by Sam Wiebe
“It wasn’t my business,” Feather said. “Religion is complicated. More so for us—it’s political, it’s something that was taken from us. White man’s god, the Christian god, and Chíchelh Siyám—it’s hard enough to get your head around one of them, let alone both.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Chelsea?” I asked.
“It was a while ago.”
“Do you think the man that dropped her off was her boyfriend or her pimp?”
“Honestly, I’d rather—”
“What was his name? I think you can tell me that without compromising.”
“I’d rather not.”
“I’d rather not have to ask,” I said. “But finding her is the task in front of me. I understand your reluctance. I’m asking for your faith.”
“You don’t strike me as religious,” Feather said.
I scratched my ear. “My parents were cultists. What I do believe, you have an obligation to the living that supersedes any promises you make to the dead. Chelsea’s mother is very sick. She’d like to know what happened to her daughter before she passes on. So please tell me the boyfriend’s name.”
Vivian Feather sighed big time.
“She never used his proper name,” she said. “That was a thing with her. She preferred to be called Charity. As if Charity and Chelsea were different people.”
“What’d she call her boyfriend?”
“Kamikaze.”
—
At two I walked down Water Street to a restaurant called Peckinpah. I threw down two shots of Bulleit bourbon, a brisket sandwich with slaw and cornbread. Then I walked to the parking lot next to Waterfront Station and stared out across the bay toward North Van.
If I was to conduct my own guided tour of the city, I’d start here. Looking out through the fence and over the rail yard, past the docks with their orange loading cranes, past the Seabus route and the cruise ship moored by the convention centre, past the sulphur barge, to the roll of cityscape slowly unfurling up the North Shore mountains. That tableau tells you everything. It tells you that beneath the trappings of civilization and the damage done by industry lies something in hibernation. Something that will shrug us off, all of us, as easily as a sunbathing father will destroy the sandcastle his children build over him while he sleeps.
On the days when you can’t quite believe how cruel and insensible the human experiment is, that passed for a comforting thought.
I took my time getting back to the office, walking off the calories and the bourbon haze. When I got back I noticed a car illegally parked out front. A silver Mercedes, cream-coloured leather upholstery, a crack in the front fender repaired with electrician’s tape. I’d seen the same car outside Kent.
Tim Kwan was sitting in the waiting area, eyeing Shuzhen over a week-old B-section of the National Post.
“We should talk,” he said.
I directed him into my office. Jeff followed us in. We all took seats.
“Coffee?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what I’d really like,” Tim Kwan said, “is a drink, a drink drink, if you have one.”
“We don’t keep any alcohol in the office,” Jeff said.
I opened the filing cabinet. At the back was a bottle of Botanist gin and a mickey of Crown Royal. I poured a slug of rye into a paper cup, topped it up with water from the dispenser in the hall, and set it down in front of Kwan. I was saving the Botanist for something special.
“You’re not joining me?” he asked.
“Had one earlier,” I said.
Jeff hadn’t stopped glaring at me since I’d produced the bottle.
“With lunch,” I clarified.
“Anything else I don’t know about? Heroin, maybe? A grenade launcher?”
“Nope.” Turning back to Kwan I said, “Are you here on behalf of your client?”
“I’m here on behalf of yours,” Kwan said.
“Care to explain that?”
Kwan sipped his drink. He didn’t down it like someone who needed it, who was accustomed to a midday sloshing. More like someone who was embarking on a dangerous course of action, and had heard enough about liquid courage to want some for himself.
“I’ve been a lawyer for fifteen years,” Kwan said. “I hate my own kind. They all went to the same Richie Rich schools, yacht clubs. Oh, they’re happy to have me on board to fill their diversity mandate, but as far as making partner and getting a place in the country club, I’m still not their kind of people. I wouldn’t go the same career path again, I truly wouldn’t. I don’t think there’s anything worse than being a lawyer.”
“Lawyer-turned-poet,” I offered.
