by Sam Wiebe
I shook my conversation partner and made my way up the staircase, well behind the bald man.
I put my ear to the door. They were arguing. Caitlin’s sobs punctuated Nettie’s abrasive whisper and the drunken challenging tone of the bald man.
“Not talking about that,” I heard him say. “Not the issue. I’m talking about certain promises.”
“That money is Caitlin’s. It stays Caitlin’s.”
“Why’on’t you stay out of this, for once in our lives? Eight years you’ve been hovering, afraid I’m gonna take Cate away from you.”
“That’s not true. Caitlin, tell him that is not true.”
“Why’on’t you let Cate answer for herself, then? Cate, tell her. We had certain promises.”
“That was forever ago, Frank.”
“So now she’s dead and you’re free to break your promise to me.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Stay out of this. Caitlin?”
“No, Frank.”
“See? She said no.”
“Fine. That’s how it’s going to be. Guess I’ll call a press conference then.”
“Don’t be an ass, Frank.”
“How many times do I gotta say it, shut your damn mouth.”
“I will not shut my—you need to leave, Frank, and never call us again.”
“Make me.”
“You shit.”
“Caitlin can make me. All it takes is cutting one cheque. I’ll leave and keep my mouth shut.”
I opened the door. I found the three of them arrayed as I’d expected—Caitlin in a chair, with Nettie’s arms on her shoulders. Frank blundering about the room, but keeping his distance.
“Hell are you doing here?” Frank said.
I said to Caitlin, “You’re out of toothpicks. Would you like me and Frank to go grab some?”
She nodded slightly. Nettie nodded vigorously.
“The three of us are having a business meeting,” Frank said.
“Let’s you and I talk first,” I said, beckoning. “Outside”
I followed him downstairs, watched him make polite goodbyes. I could see his fists flexing the way mine did when I wanted to hit something.
In the carport he said, “It’s only fair to warn you, I know Krav Maga.”
“How’s he doing these days?”
He cracked a very thin smile. “Backyard’s probably a better place for this,” he said.
We walked single file around the back. He slid his blazer off and hung it over the gate. He pocketed his cufflinks. He undid his collar and played out his tie until it was one long strand of pleated silk. “Head or gut?”
I grabbed the lonely fringe of hair at the back of his skull, head-butted him and broke his nose.
He fell on his ass, bleeding and sputtering. I waited until the flash of head pain had faded, then wiped my forehead with a serviette. I handed another to Frank and instructed him to elevate his face. I helped him into a lawn chair facing away from the house and sat near him. I told him I’d put a few questions to him and then take him to the hospital.
“Shoulda known you were a cop,” he said. It came out, “Shoulda knowed you wah a cob.”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Even worse. I hate private eyes. I hate private eye movies. Dashiell Hammond can kiss my ass.”
“Easy now. How do you know Caitlin?”
“We were engaged.”
“When and how did that end?”
“What does it matter? She’s not into men anymore.”
“With your charm, how is that possible?”
“This hurts,” he said. “It could be broken.”
“It is. What were you blackmailing her for?”
“Family secrets.”
“The best kind. Tell me.”
“It’s about her kid, Kevin. You know he wasn’t Caitlin’s?”
“Keep talking.”
“It was her dope fiend sister’s. But do you know who the father was?”
“You?”
“I have standards.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Who do you think?”
I thought that over. “What’s your proof?” I said.
“My proof? My proof is it’s true.”
“How’d you find out?”
“You think being a private eye makes you smart? I can do what you do. Any time I watch a detective movie, I can spot the killer within ten minutes.”
“So you have no evidence,” I said.
“I could get some. DNA and all that.”
“How much were you asking for?”
“Forty. Which I know sounds like a lot, but I’ve kept mum for more’n fifteen years. Caitlin didn’t want Gail to know.”
“You’re never going to bring this up again,” I said.
He smiled cynically. “Are we bargaining now?”
“This is not a bargain,” I said. “Nothing you do involves the Kirbys or Loams from here on out. You mention this to anyone and I’ll ruin you.”
“Ruin me,” he said. It’s hard to maintain bravado through a broken nose, and he didn’t quite pull it off.
“Every secret you have,” I said. “Cheat on your wife or your taxes, look up animal porn, steal office supplies, it will come out. There will be naked pictures of you mailed to everyone in your address book. You’ll be afraid to jerk off lest it’s recorded for posterity. Every secret. You can shut up or you can make another half-assed play for Caitlin’s money and lose everything.”
He took a moment to nod, then told me he wanted to go to the hospital now.
On the way I asked him how he could tell who the killer was within ten minutes of any film.
“Easy,” Frank said. “It’s always the woman.”
I asked him to elaborate.
“If it’s directed by a guy, he’s probably got woman issues. Who doesn’t, right? If it’s a chick directing, she probably wants to prove how tough and independent women are, so making a woman the killer is actually like a badge of honour.”
“Better a killer than a victim,” I said.
Back at the house I told Caitlin what had gone down. I’d dropped Frank at St. Paul’s and parked his car. I’d cabbed back. She reimbursed me the fare.
