CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In the morning I waited till Arthur was out of the house. Then I phoned Sam.
“I have to see you,” I said, “it’s important.”
“What’s up?” he said. Marlene had answered the phone, and Sam sounded as if he was still asleep.
“I can’t talk about it over the phone.” It was an article of faith with Sam that his phone was bugged by the CIA, or at the very least the Mounties, and he was probably right. Also, I wanted to sound paranoid enough from the very beginning to convince him.
“Should I come over?” he said, perking up.
“No,” I said. “I’ll meet you in front of Tie City on Bloor Street in half an hour.” Sam lived in the Annex, I knew he could make it if he rushed. I wanted him to rush; it would make him feel more urgent. Then I hung up, mysteriously.
I’d thought very carefully about the story I was going to tell them, for of course it would be both of them; there was no chance that Marlene wouldn’t come along too. The truth was out of the question, as usual. If I told them the truth they’d feel they couldn’t help me, since according to the ideology merely personal problems weren’t supposed to be very significant. If I could get each of them alone it would be different, but together they were each other’s witnesses and potential accusers. I needed the right villains, persecuting me for a cause they’d consider important. I felt a little cheap about this. Sam, like most of the group members, was essentially honest, in a devious sort of way; whereas I was essentially devious, with a patina of honesty. But I was desperate.
I waited nervously in front of Tie City, looking at the ties in the window and glancing from time to time over my shoulder, until Sam and Marlene appeared. They’d actually taken a taxi, which gave me hope: ordinarily they never took taxis.
“Look normal,” I told them in a low, furtive voice. “Pretend you’re walking along the street.” We walked along the street, heading west, and I told them the place and time of the real meeting. “I thought I saw one of them at the corner,” I said. “Don’t let yourself be followed.” Then we separated.
That afternoon at three-thirty we met in the Roy Rogers, the one on Bloor west of Yonge. I ordered a vanilla milk shake. Sam had a Roy with the works. Marlene ordered a Dale Evans.
We carried our trays to a round table beside a plate-glass window, through which we could see a small backyard with an enormous Coca-Cola billboard in it, boy and girl linking healthy eyes and swilling.
“You picked a great place,” Sam said. “They’d never suspect this joint.”
“Did you know you can get authentic Trigger Shit by sending away for it?” Marlene asked.
“Authentic, balls,” Sam snorted. “There’s more of that around than pieces of the True Cross. Besides, the real Trigger was stuffed and mounted years ago.” Marlene looked put down.
I checked the underside of the table, as if for hidden mikes. Then I leaned toward them. “They’ve found out about the dynamite,” I said.
Sam didn’t say anything. Marlene rolled a cigarette. She’d taken to rolling them lately; the tobacco ends stuck out and flamed when she lit up, but she held the cigarette gamely in the corner of her mouth while she talked. “Who has?” she said. “How do you know?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It could be the Ontario Provincial Police or the Mounties; maybe even the CIA. Anyway it’s someone like that. When I went to move the car the day before yesterday I saw two men watching it. I didn’t go near it, I just walked right by as though I had nothing to do with it. When I went back yesterday they were still there, or maybe it was two other men. That time I didn’t even go down the street, I crossed over and went down a side street.”
“That means they haven’t traced it to you yet,” Marlene said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t bother watching the car, they’d watch you instead.”
“They haven’t yet” I said. “But they’re going to. They’ll trace me to the apartment; I gave that address when I bought the car. They’ll get a description from the landlord. If they pick me up, they’ll find out my real name and they’ll get Arthur, and then they’ll get you.”
Sam was shaken. His escape fantasy had come to life at last, and he didn’t like it. Marlene, however, was very cool. Her eyes narrowed, partly because of the smoke. “You think it’s the Mounties?” she said.
“If we’re lucky,” I said. “If it is, they might never find me, and if they do at least we’d get a trial. But if it’s the others, the CIA or maybe someone worse, they might just, you know, get rid of us. They always make it look like a suicide, or an accident.”
“Holy shit,” Sam said. “I’m sorry we got you into this. But it can’t be the CIA, we’re small potatoes.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Marlene said. “They hate nationalist organizations, they want to keep this country down.”
“Well, there’s one good thing,” I said. “Right now they can’t trace it any further than that apartment, until they find out who I am.”
“We better get you out of the country,” Marlene said.
“Yes,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly. “But I can’t simply hop on a plane. If I disappear, they’ll keep looking till they find me. I think we should arrange a sort of dead end for them.”
“What did you have in mind?” said Sam.
