by Sam Wiebe
“And what did Chelsea think of him?”
“That he was Christ risen.”
Dolores Gunn laughed. She reached into her desk for a tin of chewing tobacco. She administered some to the corner of her mouth, offered me the tin. I waved it off.
“So,” she said between chews. “You’re gonna find who killed her?”
“If I can. If she’s dead.”
“What else would she be?” she said. “Some fuckin’ man.”
I didn’t know if that comment applied to me or to whoever had killed her. Both, maybe.
“Can you tell me anything about Terry Rhodes?” I asked.
“I can tell you that you pissed him off.”
“How does Chelsea fit into that? Was he just a trick?”
“The chapters like to throw parties. They need girls. Chelsea sometimes went. You got paid, plus there was usually free coke. But the ones who went all the time, they ended up fucked out. Takes a toll, being around those violent bastards. I’d never do it myself, it was me. You’re outnumbered, you’re out of the city in one of their party palaces and you got no control. That’s what does a girl in, being out of control, and your habit getting bad enough that you don’t care.”
“That what happened to Chelsea?”
“She wasn’t that far gone, but not that far from being far gone, either.”
“Did Rhodes single her out?”
She stopped chewing. A bubble of brown spittle formed at the corner of her mouth. “You think it was Rhodes? Or that big goon he’s always got with him, Charley Gains?”
“I think,” I said slowly, “that he didn’t kill her but knows who did. Knows something, anyway.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“I asked him.”
“And you’re still here,” Dolores said, impressed.
“Thanks to you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone your ass was saved by a girl.” And she laughed.
“You seem like you have some leverage over them.”
She put her thumb and index finger together a half-inch apart. “Some.”
I nodded. I stood up. My body felt like it had been pulverized with hammers and glued back together with faulty adhesive. As if a sudden move would dislodge an ankle.
“Do you know someone Chelsea would know with the initials G.O.? Or C.P.?”
“Tricks?”
“I think so.”
“Think one of them killed her?”
“Possible.”
“Don’t know them,” she said. “But I got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
Her voice dropped. She inched closer. “When you find him—”
“If. It’s never a sure thing, these type of cases.”
“—are you going to kill him?”
I was bothered she’d said it out loud, as if as long as it stayed in my mind I could pretend I hadn’t thought it. But the thought had seeped in.
I said, “I honestly don’t know.”
“Why’s that? Chelsea doesn’t count the same as some little white kid?”
I didn’t answer.
“You don’t feel you got the—guts,” she said, pausing so I’d know she’d thought of saying balls, “leave a message at the Waverley.”
—
If Everett was going to come for me, I’d need cardio and I’d need a weapon, neither of which I had any interest in acquiring. Nevertheless, I woke up at six and jogged the outskirts of Clark Park, which bordered on Commercial and had enough of an incline. I went home, stomached some bran flakes and drove out to Langley to buy a gun.
I walked the aisles of a big-box retail sports retailer, through camping gear, crossbows, bookshelves lined with guides to crimping your own cartridges or brewing your own deer attractant. Firearms were at the back of the store, trigger-guarded, under glass.
The beefy kid behind the counter pulled guns from the display case with the studied don’t-give-a-shit movements that are the armour of minimum wage employees. I examined a .38 revolver similar to what my father had carried, and a row of carbon-fibre Glocks and Sigs that reminded me of my own service weapon. Still, I preferred revolvers, with their die-cast parts and simple firing mechanisms. The movement from six-shot wheelguns to the plastic-and-springs automatics with their high-capacity clips said everything about the last two hundred years of North American history.
I looked farther along the counter, at the novelty section. Dirty Harry–sized .44 Magnums with eight-inch barrels, pink-painted “women’s” pocket guns. Silver-plated six-shooters covered with elaborate scrollwork, complete with hand-tooled pig leather cartridge belts and casings. A carnival of freak show guns in all sizes and proportions.
The kid smirked. “I think you want something more practical.”
“What I want,” I said, “is a gun I’ll never have to fire.”
“Intimidation factor,” the kid said, nodding. As if he knew the first thing about firearms, and wasn’t simply repeating what he’d heard from whoever had previously held his job. “I got a nice .357. More than enough stopping power. Plus it can take a .38 special load, which saves a bit of coin.”
“How ’bout that one?” I pointed beyond the .44.
“You don’t want that, that’ll break your arm.”
But he took it out of the case and set it on the counter. It was a hand cannon, comically oversized, with a simple rubber grip.
“I don’t recommend it,” the kid said. “First, it only holds five shots, plus it’ll cost you ten bucks per cartridge—’less you reload your own. The recoil is, well, there are videos online that show the kick. It’s pretty hilarious. Plus there’s the price.”
I tapped the business end of the gun. “This was pointed in your direction, would you get the message?”
The kid said, “Bro, that was pointed at me, I’d lose your email.”
—
I stowed the gun in its case at the office, then had Shuzhen mail the diary. Years ago I’d acquired an American postal box in Blaine, mostly to avoid cross-border shipping costs. I posted the diary to myself at that address.