“You know none of it’s true,” she said. “When Kevin needed blood there were tests done. None of the Kirbys were a possible match.”
“You seemed like you were going to give in,” I said.
“Because I didn’t want it brought up, not while things were going well for Gail. She shouldn’t’ve had to deal with Frank Ainsley. And once those accusations came out, they’re all people would remember.”
“So you don’t know the father,” I said.
“No. I don’t think Chelsea knew.”
“So there’s no chance? None?”
She sighed and rubbed one of her arms. “Maybe a very slight chance,” she said. “I’m realizing more and more that Chelsea’s experience and mine were so very different. I could have been a better sister to her if I’d realized that.”
“You did fine,” Nettie said, brushing her hair from her temple back behind her ear.
“It’s never enough, is it,” Caitlin said.
I left them and walked out, putting away my wallet. I passed boxes of heirlooms, family photos, newspaper-wrapped trinkets. The house would be empty by the summer’s end. I got behind the wheel of the Cadillac, thinking, if it’s true, god help the dead son of a bitch.
29
WHEN I GOT BACK to my apartment, I found a note on the fridge saying Shay would be back later. She’d left her handbag, taken her purse. The cloth Crown Royal bag that held my laundry money was empty.
I called Jeff and cancelled our double date. I mixed a bourbon and water. Put Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan’s Hawk on the turntable, stretched myself across the couch, and used my laptop to find out more about Frank Ainsley.
The Sun newspaper archives had a photo of Caitlin and Ainsley, looking on as
Gail Kirby and the mayor of Surrey shook hands and grinned at each other. Ainsley had his hand across Caitlin’s back, cupping her shoulder. Caitlin’s attention was fixed on her mother, her smile wide, disregarding Ainsley.
And that was Ainsley in a nutshell, on the periphery of players but not one of them. I tried to connect him to Perez, to Palfreyman. He hadn’t been convicted of anything large. I had slightly better luck tying him to Overman. The accounting firm he’d apprenticed at featured a testimonial from a Discus Solutions executive on its website. Still nothing direct.
Ainsley’s scam had been ugly and meagre and simple. Making Caitlin’s adopted sister disappear wouldn’t seem to fit into his plan—would actually complicate it. I couldn’t see him kidnapping Chelsea or harming her. But I also couldn’t see him leaving off Caitlin, despite my warnings.
Ainsley and Caitlin had broken off their engagement after Chelsea’s disappearance, while Caitlin was raising Kevin. I thought of phoning Caitlin to ask why they’d split, but figured she deserved time to mourn. It was enough to know that he was an asshole and needed watching.
I heard keys jingle and someone stab the door lock a couple times before sliding it home. Shay came in breathless, smelling of cigarettes and dance sweat, perfume and something else.
“Hey there,” she said. “Working? How’s that going? Got some leads? Get some clues?”
“It’s all right,” I said. “How was your night?”
“Good. I mean, I know we had that thing, but my girlfriend is in town, and we just—you know how it is.”
“Sure.”
“What? What, Dave?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Want to go for a walk?”
“I just got in. Thought I’d take a shower. Is that still all right?”
“Course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
She moved to the couch and threw a leg over my lap, sat down, cinched up her dress. “Are you pissed at me?”
I tossed the computer aside, put my hands on her hips to steady her. “I don’t get pissed at you.”
“No matter what?”
“Sure.”
“Not even if I smashed all your precious Nick Cave records?”
I kissed her throat. I felt her fingernails dig lightly into the back of my neck.
“None of it matters,” I said.
“That’s nice.”
“Just as long as you stay pure till our wedding night.”
I felt her body convulse with laughter. She swatted the back of my head, stood up. She smoothed her skirt, teasing with a caricature of a prim coy smile.
“How ’bout I take my shower and you take your walk and I’ll meet you in bed?”
It was the third Wednesday of the month and it was summer. Welfare Wednesday, some people called it. The police called it Mardi Gras. For people who scraped by the other twenty-nine or thirty or twenty-seven days of the month, it was cause for celebration. On the Drive, people would be carousing or drunk. On the side streets, where I walked, people sat on their balconies, or the porches or stoops of their rented subdivided houses. I passed a trio of men leaning on the tailgate of a Dodge Fargo, passing around a joint and laughing. I saw a married couple pushing a stroller, their other child walking behind them with a Slurpee held with both hands. I watched women crush out cigarettes in cereal bowls, on porch steps, on the iron banisters of their third-floor apartments. I heard a clicking sound and saw the light from the street lamp hit the reflective surfaces on a bicyclist as he passed us, the road his. As I turned up the alley toward my building I heard a man singing, plaintive and dirge-like, carrying out from the upper windows of a mosque.
—
The next morning I met with Ritesh Ghosh, Jasmine Ghosh’s father. I had no good news for him. The case would not solve, no matter how much time was added to the hours already logged, by the police, by me, by everyone I pestered.
Mr. Ghosh took it all with a good nature that would have astounded the Stoics. Every time we met he had some plan to extend the search, to broaden the criteria. As long as it didn’t involve psychics, I was happy.
This month it was sex changes.
