by Graham Reed
Dante rolled his eyes. “Hospitals handle ODs all the time, so they must have some kind of protocol for dealing with John Does.”
Richard nodded thoughtfully. “They probably tag ’em and bag ’em without raising an eyebrow.”
I raised one of mine. “Tag ’em and bag ’em?”
Richard grinned. “I re-watched Platoon last weekend.”
“I don’t know. It seems callous, don’t you think? How would you like it if someone dumped you outside the door like a bag of garbage.” I nudged the dead guy with my foot, but he didn’t offer an opinion.
“How is it any worse than dropping him into English Bay?”
“They bury Navy officers at sea,” Dante pointed out. “It’s very classy.”
Richard looked exasperated. “You just suggested dumping him at the hospital.”
Dante shrugged. “Either way.”
Refusing to concede defeat, Richard busied himself with his phone once more. “The marina only rents Boston Whalers,” he reported in a disgusted tone. “And they cost sixty bucks an hour.”
“Right then, St. Paul’s it is.”
“Grab his phone,” advised Dante.
I felt disappointed in him. “I might be the kind of guy who’ll dump a guy on the street, but I’m not the kind of guy who robs a guy before dumping him on the street.”
He looked disappointed in me. “Don’t keep the phone, dummy. Get rid of it. There might be something on it that shows he was planning to come here—texts, a calendar entry, that kind of thing.”
“Ah,” I glumly contemplated frisking the corpse. “Good point.” Burial at sea was starting to sound pretty good again.
“Right, then. It’s decided.” Richard clapped his hands together. “And I’m famished, so can we please get this place cleaned up already? Breakfast at The Elbow Room on me when we’re done.”
Dante’s face lit up. “I could absolutely devour a James Farentino right now.”
“Does that one come with shrimp?” asked Richard.
“You’re thinking of the Karen,” said Dante.
Richard wrinkled his nose. “Gross.”
Dante proceeded to go through the rest of The Elbow Room menu from memory as they exited the bathroom. I stayed. After taking a moment to steel myself, I wormed my hands down into the front pockets of the dead guy’s disagreeably snug pants. His thighs were warm but his pockets were empty.
I was in the midst of wrestling him onto his stomach to check the back pockets when, from the living room, I heard Richard exclaim, “Mao Tse Thong!”
Startled, I let the body fall back to the floor and was rewarded with the muffled thunk of a hard object knocking against the tiles. A quick foray into his suit jacket pocket produced his phone and wallet. I hesitated only briefly before returning the latter and hurrying out the bathroom door.
Like I said, I was no thief.
Chapter Three
I came out of the bathroom and stopped short. This time there was no doubt about it—the guy staring at me accusingly was definitely Mickey Wu.
Standing beside him was a hefty slab of meat in a yellow Adidas tracksuit. He had eyes like marbles and waves of freshly permed, almost colourless hair cascading down to his triple-striped polyester. Cavernous nostrils quivered like they’d caught the scent of something to gnaw on. I was reminded of the time my Uncle Frank dressed his pitbull up as Gene Simmons for Halloween using a wig he found in a trunk at my granddad’s cabin.
Richard was grinning happily at the two of them. Dante looked as confused as I felt. “So,” he said, “did you enjoy the party?”
“Mr. Wu!” I yelped, but my warning came a moment too late. My heart commenced vigorous palpitations while my hand groped for the knob to pull the bathroom door shut behind me. “I didn’t know you were home,” I added to demonstrate that I remained in full command of the painfully obvious, if nothing else.
“I cut my trip short, as I e-mailed you last night. Who are these people? What has happened to my house?” Mickey Wu’s face was rapidly taking on the colour of a debilitating aneurysm.
“I had a…small gathering,” I replied, playing for time to see if his arteries held. “An indefensible violation of our agreement, I know, and I won’t insult you by making excuses.” Not that I could think of any anyway. “If you’d like to come back in a few hours, I assure you that we will have your house restored to exactly the way you left it.” Corpse-free was what I was aiming for.
