Shadow Puppet

by Jeffrey Round

  “I think that was the point.” Dan nosed the car around a corner. “They wanted to see if you were the sort of material they could exploit. If you’re desperate, you’ll do whatever they want.”

  Prabin turned to stare out the window. “Well, that’s it then. I don’t want my fifteen minutes of fame as a porn star. That was completely degrading, and it was just an audition!”

  “I’m sorry,” Dan said.

  Prabin shook his head forcefully. “You don’t have to be sorry. I was the one who wanted to do this.”

  “Did they tell you they wanted to use you?”

  “That’s the funny thing — after telling me how great I was they got very cool and businesslike at the end and said they’d let me know.”

  “They want to keep you guessing. My guess is you’ll get a call in a day or two with an offer. But this has to be the end of it. You can’t go through with it for real.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. That was really creepy,” Prabin said. “But what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll have a talk with the chief and tell him what happened in there.”

  “If it were up to me I’d lock them both up right now.”

  Dan dropped Prabin off down the street from the condo to avoid running into Donny. One more lie, he thought, this time to a best friend. Where do they end?

  He turned the car around just as a text came through from Reggie: No white van, it said. Let me know if you need any other help.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Venus in Polythene

  THE CHIEF WATCHED AS THE server set a plate with a large slice of pie in front of Dan, then looked down at his own plate of hash browns and fried eggs. Either it was Mandy’s day off or else she’d finally been arrested.

  The chief didn’t look pleased. Nor did he sound it. “I did tell you not to get too involved in this stuff.”

  Dan tried to smile reassuringly, but it was a bit early in the morning to be faking it. “Officially, yes. You said officially.”

  The chief sighed. “Do you have to be so literal? There’s officially ‘looking into’ something and then there’s undercover infiltration, which is essentially what you were doing.”

  “Admittedly.”

  The chief raised his eyes from his coffee cup, weariness written all over his face. No resolution at home, was Dan’s guess. “Couldn’t you have just looked into things from a distance?”

  “What would I learn from that? Besides, you said you like it when I don’t do what I’m told.”

  “True enough.” The chief shrugged. “At least your friend wasn’t hurt. He must be brave.”

  “And determined.”

  “So they’re auditioning for dirty vids, your friend says they got a little heavy with him, but nothing coercive. There’s nothing illegal there so far as I can see. I’m not sure where that leaves us.”

  “Me either, but the whole scene is a little disturbing.”

  “Disturbing? You haven’t seen disturbing,” the chief said.

  Oh, yes I have. Dan thought of the forty dollars he’d laid on the sill of the ticket window the previous evening, after dropping Prabin off at home following his audition.

  “Forty dollars is a lot for a sex show,” he’d told the man — or maybe woman, he wasn’t sure which — who sold him his ticket. His or her lipstick had been put on crookedly. Someone who wasn’t sure themselves what they were.

  “It’s not a sex show,” came the gravelly response. “It’s a demonstration of the psycho-sexual aspects of sado-

  masochism.”

  “So then it’s a sex show with a Ph.D.,” Dan joked. The ticket seller’s expression didn’t change.

  “Go in there,” the seller said, pointing off to the right.

  Dan grabbed his ticket with the words Sex Wrap embossed on it. He headed for the entrance and nearly stumbled trying to find a seat in the dark. It took a while before he became accustomed to the gloom. The room was an antechamber, with maybe forty people at best. The lights rose as the performers entered, a display of physical beauty in all shapes and sizes, including a muscular dwarf barely four feet tall. His stature may have been short, but his sexual aura extended well out into the audience. A century earlier and he’d have ended up in a carnival sideshow. Now, he was box-office draw.

  “There was also the drugging they discussed when I was outside the door,” Dan said now.

  The chief shook his head. “No proof. And if I tell you how many overdose cases arrive at the local hospital every day, you’d understand why I can’t be bothered to check on it without at least a name or a date.”

