by Sheena Kamal
“No. Another group with a much lower profile, but they are believed to have links to a larger biker syndicate. The main person involved was a longshoreman named Curtis Parnell. He was able to directly confirm a relationship with Three Phoenix.”
“A longshoreman means the ports.”
“Yes, that’s how they got some of their illicit product in, at least. Dao has been in touch with Three Phoenix.”
“Thank you for the information.”
“I’m not done yet. The second line of inquiry you could take would have to go through WIN Security.” Brazuca glances at the bodyguard and driver.
“My friends here are not with that company, but I’m familiar with them. What do they have to do with Dao?”
“Ray Zhang was a client. Dao was head of his private security, but he’d work with WIN if he needed a larger detail.”
“You just gave me two lines of inquiry to find the man who might have been with my son when he died. How can I repay you?”
“Just find Dao. This is speculation on my part, but I don’t believe he simply witnessed your son’s death.” Brazuca isn’t sure why he doesn’t tell them that he saw Dao shoot Bernard Lam. Maybe he’s just gotten so used to holding back that it’s second nature.
Edison Lam exchanges glances with his bodyguard. “You think he was involved? What would he have against my son?”
“He’s mentally unstable and has been recovering from a serious injury. I think your son tried to buy him off, and that didn’t sit well.”
In a move that seems to shock Bernard Lam’s father as much as it shocks Brazuca, Edison reaches over and puts his hand over Brazuca’s. “Thank you.” In this moment he’s not a pillar of industry, a respected, ruthless businessman. Here in this car he’s a father grieving for the loss of his only son. “You were a police officer,” he says.
Brazuca nods. “A detective.”
“So you know what it’s like to witness loss.” Again, it isn’t a question.
He’s seen far too much of it. “Yes. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it.”
“Human beings are complicated creatures,” says Edison. “But they’re motivated by primary emotions. Love, lust, greed, hate, jealousy. My son, I never understood what motivated him until that woman died. It was love. I didn’t think he was capable of feeling that strongly about a person.”
“Justice,” Brazuca says. “He wanted justice for her death.”
“Justice is a moral construct. Something being right or wrong. My son once said to me that morality is for the lower classes. I think he heard it somewhere. So he only felt morality in relation to one person.”
“At least he felt it.”
Edison Lam shakes his head.
The bodyguard speaks for the first time since Brazuca got into the car. “The drugs that come here, they’re synthetic. The chemists that make them adapt to new formulas, new laws. These aren’t large-scale industrial activities. They’re small and are easy to dismantle. Producers are on edge, especially now with people being so scared of potent opiates accidentally contaminating more recreational drugs. How did he intend to track down those little labs?”
“I never asked him, but I warned him over and over that it was a futile game he was playing,” Brazuca says. He looks at the driver. “Can you take me a few blocks down?” He doesn’t want to talk about morality and justice anymore.
The driver nods. Strangely, Edison Lam doesn’t remove his hand until Brazuca gets out of the car. Standing on the pavement and watching the SUV drive away, he can still feel the old man’s touch. The lingering warmth. He might be imagining things, but it felt like a promise between them.
Brazuca hopes to hell that Bernard Lam’s father finds Dao before Nora does. Nora’s tough, but by his calculation she’s all out of lives. He has no doubt that if she comes up against Dao she won’t be left standing at the end of it. He’d seen the kind of rage Dao has inside him for Nora. She can’t compete with that.
If Nora faces down Dao, she will die. He is absolutely certain of it.
He returns to the apartment an hour later with two steaming orders of noodles and tofu in a vegetable broth. It’s the only kind of food his stomach can take at the moment. Nora’s not there, and neither is Whisper. He waits until the noodles have gone cold and then forces himself to eat, though he’s not hungry.
His telescope, the beauty he’d bought secondhand, is set up at the living room window, pointed up at the sky. Looking through the eyepiece, he roams, searching for nothing but the feeling this activity brings him. After a while, calm settles over him. There’s a text from Nora waiting when he finally pulls himself back into the room. She went to see her daughter.
