He answered it right after the third ring and didn’t speak again for three minutes.
Ricky had been listening to a terrific book-on-tape in the car lately: The Manager Inside Me. He thought it could really help a forward thinker like him define his goals more precisely and hack and slash his way toward them. While the man in Toronto was tearing strips off him every which way, Ricky stayed calm and detached. The Manager Inside Me had a chapter on that very subject, “Accepting Constructive Criticism.”
The man fed Ricky more shit than he ordinarily cared to swallow, but nothing truly damaging was said, and keeping The Manager Inside Me in mind helped: the shit still tasted like shit, but it went down easier somehow. When the rant finally wound down, Ricky calmly responded point by point. First, a brief strategic assessment of their situation to show he’d weighed both the risks and opportunities. Then a review of their agreed-upon business objectives. Finally, his plan to break new ground where the earth had been scorched.
To Ricky’s relief, the man agreed to everything. Yes, he warned Ricky that the time for mistakes was past but, before hanging up, complimented him on his strategic approach to damage control.
Man, Ricky loved that tape.
CHAPTER 9
Toronto: Tuesday, June 27
I know I’m in Israel but it looks like downtown Toronto. I’m with the Bar Kochba Infantry, patrolling the corner of Yonge and Dundas outside the Eaton Centre, where a busker in a sleeveless black denim vest drums on overturned food tubs and draws a funked-up head-bobbing crowd. I’m in desert cammies, cradling my Mikutzrar-a short-barrelled M-16 customized for urban combat-scanning the crowd for anyone whose clothing looks too bulky, too heavy for the heat.
Roni Galil, my sergeant, is next to me, asking for a smoke. I tell him I quit-he knows I quit, he listened to me whine about it long enough-then realize he means a joint, not a cigarette. I put my gun down on the sidewalk. I snap open a film case filled with a premixed batch of ground-up blond Lebanese hash and Marlboro tobacco that we always had good to go. I twist up a joint, but as I’m lighting it, a child in soccer shorts and tank top approaches. He has dark curly hair and looks just like his mother, which I somehow know even though she isn’t there. While I tousle the boy’s hair he picks up my M-16 and passes it back to someone in the crowd who passes it to someone else. When Roni takes the joint from me, I realize my weapon is gone. I have only my sidearm-not even the Sig Sauer they give to officers, just a standard 9-millimetre Beretta.
I want my M-gun back. I punch the boy hard in the face. His nose breaks and he gags as blood streams into his throat. I push my way through the crowd but everyone starts pushing back, kicking at my feet, trying to knock them out from under me. If I go down I’ll never get up again, they’ll fucking kick me to death. I plant my legs and clutch at their clothing, bunch it in my fists like a man trying to keep his head above water. I call for Roni but he’s sharing the joint with people around him. He can’t hear me. He’s not even offering it to me, the shit. No one can hear me now, not above the screaming-my screaming and the screams of the mob and the boy with the broken nose.
The exact circumstances of my Israel dreams are never the same. Sometimes we’re in a narrow alley and a torrent of water comes rushing at us, sucking us down in a vortex. Or a herd of camels thunders around a corner, egged on by small boys with sticks, nasty smelly animals with bony joints and deadly hooves that can split a man’s head in two. In one dream, people in apartments overlooking the alley started throwing appliances at us, everything from fans and toasters to full-size ovens, fridges, washers and dryers. Whatever details might be different, it’s always Roni Galil and me, trapped in a bad place with bad things happening all around.
It was 5:24 a.m. when I woke with the dream still in my mind. I knew I’d never get back to sleep and turned on the radio, looking for something, anything, to sweep away the image of the bloodied child. I caught a few West Coast baseball scores, then a news update. The heat wave was still the top story. Several related deaths had been reported, including a ninety-three-year-old woman whose power had been cut off for non-payment, leaving her without so much as a fan. Ontario Hydro spin doctors would have to take a break from defending their lucrative consulting contracts to deal with that one.
