In the hallway upstairs he found JD talking with Jimmy Torr and Cal Dion. They didn’t look happy. They spotted Leith and summoned him over, as if they had a score to settle and he was the appointed judge.
“Sigmund Blatt’s gone,” JD told him. “Employer reported he wasn’t showing up for shift.”
“Disappeared from his digs in Calgary,” Torr said. He held a paper cup in one hand, Starbucks logo, a little drift of steam escaping from its sip hole. “Calgary’s on the BOLO for him. I’m thinking we better get over there. If he’s not dead, he’s maybe being held captive. All I’m saying is we should be there when it hits the fan, right?”
Dion spoke up now. His hands were stuck in his trouser pockets in a carefree way, but there was nothing carefree about his face, overheated and damp looking. “He’ll show up,” he said. “He’s scared, that’s all. He’s gone into hiding.”
Torr said, “And how d’you figure that? Some real hardass terminated the Lius, and this Blatt dick told us he’d be next, which is why he skipped town. So he’s got something to hide, and maybe this thing is bigger than we think. Maybe we’re talking hit list. Maybe the hit’s followed him east. What’s to say he’s not already dead?”
“Because he took the bird with him,” Dion said.
Leith said, “Bird?”
“What bird?” Torr said. “What the fuck you talking about, bird?”
“His pet bird, the one in the cage he had when we talked to him.” Dion was staring at Torr as if he wasn’t quite possible. “You think the hitman took it, too, in case it talked? Or not to separate them, maybe? Out of the goodness of his heart?”
Something dawned in Jimmy Torr’s eyes. “The parrot? What d’you mean he took it with him? I talked to Calgary, you didn’t, and nobody mentioned anything about a parrot.”
Dion was raising his voice, too. “Because you didn’t ask, so I did. I called ’em back and asked, and they said there was no bird in the townhouse when they searched it, but there was a stand and birdseed scattered around. So he either delivered it somewhere or took it with him, which means his disappearance was at least partly planned, so it was voluntary, so he’s probably fine. Not too bright, but fine.”
“Be nice if you told me all this at the time,” Torr snapped.
“I did,” Dion snapped back. “You just didn’t hear. Too busy listening to that weird buzzing sound between your ears.”
Torr opened his mouth to answer, but Leith flagged both men to silence. “Hold it. I didn’t see anything about a talking bird in any of the reports. Let’s hear a bit more.”
“Some fucking noisy parrot Blatt had in his apartment,” Torr said.
“It’s a cockatoo,” Dion said. “I Googled it. Blatt took good care of it. It had a clean cage, lots of toys. It looked happy.”
Torr said to Leith, “Whatever it was, however it felt, it was a pet bird, and it wasn’t relevant to our enquiries.”
“It is now, isn’t it?” Dion said.
Pissed off, Torr shot out an arm — maybe just an over-elaborate gesture — and it was the hand with the Starbucks Venti. The lid popped off and coffee splashed out. Dion stepped back, but not fast enough. Possibly he was hit in the face by some of the hot liquid, which was possibly why he stepped forward and shoved Torr in the chest.
The details of the skirmish that followed lost distinction in Leith’s mind. Torr staggered and his cup flew. JD yelped as she was sprayed. Torr came back with a grab at Dion’s necktie, whereupon Dion’s arms went up to defend himself from strangulation, after which the situation became messy and ridiculous. A crowd gathered to enjoy the show. Watch Commander Corporal Paley appeared, not to enjoy himself so much as put an end to things fast.
Half an hour later, Leith was obligated to describe the hallway battle to Mike Bosko. He did so, and added in his frustration, “Grown men in suits bashing each other like kids in a playground, be lucky if this doesn’t hit the press. They should both be given the boot.”
“Not the boot,” Bosko said. “But I’ll have a talk with them.”
As he returned to his desk, Leith thought over what he hadn’t told Bosko. That in his opinion Dion knew that the coffee hadn’t been tossed with malicious intent, that he hadn’t been scalded or injured in any way, and it was just an excuse to fight. Neither had Leith told Bosko anything about the war of words Dion had exchanged with Sean Urbanski earlier this week. This worried him. What if Bosko heard about it through the grapevine? He wouldn’t like being kept in the dark, might lose his trust in Leith, with reverberations all down that wobbly ladder of promotion Leith so wanted to climb.
