Invisible Dead

by Sam Wiebe

  “Come to my goddamned house,” he muttered as he followed me. “Some kind of threat?”

  “You have a nice wife,” I said.

  “She knows all about the films. We watch them together.”

  “Does she know you direct them?”

  He spat in the flower bed. “So she thinks I buy them on trips. Not like there isn’t worse floating around.”

  “There’s just something about Betacam,” I said.

  “Nothing I do is illegal. I pay well and the actors are all over the age of consent. I make sure they use condoms and I never let them hit each other if they don’t agree to it. I really don’t see what the problem is.”

  He noticed Shay sitting in the back seat of my car. Shay noticed him. Flipped him the bird.

  “I guess the problem is you tying up two people and leaving them to rot.”

  “That’s pure melodrama. They were never in danger.”

  “You had restraints around her neck.”

  “Look,” Partridge said. “She practically begged me to use her in the film. Then she became combative and held up filming with insane demands.”

  “So did Liz Taylor.”

  He folded his arms. “What is it you want to make this go away?”

  “Seventeen thousand dollars.”

  “Too steep.”

  “Plus all your zap straps plus your camera.”

  “You should have a balaclava on, asking for all that. Highway robbery.”

  “It’s a compensatory gesture,” I said. “Ten to the hotel for damages and loss of revenue from associating it with lewd actions. Two to each participant, which is what you promised them.”

  “And the other three?”

  I smiled. “Five hundred for every hour of sleep this bullshit cost me.”

  Partridge shook his head. “I’m not paying,” he said. “This is a shakedown. I’ll phone my lawyer.”

  I held up the Ziploc bag.

  “DNA swabs from the room,” I said. “Your fingerprints on the zap straps I recovered. We go the lawyer route, I’ll be presenting these in both a civil action by the hotel and any criminal proceedings brought on by your sexual abuse of a young man, and abuse via coerced proxy of the young woman in the car now. Allegedly,” I added.

  He stood with his arms crossed looking up his driveway, which seemed more like a face-saving gesture than real deliberation. He knew my price was cheap. Cheaper than justice. He said, “I’ll get my chequebook.”

  He went inside and came back with a leather binder and a gold fountain pen. Before signing he opened the trunk of the Beemer and pulled out his kit—zap straps, camera, lights. It was neatly compartmentalized and looked like ordinary luggage. He set it down, closed the trunk, and leaned against the roof of the car to make out the cheque. “Their clothes?” I asked. He shook his head, gone.

  I’m not good with technology. I was down on one knee turning the camera over in my hands, looking for a memory card slot. I didn’t hear the door of the Caddy open. I looked up when I heard agitated footsteps.

  Shay had my Mag-Lite. I watched her sly-rap Partridge on the back of the skull hard enough that his jaw bounced off the roof.

  I keep handcuffs in my tool box. Shay had them out. She cuffed Partridge’s left wrist to the side mirror and kicked him, and grabbed the Mag-Lite from the ground and hit him again. Partridge was left-handed and he brought his right up feebly to ward off blows to the face.

  “How do you fucking like it?” Shay said. “Like being tied up? Feel good?” She worked down his pants and his tighty whities. She held the flashlight over him. “How ’bout I shove this up your ass? Like that?”

  I pulled her off of him. I could have done that sooner. Maybe it was shock. Or maybe, when you see someone commit a serious crime in the name of revenge, inchoate, reasonless revenge, and you feel no urge to stop them—maybe that’s how you know it’s true love.

  22

  I HAD THE SITUATION DEFUSED in nine steps. These were:

  a) Flinging Shay away from Partridge.

  b) Fetching the handcuff key.

  c) Telling Shay to stay back as I

  d) unlocked Partridge’s wrist, then

  e) retrieved the chequebook,

  f) made sure Partridge signed,

  g) placated an incredulous Mrs. Partridge with a wave, then

  h) took possession of the cheque and

  i) beat a retreat with Shay, my tool box and Partridge’s camera bag.

  “I can run the cash over to you when the banks open,” I told her as we followed Georgia back downtown. She sat in the front seat, playing with the lock peg on the door.

  “I can wait,” she said. “How ’bout breakfast?”

  I pulled into a White Spot. I ordered an omelette with the closest thing they had to Twinings Earl Grey. Shay deliberated and settled on a Belgian waffle with fruit and whipped cream. We were boothed between old ladies, truckers, families. Shay put her hat next to her in the booth, shook out her hair. She’d ordered a juice but she didn’t touch it.

  “ ’Member that time you walked me to school?” she said.

  I searched for the memory and couldn’t find it. “Not really.”

  “It was maybe grade four. I was living with my dad. This was about a month before we moved out to Aldergrove. I saw you walking up Laurel Street and I rushed after you. ’Member I made you put your arm around me?”

  “Right,” I said. “You grabbed my arm and hugged it with both your hands. I thought you were rubbing snot on it.”

  She laughed. “You were a stupid kid.”

  “That’s a hurtful thing to say and probably true.”

