by Sam Wiebe
“Why take him in the first place then?”
“So what happened here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something bad, probably.”
“I don’t know, Gavin.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt as I stopped. “I don’t like this place,” he reiterated.
The ground was puddled and uneven. Delgado walked us toward the barn. “Anything in there?” Fisk asked, pointing at the house.
“Cleared, emptied and sealed up, just the way it was after Lester passed.”
“But you guys unsealed it and looked inside.” Fisk had stopped moving.
“Of course,” Delgado said.
“Nothing tampered with?”
“Nope.”
“No secret rooms or nothing?”
“There’s a salt cellar.”
“And what was in there?”
“Salt.”
Delgado led us to the open mouth of the shed. The aluminum frame had been fastened onto a concrete slab using industrial screws. An array of shovels, axes, trowels, hoes, rakes, shears and machetes littered the ground by the right side, along with some larger tools including Delgado’s borrowed cement mixer, bricks, pottery and other flotsam.
“You print these?” I asked him.
Delgado shook his head. “Don’t see the point. I mean, some of my own prints would be on there.”
“The point, Willie,” Fisk said, “is that the car got in the shed somehow. Meaning whoever put the car in the shed took the crap out of the shed and dumped it here.”
“Don’t take a tone with me,” Delgado said. “Beth believes this to be a suicide.”
“Prosper’s Point must have a different definition of the term,” Fisk said, “’cause in Vancouver suicides don’t padlock themselves in sheds after they off themselves.”
“Easy,” I said to Fisk, and turned to Delgado. “My colleague’s concern is that we simply don’t know all the details at this point. Given that, it makes sense to treat this like a potential crime scene. Which I’m sure you’ve done.”
Delgado directed a pained look at Fisk. “As to the padlocking,” he said, taking a sudden interest in his shoelaces, “I couldn’t be sure someone from around here didn’t see the padlock on the ground and lock the shed to prevent vandalism.”
“Reasonable,” I said, thinking just the opposite and wondering what Fisk was making of this. I hoped he wouldn’t share his thoughts and make an enemy out of Sgt. Delgado. To his credit, Fisk kept dumb.
“To be perfectly honest,” Delgado said, “I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t me who saw the car and put that padlock on. My thinking being that since the house wasn’t disturbed, one of the new owners might have intended to lock the car in the shed and forgot. The lock was in its original packaging but the keys had been removed.”
“Did you at least run the plates?” Fisk asked.
“I certainly did, when I came back the second time, after your call.”
“Unbelievable,” Fisk said. “I’m gonna check the house.”
Once Fisk had removed the planks from the side door and entered, Delgado said to me, “Your — colleague? — could stand with a refresher course in getting along with people.”
The autopsy wasn’t finished by the time we returned to the centre of town. Delgado invited us for drinks and grub at Ace’s. We settled our gear into adjoining rooms in the Country Cabin. My room had a stale smell to it. An old-style TV with knobs and dials, a phone, a painting of grouse above the headboard. I unpacked my clothing and appliances, plugged in the cellphone charger. In the bedstand drawer, instead of a bible, was a chapbook of inspirational poems from local authors.
I phoned Katherine. She gave me the number in Iceland I’d asked for. She also told me about someone who’d phoned the office.
“Loretta Dearborn.”
“Don’t know her,” I said. “Potential client?”
“She phoned about the missing child.”
“The Loeb case or the Szabo case?”
“Didn’t specify.”
“Could you find out for me?”
“I’ll give you her number, Mike, but I meant what I said.”
“About?”
“About not working for you anymore.”
“For the next day or so, till I get back to the office and can sort things out, could you please check into it? Think of it like you’re helping a missing child.”
“You’re a manipulative prick.”
“Any sightings of the Ateros?”
“No, it’s been quiet.”
“Stay away from the office. Just use the answering service. If Loretta wants to meet, suggest a neutral, public place, coffee shop or the like. Any trouble get in touch with Mira Das.”
