A Cloud of Suspects

by Laurence Gough

  “Did I?” He twirled the upswept tips of the handlebar moustache. “You sure that was me?”

  Jan turned to Sandy. Traffic zipped past, shards of sunlight flashing on plate-glass windows. The light changed and a tight-packed horde of pedestrians charged across Granville. She said, “Good luck.”

  Sandy looked like he wanted to say something to her but wasn’t sure what it was. He nodded to her in a brisk, businesslike fashion, and stepped away from the car. He and Harvey started towards the sidewalk, and then Sandy turned and hurried back to the Cruiser.

  Jan said, “What now?”

  “You by any chance remember a skinny black bartender named Billy Zeman?”

  Jan stared at him.

  Harvey was walking back towards them, frowning.

  Sandy said, “I heard Billy used to hang out with your old pal, Matt Singh. Not long before you and I first met, Billy got busted trying to rob a bank over on Main Street. He was looking at quite a stretch. I hear he managed to work something out. Maybe he rolled over on somebody, but who can say?”

  Jan said, “How would you know all that?” Her eyes widened as everything fell into place. She wanted to ask him point blank if he was a cop, but Harvey was right on top of them.

  Sandy gave her a quick kiss. He said, “For luck.”

  Harvey said, “We’re running late.”

  Sandy and Harvey headed south on Granville towards the Vancouver Block. It was thirteen minutes to twelve by the clock on top of the building.

  *

  Jan didn’t see anybody tailing her. That didn’t mean they weren’t there. She made a U-turn and ran a red, blowing through the crosswalk an instant before it filled with shoppers and tourists. Horns blared. People yelled. Fuck ’em. She drove one short block down Granville, made a hard left on a late yellow, drove another half-block, and ducked down into the cavernous parking lot beneath the old Eaton’s building, now Sears. She parked in a handicapped zone, and sprinted towards the escalator. Two minutes later she was in a taxi, punching buttons on her new cellphone, yelling at Tyler that she’d be there in fifteen minutes.

  Tyler said, “Is it time for me to go and sit in the red car?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Harvey’s Firebird?”

  “That’s right, Tyler.”

  “Are we going to drive to the Rocky Mountains, and see deer and all kinds of animals?”

  Jan said, “You better believe it.”

  “Is Harvey coming with us?”

  Jan said no, and neither was Sandy. Her voice caught as she told Tyler that, from now on, he was going to be the only man in her life.

  *

  Sandy followed Harvey into the Vancouver Block’s small lobby. A security officer, dressed in the white shirt and dark blue uniform of an Air Canada pilot, lolled behind a desk-on-wheels, reading a newspaper. Harvey studied the building’s directory. He obviously hadn’t graduated from his speed-reading course.

  Sandy couldn’t see any of the ERT guys. Hopefully, that meant they were there. Losing patience, he said, “Fifth floor, five-thirteen.”

  Harvey gave Sandy an evil look. He said, “Thank you for your help.”

  They joined the gathering crowd waiting at the bank of three elevators. The building was home to several embassies, numerous doctors and dentists, the gold and gems crowd, and various anonymous businesses. Sandy glanced casually around, looking for Friendlies. Nobody paid any attention to him, or to Harvey, despite his stupid moustache and stupid hat. Sandy turned and looked behind him. The security officer ducked his head. Sandy turned away. Harvey studied the three half-clocks with their moving arrows that indicated what floors the elevators were on. A bell pinged. Two elevators arrived at once. The doors slid open. A few people hurried out. Harvey stepped aside, making way for a pregnant woman.

  He and Sandy stepped into the nearest elevator. Harvey punched the fifth-floor button. He adjusted the set of his fanny pack, caught Sandy watching him, and gave him a conspiratorial wink. The elevator stopped at the third floor. A shabbily dressed woman carrying a large white florist’s box got on board. The elevator door slid shut. They ascended to the fifth floor. Harvey and Sandy and the woman with the flowers stepped out. The woman turned left and walked down the hall. Harvey and Sandy went in the opposite direction. The building had been around forever, and renovations had been kept to a minimum. The office doors were varnished oak. Some had frosted-glass panes, but most were solid wood. The door to suite 513 had a peephole at eye level. Harvey pressed the wall buzzer. He held an oval-shaped silver badge up against the peephole.

  Sandy said, “Where’d you get that?”

  “Tooth fairy.”

  A muffled voice asked who was there. Harvey said, “Police.” His voice was loud and authoritative. He pounded on the door with his fist, and then he reached down and unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out what appeared to be a solid-gold pistol, the biggest damn handgun Sandy had ever seen.

  The door opened on a safety chain. Harvey stepped back and kicked hard. The chain snapped and the door flew open. Harvey followed his gun into the office. Five hard-eyed men dressed head to toe in black ballistic nylon pointed their weapons at him. Somebody yelled, “Police! Drop your weapon! Hands above your head!”

