Last of the Independents (22 page)

“Tough break. Clear your arson schedule and you could maybe find a night shift position.”

“Too bad you couldn't see it,” Theo said. “Next time I'll call you so you can watch from your office. Then you can jump off that balcony, doing me and my brother a huge favor.”

“That's two balcony threats,” Ben said to me and Katherine.

“You're keeping track?” Theo asked Ben.

“Counting to two isn't a full-time occupation for some of us.”

Zak and his partner lingered by the door. Zak's foot was wedged against the frame as if to guarantee he'd have an exit. No one had weapons in their hands, although all three wore heavy enough jackets that something could be concealed beneath them. My Glock was within reach, but I had a feeling this could be solved without firearms.

Theo looked from Ben to me. “Your butt buddy thinks it's all right insulting me. Obviously he's not taking into account I'm on an extremely short tether since my brother's face ended up on the CBC.”

I asked Zak, “Do you think you got a raw deal?”

Zak shuffled foot to foot and shrugged.

“Leave him out of things,” Theo said, inches from the table. I stood up, came around to stand eye to eye. I saw Katherine unplug and pocket my cell.

I was glad of the height advantage, but Theo seemed comfortable staring down people taller than him.

I said, “That's the last order you give me in that tone of voice.”

“There an ‘or else' attached to that?”

“How stupid can this guy be?” Ben said. Theo turned his head towards him. “Since you've met Mike you've lost a job, your brother's become a media star, and you've found out your boss won't back you in a fight. And Mike hasn't broken a sweat. How much worse do things have to get for you to back off?”

“I do my own fighting,” Theo said. “I don't need Lloyd's permission. How 'bout you? Comfortable standing behind your friend's back?”

“Of course,” Ben said. “I've got a great view for when he kicks your ass.”

“You're a fat-titted schoolboy.”

“Better than an unemployed Dennis Franz lookalike.”

Theo's eyes met mine. When he spoke again it was at half the volume, like an exasperated teacher trying not to yell at a lazy dunce.

“My mistake was in treating you like a man,” he said to me. “I thought a warning might be enough. All you had to do was back up politely and let me and my brother alone.”

“Leave,” I said to Zak and his partner. Zak looked to Theo, who nodded. Zak took a few cautious steps out the door. We listened to his footfalls on the stairs. His partner lingered for a few seconds before following Zak out.

“What does the Pacific Northwest Dennis Franz Lookalike Society charge in yearly dues?” Ben asked Theo.

“Shut up,” I said to Ben.

Theo smiled and nodded. He turned to Ben. “Your friend's giving you good advice.”

“I don't want to see you again,” I said to Theo. “And if you answer me with another empty threat I'll send you to the emergency room at St. Paul's. Understand?”

I took a step towards him and he backpedaled towards the door. “I was you,” he said, “before I ran my mouth, I'd take out life insurance.” We took another collective step toward the door. His hand grazed the knob. He was still talking. With my good hand I grabbed the first object off the table, a three-hole punch, and buffaloed him across the forehead. Theo fell backwards into the door. I dropped the hole punch and shoved him hard down the stairs.

He didn't fall the entire flight, only about two-thirds. A scream of shock issued from him in the brief instant he was in mid-air. Then he landed on his side, heavily, moaning and uttering curses under laboured breathing.

I walked down to where he lay and grabbed a handful of hair, raising his head off the step. When I dropped his head his jaw clicked shut. I walked to the bottom and locked the street-level door. Zak and his partner stood by Theo's Mustang, passing a joint between them.

“Up we go,” I said, seizing Theo by his collar and belt. I dragged him up, counting the stairs he'd fallen. Nine counting the top. There were sixteen in total. Theo didn't struggle as we climbed.

I propped him up against the door at the top of the stairs. He'd started to sweat. Ben and Katherine were whispering behind me.

“I hope that hurt,” I said. “If it didn't I'll have to do it again. I don't want to, but I can't have you threatening me.”

“Break your other arm,” he said. “Fuck you up royally.”

“That's exactly what has to stop,” I said. I helped him to his feet.

“When you least expect it,” Theo mumbled. “Gonna fuck you up. Gonna —”

“This is pointless,” I said. I let go of his shirt, grabbed a hank of hair and pitched him back down the stairs.

He landed awkwardly and rolled almost to the bottom. I followed him down and put the boots to him. I held onto the rail with my casted left arm and kicked at his ribs. When his hands moved to protect his side I kicked him in the face. From the way he thrashed about I could tell he hadn't broken anything more serious than a rib or a finger. That made me mad. Old Man Kroon flails about in the dark and manages to fracture my arm, while Theo Atero escapes two trips down the stairs unscathed. Well, not quite unscathed.

