Last of the Independents

by Sam Wiebe

  “What about me?” Ben said.

  “Stay in the van and don’t feed that muffin to my dog. If someone comes by, move the van.”

  “I’ll set the mic up now,” Yeats said, “but someone will have to make sure it’s working till I get back.”

  “Show Ben,” I said to her, then to everyone: “So we all understand what we’re doing?”

  Szabo nodded, Yeats and then Ben.

  Katherine said, “I can’t.”

  Turning around in the driver’s seat she said, “I know what you’re trying to do, and I’m not saying it’s wrong, Mike. It might even be noble. But I can’t be a part of this. If there’s even a chance we could get in shit, from the cops or whoever, that’s too much of a risk.” She looked at Szabo. “I’m sorry.”

  “Understandable,” he said.

  “How would you feel about staying in the van, making sure the mic’s picking up properly?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Good.” I said to Yeats, “Show her what she needs to do.”

  I turned to Ben, a streak of melted baker’s chocolate on the corner of his mouth.

  “That means you’re up.”

  Amelia Yeats had been in the store five minutes when we unleashed Ben. Szabo, nervous and looking for a distraction, opted to walk the dog around the block. Katherine and I shared the pair of Koss headphones Yeats had supplied. We watched the waveforms on the laptop screen. The bug was picking up the ambience from the pawn shop perfectly. Ben opened the door and climbed out of the van’s back seat.

  The overcast sky had been growing progressively darker as noon approached. The threat of rain hung in the air, keeping pedestrians to a minimum. The thrift store’s parking lot across the street would have been ideal, but it was too empty, our van too conspicuous. From where we’d parked, we had a good diagonal view of the storefront.

  Over the headphones I heard the dunh-donh of the electronic door chime as Ben stepped inside:

  “Afternoon, sir,” Ben said. “I’m here today to buy something.”

  I didn’t look over but I knew Katherine was rolling her eyes.

  Ben: “What I’m actually looking for is a camera.”

  Ramsey: “Okay.”

  Ben: “I don’t know anything about cameras.”

  Ramsey: “Okay. Well —”

  Ben: “— Other than, y’know, you point and click. At least I think that’s the order.”

  Ramsey: “Right.”

  The sound of tapping on glass.

  Ben: “That one looks nice.”

  Ramsey: “Yes.”

  Ben: “Can I see it?”

  The sound of a key chain being rifled through, a lock being slid back, the case drawer sliding open, and presumably a camera being plunked down on the counter top.

  Ben: “Looks pretty good. How many, um, megapixels?”

  Ramsey: “It says right here.”

  Ben: “Right. So is eight good? I mean, is it enough?”

  Ramsey: “Depends for what.”

  Ben: “Nature photography. I take a lot of footage of squirrels and the like. The odd chipmunk. I like squirrels better than chipmunks, even though chipmunks have the better PR. Alvin, Simon, Chip, Dale. Like raccoons. Ever see a raccoon that wasn’t eating garbage or murdering cats?”

  Ramsey: “I don’t know.”

  Ben: “And yet they’re beloved. Chipmunks are the same. You have a preference, chipmunks or squirrels?”

  Ramsey: “No.”

  (“Thinks he’s seventies DeNiro,” I said to Katherine.)

  Ben: “Weird how some animals get the cartoon stamp of approval and others don’t.”

  Ramsey: “This is a nice camera.”

  Ben: “Does it shoot video?”

  Ramsey: “No, but this one—”

  Ben: “— Let’s see it. No, don’t put that one away, I might get both. And do you have any accessories?”

  Lisa: “Can I help you with something?”

  Amelia Yeats: “No, just looking, thanks.”

  Ramsey: “Tripods in the corner.”

  Lisa: “Well if you need anything let me know.”

  Ben: “What about flashes?”

  Yeats: “I will, thanks.”

  Ramsey: “Flash is built in.”

  Ben: “On both?”

  Ramsey: “Not on the video. But you can adjust —”

  I took off the headphones as Mr. Szabo came around the front of the van. We lifted the dog inside.

  “Ready?” he said.

