by Sheena Kamal
“The same, baby. So when you say you’re up on the Triple 9 connects, that’s what I think of. I think of Three Phoenix, and the fucking heroin junkie who whispered something in my ear one time. The junkie who wouldn’t stand up in court and we couldn’t prove shit. That kid disappeared right before I transferred out of Gangs and I never knew if they found out he was talking to us and took care of him.”
“Shit. Three Phoenix . . .” They’d been famous for some brutal hits on the Vancouver streets some twenty years ago, but hadn’t made the papers much since. Even Grace’s files had contained some references to them, but they were dated. “Jimmy Fang was years ago. Any new triad activity that’s been making the rounds?”
“Come on, man. New triad activity? Triads came from tongs, which have been on the west coast for nearly a century, initially to protect a population that’s faced discrimination from the get-go—by the way. Ever heard of the Chinese head tax? Discriminatory housing policies? Underground organizations have been operating here for a very long time. Whenever law enforcement gets a handle on what’s happening, they’re already two steps ahead. Now with technology being so globalized, we don’t stand a chance. If there’s one thing Asians are good at, it’s technology.”
“Uh-huh,” says Brazuca, who is well familiar with Lee’s perverse sense of humor. “You’re Korean and from what I can remember, you can barely use a computer. You used to call IT every week because you kept forgetting your own password.”
“I spend so much of my free time doing math that recalling specific number combinations is difficult. Also, I’ve been hit in the head a lot because of all the tae kwon do I practice,” replies Lee, who, to Brazuca’s knowledge, has never done tae kwon do and can barely figure out how much to tip after eating out. “Point is, I couldn’t tell you what’s new, and I bet to holy hell no law enforcement operation in this country could, either. But if you want information on organized crime in Vancouver—any organized crime, by the way—then look in front of you.” He waves expansively to the dark ocean in the distance. “You gotta figure out who’s got access to the port. Let me give you a hint. Port unions have been infiltrated for a long time now and they don’t even seem to care. So, guess what? It’s everybody.”
Brazuca stands. “Thanks.” Vancouver’s ports were notoriously porous, but Lee confirming it hasn’t given him any peace of mind. “You’ve been a ray of sunshine, as always.” He tosses his can at the open recycling bin and misses.
Lee laughs. “Didn’t realize we were dating. I’ll be on my best behavior next time.” He reaches for Brazuca’s can and is about to toss it into the bin when he catches a glimpse of the label. “What in holy hell is iced kombucha?”
Brazuca shrugs. “Who knows.”
Lee stares at him. His eyes are as clear as they’d been before he’d started in on the beer that Brazuca brought. He may be a borderline alcoholic, but he’s a high-functioning one. “You know, don’t you?”
“Shut up,” Brazuca says, unable to explain fermented tea even to himself.
“Don’t worry. Us Koreans are experts in fermenting shit, buddy. Ever heard of kimchi? Big Bad Bazooka,” Lee says, laughing again, “drinking his kombucha.”
“You’re an asshole. Don’t quit your day job.” Brazuca lets himself out from the back gate.
“My mother thinks I’m a catch! You Catholic?” Lee shouts after him, still grinning like an idiot. “Call me!”
20
I need someone to complain to so I try to reach Veterans Affairs. No one returns my calls. If anyone has ever had an encounter with the VA, they would not be surprised. A veterans’ crisis center a block down from my old motel is empty. The sidewalk in front of it is a strip of rubble, razed for some reason long forgotten, perhaps to let the veterans standing outside the empty suite of offices know as clearly as they can that they’ll find no firm ground here. I have sent an email about my father to the Marine Corps Research Center in Virginia, but the message has disappeared into the ether along with my phone messages.
I still have some pent-up energy left, though. I call Seb again, but he doesn’t answer. I could complain to Simone, but she’d warned me not to expect much, so I doubt she’ll be understanding. Cory Seaper was another dead end, which was to be expected on this seemingly fruitless mission to find out the truth about my father’s death. I feel like a morbid character in a children’s book. Did you know my father? What about you? Do you remember seeing a man who was sort of like me but better looking?
