The God Game. Jeffrey Round
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sophisticated downtown crowd. Sometimes there were murmurings of sympathetic understanding, but usually not.
“You’re more than welcome to it,” Nick told him, after offering to buy a dishwasher and being turned down flat.
More often than not, Nick sat at the table and nursed a coffee while Dan washed up, rather than rushing off to read or lounge in front of the television. Completely comfortable in each other’s presence, they were seldom apart during their off hours. Anyone seeing them might suspect there was an invisible force constantly pulling them together.
Dan finished the dishes, then followed Nick into the living room. He plunked himself down on the sofa and grabbed the TV remote.
“News?” he asked.
Nick grumped. “Why? It’s always bad. I get enough of that at work. In fact, I can tell you the news without even turning on the TV: somewhere there will be wars, somewhere else a natural disaster, while closer to home we’ll have a suspicious fire and a car accident that tied up rush-hour traffic.”
“You forgot politics,” Dan added.
“Yes, I did. On purpose.”
“You are one of the few people I can truly say is more curmudgeonly than me.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Dan aimed the remote. “Let’s brave it anyway.”
They sat through the commercials with the sound muted until the news began. As Nick predicted, there was coverage of fighting in Africa and the Middle East, with an earnest detailing of the collapse of last-minute peace talks. The World Health Organization reported an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. Disaster was the through-line, distressing despite its seeming remoteness. Only the local news featured a bright spot, with mention of a donation to SickKids hospital.
Dan was about to turn it off when a shot of Peter Hansen and Tony Moran appeared onscreen as the anchor’s disembodied voice stated that the husband of the special assistant to the educational reforms minister had been declared missing. A former candidate for the legislature, Hansen had hired a private investigator. Dan felt a jolt when he heard his name cited. The anchor closed by saying that both Peter and Dan had declined to comment on the case.
Nick’s hand stole over and gripped Dan’s thigh.
“Did you know about this?”
“No,” Dan said grimly. “So much for my client’s request for discretion.”
Just then his cellphone rang.
Dan looked at Nick. “What are the chances?”
He picked up and heard Peter Hansen’s gruff tone.
“Why did I just hear my name and yours on the evening news?” Hansen demanded. “What is this? Some kind of publicity grab? I told you I didn’t want this getting out.”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t contact the press,” Dan said. “Someone called me to ask about the case. He said you gave him my number. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Who was it?”
Dan repeated the name he’d been given.
“Never heard of him,” Hansen growled. “Those fucking barracudas!”
“Who?”
“The political reporters. They must have followed me to your office, or else they’re hacking my email.”
“We haven’t had an email exchange.”
Peter snorted. “My phone, then. Who knows how they get this stuff!”
“I would advise caution from now on. Let’s talk directly in person when we speak about it.”
“A little late for that!” Hansen rounded off his conversation with a few well-placed expletives. “Sorry. Not professional of me.”
“I understand.”
“Please just find Tony.”
“I will,” Dan assured him.
He’d just put the phone down when it rang again.
“Sharp.”
There was a short pause followed by a tenor voice asking, “Could I get a comment on the Peter Hansen situation?”
“Who is this?”
“Simon Bradley. I’m a journalist. I cover local politics.”
The name rang a bell, Dan thought, but from long ago. This voice sounded too young.
Bradley continued. “I’d like to ask a few questions about Tony Moran. I might be able to tell you something in return.”
“Such as?”
Dan heard cars whizzing past on the other end, a busy highway.
“John Badger Wilkens. The Queen’s Park minister who committed suicide at Christmas.”
“Why would I want information on him?”
“I’ll explain, if you meet me.”
Dan looked over at Nick, who had busied himself with a magazine.
“When?”
“I’m just heading back into town. Say half an hour?”
Vesta Lunch had been open on the corner of Bathurst and Dupont, night and day, for as long as Dan had lived in Toronto. It never closed and never seemed to change. Not the servers, not the clientele, not the menu. As greasy spoons went, it was one of the best. Late-night comfort food for the lonesome and early-morning remedies for the hungover. Even an emergency shelter in a snowstorm, if need be. No matter how far your fall from grace, it was a place to hang your hat and call home.
Simon Bradley stood upon Dan’s arrival. He was young and easily six-foot-four, with a slim build under an Armani jacket, a confident smile, and a haircut that must have cost two hundred dollars. Dan recognized him as an occasional on-air broadcaster, the type who showed up in the midst of swirling snowstorms to report on traffic jams, house fires, derailed trains, and the other detritus that made up the bread and butter of the all-news stations. Apparently he’d been transferred to doing pieces of a political bent. Someone must have thought his mug worthy of the cause.
“Was it your father or your grandfather?” Dan asked.
The question caught Simon by surprise, but he quickly got back on track.
“Grandfather,” he said as they shook hands. “You remember him?”
“As a kid, yes. The name mostly, but I think I recall a resemblance.”
Simon Bradley Sr. had been one of the names reverberating through the Sharp household, spoken with reverence, when Dan was a boy. The names, including old-school politicians such as Lester Pearson, hockey players like Jean Béliveau, and broadcasters like Simon’s grandfather, were laid out as evidence of the glory days now past. They’d been legends back in the day when television ruled and you couldn’t get through the bleak northern Ontario winters without one.
“You’re right. I got his name and his looks,” Simon said. “But my dad got all the literary rights to his books.”
There would have been dozens of them, Dan recalled. Bradley had been one of Canada’s mainstays as an on-air journalist, and before that as a historian famous for his coverage of the Cold War. Now here was his grandson trying to make a name for himself in the same field. Sometimes the pressure to live up to a forebear was more trouble than it was worth.
Their server heard them talking and stole a look at Simon as though he was considering asking for an autograph.
“You somebody I should know, man?” he asked, setting down a plate of fries alongside a chicken-and-gravy sandwich.
Simon shrugged. “Only if you watch television.”
The