NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders

by Gar Mallinson

  With her carry-on trailing behind her, she made her way alone up the aisle, thanked the smiling stewardesses, and walked slowly up the ramp, glancing out the tiny windows at the busy concrete apron.

  The terminal was what she’d expected, very much like Singapore’s except that the walk to the luggage area seemed like miles. She watched the loading gates through the glass wall as she passed along the endless corridor, wondering where all these people were going. As the arrivals corridor opened up, she paid particular attention to the shops to see if she recognized anything, but they were all foreign. One of them selling pastries and coffee had a large red sign that said Tim Hortons. She’d heard of that one, and the green Starbucks she knew.

  By the time she got to the luggage carousels, the crowd had mostly dispersed, and only a few stragglers remained. Six or seven suitcases still circled, awaiting their owners, one of which had an orange scarf tied to its handle. Mary reached for it and struggled to get it off the conveyor belt. One of the remaining passengers, a young white guy, pulled it off and set it beside her.

  She thanked him. He blushed and mumbled something that sounded like “okay”. She found that strange. Young men in Singapore were far bolder. Mary smiled to herself, thinking that this country would be fun if men were so easily embarrassed. She would have more power here and that pleased her.

  Granted, she thought, her English was rusty, her pronunciation accented, and her phrasing a bit odd, if her English-speaking friends were right. But she did speak the language. She could use that awkwardness to charm the men.

  Mary’s family was traditional and her parents strict, but her school was a way out for her and her friends, free from parental disapproval, and if you were careful, free from the strictures of the staff. She had quite early begun her own emancipation and had practised using her beauty and intelligence to get what she wanted from the older boys. She wasn’t very successful with her teachers, although there had been one. But with the boys she was, and she’d managed so far to avoid any unpleasantness.

  Mary had dressed conservatively for the flight since her parents had seen her off, but she wasn’t planning to stay that way. She left the baggage area and went directly to the nearest women’s lavatory. Inside, the fixtures were different, but that’s not what she was there for. She sat on one of the western-style toilets and changed her clothes.

  No one was meeting her here; she’d insisted on that. When her parents objected, she’d pointed out that part of the reason for the trip was to allow her some independence, and that having her met was treating her like a child. She’d won that battle, but not easily.

  She had three days in the big city, well two nights anyway, and she was planning to make good use of the dark hours. Her Canadian friend in Singapore, the special one she’d had an affair with, had lived here. From him she knew all about the city’s more interesting places.

  When Mary left the stall, she had on her mini skirt, her heels, and her special top, the tight one. She looked at herself in the mirror, smiled at her reflection, and dug in her carry-on for her makeup. Twenty minutes later, she left the women’s washroom a different person. She walked differently; she seemed older and much more sophisticated; and she saw the reactions of the younger men, even some of the older ones. It was all good. She was here, she was free, and she was sure of herself.

  The SkyTrain was noisy compared to Singapore’s subway, but it was taking her to the city center so she forgave it, even for its slowness. Eventually, she got out at Burrard station, just one stop past the change at Granville, and once up the escalator and out on the street, she could see her hotel.

  Only her second day was spoken for, and on her third day, she’d be back at the airport’s south terminal for a seaplane ride to Harbour City. There was no time to waste. Mary marched up the street, crossed Georgia to the Hotel Vancouver’s front doors, and went into the lavish lobby. She registered, took the elevator to the tenth floor, dumped her suitcase and carry-on, and checked her appearance in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

  A half hour later, Mary was back on the street, headed up Burrard from Georgia toward Davie, the street her friend in Singapore had talked about. It was still light, but she wanted to know where to find the special places, and this was a perfect way to see what was there.

  Seven blocks up, she strolled along and looked at people and restaurants. It wasn’t much in daylight, and it was a lot dirtier than anything in Singapore. Still, it was full of people just like the streets at home. Coffee houses pushed out into the street, the patrons inches away from the passing crowds; well-lit restaurant windows revealed full houses; a few cheap sex shops were empty, the come-on too glaring for most afternoon customers. Mary smiled at the outfits and could feel the fine lacy black lingerie she had on.

