DITW 14-5: Departing Cranes

The show tonight at the Royal Ontario Museum started at seven, and it was quarter to five now. It would be a rush, but they could get to Future Bistro for dinner in time to make the Opera Atelier at the ROM’s Eaton Theatre for a special kids’ show. Sophie would love it. Dinner at the fun bistro—a place of fond memories for her Aunt Kimmy and Uncle Josh—and then professional Romantic ballet; mazurkas and tarantellas.

Her phone dinged with an incoming text, and she pushed herself back from her desk.

Hyun: We’re here now. Do you want us to come up?

Kimmy: I’m coming down

Hyun and Sophie had taken the GO Bus this afternoon, heading out of Ajax as soon as Sophie got out of school. They’d made good time.

Tami stopped her in the lobby, hanging up the phone and calling her name. Kimmy turned, and Tami said, “Mr. Stone wants to see you.”

“I’m on my way out. I have people waiting. I’ll call him later.”

“It’s Mr. Stone senior,” Tami said. “He’s here.”

Kimmy showed no expression, but her heart thudded double time and her back went to ice. A tingle began at her fingertips and crawled up her arms. “He’s here?”

“Yes, he’s waiting for you downstairs. He told me to send you down.”

“He’s not coming up?”

Tami looked helpless. “He just said for me to send you down. I think he’s in his car.”

While her pulse thundered in her ears, she considered what it might mean—then she smiled for Tami’s sake, headed to the washroom, lightheaded now. Once she was closed in the washroom, she ran cold water, wetted a paper towel and held it to her forehead. She regarded her pained eyes in the mirror, saying to herself, “This could be it.” This could be where it all came crashing down. “Friday, just before five.” The time when all good leaders dropped their hammers, a time where an unfortunate underling couldn’t make a scene and would go home to vent their frustrations to their families.

She dried her hands and face, tidied her clothes, then left the washroom and walked to the elevator.

*

A cold October afternoon, but sunny, and out in the daylight two things met Kimmy. On the left, standing on the interlock walkway out front of the P&G building, were Hyun and Sophie, oblivious to the second thing waiting to greet Kimmy. Hyun smiled with innocent joy and held Sophie at the shoulders, Sophie standing in front of her mother wearing comfortable dress-up clothes. They were going to have a fun night tonight.

But the second thing that greeted her was a long black car on the right, faceless, nameless, gleaming. The windows were tinted black, concealing its intent. It was Stone senior’s liveried saloon, a driver up front behind the black glass, a buttercream leather salon in the back. She’d seen it before at a meeting in Kingston. She’d never sat in it. As the rear door opened and an unknown man in a suit stepped out, Kimmy greeted Hyun and Sophie, conjuring every ounce of inscrutable calm while the seas roiled inside. 

“Look at you, Sophie,” she said, eyeing the high shine on Sophie’s patent leather lace-ups. “I love your shoes.”

Sophie smiled ear to ear, wowed seeing her Aunt Kimmy all dressed up for work, in the city, going out for a fun evening just for her to see a real ballet.

She cupped Sophie’s cheeks and kissed her hairline, rising again to meet Hyun’s gaze. Hyun was filled with warm ardor, both of them restraining the desire to kiss. Not in front of Sophie. She mouthed, “You look good, too.”

Hyun went bashful, her tawny cheek looking exquisite against the camel taupe of the long wool coat Kimmy had bought her for the season.

“Hey,” Kimmy said, smiling, “I have to take care of one more thing before we get going,” nodding her head to the side where a man stood waiting for her beside Devlin’s father’s limo.

Hyun nodded, ebullient, and unsuspecting of the dire circumstance around them. The man waiting for her would be a lawyer, or worse, an RCMP officer.

But as she got closer, she knew he wasn’t the police. He was a man shorter than her, in his fifties, and not the kind of man who’d spent time on the rougher side of law enforcement. He was pampered, soft, well-nourished, his hair a curly salt and pepper. She knew his name from the company roster before he’d even said it.

“Kim Waters? I’m Aaron Berg, Stone’s counsel.” He gestured into the cool cabin. “Mr. Stone and I would like to speak with you.”

Only Stone didn’t speak with her, not even looking her way as she sat down on the comfortable back-facing leather bench, sitting so she faced both men. Devlin’s father didn’t look her way, eyes cast out the side window, looking at nothing but parked cars, elbow on the sill, groomed hand supporting the wide point of his chin. He looked like Devlin, only mean and cunning, and sporting none of that boyish emptiness filled with bravado. Stone senior was the real man of the show. Aaron Berg closed the car door, and the cabin was dimmer with the tint. She worried what Hyun and Sophie would be thinking now, but then realized they thought she was the real woman of the show. They’d be impressed. Look at your Aunt Kimmy at work, the level of business she deals at.

Aaron crossed his legs and held cupped hands over the point of one knee. “Something’s come to our attention, and I think you know why we’re here.”

“I don’t.”

Aaron smiled. “I’m quite sure you do, Mrs. Waters. You’ve been avoiding us.”