“None of them care about right and wrong,” he said. “About morality and ethics. And least of all justice.”
“This isn’t news.”
“The partners would fire me if they knew I was here, no doubt. But I have to tell you—and it can’t get back to me—I saw your missing girl.”
“Chelsea Loam?”
Kwan nodded.
“Alive? When?”
Kwan said, “Our firm has another client who’s been fighting a prohibited weapons charge. We had it thrown out of court. Wasn’t hard—the Mounties really wanted this guy, they rushed things and botched procedure. They disclosed surveillance photos of our client in his clubhouse during one of his parties. They would have been taken around the time your girl went missing. I was going through those photos, on account of a civil suit the client is launching against an associate-turned-informant. I think she’s in one of the photos.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so, yes.”
“Can I see the photo?”
“You can come with me and I can show it to you. I can’t give you a copy and I can’t verify any of this legally or I’d lose more than my job. You can’t tell anyone this came from me. Fair?”
It wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. “Fair,” I said.
“If you’re ready we can go. I’ll drive us to my office and bring the photo out to you. You can take a look at it, verify, but then that’s it.”
“You’re being a bit sly with regards to this other client,” I said. “I assume we’re talking about someone in organized crime?”
“It’s Terry Rhodes,” Kwan said.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “Nothing can ever be fucking simple.”
“You understand why the precautions,” Kwan said. “Why the—why the drink. If this gets back to my boss, I’m fired. If it gets back to Terry Rhodes, I’m fucked.”
“The last thing we need is the Exiles involved,” Jeff said to me.
“Agreed. But all the same I’ve got to see that photo.”
“I guess you do,” Jeff said. “Just talk to me before you do whatever else you’re thinking of.”
7
KWAN’S MERCEDES WAS IN NEED OF NEW SHOCKS. As we stop-started through the midday traffic, Kwan talked about everything but the law or Rhodes or Chelsea Loam. The firm’s offices were on Melville Street. It would have been quicker to walk.
“Your partner gets it,” Kwan said. “On the one hand you’ve got the white establishment, on the other, your own kind. And neither can understand why you don’t swear allegiance to them exclusive.”
“Jeff’s his own man,” I said.
“No one’s his own man. Second you’re born, you’re an owned commodity.”
“I disagree,” I said.
“You’re young.”
Kwan left the sedan double-parked and dashed inside. I sat in the artificially cool climate and thought about how to proceed. If it was Chelsea—big if, but it made a sick type of sense when I thought about it—I’d have to talk to Terry Rhodes.
Rhodes was an east coast biker who’d survived the Montreal motorcycle gang wars. He’d come west, decided he liked it and stayed. He had homes in Campbell River, Surrey and Abbotsford, but business often brought him to the city. He ran a security company, of all things. Corporate swine paid extra to have
their galas and soirees protected by a bona fide full-patch member of the Exiles.
Nothing conceals a great crime like a smaller, flashier crime. Beneath the hard-living exterior of every biker lies a calculating business mind. They import black tar heroin and cocaine via the docks, farm the high-risk grunt work out to ethnic gangs or associated bike clubs. They run sprawling, massive dope farms up north, some buried deep in the earth, and swap it with the Americans for guns. The public sees rowdies and easy riders and doesn’t give a shit. The city has been don’t-give-a-shit territory for forty years. By the time people wised up, most of the old-time bikers had bought into straight businesses and gone semi-legit. Not only strip clubs and online poker sites, either, but clothing boutiques, music stores, car dealerships.
Terry Rhodes was past fifty, had money enough to buy an island, if he’d been that kind of asshole, and could have retired comfortably. But the grin he wore when his picture landed in the paper betrayed something more irrational than greed. The purpose of money wasn’t to have enough. It was to take it from the other guy. The money only existed to pay off those institutions that needed paying off so he could continue doing things his way.
And what was his way? There were rumours. Rhodes still personally dished out punishment, still went on hits, still did the bidding of those wealthier and more influential than he was. A “Terry Rhodes” was a type of disfiguring torture or punishment involving the right eye and several teeth. All of it hearsay—or mythology.
