by Mel Bradshaw
“Enough to make him a person of interest.” The detective held open the door of an interview room furnished like the one at 11 Division. “Scar sounds like a gang handle. Do you have a last name for our boy?”
Ted thought back to Melody’s list, blanking for a moment. “Hollis,” he said. “No, Hollister.”
“Too bad.”
Before he could ask why, they were interrupted by the arrival of a fortyish woman in a nubbly orange sweater and jeans. She carried a laptop, which she plugged into an outlet under the table. She wasn’t introduced and sat where Ted couldn’t see her screen. He volunteered to move, but Rodriguez suggested he describe Scar first and make any necessary corrections after.
The description he gave was of a man just under six feet tall and in his early thirties. Muscular, but leaner than his brother bikers with their steroid-bloated arms and torsos. The easiest things for Ted to describe about the face were also the easiest to change. On the other hand, membership in a motorcycle gang was all about image and bravado, Ted thought, and no biker would sacrifice his trademark look lightly, especially if the reason for doing so was disguise. So he told Rodriguez about the heavy black hair, parted on the right and falling over the forehead to obscure the left eyebrow. And about the full, wide black moustache, which hid the mouth, except for the middle of a narrow lower lip. For the rest, the jaw was long and tapered, the nose short, the eyes narrow slits. Ted wasn’t sure about eye colour, but the upper lids, already low, fell even further towards the outside corners.
When he walked around the table to look over the sketch artist’s shoulder at the image her software had constructed from his words, he suggested the chin should be even longer, made a few other corrections of proportion, and eventually concluded it was not a bad likeness in a cartoonish sort of way.
“So where is it?” said Rodriguez.
“Where’s what?” Ted asked her.
“The scar.”
“Never saw one. Maybe under his leathers.” Or maybe, Ted quietly thought, he’s called Scar because he leaves scars on others. “Why did you say, ‘Too bad’, when I mentioned the name Hollister?”
“Because,” said Rodriguez, “it’s almost certain to be an alias. Hollister, California, was the site of a big biker riot in 1947, what really got the outlaw biker movement going.”
“I remember now,” said Ted. “Is this picture going to be in the papers?”
“We’ll see what Nelson says. My guess is we won’t want to let Scar know we’re looking for him, at least till we’ve exhausted the alternatives.”
“Can you let me have a copy?”
“What for? So you can make your own inquiries? We ask you not to do that, Mr. Boudreau. There are a lot of rules these days about the ways in which evidence can be collected, and it’s hard enough for us professionals to keep them straight. What you can do is make me a list of people and businesses in your neighbourhood you think we should show this to.”
After Ted had done so, Rodriguez got him to describe as fully as possible any other members of the Dark Arrows he might have seen. She said she’d be checking for matches with the OPP’s Biker Enforcement Unit in Orillia.
That night, Tuesday, September 5, was Ted’s worst since the break-in for getting to sleep. On Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the exhaustion of grief had eventually let Ted drift off, but on Tuesday, the faces of the Dark Arrows he had described to Detective Rodriguez loomed up at him when he closed his eyes. Each image was like a pot of strong coffee. As much as the menace, what racked and prodded him was the uncertainty. Which of them had killed Karin? And if they had delegated the dirty work, as was biker custom, what other face should he imagine?
He could hear the engine noises of a truck passing the house. What would it be doing on the crescent at this hour? Leaves rustled in the wind. He wondered if he heard a noise from inside the house as well. Except to reinforce the plywood the police had nailed over the broken window, he had avoided going down to the basement since Friday night. The image of Karin, dressed for the cottage, lying lifeless on the concrete took vivid hold of his imagination. He knocked over the bedside lamp in his haste to turn it on.
He got up and looked for something to read in a pile of old periodicals, settling in the end on some Amnesty International reports. He’d long been convinced that the risk of judicial error constitutes a conclusive argument against executions, so had never stopped to think much about the phrase legal murder that abolitionists love to trot out. He found it again in a 1992 speech by a future Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago: “Putting the prisoners to work so they can contribute financially to the victim’s families would be more constructive than resorting to legal murder. The Government is committing murder under the guise of law.” By this logic, it occurred to Ted for the first time, imprisonment was legal kidnapping; imposing a fine, legal theft; putting prisoners to work, legal slavery.