“A” Watch left for the day, but he remained at his desk, in a pocket of silence. He was looking at his computer screen, at the map that the tracker provided, the route Dion had taken out to Cloverdale, the route Leith should probably not follow himself, on his first day off, if he had any sense.
Where was Dion now? Sent home, but was that where he had gone? After the fight was quashed he had calmed down, looking at his knuckles in wonder. Then wrapped his arms over his head like an athlete who had just flubbed a gold medal competition. Paley had lectured him on professionalism and self-control and told him to go home, report in tomorrow first thing for further discussion.
With Dion gone, Paley gathered those who had witnessed the fight to talk it over, to see if anyone was going to make noise about it. Leith sensed it was more a question of getting their stories straight than a disciplinary exercise. Torr said he didn’t care, JD said she didn’t either, and Leith didn’t foresee anyone else here making waves. But he did see rough waters ahead.
Eighteen
Zephyr
Dion didn’t show up in the morning, but it wasn’t Leith’s problem. He went back to brainstorming with the others about the missing parrot. Or cockatoo. JD suggested that if someone had kidnapped Blatt, they might have taken the bird in case it got noisy as it got hungry, and the noise would alert the neighbours. Leith didn’t think so. Those birds were noisy round the clock, in his experience. JD said the hitman might not consider that. Leith told her no, he just didn’t see a hitman carting off a full-grown man along with his pet bird in a large cage. He believed Dion was right, that Blatt had taken himself, and bird, AWOL.
Leith made some calls and learned from Blatt’s townhouse neighbour in Calgary that Sigmund Blatt was “kind of a paranoid weirdo,” and yeah, he had this cockatoo that talked pretty good English. It could sing “O Canada,” but other than that, pretty well all it had to say were taunts, one-liners, and profanities. The neighbour wasn’t surprised that Blatt had vanished. “Like I said, he was paranoid. He wasn’t about to tell me where he was headed, was he? I’m just a neighbour, not a friend. But he was spooked.”
“Did he seem to have any friends?”
“One rude cockatoo. How sad is that?”
Leith spoke to Blatt’s employer as well, a Mr. Ray Duhammond, who ran an electrical contracting firm in Calgary. It was the same firm Blatt had left last year, to move out here to the coast to start his own company with his now-dead partner Lance Liu. Duhammond had taken Blatt back because he was short of linemen. He had already been grilled by the Calgary police and was fairly snappy with Leith, saying he didn’t know where Blatt was now. He ended the call, “When you find him, tell him if he wants a third chance he can kiss my sparky ass.” Which Leith had to assume was electrician lingo.
He promised to pass on the message, hung up, and went on to the next task. It was going to be a long day, and they were short a man — damn it.
* * *
Sometimes morning brought answers and fresh starts, but not today. Dion stayed in bed and inspected the congealed blood on his right fist. It stung. The knuckles had ripped across Torr’s metal cufflinks, that’s what had done it. Ripped the skin. He had sabotaged himself yesterday, taking a crack at Torr like that, but it was a good thing, in the end. It took the guesswork
out of his future. It put him on the road.
Sun flares skewed by traffic slid across the ceiling. There had been no alarm clock beeping this morning, no texts or phone calls, because he had turned everything off. The sleep meds had dazed him but not knocked him out.
Now it was nearly eleven, checkout time. He rolled out of bed. He showered and shaved and got dressed. He went downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant. The place had character, but it was empty. It was probably empty because the food was bland, and the food was bland because the cook no longer cared. He no longer cared because his days were numbered; the hotel was slated for destruction by the end of the year, and another high-rise would stand here soon, adding more pressure to the Earth’s crust. The vertical growth in North Van was causing traffic jams, bottlenecks, and road rage. Home, to Dion, was feeling less like home every day.
Over a cup of coffee he knocked his notebook flat with a fist and tried to list his options.
