by Sheena Kamal
“So I had to wait until morning to find my car keys,” Brazuca says. “In case you were wondering.”
Here it comes.
“The gas station attendant couldn’t understand how I could have lost them in the woods. He wanted to call the authorities to warn them about a ‘sketchy woman driving an SUV,’ but I convinced him otherwise. You want to know why?”
“You’re a good Christian?” I venture.
“My parents are Buddhist, actually.”
Go figure. It’s the west coast, after all. And hippie parents would explain the alcoholism. “That doesn’t mean you’re not Christian.”
He ignores this. “I didn’t let him call the authorities, because I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t mention it,” he says, his voice like warm honey. That’s how I know it’s going to be bad. Brazuca is a charming man, but he has never turned it up on me before now. He is smiling a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I looked into the disappearance you mentioned,” he continues. “There was a missing person’s report filed, the third one on that same girl. Turns out, she’s adopted.”
I flinch. I’ve never had much of a poker face.
“Oh, yeah. I was pretty surprised to hear that one, too. I stopped by to have a chat with the parents. Her father says that he contacted the birth mother but she didn’t want to help. He was disappointed because she didn’t even seem to care . . . But he just didn’t know her very well, did he?”
He waits for a response. I don’t give in to the pressure, so he takes my silence as an affirmative.
“The birth mother, what an interesting case, and I’ve seen a lot. She was in and out of foster care as a kid. Left the Canadian Forces after basic training. And then there was the generally disobedient behavior. Bad attitude. Disappeared off the map for a couple of years after the discharge . . . want to know what happened to her?”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s exactly what she did—how did you know? And then she was found dumped in a ditch, wrapped in a blanket, raped and beaten to death. Except she wasn’t actually dead, despite appearances. Just barely alive. Spent six months in a coma, during which time her attacker was never found. She woke up and discovered she was pregnant, but the province stops funding abortion services after five months, so she couldn’t do anything about it. Plus, she wasn’t especially talkative back then. She tried to self-abort or commit suicide and was considered a threat to herself and the child. Spent the remainder of the pregnancy recovering in an institution. Once the baby was born, she put it up for adoption and walked away.”
I drag the cleaning cart over to the door.
“You see,” Brazuca says. “What he didn’t understand is that for someone to survive being assaulted and beaten within an inch of her life, bear a child from that assault, battle addiction, and win, that woman is a fighter. Someone like that wouldn’t just walk away from the girl if she was in trouble. Especially if she thinks that no one else is going to fight for her. That girl’s birth mother already has a problem with authority. Doesn’t like them. Doesn’t trust them. So she’s going to do something, that’s almost a given. But she’s going to do it on her own terms.”
Mercifully, the bathroom door swings open and Carl saunters in, almost bowling me over. He looks at my face, drained of all expression, and then for the first time notices Brazuca, rigid with tension, gripping the sides of the sink.
“Came to see how you were making out,” Carl says, much too loud for a nighttime bathroom rendezvous.
“Fine,” I mutter.
“That’s good,” Carl says, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops. He looks from me to Brazuca.
Brazuca scratches at the stubble on his chin and gives Carl a perfunctory nod as he leaves.
After the door swings shut, Carl sighs. “That man wasn’t troubling you, was he?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.”
He frowns and spends a moment considering what I could possibly be referring to, then decides it’s not worth the effort. “Maybe I should take care of the men’s facilities from now on.”
I nod. “That might be for the best.”
I push my cleaning cart out of the bathroom and move into the dining room, which is next on my to-do list. I wipe down the tables there with a cloth that could be dirty or clean. I’m too rattled to pay attention. Brazuca emptied his sleeve of the cards he’d stashed there, showing himself to be more thorough and vengeful than I’d imagined. Troubling me indeed. He was, and with the only thing that can have any kind of true effect on me.
My past.
4
I have a nightmare that goes something like this: I am being suffocated by a pillow and my arms are tied over my head. Eventually, one of my arms breaks free and I find a loose screw from the headboard. Maybe I don’t find it loose, maybe I pry at it until it comes off in my hand. Sometimes this detail changes. But what follows never does. My lungs scream for oxygen and my body thrashes about looking for some kind of leverage. I can’t feel anything below my waist. No sensation, good or bad. Nothing. As I continue to struggle, I swing the screw down with my free hand and find that there’s nothing there but air. I claw and claw with the screw, but it finds no purchase . . . and then it catches an inch of flesh, and tears through it. I fight so hard that my body becomes exhausted and heavy with fear. Then I wake up gasping for breath.
This nightmare used to be a nightly event except when I drank so heavily that sleep would excise it from my mind. It has faded with time, but comes back once or twice a year to remind me what it’s like when all of the breath is being cut off from my lungs and no one listens to my screams.
When Carl showed me to my room after my shift with instructions to see HR Lucy first thing, I fell asleep almost immediately in my uniform and woke up two hours later from that dream, which has decided to put in an appearance for the first time this year. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I’ve known it was coming since I met Everett and Lynn at that café but goddamn it, I just wasn’t prepared. I pace in my tiny room in the staff quarters, and try to shake off the effects of the nightmare. My body is on autopilot and I can’t legitimately remember the last time I fed it anything other than coffee or granola bars from gas stations.
