by Daniel Kalla
He didn’t look up at me when I walked in the room. “Where’s Dr. J?” he asked in a frail falsetto voice.
“I’m covering this morning.” I grinned as I held my hand out for him. “I’m Dr. Horvath, Patricia.”
He shook my hand tentatively, but his grip was strong.
“What brings you in, Patricia?”
Without lifting his head, Patricia reached up and slowly pulled off his glasses. The bruising was worse than I’d imagined. His right eye was bloodshot, and his left swollen completely shut. “It’s always the same,” he said in whisper. “It’s not like they don’t know what they’re getting beforehand.”
“They?”
“The johns. They know what I am. But they still do this to me.”
I felt a pang of sympathy for the transgendered patient. “Did he use his fists?”
“Boots, mainly.”
I surveyed the damage to Patricia’s face more closely. His left cheek looked asymmetrical and flattened. His cheekbone had to be broken. When I reached out to touch it, he winced in pain but held still. The fractured zygoma bone creaked under my thumb like a loose floorboard. “Any injuries aside from your face?” I asked.
Patricia shrugged. “Nothing I can’t live with. Of course, he raped me, too,” he said as if it was a commonplace occurrence, and I realized that for Patricia that probably wasn’t far from the truth.
“Can I examine you there?”
“No, no. It’s okay,” he said, embarrassed. “My face got the worst of it.”
I rested a hand on his shoulder. “Patricia, we’re going to need to get a plastic surgeon to stabilize that cheek bone.”
He frowned at the floor. “Will that leave a scar?”
“No, they’ll make the incision above your hairline and then lift up the cheekbone,” I reassured. “I’ll arrange it with the hospital. Meanwhile, I’ll give you a shot of morphine for the pain.”
For the first time in our interaction, Patricia made eye contact with me. He nodded gratefully. “I knew Dr. J. would only hire someone with compassion.”
By the time Edith and I finished arranging Patricia’s transfer to hospital, I was even further behind. The waiting room was again standing room only. The patients who followed Patricia had more run-of-the-mill medical issues, so I was able to make up for lost time. Along the way, I filled several prescriptions for HIV medications. With their expensive drug habits, many of those patients looked as if they could barely afford to feed or house themselves, let alone cover the monthly three-thousand-dollar prescription cost. However, I soon learned that in the Canadian system, the government pays for the exorbitantly priced drugs.
I thought of Emily. Had she lived in Canada, she would never have had to turn to a pusher like Jason “J.D.” DiAngelo for black-market HIV medications. I wondered whether that would have saved her from her violent death. I decided that probably even Canada couldn’t have protected her from Philip Maglio’s wrath.
By the time I took my first breather of the day, it was already noon. Heading past Edith’s workstation on my way out for a coffee, I noticed for the first time that her desk was unattended. I looked over at the patients watching me from the waiting room. As casually as possible, I turned back and sauntered through the door into the enclosed reception area.
I looked at the row upon row of charts filling every inch of wall space, staggered by the sheer number of patients Joe Janacek cared for. I scanned the D section looking for Malcolm Davies’s chart. With the charts packed so snugly, it took me a couple of passes before I located his file. After a quick over-the-shoulder check, I yanked the chart out of the pack. I hurried it over to the desk and opened the cover page. Palms sweating, I grabbed a pencil and jotted down the address and phone number. I closed up the chart and rushed it back into place.
I had just tucked it back into its slot when I heard Joe Janacek’s voice behind me. “I thought I hired you to work in the back office,” he said in his lyrical Czech accent. “Besides, Edith is not fond of competition.”
I turned to face him. With his white hair combed perfectly back and his white lab coat crisp as ever, I had a mental picture of Marcus Welby. “I needed contact information for a patient for, um, a prescription refill,” I stammered.
“We don’t refill prescriptions over the phone. It’s bad medicine.” He broke into a smile. “Besides, we can only charge for refills if we see the patient in person.”
“Very charitable policy,” I said. “I’m just heading out for coffee. You want one?”
