The Vanishing Track

by Stephen Legault

  Denman sat and accepted a plate.

  “These are men who run some of my businesses around town,” said Fu. Denman nodded as Fu made introductions. “And Denman Scott runs Priority Legal on Hastings. He is one of our city’s great citizens. He provides free legal assistance to those in need. The homeless, those in poverty, those abused by the system or by our over-zealous police force.”

  Denman smiled and turned his meat on the grill.

  “Now, what is it that I can do for you? Have you come seeking a donation to your excellent cause?”

  Denman’s smile widened. “No, but thank you for thinking of it. Perhaps in the future. My business today is of a more troubling nature, Mr. Fu. I’ve come to ask for your assistance. It seems something is terribly wrong in our community. Four people have gone missing in the Downtown Eastside in the last month. All long-term street people. All well known by those providing social services.”

  “By that you are talking about Juliet Rose, the excellent street nurse.”

  “Her, and others,” said Denman, holding Fu’s eyes.

  “You and she are developing a strong friendship,” said Fu.

  “We share a common cause.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I was hoping you might have some knowledge as to their whereabouts.”

  Fu took a mouthful of pork and chewed thoughtfully. “I know nothing of their whereabouts. I try to stay abreast of the rumors and gossip on the streets, if only just for the sport of it. But where these . . . men or women?”

  “Two men and two women.”

  “Where these men and women have disappeared to, I do not know.”

  Denman dipped some pork into hot sauce. He nodded as he ate. “Mr. Fu, I have heard concerns that the City itself is cracking down on homeless people, making their lives uncomfortable. I’ve received an increasing number of complaints of excessive force. Prostitutes are being beaten. Homeless people roughed up. The rally that was to show support for the Downtown Eastside community last week turned violent. The police beat people and tear-gassed the crowd.”

  “Yes, I understand His Worship the Mayor had to be rushed from the scene,” Fu smiled.

  “Have you heard anything that would suggest that the City is cracking down in the Downtown Eastside to try to bully people out of the area to make way for condo development?”

  Fu sat back against his cushions. “Surely you must know that if the City wants to build condominiums in the Eastside, all they have to do is support the developers’ efforts to buy up the low-rent hotels and to fast-track development permits. It’s really that simple. They don’t need to beat up hookers to do that. Now, that being said, the VPD never needed an excuse to pick on the least privileged among us. As you might know, I have associates who make their living any way they are able, which sometimes skirts the strict legal parameters in our society, and I have come to understand that to do so one risks far more than arrest in our fair city. If you take my meaning.”

  Denman allowed a smile and a nod. “But you feel certain that this excessive force isn’t in any way connected to the closure of places like the Astoria Grand or the Lucky Strike Hotel.”

  Denman felt it, though he couldn’t see it. At the mention of the Lucky Strike, the energy changed in the room. It was for just a split second, but it caused the hair on the back of his neck to rise.

  “I assure you, if there was any connection between the abuse our city’s finest heap on the citizenry of our community and the redevelopment of low rent hotels, I would know. And I would gladly share that with you.”

  Denman took a last bite and then a sip of tea. “Mr. Fu, you have been a gracious host. I appreciate your time. With your permission, I will take my leave,” he said, rising.

  “Come back and see me about a donation to your excellent work, Denman. You are welcome here anytime.”

  Denman bowed gently to his host, retrieved his shoes, and made his way back down the dimly lit hall.

  COLE STOOD IN the darkness, leaning against the wall beside the back door, the rain drumming down on his ball cap. A steady drip had formed along the brim of his hat and slid down his coat. He dug out his cell phone and checked the time. Denman had been gone for just two minutes and already he was growing antsy. He had been serious about the ten minutes. In eight more ticks he would be marching through the front door, and God help anybody who got between him and his best friend.

  “Of course, I do that and I won’t be able to piss in this city without looking over my shoulder,” said Cole aloud, grinning.

