After the Horses Read online

  “There was also a rumour Yuri was making payoffs to someone, so they’ll be looking for that, too.”

  “Payoffs for what?”

  “Ah.” Dan heard a sharp intake of breath as the cigarette swung into action. “That I do not know. For the answer, we must consult Charles. The reservation’s in an hour.”

  The place was packed. Fifteen years earlier, Toronto had barely heard of sushi. When you could find the stuff, it was priced to the hilt. Now it was de rigueur at cocktail hour in all the stylish homes and there was an izakaya — or sake house — on every other corner. From feeling squeamish about raw fish and squiggly things on their plates to becoming connoisseurs in a decade and a half, Torontonians had made the leap and landed solidly on both feet.

  Dan sipped his soda water and looked across at Charles the lawyer as he deftly scissored a maki roll with chopsticks and lifted it to his mouth. He was, Dan noted, expertly groomed and outfitted in the image of a successful man. His moustache looked hand-manicured. Donny was right, however. Despite being textbook-handsome, Charles wasn’t exotic enough for Dan’s recall. He’d met a thousand Charleses in his time, each indistinguishable from the next. In his opinion, they put more emphasis on their couture and professional alliances than anything that might reasonably be called a personality. Still, he reminded himself, it wasn’t their fault. They were programmed by their upbringings and choice of career. But this Charles at least was passionate about something: his husband’s security.

  “He doesn’t actually know I’m here,” he confided to Dan.

  “Lionel’s a very private guy,” Donny seconded.

  “Even more than me,” Charles said, smiling broadly. “And I’m the lawyer in the family.”

  “How do you think he’d feel if he knew you were discussing his private matters without his knowledge?” Dan asked.

  Charles leaned in. “I’m counting on your discretion, Dan. If he felt you were on his side, or at the very least that you wouldn’t say anything about this to anyone else, I’m sure he’d be fine about it.”

  A lawyer’s answer.

  “And if I were meeting him to discuss your private concerns, how would you feel?”

  Charles looked uncomfortable for a millisecond then smiled his winning smile again. His eyes floated lightly over Dan’s chest. “I’d be fine knowing I was in your capable hands.”

  Dan caught the flirtation under the remark, but let it pass. “Then let’s talk,” he said.

  Donny relaxed visibly and leaned back. Maybe, just maybe, his best friend was not going to be the uptight prude he so often proved. Dan didn’t like to disappoint Donny, but he wouldn’t step outside the bounds of his profession without good reason. Having an attractive lawyer for an ex-boyfriend did not constitute good reasoning to Dan’s thinking.

  Charles looked at Dan. “When we spoke, Donald assured me this would be kept in strict confidence.”

  Dan shot a glance at Donny: Donald?

  Charles continued. “When I told him why I was concerned, he explained that you might be the best person to turn to, all things considered.”

  “All things considered?” Dan said.

  Charles’s smile crumpled. “Sorry, I wasn’t … when you hear what I’m about to tell you, I think you’ll understand my hesitation.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “As Donald has told you, Lionel was chief accountant for a bar called the Saddle and Bridle.”

  “I’m familiar with it,” Dan said.

  “Then you will know that the owner, Yuri Malevski, was found murdered a couple of months ago.”

  “Yes. I’d heard.”

  “Lionel was also Yuri’s personal accountant.”

  Charles paused. It seemed a cue for something.

  Dan cocked his head to encourage him to continue. “And?”

  “Well …” Charles blinked and smiled again. It seemed to be his default when all else failed.

  The penny dropped. “And being Yuri’s personal accountant required a certain amount of discretion on Lionel’s part,” Dan suggested.

  Charles nodded and turned to Donny. “This guy’s good,” he said.

  Dan got the message: saying things for Charles meant he did not have to make any potentially incriminating statements himself.

  “Which is why Lionel is reluctant to talk to anyone,” Dan went on, half guessing. “But surely the police have already questioned him about the murder?”

  Charles’s expression turned grave. “They did. Lionel is afraid because of what he knows. When Yuri didn’t show up at their last meeting —”

  “Sorry, when was this?” Dan interrupted.

