Hair-Trigger

by Trevor Clark

  “Missing persons was another major one. People looking for lost loves, missing children, things like that. Private investigation’s a huge industry because police don’t have the manpower or man hours to investigate what they don’t consider top priority cases.”

  “So, why don’t you open your own place up here?”

  “I came up here for different reasons. I looked into it and knew I’d need a lot of money to get back into the business. In order to get licensed for Ontario I’d have to take various legal courses, which I had no problem with, because the industry isn’t well served by people misrepresenting . . . You hear stories, like a guy hires somebody to find out who’s fucking his wife, and the detective ends up fucking the wife too. I have no problems with licensing procedures, because like I say, it doesn’t help the industry to have these rogue people out there. I want to see them licensed.

  “I figured my license would have cost about twenty-five hundred dollars in legal courses, because you have to know the PI and Ontario court systems, and stuff like that. That’s why if you’re licensed in California, you can’t work as a PI in Hawaii, right? It’s just like a lawyer. You have to pass the Bar in New York, Connecticut. . . . You’re licensed for just one state, and in Ontario it’s the same thing. I think the act is called the Investigators and Security Guards Act; it went into effect in maybe seventy-five. A lot of times you work with the police. What the police consider a routine investigation is not routine to a man whose daughter or wife has gone missing. Information is worth a lot. I used to think to myself, ‘I’m the last lifeline for this guy. He’s been fucked by the police, he’s been fucked by attorneys, he’s been fucked by the insurance companies. He comes to me, and I tell him what he wants to know.’”

  Marva yawned and then seemed to refocus. “You said you did ‘consulting’ now?”

  His ash dropped onto the sheet as he turned to reach for the empty bottle. Brushing it off, he said, “I’m not licensed up here but I do the odd freelance job as a security consultant. I still know what I’m doing, and I’m good at it too. I’ve done some missing persons, landlord-tenant stuff . . .

  “A few years ago there was a shooting outside this West Indian nightclub, and the cops had a suspect but no witnesses. This guy’s attorney called my old attorney, and he recommended me, so he called and asked me to look around, ask some questions, see if I could find any witnesses. I couldn’t, but it’s a long story. Based on my testimony the police dropped the charges—” The telephone suddenly rang again. “You’re very popular, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t believe this.” Marva picked it up. “Hello?”

  He watched her blank out again while she listened and answered yes, no. He dropped the butt into the bottle. Maybe she was hooking on the side. If the conversation was anything other than business it was remarkably toneless and one-sided. He scratched his scrotum and went to take another drink, but caught himself.

  When she got off, she said, “It was Tyrone again. I don’t know what he wants. Just this bullshit about a health card, then he’s talking about nothing.”

  “Obviously he wants to get back together with you.”

  She lay on her side and propped her head up with her hand. “I don’t think so. I think he’s smoking crack. When he was living here he wasn’t working or anything, right? But he’d go out with his friends all the time and wouldn’t help with anything. I got fed up because it looked like he was just using me for a place to stay, and I told him to move out.

  “He went back up to Jane and Finch, and was living at a friend of mine’s place. When I’d phone he’d never pass on messages. I was up there at a party one night, and he was making a phone call in the bedroom where I was putting my coat, and I just, like, tapped him on the leg—just kidding with him, and I said, ‘How come you don’t ever pass on my messages to Lindsay?’ And he jumped up and started punching me in the head.”

  “I don’t like assholes who hit women.”

  “Yeah, I was, like, totally blown away. I could not believe it. So I started hitting him back, and the room got totally wrecked. I called the police but they wouldn’t charge him because he told them I assaulted him first, and they said it was his word against mine. But I just tapped him like this” —she reached over and poked Lofton on the leg— “I wasn’t even mad, I was just fooling. But the police wouldn’t take my word for it and charge him even though he had a criminal record already.”

  “For what?”

  “I forget. Assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a gun—I can’t remember.”

  “Think.”

  She smiled tiredly as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “I don’t want to. Thinking hurts my head.”

  Lofton lay there while she went to the washroom. He heard the toilet flush across the hall. When she pushed the sheet aside and climbed back beside him, she asked, “So what’s the story with your friend tonight? Where do you know him from?”

  “Derek? I met him when I used to work security at a bar.”

  She pulled the blankets up. “What does he do?”

  “He manages stores.”

  “What kind of stores?”

  “Well, I remember there was a sports supply place, then a porn joint, and now he runs this little business bookstore.” Lofton finished the beer and put it on the dresser. “That reminds me—I noticed a big book out there on one of your shelves, something about Canadian law. What the hell’s that for?”

  “I wanted to read about how the cops can shoot somebody without asking questions first.”

  “Did someone you know get shot?”

  They were interrupted by the phone.

  “Jesus fuck. Is it that dick again?”

  “Probably.” She gave him an odd smile. “Hey, why don’t you pick it up?”

  He hesitated, and then leaned over to take the receiver from her. “Yeah?”

  There was a silence. Then a deep voice: “Who’s this?”

  “Never mind that. Who the fuck is this?”

  The line went dead.

