks all around, then goes over to Dusan and, extending her phone, asks her to take their picture. Dusan smiles and stands up. Then AmberLea, a step or two at a time, gently leads them farther and farther away as she fusses over the perfect background, leaving Dusan’s stuff behind.
I force myself to stroll, not run, to Dusan’s chair, sit down and open the messenger bag as if it’s mine. There’s a cell phone, tissues, a balled-up pair of little black gloves, a hairbrush, lipstick. I look up. AmberLea has them over by the yurt, using it as a background and keeping Dusan facing away from me. I plunge back into the bag: subway tokens, coin purse, a slim wallet with twenty dollars, a bank card, driver’s license for Jennifer Blum, 244 Berry Road, Toronto, Ontario, M8P 2J6. And a folded piece of paper. Out in the square, there’s a roar as the openers finish. Instantly the backstage comes alive. For a moment AmberLea and the others are swallowed in the action. I open the paper.
JANUARY 1, 2013
The SPCA is shocked and appalled by the horrific murder of Aiden Tween as he bravely sang the anthem of free Pianvians everywhere, an anthem that the current brutal PPP regime has suppressed for fifty years.
There is no doubt the Pianvian government killed Aiden Tween. His savage assassination at his concert on New Year’s Eve is yet another example of the cruelty and depravity of the PPP, who will stop at nothing to suppress free speech and human rights.
Aiden Tween was a longtime, dedicated supporter of the SPCA’s struggle for a free Pianvia. He bravely gave musical voice to a people that have none. He became a martyr to our cause as he did so. We will forever be in his debt. Let him be an example to us all. Let the world rally to our cause with the same boldness. We extend our deepest sympathy to his family in this dark hour.