Lost Girls

by Andrew Pyper

  When I enter the small boardroom at the office I’m met with a wall of cigarette smoke previously passed through Bert Gederov’s lungs. Somewhere in the haze I see Graham rise and wordlessly indicate the chair I am to take. He’s wearing a purple suede blazer and his school tie, faded by years of repeated wearings. Bert is jacketless, his sleeves rolled up, and judging from the war-torn state of the ashtray before him he’s been waiting here a while.

  “Took you fucking long enough,” he says without looking up.

  “Sorry, but they tend not to adjourn court whenever a beeper goes off.”

  “Little prick—”

  “Gentlemen!” Graham cuts in, arms open and pleading. “We have business—quite startling business—to attend to.”

  I take my seat, pull a blank legal pad out of my briefcase, ready a pen above the page. Bert pushes his chair from the table and lets his head tip back in exaggerated boredom. This is to be Graham’s meeting. He begins by tossing the day’s Star over the table at me.

  “You’ve seen?” he asks.

  “Not really.”

  “You must have heard of those missing girls up north?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Well, the local constabulary arrested a man last night, and he has since retained our firm for his defense.”

  Graham, who up to this point had been standing, now settles himself into his chair. With a wave of his hand more appropriate if it came from royalty passing in a gilded carriage he attempts to clear the air of smoke, but it does no good. Bert, pretending not to notice, belches forth another sulfurous cloud like some nineteenth-century coal incinerator.

  “Which of you is taking it?”

  “Kind of you to inquire, but we’d like you to handle it, Bartholomew. It’s yours. Bert and I discussed it early this morning and we thought, ‘This is a career maker.’ You know what I’m saying? We thought, ‘This is the one for our boy, Bartholomew.’ Hoorah!”

  Graham titters and circles his hands in the air, palms out, like a flapper doing the Charleston. Then his face contracts again into a mask of mock severity.

  “It has all the makings of a classic. The media have made starlets of them already—they’ve taken a very strong What-is-the-world-coming-to-when-these-little-darlings-go-missing? angle on it. And the English teacher as the accused is perfect for the Humbert Humbert poeticism of the thing. Well, with all of this obvious promise I can tell you that Bert and I were both slobbering over it like dogs. But no, we decided it was time to give you a turn at the bitch’s teat.”

  Graham beams at me over his clasped hands like a schoolboy who has just completed his multiplication tables in prize-winning time. Bert lights another cigarette and coughs up something large-sounding, considers spitting it somewhere, then, not finding a waste basket within range, swallows it back down to the tarry depths from whence it came.

  “Did he do it?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “Our guy.”

  “Name is Tripp. An unfortunate moniker for an accused murderer, I admit. And yes, I suspect he did it. I mean, they’ve all done it, haven’t they?”

  “What I’m asking is, did he do it beyond a reasonable doubt? In short, Graham, am I going to get fucked on this?”

  At this, Bert makes a sound in his throat which could be either a grunting effort toward laughter or an attempt to dislodge a new obstruction from his windpipe. At the same time, Graham gasps in theatrical surprise.

  “Language! Bartholomew! Language! To be truthful, there’s lots of circumstantial physical stuff connecting Tripp to the girls, yes. And he has taken a behavioral turn for the weird of late, apparently. But nothing too too unusual: nasty divorce with the missus a few years ago where she got to keep the kid, followed by some fairly curious preoccupations including cut-out girlies from the Sears pajama section plastered all over the bedroom wall. And he is not the most coherent conversationalist one could hope for, particularly for a professeur d’anglais. But it isn’t charm we demand of our clients, is it Bartholomew?”

  I slide my chair back from the boardroom table and stand before Graham, in part because I intend to turn and get myself a cup of coffee from the cabinet behind me and in part to get the height advantage on the tricky bastard. Don’t take my eyes off him as I pour and lump and stir. And the whole time Graham meets my gaze as Bert sets a new personal record by lighting his third cigarette within four minutes of my arrival.