A smog alert had been issued for the area stretching from Windsor, in the southernmost reaches of the province, to North Bay, two hundred miles north of Toronto. Officials in North Bay liked to tout its clean air to tourists, billing the area as the Blue Sky Region and the city itself as “Just North Enough to be Perfect.” Now their marketers would have to come up with a new slogan. Something like “North Bay: Not as Brown as Downtown.”
My apartment didn’t smell much better after all the cigarettes Dante Ryan had smoked last night. I opened both balcony doors and emptied and rinsed the ashtray he had filled. The evening had been so surreal I might have thought it a dream; a better dream than the one I had just had. But the photo of Lucas Silver and his parents still lay on my coffee table. The contract on their lives was all too real, if what Ryan told me had been true.
Was it? Could it be? Did he really care whether a five-year-old lived or died? Or was he using me in some way-to flush Silver out, or maybe set me up for Marco Di Pietra, who would never forget what I had cost him.
For the moment, I had to assume Ryan was telling the truth: that he wanted to save a life and needed my help to do it. I had things in this world to make up for, repairs to make, and I wasn’t getting the opportunity to do it behind my desk at Beacon.
The first thing to do was stop thinking of myself as still being in recovery. So instead of doing a physio routine on my arm, I eased myself down to the floor to begin a salutation to the sun. I worked my body slowly and deliberately through the movements, feeling tightness in my back, shoulders and calves as muscles moved in ways they had missed for months. By the time I completed four salutations my right arm felt like a wolf had clamped its jaws around it. I was damp with sweat, much of it from the heat and humidity but at least some due to my own efforts.
I rolled up to a standing position and marked a place on the floor where two parquet tiles met. I planted my feet there and began working through the sanchin kata. Katas are designed to improve a martial artist’s balance, fluidity and style, but they also provide a good cardio workout, even-perhaps especially- when done slowly and mindfully.
Sanchin is moderate in its degree of difficulty, with forty-seven moves in all, including eight attacks. Before my injury, I had done sanchin so often it felt ingrained. I could do it left to right or right to left, beginning to end or backwards. I had done it blindfolded but didn’t think I’d be trying that any time today.
During my first go at it, I felt awkward, having to think about the moves rather than letting them flow through me. My goal was to begin and end at precisely the same spot, but I didn’t feel rooted in it and even stumbled once in transition between defence and attack. I kept reminding myself to slow down, breathe more deeply, find the focus sanchin can bring.
My first karate teacher told me a kata was a fight against an imaginary opponent. Not that I needed imaginary opponents, with Marco Di Pietra back on the scene. I’ve since learned that katas can be far more than that. Like dance and other art forms, in the right hands they can express sentiments about life, justice and the self. Known in English as the Three Cycles Form, sanchin symbolizes three primary conflicts of life: birth, survival and death. Only when the life cycle has ended can it begin again. When I completed my first run-through, I rested a minute and sipped water, then started again. It went more smoothly as muscle memory began kicking in. But not until the third time did I finish where I’d begun, the marked parquet tile squarely between my feet.
By seven I was heading down Broadview in my revitalized Camry. The east-facing sides of the downtown towers reflected the rising sun as though they were aflame. Not the most comforting image in our post-9/11 world, but arresting nonetheless.
I wanted to get in to work early, whip through my media clips and forward anything pertinent to Clint and his department heads, then boot back out and try to get a look at Jay Silver and family in the flesh. I figured I could do all that and still be back at my cubicle by the time Franny reeled in.
Clint’s black Pathfinder was in its reserved spot when I pulled into the Beacon lot ten minutes later. I had no idea what time he arrived in the morning. In five years I had never yet beaten him in to work. The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the office when I swiped my way in. I was in the kitchenette pouring myself a mug when Clint appeared. He made a show of looking at his watch and feigning shock at my early arrival. The good humour seemed