If I had taken to foster care or it had taken to me, this might not have been a problem. When it comes to my dad, maybe, like Lorelei, I’d have looked for a little bit when I was young and given it up when I got older because, ultimately, there were better things to do in life than keep an eye on the rearview mirror.
But foster care and me didn’t agree with each other.
In yet another way that the Canadian child welfare system has failed, the families that took me in—there were four in total—didn’t teach me to look forward. They cashed their stipend checks while showing me that belonging is a thing for other people. Part of it is what is shared. Home. Language. Traditions. Certain spiritual beliefs. Broad, sweeping mythologies and the smaller origin stories that occur within every group of people who share a family tree. It’s not something that applies to a single person. It is not something that applies to me. You need at least two people, three is even better. I reconciled with this lack of belonging very early on in my life, because it suits my personality. I’ve never expected anyone to give me the keys to unlock who I’m supposed to be because I’ve assumed other people know as little about the subject as I do.
But my father must have been a hopeful man. He left whatever he had here in Detroit to go backward, to find out if he had a home that had miraculously waited for him for decades.
Or maybe something drove him away, says a voice in my head. One that sounds suspiciously like Seb, who won’t answer my calls but will offer imaginary opinions regardless.
I’m tempted to stay here and watch some more people drink their problems into sweet oblivion, but I can’t take it anymore. I have to know what happened in the fucked-up house my father grew up in. It has taken a while for that phrase of Harvey’s to sink in, but now, with no other leads and nothing else to do but wait for Kovaks to show up, it’s all I can think about. I can’t lie. The physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that had been revealed in recent years by some Sixties Scoop survivors about their adoptive homes has played a part in my willful ignorance. Some kids were reminded in the most grotesque ways imaginable that they’d been bought and paid for, with money handed over to adoption agencies and kickbacks siphoned to crooked government agents.
Money saved, too, from fewer people who could—or would—claim Indian status.
It was a messy business, one that most people, myself included, don’t really want to look too hard at. I don’t want to know that bad things happened to my father, but I’m left with little else to go on. So I am, once again, going back to his childhood home.
Hopefully this time I’ll make it past the front door without having to break in.
21
Every night, the supposed head of the Triple 9s is driven from the Lala Lair in Gastown to a quiet residential street in North Vancouver. Brazuca has learned several things from watching this man and his driver. One, operations at the bar are so locked down that it would be almost impossible to get to him there. Two, his North Vancouver house is also gated, with security cameras mounted around the perimeter. Three, it would be a stroke of blind, stupid luck to get a break in this case. An unexpected shift in routine, someone messing up, something out of the ordinary.
So, yet again, he’s in the back alley by the Lala Lair, in the shadows, watching the BMW as it idles nearby. He’s been here too long tonight with absolutely nothing to show for it. There’s a chill in the air and it’s cloudy out, so there aren’t even any stars to look at while he waits. He’s about to slip away when the Triple 9 driver get
s out of the BMW to stretch his legs. At that moment, someone from the kitchen sticks a head out of the back door and calls out to the driver, who reluctantly goes inside, taking his sweet time about it.
For a split second, Brazuca can’t quite believe it.
He moves out of the shadows. Strolling past the car, he stoops to tie his shoelace, ducking out of sight of the security camera mounted over the entrance. It takes almost no time at all to attach the small black box he’s kept in his coat pocket to the rear bumper, hidden from view. It’s the first time since he’s been watching the car that the young driver has left it unsupervised.
