A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  Jan brushed past Harvey and bent and ruffled Tyler’s hair. “Bedtime, sweetie.”

  Harvey said, “I’m ready. I been ready for years.”

  She gave him a warning look, and then turned and led Tyler by the hand down the hallway to his room. Harvey shifted position so he could keep her in view. She hadn’t aged a day in all the years he’d been gone. Not an ounce of fat on her. She still liked to wear tight clothes, show off her body. Well, she’d never been the shy type. Not that he remembered, anyway. He sat down on the sofa, flicked ash at the heavy blue glass ashtray. He could hear Jan’s murmured voice, and wondered what she and his son were talking about. Maybe she was reading to him from a book. There was a guy named Eric Wilson who wrote mysteries that were very popular with the cons. He’d read a couple, thought they were pretty good.

  He wondered if Jan was telling Tyler that his father was a loser, and not to expect to find him at the breakfast table in the morning.

  Jan’s voice droned on. Harvey resented whatever she was saying, even though he had no idea what it was. He got up and went into the kitchen. The fridge door had a bunch of kid’s drawings plastered all over it, held on by strips of tape or giveaway fridge magnets. He yanked open the door and helped himself to a bottle of Granville Island Lager. The beer was cold, and had a nice, malty taste. Jan must be doing okay, if she could afford to buy premium beers. Or maybe her boyfriend was the big spender. He eased shut the fridge door and went back to studying the drawings. Most of the pictures were of birds or animals. A couple were of a weird looking alien-type dude. Maybe that was the boyfriend. Sandy. What kind of name was that? It could’ve been a man or a woman. Or a beach.

  He heard a small sound behind him, and spun around so fast he surprised himself.

  Jan said, “Nervous?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Have a beer, why don’t you.”

  Harvey smiled. He bumped the bottom of the beer bottle against a drawing. “That supposed to be the boyfriend?”

  Jan nodded.

  Harvey said, “Tyler’s quite the talent. But let’s hope he don’t quit his day job.”

  Jan’s face got a mean, pinched look. Harvey suddenly remembered what a ball-breaker his wife could be. He said, “Just kidding. Sure got a flair for colour, don’t he? I guess he’s got some of your artistic genes running around in his veins.”

  Jan laughed out loud.

  Harvey said, “What’s so funny?”

  She filled a tall glass with water from the tap, and took his arm and led him back into the living room. Harvey plunked himself down on the sofa. Jan sat in a ragged, overstuffed armchair with scuffed wooden trim. The two of them were about as far apart as the room’s dimensions allowed.

  Jan said, “What’ve you been up to since you got out, Harve?”

  He shrugged a little too elaborately. “Not much. Been trying to find some honest work, but I’m here to tell you, it ain’t easy.”

  “I heard Quisno’s looking for talented people.”

  “Maybe so, but they ain’t looking for me.” He took a long pull on his cigarette. Smoke leaked out his nostrils. He opened his mouth a crack and forcefully exhaled a stream of smoke until his lungs were empty, then stretched his arms wide and took a deep breath. “I dropped by the tattoo parlour a couple times. It was always closed. You playing hard to get, is that it?”

  Jan said, “i’ve had some other projects I had to attend to.”

  “Like what, your new boyfriend? I thought you were a hardtop girl, was a big shock to see you running around in a pickup truck. You listen to C&W, wear a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, and a pleated skirt?”

  Harvey’s tone was teasing, but his eyes were hard. Jan said, “You been spying on me, Harve?”

  “Damn right. What else have I got to do with my time? Anyway, we’re still a legally entwined husband and wife, last time I looked.”

  “In name only, Harve.” Jan drank some water. Harvey’s nails scrabbled at the label on his beer bottle. She said, “You remember, I said I might have some work for you.”

  He didn’t look up. Fragments of paper fell from the bottle to the carpet. In all the years they’d spent together, Jan couldn’t remember him ever picking up after himself, or helping with the housework, or shopping … Or even thanking her for doing it all for him. There was no reason to think he was any less useless now. What could prison teach him, that was worth learning?

  After a moment he said, “Doing what?” His voice was flat, uninterested. But his nervous fingers were busy, busy, busy. A blizzard of paper fell from the bottle.

  Jan said, “If I let you in, it would only be under certain circumstances.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m in charge. You’re the low man on the totem pole, and you do what you’re told.”

  “You sure make it sound like a whole lot of fun, whatever the hell it is you’re yapping about.”

  “Armed robbery,” said Jan.

  Harvey laughed. He said, “There been some big changes around here since the last time I looked. Armed robbery? What happened to the sweet little girl you used to be?”

  “Poverty.”

  “The tattoo thing ain’t working out too good?” Harvey drank some beer. He said, “I won’t pretend I ain’t interested, because I am.” He gave her a disingenuous smile. “But where in hell am I going to find a gun?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He pointed his trigger finger at her. “You saying you got something for me?”

  “No, Harvey, I’m saying you don’t need a gun.”

  “But … ” Harvey got it. He said, “What’s your boyfriend’s name again?”

  Jan didn’t say anything. Gave him a hard look. He smiled and said, “Sandy’s the shooter, is that it?”