  I handed Katherine the leash and gave her a hesitant thumbs up. She returned it. I nodded to Szabo.

  “I’ll be thirty seconds behind you.”

  I put the cans over my ears. I’d counted twelve Mississippis when I heard dunh-donh and Mr. Szabo say in a frozen razor of a voice, “I know you know who took him.”

  And everything that had been fun and unreal about the plan fell apart. I bolted for the door.

  On the tape both Ramsey and his daughter start to speak in low, placating voices, before Szabo screams, “Lying motherfuckers, tell me where he is.” And louder, “Tell me where my son is.” And even louder: “Where is he?”

  On the tape this is followed by a hard click and the tinkle of glass, and the door chimes ringing yet again. Through the door I saw Szabo clock Ramsey on the jaw as he came around the counter. Ramsey fell back, one of the cameras still in his hand. The hand with the camera smashed into the display counter.

  Szabo swung again but by that time I was through the door, behind him, and I snapped him back from Ramsey and pulled him across the room, catching the closing door with my foot as Lisa charged at him. I maneuvered Szabo out as Lisa swiped my ear and chin, drawing blood.

  Leading Szabo up the block I said, “What the shit was that?”

  “Lying motherfuckers,” he said. I spun him around to face me, saw the tears.

  “He’s going to phone the cops and we’re going to jail,” I said, which was an exaggeration of my concerns. What really went through my mind was: I’m out of business.

  After we turned the corner and were out of sight I slowed our pace. “Did you see if she planted the tape?”

  Szabo shook his head.

  We climbed into the van. Katherine was sitting on the floor, headphones on.

  “What happened?” she said, speaking louder than necessary. Wearing headphones for long periods of time has that effect.

  I shook my head and leaned over to take the phones.

  “You should get out of here, Hough, maybe take a bus or a cab.”

  “I’ll stay,” Katherine said.

  I heard Ben’s voice saying, “No, seriously, that dude was out of it. You want me to testify or anything just say the word. My uncle’s a barrister, we could sue. Do you know that guy?”

  “No,” said Lisa. “Some crazy.”

  Amelia Yeats had joined us in the van. She unplugged the phones so we could listen on the laptop’s speakers.

  “Anyway I’ll let you get cleaned up,” Ben said. I heard them buzz Ben out.

  The silence in the van mimicked the silence in the shop.

  Ben opened the side door, decided it was too crowded and sat up front. The dog had worked between the two front seats and had her snout shoved into the muffin’s waxed envelope.

  I was conscious of the breathing of every organism in the van: Katherine’s, steady on my left; Yeats’s excited and quickened as she leaned over me from the right; Szabo’s frenetic and uneven; Ben, already bored and impatient; me, all of these things; and beneath us, the leaky bellows of the dog.

  I picture them in a back room with a “Closed” sign on the front door. Ramsey’s hand has been bandaged, his body language betraying the shock of unexpected combat and trauma. Lisa paces in front of him, clicking her broken nails on the door frame. Their breathing is audible on the tape.

  “What does he know?” Lisa said.

  “What could he know?” Ramsey said. “Not everything.”

  “No, he couldn’t k
now everything.”

  There was a sound of running water and crumpled paper.

  Ramsey: “Or else —”

  Lisa: “Or else he’d call the police.”

  Ramsey: “So.”

  Lisa: “So what does he know?”

  Ramsey: “He knows about Zak.”

  Lisa: “Not for sure he doesn’t.”

  Ramsey: “He has to know something.”

  Lisa: “Say he does. What do we do?”

  Ramsey: “Do? He’s a sad old man.”

  Lisa: “He’s dangerous. That man he’s with —”

  Ramsey: “— The detective?”

  Lisa: “He’s smart. He probably set this whole thing up.”

  Ramsey: “Set up the old man punching me?”

  Lisa: “Is that so hard to imagine?”

  Ramsey: “What does he get out of him punching me?”

  Lisa: “Perhaps it scares you into talking.”

  Ramsey: “He said he already knew.”