  In the near total darkness of the alley he took a few steps and bent his knees to loosen his legs. He scanned the space around him, trying to discern objects—the large metal trash bin, a few wooden crates, the leaning piles of empty cardboard boxes being soaked into a pulp. He stood up again and was about to take a few steps into the passage connecting the alley to the street when he heard distant voices.

  Cole held his breath and listened. A foot splashed in the puddle of water spanning the main alley and a man cursed.

  The voices grew louder. Cole felt an instinctive need to hide. He squeezed between the garbage bin and the tall wooden fence, crouching in a tiny space thick with the smell of fish and rotting vegetables and discarded cooking oil. Two men passed within ten feet of him and knocked on the same door Denman had just passed through. They talked in loud voices.

  “Fucking rain.”

  “Never going to let up, it seems.”

  “Now until April.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “You haven’t been in Vancouver very long, have you?”

  “I just got here in June. It’s been sunny since. I thought I was living in Shangri-La.”

  “You’re in for a rough fucking ride, buddy.”

  “Knock again. They must not have heard the first time.”

  Suddenly the door opened and the shaft of light spilled into the alley again. Cole could see the two men clearly. They were burly, dressed in long raincoats, the downpour driving against their crew cuts. White men, somewhere in their early thirties, Cole guessed, with square jaws and mustaches.

  Cole could not see who answered the door, but the man closest to Cole said, “Pickup for the Lucky Strike Supper Club.” The other man laughed.

  The door closed and the alley turned dark again. A few moments later, it opened wide, and someone handed out large packages of food wrapped in plastic bags.

  Cole was only ten feet away, trying to shrink farther into the small area behind the garbage bin. The light illuminated the alley well enough that if the men turned to look in his direction, he would be discovered. His heart raced as he crouched uncomfortably.

  “Better not have forgotten the fried wontons,” the man farthest from Cole said. “Andrews loves his fried wontons.” Both men laughed and the door closed. They disappeared from the rain-soaked alley.

  Cole stood up. The rain continued to drum down on his head but he didn’t feel it.

  Lucky Strike Supper Club. What were they talking about? Cole wondered.

  He fished his cell phone from his pocket and checked the time. It had been twelve minutes since Denman disappeared. The pickup had distracted him, but now he was able to squeeze out from behind the dumpster. Time to go in with a blaze of glory. He pressed past the door and was about to round the corner when the door behind him opened again and he heard Denman say something in Mandarin. Cole stopped and turned. Denman emerged with a box of food in his hand.

  “Like a fried wonton?” he asked Cole.

  TWELVE

  “I THINK WE NEED TO huddle the troops,” said Cole, feeling the rain again after the adrenaline had subsided.

  “Agreed.”

  “Let’s call Nancy and Juliet in the morning and start putting our heads together.”

  “You said they called it the Lucky Strike Supper Club?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pretty strange, I’ll grant you. But suspicious?”

  “Come on, Denman. Who pi
cks up eats from the back door of a crime-owned restaurant in the Downtown Eastside at eleven o’clock on a rainy night?”

  “Okay, it’s strange. I’ll call Juliet and you call Nancy. Eleven tomorrow morning at Macy’s?”

  “I’ve got a nine o’clock, which Mary will kill me if I miss, so yeah, eleven is good.”

  Cole couldn’t sleep, though. When he arrived home, he stood in the shower until the stench of fish and oil was washed from him. He’d gone to bed but lay awake staring at the ceiling. Finally, at two o’clock, he got up and poured three fingers of Irish whiskey into a glass with a little ice, just for show, and sat down to read. Instead of reading, though, his thoughts roamed freely over the night landscape, returning again and again to the conversation between the two muscle-heads in the alley.

  Who were those guys? They seemed out of place in an alley in the Downtown Eastside. What was the Lucky Strike Supper Club? And who was this Andrews who liked his fried wontons?

  His mind drifted from the events of that night to his thoughts from the moments just before the men appeared in the darkness. It was there that he found a more oppressive darkness, or rather, where the darkness found him. Cole lurched toward sleep preoccupied by the source of his diurnal nightmares.