I gave it some thought. “Well, I think we should stage my death; that way, when they start nosing around, they’ll find out I’m dead and that will be that. There’s not really anything to connect the rest of you with that car and the dynamite. We’ll just leave it where it is and let them worry about it.”
They were both impressed by this idea, and we began discussing ways and means. Sam came up with a plan for a fake car accident, using a body mangled beyond recognition. He watched a lot of prime-time television.
“So where do we get the body?” Marlene asked, and that was the end of that.
Sam’s face lit up. “Hey … what about a vat of lime sprinkled with your teeth? Nothing identifies you positively like your teeth. That’s what they use in airplane crashes, to identify the victims. They’d think the rest of you was eaten away.”
“Where are we going to get my teeth?” I asked.
“You have them all pulled out, of course,” Sam said, a little hurt by my negative reaction. “You can get a set of false ones, they’re more hygienic anyway.”
“No,” I said. “They’d torture the dentist. He’d tell them everything. I might consider one or two teeth,” I conceded.
Sam sulked. “If you’re serious about this, you have to do it right.”
“What I need is something very neat,” I said. “What about this?” I pulled a newspaper clipping out of my purse. It was about a woman who had drowned in Lake Ontario, very simply, no frills. She had merely sunk like a stone, and her body had never been recovered. She’d made no attempt to catch the life preserver thrown to her. It was one of the first times, said the paper, that an inquest had been held and a death certificate issued with no corpse present. I sometimes clipped items like this out of the newspaper, thinking they might come in handy as plot elements. Luckily I’d saved this one.
“But it’s been done already,” said Sam.
“They won’t notice,” I said. “At least I hope they won’t notice. Anyway, it’s my only chance.”
“What about Arthur?” Marlene asked. “Shouldn’t he know?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Arthur can’t act, you know that. He’ll be interviewed by the police, he’s sure to be, and if he knows I’m really alive he’ll either be so phony they’ll know something’s wrong or so calm and collected they’ll think he did me in himself. He wouldn’t convince anyone. We can tell him later, after it’s all over. I know it’s cruel, but it’s the only way.” I went over this point with them several times; the last thing I wanted was Arthur on my trail.
Finally they agreed. In fact, they were flattered that I thought they’d be able to put on a much more convincing act than Arthur. “Just don’t overdo the grief,” I told them. “Some guilt, but not too much grief.”
They thought I should have some forged documents to get out of the country with, but I said a friend of mine would take care of that, and the less they knew about it, the better. I was glad I’d kept my Louisa K. Delacourt passport and identification up to date.
Marlene said she had to go to a meeting, so Sam walked me to the subway. He was worried about something. Finally he said, “Joan, are you sure about those men? Are you sure they were watching?”
“Yes, why?”
“They just aren’t that inefficient. If they’ve been at it for two days, they’d have got to you by now.”
“Sam,” I said, “I’m not really sure at all. Maybe it’s them, maybe I’m mistaken. But that’s not the only reason I want to get away.”
“Promise you won’t tell Marlene?” He promised. “I’m being blackmailed.”
“You’re kidding,” Sam said. “What for?”
I wanted to tell him, I was about to tell him, but I thought better of it. “It’s not political,” I said. “It’s personal.”
Sam didn’t push for details; he knew when to back off. “I’m being blackmailed too,” he said. “By Marlene. She wants to tell Don about us.”
“Sam, does she have to come along?”
“Yes,” he said. “We need two witnesses. Anyway, she’ll be terrific with the police. She’s a terrific liar.”
“Sam, it’s very good of you to do this for me,” I said. It was a lot to ask, I was beginning to see that. “If you get into any real trouble, I’ll come back and bail you out.”
He squeezed my hand reassuringly. “It’ll go like clockwork, you’ll see,” he said.
I didn’t tell him about the other things, the dead animals and the phone calls and letters. That would be too complicated, I felt. Nor did I mention my suspicions about Arthur. Sam had known Arthur for a long time, and he wouldn’t be able to believe he would do such things. He’d think I was imagining it.
The accident was to take place in two days, provided the weather held. I used the intervening time to make the arrangements. First I bought a skirt and blouse so I’d be wearing clothes on the plane that no one had ever seen me in. I went out to the airport, by subway and bus, and got a ticket to Rome, using my Louisa K. Delacourt identification. I said I was going on a four-week vacation. I bought the pink Mountie scarf and some dark glasses, changed into my new outfit in the ladies’ can, covered up my hair, and got a Hertz Rent-A-Car, a bright-red Datsun. I said I’d be returning it to the airport in two days. I went to the ladies’ can again, changed back to my old clothes and drove away.
