Last of the Independents

by Sam Wiebe

  As I lay down on the wood planks of the corner booth, I explained to Ben the reasoning behind what I’d just done. I found it made as much sense to him as it did to me upon hearing myself say it, namely, no sense at all. I attributed this to the coke and painkillers and bourbon and beer, and the half-dozen rounds of Bushmill’s and Harp chasers we were in the process of putting away.

  I find that when I drink there’s a movement to jettison things which may, when sober, prove necessary, but under the influence seem more trouble than they’re worth. No girlfriend? No girlfriend problems. Simple as that. A drunk can justify a lot of bad decisions that way. Maybe a few days out of the year that’s good. When you start repeating that logic sober, though, you know you’re in trouble.

  Doolin’s had the darkness and warmth of a traditional public house in the old country, or at least a humble Vancouverite’s idea of what that might be like. I’ve never been to Ireland. I’ve never been anywhere. I was in Toronto once, for two weeks, on business. I was in no hurry to go back. I found myself repeating this out loud as Ben tried to unravel the chronology of my fight with Yeats.

  “You tried to confront her drug use by snorting half her coke?”

  “It wasn’t nearly that much,” I said. “I spilled most of it.”

  I heard Ben slam his empty shotglass on the bar. He had showed up dressed head to toe in black, head shaved completely, a copy of From Ritual to Romance crammed into his pocket. I’d been trying to figure out what his costume was, but after lying on my back for twenty minutes trying to will the ceiling not to spin, I was no longer sure what he was wearing. I sat up just to check.

  “My heart’s still racing,” I said.

  “I guess that would be the cocaine.”

  “You’ve never tried it?”

  “A couple times in high school,” he said. “Problem is, I’m fat and I like to eat, and that’s not likely to change. If all those Saturday Night Live deaths taught us anything, it’s that you can be fat or you can do coke, but you can’t have both.”

  “Was John Candy a sniffer?”

  “He was Second City,” Ben said.

  I downed the whiskey, killed the last of the Harp. At the bar the crowd segued from “Fields of Athenry” to “Rocky Road to Dublin.” I banged my hand on the table in tempo.

  “I should get a shillelagh and wallop the shit out of him,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Theo Atero. Who else was I talking about?”

  “You haven’t mentioned him all night,” Ben said.

  “So what was I talking about?”

  “Amelia Yeats.”

  “Right,” I said. “Anyway, I guess that’s over.”

  “From the sound of things.”

  “I was looking forward to getting laid tonight.”

  “Probably shouldn’t’ve pissed her off then.”

  “Not that that’s the only reason I wanted to see her.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m serious.”

  From the bar, a crescendo of voices.

  “Katherine thinks I’m in love.”

  “With her?”

  “With Yeats.”

  “Ever consider she might be in love with you?”

  “Yeats?”

  “Katherine.”

  “She seems happy with her boyfriend.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Though I don’t know why. He really is a dullard.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Want to go for a walk?”

  “I’ll settle up,” Ben said.

  We walked down to West Georgia, past the bank and credit card towers, to a row of three-storey office buildings with glass storefronts and canopied staircases. I knew the block I wanted but not the suite number, only that it was on the second floor and accessible by an outside staircase, just like my own office.

  “Hamlet in chemotherapy,” I guessed as I checked the office directory posted outside the main entrance.

  “My costume, you mean? Guess again.”

  “Yul Brynner?”

  “Kurtz,” he said testily. “Brando? How could you not get that?”

  “I sort of see it now,” I said.

  “Did you know Orson Welles almost made Heart of Darkness instead of Citizen Kane?”

  “What does that have to do with your costume?”

  “Nothing,” Ben said.

  On the side entrance I found the Aries Investigations logo stenciled on the door. The stairwell light inside was off. I unzipped my fly and hosed the door down.

  “Real mature,” Ben said.

  I shook out the last drops and zipped up. “Guy’s an asshole,” I said.