Chapter 7
Two weeks earlier, back on Tuesday, August 22, summer had still been sweet for Shawn. His parents were dropping hints again about his enrolling for a course, but he knew he could hold off serious nagging until after the Labour Day weekend. He had been feeling downright cocky for the ten days since August 12, when the five-year disclosability period had expired for the last break and enter he had committed under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. That was for a stereo he’d boosted from an Audi when he was seventeen. It seemed unfair that when he became an adult at eighteen and for four years afterward that offence could still have been dredged up and added to his adult record if he got caught again. Not that he was planning to get caught again.
His mother had asked him to turn off the hip hop when there were customers or potential customers in her gas bar/convenience store, but today Shawn just turned the sound system down instead. He didn’t turn it down much. The customer was Arnold Somers, a Lincoln Navigator driver, but with nothing in the way of strut or swagger. Fifty years old going on seventy. He wouldn’t be complaining to dear old Meryl about the music.
“Taking holidays this summer?” asked Somers. His arms were full of hundred-watt bulbs, which he attempted to set down gently on the counter. Shawn thought he must have a big house to buy all those at once, but maybe he just had a big closet. Eight packages of four, not a sixty or a forty in the bunch. It might be worthwhile to see where he lived.
“Too busy here, Mr. Somers. My brother’s taking his courses, and my dad’s got his rig on the road all the time. I can’t leave Mom alone.”
“Quite so. Do you have any whipping cream? In cartons, I mean.”
Quite so? thought Shawn. He couldn’t believe what a loser this guy was.
“The cream in the cans is just as good,” he said.
Somers laughed. “That hasn’t been my experience.”
“I take your point,” said Shawn, smiling back sympathetically. “But actually, this is a premium brand, one we’ve never carried before. It’s a totally new process. I’ve read where they did blind taste tests, and the experts couldn’t tell it from the kind you whip yourself. If you don’t like it, just bring it back. How many cans would you like?”
Somers submissively went back to the dairy cooler and picked up a can of the same old dairy whip that had been stocked exclusively since Meryl had bought the franchise. It helped that the colours on the can had recently changed.
“That’ll be nineteen sixty-nine,” said Shawn, packing the light bulbs into two bags. Christ, they weren’t even on sale! “Year of your birth, right, Mr. Somers?”
“Flattering thought.” Somers handed over his gold card.
“What about you, sir? Will you and Mrs. Somers be taking your Navigator into some rugged back country next weekend?”
“No, we’ll be in town. We’re entered in a mixed doubles tennis tournament.”
“Give them heck.” And don’t have his-and-hers heart attacks, Shawn mentally added.
He gave Somers time to pull out of the parking lot before he locked the store and followed on his cho
p shop rat bike. Of course, leaving the Handy Buy unattended was against franchise rules, every one of which was holy writ to Meryl, but Shawn wasn’t about to hurry on that account. He mustn’t catch up too soon if he was to see this mansion that needed all the light bulbs. He timed it perfectly so that he pulled up beside the big SUV as it was stopping in the driveway.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Somers.” Shawn made his voice breathless, as if he had been running or pedalling hard. “I just realized I overcharged you fifty cents for that whipping cream. I guess I got too absorbed in the conversation. Here you are, and have a nice evening.”
Somers looked at the coins. “You could have waited till next time, but it was good of you all the same. It’s a pleasure to meet an honest man.”
The house was no bigger than its neighbours, but had a nicely tended garden and a satellite dish. The other car parked in the driveway was a vintage T-Bird. All good, but not so good was the German shepherd lying on the front step. If it was on a rope, the rope wasn’t visible. Shawn didn’t like dogs.