I parked around the corner from our apartment, checked to make sure Arthur wasn’t there, dug an old suitcase out of the cupboard, and packed a few essentials. I wrapped the suitcase up in brown paper and carried it like a parcel to the car, where I stowed it in the trunk.
The next morning I told Arthur I had a headache and was going to stay in bed for a while. I asked him to get me an aspirin and a glass of water. I thought he’d leave the house as soon as possible – he never liked it when I was sick – but to my surprise he hung around, brought me a cup of tea, and asked if he could do anything. I was touched: perhaps I’d misjudged him, perhaps I should tell him everything, it wasn’t too late.… But he might be acting this way because he could tell I was up to something. I reminded him of the article he had to finish for Resurgence, and at last he left.
I jumped out of bed, put on a respectable dress, and stuffed my T-shirt and jeans into my oversized purse. Because of Arthur I was already three-quarters of an hour behind schedule. I drove the rented car east and went past the city and along the shore of Lake Ontario, looking for a spot where I could make a landing without running into a cliff or a crowd of people. I found a stretch of beach with some scrubby trees and a few picnic tables, which were empty. I hoped they’d stay empty; I thought they would, as it was a weekday in early June and the roadside families hadn’t yet burst into full flower. I would leave the car here and rendezvous with it later. The trees would screen me as I washed ashore.
I drove back to the nearest pay phone, which was outside a service station, and called a taxi, explaining that my car had broken down and I was late for an appointment in the city. I described the spot and said I’d be standing beside a red Datsun. I drove back to my beach, locked the car, with my suitcase in the trunk and my ticket and Louisa K. identification in the glove compartment, and buried the car keys in the sand under the right front wheel. When the taxi came I took it to the Royal York Hotel, went in the front door and down to the lower level, changed into my T-shirt and jeans, crammed the dress I’d been wearing into my purse, and walked out the side door. The ferry dock was only a few blocks away. Sam and Marlene were already there.
“Were you followed?” Marlene asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. We rehearsed again the story they were to tell Arthur: they’d run into me on the street and on impulse we’d all decided to go sailing over at the Island. Sailing rather than canoeing, we felt: it was easier to fall off a sailboat, whereas if it was a canoe, we’d all have to tip into the lake, and I told them there was no reason for them to get wet, too.
We took the ferry to the Island. Marlene had brought a camera; she felt there should be a pictorial record showing me as happy and carefree, so I posed with Sam, then with Marlene, leaning against the railing of the ferry and grinning like a fool.
Once on the Island, we strolled up and down past the boat-rental places, trying to decide which outfit would be likely to be the least suspicious of us. We picked the most slovenly-looking one and were granted a boat without any trouble, five dollars down and the rest when we brought it back. It was quite small and the attendant said that really there should only be two people on it, but he’d stretch a point as long as we didn’t take it out of the harbor.
“You know how to sail,” he said, more as a statement than a question.
“Of course,” I said quickly. The attendant went back inside his hutch and we were left alone with the boat.
Sam began to untie it briskly from the dock. We all got in and pushed out into the Toronto harbor, where other sailboats, their white wings flapping, were tacking competently back and forth.
“Now what?” I said.
“Now we just run up the sails,” Sam said. He undid various ropes and tugged at them, this way and that, until a sail began to move experimentally up the mast.
“You do know how to sail?” I asked him.
“Sure. I used to do it all the time, at summer camp.”
“How long ago was that?” Marlene asked.
“Well, I remember the basics,” he said defensively, “but if you’d rather take over.…”
“I’ve never been in a sailboat in my life,” Marlene said, with that shade of contempt women reserve for men who have been caught out in a fraudulent display of expertise. By this time we were moving steadily into the course of an island ferry.
“Maybe we should go back,” I said, “and get a canoe.”
“We can’t,” Sam said. “I don’t know how.”
We ended up with Marlene at the tiller, while Sam and I scrambled around, ducking the boom and trying to control the ropes which somehow in turn controlled the sails. This worked, after a fashion, but my spirits had plunged. Why had I concocted this trashy and essentially melodramatic script, which might end by getting us all killed in earnest? Meanwhile we wobbled across the Toronto harbor, past the causeway they seemed to be constructing out of dumped garbage, and out into the lake. With the boat more or less under control, I crouched on the deck, peering into my compact mirror and trying to cover my face with eye shadow from a pot of Midnight Blue. The blue face was Marlene’s suggestion: that way, she said, my white face wouldn’t be easily seen from the shore. It was for this reason too that I was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt.
Outside the harbor it was windier, and there were real waves. We sped east with the wind behind us. My face was now blue enough, and I was scanning the shoreline, which looked quite different when seen from the water, trying to remember where I’d left the car.