  “Nobody’s going to do any shooting.”

  “Maybe not, but you damn well know what I mean.”

  Jan said, “Sandy has a gun. It’s the only gun we’re going to need, and it’s just for show. We’re going to rob people, not shoot them.”

  “You hope.”

  Jan leaned forward. “Shut up, Harvey.” She wasn’t shouting, but his ears were ringing. She said, “Just shut the fuck up, and listen. For once in your stupid life. Can you do that, Harve? Can you just shut the fuck up?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess so, if I … ”

  Harvey clamped his mouth shut. His cheeks flushed red. Thin white lines formed around the corners of his mouth.

  Jan let a solid minute crawl past, by the battery-powered clock over the sink. Harvey stared at the blank TV screen as if he were watching his favourite program. He was so grim — his time in jail hadn’t cheered him up one little bit.

  She said, “You’re the driver.”

  He nodded.

  She said, “You can speak now, Harvey.”

  He ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, and lit another with Anders’ Zippo. “You want me to drive the getaway car?”

  “We were thinking along the lines of a van,” said Jan, “but you can think of it as a getaway car if it makes you happy.”

  Harvey grinned broadly, but his eyes were flat as a lizard’s. He said, “What’re you gonna do, knock off Victoria’s Secret, score a lifetime supply of clean lingerie?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “Just drive, that it?”

  Jan nodded. She finished her glass of water and leaned forward so she could put the glass on the coffee table. Harvey eyeballed the swell of her breasts against her T-shirt. She looked up. Their eyes locked. Jan held her pose, letting him have an eyeful. Then straightened.

  Harvey said, “I need to know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My share — what do I get?”

  Jan had her answer ready. “Ten per cent, or a thousand dollars a kilometre.”

  Harvey frowned. “A thousand dollars a kilometre?”

  “Or 10 per cent.”

  “Of what?”

  “We’re n
ot sure. Probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of four hundred thousand.”

  “That sure is a nice neighbourhood.”

  Jan nodded.

  Harvey said, “Could I take the thou a click against the 10 per cent, so I get whatever comes out bigger?”

  “Why not?”

  “Any chance of a bonus? Some kind of incentive, for a job well done?”

  “Depends what you had in mind.”

  “You know what I got in mind,” said Harvey.

  Jan’s white teeth pressed down on her lower lip, as if she were working out the implications of what he’d said. It had always driven him crazy when she bit down on her lip like that. She damn well knew it, too.

  Jan said, “I couldn’t go back to how we were, Harve. Things would have to be different. You’d have to try an awful lot harder.”

  “I would, I promise.”

  “We’d have to use the money to make a new life for ourselves. Put a down payment on a house. No flashy cars, or drugs, or … “

  “That’s exactly what I’d want for us, honey. You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “You’d have to get an honest job. I don’t mean right away, but soon. You owe that to your son.”

  “Don’t I just know it.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Name it, babe.”

  “No more fooling around. I deserve better than that, and so does Tyler.”

  Harvey put his beer down on the coffee table and pressed his hand against his chest. “Swear to God, I’d be true.”

  “I mean it,” said Jan.

  “Me too,” said Harvey. He eased off the sofa and moved slowly towards her, waddling on his knees. When he got close enough, he rested his head on her thighs, and slipped his arms around her waist. She smelled delicious. He wondered if she wanted him to kill Sandy. The way her woman’s mind worked, one little thing at a time, he doubted she’d given it a moment’s thought. Harvey snuggled a little closer. The kid had to be asleep by now. Jan had more flaws than most women, and in his opinion her worst flaw was not thinking things through. Like, how would it help if he stopped messing around with other women? He was true to her, he was going to get bored a lot sooner, and that would be a hardship on their relationship. It was the sort of thing he could never talk to her about, because she got all worked up, couldn’t think straight if her life depended on it. Well, that was Jan. She’d never change. Not in this lifetime, anyway. Did he complain or whine about that? No. So why couldn’t she be mature enough to accept his faults?

  He lifted his head so he could look at her.

  “Wanna have sex?”

  Jan smiled, “You mean, make love?”

  “Yeah,” said Harvey.

  “No,” said Jan. “Not yet and maybe never.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Talk is cheap, Harve. You’ve got a lot to prove, before I’m going to let you back into my life, and my pants.”

  Nodding agreeably, he slipped his hand under the thin material of her T-shirt.

  Jan leaned towards him. She ran her fingers through his hair, and then leaned back. Harvey cupped her breast. Yummy. Jan raised her arm. Harvey looked up. A torrent of ash and cigarette butts fell into his widening eyes. He tried to squirm away, but his hand was caught up in Jan’s T-shirt.

  He opened his mouth to yell something along the lines of Don’t hit me! The ashtray thumped his skull. He fell backwards. His head bounced off the coffee table, and then the carpet.

  Jan almost hit him again. She brought the heavy ashtray swinging down on his slack-jawed face and then had a change of heart and pulled back at the last moment. It was a near thing. The ashtray clipped Harvey’s chin hard enough to take away a little piece of skin. His raw flesh was white, then pink, then bloody.

