by Sheena Kamal
No, it’s her fear that is a travesty. I’ve made a powerful enemy, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he would be keeping an eye on Bonnie. But it should have.
I tell her there’s nothing to worry about, that I’ll look into the origins of this tattoo for her. Then I leave before she can ask any questions.
I stay in Toronto for two days, at a motel on the east end of the city. It’s close enough for me to keep an eye on the sleek town house that Bonnie shares with her adoptive mother, Lynn. I watch, but don’t see anything suspicious. Yet.
It means I have some time.
I can’t stay here if I’m going to look for the man who has made my daughter scared for her life, the one who was behind the attack on Nate Marlowe. She doesn’t know that he’s after me. And she sure as hell doesn’t know that I’m going to find him first.
3
This is how it started: When Dao was a child, his mother told him he had to be the best at everything to make it in this country that took them in. Their new, very cold home. It was a lot because he was just a child. Turns out he wasn’t good at much. And she didn’t exactly set a decent example herself. She was always too overworked, too tired to give anything her all. So she wasn’t especially good at anything, either. In fact, his first memory, when he was four years old—
No, wait. That’s too far back. If he’s going to give this a go, collect his thoughts for what they’re worth, he should start with more current events.
First, some courage.
He crushes up the last of his oxycodone hydrochloride and snorts it off his dresser. Makes a mental note to buy some more. Down here, the pills are easy to get and cost almost nothing.
Now he’s flying. On top of the world. Feeling so good—so euphoric, in fact—that he’s ready to think about those current events.
Before he can get started, the call he’s been waiting for comes through.
“Is it done?” he asks.
There’s a pause on the other end of the line, which worries him. It’s always bad news when there’s a dramatic pause. What his contact says next confirms it. “Nora Watts got away. I don’t know how. And she knows about the hit now.”
It takes him a moment to process the sheer incompetence at work here. “I thought the people you hired were professionals. I paid them for a job.”
“We thought so, too.”
He can feel his euphoria deflating. “Is she still in Detroit?”
“We don’t think so. Look, Detroit was a fuckup, and we’re obviously not going to give them the other part of the payment.”
No shit. He doesn’t actually care about the money. It’s chump change, and turns out, he’s the chump. “Where is she now?”
“She hasn’t turned up back in Vancouver yet, but—”
“So you botched it, spooked her, and now she’s on the run. That it?”
“We’ll find her.”
“You sure about that?” Dao asks softly. It’s not that he’s being unreasonable. This is what he pays them for.
What follows is a series of useless promises and excuses from his guy. Dao hangs up in the middle of it.
He flings open the windows of the bedroom that has become his entire world. A rush of cool sea air blows past him. It’s raining, and that’s depressing, too.
Rain makes him think of Vancouver, that godforsaken city he’s always hated.
He goes down to the gym and works out until he’s lathered with sweat. Even that can’t help his anger from building.
He showers, and by the time he dresses for the day, the sun has come out.
Good. It gives him energy. Seems people have forgotten how much fear he can invoke and that he has friends in powerful places.
Maybe he should remind them.
A little maid, the newish one, is on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the floors. He takes a moment to appreciate the view. When she sees him, she gets up, apologizes, and leaves the room so quickly she could have been a figment of his imagination. Moves with the flight instinct of prey.
She has the right kind of attitude, that one.
He notices that his hand is clenched in a fist but can’t place the moment the anger had taken over. But the maid had been aware of it. Of course she had. Scurried away like one of those lizards he so enjoys crushing. He imagines her, the little maid, under his boot. Squirming to get away. Her friends and family:
Wonder what happened to her?
She was crushed.
What do you mean, “crushed”?
Dead. Smashed into the ground. What else?
But he’s not actually mad about the little maid. It’s not her fault he’s so angry.
No, the blame lay with someone else entirely.
He calls his guy back. “Double it. Double the money.”
“You sure you want this woman so bad?”
Dao doesn’t even deign to respond to that idiotic question. Would he have done any of this, any of it, if he weren’t sure? “Call me when you find her.”
He leaves the house, whistling. He’s got an appointment with his Humas, his fixer, and this time heads are going to roll.
4
Step one of finding my enemy is to pick up my dog.
Whisper has nothing to do with it, per se, but I can’t be expected to embark on an important life journey like this without her. I left her in the care of my mentor, Sebastian Crow, who died while I was in Detroit. After a short, intense battle with cancer, he is now gone. Whisper has been with Seb’s ex, Leo Krushnik, ever since, and I’m just about tired of being without her. When Seb died, Leo said he would look after her until I get back.
When I show up in Vancouver at Seb’s Kitsilano town house, Leo closes the door on me.
I stuff my hands in my coat pocket and wait for a full minute on the doorstep. I can hear Whisper whining inside.
“Oh, alright,” Leo says, admonishing someone. Me or her, I’m not sure. He opens the door again, takes in my tired face, slumped posture, bleary eyes, and lets me in. His reluctance is a new stain on our relationship. We used to be on better terms, Leo and I, and I’m sad it has come to this.
