“That’s why Rolly was killed. Janssen wanted his tow truck empire but he wouldn’t sell. And Rolly was no Hugo Brasher. There’d be no drugging and enslaving that man.”
“The tow truck was a clever angle, you think about it. Legit money coming in, a lot of it cash, so if you add some more and it’s dirty it’s a great place to clean it. And a roaming DSG sales force, helping out the distressed and depressed. A pamphlet here, a pamphlet there. It’d add up.”
“But it still doesn’t tell us why. To what end?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. And Janssen knew it, too, and that’s why he’d whispered those chilling words into my ear before being loaded into the ambulance:
“You have no idea, do you?” he’d said.
I thought about it now. Why does anyone do what they do? Money, power, fame. Short term, Janssen looked good to the outside world, helping to clean up skid row. New smile, new life. Bootstrap your own rebirth, that “teach a man to fish” kind of scam job. But long term, that’s what killed me. I didn’t know his big game, or if him being in custody even hurt it.
But I was caring less and less about anything, Janssen included, as my transatlantic flight taxied to the runway and was cleared for takeoff. Flight velocity achieved, I was pressed back into my seat. The nose lifted off the tarmac and minutes later I was soaring above the clouds, watching the emergency room waiting area from high. Far removed from the mystery and chaos of the world beneath me.
The Abbott Billiards Club was down a narrow stairwell off a small piece of Abbott Street real estate between the alley running parallel to the CN Railway tracks and Water Street. The stairwell was familiar. Pretty sure I’d once believed it to be a muddy path from the forest leading into a glade populated by green-yellow skinned goblins playing a game involving sinking baby skulls down the gullets of adult skulls with their jaws pried unnaturally open. That, after I’d crossed over the void between worlds.
Then, it was drug-fueled hallucination, what Stanley called, “A trip, man.”
Now, it was my nightmare, waking sweat-soaked and heart pounding.
I’d been retracing my steps from that night, in order to heal, to move on. And to see if there was any trace of Janssen and the DSG. There wasn’t. The warehouse was deserted. I’d peered in through the window that Butch had shoved me out of but there was nothing to see. Only dust and emptiness. The whole place had been cleared out and I bet the propaganda drop had too. I went around back to the rear entrance and walked up the stairs in order to turn back around, look down. Anything to jog my memory in order to trace my steps from the night Janssen drugged me. I went back down the steps. I looked one way then the other. Right seemed more familiar so that’s the way I went. I walked East for half-block until I came to the end of Abbott Street, where it jutted south. Across the street, on the other side of Abbott, there was a familiar staircase.
I’d been there before.
Once I reached the bottom of the staircase, I knew it to be true. The “glade” was actually a low-ceilinged pool hall and the tables the goblins played their game on was actually a very large billiards table. And, of course, the goblins were human beings playing billiards, just like how there were four gentlemen currently playing. And what an oddity I must’ve been to the players I stumbled across that night, a weirdo who’d crashed through the door then stood in the shadows and watched them.
I thought of the hallucinations, the goblin who’d spotted me and dragged me to his lair. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what had actually transpired in real life until one of the gentleman playing billiards stopped, carefully laid his cue on the green felt of a neighbouring table and approached me.
It was him, the goblin. Except now, he was a mid-fifties guy, scrappy, solidly built, dressed well in brown slacks, a tweed coat and a flat cap. He spoke. I understood nothing. It took a while. It sunk in. Oh. What I thought of that wild night as goblin-speak was actually a thick Irish brogue.
I said my name was Fitch. His said his name was Joe. We shook hands. He asked how I’d been. I told him it’d been an interesting couple of weeks and he agreed it must have.
“Lad, you were right fucked that night. Outta your skull.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Aye, you thought I was a goblin.”
“I said that, did I? Sorry.”
“Think nothing of it. But I didn’t know what else to do so I thought it best to get you somewhere you could sleep it off. Then I thought, well, every man needs to look good even if he thinks I’m a monster.”
