Memory Lane

by Laurence Gough

  Bobby waved. “Hey, Claire.” Aubert was in cuffs. He was jerked off balance as Bobby veered suddenly towards Parker’s desk. “Get anything out of Timmins?”

  “He confessed,” said Willows. “Didn’t anybody bother to tell you?”

  Bobby’s jaw dropped. His mouth gaped open. Three golds crowns, too many amalgam fillings to count. Parker had always assumed that ‘jaw drop’ was a cartoon expression meant to convey surprise. But look at Bobby! His mouth continued to hang open. Willows’ little joke had resulted in a sudden loss of muscle control, due to overwhelming astonishment, and shock. Bobby’s teeth clicked together as he finally shut his mouth. He managed a synthetic laugh, pointed at Willows with a finger that was rigid and trembling. “Think you’re pretty funny, huh?”

  Willows said, “Put the finger away, Bobby, before you sit down on it, and hurt yourself.”

  Bobby’s glare was full of vinegar and venom. He renewed his grip on Aubert’s arm, pushed him towards the interrogation room.

  Parker’s phone warbled. She picked up, listened a moment. “Okay, we’re on our way over.” She cradled the phone and drank the last of her tea. “That was Christy. He’s sharpening his axe, says he’ll be ready to start on our boy in a few minutes.”

  Willows picked up a stray pencil. He made a note to ask Culver to fax him King’s rap sheet and photograph. What was he going to tell Sheila’s mother and father? What in hell was he going to tell the kids?

  Parker touched his shoulder. She let her hand lie there. “Why don’t I take care of the autopsy. There’s no point in both of us attending.”

  “Yeah? You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Willows had second thoughts. Toronto operated out of a time zone three hours ahead of Vancouver — or twenty-one hours behind. He checked his watch. It was entirely possible Culver had already left for the day. Or he could be working a fresh case, be gone for hours. There was no point in spending the rest of the day in a holding pattern, waiting for a call that might not come. He checked his desk to make sure the drawers were locked, gave Parker a crooked, apologetic smile. “I think I’ll tag along with you.” Parker glanced behind her, towards the front of the squad room. The two civilian secretaries were hard at work. Orwell and Bobby Dundas had shut the interrogation-room door. She said, “It’s a date,” and bent over Willows and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

  Chapter 21

  Shannon smelled of hotel soap, Crest toothpaste, the perfume she’d dabbed here and there in carefully positioned pheromone ambushes. Her skin was warm, smooth as anything this world has to offer. She and Ross lay beneath the sheets on opposite sides of the bed, holding hands, and chastely kissed each other for what seemed to Ross like forever and a day.

  Eventually he made a move on her, disengaged a hand and did a little preliminary exploring, groped the terrain. She reacted by bending his fingers backwards, almost deafened him with her outraged shouts. He scooted back to his own side of the bed, apologized.

  Where had he gone wrong? His memory of Garret and Shannon’s first full day together, tangled and complex as it had been, was clear as a bell. He had been confused by the unscheduled stop at the bar and then the trip out to the beach. But now that he was back on track, right where he belonged, he’d thought everything was going to be okay. Predictable.

  He rolled over on his side, reached for his shirt. He shook a cigarette out of the pack, and lit up.

  Shannon said, “This is a no-smoking room.”

  “Yeah?” He rolled over again, so he was facing her. She lay on her back with the sheets tucked under her chin. Her eyes glittered. Her hair had that tousled look favoured by the kind of girls who posed for automotive-parts calendars. The bedding blurred the shape of her body, but he’d taken a good long look at her in the shower, and for a fleeting, exquisite moment, he’d had a handful of her. The memory seared his brain like a steak on a grill. He said, “I always enjoy a cigarette after sex. Most men do.”

  “Men who smoke.”

  “Yeah, right. Men who smoke. I’d stand corrected, but I’m too tired to get up.”

  Shannon inched a little closer. She cupped her chin in her hand. “Are you telling me that we just had sex, Ross?”

  “Sort of.”

  She smiled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He worked on his cigarette, flicked a half-inch column of ash neatly into a curved depression in the base of the bedside lamp.

  Garret had told him everything. Every tiny, intimate detail. With the aid of Ross’s thesaurus, he’d recalled the soft, yielding weight of Shannon’s breasts as he had held her in his arms. The nubbly texture of her nipple, as he’d suckled. The hard grinding of their bones as she moved beneath him, how the lamplight had pierced her eyes…

  Shannon said, “Five years, that’s a lot of Saturday nights without a date.”

  Ross shrugged. “Seemed like it at the time. Now I’m not so sure.” He took a final pull on his cigarette, mashed the butt into the lamp’s metal base. He put his hands behind his head and locked his fingers, rocked his shoulders back and forth until he was nice and comfortable. He shut his eyes.

  The first time Garret told him about going to the hotel with Shannon, they’d been walking aimlessly around the middle of the yard, taking care not to walk in a straight line that would carry them into a wall, remind them of who they were and where they were. It was late October, sunny and not too cold, the sky clear, nothing above them but endless blue. Looking back, the way Garret had acted at the time, it was likely that the tumour already had a good hold on him, that he was already dying…

  Garret said, “Remember that picture I showed you, my girlfriend?”

