No Going Back

by Sheena Kamal

  “Who made the ID?”

  “Parking lot attendant from a lot across the street.”

  “I’m guessing that’s not the snitch.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use that term. Police agents are a valuable source of information,” he says.

  “Sorry, who’s the police agent snitch?”

  Of course this is a losing battle with Nora. She has never been one for the rule of law. “My best guess is a small-time crook named Joe Nolan. He went to school with Jimmy Fang and was a known associate, but not inner circle. He did some time for assault and was back in the mix as soon as he got out. When Three Phoenix fell apart, Nolan moved out to Port Moody, where his brother lives.”

  He gets his laptop from the other office, the one he shares with Stevie Warsame, Leo’s other partner in the PI business. When he returns, Nora is stretching out a kink in her back. She looks tired, he thinks, tired but alert. Her hair is swept off her shoulders. It’s longer than he’s used to seeing it. With her thin face and big dark eyes, she looks like a ragged doll someone has left out in the rain.

  She spends a moment scrolling through the photos on the social media account he’s pulled up.

  “This is Nolan?” she asks, somewhat incredulously.

  “He your type or something?”

  She ignores his sad attempt at humor. Pushes the screen back toward him. The man in the photos is over two hundred pounds of pure muscle.

  She gets a look in her eyes sometimes, Nora does. As though he doesn’t deserve the air he breathes. He’d been dishonest with her one time, about one thing, and he’ll never live it down. “Jimmy Fang had a huge network of associates,” he says. “All the cops needed to do was find a pressure point in his network and then exploit a grudge. I think Nolan had the biggest pressure point.”

  “If he was talking and had this pressure point, as you say, why not go into witness protection?”

  “I don’t know. But I have a theory. I think the cops turned him because they had something on him and they threatened jail time. His older brother is high on the autism spectrum. After their mother died, Nolan became his primary caregiver. He couldn’t afford to not be around for another jail stint, and he didn’t want to disrupt his brother’s regular routines by relocating. The case hadn’t actually progressed to trial.”

  It all comes back to family.

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Nora says, finishing her coffee and standing. “This Nolan guy.”

  Two can play that game. Brazuca stands, too. “Look, you can try to find him on your own, if you want, but it’ll take time. The other option is to ride with me. I already have his address on my GPS.”

  He expects her to put up a fight, maybe have a little bit of an argument on their way to his MINI parked out back, but she doesn’t. She looks like the fight has gone out of her, which worries him more than he cares to admit. He lets Whisper into the back seat, because Nora insists on taking her, and drives them out of the city.

  When they’re on the highway, he sneaks a glance at her. No, it’s not that the fight has gone out of her. It’s there in the hardness in her eyes, the set of her shoulders, her grim expression. It’s that she’s saving it all up.

  And it’s a good thing, too, because it has been at least ten minutes since he’s noticed the dark sedan a few cars behind them.

  He speeds up suddenly, changes lanes, and takes the next exit off the highway. The sedan switches lanes but doesn’t take the exit. Maybe it was too close to make, or maybe he was wrong about the tail.

  There’s a moment of breathless silence, and then Nora looks over at him. She’s shaken but trying to hide it. “My enemies or yours?”

  He’s not sure whether or not she’s joking, but she seems to be taking it all in stride. “Could be either, or just my imagination.”

  “Did you get a license plate?”

  “No, they were too far behind for that.”

  “Okay,” she says. “If they’ve turned around, they’ll come back to this exit to look for us. I think we should keep going.”

  “If we were actually being followed, there could have been a second car. I don’t want to chance anything. Nolan is our only lead, and I don’t want to do anything to spook him. Who’s ‘they,’ anyway? We don’t even know.” He gets onto the highway heading back to the city. “We’ll try again later. Nolan’s employed in construction in Port Moody, but he works the door some weekends at a club on Granville. Let’s go tomorrow night.”

  “He goes to a Granville club all the way from Port Moody? That’s insane.”