  “Anyway,” she said, smile fading, “I did that ’cause my dad used to follow me to school in his car. Like, drive real slow, but hang back. As if I wouldn’t notice my own dad, tailing me in the family station wagon.”

  I sipped my tea, wondering where this was leading.

  “You were tall for your age. I thought, if he thought I had a boyfriend that would get bigger than him soon, then he might stop.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Following me. What have we been talking about?”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t say anything.

  “You know what this has all been about, David, me coming with you, not going home?”

  “Money.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s ’cause if I go home I’m gonna get high. I know I’m going home sooner or later and I know what I’ll do when I get there. And I can’t help thinking, what am I doing to myself? My lungs hurt. I got bad teeth. Plus what could’ve happened last night, you hadn’t showed up.”

  Our breakfast arrived, along with smiles and solicitations from the waiter.

  “So what do you want to do?” I asked.

  “I want a real job. I want to help people. Maybe like a counsellor?”

  “What’s keeping you from that?”

  “Me.”

  She nudged the dollop of cream into the doughy grid of the waffle and spread it thin.

  “When things were really bad, I’d always tell myself I was a hustler, not a hooker. I don’t know if you can appreciate the difference.”

  “A hustler has agency,” I said. “A hustler’s in control.”

  “Right. It’s you getting what you want out of the rest of the world, instead of taking what the world feels like giving you. I’d see girls turn tricks for bus fare or fight over pipe resin, and I’d laugh at them and think that’d never be me. I was gonna do what I wanted all the time, for the first time in my life. No one was gonna own me. Can you understand what it’s like to have someone treat you like you’re their property? The stuff I’ve done. Can you imagine actually letting someone piss on you for money?”

  “Not for money,” I said.

  “No. Course not. You’re always in control. Nothing rattles you.”

  “I don’t feel that way,” I said. “I used to run my own business. Now I’m partners with this guy who’s got much more business sen
se, but treats me like a junior partner. Or like a mascot.” I looked at her, over our trays of food. “Not that it’s the same as what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s a choice you made,” she said. “And okay, maybe I made choices too, but there were other factors.”

  “So what can you do now, today, to keep yourself from going home and getting high?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What about a program?”

  “Six weeks, a lot of Jesus talk, a lot of so-called strategies for the real world that some guy’s reading out of a book. Then it’s back on the street and best of luck. They care more about an empty bed than about helping you.”

  “So what’s the solution?” I said.

  “Take me back to your place and lock me in a room and don’t let me out until I’m clean, no matter how sick I get. Please.”

  “Wish I could,” I said. “But I have to fly out to Winnipeg tomorrow morning.”

  “No one ever has to fly to Winnipeg,” she said.

  “That’s my feeling, but according to Jefferson Chen, the fate of our business hangs in the balance.”

  “Couldn’t you get someone to stay with me? Someone who’d be as ruthless as you would?”

  “That’s a short list,” I said.

  —

  At my place Shay asked if she could take another shower. I changed the bedding and took extra pillows and a blanket over to the couch. I opened the sliding door so the hint of an August breeze could trade places with the shower steam. With Sunday at the Village Vanguard playing on the turntable, I sat down with my laptop to work on the G.O.-C.P. problem.

  The offices of both Perez and Palfreyman had sent me emails to the effect that, while they really, really appreciated my taking the time to write them, they were dreadfully, dreadfully sorry that lengthy correspondence couldn’t be achieved with every interested party. They were only men, after all. I sent them identical responses, saying in essence, That’s quite all right, I’ll try you at home, and if that fails, I’ll post my questions on YouTube.

  There were G.O.’s a-plenty in Vancouver, thousands if I took in the entire Lower Mainland. I thought of phoning the office and having Shuzhen make up a list for me. I thought back to how G.O. was described in the diary: older, married, well dressed, kind. Chelsea had written about him with a measure of respect and familiarity, as if he was well known, his name common knowledge. Not a celebrity, perhaps, but a known figure. And that was the rub—a known figure eleven plus years ago. It was difficult to remember who’d been prime minister or president then, let alone the names of wealthy businessmen.

  I fell asleep turning the name over in my head. I dreamt of nothing.

  When I awoke a pillow had been shoved behind my head and the laptop was closed on the floor. Shay was standing by the bookshelf, tapping each volume at the right angle between pages and spine.

  “I keep my money in the cash box beneath the sink,” I said.

  “Shh…” She went on tapping. She had on one of my T-shirts, sticking with the baggy, too-long security guard pants.

  She finished her tapping and turned to me. “You have a hundred and thirty-eight books.”

  “Not counting the box of paperbacks in the closet, or the ones at my mother’s.”

  “How many have you read?”

  “Not many. I keep them to make people think I’m smart.”

  She picked one up at random. The Muhammad Ali Reader. “Ever read this one?”

  “Some of it.”

  She seemed to be doing a thorough inspection of the room, moving across the bookshelves and into the study. Then she inventoried the stereo set.

  “This is maybe inappropriate,” I said, “but if you ever get in the position where you need to take something to borrow or, y’know, pawn, could you please leave the records? I had a bitch of a time finding a clean copy of The Boatman’s Call.”

