Dan Sharp Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Jeffrey Round

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      He looked over at the table of teenage girls trembling with laughter as they ate their treats and gossiped in Korean. Chances were some of their fellow immigrants would have sent them packing rather than allow them access to these same shores, given half a chance. Dan also knew that men like him and Donny would quickly have been refused entry or denied their rights by many of these same new citizens. That is, if they weren’t imprisoned or killed outright. You didn’t overturn positive human values and replace them with weaker, intolerant ones. That was not the Canadian way.

      Donny was nearly over his gloom-and-doom act about the lost job, no longer convinced his life was at an end if he never sniffed another vial of overpriced skunk gland reduction. He was even considering taking time off before embarking on a search for the next phase of his existence. Still, he’d come in reflective, on the down-turned side.

      Dan turned his attention to what Donny’d been saying.

      “… and you start to wonder, you know, are the good things still ahead of you or have they already passed you by? And did you even notice?”

      Dan listened as a sailor might eye heavy, low-lying clouds in a rising wind — concerned, but not overly. And then it was his turn. He described his confrontation with Lucille Killingworth outside her estate.

      Donny paused, walnut cake halfway to his mouth. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about! First the incident on the boat with the Brazilian boy, and now attempted murder. Is there nothing you won’t stop at? I think you’re becoming unhinged. And nice shiner, by the way. I assume you’ll let me in on that one eventually?”

      “Nothing to tell — I got mugged in Sudbury.”

      Donny looked at Dan for a long while before speaking. “Why are you doing this?”

      “Doing what?”

      “This!” He waved his hands about, oblivious to the Korean family sitting next to them warily evading his reach. “All of this crazy man stuff.”

      “It’s my job.”

      “Your job is not to run amok at weddings and attack rich heiresses whose families comprise the bedrock of the Canadian establishment.”

      “True.”

      Donny slowly shook his head and looked away, a monk contemplating life’s greater mysteries. Finally, he turned back. “Who were your heroes, man? And don’t give me some crap about Superman, ’cause he’s not a real hero and you’re not an American.”

      Dan shoved a bite of walnut cake into his mouth, savouring the sweet warmth. “What if he was my hero?”

      “I detect insincerity.”

      “Okay, then maybe I don’t have any larger-than-life heroes.” Dan shrugged. “My heroes are the people who manage to get through the day without doing damage to themselves and others around them. The ones who do the best they can, without throwing the towel in and crying foul because they wanted more than life’s meagre offerings allowed them. People like my Aunt Marge.”

      “Good one.” Donny nodded, downed his coffee with a flourish. “Me? Angela Davis. She was my hero as a kid — and still is now. Black rights, human rights, women’s rights, the struggle for truth and justice. She fought for what she believed in and she paid the price. All those years in jail and all those words written for the cause. That woman had more conscientiousness and compassion in her little finger than … I don’t know what. But is it not the very definition of tragedy,” here his eyes glinted mischief, “that this woman who did so much to further the cause of race and class struggles and fight for human dignity, should be reduced in our collective consciousness to a hairstyle?”

      Dan grinned. “But a hairdo with attitude — or latitude. It was a pretty big ’fro, remember.”

      From self-pity and childhood heroes through to the shear absurdity of life. A trip across the universe over a cup of coffee. That’s what he loved about Donny. You could never tell what would come out of him next: gloom or joy, kindness or anger. He was a jazz riff tossed from horn to bass to sax, used up and carried around and turned inside out till it was almost gone, only to return triumphant in another key. That was his genius.

      “Compassion, huh?” Dan said.

      “That’s the word.”

      “So just how compassionate are you feeling these days?”

      “I smell a leading question,” Donny said, eyeing him with suspicion.

      “Are you willing to do your part for the cause? To help further the struggle, given the opportunity — and I gather that you have time to do so, given the inclination.”

      “Now I’m really suspicious. Tell.”

      Dan took a sip of coffee, tried not to gag on the taste, and added another spoonful of sugar. “I only do this for you, you know,” he said. And proceeded to fill Donny in on his adventures with Lester and his upcoming trip.

      “Another chapter in the Craig Killingworth Saga?”

      “Uh-huh. And what I need,” he said, “is for you to take Lester for a few days while I’m in B.C. Because I still haven’t found a place for him.”

      Donny’s face was impassive. Dan felt the need for a sermon coming on, one of those “Here Are Ten Good Reasons Why You Should Do This” manifestoes. The kind he’d invariably failed at with other kids at school. “Ked’s going to stay with Kendra, of course. But I can’t ask her to take in a stray.”

      “Okay,” Donny said. “I’ll do it.”

      “Okay? Just like that — okay?”

      “Do you want me to say I’ll think it over?”

      “No, I want you to say okay.”

      “And then you say…?”

      “Thank you.”

      Donny nodded. “You have a need. I have time and opportunity, as you put it. I’m out of work, feeling suicidal, and in need of distraction. Plus I am deeply concerned about you, so I will do this for you. A few days, you said? As in three or fewer?”

      “Guaranteed.”

      “And then the Craig Killingworth Story will be over for good?”

      “Absolutely.”

      “Done.”

      Dan watched the big boat manoeuvre the cliffs and head into the harbour, water dividing white and dark behind it. The Queen of Nanaimo. The wake rebounded off the island. He’d watched with a feeling of regret as they passed between Mayne and Pender Island, but there was nothing to be done about that. He’d sensed the unvoiced questions in Trevor’s emails, heard the hopeful tone when he asked if Dan might be coming back that way for a visit. It wouldn’t do to contact him if he had no intention of staying.

      Once off the ferry terminal, he noted the wary faces that marked his progress up the coast. They seemed to sense his outsider status, the eternal other-ness about him that followed no matter where he went. He passed farms and homesteads. Here the СКАЧАТЬ