A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  He’d hung around Claire’s house the past few nights, parked across the street in his Lexus, hoping for a glimpse of Claire, and also wanting a look at her cop husband, because he was curious about what he was up against. The doughnut-eater. Probably had a beer gut, comb-over, flat feet, and breath that would melt a toothbrush. Beady-eyed little sonofabitch who came home stinking of cheap liquor and sudden death.

  Randy wondered if Jack smoked. He bet the sonofabitch chain-smoked like a chimney. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Randy knew he could take Willows in a fair fight, but Willows was a cop, and cops didn’t fight fair. The bastards had guns, and a licence to kill.

  Randy turned off the shower. He towelled himself dry, went into his bedroom, and walked into the walk-in closet. Clothes were his weakness. He chose a pink silk shirt and a lightweight summer suit that had just come back from the dry cleaner, the belt with the mottled silver crocodile’s-head buckle. So cool. He got a fresh pair of Jockeys out of the drawer, and a pair of brand new socks, and laid everything out on the kingsize bed. It took him almost twenty minutes to get dressed, but he was not conscious of the passage of time.

  When he was dressed, he went back in the closet and stumbled around until he’d found his currently favourite pair of shoes. The shoes were almost new and didn’t need polishing. He tossed them on the floor, and then he dove onto the bed, fluffed up his pillow, sighed contentedly, shut his eyes, and was asleep in an instant.

  In the morning, he planned to make an unsolicited house call. What a happy surprise that would be. He imagined Claire opening her door. Her eyes widening, a glint of pleasure. Dr. Randy, at your service!

  As he slept, Dr. Hamilton’s mood was buoyant, and his spirits were high.

  Chapter 21

  The end of almost everything

  Jack had set the alarm for 6:30, but it was Claire who woke him. She’d made scrambled eggs and toast, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. She handed him the tray, and slipped into bed. He held the tray while she unfolded the legs.

  She said, “i’ve missed you, Jack.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth. Her hair was brushed, and she tasted of mint-flavoured toothpaste.

  “Me too,” said Jack. The words reverberated hollowly among his unbrushed teeth. He ran his fingers through his sleep-tousled hair. “i’ve missed you too, honey.”

  Claire took a bite of whole-wheat toast, licked a crumb from her finger. “I thought we could take Hadrian to Science World, run him into the ground, and then maybe go somewhere nice and have lunch.”

  “You’re calling in sick again?”

  Parker nodded. She said, “The way I feel now, I may never go back.”

  Jack put his coffee mug down on the tray. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  Claire said, “Jessie Waters, that woman down the street who just had the twins? She said that new Italian restaurant on Twelfth Avenue is really good. Not too pricey, either. If we’re lucky, Hadrian will sleep for an hour or so, and we … ”

  Jack said, “Claire, I’m really sorry, but I have to go to work.”

  “I haven’t seen you for three days!”

  “Everybody’s overworked. It’s the Colin McDonald case. Dan and I have a suspect. She isn’t much, but she’s all we’ve got. We staked her house out last night. Hopefully, we’ll get to talk to her this morning.”

  Claire was quiet for a moment. She dipped a corner of her toast in her coffee, and chewed meditatively. Jack noticed that her toast was dry, whereas his was buttered and slathered with jam. She knew he had to watch his cholesterol levels. What was she trying to do, kill him with kindness? Finally she said, “All right, fine. If you have to go to work, you have to go to work. I understand that. But I want you to talk to Homer about getting some time off.” She gave him a warning look to stop him from trying to interrupt. “You and I need some time together. We have to talk about my career, and our marriage. Especially our marriage, Jack. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. They were also going to have a special talk about how in hell they’d manage to pay the bills if she quit working, but he wasn’t going to mention it now, because he didn’t have the time to argue about it. His stomach turned. He was starving but hadn’t touched his toast because he knew that not giving Claire his full and undivided attention would be suicidal. The alarm rasped like a dentist’s drill. He reached over and turned it off, but not before Hadrian started crying.

  He said, “I have to go.”

  Claire nodded. She didn’t look at him.

