by Sam Wiebe
“Could be,” I said. “Didn’t stop you from trading down.”
The door rattled and Gavin Fisk walked in, carrying two cloth bags full of groceries. He wore track pants and an MMA T-shirt with silkscreened images of barbed wire and diamond plating. He nodded at me, stepped over to Mira for a peck on the cheek.
“Beverly Hills Buntz,” he said. “Returning that Jeff Buckley CD?”
“Came to talk to you about the Szabo case.”
He put the groceries on the counter of the kitchenette. “Want to start dinner?” he said to Mira. She nodded and began unpacking cauliflower and jasmine-scented rice, as if a soundproof wall had sprung up between them.
“You know the dad phoned me out of the blue to apologize?” Fisk said, flopping onto the couch.
“He’s a good guy.”
“You put him up to it.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t make much of a difference.”
“Did you come across anyone named Zak? Maybe connected to the Ramseys and Imperial Pawn?”
To his credit he thought it over. “Can’t say I did because I didn’t. Why?”
“I heard the Ramseys mention him.”
“In connection to the kidnapping? How’d you work that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
He grinned. “Mr. Right and Wrong is beating confessions out of people now?”
“Only a cop thinks ‘right’ and ‘lawful’ are synonyms.”
“Which you’re not anymore.”
“Will you ask about Zak? Maybe run the name through CPIC, see if anyone with that name has a sheet with car thefts or kidnappings?”
“It’s not exactly lawful — or right — to run searches for civilians,” Fisk said.
“Not like you can’t find an excuse.”
“But I don’t have a motive.”
“Solve a case that’s still on the books? Reunite a kid with his father? What do you want, a kickback?” I poured three dollars in quarters, leftovers from the meter, onto the coffee table. It was the wrong thing to do.
“What I’d like from you, first off, is a bit of fucking respect. We’re not co-workers, Mike. You’re not on the job anymore. Maybe you haven’t clued in to that. If you were in my place — and you know this, Mike — and some pain-in-the-ass amateur approached you with a first name and he’s in no hurry to tell you how he got that name, you wouldn’t hop to it like you expect me to.” He mock saluted. “Yes, sir, Mr. Private Citizen, sir. Thanks for enlightening me how to do my job. By the way, you want to tell me how to take a shit, too?”
“Just treat it like a tip. If a stranger came to you with the name Zak —”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Go fuck yourself, Gavin.”
We stood up. He gave me a “you-want-some-of-this” stare. I stepped past him towards the door, our shoulders grazing. I looked at Mira in the kitchen, chopping cauliflower to make aloo gobhi. I left them to each other.
Saturday afternoon I laid things out for Cliff Szabo.
“My guess is that Zak is primarily a car thief. I don’t have too many contacts in that world, so if you know anyone who runs a chop shop or fences cars or car parts, I could use a steer in their direction.”
“I’ll find someone,” Szabo said.
Before he left he put fifty four dollars on the table and apologized. It had been a slow week.
The night of Friday the 24th: no Corpse Fucker.
The night of Saturday the 25th: no Corpse Fucker.
The night of Sunday the 26th: no Corpse Fucker.
Tuesday night I met Amelia Yeats at the Commodore for her friend’s concert only to lose her in the multitude for two hours. I stood at the bar and drank exorbitantly priced Jack Daniels. I was handing over my tag to the girl at the coat check when Yeats tapped my shoulder, asked me how it was.
“Good. Tribute bands weird me out a bit, but at least they were more about the songs than just looking like the musicians.” No worry that her friend’s band would fall into that category: while “Near-vana: a Tribute to Kurt Cobain” boasted a guitar/vocalist with the appropriate dirty blond hair and red-and-black horizontally striped sweatshirt, the rest of the band included a five-foot tall female Krist Novoselic and a Samoan Dave Grohl. “It was nice to hear ‘Down in the Dark.’”