Mickey Wu stared at me. I wanted to believe that he might be considering my proposal but couldn’t quite get there. I consoled myself by focusing on the positive: he hadn’t called the cops. Yet.
I suspected that if the silence stretched on much longer, I might have an aneurysm of my own.
“I really like your underwear,” Richard interjected.
Dante hissed at him, his eyes wide as full moons. I merely stared, listening with interest as my throat made a dry clicking sound.
“What? Don’t you know who this is?” Richard beamed at Mickey Wu. “Mao Tse Thong, the Underwear King of Beijing!”
Much to my amazement, after a brief hesitation Mickey Wu bowed slightly. “That is not my actual name, but yes, I am he.”
“What was your slogan again? Revolutionary comfort?”
“The Comfortable Revolution.” Mickey Wu frowned. “How do you know this? My underwear is not available outside of China.”
“I spent some time in Shanghai working as a model.” Richard illuminated the room with one of his more modest smiles. “Did a few shoots for your ‘Made in America’ campaign.”
“Mmm, that campaign was a substantial success.” Mickey Wu inclined his head. “Thank you for your contribution.”
“It was my pleasure. And may I say that you have a beautiful home here. I hope you’ll allow us to restore it to its previous splendour.” He cranked it up to matinee-idol smile. “It would be my privilege to work for you again.”
Mickey Wu hesitated before turning back to me, his expression hardening. “Mr. Constable, this mess will be cleaned up immediately. You will then return your fee and I will never, I repeat never, see or hear from you again. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I wanted to fly across the room and hug Richard.
“I’m going to my club for a steam. I will return in two hours,” Mickey Wu announced, with a meaningful glance in my direction.
I was making preparations to relax when he started across the room toward me. When I didn’t move, Mickey almost walked right into me before pulling up in annoyance. “Step aside,” he snapped. “I must use the washroom before I depart.”
I stood frozen with my hand clamped on the bathroom doorknob. “Wouldn’t you rather use the ensuite in the master bedroom?”
“I would not.” His eyes narrowed as he looked over my shoulder at the bathroom door. “Why?”
“Oh, it’s just that this one is a bit of a mess and I’d like the chance to get it tidied up before you use it.”
“Out of my way, Mr. Constable.”
When I hesitated, Mickey Wu snapped his fingers. “Thaddeus!”
The tracksuit advanced on me like I was the last skirt at the barn dance. I had three inches on his six feet, but he had thirty pounds on my two hundred. When I bounced on my toes, the guy grinned like a hyena and high-stepped like a nervous foal. He was such a wonderful anomaly. Part of me wanted to sample his wares before he was summoned back to the Island of Dr. Moreau, but the rest of me was in enough trouble already. I let go of the doorknob and stepped out of our mutual employer’s way. Thaddeus teased his perm while I rubbed at my sandpaper skull in frustration.
All things considered, Mickey Wu took it a lot better than I expected. He merely asked a very reasonable question: “Who is this man?”
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue,” I replied.
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Mickey Wu studied me at length. “I believe you.” He sounded like he actually meant it. “What happened to him?”
“Honestly, I don’t have a—”
Mickey Wu’s expression sharpened, cutting me off in mid-sentence.
I shrugged. “We found him this way. There was a bag of what looked to be drugs on the floor beside him. As you can see, he also took a nasty knock to the head. But don’t worry, blood washes right off Italian marble,” I added quickly.
“What exactly were you planning to do with him?” His voice was dangerously quiet.
“Take him to the hospital,” I said. “We figured they would handle things from there.”
Mickey Wu closed his eyes and kept them that way for awhile. “Unacceptable,” he said at last.
“We also considered burial at sea,” Dante murmured.
