Depth of Field

by Michael Blair

  “Nothing,” I said. “Except that she may have been on the Wonderlust the night Bobbi was attacked. You can see the slip where it was moored from here. Even better from the dock nearest Granville Island,” I added, pointing to the map on the wall behind the counter that showed the five docks of the marina jutting out into the shallow curve of Broker’s Bay. The easternmost dock was only twenty metres or so from the where the Wonderlust had been moored. “Maybe someone in one of the boats on that dock saw whoever was on the Wonderlust Tuesday evening.”

  “Maybe,” Jimmy said. “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “We could ask,” Barbara said. “There’s usually a few people on those boats at night.” She came out from behind the counter. She had a voluptuous figure and her jeans fit her nicely. I’d always thought there was something alluring about a mature woman wearing jeans, as long as she wasn’t too mature. “Come on, Mr. McCall, I’ll take you out and introduce you.”

  We left Jimmy in the office and went out into the sunlight. The breeze off the water was cool, smelling of fish, salt, and iodine, as we walked down the ramp onto the easternmost of the five docks. A dozen fishing boats of various sizes were moored two deep along both sides of the dock. On the side facing Granville Island, two big, rough-looking men at least twenty years apart in age sat on the centre hatch cover of the middle outside boat, smoking and drinking beer from cans.

  “Matthew, John,” Barbara called across the inside boat.

  “Hey, Barb,” the older of the two said as they both stood. They threw their cigarettes into the water, then made their way across the intervening boat and stepped down onto the dock. Close up they looked even bigger and rougher, but both wore friendly, open smiles.

  Barbara Reese introduced me to Matthew and John Ostrof, father and son. I shook hands with them. Their hands were like warm blocks of gnarled hardwood. “You heard about that girl who was attacked on that boat over in the Broker’s Bay Marina?” she said to them.

  “Yeah,” Matthew Ostrof said. His son nodded. “That lady cop and a detective told us about it.”

  “She was Mr. McCall’s friend. He wants to ask you a couple of questions about what you might’ve seen that night.”

  “Like we told the cops,” Matthew Ostrof said, “we didn’t see nothin’. Sorry.”

  “Yeah,” John Ostrof added. He was in his late twenties, muscular and ruggedly handsome. I’d seen him in Bridges, playing darts for beer. He didn’t buy very often. Bobbi had commented on how delicately he’d held the darts in his hard, powerful hand, how effortlessly he’d flicked them at the board. She’d thought he’d make an interesting subject, wanted to photograph him, but had been too shy to ask.

  “The boat she was assaulted on is owned by a company that rents it out for parties,” I said. “You must have a front row seat.”

  “Pretty close,” Matthew Ostrof agreed. “But there was nothin’ happening on Tuesday that we saw, was there?” His son shook his head.

  “What about other times? Do you know any of the people who have been to the parties?” Both men shook their heads. “Do you know Sam or Anna Waverley?”

  Matthew Ostrof shook his head again, but John Ostrof said, “She’s the one they were talking about at Bridges, Dad. The one that got killed in Point Grey. She bought fish from us a couple of times,” he said to me. “Owns that blue Sabre over there,” he added, pointing.

  “The runner with the nice —” the elder Ostrof said.

  “That’s her,” his son said.

  “Did you ever see Mrs. Waverley at one of the parties on the Wonderlust?” I asked.

  “Nope,” John Ostrof said. “I wouldn’t expect to, either. They’re more like business meetings than parties. You know the kind, a half a dozen middle-aged guys, booze, and a couple of ‘professional’ women” — he made quote signs in the air — “as entertainment.” He shrugged. “It’s a good, solid boat, but kinda neglected. Looked her over a few weeks back. Heard she might be for sale.”

  “What do you want a fancy boat like that for?” his father said disapprovingly.

  “Thought we might do charters, Dad. We talked about this, remember? It’s getting too hard to make a living fishing.”

  “Humph,” Matthew Ostrof opined.

  “When Mrs. Waverley bought fish from you, was she alone?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’ve never seen her with a man?”

  “Nope, sorry,” Matthew Ostrof said.

  But John Ostrof said, “I remember seeing her one day a couple of weeks back. I was heading over to Bridges and she was on the quay by the marina entrance talking to some guy.”

  “This man,” I said. “What did he look like?”

