Blind Luck Read online

  “For Christ’s sake, Jack. It’ll only take you fifteen minutes.”

  Jack looked up again, folded the pages and rose from the seat. “I’m joking. I’ll do it after Dave’s game.”

  He kissed her on the cheek and stepped towards the living room, where Dave played with a collection of miniature cars in front of a T.V. tuned into a game show.

  “You ready, buddy?”

  Dave hopped to his feet, nodded and grabbed his baseball glove from the couch. Ruby hadn’t said a word since Jack had risen from the table.

  “Wish him luck,” Jack said, kissing her again.

  “Good luck, David. Have fun.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Jack didn’t say much during the drive to the ballpark. Sports talk radio debated whether or not taxpayers should have to contribute to a new stadium while Jack waited for injury reports and odds.

  Number of games, multiplied by the odds of each team winning, multiplied by the wager. A station wagon cut in front of them on the way into the parking lot, prompting Jack to lean on the horn, drop the window and fire a middle finger into the air.

  Eight-year-olds only play six innings. By the bottom of the fifth, Dave had ten strikeouts in a one-nil game for his team. Jack leaned into the heavy-set man beside him. With a thick red beard and a protruding brow, the man looked almost primitive.

  “Your son playing?” Jack asked.

  The man turned his head. “What’s that?”'

  “What number is your son?”

  “Fifteen,” he said, pointing to a kid a good thirty pounds heavier than anyone else sitting in the dugout. “What about yours?”

  “Mine’s the pitcher.”

  “The kid’s got a good arm. He must have half a dozen strikeouts.”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten?”

  “Yep. And I’ve got a fifty that says he’s at a dozen by the end of the inning.”

  “No way. Ritchie’s up soon, and there’s no way he whiffs again. He’s leading the league in home runs, you know?”

  “So let’s make it a hundred.”

  “Two more strikeouts by the end of the inning?”

  Jack extended his hand. “Guaranteed.”

  “You’re on.”

  The man with the red beard cursed Dave’s next four pitches, but after opening with a ball, he fired two strikes past the batter. His next pitch was a fastball that left the batter swinging for air and sent the crowd into a loud series of oohs. Jack didn’t even smile. This was his son. He had watched Dave many times before and knew he didn’t pitch like an eight-year-old.

  Dave almost hit the next batter with a curveball that sailed high enough that the boy dropped his bat and headed for the dugout. The coach tried to steer him back to the plate, but the kid shook his head until snickering from his teammates forced him back into Dave’s line of fire. The kid couldn’t keep his bat steady as Dave reared back for the next pitch, and when the ball came, he closed his eyes as he swung. He must have surprised himself by making contact, because as the weak grounder rolled towards the shortstop, he remained at the plate. After his coach screamed him into the moment, he got about three steps towards first before the shortstop threw him out. Jack stirred in his seat while the man beside him with the red beard clapped awkwardly.

  Jack wanted to cheer for Dave, but all he saw were the mistakes the kid had made with the last two pitches. Keep your head down; drive the pitch with your lead leg; stop looking at the homeless guy picking through the garbage can beside the stands.

  The man with the red beard rose to his feet as his son Ritchie approached the plate from the batter’s box.

  “Let’s go, Ritchie. It’s your field, son.”

  Ritchie looked even bigger close up. With large hands, chubby cheeks, accentuated by the helmet pressing against them, and feet the size of many men’s, he looked more like a ten or eleven-year-old.

  Dave’s first pitch bounced into the gravel before the catcher secured the ball.

  The man with the red beard shook his head. “That’s right kid, you don’t want to put it anywhere near the strike zone with my boy.”

  The second pitch avoided the ground, but it still landed too far away from the strike zone. Frustration surged through Jack’s arms until his fingers wrapped around the bottom of the bench. Eyes up, snap your wrist.

  Dave raised the peak of his cap and wiped his face with his forearm. He looked over at the homeless man, who was only visible from the waist down as the rest of him stretched for something he wanted at the bottom of the can. Dave pivoted towards Ritchie, cocked back and fired a fastball right across the plate. Ritchie swung so hard, he fell to one knee. The crowd and both teams chuckled.

  “The kid’s got a rocket for an arm,” a man with a ponytail sitting behind home plate repeated to anyone that would listen.

  Dave chose a slider for the next pitch, and Ritchie caught enough of the ball to send it spinning three feet backward into the cage. The man with the red beard rose to his feet again.

  “He’s catching up with it. Attaboy, Ritchie. You’ve got a beat on it now.”

  Jack didn’t hear a word of the trash talk. He never did. What he saw was Dave focussing on everything but the next pitch. The boy heard his teammates screaming his name, his opponents cursing him, and he was watching the catcher’s mother—a woman of no more than thirty wearing a pink top that struggled to contain oversized breasts. This boy’s got to learn to focus.

  Dave exhaled, reared back and side-armed a curveball too low for the strike zone, but Ritchie didn’t see a curve. He guessed a fastball and swung another full-weight swing as the pitch zipped past him.

  “Strike three,” the umpire yelled.

