by Paul Slatter
The Italian stared at him for a moment before saying back, “If you’re here to talk about the game then fine; otherwise fuck off because you’re sitting in my kid’s seat.”
Chendrill looked out across the pitch, its artificial turf lit from the open roof above and calling out to anyone who’d ever kicked a ball and enjoyed it. Turning back Chendrill smiled and said, “We can talk now since it’s halftime or I can come back when they’re in bed.”
Chapter Six
Daltrey waited until morning before she checked herself out of her private hospital room and headed home to her apartment in a cab. The place was a mess as she stepped inside. Curry powder was on the floor of the kitchen and all her toothpaste was gone in the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered now why she had not come home sooner rather than hiding herself away as she had on that boat. Twisting her head to the side, she looked out the corner of her eye to the mirror, trying to get a side view. Nope, nothing’s changed, you’re still a wreck, she thought as she looked at the bandages around her head hiding the burns and her scorched hair. She felt like crying but what was the point in that? She’d done that enough for a lifetime. She walked out from the small bathroom back into the kitchen and looked to the curry powder on the floor. Maybe she’d dropped it before she’d got herself into the mess she was now in. Maybe? But really what did it matter? It wasn’t like she was about to knock out a chicken tikka masala anytime soon.
She was getting stronger now though, not crying at the state of her place was a good sign. Stuck on that boat, too frightened to go anywhere, she’d cried at anything, especially the huge billboard of Dan posing in the same underwear he’d snuck into the last time they’d been together—when she’d been sneaking around Mazzi Hegan’s apartment and found Dan on the bed wearing only those silver undies and a stupid grin. There was that one and the others she’d seen on the way over too, Dan with a busted nose in the elevator looking frightened, Dan with that dumb model with the tits, and Dan getting his face licked by some guy. What had Chuck said? he’s now an international superstar model driving a Ferrari. What the hell had happened? No wonder she thought she was going crazy.
Daltrey walked back into the living room and then into her bedroom and sat on the bed. Everyone had thought she was dead but no one had bothered to come over and sort her stuff out. But who would have, who did she have? No one really; her family were all gone, ravaged by sickness and the ones who were still alive lived far away on the fringes and were long forgotten in her life.
She could have been burned alive and the only people at her wake would have been the people she rather be dead than socialize with anyway, except for Chendrill that is, so maybe it would have worked out perfectly.
Now though she had a dead girl a lot braver than she was to thank for the fact she was back home with the rest of her life ahead of her. She walked back into the bathroom and stared in the mirror, her head bandaged up, her cheeks still blistered. Unclipping the bandage, she began to unravel it until it was completely off and laying crumpled in the sink. Very slowly she took off the t-shirt she had stolen from the closet of the yacht she’d holed up in, hiding from herself, and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Her face and hands were taut and red from the Russian’s flames, but now in the bright bathroom light the injuries didn’t look half as bad as they had when she’d glimpsed herself in the half-light of the boat’s cramped washroom. Her hair on one side was partially gone, the skin on her shoulders peeling. Then as she stood in the shower feeling the cool water on her skin, the house phone rang and for a moment Daltrey carried on, ignoring it and wondering who it could be.
Stepping out, Daltrey answered the phone and for a moment, the person on the other end of the phone sounded like a man, as she heard the voice in a familiar tone say, “Hey, you’re a hard one to track down.”
Running her fingers through her wet hair, Daltrey said, “Who are you and what do you want?”
And the girl on the other end of the phone, who wore leather and rode a Harley, got straight to it, saying, “Don’t play games, you know who I am and I want you over here giving me a piece of your pie.”
