by Paul Slatter
Sebastian looked at the phone then asked, “A man?” And before Chendrill could answer, he carried on with, “You see—I’ve got this friend.”
“The man who was mugged, you think?” Chendrill asked, as he saw Sebastian start to blush.
Then Sebastian stood saying, “No, not like that, you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying, we’re talking about a woman Chuck, a woman I met.”
“Oh?”
“I haven’t got a man, I haven’t. I’ve got no secrets Chuck, there hasn’t been another man in my life since Alan.”
And there hadn’t, Alan had been the sole reason Sebastian existed and since he was gone there could be no other who’d come close to filling his shoes. Except for Charles Chuck Chendrill of course, but that was a secret fantasy as he played for the other team, which in its own way only made it all the better. He carried on, “I’m friends with this woman Chuck, no kinky stuff though, so don’t get any ideas.”
Kinky stuff? Chendrill thought, male and female together, that’s the way he sees it.
“She’s so sweet, I met her in the park, we chat and she’s got such a wonderful family.”
“And?” Asked Chendrill, waiting.
“And she doesn’t have a phone… so I bought her a phone. And put yours and my number into it,” Sebastian said, smiling like a guilty child who was lying to his mother.
“And?” Chendrill asked again.
“Did I do wrong Chuck?”
He hadn’t, but in his mind what was wrong is that the woman took it. Chendrill asked, “What’s her husband do?”
“She said he’s looking for work Chuck that’s why I helped out.”
Chendrill took a deep breath; it was getting better by the minute. The next thing Sebastian was going to suggest was either the husband come and work with Chuck or Sebastian was going to buy the guy a car so as he could get to work.
But for once, he was completely off the mark, as Sebastian carried on saying, “No Chuck, I just bought them a house.”
Jesus Christ, Chuck thought—the man was a sweetheart and generous to the bone but who was this woman? He said, “What’s the woman’s name?”
“Oh I don’t know.”
Chuck took a breath, fuck me, he just bought a house for a woman and he doesn’t know her name, so he asked, “She has a first name?”
“Oh yes—Suzy.”
“Suzy? Right. And how old is Suzy?”
Sebastian thought about it, staring down at his dog as Chendrill waited—this man who was worth a fortune and could see through any level of bullshit in his own world was now talking like a fool.
“Maybe forty, but she looks younger.”
“Where does this friend and her family live?”
“They used to live on the East Side, but not in a home with a nice garden on the East Side. They were in sheltered housing Chuck, right in the East Side.”
Chendrill asked, “Where?”
As he picked up his duster again then put it back on his desk, Sebastian said, “Right plum front and centre to that nightmare Hastings Street with its drug and social problems.”
Chuck sat quietly for the moment still staring at the dog laying on his back showing off his dick. Then as he was about to speak, Sebastian said, “Oh, and she used to be an erotic dancer.”
A stripper? Chendrill thought, as he wandered around Sebastian’s office at Slave. Then turning said, “Used to be?”
“Yes Chuck, she used to be.”
“Why, is she too old now?”
Sebastian shook his head; this wasn’t the case, far from it. “Oh no Chuck, the girl’s still got it, she has a medical condition that’s all and I think it’s best we leave it at that.”
A medical condition, Chendrill thought and not taking the slightest notice of Sebastian’s hint at protecting the woman’s privacy asked, “What is it?”
“She’s got a bag Chuck. So like I said, let’s leave it at that.”
Well chances were high he wasn’t referring to Burberry or Coach, Chendrill thought, so he put it out there, “What type?”
"There’s more to it, Chuck. She’s unemployed now because she’s wearing a colostomy bag. And I don’t want to betray the woman’s privacy, so please let us leave it at that,” Sebastian said back in the kindest voice he could muster.
Okay? Chendrill thought as he found his way back to his usual spot by the window and carried on asking Sebastian, “Why’s this girl not taken a real job then, one where she can keep her clothes on, like everyone else?”