  The man with the red beard dropped to his seat. Jack nodded while tapping the empty wood between them. The hundred dollars felt like a hundred thousand. The next inning

  the coach decided to sit Dave, and the closer allowed four runs in a four to one loss.

  “How about some ice cream?” Jack asked in the car. “You’ve earned it.”

  Dave didn’t respond.

  “I don’t want you feeling bad about the loss. You threw twelve strikeouts. That’s more than one for every year you’ve been on the planet. You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

  “We lost.”

  “They lost. You pitched twelve strikeouts and went two for three with a double and an RBI.”

  The words didn’t remove the frustration from Dave’s face. His eyes narrowed to form the look that accompanies all eight-year-olds learning the humility of defeat, but Jack gave the horn a honk anyway.

  “Hell, let’s make it an ice cream cake then. I’ll teach you how to celebrate before the day’s done.”

  He honked the horn again and poked Dave under the armpit in his most ticklish spot. Dave tried to look angry, but within seconds he broke into a smile.

  Three

  Dave waited in the detective’s office for twenty minutes, and he replayed finding his dead colleagues twenty times. Instead of the soft rock on the office radio, he heard the crumpling of metal that had accompanied the destruction. An image of the eighteen-wheeler looking as out of place in the office as a fully functioning reception desk would look in the centre of the road shadowed every thought, and flashes of his colleagues’ broken, limp bodies haunted him.

  A detective’s office was the last place he wanted to be, but they had questions, and he understood they needed answers. He thought of his bed, the covers pulled tight over his head; his father’s nursing home, and any bar with a thick, cold pint, when Detective Naves entered the room. Sitting across from Dave, Naves looked like the archetype of how actors chose to portray detectives on T.V. shows. He wore a forgettable suit, had a strong build and ran a finger over a moustache that would make most people think of Halloween. But it was clear he didn’t see himself that way. His forty-something eyes were proud, and everything about his manner and comfort in the environment suggested he had been doing the job for years
. He looked at Dave long enough to make him feel uncomfortable before saying anything.

  “Do you want another coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Then I’m going to get started, if that’s okay with you.”

  Dave nodded.

  “How long did you work at Richter Accounting?”

  “This is my seventh year.”

  “And what is your official job title?”

  “Accountant.”

  “How many employees worked at the office?”

  Dave thought of their broken bodies. “Art Richter owned the business, and there were four others including me.”

  “Do you remember who entered the building last that day?”

  “Yeah, me. A couple of minutes before nine.”

  “And the accident happened at six minutes after nine?”

  “Best I can tell.”

  “Did anyone leave the office after you arrived?”

  “Not that I know of. But if they did, it couldn’t have been for long.”

  “And you were in the washroom when the truck made impact?”

  “Sitting down in the washroom.”

  Detective Naves paused for a moment to scratch behind his ear with the pen. “How much time passed between you going to the washroom and the incident?”

  “I’m not sure, maybe two minutes.”

  “Was anyone alive when you entered the main room?”

  “There’s no way anyone was alive.”

  Detective Naves picked up his pad of paper. “You must have an angel on your shoulder, Mr. Bolden.”

  He looked at Dave for a moment the way detectives do. He absorbed every detail and worked to make connections. What he likely saw was a man who realized for the first time in his life that horrible things can happen to him.

  The realization was different than the painful scares of a broken bone or setbacks like being dumped by a girlfriend or passed over for a promotion, because he had to accept the finality.

  Detective Naves rose from his seat. “There’s a psychologist here who would like to speak with you.”

  Dave shut his eyes. He just wanted to go home, take a shower and let everything settle in. He didn’t want to talk about how he felt; he didn’t know himself yet.

  “I’ve seen a lot of tragedies in my years here, Mr. Bolden,” Detective Naves said. “And I can tell you that people who speak to someone are better off for doing so.”

  Dave nodded. It was easier to agree. A part of him wanted to say, I don’t give a fuck how many tragedies you’ve seen, you haven’t seen my friends mangled under an eighteen-wheel truck.

  But that required energy, and he barely had enough to stay conscious.

  A woman with short red hair, a sprinkle of freckles on both cheeks and pistachio eyes entered the room as Detective Naves left. A visitors’ pass dangled from a clip on her suit jacket: Dr. McMillan.

  “I’m Mia,” she said, extending her hand. Dave was surprised to find it colder and sweatier than his. She sat down and sipped from a large styrofoam cup of coffee. “I’m a trauma councillor, Dave. I work with cases like yours, cases with incidents where there are few survivors.”

  Her voice felt an inch away from his face. He wanted to drag her back to the office, back to the smell of fried wires, back to the look of crushed bodies and dare her to speak with that tone then.

  “Look, I appreciate your offer, but I don’t want to talk any more. I’ve already been here for awhile, and I just want to go home.”

  “Do you live with anyone, Dave?”

  It took him a moment to accept that she had ignored his wishes. “No.”

  “Is there anyone you can stay with for a few days?”

  “I just want to go home.”

  “Or maybe someone could stay with you.”

  “I don’t want anyone to stay with me.”

  Half frustrated by his ignorance and half-inspired by his defiance, she looked at Dave like she knew something he didn’t. She took another mouthful of coffee before continuing. “You’re going to have a lot on your mind; it’ll be best to have someone to talk to.”

