by Daniel Kalla
I was so desperate to distract Malcolm I would have prescribed anything he asked for, but staring at the road map that was his chest, I had little doubt his pain was genuine. As I was filling out his prescription list, I asked, “What caused the explosion?”
“My meth lab blew up,” he said nonchalantly, as if an exploding crystal meth lab was as common a nuisance as being rear-ended at a stop sign.
I was so relieved at his apparent lack of interest in my identity that I just nodded and said, “Bummer.”
Malcolm buttoned up his shirt. I handed him the prescription. He nodded and turned for the door.
I focused on the patient’s chart and jotted a brief note about the visit. I was halfway through listing all the refills I had included in the prescription for the crystal meth chemist, when I recalled his words—“a guy I used to know who disappeared a while back.” It suddenly clicked. Malcolm didn’t recognize me from the newspaper.
He thought I was Aaron!
Chapter 20
Stopping by his office on my way out the door, I saw that Joe Janacek was almost buried behind the mound of charts on his desk. He looked up from the chart he was scribbling in and appraised me with a long stare. “Dr. Horvath, you’re leaving early today?”
I glanced at my watch: 8:15 P.M. “I’m more of a morning person.”
Janacek ran a hand through his thick white hair. “You will be back tomorrow then?”
“Am I welcome back?”
“Sadly, I am not Donald Trump,” Joe said with a sigh. “I don’t have the luxury of choice. Anyone with a pulse and a less than extensive criminal record will do.”
I stiffened at the term “criminal record.” I forced a grin. “You know how to make the new guy feel welcome.”
“It’s a gift.” He pointed around the room. “What do you think of my practice?”
“I’ve seen worse,” I said.
Joe raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve worked in some American inner-city practices,” I said. “At least in Canada, there’s more of a social safety net for the addicts.”
“I suppose.” He sighed again. “Though our disenfranchised have become wards of the state. That’s expensive for us, humiliating for them.”
I cleared my throat. “Joe, um, when will I be paid?”
He eyed me steadily. “We will be paid for your billings at the end of next week. I intend to pay you then. Do you need money sooner?”
I need a roof over my head! I need food! I need a bike! “Should be okay. I wish I did a better job of saving a little while overseas. Too much travel.”
“Let me know if you change your mind, Peter.” Joe flashed his pearly whites. “I enjoy having people beholden to me.”
I said good night and headed for the door. At the reception desk, I was disappointed to see that Edith still manned her station like a guard dog. I’d hoped to unearth Malcolm Davies’s records and to steal his address and phone number, but I didn’t stand a chance now.
She looked up at me with no more warmth than earlier. “If you want to survive here, you’re going to need to keep up.”
I nodded. “Thanks for your help today.”
She shrugged her skinny shoulders. “You know we open tomorrow morning at eight.”
It was a command, not a question. “See you then.”
I walked into the cool drizzly night. Though it was early evening, the darkness had brought out a different element to Hastings Street. With the few shops boarded or gated, the people milling on the street looked to be the same aimless down-and-outers I’d spent the afternoon seeing as patients. Several people pushed shopping carts full of their possessions. Some staggered up and down the block, drunk, high, or both. A few men and women approached, requesting or demanding smokes or pocket change.
And yet I felt safer than I had in days. I knew none of the people I passed would blow my cover with the S.P.D.
Heading west a few blocks, the low-rent district suddenly gave way to the highly touristy cobbled streets of Vancouver’s historic Gastown. High-end shops, restaurants, and studios filled the reclaimed brownstones. BMWs replaced the shopping carts.
My guard rose.
I spotted a phone booth near the landmark gas clock, and I headed for it. Turning my back to the bustle of the streets, I dialed Kyle’s cell phone number and reversed the charges.
“Ben, you made it out of the tunnel!” he said joyfully.
“Yeah, it was a bit touch and go for a while,” I said, brushing over the incident with the silver pickup truck. “How about you?”
“You know me. I could talk my way out of a lion’s den.”