The paper remained blank, and his eyes filled with tears. The heavy old waitress was eying him from her resting spot behind the counter. He palmed away the tears. He knew nothing except police work. He had joined up straight out of high school, gone to training depot in Regina alone, and come back to the coast as a member of the largest family in the world.
Probably leaving like this, abruptly and in disgrace, would bar him from working in any police force. Security guard was out of the question — nothing in a uniform. Suicide seemed logical, but he had thought it through, and knew he wouldn’t. Mechanics, computers, clerical, service industry, mining — nothing fit. Some ex-cops got into the consulting business or opened security firms, but those were the ones with their faculties intact.
Maybe he could go out to the oil fields of Alberta, where a man like him could learn on the job and make good money while he was at it. Even with the slump in the gas industry these days, there would be something for him there if he pushed hard enough.
“You all right?” the waitress said. Though he’d seen her often during his stay, all he knew of her was the name pinned to her frock, Raquel.
He realized how he must look. Dreadful and red-eyed. He said, “I lost my job.”
She had a bulldog face, breathed like an asthmatic, never smiled. She nodded. “Yeah, that’s tough. But you know what? You’re young and healthy, so don’t you forget to count your blessings. Okay?”
It sounded like an order. She refilled his cup and walked away, wheezing.
Dion paid his bill and handed in the key, telling the desk clerk of his plan, to set it in stone. “Going east. Alberta, probably.”
He hauled his two oversized duffel bags of belongings out to his car, feeling jittery. He still had furniture and appliances in storage, and some personal items Kate was holding on to for him, but he would deal with it all another time. Now that his mind was made up to go, he wanted to put the miles down fast. A gentle, warm wind blew in from the west and rippled his T-shirt. He had the trunk open and was stuffing in the bigger bag when a low-slung silver car entered the lot behind him with a throaty purr. He stopped packing and watched it slip into a slot not far from where he stood. A man and woman stepped out.
He knew them all — the car, the man, and the woman. The woman wore a filmy red dress with fluttering kimono sleeves. She was tall and curvy and managed to hold herself in a way that was both careless and photo-worthy. Jamie Paquette. The man with her was Jon York, and that was the Nissan that had been parked in the York driveway in Deep Cove.
York had his hand on Paquette’s hip as they talked and seemed to lean in toward her, maybe to whisper something in her ear but more likely to plant a kiss. But Paquette spied Dion, stepped back, and said something. York turned to look at him with surprise. He left Paquette by the car and approached with a grin. “Wow, this is awkward,” he said. Hands up, don’t shoot. “I can guess what you’re thinking, but you’re all wrong, I swear, Officer.” He stopped as he spied the giant duffel bag half-crammed into the trunk, and his brows went up. “You’ve been slumming? Here?”
“Just leaving,” Dion said. He slammed the trunk and looked pointedly east, away from the ocean he had once considered his lifeblood, toward the Rockies and Alberta beyond. “I’m quitting the force. Going to find work in the oil fields.”
“You’re shitting me. Why?”
Dion shrugged. “Time for a change.” The woman in red was dragging at his line of vision, spotlit in the sun. So he angled his body away from her, asking York what brought him here. Though he could pretty well guess.
York jerked his thumb toward Paquette, who paced at the side of the sleek car. She had her back turned to the grubby brickwork of the Royal Arms and was watching the entrance to the parking lot. “She’s got a meeting with an agent. That was a good-luck kiss you saw. I’m just her chauffeur.”
“Oh. What sort of agent?”
“Talent. It’s a euphemism, but don’t tell her I said so.” York laughed. “We were all hoping she’d change her ways, go back to school and become an astrophysicist, but it’s not going to happen. With Oz dead, she’s decided to go back to the stage. Not the thespian type.”
Another car pulled in, an older-model Corolla with a crunched rear panel and duct-tape over the door frame, and parked next to the Nissan. A heavy man struggled out from behind the wheel and stood straightening his suit.
“God,” York said. “Don’t tell me that’s him.”
The man strode around to Paquette, firing his index finger at her. Dion could overhear the conversation, but barely. “Wow, you’ve changed,” the man told Paquette. “Man, you’re hot. Hot, hot, hot. Tssst, ouch!”