  She didn’t nod and she didn’t put on a how-dare-you expression. “What were you listening to earlier?” she said.

  “Bill Evans. He’s a piano player. Maybe the greatest white jazz musician of all time.”

  “Making him what, four hundredth overall?”

  I laughed. She sat down at the table and turned the chair to face the couch.

  “I peeked at what you were working on,” she said.

  “And?”

  “She’s lucky to have you looking for her.”

  “Nice of you to say.”

  “I mean she’s lucky to have someone care enough to find out what happened to her. Not everyone has that.”

  Shay looked out through the patio at the city, corralled by distant mountains. “Sometimes I hate this place,” she said. “Even though I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  I sat up and twisted my neck to read the time off the stove. “Four already. How do you feel?”

  “Like I should get high,” she said. “I need some clothes and vitamins and things. Will you grab them for me? If I go up to my apartment I’m going straight for my stash.”

  “Give me your keys. I’ll drop you off first, then get to the bank so I can cash that cheque and disperse the money to the proper parties. Then get your stuff and bring it to you. Should have just enough time to make Alex Knowlson’s talk.”

  “The art guy? He’s part of this case?”

  “Everything’s part of this case,” I said.

  —

  Drop off, bank, hotel, front desk of Marius’s hotel, Shay’s apartment (flush flush flush goes the dope, stamp stamp stamp goes the pipe), London Drugs, then finally over the river and through the woods, back to my mother’s house on Laurel Street.

  There were strikes against it as a place to kick a drug habit, especially for Shay. Chief among them was that it was in the neighbourhood she—we—had grown up in. Anyone who’s tried to go back to a childhood home knows that at best it’s disconcerting and at worst, it sets you adrift from your own sense of self-history. That was a danger.

  But it was peaceful and there were quiet places to walk, and ultimately one room is as good as another. And it had my mother, whose disciplinarian’s kindness would prove an asset. If Shay could survive that house on Laurel Street, the wide world would present nary a problem.

  My mother was on her porch tapping pipe ash into her planter box. The first thing she said as I came up the steps laden with groceries and garment bags: “This is you punishing me, isn’t it?”

  I kissed her cheek. “She needs help,” I said. “She asked me if I knew someone ruthless and mean. You’d feel bad if I called anyone else. And you can probably use the company.”

  “Your half-sister was out last week.”

  I unlatched the screen, held it open with my knee as I opened the door. “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s having a hard time with school.”

  “Grade twelve, that’s natural. She got any idea what she wants to be?”

  “A private investigator,” my mother said, closing the door behind us.

  The house was warm and dark. The smell of chicken stock and celery hung in the air. The TV segued from Law and Order to a maxi-pad commercial, glowing smiling women pouring out blue liquid. I took my shoes off without undoing the laces and earned the first of a long evening’s worth of remonstrative glances.

  “I put your friend in the guest bedroom,” my mother said. “You can take her stuff up to her.”

  “You could have given her my old room,” I said. “More space, at least.”

  “Women don’t like basements, David.”

  Her voice grew distant and echoed as she carried on our dialogue from the kitchen.

  “Now, I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t make anything special. But I defrosted some homemade soup. We’ve got rye crisp and we’ve got bread. You can like it or you can lump it.”

  “Did that sign arrive?” I asked.

  “What sign?”

  “The one for over your front door. One that says ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.’ ”

/>   She stopped her kitchen bustling to stare at me. No trace of recognition that it had been said in jest.

  “Don’t make jokes about that,” she said. “Your great uncle died fighting those people.”

  “He died in a POW camp. Probably did in by his own men for serving them soup in August.”

  “David.” Turning the word from a proper name into an admonishment.

  I took Shay her clothes and meds and moisturizers and everything else I’d swept off her counter and into a Safeway bag. She was sitting on the corner of the paisley-patterned guest bed, leafing through photo albums of dead people and children.

  “She has a whole scrapbook of newspaper clippings about your exploits,” she said.

  “My exploits.”

  “And check this one out.”

  My mother had filled two plastic pocket pages of the album with photos of a smiling handsome couple changing the diaper of a bawling infant in an Optimus Prime sweatshirt.

  Shay tapped the third photo. “That’s your dick,” she said.

  Indeed it was, protruding from the smooth body like a gnarled and misplaced thumb.

  “In her spare time,” I said, “my mother is a child pornographer.”

  “I think it’s nice. You have this whole record of who you are. And your real parents, you have to be glad to have pics of them before—” she paused. “Before whatever happened to them.”

  “They’re still alive,” I said.

  “Really? I thought—”

  “They were part of a church, ardent followers of the Reverend Something-or-Other. It’s a long story.”

  She looked at me expectantly. I sat down on the bed.

  “He was a counsellor,” I told Shay. “I was their second kid. The oldest, Kyra, joined the church’s youth brigade. She was—the church called it an accident, some fault of hers in following their purification program. When my parents found out, they split. Disconnected from their friends, from everyone they knew. That pretty much killed their marriage.”

  The photo in my lap showed the dark-haired woman in a knit sweater and skirt, the tall redheaded man who I’d heard all my life I was a dead ringer for.