Parker read the clue. Author of Animal Farm. She smiled. ‘I wish I could help you, Eddy.’
Orwell’s deeply embedded paranoia, an unhappy consequence of his marriage, rose swiftly to the surface. ‘But what? You can’t? Or you won’t?’
‘Got to get to work, Eddy.’ Willows had taken off his jacket and was reaching for his phone. Parker sat down at her desk. She scanned through the Sammy Wu file as Willows dialled the prostitute’s private number. He leaned back in his chair, suddenly sat erect. ‘Holly, this is detective Jack Willows. I want to ask you a few questions about your visits with Sammy Wu… ‘ His expression hardened. He said, ‘Listen to me, Holly… ‘ He jerked the phone away from his ear, and slammed it down.
‘Holly otherwise engaged?’ said Parker sweetly.
Willows referred to his notebook. He picked up the phone and dialled.
‘Quick’n’ Easy Escort Service, Debbie speaking.’
‘Debbie, this is Detective Jack Willows.’
‘What can we do for you, Detective?’
Willows said, ‘Holly wasn’t always alone when she visited Sammy Wu, was she?’
There was a brief pause. He could almost, but not quite, hear Debbie’s cogs slowly spinning.
Finally she said, ‘Jack, I’m not sure I should discuss that with you. Can I put you on hold for a minute?’
‘Sure.’
Willows found himself listening to recorded music. Madonna. Who else?
A heavy, aggressively masculine voice came on the line.
‘Detective Willows, Edward Griffin. I’m a partner in the company. Debbie tells me you’re interested in Mr. Wu’s dating preferences?’
‘Right.’
‘Holly was always his favourite. If he was in the mood for a twosome, he’d ask for a friend of Holly’s, a woman named Barbara. Unfortunately, Barbara - Barb - is no longer working for us.’
It was a waste of time, but Willows had to ask. ‘Do you happen to know where we can reach her?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Willows said, ‘If you hear from her, would you please get in touch with me as soon as possible?’
‘Yes, of course. I believe Deb has your number?’
‘I believe she does,’ said Willows. He politely thanked Edward Griffin for his time, and gently disconnected.
On her way past Orwell, who was still working on the crossword puzzle, Parker said, ‘Orwell.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ said Parker.
*
The corporate headquarters of Quick’n’ Easy Escorts was located on the top floor of a three-storey walkup on Davie, just off Granville. It wasn’t a great neighbourhood, and it didn’t look as if it was in much of a hurry to improve itself. But it was centrally located, close to several moderately priced hotels. Parker thought that must be a consideration, given the nature of Quick’n’ Easy’s business.
The receptionist, Debbie, was reading a tattered copy of the August 1996 issue of Shape magazine. The lead article was titled ‘Bikini Butt, 6 new moves for your best behind.’ She glanced up, more surprised than annoyed, as Willows and Parker brushed past her down-at-the-heels desk. Debbie was a perfectly accessorized redhead. She had big lips and big eye shadow, and she wore a really big sweater. Her glossy black fingernails were very big, and so was her attitude, when she finally realized what was going on.
‘Hey, you can’t go in there!’
Willows pushed his way into Griffin’s office, with Parker close behind. She was careful not to slam the door.
Edward Griffin’s desk was larger than Debbie’s, and in much better condition. This may have been to compensate for the fact that Edward Griffin was smaller than Debbie, and in even worse shape. Griffin vaguely resembled Danny DeVito’s considerably older, shorter, and less wise brother. He turned off his electric razor and carefully put it away in a desk drawer. Then, taking it one step at a time, he turned so he squarely faced the detectives, and offered them the most insincere smile that either of them had ever seen.
‘You must be Jack. And you must be Claire.’
Willows said, ‘But you can’t be Edward, because he sounded so much bigger than you’ll ever be.’
Griffin shrugged. ‘I’m not supposed to meet people. That’s not part of my job. It’s the girls who meet people.’ He reached across his desk and picked up the phone, punched a button.
‘Debbie, get me Barb.’ Clasping his hand over the receiver, he made eye contact with Willows and said, ‘Can I interest you in a Braun portable razor? New in the box, 20 per cent off retail?’ ‘Can I interest you in a cell?’ countered Willows. ‘It’s used, but still has plenty of years left in it.’