Knowing now who it was and worrying about her hair as she sat down on the sofa. Realizing her hands were shaking, Daltrey looked to one of the Monet prints on her wall for comfort. The woman in the painting framed against a wispy blue and purple sky. Standing amongst a field of flowers clothed in a white dress and hat looking down at her. The woman from another era, beautiful and now long gone, clutching an umbrella to shield herself from the afternoon sun. Holding herself with perfect poise and femininity as she posed for the artist who maybe she was in love with. A woman who Daltrey knew she could never be. She said back, “I’ve had some trouble, my hair’s not the same.”
“So?”
“I’ve had a bad burn, my face… it’s burnt and my shoulder. I’ve just got out the hospital.”
“So that’s where you’ve been?”
“Kind of,” Daltrey replied, thinking of the amount of time she’d spent crying and eating tinned salmon.
Then the girl, who lived out on Commercial Drive and who drove a Harley and hated men because she wasn’t one, said, “You fit enough to meet for lunch?”
She changed into some jeans and a top she’d forgotten she had, wrapped a scarf around her head and wondered where her Audi was now as she sat in the back of a cab watching the meter rise.
The biker girl was already there when she arrived, sitting there at the curb with her ass side saddle on her bike with straight pipes. Kissing her on her good cheek and looking at her other, the girl said, “It’s not that bad.”
Daltrey saying straight back, “You should see my hair.”
Trying to look cool, the girl said to her, “Hair grows back, that’s why we get those hot bitches working the salons.”
They sat on the patio of the restaurant that had been bought and named after the owner took a holiday in the South Pacific, the biker telling Daltrey how she’d really enjoyed their time together before and how she’d been out there trying to find her since, and Daltrey knowing she’d been feeling the same way—but that was before someone had tried to kill her.
Then the biker, who liked to be called Sam, said, “I know the line of work you’re into so I won’t ask you what happened, but you can tell me if you want when you’re ready.”
They were both eating the salad with raisins in it, which came free with the meal, and stopping for a moment Daltrey stared at the plate. How could she explain what she’d done? Someone had tried to kill her—another girl coming out of nowhere, saving her, but getting herself burned to death in the process and Daltrey doing nothing about it, just running and hiding. Really, how could she explain that?
Changing the subject, Sam took a swig from her beer and said, “Seen any nice pussy lately?”
Smiling, Daltrey looked up and shook her head.
Then Sam took her by surprise saying, “What about that guy with the busted face everywhere in town in those undies, he getting you going is he? I heard he was from Vancouver. I can tell you, I think that skinny fucker is out there for the sole purpose of doing a conversion job on hard ass bitches like me. If I ever see him in the flesh, I hope he hasn't wasted his time getting that nose of his fixed as I'm going to be breaking it again the first chance I get.”
***********
Around noon, Chendrill parked his Aston up outside Slave and didn’t say anything to a soul until he reached Sebastian’s office. As soon as he opened the door, the man who paid him a grand a day to look after their new star and gave him the Aston to drive asked, “Is Dan okay, Chuck?”
Chendrill didn’t know, as he hadn’t been there since Dan’s mother had caught him hard with a slap to the face which she now regretted. Without lying, he said, “Don’t know.”
What he did know though was that Sebastian didn’t owe money to the loan shark anymore–the Italian telling him earlier at the stadium only after it was
too plainly obvious that Chendrill wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
“You can let that faggot know he owes me for a new car,” Mattia had said. Chendrill hitting him straight back with, “I thought this was about a horse?”
“Yeah and the horse.”
“What’s the deal with the car?”
“Ask your friend; his boyfriend smashed it up.”
“I heard it different.”
“Well you heard it wrong.”
Then Chendrill had asked, “You were there, were you?’
The loan shark who had a thing for big titted strippers coming straight back with, “No, my brother was.”
Chendrill had took a chance and said, “What your brother does in his personal life is his business.”
Then after looking up the aisle for his kids, the loan shark had taken a deep breath and said, “Your friend who’s got the penthouse, his boyfriend led him on.”
“From what I heard your brother’s the one who had something in his mouth when he got knocked out, not Alan.”