  “Not if you time the drive right. A lot of people make that commute for work.”

  “What club?”

  “Ha. You’ll just have to come with me tomorrow to see. I’m not taking any chances you’ll cut me out.”

  She refuses to meet his eyes, and that’s how he knows that’s exactly what she was planning to do. He drives her to Chinatown and trusts her instincts when she asks him to let her off a few blocks away from Leo’s place.

  “See you tomorrow,” she says, opening the back door for Whisper. The dog bounds out, waits patiently for her leash, and then they’re both off.

  9

  In the past I’ve dreamed that drums are summoning me, but to where? I never figured it out. This is why I’ve always preferred the guitar. A stringed instrument asks you to sit and stay awhile. Marinate in your depression. It doesn’t want you to get to your feet.

  Today, drums shake me out of the lethargy I’ve felt since Brazuca dropped me off. At first, I think it’s coming from inside Leo’s apartment building—some neighbor from hell—but no, it’s happening outside. The drums are prodding me to leave the apartment, even though I’ve just arrived. To venture outside and be among people. There are voices lifted upward as people chant and talk and shout to a live percussive soundtrack.

  I leave Whisper inside to rest when I go. She doesn’t like people in this kind of proximity. Neither do I, really, but I can’t stop my curiosity.

  When I get outside, it feels different from the crowd mucking up traffic for the royal visit. There’s a sense of purpose here, and one of discontent. No garish hats in sight, but there are quite a few signs announcing that water is life.

  “What’s going on?” I ask a young man in horn-rimmed glasses.

  He hoists up a stray strap of his backpack. “Oil spill in the Burrard Inlet,” he says. “Government backed a new pipeline going from those fuckin’ tar sands to the coast and a tanker leaks on the damn water. We’ve had enough of this shit.”

  He gives me a fist bump even though I haven’t agreed with anything he’s said. It’s not that I disagree, just that this settler colonial state was built on the exploitation of resources. No matter what friendly, aw-shucks Canadian face they put on it, it’s never going to change.

  I decline his tempting offer to share a joint and am about to turn back when an indigenous drummer passes by. She’s dressed in jeans and a winter coat with the hood up. With her earnestness, her sense of conviction, the fierce expression on her face, and the slope of her high cheekbones, she resembles my sister, Lorelei.

  Which makes me wonder if Lorelei is here today.

  I follow the drummer, looking for my sister, hoping to catch a glimpse. I’d first moved out to the West Coast after Lorelei had gotten accepted into university here, just to be closer to her. She was so full of conviction, my younger sister. I was proud of her. Despite being put in care after our father died, she had come out of it full of confidence and a belief in her ability to change the world. My aging out of foster care pushed me right into the army. They took one good long look at me and sent me packing, too. Confidence and conviction have eluded me at every turn, but it seems right that Lorelei should have it.

  I’ve never known how to speak to her, but I moved here anyway, to be near her, waiting for a phone call that never came. She’s a righteous bitch on most days, and I suppose I’m waiting around for the moment she’s not. Maybe today is the day. I
live in hope.

  The drums pull me deeper into the crowd, but I lose sight of the young drummer. I imagine my sister’s face everywhere and allow myself to be swept into a march just for the desire to see her again. Her feelings toward me have never changed mine toward her. I keep away, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the sight of her, as complicated as our relationship is.

  It’s during this searching that I sense someone’s attention on me. A man in a dark green jacket with his hood pulled forward is watching me. Every time I catch a glimpse of him, he disappears. Now the drumbeat speeds up, but I’m not sure if it’s in my head. The crowd pulls me too close, and someone is shouting on a megaphone up ahead.

  There’s a call and response, no less musical than the blues.

  “The system isn’t broken!” shouts the woman—man? Does it matter?—on the megaphone.

  The crowd breathes in, almost collectively.

  “It was built this way!” they cry back, on the exhalation.