Right.
He’d forgotten to ask Nora how it turned out, but it must have been alright if she’s seeing the girl again. Another thing he hasn’t remembered until this moment is taking his antibiotics. There’s too much to keep track of. He pushes it all out of his mind for now, showers, and goes to bed.
The sheets don’t smell like him, but that can only be a good thing for a bachelor. Crawling into a bed that smells like a woman who’s just been in here with you. So that even when she’s gone, you’re not alone.
During the six years he was married he didn’t sleep well beside his wife, especially toward the end. But it was the thing he missed the most about her presence in his life. Having a living, breathing reminder that at least someone would notice if he didn’t wake up. Now that he’s divorced, even this small reminder is enough. A woman he’d never thought he’d have in his bed has been here and left behind traces of her presence. Her scent, the groove on the other side of the bed. A warmth that still seems to linger. He’s shocked that he’s thinking of Nora—goddamn Nora, who has in the past done everything she could to push him from her life—in this way. But he is.
48
Whisper is in the back seat of the car, fast asleep. I’m following Everett’s Audi on the Sea-to-Sky Highway.
Before we set off for the Whistler cabin, he casted a dubious look at the Corolla. “You got snow tires on that thing?”
“Yes.”
“Because to travel on that highway after October, you need snow tires.”
“I’m aware.”
He was about to say something again about the snow tires, which I don’t have, when Bonnie came out of Everett’s place with her backpack and a rolling suitcase.
“Can we go now?” asked Bonnie, saving me from having to lie once again.
Who has the time to change tires for a different season? In any case, Everett insisted that Bonnie ride with him and Lynn in his Audi. Bastard. I wouldn’t drive badly with my dog in the car.
The highway dips and rises, hugging the coastline. In the daylight it’s a beautiful drive, one many people make just for the pleasure of going around a bend and coming out of it to see the ocean spread out in front of you. It’s so pretty it’s dangerous. I’m glad we’re doing this at night. The snow has held off, thankfully, so at least there’s some small reprieve. And I have the radio to keep me company.
That is, until the Detroit song comes on, and I hear Nate’s voice.
I switch it off before I can hear my own. But it’s too late. The mood changes. It’s no longer a pleasant night drive with only the taillights of the car ahead of me to keep me focused. It’s a drive to hide away a girl I’ve put in danger by simply being alive. I used all the countersurveillance tactics I learned from life and Stevie Warsame before going to meet Bonnie and her family, but Nate reminds me that it’s never enough. I can’t seem to help myself, though. Now that I know Bonnie’s not safe and that someone has tried to take her, I have to know where she is.
This, perhaps, is what danger does. It helps you to stop questioning your instincts.
Less than two hours after starting out, we’re at the cabin. From the spill of light on the porch a woman emerges and beckons us inside. Everett goes first, with Lynn and Bonnie trailing after. I let Whisper out to stretch her legs. She sneezes at
all this crisp mountain air and urinates by a nearby bush.
We wait.
Five minutes later, Bonnie comes looking for us. We go inside for a family reunion.
“You didn’t tell me there was going to be a dog,” says Adele, Everett’s new lady. Well, maybe not so new. He’d been having an affair with her while still married to Lynn.
Everett glances at me. “I didn’t know the dog was coming.”
“She’s a good girl,” Lynn says, having met Whisper exactly once before tonight. “I’m sure she’ll be no trouble at all.”
“I’ll walk her before we go to bed,” Bonnie offers.
Adele nods. “Okay.” She doesn’t like Whisper in the cabin but is prepared to put up with her because it’s Everett’s family. I get the feeling that mother and daughter have met the new woman in Everett’s life before, but this might just be their first time being in such close quarters. And now there’s a dog to factor in.
