by Sheena Kamal
Simon stops pretending, presses his head into his hands.
“It was exciting,” I say. “Best experience of my life. You should have come.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
I would happily do that, but I can’t leave him here alone in this sad place with these sad people. After I pay the bill, I realize that I couldn’t be an alcoholic anymore even if I wanted to. Not at these prices. Not with my bank account balance.
“So,” I begin. I’m coming around to thinking of Simone as Simon now, but I don’t know if that’s what I should be doing. I do know that I’m not meant to see this part of my friend. Simone in her right mind would never want me to because Simone in her right mind has never allowed me a glimpse into Simon.
“I can get home,” Simon says. “Don’t touch me.” He’s slurring so much that I don’t even bother listening. The cab ride home to his condo in Yaletown doesn’t take long, but he falls asleep anyway. When we get inside his apartment, he straightens and goes directly to the bathroom. I stand by the door, listening to him wretch his guts out. While I’m there I take in the condo, which I’ve never been to before. It is decorated in black and white, with elegant green accents. It doesn’t feel particularly masculine or feminine, which is a strange window into this person I know but don’t really.
The toilet flushes, and Simon stumbles out. “Get out,” he says to me, but there are tears in his eyes, so I have an inkling of what it’s costing him to say those words.
I do get out, but I keep the keys when I leave and return in the morning with Whisper in tow, just as dawn begins to rise. Simon is sitting on a stool by the kitchen, sipping strong black coffee. He’s not in drag, but he has showered and taken the time to apply thick black eyeliner to his lids. Whisper gives our friend a good long sniff and receives a few pats on the head in return.
Simon pours me some coffee but can’t seem to meet my eyes. He disappears into the bedroom and returns as Simone, in subtle makeup and wearing a muted pink wig. I’m not sure if it’s for my comfort or for hers.
“How long have you been drinking again?” I ask when we’re on our second cups.
“Since Benedict Cumberbatch died.” She looks at me. “You didn’t know.”
That her feisty little terrier was dead? Suddenly I’m ashamed. “No, I’m sorry. I should have—”
“Yes. But, as always, you were caught up in your own drama. You could put a drag queen to shame.”
Do I feel guilty because I’m angry, or am I angry that I feel so guilty? “Seb was sick. My father . . . I ran into trouble in Detroit. You know that. I was almost killed.”
“And when you weren’t, you didn’t think to call me? Send a text to let me know you’re okay? I’ve been trying to reach you. I’ve been worried about you.”
It’s true that when I dumped my phone, I didn’t reach out on the burner. Bonnie was on my mind, not Simone.
“I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think I’d care enough.”
In her expression there’s a glimpse of something so infinitely sad that I can’t bear it. “Do you think so little of yourself, Nora, that it never occurred to you that you deserve love and compassion? You spent a year looking after a sick man, hoarding all his secrets, taking care of his every need and not letting anybody else in on your burden.”
I don’t know what I’m expected to say to this. This conversation isn’t supposed to be about me.
“Whoever said you weren’t good enough to care about?” she asks.
I’ve never seen the point of tears. There’s something inside me that grows cold at the thought of shedding them, at the sight of someone else letting them fall. I don’t give in to tears, not even now, because I’ll never take the chance that someone will see it as weakness, as I do. But I wonder what it would be like if I did. I feel like we’re on the brink of something in our friendship.
“You run away,” she continues. “Because you don’t want to stay and ask for love. You keep people at an arm’s length and blame them for not wanting to come closer when you’re the one that pushed them to the corners of your universe. You think I don’t know what it’s like to feel like I don’t have anyone? Like I’m not worthy of love?”
“You’re wonderful.”
“Of course I am,” she snaps. “I don’t need anyone to tell me that.”
“Are you done?”
“No, actually I’m just getting started. You want to slay Bonnie’s dragons and chase all her demons away, but you put yourself in danger because you don’t see yourself in her life, being there for her and having a functional relationship. So let me ask you this, Nora: Who slays your dragons?”
Krista Dennings had asked the same thing, in her own way. “I slay them myself.”
She nods. “I was afraid you’d say that. One of these days, you’ll look around and find that you are truly alone and that you always have been because you’re too afraid to let anyone see you. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you don’t need anyone else because you have Whisper, and I don’t even want to start on how fucked up that is. Whisper has people. Whisper has made friends and has a better community than you do. Think about that. Dogs are pack animals. She has others, and at the end of the day, if something happens to her, you have nobody else. You continue this way and you won’t even have me.”
“You continue this way”—I nod to the empty boxes of cheap wine lined up by the sink—“and I won’t even have you. So what are we going to do about it?”
“Rehab,” she says. “What else? I can’t do this alone. I’ve already made arrangements to go today.”
The relief I feel is almost overwhelming. You can’t make someone go to rehab. You can’t make them value their lives. So at least she knows she’s ready.