Kwan came out of the office. He approached the car and made a window-rolling motion. He was sweating.
I pressed the roll-down switch, but without the ignition key the powered windows were just windows. Kwan looked both ways, tentatively, then held up his phone and pressed the screen against the glass.
In pixilated form, the photo showed a crowded bar scene. A corner of a stage was visible, part of a drum kit and the keyboardist’s arm and shoulder. In the centre two figures moving through the crowd, a man and woman both in leather. Kwan turned the phone long enough to zoom in on the faces. They were holding hands, the man leading her—or pulling her, it was hard to tell—away from the stage. The man had the hatchet face, long hair and beard of Terry Rhodes. The woman was definitely Chelsea Loam. Cheekbones jutting out of sunken features, hair cut short and returned to its natural black, casual smear of lipstick and kohl-rimmed eyes. She looked haggard, partially digested by her lifestyle. But it was her.
I stared until Kwan took the phone away and went back inside the office. I climbed out and stood near the car.
Nothing can ever be fucking simple.
After ten minutes Kwan emerged with a cigarette in his mouth. He made an elaborate deal out of patting his pockets before asking me for a light.
“Left my Zippo upstairs. Do you mind lending me yours?”
So we had a smoke and played out Kwan’s cover story, two strangers enjoying a late afternoon nicotine fix. I thanked him.
“I hope she turns up all right,” he said.
“You know the exact date the photo was taken?”
“October twelfth. Big party at the old Law Courts Pub in Port Coquitlam.”
“You know the place?”
“Knew of it,” Kwan said. “Exiles hangout by reputation. Long gone now.”
Kwan tossed down his cigarette and ground it into Melville Street with the point of his loafer. The cigarette had barely been touched. I wondered if Kwan actually smoked or if it was another precaution. I wondered why I found his precautions so amusing.
“Remember you can’t say it came from me. And if you talk to him you can’t say you saw a photograph. Do you need a ride back?”
“Quicker if I walk,” I said.
“You’d think I never learned ethics,” Kwan said. “I just broke every rule in the book.”
“Rules and books don’t draw breath.”
“The truth is, I used to have to go to places like the Law Courts all the time. Ms. McKechney used to send me on errands. Rhodes and his hangarounds would make me wait, call me names like gook, commie. More often than not I wouldn’t get paid for it. Well, fuck them. Fuck. Them. I hope you find that dead girl under their floorboards and they go away forever.”
“And your firm would represent them, naturally.”
Kwan smiled. “Kind of a win-win, isn’t it?”
—
Shuzhen left first, saying her goodbyes and slinging her white trenchcoat over her shoulder. Jeff came into my office and treated me to the spectacle of watching him change ties.
“Taking Marie to Bard on the Beach tonight,” he said.
“What’s on?”
“Macbeth and some comedy. We’re seeing the comedy.”
“Enjoy that.”
He shot his cuffs. “It’ll be all right. They serve wine.” He looked at the paper cup half full of whiskey, still sitting on the corner of the table. “Yeah, drinking is a lot of fun. Under the right circumstances.”
“That’s about as subtle, Jeff, as if you’d tattooed it on your foot and kicked me in the face. I’m not an alcoholic.”
“No, I know that. Alcoholics are happier.”
“Lot on my mind,” I said, trying to end the discussion.
“You’d do better, Dave, to leave your work at work. Get some sort of personal life, then when you come back in the morning, you come back refreshed.”
“Compartmentalize,” I said.
“Exactly. It’s better for your health and better for your work. Forgot to ask how your date with Marie’s friend, what’s her name, went.”
“Brianna. She has a really neat phone. Lots of neat programs on it.”
“They call those ‘apps.’ Five years older and I’m telling you.” He checked his reflection in the window. “You work too damn much, Dave. Not too hard, just too much. And when an Asian tells you that, it’s time to listen. Go fucking watch the sunset or something. Go to the beach. Get laid.”
