Mayor Hope Pedlar pushed back the sliding door, and stepped out onto the balcony.
Her apartment overlooked Lennox Bay from eighteen stories up. She stood there, despite the chilly evening air, in a moment of contemplation. One year ago; the forty-seven year old single Catholic girl, (and confirmed virgin,) from South Lennox High had won a third term as Mayor of this grubby little one-industry town. The tall, blue-eyed, apple-cheeked brunette had been having a few of these moments lately.
“Gazing out over a wine-dark sea, like some white-armed Andromache,” quoth her long-time beau and perennial confidant, Andy Bandy.
“Homer,” he added, rather unnecessarily.
The bow-legged, balding, sixty year old, big-bellied gentleman had been hanging on for years waiting for a sign; a sign which she would never give. But if nothing else, they kept each other out of the matrimonial stakes.
“That bastard Flushing blew my cover,” she grouched. “He’s quoted in the news; saying that I called for a motion at county council, and, ‘she knew what she was doing,’ according to him.”
It was nothing more than the truth, to a certain extent. But their local Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Mrs. Achmed-O’Malley, seemed to have been betrayed out the back door of the Ministry of Health. She had nothing to do with that—yet here was some lady, some unknown letter-writer in the paper saying, ‘The Mayor is very powerful,’ and such ilk. The Mayor didn’t tell her to deny knowledge of the hospital’s cost.
The Mayor only had one vote, and as often as not didn’t use it except for tie-breaking. Admittedly the side which lost never took it very well. Achmed-O’Malley, local MPP, was bound to lose her seat now, over the hospital fiasco. The price, once quoted at a hundred and twenty-six million, had somehow skyrocketed to over three hundred and seventy million. Taxpayers were stunned to say the least.
“It’s not much comfort, the possibility that Mrs. Achmed-O’Malley is even now plotting your downfall,” whispered Andy, nuzzling up to her pink, shell-like ear.
Used to it by now, she brushed him off with a shiver and made for the door of the apartment where a bright golden glow beckoned, a promise of warmth and the very finest in champagne and caviar, hot buttered toast, lobster, truffles and blueberry cheesecake.
They’d rented, ‘Madame Butterfly,’ Andy’s favourite film.
Hope always wondered about the character played by William Hurt.
“How could you not know? How could you not suspect, sir?”
“Then there’s Don Speedworthy, and a couple of others,” she murmured. “Why do people get so angry?”
“Well, what about Brubaker?”
She sighed. Were they really angry? Or was it just dirty politics?
“Yes, I suppose there’s always something behind the grudge,” she admitted.
Andy was perfectly aware that after a particularly scathing attack by Brubaker in the paper; she phoned up Chief O’Shaughnessey, trying to find out what the man’s beef was.
Obviously, he was beating around the bush about something. He claimed to have been harassed out of his home. What did the cops know? The chief called back and told her the man was suffering from, ‘flawed perceptions.’
Rumours of a forced confession were, ‘wildly exaggerated,’ according to the chief.
“Otherwise; why isn’t he behind bars already?” according to O’Shaughnessey. “He’s all over town on that big black mountain bike of his, picking up beer bottles, instead.”
That didn’t seem like a forced confession to the Mayor.
She accepted the answer and let it go at that. But what if he wasn’t?
The Chief provided an extensive dossier. Why did he have it for some obscure, pot-smoking, psychiatric basket case? One who couldn’t even hold a job as a roofer? Yet Brubaker was also clearly in control of himself, no matter what deep well of anger and resentment he tapped into when he sat down to write.
The reminder of Brubaker brought back last year’s election race.
Brubaker attacked her after the Premier, Mr. Walker McSquiddy, came to town with a half a million bucks for research and development of fuel cells. She called in some favours, and the premier delivered. Brubaker took a good-news story and bashed it into the ground. With just the slightest burning sensation in her gut, she wondered, was the man simply power tripping?
Mayor Pedlar had some resentments of her own. Oddly enough; she also knew it wasn’t personal with Brubaker. Not too sure how she knew it, but somehow with her feminine intuition, she knew it was some policy. But why keep coming after her?
Why not take it up with the police formal complaints process?
Didn’t he trust the cops?
What did he know that she didn’t?
She was chair of the Police Commission, after all.
Unofficially; it came back from Les Purvis, through his buddy at the cop shop, that Brubaker had some recording. He claimed that a police sergeant lied to him numerous times; he had it on tape, and he was pissed off about being labeled mentally ill, and being harassed out of his home.
Why didn’t the man just accept his fate and get on with his drab, miserable and meaningless little life? In spite of some perceived provocation; Brubaker kept his cool.
He would not allow himself to be provoked. Each and every literary attack was well conceived, brilliantly executed and was doing real damage, if quick and dirty straw polls were to be taken into account. The man was on his own timetable, apparently. And Mayor Pedlar was noticing that no one, not Achmed-O’Malley, nor their Member of Parliament, Dick Chizzler, nor anyone else; seemed willing to engage with Brubaker.
To acknowledge him was to lose face.
To ignore him was even more deadly.
It appeared the criticisms were true.
Man for man, Brubaker was her biggest political threat. The guy simply didn’t have the means to run against her. But he was a man with a plan, and that scared her. The cops made the big bucks, and the Mayor struggled along on about thirty-five thousand a year.
Admittedly, it was her own lifestyle, her own choices that made that slipper pinch the foot that bore it. While she sympathized with Mr. Brubaker and his elderly father, who was apparently suffering from Parkinson’s disease, according to the Chief, her own financial future wasn’t exactly carved in stone.
What did he hope to achieve? With three years left in her term, and with no major political players on the scene to make a serious challenge, Brubaker could definitely do with some watching. If his father died, and left Brubaker a few grand, he might even get the notion to run against her. Clearly Brubaker had a gift of rhetoric. His populist demagoguery could do a lot of harm. That sort of thing depended on who else was running at the time.
He could never win, of course. But he could be a spoiler for someone else. What if the man got up in front of the microphones and could actually speak?
Sure as shooting, it would cause big problems. That mental illness tag might come in handy. Maybe that’s why the coppers threw those mental health forms around like so many parking tickets.
You never knew when you might want to railroad somebody.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Barnes and Noble…