“Kyle, you were coughing pretty heavily in that tunnel.”
“My lungs were weakened by the radiation during the bone marrow transplant. I don’t do well in dank places anymore. No big deal.” He dismissed it as if explaining away a cold. “How are you coping?”
“I’m settling into life in Vancouver as a wanted man.”
“Probably best you didn’t hang around here. The search for you is pretty intense. They even came to see me.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Rick and Helen?”
“Yup.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Ever since I found my faith, I’ve been saddled with these annoying guidelines on honesty.”
My stomach churned. “What did you say, Kyle?”
“What I knew.”
I squeezed the receiver tighter. “Meaning?”
“Truth was, at the time I didn’t know if you were still on the American side lying dead in the tunnel or if you had hightailed it off to the Arctic or Newfoundland.” He chuckled. “I told them I didn’t have a clue where you were.”
“And they believed you?”
“Haven’t seen them since.”
“Thanks, Kyle.” I exhaled with relief. “You don’t happen to know a guy named Malcolm Davies?”
“Why does that name sound so familiar?”
“A crystal meth chemist.”
“Of course!” Kyle’s voice filled with recognition. “He was badly burned in a meth lab explosion a while back. How did you run into Malcolm?”
“I saw him at a clinic I’m working in. I think he recognized me. Or at least Aaron.”
“Yeah, he would.”
“Why?”
“Aaron and I used to get our supply directly off of Malcolm,” he said. “Cheaper than buying retail, you know.”
“Do you know where he lives now?”
“Not since his lab, which was also his home, blew up.”
“Kyle, I am not sure he bought my cover story. You think he’s the kind of guy that might go to the police—”
His laugh stopped me. “Malcolm?” he said. “You could rob his grandmother at gunpoint in front of him, and Malcolm wouldn’t go near the cops.”
Reassured, I changed subjects. “Kyle, the last time I spoke to Aaron he told me about a woman.”
“Jenny, right?”
“Did you know her?”
“They hooked up right around the time of my illness.” He cleared his throat. “We’d already had a falling out. I never met Jenny, but Aaron told me about her when he visited.” He paused. “The way he talked…it wasn’t like with other girlfriends.”
“You mean long term?”
He laughed. “Exactly.”
A car slowed down beside the curb. Had they traced me to Gastown? Worry penetrated my calm. I tucked deeper into the phone booth, feeling too vulnerable. “No chance Aaron ever mentioned Jenny’s last name, huh?”
“If he did, it’s long gone.”
The car moved away, but I was eager to move again. “Thanks, Kyle. You’ve been a big help,” I said, trying to wrap up the call.
“Ben, I’ve done some digging into Maglio and that NorWesPac development in Whistler.”
My grip tensed on the receiver again. “And?”
“My information is all secondhand,” Kyle sai
d. “But that development was going to be a huge deal. NorWesPac would’ve been in for a couple of hundred million dollars when it was all said and done.”
“Does Maglio have that kind of money?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. He needed about twenty million up front to get it off the ground. But he wasn’t alone. He had silent partners.”
“Like who?”
“Well…me, for starters,” Kyle said.
I was too surprised to say a word.
“Remember I told you that Aaron turned our drug money into an impressive legit portfolio?”
“Yeah.”
“From what I heard, Aaron was planning to put up three million as seed money for Maglio’s development. But I didn’t know he was going to. At that point, I was already in hospital, too sick to care about anything but staying alive.”
My mind raced and my temples pounded. “You said, ‘was planning to’?”
“Aaron didn’t end up putting up a dime.”
“Why not?”
“Turns out, the deal was more than about only real estate,” Kyle said slowly, drawing out his revelation. “The development was going to be an opportunity to launder drug money. And it provided a perfect cover for Maglio to expand his cross-border drug trade.”
“So Maglio gets three wins in one! A promising real estate venture. A place to clean tainted drug money. And a new supply route of cross-border drugs.”
“Sounds right,” Kyle said.
“But Aaron walked away from it?”