“Look both ways before you cross the street, I got it. Enjoy your vacation.”
“Kiss my ass.”
I cleared off the student’s desk that stood in the corner of the room and set up my kettle and grill. I lay down on the bed. My cast itched. I wondered what time it was in Reykjavik.
I’d dozed off on the bed with my shoes and coat still on. Fisk woke me when he opened the adjoining door. He looked over at the steaming kettle on the desk. “Planning on moving here?”
I sat up. He unplugged the kettle for me and looked at the other appliance. “That a George Foreman?”
“I was planning on walking down to the Overwaitea and buying the makings for grilled cheese,” I said.
Fisk had a beer in his hand. “I thought we’d try out the famous Prosper’s Point cuisine.”
“I don’t have money for that, and I can’t stomach fast food more than once a day. You go ahead, I’ll meet you back here later.”
Fisk would have none of it. “I think I can put a couple of steak dinners on my expense account,” he said. “Don’t make me drink with Delgado alone.”
Ace’s had Molson and Bud on special. I forget what we ordered. By the second pitcher all was right between Gavin and Willie. They’d moved on to first names and were sharing war stories. We all ordered T-Bone steaks with fries. The two of them argued over who would pick up the check.
The autopsy had confirmed Dr. Boone’s speculation: asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide poisoning, though she was waiting for test results on the carboxyhemoglobin-to- hemoglobin ratio in the dead woman’s blood. No bruises on her body or any signs to suggest she’d been coerced. Moles on her left breast and both arms, a tattoo on her lower back of a butterfly, scars on her knees and hip. Dr. Boone wasn’t ready to pronounce a definitive time-of-death, but she told Delgado that mid-June probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
Fisk made a call from the payphone and came back having verified that Barbara Della Costa had a butterfly tattoo on her back. “Not that that clinches it,” he said. We were all drinking from pitchers now. “You couldn’t pick a more common tramp stamp.”
“Almost as clichéd as barbed wire around the bicep,” I said, knowing Fisk had that tattoo.
“Hey,” Delgado said, as if about to broach a subject he’d given some thought to. “Either of you ever seen a pussy with rings and stuff in it? That common in the city?”
“Ask Mike about his cock piercings,” Fisk said. He found this hilarious, almost falling off his chair.
“Is he serious?”
“No,” I said, “he was born without a sense of humour. It’s a side effect of being an investigative genius.”
“I just don’t understand why a person would put shrapnel in their privates,” Delgado said, in what sounded like a punchline cribbed from a bad standup act.
“High self-esteem,” Fisk said. “First girl I ever ate out had six piercings, including one in her clit. And I —” He laughed, unable to finish his sentence “— had braces.”
A country band set up, bringing with them a small crowd. When Delgado left the bar for a smoke, I followed him out.
“Which way is the Palatial?” I asked him.
“Left to Third Avenue and down a piece,
” he said. “Don’t know why you’d want to go there. Other than when the bikers come, it’s pretty dead.”
As I started off down the street, Delgado said, “Did it hurt?”
“Did what hurt?”
“Getting that cock piercing installed. Sounds painful to me.”
I paused to think up an appropriate response, settling on, “Not as bad as you’d think.” Sometimes the joke is on you, and it’s best to just go with it.
As a structure, the Palatial was not a dive. In fact, it had points over Ace’s. The bar itself was varnished mahogany, with the same for the banisters, stairs, tables and chairs. The room had been designed with thought given to table space, privacy, acoustics. Over this foundation, though, a layer of neglect and abuse had settled. Every surface had been gouged, burned, carved and graffitied. The floor was sticky and dotted with bottle caps crushed into the wood and bits of glass. None of which was as bad as the table in the far corner, its surface covered with specks of old vomit, or the overturned rat trap beneath the P.A. system.
The bartender was a woman in flannel who didn’t look like a stranger to her own product line. She had a bright red cratered nose, small eyes and a broad, aimless smile.
