The Goldfish Bowl

by Laurence Gough

  Foster hung on tight as they rocketed around the final turn and down the straight towards the Richards Street exit. He braced himself against the back of Tate’s seat as Moore took his foot off the gas and let the transmission and high compression engine work to slow their approach to the small, white-painted collection booth. Moore tapped the brakes, and the Triumph stopped opposite the booth.

  The attendant’s sliding window was shut tight. It was made of plexiglass that was badly scratched and yellow with age. Foster saw a shadowy figure move inside. A hand pressed against the plexiglass and then fell away.

  Tate watched Moore search through his pockets, frown, glance at the dashboard and then at the floor of the car.

  “What is it, you lose your parking ticket again?”

  “Just misplaced it,” said Moore. His cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, he leaned across Tate and flipped open the glove compartment. The Triumph’s insurance and registration papers were crammed in there, along with maps of the province, Washington state and California. Under the maps Moore found a wrinkled apple, a handful of Chevron receipts, a pen that didn’t work and a battered paperback copy of a bestseller he’d never read.

  But no parking ticket.

  Which meant he was going to have to do some fast talking or pay the maximum day rate: triple the amount he actually owed. He slammed the glove compartment shut and turned towards the collection booth.

  The attendant had opened the plexiglass window, and he was watching them. He had clear blue eyes, and he was crying. Tears streamed down his coarse and stubbled cheeks, smearing his thickly applied makeup.

  Moore blinked. There was too much to take in at once. His focus shifted from the cheap blonde wig to the violent slash of bright red lipstick that angled across the mouth and over the left nostril.

  The man turned to face Moore more squarely. The lace trim of his white dress rippled, and then lay still.

  Moore disengaged the clutch. He shifted from neutral to first gear.

  The barrel of the Winchester came up. Moore saw himself in miniature, his fear reflected in the polished lens of the Redfield scope.

  He started to let in the clutch.

  There was a deafening explosion, a scorching flash of light. Five hundred grains of copper-jacketed lead alloy punched a hole in him the size of a grapefruit, killing him instantly. His foot slipped off the clutch. The Triumph crawled forward a few feet, and then the engine coughed and died.

  Tate stared uncomprehendingly down at the corpse lying across his lap. The huge wound in Moore’s back was streaming. The inside of the car was splattered with gouts of blood, chunks of flesh, startlingly white splinters of bone.

  Tate screamed. He tried without success to push Moore away from him. A piece of Moore’s shirt came free in his hands. There was blood all over him. He tried to stand up, and was contained by the seatbelt. Clawing at the corpse, struggling to free himself from Moore’s sticky embrace, Tate bared his teeth and shrieked with frustration, rage and fear.

  Foster scrambled to his feet and twisted to face the rear of the car. Richards Street was less than twenty feet away. If he hit the concrete on the run, the killer would have time to fire no more than a single hurried shot. And he’d still have Tate to worry about. Would he choose the moving target instead of taking the easy shot? Foster didn’t think so. He got a foot up on the Triumph’s sloping trunk, and jumped.

  The bullet caught him on the wing, at the apex of his flight. It smashed his hip bone and deflected upwards to plough a vertical path through his stomach wall, eviscerating him with all the force and delicacy of a blunt axe.

  He hit the concrete face down. There was a third shot, but he didn’t hear it.

  XVI

  WILLOWS LAY ON the Chesterfield with an arm flung across his face to fend off the flickering light of the television. On the coffee table in front of the Chesterfield there was an empty highball glass and an old Hardy split-cane flyrod. Willows had spent much of the evening drinking Scotch, retying the rod’s guides and ferrules, carefully cutting away and replacing worn thread with new, applying a thin layer of clear varnish. At eleven o’clock he’d turned on the television to watch the news. Now, at twenty past, Pamela Martin was reporting on an East End warehouse that had gone up in smoke, and Willows was sleeping soundly.

