Bobby Chow ate his hamburger in five large bites. He licked mayonnaise from the gold foil wrapper, balled up the wrapper with trembling hands, tossed it on the floor of the car. “Sugar?”
Parker handed him three small white envelopes. Bobby sweetened his coffee, added cream. He said, “You Jack’s partner?”
Parker sipped her coffee. She’d had better, but she’d had worse.
“Silent partner, huh?” Bobby grabbed a handful of french fries.
Willows said, “What’ve you got for us, Bobby?”
Bobby shrugged. “Not much, really. I was all doped up when I phoned. My mind’s a lot clearer now. Sorry I wasted your time.”
Willows opened his door. “Let’s go, Bobby.”
Bobby grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “No way. I got to finish my lunch.”
Willows scooped up a handful of ketchup-smeared french fries and stuffed them in the breast pocket of Bobby’s suit. “Take it with you.”
Bobby licked his lips, studying the look in Willows’ eyes. After a moment he said, “Good idea, Jack.”
Mountain View cemetery contains one hundred and six acres of gently rolling, well-tended lawn, thousands of graves and a crematorium. It’s the only cemetery inside the city limits, and the main gate is five blocks from the A&W. Willows and Parker, with Bobby slouched in the Celebrity’s backseat, drove slowly down a narrow road of cracked and faded asphalt.
After a few minutes, Willows stopped the car. “Out, Bobby.”
“Now?”
Willows climbed out of the car. After a moment’s hesitation, Parker followed him. Willows yanked open the back door.
“What?” said Bobby.
“We’re going to take a walk.” Willows grabbed Chow by the arm and hauled him out of the car.
“Leggo, you’re hurting me!”
“Not yet, but soon.”
“Jack…” said Parker.
Willows ignored her.
The grass was gray with frost, and crisp as breakfast cereal beneath their feet. Willows walked Bobby into the forest of tombstones and pointed at a rectangle of pink granite.
“Sit.”
Bobby sat.
“Grand theft auto, Bobby. Your probation officer’s gonna laugh his head off.”
“The key was in the fuckin’ ignition. The fuckin’ door wasn’t locked! So I fucked up the paperwork. Jeez, it was a simple mistake. Error of judgement. Could’ve happened to anybody! Long as I pay, Hertz don’t give a shit. I wanna see my lawyer!”
Willows said, “Why don’t you take a walk, Claire.”
Parker didn’t move.
Bobby said, “She wants to be with you. Hey, maybe it’s love.”
Willows knocked him off the tombstone and face down into the brittle, frozen grass.
Bobby started crying.
Parker said, “That’s enough, Jack.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s more than enough,” said Parker.
Willows nudged Chow in the ribs with the toe of his brogue. He said, “Is she right, Bobby? Or do you want some more?”
Bobby got up on his hands and knees. He wiped the tears from his face. “Knock it off! You can’t do this, you’re a cop!”
“And you’re a snitch. Don’t forget it.”
Bobby looked wildly around. On the far side of the cemetery, an old woman was laying a wreath on a grave. Bobby started screaming for help.
Willows waited until he ran out of air and then punched him in the kidneys.
“Jesus Christ!”
“He can’t hear you either. And neither can Kenny Lee. But I can, and I’m listening.”
“When I called you I was wired, half-asleep… Jack, I didn’t know what I was saying!”
“Kenny Lee had a wife, two kids. He’s on his way over here, Bobby. The day after tomorrow, they’re going to bury him right here in this cemetery.”
Willows felt a hand on his shoulder. Parker. He spun away, grabbed a fistful of Bobby’s lapel and dragged him across the grass, smashed his face into a sagging granite tombstone. Bobby spat blood.
Parker said, “Hit him again and I’ll file a report. I mean it, Jack.”
Willows turned his back on her and strode across the manicured lawn towards the unmarked car.
Bobby, still on his hands and knees, said, “I asked around. Lee was no high stakes gambler. He didn’t owe anybody a goddamn penny.” He wiped his nose. “You hear what I said, lady?”