  “Just an ordinary guy,” John Ostrof said with a shrug. “Tall as you, maybe, but a bit heavier and a few years older. Kept patting his head, like he was making sure his hair was still there.”

  “Could it have been her husband?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  “Nope,” he replied. “She looked upset, though, like maybe they were arguing about something. When he put his hand on her arm, she jerked it away, then turned and walked away from him. He looked pretty angry, too.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Now that you got me thinking about it, I might’ve seem him a time or two on that party boat.”

  I thanked them for their time. They said they were sorry they weren’t more help, and clambered back across the intervening boat to their own vessel.

  There was no one aboard any of the other boats moored along the dock. I walked Barbara Reese to the marina office, thanked her, then headed back along the seawall to Granville Island.

  chapter twenty

  As I walked beneath the Granville Street Bridge along Anderson onto Granville Island, I spotted Mabel Firth and Baz Tucker on the boardwalk by the Broker’s Bay Marina. They were confronting Loth. Curious, and not wanting to feel left out, I joined the small crowd gathering on the boardwalk to watch the action unfold.

  “Mr. Loth,” Mabel said. “We don’t want any trouble. You just come quietly, okay, we’ll get it all straightened out.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowheres wit’ you,” Loth replied plaintively, waving his stout cane to emphasize his point. “I jus’ a sick old man, mind my own bidness, don’t bother no one ’less they bother me. That Jimmy Young, he wanna t’row me outa my home.” He shook his head. “It ain’t right. Them people’s lyin’. I ain’t hurt no one. No one. It jus’ lies.”

  “If you’ll just come with us, please, sir,” Mabel said. “We’ll get it all straightened out. And, if you wouldn’t mind, maybe you could stop waving the cane around. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Loth shook his great balding head and repeated his familiar refrain, “I ain’t going nowheres. I ain’t hurt no one. I’m jus’ a sick ol’ man.”

  Baz Tucker had his nightstick out and seemed more than ready to use it on the old man.

  “Put that away,” Mabel said to him. “I’ve called for backup. Let’s wait for it, all right?”

  Baz Tucker slid his nightstick into his belt loop. “All right folks,” he said to the crowd. “Go on about your business. Nothing to see here.”

  Grumbling, the onlookers began to disperse.

  Loth saw me, bulled between Baz and Mabel.

  “You, mister man,” he said, lumbering toward me. “You tell ’em. What they want to bother a sick old man for, who ain’t never hurt no one? You know I ain’t hurt that one on that boat. That Bobbi. I ain’t never done nothin’ for her to call me bad names for. I ain’t never hurt no one. Not her. Not that other one, either.”

  “What other one?” I asked.

  “The whore that sucks on men’s dicks for money on that ol’ boat. I tol’ her I give her money if she suck on my dick, but she said no, go away, like my money ain’t good enough, like she was better ’n’ other whores. A whore is a whore is all what I know. I seen her with them mens, sne
aking onto that boat to get their dicks sucked on for money.”

  “What men?” I asked.

  “Mens. You maybe, too, mister man. She suck on your dick too, eh? You suck on her, eh? Fuck her in the bum hole?”

  I bit back on my disgust. “When did you see these men?”

  “All-a-time. Seen her with womens, too. She fucks with womens, I bet.” He shook his cane in my face. “That ain’t right, no.”

  “What women?” I demanded. “When did you see these women?”

  “Tom,” Mabel Firth said sternly. “You’re only making things worse.”

  “All-a-time,” Loth said. “She jus’ a whore. All womens’s whores. That Barbara. Her, too. She sucks on that Jimmy Young’s dick, lets him fuck her in the bum hole. Thinks no one knows. But I seen ’em. I seen that whore on her boat too, fucking with mens.” He waved his cane. “Go away. I ain’t talkin’ to no one no more.”

  He lumbered off along the boardwalk toward Anderson Street, waving his cane at the crowd, scattering it like a flock of ducks, ignoring Mabel Firth’s commands to stop.

  “We can’t just let him go,” Baz said, drawing his nightstick again.

  “What’re you gonna do, Baz? Whale on an old man with your stick? Besides, where’s he gonna go? Wait for backup.”

  “Why are you trying to take him in?” I asked her. “What did he do?”