  “We’ve still got an autopsy report that shows Nabil Ahmad was asphyxiated before being dumped in the water. We’ve also got the photograph showing he was in Sam’s apartment at some point. That could tie him in with Star-X.”

  The chief paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “You said some of his pictures disappeared between the time you first saw the computer and the next time the brothers let you in for a look?”

  Dan nodded.

  “That in itself bothers me. We might call it destroying evidence. But there’s still no proof he was involved with the porn operation,” the chief grunted. “Besides, it could be coincidental that he visited a guy who lived in the same building.” He took a bite of sausage and made a face.

  “No good cop would believe that,” Dan said.

  “Don’t tell me what I believe,” the chief growled. “I’ve now done a thorough search of the names you gave me: Sam Bashir and the other two. Adam Carnivale and Saleem Mansouri. Bashir came over from Iran on a student visa and attended theatre school for a while. Apparently he was a puppeteer.” The chief shrugged. “Do they still have puppeteers? Anyway, his visa expired last year, but we have no record of his leaving the country. The obvious conclusion is that he chose to stay illegally. Saleem Mansouri’s a permanent resident. He was a dentist back home in Turkey, but couldn’t use his credentials here. Adam Carnivale’s real name was Farid Malek. He came here a few years ago from Bosnia as a temporary visitor. Again, I can’t find anyone by those names leaving the country.” He looked at Dan. “But you were right — they’re all Muslim. You get big points on that. However, when I asked for a trace on any other relevant missing persons who fit the same profile, guess what? I found eleven, including your four. It’s impossible to keep tabs on them all.”

  “I don’t know about the others,” Dan said, “but we know Sam Bashir still keeps his apartment here.”

  “Not illegal, even if you’re not a citizen.”

  “Is it possible he changed his name?”

  The chief shrugged impatiently. “Changed his name, changed his sex. It’s hard enough tracking down killers when we know what they look like, but these days the kids are all swapping identities. We took forever to find one guy, a dealer with thirteen aliases and a Facebook page for each one. It was a frigging nightmare trying to figure out who to charge!”

  When Dan had asked Domingo the day before, she’d told him she didn’t know whether Edie Foxe had another name.

  “She came from Sarajevo as a temporary resident,” Domingo had said. “Her papers expired and she ended up on the streets. But she was determined to stay in Canada. She started off as a prostitute to support herself then she discovered there were people with real money who would pay her to put the fear of god into them.”

  But she refused to talk to him, Domingo said. Even after she explained what Dan was after.

  “I’m surprised. What kind of performer doesn’t want to talk about her art?” Dan asked.

  “A scared one is my guess. Anyway, she said no dice.” There’d been a silence over the line. “She has a performance tonight at Lola’s Cabaret. You didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Thanks.”

  The chief pushed his plate aside and concentrated on the coffee. “If these people need money, the sex trade’s one of the easiest ways to get it.” He looked down at Dan’s pie then back to his own unfinished plate. “Should have
got that, I guess.” He sighed. “The whole Middle East is set to explode. Could happen any day … Syria, Libya. People jumping ship everywhere. Every day someone shows up claiming refugee status. Some are legit, some are not. And getting fake papers is not that hard. I read a report from CSIS the other day — there could be up to a hundred terrorists in the country. Half their budget is spent on counter-terrorism, if that tells you anything. Our border’s porous, illegals cross over from the U.S. all the time. To them, we’re a haven. But that’s not my problem. What is my problem is when they end up here in the city, where it’s easier for them to blend in. It gives me ulcers just thinking about it. Take my word for it, your guy is one of those, whether his name is Sam or Mahmoud. Anyway, we now know what became of Nabil Ahmad. I’m sorry for your clients. How are they holding up?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Dan said.

  The chief nodded. “If your suspicions are correct then we’ll probably come across the bodies of the others at some point. Maybe not until the spring thaw.”

  “Why did we find Nabil’s body, but not the other two? Change of MO?”

