During the pandemic I experienced a little bump in productivity on the assembly line. Currently my publisher had THE DEAD DREAM, due out for the Christmas rush, THE DEAD WALK and THE DEAD RUN, books nine, ten and eleven in the Callum Cogan PI series. The deal was one book a year. I did the math and reckoned I had some down time coming to me.

      Woof. C’mon Dad.

      “Alright, old buddy.”

      The truth was I was sick of Cogan, though appreciative of the financial success he had delivered to my table. With that in mind, I decided it was time for a new direction. I stood on the balcony of my condo and looked at the clouds. Follow them, I thought. 

      Woof, C'mon Dad.

      Victoria Memorial Park had been a graveyard for the British military stationed at Fort York, during the late eighteenth until mid-nineteenth century. Me and Photon II had just come abreast of the old gravestones at the east end of the park. I saw a man sitting on the bench under the big maple tree. 

      The man was seated with his legs apart, both hands resting atop an unadorned wooden walking cane. He was dressed casually; straw fedora, a tan blazer with a yellow hanky spilling out of the pocket. A dapper sort of fellow, vaguely familiar.

      It took me a few seconds before I realized that there was a dove perched on the top of the dapper man’s hat. The dove was completely still. But then the bird rearranged itself slightly, thereby announcing that it was alive.

      Odder still, the dapper man did not flinch. I had the feeling again that I knew the guy. Then it dawned on me. I was looking at Martin Frobisher. 

      Photon II ran ahead, tail wagging, woof, woof, throw the ball, Dad. The dove leapt into the air.

      The man’s eyes were open, and they seemed to be staring into the distance. Towards the pub in fact. A man with a sense of direction, I thought, but as far as I could tell, Martin Frobisher, winner of just about everything from the Governor General's Prize to the Giller to The Booker, short listed for the Nobel, was pretty much dead. 

      I loved his books. He was everything I wasn't as a writer. It was like he wrote with a chizel. It was as if he chipped each word out of the vast frozen north that he loved. You read one word you felt cold, two words you felt a distinct chill, three words your nose was frostbitten. What do you say to a dead literary genius?

      “Good afternoon, sir,” I said, awkwardly, as I came near.

      I gave his toe a little nudge. 

      “Good afternoon, sir,” I said, a little louder. 

      Not a blink. 

      “Photon,” I said, “the man’s dead.”

      Woof, throw the ball, Dad.

      I called it in. 

      I looked the man over and noticed a trade paperback partially hidden by the hem of his jacket. It was THE DEAD CALL, the fourth instalment of my Cogan franchise. Some lunatic said of the book; ‘Cogan is a force of nature.' Who was I to disagree, sales through the roof. 

      “You’re a fan of Cal Cogan,” I said without conviction.

      The dapper dead man shifted his eyes, “Yes, the man's a force of nature.”

      I wasn't hearing any irony in the statement. I sat, keeping a little distance between myself and death the way one might avoid a runny nose on the streetcar.

      “You don’t think he’s a little over the top?”

      “Of course, it’s entertainment.”

      “What about Sugar Salks?”

      Sugar Salks, Cogan's Pollyanna sidekick, bore a striking resemblance to Tinkerbell.

      “Tragic elegance,” he said, with what appeared to be a look of fatherly concern.

      “I’m thinking of killing off Cogan,” I said.  “I was heading over to the pub to sort it out over a pint or two. Write something else. A memoir, maybe. My Irish ancestry, the coffin ships, alcoholic father, the Afghan war, Mountain Thrust.”

      I tapped my prosthetic leg.

      "PTSD, opiates, failed marriage, therapy, Callum Cogan as therapy."

      “Sorry to see Cogan go. Nothing like a good who-dunnit,” Martin Frobisher said, sounding sincere.

      Woof. Throw the ball Dad, Photon II said, frantically wagging his tail. 

      Martin Frobisher sighed.

      "I started out wanting to be a crime novelist. Never got the hang of it, you know the pacing, the snap, crackle, pop of the thing. And there was winter, all that winter, the voice singing to me from beneath the river ice." 

      A crime writer? Martin Frobisher sighed again.

      “You’re off to the bardos then,” I said.

      I knew about the bardos because Sugar Salks practiced Tibetan Buddhism. “Some spiritual detailing before you move on.”

      “A shoeshine for the soul?”

      “More intense,” I said.

      “Boot camp.”

      “Yes.”

      We sat in silence for a while. Eventually, I heard a siren in the distance. 

      “There’s your ride,” I said.

      “Charon the hack.”

      “A sense of humour always helps in times of need.”

      “I don’t need anything.”

      The siren grew louder. 

      "A piece of advice," Martin Frobisher said.

      Advice from a dead man, why not?

      "Sure."

      "Always save a dance for the one who brung ya."