Parker said, “Bobby, don’t even think about laying a complaint. Understand?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Look at me.”
Bobby blinked away his tears.
“He’s my partner. You lay a complaint, we’ll find a way to put you away for the rest of your miserable life.”
Parker leaned forward. Bobby flinched. She ruffled his greasy hair and then stood up and strode briskly across the frozen grass to the car. Willows was in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. She got behind the wheel and put the car in gear.
Willows said, “Drop me off somewhere, will you. I think I’ll call it a day.”
“Drop you off where?”
“Eddy’s. I could use a drink.”
“You don’t need a drink, Jack. What you need is a whole new outlook on life.”
Parker braked at the gates, waited for the traffic to clear and turned right on Fraser.
“Bobby rolled over.”
“Yeah?” Willows didn’t sound surprised.
“Melinda was right. Despite his trips to Vegas, her father wasn’t a gambler.”
Willows thought about it. He said, “We ought to call Vegas again. Lee must’ve been in some kind of trouble. He had a reason for flying all the way down there, right? Maybe the Vegas cops have got a sheet on him.”
Parker said, “It’s worth a try. Still want me to drop you off?” “Let’s go back to work.”
“You keep hitting people, Jack, you’re going to lose your badge.”
“Not as long as I keep hitting people like Bobby, I won’t.”
Parker said, “Why don’t you arrange to take a few days off, go see your kids.”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“They miss you, too, Jack.”
“Yeah, I know.”
*
A chair had been drawn up next to Willows’ desk. The woman sprawled in it was wearing heavy black boots, a pair of skin-tight black leather pants and a fuzzy pink angora sweater. Her hair was the colour of radishes and she sported a diamond in her left nostril. As Willows and Parker made their way across the squad room towards her, she stood up, tugged at the pink sweater. “You’re Detectives Willows and Parker?”
Willows nodded.
She offered a hand decorated with a tattoo of a red and blue butterfly. “I’m Beverly.” She sat back down in the chair, unfolded a scrap of newspaper and smoothed it out on her black leather thigh. “I work the late shift at a restaurant down on Pender. This guy?” She pointed at the police artist’s composite sketch of the man who’d rented William Chang’s warehouse. “He came in for a cup of coffee the night before they found this other one, the Chinese guy who froze to death.”
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“Yeah, positive. A redhead, like me, except natural. Real smart-ass. Asked me if it hurt when I sneezed.” She touched her nose. “Talking about my diamond, and I didn’t like it, not one bit.”
She hadn’t liked the way he’d stood her up, either, but there was no point in telling the cops about that.
“Did you get a name…”
“Wouldn’t tell me. But I was leaning way over the counter when he paid for his coffee. Cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie, that’s what he had. Two dollars and thirty cents. No tip. When he opened his wallet, I got a peek at his driver’s licence.”
“Was it local?”
“Yeah, sure.” Beverly smiled. The diamond twinkled; a star to be wished upon. “His name was Garret.”
Parker said, “Is that a first or a last name?”
“I don’t know, I only got a quick look. A guy opens his wallet, you don’t want him to catch you staring.”
“Right,” said Parker, nodding.
Willows started asking questions. Half an hour later, he knew — or hoped he knew — Garret’s approximate height and weight, the colour of his eyes, that he had no discernible speech pattern or accent, and that on the night in question he’d worn jeans and a black leather jacket, a pair of fancy cowboy boots and a black cowboy hat.
“You mind if I talk to my partner for a minute?” He drew Parker aside. “Anything else?”
“She’s a shallow pond, Jack. I think we’ve drained her dry.”
Beverly said, “So, what’re you gonna do now?”
“Run the name through the computer, see what we come up with.” Parker smiled. “We get lucky and come up with something, you mind looking at some pictures?”
“I can’t, I gotta go to work.”
“Not now. Maybe tomorrow, though. Would you do that for us?”