For some reason unknown to Sebastian, Chendrill had become hostile, he’d seen it building in him, ruffling his red Hawaiian which clashed with the car, then saw it run through him the moment he’d mentioned the lady used to be an erotic dancer. He’d said to Chendrill, “There’s nothing wrong with that Chuck, I’ve known a couple of friends who danced burlesque. They were completely sane; it’s an art.”
But it wasn’t art for this woman—that was for certain. Chendrill could feel it. It was a business, and in his eyes strippers were one short step away from laying down for a few dollars more than they could stuff into the lining of their panties when they left the stage.
Someone was coming after Sebastian and him being gay only meant that they were coming from a different angle. That was all, playing on the man’s softness and generosity. But how the fuck had whoever it was gotten this far so quickly?
Chendrill sat outside Slave at the wheel of the Aston thinking for a moment before pulling away. That one had taken him by surprise. He had asked when they’d met, and Sebastian, getting candid, said he’d been sad on the day after the fireworks when he’d seen Chendrill trying to be discreet holding Dan’s mother’s hand. Then the next day he’d been for a walk in the park and seen this beautiful lady crying and explained how he’d sat with her on the bench and heard her pour her heart out and how he’d got on the phone without a thought and bought this woman he didn’t even know a home, doing it on a whim. He’d told Chendrill how beautiful the place was with its big bay windows and how they met now occasionally in the park. Chendrill had stood there by Sebastian’s own window, no longer looking at the dog’s bollocks but shaking his head in disbelief.
Trying to justify himself, Sebastian had said, “Oh, I’m just letting them live there, Chuck—I’m not stupid.”
Sebastian snapped back at him in the kindest of ways, and heard Chendrill ask, “For free?”
“For now, yes. Until the family gets back on their feet. I did it because I was feeling sad Chuck and it made me feel good.
“It’s just a cheap place Chuck, old and cheap.”
Old and cheap? Anywhere in Vancouver old and cheap these days was going to be around a million dollars regardless if it was on the East Side. Chendrill had said, “Vancouver’s not cheap Sebastian.”
“Neither’s making a film Chuck, but I can tell you, buying that house and telling that beautiful lady she and her family now have a proper roof over their heads has given me more satisfaction than I’ll ever have shelling out on Patrick’s movie.”
It was a family of four, the unemployed stripper, her unemployed husband and their two boys, probably the same two ‘wonderful’ boys who’d stolen their mother’s new phone and who Daltrey had stopped from mugging the guy in the park.
Probably.
He took the flyover passing through the sports stadiums and headed towards Strathcona on the East Side of town with its trendy wooden houses full of aging hippies and families in rentals.
The address on the piece of paper Chendrill had squeezed out of Sebastian read, 2123 Salsbury Street. And just as he pulled up along the road from the newly purchased property which made his employer feel good, he got the phone call he was expecting from the Vancouver Police Department—a message politely asking him to come in for an interview.
Chendrill estimated that the house was at least a hundred years old and looked like any other on the street with its steps leading up to the front door and big bay window, except f
or the sold sign sitting in the front garden and the stacks of new furniture boxes and cellophane thrown down the side alley—from the extra twenty thousand Sebastian had splashed out to fit the place out.
He got out and walked along the road and stood outside, feeling the wind heading south away from the mountains, hitting the trees with purpose like an invisible ghost rushing away to nowhere.
Walking up the short stairs, he knocked on the door and waited until he heard a stir and then knocked again and moments later saw the silhouette of a slim woman with big fake titties walking towards him through the stained-glass window of the front door.
She opened the door and before she could speak Chendrill said, “Suzy?”
Suzy looked up at him, this big guy in a red Hawaiian and, still clinging to the front door, pulled her long hair from her face, tucked it to her shoulder, and asked, “Who are you?”
“Sebastian asked me to come over, see if you have anything you need sorting out?”
