by Mike Knowles
“I can make you happy.” The words were a practised purr.
“Me neither,” Dennis said. “I know it’s not in the cards, not for men like me. The best I can hope for is moments like this. Sitting in my car, paying more attention to who might be watching me than who is sitting beside me. She made me feel like maybe that wasn’t the way it had to be.” Dennis sighed. “I can’t tell you how much I liked the idea of someone like her out there. Someone who knew me and didn’t care. That was something rare. She was something rare, and someone carved her up like she was a piece of meat.” Dennis ran a finger down the condensation on the driver side window hard enough to make a squeak. “She looked out for me when no one else would have; she deserves the same. I owe her that much. But if I’m being honest right now,” Dennis didn’t bother to look at Jennifer to see if she was listening, “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I am good enough.”
He looked out the window until Jennifer said, “Daddy.”
Dennis turned his head and he saw Jennifer slowly take the popsicle out of her mouth. Some of it had melted and it was on her fingers. She sucked each one clean while Dennis watched. “So, you going to take me home or are you just going to buy me treats all night?”
Dennis saw that he could be honest with Jennifer, not because she didn’t judge him, but because she didn’t care. In that moment, Dennis remembered Julie’s eyes all over again and forgot about the doubts he had just given voice to for the first time. He would see this through to the end. The killer had taken Julie’s life and any chance of Dennis seeing someone look at him like that again; he would be damned if he didn’t get something back. Dennis caught sight of the dashboard clock and realized his hand was still on Jennifer’s thigh. He felt his anger dull as his body responded to the feeling of Jennifer’s skin. There was work to be done, but it could wait for a few hours. Dennis took one last look around the lot for anyone giving his car too much attention, then drove in the direction of his apartment.
Inside the apartment, Dennis put on some soft music and opened a bottle of wine. He had changed into an old sweater and a pair of khakis that he bought a decade ago. The sweater was scratchy, but it was big enough to conceal all of his imperfections. Dennis liked it because it didn’t make him look like a cop. When he wore it, he felt like himself. Jennifer liked the sweater. It was the very last thing she took off Dennis’s body.
Forty-five minutes later, Dennis was filling two glasses with the last of the bottle. He saw what a mess the bed was when he walked back through the bedroom on his way to the bathroom. He put a glass on the small part of the counter not taken up by the sink and sat on the toilet lid and watched Jennifer shower.
“You looking at me, you pervert?”
“Just getting my money’s worth.”
“Oh, I think you already got that. Now c’mon, don’t stare. I’ll be out in a second. I promise I won’t steal nothing.”
Dennis sipped the wine. “I know you won’t. I just like to look at you.”
“Ugh, I’m getting old.”
“What are you, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-five.”
Dennis laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I’ve had twenty-five years in the wrong body. It’s no picnic. I work too hard to pay the bills and save for the surgery.”
“Don’t do that,” Dennis said. “The surgery, I mean. You look good the way you are.”
“You’re sweet, baby, but nine grand more and I’m off to Thailand for an extreme makeover. Believe me, honey, you’ll like me a whole lot better when I’m done.”
Dennis sipped the wine and said nothing. He wouldn’t like her better then. The surgery would change everything. It would unbalance moments like this. Moments when neither of them could hide what they really were.
When Jennifer came into the living room, Dennis was watching the television. Jennifer was wearing only a towel. “I need my dress,” she said.
Dennis followed Jennifer back into the bedroom and sat on the bed while she put on her clothes.
“I have to go, Daddy.”
“I know, Benjamin.”
“Everyone calls me Jennifer, Daddy. Why don’t you?”
Dennis sipped more of the wine. “Times like this, a lie would cheapen the moment. I like being real—it feels good.”
Jennifer snorted as though Dennis had just told a joke. “Real?” She gulped down the wine Dennis had left for her and stepped into her dress. When she looked at Dennis again, there was no sign of the humour. “Funny how being real feels good, but not as good as me calling you Daddy.”