I was gripping the rail with both hands now, stomping on him. Most of my blows caught his fleshy parts, thighs and arm. One solid drop of the heel found his ribs and I knew I'd broken at least one. I felt a pair of arms encircle my neck from behind and I shoved them away to deliver one last kick that caught Theo in the groin. He let loose with a howl of pain. I looked behind me, re-orienting myself. The arms had been Katherine's. I'd shoved her back into the stairs.

The sight of her and the look of fear on her face calmed me instantly. She looked pale. For a moment I thought I'd hurt her, but then I saw it was the makeup caking on her cheeks. I looked down at Theo Atero, wriggling towards the door. I stepped over him and unlocked it but let him crawl and reach for the knob. Theo spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Zak and his partner caught sight of Theo. They weren't the only ones. A long-haired panhandler across the street looked over, as did a young gay couple walking their dog. All six of us regarded the man in the street. Theo crawled to the curb where his brother bent to help him.

I slammed the door, locked it and headed up to the office, walking past the blood on the stairs and on the wall.

Ben had positioned himself by the balcony window, watching the Ateros' car speed away. Katherine emerged from the washroom holding a moistened paper towel to her elbow.

“Did I hurt you?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “It's just a scrape.” We were both speaking quietly, using what teachers used to call thirty-centimetre voices.

“That was ferocious,” Ben said.

“You're an idiot.” Katherine flung the towel at him. It bounced off his breast and hit his shoe. “If you'd shut up maybe it wouldn't've come to that.”

“Like he was going to be reasonable,” Ben said.

She walked to her desk, picked up a stray napkin and clamped it over the elbow. “I quit,” she said.

I wanted to tell her not to. I would have, but quitting would put her out of harm's way. I had no right to meddle with her safety. I wanted to, though.

I said to Ben, “There's a squirt bottle of bleach and water beneath the sink. Take it and one of those rags and go over the stairs, especially at the bottom. Keep your back to the door so anyone peering in can't see what you're doing. Make sure to disinfect anything that even remotely looks like blood.”

To Katherine I said, “Could I trouble you to erase the last hour of security cam footage?”

She nodded.

“I didn't mean to shove you,” I said. “I'm sorry it happened. I'm sorry about the whole thing.”

“You would have killed him,” she said.

“No. But I'm grateful you stopped me.”

She moved to her desk and called up the camera application on her computer. “Sure about that?” Ben said, carrying the bottle and some stiff-looking rags. “If it was me I'd want a copy of that beating.”

Prosper's Point

M
onday
morning I was up before dawn, packing a travel bag and a Thermos, two sandwiches, a case of water, and the first Mandarin orange of the season. It wasn't a long trip — half an hour to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, two or two and a half hours on the water depending on the ferry, add half an hour for loading and unloading, and a ninety-minute drive from Schwartz Bay north to Prosper's Point. Five hours give or take. If we lucked out we'd be on the last boat back to the Mainland. More likely, though, Fisk and I would be spending the night.

When I reached the Tsawwassen terminal there was no lineup and the parking lots were practically empty. I pulled up next to Fisk's F350 in the Premium lot, a stone's throw from the water's edge.

“You know parking is five bucks cheaper over there.” I pointed to the yellow barrier a hundred yards away that marked the start of the Econo lot.

“I like to leave quickly” was Fisk's reply.

We'd decided that since I might stay longer, I'd take the van over and he'd ride with me. Fisk had been in contact with a constable named Delgado who'd agreed to show us around. Fisk described him as “pissy.” I chalked that up to VPD-RCMP police rivalry.

We were the third car onto the ferry. By seven we were having breakfast in the ship's cafeteria, watching through the portals as we sliced our way across the Strait of Georgia.

“Mark Eager told me something funny,” Fisk said as he tucked into a plate of eggs benedict.

I'd brought tea bags with me, and set one down in a cup of hot water. I didn't answer. Fisk would get there himself.

“Some question of where you were the time of the fire,” he said. “Your friend said you were with him all night, then called Mark back to tell him actually you weren't. He wanted it stated for the record — actual term he used, according to Mark — that you told him to tell the truth. Some people might think you put him up to lying in the first place, then realized we'd see through that.”

I said, “That makes a hell of a lot of sense.”

“Just saying, there are a few unanswered questions, least in Eager's mind.”

“That's because I set the fire,” I said. “I thought, ‘Shit, I don't need the car, and wrangling with ICBC claims adjustors for months on end is enjoyable and productive.' Why wouldn't I want to do that?”

“What Mark also said was that you made no mention of your trouble with the Ateros.”

“He knew their names. I said I knew them.”