  “So that’s why you and Bert don’t want it,” I say, taking them both in through the gloom. “Dead little girls. And the teacher did them in to sniff the panties. No alternative suspect, no alternative theory, no alternative alibi. That’s why you’re giving it to me. It’s dirty, ugly, and unwinnable. Plus, he probably couldn’t afford either of you. So you’ll take the professional credibility kick for handling the famous client while skimming the margin between what he pays you and you pay me.”

  “Bartholomew! Your suspicious streak is showing! Really! No, no, no. Not at all. I should have told you earlier. You see, there’s a very nice thing about Mr. Tripp’s circumstances you haven’t yet heard,” Graham almost giggles, and then it’s his turn to pause. “There are no bodies. Six weeks of helicopters, woof-woof police doggies and weepy search parties of concerned citizens shuffling through the trees, and nothing. No bods to keep the lonely coroner company.”

  “No girls, no case,” I say, calculating with a sugar cube between my fingers. “Even if they prove he had intent, if there aren’t dead bodies they can’t establish the actus reus, and they need both. Am I right?”

  “That would appear to follow at first blush, although I suggest—”

  “Did he confess?”

  “No. He’s a muddle-headed fellow, but not so stupid as to tell the truth to the police.”

  Graham grins up at me with his ashen face of blue eyes and fastidious wrinkles that somehow fixes him in a state of permanent childhood. Bert smokes. They’re waiting for me to say yes. But I’m not going to. I need my first murder to be a winner, and if these two are handing it to me there’s got to be something wrong with it. We work together; they’re my mentors and only friends in the world, but they’d far sooner screw me than each other.

  “No,” I say, and touch lips to coffee.

  “No what?”

  “You can keep it.”

  “Faggot,” Bert spits.

  “No, Bert, that’s your partner. Maybe you can’t see for the smoke. I’m the guy over here trying to cover his ass.”

  “Fucker fuck!”

  “Boys! Boys! I must say for the record that I resent both of your comments.” Graham shakes his head in false injury. “And as for you, Bartholomew, it’s not a loser file, you are ready, and I’ve advised Mr. Tripp to expect you in Murdoch the day after tomorrow.”

  I attempt to read their faces but it’s impossible, their features shrouded in thickening smoke. For a time nobody moves. Then it’s Bert, his voice a low, territorial growl.

  “You want to keep your job, you take this file.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it, pally boy.”

  “Well if you’re going to be so sweet about it, Bert, then I guess I accept your offer.”

  Graham throws his fists into the curdled air.

  “Good! I’m so pleased! We’ll—”

  “But I have to do it alone.”

  “Alone? Well now, you really should consider that dividing some of the work would only assist—”

  “No dividing, no assisting. On my own. Completely.”

  “I do like this attitude! Very eat-what-you-kill. Grrr!”

  Bert pulls his chair in and places his thick hands on the table, drills his eyes into my forehead.

  “I’m leaving now,” he says. “Call us if the newspapers get too hot on you and I’ll handle them from down here. Other than that, any shit you create is your own. And when Graham said this was a career-maker, he forgot to mention it could also be a career-breaker. Therefore, I strongly advise you
not to fuck up.”

  He leans back again and grabs his cigarette from its brief resting place on the table’s edge. I note that his words qualify as both the kindest and most effusive he has ever uttered to me.

  “Thanks for the confidence. Now if you’ll excuse me, before I pack my bags I think I owe myself a night of self-congratulation. Didn’t I mention? I won the Busch trial today.”

  “Well done, Bartholomew! You’ll have to tell us all about it sometime.”

  Graham’s head is down and he’s already sliding the Tripp file over the table at me. Bert stabs his half-finished cigarette out in the gray dunes of the boardroom ashtray, lifts his gut with a wheeze and leaves without another look.

