After the Horses

by Jeffrey Round

“And you know this how?” she asked.

  “Through one of his employees.”

  “Name?”

  Dan hesitated.

  “If I’m going to trust you, then I’d like you to trust me.”

  She wasn’t hard-balling him, just stating her position. There was no aggression or intimidation in her voice.

  “I’m sorry. I promised my source anonymity.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Fair enough, but the more you tell me, the more I can help you. Let me be frank: I can’t prove that whatever you tell me is safe, but I want you to know my aim is to rid the police force of corruption inasmuch as that is possible in a force this large. I have no hidden agenda. The bars are part of it. There are drug deals, as well. Lots of messes to clean up. But I don’t screw around with confidential information or the lives and reputations of police officers. I’ve merely been assigned a task and I’m trying to carry it out as well as I can. We will all benefit from a cleaner police force. Do you have any questions?”

  Dan liked her so far. “Where do you get your zeal? What makes you suitable for this job?”

  Her gaze was unblinking. “My father. He was a good cop. One of the best. He taught me to be honourable in all things. He taught me that although there are unjust laws, there are a lot of good and meaningful laws on the books. You don’t break laws simply for your own convenience and especially not for personal gain. My father didn’t like graft and corruption. I don’t either.”

  Dan started to speak, but she cut him off.

  “And in case you think that’s a pretty speech, I’ll tell you that my father died in the line of duty. I don’t take his memory lightly.”

  “Okay, I believe you,” Dan said. “Forgive me if I don’t name names. I gave my word, and that means something to me. In fact, it means everything to me. I will ask for permission to spell things out to you personally, but give me credit that for now I simply cannot.”

  “Cool. Let me know when you can.”

  “For the moment, however, I can give you the name of one of your own: Trposki.” He caught a flicker of interest behind the self-assured gaze. How deep the interest went, or why, was impossible to guess with certainty.

  “What about him?”

  “I’m told he was one of the officers who might have received bribes from the Saddle and Bridle.”

  “And this comes from your source?”

  “Yes.”

  Her mood had darkened, but only slightly. He saw the outward signs, and was glad he hadn’t revealed everything. Obviously the name meant something to her. Dan recognized the look. He’d seen it in his clients, the ones with things to hide. They didn’t necessarily turn away when you asked the hard questions about why someone might have vanished: Did you ever hit her? Were you having an affair? These were the sort of questions that made most people blink, though a few had played poker long enough to know that an averted gaze was as good as an admission of guilt. But there were others, like Superintendent Johnston, whose aversion tactic was barely discernible. Dan thought of it as lips being out of synch with the words in a film. Something was mismatched. If asked to describe it, he would have said she seemed to be thinking one thing while saying another, the words going in one direction while the flickering traces of thought on her face went elsewhere. It was his own internal polygraph, but he’d never known it to be wrong. A lie was a lie, no matter the reason for telling it.

  “I’m curious,” she said at last. “What’s your interest in this case?”

  “My source is also my client. I think I can safely tell you that much. I’m looking for Malevski’s ex-boyfriend, Santiago Suárez.”

  She sat back. “Interesting.”

  “As far as I know, Santiago was responsible for passing the payback money along to the police officers who were taking bribes.”

  “I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear we already know this?”

  “Is he a suspect? In the murder, I mean.”

  “As much as anyone who knew Yuri Malevksi is considered a suspect at present.”

  “What about the killing itself. How was it done?”

  “Nasty and swift. A long-handled knife was used. From what we can tell, he was attacked in his kitchen before being carried upstairs afterwards. There were a few residual bloodstains on the stairs. Everything else had been cleaned up. The front door was double-locked from inside and the back door alarmed. He was all dressed up when they found him. Almost as if he was going somewhere. In any case, he probably died in his bed.”

  “Sounds like someone went to a lot of trouble to hide the body.”

  “Seems like it. He was discovered pretty quickly, however, when he failed to show up at work and missed an accounting meeting he had planned.”

  Dan nodded. “Word is the ex-boyfriend left Yuri for a girlfriend. Do you know anything about that?”

  Johnston’s smile lit up her face. “That’s what we heard, too. I thought at first it might just be an alibi thing, but we found the girl and she confirms his story. A quick conversation with some of the neighbours told us he’d been coming and going for some time. So it seems as though it might have been real. At least back then. We put a watch on the apartment, but he never returned. Probably never will, is my guess. If it helps, I can give you her name and address.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Inspector Johnston took out a notebook. “She’s in the Jane-Finch Corridor. If he’s hiding out, it would prove easier for an illegal alien to hide out there, far from the downtown core, rather than in other culturally diverse areas like St. James Town.”

  “True enough,” Dan concurred as he wrote down the particulars.

  “What else do you know about Officer Trposki?” she asked.

  The turnaround surprised him, but it shouldn’t have. She came across as pleasant, but she was still canny.

  “He’s gay.”

  She finished her coffee.

  “Okay, leave this with me. Do I have permission to call you at home?”

  Dan nodded. “Any time you like.”