  Within seconds it rang a fourth time.

  “What’s your name, fool?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lofton said. “And don’t fucking call here anymore.”

  “I be cuttin’ your balls off, motherfucker.”

  “You haven’t got a big enough knife, Leroy.” He leaned across her to hang up, but couldn’t reach. She took the receiver from him and put it back. “Okay, now take it off the hook and leave it off. Yeah, that’s right.” He sighed and leaned back. “All right, you got anything serious to drink around here?”

  7

  The bookstore that Derek Rowe managed occupied the main floor of a converted nineteenth century house on a downtown side street. His employer was a CFA who supplied the actuarial and accounting market, stocked texts for local colleges, and ran an international mail order business. When he’d been checking references it seemed likely that he hadn’t realized that Rowe’s previous employer, City Books, dealt with pornography and coin-operated peep show booths.

  The manager who’d preceded him had embezzled money, so the owner signed all cheques himself which Rowe prepared weekly to cover payroll, utilities, couriers and publishers. A freelance bookkeeper did the monthly bank reconciliations. Between sales, overseeing stock and the part-time clerk who handled shipping, Rowe was skimming from the till by telling customers the printer was down during cash transactions, and providing receipts from the calculator. He then edited the computer’s inventory. Even with this covered he tried not to exceed reasonable shoplifting losses, so it didn’t amount to much.

  Rowe needed to move in a new direction. Robbing bank tellers on his own had given him a charge but wasn’t very profitable when factoring in the risk, and he found himself occasionally thinking about maxing out his credit cards in Tahiti and declaring bankruptcy, or bringing Jack Lofton in
to a more professional heist.

  Despite claims of PI work and political connections, Lofton hadn’t held a real job in years and had got by at one time by pimping out his own wife. Although he claimed to be getting unemployment insurance while doing freelance security and consulting, that would have lasted twelve months at best. If anything, he was on welfare. And now there were the shoplifting, weapons, failing to appear, and obstructing justice charges. Having a loose cannon for a partner would probably have its drawbacks.

  Sitting behind the counter, he watched a familiar loiterer in the art school section where the most expensive books were located. In a store where there wasn’t anything interesting to read, people were generally there to pick up course material, not browse.

  Over six feet tall, mid-forties, matted hair, dirty clothes. He never bought anything, and was crouching behind the edge of the wall looking at an expensive text where visibility was limited, even with the convex mirror. Track lighting illuminated a rectangular space further narrowed by bookcases. Rowe tried to monitor him through a gap in a computer book stand on the counter, but when he looked again the man was withdrawing a hand from the inside of his army coat.

  Any shoplifting cut in on his margin for theft. Rowe got up from his chair and walked around the counter. “Excuse me. Did you just steal a book?”

  The guy looked at him, startled. “No.”

  “Open your coat.”

  He stood up and pulled it wide apart. While there might have been a hidden compartment, nothing was visible. Rowe reluctantly apologized but wasn’t sorry to see him leave.

  He sat down again beneath an antique shade. The building had been around a long time. Crooked stained glass above the front window had apparently shifted during an earthquake eighty years earlier, and an old man once wandered in to tell him that he’d met his wife in 1952 in the finance section, which had then been someone’s living room.

  Robert O’Hara, the clerk, was working in the back. He had been a clean-cut student at one of the schools they supplied when the owner had hired him, but despite his politeness and interest in the stock market, Rowe had suspected from the chiseled face and predatory eyes that he spent more time working out than studying.

  O’Hara had since dropped out of college, pierced his ears, grown his hair to his shoulders (which he wore at work in a ponytail,) and was in the process of becoming elaborately tattooed. So far he’d had both arms and half his back covered in dragons, flames, gargoyles, swords and other images of a gothic nature. On his own time he wore a ring in his nose. Apparently he was tens of thousands of dollars in debt for courses that had gone nowhere, and was now dealing coke. Rowe, who was now going to bars with him, knew he was fucked-up but thought him basically trustworthy, and had been considering asking him onboard for a robbery.

  O’Hara used an alias at a second part-time job in a shady telemarketing company which sold office supplies to businesses at four or five times the market rate. Although it wasn’t clear to Rowe if the practice was literally fraudulent or if the sales pitch was just misleading, the company had been exposed on an investigative TV program. Apparently there were an unlimited number of people in purchasing out there not paying attention. Those that did were unable to trace their original sales contacts. To hear O’Hara explain it, many departments near their year-end were willing to pay inflated prices so that their budgets wouldn’t be cut, and he made a killing in commissions.

  Rowe went into the back room, where the clerk was saving shipping records onto a computer. A ghetto blaster and old cassettes sat on a shelf over the garbage can and broom, squeegee, dustpan and mops. Beside the sink there was a filing cabinet containing the monthly cash register receipts, old phone orders and publishers’ catalogues; next to it on the desk there were books, binders, papers, another calculator, and out-of-date trade show advertising. Ancient business cards, notes, garbage pickup and recycling schedules were tacked to the bulletin board.

