“I believe you,” I said. “Thousands wouldn’t.” I was cleaning a particularly painful-looking abrasion near Fred’s eye with an alcohol-soaked cotton swab, and I may have done it a tad more roughly than the job required. I wasn’t sure why I was so irritated. Fred was a grown man, with a perfect right to go to a strip club if he wanted to. And my sister was, after all, dead.
And what with me being in the midst of my Summer of the Prowl, I was not in a position to judge the sex lives of others.
I think it was his naivety that got to me. After all we’d been through, after what Ginger had gone through at the hands of the woman he’d had a fling with, for him to be such a rube was supremely irritating. I put the cold pack back on his eye. “That’s good enough for now,” I said. “Continue.”
“I did clue in,” Fred said. “I do know what a lap dance is, Danny. I’m not a total idiot.”
Cue Darren snorting. Check. I kept my face straight, somehow.
“There was something about her, though,” Fred said.
“There always is,” Darren said, and Fred and I both looked at him. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“I never got her to dance for me. I never got a lap dance.” Fred leaned back into the couch.
“Lie down there,” I said. “Take the weight off your butt.” I helped him down and stuck a couple of cushions under his head.
“She made me laugh,” Fred said. “Look, it’s nothing sexual. It’s not even romantic. We’re just friends. She’s a kid, for God’s sake.”
“Do you give her money for all this non-lap-dancing time you spend with her?” Darren wanted to know.
“Sometimes,” Fred said. “She’s at work. She has to make some money. And she hates what she does so much, and I hate to see her having to do it.”
“I don’t blame her,” I said. I had never forgotten some of the stories I’d heard from my stripper clients when I was a trainer. “But presumably no one has a gun to her head, right? I mean, if she hates it, can’t she go back to school, or find another job, or…?”
“That’s what I said.” Fred put his hand to his lower back. “We’ve been spending a lot of time together, in the evenings.”
“At Helen of Troy,” I said.
“That’s quite a name for a strip joint, by the way,” Darren said.
“High-minded owners, obviously,” I said. I took a deep breath. “It really is late. I need a shower.”
“Yes, you do,” Darren and Fred both said. They smiled at each other, and Fred put his hand to his face.
“You guys are hilarious.” I stood up and stretched. I did need a shower. Aside from any olfactory issues, my muscles were starting to seize up a bit. “So you and Zuzi have become friends, and she hates her job. Lots of people do. So why did you get a beating?”
“That’s just it,” Fred said. “It’s the management of the place. She said it was sold about eight or nine months ago and the new owner brought in new floor staff and so on. They’re pressuring the girls to do things outside of work hours. Illegal things,” he added.
Darren sighed. “Sex with customers kind of things?”
Fred nodded. “They’re basically turning the girls – well, some of the girls, the younger ones – into escorts. Or trying to.”
“So you got on your white horse and tried to have a chat with the management?” I was kind of proud of Fred, if so. He looked about as threatening as a hobbit. But then again, I’d seen him take a man’s eye out with a corkscrew, so I knew he had reserves of rage in there somewhere.
“More like they decided to have a chat with me. The manager took me aside after Zuzi left my table tonight and asked if I’d like to take her home. Said they were offering this ‘service’, as he called it, to loyal clientele.”
“Fuck,” I said. I actually was feeling more sorry for this girl now. I’d never heard of anything quite so sleazy happening in the clubs of the dancers I knew.
“Yeah.” Darren went and got some water for all of us. The sky was actually lightening a little bit, and brandy at dawn was starting to feel a bit too Days of Wine and Roses.
“I said that, aside from the legality of their offer, shouldn’t it be up to the girls to decide whether or not they wanted to see a customer outside of the club.”
“I assume they didn’t take kindly to you reminding them about the law,” Darren said as he sat back down on the ottoman.
“Gutsy move, Fred, but it might have been wiser to just kindly decline. Say something about a wife at home or whatever.” It wasn’t like he had been drinking, so neither his judgment nor his mouth could have been impaired.