  “Sharon?” As if he didn’t remember.

  “Shannon, dipshit.” Garret cuffed him playfully on the side of the head. “I ever tell you about the first time we did it?”

  “Did what? Grabbed a couple of straws and shared a milkshake?”

  Garret wasn’t smiling. At that moment, he looked as serious as anybody in the yard. “What I’m talking about, the first time we made love.”

  “No, you never told me about that.” Ross slowed, drifted a couple of steps off the line they’d taken, shook out a cigarette and lit it.

  Garret stopped walking. He turned around and came back. “Gimme a smoke.”

  Ross shook a cigarette out of the pack, handed it over. He sparked his lighter. Garret took the lighter out of his hands. He lit his cigarette and slipped Ross’s lighter into his pocket, blew smoke into the yard, glanced idly around and then back to Ross. “Want me to tell you about it, how it went?”

  “Not if you’re gonna wake up in the middle of the night and wish you hadn’t.”

  Garret thought that over for as long as it took him to haul in another double lungful of smoke. Exhaling, he said, “I see your point.” His upper body tilted left as he fished deep in his pockets for Ross’s lighter. He handed the lighter back to Ross. They wandered around the yard for another ten minutes or so and then Garret said, “She had this park she wanted me to see, where she played tennis. Then we went to a restaurant and had lunch, a really nice lunch, with wine. Italian wine.” Garret tried on his accent. “Valpolicella Classico Superiore. And then we went straight to the hotel. What I mean is, she dragged me to the hotel.”

  “What hotel?”

  “A downtown hotel, across from the water. The Sylvia. Real nice place. Very clean, nice and quiet, reasonably priced. Ever stay there?”

  Ross shook his head.

  “They got ivy growing all over the walls, all the way to the top of the building. Open your window and look around, there’s vines everywhere, some of ’em thick as your arm, twisty and green. You can hear birds chirping away in there, squirrels and what have you…”

  “Chimps?”

  “No chimps, Ross.” Garret’s mouth twisted around a grin. “Plenty of monkey business, though.”

  In the slammer, two things that were never in short supply were time and
bullshit. Garret was an experienced convict, an expert at verbal foreplay, who knew how to grab that big clock by the hands and turn it to his advantage. Eight long days had come and gone before he finally got around to telling Ross about what Shannon was like in bed.

  “Hot,” Garret said as they lounged in a patch of watery sunlight. Low-altitude clouds scudded overhead. A bitter wind swooped the length of the yard, snatched up whatever particles of debris it could find, and flung them in the faces of those convicts stupid or desperate enough to brave the elements.

  Ross said, “Yeah?” He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his back to the gale. The fitful wind tore at him, snapped at his loose-fitting denim jacket and made his hair ripple like a wheat field.

  “Hotter than a Thanksgiving turkey,” said Garret. Then, finally, he told Ross what Shannon liked to do, in between the sheets.

  Garret had a way with words. His description of those hours spent in bed with Shannon were minutely detailed, incredibly graphic.

  But was he speaking the gospel or had he told a hundred lies?

  Ross sat up, adjusted his pillow behind him and leaned back against the headboard. He lit another cigarette.

  “Shannon?”

  A long silence. Then, “What do you want now?”

  “Just to tell you that I’m sorry if I’ve pissed you off.” Ross paused. He was acutely aware that he’d better choose his words carefully. A misstep at this crucial point in the proceedings could be fatal to their romance, such as it was. He said, “Garret told me about certain things you and he did, stuff that happened between you, important experiences you’d shared.” Ross’s cigarette glowed bright. He exhaled with a rush, flicked ash in the general direction of the floor. “Then, this morning, those same things started to happen to me.”

  “Like what?” Shannon’s tone was harsh as a raven’s.

  The light in the room had never been strong. Now that they were well and truly into the hindquarter of the day, it was fading away at a gallop. Ross was grateful for whatever gloom was available; he had no desire to make eye contact.

  He said, “Well, like going to the park, the tennis courts. And that real nice restaurant you took me to, and now here we are at the Sylvia Hotel.”

  Ross waited a moment, giving her a window of opportunity, should she wish to jump through it. But if she saw the chance, she gave no indication that she cared to take it. A minute or two passed in congealing silence and then Ross said, “I guess I thought things were going to keep on going the way they’d been going…”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, when you invited me up to your room, just like you invited Garret, I guess I made the mistake of thinking we’d end up passing the time in the same way that you and he had done.”

  “Keep talking.”

  But her tone was so icy that Ross fell silent.

  She said, “What kind of things do you think you’re talking about? No, wait. Let me guess. Sex things?”

  Ross nodded, his head jerking. But by now the light was so far gone that it was impossible for her to see him. He said, “Yeah, that.”

  “Garret told you we came up here, to this very room, and had sex?”

  “Well, no. He never said what room it was.”

  “But he told you we had sex?”

  “Made love,” said Ross miserably.

  The bed squeaked as he reached for the lamp. He warned Shannon that he was going to turn the light on, so she’d better shield her eyes. He switched on the light, turned towards her.