  Harvey retreated backwards. Sandy stopped him with the palm of his hand. He pressed the Glock’s muzzle into the small of Harvey’s back.

  Sandy said, “Give it up, Harvey.”

  Harvey turned his head so he could glare at him. He said, “Think it’s gonna be that easy, do you?” He raised the gold-coloured Desert Eagle and fired. The roar of the gunshot was deafening. The recoil jerked the muzzle upwards. The .50-calibre round hit an ERT cop named Hannigan an inch below his widow’s peak. Hannigan’s cheeks and pale blue eyes bulged. His head exploded into bloody shrapnel.

  Harvey drew a bead on another officer.

  Sean tilted his Glock’s barrel so it was tilted downwards at an acute angle. He pulled the trigger three times in quick succession. The bullets shattered Harvey’s spine, paralyzing him. Two rounds exited through his belly, below his belt. The third lodged in his right thigh, midway between hip and knee. Harvey crumpled. He doubled over and then he threw his head back, straightened, and fell backwards onto the bare wooden floor.

  Sandy kicked the Desert Eagle under a desk. The overhead fluorescents were reflected in Harvey’s unblinking eyes — vertical bars of white light that gave him a feral, unworldly look. Blood poured suddenly out of his mouth and nose, the gaping holes in his stomach. Sandy stared down at him. He was still trying to think of something to say when an anvil-jawed ERT cop roughly shoved him out of the way. The cop leaned over Harvey. His tears fell into Harvey’s eyes, blurring the white bars of reflected light.

  Harvey licked his lips with his bloody tongue. His mouth opened and closed, as if he were a fish on a carpet. The cop lifted his leg like a dog at a fire hydrant. He rested his black boot on Harvey’s gaping mouth, silencing him, and then the cop shot him straight through the heart.

  Harvey had been front-page bad news since he was old enough to take his first step. Now, far too late, he was gone.

  Chapter 22

  Family reunion

  Harvey was cremated ten days after his sudden but entirely predictable death. There was no service. If there had been a service, it is unlikely anyone would have attended, because Harvey had no friends and his few surviving relatives loathed him. His wife and son were thousands of miles away, their backs to the West Coast. Jan didn’t want to know how the diamond robbery had gone down, if Harvey was a rich man or dead, or a reincarnated felon. In the days following her flight from Vancouver, she’d deliberately avoided watching television or scanning newspaper headlines or listening to the news on the car radio. If she had somehow learned about her husband’s death despite all these precautions, she would have grieved, and been relieved.

  Jack took some of the vacation time he was owed. Claire arranged an unpaid leave of absence of indeterminate
length. Jack knew a retired VPD cop who owned a romantic beachfront summer cottage in Seaside, Oregon. The cottage was rented for most of the summer but happened to be empty due to a cancellation. Jack rented it for a week at a rate that wasn’t exactly cheap, but was borderline affordable. He and Parker and Hadrian were going to leave early Monday to avoid the lengthy weekend lineups at the border, and hoped to arrive at the cottage sometime the following day.

  Claire suggested they host a family barbecue. She phoned Sean and, after a lengthy conversation, managed to talk him into dropping by for dinner on the Sunday evening before they left for Oregon. Claire told Annie she was welcome to invite a friend. Annie declined without explanation.

  Sunday morning, Claire went to the local Safeway and bought a couple of thick T-bone steaks, two chicken breasts, a packet of wooden skewers, new potatoes, and onions and green peppers and cherry tomatoes. When she got home, Jack used the car to drive to a nearby wine and beer store, where he picked up a bottle of Chenin Blanc, and two six-packs of Sean’s favourite imported beer.

  The gas barbecue, stored under the back porch, hadn’t been used all summer. Jack took a broom, swept away the cobwebs, and rolled the barbecue out onto the patio. The grill was filthy. Worse, large pieces of the glossy white paint on the propane tank had flaked away, and the bare metal was bubbled with rust. Jack gave the tank an experimental shake. It was empty. He unscrewed the tank from the brass coupling and carried it around to the front of the house. The car was gone. He went inside, and found Claire in the dining room, feeding Hadrian tiny slices of fresh peach. “Where’s the car?”

  She looked up. “Annie’s got it.”

  Jack felt as if he was about to explode. He told himself to calm down, it wasn’t all that important, they could always order takeout Chinese. He said, “Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know. Why, what’s the problem?”

  “There’s no propane — the tank’s empty.”

  “Can’t we use briquettes?”

  “We don’t have any briquettes, either.”

  “Yes, we do. There’s a bag in the garage. Some friends of Annie’s brought it over last summer. I’m sure it’s still there, on the shelf by the window.”