“You say that every time, jerk.” Paquette was grinning.
“But this time you’re hotter. And fatter, but I like it.”
Fatter? The two walked toward the hotel lobby, and the conversation faded, with more compliments from the agent: “And what’d you do with your hair, kid? No, it’s fab. You’re going to have lineups ’round the block.”
York cupped his hand and shouted, “Jamie. Going to call?”
Paquette turned and waved at him. “Yeah, I’ll call.”
Dion watched the talent agent open the glass doors and Paquette step inside. The door eased shut. “She’s not staying here, is she?” He couldn’t imagine anyone transitioning from the Roth house to these rooms, with their rattly mini-fridges and bar music thudding up through the floor.
“No, she’s staying with us, till her life gets sorted. They’re just meeting for coffee, talk over the percentages. She wanted me to drive her to his office on Richards, but I said no. Give an inch with that girl, she’ll take a mile. I said meet at the mall. No, she wanted to come here. It’s quiet, she says. She’s not keen about crowds. So I gave her a lift.”
“Then how’s she going to cope with dancing? That’s all about crowds.” Dion thought about Jamie Paquette under the black lights, up on stage and snapping the bands of her G-string. The image was vivid, and lust did not mix well with depression.
York shrugged. “Oz is gone and she needs money. I guess she’ll have to get over it.”
Dion said, “You’ve got a stage. Is she going to work for you?”
“That was the original plan. That’s how Oz met her. Saw her in a club in Vancouver, got all possessive, told her he was opening a club pretty soon, promised her a long-term gig, with perks. But he fell for her long before opening day, and he wouldn’t have let her dance even if she wanted to. As it happens, she pretty well stays clear of Diamonds. Not sure why.”
“Well,” Dion said, and jingled his keys, a man with important places to go.
York said, “Hey.” He had a freckled, open face, an easy smile, and about the kindest blue eyes Dion had ever seen, the kind of kindness that made him wary. “Tell you what,” the club owner said. “I’m heading over to the joint. Come on down and I’ll buy you a drink. I’m fascinated with this seismic shift
you’re making. I want to hear more.”
By the joint he meant Diamonds.
Tempting, if only because Dion had been wanting to take a look around inside. But it wasn’t going to work. The last thing he needed was to be distracted off his chosen path. “No, thanks, Jon. I appreciate it, but it’s late. I gotta hit the road.”
“How about if I insist?”
A slight hesitation sealed Dion’s fate. York smiled and clapped him on the back. “Great, see you there in ten.”
* * *
The entranceway was low key, just a black metal door with D*I*A*M*O*N*D*S stencilled across it. At the top of a flight of stairs was a foyer with sofas and a coat-check counter. Then, through swing doors, the dance floor itself, silent now. On the water side were floor-to-ceiling windows and doors leading out to a covered deck. Out here the air was heavy with brine and slightly rank. The view at night, York said, was spectacular.
He pointed out at stairs leading down to a dock. “That’s our white elephant. Phase II. We were going to have a dance boat, barge-sized — well, mini-barge-size — for charters. Or special events.”
“What happened? Why isn’t it going ahead?”
York smiled, though something like annoyance flickered in his eyes. “Seems we overreached a bit. Kind of hard to offer dance boat cruises without a cruise boat to dance on, isn’t it? We ended up scaling back. Maybe next year.”
Back inside, Dion saw a nightclub much like any other nightclub he had ever visited. Maybe it was the hour, or the silence, or his own low mood, but he didn’t find the place inspiring. It was just a businessman’s daydream of what a nightclub ought to be. Its theme, to go with the name, was plenty of mirrors and glitter and twinkly LED stars strung everywhere. When the lights went down, probably the lasers would start to flash and the disco ball would rotate. He took in the elongated S-shaped bar for serving drinks, two diamond-shaped stages with brass poles. A glassed-in DJ booth. There was purple upholstered seating along one wall, barstools and counter along another, with several table-and-chair sets around the periphery. The best feature of the place was the large, open floor space. The floor tiles were translucent Plexiglas, no doubt underlit.
Undertow Page 14