Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler

Author:Mordecai Richler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group (Canada)

Four

Harvey, an insomniac, could sleep comfortably these days, knowing it was not a total waste of time. Even while he drifted off, ostensibly an idling engine, his stocks were working in overdrive for him. His burgeoning shares in Acorn and Jewel. His fattening private portfolio.

Harvey’s day started out like a bell-ringer. Becky didn’t make one rude remark to him at breakfast. Picking up the front section of the Gazette at the table, he saw that it was Watergate, Watergate, Watergate everywhere. Harvey, as usual, waited until he got to the office to read the sports section. Bad omen. Turning to the box scores, he was brought up short by an item on the opposite page:

I WAS JAILED

BY MISTAKE

MAN SAYS

A Montreal West man who was thrown into jail when he went to bail out his brother-in-law has filed a $200,000 lawsuit against three Montreal Urban Community police, a provincial policeman, the MUC and Quebec’s solicitor general.

Hector Lamoureux is claiming for moral damages, humiliation, loss of freedom, anxiety and anguish after his illegal arrest and more than 48 hours behind bars. His problem began—

Miss Ingersoll buzzed to say Lionel Gursky was on the line from New York.

“My father’s only been in his grave for a week,” Lionel said, “and it’s started again.”

“Not necessarily.”

“I’m talking millions of dollars in shares, all of which were acquired in Montreal this time, through Clarkson, Frost & McKay. Isn’t Tom Clarkson a neighbour of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’d just better find out who his client is and what he’s after and call me back.”

Harvey had now been rooted in his house high in Westmount long enough for him to have grown familiar with his street. Its rhythms, its moods. Eight o’clock every morning, rain or snow, as his chauffeur backed his Mercedes out of his garage, the Jamaican Clean-Up Brigade, eyes swollen with sleep, began to lumber resentfully up the hill. One sullen, parcel-laden cleaning lady following another. And if Harvey was early starting out for the office he was bound to run into the Italian gardeners, a ferocious swarm, blasting compulsively on the horns of their pickup trucks as they swooped from house to house, ploughing the driveways clear of snow in winter and laying in beds of impatiens and petunias in summer, bellowing each to each, no matter what the hour, over the roar of their power mowers or snowblowers.

Further down the street was that most esteemed of Belvedere residents, Tom Clarkson, with his second wife, his surprising bride of a month, a girl called Beatrice. Tom was tall and thin, almost delicate, with sandy hair and piercing blue eyes. He had about him the manner of a man who would have been disappointed rather than angry with a maître d’ who didn’t show him to the best table. He served on symphony and museum boards because it was clearly his duty. He was also a collector: jade, nineteenth-century porcelain.

Tonight Tom Clarkson had a problem. Over the past three days Tom hadn’t returned four phone calls from

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