Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  “I wish I’d known her,” said Gary. He smiled. “What you do with the body, by the way?”

  Randall hadn’t quite made up his mind about that. Moira was back at the apartment, waiting for him in the tub. He shrugged. “Nothing special.”

  Gary went over to the bookcase, selected a thin volume and opened it and took out a small map. “You ever see this?”

  “What is it?”

  “Map of the city, the suburbs. Shows you all the most popular places for ditching a body.”

  “Oh yeah?” Randall was interested. He put his empty glass down on the carpet beside his chair, leaned forward.

  “Stanley Park gets most of the action,” said Gary. “Makes sense, if you think about it. Convenient, right? Second most popular place is way over there in North Van, Mount Seymour Park. A long drive, but I guess it must be worth it. Ever been there?”

  “No,” said Randall. “Can’t say I have.”

  Randall heard footsteps in the hall. Frank came into the room. He was wearing a brown leather jacket with a sheepskin collar and held a big five-cell flashlight in his right hand.

  “What took you so long?” said Gary.

  “I had to feed the cats.” Frank gave Randall a wink. “Little furballs rub up against my leg, I can’t resist it. Makes me melt like butter.”

  “You didn’t give them that leftover chicken was on the bottom shelf of the fridge, I hope.”

  “Cat food,” said Frank. “A tin each of Miss Mew, and a bowl of milk.”

  “Water’s better for them.”

  “Better for you, too, Gary. But every time I look at you, you’re drinking beer.”

  “Beer’s got electrolytes. When you exercise the way I do, you got to replace your electrolytes. Can’t get by without ’em, that’s all there is to it.”

  Frank nodded, thinking electrolytes? What did Gary think he was, a fuckin’ light bulb?

  Gary folded the map and put it in the book between the last page and the cover, slid the book back into the bookcase. “Batteries okay?”

  Frank switched the flashlight on, shone the beam into Randall’s eyes and made him squint.

  “Let’s go,” said Gary.

  They went downstairs and through the huge gleaming kitchen, empty except for the quartet of Siamese cats and the muted gurgle of the dishwasher. Out the back door into the warmth of the late August evening. The sky was cloudy, dark. To their right there was a spacious brick patio surrounded on three sides by apple and plum trees; to their left the glass-enclosed walkway that led to the squash court. Frank led them down a path of interlocking pink brick, past a small fishpond towards the far end of the back yard.

  “Where we going?” said Randall.

  Frank hit him in the small of the back, sent him skittering down the path.

  The property was about one hundred and fifty feet wide and almost four hundred feet deep — altogether a little less than three-quarters of an acre. With the house and outbuildings it was worth in the neighborhood of a couple of million dollars. There were always real estate agents pounding on the door. Gary invited the pretty ones in for a drink, fed them vodka martinis at ten in the morning. So far none of them had put out. Still, you never knew.

  There was a narrow unpaved lane at the back of the yard, behind a six-foot high fence of rough-sawn cedar boards. The lane was dark, no streetlights. The beam of the flashlight swept across the fence and then held steady on what seemed to be a garden — long, orderly rows of slumping green plants.

  “Wanna show you something,” said Gary.

  Frank grabbed Randall’s arm. Randall saw that Gary had picked up a stick, no, a pitchfork. Randall’s face was sticky and damp. A mosquito shrieked into his ear. He slapped himself on the side of the head. Frank led him off the path and across a patch of soft ground. He could smell the earth, moist and gluey. He stumbled and almost fell.

  “Gimme the flash,” said Gary. The beam of light wandered across the rows of plants and steadied on a fat green and orange striped squash.

  “That my baby?” said Gary.

  Frank crouched beside the squash, brushed away some mud, fingered a rectangle of cardboard attached to the stem of the plant by a short length of coarse brown twine. “Number sixteen?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” Gary punched Randall on the shoulder. “Look at the size of that thing. Is that a goddamn squash or is that a goddamn squash?” He played the beam of light over the squash and then shone it into Randall’s eyes.

