Long Ling is still looking at YouTube videos. Sean Wiggens is on the phone with the forensics lab. He’s the fourth and least useful member of Maguire’s team, and is known on the Force as Wiggie, probably because he’s scatterbrained, zoned out half the time. He’s a six-and-a-half-foot uncoordinated beanpole who likes to loom over people, especially shrimpy Long Ling.
Gaylene finishes off a sandwich from the canteen, announces she just got off the line with someone in the president’s office at UC San Diego.
“There was a confrontation over an op-ed Knutsen wrote, mocking neonics. They blame him for Monsanto revoking a hefty grant they promised. No contact with him since he checked out of California, but he left a forwarding address in Montreal, where they mailed him a severance cheque. I’m on it.”
Maguire sits down with his coffee, feeling useless. They’ve got sweet dick. A crafty young trickster and a bitter scientist, that’s all they’ve come up with. The trail is getting cold — the perps could be anywhere, the other side of the country. Latin America, Europe.
Meanwhile he’s stuck in Toronto with no end game in sight, with only an occasional day off. That will happen tomorrow, a short-haul flight to London. When he phoned Sonia to tell her to expect him, she seemed to hide concern, maybe impatience. Their thirtieth coming up. Hawaii. Maguire had sworn he would take her.
“No problem, honey,” he said. “We’re gonna wrap this up at hypersonic speed.”
Gaylene is on the blower, to Montreal, tracking down Professor Knutsen’s forwarding address. Doing it in fluent French. Annoyingly cocky, for sure, but she’s the best female cop he’s ever worked with. She too is away from home, and missing her partner and her boy and girl. Maguire has got to stop feeling sorry for himself.
There comes a sudden shout from Long Ling: “Got her!”
Wiggie, the squad-room skyscraper, knocks over his chair as he rushes to Ling’s monitor, followed by Gaylene, still talking on the phone, “Call you back, sorry, emergency.” They form a tight pack around Long Ling, so Maguire has to crane over Gaylene’s head, barely managing to avoid contact with her extended butt.
“I’m backing up,” Long Ling says. “It was uploaded from a phone.”
The opening shot is of a band tuning up, ambient crowd noise, people shuffling about in front of the camera. The lens then moves to the side of the stage, behind the curtain, several crew bustling about backstage. A blur of activity, then the camera pans right, and holds on a pair of young females bent over clipboards, like they’re comparing notes.
Long Ling freezes on them. One is definitely the pseudo–baseball fan known as Becky McLean: dark, petite, and pretty as a kitten, brown hair cut shorter than in the photo from the SkyDome. Jeans and floppy shirt. Her confederate is taller, with a mop of magenta hair, also hot-looking in a kind of witchy way, all mascaraed up, and wearing a T-shirt promoting the 2017 Ontario Tour of a band called Panic Disorder. Both have badges that say “Staff.”
Gaylene bends closer to the screen, and her bum thumps Maguire’s groin. Embarrassed, he backs off. But she bumps him again, teasingly, and again he jerks back, flustered. He wants to think she’s not being indelicate or risqué — it was kind of like high-fives, just lower down.
The tail end of the video is brief: the girl in the Panic Disorder T-shirt sees they are being filmed, and says, “Get the fuck out of here,” and the camera clicks off and that’s the end.
Still rattled by Gaylene’s immodesty, Maguire covers up by barking orders. “Okay, we need a master for evidence and copies for each of us. Find out who organized this carnival, who they hired, who volunteered. Addresses, phones, backgrounds, where they hang, their friends. When you show photos of these two ladies you’ll get questions. Explain we got a missing persons report, it may be nothing, we don’t want to alarm family and friends. Say no more. And let’s check out Panic Disorder.”
That last task doesn’t take long. Gaylene pulls up several links: reviews, comments, photos, none from mainstream publications, most from counter-culture media. A lanky, long-haired bozo on guitar; another string bean alternating on guitar and keyboards; a black, wild-haired woman on bass; and a fat, hairy freak on drums. A barely-making-it bar band, Maguire decides, with a slim but loyal following. Maybe Becky’s girlfriend is a groupie.