  She wandered through the Two Sisters Bookshop, Priapus, and a couple of the better clothing stores. She ate a hotdog from a street vendor, one with fried onions, popped a breath mint afterwards, and sauntered back down Davie. She picked up a copy of Georgia Strait from one of the racks parked along the street.

  In the daytime, she thought, the street was not just dirty; it was almost lifeless, even with crowds of people. Every street in Singapore sang with spirit in comparison, the great shops on Orchard Park busy with custom, the small ones equally so. Here, everything was sort of low rise except for the apartment buildings, and full of noisy traffic. She realized that’s what the difference was: the endless flow of cars and trucks and buses. Mary’d never seen so many cars on a street, either parked or moving. She was familiar with the congestion of Malaysian cities like Georgetown, with its overflowing streets and the roar of motorbikes, but this was a different kind of busy, somehow tamer.

  Mary found one of the hotspots she intended to return to that night. Maybe the streets changed at night, she thought, as hers did back home, a kind of metamorphosis as the night people emerged. She’d soon see.

  She returned to the hotel and spent time in her room comparing outfits and deciding which one she’d wear. She wanted a club filled with music and light, pounding with a beat, jammed with a more deviant crowd. There, she knew, the possibilities were endless.

  Having picked her outfit for the evening, she passed the time until darkness came by ordering room service and reading Georgia Strait. The paper was more like what she’d expected. All the clubs were there and the ads in the back covered the spectrum of sexuality she intended to explore. This was the city she had come for, the night city, the clubs, the music, and the beat of streets filled with people like her, young and ready for anything. Tomorrow was for Chinatown and duty, parents and relatives, and more quiet behaviour. But tonight was hers.

  ◆◆◆

  Mary didn’t return to the hotel that night. She didn’t return until the stores were open the next day and the streets were busy with shoppers and traffic. She would always remember the night: the club, the music, and especially the girls and boys and kathoeys who danced with abandon and carried her with them when they left, moving from club to club. She remembered leaving in a van. She remembered a room, hands, lovely wanton touching, ecstasy, and darkness, but she remembered little else.

  She’d awakened while the others slept, climbed over various pairs on the floor, the bed, and the furniture, cleaned up in the bathroom, and let herself out. An elevator had carried her to a street she didn’t recognize, and she had begun to walk. She found a cab a few blocks down at a busy intersection. She was due in Chinatown in the early afternoon.

  In her room, Mary cleaned herself thoroughly and chose a conservative outfit, much like her school uniform but with a longer skirt. She ordered lunch from room service and was now on her bed studying a map of downtown.

  Chinatown was small, she thought, and not very far away. She’d take the SkyTrain to Main Street and walk the few blocks. Her aunt’s address was on a street called Pender and since that crossed Main, it would be easy to find. But first, she’d call her parents, as she had when she arrived.

  Th
e afternoon at her aunt’s house dragged as she answered endless questions about her parents and family and friends. Dainty hors d’euvres and Chinese specialties were served by two young Chinese women. She didn’t want anything, but she also couldn’t refuse. That would be rude, she knew. Mary’s cheeks ached from smiling and her head began to tire from nodding. She felt dreary and plain and tired from lack of sleep. The endless servings of tea kept her going.

  Finally, in the early evening, Mary left her aunt’s small house on Pender and walked over a block to Hastings. She knew about the street and the infamous East End from her friend in Singapore. So of course, she had to see it. The street itself was wide, but it was also nondescript, scruffy and unattractive, with ugly worn down hotels and lines of two-storey shops of all kinds, most of them with barred windows and doorways.