  She said, “Well, he lied. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe I’m a little confused about how I feel right now. Is there something wrong with that?”

  Ross said, “No, of course not.”

  They lay there, facing each other, looking into each other’s eyes. They were no more than a hand span apart. Breathing the same air. Sharing a bed, both of them alive in that same tiny sliver of time in the endless history of the world. What were the odds? A sentimental fool could drown in his own tears, just thinking about it.

  Ross wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He itched to know who she saw. Was it him, or was it a dead man, a handful of dust?

  The sheets moved. Shannon’s hand touched him. She inched a little closer. Her breath warmed him. He could feel the heat of her body, coming at him in waves. She said, “What are you thinking?”

  He shrugged. That slight movement brought him into fleeting contact with the swell of her breast. She gave no indication that she’d noticed. He said, “I’m just wondering where your friend Kelly fits in.”

  “I told you, he’s my brother.”

  Ross smiled wearily. “C’mon, there’s got to be more to it than that. For example, why did you meet him in the bar? And what was he doing up here, in the room?”

  “When we arrived at the hotel, I noticed his car parked on the street. The old orange Datsun? With the rust? That’s Kelly’s car. So I knew he was here, and that he was probably in the bar, having a beer.”

  “Wait a sec. Are you telling me his presence was a wild coincidence?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly. He knew I planned to bring you here. But please don’t ask me why he showed up.”

  “Intrusive personality,” said Ross.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s pushy.”

  “What was I supposed to do, ignore him? The reason we only stayed for one drink was because I assumed that, if we left, and he didn’t think we were coming back, he’d eventually go home.”

  “But he didn’t go home, did he?”

  “Well, I can’t help that.”

  Ross lit a cigarette. He felt like he’d been parachuted into a maze with no exits. He said, “But why was he waiting for us?”

  “I don’t know! He’s my big brother. Naturally he thinks he knows what’s best for me, even though he doesn’t.”

  Ross worked hard to make sense of this piece of intelligence, or perhaps a far better word was bullshit. Shannon was in her mid-twenties. A woman a quarter of a century old was nobody’s child. She’d have the same basic needs as anybody else, any other woman. If she wanted to take him to a hotel, what was wrong with that? Nothing. So, bullshit aside, what had motivated Kelly to get mixed up in business that was none of his concern?

  He asked her.

  She said, “Kelly was a friend of Garret’s.”

  “Oh yeah? He never mentioned him.”

  “Not a close friend,” said Shannon. “But they had certain things in common, mutual friends…”

  Ross pulled on his cigarette. He’d been studying her closely as she spoke, and he was fairly sure that, so far, most of what she’d been telling him was either the truth or a lie. He said, “Was Garret involved in criminal activities, at the time?”

  “Not that I know of. In fact, after he did those terrible things and they put him in jail, I often wondered if it was my fault that he’d turned to a life of crime.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  Shannon said, “Before he met me, Garret was… I remember he described himself as kind of idling through life. Not doing much, but getting by. But then he met me, and he felt differently about things.” She gave Ross a dazzling smile. “But where could he take me that didn’t cost money?”

  “Beats me,” said Ross.

  “That was when he teamed up with Billy. At first all they did was break into cars, stuff like that.”

  “Small potatoes,” said Ross. “But then they got ambitious.” Or, another word, greedy. “Decided to take on the armoured car, get rich all at once, in one big chunk.”

  She nodded. A tear welled up in the corner of her eye. It hung there for a moment, glistening, and then tumbled slowly down her cheek, into the corner of her mouth. She licked it away.

  Ross said, “When you come right down to it, the only reason people do what they do is because of who they are, deep inside themselves. Think about it, Shannon. How a person behaves has got nothing to do with anything outside himself. Not
really. It’s what’s coiled inside a man’s heart that counts for everything.”

  His cigarette had burned down to the filter. He lit another. “Garret could’ve won the lottery, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to the way he acted, the path he chose.”

  Shannon had drawn away to the far side of the bed. Ross didn’t pursue her but neither did he put a stop to his chatter. “You really think it mattered to Garret whether or not he was going out with you? He tried to rob an armoured car but it wasn’t money he was after, even if he didn’t know it at the time. See, we talked about this kind of stuff all the time, when we were in prison. ‘Exploring the Inner Self’, they called it. Group therapy sessions. What Garret wanted, above anything else, was to feel like he was alive. He was so far gone, so royally fucked up, that the only way he could do that was to make other people die.”

  Shannon was crying now, in full flood. Her pretty face twisted by grief, the sounds she made tortured and animal-like, not at all musical.

  Ross felt much worse than awful. He said, “Look, I’m sorry…” Man, if she didn’t stop crying, they were going to need a canoe. He said, “What in hell are we doing here, anyway?”

  In a strangled voice Shannon replied, “It was Kelly’s idea.” She leapt out of bed, disappeared into the bathroom. She blew her nose violently. The toilet flushed. She climbed back into bed. “He told me it would be a good idea if I seduced you.”

  Ross was dumfounded. Finally he collected himself. “Why?”

  “So you’d help us get back Garret’s two hundred thousand dollars.”