A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  Claire looked up. Dr. Hamilton — Randy — stood by the door to his examining room, smiling his boyish smile, and motioning her forward.

  Dr. Hamilton was in his late thirties. He was tall and thin and had a shock of red hair he wore on the longish side. He was a preener, a man who had achieved his goal right on schedule, and had been basking in his glory ever since. Claire believed that younger doctors were probably more likely to be in tune with the latest in medical miracles. On the other hand, Hamilton’s unlined face didn’t instil confidence, and his unbridled enthusiasm, together with his apparent belief that a loud voice and active manner equated heartfelt concern, sometimes grated on her. His insistence that he call her by his first name — Randy — was another thorn in her side. She supposed her age was showing. But the clinic was a lot more convenient than phoning her family doctor and nagging the receptionist to fit her in sometime next month. Anyway, Hadrian got along with Dr. Hamilton, and that was all that really mattered.

  Claire put the magazine aside and stood up. Hadrian threw the car keys to the floor and pointed at them and screamed loudly. She bent to pick up the keys and give them back to Hadrian. When she stood up, Annie was glaring furiously at Hamilton. Claire was wearing a scoop-neck blouse. Her breasts were swollen with milk, and she guessed that Hamilton must have snuck a peek at her cleavage when she’d knelt to pick up the keys. She felt herself blush as she walked towards him. He touched her arm as he followed her into the examining room.

  “Hadrian feeling a little under the weather is he?” He took Hadrian from her and held him up in front of his face as if Hadrian were an inanimate object, some small thing that had attracted his attention and that he might be interested in, if the price was right. Hadrian swiped at him with the keys. His aim was true but his arms were short.

  Claire said, “He had a temperature early this morning, and he was vomiting, and now he has diarrhea, and he can’t seem to keep anything down.”

  “Getting plenty of fluids into him?” Had Hamilton just snuck another look at her breasts?

  She said, “Yes, but as I said, he isn’t keeping much down.”

  Randy Hamilton got Claire to sit Hadrian on her lap while he shone a light into his ears, nose and throat. Hadrian was fascinated by Hamilton’s flashlight. Hamilton let him play with the light while he took his temperature.

  He said, “He’s up a couple of degrees. It’s nothing to worry about. Little tyke’s building up his immune system, that’s all. His weight’s fine and his general health is excellent.” He smiled. “You’re doing a wonderful job, Claire.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hamilton, standing directly in front of Claire, put his foot up on the arm of the chair she was sitting on. His posture was entirely inappropriate. She looked away. Hamilton said, “Everything else okay?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Your husband’s a cop, isn’t he?”

  She nodded tersely.

  He said, “It must be difficult, with all the shift work.”

  “He’s a homicide detective. He usually works a nine-to-five shift.”

  Hamilton nodded gravely, salting the information away. He said, “I don’t suppose it’s exciting as the movies, car chases and midnight surveillance and so on … I suppose he must have to put in a fair amount of overtime. Can’t expect your average murderer to put away his knife and gun at five sharp.”

  Claire smiled politely. She could have bitten her tongue for discussing Jack’s working hours. Hamilton was vain enough to assume she wanted him to know when she was alone at home. She said, “We work things out.”

  “Well, good.” Hamilton stood up, and rubbed his hands briskly together. “Call me if there’s a problem. As I said, the trick is to keep him well-lubricated.”

  Parker nodded. There was nothing in Hamilton’s tone of voice that suggested any hint of sexual double entendre. But had she seen a teasing hint in his eyes — or was her imagination working overtime? He managed to briefly touch her again as he escorted her out of the examining room.

  As Annie drove her home, Claire thought about the fact that, although the clinic had two doctors, she never saw anyone but Hamilton. She supposed that didn’t mean anything, that he saw her because he was familiar with her file. Even so, she decided it was time to find another clinic.