  “Two months ago. Right after we got back from Mexico. Lionel and Yuri were scheduled to meet the day after we returned. It was a Saturday. February twelfth, to be exact. Yuri called on Tuesday and left a message while we were away on a jungle tour. Lionel didn’t get it till Thursday. When he called back, the mailbox was full, so he left a message on Yuri’s home phone.”

  “And Yuri was a no-show on Saturday. What happened?”

  “Lionel called Yuri’s cell a couple of times in the morning, but there was no answer. He showed up at the bar for their meeting, but no one had seen Yuri. So Lionel tried his home. Still nothing. Nor had there been any further communication from Yuri saying he wanted to postpone the meeting. It was a monthly affair, so Yuri always knew in advance when he needed to change the date. Anyway, when Yuri didn’t show up, Lionel started to worry that something had happened to him.”

  “Why?”

  Charles shrugged. “He knew Yuri’s lifestyle: sketchy friends, drug users, and rent boys. You name it — if it was dirty, Yuri was into it.”

  Dan nodded. “What did Lionel do next?”

  “He called a few friends and business associates, including one of the bar managers who was off duty that day. Turns out no one had heard from Yuri for several days, in fact. They went over to the house and found the front door was double-locked and that he’d changed the entry code. That was odd, too, since Yuri always told Lionel when he changed the code. But this time he hadn’t.”

  “Who found him?” Dan interjected.

  “The bar manager called the police, who called the security company and got them to let them in. They found Yuri murdered in his bed. They’ve questioned a lot of people, but they haven’t named any suspects yet.”

  Dan took this in. “So who do you think did it?”

  Charles looked uncomfortable and turned to Donny again.

  “Tell him,” Donny urged.

  Charles clasped his hands. Dan resisted the urge to tell him to stop using over-obvious court tactics and get on with the story.

  Charles nodded, as though trying to convince himself. “Lionel thinks the police did it and will try to cover things up.”

  “Why?”

  Donny leaned forward like a spectator at a hanging waiting for the trap door to open.

  “Blackmail,” Charles said.

  Dan blinked. “Blackmail?”

  “Payoff money. Call it what you want.”

  “Payoff for what? To whom?”

  Charles looked to Donny. For the first time there was a glimmer of doubt in his eyes. He turned back to Dan. “Surely you’ve heard of bar payoffs? The owners pay the police for overlooking certain violations. Overcrowding and whatnot. A regular payoff ensures your bar is not visited on certain nights of the week, that sort of thing.”

  Dan looked sceptically at him over the table. “And Lionel thinks that’s why Yuri was killed? For bar payoffs?”

  Charles looked deflated. “Yes.”

  “Did Yuri pay them?”

  “Lionel said he paid them for a while, but then he stopped paying them. That’s what the problem was.”

  Dan studied the two faces watching him as though he could see clearly beneath the surface of what seemed to him a very slight mystery.

  “Then why not bust him or fine the bar? Why kill him? They’re police, not hired assassins.”r />
  Charles seemed at a loss for words.

  “Maybe to send a message?” Donny suggested.

  Dan gave him a jaundiced look. “That’s all very colourful. You back on Netflix again?”

  Charles studied him. “You don’t think it likely?”

  Dan shrugged. “All I’m saying is it sounds too much like shoddy TV. Who would they kill next? Every bar owner who put a stop payment on their blackmail cheques?” Dan let Charles squirm a bit before he continued. “Who else might have wanted Yuri dead? Did he have a quarrel with anyone? As you said, he was into questionable things. Maybe he pissed off the wrong person.”

  Charles leaned back. “You’re right. There was an ex-boyfriend. He gets a checkmark in both boxes: drugs and immigration. He also knew about the payments to the police.”

  “An ex-boyfriend? What’s his name?”

  “Santiago Suárez. They had a big messy break-up not long before Yuri was killed. If I were a cop, he’d be my first choice in a suspects line-up.”

  “Then you should have a chat with him,” Dan suggested. “Or better yet, let the police do it.”

