So our son the litigation lawyer made the lead story in yesterday’s Globe and Mail. OK, he turns up near the end of the convoluted yarn. But I had no idea that back in 2005, when he was a law student, Carlin was involved in such cloak-and-dagger skulduggery. He has been practicing now for more than a decade with Duvernet, Stewart, an amazingly successful boutique firm based in Mississauga.

But here is Globe reporter Mark MacKinnon, writing of 2005 and looking for Boris Birshtein: “After trying, and failing, to deliver the documents at two Toronto addresses, the law student, Carlin McGoogan, made the 75-minute drive north to Shanty Bay, a quilt of elegant farm and cottage properties on the western shore of Lake Simcoe. Faced with a gated driveway and what he described as a 10-foot-high fence at Mr. Birshtein’s home there, Mr. McGoogan taped Alon Birshtein’s statement of claim to the iron gate. This fall, 13 years later, I found myself following in the student’s footsteps. . . .

Like Mr. McGoogan before me, I found myself with only the Shanty Bay address left to try. So I rented a Chevrolet that I hoped looked nondescript, and headed north from Toronto on an early autumn afternoon. I found the property exactly as Mr. McGoogan had described it – but on this day, the gate was open, though dense forest obscured any view of what lay beyond. . . .“

Today, answering my email queries from a ski hill in the Eastern Townships, Carlin revealed that on another occasion, he did get into the mansion at Shanty Bay . . . and even spent time in the steam room. All this was news to me. Speaking as a father, I can say only that at such revelations, the mind reels. But click here for the MacKinnon yarn.