Business is booming with her cyber security company so she can afford one of the good ones, the one on a Gulf Island where you can’t escape confronting your poor choices and destructive habits because it’s an island. I drive her to the ferry and fill her in on what’s been happening.
When the ferry arrives, she tells me I can keep the spare keys to her apartment but doesn’t say why. Only “just in case.” After the ferry leaves, I take Whisper for a walk down by the water and think about Joe Nolan, bleeding out on the rocks. Maybe his death was quick. I hope it was. But he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d catch a break like that.
One thing is certain. I know, without a doubt, that this path I started him down led to his death. That I am, again, responsible. There’s another name to add to the list.
28
“What do you mean he wants more?” It has been a day and Dao is in no mood for this shit. “I pay you to pay him to go away.”
Jono, his Humas, his local fixer, is adamant. He names a figure, a new demand from the workers. “This is not possible with the budget you gave me last. Sammy says he will not go without more. After the earthquake everybody has more bills to pay. Oh, and he says there are a couple reporters on their way.”
They’re looking at a protest racket blocking the access road. Picket signs, the works. Catnip for the media. Bad for the mine. A smirking youth with bills to pay watches them from the sidelines.
“Okay,” says Dao, eyeing the kid. He can’t be more than nineteen. Any more years on him and that smug expression would slide right off his face at the way Dao’s looking at him now. “Tell him I’ll meet him in twenty minutes round back, by the offices.”
“And I will tell his cousin this is not how to do things. For now, I will give the money to Sammy if you just—”
“No, I’ll do it.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I’ll do it. This isn’t ever going to happen again, you hear me? You’re the fixer, right? Fix it better next time.”
Jono looks as though he’s about to say something else but thinks better of it. He leaves to pass along the message while Dao’s men clear the crowd for his car to get through.
Twenty minutes late
r, Dao finds Sammy waiting at the back door to the office building, smoking a cigarette.
Sammy sees his hands are empty. “Where’s the money?” The smirk is replaced with a frown.
Moving quickly, Dao grabs the boy by his shoulders and slams him back against the wall. He picks up Sammy’s fallen cigarette and presses the lit end into the side of his neck. The boy screams.
“You got your money this month,” Dao tells him. “And you’re not getting any more.”
Sammy slides to the ground, gasping, clutching at his neck. “You know who my cousin is? You’ll pay for this!”
“Tell your cousin the community leader that this company will donate what we agreed on to his community projects and not a cent more. And don’t you ever pull shit like this again.”
Dao watches Sammy scramble away. His cousin isn’t a community leader so much as he’s a local gangster. But Dao isn’t afraid of him. And you let any of them get used to upping their price on you at will, and it’ll never stop.
Better let them learn the hard way. That is, after all, what he’s paid for. To give them the hard way, but only when they’re begging for it.
He feels a lot better now. His phone rings. “Yeah?” he says.
“Nora Watts is back in Vancouver. I saw her myself,” says Van Nguyen, his guy.
Dao goes back inside to hear the update. The boy, his cousin the corrupt community leader, and the protest graft are completely forgotten.
By the fence, the DSLR camera keeps clicking away until the big man disappears back inside. The reporter holding it couldn’t hear any of the exchange, but what he witnessed was an act of brutality toward this country’s protest movement, no doubt about it.
He waits a few more minutes to make sure nobody is coming back out, then he rises, stretches his legs, and heads off to find Sammy Saleh, one of the shining stars of the local conservation effort. Maybe he can get a few pictures of Sammy’s wounds, make a nice little package for the news.
The guy who’d slammed Sammy against the wall and burned him wasn’t familiar to him. He wasn’t one of the local employees or part of the private security team that protected access to the mine. No, he was the guy above it all. Who drove in, his car windows tinted too dark for anyone to catch more than a glimpse.
He was the guy who managed security, the one everyone was so afraid of. Who worked everyone to death and who no one dared to cross.
Someday, somebody was going to catch that fucking violent asshole and teach him a lesson.
29
As I pull into the alley behind the Hastings office, I notice a man wearing all black lingering outside the back door, pretending to seek the shelter of the awning. He’s in excellent shape, extremely broad in the chest. Too healthy for this neighborhood by far and trying to hide it with an affected slouch. But I have lived in the downtown eastside for years, walked these streets at all hours of the day and night. I know who belongs in these alleys, and he doesn’t.
I drive past with my hood pulled low. As I do, he steps away from the awning, his focus on the car. In the rearview mirror I see his phone is out and he’s speaking into it. Shit. I gun it out of the alley and go the wrong direction up the one-way street it lets out into. There are several honks, but I keep going until I get to the next cross street and make an abrupt turn. It takes me ten minutes of driving to make sure no one’s behind me.
Eventually, I get to Leo’s place.
Standing outside on the busy street, I look up. A shadow crosses the window inside the apartment. I call Leo’s phone. He picks up after the third ring.
“Are you at the apartment?” I ask.
“Nora?”
“Are you there?”
“No.”
“There’s someone inside.”