“Let me understand this,” Mickey implored the ceiling. “While I was out of town you had some kind of unauthorized gathering in my house, during which a man was killed, either by a drug overdose or a blow to the head.” His gaze descended upon me, equal parts wounded and withering. “Does this adequately summarize the service you have provided to me?”
I nodded.
“Get out of my house,” he hissed. “All of you.”
My mouth hung open for a few seconds waiting for the words to start coming. “Sir, we would be more than happy to clean…”
“Your services are no longer wanted in any capacity Thaddeus, remove these men immediately.”
Chapter Four
Richard swallowed a mouthful of the Lumberjack. “I thought that went pretty well.”
With effort, I looked up from the untouched pancakes on my plate. “In what possible way do you think that went well?”
He looked around theatrically. “Are we sitting in a police station right now or are we enjoying a sumptuous breakfast at The Elbow Room?”
He had a point. “The Elbow Room,” I conceded.
“And tonight, are you going to be chauffeuring a corpse around town or watching Full Metal Jacket at my place?”
Okay, two points. “Full Metal Jacket.”
Richard loved watching military movies. Mostly so he could point out scenes of what he described as “latent homosexuality.” If I objected, he would assert unassailable expertise on the basis of what he referred to as his own blatant homosexuality. The thing was, I wasn’t actually disagreeing with him. I just wanted him to shut up so I could enjoy the movie. However, as tiresome as it was, I would rather listen to Richard speculate on Stanley Kubrick’s sexual hang-ups than hear the sound of a dead body rolling around the trunk of my car.
“I guess it turned out okay,” I admitted.
Dante snickered. “I’d say amazingly well, seeing as how you complimented the man’s underwear.”
“Because I complimented the man’s underwear,” Richard corrected him. “Which did a lot more to win him over than Jake’s pathetic mea culpa or you asking him whether he enjoyed the party.”
Dante shot Richard a venomous look. “I’m really sorry about that, Jake. I thought I recognized Thaddeus from the party and assumed he had forgotten something and come back for it. I had no idea the man with him was Mickey Wu.”
I waved my fork dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. There was no way you could have known who he was. Lucky for us, Richard did.”
“I couldn’t believe it was actually him. It was like meeting a celebrity—he got a lot of media coverage while I was in Shanghai.”
“For selling thongs?” I had a hard time imagining China’s state-controlled media putting too many column inches into racy underwear.
“My Mandarin is pretty limited but I got the sense that most of the coverage was negative. I think he kind of stirred things up when he named them after Mao.”
“But he still sold enough of them to buy a house like that?” asked Dante.
“Mao Tse Thongs were very much the thing for kids in their twenties trying to show everyone at the shopping mall how irreverent they were.” Richard made a moue of distaste. “Personally, I found the things tacky and uncomfortable. Like someone took a BeDazzler to a jockstrap.”
Chapter Five
After breakfast, my hangover tried to convince me to go home for a nap, but the four cups of Elbow Room coffee coursing through my system overruled it. Feeling jittery and paranoid, I decided now was the perfect time to go looking for Martin Farrell. They say the best hunters are able to think like their prey. Not that it would be particularly difficult to track him down, as he seldom left the three-block radius around his hotel room.
Martin was a rich kid from West Vancouver. I met him during his half-hearted pursuit of a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of British Columbia. He was one of my best customers, regularly buying in bulk for his entire dorm. As a graduation gift, I gave him a free ounce and his father gave him a partnership in his Mercedes dealership. Martin celebrated by taking a 500SL convertible off the lot and going out for an extended joyride before trading it for twenty pounds of weed. Unimpressed with his son’s negotiation skills, Martin’s father wasted no time in revoking the partnership. Undeterred, Martin continued on the same trajectory, which is to say a tailspin, eventually crash-landing on Vancouver’s version of skid row—the Downtown Eastside. He now lived on an allowance secretly provided by his mom, more than enough to cover his insatiable appetite for intoxicants. I was confident he would still know how to contact The Norwegian.