  “I thought they grew on trees,” Randall said.

  “Frank buries you here,” said Gary, “the roots’ll wrap around your bones and nobody’ll ever find you.” He stuck the pitchfork in the ground and then pulled it out again. Lumps of sticky black earth clung to the tines. Gary poked Randall in the belly. Randall didn’t know what to do or say. He could feel the damp seeping up through the thin soles of his hundred-dollar Italian slip-ons.

  “Keep looking for the dope dealer,” said Gary. He threw away the pitchfork, passed the flashlight to Frank and started back towards the house.

  Frank led Randall to the back gate. He swung the gate open and Randall followed the beam of the flashlight into the lane. The gate swung shut behind him. His car was parked out front. He was going to have to hoof it all the way down to the end of the lane and back up the street, half a mile or more.

  It was pitch dark. No streetlights. No moon. Not a goddamn star in the sky. He started walking.

  When Frank came back into the kitchen he found Gary crouched down in front of the fridge, ripping chunks of meat off the corpse of a cold chicken.

  Gary glanced up, jaws working. “There’s something I wanted to ask you, Frank.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The night we had Oscar Peel and Pat Nash over for a visit, you remember Peel knocked some of my trophies off the fireplace mantle and one of them broke?”

  “Yeah, sure. Who could forget?”

  “The base off one of them is missing. You know where it is, seen it around?”

  Frank shook his head, no. “Is it important, Gary?”

  “Probably the maid tossed it in the garbage. See if you can get the thing fixed, welded to a new base. Make it read ‘First Place, Men’s Singles, Inter-City Squash Championships 1988’.”

  “I thought you were runner-up that year.”

  “Just do it, okay?”

  “Whatever you say, Gary.”

  Gary pushed himself to his feet, strolled out of the kitchen. He’d left the refrigerator door open, simply hadn’t bothered to shut it. Where he’d been eating, the polished hardwood floor was littered with slivers of meat, yellow globules of fat. Frank shut the door and cleaned up the mess, fed the leftovers to the cats.

  Summer was almost over, winter was on the way. But Frank knew that no matter what the season, as long as he stayed with Gary, the days would just keep on getting longer.

  14

  The deck of the Seabus shuddered beneath Paterson’s feet as the 1600 BHP twin diesels were thrown into reverse. The ferry slowed abruptly, screws churning the water to a froth, and then the roar of the engines faded to a steady drone.

  All he’d been able to think about during the twelve-minute ride across the harbor was that the man he’d shot probably had friends who’d be waiting for him when he got to the other side.

  He peered anxiously into the purplish glare of the fluorescent lights. There were only three people, two men and a woman, waiting to board the Seabus for the run back to the city. The men were in their late twenties, both of them wearing jeans and black leather jackets. Under the lights their faces were unnaturally pale, eyes dark and hollow.

  Once the ferry was underway, all passengers were locked inside until the electronically operated doors slid open at the end of the run. The vessel was designed so passengers boarded on the port side and disembarked on the starboard side. The system was fully automatic, impersonal but highly efficient.

  Paterson moved towards the exit nearest the bow
. Nobody paid any attention to him. He squeezed into the crowd. The automatic doors slid open. He pushed forward and hurried up the ramp towards the street, constantly twisting and turning to peer behind him.

  Outside the terminal the landscape was dominated by huge elevated ramps supported by massive pillars of rough gray concrete. Beneath the ramps a strip of oil-stained asphalt was used by the municipal buses that connected with the ferry and serviced the North Shore.

  A uniformed bus driver stood beside his vehicle, smoking a cigarette. Paterson asked him for directions to the nearest taxi stand. The man dropped the stub of the cigarette on the asphalt, ground it under his heel and pointed over his shoulder towards a cab idling at the curb. Before Paterson could thank him he’d climbed into the bus and the door shut behind him With a hiss of compressed air.

  The cab was a dark blue late-model Cadillac, the cabbie a middle-aged Italian who was bald except for a fringe of gray above his ears. He was wearing a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, dark blue tie decorated with diagonal rows of little silver pigs.

