by Trevor Clark
Even O’Hara had to admit that Kim was a bit of a freak with his dyed white hair and shaved-off eyebrows and super-long fingernails, standing there in his black turtleneck like some kind of skinny fey vampire or zombie. He was still almost a virgin since he never seemed to get any action, so his membership in that man-boy love society was basically a pose.
“I went to apply for a job as a security guard today,” Ellison said, “and the guy just looked at me and laughed.”
“You should’ve worn your Docs.”
“I did.”
O’Hara upended the bottle and wiped his mouth. “At the bookstore I had this strange conversation with Derek—you know, my boss—and he seemed to be hinting around that he was interested in me coming in on some kind of fucking armed robbery.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“He must have been messing with you.”
“Well, one of his jobs was being the manager of the rifle department of some sporting goods place. He knows his way around guns, and he was trying to give me the impression he’s got some kind of background in this shit.”
Ellison put his arm on the bar. “What’d you tell him?”
“Nothing, yet. I still have to hear what the plan is.”
“I don’t know, Rob.” He lilted emphatically, playing Auntie: “Sounds pretty wei-rd.”
“He’s been around.”
Ellison tried to peel the label off his beer. “How old is he?”
“Forty something.”
He looked back at the dance floor. “Is he talking about a jewellery store or something?”
“I said I don’t know yet.”
“Because you know you need a fence to sell that kind of stuff.”
“Fuck, listen to you,” O’Hara said. “A ‘fence’.”
“I’m serious.”
“He said something about a bank, or like an armoured car.”
Ellison put a hand on his hip as he turned away. “You should find out exactly what he’s done before.”
They stood there, backs to the bar, drinking. Ahead, a disco ball revolved over the dance floor.
“I don’t think bank robbers usually work in bookstores.”
“Fuck, Kim, all I know is, he does seem to know about this shit.” O’Hara shook his hair free. “The old man taught me the basics, but I think this guy was in a gun club and goes to a fucking range.” As they walked alongside the bar to the left of some fencing, he looked for potential customers among the people standing around, sitting in booths or on benches. The decimals from the bass reverberated with his heart and thumped up his spine. Rounding the corner, they went into a dimly-lit sitting area which opened onto the dance floor, where he saw someone they knew coming from the coat check.
Rusty walked up and shook their hands. “Hey, degenerates, how’re you doing?”
“Rob wants to leave,” Ellison said.
O’Hara ignored him. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I was just over at the Black Bull. Anybody here?”
“Jake and Ariel, but they left.”
“They went to the Gypsy.” Ellison gazed at the dance floor with a bored expression, a hand on his hip and his cheeks sucked in.
When they moved closer to a light, O’Hara got a better look at Rusty’s black eye. He was already a rainbow with the blue hair and red beard, not to mention the fucking plaid pants and the snake tattoo on his neck. Sometimes he even wore a kilt. “Beautiful shiner. How’d you get that?”
“Some asshole bouncer. Come to the bar so I can get a drink.”
O’Hara commiserated as they walked together. “I got into a scrap last week. I didn’t want to hit the guy but he hit me first, so . . .” He switched the bottle to his other hand and gave the air a few downward jabs.
After being served they sat on a black bench built along a divide in the centre of the floor, trying to talk above the noise. “So,” Rusty asked, “how’s the capitalism doing?”
O’Hara wondered if this was a criticism of his counts. “What?”
“You were telling me about your investments.”
“I was?”
“At Chester’s. You were wasted.”
“Oh . . . yeah.” He watched the pool table. “I’ve been playing the market. I might take some more courses and get my MBA.”
Rusty laughed. “No offense or anything, but I don’t see you with a briefcase.”
“He was at the School of Business,” Ellison said.
They listened to the music and watched people go by.
“You interested in any coke?” O’Hara asked.
“I’m not getting paid until Wednesday, but if you want to front me a line.”
O’Hara looked around. “Come into the can in a few minutes. I’ll try and get the last stall. Knock twice on the cubicle door, and go in when I come out. It’ll be in some foil on top of the toilet paper thing.”
After he left the Sanctuary, Robert O’Hara walked east along Queen towards Bathurst with his hands in his coat pockets, jaw clenched when he wasn’t working the gum. He looked into the Gypsy Co-Op bar before continuing past a hair stylist and used books shop, glancing at a Doc Martin window display and then his face in the dusty glass of Ecstasy Perfumes. The church at the bottom of his street had been painted with graphics and turned into a crafts shop and restaurant.
He prepared himself for a hassle as he walked up Euclid. Even though he’d told her he had business to do, Betty was probably waiting for him with a goddamn whip or something unless she got tired of hanging around.
Some of the attached houses on the narrow street had modern refaced fronts, others traditional ornate touches. Numerous clotheslines hung in small front yards. A real estate sign in English and Chinese was planted in front of a property in a row of nearly identical brick homes. Being late September, the hedges were still leafy and a few flowers were still around.
In the next block, past Robinson, O’Hara thought he noticed someone standing just off the sidewalk around his place. He squinted but it was too dark. If somebody she knew was waiting for him, Betty probably would have invited him inside. Bitch did have some manners. Weird how she’d re-named herself after that bondage model from the ’50s. Maybe he’d do another line when he got home if she wanted to fight instead of party, or even the other way around.
