Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  “At South Edmonton Common?” He said it absently, just keeping the conversation going, keeping her engaged and happy, even though he wanted to yell at her, to shake her for wasting so much money all of the time.

  But Chantelle was beautiful, and she forgave him when he smoked pot, or didn’t clean the house, or pretty much whatever stupidity he got up to. She always threatened to leave, but Tommy knew she wouldn’t. She just wanted him to be there for her, that was all. He’d never really had family, not since he was little, and they’d told him things had been real bad back then. But Chantelle was there for him.

  “Did you remember to pick up something for dinner?” she asked.

  She hadn’t asked him. And she’d just been at the mall. He wondered if she’d thought about it. When they’d first gotten together, he would have said something, maybe even gotten angry at her. Instead, he just left it. “No… I didn’t realize I needed to.”

  “You’d forget to get up in the morning if I didn’t remind you,” she said. “You talk to Ritchie?”

  “Yeah. We’re good.”

  “So he’s going to let you carry for him again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. We need a new refrigerator.”

  Tommy looked over at the kitchen. “What’s wrong with…”

  “It’s white,” she said. “I told you, I don’t like white appliances. We have to replace the stove, too. But we can wait on that.”

  Life with Chantelle was expensive. But it beat trying to make it by himself. Somebody had to make sure things got done.

  24

  Jessie sat patiently waiting for her grandfather to finish the paperwork that lay in front of him on the broad, grey steel desk. The nameplate on the front edge read Errol Harper.

  He appeared studious, a pair of half-glasses perched on the end of his nose so that he could easily see the work. A string attached to the arms kept the glasses hanging around his neck when not in use. He leaned forward slightly as he parsed the text, making several notations with a red pen.

  He looked pretty good for sixty-six, she thought, his hair only just starting to go grey, still long and lustrous, pulled back in a tight ponytail.

  “I’m so torn by how he behaves sometimes,” she said. “It’s like he’s never really going to grow up. Going to a blues gig instead of grandma’s anniversary? I need to know how to deal with this. I need your wisdom, Grandfather.”

  “Ancient wisdom of the elders? That’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it, dear?”

  “You have a PhD in behavioral psychology, Grandfather. Who else would I ask? The guy who plowed in my driveway this morning?”

  “True enough. Your father has always been selfish, even since he was a little boy who wouldn’t share toys.” Errol finished off the paper he’d graded. The room was the same disaster it had been the last time Jessie visited, the faux wood bookshelves crammed with hardbacks, reference volumes, stacks of magazines with post-it notes attached to them, stacks of post-it notes with magazines under them… “I wouldn’t expect him to change a whole lot. Most people I know get more stubborn as they get older, not less.”

  It wasn’t much of an answer. “Doesn’t he ever feel guilty for the way he behaves? I can’t remember him ever saying ‘sorry’ in a way that sounded like he really meant it.”

  “Oh, he’s not that bad,” Errol defended. “And he does love you a lot. The rare time I get to talk to him, all he does is go on about his daughter, the big shot lawyer.”

  “Once again somewhat missing the point of what I do. And at least he calls you. He’s been on the road on and off for months now, never further away than Swift Current or Vancouver. And the only time I hear from him is on my birthday or Christmas.”

  He put his pen down. “Look, Jess, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that your father is going to wake up one day and realize what a dumb-ass he’s been. It’s not in his character. He picked up that bass when he was twelve years old, and he’s made a living with it ever since. So trying to tell him different is like trying to reprogram nature. He’s a musician, and it comes with a certain lifestyle.”

  “So you don’t even bother anymore?” It sounded harsh, and she apologized immediately. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out…”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m also not going to lie to you and say I was the best father he could have had. You know your nan died when he was very young, right? That put a lot of pressure on him to raise himself, as I was wrapped up in this place. So some of this on me, you know.”

  “I know: that’s why I want you to talk to him. Can’t you tell him how hurtful it is to me and mom when he skips out on us at the last second?”

  “Do you think that would work?” He leaned back in his desk chair and crossed his fingers across his belly. “Because if you think it will, I’ll talk to him. But I suspect he resents me in much the same way you resent him.”

  “You’re both incredibly stubborn,” she stated frankly.

  “And you drink too much.”

  Jessie was taken aback. “Grandfather!”

  “That’s what your mother says.”

  Jessie recognized the time-honored male family tradition of shunting the argument but was still stung by it. “She exaggerates.”

  “Sure. But in our family, even a little too much is too much.”

  “For mom, for my father, sure,” she listed. “But I didn’t spend my teenage years unconscious.”

  “So … What? You’re trying to catch up now?” He seemed genuinely worried.

  “I don’t know what she’s been telling you, Grandfather, but I don’t drink regularly. I’ve gotten a little hammered a couple of times recently. After work, on the weekend, going out. That’s it.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s just sort of a familiar refrain, is all; from your nan, from your father and mother…”

  “But you never had the same problem.”

  “I was lucky,” he said.

  “Maybe I am too.”

