Meaner Things

by David Anderson

  *

  For once, Charlie looked serious. Either that or his junk food diet had made him constipated.

  “You sure you want to get involved in this?” he said.

  I considered his question carefully. “Not a hundred per cent,” I replied, “But I do want to help Emma if I can.”

  “Even after what she did to you.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  I shrugged; said nothing.

  “You could have done jail time, you know,” he persisted, “You’d risk that again?”

  He had me there, and this time I knew I had to answer him. Was Emma a good enough reason to take that risk? If I was honest, I had no idea. Again I shrugged. “If I plan it right, there won’t be much risk of anything going wrong.”

  “Then it better be one hell of a plan,” he shot back.

  “And what about you, Charlie? Are you in on this, ready to take the risk too? I’ll need your help.”

  His frown disappeared, replaced by a slow grin. “What do you think?”

  “You’re in? You think it’s possible then?”

  “Sure it is. Best scenario is when the house is empty; next best is when they’ve all gone to bed. The alarms and stuff are easy.”

  “But what about getting into the safe?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Ways and means, ways and means.”

  “I’d need to know a bit more than that before we went in.”

  Charlie jerked forward in his deck chair. “What’s this about me being there? I never agreed on that; just that I’d help you.”

  My hopes suddenly crashed. “You’re the master cracksman.”

  He seemed appeased by the compliment and sat back again. “Yup, I am that.” He seemed to be imagining it in his head. “And it would be easy-peasy. But I’d never agree to do it.”

  I was feeling guilty now for having asked him, like I’d sprung two horns and a trident. “Fair enough Charlie. I realise you’ve gone straight. I don’t want to jeopardise . . .”

  He didn’t let me finish my spiel. “It’s not that. To hell with that. I continue to take my opportunities when I see them Mike. And this Zheng guy would likely have plenty worth taking. Believe me, I’m sorely tempted.”

  “You don’t trust me then?”

  He snorted. “To the contrary, mate. From what you’ve told me of your past, you’re a natural. You should see the fire in your eyes when you talk about it. If I was doing this job, I’d want you and me to do it together.”

  “Then why not?”

  He sat back and peered at me through squinty little eyes. “The woman.”

  “Emma? What about her?”

  “I don’t trust her. Not at all. She’s a quitter. Suppose she does what she did last time?”

  That hurt, but there wasn’t much that I could say in reply. I didn’t want to get into an argument with him about her. But his strong reaction conveniently put the kibosh on my great idea. If Charlie wouldn’t take part, there was no way that I could do it by myself, even if I wanted to. I’d come here expecting Charlie to tell me it was a crazy scheme. Instead he’d confirmed its viability. He was even keen to do it, if only it hadn’t involved Emma.

  But I’d still got my ‘out’. Emma would have to accept it.

  “OK, Charlie, if you won’t do it with me, it’s off.”

  “No hard feelings, mate?”

  “No hard feelings.”

  On my way home I felt like skipping, I was so relieved.

  *

  After sleeping on it I called her first thing the next morning and hastily arranged to meet her at a Starbucks on West Broadway. Over a breakfast blend I told her the news. She wasn’t pleased.

  “Then what am I going to do?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “And don’t care.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. I mumbled something about finding another way and we batted it back and forth for a while, her voice increasingly shrill. I replied softly, trying to calm her, but that only made things worse. The tension between us became palpable. It was the first friction between us since we’d met up again and I wasn’t happy about it.

  But I had to get to work so rose to leave.

  “I guess that’s it then,” she said, touching my arm.

  I sat down again. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but I can’t do it without my friend. He’s the electronics whizz, not me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “It would be suicide, Emma, and wouldn’t help you at all.”

  She shrugged acceptance. “I guess you’re right.”

  I checked my watch and realised the time. “Gotta go.”

  “Can we talk later? We’ll figure something out.”