“Who?”
“I can’t make it out, but it looks like a woman.” There was a sweep of long hair falling forward when the figure crossed the window. “Who else has access to the place?”
“Nobody. It’s a crappy little apartment, though, and security is almost nonexistent, as you know. People leave the rear door propped open all the time to move stuff into their cars out back.”
And the lock on that door itself is a joke. I could pick it in under a minute. “Someone’s watching the office, too.”
“You sure about that?”
I think about the broad-chested man in black. “One hundred percent.”
“I’ll tell Warsame and Brazuca. Nora, I’m calling the cops to report a break-in. Just so you know.”
There’s a laundromat about four doors down with a few parking spaces out back. I pull into one of them and use the mirrors on my old Corolla to watch the rear door of Leo’s building. There are apartment units up there, and Leo’s right, nobody living there is particularly concerned about leaving the door open every now and then. Even though they should be. Because now there is someone who isn’t supposed to be up there, rooting around.
It feels like hours but must only be several minutes before a police car pulls up in front of Leo’s back door and two officers get out. They try the door. It’s open. What a surprise. I wait for them to go in, wait another set of indeterminable minutes to see if they’ve scared anyone out, and then finally when I see only one of the officers strolling leisurely back to the car from the opposite end of the alley, having just made a block, I realize that all of us were too late. Whoever was up there is long gone. Must have gone out the front, swept away with the tide of nine-to-fivers just getting off work.
They know about Leo’s apartment but weren’t able to find me there. No matter, the man with the phone already saw me at the office.
“The back door was open, but the lock on my apartment door was forced,” Leo says to me, when I call him to give an update.
“Was anything taken?”
“No. The cops think it might have been a crime of opportunity. Some degenerate found the back door open and, as you know, my apartment is the first unit at the top of the stairs.”
“Did you tell them about the man watching the office?”
“Yes, but it’s an alley off Hastings Street. All sorts of shady characters hang out in that area. They implied that maybe PI work is getting to me, that I’m jumping at shadows. I never understood why you hated cops so much, Nora, but after dealing with this mess, I’m rethinking my position.”
“It can’t be a coincidence. Someone at the office and the apartment like that.”
“I agree. I’m assuming this is about you? They’re ramping up their surveillance?”
“It’s not safe to go back to the apartment, Leo. For me or you. Is there someone you can stay with?”
“Yes. What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I say.
I get a text from Stephanie Kwan saying she remembers something and to meet her at the house as soon as possible. What she has to say can’t be shared over the phone. The message is paranoid, but then again, so am I. I’m stuck in North Van traffic for far too long, and when I finally get there, I drive right past the house and park a few houses down.
Bright lights are flashing in my rearview mirror as an ambulance speeds away.
I get out of the car and run to the house.
There’s a police officer blocking my way. “Please stay back, ma’am.”
“What happened?” I ask.
The officer ignores me and goes to the porch while I remain out on the street. A neighbor in a flannel onesie wanders over. “Do you live in this neighborhood?” she asks.
“No, but I know Stephanie. What happened?”
“Well, neighborhood watch heard what they thought was a scream coming from Steph’s house and went and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but Brenda next door had a key so they asked her to open it to check if Steph was okay. Found her with her arm broken. Looks like she interrupted a burglary or something.”
“Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She got that arm twisted bad but managed to fight back. Got her hands on her be
ar spray and just went off on that bastard. Got him real good. And when she screamed, well, that’s when the watch went and knocked. Steph said the guy took off then, through the back. Who the hell beats up on a woman, though? It makes me sick!”
I feel the same. I get back in the car.
This is what I think happened. When Van Nguyen saw my face, he couldn’t immediately place it, but he knew he should have. Because he was the one who arranged the surveillance. When he realized he saw me here with Stephanie Kwan, he or his goon decided to come back and confront her. He was the one who sent the text.
As I drive away, I take out the phone I have, the burner, and toss it out the window.
30
Later, after I’ve gotten a new phone and updated my contacts, I let myself into Simone’s apartment. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Whisper seems to be as exhausted as I am. She barely eats the gourmet dog food I picked up for her, which was expensive. I don’t even bother explaining that while she’s got the best the pet store has to offer, I’m eating from the discounted deli section of the grocery. I’ve got bigger problems than the luxury lifestyle she’s become accustomed to, courtesy of Leo, who must have a more generous credit card limit than me.
After a long shower, as hot as I can stand it, I turn up the thermostat and try to process the events of the day from the couch. It feels as though I’ve lived a week in the past twenty-four hours.
Dao’s search for me is ramping up. He’s sent his attack dogs to use my connections to lure me out.
It’s also clear that he’s not here to greet me in person. If he had been, he wouldn’t have sent others to do his dirty work for him. He would have been in the Hastings alley himself. Waiting for me down the street from Stephanie Kwan’s place. Or at Leo’s apartment. I can see him now, perched on an armchair in the dark, biding his time until I walk in the door.