  She looked at me, and I realized the width of the gulf that lay between us, cop and civilian, despite our friendship. Then her expression softened. “Besides a couple of dozen complaints about indecent behaviour,” she said, turning her attention back to Loth as he limped along the boardwalk, “he’s in violation of the conditions of his release. He’s supposed to report for weekly tests to make sure he’s taking his medication. He hasn’t reported for almost a month.”

  “Medication for what?” I asked.

  “Your guess is a good as mine,” Mabel said. “Which would be schizophrenia, but —”

  A woman cried out as Loth struck her with his cane.

  “Hey!” a man shouted. Loth whacked at him with his cane. Blood sprang from the man’s cheek.

  “Aw, crap,” Mabel said. She ran to the man, helped him to a bench, while Baz called for paramedics on his radio as he jogged to intercept Loth, who was standing on the boardwalk between Granville Island and the Kitsilano mainland, swinging his cane at passersby.

  “I’m all right,” the man said, waving Mabel off. A woman sat beside him, handed him a wad of tissues, which he pressed against his cheek.

  Mabel drew her stick. She looked frightened. “This is going to be bad,” she said to me. She looked around. “Shit, there must be a dozen fucking video cameras in this crowd.”

  In the four years I’d known her I’d heard her swear mildly a few times, under stress, but I’d never heard her say “shit” or use the fuck word in any of its myriad variations.

  “Wait for your backup,” I said, as Loth took a swing at a man on a mountain bike, sending him crashing into one of the massive concrete piers of the Granville Street Bridge. He flipped off his bike onto Anderson Street where, fortunately for him, traffic had stopped to watch the fun.

  “Shit,” Mabel said, as she moved after Loth and Baz.

  She was right. It was bad. In fact, it was a disaster. She and Baz Tucker tried to persuade Loth to get into their squad car, first with pleas, which he ignored, then with physical restraint, each on an arm damned near as big as my leg, which he also ignored. When he shoved Mabel in the chest, almost sending her reeling off the causeway into Broker’s Bay, Baz whacked him on the back of the legs with his nightstick, aiming for thick muscle, scrupulously avoiding joints, spine, internal organs. He might as well have been hitting a sack of sand for all the apparent effect it had.

  The backup arrived then, three male officers and one female, in two squad cars. They all piled on, trying to force the old man to the ground and get cuffs on him. Loth shook them off like a rhino shakes off tick birds. They surrounded him, drew their sticks. He struck out with his cane. The female constable shattered it with her nightstick. Meanwhile, in the crowd, video cameras whirred and cellphone cameras chirped.

  “They need a fucking Taser,” someone near me said.

  “Or a tranquilizer gun,” someone else said.

  “Or one of them loops they use to catch stray dogs,” another added.

  “Just shove him into the fucking water,” suggested a fourth.

  “Fuck it,” contributed a fifth. “Just shoot the great ugly bastard.” I glared at him. “Just tryin’ to be helpful,” he said with a shrug.

  “Fucking pigs,” differed an overweight man with long, ratty hair strung with coloured beads.

  “Shut up, asshole,” a bystander growled at him.

  “Why you doon this?” Loth bellowed as he lumbered along the boardwalk and the cops flailed at his legs and buttocks with their sticks. “I ain’t done nothin’. I ain’t hurt no one.”

  He grabbed one of the cops, lifted him off his feet as though he were a child, and threw him over the edge of the causeway into the bay. He hit the water with a bellow and a spectacular splash. One of the other cops leaped onto the huge old man’s back, jamming his nightstick under his chin, trying to incapacitate him with a choke-hold. Loth heaved and rotated his massive shoulders and the cop lost his grip, went flying, and almost ended up in the drink himself.

  “Loth, stop it!” Mabel shouted at him. “Please. We don’t want to hurt you!”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowheres with you. I ain’t done nothing. I ain’t goin’ back to jail. I ain’t goin’ to no hospital, neither.”

  “Fuck this shit!” Baz Tucker roared. He lowered his head and charged at Loth, throwing himself at Loth’s knees like a football guard protecting the quarterback from a blitz. Loth staggered, but did not fall, fortunately for Baz, upon whom the gigantic old man would surely have landed. One of the other male cops slammed his shoulder into Loth’s thick gut, while Baz clung to Loth’s massive legs. With a roar, Loth toppled backwards, landing on his broad rump, half sitting on Baz. He rolled over and tried to stand, but the rest of the cops, wet and dry, piled onto him. The one who’d gone into the water managed to get one bracelet of his handcuffs onto Loth’s thick right wrist, used it to lever Loth’s arm back while kneeling on his spine. Mabel snapped another cuff onto Loth’s left wrist, then they linked the free bracelets. Loth bellowed and thrashed, but with his arms manacled behind his back he was as helpless as a beached whale. He gave up the struggle and went limp, face red and breathing heavily and rapidly.

