The Devil's Copper Read online

  At one point, I told him he was too good to be true. I asked if he had any dark secrets I should know about. The only black mark he had to offer was that he used to play poker with some unsavory people, whom he was sure to distance himself from when he finished school and started building his career.

  That I could live with. But there was another issue. Not a deal-breaker, but a definite drawback. Something that caused me concern, but didn’t bother Jack in the slightest.

  Walter.

  Walter Blunt was a good friend to Jack’s. The ‘why’ of the matter was a mystery to me. He was Jack’s exact opposite: lazy, unmotivated and, well, blunt. Often to the point of being outright offensive. His emergence began like an infection, starting as a minor irritation, but eventually growing to an unavoidable presence. He didn’t live with Jack, but he would often be there when I went over. Walter didn’t say much but his mere existence was enough to cast an awkwardness over the room. Most times I found him asleep on the couch. I think that’s what bothered me the most. He’d show up, sleep, make a few smart ass comments, then leave. I’m sure I didn’t hide my frustration as well as I should have – I didn’t want to be that kind of person – but it puzzled me why Jack was always so eager to see Walter, despite the awkwardness his presence cast.

  After ten months of being together, Jack and I decided to share an apartment in the New Sudbury area. It was a wonderful experience, overcast by the fact that Walter soon basically became a third tenant. He was always there. I had asked Jack on a few occasions if there was anything wrong with Walter. You know…mentally. Or if he had any issues or habits I should be concerned with. Jack insisted Walter was just Walter, and that there was nothing to be concerned with. I had suspected that he suffered from OCD; I often heard him randomly counting for no specific reason. (Often no higher than ‘three’ or ‘four.’) Jack dismissed this. He said Walter was always a bit ‘unique’ due to his upbringing, and that he looked out for him; Walter had no family of his own. That made it harder for me to complain. But sensing the tension Walter’s frequent presence caused me, Jack did ask him to make himself scarce more often. At least in the evenings. It was a fair enough compromise. I did my best to make Walter feel welcome in our home, provided he only come at the predetermined times.

  It was when he started referring to me as ‘the princess’ that I felt the friendship was going to be a strain on our relationship. Jack always chuckled, taking it as a joke. I always took it as a jab.

  Anyway, as problematic as it was I had to remind myself it was a small price to pay for the overall happiness I felt when Jack and I were together. I even started to look at getting back into community theatre, if not for my sake, for the sake of my friends waiting to be part of a celebrity entourage. After spending most of my life feeling like an outsider, I finally felt I was going to have a ‘normal’ life after all. Boy, was I wrong.

  ONE

  It was our one year anniversary. Yet another wet and chilly Sudbury spring day. Jack told me he had reservations at Chez Something-or-Other. He knew I wasn’t impressed by that kind of thing, but he always tried. I humoured him for the most part. When we first started dating, I was worried I would never fit into this part of his world. He once told me he knew; he just liked seeing me squirm. What an ass.

  “Do I need to wear a dress?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “You don’t need to.”

  “Do you want me to wear a dress?”

  “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with.”

  “Is the implication that a dress would be preferred?”

  “Do you want to wear a dress?”

  “I don’t like dresses.”

  “And yet here we are, having this conversation again.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Do you want me to want you to wear a dress?”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “Just dress how you want.”

  “Can’t we just get a pizza?”

  Apparently that was not an option.

  The day fell on a weekend that year. That was not to say we were not burdened by work; we both had jobs which required our attention beyond working hours. I had to carry a beeper, which went off any time the answering service got an emergency flooding call. At which point I would have to find a phone and contact one of our on-call drivers and send them out. Which was always a fun call to make on the weekend. Jack, meanwhile, was a little more advanced, and had a cell phone that could reach him at a moment’s notice. He hated cell phones. He said they were removing our ability to distance ourselves from those we want to distance ourselves from. Prophetic words. Anyone who had a financial investment emergency on a Saturday when markets were closed didn’t deserve to be able to contact someone on their day off.

  Dinner was delightful. If that’s the proper word to describe it. It was overpriced, and I’ve had better meals with a greasy spoon. But Jack seemed to enjoy watching me attempt to be civil. We lived together, but we were not married, and it was not my business how he spent his money. However, if the funds came out of a shared account, there was no way I’d have been okay with spending that kind of money on ravioli that didn’t taste much different than the frozen kind you buy in a bag. I was going to compare it to the canned type just to be spiteful, but I’d only be insulting myself; I do have some standards.

  After dinner, he said he wanted to check in on work and asked me if I’d mind. I did, but I wasn’t going to object, as my beeper had gone off twice during our ‘intimate’ dinner. We didn’t swing by his office though, (neither his professional or personal one), but rather, stopped at a small and frankly concerning little bar in the Donovan I had never heard of before. Speaking of having some standards.

  “Why are we here?” I asked.

  “Mike has a job tonight. I thought it would be fun to watch.”

  Mike, the ‘time traveler’ who almost fooled me a year ago, was going to work his craft on another unwitting individual, in a dive bar on a Saturday night. Hardly the opera, but I was intrigued.

