Open Season (Luc Vanier)

by Peter Kirby

  Vanier picked up the folded cardboard, let the window slide down. The sash was broken. The cardboard was three business cards folded and refolded to make a wad to hold the window open. The business cards said Carlos Santos GSC, and under the letters were the words Global Security Consultants. There was no phone number and no address. He turned to the SWAT officer in charge. “Close it up until the fingerprint guy gets here. We’ve got to go.” He headed for the door, turned back to the SWAT guy. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. A nice change to go in and there’s nobody home. More peaceful that way.”

  Saint Jacques had found an address for GSC on her phone in seconds. The drive took twenty minutes. When they got there, Vanier was surprised. The offices took up the entire floor of a downtown high-rise on Mackay Street, expensive real estate for a security company. The reception area confirmed that GSC was making serious money, all marble, steel and glass, with a receptionist that looked like she had just finished a photo shoot for Vogue.

  The receptionist beamed a smile as they entered, appraising Saint Jacques’s outfit at the same time and seeming to find it wanting. Vanier smiled back, introduced himself. They were looking for whoever was in charge, he said.

  “That would be Mr. Merchant. I’ll see if he’s available.”

  Saint Jacques sat down, and Vanier paced slowly, stopping to look at the magazines lined up neatly on the low table, Soldier of Fortune and the Economist, along with several GSC brochures.

  Eventually the receptionist took a call. “He’ll see you now. Follow me.”

  Merchant met them at the door to his office. “Thought we would talk in here rather than in a boardroom. It’s more personal. After all, boardrooms are for clients and we’re in the same business, aren’t we?”

  Merchant’s office was a shrine to himself, photos on every wall showing him in uniform, half of them with the over-decorated military types you find in countries where the army still runs everything.

  Merchant waved at two seats in front of the desk and dropped into his own, a fancy black model. His suit jacket hung over the back of the chair, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. His eyes matched the greyness of his close-cropped hair. He started tipping slowly back and forth in the chair, apparently enjoying the swinging motion. He kept a polite smile on his face, but he was appraising them like a horse trader at an auction.

  “We’re trying to locate one of your employees, Carlos Santos.”

  The mention of the name didn’t seem to register with him. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “He worked for GSC,” said Vanier.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Vanier slid a five by seven print made up from the hospital video clip across the desk. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Merchant looked at the photo without touching it. Vanier thought he saw a flicker of recognition cross Merchant’s face, but it didn’t last.

  “This the guy you’re talking about? Santos?”

  “Might be. We’re not sure.”

  Merchant picked up the photo and made a show of studying it.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  He shook his head and handed the photo back to Vanier. “Sorry. It’s not the best photo, is it? I mean for identification. Could be anyone. But no. It doesn’t look like anyone I know. And this guy, or Carlos Santos, doesn’t work for me.”

  Vanier looked to Saint Jacques and nodded. She fished in her pocket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag with the Santos business cards. “The man we’re looking for had these. Why would he have your business cards if he didn’t work for you?”

  Merchant took his time. Studied the cards. Looked up. “It’s weird. But you’re cops. There are a lot of strange people around. You can get a card like this at any printer. You can even make them on your computer. It’s got our name and logo, sure. But like I said, he’s not one of our employees. I know everyone who works for me and he’s not one of them.”

  “Why would he have the card if he didn’t work here?”

  “You’ll have to ask him, won’t you? But look at it. It doesn’t have a phone number, no email. It’s not one of our cards. They have the phone, email, and address. What’s the use of a business card if it doesn’t have your contact information?”

  Merchant grabbed two business cards from a small silver tray on his desk and handed one each to Vanier and Saint Jacques.

  “See what I mean? That’s my card. That’s what cards are supposed to look like. You want to get in touch with me, it’s on the card. You ask me, this Santos guy isn’t too smart. Maybe he printed up the cards to impress girls. Who knows?”

  “This is a big company. Maybe you could check.” Said Vanier.

  Merchant stopped the back and forth in the chair. “If you insist, but for the record, this is a security company. It’s my company, and nobody works here without me knowing about them.” He leaned forward and punched numbers into the phone, leaving it on speaker.

  “Mr. Merchant?”

  “Véronique, can you do me a favour? Do we have anyone by the name of Carlos Santos on payroll?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell. But let me check.”

  Merchant looked at the officers. “Véronique is in human resources. If he works for us, we pay him. And if we pay him, Véronique will know.”

  Véronique came back on the phone. “Mr. Merchant?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “No. We don’t have anybody by that name on the payroll.”

  “Thank you, Véronique.” Merchant pushed a button to disconnect. “Nothing wrong with my memory. He doesn’t work for us.”

  Vanier looked to Saint Jacques. She shrugged imperceptibly and Vanier began to stand up.

  “That’s it?”

  “For the moment,” said Vanier. “If you remember anything, let me know. Or if Santos shows up for work, let me know.”

  Merchant remained sitting, rocking back and forth. Vanier slid his card across the desk. Merchant look at it but didn’t make an effort to pick it up. He reached for the phone instead.