  Errol studied his granddaughter in the moment, her pride evident, ready to argue at the drop of a tack. She looked like his late wife, her eyes large and dark, broad forehead, high cheekbones. She was pretty and confident and strong. He felt a swell of pride, but he held back on saying anything. In the moment, she didn’t need her ego stroked.

  Instead, he said sternly, “You know we’re all very proud of you, Noozhis.” He slipped for a moment into Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe tongue. “But you’re not perfect. Everyone gets taken down by too much stress eventually. Everyone. You need to have healthy ways to deal with it.”

  “With due respect, grandfather, you don’t have to see and hear what I do every day. These people have just… shattered lives; I mean, the hardest cases going through the system tend to end up at my door. And I know that’s something I always said I wanted, and it is. Someone has to be there for them. But, sometimes… it’s just really hard, that’s all.”

  “You forget where you come from, child? You think it was any different for me fifty years ago than it was any other Indian in this country? You think that degree just jumped up onto the wall on its own? Many of us have moved mountains, Jess, to get where we are; an absence of recognition does not change that fact. But do you know why I am still here, strong, proud and happy, at my years?”

  Jess held back the urge to roll her eyes, sure some line about the Creator’s generosity about to come forth. “Why, grandfather?”

  “Because I avoided the quickest route to burying pain: at the bottom of a bottle. I did that because it creates ten problems for every one day of happiness it brings you. My mistake was not drumming that into your father when he was younger even than you are now.”

  She felt her irritation subsiding; he loved her so much, loved his whole family. And he was wise, whether he liked the connotation or not. “I’ll be careful, Grandfather, I promise.”

  “The second it goes from tying a few on for fun to ‘I need t
his,’ you’re already in trouble.”

  She nodded. Jess wasn’t about to mention that she and most other lawyers she knew needed something at the end of the day. If it wasn’t the workload, it was the nature of the work itself. They all needed a release. Some were alcoholics; others were potheads or took a few valium; a surprising number practiced martial arts, perhaps a subconscious hedge against the violence in their clients’ worlds. But when the daytime came and they all went back to work, the vast majority sloughed off the night before and got it done. She did what she had to do.

  But she was glad he tried. “I understand, Grandfather.” She got up from the chair and came around the side of the desk to kiss him on the forehead. “I have to get back.”

  “I’m not sure I gave you the advice you were looking for…”

  “Yeah… well, maybe I’ll never figure my father out.”

  “Oh? That’s easy,” Errol said. “He’s an ass. Hell of a bass player, though.”

  Jessie was halfway back to her car in the near-full adjacent university parking lot, an acre or so of cars spread across a half-kilometer, when the voice called out.

  “Ms. Harper? Ms. Harper! Ms. Harper!”

  She turned and looked back down the sidewalk. A young man in a brown parka ran in half-steps up the block, trying to avoid slipping on the icy patches, a sheet of paper in one hand, using his other to try and get her attention. Jessie waited for him to catch up.

  “Ms. Harper, hi,” he greeted, a little breathlessly. “Sorry for yelling like that but I saw you come out of the social sciences building and figured it would save me having to go all the way downtown to talk to you.”

  She didn’t recognize him. “I’m sorry, Mister…”

  He held out a hand, and she shook it. “Omri Hedrow. I’m with the campus branch of the Green Wings Alberta project.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re an environmental action group concerned about the increase in fracking in Alberta over the last decade and… well, to tell you the truth, we were sort of hoping you might want to represent us on a case.”

  “I’m pretty busy with low-income clients, Mister…”

  “Hedrow. Omri. We get that, totally,” he agreed. “Would you consider it at double your normal fee? We’d need you immediately, of course.”

  “Out of the question, unfortunately,” she said. “I’m tied up right now with a major felony trial.”

  “The Paul Sidney case?”

  “Yes, exactly. So I’m afraid…”

  “But surely that will be over fairly quickly? The police indicated on television he was caught with the murder weapon.”

  “It’s complicated, and I can’t really discuss it,” she said. “Suffice it to say, I don’t think he did it, and he claims not to have. It’s a murder case, Mr. Hedrow. They’re rarely uncomplicated or brief.”

  “Could we perhaps interest you in some overtime or extra-hours work for a slightly increased rate?” he asked.

  Students with money? Strange, Jessie thought. “I don’t think so, Mr. Hedrow. My calendar’s pretty full for at least the next six months…”

  He nodded and sniffed slightly, his nose runny in the sub-zero breeze. He took a Kleenex out of his pocket and wiped his nostrils carefully then put it back into his pocket. “Okay then. You don’t mind if I bug you about this again in a few weeks, though, to see if things have changed?”

  There was no harm in it, Jessie figured. She handed him a business card. “If I’m not around, my assistant Ms. Wilson can take a message.”

  He smiled and held the card up tentatively in a small show of victory. “No harm, no foul, eh? Thank you so much, Ms. Harper,” he said as he started backing down the street.

  “Uh huh. I didn’t say I’d represent you, just that I might have more time…”

  “Good enough!” He turned and headed back in the other direction.

  25

  “We’re back in court tomorrow morning.”

  Cobi hadn’t even sat down. “Good to see you too, boss.”