“Can you take a break from your game of pool and show me?”
“Snooker, lad. And I can.”
Joe led me to his barbershop, which was on Water Street, equidistant from both the Abbott Billiards Club and the warehouse. The shop had a snazzy tile floor, framed black-and-white photos of Joe’s Irish homeland on the wall, and the obligatory spinning barber’s pole outside. I had to laugh when I saw the chair and figured it out.
“I thought you were going to slit my throat but it was a shave, wasn’t it?”
“Aye. Had to strap you down with my belt and bit of old rope from the cellar so you’d settle.”
I felt my face, the stubble there. “Guess it grew out by the time I was thinking straight again, so I didn’t notice. But the haircut I did. Nice work.” I offered to pay him for his service. He waved his hand, no.
“That one was on the house. Next one you pay for.”
“Deal.”
“Where’d you end up, lad? You ran out of here screaming like a bog banshee as soon as I took the restraints off.”
“Kitsilano beach, covered in sand and bird shit.”
Joe laughed and patted my shoulder in brotherhood. “Had a few nights like that myself, haven’t I?”
The guy at the framing store was early-20s with a duckbill haircut and Buddy Holly specs. He looked prepared to be mucho unimpressed by anything anyone over 25 would have to say. That is until I showed him what I had. His eyes bugged out. He went, “Woah.” He thought it had to be a joke, walking around with a signed cheque like that. Not only did it look like the paper version of Frankenstein’s monster, all taped up and cobbled together, but all those zeros.
“That’s not real is it?” he asked.
“You think a guy like me gets a cheque like that? Nah, it’s a joke among friends.”
“Nice friends, daddio.”
“Well, maybe acquaintances. Daddio.”
After I paid, he said it would be an hour and walked away shaking his head, still looking at the cheque. Probably imagining everything he could do with dough like that. Buy a cherry sled. Get some new threads. Pick up a guitar. Start a band. Cut a record. Play some shows. Get girls. Get famous. Get more girls. I knew how he felt. Minus the guitar and the band, but including the girls, it was everything I’d once imagined I could do with a pile of cash.
When the cheque was done and framed, I went back to my room to hang it near the door. Hammering in a nail using my left hand was not easy but I got the job done and the frame hid the holes I bashed in the wall in the process. I’d dug through the garbage in the Brasher study to collect the paper scraps right after snatching my roll of nickels off the desk but before luring Mr. Jangles into my arms using an opened can of tuna I found in the pantry.
I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a keepsake. Now, every day I could look at the cheque and say to myself, Okay, I might still be living in a one-room apartment in a boarding house for ne’er do wells and down-and-outs and treat a dive diner like both office and living room, but I still had a few principles that couldn’t be bought.
What could be bought for me was sympathy diner coffee and I soaked up every drop I could get. My hand cast was a hit and the story about how it happened changed depending on the diner denizen you talked to. I neither confirmed nor denied and enjoyed the ambiguity, even if others didn’t. But I wasn’t about to loop myself in with anything nefarious that had occurred th
at night with Janssen, Reynold or Butch. That was a can of worms best left unopened because the police were neck deep in Janssen’s business and getting out the scuba diving suits. Bodies and headlines tended to do that.
I read about the scene at the Brasher mansion in the newspaper. Summoned to the estate by an anonymous caller complaining about “strange noises,” the cops found Kathleen Brasher and her chauffeur, Seamus Kelly, in the trunk of a Rolls Royce belonging to the Brasher family. Mrs. Brasher died of strangulation, while Mr. Kelly bled to death from several knife wounds. Skin under both victims’ nails revealed their attacker to be Butch Montrose, a former police officer turned private security consultant. Mr. Montrose had also been found dead at the scene, stabbed to death by an antique sword. Hugo Brasher, found clutching the sword, had been arrested for the murder of Butch Montrose, though the family’s attorney was already claiming self-defense.
