The Delicate Storm

17

CARDINAL HAD MANAGED TO CATCH the last flight leaving Toronto that Wednesday for Algonquin Bay. “Thank God, you’re back,” Catherine said the moment he stepped off the tarmac. She looked pale, the lines on her face deeper.

“How is he?”

“Stable. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but they say he’s stable.”

They drove down a glistening Airport Hill toward City Hospital, Cardinal fighting an uprush of panic.

“He was having trouble breathing,” Catherine told him. “I’d dropped him at home, and he was putting groceries away when suddenly he was feeling like he couldn’t breathe. Anyway, he called his cardiologist—who called an ambulance, thank God—and now he’s in the ICU.”

His father seemed in many ways an indestructible man, but Cardinal suddenly feared that he might become incapacitated, that he would have to live with Cardinal and Catherine and they’d oversee his final months or years, wheeling him about, changing his diaper. Then Cardinal’s Catholic conscience rounded on him and threatened centuries of hellfire for that selfish thought.

At the intensive care unit they were informed that Stan Cardinal had been moved to cardiac care, on the fourth floor. The nurse told Cardinal his father was resting comfortably. “We’ve adjusted his medication, and he seems to be responding well. I suspect he’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

“Can I see him?”

“Keep it to five minutes. We don’t want to tire him out.”

“Which room is he in?”

“He’s in one of the ‘Mantis’ suites, I’m afraid—one of the curtained-off areas down the hall.”

“Wait a minute. My father’s having heart failure, and you’re telling me you’ve got him parked in the hall?”

“I’m sorry. Cutbacks courtesy of the government. A bed in the hall is the best we can do right now.”

“I saw him already,” Catherine said gently. “Why don’t I just wait here for you?”

There were three so-called Mantis suites. Cardinal’s father was in the last one, his curtain pulled back so he got some light from a window that looked out across railway tracks and the schoolyard of Algonquin High. The glass was blurry with rain.

The bed was cranked upward at a thirty-degree angle. Stan Cardinal lay sunken against the pillows, his head drooping to one side as if the weight of the clear plastic tube taped to his nostril was too much to bear. His eyes were closed, but as Cardinal approached, they fluttered open.

“Look who’s here.” His father’s voice sounded much stronger than he looked. “The forces of law and order.”

“How you feeling?”

“Like an elephant’s sitting on my chest. It’s better, though. Earlier, it was two elephants and a rhinoceros.”

“The nurse says they’ll probably send you home tomorrow.”

“I wish they’d send me home right now.”

“Well, they seem pleased with how you’re doing.” Cardinal could hear the false note of optimism in his own voice.

“I feel fine. I really do. I only called the cardiologist to see about my prescription. I didn’t expect him to haul off and call an ambulance.”

“Well, you must have needed it.”

His father shrugged and winced. His skin was grey and papery, his eyes watery.

“Are you all right? Do you need the nurse?”

“I’m fine, for God’s sake. I just want to go home. How the hell do they expect you to get better in a hospital? What you really need is to be surrounded by your own things, watch your own television, make tea in your own pot. This place, you’re at the mercy of everybody. Stuck in the hall like a sideshow. You ring and ring and they just wander by whenever they please. At home I can fix what I want, when I want. I don’t have to rely on these little Dairy Queen dollies to bring it to me.”

“I better go. They told me not to stay long.”

“Yeah, get outa here. I’ll call you as soon as they give me my walking papers.”

Driving home, Catherine reached over and touched Cardinal’s shoulder. “Maybe your dad should come and live with us for a while. You know, if the doctors say he needs to have someone around all the time, he can stay with us. I’m fine with that, if you are. I wouldn’t say so if I wasn’t.”

“I don’t think he’d stay with us anyway,” Cardinal said. “You know, when Mom died, I wasn’t sure he was going to make it, he was so … shipwrecked. But he pulled it together and got himself that little house, and there he was at the age of seventy-one, living on his own for the first time since he was twenty-something. He’s never said so, but he’s really proud of that. Self-sufficiency. Independence. It’s everything to him.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m just saying, if he needs to have people around him, we can have him with us.”

Cardinal nodded. He found it hard to look into Catherine’s eyes—she, who had suffered so much, offering her helping hand.

She asked him about work.

He gave her a brief rundown of his New York trip.

“Did you get a chance to call Kelly?”

“There wasn’t time,” Cardinal said. “I had to get back here. The problem with this case is that the luck is all running one way—against us and for whoever it is we’re after. I’m just not getting anywhere.”

Cardinal went inside the house with Catherine, but only long enough to see that everything was all right. Trying not to be too obvious about it, he checked the doors and windows for signs of tampering. There were none.

“It’s ten o’clock at night and you’ve still got your coat on,” Catherine said. “You’re not going back to work at this hour, I hope.”

“Afraid so. Shouldn’t be long, though.”

Cardinal’s next stop was the Hilltop Motel, a red brick oblong located, as the name suggested, at the top of Algonquin. He parked in an unobtrusive corner. There were only three cars in the lot, and the asphalt gleamed with black ice. Cardinal had already checked to see if Squier was still registered, but the slot in front of number eleven was empty.

While he was waiting, Cardinal listened to the news. The provincial election was gearing up. Premier Mantis had announced he would indeed run again: it was time to stay the course, not to rock the boat. His Liberal opponent, not to be outdone in clichés, thought it was time for a new dawn.

A few minutes later Calvin Squier pulled in.

Cardinal jumped out of the car and called across the lot, “Hey, Squier!”

Squier turned at the doorway of room eleven, key in hand. “Hiya, John. How’ve you been?”

“Fine. Been travelling.”

Cardinal had one hand thrust out to shake. When Squier reached out, he slapped the cuffs on him. On the slick pavement, it was beautiful: Cardinal pulled down and sideways, and Squier went down like a bagged moose, his cellphone skittering across the ice. Cardinal had the other cuff on him before he had time to catch his breath.

“Hey, come on, John. What’s going on, here?”

“Calvin Squier, you are under arrest for interfering with an investigation, for obstructing justice, for public mischief, and for anything else I can think of before I get to the crown’s office.”

“Oh, no,” Squier said. “This is awful.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to resist arrest? It would go a long way toward improving my mood.”

“Come on, John. Let me up.”

Cardinal kept his knee planted on Squier’s back while he read him his rights, enunciating every word clearly. “Do you understand these rights?”

“John, you’re going to get me in serious trouble. You don’t want to do that, do you?”

“You seem to be under the impression that we’re friends, Squier. I don’t know what gives you that idea. I can’t remember when I met anybody I liked less—and I meet a lot of unpleasant people.”

Squier had trouble getting to his feet with his hands cuffed. Cardinal steadied him and then led him across the parking lot to the car.

“This is pure pettiness,” Squier said from the back seat. “You’re just getting even for my taking your gun away the night we met.”

“Just keep talking, Squier. It always puts me in such a good mood, the sound of your voice.”

“I think if you look at this objectively, you’ll find you’re behaving unfairly.”

“Christ, Squier. How’d you ever think you could get away with it?”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

“Pretending that our murder victim was one Howard Matlock when clearly you knew he was someone else.”

“I never said he was Howard Matlock, as such. You found a wallet in his hotel room and you made that assumption.”

“Which you confirmed by your mythical trip to New York. By pretending to assist in this investigation when you are in fact actively blocking it. All that crap about the CADS base and WARR. It was all a crock, wasn’t it.”

“John, I realize that candour is the soul of good teamwork. But I work for Security Intelligence. Obviously, I’m not at liberty to explain all my actions to you.”

“I don’t care. Explain them to the judge.”