After testing to make sure the device is secure, he walks away like a man without a care in the world, or one who is about to come into some serious money. Unconsciously mimicking the slow gait of the BMW driver, he takes his time getting back to his MINI. If the tracking device is discovered, the Triple 9s will no doubt increase their security measures and he’ll likely never get another chance like this to dig up a lead in their supply chain. But Stevie Warsame, Leo’s partner in his current PI company and something of a gadgethead, has assured Brazuca that this model is the most secure and unassuming one that Warsame’s worked with. So Brazuca feels slightly more comfortable taking the risk. He has to do something to speed things along so that he can get Bernard Lam the answers he so badly wants and the financial freedom that Brazuca has only seen on the faces of happy retirees featured in bank commercials. He could be a happy west coast retiree, and why the hell not?
The funny thing about it, though, is that he can’t seem to picture himself with a cabin by the water, a kayak strapped to his roof rack, and a granola-munching woman at his side. He sees Lam, in his grief. Grace, with her unhealthy obsession over her sister’s death. Leo, in the dark about his ex-lover’s illness. And, after a moment, Nora, whom he can’t picture in old age no matter how hard he tries. Him and Nora, that’s what drew them together. There may be happy endings at the hands of dead-eyed masseuses at seedy parlors around the globe, but the real ones, the ones where you get to keep your dignity and self-respect, aren’t for the likes of the two of them.
Now that he thinks about it.
Brazuca pushes thoughts of Nora from his mind and spends the next day tracking the car’s movements. He’s waiting for another stroke of blind, stupid luck. Another sign that his life is turning around. Some aberration in schedule that will give him a lead. Instead of looking up at the stars, he stares at his phone, on which he’s set up alerts for the tracker. He’s hopeful, not stupid. The device will be discovered eventually and he’ll be fresh out of leads but, for the moment, he’s got nothing else to go on.
In a moment of boredom, he returns to Clementine’s apartment and finds Grace sleeping in the bed. She mutters under her breath and turns toward him, but doesn’t wake. While he stands there, deciding whether to slip into bed beside her, the phone in his pocket buzzes. A new alert on the tracker. It tells him the BMW’s current location isn’t one that’s been visited yet. He feels a small creep of premonition, a tiny thrill of anticipation skating up his spine.
This is it, he thinks. His aberration.
He turns and departs quietly, locking the door behind him. Leaving Grace to her restless sleep.
Part Three
22
The curtains at the house across the road have been twitching at me for almost an hour. I’m out on Harvey’s front porch, waiting for him to show up. I know that I’ve been seen and maybe a call has been made to him. If there’s one thing I hate more than talking to cops, it’s talking to snitches who do it for anything other than money. But I try to keep this to myself as I cross the road and knock on the door.
The twitch morphs into a nervous flutter.
“I know you’re in there,” I say loudly, into the mail slot at the door. “I just want to ask about my father, Samuel. He used to live in that house across the road. I’m wondering if you knew him.”
After a moment of silence I sit on this porch for a full five minutes, hoping this swapping of stoops will get me some answers. If nothing else, it affords me a good view of the house my father grew up in. It was probably nice, once. There is a little yard, now overgrown, and the cracked yellow paint must have been pretty a few decades ago.
The curtains are motionless. I’m tempted to give up this futile quest of mine and do some sightseeing. Maybe go see the murals painted by Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts. And I might have been tempted, if I hadn’t already had my fill of those images on convenience store postcards. In the murals he depicts the wonders and horrors of a machine revolution. But he has not taken into consideration the drug epidemic, has not seen like I have a woman so high she stood on the street in her underwear just to explain something indecipherable to passing cars. I’ve been told by tourist websites that I should visit the Motown house and the music lounges. I should talk to the ride-share drivers about the decline of the city they still live in. Eat a locally sourced organic sustainable meal that costs more than the average resident’s weekly food budget. I should try to forget the city’s past glory because it is long gone, having been sold by titans of industry years ago. In a world of Somebodys and Nobodys, Detroit is a Nobody that used to be a Somebody and is feeling rough about it. Like today. There aren’t many people on this street, but the ones that pass by can’t spare anything but a suspicious glance for me. I try not to take offense. I’m feeling similarly.