“But you didn't exactly volunteer the information.” Fisk sopped up hollandaise with a triangle of toast. The beige concoction on his plate looked like it had been created in a laboratory rather than a kitchen. “If the Ateros aren't involved, who else could be responsible?”

“My money's on you,” I said, blocking out the imaginary headline with my hands. “B
UNGLING
C
OP
O
VERCOME BY
J
EALOUSY,
S
ETS
F
IRE TO
IN
TREPID
PI'
S
C
AR
.”

“That's how you see me?” Fisk said.

“No.”

“That how you see yourself?”

“Christ, it was a joke,” I said.

He nodded. “It's early. I'm not a morning person.”

Then he did something that utterly surprised me — he pulled a book out of his travel bag. I bent my head to look at the title.
The Green Hills of Africa
, an ancient yellowed paperback edition that looked identical to one I'd bought at MacLeod's years ago.

“What?” he said, looking up from the page. “You didn't think I read?”

“No, I just took you for more of a Fitzgerald guy.”

“It was on Mira's shelf. It's about hunting. What's wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I must've left it at her place.” I wondered what else he might have inherited.

“It always comes back to that,” Fisk said. “It was almost two years ago. Can't you let it go?”

“It was more than two years ago, and I didn't bring it up.” I finished my tea and fetched my own book,
On Boxing
by Joyce Carol Oates, which had been sitting on my bookshelf for half a decade. Sometimes you buy a book so that it's on hand when the moment arrives. But this wasn't to be that moment.

Fisk clapped his book shut and dropped it on the table. “Why don't you get it off your chest.”

“Get what off?”

“You've been waiting two years to say it. What an asshole I am.”

“You are an asshole,” I said. “You're a shithead. Why would you do something like that to someone who was your friend?”

“Like if you were in my place you wouldn't've done the same thing?”

“No I wouldn't. Because I'm not a shithead.”

The parents at a nearby table glanced at us, a tut-tut expression on the woman's face. Their kids paid us no mind.

“You beat the holy hell out of Theo Atero,” Fisk said. “Eager told me he visited him in St. Paul's. Three broken ribs, a broken finger and a sprained wrist, plus the concussion.”

“He's in a rough line of work,” I said. “What does that have to do with me?”

“You beat him up, didn't you?”

I pointed to my cast as if that was proof I wasn't complicit. “Maybe he fell down some stairs. Twice,” I added, unable to help myself.

“So how are you better than me?”

“I never thought that,” I said, “until you slept with the woman I was engaged to. Things were a mess between her and me, but at least Mira apologized.”

“Is that what you want from me, an apology?”

“I don't want anything from you except to find the Szabo kid and go home.”

We each picked up our books.

“Sorry,” he said.

When I looked up his face was buried in the page.

“Did you say something?”

“No.”

“Just checking.”

“Who the hell is Garrick?” Fisk asked after a few minutes of reading.

“In the book? One of the guides.”

“I know that. Why does Hemingway call him that?”

“Name of a famous actor, I think.”

“Guess that makes sense.”

I read a little about boxing.

B
efore I'd left I tried to talk to Amelia Yeats, but her phone went straight to message. She wasn't at Enola Curious, and nobody answered when I rang the bell at Yates Manor.

Sunday night she emailed me. With her spelling corrected, this is how it read:

Hey.

I'm in Reykjavik right now, helping my dad record this heavy metal band that hasn't played together in forty years. They got offered a million dollars to re-form for the European festival circuit. Some of them haven't picked up their instruments in all that time. I guess there will be a lot of disappointed Europeans next year. But then most people go to shows to see a group, not to listen to them, so maybe no one will notice.

I think if you took everything we said to each other and everything we did, and separated them, there would be two different relationships. I think some people talk out of fear but act out of love. I think we're both like that.

I've attached that
Hooker'N Heat
album we talked about. I have the vinyl at home, but I downloaded this copy illegally. Don't hold it against me.

The band and my dad are back from the pub. In Iceland they have this drink called Glögg. It's hot wine with cloves in it, served with raisins and almonds. Sounds gross, but once you get used to it it's really quite horrible. The bass player Nils is in Narcotics Anonymous. Some of what he says makes sense. Don't get your hopes up.

Anyway, I have to go. I hope you find Cliff's son. I miss seeing them.

Love.

She hadn't signed it, just
love
. Love was enough.

T
he van's glove box yielded a treasure trove of demo CDs. Fisk and I listened to them as we drove. Most lasted about thirty seconds before Fisk hit eject and Frisbee'd them out the window. We listened to a passable metal band and a live recording of a his-and-hers folk duo who sung “Wade in the Water,” “I'll Fly Away,” and an original that had a call-and-response structure. The man would ask some sort of hippie-drivel question and the woman would answer “Yes, Yes.”