Jeff and Marie arrived, and we rehashed the argument over my table. Marie told me there were some incredible rolltops that could be had for a steal at the rosewood furniture shop on Broadway.
“Or if not a rolltop, Dave, how about a trestle desk? Sawhorses instead of feet. Ralph Lauren makes a great trestle for about thirteen hundred—”
They’d brought back lunch for the office. The four of us sat and went through cartons of lo mein, pork cheek and peppers in black bean sauce, wonton and rice and a half-order of duck.
“Are you going to need a ride on Wednesday?” Jeff asked.
“What for?” I said through a mouthful of cheek.
“Winnipeg. Ride to the airport.”
“I’ll bus it,” I said. “It’s just the ninety-nine and then the Skytrain.”
“Do you have a suit?”
“You’ve seen me wear it.”
“Well, you can’t wear the same suit,” Marie said. “He’s already seen you in it once.”
“Who has?”
“Tommy Ross.”
“So what if he has? I have to amuse him by dressing different?”
“You have to be presentable,” Marie said.
“Professional,” Jeff added.
“Right. You’re not only representing yourself.”
“You’re repping the business.”
“Think of him as money.”
“Right. Impress the money.”
“And behave yourself.”
I put up my hands, surrendering. “Hell with it. I’ll buy another suit.”
“Go with him,” Jeff said to Shuzhen. “Make sure he doesn’t pick out something stupid.”
Shuzhen replied in Chinese and the two of them laughed. I didn’t catch it but I knew who was the butt.
Before I left I told Jeff about the gun. Bringing one into the office was a decision the tw
o of us should’ve made together. He said as much. I gave him one of the keys to the trigger guard.
I picked a smoke-grey blazer off the rack. The tailor made notes on what to take in or let out. Mostly let out. He found a pair of matching dress pants for me and we repeated the process. Shuzhen sat and played games on her phone. When the tailor had signed off I presented myself to her, wearing the suit coat over my T-shirt like Don Johnson.
“Well?” I said, striking a pouty-faced pose.
“You need shirt and tie,” she said.
“I got three at home.”
“Jun Fei said for you to get new ones.”
One black shirt and one red tie later we were on our way back to the office, my street clothes folded in a bag at my side.
“How many pairs of underwear did Jeff tell you to make me buy?”
She laughed but answered seriously. “No underwear. Buy that yourself.”
We neared Harbour Centre, a vast brown obelisk housing a mall and offices and a satellite campus of SFU. I pointed at the saucer mounted atop the building. “Ever been up there?” I asked.
I bought two overpriced tickets and we rode up, up to the observation deck where we had a three-sixty view of the city and harbour. It was the opposite of what Alex Knowlson had drawn. We were up above, like a floating, benevolent deity, looking down at the insignificance below. No streets look dirty when viewed from on high. Nothing looks out of place. Like a glimpse of an order the brain can’t fathom, as if a lab assistant had held a white rat high above the maze it was destined to run through.
“Beautiful,” Shuzhen said.
She took pictures. I phoned Jeff and reassured him I wouldn’t be a sartorial disappointment to the good people of Winnipeg. Jeff said he’d never doubted it.
Watching his cousin collect photographs, I wondered how Jeff felt about our partnership, now a year in. “Does he like his work?” I asked Shuzhen.
“Jun Fei?”
“Yeah. Is he happy with the business?”
“Worried for you,” she said.
“He shouldn’t be.” I added, “I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Not so much disappointed. He thinks you’re good at one thing. He’s a little bit good at a lot of things. His way works for him, but sometimes he thinks you focus too much. Because he can’t focus.”
“I can imagine.” Jeff had been a satellite kid, sent by his parents to another continent to learn English and get an honours degree in economics. Given a BMW and an apartment in Richmond and told to earn it by thriving at what they’d chosen for him. Families like his had found the culture shock of Western academics more easily assailable than the Gaokao and government bribery.
Only Jeff had been sidetracked—or corrupted, depending on which parent you spoke to. More adept at picking up language and customs than parsing Keynes and Friedman, he was practical, personable, hands-on. His success had somewhat defrosted his mother, though the introduction of Marie had promptly plunged her back into Arctic winter.
Chen Jun Fei was his own man. He was my partner. I was happy with that.
I bought Shuzhen a pop and took the elevator down alone. At the university’s help desk I bought a ticket for Alex Knowlson’s lecture. They’d had a cancellation. I was lucky. The receptionist informed me of this twice.
“Alex does one of these talks every year and they’re always very well attended. He puts on a good show. You know he’s an alumnus?”
She tried to sign me up for an arts diploma but I begged off and retreated to the street where I smoked a dry cigarette that tasted no different than the air and waited for Shuzhen to come down.
20
UNIVERSITIES, LIKE UNIVERSES, tend to expand. There was SFU Harbour Centre, SFU Woodward’s, SFU Surrey. Simon Fraser University proper was an ominous grey fortress that loomed over the city from Burnaby Mountain. It was designed in part by Arthur Erickson, whose fondness for concrete and despair helped earn SFU the unflattering distinction of having the highest suicide rate among Canadian universities. In my time there I’d nicknamed it Castle Grayskull.
