Lights Out!--A heist thriller involving the Mafia (4 page)

‘Just an experiment,' he'd said. ‘I'll get a haircut soon.'

Which he did, but instructed the barber to keep the sides and back long. ‘Just going back to my hippie days,' he said, joining the barber in a good laugh.

After showering, he came downstairs wearing a pale blue silk robe over pale blue silk pajamas. Cynthia was in the kitchen with her mother.

‘Good morning,' Smythe said cheerily.

‘Good morning, Carlton,' the mother said, not looking up from that morning's copy of the
Globe and Mail
.

He came up behind Cynthia at the sink, kissed the back of her head, and joined his mother-in-law at the table.

Cynthia turned, arms folded. ‘Carlton, I need to talk to you.'

‘Sure,' he said, pouring coffee into his cup.

‘I really don't see any reason for you to be making all these trips to South America.'

‘I told you, Cynthia, that I've developed this very close and lucrative relationship with my clients in Buenos Aires. They need nurturing, a lot of hand-holding, and I don't want to lose this account.'

‘There are plenty of clients right here in Canada,' she said, echoing her mother.

‘And I'm pursuing them, too.'

‘Frankly,' said Cynthia, ‘I don't see why you're even bothering becoming a consultant, or whatever it is you call it. Just handling the family finances should be job enough. Besides, I need you here. We're coming into a very busy social season and—'

‘I appreciate what you're saying, Cynthia, but I'm not ready to retire and sit around doing the family books and playing host to half of Toronto.'

Mrs Wiggins looked up over half-glasses as Cynthia let out a frustrated grunt and stomped from the kitchen.

‘I wish she understood my needs,' Smythe said to his mother-in-law.

‘What about
her
needs, Carlton?'

‘I'm well aware of Cynthia's needs, Mom, and I always try to meet them.'

Mrs Wiggins sighed deeply and closed the paper. She removed her glasses and used them as a prop as she turned to face him. The sermon was about to begin. ‘I know I shouldn't become involved in your marital situation, Carlton, but I feel I must. Surely you're sensitive to what Cynthia has had to live through since the miscarriage?'

Cynthia had miscarried the child conceived during that chance sexual encounter in her student apartment. It happened the week after she and Carlton were married in a lavish ceremony and reception at her parents' home. An added medical complication necessitated the removal of her reproductive organs. There would never be children unless they opted to adopt, which was anathema to Cynthia: ‘Who knows what we might end up with, someone else's problem, like buying a used car.'

The notion of adopting a child was dropped.

‘That was more than thirty years ago, Mom.' Smythe was never sure whether to address her as Mom, Mum, Ma'am or Mother. Using her first name, Gladys, was out of the question.

‘Something that traumatic lasts a lifetime,' she said. ‘Cynthia has had to live with memories of that for the rest of her life.'

‘I was impacted by it, too,' Smythe said, not pleased that he found himself defending himself to this old lady who raised self-righteousness to a new level.

‘Of course you were, dear.'

Don't call me dear
.

‘The point, Carlton, is that Cynthia needs you here more than you need to be winging all over the world looking for clients. You must admit that had you listened to Walter and come to work for him, you wouldn't be in this unfortunate position.'

‘I—' He stood. ‘I'm sure you're right, Mom, but it's important that I pursue something meaningful to me.'

‘I should think that managing the significant money left to Cynthia by her father – money that you enjoy, too, Carlton – would provide enough of a professional challenge.'

‘I really don't think that—'

‘And,' she said, not missing a beat, ‘it would help you to satisfy your middle-aged insecurities.'

He looked down at her.

‘I understand that men go through what's called a mid-life crisis. Fortunately, Walter was too grounded to allow that to happen. But—'

‘Excuse me,' Smythe said, ‘I have work to do.'

He'd vowed years ago not to get into an argument with Gladys Wiggins, and had been successful for the most part. But there were times. A fleeting vision of being behind bars for murder, and being sexually assaulted by brutish, tattooed inmates, came and went.

As he dressed in his bedroom – he and Cynthia had separate bedrooms – a familiar and unwelcome feeling overcame him. He had various names for it, but they were only euphemistic rationalizations. The truth was, guilt often descended upon him like a gigantic yoke that threatened to press him into the ground.

