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By Root 465 0

’s, or any other Crescent Street watering-hole, was sufficient to empty the place of dealers in drugs, stolen goods, or call-girls, none of whom wanted him to see them spending lavishly. But nowadays O’Hearne, his residue of snowy white hair still parted down the middle or spine, stray strands slicked down either side like bleached salmon ribs, was not so much corpulent as beer-bloated, his blubber seemingly without substance. Prick him with a fork, I thought, and he would spurt fat like sausage in a pan. Jowly he was, sweaty, his double chin wobbly, his belly immense. He no longer chain-smoked Player’s Mild, but he was left with, and often overcome by, such a wet, bronchial cough as to make the rest of us resolve to reread our wills when we got home. The last time he stopped by to check me out, heaving himself into the bar stool beside me, wheezing, he said, “You know what worries me most? Cancer of the rectum. Having to shit into a Glad Bag attached to my hip. Like poor old Armand Lemieux. Remember him?”

Lemieux was the one who’d put the cuffs on me.

“I sit in the crapper every morning now,” he said, “and an hour passes before I’m done. It comes out in angry little bits.”

“That’s very interesting, your excreta. Why don’t you go in for a check-up?”

“You eat Japanese?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I tried that new place on Bishop, The Lotus Blossom, or whatever the hell they call it, and they brought me raw cold fish and hot wine. Listen here, I said to the waitress, I like hot food and cold wine. Take it away and try again, eh? Hey, I get a lot of reading done these days.”

“Sitting on the crapper?”

“Lemieux remembers you like yesterday. The way you handled it, he says, you had to be a genius.”

“I’m touched.”

“Lemieux’s got himself a nice bit of stuff for an old cop. An Italian widow, with boobs out to here, who runs a dépanneur in the North End. But what can it be like for her, eh? I mean he’s in the sack with her, woosh woosh woosh, and she takes a peek and that fucken Glad bag is filling up. Am I boring you?”

“Yes.”

“You know, after all these years The Second Mrs. Panofsky, as you insist on calling her, still has me around for the occasional dinner.”

“You’re lucky. Of all my wives so far, she was the best cook. I don’t mind you telling her that,” I said, hoping my calumny would be reported to Miriam.

“I don’t think she’d appreciate the compliment coming from you.”

“She still accepts my monthly cheques.”

“Let’s be serious for a moment. It’s like her life stopped right there and then. She’s got the trial transcripts bound in morocco, and she goes over it again and again, making notes, looking for loopholes. Hey, tell me the difference between Christopher Reeve and O.J.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“O.J. will walk,” he said, guffawing.

“You’re such an oaf, Sean.”

“Don’t you get it? Reeve is that actor, he played Superman, who had this riding accident and is paralysed for life. O.J. is guilty as hell, you know. Just like you. Ah, come on. Lighten up. That’s all water over the dam. In your position, I might have done the same thing. Nobody blames you.”

“Why do you keep coming in here, Sean?”

“I enjoy your company. Really I do. Would you do something for me? Leave me a letter, saying what you did with it.”

“The body?”

He nodded.

“But you’re bound to go first, Sean. With the weight you’re carrying around these days you’re just begging for a heart attack.”

“I’ll see you out, Panofsky. Guaranteed. You leave me that letter. I promise to read it and destroy it. I’m curious, is all.”

8

Irv Nussbaum was on the phone again this morning before I even had my coffee. “Terrific news,” he said. “Turn on CJAD. Quick. Kids painted a swastika on the walls of a Talmud Torah school last night. Broke windows. Bye now.”

And a compelling item out of Orange County, California, in today’s Globe and Mail. A seventy-year-old woman, taking care of her cancer-ridden husband — changing his diapers, feeding him, sleeping only a few hours a night because of his incessant TV watching — just about snapped. She splashed her significant other