  “I just want to get home.”

  “It’s important that you don’t blame yourself for what happened.” Dave looked at her like she was crazy, and not crazy in an intellectually-weird sense, but shit-in-your-hand, preach-on-the-subway crazy. “These type of horrors tend to be so overwhelming,” she added without pausing, “so far away from the common experience that the mind copes by ascribing meaning.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Not yet. But if you find yourself looking for a reason why this happened, or thinking in any way that you had something to do with people dying or living, I want you to call me.”

  She slid a business card across the table. Dave noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Will you do me a favour before you go?”

  Dave made eye contact. Her eyes swirled with an intensity that confused him, and he wasn’t sure whether she was stimulated by her job or if she genuinely cared. He didn’t respond, but his look suggested she could go on.

  “Take ten minutes and write down every detail you remember about what you saw.”

  “I know what I saw; I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Today you can’t. But the odds of you distorting those memories as the days go by are very high, and the odds of you distorting those memories to fit the theories you’ll develop to explain why you lived and your coworkers died are even higher. What you write down now will protect you from yourself later.”

  Shut the fuck up, he thought. Protect me from myself? I don’t need protection from myself. I need protection from eighteen-wheel trucks. He picked up her business card before rising from his seat.

  “I’m leaving now. Thank you for your…words.”

  She didn’t try to stop him. In fact, nobody spoke to him as he entered the precinct lobby to wait for an elevator.

  What Dave didn’t know was that Grayson Leonard was watching him from a bench, where he sipped on a white mocha. Grayson wore an Armani suit and looked at Dave with eyes that capitalized on details.

  He found the tiny differences most people didn’t notice—the differences that separated the poor, middle-class and rich. He joined Dave by the elevators.

  People walking past looked a moment longer at Grayson than they did anyone else in the lobby. They watched him like he might be a famous lawyer, detective or Mafia Don. Nothing about him was average or forgettable. At almost forty-five, his physique looked ten years younger. Even in a suit, it was obvious his body was strong, and his cleanly-shaved head, swarthy skin and warm eyes belonged more in a movie than the muck of the downtown core. He stepped into the elevator behind Dave, waited for the doors to close to ensure privacy, then turned towards him.

  “Mr. Bolden?” Dave looked up. “My name is Grayson Leonard. I’m from SBT Global Investors. We were scheduled to meet this afternoon.”

  Dave shook the extended hand as a reflex, but he didn’t get past the word “meeting”. Surely the man hadn’t tracked him down at the police station to remind him of a meeting. He didn’t know whether to ignore Grayson or punch him.

  “I imagine your head’s spinning,” Grayson said.

  Dave chose to ignore him.

  “My heart goes out to your colleagues and their families. I tracked you down here because the owner of our company, Mr. Thorrin, wants to meet with you. He has an offer he believes can make some good of this tragedy.”

  Dave made eye contact for the first time. As much as he wanted to confront Grayson, the tone of the man’s voice was disarming. Equal parts enthusiastic, honest and engaging, he reminded Dave of a politician.

  “An offer that’s for you only.”

  The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into a crowded lobby. Dave deliberately stayed quiet until he led them outside and into the much needed fresh air.

  “This guy you’re talking about…”r />
  “Mr. Thorrin.”

  “Mr. Thorrin. He realizes what happened today, right?”

  “He does, but he feels it’s in your best interest to focus on the future.” Grayson extended a card. “This has my work extension and two cell phones. Give me a call and let me know when you’d like to meet with Mr. Thorrin. Within the next twenty-four hours is best, as he’s anxious to get this process under way.”

  Dave looked at him like he was crazy. There had to be a catch to this, but Dave felt too exhausted to figure it out. Maybe the man was crazy, or maybe he was actually a journalist working hard to get a story no one else had, or an insurance shark looking to angle his way into details about the crash. Grayson’s extended hand held position in front of Dave for a moment before he noticed.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bolden.”

  They shook hands, but when Dave pulled away, Grayson held on. It wasn’t the type of hold that had any sexual connotation, but a firm grasp that waited to see what might happen if he held it a little longer. Dave finally freed his hand, and they exchanged a long look before heading in opposite directions. Grayson didn’t wash his hand for the rest of the day.

  Four

  When Dave was nine, his father left him overnight at a stranger’s house. Only, he hadn’t planned to, especially not when he woke his son up that morning.

  “Let’s go. We’ve got a big day ahead of us,” he said, pulling on Dave’s feet.

  Dave opened his eyes to see his father hovering over him and almost screamed until he noticed the index finger shushing him to be quiet.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Is Mom coming?”

  “No, we’re going to let her sleep.” Two day’s stubble ran thick on Jack’s face. Purple bags shaded his eyes a sickly colour, but he was smiling. “Let’s go have some fun.”

  Bob Dylan played loudly on the car’s speakers while Jack’s lips mouthed the words. Dave didn’t say anything until the car pulled into Bubba’s Burgers.

  “You ready for a burger?” Jack asked.

  “For breakfast?”

  “I’m starving, but you can have whatever you want; it’s going to be that kind of day.”