“The guy didn’t say much of anything. He was very polite, apologized for any misunderstanding. Then when I left, there were two very big gentlemen waiting outside. They frogmarched me into the alley and did this to me.”
Now I was angry. I was supremely irritated at Fred for the falling-for-a-stripper thing – as much as he might deny it, I had a hard time believing he didn’t have the hots for this girl – but the idea of these people dragging my brother-in-law into an alley and beating him up, especially over something so awful, made me want to kick someone in the head. At the very least.
“So maybe you should take a break from the place for a while, Fred,” Darren said. He looked exhausted, Darren did, and I remembered that he had taken the boys to The Ex earlier that day – well, the day before. The Canadian National Exhibition: an orgy of fairground rides, games, and deep-fried dough. Heaven, in other words.
“Oh, I’d love to. But I do need to get Zuzi out of there,” Fred said. “She’s on her own – parents both dead and she has no siblings. She’s smart and funny, but she feels a bit… damaged.”
No parents. No siblings. He knew how to get us. I looked at Darren, and Darren looked at me. He nodded. “For God’s sake,” I said.
“I know,” Darren said.
“We’re idiots,” I said.
“I know.”
I looked at Fred. “We’ll take care of it,” I said to Fred. “But we’re not kidnapping her. Can you just call her and tell her what happened tonight? Tell her not to go in tomorrow night? She must have some sense of self-preservation.”
“I actually don’t have her number,” Fred said.
“So you’re great friends, then,” I said. “Jesus, Fred.”
“We should also call Paul,” Darren said. Paul Belliveau: a sergeant with the Toronto Police, and my savior when a crazy drugged-out cop from California came to Toronto and tried to kill me. He and his wife were like godparents to me, whether they wanted to be or not, and the Clearys had adopted them both.
“We can’t,” Fred said. He closed his eyes. “There’s one more thing.”
“Of fucking course there is,” I said.
“When they were doing this to me,” Fred said, gesturing to his face, “they said something about going home to my boys and not coming back there.”
“Your boys?” Darren said. He stood up.
“You’re just telling us this part now? Are you crazy?” I could barely see, I was so angry. Fred seemed more worried about this stripper’s safety than his own sons’.
“Well, I told Zuzi about the boys, of course,” Fred said, “and us all living together and everything. She knows about my life. Well, some of it.”
“Did you, by any chance, tell her where we live? You fucking moron?” I was clenching my hands together so tightly that I could feel one of my nails break the skin on the back of my hand. It was that or finish the job the men in the alley had started on Fred.
“Not the address, Danny, but she knows I live close by, and she knows we live in a disused industrial bakery.” He looked even more pale, if that was possible. “She wouldn’t tell them anything like that. And besides, why would they want to come here? I’ve said no, they beat me up. End of story.”
“They know you have sons. The fact that they mentioned it at all is an implied threat,” I said. I couldn’t believe how calm my voice sounded. Though it was perh
aps a tad loud. “And they could really only have gotten that from this Zuzi. She knows pretty much everything else about you, probably. And, they know that you know about their highly illegal slave trade.”
Fred looked sick. Good. I left him with Darren and went running downstairs to the floor Fred shared with the boys.
I stood outside their room and tried to calm my heart. I could cheerfully have wrung Fred’s neck – really, I would have been glad, at that moment, to chuck him headfirst down the fire escape – but he had been my sister’s husband, and he was the boys’ father. I was going to have to learn to deal with this.
Upstairs, I could hear Darren yelling at Fred, which made me feel a bit better. I wasn’t overreacting. Maybe Darren could talk some sense into Fred, make him understand how stupid he’d been.
I hesitated outside Matty and Luke’s door. I hated invading their privacy, but I had to make sure they were okay. I had to watch them breathing for a minute. Then, perhaps, I could calm down.
I turned the door knob as quietly as I could and stuck my head round the door. I could hear the deep breathing of sleep, and the room felt close and too still. While we had two bedrooms for the boys, with a bathroom joining them, the boys had opted to stay together in the bigger of the two rooms. I knew that one would eventually move to the other room, but I think we all liked it this way. I didn’t want either of them to be alone.