When he got back to the shop, the red-headed woman from two streets down and around the corner was waiting outside the locked door. The chick that drove the gas-electric hybrid. Older but very desirable. Because she never paid by credit card, he’d had to ask her name. What was it now?
“Hey, Shawn,” she said, following him inside, “when does Dwayne get his mechanic’s papers? Soon, I hope. Then your mom can add a service bay to this place.”
“Afraid the terms of the franchise agreement don’t allow for that. He’d do an oil change for you, though, if I asked him. I guess your Insight still needs oil. Say, Karin—” There, he had it. “I’ve seen your car or one just like it outside 19 Robin Hood. Is that your house?”
Karin had filled her arms with snacks—potato chips, Toblerone, salted cashews and a tin of black olives. Everything she needed to get through a five-hour rehearsal: the Tuesday evening one was always a brute. She nodded absently as she piled her purchases on the counter.
“The reason I ask,” said Shawn, “is I was wondering what your experience has been with Alarm Protection Service. From what people tell me, they’re very slow to respond to any sort of emergency.”
“Oh, we’re not subscribers. The sign’s just left over from the previous owners.” Karin watched the numbers Shawn punched in and handed him exact change when the total came up.
Next time, thought Shawn, I’ll find out if she has a dog.
“Have a good evening,” he said, and filled the store again with the kick-ass rants of Ice T. Shawn liked the album title—Freedom of Speech . . . Just Watch What You Say.
“Did you check the washroom?” his mother asked when she returned after seven p.m.
“I was just about to.” Shawn didn’t look up from the copy of Outlaw Rider he was thumbing. He couldn’t see himself as one of those steroid-pumped oafs, so heavy they had to change the break pads on their hogs every three months. Cooler was the Peter Fonda type from the sixties. Biker rags still ran his picture. Peter wore the sunglasses well—you had to give him that—but what appealed to Shawn about bikers was the easy money rather than the easy riding. Managing strippers, call girls. Dealing dope. Maybe there was a way of getting in on the action without submitting to all the regimentation of a gang.
“Shawn!”
Meryl was leaning across the counter on her elbows. She was trying to sound perky rather than nagging, trying not to look her fifty years, trying not to show the tiredness she felt. There had been a horrendous lineup at the bank, and the discount hair salon where she’d gone was breaking in another new girl from some part of the world where English was no more than a boring subject in school.
All the subjects had bored Shawn. Not Dwayne, Meryl thought. Dwayne had genuinely struggled to get adequate marks, but Shawn was bright. He’d dropped out because he couldn’t be bothered. Meryl thought that once he found out what he wanted, Shawn would apply himself. He’d take a community college course like Dwayne. And then, watch out, he’d have the world by the tail.
“Yes, miss. What can I do for you?” He flashed her the smile he knew she couldn’t resist—although seeing her in that pukey gold Handy Buy convenience store golf shirt made him want to do anything but. “Do you have to fly the company flag when you’re not in the store?” he asked, switching in a heartbeat from flirtatious to reproving. “You wear that yellow rag in the mall; then you complain about slow service. People see you in uniform, and they think you should be serving them.”
Meryl’s face dropped. Her best T-shirt needed ironing, her best blouse needed a button, and her other blouse was in the laundry basket.
“What I’d like you to do for me, Shawn,” she said wearily, “is check the washroom. It’s company policy that we look in every hour to make sure the facilities are clean and that the supplies aren’t running out. That’s once an hour. I’ve been gone four hours. How many checks have you done?”
“I told you, Meryl, I was just about to.” Shawn stood up and glared down at his mother. He had been holding his gum in his cheek, as she’d asked him to when customers were in the store, but now he chewed it at her with open mouth.
A woman interrupted their standoff by coming in to pay for her gas.
“Never mind,” said Meryl. Cheery face, cheery voice. “I’ll see to it while you look after Mrs. Howse.”
“How are you, Mrs. Howse?” Shawn’s face and voice were just as cheery. “Are you going to get up to the cottage this weekend?”