  “You can see yourselves out, right?”

  Vanier was sitting in the gloom of his apartment, high up on Redpath. The pale moonlight mixed with the lights from the city below was all he needed. He had a glass in his hand, half full. He closed his eyes and listened to the music.

  He was sitting in a club in prewar Berlin listening to Coleman Hawkins and his orchestra, a collection of European session-men bolstered by some of the great US musicians who, like the Hawk, had been exiled to Europe when drug convictions got them barred from playing in the New York clubs. He imagined the club’s dark interior, filled with smoke and heavy with the smell of alcohol, perfume, and sweat. A room filled with people who knew they were in the presence of greatness. The tracks all started early, and you could hear the conversations dulling to silence as the music began and the Hawk transported the audience into dreams they never knew they could have.

  It had been too long since Sophia had been kidnapped, and they still had nothing.

  He didn’t know when he had started thinking of her as Sophia, but it had become personal, and he was failing her. Someone out there was holding her and would probably kill her, but all he kept getting were dead ends. He needed a break. If he knew what she wanted to trade, he could maybe figure out what was going on, but Camara had gone to ground.

  He went back to the bottle on the counter and poured another drink, opened the fridge door for some cold water. The light from the refrigerator fell on the GSC brochure he had dumped on the counter with the takeout menus. He picked it up and settled back down on the sofa. He flipped on the small lamp, enough light to read by, not enough to destroy the mood.

  The brochure was more photos than words, tough guys in uniform providing security in countries no tourist would want to visit. It had a map of the world with red dots on the places where GS
C was working. Red dots for Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, and a sprinkling across the north, marking remote mines and oil fields. Further south, there were three cities in Mexico and one in Guatemala. The brochure said GSC had provided security for the Essence mine in Chajul since its opening in 2007.

  Vanier got up and went to the computer. He Googled the Chajul mine. Most of the hits were from two years earlier, when the mine’s tailings reservoir had collapsed, causing a mudslide that covered the village at the foot of the mountain. Susskind hadn’t remembered exactly how many people the slide had killed, but all the reports put the number at over a hundred. The Guatemalan government had reacted quickly by promising everything to everyone: compensation and retribution, new attention to mine safety, health care for the injured, and schooling for the orphans. More promises than an election manifesto. More recent articles focused on the fact that nothing had been done other than burying the dead. The village had not been rebuilt, and the survivors had scattered. One article reported a Canadian government announcement of a $100 million compensation fund that would be paid for by equal contributions from the Canadian government and Essence.

  When he tried Googling Sophia Luna and Chajul he got nothing. When the accident had happened, she was just starting her refugee odyssey and hadn’t published a word on it. Searching for Sophia Luna on her own turned up a few results, but nothing recent. She had been keeping her head down in Canada.

  After an hour of trolling through the search results, Vanier turned off the computer and refilled his glass. It was two o’clock in the morning.

  Seventeen

  Katya was already shedding the fear that had been with her since she had fled. She wasn’t relaxed, but she could go for a couple of hours without being overcome by dread. But she knew she couldn’t stay in the shed much longer and had been searching for somewhere safer to stay.

  The day before, she had spent hours walking the streets, trying to plan her next move. She had walked as far east as the Atwater market, where she found a trove of discarded food. She could understand the thrown-away fruit and cheese—it was rotting in places, or growing mould. But she was baffled by the unopened packages of good food that were discarded. She just accepted that in rich countries people throw food in the garbage. She had no trouble finding enough to eat. Market vendors threw away enough to feed an army.

  Finding a new place to sleep was harder; all the good places were taken. Whenever she came across a hidden corner or an alcove, there was always a rolled-up blanket or large bags stuffed with clothes, signs that someone had staked a claim and was coming back.

  On the morning of the third day she decided that staying in the shed wasn’t an option. As she left and closed the door, she told herself she wouldn’t be coming back.

  She turned right on Notre-Dame and walked in the direction of the market. It was early, and the streets were quiet. She thought it might be a weekend. She heard a car slowing down behind her and turned her head slightly. It was a police car. Her heart started pounding, but she forced herself to look straight ahead and kept walking, doing her best to look calm. But if you’re homeless, it doesn’t matter what you do, you stand out. If you have spent nights sleeping in the open and days wandering the streets, you cannot hope to look the same as someone who has a home. Your skin has a layer of grime, your face is red from the sun, your clothes look old and dirty, and your hair is matted with filth. If you’re homeless and on your own, you’re particularly vulnerable, an antelope that can’t keep up with the herd. Every predator has you marked as a victim. The police car was still keeping pace with her. She knew it was worse to pretend it wasn’t there. Only guilty people did that.

  She turned her head. The cop was alone in the car and she locked eyes with him, keeping a blank face, no expression, no communication. After a few seconds she heard the car radio bark to life and the car picked up speed and left. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  The market was already bustling when she got there. There were hardly any customers, but workers were putting displays in order; unloading fresh produce and piling fruit and vegetables onto tables, filling empty boxes with anything that was slightly damaged, and building piles of empty cartons.