No website, but here’s a Facebook posting from a week ago about their next gig — they’re opening two nights from now, Wednesday, in an east-side tavern called Squirrelly Moe’s.
“You want to send someone?” Gaylene asks.
“Yeah, me.”
“Get real. It’s a hipster bar. You’ll stand out like a grizzly bear at a New Age picnic. May as well wear a uniform.”
“I’m checking it out. You guys work the fucking Bee-In. Fast, before these jokers get lawyered up.” Maguire has an attitude about lawyers — meddlers, gumming up the system with their tricks and technicalities.
2
Wednesday, September 19
It wasn’t easy, but Maguire found the mojo to tell Sonia he’d have to postpone his one-day furlough because of some hot new leads in the case. “We’re going to wind this up lickety-split,” he said with fake enthusiasm. “Guaranteed. Hawaii calls.”
Guaranteed if they can scoop the young lady flagging herself as Becky McLean. How hard could that be? They’ve now got a list of Bee-In organizers, seven of them, greenies, eco-obsessives. They’ll have info on employees and volunteers. Surely someone will recognize Becky and her punk-haired friend.
Last evening, after divvying up the interview list, Maguire picked up a car from the pool and visited Squirrelly Moe’s, on Queen East, near Broadview. A poster in the window: Panic Disorder, 7 to 10 wednsday and thursday, 8 to whenever Friday, No Cover. A blow-up of them on a stage, three characters stomping around the fat drummer with his braided beard.
Maguire had stepped inside for half a minute to scope the layout: a dark dive smelling of spilled beer, walls plastered with posters and graffiti, a dozen patrons, mostly young, capacity for maybe forty more, but also a few older guys at the long bar, ordering up before happy hour ends. His best lookout would be from the last barstool, in the shadows with a 270 view.
The bartender was squinting at him, probably making him for a cop, and he looked like one. Others turned his way as he sauntered off. Grizzly bear at a picnic, Gaylene warned. He’s got to work smarter.
That was yesterday, and Maguire spends much of today wandering among thrift shops for appropriate gear. At five, he’s back in the squad room. Long Ling and Wiggie are still away on their interviews, Gaylene holding the fort, working the phones. Proudly, he lays out his uniform for the night: ragged jeans, a denim jacket a size too small with patches, a peace symbol and a cannabis leaf; the jacket open over a T-shirt urging “Save the Birmingham Eight,” whoever they are, all topped off with smoked grannie glasses and a Che Guevara cap. Gaylene roars with laughter.
Undeterred, he goes to the can to change. He studies his bushy stache, hopes it’s hip enough. On leaving he nearly collides with ungainly Wiggie, who says, “Excuse me, sir, but this here men’s room is only for personnel . . .” He does a double take. “Hey, Inspector, that’s perfect.”
“So what did you get?”
“Okay, I got a list of about two hundred volunteers, none named Becky McLean. The lady who signed them up works for the Green Party. The list has phone numbers, some emails, no addresses. She remembers Becky from the pictures I showed her, but not her name or anything about her or Becky’s friend. She kind of got uncooperative, and was like, ‘Who says they’re missing? Do you even know their names? What’s this really about?’ I don’t think she believed the cover about alarming the families.”
Maguire holds his temper. Somehow, predictably, Wiggie has cocked this up, he’s a lousy actor. This is threatening to become a big, noisy effort to nail down these dames. If word gets back to Becky, she’ll be getting out of
Dodge fast. Bye-bye Becky, bye-bye chances of a fast collar, bye-bye Hawaii.
“I’m honing them down,” Wiggie says, cowed by the glaring old dude in his sixties peacenik gear. “Thirty volunteers worked backstage. I’m gonna start phoning, set up interviews. Hey, Inspector, that outfit really works.”
Back in the squad room, Wiggie advocates so loyally for Maguire that Gaylene relents: “Okay, maybe you’ll pass for a sixties freak. At worst, a dope dealer.” She works him over with makeup, darkens his stubble, combs back what’s left of his hair into a rubber-banded ponytail.
“So what about Professor Knutsen’s mail drop in Montreal?”