“Wasn’t it? Zoltan has a decent voice, but he’s a stellar guitar player. I keep telling him to get some originals together, maybe get another singer. He’s more comfortable, I guess, doing Cobain than himself.”
We crossed Granville to the Mega-Bite, found a table, ate potato pizza off of paper plates.
“So is he your boyfriend?”
“Zoltan?” She wiped her mouth demurely. “Not since forever. Why?”
“Why do you think?”
She shrugged, smiled. I leaned over and kissed her. Hot sauce, potato, cigarettes, rum.
“My ex says she saw you at some awards show,” I said after some silence.
“Your ex. She leave you or you leave her?”
“I moved out. She moved on.”
“What’d you do, cheat on her?”
“Lost myself in work. Missing child. Ben’s sister, actually. Cynthia Loeb.”
“You ever find her?”
I shook my head. The demons that the night off had dispelled crowded around, demanding entry. I willed myself to enjoy the moment.
“No leads?” Yeats said. “No hunches?”
“All likelihood she’s dead,” I said. “But I can’t tell them that.”
“You lie to them?”
“Never. But her mom won’t hear it and her brother doesn’t need to.”
“Horrible.”
“Yeah. And here we are eating pizza.”
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “Just that nothing stops on account of tragedy. I still have to get up every day, make tea, walk the dog, earn some money. So does Mrs. Loeb. And Cliff Szabo. You try to remain vigilant, but most days there’s nothing you can do. You can’t make the kid materialize out of thin air. The hard thing is getting accustomed to your own uselessness.” I finished my pizza and balled up a napkin with my fist.
“So why do it?”
“I have some bad tendencies that come out when I work for other people, or when I’m not working at all. This way I’m always busy and I have a measure of control.”
“It’s the same with me,” Yeats said. “If I can’t tell the people I’m working with to fuck off I go nuts. Not that I want to tell them that, just that I want the ability to tell them that.”
“To disengage. At your discretion.”
“Right.”
“Come back with me,” I said.
“Can’t tonight. I have to mix Zoltan’s demo for some contest he’s entering. How about Friday?”
“Working. Monday?”
“Let’s leave it open,” she said.
Thursday afternoon Cliff Szabo told me to meet him outside a body shop on Kingsway. A Vietnamese man shook Cliff’s hand and led us into a back room, where a half-dozen men in smocks were disassembling a Cabriolet. I spent a couple minutes with each one, heard a similar smattering of evasions, non-answers, and lies. Outside the shop I said to Szabo, “How do you do business with them?”
His answer: “Their English is better when money is involved.”
The night of Friday, October 2nd: no Corpse Fucker.
The night of Saturday, October 3rd: no Corpse Fucker.
The night of Sunday, October 4th: no Corpse Fucker.
I’d started to bring my dog to the office in order to keep her out of my grandmother’s way. On dry days she’d lie on the balcony, letting out the odd disgruntled woof at passersby.
Katherine was spending more time at the office, studying in the evenings for her midterms at the end of October. I saw less of Ben, who would stop in, try to goad one of us into an argument and finding no takers, announce that he was heading to the Comic Shop or Golden Age Collectibles for intellectual stimulation. Awar
e that even this last comment was his way of starting an argument, we ignored him. For Ben, after the high of the bug planting, lingering in an office watching two people write emails to other people in other offices was a letdown. Part of me agreed with him.
I’d become embroiled in a minor legal dispute with a private school in New Westminster. The principal had hired me to ascertain whether or not one of their Social Studies teachers was a pedophile, after an unfounded rumor about a locker room peep show reached some concerned parents. After two weeks of stakeouts I’d concluded that he wasn’t a pedophile, at least not a practicing one. His taste in porn ran to the exotic but legal; I found this out by staring into his apartment window three straight balmy days in July. I could see the back of his head and the monitor of his computer through the bedroom window, while in the living room his wife watched the daytime soaps she’d recorded earlier in the day.