  Paterson climbed inside, shut the door. The taxi was showroom clean, smelled vaguely of peppermint.

  The cabbie eyed him warily in the rearview mirror. Paterson pulled out his wallet, flashed a twenty. “Can you recommend a hotel?”

  “The Wyndam’s pretty good. A little pricey, maybe. But worth it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The Wyndam turned out to be a concrete highrise with rooms starting in the sixty-dollar range. Paterson used his Visa card, paid in advance for one night.

  A bellboy with a Bob Hope nose and shiny black pants led him into the elevator and up to a room on the fifth floor. He unlocked the door with a flourish, handed Paterson the key and went over to the window and pulled the drapes on an uninspiring view of Marine Drive — an endless string of self-serve gas stations and used-car lots, take-out chicken and pizza joints. Gaily colored plastic flags flapped in the breeze. The hard scrawl of neon faded into the distance. The bellboy turned the TV on and off. He showed Paterson where the bathroom was, but not, surprise, how to flush the toilet. He loitered near the door. Paterson gave him a dollar, locked the door behind him.

  The room was quiet except for the distant hum of traffic. He turned on the television and found himself watching a Mary Tyler Moore rerun. Ted’s hairdresser had taken early retirement and was moving to Miami Beach. Ted was inconsolable.

  He turned down the volume. The bulk of the heroin was still hidden on his sailboat, but he’d taken one of the half-pound bags with him, proof, if he needed it, that he was serious. The heroin, along with his expensive pigskin briefcase, had been left in the skid-road hotel room. The briefcase had a small brass plaque with his initials on it.

  He worried about that for a while, and then let it go. He thought about the money. Tried not to think of all the pain and anguish and human suffering the heroin would cause. What it boiled down to was he’d shot a man so his wife could keep her microwave. The guy was a pimp and God knew what else, but so what? He might’ve killed him, and his actions were indefensible.

  What if he went back down to Coal Harbor and tossed the rest of the heroin into the ocean? Then what? The price of a fix would skyrocket, but the junkies wouldn’t go away. Nothing would change.

  His first obligation was to his wife and kids. The bottom line was that his family depended on him. He had a standard of living to maintain.

  And the goddamn plum-colored Porsche had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  On the TV, Ted burst into tears and Mary put her arms around him, patted him on the back and rolled her eyes. Paterson turned the sound right off. He picked up the phone and dialled room service and ordered a hamburger and fries, coffee, a couple of double Scotches. What he needed was a hot shower and a stiff drink, a good night’s sleep. Time to flush the adrenalin out of his system, clear his mind.

  He’d tried to make a connection and it’d been a total disaster. Jesus, there were fractured moments when it all seemed like somebody else’s idea of a nightmare — he couldn’t quite believe he’d actually shot the bastard, pointed the Ruger at him and blasted away, pumped two or was it three rounds into the guy.

  And that as he’d hurried up the ramp from the Seabus he’d been ready to shoot anybody who got in his way.

  There had to be a better way of doing business. All he had to do was figure out what it was.

  One thing for sure. It was too late to turn back now.

  15

  The phone on Eddy Orwell’s desk rang twice and then fell silent. Orwell paused, hand hovering like a fat pink butterfly. Shrugged. Went back to his paperwork. The phone rang again. He snatched it up and said, “Jeez, Judith, I been trying to get ahold of you all goddamn mor ...”

  His beefy face flushed red.

  “Hey, sorry. I thought ... Yeah, sure. ’Course I got a pencil, go right ahead.”

  Orwell mashed the phone against his ear to drown out the clatter of a distant telex, scrawled an address on a pad and said thank you and goodbye and waited until the beat cop on the other end had disconnected, then slammed down the phone. Tore the sheet from the pad and folded the sheet in half and put it in his shirt pocket, pushed his chair away from his desk. Stood up. Checked to make sure the slip of paper hadn’t fallen out of his pocket. Slung his sharkskin jacket over his broad and muscular shoulder, stomped the length of the squadroom and rested his narrow masculine hip against Parker’s desk.