  He said, “Thanks for making breakfast.”

  Now she did look at him, and he wished she hadn’t. She said, “Shut up, Jack.”

  Willows showered and dressed, and left the house without a word. Oikawa was parked outside Jennifer Orchid’s house when Willows arrived. Willows was driving a Chevy from the motor pool. Oikawa was in a silver-coloured Audi parked halfway up the block. Willows pulled in behind him. He walked up to the Audi and got in.

  Oikawa said, “‘Morning, Jack.” He had a Thermos, a green-and-gold coffee mug from Harrods, and a six-pack of Tim Hortons doughnuts. “Doughnut?”

  “No thanks. Nice mug.”

  “Watching your weight?”

  “Cholesterol.”

  “Want some tea?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Oikawa unscrewed the Thermos’s metal lid, which doubled as a cup. He filled it half-full and handed it to Willows.

  “Thanks.”

  Oikawa took a bite of a chocolate-sprinkled doughnut, and said, “Mmmmm.”

  Willows checked his watch. It was quarter past seven. There were no lights on in Jennifer Orchid’s townhouse, and no sign of movement inside.

  At seven-thirty, they got out of the car and walked across the street and knocked on the door.

  Two minutes later, they walked back to Oikawa’s car.

  At ten past nine, a dark blue Ford Mustang convertible pulled up to the house. The top was down. The car had a yellow Hertz sticker on the rear bumper. Willows and Oikawa slouched low as Jennifer Orchid got out of the Ford. She hurried across the boulevard and let herself into her condo. She wore a black spaghetti-strap evening dress and black shoes with stiletto heels, and carried a small black purse.

  Oikawa said, “I don’t think she was wearing anything under that itty-bitty little dress.” He added, “I couldn’t walk two steps in shoes like that.”

  “Just as well,” murmured Willows.

  “Want to grab her?”

  “Not yet,” said Willows. Their suspect had left the rented Fords engine running. When he’d knocked on the door, no dog had barked. What was going on? Why had she rented a car? He said, “I want to see where she’s going to go next.”

  “You’re thinking a kennel?”

  Willows nodded.

  Oikawa had two doughnuts left, an Old-Fashioned Plain and a Boston Cream. It was a no-brainer, but he wished he’d brought more napkins …

  Jennifer Orchid came out of her house wearing a baseball cap, Yale T-shirt, a pair of hot-pink Capri pants, ankle socks, and white sneakers. She put on a pair of sunglasses as she got into the car.

  Oikawa started the engine, and cranked up the air conditioner. He said, “i’ve got Glenn Gould in the CD player. That okay with you?”

  “Fine,” said Willows.

  Oikawa waited until the Ford had disappeared around the corner at the end of the block, then put the car in gear.

  *

  Aldo and Jackie played blackjack till dawn. By then, the casino was almost deserted, and they were up a little over three thousand dollars. A somnolent woman offered them another round of free drinks. Jackie turned her down with a grim smile and a fifty-cent tip. He doubled up on a pair of aces and won another four hundred dollars.

  When Aldo had finally got his yawn under control he said, “Yee-haw!”

  Jackie said, “I’m bored.” He mock-punched their pile of chips, scattering them across the table. “This is nothing — it’s funny money.”

&n
bsp; “What d’you mean?”

  “It’s stupid. It means nothing. Let’s have some fun with it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Three thousand dollars is an insignificant sum. Lady Luck wants to take us for a ride and we are too frightened to jump on board.”

  “Speak English!”

  “Craps,” said Jackie. “Roulette. That’s where the serious money is to be made. I say let’s roll the dice, and see where they take us!”

  “Straight to the poorhouse, I bet.”

  Jackie looked his older but not wiser brother in the eye. He said, “‘Life is too short to act as if life is too short.’”

  Aldo jerked his head back as if he had been punched in the jaw. “That’s so profound.”

  “People magazine,” said Jackie. “Last week’s issue. Goldie Hawn, or maybe it was Brad Pitt, I can’t remember.”