  Cole’s phone rang, and instinctively he raised his fists in front of him, half rising from the armchair he was slumped in. A bolt of pain shot through him, his ribs aching from the awkward sleep and reflexive jarring. “Good God . . .” he mumbled, sitting back down and holding his arms across his ribs. He reached across the clutter on the table and fumbled for the phone. The portable receiver slipped from his hands and hit the floor and he bent too quickly to retrieve it and another spasm of pain pierced his chest. “Fuck,” he finally spat, grabbing the phone from the floor and hitting the receive button.

  “Blackwater,” he barked.

  “Cole, it’s Mary.”

  “Oh, Mary. Hi, sorry. What time is it?”

  “It’s 8:00 AM.”

  “Right, God—the Nexus call.”

  “The cab will be outside your door at eight-thirty, Cole.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “Thank you, Mary.”

  “Don’t mention it, Cole. Let’s get your game on, okay?”

  At ten to nine Mary greeted him at the door. “The Nexus file is on your desk,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Thank you, Mary. Where would I be without you?”

  “In bed.” She smiled.

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “And out your best client,” she added.

  “Right,” he said, entering his cave of an office to review the Nexus Energy file.

  As he expected, during the telephone meeting he was invited to sit on the company’s behalf on a new, pioneering energy and climate change association. Cole had felt a rush of pride. It had been almost five years since he decided to fly solo as a strategy consultant, and the invitation was a sign of his success. But his euphoria was short-lived. Late in the meeting, he learned that the association would be led by Brian Marriott. Brilliant, charming, and politically connected, Marriott had been the Ottawa lobbyist for the Petroleum Resources Group when Cole was the conservation director for the Canadian Conservation Association. In public they had been outwardly tolerant, but everybody in Ottawa knew the two men despised each other. Cole heard through the grapevine that Marriott had had a change of heart in the last couple of years. Marriott had read The Weathermakers—a revolutionary look at the ecology and politics of climate change—while on vacation sometime back, and left the PRG when they refused to yield on the issue of global warming. Somehow Cole couldn’t fathom Marriott leading a climate change association, especially one that Cole was now involved in.

  Cole sighed. “Anybody but Brian Marriott,” he said aloud after he put the phone down.

  “What’s that, Cole?” said Mary, her face appearing at the door.

  “Brian Marriott.”

  “That name sounds familiar.”

  “I think I may have just screwed myself, Mary.”

  “And to think it’s only eleven in the morning,” she said in a chipper voice.

  “Can you find out everything that Brian Marriott has been up to since I left Ottawa, Mary?”

  “Sure.”

  “And look under the rocks.”

  “That good, eh?”

  He arrived in the Downtown Eastside ten minutes late. Nancy, Denman, and a beautiful, plainly dressed woman sat together in the window of Macy’s. He rushed in and offered his apologies.

  “Up most of the night,” he said by way of explanation.

  Denman stood and said, “Cole Blackwater, Juliet Rose.” The two shook hands.

  “Finally, the infamous Cole Blackwater darkens my doorway,” Juliet said with a smile.

  “Finally,” he responded, “I get to meet the saving grace of the Downtown Eastside. Does anybody else need a coffee?” He looked around, saw no takers, and went to the counter. He ordered a coffee and bought a sugary doughnut and sat back down.

  “Let’s get right to this,” said Denman, and proceeded to fill the women in on the evening before.

  “You did what?” Nancy exclaimed after hearing the story.

  “Cole has this theory,” said Denman. “He thinks that City Hall is somehow mixed up with organized crime on the Eastside and is knocking off homeless people to eliminate opposition to condo development.”

  Nancy shook her head. “You know, Cole, when I told you that I thought that maybe the missing people were connected with Fu, I didn’t expect you and your sidekick to go kicking in doors looking for them.”

  “Actually,” said Denman, “Cole was my sidekick . . .”