The principal was relieved, said the check would be mailed after the mandatory two-week processing period. Mid-September I received a sheaf of paperwork, including an employee records form, federal and provincial tax sheets, two workplace safety checklists which I had to sign after reading the accompanying booklet, a direct deposit form, a questionnaire about my marital status and whether or not I smoked, and a release for a background check. I wondered who they’d hire for that. Even though I don’t have a home computer, I was glad my bedroom had no windows that looked out on the street.
I’d made Katherine fill out all that crap and run interference when they phoned to get a photocopy of my driver’s license and SIN card. The afternoon of Wednesday the 7th, I’d just finished dashing off a “More-in-sorrow-than-in-anger” type missive informing them that if I didn’t have the three grand and change on my table, in cash, by Hallowe’en, I’d take them to court, when Katherine told me someone was coming up the stairs.
I didn’t need to look at the security monitor to know who it was. The dog jumped up with more verve than she’d mustered in the last two weeks. She was sniffing at the office door when Mira Das opened it. Not even in the room yet, Mira squatted down and accepted a lick on the face.
“Missed you too, Babe,” she said. Looking up at me she said, “How’s she doing?”
“Better for seeing you.” I stood and introduced her to Katherine. “Constable Mira Das of the VPD. Katherine Hough.”
“Pleasure,” Mira said.
“Same,” Katherine said. She picked her coat off the balcony. “I’ll go get lunch, let you two talk. Want anything from the sushi place?”
“I’m not picky. Improvise.”
When she was gone Mira settled into one of the clients’ chairs. “The last time I was in here you didn’t have furniture. Or a secretary.”
“She’s more of a junior partner than a secretary,” I said. “Hildy Johnson to my Walter Burns. As for the furniture, it’s getting better. Although part of me kind of liked that ramshackle look.”
“You need a piece of art for the wall behind you,” she said. “Or a fish tank.”
“How about a great big tactical map with colour-coded pushpins?”
“Lovely.”
The dog leapt onto Mira’s lap and nuzzled her neck.
“I have something for you,” Mira said, producing a creased piece of paper from one of the pockets of her uniform. She pushed it across the table to me.
Unfolded, the type read:
Zachary (Zak, Zack) Atero
5’7” Caucasian
Brown and Brown
Tattoos: ‘Shawna,’ left bicep. ‘Devo,’ right wrist.
Prior arrests for controlled substances, vandalism, vehicular theft.
No current record of employment.
Last Known Address: 412 Crookback Drive, Edmonton, Alberta
Sibling, Theodore (Theo) Atero, lives on West 60th
“Just don’t tell anyone you got it from me,” she said. “Especially Gavin.”
“Won’t leave the room,” I said. “Thank you.”
As I moved to take my place behind the table, she stood and kissed the dog one last time before heading to the door. “Take care of him,” she said to the dog. To me she said: “Behave yourself.”
X
The Impossible Case
Often the trouble isn’t a lack of evidence but a deluge. If you post ten sentences a year online, in forums or on social networking sites, FAQs or blogs, you’ve left ten clues to your location, personality, activities and mindset. And how many people post ten times that much over the course of a day?
Zak Atero wasn’t a particularly garrulous net user, but he’d kept an online journal for a few years. That led me to an automobile message board he frequented, though all of his posts were at least two years old. His forum responses ranged from “UR A FAG” to detailed, considerate advice on repairing the fiberglass bodies of vintage Corvettes. Sometimes in his posts he would give himself credentials he didn’t have, in order to make his opinions seem more authoritative. Once, after another poster claimed to have worked on the Sunfire, Zak claimed to have met with Ford officials and offered them “tens of suggestions” which the company used in designing the new Mustang.