  Chapter 8

  On being a consumer

  Harvey drove straight down Main, towards the mountains. He parked on the street, and sat quietly in the car. Half a block behind him, a City of Vancouver Meter Maid bulled her way towards him. Her face was twisted with arcane rage. Harvey reflected on the personal cost of unlimited power. Pen in hand, her knuckles white with pressure, she showered illegally parked vehicles in a blizzard of tickets. When she got to Harvey, he stepped out of the Firebird and groped his genitals as he made a show of patting himself down for change. The Meter Maid dawdled, book in hand, applying pressure as best she could. She was a blonde, kind of stocky, with bulgy calf muscles built for tackling the Alps. He thought she would’ve been a good match for Anders, if his name hadn’t been so misleading. The Meter Maid wasn’t what you’d call a stunner, but Harvey thought she looked kind of cute in her crisp white shirt and dark blue shorts, shiny black boots. She was about five-eight, a solid two inches taller than he could ever hope to be, and that helped to crank up his interest. Was it the woman he was attracted to, or the uniform? He hoped it wasn’t the uni, because that would indicate he’d been institutionalized during his long period of forced incarceration, and was therefore doomed to eventually — and probably sooner than later — recycle himself back to prison.

  Harvey slid Anders’ mirrored sunglasses down his nose and gave her a great big smile, crinkled up his eyes, shovelled on the charm. Lots of women, at least two of them, one unsolicited, had compared his natural good looks to the notoriously handsome film star Richard Gere. Harvey believed Gere was past his prime. He’d told both women he appreciated the compliment, but thought it failed to do him justice. He slid the sunglasses back up his nose and said, “Could I ask, you got change for a dollar?”

  “You don’t need change, the meter accepts dollar coins.”

  “I’m only gonna be here a couple minutes.”

  She gave him a nice smile, setting him up. “Do I look like a bank?” In the blink of an eye, Harvey’s seductive smile twisted into a black-hearted sneer. He said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact a bank is exactly what you look like.” He thrust out his arm and shoved a dollar into the meter, and twisted the butterfly handle. A green light blinked. The timing needle swung around to the sixty-minute mark. Harvey said, “Quit staring at me and get back to work.”

  “Fuck you, Shorty.”

  Harvey waggled a finger. He said, “I like a woman with ambitions. Too bad for you that wishing doesn’t make it so.”

  She turned her back on him and strode off. The ground didn’t shake, but it had to be a near thing. Harvey waited impatiently for a break in traffic. He trotted across the street and down the long half block to the Army & Navy, the no-frills, Jacqui Cohen-owned department store that had been a Vancouver institution since 1919.

  Harvey wandered around the store, taking his time, making a game of spotting security. The store was crammed with a wide variety of shoppers, all the way from fashionably dressed young couples to desperate welfare recipients trying to stretch their miserly pittance of a government handout as far as it would go. Harvey made his way downstairs, to the sporting goods department. When he was a kid, anybody could walk in and buy an army surplus Lee-Enfield .303 rifle and a box of hardball ammunition simply by plunking down the twenty-dollar price. No GST, either. Those days were long gone, and would not return. Now the only guns in stock were air pistols, good for irritating crows, but that was about it. Harvey went over to the fishing department and bought a double handful of one-ounce lead fishing weights and a jackknife with a fake buckhorn handle, then went back upstairs and paid cash for a pair of emerald-green canvas deck shoes, and a bright red made
-in-China fedora.

  The clerk punching cash-register buttons was Chinese, or maybe a Filipina, Harvey never could tell the difference. He tossed the pantyhose on the counter, but left the fedora on his head, tilted at a rakish angle like a private detective in a black-and-white movie. Affecting an exaggerated lisp, he said, “My boyfriend’s six-foot-four. He’s got really heavy thighs because he plays professional football. Will these fit him or are they going to be too ti-ight?”

  The clerk squinted up at him. She said, “How much does he weigh?”

  “Two hundred and fifty-eight and one-half pounds, somewhere in there. That was this morning. He gains as the day goes on.”

  “Should be okay. Are you paying for the hat?”

  Harvey worked on looking surprised, then sheepish. He wasn’t confident he’d pulled it off. He tilted his head and thumb-flicked the back of the brim so the fedora jumped off his head and landed upside down on the counter. The clerk rang it up, and totalled the bill.