I had left my car back in Point Grey, the leafy and luxurious seaside enclave where Mickey Wu resided, due to the lingering effects of bourbon mixed with Windy-Mindy’s vitamins. Vancouver was recently named Canada’s “most walkable city,” but I suspected that was merely tourism board code for “least number of days snowboots are required.” The west side of the city is comprised of hilly residential neighbourhoods like Point Grey, whose affluence increased in correlation with their proximity to the Pacific Ocean. Three bridges—Burrard, Granville, and Cambie—crossed False Creek to connect these neighbourhoods to downtown Vancouver, located on a peninsula in the Burrard Inlet. The peninsula is divided into two forests, one concrete, one wood. A multitude of handsome, modern towers—office, retail, residential—dominate the downtown skyline all the way down to the water, as if trying to glimpse their photogenic reflection, unaware that they are dwarfed and upstaged by the mountains and ocean that surrounded them. The second forest is a miraculously preserved thousand-acre swath of trees called Stanley Park, a prehistoric oasis of calm on the edge of the metropolis. Extending from its northern tip is the Lions Gate Bridge, which connects West and North Vancouver, gouged into the base of the North Shore Mountains on the far side of the Burrard Inlet. More bridges funnel traffic to the municipalities to the south and east—Richmond, Burnaby, Surrey, Delta—allowing almost three million people to move around the Lower Mainland. A surprising number of them do so in Teslas, BMWs, and Range Rovers, but the odd person is on foot.
After the party, a very sober Dante drove us downtown to The Elbow Room in Buff’s purple Hummer. As far as I could tell, the man never drank anything stronger than protein shakes. He also required absolute silence when behind the wheel so he could focus—not on the road, but on the Gregorian chants he played while he drove. I should have taken a cab.
I was in the process of repeating this mistake. Fickle autumn sunshine had enticed me into an ambulatory search for Martin before abandoning me on grey, grimy Hastings Street amongst the clamorous dregs of the night shift. It was impossible to guess whether some of the revelers were in the final throes of their binges or just starting out, but they made me want to either swear off drinking entirely or have a stiff one immediately. Things quieted down as I moved east toward Main Street and the drunks ceded dominion to the junkies. Too easily, I fell into step with this herky jerky parade of worn and faded humanity running down their clocks.
Turning t
he corner, I almost tripped over the second cadaver of the weekend. This one was slumped against the wall of a pawn shop dressed in a grey twill pants and a navy blue blazer. I smiled with relief. “Hi, Martin, long time no see.”
The cadaver didn’t move a muscle, possibly due to their absence, but alert eyes the colour of tarnished silver spoons swivelled upwards. They registered no surprise. Martin was calibrated to expect the unexpected. “Hey, Jake,” he muttered, barely moving his lips.
“How’s life down there?”
“A bit tricky at the moment. I’m under surveillance.”
I followed his gaze to a rusty Hyundai with no front bumper. A thicket of parking tickets festooned its cracked windshield. “Martin, that car is abandoned.”
He smirked. “Sure it is.”
Martin cherished his beliefs rather zealously. Best not to get sidetracked. “You seen The Norwegian lately?”
“I wish. He hasn’t been around in weeks. Word on the street is he’s still running on empty.”
“You know how I can get in touch with him?”
“His number’s in my phone.”
“Great.” I waited. The blue blazer lay dormant; the skin and bones within continued to obey Newton’s first law of motion.
“Can you give it to me?” I pressed.
“Sorry, man. If I move, they’ll be all over me.”
Together, we watched a crow forage amongst the Hyundai’s parking tickets until it found the one it was looking for and took wing.
“I really need his number.”
“Left pants pocket.”
Martin’s thighs weren’t as warm as the dead guy’s had been, but his phone was there, as promised.
“So you want to get back into business with him now that he’s hitting the big time, huh?”
“Not a chance.” I stopped entering The Norwegian’s number into my phone. “Didn’t you just say he was out of product?”