Ice Lake (6 page)

“Or what, Andy?”

“You’re Indian, right?”

“So?”

“Heist a truck in the States. Then use your Indian friends—I’m just saying, maybe you have a connection—to let you drive the truck back across the border. Everybody knows Indians control the border. If what you want is the truck, pay your Indian friends with the contents. Cigarettes or booze.”

His eyes had wandered to one side during his dissertation. Done, he looked back at Lucy Gabriel, and discovered that she was staring at him with a grave expression.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She shook herself, as if emerging from a trance, and jumped up from her chair. “Would you mind waiting here a minute?”

“I got no pressing engagements.”

Lucy quickly left the office.

She made her way down labyrinthine corridors, halting at a number of doorways to punch in a code, and
entered an expansive laboratory. Lucy started work early, and the lab had yet to fill with its usual complement of technicians. Spotless, the walls and ceiling white, the tables a shiny stainless steel, the room was made eerie by silence. Lucy was pleased to find the man she was looking for there, which saved her an elevator ride three floors up to his office.

“Dr. Largent!” she called.

“Good morning, Miss Gabriel.” A slight, mousy-looking man with distinctive blue eyes, Dr. Randall Largent brushed his tufts of hair into rampant bursts of white flame, as if performing an impression of Einstein. Under his laboratory smock he was dressed in his familiar pinstriped blue suit and tie. Sixty-two years old and a principal of the company, he was a creature of the executive suite, not the lab.

She strode up to him to whisper her information, and her employer placed a conspiratorial hand on her elbow, drawing her close as he lowered an ear.

“I’ve found the one for us! He’s perfect! Perfection on a platter!”

“Calm down, Lucy.”

“He’s
exactly
what we’re looking for. He’s here as a lab rat. What should I do?”

Dr. Randall Largent sucked in his breath before announcing his decision. “Hire him,” he suggested. He exhaled.

“Really? For the job?”

“No,” he stipulated. “Hire him as a lab rat. Observe him over the weekend. See how he handles himself”

“Yes, but what if he doesn’t show up for the weekend?” Lucy objected.

“Then he’s not the man for us, is he?”

“I suppose not,” she conceded. “But it’s not a typical weekend, remember. It won’t be easy.”

“All the better. We’ll see how he fares.”

Hillier-Largent Global Pharmaceuticals, Inc., did
contract research, and Montreal was a major research centre. Whenever the exclusive license to a successful drug patent was expiring, competing companies developed their own versions for the marketplace. New variations required testing, if for no other reason than to adhere to government regulations. Drug companies had found it cost-effective and less messy to farm out this kind of work, and Hillier-Largent Global, a relatively small outfit, happily took on the contracts as a means to finance its own development of new drug therapies for serious illnesses. This weekend they were experimenting with a bowel cleanser, to be used when patients needed to prepare their intestines for examination. When Andrew Stettler had mentioned taking an enema, he’d been close to the truth.

Lucy nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that.”

“Good morning! What’s up?” The question was posed by the other half of the company’s letterhead, Dr. Harry Hillier, as he entered the lab. Harry was easily Lucy’s favourite of the two, but he was not involved in all the company’s enterprises. She knew things her boss did not. Bald across the top, with jet-black hair worn straight down on the sides, Harry had a horse-shaped face with large lips. He was no taller than Lucy. Everyone knew that Harry Hillier was the scientific brains behind the company, whereas Randall Largent managed the enterprise. Hillier was known as a bland stickler for the rules, while Largent had a reputation for fudging data, and nobody would put it past him to cook the books.

“Just working my way through roll call,” Lucy cheerfully intoned. “It’s under control now. Got to be going. Bye!”

She set off on the fly, sliding a little on the polished floors.

Andrew Stettler had left his seat and was examining a photograph perched on a filing cabinet as Lucy returned to her office. In the picture, Lucy was dressed in what she referred to as battle fatigues—an embroidered elk hide vest, denim shirt and tight-fitting, patched jeans. She was standing on an upside-down police cruiser, a fist clenched at her side, her other hand raised straight up clutching a rifle. Her face was painted with colourful streaks—war paint—and her mouth was wide open, apparently expelling a bloodcurdling holler.

“Lucy, is this you?” Stettler asked, incredulous, as she took her seat.

“Yep.”

‘Jesus. I better not mess with you. That was during the Oka Crisis?”

At the beginning of the 1990s, an altercation between the police and her people had led to a conflict. A town near the reserve, called Oka, had blithely decided to expand the limits of its municipal golf course. The expansion absorbed land Mohawks considered to be their own, and they further believed that the land in dispute included sacred burial grounds. A classic confrontation. Whites pooh-poohed the notion of ancient burial grounds and faded treaties while deifying golf and every man’s right to swing a club. Mohawks invoked centuries of grievances to marshal their defence of the piney woods and put up roadblocks. The SQ, attacked. A cop was shot and killed, and the police contingent fled the woods like scared rabbits. The army was brought in next, and the stand-off between Indians armed to the teeth and soldiers with fixed bayonets absorbed the interest of the western world for weeks. Eventually, peace was restored. The Mohawks kept their burial grounds, while a few of their number did jail time.

“Oka Crisis … last weekend,” Lucy deadpanned, “I
can’t remember now. I’m always turning over cop cars, it’s hard to keep track.”

“And I thought I was a bad boy.”

She smiled. She liked him. “Listen. There’s a chance of a regular job.”

“You’re kidding me. Here?”

“Not here. But that’s another story. Next week, maybe, I’ll set up a meeting with the president of another company, a partner company of ours. He’s looking for someone like you.”