There’s a knock on the door.
“It’s me,” says Brazuca from the other side.
I stop pacing.
“I know you’re in there.”
That’s not a good enough reason to open the door for anyone.
“I have food.”
It takes me two short steps to cross the room. “How did you find me?” I ask, as I let him in.
“I saw the old man lead you into the building, then this light came on.”
The staff quarters are tucked away by the west side of the chalet, connected to the main building by a short, narrow hallway so that it doesn’t obstruct the main panoramic views. When you’re paying through the roof for this kind of vista, you don’t want to see the staff. You just want them to be close by when you need the sheets turned down and your coffee to be hot.
Brazuca holds up a paper bag. “Peace offering from the breakfast buffet.”
I look inside the bag and pull out a carton with toast, jam, eggs, and bacon. My stomach twists into a knot at the smell of hot, greasy food. I motion him to have a seat on the bed while I eat at the desk. He stares at me with undisguised interest as I shovel food into my mouth.
“What are you looking at?”
“When was the last time you ate something?”
“Yesterday . . . I think.”
He shakes his head. “Let’s leave that one alone.”
“Like you’re any better.” I wave my fork toward the vicinity of his rib cage.
“Nora, I just found out that James Whitehall won’t be here after all. Problem at their Hong Kong offices. And Lester Nyman is away on business. I’m sorry; the firm is handling the security for the conference and my conta
cts say Whitehall was supposed to put in a personal appearance. The keynote was by an official of a corporation that’s a pretty big fish for the firm. They were WIN’s first client when they started up.”
“How did they land a big-fish client right off the bat?”
“Nyman is the brains but Whitehall has the military background. Word on the street is that he did some private work—”
“Meaning mercenary.”
“Not necessarily, but it happens more often than people think. I heard he worked for old man Zhang when they were based in Hong Kong. But this is a few decades ago, so no one can really trace the connection.”
“Old man Zhang?” Zhang sounds familiar, but the carbs, fat, and protein molecules are rushing to my brain, turning it sluggish.
“Ray Zhang. Head of Zhang-Wei Industries. There’ve been rumors about him for years, mostly that not everything is aboveboard. Some of his associates have triad connections but no one’s ever been able to pin anything on him.”
We are silent for a moment, immersed in our own thoughts. I remember where I heard the name now. Angus Holland told me Zhang-Wei Industries had dealings with Syntamar in the Congo. Syntamar, the company Starling was looking into before he was murdered.
“Organized crime doesn’t get a lot of attention in this country these days,” Brazuca says. He hasn’t yet noticed my attention is elsewhere.
I nod. “‘Terrorism’ is the catchword everywhere now. Gangs do what they want.”
“Not quite. They would do what they want anyway, but we can’t deny that in this current political climate it’s easier for them. I don’t know if Zhang is triad, or just worked with them sometimes, or if those rumors have no basis in truth. We just don’t have that information. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, really. If Whitehall was going to show up, it would be for a Zhang-Wei Industries event. For your missing girl, I would have liked to get you in a room with him to at least ask what kind of stake he’s got in this.”
“So no talking to the horse’s owner.”
“With their level of security and their schedules, I doubt it. I guess you were right to go looking into his mouth willy-nilly like that.”
He uses these bizarre expressions on occasion, which make me think that even though he has no British accent, perhaps he spent some time overseas in his youth. I’ve never heard a Canadian under the age of sixty say “willy-nilly.” Brazuca leans back on the bed that I’ve just left, on my crumpled sheets, and closes his eyes. It’s surprisingly intimate. One shove will send him toppling to the ground and I’m tempted because I worked all night to earn this bed and he’s done nothing but drive.
“Ah,” he sighs, rubbing the sore spot behind his head.
And then I remember that it’s probably my fault that he can’t sit upright, or stand and leave the room now that he has overstayed his welcome. I’m not exactly a good sport about facing the consequences of my actions, but I read somewhere that it’s never too late to start.
I put the empty carton back in the paper bag and toss it in the trash bin by the desk. “What do you know about Syntamar Industries?”
He frowns. “Syntamar? Nothing really, just that there was a roadblock and protest a few years ago about a proposed mine up north and they were one of the investors for the project.”
“They had a couple of joint ventures with Zhang-Wei a while back after the two worked the same region in the Congo.”
“How do you know that? What’s the connection with Syntamar and your girl?”
I have a decision to make here. He knows enough of my past to link me with Mike Starling, if he hasn’t already, but I’m not quite prepared to tell him that we’re not just looking into a disappearance now. We might be looking into Bonnie’s kidnapping. And Starling’s murder. “Nothing that I can make sense of, but it came up once and I thought it was interesting.”
“I might know someone who could give you some more information on Zhang-Wei,” he says slowly. “Possibly Syntamar.”
“You do?”
“Maybe,” he says, mid-yawn.