  “Are we overdressed?”

  Jack looked down at himself, then loosened and removed his tie. “Perhaps it’s a good thing you didn’t wear a dress.”

  “Told you.”

  We opened the doors, and were assailed by live music booming at deafening levels. It’s not that I don’t like heavy music; I’ll listen to anything. If it’s good. But it was a little hard to tell if the band was going for Led Zeppelin or eighth grade band practice. It sounded as though the guitarist thought they were playing thrash metal, but the drummer thought he was accompanying a waltz. They were shit, is what I’m trying to insinuate. Upon breaching the perimeter, we were assailed with the dim light of the bar, the reek of beer-soaked carpeting, and the hum of raised conversations trying to be spoken and heard over the unruly mess coming from the tiny stage in the corner of the establishment. It wasn’t overly crowded, and we were able to find a table at the back of the bar. Jack pulled out my chair and gave it a quick wipe down with a handkerchief before allowing me to sit. Once he joined me, the guitar solo ended and the singing began.

  “That was supposed to be New Orleans is Sinking?”

  “Singer’s good,” Jack leaned over and said. It sounded like a whisper but was actually a shout.

  “Too good for this band.”

  “Exactly.”

  Jack left, then returned with two bottles of Molson Canadian. Because what else are you going to find in a bar in Northern Ontario? We endured two additional songs of amazing vocals backed by terrible guitars, a drummer with no rhythm, and a bass player nowhere near as loud as his tattoos. Eventually this came to an end, and the band regrettably took a break between sets.

  “You really know how to show someone a good time,” I muttered.

  “Wait for it.”

  The band dispersed and made their way to the bar, looking for alcohol and commendation from their adoring fans, while the singer made his
way off to the left of the stage, taking his place at a small table. One or two young patrons, likely underage and thrilled to actually see any live band play, spoke with him for a few minutes but it was clear he was only being polite. After they left, he seemed happy to return to his solitude.

  Off to our right, the door to the bar opened. A man wearing a vibrant jacket slipped in. He went mostly unnoticed, except by us.

  “Showtime?”

  “Showtime,” Jack agreed.

  The actor made his way over to the singer and asked for a moment of his time. Due to the general hum of conversation and the music the jukebox began to play between sets we couldn’t hear the actual exchange but it was easy to assume what was being discussed.

  “The singer’s name is Jerry Fallon,” Jack explained. “He’s aspired to be a vocalist since he was a child. He could just never find the right band. His family wants him to give it up, and who can blame them with these musicians. He’s about to give in to the pressure but his friends want him to keep trying, even if it means leaving the city and trying somewhere else. I mean, you heard him, he’s pretty good isn’t he?”

  I nodded, too intent on watching the conversation to reply. I was mentally filling in their words, based on the information Jack was feeding me. There was a look of skepticism, even mistrust at first. Mike then pulled out a cassette tape, likely insisting it contained some original material that influenced him when he was younger. The vocalist then had the same expression I likely had – too smart to believe it, but hopeful enough to want to. This ‘Mike’ was a good actor. He was selling a believable story, probably telling him how much the vocalist’s music changed his life. He had genuine tears in his eyes while doing so. He stood, pulled one of the band’s posters off the wall, and set it down in front of him with a pen. Reluctantly, the vocalist signed it, his face plastered with a self-deprecating smile. There were a few more comments exchanged before Mike claimed he had to leave.

  “This is where I’m needed,” Jack said.

  “Why?”

  “We use a rigged strobe light to make the flash but Mike forgot it. It’s in the car. I need to go get it for him and make enough of a flash that our friend sees it through the window in the door. I’ll be right back. Don’t’ take your eyes off of him, this is the best part.”

  Jack casually left moments before Mike made his “I must return to my own era” escape. I did as suggested, and simply watched the vocalist as he looked down at the table and wrestled with the thoughts in his head. He was smiling and gave his head a shallow shake, but it was clear there was a bit of renewed determination in his expression. He was fighting off his skepticism, trying to think “yes, but what if it was true?”. Then, to punctuate it, he was momentarily distracted by a bright flashing light from the small window on the main door. He laughed to himself, got up and prepared for the next set.

  He had hope, and my boyfriend gave him that. Well, my boyfriend and his paid actors. But screw them; this isn’t their story. I was proud of him. It wasn’t his money that made him happy, but those ‘ah ha’ moments where maybe, just maybe, he might have helped someone avoid giving up on a dream.

  Yeah. He was getting some that night.

  I waited for him. But five minutes later, Jack still hadn’t returned. Once the band started playing again, I knew I had to leave. I went outside to see what the problem was.

  When I got outside, I saw Jack standing by the corner, under a floodlight, talking on his cellphone. He seemed mildly vexed, so I knew it wasn’t work related; he’d have his professional game face on for that. I approached quietly, so as not to intrude on the conversation, but intrude on it nonetheless.