  Charles shrugged. “We would, but we don’t think he’d talk to us.”

  Donny was staring at him. Dan felt that sense of futility again that said he wasn’t going to be able to avoid whatever Donny was about to ask.

  He turned to face him. “What?”

  “You could ask him,” Donny said at last.

  “That would be interfering in police business. Why would he have any reason to talk to me?”

  “Because he’s an illegal. He won’t go to the police, because they’ll throw him out of the country. You could threaten him with exposure if he won’t talk to you.”

  Dan shook his head. “You want me to threaten him? What TV series is this coming from? Since when do you encourage me to be a hard-ass and go around interfering in things that are not my province and threatening illegal aliens?”

  Donny shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

  “I’ll say,” Dan said.

  “There’s another problem,” Charles said. “We can’t find him.”

  “You don’t know where he is?”

  Charles shook his head. “Nobody’s seen him since we got back from Mexico. What if I paid you to look for him and then let me decide if I want to talk to him?”

  Dan looked off for a moment, his training kicking in. “He could be in a million different places. If he thought the inquiry might implicate him in a murder, he very likely absconded back to … where is he from?”

  “Cuba,” Charles supplied.

  “Cuba. Hmm. Maybe not then. You don’t willingly go back to Cuba, from what I hear.” He considered. “Well, he’d go wherever Cuban expats go. Maybe there’s an enclave in Montreal, for all we know. Did he have money?”

  “Not his own,” Charles said. “He was living off Yuri.”

  “Maybe he killed Yuri and stole the money,” Donny suggested, looking more than a little excited by the thought.

  “You should be the sleuth,” Dan told him.

  “Thanks, but I’ll stick to fashion.”

  Dan turned to Charles. “Give me some addresses and maybe a few phone numbers. Whatever you have.”

  He copied the information in a small notebook.

  “You’ll look into it?” Charles asked hopefully.

  Their waiter passed by with a flirtatious smile. Charles palmed him a JP Morgan Palladium credit card. Private bank and an extremely high spending threshold, Dan noted. The waiter registered the card for a mere second before resuming his expression of unruffled winsomeness.

  “I’ll ask around,” Dan said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  “Whatever the cost, Lionel and I will pay. Just let us know what it’s worth to you.”

  Dan stood, marvelling again at the tendency of men to think their clothes and credit cards were anything like indicators of their true worth.

  Two

  Tall in the Saddle

  The sun threw long shadows as Dan left the sake house and headed down the stairs. He passed a skinhead seated on the bottom step beside a mangy dog, some ersatz version of a pit bull. The kid’s boots reminded Dan of the Doc Martens of his youth, except these looked far more pricey. Make-believe punk. Someone born three decades too late trying to be the person he imagined himself to be. How do you liberate your inner anarchist? You could change your outer self, but not your internal reality. Dan dropped a loonie in his outstretched palm and walked on.

  Richmond Street lay a good fifteen minutes south. For years he’d never been able to recall which of the one-way streets between King and Queen was which, until someone told him the city planner’s secret: boy-girl-boy-girl. King, Adelaide, Richmond, Queen. That cemented it for him.

  He passed Massey Hall, that gloomy, neo-classical tribute to Canada’s premier family of days gone by. Back when Dan was growing up amidst Northern Ontario’s mining industry sprawl, the joke went that Canada had no social classes, just the masses and the Masseys. All that was long gone. In these days of rampant consumerism, the country’s social compact had splintered beyond any chance of reunification. Dan thought the old system highly preferable.

  The Saddle — or more correctly the Saddle and Bridle, as it was christened — had opened at the outset of the first AIDS decade. Back then it catered to a generation of gay men who felt they’d found themselves at last, only to discover that in finding themselves many would lose their lives and their friends far too early and in extremely unpleasant ways. The ugliness of the disease in its early years could not be overstated, before drug cocktails and therapies commuted a death decree into a life sentence, albeit one with no foreseeable chance of pardon.