“Why only maybe?” Stettler asked.

Lucy cocked her chin. “First, you have to get through the weekend. I’m hiring you for the guinea pig job. If you’re not a troublemaker, if you behave, that sort of thing, you’ll get the interview.”

“Lucy, that’s great. Thanks.”

“You won’t be thanking me this weekend. You’ll be puking your guts out between attacks of diarrhea.”

“Yeah?’

“Afraid so.”

Andy gently nodded, accepting the conditions, and flashed his seductive smile again. “How’s that any different from my usual weekend?”

Andrew Stettler walked away from Hillier-Largent Global that morning, which was not unusual in itself, for most lab rats arrived and departed by public transport or on foot. Only a few drove, usually in old, rust-spotted cars that dragged their mufflers. What made Stettler’s departure exceptional was that after he had walked a few blocks and turned three corners he stopped and looked around, then unlocked the door to a late-model Oldsmobile, tucking himself in behind the wheel.

Equally surprising, he drove to a house he owned. Andrew Stettler lived on the upper floor of a duplex in a congested, nondescript north-end neighbourhood, and leased the lower portion of the house, connected
by an inside staircase, to his mother. He did not charge her more than the monthly allowance he provided for her, but for tax purposes they honoured the ritual of writing and cashing rent checks.

At home, Andy stripped out of the faded, rough clothes he had worn to the interview. He unlaced the worker’s boots and tossed his old jeans into a heap. Then he dressed again, in a pressed shirt and creased trousers. A knock on the front door interrupted him.

Two raps, a pause, two more raps, a second pause, one final rap.

As always, secret code.

His one irritation about living in close proximity to his mother was her tiresome habit of visiting him soon after he arrived home. His complaints had caused her to delay her entry by a few minutes, but she could not resist coming up the stairs and sharing a word within the half-hour.

“Hi, Ma.”

“Andy! You were up early this morning!”

“My prerogative, Ma.”

“Where were you off to?”

“My business, Ma.”

“I’m just making conversation.” She was entering deeper into his apartment, scanning, sniffing slightly, curious as to whether or not he was alone.

“You taught me to be secretive, Ma. Don’t complain about the results.”

“Secretive about secrets, Andy. Not secretive for the sake of being secretive.”

Never a tall woman, she seemed to be shrinking daily. Andy had wondered if the process would ever stop, or would she continue to shrivel until, one day, he’d be unable to find her amid her pillows and sheets unless she spoke up. Around the house, she tended to wear her bathrobe over her nightdress, and only when special guests were coming over did she bother to put
on a proper outfit and don her cape. Mrs. Stettler was interested in the occult, and had belonged to a secret spiritual group while her son was growing up. Covert knocks and coded rings on the telephone, abrupt moves in the middle of the night and a strict prohibition against outsiders coming into the house had defined his childhood. The techniques came naturally to him now. He could lead a double or a triple life, deceive as easily as breathe. In her dotage, Mrs. Stettler restricted herself to reading tarot cards and hosting the occasional midnight seance. To her friends she was a harmless daffy duck, but her son had taken up the mantle of the secret life. Even she did not know what he did for a living, or how he managed in the world.

“Ma, I’m heading out soon. Is there something you wanted?”

“The
TV Guide,
dear. I’ve misplaced mine.”

He smiled. She always had an answer, one that never sounded as though it had been divined on the spur of the moment. He had inherited the knack. Andy always had an answer, too.

After sending her on her way with the magazine and wolfing down a quick bite, he headed out for his squash club. This was a lengthy jaunt, for he preferred to live among a mix of French and immigrant populations while socializing in the more affluent English neighbourhoods farther away. He had to drive across the northern rim of the city into the western sector and get off the expressway in a community of shopping malls, bungalows, and split-level homes. Werner Honigwachs was waiting for him when he arrived, and the two shook hands.

“I got a call from Lucy,” Honigwachs told him.

“Already?”

“She’s hot to trot. She thinks I should hire you.”

The two men chuckled.

Honigwachs carried himself with a presidential air.
He had a round face, with eyes set wide apart and the cheekbones unusually broad, flat plateaus. Although somewhat small, his nose was distinctive, the tip pushed slightly to one side. His black hair was trimmed to perfection, his fingernails equally well manicured. Trappings of his success were in evidence. Rolex watch. A substantial gold wedding band on one finger, on another a hefty topaz stone nestled in a bed of diamonds on a white-gold ring. The suit was a striped executive grey, a superb fit. Solidity exemplified his appearance, the large, square shoulders sloping to a heavyweight’s chest. That he looked after himself was apparent to Andy, for his body type would noticeably sag if he let himself go. He was a six-footer, around two hundred pounds.

“She told me I had to get through the weekend first, prove myself.”

“The weekend won’t be easy,” Honigwachs cautioned.

“I can handle it. The worse it is, the better for me. A little sympathy will help seal the bond between me and Lucy. You were right, Werner. She’s a babe.”

“Did you meet anyone else?”

“Nope. Wasn’t introduced. She did leave to talk to someone—”

“Randall Largent,” Honigwachs interjected.

“He’s the guy onside, right?”

“Get that straight. Randall Largent, wild white hair, looks like a mad scientist. It’s a studied look, incidentally. He’s neither mad nor much of a scientist. Yes, he’s the one onside. His partner is Harry Hillier, short, stooped, bald on top, baritone voice—he’s not onside. Harry knows nothing about you.”

“Largent knows.”

“Largent knows and I know. Period. To everyone else you’re a lab rat coming in from the cold.”

“Except for Lucy. I’m the man of her dreams.”

“So soon?”

“I got that feeling.”