  Lisa: “He could’ve said that to trick you into talking to him, Papa. Like, if you’re hiding money and I say I know where it’s hidden, and you look over to the bathroom where you hid it.”

  Ramsey: “Why would I hide money in the bathroom?”

  Lisa: “You see my point though.”

  Ramsey: “Dangerous.”

  Lisa: “Possible. How’s your hand?”

  Ramsey: “Fine.”

  Lisa: “How’s the camera?”

  Ramsey: “It probably needs some parts.”

  Lisa: “Not a problem.”

  Ramsey: “But who do we go to for them?”

  Lisa: “I’m sorry it was Cliff. I wish Zak had been later or earlier.”

  Ramsey: “It’s a strange and cruel world.”

  “Was that what you wanted?” Katherine asked me.

  “Don’t know.” To Szabo I said, “You know a Zak?”

  He shook his head.

  “But it’s something to go on, isn’t it?” Katherine asked me.

  “Sure,” I said. “I can take it to Fisk. How long will the battery in that bug last?”

  “A few days,” Amelia Yeats said. “But the laptop has to stay in this area.”

  I pointed through the tinted window at the Waves café across the street. “Can you get a signal from over there, least until I bring my car back?”

  “Long as you bring a charger with you.”

  “I think you all owe me an apology first,” Ben said.

  Katherine shook her head. “What on earth for?”

  “For stepping in at the last moment and selling the shit out of my part. I’ve always considered acting kind of an unworthy profession. But now I see the allure of a life in the theatre.”

  “You played a longwinded doofus who didn’t know what he was talking about,” Katherine said. “What a stretch.”

  “Some are born to tread the boards, others to hurl insults from the safety of the balcony.”

  He hadn’t meant to remind Katherine of her choice, but her mood sank. Later, once Cliff and Amelia had gone and Ben had been dropped off, and the laptop was charging off my Camry’s lighter, I leaned in the window of the Odyssey and said, “Actually worked out better this way, all things considered.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I feel like I let you down. And when I heard the fighting I thought of coming to help but —”

  “It worked out fine.”

  “How’s your ear?”

  “My —” I touched the crust of newly formed scab. “Right. Got to get some antiseptic on that.”

  “I could bring you that.”

  I shook my head. “Your day’s done. When they close shop I’m heading to the Kroons’. I’ll pick some up on the way.”

  “Night,” she said, starting the engine.

  I’d already been lucky, but I waited in the car another four hours hoping to give Zak a last name, a description, or a base of operation. All I got was a few mumbled g’nights as Ramsey and his daughter locked up and went their separate ways. Luck provides no encore.

  IX

  Near-vana

  I’d been giving the Corpse Fucker short shrift, putting in my hours but leaving all kinds of stones unturned. I made up for that in the last weeks of September. I interviewed the office staff under the guise of taking suggestions for improving security. I uncovered very little. Carrie knew about the situation, but had no idea who it could be or how they were getting in. Jag was in the dark. The dispatcher, Kurt, had only heard rumors. The Kroons were more concerned with preventing another defiling than catching the culprit. To me those seemed like the same idea.

  Spending three nights and four days on the Corpse Fucker subsidized the time I was spending on the Szabo disappearance. At least that’s how I rationalized it. I hoped that splitting myself between the two cases wasn’t adversely affecting them. It was tough to tell. Both were moving on glacial time.

  Tuesday afternoon Tish at the front desk of the Cambie Street Station told me Gavin Fisk was off that day. I looked up his home address, an apartment within walking distance of the Science World dome. I fed the meter and walked over the Cambie Street Bridge, enjoying the view of the boats and barges rocking on the choppy grey water below.

  Fisk’s apartment was a white shard of crystal jabbed into the skyline. Given his pickup and his shit-kicker persona, I’d expected a less cosmopolitan dwelling. As I rang the buzzer I wondered if he had white wall-to-wall carpeting in his flat. Maybe a tiger’s pelt draped in front of a fake fireplace.

  A woman’s voice, a familiar woman’s voice, asked who it was.

  “It’s Mike,” I said. “To see Gavin if he’s around.”