  Juliet jumped in. “I think you’re overlooking something important. None of these four people were involved in street-level crime. And none of them were operatives for Hoi Fu.”

  “How can you be sure?” asked Cole.

  “I work with these people every day,” she said. “I know them as well as anybody could. I know who the dealers are, the runners, the muscle. You have to believe me, these were four ordinary people.”

  “Ordinary?” asked Cole.

  “As ordinary as you can be living on the street. Sure, they have their troubles. A week on the street and you would too. Mental illness and addictions. Peaches hooked for a while. Veronica was known to re-sell some smack. But they weren’t mixed up with Fu. No way.”

  “Juliet knows what she’s talking about, Cole,” said Denman.

  “No argument from me. I’m just trying to figure this all out,” agreed Cole.

  “You said they called it a Supper Club. Sounds like something that happens on a regular basis.” Nancy pointed out.

  “Sounds like,” said Cole. “But at least one of the guys who were picking up food was a first-timer.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Nancy.

  “Just the way they were talking. It was like he’d never been out of the West End, you know what I mean?”

  “Describe them again, would you?” asked Denman.

  “Big dudes. Even with long raincoats on, I could tell. The one guy, the one farthest from me, was cruiser weight. Like one-eighty. The other guy was easily heavyweight. Two hundred easy. And not fat. Fit. Big dudes . . .”

  “Don’t mind Cole,” said Nancy to Juliet. “He can’t help but size everybody up as a potential opponent.”

  “Few too many shots to the head,” said Denman, making a face. Juliet laughed.

  “Ha ha,” said Cole. “My point is these guys were big. And I could see they had short hair. Their hoods didn’t cover their foreheads, and their hairlines were like brush cuts. And mustaches.”

  “They were cops,” said Juliet.

  “Come on, how do you know that?” asked Cole.

  “Who the hell else wears a mustache and a crew cut?” asked Nancy.

  “Fair point,” said Cole.

  “And that means the Andrews they mentioned, the one who likes his wontons fried, is John Andrews
,” said Denman.

  “Division 2 Commander,” said Nancy.

  Cole sat back in his chair and fiddled with his empty coffee cup. “Okay, so if these guys were delivering food to a meeting hosted by Andrews and dealing with the Lucky Strike, what does that mean?”

  “Maybe nothing,” said Nancy.

  “Or maybe it’s a nightly strategy session to address the standoff,” said Denman. “That would figure.”

  “Sure,” added Juliet. “You know that the City and the cops are stewing over this occupation. It’s a total mess.”

  “Ironic that the cops are getting takeout when they’ve stopped food from getting to the protesters,” said Nancy, making a note.

  “You can’t write about this,” said Cole.

  “Really? You’re not willing to go on the record?” she mocked. “‘Overheard in Dark Alley, Fried Wonton Conspiracy Theory . . .’” Her hand inscribed the headline in the air in front of her.

  “No, really.”

  “She knows, Cole,” said Denman.

  “I’m just making sure,” said Cole.

  “I learned my lesson, asshole,” said Nancy.

  Cole shook his head and looked down.

  “People, please, not in front of the kids,” Denman said, looking around.

  “So what we have is the possibility of the cops and the City feasting while the protesters starve. Is that it?” asked Juliet.

  “No, we’ve got way more,” said Cole. “We’ve got these meatballs picking up chow from the back door of a restaurant owned by a crime boss.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” said Nancy.

  “It doesn’t mean nothing, either,” spat Cole. “Look. I don’t know why I’m the only one who sees this.” He raised his voice. “We’ve got cops picking up grub from the back door of a place that is a front for organized crime in the city, delivering it to a meeting where the divisional commander is talking about the Lucky Strike. We think it’s got to do with the occupation, and that the City is involved, but we don’t know that for sure. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we’ve got four of Juliet’s flock gone missing, all in the last month. All this while the city gears up for a huge development push into the last real estate available for condo development in the city’s core.” He pounded his flat hand on the table, making the coffee mugs bounce. The other three stared at him.