With its vaulting quadrangle and many ramparts and battlements, the Burnaby campus brought in a supplemental income serving as backdrop for low-budget science-fiction films. Many a student activity had been disrupted by the hammering of set designers, turning the quad into Alien Marketplace or Future Lab. Today it was the corporate headquarters of an evil biogenetics firm. A giant INGEN-U-TECH crest hung above the elevator doors, and the doors themselves were buffed and shined into flawless mirrors that reflected nothing.
Spirit Bear Coffee was across from the library, in the same complex that housed the Highland Pub, the gift shop, and administration. Working the till was a tall woman who spoke so softly I had to lean over the counter to hear her.
I paid for tea and told her my name. She asked me to give her fifteen minutes, since the other barista was on her break. I strolled the grounds, watched the film crew work. The temperature was lower on the mountain and there was a hint of a breeze. I crossed the koi pond in the courtyard of the quad, rounded the Terry Fox statue and turned back. As I did I saw Marjorie Vee hike up the stairs, heading toward me.
We shook hands. Away from the till, it was easier to find traces of her birth sex. But she was beautiful, her mannerisms as old-school feminine as my mother’s. Her timid smile made me attempt to be gallant, gentlemanly.
We chose a bench with a view of the pond. “I wish we weren’t meeting under these circumstances,” she said. “Detective Henriquez said you’re looking for Chelsea.”
“I understand you were friends.”
“Yes, she was my good friend. I didn’t have many. It was a very tough time for both of us.”
A family of four crossed the concrete steps that bridged the pond. The two children paused to crouch and examine the fish. Their mother urged them away from the water with a command to hurry up, a command that couldn’t disguise the small note of worry in the last syllable. The water was half a foot deep, the bridge an inch or so above its surface. The woman walked back, gave each child her hand and led them off as if evacuating them from a burning church spire. As they went on, the father’s hand fell to the nape of the younger child’s neck. “Crisis averted,” I said.
Marjorie smiled. “It’s nice to see families.”
“What are you studying?”
“Humanities,” she said. “Greek and Latin. Kind of frivolous, I guess, but I like it.”
“How did you meet Chelsea?”
“At a women’s shelter. She was one of the only ones who didn’t mind showering with me. The others used to wait till I finished.”
“And you connected.”
“Oh, yes. She was sweet. She also knew things about how to function in that world.”
“Kind of things?”
“Where to get clean needles, free prophylactics, where to go for medical attention, which cops would actually listen to you. My family was upper middle class and I was very sheltered, which I only realized once I’d run away. Chelsea was like a big sister to me.”
Marjorie Vee clasped her hands together and rotated the palms against each other, back and forth. Her face lit up with a memory, and for a split second she seemed transported back into the fray of the past.
“One night I was in an awful way. I phoned Chelsea and she met me downtown and comforted me. She took me to a crisis centre. The person running the place wouldn’t accept me. Chelsea urged them, first very politely, but then she got cross. She was screaming. She told them if they didn’t let me in and treat me like any other woman, she’d tell the entire community. Finally they let me in.”
If I’d had a handkerchief I would have offered it to her. She covered her nose, sniffed and wiped at her eyes.
“Chelsea was beautiful like that. She’d help someone without even thinking about it. I try to be like her, but when I do something good and right it’s because I’ve thought it through, weighed my options. Good, for me, is a decision, Mr. Wakela
nd. With Chelsea it was instinctual. I so miss her.”
“Anything you can tell me about her regular clients? The circles she travelled in?”
“When I met her she was very careful. She had a few regulars. She never partied. She would work and then go home and—fix.” The very comfort Marjorie Vee had with the slang was distasteful to her. “After she moved in with her boyfriend she became a bit less together. I don’t know if it was his influence, or her habit had gotten worse, or problems with her family, or what. The old Chelsea would never have gone to bikers’ parties. Maybe it was the money.”
“Did you ever hear her talk about Alex Knowlson?”
“Yes,” she said. “I met him.”
“Decent guy?”
“Chelsea believed so. He and I—I thought his art was very nice. Chelsea told me he thought I was ‘asymmetrical.’ ” She pronounced the word as if it were the ultimate insult.
“I have Chelsea’s diary,” I said.
“Oh, you mustn’t read it.”
“I don’t have a choice, I need information. You’ve been one of the more helpful people.”
She’d begun to cry. I fetched her a pair of brown paper napkins from the coffee shop.
“I know it’s invasive,” I said. “I know I have no right. I promise you I’m not using it for titillation or cheap thrills. And if it makes you feel better,” I added, “she had nothing but nice things to say about you.”
“She was my friend,” she said through sobs.
“I know that to be an indisputable fact.”
“She didn’t deserve whatever happened to her.”
“No.”
“How can there be a god that lets those things happen?”
She leaned forward, face in hands. I put a hand out to her, gingerly, and when she didn’t shy away I rubbed her back, trying to be soothing. A tiny silver crucifix and a St. Christopher dangled from a silver band around her neck.
Her sobs eased. She used the tissue to blow her nose and dab at her eyes. Shame and gratitude and anger and hurt all played across the soft features of her face.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said.
