(11) Black and Blue Ops
A quiet morning of moving slowly about the place, tidying up before the Clean Sweep ladies arrived. A timeless thirty minutes of breathing slowly in the conservatory. A random thought about Jordan. Several pointed thoughts about Janet’s husband, some detective novel theorising, and hey-ho, some psychic input from wherever that came from. Spirit talks, as Jordan was wont to say, but you have to listen. The image, for image it was, not words of wisdom, was cardboard boxes loaded into trunks and driven away. A standard commercial parking lot, maybe a Tim’s or a Golden Arches and boxes going from one trunk to another. Bit bigger than shoe boxes. Smoothly and efficiently. About ten or twelve. One of the guys was Jackson, and the other, his contact, maybe an off duty cop.
Andrew was in denial mode, so he strolled out to the lakeside, passed the vegetables stirring themselves to action, and served himself the view. He’d been there a couple of minutes when he realised that his feet were bare. Seduced by spring. Definitely something to announce on Facebook. Years before you’d just do it and enjoy it, now you went about announcing it. People in Australia and New Mexico would know of his bare footed adventure. But not of his toe-dipping psychism. He moved back from the waterline to his Muskoka chair and settled in for a lounge in the morning sun.
His life of details and schedules and dramas melted away into the moment of warm enjoyment. It was a glorious reprieve from the day’s demands, and yet despite his surrender to the oasis, part of him, some insistently curious kitten, wanted to know what would happen next. He abandoned his amusement in time for the Clean Sweep ladies, greeting them at their car. Even more cheerful than usual, they warned of a crippling schedule and need to be allowed to get right to it. Andrew deplored the lack of witty banter, claiming that was his hidden agenda and that a dust free domicile was the last of his concerns. They laughed as he poured them each a coffee. As they were obviously in no mood for his delaying tactics he returned outdoors, still barefoot, padded about delightedly on the warming lawn, chewing on a couple of oatmeal cookies discovered trying to hide themselves beneath some bagels. That would be the last time they’d try a stunt like that. He parked himself once more in the Muskoka chair, knowing he’d have more than an hour to contemplate the view before anything else required attending to. He would have lost himself in the experience, and gladly too, but for the recurring images, making him feel that he was supposed to follow up on them.
Wasn’t how that whole wrangle with the Randy got started? Curiosity born of psychism and nurtured by righteous avenger fantasies? Why couldn’t he just sit here, a Buddha smile on his all-understanding lips and let the world riddle itself with ambitions and desires? Was he to be forever haunted by philanthropy and putting the world to rights? No, let’s be honest, that should be philanthropy, putting the world to rights and priapic adventurism. The answer, he giddily suspected , was yes. Well, he’d had a goodly dose of priapic adventurism, so maybe it was time to put the world to rights. And let’s face it, it looked like he was going to have to shoot right past all those Arab Spring kerfuffles, the endless nightmare of child soldiers and massacres in the Congo and straight to this mystery swirling around Jackson and his hockey sluts. And he somehow had the feeling that the Hugh and Robert show had gone into remission for the time being, so that left him free to snoop around this local skullduggery.
But where oh where to start? Maybe Jordan would have some ideas? Heck, he hadn’t heard from him in an age, where might that Zen master be? Right at the end of his telephone line, as it turned out. Reading yesterday’s Globe and Mail and sipping herb tea. After teasing him about his stable of fillies, he listened carefully to the details as Andrew understood them.