  Orwell was wearing a pale blue short-sleeved shirt. The muscles of his arms flexed and bulged. Parker was punching the buttons of a pocket calculator, working out the monthly payments on a new Honda Civic. She glanced up, her eyes flat, incurious.

  “Whatcha doin’?” said Orwell.

  “My job,” said Parker. “Why don’t you go do yours?”

  “Ouch,” said Eddy. His head snapped sideways, as if he’d been punched. He gave Parker a doleful look, rubbed his jaw.

  Parker ignored him.

  “Where’s Jack?” said Orwell.

  “With Bradley.”

  Orwell put his hands on his hips and turned to stare at the door to Bradley’s office. “So how come I don’t hear anybody yelling?”

  “Because they’re both adults, Eddy, and adults don’t always find it necessary to yell at each other to make a point.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Orwell jerked a thumb at the calculator. “Working out your taxes?”

  “My car’s burning oil. It needs a new engine.”

  “The Volks?” Orwell mimed shock. “I thought those things ran forever. Remember that Woody Allen movie, Sleeper, where he’s on the run from the cops and finds an old Beetle in a cave. Car’s all covered in dust, it’s been sitting there about two hundred years. He turns the key and it starts right up. You catch that movie?”

  Parker nodded.

  “Then he decides to get rid of it. Drives it off a cliff into a lake or whatever. Damn thing won’t sink.”

  “Was there something you wanted, Eddy?”

  “People laughed their heads off when Woody started that car,” said Orwell. “Not me, though. Two hundred years old, Volkswagen or not, I guarantee that battery would’ve been dead as a doornail.”

  “A new engine is going to cost me almost a thousand dollars,” said Parker.

  “He’s got a serious side, though. You see Love and Death?”

  “But the upholstery’s falling apart and ...” Parker’s voice trailed off. Orwell, clearly not listening, had taken a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and was squinting at it as if he was having trouble deciphering his own writing. “A hotel, the Vance. You know it?”

  “Why?” said Parker.

  “The desk clerk just phoned. He’s got a body, room three-eighteen. Spears is still in bed with the mumps, clap, whatever he’s got.”

  The door to Bradley’s office swung open. Willows came out and started to walk towards them.

  Orwell stepped away from Parker’s desk. “So, since I’m all alone, I wondered if maybe
you were interested in helping out?”

  “Are you pulling my leg, Eddy?”

  “Huh?” said Orwell, frowning.

  Willows pointed at Orwell. “Bradley wants to see you, Eddy.”

  “What about?”

  “He’ll let you know.”

  Orwell held up the slip of paper. “I just got a call. A homicide.”

  “The Vance,” said Parker. “Room three-eighteen.”

  Willows snatched the slip of paper from Orwell’s hand. Orwell snatched it back.

  “Eddy!” yelled Bradley from the far end of the squad room.

  “When’d you get the call?” said Willows.

  “Just a few minutes ago. Why?”

  “There was a ‘shots fired’ report a couple of days ago,” said Parker. “The responding officers found some blood, but that’s about all.”

  “Think there might be a connection?” said Orwell.

  Willows indicated the calculator. “Got a problem?”

  “I’m trying to figure out,” Parker said, “if I should get myself a new partner.”

  For a split second, Willows thought she was serious. He hoped like hell that moment didn’t show.

  *

  There was a uniform down on the street, another on the landing, two more lounging inside the room. The desk clerk was standing in the hallway looking as if he was waiting in line to go to the bathroom. He was twenty-eight or maybe twenty-nine years old, very thin, about five foot six. He was wearing a black leather vest over a black shirt, black Levis. His face was like a wedge of Swiss cheese, flat and white and oily. A tiny diamond sparkled in his left ear. He had watery brown eyes and his teeth were stained the color of weak coffee by a lifetime of fifty-cent cigars. His posture was terrible.

  “Somebody call the techs and ME?” said Willows.