  The brothers went their separate ways. Jackie circled the roulette table like a vulture while Aldo shot craps. They took a pre-scheduled break after one hour. Aldo was up another five thousand, Jackie almost seven. Aldo unstrapped his Timex and pushed tiny little buttons until the watch was in calculator mode. Ten minutes later, he said, “We’re up fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “A good start,” said Jackie.

  Aldo glanced warily around. He said, “They don’t like it. They’ve encouraged me to bet far above the paltry legal limit, and never stop trying to serve me alcoholic beverages. It drives them mad that I keep winning.”

  “Me, too,” said Jackie.

  “Shall we keep playing?”

  Jackie clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Why not?”

  A little while later, Aldo tired of craps and joined Jackie at the roulette table. Every so often, acting on a whim, he placed a bet. Each time he did this, Jackie lost a sum of money that was insignificant compared to the amount that Aldo acquired by betting against him.

  By eight o’clock in the morning, they were up thirty thousand dollars, and the casino’s manager was sweating solid silver bullets. He asked Aldo and Jackie if they were interested in a complimentary breakfast, then sent out for orange juice, coffee, and Grand Slam breakfasts from a nearby Denny’s.

  Aldo and Jackie ate at the table. They placed bets between mouthfuls of food. The Grand Slams were delicious, but, though neither complained, both men thought the orange juice had a slightly bitter aftertaste.

  By 8:30, they were up another five grand.

  Ten minutes later, both men unceremoniously dropped to the casino’s thinly carpeted floor. By 8:45 they were in the trunk of a glossy black Cadillac speeding east on Marine Drive. The Caddy crossed the Fraser River on the Knight Street Bridge. At this point, the driver, Marcus, lost his sense of direction. He drove a couple of blocks and parked in IKEA’S massive hundred-acre parking lot, and consulted a magazine-style booklet of maps of the Lower Mainland.

  The guy in the shotgun seat was a chubby guy named Kelly Ames. Marcus had never worked with him before. Kelly said, “I hate fucking Richmond. Everything looks exactly like everything else. Santa Claus could get lost out here.”

  Kelly’s hair was thinning. He had the pear-shaped body of a man who had never met a calorie he didn’t like. His eyes were the washed-out blue of a country sky, and the way he walked somehow gave the impression his arms were a little too long. He dressed badly. His ill-fitting pants always needed a press. His shirt always needed tucking in. Marcus had taken an intense dislike to him the moment he’d met him. There was something about the guy that made him need to wiggle his toes. His blunt finger stabbed at the map, distorting the lay of the land. He said, “That’s where we want to go, Kelly. Right there.” His finger moved and stabbed. “This is where we are now.”

  “Here, in the parking lot?”

  Marcus nodded. He said, “I’m gonna pull out of the parking lot and drive down this road right here, back where we turned left at the lights. Then I’m gonna take the overpass over the highway, and head down towards the river. Gimme the lefts and rights as I need ’em, ’kay?”

  Kelly nodded doubtfully.

  Marcus thrust the map into his hands. “Here, take the map. What d’you think, I’m gonna hold it for you while I drive?”

  Kelly studied the map intently for several long seconds, then turned it around so it was right-side up.

  River Road was essentially a narrow strip of two-lane asphalt that ran along the top of the dike that kept the Fraser from flooding Richmond. On the Caddy’s left, there were big deciduous trees, and log booms tied to the bank. Beyond the trees the mud-coloured river flowed ceaselessly and unhurriedly towards the sea. On the right, there was a twenty-foot-deep ditch, more dark water, the odd jettisoned major appliance, and lots of bright green pond scum. Algae. On the far side of the ditch there were acres of apparently untended fields, a scattering of blocky warehouses with silver-or blue-tinted windows, swampy-looking areas full of dead trees, every once in a while a barbed-wire-surrounded concrete-block office building, a few small houses. The speed limit on the dike was 30 KPH per hour, and Marcus was in no hurry.

  After the better part of an hour, they crossed back over the river, into the City of New Westminster. It wasn’t anywhere Kelly would want to live. Marcus steered the Caddy into a straggly industrial district that ran parallel to the river.

  Kelly said, “You got a particular dumpster in mind?”