I crept forward. In the bed next to the wall to my far left I could make out Luke’s lighter hair, as my eyes adjusted to the dark. I made my way over to him and squatted next to the bed, hoping he didn’t choose that moment to open his eyes. We’d both get the scare of our lives, and he’d probably be in therapy over it for the rest of his life. But I had never realized how deeply kids sleep at this age. Ginger would have known, and I was sure Marta did. I moved Luke’s hair off his forehead and kissed the top of his head very lightly. He stirred and murmured something that sounded like a language with no vowels. I turned and started creeping the ten feet to the other bed.
Trying to move silently in the room of two teenagers is futile. I kicked what sounded like a bowl with cutlery in it and nearly slid to the floor on a magazine. Or, perhaps, a graphic novel.
I got to Matty’s bed, and my eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to see that he wasn’t there. His bedding was all over the place. I looked at my watch. Four fifty-five a.m.
Just as I was about to sound the alarm, press the panic button (literally – I had them installed in all the bedrooms; they acted like an internal fire alarm, waking everybody in the building), Matthew came out of the bathroom, rubbing his eyes.
“Hey, Auntie,” he said. “Everything okay?” He was in pajama bottoms and a Joy Division t-shirt that I recognized as Darren’s. He was tall, gangly, and skinny, and without his brother’s easy grace – yet. Matty had sat with me watching my husband die, choking on his own blood. Matty and I had been in hospital together afterward, after he had been kidnapped and his twin brother had been taken from him, and his mom had been dead for a week. Matty slept in my hospital bed that night, and I’d wrapped myself around him and vowed that nothing and no one would ever hurt him again. Stupid promise, but I made it to myself. I knew better than to make it out loud.
Something in me changed that night. I would never have my own children – not just because my husband was dead; we’d split before that. But I owed it to Ginger to put her boys first. I had to see them to adulthood, leave them everything I could in terms of love and life lessons and even whatever money I had left.
I thought it was pretty likely that I wasn’t going to live very far into their young adulthood. I had to give them every single thing I had, until that day.
Once my heart started beating again, I tucked Matty in. “Everything’s fine, little man,” I said quietly. It was a running joke, since the boys were both nearly as tall as I was now. “Just had to check on you.” And your father’s an idiot who spilled his guts to the first stripper who turned his head, potentially putting your lives in danger, I wanted to say. Otherwise, everything’s just peachy.
“Cool,” he said. “Love you.”
My heart lurched. Luke was the more affectionate twin. But Matthew was half-asleep, and his defenses were down.
“I love you double,” I said, and kissed his forehead. I started to back away, but Matty grunted and slapped his hand on something.
“Text came for you,” he said. He held his arm in the air. “Night.”
“Thanks, buddy.” I took the phone from his hand gently and he flopped his arm back down. He seemed asleep before it hit the bed.
I stuck the phone in my back pocket and returned to the hallway. I could hear Darren and Fred upstairs, again, but the voices weren’t raised now. I was exhausted by my anger at Fred, the deadening effect of the brandy, and the long run home, not to mention having been up for twenty-something hours. I trudged back up the stairs, deciding to tell Fred and Darren I was calling it a night. We’d deal with Fred’s fuck-up tomorrow.
I was in the living room I shared with Darren when Matty’s phone vibrated in my back pocket. In the space of thirty seconds, I’d forgotten about it.
In one of our many talks about planning and safety for the boys, Darren, Fred, and I had decided that while we wanted to give the twins as much fun and freedom as possible – and not make them feel like they were living in some kind of very odd witness protection program – they had to tell the three of us their passwords for everything, and let us know immediately if they changed them. It wouldn’t be forever, we promised them.
The latest text, the one that had just vibrated, read:
Whoops, sorry dude! It’s mid afternoon where I am. Hope your phone is off. My bad.
The text was from Dave. And there was another one, from probably half an hour earlier.
Found that book I was telling you about. Sent it. Oh, and tell your auntie to call me, okay? Her # accidentally got deleted from my phone.
Then he used the nerd emoticon, with the cross-eyed guy with glasses.