“Set you up?” she asked.
“Pabst Blue Ribbon, and I’d like to open it.”
She shrugged and fetched the bottle.
Other patrons floated through a cigarette haze. A native- looking couple sat drinking from the same glass in the quiet and relative cleanliness of the upstairs. A gent with a long beard and grubby overalls had parked himself at the end of the bar. He was talking to a man who looked comatose, but who rose up every few seconds to nod and slurp from his beer stein, which remained planted on the bar. Two women ate French fries by the door. They shot me looks of appraisal. I nodded back. Odds that at least one of them was on the game: even.
The bartender brought me the PBR and the glass. I ignored the glass. I wiped the lip of the bottle with my shirt cuff.
I sat down on a stool that seemed to have missed a few steps on the assembly line. I kept my feet flat on the ground. Serves me right, I figured, offering my clients that wobbly bench all those months. Thank God for Staples. One of the women leaned over the table to confer with the other in whispers. The one standing looked at me again. Thicker by far in the waist than the hips, smaller on top, black hair trimmed short. Her friend had peroxide cornrows, was a third the size, and had a malnourished pallor that made me wonder if she glowed in the dark. Odds that they were on the game: seven in ten.
I took in the bar so as not to seem interested. A man sat at a small table half-hidden by the staircase. He was drinking cider from a can and eating a BLT, fingers poised on either end of the toothpick. A boutique notebook sat open in front of him, six sharpened pencils rubber-banded together within reach. Sharing the table was a green bird in a cage.
The bartender picked up on the look I was giving the man and his bird, neither of whom paid attention to me.
“That’s Jerry and Precious.”
“Which is which?”
She guffawed. “Jerry’s the one runs up his tab. Raises all kinds of birds, ’cluding exotics. Had a lovely pair of peacocks, some ostriches. That’s the source of his nickname, the Ostrich Man.”
“What does he raise them for?”
“Zoos, meat, I don’t know.”
The Ostrich Man wrote something in his notebook and looked up to see who was watching him. I nodded to him. He smiled.
“It’s a green conure,” he said, “case you were wondering.”
“Beautiful,” I said.
He opened the cage, brought Precious out, sat her on his arm to show how tame she was. “Completely domesticated,” he said. “Conures make good pets. They like attention.”
He walked to the bar and tipped Precious onto my arm. At that range I could smell the cider. The bird strutted down to my elbow, about-faced and hopped back onto Jerry’s palm.
I said, “Next round’s on me, if you’ll have it.” I looked at the bartender and pointed at the two girls at the table. “Include them, will you? And another Blended Splendid for me.”
When the drinks came, the dark-haired woman sidled up to me. Odds: nine in ten.
“My girlfriend Di thinks you’re a cop,” she said.
“Ever know a cop to buy a round?”
She downed her shot of what looked like Jagermeister, picked up my beer bottle and helped herself. My next sip of beer tasted like licorice. Definitely Jager. Definitely on the game.
“Truth is,” I said, “I came here to get away from cops. I was at Ace’s earlier. Don’t know if you’re familiar with that establishment, but it’s full of cops. What’s your name?”
“Shoshona. Yours?”
“Wilbur. Glad to meet you.”
The Ostrich Man had finished his drink and retreated with his bird to the table, probably all too aware of the kind of business Shoshona and I were conducting. As I walked to the girls’ table I passed Jerry and Precious’s table, stuck out a finger to the bird, who was content chewing on a branch, and caught a look of disapproval from the Ostrich Man.
Di headed to the washroom as we took our places. Shoshona pushed the fry plate away and downed the residue in Di’s shot glass. “What line of work are you in, Wilbur?” Nodding over at the bartender to hit us again.
“Well, Shoshona, I’m a security installation consultant. I travel around this great province helping businesses optimize their security systems. Do you know, Shoshona, that thirty-six percent of all public buildings, and a whopping fifty-six percent of all small businesses, have insufficient alarm and security features?”
