Julian (21 page)

After Charr had thumped back down to his room with his books, I looked up the number of the mission and, perched on the edge of my window chair with my eye on the street outside, punched the number into my work cell.

“Guiding Light.”

A male voice, ageless and uninviting.

“I’d like to speak to Ninon Bisset if she’s there.”

“Staff only.”

“Pardon me?”

“You can only talk to someone on our staff. We don’t give out the name of anyone who may or may not be a guest at the mission.”

“But she’s a regular. If you could just tell her—”

“And we certainly don’t take messages.”

“Will you at least let me know—”

“Have a nice day.”

And he ended the call.

I stabbed the OFF button on the cell. I hadn’t really expected to be able to talk to Ninon, but I was hoping. Should I go over there? I wondered. I probably wouldn’t get past the doorbell. Some of the people who made use of the mission would be, like Ninon and me, on the run—hiding—and regardless, as the man had grumpily told me, the mission wasn’t there to act as a message service. But images of Ninon shuddering from a coughing fit and burning up with fever wouldn’t leave me alone. I pulled on my running togs and, although the mission was a long way off, I included it in my route for the day.

No luck. She may have been there. Or on the moon, for all I was able to discover. I jogged off, wishing she’d call and let me know how she was doing.

After supper I was out front, cultivating the flower beds that skirted the verandah, when a cab deposited Rawlins and his travel bag and four instrument cases on the sidewalk. I wiped the sweat off my forehead, propped the cultivator against the porch railing and went to help him with his baggage.

“You have an extra guitar,” I said in greeting, picking up two of the cases.

Despite the heat, Rawlins was sporting a long-sleeved, snap-button shirt with pointy pocket flaps, faded denims and dusty cowboy boots.

“Hey, Julian. Yeah, bought the new one in Kentucky. Come on in and take a look.”

A few minutes later, after throwing open every window in his stuffy apartment, Rawlins flipped the latches on the case and, with a wide grin on his weathered face, held up the instrument for my inspection. It was a six-string, all black, polished smooth as glass, with gold tuning pegs and an inlaid pearl Q on the head.

“Wow.”

“Brand new. Handmade. Ordered it two years ago from the artisan; he’s a slow worker but worth the wait. Solid top, sides and back—the guitar, not the craftsman. Want to hear it?”

“Yeah.”

While Rawlins tuned the guitar I pushed aside a stack of sheet music and sat on the couch looking around, wondering where Chang’s techie had discovered the bugs—something I wouldn’t be telling Rawlins about. He began to play, using a flat pick and his fingers. A piece he called “The Drummers of England” flowed out of the instrument, the beat steady and brisk, but not military or aggressive like the title suggested. I wished I knew something about music. The tune was beautiful. I liked it, but I didn’t know why I liked it. I wondered how long it took to be as good as Rawlins.

When he finished, I asked, “Did you make up the tune?”

“Wish I had. No, that’s a Barenberg piece.”

“Well, the new guitar sounds fantastic.”

As if he’d tuned in on my thinking, Rawlins added, “You know, Julian, I could have you making music—not concert grade, but a beginning—in a month, if you want.”

I was tempted, but with all the confusion in my life right then, I couldn’t see my way clear.

“Maybe one of these days,” I replied.

As the dark came on, the breeze dropped, leaving the air velvety and close. Sitting in my chair by the window, I heard guitar music downstairs. I could also detect cigarette smoke floating on the sultry air coming through my window screen. I guessed that Charr was on the verandah. He wasn’t even supposed to be out of his room, never mind outside the house.

I found him sitting on a lawn chair, eyes closed, head back, a cigarette burning between his fingers. Enjoying the music, I supposed. Who could blame him? His room would be roasting, the air stiff and stale. The clap of the screen door as I came out broke his reverie.

“Ah, Jurian. Thank you for newspaper.”

I had popped into a shop near home at the end of my run and picked up a couple of dailies for him.

“That’s okay,” I replied, sitting on the verandah swing. “Hey, I never asked. Do you have enough food?”

“Chang give me.”

I nodded. Maybe it was the peaceful night, the mood created by the music, but I thought Charr might open up a little.

“You come from China,” I began.