  Katya wasn’t the only scavenger. Most of the others were street kids, wearing black on black on black. To Katya, their attitudes were as dark as their clothes. She wasn’t one of them, and because of that she drew only hostile glares.

  She walked along the back of the stalls where the throwaways were, always walking slowly, trying to look like she had somewhere to go, but giving herself time to see what was available. Every now and then she’d stoop to pick up some discarded fruit. The best were just blemished, thrown away because the upscale market crowd would only pay for pristine fruit. She found a loaf of stale raisin bread in the container at the back of the Première Moisson and ate half of it. Then she went inside the market building and washed herself at the sink in the ladies’ toilets.

  She spent the rest of the morning wandering, noting landmarks that would allow her to know where she was and where she had been. As time passed, there were more people in the streets and her fear evaporated. She concentrated on finding an alternative to the shed. The busier the street, the less likely it was to offer a safe place to sleep, so she walked up and down smaller streets, exploring laneways and parks, attracted by shadows and corners and hidden places where no one seemed to go. She walked aimlessly north towards the Ville-Marie Expressway. The elevated highway rested on concrete stilts running parallel to Saint-Antoine. The land underneath was fenced off to the public, a shadowland of dirt where nothing grew in the gloom, and the only colour came from the graffiti that covered the concrete pylons. Katya stuck to the south side of Saint-Antoine, looking across the street for a break in the wire fence. She was so absorbed, she didn’t notice the skinny girl on the bench outside the metro station. As Katya drifted past, the girl called out. “Change? Spare some change?”

  The voice startled Katya. It was the first time anyone had spoken to her in days. She stopped walking and turned to look at the girl. She looked worse than Katya. She was emaciated. The flesh had all but disappeared from her face, leaving only skin, with eyes bulging from their sockets. She was shivering despite the heat, dressed in a pair of ripped denim shorts and a dirty grey T-shirt stained black at the armpits. Her greasy hair was dark brown except for a two-inch strip of crimson at the ends.

  “I said, you got spare change?”

  “No. Sorry. No money.”

  Katya stood there, staring.

  “You lost?” the girl said.

  Katya looked up and down the street. They were alone except for passing cars. She studied the girl, sitting with her feet on the bench, arms wrapped around her legs.

  “Not lost. Just walking.”

  “Oh.”

  Katya sat down on the bench. The girl ignored her, staring straight ahead at nothing, her body twitching as though she was cold.

  “I have no home. I am looking for a place to sleep.”

  The girl motioned with her head to the expressway. “Under there. We all sleep under there.”

  “How you get in?”

  The girl unclasped one shaking arm from around her legs and pointed. “There’s a hole in the fence. Over there.” She pointed to a road that led under the expressway and on up to the city. “On the other side. Up the road on the other side.”

  Katya looked over to where the girl was pointing. “Yes?”

  “Lots of people sleep there.”

  “You sleep there?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes.”

  “You can show me?”

  The girl looked at Katya as though for the first time. “If I show you, you owe me, right?”

  “I owe you?”

  “Yeah. Like when you get money you give me some. Okay? I help you, you got to help me. Deal?”

  She held out a dirty hand
and Katya reached for it. “Deal. When I get money I give you some.”

  The girl held onto Katya’s hand, she was staring at the eagle tattoo. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Is Russian eagle.”

  “You Russian?”

  “No, Ukrainian.” Katya was getting nervous. Too much information. She pulled her hand back from the girl’s grasp. “You can show me now?”

  The girl sighed. “Okay. Sure. Where’s your stuff?”

  “No stuff. I have nothing.”

  “Shit. Nothing. Okay. Then maybe I help you get a sleeping bag. Then you owe me big time.”

  The girl put her feet on the floor and stood up. She leaned forward and half tripped, half ran towards the road. Then she stepped out and crossed without looking at traffic. Cars swerved to avoid her, the drivers shouting abuse. She gave the one-fingered salute to no one in particular and continued unsteadily across the street without looking back to see if Katya was following. Katya waited for a break in the traffic and ran to catch up. The girl led her around to the north side of the boundary fence and, about thirty metres in from the road, she reached down and pulled the wire fence up and away from the post. There was a triangular opening in the fence. The girl got down on her hands and knees and climbed under, letting the fence drop back into place. Katya followed.

  At two in the afternoon, the space under the expressway hovered in a shadowy dusk. There was a stench of rotting garbage. The ground was littered with junk: empty bottles, beer cans, cigarette butts, takeout containers, and discarded scraps of food. The sound of the traffic on the road above was soothing background noise compared to the loud buzzing of flies around them. Katya wondered if she could sleep here, but she told herself it was a step up. She would be sharing space with Canadians. It was almost like living in a community.

  “Only one rule. No shitting here. You want to shit or piss you go to the end over there.” The girl waved vaguely over to the southwest end of the fence. “Far away as you can go. Next to the fence.”