Karaoke Rap

by Laurence Gough

  Sean finished one slice of pizza and started another. Willows told him about the superintendent of Melanie’s building. Barry Holbrook. He explained why they suspected Marty was paying Holbrook a monthly retainer to look the other way, when Marty came to visit.

  Sean finished the pizza. He yawned widely, and excused himself. He said, “You live an exciting life, Dad.”

  Willows smiled. “Wait’ll I tell you about the paperwork, that’s when things really go crazy.”

  “Yeah, I bet.” Sean reached behind him to turn over his pillow, give it a shake and thump it with his fist. He said, “Dad, I’m tired.”

  “No problem, I should get going anyway.”

  “Say hello to Claire, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Sean shut his eyes. Willows pushed himself away from the window. He went over to the bed, hesitated a moment, and then leaned over and kissed his son lightly on the forehead. Sean’s eyes popped open. He looked surprised. For a split second Willows wondered if he’d already fallen asleep. He touched Sean’s shoulder with the tips of his fingers, very lightly. “Sweet dreams, kid. See you in the funny papers.”

  Sean grinned up at him. “You haven’t said that to me in about ten years.”

  “It’s been a while since the last time I tucked you into bed.”

  Sean shut his eyes again, burrowed a little deeper into the blankets. His voice was muffled as he said, “Take care, Dad.”

  Willows lingered a moment, until he was satisfied that Sean’s breathing was deep and steady.

  *

  The 312 Main squadroom was empty but for Parker, who sat at her desk sipping a hot mug of blackberry tea. She told Willows there was plenty of water in the kettle, if he wanted to make a cup. He speedily declined.

  Parker said, “How’s Sean?”

  “Better and better. Making good progress. He said to say hello.” Willows slung his jacket over the back of his chair, sat down.

  Parker smiled. She drank some tea and put the mug carefully down on her desk. “Annie called.”

  Willows looked up from his phone messages.

  “She’s fine,” said Parker. She held Willows’ eye. She said, “Sheila’s in town. She flew in this morning.”

  “No kidding.” Willows noticed that his voice was curiously flat, almost as if he had deliberately suppressed any show of emotion. But he felt nothing, other than a sense of foreboding. Certainly he didn’t feel elation, or a sudden sense of longing. No fire, not even a spark. He half rose from his chair and reached across his desk, picked up Parker’s mug and helped himself to a small sip of tea.

  “Good?”

  “I’ve never met a blackberry I didn’t like. Until now.”

  Parker checked her watch. “Annie phoned about an hour ago. Sheila’s staying at the Davie Street Best Western. She told Annie she planned to spend the afternoon with Sean. She wants to pick Annie up at the house about five, to take her out to dinner. Annie said to call her at home if you had other plans.” Parker looked directly at him. “Do you have other plans, Jack?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. How about you?”

  “I thought we might hang with Joan. Or, if she doesn’t care for the pleasure of our company, loiter discreetly in the neighbourhood.” Parker held the mug of tea in both hands. The mug was white, with red and orange and mauve lettering, a give-away from a Calgary radio station, 66CFR. “Calgary Flames Radio Calgary’s Oldies Radio.” She idly wondered how the mug had made its way to the squadroom. Via a circuitous route, no doubt. Usually things disappeared, not the other way around. She said, “Mrs. Wismer had lunch at home, alone, out on the deck. After lunch she phoned Eaton’s, spoke to a clerk about the various brands of nesting luggage that were in stock. She used her Visa card to pay for a set of three green-and-black plaid nesting softshell suitcases — she told a clerk they had to be identical to a set she bought there a year ago. Russian dolls, the kind that fit inside each other? Like that.”

  “Green-and-black plaid?”

  “She told the clerk she’d send a cab to pick them up. As soon as she hung up, she phoned Blacktop. Bobby intercepted the cab a couple of blocks from the house. There were three suitcases in the set. Bobby measured them, height, width and depth. “I could get every piece of clothing I own in the smallest of them.”

  “You still want a new leather jacket for Christmas?”

  “I didn’t get one last year.”

  “Gifts from the heart are rarely of a utilitarian nature.”