Do we wish all people loved each other?

Yes, yes.

Do we wish more people hugged each other?

Yes, yes.

“Put a fucking bullet in me,” Fisk said.

Do we believe that we can change, that governments don't have to fly their planes of destruction,

O destruction, let me hear you sing it now,

Yes, yes.

The other verses were even worse.

Prosper's Point was named for a hill rather than a coastal feature, and located in the interior of the island. We drove through Nanaimo (“Would be the easiest city to police,” Fisk said.

“Why?”

“Because it's built on a slope; all the criminals would run downhill.”) and north through pasture. We passed isolated ranches whose barns, long empty, had been allowed to weather artfully but not fall into disrepair. In one fenced-in meadow a trio of Bay horses grazed. All three were wearing capes to ward off the chill. It gave them a kind of regal appearance but also looked stupid, like dogs in pink sweaters. We passed the turnoff for a trailer park

(“I'd be shocked if there were less than three meth labs in there,” said Fisk.) and turned on to a narrow road that cut through the Douglas Fir leading us to the top of a small rise. On the other side lay Prosper's Point.

The main strip had a McDonald's and a Country Cabin Motel, two gas stations and a selection of bars. The thoroughly modern glass-and-plastic RCMP station was sandwiched between a coffee shop franchise shaped like a teepee and a solid-looking blue brick building that housed the Prosper's Point Library, City Hall, and Chamber of Commerce. I pulled into the parking lot, climbed out of the van and stretched.

Fisk said, “How 'bout I go track down this twit Delgado while you get us a coffee?” I was too busy yawning to argue. He went inside the station and I walked over to the teepee. A heavily-freckled redhead and a dark-haired boy, both wearing yolk-yellow T-shirts carrying the franchise's logo, stood behind the counter. They looked about seventeen, the girl maybe older, in the full flush of her beauty, the boy gangly, acne-pitted, and awkward. He was in the middle of an anecdote that had put a smile of questionable sincerity on her face. The sum total of their relationship, and indeed their lives, was written in that tableau for any stranger to see.

The boy noticed me and put his arms on the counter. “How,” he said.

“Please tell me your boss makes you say that.”

The girl grinned. So did the boy, but only after checking her face and then only enough so she wouldn't think him jealous. His nametag read S
TEVIE
, hers A
BIGAIL
.

“Guess a London Fog's out of the question,” I said.

“What's that?”

There was no bill of fare posted in the small shack, just urns of coffee and hot water and a display rack of shrink-wrapped pastries.

“What kind of tea do you have?”

“Tetley's and Rose Red,” Abigail said.

“Cup of hot water and a Double Double,” I said. “That's coffee, two cream two sugar.”

“I know what a Double Double is,” Stevie said. He went about putting the drinks together. Abigail remained perched on the back counter.

“That your van?” she asked.

“Just bought it this weekend,” I said. “Used to belong to a record producer-slash-engineer. He accepted it as payment from a bar band for doing their demo.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Stevie put the drinks on the counter and made change from my twenty.

“In fact,” I said, “were you to inspect the back of the van, you would find a piece of plywood. If you were to lift this plywood up, you would find a hole drilled in the floor of the van.”

“What for?” asked Abigail.

I unwrapped my Twinings bag and dunked it in the water. Stevie seemed agitated that I hadn't left. I didn't want to cause him grief by wooing his girlfriend with tales of musicians and exotic beverages, but I felt that if anyone noticed who came and went in Prosper's Point, it would be her.

“The hole,” I said, “is for a funnel and a hose.”

“Like a beer bong?”

“Much like a beer bong, except it's used to get rid of fluids. When you tour Canada by van, you can't stop every time someone needs to piss.”

“I don't believe it,” she said.

“If you can abandon your post for a moment I'll prove it.”

She hopped off the counter and came out the back entrance. I didn't need to look back at Stevie to know his expression.

I put Fisk's coffee on the roof, opened the back doors and pulled back the plywood. “One hole as promised. Now you can go to your grave having seen everything.”

“Not quite,” she said.

I sat on the floor of the van with my legs hanging out and patted the bumper for her to join me.

“My name is Mike Drayton and I'm a private investigator from Vancouver,” I said. The last two words made her face light up. “I'm looking for three women who came here in March or April, either passing through or to stay.”

“Why, what'd they do?”

“Do you want me to lie to you, or can I just say it's important to find them?”

“Mysterious,” she said.

“They would've had a boy with them, maybe twelve years old.”

“And they looked like what?”

“Blonde, mid-thirties named Barbara. Brunette named Dawn or Dominique. No description on the third one.”