“Yeah, sure. Tell you the truth, I’d like to go to the trial, watch him squirm.”
Parker moved closer, stepped between Beverly and Jack Willows. Speaking very softly, almost whispering, she said, “Did he do something to you?”
“Stood me up,” Beverly said, blurting it out. She blushed, her skin taking on a shade somewhere between the pink of her sweater and the fire-engine red of her hair.
“If it does go to trial,” said Parker, “you’ll know all about it, don’t worry.”
Eddy Orwell came out of a witness interrogation room as Parker, still murmuring words of sympathy, walked Beverly to the elevator. He kept his eyes on the black leather until it disappeared from view and then turned to Willows and said, “Hear about Farley?”
“Only that they operated on him, nothing since.”
Parker sat back down at her desk. Orwell, looming over her, said, “You hear about Farley?”
Parker glared up at him. “Back off, Eddy. Give me some breathing room.” She made a note on a pad. “Jack, we should give some thought to how Beverly’s going to look in court.”
“Maybe somebody could give her a hand with her wardrobe. Angora and leather, it can’t be all she owns.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Me either,” said Orwell, “the way she walked out of here, she sure owes me. Anyhow, about Farley. It was touch and go. I been spending all my spare time with him, night and day.”
“That’s really terrific. What a wonderful guy.”
“So if Judith calls, would you mind telling her where I was?”
Parker said, “Know something, Eddy?”
“No, what?”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Jack?” said Eddy.
“Really disgusting, Eddy.” Willows dialled the long distance operator, got Las Vegas and asked for the number of the Vegas police. He disconnected, dialled again.
Orwell said, “How it happened, they were playing that game, you wet the top of a beer glass and stretch a paper napkin over it, drop some coins on the napkin and take turns burning cigarette holes in it. Last person to burn a hole before the coins fall through has to pay for the next round. Farley and the morgue guys, that’s what they were up to. Farley kept losing and he cut his losses by eating the money. Ever heard of anything like it? He must’ve been smashed out of his mind.”
Willows said, “Fascinating story, Eddy. But the way I heard it, Farley had a heart attack and he’s going to be just fine.”
Parker opened the thick black plastic ring binder containing the Lee file. There it was, on page 113. Melinda Lee’s emphatic statement that her father was at most a recreational gambler. Willows spoke briefly into the phone, hung up.
Parker said, “They got anything?”
“Going to call back.”
Parker began to write her daily report. Half an hour crawled past.
Willows’ phone rang and he snatched it up.
The Vegas police department knew Kenny Lee very well. During the past two years he’d flown into town on three separate occasions. The first time had been to pay a five figure bill at the Sands Hotel. An overdrawn Visa card issued in Lee’s name but in the possession of his son, Peter, had been used to cover a suite at the Sands, as well as several cash advances lost at the tables. Lee’s other two trips to Vegas had been for the express purpose of posting bail for the kid. The charges weren’t serious — a gross indecency and a drunk and disorderly. Willows asked about the first charge and was told the Lee kid had been caught pissing on a Lincoln parked in front of the Flamingo. At high noon.
Willows thanked the Vegas desk sergeant and hung up. Parker lifted an interrogative eyebrow.
Willows said, “Claire, did Lee’s son say who he took his ski trip with?”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“When you questioned him, how did he react?”
“He was tense, naturally. I assumed it was due to the circumstances of his father’s death. Why, what did you find out?”
“Kenny Lee made those trips to Vegas to wipe up the mess his son made. The kid racked up some serious losses at the Sands. Daddy had to bail him out. What do you know about the terms of Lee’s will?”
“Everything went to his wife. But the Chinese live in a male-dominated society, Jack. Maybe the kid figured he could take over the paper, eventually sell out for a bundle.”
“Head back to Nevada and make his fortune,” Willows said thoughtfully. “Be nice to tie him and this Garret kid together.” He pictured the naked body of Kenny Lee sitting bolt upright in the full-lotus position on the frozen surface of the artfully designed pond in the Sun Yat-Sen Gardens. The corpse encased in a shroud of cloudy ice.