I feel drowsy now that my stomach is full so I lay my head on the desk. When I wake up three hours later, Brazuca is gone. All that’s left of him is a note on the corner of the desk. “Second floor lounge. 2 p.m.”
5
Brazuca is waiting for me when I get off the service elevator just before two. I entered the main floor from the staff quarters, just to avoid passing anyone in the hallway. According to the schedule in Carl’s office, there’s a meeting taking place in one of the first-floor salons as we speak.
“I have a friend who’s here for the conference,” Brazuca says, by way of greeting. “He might be able to give us some info on Syntamar.”
“Who’s the friend?”
“Bernard Lam,” he says as we enter the lounge, before I have time to stop and stare in wonder at the man Seb wrote a profile piece on two years ago.
Bernard Lam is the only heir to a billion-dollar fortune. He has been educated at Harvard, Oxford, and even had a brief stint at the Sorbonne. His philanthropy is well known and his face is often splattered about Vancouver’s society pages as being one of the city’s most generous imports. Vast wealth has not eroded his graciousness and sense of humor, however, or the charisma that radiates from him in waves.
“Bazooka!” he calls affectionately as he spots Brazuca from across the lounge. It’s dim and quiet in here so it takes us a moment to pick him out among the plush suedes, leathers, and fur-trimmed throws. The purpose of this room isn’t to draw attention to the furnishings; it’s to showcase the incredible view of the valley below us. We’ve interrupted Lam from sniffing a glass of amber liquid like it is a rare and beautiful flower as he contemplates the meaning of life. Or something like that. Lam ignores Brazuca’s attempts to sidestep his hug, which does not appear to be an easy task. Lam is tall, but round. His cheeks are full and red with the crisp mountain air. Though he appears to have all his teeth, he still somehow manages to remind me of a large, spoiled baby. He embraces Brazuca, who, in comparison, looks like a sickly weakling drowning in a vat of expensive dough.
Brazuca is released and wheezes in a breath. Lam now turns to me. I’ve hung out my staff uniform just in case I need to use it tonight and am wearing my best jeans and the only sweater I own with no holes. There’s a coffee stain on the back of it and although Lam could not possibly see this from the angle at which we’re now facing each other, I get the feeling that this affable-looking man-baby knows that it is there. “This must be your—”
“He’s my sponsor,” I tell him.
“We’re testing her resolve today,” Brazuca adds, eyeing the glass of cognac. It seems we’re also testing his resolve.
“Ah.” Lam puts down the glass. My gaze lingers a good two seconds longer than it should. The bottle that it came from most likely cost more than my monthly salary. “Well, I’m glad you made it. How are things working out for you at—”
“Let’s talk about that later,” Brazuca says. Their eyes meet over the top of my head.
Lam smiles as though it never happened and turns back to me. “You must be the reason my good friend decided to make the trek. I’ve been trying to get him out of the city for years. Loosen up a little.”
“Yeah, we’re here to have a good time. I’m doing some research on rich Asians.”
Brazuca sends me a warning glance, which I ignore.
Lam laughs. “Well, you’ve come to the right place.” He takes my elbow. “Come, let’s walk.”
I stare at his hand until he removes it. He glances at Brazuca over my head. Again. I’m starting to see a pattern with these two. That I’m the odd woman out.
Lam takes a graceful step back. “My apologies if I seem overly familiar. You see, Jon and I go back a long way. Any friend of his, well, I consider that person to be a friend of mine as well. So, please, tell me how I can help you.”
“Syntamar Industries,” I say, pulling out the newspaper clipping from Starling�
��s storage locker. “Do you know who this man is?” I point to the Asian businessman who refuses to crack a smile among all the other grinning execs.
Lam stares at the photograph for a moment. “No,” he says smoothly. “No idea.”
There’s a flaw in my special skill.
I can tell when someone is lying, yes, but there is nothing I can do to make them tell the truth. I can only look into their eyes and let them know what I see. That they’re not fooling me. If it sounds like precious little, that’s because it is. But it’s all I have. I stare at Bernard Lam, who I want to believe is kind and honest, but wanting it doesn’t make it true. Now I’m angry. “Do you always lie to your friends?”
“Pardon me?”
“You just said any friend of Brazuca is a friend of yours. So we’re friends now, then. Why are you lying about the man in this photo?”
Lam looks to Brazuca for help, yet again, over my head. I get close to him, close enough to smell his crisp, woodsy aftershave. Now I appear to be drowning in a vat of doughy billionaire. “Don’t look at him. Look at me. A girl is missing, okay? A teenage girl and I’m trying to find her.”
All of his attention turns to me. I’ve invaded his personal space but instead of backing away, feeling threatened, he seems to enjoy it. Or maybe he’s just used to women wanting to get close. Curl up next to his piles of spare cash, maybe. “What does Syntamar have to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet that it does. This is what I’m trying to find out. And I need to know who that man is.”
“Honey,” he says, even though I might possibly be older than him, “maybe we should take a walk.”
“Sugar lumps, I don’t go for strolls with liars.”