Dennis didn’t look away; he watched Jennifer pull on her clothes. For a few seconds, Jennifer wasn’t concerned with a façade. Dennis saw everything as it was. Jennifer’s nudity disappeared in pieces after that, until everything was concealed again by the tight blue dress. She took the cash from Dennis’s hand and kissed his cheek before walking out the door. Dennis went back to the couch and turned on the television. The news was just starting. Julie’s death was the lead story. All of a sudden, the sweater was too itchy. Dennis pulled it off and threw it on the floor.
23
Os had left Central a few pounds lighter without his badge and gun. He spent the day pacing around the house, drinking tequila and trying not to think about Julie tied to her bedposts. But when he stopped thinking about Julie, he started thinking about the way the smug fucking Russian took him down. He should have just killed the prick and his comrades and been done with it. They might not have murdered Julie, but they sure as hell did a lot of other shit that should have earned them a bullet. Now he was going to be out of a job, out of a pension, and maybe in jail while bad guys like Vlad got to go home to fancy houses paid for by fat bank accounts full of money that they made off the backs of good people. It just wasn’t right.
The brief report on the noon news was shallow and full of speculation. While listening to it, Os stopped pacing long enough to punch through the drywall a few times. As the day wore on and the tequila ran low, Os got tired of walking circles around the living room. He picked up his cell phone and called a few of the cops he had worked with in the past. The kind of cops who owed Os a favour, or two, for looking the other way when it would have been much more exciting to keep staring. Os found out through the grapevine that Woody had brought Tony Nguyen in.
Os was happy that he never told anyone about him and Julie. Who knows how much time would have been wasted putting him in the interview room. Tony could have covered his tracks or jumped town while Os waited for someone watching his interrogation on a monitor to believe his story. Keeping his mouth shut was the right move; it kept everyone focused on the real bad guy. Woody brought the motherfucker in, but he must have missed something because Os’s contacts told him they expected Tony would walk as soon as his lawyer sorted everything out. No mention of a baby was made, and Os knew that was that. The failure of the Amber Alert to turn up any leads made that clear. The baby had no chance on her own, the coroner had said that herself, and no one had brought her in to a hospital. Worse still, Tony Nguyen was brought in alone. If the kid had managed to beat the odds and keep on breathing, Tony would have ordered it killed the first chance he got. He would have made sure that the body was never found, and without a body there would have been nothing to connect him to the murder—no evidence, no conviction.
The kid was dead—if it had ever even been alive. Os had kept hoping, he even got down on his knees and prayed for the first time in twenty years, but he knew deep down things like this never worked out. The baby was gone and Tony would walk. The slippery fuck was above the law, just like Vlad. The rules didn’t apply to guys like that; they just did whatever they wanted and they got away with it while guys like Os, who did what had to be done to keep the streets safe, ended up hung out to dry. Os put the tequila down and went upstairs to his bedroom closet. He got a little dizzy on his way up, but he managed to keep himself
on his feet. He pulled out his backup gun from an old shoebox. The revolver was clean and registered to him, and it was all he had. He put the gun in an ankle holster and Velcroed it on. He filled a duffle bag with a few more things and got in the Jeep.
*
Tony Nguyen walked out the front door of the police station with his lawyer at nine in the evening. It had to be Tony—it was the first Vietnamese guy to walk out with a man wearing a thousand-dollar suit. Os followed the two men to the lawyer’s Lexus. The Lexus took Tony from the downtown police station to a loft apartment building on Murray Street. Tony got out and spoke into the car for a few minutes before closing the door and slapping the roof a couple times. Tony walked to a black metal door that had a compass stenciled in white on the face. From where he was sitting, Os could make out the words North End Lofts below the image. Tony produced a key and entered the building. Os didn’t see a lobby inside the door; it looked like it served as access to a stairwell. Os stayed in his spot across the street, watching the windows above the sidewalk. A minute later, lights came on in a third-floor apartment. Os memorized the placement of the windows and then settled in to watch.