  Jan stood up. She was a little shaky, but not bad. Harvey’s eyes were closed. His breathing was deep and slow. The ashtray was flecked with blood, and cracked diagonally from corner to corner. Harvey’s forehead was horribly swollen. A purpling bruise raced across his skin, from temple to eye. He’d swelled up as if something was alive in there. Jan tossed the ashtray on the coffee table. It exploded into a thousand pieces that rained down on the carpet.

  She went into her bedroom and picked up the phone and speed-dialled Sandy’s cellphone number.

  He picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for her call. “How’d it go?”

  “Not all that wonderful.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “He still there?”

  Jan said, “He got kind of frisky. I hit him with an ashtray.”

  “That big blue one?”

  “You don’t miss much, do you? He’s unconscious.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Be right up.”

  That startled her. She said, “Where are you?”

  “Across the street.”

  Jan went over to the window and cracked the blinds and looked out. Sandy’s pickup was parked in the loading zone in front of her building. The truck’s door swung open and he got out. His phone was up against his ear.

  She said, “How long have you been there?”

  He looked up, waved, as he crossed the street. He was walking as fast as a man can walk and not be running. He said, “Buzz me in.”

  Jan said, “You better believe it.” She’d been ready to do pretty much whatever was needed to get Harvey to drive the getaway car. She was glad it hadn’t come to that. Say what you would about him, Harve was a bear in the sack. It had shocked her how much she had wanted him, when he’d strolled back into her life. It was crazy. Harvey was a total loser, and likely always would be.

  But there had always been something between them, sexual alchemy, a white heat that burned her soul …

  How much longer would Sandy have waited, parked in his truck outside her bedroom window, before he decided that he was the one getting screwed?

  Jan didn’t even want to think about that. From now on, she would have to be very, very careful. Sandy and Harvey both wanted her. Both men expected to be with her. For now, she was walking a tightrope, because she needed them both to pull off the diamond robbery. Afterwards was a different story, but she doubted she’d have to choose between them.

  Harvey wouldn’t let that happen.

  Neither would Sandy, and Sandy already had a gun.

  Chapter 15

  Breathless

  Willows parked the unmarked car in front of the Western Hotel, with the right-side wheels up on the sidewalk.

  Oikawa gave him a look.

  Willows said, “What?”

  “It makes it a lot harder to open the door when you park like that, ’cause I got to push up, as well as out. I miscalculate, don’t push hard enough, the door could swing back on me … ”

  “And break your legs?” Said Willows pleasantly. He got out and slammed the door shut and strode around the car, towards the front door of the hotel.

  Oikawa had to hurry to catch up with him. He was always chasing after Willows, and he hated it. Willows was a prototypical A-type personality. Why didn’t he do the right thing, and have a goddamn heart attack, and die? Only then, maybe, would he slow down enough for Oikawa to keep up.

  Willows pushed aside the hotel’s sturdy metal-clad door and climbed a short flight of stairs to the lobby. A uniformed cop at the top of the stairs stepped aside. Willows said, “There a desk clerk?”

  “In his office, over there.” The cop pointed at a closed door.

  “Who’s keeping him company?”

  “Sergeant Gramfield.”

  Willows nodded. Gramfield was in his late fifties, a lifer, and a force in the all-powerful police union. The desk clerk was in good hands. Three quick steps took Willows across the lobby, past the short, wide corridor that led to the restrooms and the hotel bar, and over to the stairs that led upwards to the second and third floors. Oikawa trailed along behind at a relatively sedate pace. The canned music from the bar was just short
of deafening. The Western, in common with most of the hotels in the area, depended on its liquor licence to maintain any semblance of solvency.

  The crime scene was on the third floor. By the time Willows reached the second floor, he was sucking wind, and sweating buckets. His heart was like a battering ram, banging away at his ribs at a frantic rate. Oikawa passed him between the second and third floors. For him, the climb up the steeply pitched stairway had seemingly been effortless. He smiled at Willows. “You okay, Jack?” Willows nodded, too puffed to speak. He leaned against the railing. His damp shirt clung to his heaving chest.

  Oikawa said, “Maybe you ought to spend a little time at the gym, work on your cardio, lose a few pounds.”

  Between gasps, Willows said, “Thanks for … the … advice … Danny.” He wiped stinging sweat from his eyes.

  Oikawa said, “You look like you’re gonna puke. You look like puke. Want me to buzz the paramedics?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Oikawa chuckled good-naturedly and continued down the hall. Willows took a deep breath, stood upright, and followed after him. Oikawa badged the cop standing by the open door to apartment 313. The cop was a rookie, straight out of the academy. He nodded to Willows. “How’s it going, Detective.”

  “Great. Yourself?”

  The cop said something Willows missed, due to the ragged catch of his own hard breathing. He entered the apartment. A short, narrow hallway led to another open door. The hallway had no architectural merit, other than to function as a simple but highly effective trap. Willows heard Oikawa say something and laugh. He followed his partner’s laughter into a large room filled with a soft, golden light.

  Oikawa had been talking to a uniformed corporal. He pointed at the body on the floor. “Anders Bruhn. Got a sheet on him would cover a city block. Drugs, petty theft, assault … ”