“He had turned over a new leaf by then. He desperately wanted to get clean. And this development would’ve put him in even deeper.”
“Is that why the deal fell through?”
“One of the reasons. NorWesPac also ran into a big problem with the zoning application.” He chuckled. “Which only got a lot worse after the raid and arrests.”
“Kyle!” I knew he was deliberately prolonging the suspense.
“NorWesPac threw a high-end party at Whistler for several local VIPs and city council members,” Kyle said. “The RCMP raided it. They found pretty healthy quantities of coke, E, crystal meth…you name it.”
“Was Maglio there?”
“No.” He clicked his tongue. “But it was hosted by the development’s sales director.”
“Emily!”
“Hmmm.” I could picture Kyle’s mischievous smile. “Emily was busted along with a few others. It was all hushed up and glossed over. Though it sounds like it a got a lot colder in Whistler for NorWesPac right afterward.”
I turned my back on the phone and stared at the cobblestones beside me, my sense of exposure replaced by the rush of a fresh lead. “Aaron pulled out his money, while Emily’s drug bust at the party led to a loss of zoning permits. Inadvertently or otherwise, they both screwed over NorWesPac.”
“And Maglio.”
“The potential loss of a few hundred million sounds to me like a reasonable motive for murder.”
“It’s practically justifiable homicide,” Kyle grunted.
“Who is your source?”
“Sorry,” he said genuinely. “I gave my word. I can’t say.”
“Guess I should be all for you protecting your sources.”
“Ben, there is someone who might know more about all this.”
“Who?”
“His name is Drew Isaacs. Used to be kind of our right-hand man in Vancouver. He ran the show before Aaron moved up. Not much happened north of the border without Drew knowing about it.”
“Drew Isaacs,” I said to myself. “You wouldn’t have a number or an address for him?”
“I have a two-year-old cell number.”
“I’ll take it.”
Kyle reeled it off. Always good with numbers, I committed it to memory.
“If you find him,” Kyle warned, “I’m not sure Drew would want to relive the old days with you, you know?”
“I’ll be careful. Thanks, Kyle.”
My head was spinning by the time I hung up. The buzz from the new leads gave me a lift. Someone had a plausible motive for killing Emily. Someone with a history compatible with violent crime.
Maybe it would be enough to convince Helen.
I bounded down the streets, feeling glimmers of a sensation that seemed almost foreign to me. Optimism.
Chapter 21
I woke up from the deepest night’s sleep I’d had in weeks burning with determination. Glancing around the meager room that had become home over the past four days, I knew I couldn’t stay much longer at the YMCA. Cost aside, the unwanted attention of my well-meaning fellow residents—especially my lonely next-door neighbor, Ray, who smoked so much that he smelled like an ashtray—was beginning to wear on me. The colored contact lenses and my growing hair and beard afforded only a certain degree of anonymity. I knew the American news coverage of my disappearance hadn’t let up; and I didn’t want to be around if and when my face popped up on the TV that played twenty-four hours a day in the common room.
I stood up and stretched away the tightness in my lower back, which I attributed to having not been on a bike for days on end—my longest dry spell in fifteen years. Like any addiction, it was fitting that a physical ache accompanied my cycling withdrawal. I missed the whistle of the wind, the warm burn in my thighs, and especially that rush of speed, but like an alcoholic or a heroin junkie, what I really missed was the high that a hard ride brought me.
Knowing I would see a paycheck in the not-too-distant future, I resolved to dip deep enough into my savings to buy a secondhand bike. Nothing fancy like the carbon fiber frame and alloy component bikes I had built in my garage. Anything with wheels and a saddle would do.
I headed down the hallway to the showers, relieved that at 6:45 A.M. I still had the floor to myself. I showered, changed, and walked down to the lobby. My luck was holding. The phone booth was open, and the floor deserted.
I called Alex collect, and she accepted the charges. “Ben, how are you?”
“Under the circumstances, not bad,” I said, warming at the sound of her voice. “How about you?”
“Hard to complain to you.”