  Jack went into the kitchen and splashed cold water on his face and the back of his neck, and then he went out the back door and walked down the brick sidewalk to the garage. The door was locked, and he didn’t have his keys. He went back into the house, found his key ring after a brief but irritating search, and returned to the garage. The five-kilo bag of briquettes was right where Claire had said it would be. He ripped it open. The shiny, black, weirdly shaped lumps of fuel seemed to have aged well. He used a small axe to chop some scraps of wood into kindling, and carried the kindling and briquettes back across the lawn to the barbecue. Now he was all set, except he needed a beer.

  Annie came home half an hour later, with a brand-new tank of propane. Jack thanked her for her help, and carried the kindling and briquettes back into the garage. He and Claire were skewering vegetables and chunks of meat when the back screen door slammed shut, and Sean called out a cheery hello from the porch.

  Jack told his son there was a cold beer in the fridge. Sean disappeared back inside the house, and came out again a few minutes later, with his arm slung across his sister’s shoulder, and a beer in each hand. Claire hugged Sean, and Jack slapped him on the back, and told him he was looking well. There was an awkward silence. Sean’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was a little unsteady on his feet. Jack put him and Annie to work setting the picnic table. He tended the grill while Claire went inside for glasses and cutlery. Sean sat heavily down in one of the chairs.

  Tripod came into the yard through the open gate that led to the lane. The cat stopped dead in its tracks, lifted its head and stared at them, and then raced diagonally across the lawn, and jumped up onto the wooden fence that ran along the length of the property. It trotted along the fence for a few feet, and then, with a prodigious effort, leapt up onto the garage roof, and stretched out on the peak in the sun, where it had a clear view of the backyard.

  Sean said, “That cat’s just amazing.” He finished his beer and put the bottle down on the table and started in on his second bottle.

  Jack said, “You’d better slow down, or you’re going to have to walk home.”

  Sean laughed harshly. “Who you think you’re kidding. I’m a cop. I can drink and drive if I want to. Who’s gonna arrest me?”

  Annie brought out a bowl of taco chips, and salsa, and the worn leather football Jack had been given on his sixteenth birthday. The ball was deflated.

  Jack said, “The pump’s in the basement. I’ll get it.”

  Sean pushed himself out of his chair. “i’ll help you look for it.” Jack was mildly surprised, but didn’t say anything. Father and son walked side by side across the yard. As they entered the basement through the ground-level door, Willows paused to give his eyes a moment to adjust to the light. The pump was in its customary place, hanging from a hook over the work bench. Jack was reaching for it when Sean rested his hand on his arm.

  Jack glanced over his shoulder at his son. What he saw in Sean’s eyes broke the rhythm of his heart.

  He said, “What is it — the shooting?” What else would it be? Jack felt stupid for asking. He said, “Sean, you did what you had to do. The guy was a killer. It was you or him. You’re getting trauma counselling, aren’t you?”

  Sean told him how Harvey had died. His tone was flat and unemotional. He chose his words carefully, for their ability to describe the unimaginable as an everyday event. He would not meet his father’s eyes. Halfway through his story his shoulders began to shake, and he fell apart, dissolving in tears.

  Jack eased shut the basement door, and locked it. He took his son in his arms and held him tightly, as he hadn’t held him in half a lifetime.

  When Sean had finally regained control of his emotions, he said, “What in hell should I do?”

  “What do you think you should do?”

  “Turn the sonofabitch in.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “Sometimes.” Sean wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He said, “I’m not saying anybody ever deserves to die, but if anybody ever did, Harvey would’ve been pretty close to the top of the list. You could even say he committed suicide when he shot Hannigan, instead of choosing to give it up. I mean, he was up against five ERT cops. He must’ve known he wasn’t going to take all of us out.”

  Jack said, “You got that right.”

  “He would’ve died anyway, if that ERT cop hadn’t shot him. Hell, if the ERT guy hadn’t put a bullet in him, the three rounds I gave him would have killed him. So you could even say I owe the ERT guy a favour.” Sean’s mouth twisted. For a split second that Jack knew was burned into his memory and would stay with him until the day he died, his son was transformed into something mean, and ugly.

  Sean said, “If I rat on the guy, it isn’t going to bounce off you, is it?”

  “Of course not. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I feel so goddamn naive. I thought we were supposed to be the good guys.”

  Jack said, “Most of the time, we are.” He could hear Annie calling to them that dinner was ready. He said, “Are you okay to go back out there?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “We’ll talk about this after dinner, okay?”

  “That’d be good.”

  Jack put his arms around him and held him close for a long moment. He said, “We’ll figure something out, son.”

  Sean nodded. He laughed and said, “Or if we don’t, at least we can knock back a couple more beers.”

  Jack unlocked and opened the basement door, and he and Sean went back outside, into the brittle sunlight, and lengthening shadows.

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