Those frosty, blinded eyes.
Chapter 21
Nancy lay on her side, facing the big glass wall and the lights of West Vancouver. Her husband was asleep on his stomach, sprawled across the middle of the bed. His mouth was wide open. He was snoring, Nancy could smell the wine. When had it become so predictable? Tyler was like an elevator. Up. Down. Off we go. A machine would be more fun, because a machine would do exactly what she wanted, whereas poor dull Tyler laboured under the misapprehension that he knew what she wanted, and she…
She’d lost it somewhere along the line, the ability to talk to him. Be blunt without hurting him. She didn’t think she could do it any more, talk to him the way they used to talk. Always giving as well as taking. Too many little things had gone wrong. They’d moved too far away from each other — shouting wouldn’t span the gap. And besides, she didn’t know how Tyler would react if she told him what was on her mind, how she felt their life had deteriorated. The way Tyler was now, she was afraid he might blow a gasket, explode. Say things she’d never be able to forgive. And then where would she be? Out on her ass. Life taken from a brown paper bag wasn’t an appealing prospect. Too many of her friends had been savaged by the courts, and Tyler could certainly be ruthless, she knew that much about him. No, sitting down for a heart-to-heart talk about their sex life was out of the question. She wasn’t willing to risk it.
So a couple of times a week, if things were going well at the office, Tyler did his elevator trick and she got what she could out of it, and that was that.
There had to be something else out there, but what was it? Something unpredictable, wild.
A police car or ambulance or maybe a fire truck — she knew they had different sirens but had never learned to tell the difference — wailed past on its way to some kind of tragedy, an accident.
Tyler’s snoring faltered. He rolled towards her, and she felt herself tense up. His breathing steadied, grew deeper.
She slowly relaxed, the stiffness seeping out of her body.
He was her husband, for God’s sake. In all the years they’d been together, he’d hardly raised his voice to her. What was the big problem?
She was dying of boredom, that was the problem.
<
br /> Nancy lay on her side, watching the steady red glow of the numerals on the digital alarm clock, counting off the seconds, letting another five minutes drift by, just to be sure.
At 11:43, she eased out of bed and went over to the window, her bare feet silent on the thick carpet.
The pool was a perfect rectangle of aquamarine. Snow, hard and crystalline, glittered and sparkled under the security lights. The branches of the small birch copse next to the fence cast a spider web of shadows on the pale ground. The harbour was a patch of black cloth hemmed with tiny orange lights. She moved a little to her left, so she could see the lights of the downtown core.
Nothing moved.
He was out there, somewhere in the city. She wondered what he was doing, if he was thinking of her.
Maybe he was on his way over right this minute.
She was wearing a rose-coloured silk nightdress with spaghetti straps. She eased one strap over her shoulder, and then the other. The silk pooled at her feet. She stood there for a moment, one leg cocked.
Nothing moved.
She turned her back on the plate glass, late-night still life, and went into the bathroom and carefully shut the door. The floods and heat lamps and fan switched on automatically. She turned on the shower, adjusted the water temperature and stepped into the stall, slid shut the glass door.
The water drummed down on her breasts, stiffened her nipples.
She imagined him forcing a window, a door. Striding boldly up the stairs. Pushing open the bedroom door. Tyler had vanished; he simply wasn’t there. He heard the shower and walked into the bathroom. Nancy watched him strip off his black leather jacket, those tight, faded jeans. His socks. Underpants. She wondered what kind of underpants he wore. She pictured him in bikini-style briefs, skimpy and bulging. His body was hard, flat and angular.
She leaned weakly against the black-tiled wall of the shower. The spray pounded against the back of her neck. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her very bones and all the strength that was in her dissolved in the billowing steam.
She clenched her teeth, trying not to scream. God, what was the matter with her? She turned off the water and stepped out of the glass cubicle. Wrapped a towel around her hair.
Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 19