  “Sure, I’d like that a lot.” It came out sounding more lukewarm than I’d intended. I got up again and this time she didn’t try to stop me.

  “Thanks for trying to help,” she said.

  At the door I paused and looked back. She was watching me with a strange, forlorn look on her face.

  I smiled and turned away. For the first time in our relationship I felt like an utter louse.

  *

  The meeting with Emma meant that I got to the bookstore twenty-five minutes late and was immediately instructed to go see the manager, Mr. Barnes. I knocked on the door of his office and prepared myself for the kind of encounter I’d already had with him half-a-dozen times in the recent past. He didn’t look up as I came in, just sat behind his tidy desk and stared at a computer screen. His extensive paunch pressed against the edge of the keyboard and his bald pate gleamed up at me, a few wisps of hair stuck across it in the world’s worst ‘comb over’. Volumes is the ideal place for Barnes to hold sway I thought, as I waited for him to acknowledge my existence – it’s perfect for someone who insists on everything being done by the book.

  “Late again, Malone. Thirty minutes.”

  I knew better than to argue. “Yes, sorry about that. Had an unexpected call from my mother in Burnaby. She’s just had a terrible accident. Fell down the stairs. She’s in VGH now; could be in a cast for months.”

  His face darkened in a scowl. He didn’t believe a word of it, of course. Which is not surprising, as I realised after I said it that the last time I’d made an excuse for being late, I’d told him my mum lived in Victoria. Oh well.

  “I’m taking half an hour off your pay,” he said, sounding personally affronted. “Don’t let it happen again or it really will be the last straw.”

  I nodded and turned to leave.

  “And did you not get the memo last week?” he said to my back. I made the mistake of turning around. “The memo about wearing a tie at work,” he continued. “And I don’t see any tie.” He jabbed a finger in the rough direction of my neck.

  “I’ll wear one tomorrow, Mr. Barnes.” A tie in this heat! I would put it on as I entered the store and not a second sooner.

  I left his office, carefully banging the door behind me, and promptly forgot every word he’d said. My mind was buzzing with thoughts about Emma. I had an overwhelming feeling of having let her down.

  Throughout the rest of the morning I was distracted with customers, but at eleven I had a fifteen-minute break and spent it in the washroom, deep in thought. I asked myself what I truly thought of Emma. How much of her story did I really believe? Deep down, I was still sceptical. My doubts were coming between us.

  A few minutes before lunchtime my cell phone hummed in my pocket and, when I checked, it was her number. I ran to the washroom again, holding the phone to my ear as I slalomed through the aisles.

  “Mike?”

  “Emma.” I was incredibly happy to hear her voice.

  “Mike, you have a lunch break?”

  “Yup, just coming up right now.”

  “Great. Can we talk? I’m here in the Starbucks right beside you.”

  “Wonderful.” I really meant it too. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  When I got there I found her at the very b
ack in a snug little alcove that was rarely vacant.

  “You picked my favourite seat,” I said.

  She smiled. “I seem to remember you like being hidden away.”

  I slid into the seat opposite her and noticed a mug of coffee in front of me.

  “I got you one already,” she said, “Thought it might save time.”

  I raised the mug and took an appreciative sip. It was slightly cool, but I ignored that.

  She reached across and put her hand over mine. “Mike, I’ve been thinking a lot.”

  “What about?” I wondered if she was going to try to persuade me to go back on what I’d decided earlier.

  “About a lot of stuff. Remember when we used to talk about the future, about our dreams?”

  I nodded. I’d thought about it a million times.

  “Remember how mine always involved money, lots of it, enough to buy anything I wanted?”

  “Winters in Whistler and summers in Barbados” I replied quietly. I’d never seen her in this mood before.

  “Well, you know what? I made my dream come true. I’ve been there, done that. And it left me empty.”

  I said nothing; let her talk.

  “I guess it’s about getting older or something,” she said. “But I don’t think that way anymore. Money doesn’t bring happiness. Sounds corny I know, but I learned the hard way.”