  “Nope.”

  “We could chuck ’em in the river … ”

  “Only if they come back to the casino.”

  “That ain’t likely to happen.”

  “Really? How do you know what they might do?”

  “A person wakes up naked in a dumpster way outta town, I’d have thought the message was clear.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes. He said, “Not if you’re an idiot.”

  “Are they idiots?”

  “Well, if they aren’t, what in hell were they doing in a casino in the first place?”

  “Having a good time?”

  Marcus rolled his eyes.

  Kelly said, “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  The Caddy’s suspension worked hard to smooth out a set of railway tracks. The road narrowed to one lane and swung around so the river was on their right. The road fell into a huge, pothole-sprinkled gravel yard. A squat, hangar-sized building made of rusty, corrugated metal loomed above the river. The Caddy splashed through puddles of oily black water. Marcus spun the wheel. They cut around a stack of railroad ties, and drove through a vast doorway, into the empty building. Shafts of light fell through huge mullioned windows, speckling the concrete. Marcus slowly backed the Caddy up against a scabrous, rust-flaked wall. “This outta do it.”

  “Where’s the dumpster?”

  “Let’s just pretend it’s right here, okay?”

  Marcus popped the trunk. The high-rollers were still napping. He told Kelly to grab a couple of ankles, and to go easy, concrete was hard.

  Kelly said, “So what do we care if the idiot chips a tooth?”

  “I never hurt anybody I don’t have to.”

  “Why not? The ones you don’t have to hurt are the most fun.” They swung Aldo out of the trunk and lowered him to the cement. A handful of pigeons wheeled high overhead. A pale grey feather came fluttering down. Marcus held out his hand and let the feather drift into his cupped palm. It was shaped like a tiny ark, and it was beautiful. Kelly was watching him, frowning critically. Marcus pursed his lips and blew the feather on its way. They lifted Jackie out of the Caddy’s trunk and laid him tenderly down on the ground next to Aldo. The brothers were breathing steadily. They were going to be okay. Marcus said, “Strip ’em naked.”

  Kelly had been hoping he’d say that. Smiling happily, he got to work. When he’d finished, he manipulated Jackie’s body so his head was nestled in the crook of Aldo’s arm. He smiled at Marcus and said, “How’s that — you satisfied?”

  Marcus said, “There are worse things than being a feather.”

  “What the fu
ck’s that supposed to mean?”

  Marcus gave himself a shake to loosen himself up. He had a feeling it was going to be a long ride home.

  *

  The night before the robbery, Sandy couldn’t sleep. He had pills, but didn’t want to take them. In the morning, his head had to be clear. He watched TV for a while, and fell asleep on the sofa in the middle of a truly awful film called Hercules in New York, starring a badly dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  The alarm woke him at seven. The diamond-merchant robbery was supposed to go down at quarter to twelve.

  Sandy showered and shaved, and dressed in black sneakers, pleated black Dockers, and a loose-fitting black button-down shirt from the Gap. He shoved his holstered Glock inside the waistband of his pants, and let the shirt hang loose. The gun was undetectable — not that it made any difference, since Harvey would assume he was packing. The Dockers were cuffed, and fairly wide at the ankle. Sandy’s back-up piece was his blue steel .22-calibre Iver Johnson Pocket Pistol. The gun had a three-inch barrel and a seven-round magazine. It fitted snugly into a black suede thumb-break ankle holster with a Velcro strap. His father had given him the gun. It was fifteen years old, but had never been fired in anger.

  Sandy brewed a pot of coffee, and turned on the TV. He usually ate breakfast but he wouldn’t eat today, because it was better not to have a full stomach if you got shot in the belly. The weather channel said it was going to be clear and warm, with a mid-afternoon high of 26 Celsius degrees. He turned the TV off and went outside. A robin pecked at his landlord’s lawn. Somewhere, not far off, a gas lawnmower roared. He wished the city would ban the damn things. They were noisy as hell and spewed out more pollution than your average dump truck. The mower burped and roared. What kind of inconsiderate fool mowed his lawn at eight o’clock in the morning?