  Someone jostles me, and I flinch away. There is a rage here, building. The feeling sweeps over me. I’m not angry, but I feel a peculiar fear that has to do with being surrounded by strangers. I don’t want to see my sister anymore. I only want to leave.

  “The system isn’t broken—”

  The crowd is moving, and I’m being sucked toward the center, where the megaphone is. There’s an alley opening to my right that I head for now.

  “It was built this way!”

  There’s a flash of green in my periphery, but when I look, it’s gone again. Someone swears at me as I bump into them. Pushing past the outraged faces, the sharp elbows and wandering hands, I reach the alley. I know where I am. Just through here I can make it to the next street over, and away from the noise and sea of bodies.

  “The system isn’t broken—”

  As I move deeper into the alley, I feel a hand on the back of my jacket pulling me into a doorway. Instinctively I drop to the ground, bracing my hands on the filthy concrete and lashing straight up and back with my right leg. But I slip forward, and the kick is shortened. There’s a howl of pain as I catch a man in the knee. My aim had been for the groin.

  “It was built. This. Way.”

  “Hey!” someone shouts. I get to my feet and stumble forward, looking for any kind of weapon. There’s a broken hockey stick nearby that I just manage to get my hands on when I hear someone behind me.

  I turn, the hockey stick raised.

  An older woman wearing a vivid red poncho cringes back. Her crooked eyeglasses fall off her face. “Honey, it’s okay,” she says, bending to look for them. “I saw that man pull you. He’s gone, don’t you worry. I saw him run away. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  She’s right. The glasses are closer to me than they are to her. I return them to her.

  “I can wait here if you want to call the police?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

  “Really, it’s no trouble. There are predators everywhere, and we need to stick together to catch these bastards! Imagine preying on an innocent woman at a rally! People are . . . I just don’t even . . . are you sure you’re alright?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I say, still trying to get over being called an innocent woman.

  She insists on giving me her phone number just in case I want to file a report later. “Maybe there’s a paramedic around to help you with those hands,” she says, looking at the scratches down my palms from when I dropped to the ground.

  “No, really, it’s nothing.”

  She wants to be helpful but doesn’t know what else to do. I say bye to my good Samaritan to let her off the hook. Then I stand in the entrance of the little alley and scan the crowd, still marching. The green I’m looking for is long gone.

  “The system isn’t broken—”

  “It was built this way!”

  “Water is life!”

  A sea of people wash past me with their drums and chants. I lean a shoulder against a doorway away from the alley, facing out into the street. Searching for a green jacket in the crowd, even as it thins. Waiting for the adrenaline to come down. Besides, I need a moment. I’ve scratched my palms and had a close call.

  Was this some kind of crime of opportunity? A case of mistaken identity? A quick rape down a dark stairwell? It could be your garden-variety downtown eastside mugging.

  It didn’t feel premeditated. Or careful. It didn’t feel like Dao. But, then again, putting a hit on me in Detroit didn’t feel like him, either. The cool, calculated man I’d encountered would never be that sloppy. The truth is, he’s as much a mystery to me as he has ever been.

  10

  Back at the Hastings office Brazuca finds Stevie Warsame sorting through his store of surveillance equipment and gadgets, putting some in the desk behind him and others in one of the two duffel bags at his feet.

  Warsame was a cop, too, before turning to private investigations—though it had been his choice to leave the police department he served in Alberta. He never mentioned why, but Brazuca has a good idea that Warsame’s Somali heritage might not have gone down so well in certain circles. Not that you’d know from Warsame himself, who seemed to dwell on nothing but the condition of his surveillance equipment and the various gadgets he kept in what he called “resale ready” shape.

  Brazuca sits at his desk and frowns at the opposite wall. He’s still trying to process the events of the day. He wants to be alone but can’t think of a polite way to ask Warsame to leave.

  Warsame, sensing his mood, looks Brazuca over. “What’s up with you?”

  “You notice anyone watching the office lately?”

  “Should I be worried about something?”

  “Don’t know just yet.”