  “…so you have no idea?” he asked. “No. No, it’s fine. No, I’m not mad. No, it’s fine. We…yeah, we were almost done anyway. What? Well that’s none of your… Oh shut up. You wish.”

  Annoyance, punctuated by sarcasm. A clear sign he was talking to Walter.

  Jack cupped his hand over the phone. “He’s not quite sure where he is. I think he’s downtown.”

  “What the hell was he doing?” I asked.

  “What? No, no, it’s Billie,” he said back into the phone. “Yeah, we’re just…so what do you see? A what? Oh, okay. I know where that is. Yeah, I can.”

  I shook my head sternly. He gave me a simple expression that said ‘I love you, but I have no choice; please understand, I am naught but a mere male with a great ass.’ Or something to that effect. I let him off the hook by looking away, and specifically not letting him know he was off the hook.

  “Okay, I’ll be right over. Just don’t go anywhere. Okay, bye.”

  I waited until the phone was put away before saying anything.

  “This is mental.”

  “He’s…he just needs my help.”

  “He needs help, Jack. Professional help.”

  “He just gets really tired. It's hard to explain why.”

  “Drunkenness,” I said, counting my fingers, “narcolepsy, severe neurological impairment… If you really want to look out for your friend, look out for his well-being, rather than covering for his dumbass behavior.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

  “No,” I insisted, “I don’t, but if I’m going to be as important to you as he is, maybe you should help me understand.”

  He hesitated, his head literally bouncing from side to side as he fought with the various retorts and counter-arguments. “Okay. Later, okay? Get a cab home, there’s no reason for you to come with,” he said as he waved at a parked cab waiting for it’s next drunken fare. It’s lights came on and it slowly crawled towards them. “I love you.”

  “I love you too. Just…be careful.”

  “It’s fine,” he insisted.

  “One more thing,” I said as I opened the cab door. Side note, it smelled like a urinal puck in there. “Did he call me a princess?”

  Jack hesitated. “…yeah.”

  “Tell him I said ‘fuck you’, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  ***

  Cabs are stupid expensive. Just sayin’. This was well before Uber. When I got home, I realized my beeper had been going off for a while, so I had to make a number of calls and inconvenience a few drivers. As if they didn’t hate me enough. Monday was going to suck. It was at least 30 minutes of that nonsense before I had the time to slip into something more comfortable and get into bed. And a further 30 minutes until Jack finally got home. He entered the bedroom looking frazzled, but at least he was alone. He must have taken Walter home.

  I was going to ask how it went, but thought better of it. I threw the sheets back and urged him to come to bed. He quickly undressed and threw himself down next to me.

  “It’s hard,” he muttered.

  “Is it?”

  I heard him laugh into the pillow. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not easy being his friend.”

  I turned and put my arm around him. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Thank you for understanding.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say I understood.”

  I kissed him, and his reciprocation was feeble.

  “I know it’s our anniversary, but…”

  “Go to sleep,” I sighed.

  I was tired too. It didn't take long for either of us to fall asleep.

  TWO

  Have you ever had your bedroom door kicked in at 2:00 A.M. by masked men, armed with semi-automatics? It totally sucks. Not recommended. Oh, I can joke now. But I was a screaming mess at the time. It did my image no favours, I can tell you. One minute it was peaceful bliss, and the next, the door was off its hinges. It hit the floor with an echoing crash, followed by deep, booming shouts.

  “Nobody move!”

  “Police! Stay where you are!”

  “Hands where we can see them!”

  “What the hell?” Jack shouted.

  He shielded his eyes from the bright light on the scope of one of t
he weapons. In his confusion, he tried to shield me with his body, but he was quickly pulled off the bed and to the floor. Three men loomed over him with their weapons trained on him. One additional man kept his weapon trained on me.

  This was a dream. It had to be.

  “Jack Spry?” one of them shouted.

  When he got no reply, he hit Jack with the butt of his rifle.

  I screamed, but stifled it when the gun pointed at me got closer.

  “Jack Spry?” the voice called again.

  “Yes!” came his feeble reply.

  He signaled to the others. They shouldered their weapons so they could hoist him up. Blood streamed from the side of his head. He looked disoriented. Possibly concussed from the severe blow.

  “What the hell is going on?” I cried.

  “Police business,” said the man with the gun trained on me. “Do not interfere!”

  They were all dressed in black, with bulletproof vests and side-arms. It was only in retrospect that I realized their headgear did not match. Some wore goggles, while others had sunglasses. The three attending to Jack wore balaclavas, but the one who spoke to me had his mouth uncovered. His only defining feature was a thick brown mustache.

  “Get him out of here,” he said to the others.

  “Where are you taking him?” I gasped.

  “I said do not interfere,” he insisted, this time with a growling tone of finality.

  I couldn’t do anything but watch. They hauled Jack away like a cumbersome bag of trash. From the bed, I could see out to the main door to our apartment, which was wide open. There was a hole where the door handle had been. How they managed to do that without waking us up, I had no idea. The remaining man looked over his shoulder, verified the others were clear, then left me with a final message.