She said, “Tell me what it’s about.”

Aaron said, “It’s a matter of money, isn’t it?”

“You’re not telling me, you’re asking me.”

Aaron looked at Stone’s profile a moment, then returned his attention to Kimmy. “There’s a leak. Money pouring out of a hole in Mr. Stone’s boat. And it looks like you’re holding your cupped hands below the hole. Is that clearer?”

“You’re accusing me of stealing?”

Aaron smiled again. “Yes.”

Her pulse galloped faster. She showed no expression, no change of demeanor, only fixed her gaze on Aaron’s. She said, “Then arrest me.”

Aaron seemed gleed by her resistance, trying to show her he had all the best cards and she had none. “First things first. The money?”

She turned away from Aaron Berg, sighing, looking out the same window Stone senior looked out. “This isn’t about the money,” she said.

Aaron said, “It isn’t?” Curious and playful, like he toyed with her.

“No,” she said. “And you know it’s not. This is bigger than a little bit of missing money.”

“It’s seventy-five K, Mrs. Waters. If we took it from you, would you say the same?”

Though her heart pounded and her back went into agonizing spasms, she spoke to Devlin’s father’s profile. “Your son isn’t the man you are. He wants to be, but he hasn’t got anything more than a handsome face and a big set. You know that’s not enough. In fact, that’s the worst combination. At least the most dangerous. But you know that, too. I’ve proved it to you. You see it. And that’s why I’m here.”

Aaron looked to Stone senior and finally Stone turned to regard his lawyer, face stony and unreadable, other than its natural grave menace. They said nothing, but Stone moved two fingers of his left hand sitting in his lap.

Aaron returned his attention to her. “So you don’t think it’s about the money you stole?”

She said, “$75,000 got your attention. You would have paid a consultant $200,000 to come in for six months and find out why things weren’t adding up. If you ever even noticed they weren’t adding up at all.”

Now for the first time Devlin’s dad really considered her, turning his face to hers. He didn’t speak, only regarded her in a way that said he wanted to smash his fist through her face. She soaked it in, adrenalin replacing the fear. Devlin’s father was everything Devlin wanted to be. Everything he pretended to be. But Devlin’s dad didn’t go to a nice high school in the suburbs, didn’t have all the corrupting perks Devlin had. He was the one who’d done the work and built the business. He had large workman’s hands at the end of his fine French cuffs and platinum cuff links. It made her wonder if he also sported an equine appendage between his legs.

But Stone senior said nothing, only attempted to wither her in his radioactive gaze. Then he regarded Aaron and nodded once before resuming his parking lot reverie.

“We’re done,” Aaron said, leaning forward, uncrossing his legs so he could put his hand on the door’s handle. “Here’s what’s going to happen next. Expect a call from the Law Society, and if I were you, I would shop for a criminal lawyer.”

There were many possible retorts. She could have name dropped the lawyer in Cayman, Quinton Rathburn, a man who should not ever touch the books of a legitimate Canadian company. And how she’d been awarded a trip to meet with the man, and what that trip really meant. She could have mentioned how Devlin Stone followed her and her husband to Cayman and insinuated himself into their marriage. She could have opened her jacket and rested her hand on her belly as a silent indication of the result of Stone Junior’s very deep insinuation. And if she felt really nasty, she could show Devlin’s father the video of his son wearing her satin panties and loving every second of it.

But those were emotional reactions, theatrical, hysterical, not the reaction of Kimmy Chang Waters. So she said nothing, showed no reaction, left them wondering as Aaron Berg, Esquire, levered open the luxury car’s door for her and she stepped back onto the interlock walkway.

Hyun and Sophie waited for her. Had stood there the whole time imagining great things for her career were happening behind those blacked-out windows. They couldn’t imagine that she’d been caught stealing a lot of money. Couldn’t imagine that her career would end here and she would be disbarred and would soon be in court and could see the inside of a prison, too, if convicted. They didn’t know any of that. They only knew what they saw and what she told them.

Her legs quivered and shook, and her heart raced. The urge to crumple before them came over her with infernal weight and it took courage and strength to remain standing. She admired them for a moment, knowing this might be one of the last moments anyone she knew would see her with any measure of respect.

What would happen next was clear. Someone from building security would emerge from the lobby with her belongings in a box, maybe the painting of cranes her father had gifted her wheeled out by a second guard, they would put them on the ground and leave her in bottomless shame for Hyun and Sophie to see.

She stood, not knowing if she should smile, if she should appear stoic, or if she should do the easiest thing and fall to her knees and lure their comfort.

But nothing happened. 

Hyun’s smile screwed to one side and her brow wriggled as she tried to comprehend why Kimmy stood there saying nothing and doing nothing. Behind her, Stone’s limo left the curb and drove away, out onto Yonge Street and to who knew where. No one came out from the lobby with her belongings.

She worked her jaw around, trying to reduce the whooshing pulse deafening her. Then she smiled, produced her car key and said to Sophie, “Are you ready for the ballet?”