  The cash register buzzed and whirred. The clerk said, “That’ll be thirty-seven dollars and fifty-four cents.”

  Like Harvey couldn’t read the numbers for himself. He peeled a couple of twenties off his fast-dwindling roll. It was a hard world. A man had to spend money to make money, and there were no two ways about it.

  *

  Grindstone

  “Jack?”

  Willows turned and looked behind him. Inspector Homer Bradley crooked a finger. Willows clicked his pen and put it in his shirt pocket. From his desk across the narrow aisle, Dan Oikawa gave Willows an under-the-eyebrows look. In the past few weeks, more than two dozen cheap ballpoint pens had disappeared from the desks of the six-man Serious Crimes squad. Nobody was pointing any fingers, yet. But at the same time, everyone in the squad was on his toes, eager to solve the case and bask in the resultant glory. Dan Oikawa was usually pretty good under pressure, but lately his paranoia meter had been on the rise. Willows stood. He pushed his wheeled chair up against his desk, straightened his tie, and headed for Bradley’s office.

  Inspector Homer Bradley was pissed. He was chronically short of detectives because of the infamous on-going “pig farm” investigation into the disappearance and possible murders of sixty-three female Vancouver prostitutes and drug addicts. The VPD had slept through years of murder, and the pendulum had finally swung the other way — a whole bunch of top-level cops were losing sleep over the Pig Farm case. Or if they weren’t, they should have been. Not that it was doing anybody any good. Public confidence in the VPD was, deservedly, at an all-time low. Bradley didn’t expect the situation to improve in the foreseeable future. Eventually, there was bound to be a public investigation. When the truth came out, many heads would roll.

  Bradley’s mood further darkened when he got the news that Parker had booked off sick, again. The world went black when he learned that Detective Eddy Orwell had bugged out for an emergency dental appointment.

  He waved a pencil at Willows. “Shut the door, Jack.”

  Willows turned and shut the door. In all his years as a homicide detective, he’d never walked into Bradley’s office without being immediately told to do something. It was usually the door, but sometimes Bradley wanted his window shut, or the buzzing fluorescent ceiling light turned on or off, or a chair moved an inch to the left … Willows supposed Bradley was demonstrating control, unsubtly reminding him that he was the biggest bear in the woods.

  Willows leaned against the wall. He had to pick his spot, because most of the space was covered with photographic reminders of Bradley’s decades-long service to the department. There were pictures of Bradley in chummy group poses with six chiefs of police and four ex-mayors, several aldermen, a handful of easily recognized film stars, and numerous fire chiefs and other genuine or dubious local heroes.

  Bradley said, “I see Claire booked off sick again. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “She be back in tomorrow?”

  Willows shrugged. “Beats me, Homer. Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  Bradley slid a slip of paper across his desk.

  Willows pushed away from the wall. He spun the slip of paper around so he could read the address printed on it. He recognized the address as a luxury waterfront high-rise on the north side of False Creek. The building was ideally located between the Granville Street and Cambie Street bridges. The penthouse units had the highest per-square-foot price in the city. Willows knew all this because he and Parker, wasting time one evening a couple of years ago, had visited the presentation site. He remembered the high-pressure salesman assuring them that the amenities included but weren’t limited to fantastic views, top-of-the-line appliances, genuine marble and selected hardwood floors, and European-style lighting fixtures. Neither he nor Parker had been seduced by the presentation. Maybe he’d be interested in another twenty-odd years, when he’d retired and Vancouver developers had learned how to build a watertight envelope.

  Willows brought Oikawa up to speed in the elevator. They were investigating a homicide that, unless the uniformed cop who’d called it in was hallucinating, was a lead-pipe cinch for a murder investigation. Even better, the victim was Colin McDonald, the multi-millionaire developer renowned city-wide both for his appetite for beautiful young women and his ability to construct flashy-looking buildings with all the characteristics of a sieve. It was clear from the troubled look in Oikawa’s eyes that he wasn’t too pumped about the case, no matter how high-profile it was. Willows wasn’t going to worry about it. Oikawa had always been a moody personality.

  *

  Shopaholic, inc.