‘Barb? Edward. You in a cab? Get your ass over here, baby. I don’t care about that. Don’t keep me waiting,’kay?’
Griffin hung up. He said, ‘She’s in a cab, on her way over. Be here in a couple minutes.’ Griffin’s tired eyes shifted from Parker to Willows and back to Parker. ‘Want a drink? No? You sure?’ He slid open the desk drawer, held up his razor. ‘You mind?’
He was still shaving, working on his upper lip, when Barbara slipped into the office.
Willows wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Someone like Holly, he supposed. Someone who looked like a hooker, not a tired, middle-aged nun. If Barbara was wearing makeup, she had applied it too subtly for him to detect.
She turned on Griffin. ‘Turn that fucking thing off, Edward!’
Edward Griffin promptly switched off his Braun.
Barbara leaned against her boss’ desk. She dug a pack of filter cigarettes and a disposable plastic lighter out of her purse, lit up, and exhaled a cloud of smoke into Griffin’s face.
‘Cut that out, dammit!’
Barbara flicked ash onto Griffin’s desk. To Parker, she said, ‘I got to get out of here. What d’you want to know?’
‘You knew Sammy Wu?’
‘Yeah, sure. But I didn’t know anything about him. Except for his sexual preferences. I mean, we never talked about personal stuff. It wasn’t that kind of relationship.’
‘What kind of relationship was it?’ said Parker.
‘Strictly business.’
‘When you visited him, was there ever anyone else there?’ ‘You mean, aside from Holly?’
Parker nodded.
‘Just once, the last time I was there.’
‘When was that?’
‘Two weeks ago today.’
‘Do you remember the man’s name?’
‘Mr. Smith,’ said Barbara with no trace of irony.
‘Did you get the impression Mr. Smith was a friend of Sammy’s?’
‘Must’ve been, because Sammy paid his freight.’ Barbara frowned. ‘On the other hand, Sammy didn’t have any friends. He wasn’t that kind of guy. So I guess it was business with him, too.’ Parker said, ‘Can you describe Mr. Smith?’
‘Not really.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, you might find this kind of hard to believe, but I never really looked at the guy. He was big and had a full beard. That’s all I can tell you. Truth is, I never look at any of them. I just let my brain go out of focus, know what I mean? They’re paying for the use of my body, not my mind. So I’m there, but I’m not there… ‘
Parker nodded, getting it. She was aware that Willows was staring at her, scrutinizing her. Parker had been engaged, back in her twenties. Suffered a long-term relationship that went nowhere for years, before she finally wised up, and cut and run. She supposed she was going to have to let Jack in on her little secret, explain, and reassure.
She took his hand, and let him see the love for him that was in her eyes, her very soul.
Barbara saw it, too. She looked away.
Chapter 27
He was alone, again. Sometime during the evening, April had slipped away. Lewis rolled over on his back and stared up at the ceiling. As usual, he had no idea what time it was or even what day it was. He tried to imagine where April might have gone. He pic
tured her in the mall parking lot, and then in the backyard, and then in the kitchen. The rest of the world, all of it, was a blank. His body tingled. He walked his fingertips lightly across his face, and wasn’t at all sure he recognized the topography. He accepted that he had no idea where April was or what she might be up to or when she might return to him.
He rolled over on his belly, and clutched at either side of the mattress as if he were afraid it might fly away and not take him with it. He might have dozed off again, and, if he did, he was reawakened by the television. He rolled over on his side so he could face the screen. There was a tape playing in the VCR.
Some kind of crudely animated cartoon… Lush green fields filled the screen. Tall grass bent in the swirling blue wind.
Hump-backed cartoon grizzly bears waded the shallows of a picturesque stream. The bears kept slapping at the water, shoving their large heads under the surface as if they meant to commit suicide. One of them came up with a large cartoon fish. An improbably huge fish. The fish wriggled and squirmed, and then went limp. The camera moved in for a close-up. Large black crosses had been drawn across the fish’s bulging eyes, signifying death.