  Parker said, “Another thing. Joan got a phone call when she was at the bank. When the answering machine picked up, the caller disconnected.”

  Willows reached for his coat.

  Bobby crushed his cigarette underfoot as the unmarked Ford turned the corner at the far end of the block. He saw that Parker was driving, and wished again that she’d grow her jetblack hair a little longer. He admired the pale oval of her face, her classic posture. Willows was slouched in the passenger seat.

  Bobby sparked his gold Dunhill, lit another cigarette. The cramped interior of the surveillance van was driving him crazy. Worse, Orwell was thriving in there, every drop of sweat that leaked from his overdeveloped body a source of joy, to be celebrated with small yips of triumph, bursts of low, cackling laughter. Bobby believed sweat was a low-level blue-collar illness, something that should be avoided like the plague. But, except for his armpits, he was sweating now, sodden as a rainforest.

  Parker pulled up behind the van, killed the engine. She and Willows got out of the Ford, strolled casually towards him.

  Willows said, “How’s it going, Bobby? You look hot.”

  “Yeah?” Bobby tried a cocky smile. His teeth felt as if they’d spent the night lying in a ditch. He said, “I’m fucking drenched.” He plucked at his shirt. “I couldn’t be any wetter if I’d just been baptized.”

  The two detectives brushed past him. Willows slid open the side door and he and Parker climbed into the van.

  Parker said, “Kind of warm in here, Eddy.”

  “Yeah, well. Leave the door open, if you want.” Eddy had been working on his rap song, churning out the lyrics. He shut his notebook and put it away in his pants pocket, glanced cautiously towards the open door. “Bobby’s such an asshole. A woman happens to drive or walk by, it don’t matter how old she is or what she looks like, he can’t help himself, he’s goes into his monologue, talks to her sweet ’n’ low. You oughtta hear him. No, probably not. He’s saying things ... Man, I want to arrest him. He’s like a sick and twisted cartoon, the way his eyes bulge, his filthy tongue falling right out of his mouth. And he’s talking to these women like they’re right there beside him, sitting in his lap, listening to every word. Guy’s nuts. Plus, he’s a whiner. Always complaining.” Orwell smiled sheepishly at Parker. “Now I’m doing it, aren’t I?”

  “Doing what?” said Parker.

  Orwell laughed.

  Joan Wismer’s phone started ringing.

  Orwell stopped laughing.

  Bobby hovered in the doorway, cigarette dangling from a corner of his cynical mouth, one eye weeping.

  Joan Wismer picked up. She said, “Hello?” in a quavery, uncertain voice.

  The caller neglected to identify himself, but even Orwell recognized the voice. Bogart, wanting to know if she had the money.

  Joan said, “I’m working on it. It isn’t that easy ...”

  “Just get it, baby!” Telly Savalas. The line hummed for a moment, and then fell silent.

  Bobby, still lurking in the van’s open doorway, said, “Didn’t I read in People that Telly was dead?”

  Orwell rewound the tape. Six seconds. Useless.

  Parker climbed down out of the van. She motioned to Willows to follow her, walked a little way down the street until they had a clear view of the Wismer home.

  She said, “The guy plays the tape, listens, waits for Joan’s response. He’s got to be wondering if she called the cops ...”

  Willows kicked a small stone, se
nt it skittering across the road and up onto the boulevard, where it was lost in the grass. Lost until someone went to work with a mower.

  Parker said, “How did she sound to you, Jack?”

  Willows thought about the few words Joan had spoken. I’m working on it. It isn’t that easy ... He remembered a movie about a kidnap victim whose wife decided she didn’t want him back, that she’d rather keep the money. And there was another movie, a Mel Gibson film, about a father who’d turned the ransom money into a reward for the capture or death of the kidnappers. Joan knew about Melanie Martel, so she sure as hell had a motive for cutting Harold adrift.

  They walked back to the van. Orwell played the tape again. Wrong. Willows couldn’t pin it down, but Joan Wismer sounded absolutely dead wrong.

  Parker agreed. Joan was up to something.

  But what?

  The Wismer phone began to ring. Eddy hastily cued the tape. Joan Wismer picked up.

  “Be ready ...”