“We’re too far out,” I shouted to Sam, “can’t you get us farther in?” I could swim, but I was not a strong swimmer. I didn’t want to have to float a mile on my back.
Marlene handed me Don’s binoculars, which she’d thought to bring, that old Brownie training. She’d brought everything but semaphore flags. I scanned the shoreline with them and there were the sandbar and the picnic tables and, yes, the car, receding at a fast clip behind us.
“It’s back there,” I called to Sam, pointing. “How do we get back?”
“Tack,” Sam yelled, diving for a rope.
“What?”
“I’ll have to take the tiller,” he screamed, and began to crawl back towards us.
“Oh, God, I just remembered something,” Marlene said; screeched rather, as otherwise we couldn’t hear above the wind and the waves, which were beginning to look frightening. They had white foam streaks on them and were splashing over the sides of the boat.
“What?”
“Don … this will be all over the papers, and he’ll know we were together.”
“Tell him you’re just friends now!” I screamed.
“It won’t work,” Marlene said, pleased that the thing she wanted revealed was going to be brought to light with no intervention by her; and in her despair or joy, she let go of the tiller. The boat swung, the sail collapsed, Sam ducked, and the flailing boom hit me in the small of the back and knocked me overboard.
I was unprepared and got a mouthful of unprocessed Lake Ontario water as I sank. It was much colder than I’d expected, and it tasted like stale fins and old diapers. I rose to the surface, coughing and gasping.
Sam had dropped the sails and the boat was wallowing uncertainly a little farther on. Marlene was yelling, “Oh, my God,” very authentically, as if I really had fallen overboard and was drowning. She reached out her hands towards me, leaning dangerously, and called, “Over here! Joan!” but Sam caught hold of her.
I couldn’t climb back into the boat and do it again the right way; I would have to proceed from here. I made a feeble dive and attempted to swim under the boat, as we had planned. I was supposed to come up on the other side, where I would be out of sight from the shore in case anyone was watching, and this move was necessary as I’d spotted a family at one of the picnic tables. I made it on the second try, but Marlene and Sam were still looking on the side where I had disappeared: they seemed to have forgotten all about the plan. I tore the binoculars off my neck – they were weighing me down – and attempted to heave them into the boat, with no success; they sank forever. Then I remembered my dress, which was in my bag, stowed in the bow. “My dress,” I yelled, “remember to ditch it,” but they’d drifted downwind from me and didn’t hear. They were trying to regain control of the boat.
I spat out more of the lake and lay back as flat as I could; if there’s one thing I knew how to do it was float. I pointed myself towards the shore and kicked my feet under the water; I hoped I was wafting unobtrusively toward the sand spit, helped by the waves, which broke occasionally over my head. We had bungled, but that wasn’t so bad. It would look better than if I had simply dived off the boat. I stared up at the blue sky with its white drifting clouds and concentrated on the next move.
Luckily I ran aground out of sight of the picnic tables, which were screened by the clump of bushes. I was only about five hundred yards from where I should have been. I pulled myself onto the shore and lay there, catching my breath, while orange peels, dead smelts and suspicious-looking brown lumps eddied around me, sucked in and out by the waves. My hair was full of sand and little pieces of seaweed. When I was ready I squelched as quietly as I could along the shore and crouched behind the bushes. My car was on the other side of them, I knew, but so was the picnicking family. I couldn’t risk getting close enough to watch them, but I could hear the whining of the children and the grunts of the father.
I lurked in the underbrush for at least half an hour, dripping and shivering and avoiding the poison ivy and the drying mounds of human shit and melting toilet paper, the wads of crumpled sandwich wrap, bits of salami and old pop bottles, and wondering whether they were going to stay all day and if so whether I would miss my plane. Finally I heard the sound of a car motor and the crunch of wheels on gravel.
I gave them time to get away, then walked to the car, dug the keys out from where I’d buried them, took my suitcase from the trunk and changed into my skirt and blouse in the back seat, covering my wet hair with the Mountie scarf. My face in the rearview mirror looked starding; genuinely drowned, almost. I wiped the blue eye shadow off with Kleenex, which I threw into the bushes. I wrung out my jeans and T-shirt, rolled them into a ball, stuffed them into the green plastic Glad Bag which I’d brought for this, and packed the bag at the bottom of the suitcase. As I drove off I caught a glimpse of Marlene and Sam; they’d got the sail back up but hadn’t managed to turn around, and they were scudding towards Kingston with all sails set.
I made it to the airport, returned the rent-a-car, and caught the plane with twenty minutes to spare. Sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off was the worst part; I couldn’t quite believe that I hadn’t been followed. But I was safe.