The loan shark had looked at him, that statement and Sebastian’s old love’s name seeming to sting the loan shark’s inner being.
Chendrill carried on, “What does it matter now though—the guy you’re talking about is long gone from this world.”
Then the loan shark took a look at the ground and in almost a whisper said, “Well at least he’ll have company.”
“You talking about Sebastian?” Chendrill said.
“If he doesn’t pay up then yeah, sure, I’ve got a place he can hang out in.”
“How much he owe?”
“Not sure.”
Remembering the junkie guitar player’s words, “the man doesn’t carry a book he remembers everything,” Chendrill raised his eyebrows and said, “Well when you’ve figured it out then come see me because what you feel he owes you is now, according to street law, my debt because I took on what he owes a while back.”
The loan shark who’d filled his ex-wife’s lawyer’s mouth full of dog shit had sat there for a moment, staring at the subs out on the artificial turf, practicing kicking the ball about, wishing they could make the team and trying to look as though they were alone in the park and didn’t have 28,000 people watching them, then he smiled and looked at Chendrill and said, “Good then you can tell that little poof he doesn’t owe me a penny, but before you get your ass out of my kid’s chair you need to know you now are on the hook to me for $250,000.”
“$250,000—for what?” Chendrill snapped back, almost laughing.
“For his boyfriend, distracting my brother while they were driving over there on the island—for sending my car down the ditch and killing the racehorse in the back of the fucking trailer, that’s what.”
Chendrill stared out across the soccer field, still trying not to laugh at the man. What had gone down with this guy in his personal life to make him so angry after all these years was anyone’s guess. Chendrill knew though that whatever it was wasn’t his problem and just from the snooping about he’d already done, he knew the man was not stupid. For the moment though he was being just that and it was a waste of time arguing a solid point with stupid people. Even if they were just going through a phase. Either way, he’d heard enough.
Looking the man straight in the eye, Chendrill said, “I suggest you and I call it quits and part company so you can carry on earning a living off those junkies like you do. Because if you want settlement for something that happened years ago and I know you had nothing to do with financially, you now have to come see me. But I’ll tell you, if you do I’ll be telling you straight away to do to me what I’d say your brother was doing to Sebastian’s boyfriend when he crashed your car.”
*********
“Now,” Chendrill said to Sebastian as he parked his ass against the window ledge as he liked to do, “this guy who’s been sniffing about is a loan shark, works on the East Side feeding off junkies.”
Sebastian stared at him for a second, then said, “There’re junkies here Chuck?”
There was—they were everywhere. Chuck looking at himself in the big mirror on the wall said back, “Yeah, you need to get out more—maybe you’ll see them. Keep your eyes peeled; they’re floating about in amongst the poor people and look like shit.”
Sebastian nodding, he knew the type having seen enough out there with their hand out looking dirty and beaten, then he said, “You think that some of those poor guys in the shop doors are that way?”
“Almost all,” is all Chendrill said, then carried on with, “And if you’ve been dropping them any cash then chances are it’s been finding its way back to that Italian guy who was here the other day.”
“He’s Italian? I thought he was Persian,” Sebastian remarked. Chendrill said straight back as he moved from the window and sat down without being asked, “No, the Persians deal in furniture, fruit, and cut hair. They also think they can play soccer.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, and the Italians have cafes and buy commercial property and do a few other things.”
“Like what?”
“They lend money.”
“Oh, well I do that Chuck.”
Chendrill smiled at Sebastian, wondering if Sebastian was half the fool he pretended to be. He said, “Yeah but these guys always want it back. Except in this guy’s case, he didn’t lend you or your Alan money and you were right, it was about the horse—don’t worry though its settled and he’s told me you don’t owe him anymore.”
Then Sebastian said, “As far as I know I didn’t owe him anyway, Chuck.”
“Well in his eyes, you did, but not any longer. I think he’s got some personal issues going on and wasn’t focusing properly.”