  “Good. And I’d like you to feel free to contact me any time as well.” She stood and offered her hand. “Lydia, please.”

  “Dan.”

  Dan had a couple of hours to kill and an appetite to appease now that he’d overdosed on bad coffee. He headed back to the ghetto. The Village Rainbow Restaurant seemed the quickest option on the strip. He wasn’t above cheap food when his appetite was on autopilot. He went in and took a seat.

  The waiter’s immaculately cut hair was the only clue he cared about his appearance. The trousers pushed down around his hips seemed to say, I can’t be bothered to worry what you might think about my butt. He was arrogant with the scarcely considered beauty of youth — untouched, untutored, and altogether radiant.

  The burger was barely noteworthy, but Dan wolfed it down anyway. Fries were always in season. When the bill arrived, Dan pulled out his wallet. The blue-and-white-striped card fell onto the table. He picked it up and thumbed the edge before tucking it back inside.

  “Yeah, thanks,” the boy said coolly, when Dan tipped him for his meagre efforts.

  His look was sullen, as though he hated to be beholden for something as inconsequential as money.

  Afterwards, Dan stood on the sidewalk outside. Apart from meeting Hank, there’d been little mem-orable about his afternoon in the ghetto. It simply reinforced his belief that he didn’t belong there. He was a misfit among misfits. But the neighbourhood wasn’t the problem, he realized. Now he saw it simply for what it was: an underprivileged bit of turf that attracted a particular type of person. Why did the LGBT community need to stand out? Wasn’t that what his therapist had accused him of: trying too hard to show the world that he belonged? Maybe the boy who served him his burger felt the same: Take me or leave me, he seemed to say. I can’t be bothered to waste my time trying to impress you.

  Dan remembered walking down these same streets for the first time as an eighteen-year-old. The city had s
eemed immense to him, having just come from small-town northern Ontario after leaving behind a brutal upbringing where love was expressed with fists and curses by his alcoholic father. Back then he’d felt it was all he could do to survive, but somehow his future had been forming quietly in the background, taking shape while he walked the streets and grew more and more comfortable with the cityscape.

  Images passed through his mind, a parade without end. Now, more than twenty years on, the buildings no longer seemed so high, the city less crowded than in his memory. He’d scaled its heights, bringing it down to human proportions. Of course, raising a son had contributed to that. There was nothing like being responsible for another human being to make reality assert itself.

  He saw them up ahead, a trio of twisted sisters. They were a splash of local colour, a stage designer’s trompe l’oeil, like exhibitions in the Church and Wellesley display for curious tourists. “If you look to your right, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll see some of the favoured clichés of the LGBT community …”

  The first was male, at least in appearance: red hair, freckled shoulders, and muscular physique, though the walk and talk said otherwise. Why go to the trouble of pumping yourself up if the voice and personality didn’t match? Security, of course. You could beat up a wimp, but you’d think twice before tackling someone with a construction worker’s build. The second was also male, nothing much to write home about, though the third had Dan perplexed. Shoulder-length hair and wide hips, but with a broad back and a boy’s voice that cackled and whinnied and carried on. The message was as loud as it was clear: You may think we’re freaks, but don’t mess with us. We won’t be silent. The latter leaned over to the first and kissed him on the mouth.

  “Longer and wetter, sweetheart!” came the cackling command.

  Even when Dan passed them by, casting a sidelong glance to see if there were breasts — hardly any to speak of — he still couldn’t be sure. Then it dawned on him: the spiky hair and bushy eyebrows. This was Jan the transsexual. Normally, he looked for signs of aberration: an unusual scar or an overly obvious tattoo — something to tell him the thrust behind the personality, where a person came from and how they’d been formed. Clues that gave hints about the likeliest approach to finding someone should they disappear. But this was an overload of signs and signals in every sense of the word.

  Before Dan could make a move, Jan held up an arm and let out a whistle, stopping a passing cab. The unlikely trio climbed in, the cab whisking off even before the doors were shut properly.

  Dan watched it pass down the street and out of view.

  Ten

  Outskirts

  There was nothing particularly frightening about the Jane-Finch Corridor when seen from the perspective of someone driving past at fifty kilometres per hour with little or no intention of stopping. It was the stopping that got you in trouble. Conceived of as an “instant suburb” in the 1960s, Jane-Finch was the product of an altruistic We’re-All-Equal mentality bent on creating a socially diversified community, while giving little credence to the infrastructure necessary to making such a vision work. The concept of “equal but different” did not apply solely to unjust marriage laws, Dan knew, and it might cynically be said to have found a better fit here, fostering a population with one of the most culturally diverse criminal gangs and low-income, single-parent families, as well as the highest hospitalization rates for trauma in the entire city. Not your average success story. But still, it was home to some.

  That Santiago Suárez had considered marrying someone from the corridor said a lot about his desperation to acquire citizenship. Ostensibly, he was a man trapped between three hostile worlds: first, that of the Canadian legal system, where he would be viewed as a murder suspect as well as an unwelcome refugee claimant; second, of his past, where he was an escapee from a dictatorial country whose citizens were not allowed to travel; and third, as a homosexual in a macho Latino culture that derided the mariposa.