“Wow,” Shoshona said. I held up two fingers to the bartender. Another beer, another Jager.
“Those numbers are based on an eighteen-month study using forty separate criteria. Not only did I oversee the study, but I designed the criteria myself. My bosses said that I showed tremendous initiative. They were right.”
“I think you showed tremendous initiative too,” Shoshona said.
“Thank you. Can I ask you something, Shoshona?”
“You’re buying.”
“In addition to tremendous initiative, I’m also blessed with a rather large cock, and a few extra dollars. I’d like to invite you or your friend, or both, for an all-expenses-paid trip to my shitty motel room down the road. How does that sound, Shoshona?”
“You can have me or Di, can’t have both.”
“Then I’d much prefer you. I’d be afraid of ripping her in two.”
Before we left the Palatial, Shoshona told Di which room I was staying at. “It’s just a precaution,” she said as she rejoined me. “Can’t be too careful.”
Outside the temperature had dropped below zero. A wedge of moon hung in a cloudless sky. We crossed the street to avoid walking past Ace’s.
“Born here?” I asked Shoshona as I brought out my keys.
“No. I’ve lived here for — let me see.” She counted on her hand. “Six years.” The number seemed to depress her.
“Know the place pretty well.”
“I guess.”
I followed her inside, closed the door, hit the lights.
“Off,” Fisk growled. He’d passed out on my bed.
“What is this?” Shoshona said. “I don’t pull trains.”
“My colleague is drunk. He used the wrong room.”
She saw Fisk’s holster in the open drawer of the bedstand.
I beat her to it and shut the drawer. Fisk sat up at the sound.
“You are cops,” Shoshona said. “I fucking knew it.”
“We have some questions for you,” I said. “We’re looking for a missing child who came here in March or April with three women, all in the same business as you. One was mid-thirties, blonde or black hair, another younger, brunette.”
“Barb and Dom,” Shoshona said.
“You saw them? You talked to them? Was the kid with them?”
“If I tell you, what hap
pens to me?” Shoshona asked.
“Who gives a shit?”
She settled into the chair and lit a smoke. “I met Barb at the Palatial. She was really friendly, really genuine. She’d been in the business a long time. She said she and her friend were in town for a couple weeks. They weren’t going to stay, just meeting someone. Till then they needed money. What I thought was nice was she asked us could they trick in our backyard for a little while. They didn’t have a pimp, and they were planning on being out by May. That’s what she said.”
“What about the other girls and the kid?”
“Dom came in the bar with Barb. Only times she came in by herself was to score off me or Di. Barb was clean — been there, done that.”
“The kid,” I said.
“Right, Mungo or whatever his name was.”
“Django?”
“Sure. Mungo, Django. Barb said he was Dom’s, but I didn’t buy that. I’ve had two kids, I know what it does to your hips and ass. Barb maybe I could see, or the other one, but not Dom.”
“Other one?”
“Deirdre I think her name was. I saw her a few times but she didn’t party, so we didn’t really talk.”
“So what happened?”
“Come May they left.”
“All three of them and the kid?”
“They were renting this small house in town, corner of Fifth and Gardenia. Deirdre and Dom used to leave food out for the neighbourhood cats, but there are no neighbourhood cats. One day they were all there, then it was just Barb, and then she was gone, too.”
“When did you see them last?”
“Really couldn’t tell you,” Shoshona said. “I assumed they went back to the Mainland. I do know that Dom scored a bunch of dope before she left.”
“Are we talking about a selling amount?”
“No, just personal, but like she wasn’t going to be able to get any for a couple weeks. When she came in the Palatial to pick that up, that might have been the last time I saw her.”
“And the kid, how did he look?”
“Like a kid,” she said. “Looked healthy, no broken bones. Always off in his own world. They got him one of those Game Station things, portable video games and movies. Kid barely looked up.”