The bear’s teeth were yellow, and curved inward. They didn’t look particularly sharp, but they sure were powerful.
The fish’s rainbow body was streaked with blood.
The camera panned to reveal distant, stereotypically picturesque snow-capped mountains.
A cartoon bald eagle hovered above a turquoise lake nestled into a steep valley.
Rows of bent and twisted cartoon fruit trees, their branches heavy with fruit, dotted a sun-bleached meadow.
Spliced onto the end of the animated footage was a shot of a black Jeep launching itself over a rise. The Jeep came crashing down on scrub brush in a cloud of dust.
Brakes squealed.
Wayne smiled at the camera. He got out of the Jeep and reached behind him for a rifle. He leaned against the Jeep and sighted over the hood at an unseen target, and squeezed the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot was so loud it hurt Lewis’s ears.
Wayne’s bullet smacked into an actual living specimen of a grizzly bear, as the creature waded across a river with a salmon dangling from its mouth. In anguish, the bear thrashed the water to foam. Wayne shot it again. The bear stopped struggling. It drifted slowly downriver for a hundred feet or so, until its body was caught in a backwater.
Wayne’s bushy head filled the screen. The rifle was slung across his back. He unslung the weapon and drew a bead on the camera, and fired. Lewis flinched. The bed trembled.
Flesh-and-blood Wayne reached out and patted Lewis on the hip. He offered him a Marlboro. They sat there in the semidarkness, smoking.
Wayne said, ‘I don’t care if I do get cancer. I don’t care if I have to spend the last half of my life in a wheelchair, hard-wired to a tankful of oxygen. I don’t care if I get Alzheimer’s, either. Know why?’
Lewis shook his head.
‘Know why?’ persisted Wayne.
‘No,’ said Lewis.
‘Because it’ll have been worth it. Man, there’s nothing like a cigarette. A cigarette, and a nice cold beer.’
Numbers frantically climbed all over themselves as the VCR’S counter wound rapidly back towards quadruple zeros.
Wayne said, ‘After a long ride on my bike, that’s when I enjoy a smoke the most. It’s hard to explain, I mean, if you ain’t been there, you ain’t done that. But I feel so relaxed, kind of sleepy sometimes. It’s a real pleasure to stretch out on the sofa, light up, and just lie there, nice and peaceful, and think about the ride.’
To Lewis, it sounded as if Wayne enjoyed motorcycling the same way most people, normal people, enjoyed sex. He almost said so. But then he remembered April confidentially telling him that Wayne had never been sexually interested in her. So he kept his mouth shut, and kept on living.
The VCR clicked noisily as the tape finished rewinding. Wayne dipped his hand into his shirt pocket. He pointed the remote at the VCR, and pushed a button.
Lush green cartoon fields, tall grass bending in a swirling blue wind.
Wayne hit the remote’s pause button.
‘You hunt?’
Lewis said no.
‘Big mistake. There’s no place like the woods. You can learn so much out there, in such a short time.’ Wayne pulled on his Marlboro, flicked ash at the floor. Exhaling, he said, ‘You grab some guy off the street, drop him off in the middle of a forest with a pack of matches, a knife and a firearm, he’ll learn more about himself in twenty-four hours than he’d have otherwise figured out in a lifetime.’
Judging from the way Wayne was staring at him, it looked as if he expected a reply. Lewis tried to think of something appropriate.
He was wired, not thinking clearly or really interested in thinking clearly. At last he said, ‘How’s that?’
‘A man finds himself alone in the woods, he’s got no one to depend on but himself. Ain’t no 7-Eleven he can wander into, pick up a candy bar and a Slurpee. Whether he lives or dies is entirely up to him.’
Wayne reached out and plucked Lewis’s dwindled cigarette from his mouth and dropped it and his own cigarette butt on the floor, stamped the life out of both of them.
‘Kill or be killed, that’s the deal.’ He lit another cigarette, taking his time about it, making a production of it. ‘Seems like you been with us a long time, Lewis. It’s like, well, it’s almost like you’re a member of the family. Dalmatian number three.’ Wayne slapped his beefy thigh. He chuckled throatily. ‘Hey, just kidding.’ He turned and pointed the remote at the VCR.