That was one thing about Shawn, thought Meryl, as she scrubbed the toilet bowl. He was a wizard at friendly chat with the clientele.
Meryl’s big task for the evening involved shuffling papers at her cramped desk in a broom closet. Inventory, Goods and Services Tax, water, electricity, blah, blah. Or maybe it was all done now on the cheapo company-supplied computer. Shawn really had no idea. Meryl had suggested he learn about all this in case he wanted to run a business of his own one day, but he had a strategy for putting her off. He’d had Dwayne bring him a Humber College course catalogue, which he’d pretend to study. Once he’d found the career that was right for him, he liked to say, all that detail stuff would come easier.
Four washroom checks later, when Meryl finished work in her rat hole, had swept the floor and Windexed the glass in the doors (the full windows only got done twice a week), she put on her grubby pink rubber gloves and went out to pick up trash from the parking lot. Her hair kept falling from behind her ears into her line of sight as she bent over the nachos and cigarette butts, and she’d have to push it back with her wrists. Why do I even bother going to the hairdresser? she thought. She always ended up re-cutting it herself, hacking away because they’d left it too long.
By now, she was getting on Shawn’s nerves big time. He had told her weeks ago to throw those gloves out and help herself to a new pair off the rack. What point was there in having a store if you couldn’t do that? But she said that she kept them odour-free with baking soda and that they’d do the job as long as they didn’t have holes in them.
“Why don’t you go home, Mom? You look bushed.”
“You must be tired too, son.” She peeled off her gloves before giving Shawn’s arm a squeeze. “It’s only two more hours till Dwayne comes on at one. I can manage. And then, if you get a good night’s sleep, you’ll be fresher to give your dad a hand fixing the porch steps in the morning.”
“Cliff’s never up till noon on days after he gets in from Winnipeg. I was just going to have a coffee anyway. I’d rather do that than sleep.”
“Okay, honey.” Meryl tidied away the trash, washed her gloves and hands, and got her purse from the back. “Here’s a dollar fifty for the coffee.”
Shawn didn’t know whether to laugh or chew her out. “Did I tell you your hair looks nice?” he said.
Without having suspected it, it was what she had most wanted to hear. Meryl walked out the door blind with love.
Shawn didn’t want coffee. Pocketing the dol
lar fifty, he went out into the parking lot to smoke a joint. He didn’t know why he was restless. He thought of the magazine photos of the biker girls with their thongs and tattoos, but more than sex it was adventure he wanted. And money. Living at home, he had cheap room and board and was paid for every hour he worked at the store. Then there were the twenties and fifties he could part his parents and Dwayne from. He’d worked out just how many before the heavy sermonizing set in. But none of it was enough to trade in his rusty old scooter for something newer that would really turn heads.
Something like that, for example. Though on more careful inspection, the machine pulling up to the pump wasn’t new at all. You could tell from the dinky little bullet of a gas tank that didn’t contour into the frame and from the shape of the rocker covers, which—according to the magazines—Harley-Davidson hadn’t made that way for over forty years. Not new, but pampered. Not a trace of rust on the paintwork. Shawn liked the fact that there was no pillion pad. This was strictly a one-man machine.
He shifted his attention to the rider, a dude maybe ten years older than himself. Black hair, black leather trousers and vest, black T. He turned when he heard Shawn approach. His eyes were narrow, his chin long, and he wore a heavy black moustache.
“Righteous chopper, mister,” Shawn said. “I have an older Harley myself, only I haven’t had time to work on it yet.”
The customer nodded. He was holding a ten dollar bill in Shawn’s direction.
“I’ll get you change from the store.” Shawn didn’t move, though, mesmerized by the gleaming chrome.
“Air’s sweet around here,” the customer said quietly. “If you can let me have a smoke, we’re square.”
Shawn grinned. This guy is cool, he thought. Bet he’d be worth knowing—if only I don’t scare him off by looking overeager. Nonchalantly, he passed over a joint and his lighter. When the man had let out his first lungful of smoke, he cocked his right eyebrow approvingly. The left was hidden by his hair.