“Sebastian?” the woman asked, her face as blank as an empty cinema screen. Chendrill stared back at her in her tight top, clinging to her stomach and oversized bosom, and wondered if Sebastian had been correct about this bag.
“Yeah, Sebastian. The guy who owns this place.”
That did it, Chendrill thought, that jogged the memory as he saw the lights go on in her eyes as she remembered Sebastian, the nice kind hearted gay guy who just forked out over a million on a whim for this place because she was crying, kitted it out with furniture so the family could get away from the drug ridden neighbourhood where the woman probably used to work twenty-seven days out of thirty in a strip club.
“Oh Seb? Yeah Seb, he’s so cute.”
“Cute?” Chendrill asked and was about to carry on speaking when he heard the voice of a man call out unseen from the living room.
“Hey! Tell this Seb guy to get his ass over here and get rid of all that shit piled up in the alley for fucksake.”
Chendrill looked to Suzy and smiled, raising his eyebrows as he did and said quietly, “Okay, I’ll pass the message on.”
Then he heard the man, whose big boots were by the door and who did not bother to get up, call out again, “Tell him if it ain’t gone tomorrow, I’ll be doing it and he’ll get the bill.”
He’ll be doing it, Chendrill thought, this unseen unemployed man who’d just been given a home. Telling the guy who’d bought it for him to shift his ass or he’d be sending him the bill. Take it out of the rent, Chendrill thought, before he placed his hand in his pocket and handed her back the phone she’d also been given for free.
Suzy’s eyes lighting up, saying, “Oh my God, where did you find this?”
Chendrill looked back smiling and said, “The police found it, came round and said they wanted to speak with your two boys.”
Which in a roundabout way was half true, although in Daltrey’s mind she was no longer a cop.
Chapter Three
Ditcon sat in his office and fumed. So far he’d had everyone he could think of in there with him, one after the other and he’d shouted at them all. Now his throat was sore.
How the fuck could anyone in this day and age let something as simple as checking the DNA of a corpse slip through the cracks? Now he had to deal with it and on top of that he’d have to look that smug fuck Chendrill, who still wasn’t returning his calls, in the eye somewhere in the process.
It hadn’t been that long though and he’d be able to skate around the borders of truth like he did, hiding behind a closed door which only the Mayor could open. But there was an election coming up soon, so chances were that the sweaty prick would be gone and there’d be another guy he could bamboozle with the bullshit he had become so good at preaching.
Tell the guy what he needed to hear, bore the fuck out of him with charts and so many statistics that the man just stopped listening and started thinking about pussy or worried about the parks and bike lanes and looking good to the small percentage of people who’d bothered to get off their asses to vote in the first place.
He walked to the corner of his office and opened the small drinks cabinet with its secret bottle of vodka at the rear, cut a quarter lemon, reached down, pulled his underpants away from the crack of his ass, and poured a drink.
Chendrill, the big fucker, gone from the force but not forgotten. Still out there sticking a thorn in his side like he’d never left. A legend when he was here and even now, after he’d left, he somehow carried it on. Even driving a fucking spanking new red Ferrari, which Ditcon had managed to have towed. Now though he’d heard a report that the prick was cruising around in an Aston Martin.
Nonetheless, the guy was a mini Che Guevara in the local legend department. Minus the stupid shirts, Ditcon thought as he took a huge hit on the vodka bottle and sunk back the lemon. Walking to the window, he looked out, almost hoping to see Chendrill pulling in to the carpark like James Bond with Daltrey at his side looking all sexy like she did so she could explain to him herself just how she’d pulled a Lazarus and risen from the dead like she had. The woman was now well on her way to being a bigger pain in the ass and too smart to manipulate into the sheets the way he’d have liked to.