The cartoon grizzly fished in the shallows of a wilderness river.
The cartoon eagle played with the winds.
The black Jeep hurtled over a rise, skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust that slowly drifted away to reveal Wayne’s hairy, grinning face.
TV Wayne grabbed the rifle, aimed and fired.
Real Wayne hit the remote’s rewind button. Then stop, then forward.
TV Wayne grabbed the rifle, aimed and fired.
Real Wayne hit the pause button. He said, ‘Think back to when I got home, that day you moved in with us. Remember? That sly bitch April had changed the locks. I started bellowing and kicking at the door… Had to knock it flat as a pancake for the simple pleasure of making your acquaintance, Lewis. There any chance at all you still remember that?’
Lewis said, ‘I think so.’
‘So tell me, can you recall what you were thinking, in the moment my boots turned that door to kindling?’
Lewis furrowed his brow.
He said, ‘It seems like a long time ago.’
‘I bet it does. Time can get real tricky, when you’re a dope fiend.’
Lewis said, ‘I was frightened. I was afraid.’
‘Sure you were. Hell, why wouldn’t you be? You’re in some guy’s house, fooling around with his girlfriend… ‘ Wayne saw Lewis was about to protest, and warned him off with a raised fist. ‘You’d have to have titanium balls, not to be a little worried. But the thing is, who were you frightened for? Yourself, or April?’
The question was a real toughie. Despite his narcotic-befuddled state of mind, Lewis had sufficient smarts to realize that sometimes the right answer was the wrong answer. He tackled the tricky, peripheral-vision-straining chore of studying Wayne while pretending not to look at him. But what if the question contained more than one hairpin curve? Lewis considered this possibility at length. Meanwhile, Wayne seemed content to smoke his cigarette.
What if the question doubled back on itself twice, and cancelled itself out? The more Lewis thought about it, the more confused he became.
‘Time’s up,’ said Wayne. He scowled. ‘I got to tell you, the fact of you sitting there mulling it over at your leisure pisses me off something fierce.’
‘April,’ said Lewis.
‘What about her?’
‘When you were kicking down the door, I feared for April.’
‘No, it’s the truth.’
‘You’d just met her. Fuck me tender, she near killed you with pepper spray, kicked you in the balls and… ‘ Wayne was a long way past confounded. He said, ‘Jesus H. Christ, she kidnapped you!’
‘Did not.’
‘Excuse me?’ Wayne’s face looked as if it was trying to break down into its component parts. He tried a sardonic chuckle but came nowhere near pulling it off. ‘You’re denying she bagged you? You’re saying, what, you tagged along voluntarily?’
‘She’s a beautiful woman. I fell for her. She told me she was crazy about me. It was one of those love-at-first-sight deals.’ Lewis hungered for a Marlboro. He scooted down the bed until he was close enough to Wayne to reach out and sneak the pack from his shirt pocket. Wayne offered his lighter. Lewis lit up, inhaled deeply. Wayne didn’t ask for his lighter back, so Lewis kept it.
He said, ‘Don’t get mad at her, okay? It isn’t her fault, any more than it’s my fault. I mean, it isn’t anybody’s fault, it’s just one of those things.’
Wayne said, ‘I don’t pretend to understand the deep recesses of the human heart. But I can tell you this much - I’m damn happy you said you love her. Know why?’
‘No, why?’
‘Rod McGuire. Ever heard of him?’
Lewis actually considered the possibility, even though he’d never met anybody with that name. Or even a similar name. Like… what? Well, how about Tod Squire?
Wayne said, ‘Hey! Wake up! Rod McGuire. D’you know him?’
‘No, I don’t think so… ‘
‘Rod’s a dealer,’ said Lewis. ‘You ever give pause to think for even ten seconds about where April got all the drugs she’s been pumping into your miserable freeloading veins?’
‘I guess not.’
‘You’re a no-good fucking leech!’ said Wayne contemptuously.
Lewis hung his head.
Wayne said, ‘April owes Rod about three thousand dollars. Some of it, but not much, was spent on projects other than yourself. But the point is, she needs our help, and we’re going to give it freely. Aren’t we?’
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