  “The handle’s steaming.”

  “Someone’s going to have to touch that,” I said.

  “Gross.”

  “Let’s do some more drinking.”

  “That’ll solve everything,” Ben said.

  As we walked back across Burrard the Night Bus let off its passengers. Two figures in black headed down towards the waterfront. I recognized one of them.

  “Katherine,” I said.

  She turned. She was wearing a leather bustier, fishnets on her arms, a streak of red in her hair. Thick makeup, black and crimson over white, a pincushion’s worth of piercings. Her companion I eventually recognized as Scott, wearing combat boots and goggles and a KMFDM hoodie drawn tight around his head.

  “Jesus, you’re drunk,” she said.

  “Happy Hallowe’en. Is this a costume or are you a goth?”

  Underneath the corpse paint I saw her blush. “We’re on our way to a club.”

  “We’ve got nothing better to do,” I said, indicating Ben and myself. “Does this club serve booze?”

  “It’s kind of a private party,” she said.

  “Whatever. So you dress like this when you’re not at work or school?”

  Katherine looked embarrassed but didn’t deny it.

  “You know it wouldn’t bother me, you showing up for work like that. The dress code is lax at Hastings Street Investigations. I mean it.”

  “Okay.” Doubtful. “See you tomorrow. Happy Hallowe’en.”

  Scott nodded to us in turn. “Later.”

  “Enjoy your vampire romance,” Ben said. “Have a glass of watered-down, de-wormwooded absinthe for me.”

  “Fuck you,” Scott called back to him, his voice cracking.

  “Kindergoths are so easy to wind up,” Ben said as we made our way back toward Doolin’s.

  “My cousin went through that,” I said. “Least they’re not Nickelback fans.”

  “There’s that,” Ben admitted.

  Through sheer luck I maneuvered my car from the parkade on Granville to the parking spot behind my office. Ben and I split a cab from there. I had the cabbie drop me on Oak, figuring the walk would either sober me up or tire me out. It accomplished both.

  The jack-o-lantern on my grandmother’s porch had collapsed in on itself, extinguishing the candle. The air around the porch smelled of burnt pumpkin. I was happy to see the new porch light snap on as I approached. The old girl had figured it out.

  Inside I poured myself a glass of water, then another, and another. I took my shoes off and moved into the living room. Something rustled on the couch and I dropped my empty glass on the rug. Atero, I thought, here to return the favor.

  Amelia Yeats sat up on the couch and threw off the Hudson’s Bay point blanket that my grandmother liked to offer guests. She was wearing one of my shirts. It looked better on her. She put her thumb and index finger into her mouth and pulled something out which she placed in a pink case on the lampstand.

  “I wear a retainer,” she said, somewhat embarrassed. “Feel like watching television?”

  “Should we maybe talk?”

  “It can wait for the morning.”

  I sat down next to her. She clicked through a few late-night movie stations, eventually settling on Defending Your Life. As we watched she leaned on my shoulder, moving down to rest he
r head on my lap. And then I was struggling out of my underwear as she took my cock in her mouth. When release came I pinned her beneath me on the couch and kissed down her torso till my tongue settled on the thatch of coarse hair and licked into the slit beneath it. Later, when the credits rolled and the movie started up again, so did we, finding a sweet rhythm beneath the rough wool of the blanket, sliding the cushions off the couch and finishing on the floor, with the only sound in the house our breath and blood.

  It was jealousy, I told her. She said that Max and the others were friends and not even really that. Not sexual jealousy, I said. What other kind is there?

  I told her I’d read a book once on the psychology of police officers. One of the reasons they tended to bend the law was a feeling of responsibility for things they couldn’t possibly be responsible for. Justice weighs heavily on some people. They feel the entire city depends on them. They’re aware of how flawed the system is and they can’t change it, so they try to work around it.