O’Hara reached the schoolyard and crossed the road, stopping short when someone stepped out from behind a tree in front of his house. A car door opened. As the first figure came into the light he saw it was the greasy dude he’d sold all the coke to a few weeks earlier, the one who’d implied that he had biker connections. They’d talked about his father and The Choice, and the Angels in Quebec fighting the Rock Machine.
“Vince, right?” O’Hara glanced over his shoulder at the other guy walking up behind him. “Did you knock on the door?”
“Yeah, your girlfriend said you’d be home any time. That was over an hour ago. This is Frank.”
O’Hara turned. The other guy was bigger. “How’s it going?”
“Listen, man,” Vince said, “that coke you sold me was sub-par, and a lot of people are pissed right off. It was really fucking cut.”
“Nobody else complained.” He found himself getting boxed in.
“No, it was fucking bad. You’ve got to replace it, or we need the two thousand back.”
“I’m not in the business anymore. I stopped dealing.” He was trying to shoulder past them when Vince suddenly shot an arm out and grabbed him by the throat. One leg buckled, but he got a foothold and managed to grip the man’s collar before a heavy fist caught him behind the ear.
Frank got around him as they were struggling, and cracked him on the head with what felt like a pipe before O’Hara was hit in the ribs. As he turned, going down, he caught a glancing blow near the eye. Vince pun
ched him while the larger man put the boots to him. He yelled for help as he tried to fight back, before pulling up his legs and covering himself on the ground.
“Get my money, fucker!” Vince shouted at him.
Frank kicked him in the kidneys. “We’ll be back.”
Lying there, O’Hara half-heard them walking away. Then the sound of car doors slamming, a motor turning over. As he struggled to his knees, he was aware of blood on the pavement.
9
Jack Lofton, drinking a 946–ML bottle of Schlitz from a paper bag, caught a bus from the St. Clair station to a stop near Derek Rowe’s apartment building. It was twilight as he crossed the intersection. After being buzzed in, he passed a shelf of discarded advertising under the mailboxes, then climbed the steps and opened a second door to the first floor hallway.
Although he wasn’t drunk, not yet anyway, he found himself veering towards the wall. Straightening his course, he turned right at the corner and headed towards the staircase.
Rowe was drying his hair with a towel when he answered the door in his trousers and undershirt. There was a pair of ratty looking slippers on his feet. Lofton followed him inside and sat down on the sofa as Rowe went into the bathroom. Crossing his legs, he pulled his bag from the bottle and took a drink. Hank Williams or some other prehistoric country music was playing. “You going out?”
“Maybe.” Rowe walked into his bedroom. “Why, you want to go somewhere for a drink?”
“No, I’m going to see Marva.” Lofton put his beer on the coffee table and took off his jacket. He glanced at the magazines in the shelving unit to the right of the doorway, and thought about getting up to see if there was anything decent, but was too lazy.
Rowe was tucking in a navy blue turtleneck as he walked into the kitchen. When he came out, he had a beer in his hand. “So, how’s that going?”
“All right. She might be a bit flaky, but she’s got the bitchingest body—well, yeah, you’ve seen it, haven’t you. I’m usually not that attracted to black women. I mean when I see them in skin magazines I don’t usually pay that much attention because they’re so dark you can’t really see the details. Even if they’re totally fucking naked you think maybe they should undress some more.” Lofton took another drink. He wanted to talk her up but didn’t feel like sounding sentimental if his doubts were valid. “At first I thought she was as dumb as a bag of hammers, but she’s pretty fuckin’ sharp, actually.”
“Yeah?”
“You better get used to seeing her around.”
“It sounds serious.”
“Maybe. . . . She’s got some fucked up friends, though.” He reached over and slapped his jacket, feeling for his smokes. “This guy, this old boyfriend or something, was calling at four in the morning until I got on the phone and told him to fuck off. He’s supposed to be some fucking gangster or something.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I don’t expect he’ll be back.” Lofton took a drag and clicked his lighter shut. “Another friend of hers—I think she’s a welfare mother or hooker or something—her kids were just taken away by Children’s Aid. The fact is, is that she knows they’re fucked up. She’s even religious, for fuck’s sake. We had sex and talked until the sun was coming up. It was nice.”
“Good thing we invited her out, then.” Rowe took a drink and pulled one slipper back on. “You know Robert? You’ve met him. Works with me in the store.”
“Yeah.”
“Apparently he got beaten up pretty bad. Wasn’t at work for a couple of days.”
“What happened?”
“His girlfriend phoned Tuesday night and said he got jumped by a couple of guys outside his place and had to go to the hospital, and wouldn’t be in for a couple of days.”
“Do we know why?”
Rowe smiled. “Listen to this. When I saw him today he told me some fucking story that didn’t make any sense. He said that he and his girlfriend had a friend over for dinner, and when the friend was leaving later that night he asked Robert for twenty dollars that he said he owed him. The two of them were standing on the steps just outside the back door, right? He lives in a basement apartment.