  He thought of the bluish colour beneath Nabil Ahmad’s skin. The cyanosis that Stuart had pointed out. Edie’s show had included a discussion of agalmatophilia, a doll fetish named for a killer who bleached his victim’s bodies to resemble wax mannequins. And that, the coroner on the case concluded, was when he fucked them.

  The chief nodded. “A change of tactics is quite possible, yes. You never know, though. They could be right outside the docks at Queen’s Quay just waiting to surface. The water’s unpredictable that way.”

  The server refilled their coffee cups and asked about their meals. The chief looked down at his plate where the egg yolk had seeped into the toast. Half of it was unfinished.

  “Yeah, good,” he said. “I’m done.”

  The server picked up the plate and headed back to the kitchen.

  The chief continued. “All these guys left a pretty thin trail behind them. There’s just not enough to go on. Somehow they’ve vanished into thin air, as the saying goes.”

  “That’s why our killer chooses them,” Dan said. “He knows they won’t be missed. Nabil was the exception. Maybe the killer didn’t know about the brothers when he chose him for his next victim.”

  “Possibly. On the other hand, if your theory is correct and it really is Muslims killing Muslims, then maybe one or both of the brothers is behind it.”

  “I thought of that.”

  The lights had come up higher as Edie walked on stage draped in fur and carrying a purse. Without her street drag she looked completely feminine, her curves accentuated beneath the pelts. Between the Mr. Leatherman contests and the sex shows, Dan thought, the animal mortality rate in the gay community must have been pretty high. Not to mention her costume budget.

  Two women came over and began to caress Edie’s feet. The goddess adored. The dwarf wheeled in an armchair and Edie sat. She reached into her purse to retrieve a tube of lipstick, cardinal red, and began applying it to her lips. The women grew more passionate, kissing her ankles and calves then reaching upward until she slapped their hands away.

  “Naughty, naughty!” she’d cried to the audience’s titters.

  “As for your pornographer, Xavier Egeli, I did a little bit of digging. He was also involved in the fighting in Sarajevo.” The chief eyed Dan. “Ethnic cleansing. Muslims. Like his boss, Zoltan Mirovic, he was cleared in a postwar investigation. So now you see why I didn’t want to declare the men publicly as having been kidnapped or killed by other Muslims.”

  “And Mirovic? Did you find anything new on him?”

  “Mirovic always stays one step ahead of the law. He’s a slippery customer. He gets away with what he does because he’s smart. He makes sure anything illegal is at arm’s length.”

  “So he’s a crime boss.”

  “Pretty much. As I said before, these are not nice men. I’m advising you to leave them to us. So this is official: don’t try to get back in that group.”

  “Okay.”

  The show had ramped up. Edie kept up a steady patter in a demonstration of forniphilia. Human furniture. Dan wished he’d brought Donny along for the running commentary as a faux living room was assembled using bodies as footstools, chairs, and settees. A young man perched on his haunches opened his mouth whenever someone stepped on his foot. Dan squirmed as a lit cigarette was doused on his tongue. The human ashtray.

  Edie stood and clapped her hands. “Let’s have the slave, please.”

  The others cleared off as a young woman walked on stage, naked, and stood meekly at its centre. Edie looked her over and turned to the audience. “Very nice, yes?”

  There was applause. Next, two assistants came out grasping a roll of polythene. Heading across the stage in careful choreography, they bound the slave while Edie watched. When the woman’s body was totally encased in transparent wrap, the assistants rolled out a large

  St. Andrew’s cross and positioned it behind her, gagging and securing her to the arms. She hung there limply, like a puppet. One of her legs twitched.

  “This exercise must be done carefully,” Edie advised. “Otherwise you could end up with a corpse on your hands. A real one.”

  She caressed the woman’s face and kissed her on both cheeks. She removed a plastic bag from her purse and held it up. The slave looked frightened and began to moan. Edie placed the bag over the woman’s head and secured it behind her neck.

  Dan looked at his watch.