Adele starts making pizza, rolling out the dough on a huge marble counter in the kitchen. It takes so long to make that nobody’s hungry by the time it’s done. But we still eat it. Everett and Lynn sit at the table and try to pretend this is a completely normal experience, all of us being together like this. Bonnie and Adele don’t pretend. They pick at their food and avoid looking at each other. I eat quickly and excuse myself from the table as soon as I can.
Everett looks up from his phone. “Before you go, we should discuss something. I’m thinking of hiring a bodyguard for Bonnie when she goes back to school in Toronto.”
Does he have the money for that? “That’s a good idea.” I turn to Lynn. “How long are you planning to stay here?”
She glances at Everett. “I’m not sure. Maybe through the holidays?”
“That’s fine with me,” says Adele. She’s still not sure why I’m here, and neither is Everett. I think only Lynn understands my presence. Maybe she understands better than I do.
It’s so quiet in the bedroom they’ve given me that I can hear every creak, every scurry, imagine every thought. I can hear Whisper’s breathing, and by the rhythm of it, I know she’s awake. When there are no more creaks, scurries, and thoughts, we open the door and walk through the house. The thick rugs and runners down on the floors keep her nails from clicking as she follows me. I check the doors and the windows. Everything is locked up tight, just the way things were the last time I looked.
There’s a flickering light coming from the kitchen. Someone has left the television on, and there’s a rerun of an American morning show playing in the background, on mute.
I find the remote in order to turn it off when, on the screen, I see a man sitting at a stool, a guitar in his hand. Then I’m searching frantically for the button to turn the volume up. The sound comes on, and I lower it until it’s just above a hum. Loud enough that I can hear every note the man plays on the Fender Strat he’s got in his hands. He doesn’t look well, but apart from his gaunt, tired appearance, it doesn’t seem to faze Nate Marlowe that he’s on live television so soon after getting out of the hospital.
He handles it like a pro, goes about strumming like there’s nobody in the world watching. Maybe there isn’t for him, in this moment. This is what music does to him. What it does to me.
He starts in on the song, a song I know by heart, that pulls at every fiber of my being so that I’m now standing directly in front of the TV set. His voice isn’t the same. It isn’t like butter, rich and delicious, as it used to be. It’s hoarse. He can’t hit his high notes anymore, so he sings it low, raw. He sounds like me. When he gets to my verse, his pitch changes and falls even lower. Watching, I’m like a string on that guitar, wrenched taut. Softly, so very quietly, I sing the chorus with him and go into the next verse. He looks up, directly at the camera, and it’s like he’s looking right at me through the lens.
The song ends, much too soon, and I become aware of a presence behind me. I turn to see Bonnie, mussed from sleep and a kind of wonder glazing her eyes. “You’re her,” she says. “You’re the woman on the song with that singer. The one he recorded before he got shot. Because you were in Detroit!”
I don’t say anything to this. But my silence is confirmation enough.
“Everyone’s obsessed with this story,” she says, moving closer. “He said he couldn’t find you, after. He said he didn’t even know your last name.”
“You should get some sleep,” I say.
“Nora . . . I didn’t know you sang.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.” Again, this comes out wrong, as my words so often do with this girl a part of me so badly wants to reach. I soften my voice. “Nobody wants to hear a woman over thirty sing a song. Number one rule of the music business: Be young.”
She giggles. Reaches up and pulls her hair into a bun, forgetting about the mark on her neck, which she has been careful to conceal before this.
“New boyfriend?” I ask, nodding to the hickey.
“Girlfriend, actually. Maybe. Her name is Alix.”
“What happened to Tommy, your old boyfriend? The one I met.”
“Oh, him. We broke up.”
“Because of Alix?”
“No, because of us. Our relationship was over. It’s tough to do long distance, with me being in Toronto. So we broke up, but it was a mutual kinda thing. You don’t have a problem with me dating a girl, do you?” Her gaze is direct, unflinching.