“So Robert goes, ‘What twenty dollars?’ The guy says, ‘The twenty I lent you two weeks ago.’ So they disagree about this money, then the guy grabs him and drags him up these steps, and pulls out a lead pipe and starts whaling on him. Robert says he was in his pajamas and couldn’t really fight back. Then this other guy comes out of the shadows, and he has a pipe too, and they’re both beating the shit out of him.”
Lofton had to urinate, and shifted his weight. “Why’s he in his pajamas?”
“They were having an orgy for all I know. He and the girlfriend seem to get into some funny shit, so I didn’t ask about that part. He said he managed to get back into the house, and collapsed on the floor covered in blood. She called the cops.”
“Who was this other guy? How long was he out there?”
“Well, this is what I’m saying. None of it makes sense.” Rowe drank some beer. “If the guy was going to ask Robert for the money, the other one would have to be waiting outside all night on the off chance that Robert wasn’t going to pay off a lousy twenty. And this is someone they’re friendly enough with to have over for dinner, or whatever—a guy who’s brought a pipe with him, and who has another guy with another pipe outside, and who’s going to wait patiently until it’s time to go home before suddenly trying to beat his head in for twenty bucks.”
“Yeah, that story’s bullshit,” Lofton said, getting up.
In the washroom he swayed a little at the toilet. Urine hit the floor. On a shelf in front of him there was a bottle of Scope, sponges, Bayer Aspirin with stomach guard, disposable razors, Ajax, deodorant and a can of shaving cream. Someone had tied a lacy hair ribbon to the blinds cord. On the upper half of the walls, above the yellow tile, the paint was buckling.
After he flushed, he walked back into the living room. Over the grey sofa was an art poster he liked with a painting of a fighter being knocked out of the ring. As he made his way around the coffee table, he asked, “So, are the cops involved?”
“Robert said they were looking for both of them, but neither of them have a fixed address. I assume it’s a drug thing. He seems to do a lot of coke, but I get the impression he doesn’t want me to know how much.”
“Gotta be.” Lofton settled down again. “And now everybody on the street probably knows he’s a rat.”
“He said he was thinking of moving. He doesn’t want to testify, either.”
“Of course not.”
Rowe had a pull on his bottle, and smiled a little as he crossed his legs. “Speaking of Robert, he’s interested in coming in on a heist of some sort that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about as well. Have you ever considered robbing some place like a bank?”
Lofton snorted and reached for his beer. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Something with a reasonable payoff that might take two or three guys. Robert apparently has access to some unregistered guns and a rifle. At least as far as he knows, nothing’s traceable. They’d just be for show; we wouldn’t want to complicate things.”
“First of all, you never bring out a gun unless you’re prepared to use it.” Lofton drew on the cigarette. Rowe was obviously fucking around because he liked the sound of his own voice, the narcissist. He’d go along with the conversation long enough to put a dent in some of his booze. “And I don’t really know Robert a whole lot, but he’s not the sharpest fucking tool in the drawer, is he? Look, I wouldn’t rob a bank—they’re too guarded and exposed. Something like a trust company or a utility company would be better, where people go in to pay their bills. And I’d go out of town, some place like Oshawa or Whitby.”
“Banks are all right,” Rowe said. “I’ve done two of them here in the city.”
Lofton looked at him. “All right, let me get this straight. You’re saying you’ve robbed two fucking banks. Is that correct?”
“Yes. Give me a cigarette.”
Lofton felt around for the pack. “And when was this?”
“One in March, one in May. I don’t want to say where. I just used a note, and picked up twenty-eight hundred bucks and then thirty-five.”
“Well, I know neither one of them was a Canada Trust,” Lofton said. “They never get robbed because of the way they have all the cash in an enclosed area. You ask them for change for five bucks, and they’ve still got to go back to a cage.”
“Right. The store has an account at a branch on Bloor. For some reason all the wall cameras behind the tellers were taken out during renovations, except for one. It’s been like that for months.”
“Well, they’re watching you. Believe it. Every time there’s a bank robbery, it’s always a Royal, a Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank or a CIBC or something, because they don’t have that setup—yet. And that’s not much of a payoff for the risk you were taking. Anyway, you don’t need more than one guy to do a bank if you want to stick to the note—”
“I realize that,” Rowe said. “I want to empty all the cash drawers. I want to go in, get the customers on the floor, and get everything accessible.”
“If you’re going to go in strong, you’d need more than two guys then. And of course no safes, not with time-release locks.” Lofton raised his big bottle as he thought it over, and watched Rowe rummaging through his tapes. “Don’t put on any more of that hillbilly shit.”
Rowe returned to his seat as some blues kicked in. “By the way, did I ever tell you I met Johnny Winter in New York?”
Lofton squinted. “I think I’d remember that. When was this supposed to have happened?”
“Nineteen-ninety. A girlfriend and I went to a bar called Manny’s Car Wash to see a guy named Lazy Lester. On the way there, we had to get back out of a gypsy cab trying to charge a flat twenty bucks. Driver tried to tell me that it was a long way and that anyone would charge that much. Took a regular cab with a meter instead, and it was like six.” Rowe smiled. “Fucking New York.