  The telephone rang fifteen times before the harsh jangling finally penetrated Willows’ consciousness, his restless dreams. He yawned, stretched, and his outflung arm knocked over the empty highball glass. The tip of the Hardy quivered.

  Willows got up and turned off the television, hurried down the short hallway to the bedroom. The telephone was on the night table beside the bed. He picked it up on the nineteenth ring.

  “Jack?” It was Inspector Bradley. He sounded as if he’d run out of indigestion tablets a long time ago.

  “What happened?” said Willows. His voice was hoarse with sleep. He coughed, clearing his throat.

  “We’ve had another shooting. A multiple.”

  “Where?”

  “A parking lot, over on Richards.”

  “What’s the address, Inspector?”

  Bradley sighed wearily into the phone. “It happened an hour ago, Jack. The party’s moved across town, to the morgue.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Bradley hung up.

  Willows sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in his lap, staring down at the silver-framed photograph of Jean, Mickey, and Laura. The picture had been taken the previous July, at a backyard barbecue. Jean was in shorts, a halter top. The kids had been splashing in the plastic pool and were wearing matching Speedo bathing suits. Willows missed them more than he cared to admit, even to himself. A month ago, Jean had announced without warning that she’d bought three Air Canada tickets to Toronto. She was going to spend some time with her parents, decide what to do with her marriage. She was taking the children.

  Willows had left her alone for a week, then called on the telephone. She hadn’t been pleased to hear from him, and he hadn’t called again, deciding that the best thing to do was to do nothing but sit quietly, and wait, and hope.

  *

  The city morgue, with its pale orange brick façade and white mullioned windows, is located on Cordova Street, just around the corner from 312 Main. The first and second floors were dark, but there was light leaking from the windows up on the top floor, where the cutting was done.

  Willows parked his Oldsmobile next to a fire hydrant. He locked the car and hurried, shoulders hunched against the rain, across the sidewalk and around to the rear of the building. A wide asphalt driveway provided ambulance access from the lane to the service elevator. Willows stepped into the elevator and pushed the UP button. The doors slid shut and an overhead fan rattled noisily. Drops of water fell from the hem of Willows’ coat to the bare metal floor. He wiped the rain from his face, and put his wife and children out of his mind.

  The elevator jerked to a stop. The doors slid open and the fan rattled and died. Willows walked down a long, unusually wide corridor and then pushed through double swing doors into the operating theatre. Claire Parker was leaning against the wall next to a window overlooking the lane. The window was open. Parker was getting a breath of fresh air. Willows said hello, and she gave him a wan smile.

  The operating theatre was a large, perfectly square, brightly lit room. The floor and two walls were covered with small, glossy blue tiles. The other walls were lined with refrigerated stainless steel drawers resembling huge filing cabinets. Two zinc tables stood directly beneath a massive cast-iron and frosted glass skylight, a faintly glowing, distorted slice of moon. Each table was seven feet long and three feet wide, and stood exactly forty-two inches above the tiled floor. A constant stream of cold water ran across the tops of the tables and down chrome drainage pipes that vanished into the tiles. Norman Tate’s body lay on the nearest of the tables, concealed by a bloody lime-green sheet.

  Inspector Bradley leaned against the other t
able. His hands were in his pockets and there was an unlit cigar clenched in his unhappy mouth. He glanced up as Willows entered the room, and then his eyes drifted back to the lime-green sheet.

  The pathologist, Christy Kirkpatrick, stood at a sink with his back to Willows. The water was running hard, splashing in the basin. Something glinted in Kirkpatrick’s large, freckled hands. He shut off the water, dried his hands on a threadbare white towel. Turning, he saw Willows and gave him a cheerful smile.

  “How goes it, Jack?”

  “You tell me,” said Willows.

  Kirkpatrick folded the towel and hung it up, taking his time. He was a large, loose-limbed man in his early sixties, with pale blue eyes and the complexion of a cherub. Despite his age, he had something of a reputation as a rake. There was a longstanding rumour, unsubstantiated but persistent, that he’d ended an affair with Superintendent Ford’s wife only a week before she’d initiated divorce proceedings against her husband.