He sat on the edge of his bed and waited for the feeling to pass, or at least to wane. That burden of guilt was heavy, and he sometimes wondered whether the course he'd set out on at this stage of his life was worth it.

He'd initiated an affair, the first in his married life. He had myriad reasons to excuse himself his indiscretions, and freely invoked them. He was involved in a loveless marriage, with a woman to whom he had pledged his lifetime allegiance. It was easy for him to assign blame to her for their marriage having become one of convenience, but he knew that was wrong and self-serving. Cynthia was simply the product of her overbearing mother and father, and Smythe and his wife saw the world through different eyes. Did he hate her? His answer to that question was always an emphatic no. Cynthia didn't deserve hatred, nor did her family. Hatred was, he believed, a religious concept, and Smythe was not a religious man. Cynthia was an Episcopalian by birth, although Carlton knew that neither her mother and father, nor their daughter, attended services in search of divine inspiration and deliverance. They went to church because it was part of their social fabric; it was expected of them, and the Episcopal Church was an appropriate choice in Anglo-Toronto where the religion you embraced helped define your social class.

Now and then, Carlton accompanied Cynthia to church on Sunday mornings. Until meeting Gina Ellanado, his main concern had been staying awake. Now, he wondered whether the priest could see into his soul, read something in his eyes or posture that shouted
adulterer!
He wasn't literally afraid that this might be the case. Carlton didn't believe in God and was a firm advocate of evolution: ‘We're just a two-legged species of the animal kingdom,' was what he liked to think, and sometimes said to friends. He wasn't concerned that he might go to Hell because of having broken his marriage vows. There was no Heaven and Hell, was how he saw it.

Still, there was the guilt, call it shame, that consumed him at odd times of the day or night, and in a variety of places – like church, or the supermarket, or in the midst of a party while sopranos and tenors filled the house with their voices. But never when wrapped in Gina's soft, scented flesh. Never then.

He chose a dark blue suit from a closet full of custom suits from Trend Custom Tailors, a freshly ironed pale blue shirt, and muted red tie. He didn't need to dress up for the day but felt more comfortable – more justified – in the eyes of his wife and her mother if he did. He returned to the kitchen and had it to himself. He ate a bowl of cereal, washed down a handful of vitamins and an Aleve for arthritic pains that had recently developed, and went to a first floor room which functioned as another office from which he oversaw the management of the family's considerable finances. A pile of unopened mail sat on the large walnut desk that had been his father-in-law's. Smythe ignored it. He rummaged through papers and envelopes in a drawer and pulled out a handful of unopened envelopes that he'd sequestered there the day before. He opened them and laid out the bills they contained. He carefully read the numerous charges he'd run up on his credit cards while traveling: hotel suites, chauffeured limousines, lunches and dinners at the fanciest of restaurants, first-class air travel, and gifts from upscale Buenos Aires boutiques. Once he'd begun his multiple trips to Buenos Aires he'd shifted funds into a separate checking account unknown to Cynthia, from which he paid those bills.

He carried them to his pool house office where he wrote checks from a checkbook kept under lock-and-key in a file cabinet, prepared the envelopes for mailing, locked everything up, and slipped the envelopes into his jacket.

He fired up the computer and clicked on the icon labeled ‘Franchise.' He spent the next fifteen minutes scrolling through the pages on the screen. When he was finished, he turned off the computer and opened the folder containing Gina's photograph. His groin tingled, and he adjusted himself to accommodate an erection.

It was, he knew, his V-1 time, that moment for pilots when they have used up too much of the runway to abort the takeoff. His flight had already taken off, and there was no returning to earth. The affair with Gina was full-fledged. Commitments had been made. What was lacking was the money he needed to launch his blissful new life with her.

It was time to put into action the business plan he'd been contemplating for a long time.

He was about to become a criminal.

P
aul Saison was hungover. It wasn't just the wine he'd consumed the night before that caused the pain in his head and the bile in his throat. The donnybrook with Angelique hadn't helped.