“It’s the apartment of a former girlfriend of his, a biologist. He picked up his severance cheque and other correspondence, and that was it. She has no idea where he is. Didn’t leave a number, email address, or contacts. He has no kids, no siblings, no ex-wives, just a couple of live-together partners, including her, a five-year run.”
“Cagey character, guilt written all over him. He’s lurking somewhere.”
“And working. CBC says they just uploaded another burst to the media.” Gaylene picks up her ringing phone. “Thank you so much for the call-back. I’m Detective Sergeant Roberts, OPP. It’s about a missing person, and I’m trying to set up some interviews with the Green Party staff. Would Margaret Blake be available?”
3
Maguire has use of a squad car, but takes public transportation when undercover, a bus today, then the Queen streetcar. None of his fellow travellers gives the old sixties relic much of a look, they’re used to characters in Toronto. He doesn’t want any unsightly bulges showing so he isn’t armed, has no radio, just his smartphone.
He gets off at Broadview and walks to Squirrelly Moe’s. It’s just after six, a little early but Maguire hopes to grab that view stool when happy hour lets out, as it’s doing now. He slips inside, lowers his granny glasses, sees his lookout spot is empty, and commandeers it.
On the wall beside him, some sad loser has written with a red marking pen: “Everything I’ve loved became everything I lost.” Another graffiti next to it: “Suck it up, loser.” A second response: “Piss on pity!” Maguire’s dark corner has negative vibes, a worrying omen.
He swivels for a see. The pub is about a third full, mostly hippie types, some likely underage. Half of them staring at their Facebook pages or on Snapchat, or whatever they do these days, others taking selfies, hugging and mugging.
At the back is a wooden stage, raised two feet, tall speakers on either side, audio equipment, drum set, keyboards, propped-up guitars. The stage abuts a stairwell leading down to WCs and, presumably, storage, and maybe a room for the entertainers. On the other side of the stage is a door to the alley, smokers occasionally drifting out there to tar their lungs.
Pouring shots behind the bar is a surly-looking guy with a dome as shiny as a peeled onion. Maguire doesn’t get a nod or even a look, in the dim light here, so he pulls out his phone and thumbs a text to Gaylene: “Made it for Hippie Hour” and a smiley face.
The bartender finally discovers him. Maguire orders a pint of honey ale and gets a long, disapproving study. “Cash not credit.”
“Business has been good.” Maguire fans some bills.
“What you selling?”
“Whatever you want. Top shelf.”
“You ain’t doing your business here, pal. Keep your nose clean.”
“Cool, man.”
When the barkeep returns with the ale, he tips him a sawsky, to make friends. He’s feeling pretty smug, give old Jake Maguire a pat on the back — all those years in undercover narcotics are paying off.
Everything flows easy for a fair stretch of time, Maguire nursing his brew, not wanting to get looped on the job. More customers are wandering in, the place filling. No sign yet of the vampish young lady with the Panic Disorder T-shirt, maybe she’s downstairs with the band, giving blow jobs. Or maybe this could turn out to be a washout. Maybe he was too optimistic with Sonia.
A weirdo in a Mexican sombrero with a face full of grizzled hair climbs aboard the stool next to Maguire and says, belatedly but politely: “Would anyone be sitting here?”
“Just you, pal.”
“Are you from around here, brother?” He doffs the hat, sets it on the bar.
“Just came up from the States. It’s getting weird down there, man.”
“Welcome to the true north strong and free.” He takes in the Che Guevara cap, the slogan on his T-shirt. “Whom, might I inquire, are the Birmingham Eight?”
Maguire wasn’t expected this hairball to speak in complete sentences, however ungrammatically. “Freedom fighters, man. And whom the fuck are you?”
“The gentleman you are talking to is a musical impresario. This is my band here. T.J. Gully.” He offers his hand.
Maguire regrets having been curt. Gully, manager of Panic Disorder: he remembers that from the internet bumph Gaylene pulled up. “Tony Calhoun,” he says, accepting Gully’s hand. “I heard your guys really rock out.”
“We’re an inch from stardom, my good man.” He calls the grouchy bartender over. “Kindly refill this fine fellow’s mug, Baldy, and I’ll have the usual.”
“Cash not credit, Gully.”
“I believe, sir, our contract provides for complimentary liquid refreshment for the band and its entourage. I am the entourage.”