Sebastian stood there for a moment, then he said, “Yes, I heard this guy who was driving the car died Chuck, maybe that’s what it is?”
“Could be.”
“But it’s sorted?”
Chendrill nodded, then smiled, knowing by some instinct that, from the man’s reputation, it was a long way from over—but now without Sebastian’s involvement.
He said, “Yeah don’t worry, it’s sorted.”
Sebastian smiled, and for the moment Chendrill thought he could see the relief come straight off Sebastian’s shoulders. He asked, “How’s Dan?”
Chendrill wondered again if Dan had been up to mischief again and Sebastian knew something he didn’t. He replied, “Dan’s good.”
Then quickly and, trying to sound sincere as he watched Sebastian reach down to pick up his dog, said, “How’s the movie? Patrick causing problems still?”
“Fluffy’s going to be in it.”
“Yeah you said.”
“And Campbell Ewes, Adalia’s favourite director is coming up here to speak with me. He’s such a talent, Chuck.”
For a moment, Chendrill wondered what movies the guy had done and, deciding not to ask in case Sebastian suddenly thought it would be a good idea for him to hang about so they both could meet, he said, “Great, well I’d better get going.”
Then he heard Sebastian say, “Oh really, well since you’re off and Dan’s fine, why don’t you go down to the airport to meet him? I’m sure he’ll love the Aston.”
**********
It had been a little over two minutes since Ditcon had put down the phone and had begun to laugh harder than he could remember doing in a long long while—with Stephanie next to him doing the same, both of them writing a fictitious text earlier in the morning over coffee, then sending it to Ditcon’s police phone. Ditcon had received it and sent it to the head of Border Protection down at Peace Arch, who then passed it on, sharing the information with the powers that be in the U.S. And a half hour later, Ditcon got a call on speaker phone from a bunch of irate big shots, sitting, no doubt, in some board room in the States wanting to know all about this Charles Chendrill who'd been disrespecting their line in the sand.
Ditcon listened at his desk with a grin, Stephanie standing next to him leaning over
doing the same, as all the bullshit she’d instigated spewed back at her out of the speaker phone. Ditcon the King, playing it cool, sitting in his office telling them he knew this guy, he used to be a cop, and now he's just a washed up P.I. pain in the ass.
“How reliable was this source though?”
They’d both heard someone call out, trying to make himself heard from what sounded like the back of the room, as Ditcon was telling them, “If we take it on a scale of one to ten, you’re looking at an eight.”
Then after five minutes of bullshit, during which Ditcon had managed to get his hand in a friendly grab just up above Stephanie’s knee, he’d forwarded Chendrill’s photo and stats to the U.S. Task Force and was off the phone convulsing in tears with his right hand covering his face on the desk and his left hand still there slowly working its way up the inside of Stephanie’s thigh. He was laughing, Stephanie laughing with him and at the same time wondering if this bad boy in a man’s body with a bald head had the guts to take it all the way and hit the sweet spot at the top. Stephanie standing there, having fun and feeling Ditcon’s hand on her thigh, knowing if it got any higher he’d find himself unleashing the spirit the young lady held within, and once he had there would be no turning back. Ditcon being Ditcon knowing the top was exactly where he was always heading, be it his young driver’s inner leg or a seat at the Mayor’s luncheon table. The man playing the big shot boss, bold and sleazy enough to fill his day with booze and drugs and then give it a go with his new driver de jour. But once he did cross that line of common decency, he would soon discover that little miss Stephanie had games of her own she liked to play, and itches she liked to scratch.
*************
It wasn’t the first time since he’d taken the contract with Slave that Chendrill had felt like a chauffeur. Chendrill wondering if he’d see this latest hot shot director running through the streets away from Slave in the early morning light, the same as he had the last one. Chendrill, the big time P.I. now knowing this new director guy’s name off by heart because he was feeling stupid standing there at the arrivals with it written on a piece of paper.