The French-Canadian engineer and his live-in girlfriend of the past two years often fought, but last night's fray was particularly nasty. She'd called him a vile, smelly drunk. He countered with, ‘You sit on your fat ass all day and do nothing, nothing!
Vieille mégére!
' Being called a vinegary hag really set her off. ‘
Gorille!
' she screamed, throwing a wine glass at him as she left their apartment, the door slamming so hard the wall shook.

She eventually returned and chose to sleep on the couch rather than curl up next to Saison's hefty, hairy body, and stayed there until he left for work. At Power-Can the next morning he went through the motions of monitoring the plant's electric output on banks of computers. At noon, he informed his supervisor that he had personal matters to attend to and would be late returning from lunch. As far as his boss was concerned, Saison should leave and never come back.

The only thing that kept Saison from being fired was an unstated rule within the company that a certain percentage of engineers, all employees for that matter, were to be French-Canadian to avoid charges of discrimination by the Anglo management. But that didn't mean that men like Saison, who'd worked there eleven years, would ever be promoted – and he hadn't been. He was a fairly skilled engineer, and there had been yearly raises, and an occasional bonus. But from management's perspective, he was lucky to have a job. He was belligerent, cantankerous, odorous, and confrontational, a thoroughly unpleasant man who complained often about his lack of advancement. Twice divorced (there was debate about whether his second marriage had been a legal one), too fond of wine, and with a known gambling addiction, Paul Saison was a liability. His departure would have been cause for celebration at Power-Can.

He drove to the restaurant Carlton Smythe had chosen, Le Papillon, on Church Street. Saison had suggested another place, but Smythe was concerned that he might bump into friends there.

‘Hello, Paul,' Smythe said as Saison made his way to the table his former colleague had commandeered in a quiet, secluded corner.

‘Hello, Smythe,' Saison said. He sat and groaned.

‘Rough night?'

‘
Oui
. That woman, she's driving me crazy.'

Smythe grinned. ‘Women can do that,' he said.

‘You bet they can. And those
imbéciles
at the plant. You're lucky to be gone.'

‘I sometimes think that,' said Smythe. He smiled again. ‘How are things at the track? Winning big these days?'

Saison guffawed. ‘Winning big? I curse the ponies every day I go to Woodbine.' He was a familiar face at the Toronto race track.

‘You should give it up, Paul.'

‘Hah! It is in my blood, like a drug, huh? You, Smythe, you look good. All that money you married for. I should find a rich woman and dump that witch I live with.'

‘Wine?' Smythe asked.

‘Of course.'

Smythe ordered a bottle of French cabernet. Saison told the waiter, ‘Pâté, huh? And escargots. We share.' He flashed a smile at Smythe, exposing a missing tooth in his lower jaw. ‘Spending some of your wife's money today, huh?'

‘And happy to do it, Paul.'

Smythe observed the man across the table who had reported to him at Power-Can during the last few years of Smythe's tenure there as a manager. Most of the food and wine went into Saison's mouth, and he frequently grunted with satisfaction. The French-born Canadian citizen was a large man in every dimension: head, torso, arms and legs. He wore a lightweight, blue and green plaid button-down shirt that needed laundering and that strained at his belly, and khaki pants that could also use a tumble in a washing machine. His face was covered with the beginnings of a scruffy black beard, his greasy black hair pasted to his head with some type of gel.

‘So, Smythe,' Saison said after they'd ordered steak for him, a salad for Smythe, ‘what's this idea you want to tell me about?'

‘It's a what-if situation,' Smythe said.

Saison scrunched up his face in puzzlement. ‘
Quoi?
'

‘Let's say you knew that at precisely nine thirty tonight, all the lights in Toronto were to go out, gone, no electricity. What would you do?'

The big man shrugged. ‘Make sure the batteries in my flashlight were good, huh?' He laughed, pleased with his reply.

‘No, no, no,' Smythe said. ‘I don't mean what you would do to be able to see. Let me be more specific. Tonight, at nine thirty sharp, on the dot, all the electricity in Toronto will go off – and you
know
it's going to go off. And what if you lived next door to a fancy jewelry store filled with diamonds, rubies and emeralds? And let's say, what if you wanted to walk away with some of those jewels, a million dollars worth?'