  When Graham is finished handing everything over he carries himself to the door, his head perfectly still on delicate shoulders, but hips swinging in their sockets. Then he turns back to me and reveals one of his vampire smiles.

  “May I suggest that if you plan on engaging in any carousing, you do it tonight. Things may get a little hectic for you over the next while.”

  “No doubt.”

  “So, care to join me for a bite? I know a perfect place not far from here.”

  “Don’t bother, Graham. I know a perfect place of my own.”

  “Of course you do.”

  He steps forward once more to where I sit, throws a hand out to me through the smoke now twisting up the air vent or lingering in blue pools in the ceiling light sockets. We shake hands: two formal pumps, his grip—as always—firmer than mine.

  “Good luck, my boy,” he says, releasing me and sliding back to the door. “And enjoy it. I’m sure you’ll find that there’s nothing like your first homicide.”

  THREE

  With tie loosened and Tripp file stuck under my arm I walk out into the purple light of early evening and direct myself east toward the noise and tawdriness of Yonge Street for a victory drink. Victory for today, and the prospect of a more dazzling victory in the weeks to come. My first murder trial. And so long as no bodies turn up, the chances are good that I can manage to spare Mr. Tripp the indignities and stigma of long-term incarceration. I’m pleased with myself, and even more pleased after I’ve vacuumed the extra generous line of Great White Hope off my desk before leaving. Things are looking up.

  I like strip bars, and of the many of this fine city The Zanzibar is my favorite. It occupies this position for no special reason other than it’s exactly the way a strip bar should be. My law school friends and I used to come here after exams or for birthday piss-ups, but while those guys have all gone on to sensible marriages and four-bedroom Victorians in neighborhoods renowned for their alternative-education elementary schools and low crime rates, I’ve become a regular at the place.

  What I like is the padded front door that seals off the interior from any trace of natural light, the always startling first appearance of a room appointed with women in various states of undress in place of paintings or potted plants, the air a mixture of beer mold and coconut oil spread over passing breasts and thighs. I even like the men, pathetic and despised, knowing they are pathetic and despised, offering up foolish portions of their wages to the waitress, talking to the girls before a table dance and imagining themselves as wealthier and better-looking than they are, the kind of men these girls might want to be with for free.

  I like the young-looking ones. Their pouting shyness, teacup breasts and Who, me? eyes. Girls’ school tartan skirt and close-fitting white blouse. Off they come in teasing slow motion, leaving her standing as though before her mother’s bureau mirror, index finger hooked on lower teeth and her other hand tracing over the smooth discovery of her body. Bad girls. A parade of faux teen naughtiness beneath the black stage lighting that hides the crude truth of blemishes, stretch marks and scars. This is what I come here for, why I put my money down: to be free of this world of women and live again, for a time, in the world of girls.

  “Something to drink?”

  The waitress is an impatient hag who’s been here forever and who doesn’t bother to get to know any of the regulars for fear of having to use more than the few words she is obliged to in order to do her job. I like her, too.

  “Double rye with ginger on the side.”

  She walks away without acknowledging my order and I look past her at tonight’s offerings. Very California these days. With the summer always come the bleached bikini babes, tans burned onto skin through repeated sessions under the lamp, spherical implants high and unmoving. Soon the leather will return though, the biker fantasies shipped down from Montreal to meet the demands of the Christmas office party season. But I’ll keep searching for my little girl.

  And find her. There, dropping a lemon into her Coke over at the bar. From this distance and in this light she could be sixteen, fifteen. Not a day over twenty, at any rate. I give her a little two-fingered wave as though making a bid at an auction.

  “Hi,” she says when she comes over, lowers her eyes flirtatiously. Good. She’s acting the part as well.

  “Hello there. Would you care to dance for me?”

  “O.K.,” she says, looking around as though to make sure her teacher can’t see her. Then she pulls over one of those plastic stands they use to dance on and sits on it.

  “I’m Deanna.”