“Enjoy your Shakespeare.”
After he left I phoned the Cambie Street police station and asked for the Missing Persons desk.
Ryan Martz’s gruff voice answered, “Yup?”
“This is Dave Wakeland. Do you have any record of Chelsea Loam associating with bikers?”
“Wakeland. This is a line for police business, not private eye wankery.”
“Chelsea Loam and Terry Rhodes?”
“Christ almighty.”
“A pimp named Kamikaze?”
“If I hang up you’ll just phone back, won’t you?”
“I’ve got a couple leads. I’m following up on them.”
“Fine.” Martz sighed into the phone. “Bikers and hookers are sometimes found in each other’s company. Match made in scrote heaven there. What else you got, Rockford?”
“Kamikaze?”
“Right. Pimps and dumb-ass names go together like fucked-out hookers and biker scum. Hope you got paid in advance, Wakeland. That all you called for?”
“Actually, I wanted to see if you felt like coming with me to talk to some of Rhodes’s crew.”
Martz laughed to himself. “Scrapyard Ed Nichulls and now Terry Rhodes. You could write a book, Dave. Fucking Audubon. Migratory Shitbirds of British Columbia.”
“I’ll be at the Northwestern Inn in Burnaby and then back in town for La Grange.”
“Tell you what. Do the titty bar first and I’ll come for that part.”
“All right. I’ll meet you over there.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you. I’ll just ask for the only guy in the bar with an erection from staring at the bouncer.”
“Gay jokes now?”
Martz’s sharp laughter over the phone.
“Lighten the fuck up, Dave. Tell you what, I’ll ask this chick I know in Sex Crimes does she know a Kamikaze. I’ll even buy the first round. Domestic only. How’s that?”
“Goddamn miraculous,” I said.
8
GIRLS. HOT WET LIVE DIRTY DESIRABLE GIRLS. Big tits and shaved pussies. Raunc
hy, naughty, crazy, explicit, wild, party-loving hot bitches. All of them yours. Turned on by you. Created, in fact, for your pleasure.
Ignore the scars from the tit jobs and C-sections. Ignore the accents, South America and Eastern Europe, hinting at a life that makes one of constant leering and menace seem liberating by comparison.
La Grange was doing brisk business for a Thursday night. A bachelor party held court at the front near the stage. The betrothed sat goggle-eyed, the best man hyping the action. The others took turns flipping the girls tens and twenties. And the fiancée, keeping pace with the boys, as if to prove she could be fun, too.
I didn’t see Terry Rhodes, but then I didn’t expect to find him. I was looking for cronies. On this night, though, there were no leather vests in the place. Maybe in a back room, but not out on the floor.
The girls took a short break and the bachelor party moved into the VIP lounge. The best man and fiancée were debating whether or not to buy the lucky stiff a private dance.
“I mean, it’s totally fine with me. I mean that.”
“Because we don’t have to. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Oh, I know that. We’ll be right in the next room.”
“Oh, totally. But again, it’s up to you.”
“He doesn’t need my permission. I’m not that kind of girlfriend, oops, I mean wife.”
“Let’s see what he wants to do. Jerry? You up for a little—”
I had a Bulleit and soda and moved through the bar. Some of the girls were gorgeous, the sweat and vulgarity and their imperfections making them somehow more than the plastic image they projected.
I sat and watched a brunette who left her heels on during her act. She moved gracelessly on the heels, unused to them. She was shorter than the others, lithe and undernourished. Small-breasted, high-hipped, not a stripper’s body. But there she was.
Martz was late. No surprise. I bought a beer and watched the bachelor party trickle out, some sort of discord among them. The brunette was swapped out for a blonde Vietnamese girl with D-cup breasts. Hers was more of a balancing act than a dance.
On the next changeover I saw the brunette stroll casually out of the washroom. There was something familiar about her. She saw me. I pointed to my nostrils. She wiped a dribble of coke-snot off her upper lip.