Traffic in and out of the building slowed at eleven. Os knew that some of the people who had left earlier through the door hadn’t come back yet, but they left late and were dressed to party, so it was a safe bet that they wouldn’t be back until much later.
Tony’s light had stayed on throughout the night, and Os saw him a few times at the window. Once, he was shirtless—probably getting the smell of the holding cell off his body. The next couple of times he saw him, Tony was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. He passed the window every now and again. It looked like it was just a lonely evening at home.
Os waited until 11:15 before he moved. Ten minutes had passed since the last person went into the building and the sidewalk was clear. He unzipped the duffel bag on the seat beside him and pulled out his lock picks and a ski mask. Os put the ski mask on like a toque so that the eye and mouth holes couldn’t be seen. He took two rubber gloves from his gun-cleaning kit and put them in his pocket. Os got out of the car, letting a cab pass before crossing to the other side of the empty street. He walked up to the door and slipped in both lock picks. The lower pick slid in clean while the upper pick worked its way into the grooves of the lock. It took Os about a minute to hear the sound of the lock turning. He should have had the mechanism open in half the time, but the tequila in his system made him a little sloppy. He turned the doorknob with his sleeve over his palm and walked inside. The door led straight to a stairwell constructed out of metal. The steel mesh stairs looked like part of an intricate spaghetti strainer. Os liked them immediately because metal stairs didn’t creak like wooden ones. Os silently walked up the stairs until he hit the third-floor landing.
The door leading to the loft units wasn’t locked, and Os found the apartment that housed the window he had been watching without any trouble. It helped that the door was buzzing from the bass of a stereo playing electronic music at a volume that must have bothered the neighbours. Os passed the door and walked the hall. Every other door was quiet. Os couldn’t hear any televisions or stereos playing. Each unit had glass blocks next to the door. The glass was constructed to let light in, but not a clear view. Each of the units was dark, and when Os hit the end of the hall, he walked back. This time he watched for cameras. There were no posted devices or telltale wires—the building seemed pretty low-tech.
Os stopped at Tony’s apartment and used the picks to unlock the door. The lock quietly slid into its housing and Os glanced at the glass blocks next to the door one last time. A faint bit of light glowed through from inside, but the source seemed too dim to be anywhere near the door. Os eased the door open, trying to see the chain before it announced its presence with a loud metal-on-metal snap. No chain stopped the door—it creaked open until Os slowed it down even more. He took one last look up and down the hall before pulling the ski mask down and stepping inside. Os stepped onto a carpet in a dark entryway. The loft expanded out in front of him like a gymnasium. The ceiling was fifteen feet above him and showed exposed pipes and beams. The living room and the kitchen were ahead and separated by space only. Beyond the living room were rooms created out of ten-foot walls that were high enough to create privacy while still allowing a person in the entryway to see the floor-to-ceiling windows. Light spilled from the open doorways of two rooms. The source of the music was in the living room on the left. Os slipped on the latex gloves and walked around the kitchen. He checked the drawers and found nothing but mundane, harmless items. Tony’s drawers said that he was a decent-enough cook with enough plates to play dinner host for eight. He recycled and composted, but that could have been a building policy rather than a green outlook. Reclining in a drying rack in the right half of the double sink was a heavy wooden cutting board. He picked up the cutting board and took it towards the other rooms.
The sound of running water could be heard as Os stood in the hallway, holding the cutting board and wondering about the gangster. Was Tony a “stand over the sink and brush his teeth” kind of guy or a “walk around with the water running” kind of hombre? Os waited—breathing, not panicking or thinking beyond the moment. Getting nervous led to bad decisions, and bad decisions led to jail. His patience was rewarded when the water shut off. Os took a two-handed grip on the cutting board and waited on door number two. He turned his hips and shoulders like he was up at bat and focused on the doorway. Tony stepped into the hallway a moment later and jerked to a halt when he saw Os. The second of confusion was all the time Os needed. Os’s entire body rolled into the swing, putting all of his power behind it. The cutting board hit Tony flush in the face and sent his body backwards. Os saw the man’s feet in the air before his back hit the hardwood floor. The sound of the impact was louder than the bass, but a neighbour wouldn’t notice.