  “The way I remember it,” says Warsame, slowly, thoughtfully, “you ran into some trouble with a biker—what was his name? Wasn’t too long ago, either.”

  “Curtis Parnell. According to my police guy, there’s a warrant out for his arrest, but he’s skipped town.”

  Warsame finishes up with the equipment and zips the black duffel. “Or he’s here, just laying low.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about him,” Brazuca says.

  “Who are you worried about, then?”

  “It’s nothing. Just a feeling. Probably need to get more sleep, is all.”

  “Could be a feeling you listen to. You don’t mess with the bikers in this town, man. Even I know that.” Warsame reaches for his jacket. “You know where Krushnik’s been for the past few days? I’ve been trying to get him to sign off on an account. Been getting nothing but background checks these days. It’s been brutal out there.”

  “He’s taking some personal time, I guess. Sign off on it yourself. You’re a partner.”

  “This company is going to shit,” Warsame says on his way out, looking harassed. Brazuca doesn’t blame him. He’s never been one for paperwork, either.

  Brazuca looks around the tiny office. He wonders if he should care that the company he’s spent the better part of a year working with is falling apart. But finds he doesn’t, really. He’s got other things to worry about.

  Curtis Parnell, the biker, had snapped a photo of his face when Brazuca was looking into a drug case for a wealthy playboy who’d lost the love of his life to an overdose. Because of Brazuca’s intervention, Parnell’s house had been raided, a selection of drugs and weapons seized, and Parnell went into hiding.

  Brazuca really shouldn’t be so invested in Nora’s hardship now that he’s got a fugitive enemy of his own, but there’s something about the danger she’s in that feels more real to him.

  Years ago, back when he was on the force, the shrink they forced him to see after he’d been shot in the leg had told him he had a hero complex. Immediately after the session he went out with his cop buds, got wasted, as they were all borderline alcoholics, and then he chose to forget that unhelpful assessment. He’d been shot at, was an alcoholic with a bum leg. What kind of hero is that?

  He logs into his ba
nk account online and stares at the balance. His playboy client who he once thought was a friend, Bernard Lam, had paid him an obscene amount of money to look into the death of his mistress. At first he thought the number was a joke, but Lam had money to burn and this is how he wanted to do it. He could have bought a new yacht or luxury property in the Caribbean, but he chose to give it to Brazuca instead to run down some leads. And, in return, get details about the people involved in smuggling synthetic opiates into Vancouver.

  Brazuca got the information, but the price had been high.

  If this thing with Nora hadn’t cropped up, Brazuca would have left Vancouver weeks ago. Not out of fear of Parnell but because he’s tired of being here. He doesn’t particularly like this city. It’s cold. Not just the weather. The people are cold. Distant. Just because you’re from a place it doesn’t mean you’ve got to put up with it for the rest of your life. He’s stayed out of habit and a concern for a woman who’s most definitely in trouble. A woman who, like this city, doesn’t even really like him.

  There’s nothing keeping him here but him and his hero complex.

  11

  Thankfully, 544 Hastings Street is still in the shitty part of town. It means that there are no upwardly mobile citizens in their business-casual wear to sneer at me while I linger in the back alley of the office, watching the lights inside switch off. Stevie Warsame left a half hour ago, but he’s not the one I’m waiting for.

  I watch from behind a dumpster, settled next to a young woman with piercings at her brow, one nostril, and both earlobes and helices, as well as a single flash of silver at her upper lip. When I saw her here, wrapped up in her sleeping bag, I couldn’t hear her breathing. So I put a finger under her pierced nostril and waited until I felt her shallow breath. Satisfied that she was alive, I turned to watch the back of my old office.

  It begins to rain.

  Brazuca exits the building and pauses in front of his MINI. It’s possible he’s considering why the hell he even bothers cramming his long limbs in such a tiny space. Eventually, he comes to terms with his poor taste in vehicles and gets in. I watch him leave, even trailing out of the alley afterward to see if anyone’s paying close attention to his disappearing taillights from the street.