  “For ...”

  “Some ...”

  “Hard driving.”

  The last two words were sung by somebody with a twangy, hard-edged, country voice. Orwell recognized the voice immediately. Hank Williams, Jr., singing for “Monday Night Football.” Discussing it, the cops found themselves agreeing that the unidentified voices had probably been lifted from television commercials. There were only a few key words. It would be easy enough, if you could stand listening to hours and hours of television, to work out a script based on what you’d collected on videotape. Running a feed from a VCR to a cassette tape machine was about as complicated as flushing a toilet.

  Orwell rewound the tape and they listened to it again, all the way through, as hundredths of seconds rolled by on the recorder’s digital readout. Orwell said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Better hold on tight,” said Bobby, “ ’cause you’ll probably never get another one.”

  “If we made a list of the movie soundtracks he used,” said Orwell, “and took it to all the video rental outlets in the city, maybe we’d come up with a name.”

  Parker nodded. She said, “Even the small independents use computers to keep track of their records, create databases for their titles and customers.”

  Orwell fished around under the van’s table until he found a battered, year-old copy of the Yellow Pages. In the city, there were nine Blockbuster and seven Rogers outlets. Orwell frowned. He said, “I’d’ve of thought there were a lot more than that ...”

  “Location, location, location,” said Bobby, favouring Parker with a smile she’d have found seductive, if she’d been an iguana.

  Orwell said, “There’s dozens of independents. Plus a bunch of foreign-language and adult-video outlets.”

  A red light blinked on the van’s grimy white plastic phone. Orwell picked up. BC TEL had not been able to trace any of the four most recent incoming calls.

  Surprise, surprise.

  An olive-green UPS van cruised slowly past, the tires making octopus sounds on the sun-soft asphalt. The van slowed and then abruptly turned into the Wismer driveway. Brakes squealed as it stopped opposite the front door.

  “Now what?” said Bobby.

  Good question.

  34

  Carried along on an ebb tide, the body drifted past Deadman’s Island at a speed of less than three knots. The island had once been a sacred First Nations burial ground, but was now leased by the military. The water was flat and calm. Had any of the soldiers on the island happened to be looking for a body, they’d have found one.

  Drifting parallel to the south shore of Stanley Park, the corpse slipped into the relatively open water of Burrard Inlet. There was a slight chop. The body lay face up, arms and legs spread wide. It jerked and twitched spasmodically, like a really ugly puppet on a very short string.

  A gull described three gradually diminishing circles, flared its wings and splashed clumsily into the water a few feet from the body. The gull considered the dead man’s ruined eyes, and licked its chops. Corpse and gull drifted side by side for several minutes, and then the gull lifted off, overflew the body and made a three-point landing on the bloated belly. The bird’s weight caused the corpse to vent a rancid belch. The gull had a cast-iron stomach but was spooked by the sudden rush of escaping gas. Lifting awkwardly into the air, it flew away in search of fairer game.

  Opposite Brockton Point, the current strengthened and the wind picked up. Soon the corpse was moving along at a brisk four-knot pace, trailing a perceptible wake. The wind grew brisker. The leather jacket’s collar flapped softly. A few strands of hair twisted in the wind.

  The corpse sailed on.

  35

  Marty was up at six. He showered, towelled off in front of the steamy mirror. Was his hair starting to thin, at the back? Hard to say. So say no. He powered up his Braun. The in-house phone warbled. Now what?

  Jake was in the mood for a big bowl of Marty’s infamous cowpoke chili for lunch.

  But, first things first. How about some fuckin’ breakfast?

  Upstairs, in the kitchen, he wrestled a plastic bag of one-inch rounds of rattlesnake out of the freezer. He poured the chunks of rattler into a glass bowl, left it on the counter to thaw, then went to work on breakfast. In a few minutes, his special blend of Brazilian and dark French coffee beans were playing havoc with a quart of bottled water. As the coffeepot filled, he dropped a couple of slices of raisin bread into the toaster, poured a measured cup of Bran Flakes into Jake’s favourite Pooh Bear bowl.