  Jessie suggested they meet at the pool hall again. At least it was upscale. “You really dig this place, don’t you?”

  She looked around. Metro had been a backdrop to various chapters of her life; there were decades of regretful cheese steaks, weekends full of memories, her first regular crew—a bunch of Thursday night media types who gathered there to drown a week of coverage sorrows, beer glasses clinking amid the crack of pool balls. “Yeah. It’s one of the few places where people generally give me absolutely no grief whatsoever.”

  “Your sanctuary.”

  “Hmmm… no, that’s my townhouse. I’m thinking more like my hangout, a place to meet friends and forget about the courthouse for the night. Where do we stand on the case?” Jessie asked. “We suspect the partner and the wife were sleeping together, but neither needed to kill Featherstone financially, and there’s no suggestion Peter Kennedy is leaving his wife. We know Featherstone got in trouble with investors, at least one of whom is hooked up to organized crime.”

  “Leon? I guess I should have figured…”

  “You didn’t know that?” She acted genuinely surprised. Gross’s alleged connections to Russian mobsters had been fodder in the papers a few years earlier, when his business card was found amidst the seized belongings of a foot soldier busted during a hotel room robbery. “Yeah, well… alleged, anyway.”

  “Uh huh. So maybe he lost their money… not his own.”

  “I don’t think it would matter,” Jessie said. “Leon’s notoriously quick to temper; he’s sued half the sports reporters in town, although he usually drops his case once he gets an apology or knows he can’t win. If he had enough reason…”

  “Oh, I know,” Cobi said. “The way he went up and down on me just for trying to talk to his boy…”

  She sipped on her coffee, contemplating the possibilities. “The thing is, even if Leon really was hooked up with gangsters somehow, wouldn’t he – or Deathgrip –”

  “Deathtouch.”

  “Sure, whatever – wouldn’t you expect either of them to use that connection and have Featherstone killed professionally?”

  “I guess, yeah,” Cobi said. “And it kind of looked like it was, except…”

  “Except that the body was moved.”

  “And the gun.”

  “What about it?”

  “Dropping the gun at the scene. That’s a young gangster move, not an old-timer. My old man told me all about this stuff. The old timers, guys Leon’s age, they’d walk up behind their target, put two in the back of his head and walk away. They wouldn’t dump an unmarked gun with a body; too much risk of a wayward print or DNA. They’d dump it later, into the river. Or they’d disassemble it first. The wise guy types are careful. The gangsters, the young guys? They want to prove that one gun means nothing to them, that it’s unregistered, unmarked, so they don’t give a sh… so they don’t care about it. They just wipe it down with their shirt, dump it in the nearest sewer; but they might just drop it outright by the body, too.”

  He spoke matter-of-factly with grim precision.

  “You’ve got a theory in the works,” she proposed. “If it’s something we can prove before the prelim continues tomorrow, that would be just excellent.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Cobi said. “Even if it wasn’t Leon, it doesn’t rule out his fighter; and Kennedy has all sorts of resources. I’m sure he’s got some fixer who could find a gangster to handle business.”

  They were missing something, Jessie knew, some tangible link between the deed and whoever did it or ordered it. “So, how do we figure out if Kennedy hired someone?”

  “Yeah… you’re getting ahead a little,” he said. “First, we have to prove he was killed somewhere else. So … where was ‘somewhere else’? How do we find that out in a city this big?”

  They both sat in silence for a few moments. The restaurant emptied after the lunch rush. “Come on,” Jessie said. “We’re not goi
ng to figure it out here.”

  When they got back to the clinic, it was already halfway through the afternoon, and Jessie headed to her office to finish preparing for court the following morning.

  “What do you want me to do?” Cobi asked before she could disappear around the corner.

  “Yeah: you mentioned in the clips he’d had words with an environmental protester.”

  “I did.”

  “Can you track the guy down, see what he has to say?”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you going to approach it?” she asked with genuine curiosity. He had a sensible, analytical sort of mind.

  “I know a few guys who know a few guys, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re talking about your former employer, Buddy? You really think that’s wise?”

  “I think it’s better than nothing. Besides, he ain’t bad. Not that bad, anyhow.”

  Cobi drove home in the late afternoon traffic, intent on one relaxing night off before going to talk to Buddy. He hated the idea, the inevitable tension of dealing with the loan shark’s embarrassment. Buddy had told all his old cronies that he had Cobi on the leash, his own personal ex-player. He wasn’t likely to take kindly to being shown up.

  At the best, asking him for a favor would come with a big price tag. At worst, Buddy would ask Gordon to beat Cobi into the ground like a tent peg.

  He parked behind the building and took the back door, then the short flight of stairs to the basement level. The sun went down early in winter, and it was dark inside, the interior hallway light flickering. He reached for the lock; hands came out of nowhere to intercept, looping under his armpits and putting him into a full nelson, turning him as the second man stepped out of the shadows and drove a fist into his gut. Cobi tensed up instinctively and saved himself from having the wind knocked out, but the gut shot instantly bruised his abdomen muscles, pain radiating inward.