Whisper trots to me as I kneel on the ground with my arms wide open. She’s a gray mutt of indeterminate age, with a distinctly feline personality. The personality thaws for a moment as she gives in to her excitement at seeing me, her primary food person.
Maybe her favorite food person?
I can’t tell. Her tail whips back and forth, almost of its own volition. Her throaty cries tell me that I’m forgiven for leaving, but my departure will never be forgotten. She hesitates after briefly licking my face, as if deciding whether to take this lovefest any further. She settles for pushing me over and barking for a while in complaint. Then she lays her body on my lap and presses her face into my chest.
“That is a nose,” I say, giving it a smacking kiss. The nose in question is as warm as rubber on a summer day. She whines and sneezes off my kiss. She knows it’s some nose, has always had a good idea of her own worth. I’m lucky to have this kind of love in my life, I think, as I glance up at Leo. I wonder if the glint in his eye is a look of possession directed toward my dog, but no, on closer examination I see it’s a tear.
He goes into the kitchen.
I don’t follow immediately, but when I do, I notice for the first time that he’s wearing Seb’s ratty old plaid bathrobe. When I saw him last, he’d been in a pair of charcoal slacks and a tailored Oxford shirt. We’d both been working at his small PI firm at that time. He was looking a lot better than he does now.
Leo looks at me, really looks, and says: “She’s not safe with you.”
“What?” It takes real effort to make my voice this clear, and despite the effort, it still sounds like some small animal has attacked my lungs. Leo doesn’t notice.
“Whisper. She’s better off with me. There are people after you and she’s getting on in years. I think she deserves some stability, don’t you? You upend her life to nurse Seb; then you run
off to Detroit, where you almost got yourself killed.”
I look at Whisper, who isn’t young—that’s true—but is otherwise the picture of health and vitality. Her eyes and ears are as sharp as they have ever been, and her coat is shiny and thick. She’s in better shape than I am.
“One person is after me.” I think about it for a moment, then add, for clarity: “Right now. Only one person at this time. How did you know about that, anyway?”
“Because it’s you, and someone is always trying to murder you for some reason or the other.”
He’s not wrong and won’t get any debate from me on the subject. Leo and I know each other too well to mince words. Back when he and Seb were together, I worked for his fledgling PI firm as an assistant of sorts. Also helped him find missing people because I have a knack for it. Before Seb broke up with Leo and asked me to come help him with his memoirs and freelance reporting, Leo and I had been close.
But things have changed.
I see now that Seb’s death hasn’t made it alright between us again. Hasn’t come close to healing the wounds of Seb’s abandonment.
“I can look after my dog,” I say.
He sighs. It’s nice to see his flair for the dramatic is still in good shape. “Can you look after yourself? You should talk to Brazuca.”
Jon Brazuca, my ex-sponsor, who is also an ex-cop turned PI, isn’t exactly in my life anymore. Not enough to swap “you’ll never guess who’s after me now” stories, anyway. We would have nothing to do with each other if he hadn’t started at Leo’s private investigation company. Which we both, at one time or another, worked for.
“What does Brazuca have to do with it?”
“You don’t know? He’s been looking for you.”
“Yeah, to tell me Seb’s de— To tell me about what happened to Seb.”
He buries his head in his hands. His bathrobe gapes open at the top and the bottom. “Nora, you’re literally the worst. Literally. In case you missed the point, I’m being literal here. Brazuca’s been looking for you for weeks now. He thought you were in some kind of danger and that there were people after you in Detroit.”
“I don’t want to get into what happened in Detroit.”
“Tough. Didn’t Brazuca warn you? Isn’t that why you’re even alive?”
“Haven’t spoken to him.”
“Jesus,” he says. “He must be so worried.”
Leo does the thing I try to persuade him isn’t necessary.
He calls Jon Brazuca.
5
Brazuca must have been sitting at home waiting for this opportunity to limp on over here, because within the hour he’s in the kitchen with us, rubbing his bum knee, staring at me like I’ve just risen from the grave and am haunting him instead of the other way around. The last time I saw him, he was working on his health, but all of that seems to have escaped him because here he is, looking like he hasn’t slept in weeks, like he’s surviving on coffee and frozen meals. Looking, if I’m being honest, like me and Leo.
“What the hell happened in Detroit?” he asks, as soon as he walks into the kitchen. “Are you alright?”
“No, she’s really not,” Leo says sadly.
“I’m fine,” I insist.
“Nora, your voice . . . it’s because of the fire, right? That warehouse that burned down . . . you were in it. Has there been damage to your throat from all the smoke you inhaled?”
Leo stares at me. “You were in a fire? I thought . . .” He’s not sure why he hadn’t noticed how rough I sound. I can tell it bothers him, that he’s missed something this important.
“Have you been to a doctor?” Brazuca asks.
I shake my head.
He doesn’t like this. It’s one of the reasons I don’t enjoy being around cops, or even ex-cops such as Brazuca. They’re too used to getting their way, making veiled threats that pass as suggestions.
“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” Leo says.
“She has to talk about it. There are people trying to kill her.”