  Bradley took the dead cigar out of his mouth. He lifted the lime-green sheet.

  Willows took a look, and said, “Who was he?”

  “His name’s Norman Tate.”

  Willows said to Parker, “Was he a member of Flora McCormick’s club?”

  Parker nodded. She looked cold, but she was staying close to the window.

  Willows turned back to Bradley. “Why wasn’t I called before the bodies were moved? Why did you wait more than an hour before you phoned me?”

  “Don’t blame me, Jack. George Franklin was supposed to take care of it. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “If I can sober him up long enough to get a straight answer out of him.”

  “The man’s taking it hard, Jack. Can you blame him?”

  Willows made an impatient gesture of dismissal. “You said it was a multiple murder. How many bodies have we got?”

  “Three. The other two are in the basement of the General, waiting for an autopsy. I had this one brought over here because there was no exit wound, and that isn’t consistent with the pattern.”

  “Neither is a triple shooting.”

  Kirkpatrick walked towards them, his crêpe soles making little sucking noises on the tiles. He handed Bradley a battered rifle bullet. The misshapen chunk of metal reflected light as Bradley turned it over and over in his hand.

  “Four-sixty Magnum,” said Willows.

  “Retrieved only after a long and arduous search,” said Kirkpatrick.

  “Why wasn’t there an exit wound?” said Bradley.

  “Nothing tricky about that,” said Kirkpatrick. He grasped a corner of the lime-green sheet and flung it dramatically back, exposing the naked corpse from head to toe.

  “That’s the entrance wound right there, just to the left of the sternum.”

  Kirkpatrick’s finger hovered over the mutilated, badly bruised flesh. Willows noticed that the fingernail was bitten to the quick. Kirkpatrick traced the twisting, convoluted path taken by the bullet.

  “The bullet penetrated the upper left part of the heart and the left lung. It then deflected off the eighth thoracic vertebra, passing through the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, sliced down through the thigh parallel to the bone, and finally came to rest below the lower end of the femur.”

  “Could we have that in layman’s language?” said Bradley.

  Kirkpatrick smiled benignly. “The bullet bounced around inside the guy like he was a human pinball machine, and ran out of juice behind his knee. He was shot and killed.”

  “There was no particular reason that the bullet stayed inside the body?”

  “A weird flight path, that’s all.”

  “Why were you in such a rush to dig out the bullet?” Willows asked Bradley.

  “I wanted to make sure we were dealing with the same shooter, not a copy-cat. The other two bullets hit concrete and disintegrated. They were too broken up to make a comparison.”

  “Why not compare the brass, check out the ejector marks?”

  “There was no brass,” said Bradley. He chewed on his cigar, spat out a shred of tobacco. “That’s what aggravates me, Jack. That there were three shootings, instead of one. That only one of the victims was a member of the singles club. And that there wasn’t any brass left at the crime scene. The pattern’s been broken, and it bothers me. That’s why I wanted the bullet, so I could get it down to the lab and stick it under a spectroscope and make damn sure it came from the same gun that killed the first four victims. Because if it didn’t, we’re in real serious trouble.” Willows held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, okay. I was just asking. Didn’t the killer leave anything behind?”

  “Half a roast beef sandwich with a big bite out of it. A plastic container of coleslaw.”

  “We can get a blood type from the saliva on the sandwich.”

  “If we’re lucky.” Bradley spat another shred of tobacco. “There were prints all over the lid of the coleslaw container.”

  “Retrievable prints?”

  “Goldstein seems to think so.”

  “Our witnesses have the killer wearing white cotton gloves.”

  “Don’t be a pessimist, Jack, Pessimists go home early and sleep in late. I only want winners on my team.”

  “So do I,” said Willows. “If George Franklin screws up again. I want him off the case. I mean right out of it, I don’t want him even keeping track of the paper clips. And I don’t give a damn how he feels about it, understand?”

  “Sure,” said Bradley.