Charr nodded. I waited but nothing more came.

“What part of China?” I asked, as if his reply would make a dent in my total ignorance of the place.

He tapped another smoke from the almost empty pack and lit up.

“North part,” he replied vaguely.

Okay, he wouldn’t play. Might as well go for broke.

“I guess Mr. Bai helped you get to this country,” I said casually, studying his face.

He tried not to show a reaction, but, behind his glasses his eyes narrowed for a split second.

“I not know this person.”

I gave up and changed the subject. “It sure is a nice night.”

He restricted himself to a nod.

We sat back and let Rawlins’s guitar serenade us with a slow ballad. I recognized the tune but couldn’t name it. I let my mind float with the music, wondering what Charr’s story was. It couldn’t have been easy, uprooting his life, leaving home, wherever that was, and sneaking into a strange country, almost certainly illegally. You didn’t have to be an outlaw to understand that wrenching yourself away from everything familiar and trying to find a footing in an alien place was harder than people thought. Ninon hadn’t managed it. Not really. I wasn’t sure I had either—even though I’d had lots of practice, and I had been born here.

Thinking about Ninon got me worrying again. I wished she’d call. I wished I could think of a way she could get out of the dead-end life she was in.

Out on the street a car rolled slowly by.

Too slowly.

It drifted past the house, the purr of the engine hanging in the still air. A black car. Two Asian men inside, the one riding shotgun boldly studying us through his open window.

As nonchalantly as I could I told Charr, “I think we’d better go inside.”

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS HOT
, and the thick air stalled over the city was heavy with moisture. I came straight home from work, a couple of newspapers for Charr tucked under my arm, their pages limp with humidity. I had promised Fiona that morning that I’d babysit Roger for an hour while Trish took her own kid to the doctor. When I turned the corner onto my street I dropped the papers and began to run.

There was a car parked in front of the house, and two guys in suits on the verandah. One of them had his hand on the doorknob. I dashed up the path and onto the porch, startling the strangers. They were the men who had cased the house last night.

They could have been twins—medium height, beige lightweight suits, slicked-back hair, dark eyes with an irritated, menacing air—but one was smooth-skinned, the other pockmarked high on his cheeks.

“What can I do for you?” I asked, not very politely.

The one who rode shotgun in the car the night before replied in a calm, bureaucratic tone, “We are looking for a friend.”

“What’s his name?”

The man offered a cold smile. “We don’t want to trouble you.” He said something in Chinese and his partner rapped loudly on the door.

“There’s a few people living here, including me,” I told him, keeping my voice even. “Who do you want to see?”

The partner knocked again.

“Look,” I tried again. “I’m the building superintendent. You’ll have to give me a name.”

“A friend,” repeated the bureaucrat.

“Excuse me,” I muttered to the knocker, pushing between him and the door, forcing him to take a step back. He threw a what-do-you-want-me-to-do glance to the bureaucrat, who gave an almost unnoticeable shake of his head.

“I think you’d better leave,” I said.

Neither man made a move, the bureaucrat hiding behind a polite mask, the knocker standing with balled fists. I pulled out my cell.

“You’re trespassing. Go now, or I’ll call 911.”

They stared at me a moment longer, and when I didn’t back down the bureaucrat snapped off a few words in his native language, turned and walked down the steps, his silent partner behind him. They got back into the car and drove off. I caught their license plate on the cell camera, although Chang wouldn’t need it, I was sure.

I had no time to think about what had happened. I was due at Fiona’s in two minutes. I knocked on Charr’s door
and told him he shouldn’t come out of his room today. He didn’t argue. I dashed up the stairs to find Fiona waiting, in a hurry as always. But she took time to cup my chin in her hand and turn my head from side to side, peering at my eye as if she expected it to fall out.

“Coming along nicely,” she pronounced. “The lassies’ll be chasing you again in no time. Roger’s sleeping, but he’ll likely wake soon. You know where I keep the diapers. His milk’s in the fridge. Bye, Julian, and thanks.”

And she was out the door, her feet drumming on the stairs, the screen door slapping in her wake.