“Liquid refreshment means a coffee or a Coke.”
Gully’s pink alcoholic’s nose wriggles with distress.
“On me,” says Maguire, handing Baldy a fifty. “I’ll get my change later, stick it behind the cash register.” Gully’s whiskers part in a grateful smile.
Maguire waits until his new best friend gets his drink, a double martini with olives, then says: “Tell me about these future stars, Mr. Gully.”
He is pleased to do so. Maguire learns three of them started off as a busker band working the subways, but they “lacked firepower” and only took off when Rockin’ Ray Wozniak crossed the border on the American Refugee Program. Introduced them to “the Oakland sound, post-punk heavy-metal.” But the glue that holds them together, says Gully, is Mary Bumpo, from Alabama, who also does vocals.
Maguire isn’t interested in Mary Bumpo. “Back up a bit. Rockin’ Ray, the American refugee. He’s political?”
“We’re all a little political these days, friend.” Gully hovers over his martini, enjoying the fumes, then closes his eyes while he sips. “Imperfect, but what can one expect from that uncouth billiard ball.” He pulls a deck of Dunhills from his shirt pocket, fiddles with a cigarette.
Maguire keeps talking to stall him from going out for a break. “I was wondering if maybe Rockin’ Ray Wozniak is from the Left. A brother refugee. Peace and justice, man.”
“I cannot verify he is a warrior for peace, sir. Ray has a brief history of minor violence, having laid low an admirer of The Donald in a bar in Fresno.”
“Right on. Cool. Maybe you could introduce us after the show. How’s your drink? Like a freshie?”
“I don’t mind if I do, sir. I shall return forthwith.” He sticks the cigarette in his mouth, makes for the front door. There’s a lineup out there, impatient faces at the windows.
Maguire sees his own pint is almost empty. He’s been tilting it mindlessly, over-excited. He raises two fingers to Baldy, then does some fast calculating about his follow-through with Gully. Does he ask about groupies, about Becky McLean’s magenta-haired friend? He itches to show him their photos, but that could explode in his face.
Gully returns, smelling of smoke. Just as Maguire is framing another question, the band troops up the stairs to loud applause that continues until, after some tuning, they rip into their first piece. A screechingly discordant wailing that checks further conversation, but the kids are into it, a couple of chicks standing, wiggling their bottoms.
Rockin
’ Ray, the lead guitarist, gyrates like a madman during a solo, his fingers whanging at the strings, then Mary Bumpo takes a turn, screaming indecipherable lyrics into a mike.
Gully excuses himself again, grabs his sombrero, and works his way to the back, placing the hat brim-up on the stage. He throws in a few bills for starters, then disappears down the stairs, presumably for a leak.
Maguire feels his own pressing need, but sticks it out, saving Gully’s seat and ordering him a fresh martini. On his return, the impresario gives Maguire a smelly little shoulder hug.
Maguire had planned on a sobering coffee but when he finishes draining his second pint, Baldy is there with a third. “What a great band,” he yells to Gully before heading off for a piss, weaving among the tables, dodging bodies, pausing at the sombrero to drop in a twenty, then aiming for the stairs. He’s a little wobbly, he’s got to slow the intake.
He was expecting gender-equal privies in a joint like this but there’s a men’s and a ladies’. He’s third in line, now second, a cokehead just exiting, rubbing remnants into his gums. Of more interest to Maguire is what’s behind a green door on the other side. It’s labelled “employees and guests only” and it’s ajar, lights on within.
Maguire’s need is great, he doesn’t want to miss his turn, so he says, “Coming right back,” and quickly slips over to that door and takes a narrow view inside. Lounge chairs, a table supporting several empty beer bottles, an ashtray, scattered newspapers, that’s all he can see until he widens the door a titch. Two gay wankers on a settee, laughing at some joke.
He pokes his head in quick: against the far wall is a young blond, her back to him, sitting in front of a makeup counter and a mirror, doing something with her hair. He sees her mirror image now, and bingo it’s the dame who was with Becky, painted up like a witchy harlot, only no longer magenta-haired but honey-yellow. He darts back, hoping she didn’t catch his reflection.
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