The Killing Circle

writer too. And I AM! It was like he READ MY MIND!!” vs “actually saw PR on queen street the other day, trying (but failing) to look like a ‘normal guy’, walking with a bag of groceries(!?) pretentious twat!”).

I’m about to log off when the cursor finds the day’s most recent entry. Another bulletin from therealsandman:

One down.

Angela gets back to me. She has to work late tonight, but can meet me later on. For some reason I insist it be at her place (which she reluctantly agrees to). After she hangs up, I realize I need to see wherever she lives in order to make sure she’s real.

I’m set to arrive at Angela’s around eight, which gives me time to put in a call to the only number other than hers I have from the circle. Len.

“The police just left,” he says, skipping over hello, as though only a day sits between now and our last conversation instead of years. “Did you hear what happened to Petra?”

“I heard. Was the man you spoke to named Ramsay?”

“I was too freaked to really listen. Kind of a funny guy.”

“Yeah?”

“Like funny strange and funny ha-ha at the same time.”

“That’s him.”

I would walk to Len’s apartment in Parkdale but the heatwave has once again broken the temperature record it set the day before, so I head west along King in the Toyota with the windows down. I turn left toward the lake, into one of the blocks of stately family homes long since cut up into dilapidated rooming houses. Len’s building looks even worse than the others. The paint peeling off the porch in long curls. The front windows obscured by pinned-up flags, tin foil and garbage bags in place of blinds.

Len has the attic flat. The side entrance is open as he said it would be and I climb up the narrow stairs past the suffocating assaults of hash smoke and boiled soup bones and paint thinner seeping out from under the doors.

Rounding the corner to the last flight, I look up to see Len waiting at the top. The big doofus stooped in the doorframe, spongy with sweat but otherwise looking relieved to see me.

“It’s you,” he says.

“Were you expecting somebody else?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

Len’s apartment is a single room. A small counter, hotplate and bar fridge in one corner, a bare mattress on the floor, and the only natural light coming from two windows the size of hardcover books, one facing the street and the other the yard. The severely sloped ceiling drops on either side from a beam that cuts the space in half, which allows Len to stand straight only when situated in the middle of the room. On the walls, movie posters bubbled with moisture. The Exorcist, Suspiria, Night of the Living Dead. The floor strewn with laundry that smells of a battle between deodorant and old socks.

“Have a seat,” Len offers, scooping a pile of paperbacks off a folding chair. It leaves him to sit cross-legged on the floor. An over-heated kid ready for storytime.

“So, how have you been?”

“Okay. Not writing much. I haven’t been able to think straight for a while now. It’s hard to write spooky stuff when you’re living spooky stuff.”

Over Len’s shoulder, stacked atop makeshift shelves made of milk crates, I notice my book. The cover tattered, the pages within fattened by greasyfingered rereadings.

“I couldn’t sleep for a week the first time I read it,” Len says, following my gaze.

“Sorry.”

“No need to be. The best parts weren’t yours.”

“No argument there.”

Len glances at the door, as though to make sure it’s locked. All at once the haggard, skittish look of him reveals he’s been cooking away up here far longer than is healthy.

“When was the last time you went outside?”

“I don’t like to go out much any more,” he says. “It’s like when you have a sense that you’re being watched, but when you turn there’s nothing there? I have that all the time now.”

“Did you tell Ramsay about it?”

“No. It’s a secret. A secret agent secret. You tell and you’re dead.”

“I know what you mean.”

“He asked about you.”

“What did he want to know?”

“If you had any relationship with Petra outside the circle. What I thought of you.”

I keep my eyes on Len as he selects what to reveal. He doesn’t seem the sort of man who can stand too much pressure, so I do my best to apply some in my stare.

“I told him you were my friend,” he says finally.

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know anything else.”

“Aside from the source for my book.”

“Aside from that.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t tell him about it.”

“Who else have you spoken to?”

“Petra called. Angela, too. She told me about Conrad’s accident. Even Ivan came round just the day before yesterday. All of them scared shitless.”

“Not William?”

“Are you kidding? The day that guy looks me up it’s time to move.”

All at once, the stifling heat in the room closes in on me. There isn’t half enough air for two sets of lungs to live on, and Len is getting most of it anyway, panting like an overfed retriever.

“Angela told you about Conrad’s accident?”

“I told you she did.”

“But did she tell you that anyone else was in the car when he died?”

“Was there someone else?”

“No. No, there wasn’t,” I say, banging my head on the ceiling when I stand. “Sorry, but I’m late for another meeting.”

“Who with?”

“Angela, actually.”

“She must be pissed with you.”

“Apparently she’s decided to let it slide.”

Len scratches the islands of beard along his jawline.

“I want to show you something,” he says.

Len uncrosses his legs and rolls over the floor to the milk-crate shelves. His thick fingers plow through the piles of comics, digging down into the wreckage of toppled towers of books. By the time he finds what he’s looking for his T-shirt is black with perspiration.

He scrambles over on hands and knees to where I’m standing and hands me a book. A literary journal I have heard of, The Tarragon Review. One of the dozens of obscure regional publications that print short stories and poems for readerships that number as high as the two figures.

“You in this?” I ask, expecting Len is trying to show off his first appearance in print.

“Check out the table of contents.”

I read every title and author on the list. None of it rings a bell.

“Look again,” Len urges. “The names.”