A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  The corporal said, ”Now he’s gonna have a new sheet on him — a pretty blue one, courtesy of the morgue.”

  Anders lay on his back, his right arm flung across an overturned coffee table. He was a big fella, about six-foot-three, maybe three hundred pounds. Despite his size, it looked as if it had taken only one shot to bring him down. Back issues of Low Rider and Time and Oprah lay on the floor like a spilled deck of oversize cards.

  Oikawa said, “An eclectic reader, was Anders.”

  Willows said, “If he lived alone.”

  The green-and-orange-striped sofa was splashed with blood. Green bands of light flickered on the CD player. A set of Sony headphones was slung around Anders’ neck. His mouth and eye were wide open. The eye that hadn’t been sewn shut was chocolate brown. He had more teeth crammed into his mouth than you’d find in the average piranha. Willows had never seen a black man who didn’t have brown eyes, and Anders was blacker than any black man he’d ever seen. He wore a loose-fitting, black, martial-arts-type outfit, and a black belt cut from a wide band of cloth. If he was a karate expert, it hadn’t helped him much. A pair of aviator-style mirror-lens sunglasses lay low on his snub nose, tilted an angle so the lenses didn’t cover his eyes. A long scar curled across his head like the memory of a model railway track.

  The CD player clicked.

  Music leaked from the headphones. Some kind of jazz.

  Oikawa said, “Coltrane. Anders had good taste in music. Wish I could say the same about the furniture.”

  “You don’t like the sofa?”

  “Not the orange part,” said Oikawa. “The rest of it isn’t too bad. This … ” He gestured widely with his arms, encompassing the width and breadth of the living room. “This seem kind of weird to you?”

  “Staged.”

  Oikawa nodded. “That’s right, staged. The headphones, magazines, the damn sunglasses. Look at the way he’s lying, with his arms and leg bent like that. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Oikawa moved gingerly around the body. He said, “You’d think the guy was posing for a goddamn Assassination Calendar.” Willows said, “We better dust every damn square inch of everything.”

  Oikawa went over to the stereo. He pushed buttons and twisted a dial. The green bands of light turned red. Coltrane’s music rattled the windows.

  Oikawa started dancing. “Know how to do the Twist, Jack?” Willows smiled. “Not to Coltrane.”

  “Like this,” said Oikawa.

  *

  Untrue love

  Annie and her best friend, Paige, had driven over to Commercial Drive to attend a poetry reading at a coffee house. They’d both dressed for the occasion. Paige wore baggy white-and-black-striped engineer’s coveralls and pink sneakers with green “Go for It” laces on the left shoe and red “Get Your Filthy Hands Off Me” laces on the right shoe. Beneath the coveralls she wore a skintight flesh-coloured Lycra tank top that showed off her large breasts. You could see her nipples, if you looked hard enough. Annie couldn’t help noticing that just about every guy in the place was looking. Most of the women, too.

  Annie wore a plain white blouse unbuttoned halfway to her navel, a supershort pleated skirt, black knee socks, and black patent-leather slip-ons. Her bra was in the glove compartment of Paige’s car. It was her new “Catholic slut” look, and it worked very well, even if she had been brought up in the United Church. Their clothes and good looks had scored them a front-row table for four. Paige had ordered and paid for a half-litre of red wine.

  Annie sipped at her wine. She was still learning about wines. This particular wine was, in her opinion, barely drinkable. Not sweet enough.

  She glanced around, self-consciously tugged at her skirt, and crossed and uncrossed her legs.

  Paige said, “What d’you think of the wine?”

  Annie shrugged.

  “It’s the best they’ve got,” said Paige defensively. “I had it last time I was here. Its South African.”

  Annie nodded, not really listening. A couple of older guys, men in their late twenties, pushed determinedly through the crowd towards their table. The taller of the two, pale-skinned, dressed in faded jeans and a pale blue denim shirt, caught her eye. He smiled and said something to his buddy. Annie drank some wine. The guy in the blue shirt was kind of cute, but his pal was a horror show. He’d shaved himself bald, had a dyed-red soul patch that turned into a short, spiky beard, wore too much face jewellery, and had Japanese characters tattooed all over his hairless forearms. He totally creeped her out. The blue shirt put his hand on the back of the empty chair next to Annie. He said, “Mind if we join you?”