This woman, who didn’t sleep and who got results that he was never able to twist into being his own, where the hell had she been for the last week or so? Pretending to be pulling some barbecue action in the morgue that’s where. But what had she been doing in the background while everyone was asleep and who was the crispy-crunch impersonator waiting in the freezer closet in the meantime? It was all he needed, especially with what seemed half the Border Security workforce calling him every five minutes asking bullshit questions.
He picked up his phone and, finding Chendrill’s name, held his thumb just above the screen—one half of him wanting to push the button and to get a start at sorting the mess out, the other wanting to go back and reopen the fridge.
Maybe he should do both, he thought, and did the latter.
If he called, he thought, as he took another huge glug and followed it with a lemon, the big fucker will get all smug and say something back to him like ‘I thought you were the detective?’
Or some other shit like that.
Then he’d have nowhere to go but to eat humble pie. He closed the fridge door and felt the taste of the lemon on his tongue as he heard a slight knock on his office door and a female officer in full dress uniform—just the way he liked them—stepped in and said, “We’ve found her sir, she’s at St. Paul’s. Chendrill brought her there this morning.”
************
It wasn’t often Ditcon rode in a squad car with the sirens on, but when he did he enjoyed it. The same young woman driving, nervous as hell, with her hair up and jacket pulled tight—it put the icing on the cake.
He leaned into the corner, enjoying the feel of the inertia squashing his body tight into the door as they hit a red and took a left onto Burrard as the lights and sirens screamed out. Fuck, he thought, this was what it was all about as he looked at the civilians holding their ears and staring at him looking cool in the back of the car.
It didn’t matter that he’d been told Daltrey was asleep; he wanted to be there when she woke so he could say something clever like, ‘You may think you’ve been hiding but I’ve known exactly where you’ve been the whole time.’
Then he’d give a little look to the girl driving the car with the sweaty palms after he’d ordered her to park illegally right in front of the hospital and insist she then join him upstairs so he could show off.
Or better still, he’d simply pretend the whole thing was part of a bigger plan that was in operation and, while Daltrey was weak, convince her she’d been used unwittingly as a pawn in a massive scheme and award her with a medal or something like that.
That’s what he’d do, Ditcon thought, as they smashed through the lights at Georgia, destroying the eardrums of anyone not smart enough to cover up.
It was all part of a bigger plan. And Daltrey had done such a f
antastic job in her part of it all.
They entered Officer Daltrey’s room on the ward, Ditcon being noisy, making sure that he wouldn’t have to wait long for her to wake. As soon as she opened her eyes, Ditcon was right there—front and centre in his suit applauding, clapping his hands together with a smile as big as the window as though the girl had just blown the socks off a panel of judges in a singing contest, and with one fist clenched in victory he said, “You should be proud of yourself girl, real proud, we’ve got them now!”
And he’d left it at that, turning abruptly and exiting the room before Daltrey could make sense of what had just happened, let alone respond.
As they rode the elevator down to the ground floor of St. Paul’s, he turned to the young police woman hiding her titties underneath her heavy jacket and said, “Let’s just say ‘illegal border crossing’ shall we? That’ll give you some sort of clue as to why we burned all that extra gas getting here today.”
It was absolute bullshit, of course, but it sounded good and was actually completely feasible; after all, it was little bullshit gems like the one he’d spat out that had got him where he was today. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, as they say, especially one that moves you forward.
Yes, at some stage they’d be a very high ranking official arriving in his office from both the U.S. and Canadian Border agencies once this young and sexy number dropped that juicy bit of gossip to the eight or so other officers who’d be sitting around her with their tongues out in Starbucks, but by then he’d have worked the end bit out and until then he was looking good.
So Chendrill could fuck off and suck his dick, he thought.
Ditcon stepped out first as the elevator doors opened and, seeing his car still sitting there in the street with the lights going, realised what a fuck up he’d just made. As cool as it was for him to have this fit young female officer with her hair up Starsky and Hutch it out front with the lights going so he could whip out the rear and hit the front doors with meaning, why oh fucking why had he not done exactly the same but at the other end of the hospital?