  *

  Willows started the Olds and turned on the heater and windscreen wipers. Parker sat quietly on the far side of the seat, staring out through the glass at the rain drumming down on the hood of the car. Willows switched on the lights and released the emergency brake. He made a wide U-turn and then a left on Main, drove two blocks and swung right on Pender, down the gently sloping hill that bisected the heart of Chinatown — or at least the Chinatown the tourists knew about. The dozens of restaurants were closed and dark, but there were lights glowing dimly on the top floor of several of the taller buildings. Illegal mah-jong games, probably. Every two or three years the department made a highly publicized attempt to shut the games down, but the raids were more a public relations gesture than an attempt to end the gambling. In 1887, the Chinese had built a high wooden fence from Shanghai Alley across to Canton Alley. The fence had been built to safeguard the population from attacks by hostile whites, and in a sense it had never come down. There were more than a hundred thousand Chinese in the metropolitan area, and only four of them were members of the police force. The community policed itself. It always had, and likely always would.

  Willows stopped for a red light at the corner of Pender and Homer. He watched a fat man in striped coveralls conduct a delicate investigation into the soggy contents of a fire-blackened litter bin. The man came up with an empty Pepsi bottle. He caught Willows’ eye, and grinned a toothless grin.

  The light changed. Willows turned left, south on Homer. The heater was working now, and he switched the fan on to maximum. A blast of warm air flooded across his legs. He glanced over at Parker. She was sitting bolt upright with her hands clenched firmly in her lap, staring straight ahead.

  “Are you all right?” he said quietly.

  No response.

  He reached out and gently touched her arm. She turned slowly towards him and gave him an odd look, an off-balanced look, as if she couldn’t quite remember who he was.

  Willows pointed at the glove compartment. “There’s a bottle in there. Would you mind getting it out for me?”

  Parker thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. She opened the glove compartment and a mickey of Cutty Sark tumbled into her lap. Wordlessly, she passed the bottle to Willows. He broke the seal and unscrewed the cap, passed the bottle back to her. She lifted the bottle to her lips, sipped delicately.

  At Granville Street, Willows was forced to stop and wait for a break in the traffic. Parker’s hair, backlit by red neon, looked as if it was on fire.
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br />   A bus shot past in the opposite lane, throwing up a huge sheet of dirty grey water. Parker handed the Scotch to Willows. He sipped companionably, and handed it back. She helped herself to another hefty shot. He watched her throat move as she swallowed. The lines of tension around her mouth and eyes seemed a little less deep now, and there was a hint of colour in her skin.

  Willows made his left, heading towards the Granville Street bridge. They were more than halfway across the bridge when Parker finally started talking.

  “Two of them were in the car. The other one was lying on the concrete beside the car. He was curled up on his side, as if he was asleep. I’ve never seen so much blood. There was blood everywhere I looked. I could smell it. I can smell it now.”

  Willows took the Fourth Avenue off-ramp. He was driving automatically, all his attention on Parker, and he almost failed to see the girl walking against the light at the corner of Fourth and Burrard. Cursing, he hit the brakes and leaned on the horn. The girl didn’t look up. The big Oldsmobile skidded across the wet asphalt and came to a stop inches from her right hip.

  The girl was fifteen or maybe sixteen years old. She was wearing a black leather jacket and tight black leather pants, black leather boots. A miniature poodle trailed along behind her on a silver chain. The dog was black, and it was wearing a black leather tuxedo jacket.

  Despite the rain, the girl was not carrying an umbrella or wearing a hat. Her long black hair was matted to her scalp, lay in thick strands across her pale face. The girl peered intently in through the windshield of the Oldsmobile. Parker saluted her with the bottle. The girl smiled, waved, and tugged hard on the silver chain. The poodle yelped shrilly, got up on its hind legs and performed a spirited little dance across the intersection. Willows saw that the animal’s tuxedo was studded with sequins and imitation pearls. Then the light changed from green to amber and he was spinning the wheel, gunning the Olds straight up Burrard to Eleventh, where he braked hard and made a left.