  Annie glanced uncertainly at Paige.

  Paige said, “Beat it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This table’s taken. Go irritate somebody else.”

  The shirt started to move away. His buddy grabbed his arm. “Hold it a sec.” He turned on Paige. “Who d’you think you are, talking to me like that!”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Not even in your dreams,” said Paige.

  “Faggot bitch!”

  Paige smiled sweetly. She said, “You better believe it.”

  The shirt said, “c’mon, let’s get out of here.” The guy with the face jewellery gave Paige and then Annie the finger as he retreated into the crowd.

  Annie turned on Paige. “What was that all about?”

  “Being a woman,” said Paige.

  Annie drank her glass of wine.

  Paige said, “Thirsty, huh?” She gave Annie a sardonic grin, and refilled her glass. A few minutes later, two women in their mid-twenties approached the table and asked Paige if they could join her.

  Paige smiled and said, “Make yourself at home.”

  The women sat down. The woman closest to Annie was short, heavyset, and had a sallow, puffy complexion. Her friend could have been a body double for k.d. Lang. Neither woman wore makeup, or perfume. The k.d. Lang look-alike wore a diamond stud in her ear.

  A waiter came by with menus. Paige ordered a pasta dish. Annie said she’d have the same thing. Paige smiled, and reached across the table and gave her hand a lingering, proprietary squeeze.

  The two women ordered pints of draught beer. The one with the diamond stud said, “I’m Sue. This is my friend Jess.”

  Paige introduced herself and Annie.

  Sue said, “You guys from around here?”

  “Not really,” said Paige.

  Jess gave her a knowing look. She turned to Annie. “West Side girls?”

  Annie nodded, embarrassed, but not sure why.

  Sue said, “You like poetry, Annie?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “I don’t know — what I’m hearing.”

  “Most poets aren’t poets at all,” said Sue. “They’re just lazy bastards spouting total crap.”

  “No kidding,” said Paige.

  “How would you know? Are you a poet?”

  Paige smiled. “Sure. Isn’t everybody?”

  Jess laughed. “Let’s hope not.”

  Everybody laughed except Annie. Paige finger-poked her in the ribs. “Relax, Annie. Enjoy yourself, for once.”

  The beer arrived. Sue and Jess raised their glasses. Sue said, “Here’s to all poets everywhere, and true love wherever you can find it.”

  Paige said, “That’s pretty damn poetic.” She and Annie and Sue and Jess clinked glasses.

  Paige and Annie’s pasta arrived. Paige offered to share her pasta with Sue. Annie felt she had no choice but to offer to share her meal with Jess, even though she didn’t want to. She was relieved when Jess took a pass. The house lights dimmed, and somebody walked up to the podium and made a few bad jokes and introduced the first of the evening’s poets. Annie didn’t catch the name. Tony or maybe Toby something. He was in his early twenties, very thin, dressed in black pants and a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the throat. He had an unruly mop of curly black hair and round, black-rimmed gl
asses. The crowd gave him a good round of applause. He wasn’t the least bit nervous. Annie admired him for that. She leaned towards Paige and said, “He’s kind of cute, isn’t he?”

  Paige shrugged uninterestedly and looked away.

  Six poets read, one after the other. Each poet was given five minutes at the podium. At the end of their allotted time, power to the microphone was cut off. One of the poets, a woman with blue hair and a sequin-speckled face, gripped the mike and shouted the rest of her poem. She ran on for several impassioned minutes, and received such a lengthy round of applause that she graduated to the next round, the following week.

  When the lights came back up, Jess said, “You guys want to go somewhere?”

  “Maybe,” said Paige. “Depends what you’ve got in mind.”

  “We could go back to our place, drink some wine, listen to some music … ”

  Paige said, “Sounds good to me.”

  “I don’t know,” said Annie.

  Jess said, “About what?”