Five minutes pass. Soon it becomes ten. Just as I’m about to leave, a tan Buick pulls up to the curb and a woman around my age hustles out with a paper bag in hand. She almost runs me over on the porch before pulling up short and blinking down at me.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hiya.” She looks from me to the front door, and then back again. A hand goes to her hair to whip her long braids back over her shoulders. “You waiting for Retta? ’Cause I can tell you for a fact that the old bird is in there. She ain’t been seen out of this house since the nineties.” The woman seems almost shocked that anyone would want to talk to Retta with the curtains, but her voice is kind so I take a chance.
I wave in the general direction of Harvey’s yard. “My dad grew up across the street. He died when I was a kid, though, and I guess I wanted to clear up a couple things about his life here. I was hoping Retta would know something about him.”
The woman frowns. “Oh, she knows. She knows everything about this damn neighborhood. Don’t you, you old witch!” she says, shouting the last bit at the front room windows, one of which has mysteriously opened a crack in the time I’ve been talking to the woman from the Buick.
“Get off my porch, tramp!” comes the reply, loud and clear. A pale, wrinkled face appears at the corner of the open window. “And tell that goddamn criminal that I don’t got nothin’ to say to her!”
Now I know who called Harvey when I broke into the house.
“Is that right? You want your barbecue, you’ll tell this nice lady about her daddy. Or I swear to God, I’m gonna eat this right here, turn around, and never come back. I’ll tell the pastor you died and he won’t make me come see your scruffy porch ever again!”
There is a noisy, almost theatrical gasp. “My porch is clean as a whistle, you godless jezebel!” comes the furious response. Then a weighted silence.
The woman sits beside me. “I’m Melissa,” she says.
“Nora.” We shake hands. “Why did she leave the house? In the nineties?”
“Oh, that. She heard there was a new church down the way and came to service. Shoulda seen the look on her face when she realized it was a black church. Ha! Pastor makes us do neighborhood outreach to the old crusties, though. Says she’s my cross to bear. Want some cornbread?”
She opens up the paper bag and pulls out a large square wrapped in wax paper. We sit there companionably, sharing a hefty piece of heaven on earth. “Mmmm,” Melissa moans, orgasmically. “So good.”
The front door opens. “Get away from my food,” says the old woman standi
ng in the doorway. She is wearing a pressed dress and matching hat. She must have put all the makeup she owns on her face, because I can’t quite imagine that any of it could possibly have been left over. Retta from across the road fiddles with a pearl necklace at her throat, while eyeing the crumbs of cornbread on our laps.
“Not until you help this lady,” says Melissa.
“No respect for elders.” Retta frowns at her, then looks at me. “You can’t come in here but you want to know about that other boy that grew up ’cross the road? He was not terrible, that one,” she says, grudgingly. “Stopped a couple of hooligans from trying to break in here once. Everyone liked him a lot better than the one that lives there now. Even the parents, too. Both of them gone now. Almost killed them when the one they liked better left for the army.”
“Marines,” I say, standing to face her.
The old woman snorts. “What’s the difference? He up and left when he was eighteen; didn’t tell nobody where to find him. Came back years later and the parents were both gone. Car crash. The other one had to take care of everything, even though they didn’t leave the house to him. Left it to their favorite, didn’t they? I don’t like that other one, but he ain’t all that bad. For them to treat him that way . . . damn ungrateful if you ask me.”
Nobody did, but I’m glad for whatever information I can get. It takes me a moment to sort through all the ones and other ones in her explanation. “My dad owned that house?”
She nods, sending the bobbles on her earrings clattering together. “Heard that one gave it to the other one, then disappeared. He knew. Knew what was gonna happen to this city. Got out while he could. Smart boy.”
Melissa clears her throat. Staring at us from the sidewalk is a large man, clutching the hand of a little girl in a soccer uniform.
“What,” says Harvey Watts, his voice low and furious, “the hell do you think you’re doing?”