  “So what does bring happiness?”

  She looked up from our clasped hands into my eyes. “Other people. People I care about. Mending mistakes, that kind of thing.”

  “I think so too.”

  “Do you believe me, Mike?”

  It was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. I thought fast and hard.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to.”

  We looked at each other for a long time and there was moisture in her eyes.

  “Those few months with you was the only time in my life when I was really happy,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  We embraced and kissed, and I arranged to come by her place later.

  10.

  BIG SHOT

  The minute hand crawled around the face of the clock hanging above the checkout counter. I checked it with my watch which, sure enough, was six minutes faster. Barnes had been at it again. We weren’t allowed to leave until the big clock said so.

  At five past six, real time, I fled my workplace and stood outside in the shade of the bookstore’s long awning. The air was hot and humid, without a trace of breeze, and I was already beginning to sweat. I put on my trusty old Ray-Ban shades, bought second-hand from a church rummage sale years ago.

  A car stopped at the kerb. A brand new black BMW. Not many of those around.

  The driver’s door opened and out stepped the Brick, as I was now thinking of him, the goon from outside Emma’s place. He was dressed more formally today, in a crisp white shirt – aviator sunglasses hanging from the breast pocket – pressed black pants and shiny shoes. And his eyes? Well, they were fixed on me.

  I considered making a run for it and quickly dismissed the idea as not a viable option. For a main intersection, the corner where I was standing was fairly quiet this time of evening and something told me this guy could outpace me with embarrassing ease. Instead, I stood stock still and tried not to tremble too obviously.

  He walked right up to me until we stood nearly toe to toe. This time I avoided looking into his eyes.

  “Boss wants a word with you.” He flicked his head slightly in the direction of the car. My gaze followed and I saw the rear passenger window slide down smoothly. A dim figure sat behind it, staring back at me. I stepped around the muscle mountain and went to the car.

  At the window I stooped down and peered in, the sun burning my back as I leaned over. In the far passenger seat sat a small Chinese man with jet black hair and eyebrows, his face smooth and pasty white, whom I took to be Zheng. He looked ten years younger than the mid-fifties I knew he had to be. Plenty of Chinese faces are animated; Zheng’s was impassive, impossible to read. Not overtly malicious, but not friendly either.

  “Get in the car, Mr. Malone.” The voice was controlled, almost quiet, but brooked no dissension. It was the voice of someone who took it as a natural law of the universe that what he said would promptly come to pass.

  The driver, who must have been standing directly behind me, gripped my shoulder and pushed me towards the open the door.

  I could struggle in the street and probably get a quick punch in the family jewels for my trouble. Or I could get in.

  I got in.

  *

  We crossed the Lions Gate Bridge and into West Vancouver. I thought about my arrangement with Emma – ‘date’ didn’t seem quite the right word for it – and I wondered what she would think when I didn’t turn up. Would she be worried or just shrug it off? I wasn’t about to whip out my cell phone and call her with Zheng sitting beside me, that’s for sure.

  A magnificent vista of Burrard Inlet, rusty-coloured container ships parked along the horizon, opened up on my left as we negotiated the steep, twisty road. It was the first time in ages that I’d been along Marine Drive, but I wasn’t enjoying the view. Zheng hadn’t uttered a word since we’d started. In fact, I think he’d barely moved a muscle. I took a surreptitious look sideways and somehow he detected it. Maybe he had an eye hidden inside his ear or something. Whatever; just as I looked at him, he annoyingly turned and stared right back at me.

  “You like Chinese food, Mr. Malone?”

  The question completely threw me. “As a matter of fact, I do,” I replied. Sweet and sour chicken was my favourite, closely followed by ginger beef, but I didn’t get into details.

  Slight nod of head. “Good,” he replied, “Then you will be my guest tonight.”

  I felt I hadn’t much choice in the matter, so looked out the window and tried to enjoy the ride.

