Against the Wind. Jim Tilley
I haven’t seen you in six months.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Hervé doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “We’ve— ” He hesitates. “Been considering other acquisitions too. Possibly a merger.”
“I’m late to the table,” says Ralph.
“Not at all. It’s not your job.”
“I thought I could help.”
“Keep focusing on our environmental litigation. That’s what I pay you for— By the way, how’s our appeal on the Gaspé case going?”
“We don’t have a hearing date yet.”
“We shouldn’t have had to appeal.”
“The judge made a mistake in his decision.” Ralph looks into his friend’s face for a sign of displeasure or disapproval. As always, Hervé is inscrutable. “It should’ve been open-and-shut in our favor— I don’t know what more anybody else could have done.”
“You could have won.”
“Our Toronto lawyers proved that Frontier met all regulatory requirements. The personal injury lawyer we brought onto the team argued convincingly that there was no link between the wind turbines in the vicinity of the plaintiff’s home and his chronic state of depression.”
Hervé raises an eyebrow. “Your man should have been more aggressive in exposing the plaintiff’s medical history. He was clinically depressed before we installed the farm— Marital problems— Job performance.”
“Look— I don’t think it’s the particular case that’s bothering you.”
“What makes you think I’m upset?”
Ralph ignores Hervé’s attempt to divert the conversation. He points out that the Federal Government has already given clear signs it is on the verge of compelling the industry to fund an independent study of health hazards. The publicity around the Gaspé case put them over the top. “Right,” says Hervé, “and now the Wind Energy Association blames my company. Even if we win the appeal, we’re stuck with a bad reputation.”
“Not if we win, but when . . .”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Set the litigation aside,” says Ralph. “Are you convinced there aren’t any health hazards from your turbines?”
“I’m not aware of any evidence proving there are.”
“Put yourself in the shoes of that poor Gaspé man and his family.”
“It’s not my job to empathize with plaintiffs.”
Ralph scans his friend’s face for a hint of compassion. “Would you consider the minimum setbacks adequate if it were your own girls’ health at stake?”
Hervé takes a long, slow drink of water and picks at his salad, moving the fish aside. “I don’t pay you to be my conscience.”
“Really? That’s exactly what I think you pay me for.”
“That’s not how I see it. I’m compensated for profits and share price— You help me avoid taking hits to those.”
“I know, but if we suspect something isn’t right, we should change it.”
“Even if the practice is strictly legal?”
“Even then— Especially then.”
Hervé gives a dismissive shrug. “We’ve had this conversation before— You always fail to factor in the costs of doing more than we’re legally required to. Face it— You’re an idealist.”
“You’re missing the point,” says Ralph. “It’s long run versus short run.”
“The point is we should have won the case and you know it.”
Ralph pauses to consider his response carefully. No matter how he phrases it his friend will resent the implicit I told you so he’s about to deliver. “If you’d volunteered to pay for the plaintiff’s ongoing psychotherapy and settled out of court, there’d be no adverse publicity at all.”
“It’s over and done with,” says Hervé. “Merely another bump in the road— You’ve served us well.” His friend’s tone suggests a finality that Ralph doesn’t like.
CHAPTER 4
As he leaves his office in Place Ville Marie and heads to the underground garage, Dieter sees that it’s already two thirty. Later than he’d planned on leaving, but still early enough to stick to the speed limit and arrive at Lynn’s on time. Germany is different. There he can put his BMW 335i convertible through its paces. The one he keeps in Montreal he has to rein in, all those horses under the hood champing at the bit for a little freedom to gallop away. Sometimes he can’t help but yield to the demands of those creatures and the one inside him, an impulse for which he’s often paid the price of a big ticket for a speed dangerously close to an automatic license suspension. Not today though. He can take his time and savor the unfolding drama he’s directing. An opportunity to write the script for the next act, his old high school rival now clearly in his crosshairs. But tonight he’ll disarm Ralph—they’ll be on the same team, currying favor with Lynn. Or maybe it’ll be good cop, bad cop, Lynn undoubtedly viewing him as the bad cop. His life’s story with her. Unlike Ralph, who’s always in her good graces.
The weather report is for solid overcast by the time he arrives in Picton, but right now in Montreal it’s sunny with high cirrus clouds. If it were still summer, he’d drive with the top down, enjoy the feeling of the wind tossing his hair. It would set his heart racing, yet not as much as when he used to take his car to Circuit Mont-Tremblant. Courtesy of a friend who knew its owners well, he was often permitted to use the track. Mostly they made him drive his convertible with the top up, but every now and then he’d run the course a little less aggressively with the top down. As a boy he watched a few Canadian Grand Prix races there, one in particular he’ll never forget—the high school graduation present from his father, who’d arranged for him to meet Mario Andretti after a Formula One event in 1967, which Mario happened to win. The autographed checkered flag is mounted on the wall of his apartment in Montreal. But he hasn’t been to the track in more than four years. His invitations disappeared after his crash in 2008. He totaled the car on the infamous Turn 2 but walked away unscathed. He’s also had a few near misses on the highway, but no accidents. So far he’s been lucky. Except for speeding tickets.
As he passes into Ontario along a straight stretch of road, clouds striding in from the west to overtake the sun drawing a late-in-the-year shallow arc in the sky, he turns his attention to Ralph and wonders what he’s up to. Probably touring Prince Edward County. Will he fall for its natural beauty, be taken in by the bays and inlets and lakeshore, the rolling farms and quaint town of Picton? Will he drive down to the beach and sit on a dune, his former boyhood friend who bounded off to camp every summer to return with tales of sailing and canoe trips? Will he get caught in his reminiscences and let them overcome him or will he see that the proposed siting of the wind farms more than satisfies the legal requirements? Will Ralph support Dieter’s views or undermine them with Lynn? Could they ever be on the same team? Ralph cares only about his own agenda. Though he suspects few people have ever seen beyond the veneer, Dieter knows that deeper down Ralph’s a fucking prick.
Back in elementary school it was different. As young children they were best friends, playing together almost every day after school. Sometimes with Lynn, at Swiss Village where Lynn and Dieter lived. Lynn’s family was granted permission to occupy one of the little brick houses his father’s company built so that its expats wouldn’t have to find a place for their families to live during their stints in Canada—a Monopoly house, red instead of green. They weren’t exclusively for the Swiss; important people working at the company could rent the houses the Swiss didn’t need. Dieter lived in the biggest by far—a Monopoly hotel—because