“I know she was only nine when she disappeared,” Mr. Ghosh said. “But I’ve been reading testimonials from people as young as five who knew they were unhappy in the gender they were born with. What if she found someone who would pay for the surgery? Maybe she thought we wouldn’t understand.”
I drank my tea and set the cup down on one of his elegant crocheted coasters. Jasmine Ghosh would be sixteen now. I had digitally aged pictures of her at eighteen, some even older to account for drug use and hard living. When Charlie Parker died at thirty-four, the medical examiner guesstimated his age at sixty.
What Mr. Ghosh wanted were new designs, forwarded to all the relevant agencies, showing Jasmine as a man.
I told him it wasn’t a problem. I knew digital artists who’d done forensic reconstruction. It wouldn’t be cheap, to do it right, but then what was?
“You know price isn’t the issue,” he said. “Just make sure it’s two different artists. You know how subjective art can be. The same range of ages and hair styles, too. Please.”
“It’ll get done.”
“And please bill me. I’d feel better if you’d accept something.”
“I’d accept another cup of tea,” I said.
It took him a significant effort to climb out of his chair to fetch the teapot. He was aging, his movements becoming arthritic, delicate and measured. I followed him to the kitchen, worried he might fall.
From the other entrance I saw a shadow slink by, heard hard steps on carpeted stairs. Mrs. Ghosh.
“You’re not married yet?” Mr. Ghosh asked me.
“No.”
“But you’re seeing someone?”
“I am,” I said.
“That’s lovely. What does she do?”
“She’s an adventurer.”
“Really! She and you must get along perfectly, then.”
—
Jasmine Ghosh and Chelsea Loam. Both had left behind damaged families, empty chairs at the dinner table. Maybe Jasmine had come from a happier family, had been too young to realize how the world would let her down. Jasmine would never know that people like Terry Rhodes could walk through this world, untouched by the systems we erect to shield good people from the likes of them. Chelsea knew. And for that her disappearance was just as hard.
It seemed wrong that it could be a bright day, with a warm breeze fluttering through the communal garden on the corner near the Ghosh’s house. The world should stop and acknowledge all those who weren’t here to enjoy it. There should be a reckoning. Instead there was the sway of carnation blossoms and a beautiful woman in dungarees crouched to check the yarn and stakes that kept her tomato plants vertical. When the world ends, the fact that the world doesn’t end is an obscenity.
I’d left my phone in the car to recharge. Jeff had texted me, relaying a message. Dolores Gunn wanted to see me.
30
“I FOUND SOMEONE YOU SHOULD TALK TO,” Dolores said, meeting me at the front entrance of her tenement building, nodding as we passed a neighbour. The elevator didn’t work. We huffed up to the fifth floor.
“Ten years and this never gets easier,” she said between gasps. “All that time and you’re the third man who’s seen the inside of my place.”
“I feel special,” I said.
“Chelsea was special. Only reason I’m doing this.”
She had three locks on her door, and I was grateful for the time it took her to get them all open. By the time she let me in I had my breath back.
It was a small apartment, messy and filled with the cloying smell of overripe fruit. Plants covered the balcony, encircled the television. Next to her bed, a stack of magazines and chapbooks leaned against the wall.
Sitting anxiously on her couch was a man who looked about sixty. He seemed ready to throw himself over the railing if Dolores closed the distance between them.
&
nbsp; Dolores brought a bottle of near-beer from her fridge and uncapped it without offering one to me or the man. She tossed the cap into a margarine tub on her counter filled with them.
“I’ll be late for my daughter,” the man said. He was fastening and unfastening the clasp of his digital watch.
“So tell him already.”
The man looked at me like I was a new kind of terror. He wore chinos and a Mr. Rogers sweater.
“Who’s this?” I asked Dolores.
She took a swig of O’Douls. “Ask him,” she said. “Ask him anything.”
I asked him.
“She bring me here because of the girl,” he said. “Because of what happened. But I don’t know anything.”
“His name’s Dyson Law,” Dolores said, “and he speaks better English than he’s letting on. He bought Flynn’s Tavern in Poco fifteen years ago, turned it into the Law Courts. What’s it called now, Dice? After he sold it the new owners demoed the building, put up a strip mall with a fancy little alehouse with plastic seats. But it was the Law Courts when Terry Rhodes and his boys hung there, wasn’t it, Dice?”
“They came in sometimes,” he said. “They drink and party. I can’t get them to leave.”
“Not till you tore the place down. Tell Dave here about Chelsea.”
“She was there sometimes,” Law said.
“Dyson. Come on.”
“There with Rhodes,” he said. “She partied a lot with him.”
“Who else?” I said.
“His bodyguard, the quiet man.”
“Gains.”
“Yes,” he said, shuddering.
“Anyone else? Any lawyers? Police? Any businessmen?”
“All types.”
“But with Rhodes and Chelsea specifically? Any connection there?”
“I don’t remember.”
“He’s not being honest,” Dolores told me. She loomed over the couch and Law squirmed, expecting to be hit. “Terry Rhodes wasn’t just some customer. He was part owner. Had the run of the place. That not true, Dice?”
