Stanley Park Read Online Free PDF Page B

killer, never found. The reason, inexplicable. The repercussions.” And here the Professor leaned forward and looked at his son very closely. “The repercussions still spilling down through the years.”
    There was a second of silence.
    “All right,” Jeremy said. “What can I do?”
    “I need details,” the Professor said. “You could try the library.”
    Jeremy thought for a second.
    “Yes?” the Professor pressed, canting a bit forward.
    “Sure,” Jeremy said. “I promise.”
    “There are stories, you understand?” The Professor was again looking directly at his son. “There is Siwash and there are others. There are individual stories written in code. Say mental illness, say what you like. But I have come to understand recently, very recently, that in these stories there are threads that weave together into a single chord. A single story lives at the centre of it all, and by this story the others might be interpreted.”
    “These kids,” Jeremy said, voice flat.
    “Their death. Perhaps.”
    Jeremy nodded, feeling helpless. A promise to do some research didn’t sound like a lot coming out. Released into the dark air between them, it gained volume and weight, instantly.
    “Well then?” the Professor said, thinking they should move on before the boy reconsidered. “Do tell.” And with this comment, he laid back in the ferns, his head outside of the pool of firelight, supported in his two interlocked hands, elbows flaring out and framing his darkened face. A coal sparked and threw an instant of reflection into his black pupils.
    “The Monkey’s Paw is everything I want to do,” said Jeremy, by way of introduction. “Jules and I work exceptionally well together. We understand each other precisely.”
    “Jules Capelli, yes. Plus, the alliterative Anya Dickie likes you,” the Professor said.
    Jeremy nodded. “That review helped us, I can tell you. We were in deep trouble there for a while,” he said. Even thinking about it made him nervous.
    The Professor waited.
    “Money trouble,” Jeremy explained.
    “Ah, yes,” his father said. He was not overly familiar with this kind of trouble.
    “No matter how good people say we are, the downtown east side makes some people uncomfortable. That is, some of the foodies we would otherwise be attracting won’t go there. Plus, what we do is not always cheap to begin with. A prawn raised in a vat in the basement of a factory in Singapore is about half the price of a fresh prawn from the Queen Charlotte Islands. Not as good, clearly, but cheaper.”
    “Fascinating,” said the Professor, who was enjoying the ideological drama captured in the story. “It is inefficient, perhaps, to have your passion for local ingredients.”
    “Maybe that’s it,” Jeremy said. “In any case, I almost crashed the whole thing. It was close. Debts, credit cards, cheques. I’m bad with that stuff. And even now, it would be misleading to say we’re hugely profitable.”
    “I see,” the Professor said. “Now you feel pressure from the moneylenders, and it is distracting you from what you love to do, is that it?”
    “Sure. Partly.”
    “And despite these pressures, you have little control over increasing your own business. So you simply cook well, remain devoted to your culinary principles, and hope that a lot of people will eventually come to appreciate your efforts and come to your restaurant and spend money, etc., etc.”
    Jeremy nodded wearily. “Basically. The strain of which brings me to the question.”
    The Professor sat up and poked the coals. “I’m listening.”
    “Dante Beale.”
    His father stopped poking the coals and looked at him. “What about Dante?”
    “He’s offered to invest. He likes the restaurant. He knows I’m struggling. He believes in what I’m doing.”
    “That barista boy,” the Professor said.
    “He
employs
baristas,” Jeremy said. “Thousands of them too. Inferno International Coffee is huge—you have to give him credit for