  More interesting than the street was the cast of characters, including drug addicted women and men, drunks, and working girls. There were also some people who looked dirty and neglected, as if they slept on the street. It was just what her friend had said it was. Singapore was not at all like this. In her city, druggies were rounded up and taken north to treatment the first time, and there wasn’t a second. Bugis Street had been cleaned up, so the kathoeys had to disperse and find tiny niches of their own. Now the street sold backpacks and other knockoffs. This Hastings Street would not have been allowed to exist in Singapore.

  Mary walked along the street up to Main, turned north a block to Cordova, and walked back down. This street was equally wide but more residential, and less filled with human refuse. The girls here were obvious and a few of them attractive. The costumes they wore, brief and suggestive, were what interested Mary the most.

  She loitered around the corners on the north side and watched the action on the other side. When she crossed over at Heatley to go back up to Hastings and then to Pender, she was followed by a large black car. It pulled into the curb ahead of her and the window went down. Mary smiled to herself and sauntered over. The man was nicely dressed and friendly, and as Mary leaned in the window, he offered her a good time for the evening at a private party. She played out the contact as long as she could before she declined and the man drove off.

  She finished her walk up to Pender and turned toward Main. That had been fun. She could have a good time on a street like that just soaking up the flavour, feeling the dark currents of the place, taking pleasure in her own appeal.

  As she continued walking, she thought back to all the aunts and uncles and friends of her parents who had gathered in the tiny living room. She’d suffered through all the polite enquiries, all the feigned interest, the endless banal stories, until she was finally out once again and free. She shivered in anticipation; the night had just begun and already she’d touched the city in places she’d never dreamed about. She intended her second and last night to be even better.

  VIII

  By ten, Mary was back on Davie Street at the same club she’d started at the night before. She knew she wouldn’t be there long, but she’d enjoy the throbbing music and the activity for a while. She danced with various boys and girls, ended up with another group, and in the early hours found herself once again at someone’s home. This time it was upscale, a high-rise apartment many floors up with a view across Coal Harbour and the black bulk of Stanley Park. To the north were the twinkling lights of the cities of North and West Vancouver and farther up the mountains, the trails of lights of the ski runs. There were adults here, and drugs, more than she’d ever seen.

  Everyone was snorting or smoking, some were shooting up in the bathrooms and bedrooms. The hosts seemed to be the suppliers and were themselves users. Bowls of pills sat around on the tables, clothes of various kinds trailed across the floors, and anyone could sample anything. Those who were not too wasted were making out wherever there was space. Others watched, and some joined in.

  Mary stood in the doorway of the living room, a little high, amused at the debauchery, and very much liking the hands of the girl standing behind her. She spent the night, what was left of it, with her new friend, and as morning light filled the great picture window, she put herself back together in one of the lavish bathrooms and let herself out.

  She had only a few hours before she had to appear at the south terminal of the airport for the seaplane to Harbour City. Her sister was expecting her, and she was eager to see her again. Olivia Chan lived with her husband in an upscale condo townhouse by the water somewhere downtown.

  Mary cleaned up and had some lunch before checking out and taking a limo supplied by the hotel. She enjoyed the ride out, watching the changing streets until the limo hit the bridge at the bottom of Granville and turned toward the airport.

  Mary sighed. Her time in the big city was over, and it was much too short a stay. She smiled to herself as she thought about her return trip. She had another two days in the city to look forward to, and she would take advantage of what she knew.

  The limo turned off before the main terminal and took a side road to the edge of a broad, slow-moving river.

  It was a twenty-minute flight across to the island, maybe around fifty kilometers. The hotel driver let her off at the entrance to a small building housing Harbour Air, carried her luggage in, thanked her, and left. She’d given him what seemed to her a reasonable tip, but his pleasure was obvious.

  After her luggage was weighed and her ticket issued, she waited in the small coffee shop and watched a number of seaplanes take off. She’d never been in anything so small that flew. This was going to be an experience.