“That sure is something, eh, Fitch?” Glenda was hovering over my shoulder.
“Sure is.”
“Bunch of lunatics out there.”
“Tell me about it.” I raised my hand cast. “And I manage to keep runnin’ afoul of them.”
“Lucky, eh?”
“That’s one way of lookin’ at it.”
Glenda laughed, reached down under the counter for a marker and wrote in big block letters, ONE LUCKY GUY, across my cast, roughly where my knuckles were. She also added a few hearts and signed her name so that made me feel better. After she’d walked away, shaking her head at the madness in the world, I kept reading the newspaper.
The same night they found Butch’s body in Shaughnessy, another suspect in Kathleen Brasher and Seamus Kelly’s death was picked up by the police in downtown Vancouver. Reynold Dietz, found with the knife suspected in the murder of Mr. Kelly, was arrested on Saturday evening at the Four Corners and was currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation. Also taken into custody that evening was one Copernicus Janssen, who was causing a disturbance only a few blocks from where Dietz was arrested. Janssen escaped from the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital in 1955 and was also known locally as Quincy Quest, the leader of the Disciples of the Sacred Glow, an organization that helped skid row denizens get back on their feet. He was being held for observation and questioning to determine his part, if any, in the recent killings.
Fitch, you wily operator, I thought to myself. Had to admit, I was proud for guessing correctly that Janssen was a booby hatch escapee. Pure instinct. But as my mother always said, even a broken clock is right twice a day. My victory felt anticlimactic and short lived when I imagined the police interrogation like Janssen dancing on ice. He’ll twist. He’ll twirl. He’ll skate free from any accusations like he was born in an ice rink with sharp blades for feet.
Reynold, though, didn’t seem very graceful to me and would probably land on his ass. Still, I didn’t want to leave it up to chance, so the last thing I did before leaving the diner was amble to the phone near the kitchen and make another anonymous call to the cops. Told them a little birdie whispered in my ear that Reynold Dietz was seen at the health club the morning Rolly Stevens ended up in a coma and it might be worth a look-see…especially since Butch Montrose investigated and wasn’t ol’ Butch an ex-cop murderer and now dead as a doornail after being impaled by a sword?
I didn’t have enough to box up Janssen for delivery so I left him out of it. He had a warrant out for escaping from Kingston Psychiatric Hospital so I figured that had to be good for a few months of three-squares and a cot at the government’s expense. Maybe I could dig something up on him, glue that would stick.
Or maybe not.
Like with my run-in with the Dead Clowns and all that verbal sparring with Adora Carmichael last year, there were a lot of maybes floating around in the air these days.
Like maybe Janssen, when he was lying on the ambulance stretcher, eyes gleaming with mischief, drug sweat beading on his forehead like he’d been waxed with a layer of Carnuba, didn’t really whisper in my ear.
You have no idea, do you?
But I knew that he had.
And maybe I didn’t really see the faces I recognized from Gastown—the same ones I’d also seen at the warehouse, beginning their “therapy” with the DSG—around town these days. But I knew that I did, though not behind dumpsters in the alleys and propping up bar stools in my local. No, in actual jobs. Always clean shaven and big of teeth, new dentures sparkling. Waiting tables in restaurants bartending at snooty bars where lawyers and judges frolicked. Pushing luggage carts from outside fancy cars to inside fancy hotels. Climbing up poles to fix bum telephone lines.
Always relatively menial, but insider positions.
Close to infrastructure. Close to power, the wealthy, the movers and shakers.
They were infiltrating. They were gaining access to the network of things, becoming intertwined in society’s guts.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I was a paranoid loon.
Maybe I was full of shit.
21
Billy answered the door, even ganglier than the last time I saw him. Didn’t know it was possible, like surely his body must have reached a pact with the invading force of testosterone by now. Apparently not and he was long-of-limb, acne-cheeked, broken-voiced and all with the faint wisp of a cheesy mustache on his upper lip. Puberty had him by the scruff of the neck and was not letting go. Not yet. Too much fun was being had at Billy’s expense.