The superheated apartment was in a state of semi-organized confusion. I sat down on the couch, still pumped by my adventure with the two beige suits. Later, Trish arrived at the door—which I had propped open to let some of the stifling air escape—to find me and Roger on the floor in front of the TV, putting an oversized jungle animal jigsaw puzzle together for the sixth time.

“If you’re free for the rest of your life, I know a few young mothers who’d snap you up in a second,” she purred over the head of the baby she held against her chest.

I carried Roger downstairs and lowered him into his stroller and Trish set off down the sidewalk, skilfully piloting one stroller with each hand. I watched them go, then called Chang.

I was late getting to bed that night and sleep wouldn’t come. Not even a breath of air flowed over the windowsill. Things were piling up. Ninon was constantly at the centre of my thoughts. The situation with Charr—the
whole Chang thing—was spinning out of control. I felt like I’d been blindfolded and tied to a violent amusement park ride.

I got up and drew a glass of water from the kitchen faucet and drank it by the back window. Mist haloed the street light and softened the outlines of the cars along the curb.

I heard voices, urgent but controlled, from the downstairs hall.

Barefoot, wearing only my boxers, I threw open my door and dashed down the stairs, swung round the newel post and landed in the hall on both feet. The suits I had kicked off the verandah that afternoon were at Charr’s door, talking rapidly in low tones. Charr, in trousers and a greyed tank top, gripping one of my paperbacks in his hand, was shaking his head and yelling, “
Bu xing! Zou kai! Zou kai!
” at the man who held him fast by the opposite wrist.

But the pockmarked man held on.

“Hey!” I hollered. “Let him be!”

The bureaucrat rattled off a sentence or two and his partner let Charr go. Both suits turned to face me, and at that moment Charr seized his chance, ducking back into his apartment and slamming the door and throwing the bolt, leaving me alone to face the suits.

I stood blocking the hallway, aware of how ridiculous I must look in my red plaid boxers.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The bureaucrat did the talking. “This is not your business,” he said, as if quietly addressing an employee, his arrogance rising from him like a sharp odour. “I advise you to—”

“You stand here in
my
house,” I hissed, “and tell me this is none of my business? You come here and give
me
advice? I asked you who you are.”

“We will go now,” the bureaucrat insisted. But he didn’t move.

The partner’s body language was subtle, but he was preparing to do something. I kept my eyes on his and stood my ground.

Stalemate.

“We will go now,” the bureaucrat repeated. “Please move aside.”

Whether his forced smoothness was meant to calm me or his partner I couldn’t tell. Deciding I could gain nothing by obstructing them, I opened the front door wide, faking politeness, Mr. Good Host seeing off his honoured guests. The bureaucrat glided past me. His flunky kept up the staring contest, wary, expecting a move from me. I almost laughed when he pirouetted and backed out of the house, eyes locked on mine, like a gunslinger in an old Western withdrawing from a hostile saloon crowd.

And then they were gone.

I rested my hand on the staircase railing, felt the rivulets of sweat trickle over my ribs, the tremor in my hands. I didn’t feel like discussing the incident with Charr—not tonight, anyway—so I padded up the stairs. I drank a glass of water, then picked up the Chang cell. After I made my report he said he’d be along as soon as he could.

I wished everything was as simple as Roger’s jigsaw puzzle, with its happy lion cavorting in the grassland with a giraffe and a rhino. Tonight I had been up against pros. The main door to the house was locked every night. The
suits had gotten in anyway without making a sound. Were they the ones who had planted the bugs? Or had they had it done? I couldn’t picture Mr. Bureaucrat doing anything that might wrinkle his suit or get his hands dusty. Who were they, he and his pockmarked partner?

My rival-gang theory, connecting the abduction attempt on Wesley with Mr. Bai’s wealth and resources and apparently illegal activities, was weakened by tonight’s events. When I blocked Wesley’s kidnappers, one of the men had come at me with a knife. Tonight was different. Although the bureaucrat’s partner oozed aggression, suggesting he could break loose and have you on your back before you knew what hit you, he and his boss were restrained. They were all business. They operated within limits. It would have been easy to pop Charr on the head, drag him to the car and make off with him. Instead, they’d tried hard to persuade him to co-operate. When the bureaucrat had noticed his sidekick had Charr by the arm, he had ordered him to lay off.