  She said, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t want to be responsible anymore,” I said. “I want to not care. People who don’t give a shit about justice or about other people live happier lives. I’ve always felt that way. I see it on their faces.”

  “You think I’m like that?”

  I told her I didn’t know.

  “Maybe that’s true,” she said. “I care about art. More than anything.”

  “It makes you happy?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “What made you quit being a police officer?”

  “I don’t think I ever did.”

  “But why’d you resign?”

  “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  “It’s morning now,” she said.

  XXI

  The Flight of the Wild Atero

  I woke to the chirping of the house phone. I sat up. Yeats wasn’t next to me. I was alone.

  The clock read 11:37 a.m. The phone’s ringing became a high-pitched jackhammer ripping up pavement in my frontal lobe.

  I groped the floor, found my pants, found the phone and flipped it open.

  Gavin Fisk’s voice. “You forget you me and Cliff had an appointment?”

  “Personal situation,” I said, sitting up. My head throbbed and my stomach felt as if one of H.R. Giger’s abominations had crawled inside to devour its young. “Start without me, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Believe me I’d like to start without you. I’d like to be done by now. Only Szabo says he wants to talk to you before he’ll talk to me. That better not be the sound of you getting out of bed, Mike.”

  “Ten minutes,” I said.

  It took me twenty-two minutes to wash and call for a cab and make the trip to the station. Fisk and Szabo stood by the door of the station in the light rain holding takeaway coffee cups.

  Fisk banged a finger on his watch. I held up a finger in return.

  “Minute with my client first,” I said, leading Cliff to the crosswalk.

  “We were waiting,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

  “You look hungover.”

  “I am a bit.”

  “This is how you look for my son?”

  “I’m sorry I was late,” I reiterated. “I do have other cases, not to mention a life. And anyway, there’s not much I can do till the police are finished. I know that’s not pretty to hear, but it’s a fact.”

  He shook his head, more hurt than angry. He spotted the cast on my arm. His temper cooled long enough for me to tell him about the Ateros, the tape, and the vacant apartment.

  “These girls might have Django?” he said, his anger and mistrust directed away from me.

  “Seems like.”

  “Why does Theo Atero want to hurt you if his brother doesn’t have my son?”

  “Family honour, I guess, which is stupid when you consider the family.”

  Szabo deposited his coffee cup in the first bin we passed. “He lends money, Theo. A shylock. He has connections.”

  “I’ll watch out,” I said.

  We ran out of awning and turned back towards Fisk. Szabo popped an antacid tablet. “Constable Fisk is going to the Island?” he said.

  “On Monday, yes.”

  “You’ll go with him?”

  “Tell him you think I should,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  “My sister is sick,” he said. “She needs me. Otherwise I’d go. But I trust you.”

  “It’s important to me you do,” I said, thinking it was better he wasn’t coming with us. “And I am sorry I was late.”

  Fisk was on his phone. As we crossed the street he looked up, saw us, and said so I could hear, “He just came back. Want me to tell him?” He waited for instructions, then held out the cell for me. “Mira,” he said. “Your car — I’ll let her tell it.”

  “Mike,” she said. Beside me Szabo and Fisk were conferring. “Mike, listen. Did you park at your office last night?”

  “Yeah. Spent the night out, decided to park it there so I wouldn’t do anything stupid like drive under the influence. Why, I get a ticket? I didn’t leave it unlocked, did I?”

  “Your car’s been vandalized, Mike.”

  “How bad?”

  “It looks like it was stripped for parts and then set on fire. Mark Eager is the constable in charge. He’ll want to ask you about the Ateros.”

  “I’ll make time for him.” I’d never heard of Eager, but then I was out of the loop. Life seemed determined to push me ever further from my former job.