  “Everything,” said Paige. That got a laugh. She put her arm around Annie and pulled her close. “c’mon, let’s do it. It’ll be fun.” Everybody stood up. Paige rested her forearm on Annie’s shoulder. Annie felt very uncomfortable, even a little scared. Jess led them as they pushed their way through the crowd. The boy in the blue shirt caught Annie’s eye. She tried to look away but couldn’t. He blew her a kiss, and then turned and said something to his friend that made them both laugh. Jess grabbed Annie’s hand and pulled her along. Annie tried to shake her off, but Jess’s grip was strong.

  *

  Thicker than water

  Aldo sat carefully down on Jackie’s futon. He leaned back and vigorously scratched his head with both hands. Dozens of glossy black hairs fell to his shoulders and lap. He said, “I’m going to be bald as a bald eagle’s egg before my next birthday, at this rate.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” said Jackie. “Nobody likes a whiner.”

  “Nobody likes you, either, do they? Can you name one person?”

  “Jennifer Orchid loves me.”

  “By the minute, and the hour.”

  Jackie smiled. He made a small gesture with his hands. “Well, yes, that’s true. But I value expertise above sincerity.” He flipped open a gold-plated pre-war cigarette case, took a moment to admire himself in the case’s small mirror and then extracted a filtertip Marlboro and lit up with a plastic disposable lighter.

  Aldo said, “I wish you’d quit smoking. It’s a disgusting habit.” Jackie exhaled a monstrous cloud of smoke. “It isn’t a habit, it’s an addiction. I’m hooked right through the lungs.” He went into the kitchen, got two bottles of beer from the fridge, went back into the living room and handed a beer to his brother.

  “Thank you,” said Aldo.

  Jackie unscrewed the cap from his beer.

  Aldo drained half his bottle. He said, “Our bodies are our temples, and we treat them like primary sewage plants.”

  Jackie drank some beer. Aldo had high hopes of living forever. He was forever going on and off the wagon. Unlike his foolish older brother, Jackie considered himself a realist. His idea of a long life was merely to survive the weekend’s debauchery. If his sybaritic lifestyle had a flaw, it was that it was heavily dependent on cash. He said, “We are men, and therefore we must do what we must do.”

  “You’re referring to the diamonds?”

  Jackie nodded dolefully.

  Aldo said, “What are you suggesting?”

  “We’ve got to kill them,” said Jackie. “Exterminate them for the worthless scum they are.” He sucked fiercely on his cigarette, and threw back his head and expelled a series of five smoke rings. It was nowhere near a record, but he took consolation in the fact that all five rings were almost perfectly circular. Little doughnuts of smoke. He said, “They’re thieves and scoundrels, all three of them. They’ve got what’s coming to them, and more.”

  “What about Harvey? We haven’t even met him.”

  “Birds of a feather.”

  “The woman, too?”

  “Why not?”

  “She has a child, Jackie.”

  “Or so she claims. Anyway, what difference does it make? She’s vermin, just like the others.” Jackie drained his beer and shot his cigarette stub into the bottle. The hiss of the dying cigarette excited him beyond all reason.

  Chapter 16

  Rivals

  Harvey opened his eyes. The nap of the shag carpet was a ticklish blur. He rolled over on his back. Now he was staring up at the bottom of a low table. He turned his head to the right and found himself looking at the bottom half of a sofa, two jeans-clad legs from the knees down, a pair of heavy black boots. Size ten, ten and a half. Jan was a five. He rotated his head to the left and saw more furniture he recognized, and something brightly sparkling and blue, caught up in the carpet. He reached out and picked up a razor-sharp sliver of glass.

  Behind him, a motor roared and something tugged at his hair. Jan was working her Panasonic vacuum cleaner, but by the time he’d worked that out, he’d already sat up in such a hurry that he’d banged his head against the underside of the table, fuelling his headache and damn near knocking himself silly, not to mention apparently knocking over a can of beer …

  Jan said, “Goddammit!”

  A man’s voice said, “It’s okay, I got it.”

  A stream of foamy liquid fell from the edge of the table onto Harvey’s stomach, splattering his shirt. The liquid was cold. He sniffed the air. Beer, for sure. He rubbed his aching head. He had a lump right in the middle of his forehead. The table was moved aside. A man looked down at him. Because of the angle, he appeared to be upside down. Even so, Harvey could see he was a clean-cut, real good-looking guy, wide in the shoulder and narrow in the hip. But young. Way too young for his wife. The guy pulled up a chair and made himself comfortable. He had an open, pleasant face. He gave Harvey an upside-down smile.