Leo dislikes this male posturing just as much as I do. He frowns at Brazuca. “She knows that. And it’s only one person right now, so you can just chill.”
Brazuca stares at me. “Do you have anything to say here?”
“No.”
“Goddamn it, you should! Nora, listen. I went to Detroit to look for you. Just got back, actually.”
This takes a moment to process. “Why would you do that?”
“Call me crazy, but I was worried. I used to be your sponsor, you know.” And he used to be more than that, I think. “I was on an assignment and you came up. I investigated an overdose death for a client and, by chance, discovered that someone connected to the Three Phoenix triad used a biker gang to keep watch on a woman. That woman is you.”
“I’ve heard of Three Phoenix. But they collapsed twenty years ago when their boss, Jimmy Fang, fled the country to escape trial,” says Leo. He’s incredulous. I don’t blame him. It’s all a bit hard to swallow.
“Three Phoenix was part of a larger network of criminal organizations out of Asia; it had connections to larger triads like 14K and the Big Circle Boys. They were fluid and worked well with other crime syndicates. They didn’t watch you themselves—didn’t have to. They used a gang that operates out of the port. I’m assuming that when they found out you were in Detroit, they decided it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of you. Someone called someone else, and boom.”
“Except no boom,” says Leo. “She’s still here. What’s this about, Nora?”
I don’t answer. I need a minute to think. Brazuca steps in to fill in the gap. “A couple years ago, Nora’s daughter, Bonnie, was kidnapped by a wealthy family. The Zhangs. In rescuing her, Nora made an enemy of Dao, head of their private security, who has links to organized crime. Dao disappeared, but it turns out he’s still got a grudge. All the Zhangs died, and only he and Nora survived.”
Leo puts the kettle on and foists mugs of instant coffee on us. There’s no milk or sugar, so Brazuca and I drink it black while Leo pours a generous shot of whiskey into his. It doesn’t aid in his understanding of the matter much, but it does improve his mood. “So Nora crosses this Dao guy. He wants revenge and uses his criminal contacts to keep watch on her in Vancouver and attack her in Detroit.”
Brazuca takes a bracing sip. He grimaces and puts down the mug. “Sounds about right.”
“People with mononyms are terrifying,” says Leo. “Is Dao a nickname? A surname?”
“I don’t know. He’s a ghost.” Brazuca tries the coffee again. From the look on his face, the second attempt is even worse than the first.
“He’s not a ghost,” I say. “I’ve seen him in real life, heard his voice. He’s real, and there’s got to be something we can use to track him down. Everybody’s got some paper on them.” Even those who do their best to avoid it, like myself. “I just have to find it.”
“We have to find it,” says Leo. “You’re not doing this alone, Nora. This man wants to hurt you. We find information on him, prove that he put a hit on you. Build a case against him to take to the cops.”
“Or you could let Leo and me figure this out,” Brazuca says to me. “Move somewhere else and lay low for a while. Hope Dao forgets about you and this whole thing blows over.”
I shrug it off. “Costs money to lay low.”
“I have money.”
He doesn’t give the impression of a man who has come into sudden wealth. There’s no Ferrari outside. “Where did you get money?”
“I did a freelance job recently. It paid well. And I have some savings of my own.” There is a directness in his gaze that I remember from our shared past.
I have a certain skill that has deserted me in the past year but is coming back quickly. I think my fear for Bonnie has put this ability to discern truth from lies back at the center of my life. Brazuca had been the one person I could never quite figure out, but that block seems to have crumbled. I see him clearly now, and I�
��m curious.
He’s not lying to me, but he’s hiding something.
“And you’re just going to give me some of this money to disappear?”
He shrugs. “It’s an option. It’ll be a loan you can pay back whenever you’re able to.”
“Why would you do that?”
This pisses him off, though I don’t understand why he thinks I’ll just take money from him without questioning his reasons. “You know what, Nora? I don’t actually know why. I just can’t believe that this is happening, and it all seems a bit dangerous. And, if I’m being honest, more than a little absurd. Why would this guy Dao hate you so much? Let me guess. You don’t want to talk about it.”
He pushes away from the table and goes to the window. I follow his gaze, but he’s not looking at anything I can make out. Just considering the sky and, perhaps, what he’ll do with all his money now that I’ve decided to let him keep it for himself.
Leo takes offense at Brazuca’s tone and glares icicles into his back before turning to me. He puts his hand over mine. I don’t love the touch, but this is Leo, and it’s impossible to be upset at him. Even though he may have designs on my dog. “Nora, hey, we’re with you on this.”
That may be true, but even I can see what Leo is really saying is that he needs this right now. Here in this kitchen is the first time he hasn’t looked completely bereft since he opened the door to me.
Brazuca looks at our hands on the table, Leo’s still covering mine. For a moment I think he’s about to add his to the pile, but he thinks better of it. We don’t touch, Brazuca and I. Not anymore. Some parts of my past have to stay there, and the line between us is one that neither of us is willing to cross.
Thank God. I’m not sure how much more masculine intervention I can take.
“If we’re going to look for Dao, we can work through the only angle I’ve been able to find,” Brazuca says.