Os looked down at the shirtless unconscious man. His hair was wet and his ear still had soap in it. The guy had a swollen gut and stupid facial hair. The pencil-thin design looked even dumber below Tony’s new nose. The bone was shattered and the nose was completely flattened. The back of the cutting board looked like it had been used to kill the world’s biggest cockroach. Blood and snot oozed down the treated wood and dripped onto the floor.
Os did a quick search of the bedroom and bathroom. He wore the ski-mask in case Tony happened to be fucking one of the neighbours and Os had to turn the operation into a kidnapping. The bedroom was empty; it took only a few seconds to see that the bathroom was the same. Os pulled the ski mask up and then took one of Tony’s limp arms and dragged him into the bedroom. Os had no trouble putting Tony on the bed. The pudgy criminal weighed maybe 170 at the most—Os could dead lift triple that. Os looked around the room. Tony’s cell phone was on the nightstand; there was no other phone in the bedroom. Os saw a modem in the phone jack, but that was it. Holding the cell, he walked into the kitchen and saw that there was no phone there either. Tony must have used his cell for everything. With the only way to call for help in his pocket, Os went through the kitchen drawers again, this time searching more thoroughly. He found everything he needed and then began looking for a toolbox. Every single person had some sort of toolkit in their home. If they didn’t buy it themselves, it was a housewarming gift from a thoughtful friend or relative. Tony kept his in the front closet. The toolbox was actually a toolbag. The bag was the size of a shoebox and made of a thick black and orange fabric. Os unzipped the bag and immediately saw a roll of duct tape. The roll was half gone—but there was more than enough left for what he had planned.
Os walked back into the bedroom and put the tape, tea towel, pen, extra-large resealable freezer bag, and kitchen knife on top of the dresser. Tony was still unconscious. Os pulled the man’s feet apart and taped his ankles to the metal bed frame. Tony offered no resistance. The hands went next, followed by the head. Os wound the rest of the tape around Tony’s face until the only flesh that could be seen
was the small bit of skin between Tony’s nostrils. Air barely flowed in through the broken nose, but he was breathing enough to stay alive. Os put the cardboard ring from the spent roll of tape in the plastic bag and tossed it on the bed and placed the cell phone back on the nightstand where he had found it. It was hard for Os to believe the pathetic specimen in front of him could hurt anyone let alone someone like Julie, but Os knew better than to judge a crook by his cover. Os also knew that his partner knew better too; it must not have taken Woody long to see through the out-of-shape gangster. He imagined that while he had been home drinking, Woody had been getting things done. He could picture his partner dissecting Tony with his eyes and using all of the man’s tells to learn everything about him. Os wasn’t shocked that Woody had brought him in so quickly, he was surprised, however, that Tony managed to walk out so fast. It had to be because of the man in the expensive suit—the lawyer. Os seethed at the thought of the lawyer leading Julie’s killer out of the station. The game had changed without anyone noticing. Suddenly, the law was on the other team. Criminals used high-priced attorneys with encyclopedic knowledge of the nuances of the law to find loopholes big enough for a suspect to walk through. Worse than that, criminals were now using lawyers for offense as well as defense. Vlad only had to open a chequebook to jam Os up and take him off the streets. It was a new world, and Os wondered if he had a place in it.
Tony’s head lolled and Os heard a quiet grunt escape the tape. He was regaining consciousness and his situation must have been so confusing; Os could appreciate that. It was scary how fast things could change. One minute you’re washing your face and the next you’re taped spread eagle to your bed. Os understood what a merciless monster change could be. He had been a father to an unborn child less than two days ago and now he wasn’t. He had been a cop and now he wasn’t. Tony and Vlad had done that to him. They had taken everything he had and the thing he didn’t even know he wanted. Os could never explain the pain he felt, but, looking at Tony, he did wonder if he would be able to recreate the sensation with what was on the dresser.