  “I’m Barth.”

  “You’re a very handsome man, Barth.”

  “And you’re a very forward little girl, Deanna.”

  She giggles and raises herself as the d.j. fades out the Aerosmith and “slows things down a bit” with the lounge saxophone intro to “Careless Whisper” by George Michael. I down the first rye in two gulps without adding any ginger as Deanna picks open the buttons on her blouse and shimmies out of her skirt.

  Behind her the waitress turns my way with eyes hooded by years of distaste followed by further years of boredom. Raise my finger to order another round, and on it goes: another ten-year-old top-40 song, another set of stretches and thrusts, another round. Throughout I am silent, everything still but my eyes.

  She keeps going, turning and stroking and bending in cycles until another song ends and the d.j. comes over the sound system praising the dancer who’s just finished her routine on the main stage: “Oh y-eah! Gentlemen, let’s hear it for the lovely Roxanne! Oh yeah! Rox-anne!” Deanna pulls back from my chair and stands limply on her pedestal.

  “Another?” she asks.

  “No, I don’t think so. Thank you.”

  Ask how many songs she’s danced for me and, as usual, I’m startled by the size of the number. I pay her and include an excessive tip. It is my habit to leave excessive tips in strip bars.

  “Thanks,” she says, tucking the money into the zippered pouch she carries with her. Then she pulls her underwear back up, clips on her skirt, shrouds her breasts beneath her blouse and steps down from her stand. She is as before, another stripper in a girls’ school uniform, but with enough age now showing beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth to make her current act almost laughable.

  “Have a great night,” she says as she leaves.

  “Have a great life,” I say, slipping, having meant to use the same words she had.

  Once outside I stand on the street for a time, close my eyes and absorb Yonge Street’s Friday night cacophony of chanting panhandlers, vomiting drunks, hip-hop thudding over hysterical speed thrash out the windows of refitted Jettas and Civics. The air a humid cloud of sugary perfumes and jock deodorant wafting off the passing packs of high school kids in for the night from the suburbs. Breathe all of it in and let its ugliness fill my lungs. It occurs to me (not for the first time) that it’s sometimes good to stop and remember that you live in a city and envision what that entails: a clotted intersection of lives all set on different trajectories, each one indifferent to the other. There was a time, I think, when this kind of observation would have left me melancholy, but now it brings a certain comfort. The satisfaction of a suspicion confirmed, an idea buried inside yourself long enough to fossilize,
its markings now permanently etched. When I open my eyes again to the yellow bath of neon in the street I step to the curb, raise my arm and hail a cab to take me home.

  I say “take me home” but where I live isn’t a home at all but a “space.” That was the way it was described in the full-page ad that ran in one of the weeklies soon after the building was re-zoned for residential use from its former function as a textile warehouse: COME AND DEVELOP YOUR OWN WAY OF LIVING IN ONE OF OUR SPACES. Not “condos” or “units,” not even “lofts.” Vacant, off-white, ahistorical, pre-personal-ized space. I was immediately drawn. Down I went to the block of rust-dirtied brick at the south end of Chinatown and bought a space of my very own the same afternoon.

  Up in the freight elevator to the top floor and down the wide industrial hall. It’s late, I’m tired, there’s plenty of work to do tomorrow before heading up into the barrens. But I’m starving for another line, and as the door swings open I head for my stash nestled among the ceramic nectarines in the fruit bowl without turning on the lights. Spill out a serving and up it goes. Only then do I turn on the lights and think: How few things I have. There’s a sofa under the broad window which frames the compact bundle of downtown office towers, a composite portrait of my graduating law school class, Swedish-designed, buttonless stereo (rarely used, all music having become grating sometime in my late twenties) and one wall of bookshelves containing the textual souvenirs of my education. No art, flowers, rugs, mirrors. Every time I face the opportunity of acquiring such things I ask myself why and, having no answer, move on, unburdened.