Getting into Zak Atero’s social sphere was slightly more complicated. Hastings Street Investigations employs two fictional people for the purposes of making friends with strangers. Ned Freen and Melissa Abandando don’t exist, but through them Katherine and I can find information denied to our real selves. As Melissa, Katherine friended two of Zak’s former high school buddies. One of them had configured Zak’s posts to appear as updates on the friend’s side. By scrolling back a few years, Katherine could view Zak’s most popular comments without being authorized. I would struggle to think of something like that, which is why I keep my own internet profile almost nonexistent. For Katherine it came instinctually.
After reading through his journal, I knew seven important things about Atero. I wrote them down in a list:
Atero:
Is passionate about cars and very little else. His father was a mechanic and his brother shares his passion.
Moved from Alberta to B.C. about the time he’d stopped posting to be close to his brother and to get better drugs.
Went through a string of jobs in Alberta, quitting for various reasons: the manager was a dick, his co-workers accused him of stealing gratuities, the muffler shop wouldn’t give him a week off to go to a car meet.
Lives with his brother now.
Does something illegal for money. While he didn’t talk about it, he wrote an awful lot about how he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.
Was responsible for the death of a woman when he was nineteen. According to his journal, it was entirely her fault. Zak was obeying the signs, and actually under the speed limit. She was walking along the shoulder, a grey mass in his peripheral vision. Her feet strayed over the line. The accident left him “bummed.”
Had asthma as a kid. In recent pictures he looked thin-chested, furtive, utterly unobtrusive. He’d never go for your throat, but he wouldn’t forgive an insult, either.
Before I braced Atero I wanted to know him well enough to predict him. That meant finding and following him. Easy enough, though Atero’s schedule clashed absolutely with mine. Except for weekends when I was stationed in the Kroons’ building waiting for the Corpse Fucker, I was usually in bed by midnight and at the office by eight. Atero woke up between one and three in the afternoon and usually went to bed after sunrise. Disrupting my sleep schedule is part of what I get paid for — except of course I wasn’t getting paid. Cliff Szabo’s tithes would barely cover Katherine’s salary.
Financially, then, the Kroons were subsidizing the Szabo case. I had other means of making money if I needed it. Odd jobs came up, favors for out-of-province lawyers and PIs. If my finances were dire, and they tended to reach that point at least once a year, I could subcontract to a security firm. The pay was shit, the hours long, the uniform itchy and confining and as fashionable as clown shoes, but it allowed me to keep the business going.
That was everything.
Thomas Kroon the Younger came to the office around noon on Friday. I was dialing Ben to see if he wanted to tag along while I followed Atero, but his phone went straight to message. I’d tried him twice so far.
Kroon sat down in one of the client’s chairs, thankful he didn’t have to balance on the old bench. “Place looks better,” he said. “A comfy chair makes all the difference.”
“How’s your father?” I asked him.
“Sick with the sniffles, though if you talked to him he’d make you think it was dengue fever. How ’bout your associate with the weak stomach?”
“Not answering his phone,” I said, hanging up.
“Anyway, Mike, I won’t take up too much of your time, but I do got to let you know there’s a financial situation at the home.”
“Is there?”
He nodded his reddish-brown square of a head. “’Fraid so. Lease on our facility has been renegotiated. It’s costing us a couple more points. Nothing drastic, understand, but it makes it hard to justify certain expenses.”
“I see.”
“We’re not talking about termination, just putting an end date in place. An exit strategy, if you will.”
“Sort of like our neighbours to the south and their Middle Eastern adventure.”
Kroon shrugged. “Pop thinks you do a hell of a job. I’m right there with him. But the Corpse Humper seems to have vamoosed, making you standing guard a bit redundant.”
“I see.”
“So let’s scale things back to Saturdays and Sundays, and let’s say at the end of the month we call the game.”
“Reasonable,” I said.
“You disagree?”
“With the scaling back? No. What I object to is giving the Corpse Fucker — Humper, whatever you want to call him — a pass. My other associate, Katherine, almost insisted the police be involved. I was content to keep them out knowing that, if pursued long enough, eventually we’d put an end to the incidents.”