  “I came across an order here for a guy named Charles Hiscock,” O’Hara said, looking up. His fierce blue eyes were expectant. “You know, ‘His—cock’.”

  Rowe poured some coffee. “I once knew someone named Lowcock. I’d have changed my name to Highcock, at least.”

  “Or Monstercock.”

  Rowe added sugar and went to the refrigerator for milk. “Do anything interesting over the weekend?”

  “I went to the Sanctuary and the Velvet Underground on Saturday, played some pool. . . .” He swivelled in his chair. “This guy I know came back with Betty and me to my place, and we, uh, had sex with her.”

  “You both had sex with your girlfriend?”

  “Well, not at the same time. After I was resting, he kind of fucked her in the ass.”

  Rowe replaced the milk and stirred his coffee. He thought Betty was a dumb brat, if only because he knew she didn’t like him. She worked as a dominatrix in a downtown dungeon and represented a part of O’Hara’s life he only partially understood from allusions to leather fetish nights and S&M episodes with melting wax. Leaning against the sink with his arms folded, he said, “On another subject, I was just wondering something. Have you ever been arrested?”

  O’Hara drew back with a mock scowl, and laughed. “Heavy question.” He seemed unsure if Rowe was serious. “Well . . . I got into trouble a few times when I was younger, but nothing bad. Like, when I was sixteen I was walking home one night and saw this cat get run over. I stomped it a few times to put it out of its misery, but some people freaked out and called the police, and I got chased. They were prejudiced from the way I looked back then, because I had a blue Mohawk and jack boots. I had to hide up on somebody’s roof.”

  “You stomped on a cat?”

  “Well, it was suffering. Another time I was wrestling around with a friend, and dialed 911 and yelled, ‘Help, help, he’s killing me!’ Then the phone wouldn’t hang up. This woman’s voice kept going, ‘Hello? Hello?’ She was still there every time I picked it up. Five minutes later the cops were banging on the door and rushing into the room with their guns out. When I explained what happened, they threatened to arrest me.”

  Rowe put his mug on the edge of the filing cabinet. “Ever thought of pulling off a robbery?”

  “You mean like a bank or something?”

  “A store, a bank, an armoured truck . . .”

  O’Hara pushed a strand of hair behind his ear, and said, “No, not really.”

  “Come on. You look like the kind of guy who’s pulled a rip-off or two.”

  “Hey.”

  “I won’t go into details,” Rowe said, raising his coffee, “but I’ve done a few things along that line. I was just wondering if you had any sort of experience or interest in something like that yourself.”

  O’Hara frowned as he considered his answer. “Sometimes dope deals can be like that, but I’ve never gone into a store with a gun or anything. Why, do you want to rob a bank or something?”

  “Oh, we’re just talking.”

  “Wicked,” he said, nodding. “I don’t know if you’re just joking or what, but let’s just say I’m openminded.”

  “All right.”

  Five minutes later, O’Hara came out while Rowe was sorting invoices. “So that wasn’t like a test of my honesty, was it? I mean, no money’s gone missing around here or ­anything?”

  “No, no.”

  “Who’d believe a conversation like that with the boss anyway?” He straightened a book on the shelf beside him. “Just in case it makes any difference, you remember I told you that my father used to be in the Satan’s Choice, and he’s in jail now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s got some rifles and guns stashed up at my mother’s house.”

  “Really.” Rowe leaned back and propped one foot on the edge of the desk. “I may just have to recommend you for a raise.”

  8

  A flying ske
leton was painted on the outside of Sanctuary. There was a white wooden cross over the entrance, and a motorcycle propped on its kickstand inside the doorway. Under a low ceiling music pounded through a black space filled with a crowd in eyeliner, dog collars, leather and dark lipstick, many of them dancing in a dry ice mist pierced by flashing rays of light. The floor was bordered on the north side by netting and Frost fencing.

  Robert O’Hara leaned over the pool table and shot the last ball into the side pocket.

  “Bitching.” Kim Ellison laid his cue across the felt and gave one of their opponents an effete handshake.

  When the other man handed him a five, O’Hara asked, “You sure you don’t need any blow?”

  “Not unless you’re going to lay some on me.”

  O’Hara picked up his black leather coat from a bench and strode past the men’s washroom with Ellison in tow, pausing to glance at the dance floor before stopping at the bar under an old chandelier. Behind the bottles there were shelves of animal skulls he’d decided were those of a fox, raccoon, horse, and his favourite beast: the mighty wolf, with fangs intact. Above that a purple black light poster with a pentangle bore the words, “Devil’s Right.” Another, with Japanese writing, included the English translation: PAIN STATION. Barbed wire imagery was painted in white along the wall.

  O’Hara tossed his hair over his shoulder as he reached into his pocket to pay the bartender for another round. “I think I’m going to go home after this,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Betty’s there waiting.”

  “Oh, stay out. There’s nobody here I know.”

  “No, she’s already going to be pissed off.”

  “Fuck, let’s go to the Zoo Bar.”

  “I can’t. I told you she’s psycho right now. When she got to that party and saw me necking with Janet, she kicked me right in the fucking head, man. I don’t need that tonight.”