  “He’s not,” Mira said.

  “Will he be home soon?”

  “Come up and wait for him if you like.”

  She met me outside the elevator on the third floor, the door to the apartment held open with the bent-back latch. Padding down the carpet in slippers and a terrycloth robe, tendrils of hair spilling from the towel wrapped around her head. Sometimes after seeing an ex you think, Thank God I dodged that bullet. Sometimes it starts a pain in your guts because she looks so beautiful, so at peace. That wrenching of the innards is the knowledge that her happiness is predicated on not being with you. With Mira Das I felt neither, though a sex impulse reared its head as I scoped her contours through her robe. What I felt was a loss without a longing. Sometimes you reread a favorite book, particularly one you treasured when you were young. You meet the same golden characters who utter the same witty banter and jump through the same startling and pity-evoking hoops. The book’s brilliance hasn’t diminished on rereading, but you are different. You’ve moved outside the circumference of the book, and you know that as much as you may admire it, you will never recapture the feeling that the book was translating yourself to you as you read. So that even knowing it by heart, it feels strange. That was the feeling she evoked: we were beyond each other now, and contentedly so.

  We sat down on sections of a black-upholstered sofa. Only the barest of traffic noise petered through the double-glazed windows. Grey wall-to-wall Berber carpeting, scuffed enough that I didn’t feel bad leaving my shoes on.

  Mira had her hands folded in her lap. “I should have offered you something to drink.”

  “Not too late,” I said.

  “Tea? I probably have some Twinings Earl Grey.”

  “You remembered.”

  “I remember being dragged out of perfectly good restaurants that didn’t serve it. That was before you started sneaking it in.”

  “Creature of habit,” I said. “I’m less particular now. I’ve become addicted to these London Fogs — teabag, steamed milk, shot of vanilla. Each one costs half a week’s pay, but it’s worth it.”

  Mira laughed. “What else has changed?”

  “I’m learning to work with others, trust people a bit more. This is turning into a therapy session. What about you? You moved in with Fisk?” I didn’t mean it to come out as a
question.

  “I moved in in August, after months of debate.”

  “He didn’t want you to? I’m sure he had great excuses. ‘Y’know, darling, for two people to really appreciate each other they need space.’”

  “Actually I was on the fence,” she said. “Gavin wanted me in from the start.”

  “So why’d you cave?”

  “I didn’t ‘cave,’ I decided. Why would I have to cave?”

  “Because you’re not in love with him and he’s not in love with you.”

  We heard the click of the plastic kettle shutting off. She brought the teapot in, set it on the glass coffee table. “You were saying?” she said.

  “You’re too smart to consider him an equal and he’s too much of a cunt hound to settle on one woman.”

  “You’re still a prick,” she said, her childhood in London evident in her voice.

  “You asked. Two fuck buddies want to delude themselves they’ve found true love, that’s their business.”

  “How’s your love life, Michael?” she asked.

  “Arrested,” I said. “I mean, there’s someone.”

  “Which is it?” Enjoying watching me squirm.

  “Well, we’re friendly. She’s rich and gorgeous and self-employed and talented as hell. And I get the feeling she’s into me. But every so often I get a look from her like she’s Queen Elizabeth and I’m standing in her throne room wearing a coxcomb.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Yeats. Amelia.”

  “The producer?” Mira stood up and walked to the large maple bookcase on the far wall, the one I’d built for her that matched the two in my bedroom. She reached to the top shelf and pulled down a CD by some B.C. band. How could I tell they were Canadians, let alone from British Columbia? In the cover photo of the band, the kick drum head was painted as a Canadian flag, green bars instead of red, a cannabis leaf substituted for the maple. Only an alt-rock band from Vancouver would find that clever enough for an album cover.

  The blurb at the bottom of the back of the CD read: “Tracks 1, 5, and 7 (*) produced by Bob Rock. All other tracks produced by Amelia Yates. Mixed and Mastered at Enola Curious Studios, Vancouver.”

  “Won a Juno last year,” Mira said, her voice losing the accent. “I watched the show. I think she had a boyfriend.”