  Dan knew Canada’s record for deporting refugees back to regimes where their safety and their lives were at risk. Currently, Haiti, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Congo were on that list of no-go zones, though every year dozens were returned to those very countries. While Eastern Europeans might claim financial deprivation as a legitimate reason for not wanting to be sent home, others like Santiago faced imprisonment, physical danger, and possibly death if they were extradited. Dan knew to tread lightly as he approached Santiago’s girlfriend’s door.

  Judging by the building’s exterior, she wasn’t living a life of luxury. If Santiago had been well kept by Yuri, he hadn’t upgraded by turning to Jane-Finch. Dan glanced up at the brown high-rise with its paint-flecked balconies. Bullet holes pocked a NO PARKING sign to his left. While it might have been the dream of many immigrants to live in a building towering high above the world, some of them had probably hoped to share it with better neighbours.

  The door opened on a very plain young woman who stared at him through stringy bangs with sullen regard.

  “Are you Rita St. Angelo?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking for Santiago Suárez.”

  “He’s not here.”

  She started to shut the door, but Dan held his hand against it. She didn’t put up much resistance. “Bored” was how he read it. His appearance on her doorstep might at least offer a distraction.

  “I’m not with the police,” he hastened to add. “I’m a private investigator. Do you mind if I just ask a few questions about him?”

  “You can’t come in,” she said, though Dan wondered how much resistance she would give on that, too, if he pressed her.

  “I promise I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “I have to go to work.”

  Her hair was a snarly mess and she was dressed in a housecoat and slippers. A TV blared in the background. Dan doubted work was her priority. She had “fag hag” written all over her, but in a language he couldn’t read. Her skin was oily and she could have done with a manicure. He doubted she would be much of a sexual draw for someone like Santiago, even if he were straight. She practically had “free citizenship” stamped on her forehead.

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  Her eyes flickered. He’d caught her attention.

  “Yes. And he loves me.”

  “Then maybe I can help you.”

  Her hand stopped pressuring the door. She waited for him to continue.

  “I know you told the police he vanished. Do you know where he’s gone?”

  She shook her head, eyes misting over. Dan believed her.

  “If he loves you, he should be here. Why isn’t he here with you?”

  “He’s afraid they’ll take him away. He didn’t do anything wrong, but they’ll try to blame him. The police, I mean.”

  And the immigration authorities, Dan thought, mentally adding to the count.

  “For the murder?”

  “Someone killed his boss. But it wasn’t him.” She seemed resigned to talking to him now. “He was here the entire week that guy was killed. He never went out. I told the police that, too.”

  Standing by her man, Dan thought. “Even while you were at work?”

  “I wasn’t working that week.”

  “So he never left the building?”

  “Just to get milk and cigarettes at the corner store.”

  “Did Santiago tell you that he and his boss lived together?”

  She flicked a fluff ball from her arm.

  “He said he was just a friend who needed help to pay the rent, so Santiago moved in with him for a while. But that man was crazy and jealous as they come. He was delusional!”

  Watches too many talk shows, Dan concluded, thinking of all the misguided people conned into putting their personal problems on daytime television, believing it would help.

  “What happened? Can you tell me?” he prompted, feeling like a talk-show host coaxing his guests into revealing the details of their lurid lives.

 
; “He threatened Santiago. Said he would make sure he couldn’t come back here. He even phoned me on my own phone!” Her expression said she was impressed by this revelation and expected Dan to be too. Her eyes narrowed. “He said if I knew what was good for me, I’d leave him alone.”

  “How do you know it was his boss?”

  “I know the type,” she said, her eyes flashing with a woman-in-love defiance. “But Santiago said never mind, when we got married we would move to a nice house somewhere.”

  Paid for with what? Dan wondered.

  “Where did you meet him?”

  Her smile flickered back to life. “In a Cuban bar. The Little Havana. Afterwards, we went salsa dancing at El Convento Rico. He was the handsomest man there. He always is.”

  Dan knew El Convento Rico, a Latin bar where straight closet cases could grind up against the gay men and drag queens on the edge of the dance floor without causing a riot.

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Four months.”

  Dan calculated back: that was around the time Santiago and Yuri were supposed to have had their big break-up.

  “Isn’t that a little quick for a marriage?”

  “Not when two people are in love like we are.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe he wanted to marry you for citizenship?”

  Her face turned pouty. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “You’d be surprised what people do,” Dan said.

  She was undeterred. “I approached him, if you want to know. I offered to marry him to help him stay here. He never asked me for anything.”

  A nice-looking Latino illegal flirts up a storm in a bar and gets offered marriage and citizenship. Not bad for an evening out, Dan thought.

  “Is that what you told the police?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Dan pulled a card from his wallet and handed it to her with a fifty-dollar bill.

  “Give this card to Santiago when you see him.” He thought of editing when to if, but stopped himself. “The fifty is for you. I’m not with Immigration. I just want to ask him about payments he made so the police would leave his boss’s bar alone. If he can help me pin that on anyone in particular, it might help with his case.”