  Nevertheless, the bar thrived, becoming one of Toronto’s pre-eminent dance clubs, changing hands and owners several times along the way before ending up in the clutches of one Yuri Malevski, a Macedonian immigrant who had come to Canada seeking freedom from discrimination in the Old World. Malevski happily embraced all that was forward-thinking about his adopted home, even while a fearsome virus was decimating his community in ways far more atrocious than even the worst politicians and religious fanatics had been capable of devising.

  Like nearly everyone else in the gaybourhood, Dan had heard of the murdered nightclub owner. Who hadn’t? Over the years, Malevski’s reputation grew. He was praised for being a hard-working community entrepreneur, a generous AIDS-charity benefactor, even while rumours proliferated about the deteriorating physical condition of the bar as well as its notorious after-hours activities. And the band played on. Few blamed Malevski for what happened behind the scenes in his club. Drug use was rampant, and, despite the risks it entailed, sex had become a free-for-all. One pair of eyes could not be everywhere, they said. Not his place to try and stop it, they said. This was back in the days when the gay community was still reinventing itself, looking for greater acceptance from the world at large as it transformed from social pariah to business success. Who would dare to interfere?

  The old millennium ended and another began. All the while, the club thrived. Malevski became a solid part of the establishment, entrenching himself in the bedrock of the community. Then the murder happened. It was a shock to many, but not to all. The real bombshell was the way his reputation got served up to public censor. It was messy, semen-splattered news of the coarsest sort: a rich pervert — who entertained hustlers, drug dealers, drag queens, and transsexuals — found murdered in his luxury home. The media feasted on it. What newspaper wouldn’t splash it across their front pages, wringing every last cent from a curiosity-starved public? Strangely, in all this, the police were unusually reticent, treating it as an everyday incident, a run-of-the-mill murder rather than the sensational headline material it was proving. That in itself, Dan thought, made it noteworthy. Why downplay the case when publicity might help catch a killer? Still, chasing illegal Cuban boyfriends and other potential murderers wasn’t his thing. Let someone else be heroic — the Dan
Sharps of this world needed to be practical.

  He passed a muffin shop, letting his eyes roam over the display while noting a dozen ways to flavour something he didn’t particularly want before deciding he didn’t actually need another sugar high. He pictured Donny’s fingers tapping restlessly on the counter whenever he ran out of cigarettes. If he wanted to criticize his friend’s bad habits, it wouldn’t do to have too many of his own.

  Dan found the Saddle and Bridle looking as forlorn and neglected as a cast-off lover. Sheets of bare plywood covered the windows. Concert posters had been pasted over the exterior like a second skin. From outside, it appeared to be little more than an overgrown, neo-gothic pub, heavy on the brickwork. Passing by on the street, you might not even register the nature of its clientele unless you stopped to consider the giant mural of two moustachioed men seated together on a black stallion, their smiles gleaming three storeys above the parking lot. Inside told a different tale. The walls were covered with far more revealing artwork of men in various states of undress and sexual postures — nothing extraordinary for a gay bar, though Dan recalled a rumour the place contained a labyrinthine basement suitable for torture, long-term imprisonment, and the deepest, darkest acts of fetishistic carnality, all just waiting for Vlad the Impaler to return.

  He skirted the building, trying first the front then the back door. Both were locked. He was about to step aside and be on his way when he heard a staccato tapping from within.

  A dim recollection surfaced through the bric-a-brac of memory: himself as a twenty-something clubgoer, right before he became a dad and his social life virtually ended overnight, having just had a pass made at him by a drunk whose hands wouldn’t accept “no” for an answer. He’d been upstairs in a corral-like area, surrounded by cowboys-in-drag with their chaps and spurs and Stetsons. This particular wrangler had a lasso strapped to his belt, though he’d looked too inebriated to use it even if he wanted to.

  Freeing himself from the man’s insistent pawing, Dan pushed his way through a maze of black-lit rooms and out a private exit leading to a back alley fire escape. At the bottom, he passed a trellised garden where a clutch of drag queens slinked about, cocktails in hand, before making good his escape onto the street. It was months before he returned.