‍

How The Dead Dance Died

      "Mrs. Dogsbody speakin', how may I misdirect yer call? No, the great man is not currently available. Yeah. Yeah. Yer kiddin' me?  Alright then, hang on."

      Aoife handed me my cellphone.

      "Who is it?"

      "Your agent calling to say you're going to need some new patio furniture."
‍

      Notes in my GRAB BAG dollar store notebook somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean:

      1. A middle aged woman with an extension ladder attempted an escalade on my 2nd floor condominium.

      2.  Just as she had a leg up on the balcony rail she was interrupted by Harry-the-concierge. "Scuse me ma'am, can I help you?"

      3. The woman tossed a hammer at Harry, striking his forehead just above the right eye.

      4. The woman continued her escalade but was unable to gain entry to my condo without the hammer.

      5. The police arrived.

      6. The woman began tossing my balcony furniture onto the sidewalk below.

      8. The police entered my condo and after some back and forth a constable tackled the woman as she attempted to toss herself after the barbecue.
‍

      Woof, woof! C'mon Dad.

      Yeah, me too, ol' buddy. We were happy to be home, and well, just a little shocked at the immanent changes we'd set in motion on the back stoop of the stone cottage in Knockgraffen prior to the drive to Dublin to catch my flight. Me and Photon II loved Ireland. I'm guessing it was the Celtic kibble for the Woofster and the big magical heart of Aoife O'Casey for the both of us. 

      Aoife was due in a couple of weeks, a scouting mission to look for some studio space for her loom that she could afford (good luck with that). It was part two of the test to see whether or not our plan to divide our time between Toronto and Knockgraffen was workable.

      Woof, c'mon Dad.

      Alright then. 

      It was nice to see Harry-the-concierge was back at work, though with a sinister looking black patch over his right eye. 

      When we got back from walkies there was an email from my agent. One of the news feeds was reporting that the woman who attempted the escalade believed that my intrepid private detective Callum Cogan was the father of her daughter's child. (Maybe this was related to THE DEAD FLY series #2 in the series in which Cogan fends off a paternity suit from a mysterious Russian woman, whose mother in THE DEAD SING, series #1 disappeared after she was exposed by Cogan as an ex KGB assassin.)

      No indication of what she intended to achieve from a confrontation with Callum Cogan.

      The whole thing was too bizarre. I copied the note to the sub-file ODDs & ENDings, in the master file entitled GRAB BAG. I had a shower and then me and Photon II crashed on the couch. Good to be home.

      A few days later my agent emailed me an update to say that the woman, who claimed to be an actress and who went by the name Honey B, had escaped custody from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and thrown herself in front of a subway train. 

      I'd seen enough misery, (see THE DEAD HIDE, series #3, Callum Cogan failing to cope with PTSD, from  my experience in Afghanistan during Mountain Thrust) to have an idea of the terrible depths of the woman's pain. Still...
      I always start with the elevator pitch. Buy this book because, in twenty five seconds or less. The pitch was my anchor, the chunk of concrete that kept the good-ship Callum Cogan from splintering on the great rock of my imagined genius.

      The pitch: A woman attempts to hire Cogan to investigate the undercover police detective from a popular television crime series who she believes is the father of her daughter's child. Cogan declines, because obviously, the woman is nuts, but then her head explodes from an assassin's bullet. 

      I put the pitch aside and thought I'd spend an hour working up a general outline. A title came to mind, THE DEAD DANCE.

      I was interrupted by Harry-the-concierge. He called up to say that a woman who appeared to be a homeless street person, had dropped off an envelope.

      It wasn't an envelope but a single sheet of paper folded over four times. I unfolded the paper and saw that it had the CAMH logo at the top. There were some lines of tiny ink scrawl.
‍

            Stank of urine in the hall

            A guy with no legs smoking

            A guy curled up on the couch weeping

            You know what I did

            I opened the windows

            You know why I opened the windows

            I opened the windows

            Because it was a beautiful day

            Yes
‍

      The paper was signed at the bottom in loopy backhand letters: Honey B.

      I went out onto the balcony and sat in my comfy chair. It was a Hogtown summer day, hot enough to melt asphalt, air soggy with the humidity. I read the poem again. I thought about it for a few minutes, the Yes. I reckoned that it was a remarkable yes, a simple yes, spoken with all the beautiful, doomed hopes and dreams of Honey B pouring into a world that didn't much care. 

      I thought about the window me and Aoife had just un-shuttered, both of us trying to throw off the shadows that haunted us.

      Yes, we'd said to each other on that back stoop in Knockgraffen.

      Woof. Walkies, Dad.

      I fetched my laptop. I deleted the elevator pitch from the GRAB BAG file. I folded up the handwritten poem and set it on the coffee table. It was something to hold onto, but in a way that respected the sad life of Honey B. Maybe that's what I'd think about when me and Photon II went walkies.

      Woof.

      Nope, Aoife's gonna love the humidity.