  I had no doubt this was the work of the Ateros: trust the sons of a mechanic to strip parts from a car before torching it. I’d half-closed the deal with Chet Yates for the van. Now that would have to be fast-tracked, the van Air Cared and insured. Then there was the process of filling out an insurance form for the value of the Camry. Luckily my cameras and gear were in the office waiting for someone to catalogue and store the footage from the mortuary. I was out an overnight bag full of clothing and half a box of granola bars. Acceptable losses.

  I passed the phone back to Fisk, whose expression had soured since beginning his talk with Szabo. He said, nodding at Szabo but looking at me, “You put your client up to asking that?”

  “About me coming with you to the Island?” I shook my head. “His idea entirely.”

  Fisk poured his cold coffee into the gutter. “Not only do I get to deal with some local RCMP clown, but I get to hang with a half-assed private eye too. Lucky fucking me.”

  “You have an ability to bring people together, Gavin. Embrace it.”

  The major casualty of the fire was the Camry’s leather interior. The contents of the trunk were undisturbed, save for the permeating smell of gasoline. The hood had been forced up with a crowbar and left propped open. The catalytic converter, the distributor pad, and a few other easy-to-carry parts were gone. Eager had canvassed the neighbourhood. No one had seen anything. I answered his questions but didn’t elaborate on the Atero brothers.

  Once the car had been towed and Eager placated, I hiked up to my office, made tea and flipped through the mail. From the small balcony I couldn’t see around the corner of the building where the car had burned. I could, however, see the front window of Grayson’s Diner. If a person wanted to watch both the car and office, the front window of that greasy spoon offered the best vantage.

  The sun was positioned such that I couldn’t see through the window of Grayson’s on account of the glare. The Ateros could have been inside, could still be there. I locked up the office and crossed the street to find out.

  A few sallow-faced patrons sat on mismatched chairs, eating and looking over the racing forms. I reckoned most of them were dealing with hangovers at least as severe as mine. Grayson stood with his back to the register, wearing a grimy smock over a brown polo shirt with loose threads hanging from the sleeves. He fed carrots into a food processor which coughed the shredded remains into a bowl al
ready filled with cabbage.

  “The private eye from across the way,” he said, catching sight of me. “Used to come here when you first moved in. Not so much after that.”

  “I brown bag it most days,” I said. The menu was written out on a whiteboard hung over the prep counter. “Have anything that will cure a hangover?”

  Grayson brought a tub of mayonnaise from beneath the counter and began stripping the plastic seal around the lid. “If I did I’d own franchises,” he said, slopping two spoonfuls of mayo into the bowl and tossing the contents, the sailor girl on his bicep contorting as he worked the spoon through the mixture.

  I waited until he was done to put in my order. “Grilled cheese and a Coke. Seen two guys in here, both white, brown hair and eyes, one about twenty-eight, lanky and fidgety, the other late thirties, stockier, balding?”

  “Were they both maybe wearing T-shirts and jeans?” Grayson asked. He opened a package of brown bread and buttered two slices with a spatula. “Because that would describe three-quarters of my clientele.”

  “They probably would’ve been in late last night, around the time of the fire.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Mild curiosity on his face as he peeled a slice of American cheese, stuck it between the bread and dropped the sandwich onto the grill. “Was the younger one kind of pale? Druggy sort of look to him, like all he wants to do is score, and it’s the bald guy keeping him from it?”

  “Those are them.”

  Grayson scraped at a spot on the grill. He took a paper plate from the stack and added a scoop of fresh slaw and a quarter of a dill pickle.

  “Younger one had a milkshake. Bald guy ordered a bacon cheddar. Threw a fit when I told him we don’t serve fries past midnight. I told him the deep fryers are off at 11:30, says so on the board.” Indeed it did.

  “So they were in after twelve?”

  “Squeezed in at 1:20,” he said. “Left at 1:40, ten minutes past closed.” I handed him a five dollar bill. He began to make change. I shook my head.

  “Don’t know what it is about me,” he said, “but I’ve started to lose my nerve. Probably on account of having my balls beat off last year by a couple of crackheads.”