  The car passed Gleneagles Golf Course and turned left. We wound our way around various twisty roads named after British military figures and dipped down until we were right at the coastal shoreline. Finally, we turned into a wide driveway and pulled up in front of a set of enormous white garage doors. The driver clicked something he was holding, the doors slid up noiselessly and he drove slowly in. I had managed to relax a little during the drive but the garage doors closing behind the car tensed me up again.

  The chauffeur opened the door for Zheng while I got out the other side. I just had time to note several other cars in the garage before I was shepherded up a short flight of steps to a courtyard on the main level of the house itself. The house was L-shaped, with lots of windows on all the sides I could see. There was an aquamarine pool inside the ‘L’ and an overalled worker was cleaning it with a long pole.

  “Welcome to my home, Mr. Malone.”

  “Very nice,” I replied. “Lots of natural light.”

  Zheng gave me an inscrutable look. “Ah, the windows, you like those. Easy to break into, yes?” He pointed a stumpy finger at the worker beside the pool. “This is one of my outside guards. He is armed, of course. There are several more in the grounds. And my home has the latest electronic security. It would not be so easy for Mr. Burglar.”

  I swallowed hard. This was way too close to the bone.

  “Now you will need to freshen up. Wark will take you to the washroom.”

  So that was the driver’s name. It sounded vaguely Scottish and distinctly ominous.

  “We have supper in ten minutes,” Zheng said, looking at Wark who nodded. He led me upstairs to an ornate bathroom which was probably bigger than my entire bachelor suite, and shuffled me inside.

  I locked the door, leaving Wark standing outside, and fought the panic down. What was I doing here and how the hell was I going to get out? How did he know about Emma and me? My eyes went to the windows, of which there were several, three high up above the twin washbasin mirrors, and another bigger one above the bathtub. None looked like the kind I could easil
y clamber through, and I had no head for heights anyway. Not to mention the guards lurking in the shrubbery. I thought about Emma waiting for me in her apartment and decided to text her. With the cold tap turned on to drown the peeps, I tapped out ‘Sorry, can’t come, will explain later’, and switched off the phone. It would have to do.

  Needless to say, by now I really did have to use the bathroom for normal stuff. I did my business, washed my hands, and rejoined the ape outside.

  The dining room had the same high windows and all white décor. The two of us sat at a table that seated eight, Zheng at the top end and me in the middle to his left. I craned my head around and, sure enough, Wark was standing at the wall behind me.

  “We eat first, talk afterwards,” Zheng said.

  I was happy enough to go along with that. At least I was getting a meal out of this, after which we’d talk, I’d deny everything, then go home. The first course arrived, served by a middle-aged female housekeeper with a Chinese name I didn’t catch and couldn’t have pronounced. It was some kind of thin broth, with unfamiliar vegetables floating in it. I took a couple of little mouthfuls and passed on the rest.

  The subsequent courses, of which there were three, weren’t any better. I don’t recall the exact sequence, but steamed whole fish appeared, the housekeeper carefully pointing their heads towards Zheng – this seemed important – some battered claw things that I eventually figured out were chicken feet, and a cold dish with shiny round vegetables that Zheng deemed to explain to me was jellyfish and sea cucumbers. Not my kind of Chinese food.

  Zheng ate with studied concentration; always at the same slow careful pace, slurping noodles, sucking bones, and occasionally emitting a grunt of pleasure. I sipped green tea and picked at the edges of each dish, trying to look busy whilst eating as little as possible. Zheng wasn’t fooled for a moment. After a while I realised he was quietly enjoying my discomfort.

  At the end the housekeeper cleared away the greasy dishes and brought two small bowls of hot water with lemon slices in it. I knocked half of it back like I was thirsting to death, glad to rinse my mouth of strange flavours. Zheng dabbled his fingertips in his bowl and dried them on a little towel that I hadn’t even noticed. I felt like an idiot and hated myself for caring.