  He opened a tin of prunes, ladled three of them into another bowl. The toast popped. He buttered it lightly, cut the slices diagonally. Then he fetched the newspapers off the sun-bleached porch, called Jake on the intercom and told him breakfast was ready.

  Jake told him to come on up.

  Marty put two mugs and the coffeepot and his toast and Jake’s Bran Flakes and bowl of prunes, sterling-silver utensils and linen napkins pinched from the Wedgewood and a crystal jug of milk on an inlaid rosewood tray. He tucked the newspapers under his arm and picked up the tray and went upstairs and along the hall to Jake’s bedroom.

  The door was locked. He knocked. Jake buzzed him in.

  Jake slouched low in his bed. He was wearing his Simpsons pyjamas, which he’d bought in the children’s department at the Bay, cleverly avoiding sales tax. Bart and Lisa and the rest of the crew peeked mischievously out at Marty from the folds of cotton. Jake sat there, passive. His liver-spotted hands in his lap, fingers intertwined, his nails the colour of old ivory, cold lizard eyes focused on his big Panasonic TV. Jake liked to exercise his brain while eating. This explained why he always watched “Good Morning America” during breakfast. Or maybe not.

  During commercial breaks, Marty read aloud juicy titbits from Malcolm Parry’s “Town Talk” column. The journalist had written about a charity ball hosted by a city woman whose ritzy garden-supply shop was, if Marty had it right, a front for a high-end specialist brothel. Was Parry unaware of the nature of the woman’s business? Or merely turning the other cheek? Yuk yuk. They talked about the brothel until Jake, abrupt as falling off a cliff, lost interest.

  When they’d finished eating, Jake told Marty he wanted to take a bath, told him to fill the tub full of hot water. And to send Steve or Axel to the Safeway for whatever ingredients Marty required to mix up a big batch of his famous three-way chili.

  Marty cautiously reminded Jake that Steve had vanished somewhere on the Sea-to-Sky. Jake slapped his forehead, miming despair. He wondered if Marty would mind doing the shopping. Marty suggested Axel. Jake thought that was a great idea.

  Marty carried the breakfast tray downstairs. He loaded the dishwasher, checked the fridge and found it wanting, sat down at the table and wrote a grocery list. Two fresh whole chickens, a few pounds of stewing beef, ten large cans of kidney beans, chili pepper, onions. Also, Axel was going to have to drop by the liquor store, pick up a bottle of red wine, a couple dozen Coronas and a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  The morn
ing zipped by, as Marty laboured over a hot stove, drinking iced Coronas and tending to his famous cowpoke chili. Axel lingered in the background, occasionally darted forward to stick a finger in the pot. Marty swung at him a few times, missed. Axel was stupid, but he was quick.

  He and Jake had lunch at a little past one. By then Jake was ravenous, had been turned by raw hunger from a sipper and a nibbler into a two-handed guzzler and slurper. What a disgusting racket. Marty rested his chin in his cupped hands and discreetly stuck his fingers in his ears. He and Jake sat at opposite ends of the long mahogany dining-room table. Ten feet apart, easy. But it was still too close. Marty hummed low in his throat, hoping to drown out Jake’s munching in a flood of white noise.

  He finished his Corona and opened another. Jake speared a chunk of rattler. He told Marty one beer was enough, since he was gonna be doin’ some driving.

  Marty said, “Okay.” He put the bottle down on the table, pushed it away with the tips of his fingers.

  Driving where?

  There was no point in asking. By now, Jake probably didn’t remember anyway.

  Jake used an inch-thick slice of sourdough bread to wipe his bowl clean. He gestured at Marty’s open bottle of beer. Marty pushed himself out of his chair, picked the bottle up by its neck between his finger and thumb, strolled down to the far end of the table. Jake pointed at his pint mug. Marty filled it one-third full. He put the bottle down on the table next to the mug, returned to his chair. Jake rinsed out his mouth with a sip of beer. He spat into his bowl, wiped his mouth with a napkin stolen from the Bayshore Hotel. “Dey only got four stars, but dat’s quality fuckin’ linen,” he observed as he tossed the napkin on the table. He rubbed his belly. “Dat guy, moves da cellphones. Wha’s his fuckin' name?”

  “Arnold.”