“I don’t have a problem with you dating anybody.” I think of Krista Dennings and her tall French wife. If that’s what’s in store for Bonnie, I’m more than happy with it.
She smiles. “The thing is, I’m not even sure that we’re officially dating or anything yet. So I’m not ready to tell my parents about Alix . . .”
“No problem. I won’t say anything.”
“I never thought you would,” she says, sweeping a lock of black hair off her face. The hair doesn’t seem to want to stay in the bun. Pieces of it slip out to frame her face. She gazes at me with the most piercing look I’ve ever been on the receiving end of. “You know, when I used to think about who my birth mom was, I never imagined you. Okay, that sounds really bad! Sorry. I mean, I’ve met you, we text, and I send you those dumb photos, and still. You’re, like, a mystery.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something.”
“Wait. I’ll do one better.” I hand her the key from around my neck, still on its leather string. “This belonged to my mother. It was from her home, back in Palestine.”
“Palestine?”
“Yes.”
“How . . . how did she get here?”
“From Palestine, she lived on the outskirts of a refugee camp in Lebanon. Someone sponsored her to come to Canada, and she eventually went to Detroit for a wedding. That’s where she met my dad. In Detroit,” I say. “This is all I have of her.”
“My grandmother . . . what was she like?”
“I don’t know.” Then I laugh. “I have no answers about her. She left when I was a kid. But I can tell you about your grandfather—my dad. That’s why I went to the States. I was looking for clues about his life. He was born in Winnipeg, but he grew up in Detroit. He was . . . his friend told me he was a good man. He was kind.”
“That’s why you were there? And how you met Nate Marlowe?”
“Yes. Your grandfather was adopted, like you, but he knew nothing about his birth family. He spent his whole life trying to find out.”
She puts the key around her neck while I tell her what little I know about my father. Lynn comes into the kitchen at some point and fills a glass of water from the tap. But she doesn’t leave after. She lingers with us, listening. It doesn’t feel like an intrusion, her being there. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.
It’s enough, maybe, to help me forget life outside this cabin in the woods. Just for a little while. Talking to her now, in the hush of this kitchen, I am able to push aside the thought that Brazuca hasn’t responded to my message te
lling him that I would be away tonight.
Also the memory of him limping away from Edison Lam’s car like he has no care in the world, while I clenched Whisper’s leash in my fist and led her away, deep into an alley behind me, into the shadows, around and back to a place where I could watch him go while still remaining hidden.
Keeping, as always, to the dark end of the street.
49
I wake up to a missed call from Leo and a video waiting from Simone. I open the video first. When I click on the link, shaky footage of what happened on the back patio in Lombok starts to play. After a moment, the focus clears. The events unfold the way I remember, but from a different angle. Then the memory fades and new information comes my way. Dao takes cover behind the sculpture of a mermaid and returns fire. The gang take cover, too, but two of them are shot. One is the young protester. Dao doesn’t stop to ponder this. The chaos is enough for him to turn, jump the wall, and disappear.
Rewinding the video, I pause just at the moment he turns. The focus adjusts, zeroes in on his face. I stare at it for a long time. There are creases on his forehead now, and two bracketing his mouth. There’s a cut bleeding freely on his chin. It seems as though he’s looking straight at the camera—or at the person holding it.
“Who took this video?” I ask Simone, when I get her on the phone a few minutes later.
“Gimme a sec. I’m just getting back from morning meditation and my ass is numb from sitting on the floor so long.” There’s a rustling sound, and then she comes back on the phone. “Okay, so I was doing some searches inspired by the news report with the photos of him manhandling that protester, and I found the video. Some socialite staying at the hotel recorded the murder, ‘accidentally’ uploaded it on social media from Bali. Claimed she was too distraught to think clearly, but the thing was widely circulated before she pulled it down.”
I remember the flash of dark hair down at the beach. It’s what caught my attention at the window in the first place. Lam’s heiress, the daughter of the oil baron.