“Fitch?” he said, eyeing me, then the blanket-covered box at my feet. “What’re you doing here?”
“Got a surprise for you.” I took the blanket off the cat carrier and lifted it up to Billy. I may have failed Kathleen Brasher, her son, Hugo, and the chauffeur but not this kid. “It’s Mr. Jangles.”
Billy went green in the gills. He looked back into the house. He moved forward onto the welcome mat and closed the door behind him. Not the reaction I expected. I thought more excitement, maybe some confetti. After all, Fitch had done it, come through, done him a solid and found his missing cat, against all odds. But no. He said, “You gotta go, Fitch. And take the cat with you.”
“But Billy…”
“Mr. Jangles is inside.”
I looked into the cage. The cat meowed. It was definitely Mr. Jangles. “I think you’re wrong on that. Look at the tag.”
“No, you don’t get it. My Mr. Jangles is inside right now. See, my mom was so sad when her boyfriend left. Then the cat ran away. Butch was a deadbeat, couldn’t help that, but I could do something about Mr. Jangles. So I took the money I’d had saved up from my paper route and found a calico at the pet shelter that looked enough like Mr. Jangles to fool my mom, who actually doesn’t like cats that much. I just didn’t want her to be sad that I was sad, you know? So don’t blow my cover, okay?”
Billy was scared. His eyes pleaded. Single mom heartbreak and a kid trying to mop up the spill. It hit home. It rang memory bells. I could relate. I sympathized with his cause. Not an easy road for him ahead, as there was always another spill, another mess, but he’d have to figure that out for himself. Decide his own level of involvement. I vowed to myself to check in now-and-then, make sure everything was as copacetic as possible.
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “You got it, Billy. Me and this cat, we’re ghosts.”
My new feline friend didn’t waste any time in making himself at home. Within an hour of being in my room, the cat formerly known as Mr. Jangles had torn up my pillow and scratched up the door. But he’d also killed a mouse and batted a cockroach back-and-forth in its paws like a hockey puck.
“Cat,” I said, “you’re hired. I pay in canned tuna and kitty litter. What do you say?”
The cat did its leg-splay-and-crotch-lick routine.
I took that as a yes.
The nightmares continued, morphing, changing. As the weeks went by, the hallucination flashbacks about goblins and voids faded, only to be replaced by realizations made at painkiller cruising altitude. Though I couldn�
�t figure out if it was my own brain that conjured them up or if it had been Adora telling me, there in the emergency room waiting room.
You’re stuck in a loop, Fitch.
You’re going around and around.
Think about it: get a half-baked ‘case’ and make a half-baked investigation. Run into some bad people, some good people and some crazy people. End up in the hospital. Kind of figure some stuff out but not really. All the while flirting with a diner waitress and drinking diner coffee.
You’re a satellite in orbit, rotating, observing.
Your orbit won’t change until you figure out what you should be doing. New trajectories.
And sure, you’ll add a few people to your orbit each time, maybe a dog next time, another pal, carve a bigger path, but a circle’s a circle no matter how big.
The end becomes the beginning.
And the next go-round might kill you.
Ever think of that?
So, what’s the real question?
What’s your mystery?
Who really left you?
What won’t you admit to anyone, even yourself?
What really happened to your mother?
When you got back from your hobo life, from running away, where did she go without a trace? No forwarding address left, no word whatsoever.
Isn’t that your missing person?
The BIG CASE you always wanted.
You’re stuck in a loop, Fitch.
You’re going around and around and—
Always woke up sweating, heart pounding, gasping, brain swirling with new, even scarier, goblins: the truth, the lies, and everything in-between.
- Ellie?
- Yeah?
- It’s Fitch.
- No shit.
- Language.
- Go fly a kite, daddio.
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