  Harvey said, “Who in hell are you?”

  The guy offered his hand. “I’m Jan’s boyfriend, Sandy.”

  Harvey said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jan’s husband, Harvey. How long have I been out?”

  “A long time,” said Sandy.

  Harvey took Sandy’s hand. He squeezed down on Sandy’s fingers as hard as he could, with such force that the veins and sweat stood out on his throbbing forehead. Sandy kept on smiling. He made no attempt to free his hand. But then, why would he, given that he seemed blissfully oblivious to the fact that he was in tremendous, excruciating pain. Harvey kept squeezing. Sandy reached out with his left hand and picked up his glass of beer and calmly took a small sip. He put the glass back down on the table and squeezed back, with more pressure than Harvey would have believed was humanly possible. Harvey gasped, and tried to jerk his hand free. Sandy kept up the pressure. Harvey moaned deep in his throat. Sandy let go.

  Jan turned off the vacuum cleaner. In the silence, Harvey could hear himself moaning. He clamped down on his pain. Jan said, “I bet you don’t try that again.”

  “Try what?” Harvey gingerly clenched and unclenched his aching hand. His fingers hadn’t been mashed to a pulp, but his tough-guy rep had sure as hell taken a twelve-round beating. He got his legs under him and headed for the kitchen.

  Jan waited until he yanked open the refrigerator door, and then reined him in. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

  Harvey let his shoulders slump. He said, “Okay, fine, i’ll play your silly, childish game. Can I have a beer?”

  “One,” said Jan. “A Budweiser.”

  The Bud was down on the bottom glass shelf, next to a four-pack of outsized cans of a brand of beer Harvey had never heard of. It was brewed in England and was called Malpin’s Best Cream Lager.

  Harvey held up a can. He said, “What’s this imported crap?”

  “That’s Sandy’s.”

  Harvey stood there by the fridge’s open door with the outsized can of English beer clutched in his aching hand, w
aiting for Sandy to tell him to help himself, enjoy. He waited about five extra-long seconds and then it filtered through that he could stand there forever and a day, feeling a chill from two directions at once, and never get the green light. What the hell. He popped the tab and took a long pull.

  Sandy said, “Get one for me while you’re at it.” The way he said it made it an order rather than a simple request. Harvey drank another leisurely mouthful of beer. He swung the fridge door shut and then swung it open and then shut and opened it again, and reached down and grabbed a can of Budweiser and flipped it low and hard at Sandy’s crotch. Sandy snatched the can out of the air and lobbed it back at him. He was so smooth and graceful and accurate that Harvey was a little bit impressed despite himself. He tossed the Bud in the fridge and got a can of Malpin’s and walked over to Sandy and docilely handed it to him. He noticed that, as he drew near, Sandy turned his body and dropped his right shoulder and bent his left knee, so he was ready to deal with it if Harvey got stupid with the big can of Malpin’s.

  Harvey lifted his beer. “Here’s to crime.” If push came to shove, he loved Jan too much to stand in her way if she wanted to be with another man. But not this one. Sandy wasn’t right for Jan. Harvey didn’t think Sandy was right for anyone. There was something about the guy that wasn’t quite right. Harvey didn’t know what it was, but he was going to work on it until he had Sandy all figured out.

  *

  Reel to unreal

  Sue and Jess shared a third-floor walk-up apartment in a house on Napier, a few blocks off Commercial. In the kitchen, Sue casually put her arm around Annie’s waist and asked her if she wanted a beer. Annie said no. She shot Paige a “let’s get out of here” look, but Paige ignored her. Sue asked her if she was afraid she might get drunk, and laughed and gave her a quick squeeze, something that might almost have been a hug.

  A burst of laughter made Annie turn and look behind her. Jess was toying with Paige’s silver necklace, making a game out of nothing. Flirting. Annie had no idea if she was jealous, or not. She’d felt a pang, but it wasn’t in her heart and she wasn’t sure what had caused it.