  There was still half an hour left on the meter when Harvey made his way back to the Firebird. He was feeling cocky in his new hat, but his mood soured when he spotted the City of Vancouver parking ticket tucked under the windshield wiper. The ticket was dated and had the time written on it in a delicate, spidery hand.

  Harvey slung his cool Army & Navy shopping bag into the car. He ripped the ticket in four ragged pieces and tossed it on the sidewalk, where the Bitch would be sure to see it next time she passed by.

  He had the urge to track her down and give her a peek at his dark side, but told himself she wasn’t worth the trouble. She had a radio and would jump at the chance to sic the cops on him. Let her own karma take care of her.

  Harvey had the green shoes and red fedora and black pantyhose. All he needed now was a shirt, and a black, or green, suit. No way he was paying for a new suit, not on his budget. It seemed like everything from tobacco to bubble gum was at least twice as expensive as when he went into the slammer. A guy didn’t have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that meant he was going to have to pull twice as many robberies to maintain the same shabby standard of living he’d endured before he’d been busted. If he wanted to better himself, he was going to have to stay busy.

  Factor in Tyler and all the stuff he was gonna need, Harvey was going to be one seriously overworked criminal.

  His first stop was a charity used-clothing store on Fourth Avenue, a few blocks west of Burrard. When Harvey had gone to jail, the building had been home to a radio station. He assumed the station had moved, or gone belly up. He followed a woman up the concrete steps and didn’t complain when she held the door open for him. Inside, racks of used clothing were organized according to customer gender and type of item. There were about fifty suits to choose from. Only one was green, and it was way too big for him. No problem, except he’d have to roll up the pants to keep from tripping over them, and what if they came unrolled as he was making his getaway? He dreaded the evil crap his fellow cons would sling at him, if he got tossed back in the joint because his getaway pants didn’t fit.

  There were lots of black suits to choose from. Most of them looked like new — so much so that Harvey was suspicious of their origin. Had they been stripped off dead bodies by avaricious funeral-home employees? He decided he didn’t care one way or the other. Not at these prices. He grabbed a charcoal Armani and a dark
blue Hugo Boss and headed for the curtained changing rooms. The Hugo, with its thin-to-the-point-of-invisibility pinstripes, suited him best. The size 48 jacket hung on him like a tent, but that was a good thing, because the extra bulk would make it harder for the victims and witnesses of his crime to give the cops an accurate physical description. The pants’ thirty-inch waist was a tad loose, and the inseam was a paltry twenty-four inches, but if he wore the pants low on his hips, he’d look just fine. Not that he was trying to make a fashion statement.

  But what was that weird smell? He shucked the jacket and pressed a handful of material against his nose and inhaled deeply. The suit smelled of scorched earth and mouldy cheese and rotting meat.

  Harvey tried the Armani. Ditto.

  He found a canary-yellow three-piece suit in a 38 Large at the far end of the rack, mixed in with the smaller sizes and a few yellow shirts. It was as if some sneaky bastard had hidden it there, intending to come back later. Harvey slung the suit over his shoulder and headed back to the changing rooms. The suit fitted easily over the drab clothes he was wearing, and had the bonus visual effect of adding a solid forty or fifty pounds to his weight. Perfect.

  He found an electric-blue shirt with fake mother-of-pearl buttons that was priced at a dollar-fifty, and a yellow-and-blue-striped mile-wide tie that set him back another fifty cents, and a white patent-leather belt that was a dollar. He changed in the car, in the parking lot behind the building. There were two business establishments on his short list of places to rob. One was a drive-in hamburger joint way out on Kingsway, called Harvey’s. The other place was a health-food store-restaurant combo named Capers, that had made big black headlines a few years ago due to an employee infecting a number of innocent customers with Hep A.

  Harvey liked the idea of a guy named Harvey robbing a place called Harvey’s, but was leaning towards knocking over Caper’s, because it was conveniently located just a few short blocks away.

  But maybe it made more sense to bust Harvey’s, because he was starving, and they made a great cheeseburger platter, and you couldn’t find a better chocolate shake anywhere in the city …