More than through her words, I picked upon on the forlorn quality in her voice. “Is it Marcus?”
“He wants to alternate full weeks.” Alex stopped and swallowed. “Ben, I can’t imagine going every second week without Talie.”
That heartless bastard. “Can he do that?”
“According to my attorney.”
“I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I wish I was there to help.”
“I know you would if you could, Ben.” She cleared her throat. “Speaking of Marcus…”
I stiffened, sensing trouble. “What about him?”
“He knows you’re in Vancouver.”
My voice dropped. “How?”
“He was in the house yesterday, waiting to gloat about custody. When I got home, I found him scrolling through the phone’s call display. After seeing the calls from Vancouver and Aldergrove, he put it together. He brushed off my attempts to deny it.” She paused. “Maybe I should have erased those numbers—”
“Alex, it’s not your fault,” I reassured, though my pulse hammered in my temples. “What is he going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. He’s been so interested in you ever since the news broke. On the other hand, he never reported you to the detectives after Talie told him you were in our house.”
“That’s true.” So why the interest in me?
“Ben, are you any closer to finding Aaron?”
“Some promising leads.” I glanced at my watch, conscious of the time, and decided not to expand on Emily and Aaron’s connection to NorWesPac and Philip Maglio.
“You know, if Talie really does go with Marcus for a week, then I’ll have some time on my hands…”
She left the offer unfinished, but I knew what she was implying. I would have loved nothing better than for her to join me in Vancouver. Help aside, I ached for company, especially hers,
but I bit my tongue as reason prevailed over emotion. “No, Alex. I need you where you are. In fact, I need to contact Helen Riddell again.”
“From Tacoma again?” she said quietly.
I forced a laugh. “Maybe I’ve moved to Mercer Island or Bellevue now?”
Alex said little more aside from good-bye. I wasn’t sure if her reticence was a reaction to my rejection of her offer or the prospect of facing every second week without her daughter, but either way, I hung up the phone feeling as though I’d disappointed my best friend.
Digging my hand in my pocket, I found a quarter. I took a quick scan of the lobby before picking up the phone. I dialed the number of Drew Isaacs’s cell from memory. Hearing it ring twice, I was relieved that the phone was still in service. After the fifth ring, a curt message, presumably in Isaacs’s voice, said, “You’ve got Drew’s cell. Leave a message.”
Realizing I couldn’t explain myself on voicemail, I hung up without leaving a message.
Between the phone calls and the lineup at the local Starbucks, I was late arriving at the East Hastings Clinic. By the time I stepped into the clinic, the waiting room was already half full. The stagnant smell of unwashed clothes and people wafted to my nose as strong as the day before. I glanced at the clock reading 8:17. Then my eyes fell on Edith. With her gray hair pulled back tight, she sat behind her desk, barely clearing the desktop. She scowled at me as if I’d shown up late for our wedding.
I approached the desk, donning my most disarming smile. “Good morning, Edith.”
It didn’t work. “Dr. Janacek won’t be in for a couple of hours,” she grumbled. “As you can see, we’re already behind. You best get started.”
I decided it probably wasn’t the right time to beg Edith for Malcolm Davies’s chart. I turned and walked down the hallway into the office I used. I hung up my Salvation Army thrift store jacket and reached for the white coat. Unconsciously, my hand drifted to the stethoscope in the pocket, the contact with which gave me a comforting sense of grounding; my adult equivalent of a security blanket.
I picked up the chart outside the first examining room. I was momentarily confused by the label reading PATRICK “PATRICIA” HOLMES, but the mystery was solved the minute I glimpsed him. Tall and reedy, Patricia sat on the examining table with his chin hanging on his chest. In a cardigan and short black leather miniskirt, his legs were well sculpted but bruised and scraped. Below his thick brunet wig, he wore sunglasses, but the lenses weren’t quite big enough to hide the navy welts that extended out beyond the chunky frames. Despite a generous application of lipstick, I saw that his upper lip was swollen and split down the middle.