  After she lined up and boarded with seven others, she was directed to a window in the front. The small plane taxied out to the river’s center, the single engine loud in the passenger cabin. The takeoff was noisy, but the engine settled down once they were airborne, and Mary watched the Salish Sea running beneath the plane. They flew so low, she could see the men in the sailboats below them. The sea between the island and the mainland carried freighters, but it was nothing compared to the shipping channels at home. Here, there was mostly water; back home there was mostly large ships.

  They began their descent only minutes later, and Mary watched the island she’d spotted become larger and larger, the trees suddenly beside them as the plane entered the harbour area and touched down. As the engine roared to slow their approach, Mary thought how similar it was to landing in a jumbo, just on a different scale.

  ◆◆◆

  Olivia hugged her sister. It went on too long and Mary struggled to get free so she could talk. She gave her a carefully edited account of her crossing and her time in Vancouver. They moved off the dock end onto the walkway and crossed a bridge that joined the building to the seawall. Mary looked back at the harbour. Four planes lined the dock near the terminal building, and on the far side, sailboats filled the basin of the harbour, their masts bright in the sun against the wall of green trees covering two islands.

  Olivia waited patiently. “That’s the main harbour out there. See that long dock way down? That’s where the cruise ships dock, and on this side are the docks where the fishing boats come in and the tourist boats dock. Let’s get your suitcases into the house, and we can take a walk around, unless you’d rather have a rest?”

  Mary shook her head. “I’m fine. I’d like to see the town a little. Maybe we could get a coffee and sit for a bit?”

  Olivia took the large bag and began to walk down the seawall. Mary followed. They hadn’t gone more than a half block before Olivia turned in at a small wrought iron gate and climbed the steps to one of the townhouses that lined the seawall. Mary stood for a moment, then followed.

  The interior was rather small, but the great room was high-ceilinged and elegant, the furnishings modern but classic at the same time. Mary liked it. The two women parked the suitcases in the foyer, toured the house, and left again to look at the town.

  Down the seawall from the townhouse in one direction was Maffeo Sutton Park with its arched pedestrian bridge. The other direction, the one t
hey took, led past a row of shops on one side, mostly tourist traps, and long docks filled with fishing boats mixed in with other small craft. The seawall was about ten feet above the level of the water, the tide just beginning to come in, and it led toward a small marina for larger pleasure craft, the type that ostentatiously scream wealth. There the seawall ended and they crossed Front at the concert hall and walked up through the arched cobbled street to Commercial, the heart of downtown. Olivia pointed to a Serious Coffee on the corner and they went in.

  Mary got her usual dark roast and looked at her sister, who had a skim latte. “It’s a very small city, isn’t it? Is this all there is to the downtown, this one street?”

  Olivia took a sip of her latte. “Yes, this is about it. The town is fairly large but spread out up and down the highway. There are plazas all over the place, but the downtown commercial district is here.”

  She smiled at Mary, patted her hand, and drank coffee. Mary sighed deeply, realizing that this was not going to be much fun. There were no clubs that she could see and if there were, she couldn’t ask Olivia about them. Few of the restaurants or bars looked interesting, and the shops, well, from what she could see just looking up and down the street, there was little to redeem the place. She was trapped for two weeks.

  She smiled at Olivia. “So tell me about things. When did you get the townhouse? What do the two of you do? And why do you live here instead of Vancouver?”

  “Look, I sympathize. Harbour City isn’t very big for someone like you, and certainly not very interesting, but there’s a larger, more interesting place down the highway only about a hundred kilometers. It won’t be as bad as you think. You can go to Victoria whenever you like. It’s your vacation, so we won’t hold you to anything. I can show you what we have here in the way of fashion and entertainment. There are a few clubs, the usual sort of thing. The ones on the main street are pretty cool, but I’d stay away from the one on Victoria Crescent. It has lots of fights, and the cops practically live there. There’s one good restaurant, a very good one, just up the hill a bit from that club, but the street’s not somewhere you want to mess around. Too many drugs, too many hookers, and too many bikers.”