Accidentally, my ass. And I didn’t blame him, after the mess I’d made with him. I went back downstairs to put Matty’s phone on the table outside their bedroom, went back upstairs with my level of exhaustion somehow, if possible, doubled in the last couple of minutes.
Another ridiculous stranger’s bed, another long run home, and then Fred arriving in my living room looking like he’d just been trapped in the Octagon for two minutes with Georges St-Pierre. Not to mention the story of Zuzi the Stripper, and possibly a nice case of human trafficking he’d dragged us all into.
“Boys are fine. I’m having a shower, and then I’m sleeping for about fourteen hours. Don’t wake me unless there’s a solar flare or something.” Fred opened his mouth to speak, and I stopped him. “We’ll deal with everything tomorrow, Fred. Keep Tylenol by your bed, and water, and take some as soon as you wake up.” He nodded, and Darren nodded, and then I nodded. Good. Nods all around. For once, from my family, no talk. I liked it. I especially appreciated it at nearly dawn, when I’d been up for twenty-two hours.
Ten minutes later, after a quick, blissful shower, I was crawling under my duvet, and as I was falling asleep, for a moment I felt a burst of something like happiness.
I would talk to Dave tomorrow.
* * *
When I woke, I could tell by the angle of the light that it was late morning. Other than ravenous hunger that hit me about two minutes after I opened my eyes, I felt good. Even the hunger felt good. Healthy. Whoever invented sleep knew what she was doing, I’ll tell you that for free. It may only have been four or five hours, but I felt restored.
Just as I was considering hauling ass out of bed, Darren’s knock – a sort of two-knuckle slide across the door – preceded his entrance.
“Fuck, Darren,” I said. “I have been awake for about thirty seconds.”
“I just talked to Dave,” Darren said. He sat on my bed, his phone in his hand.
“You did?” I said. Or
rather, I squeaked. I cleared my throat.
“He just got confirmation from a friend – well, he couldn’t go into how he got it, you know what he’s like, and I think he’s somewhere in Asia, but he didn’t say.”
“Yes?”
“Michael Vernon Smith. He’s in Toronto, Danny. He crossed the border about thirty-six hours ago, or at least Dave’s pretty sure it’s him. Obviously with a different passport.”
“Obviously,” I said. I was sitting up. I couldn’t remember sitting up. “Of course, as far as we knew, he could always have been in Toronto.” I pushed Darren off my bed with my feet and got up. “Now we know. Now we have information.” I was awake. I was fully fucking awake. Outside of being under the influence of cocaine, I didn’t think I’d ever felt as awake. “Information is power.”
“He sent Rosen the CCTV,” Darren said.
We all had the same high-security Internet connection, but Rosen was a tech wizard, and could talk geek with Dave’s people.
“I’ll meet you down there in five,” I said. Darren nodded. On his way out the door, I stopped him. “Darren,” I said. “We are going to get him.”
He tried to smile. “Unless he gets us first, right?”
“Not gonna happen, my brother. Not going to happen.”
In the bathroom, I brushed my teeth so hard I made my gums bleed. Terror and exhilaration: my favorite combo.
FIVE
“It’s him,” I said. We had watched the footage three times: Michael Vernon Smith, in an unseasonal tweed cap, thick black-framed glasses, and a full beard, collecting his baggage from a luggage carousel at Pearson International Airport.
“How can you tell?” Darren said. His nose was nearly at the screen, and Rosen gently moved his shoulder out of the way. “That could be Michael Caine, for all I know.”
“The facial recognition software Dave’s team uses caught him.” Fred pointed at the image we were looking at, freeze-framed. “The algorithms analyze the spatial geometry of a human face. Facial hair and glasses may make the result a bit less accurate, but what most people think of as disguises don’t cut it. It’s really the area between the brow and the chin that the software is analyzing, the pupillary distance, and the space between nose and mouth.” I looked at Fred, whose own nose and mouth were both looking quite a bit worse for wear today. “The best way to fool the software is a very large pair of sunglasses, and they tend to frown on those when a person’s in the security area of an airport.”
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