  “When breathing is restricted, it can cause bleeding around the eyes,” Edie informed them. “You will find this on people who have been strangled and asphyxiated.”

  In his mind, Dan was back at the morgue listening to Stuart Morgan talk about bleeding under the conjunctiva. Nabil’s bloodshot eyes.

  The slave thrashed. Edie sat and applied her bronzer, continuing her commentary. All eyes were on the bag as it began to fog over.

  Dan checked his watch again. One minute and forty-

  five seconds.

  “You need signals so you don’t go too far,” Edie told them. “Something for your slave to let you know when he or she has reached a sexual threshold.”

  “Then you’ll investigate the basement?” Dan asked the chief. “There might be other things to find.”

  A look of concern crossed the chief’s face. “I’m going to have a hard time getting a search warrant. I can’t just go on your say-so that you found a set of dentures with bloody incisors. That brings up a whole raft of problems. It would also implicate your superintendent.”

  “What about a complaint from a performer that she’d been drugged and abused by them?”

  The chief nodded and sipped his coffee. “That might do it. Especially if she pointed out the basement as the place where she was drugged and abused.”

  “It would have to be anonymous,” Dan said. “She’s terrified they’ll kill her.”

  A chill had set over the audience. Edie turned away from the cross. “Bodies aren’t easy to dispose of, so make sure your slave doesn’t kick it. This is not something you should attempt when using drugs or alcohol.”

  Dan’s watch read four minutes and thirty seconds — it surpassed anything he’d managed as a teenager. The entire room was holding its breath. The slave thrashed a final time and went still. The bag was entirely opaque. Dan thought of a tramp he’d discovered on the sidewalk outside his warehouse early one morning. Pale, unmoving. Shortly after he’d called 911, however, the tramp revived. He’d glanced up at Dan standing over him with a look of concern. “Fuck off,” he snarled just as the first ambulance arrived.

  Five minutes and fifteen seconds.

  Edie walked over to the suspended figure, slowly unfastened the clasp then whipped the bag off. The slave’s head hung down on her chest. Edie stepped into the light and bowed. The audience clapped half-heartedly, too stunned to know what was real and what fake. When Edie indicated the slave with her hand, the woman sudd
enly perked up and broke into a grin. The applause grew as the other performers filed back on stage.

  More bows. The show was over.

  “It’s enough to make me start smoking again,” the chief told him.

  Dan had been waiting in the dressing room when the door opened and Edie entered, still dressed in her furs. At least they’re real, Dan thought.

  “Good show.”

  “Friend of Domingo’s, right?”

  She sat at the mirror, ran her fingers through her hair then picked up a cotton ball and began to remove her makeup. She seemed ordinary once again, the adolescent boy peeking through, Dan thought. It was as though he were looking at someone who’d just been exorcised of a demon.

  “She said you didn’t want to talk to me. I thought I’d try to convince you.”

  “What is this about?”

  “Murder. You could be implicated.”

  She laughed out loud. “For my show? Not likely. You saw that girl walk off stage of her own volition.”

  “I was referring to your association with Star-X Productions.”

  Her eyes caught his in the mirror. “Those guys are sons of bitches. Somebody needs to tell them BDSM isn’t for real.”

  “There’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Dan said.

  She whirled to face him. “Nobody gets hurt in my show.”

  “Not even your human ashtray?”

  She sneered. “His tongue is coated. All he would feel is a little heat. Nothing lasting.”

  “And the polythene wrap girl?”

  “Elena is a trained athlete. She can hold her breath for up to six minutes. Do you think I want fucking bodies littering the theatre? I hate being upstaged.”

  “So it was all faked?”

  She turned back to the mirror. “It’s the psychology of fear and submission I’m teaching. People need that. It’s a release from their own fear of sexuality.”

  “Have you ever gone too far?”

  She met his eyes in the mirror again. “You mean have I ever killed anyone? No. There are signals. If someone can’t stand it, they say, ‘Ow, that really hurts, Edie,’ and I stop whatever I’m doing.”