Read Online Famous Last Meals by Richard Cumyn - Free Book Online

network.”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œCommunication with constituents.”
    â€œYou would think so, wouldn’t you.”
    â€œIt can’t be sex appeal. Look at Mackenzie King.”
    â€œThe answer is unthreatening image. The ideal is a competent MP who doesn’t keep the voter up at night.”
    â€œYou’ve made a study of this. I’m surprised you went into law and not political science.”
    In Oliver’s face was the embodiment of his own principle: dependability and civic duty obscuring a lively skeptical mind. The face required shaving twice daily. The forehead was high with a hairline retreating toward male pattern baldness. The eyes were a reader’s, weak, the small ears ursine. A thick neck and broad shoulders made him look as if he had worked toting rolled carpet or sides of meat. Adam pictured him taking his coffee break in the lunchroom of a factory or an abattoir, his open textbook propped defensively between him and prying, teasing, suspicious, misreading eyes.
    â€œYou never practised law?”
    â€œI always wanted to argue both sides of any given case. I was more interested in cooperative than adversarial jurisprudence. Aboriginal tribal councils, for example, emphasize redress over retribution. That was the thrust of my thesis: adapting native sentencing procedures to white justice. I didn’t get very far with it, mainly because my supervisor didn’t believe in it, and he was the only one in the department doing work even remotely related to my topic. His thing was the effect of community-service sentencing on recidivism.”
    Oliver wanted to tear down most of the prisons and replace them with halfway houses, leaving only the most violent offenders behind bars. Would he make that a crusade if he got elected?
    â€œEventually. You don’t want to scare people off. This kind of thing takes years, decades. It gets done, when the electorate isn’t paying attention, by representatives who, as I say, don’t appear to be making waves. And it all has to fit into the corset of party discipline. So much power resides in Cabinet now.”
    Oliver’s calculated, bloodless strategy left Adam feeling chilled. For all that he felt detached from the Feeney campaign, he was disturbed to think that legislative change could happen with so little disclosure.
    They reached their assigned neighbourhood after an easy, fifteen-minute walk from the hotel, and agreed to split the area. Usually when he rang the bell or knocked on the door Adam got no answer, and so would leave a flyer in the mailbox: “Sorry we missed you! Your support is important to us. If you have any questions for Don or for the Prime Minister don’t hesitate to call. Remember: Don Feeney Gets It Done.” Twice he triggered loud barking, making him feel like a burglar. One man who came to the door swore that he would not vote for “that deadbeat” Don Feeney unless they paid him a million dollars, which was the amount he said Feeney had bilked him out of, back when they were both young salesmen with the same life insurance company and Feeney had tried to convince him to invest ten thousand dollars in a mining project. Something about Feeney was untrustworthy, he said, and so the man had let the opportunity pass. Adam asked why and how not giving Don ten thousand dollars to invest caused the man to lose a million.
    â€œYou’re not listening, you see. If he had been trustworthy, and by that I am referring to the distance between his eyes, which is not wide, you have to admit, I would have given him the money and I would be on Easy Street today. You have heard of Consumption Sound, have you not?” Adam pretended he had. “Well, there you go. Enough said. Projected ore body in the billions and that’s conservative. So don’t expect a vote out of me, young fellow, not for a mandarin parachutist who would do such a despicable thing to a friend.”
    Several