  Mabel stepped back, gulping air, cap missing, dark blonde hair loose around her face. She caught her breath, then spoke into the microphone clipped to her shoulder, calling for more paramedics. Loth didn’t seem to be in distress, was breathing more or less normally and muttering about having done nothing to warrant such treatment, but Mabel wasn’t taking any chances. A man stepped out of the crowd of onlookers, pressed close, aiming a video camera at Loth and the cops surrounding him. Baz Tucker stepped in front of the camera. The aspiring videographer tried to manoeuvre around him. Baz, his face blazing with anger, ripped the camera out of the man’s hand, cocked his arm, and threw it like a quarterback going for the desperate long bomb.

  “Son of a bitch!” the man shouted, as he watched his camera arc out over Broker’s Bay and drop into the water almost halfway to Fisherman’s Wharf.

  “Aw, geez, Baz,” Mabel said.

  “Fuck this shit!” Baz shouted at no one in particular, while from a safe distance a Chinese girl with black-and-orange hair aimed her cellphone at him.

  It was after four by the time I got to the studio. The door was locked and Mary-Alice and Wayne were nowhere to be seen, so I went home, got a beer out of the fridge, and took it and the cordless phone up to the roof deck. I phoned the hospital and spoke to Bobbi for a few minutes. Wayne was bringing pizza, she told me, did I want to join them? I said thanks, maybe I’d drop by later. We chatted for a minute more, about not
hing of any real consequence, then rang off. I realized I’d forgotten to ask her if she remembered anything more about her attack. I supposed she’d have mentioned it if she had.

  There was a heaviness in my chest that seemed to go well with the sense of detachment I felt, a disconnection from the world and the people around me. The hinges of my jaw ached and I realized I was clenching my teeth. I forced myself to relax, took a drink of beer. It tasted vaguely foul, as if it had turned skunky. Or I had. I took another swig and felt nausea clawing at the back of my throat.

  Had Loth been talking about Anna Waverley when he’d claimed to have watched a woman having sex with men on a boat, which I presumed to be the Wonderlust? I didn’t want to think so, but it hardly mattered what I thought; the universe would unfold as it would, irrespective of what I wanted. It always had. And so what if Loth had spied on Anna Waverley having sex with men on the Wonderlust? As Mabel had said, perhaps Anna met her lover on that boat, rather than on her own, because she didn’t want to violate a bed she shared with her husband, whom she had professed to still love. Did that make her a bad person? No, of course not. It made her human.

  On the other hand, if Loth were indeed schizophrenic, as Mabel thought, he wasn’t a particularly reliable witness.

  I took another mouthful of beer.

  Who was the man John Ostrof had seen Anna arguing with, and who he thought he might have seen on the Wonderlust? Was it her husband, her lover, or just “some guy,” as he’d said? I made a mental note to tell Matthias, who might want to sit John Ostrof down with a sketch artist.

  I went downstairs, where I dumped the rest of the beer down the sink. It was not quite 5:30, a little too early to think about dinner, but the emptiness gnawing at my gut felt like hunger, so I scrounged through the fridge for something to eat. I thawed some slightly freezer-burnt spaghetti sauce in the microwave, boiled some pasta, and ate it a little too al dente with a salad and a couple of glasses of red wine. It was not quite seven when I finished washing up. I took another glass of wine into the living room, put a Renee Fleming compilation on the stereo, and lay down on the sofa. Listening to Renee Fleming’s pure, soaring voice reminded me of Reeny. Not only because of the similarity of their names, but because it had been Reeny who’d introduced me to opera, particularly sopranos. Until then, most opera, sopranos in particular, had sounded to me like a cat with its tail caught in a door. Some still did. But thanks to Reeny I had developed an appreciation for Renee Fleming, Cecilia Bartoli, Dawn Upshaw, and Kiri Te Kanawa, to name the few I’d collected so far. I was going to have to work harder to like tenors; they weren’t nearly as pretty.