He nodded. “But I can’t trust a Hungarian with my coffee. It will probably come back with two scoops of sugar and a half cup of cream. I’ll come with you.”
Without taking off his lab coat, Joe walked with me across the street to the small coffee shop. He ordered a dark roast coffee while I decided to splurge on a latté, but it was a moot decision as Joe insisted on paying.
We sat at a table in the corner. Joe studied me over the rim of his cup. “Are you surviving day two, Peter?”
“So far,” I said. “Though I saw a sad case this morning. Patricia Holmes.”
“Was Patricia beaten again?”
“His zygoma was crushed in. I had to send him for surgery.”
“Oh, Patricia,” Joe heaved a sigh. “Life hasn’t been fair to her since the day she was born in the wrong body.” He put his cup down and stared hard at me. “And you, Peter?”
“I make do with the body I was born in.”
He chuckled, but his eyes held their intensity. “You asked about money yesterday.”
I waved the idea away. “I can wait until payday.”
Joe dug in his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and slid it across the table to me. “We’ll sort out the paperwork later.”
I picked up the envelope. Through the open flap, I glimpsed the brown tint of at least one Canadian hundred-dollar bill. “It’s not necessary, Joe.”
“Don’t make a big deal. Just put it away.” He shrugged. “In this neighborhood, you don’t want a reputation for carrying cash.”
“Thanks.” I tucked the money in my pocket, envisioning the bike I was going to buy.
“Tell me, Peter.” Joe scratched his chin. “Will you still be around come payday?”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned back in his seat. “In August 1968, when the Russian tanks rolled into Prague, I joined the student uprising. I wasn’t much for politics, mind you, but I had a soft spot for a very pretty activist. Eliska Brabanek.” He sighed her name. “Eliska. Deepest, most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen. They could make a man do anything.”
My guard rose, though I didn’t know what he was getting at. “Joe—”
“I even learned how to make Molotov cocktails. Can you imagine?” He grunted a chuckle. “Needless to say, the authorities were not pleased with me after I blew up one of their precious tanks.”
“Joe, I don’t see what—”
“For six weeks I was in hiding in Prague, before I managed to procure phony papers to escape the country. I’ll never forget those days as a fugitive.” He sighed knowingly. “Always checking over my shoulder. Always wondering whether I was recognized. Never certain whom I could trust.” He viewed me for a long moment. “I see those exact same signs in you, Peter.”
I rose from my seat. “You’re way off the mark, Joe.”
“I called the British Columbia Medical Association this morning,” Joe said, freezing me in my tracks. “According to their records, Peter, you’re still working in Taipei.”
Chapter 22
The panic welled in my chest like an expanding balloon. I eyed the door, with a view to bolting. Then Joe reached out and gently laid a hand on my wrist. “Sit, Peter, please.”
Slowly I turned and sat back down in the chair. “Joe, I can explain the mix-up.”
“I also spoke to the College of Physicians and Surgeons,” he went on calmly. “According to them, your papers are in order and you are legally licensed to practi
ce in the province.”
I gaped at him, sensing silence was my only option.
He broke into a half-smile. “If nothing else, I pride myself on being a decent judge of character. I am going to assume the Medical Association’s information is out of date, and that you left Taipei without bothering to tell them that you had come back. Is that right?”
The balloon in my chest deflated. I nodded my gratitude. “It’s complicated.”
Joe arched one of his bushy eyebrows.
Though I barely knew Joe, I already trusted him. I would have liked to come clean, but aside from the enormous risk of exposure, I realized that the truth would place Joe in a difficult dilemma: If he didn’t call the police, technically he would be guilty of aiding and abetting a felon. I’d already asked that of Alex and Kyle; I wasn’t about to throw Joe into the same quandary.
I met his stare. “I didn’t do anything wrong or illegal, but I had to leave in a hurry,” I said, deliberately vague. “I’m working on clearing my name, but it could take a few more weeks.”
Joe’s eyebrow fell. “As I told you earlier, I always give people the benefit of the doubt.” Then, as before, he added: “Once.”
“Thank you.”
Joe picked up his coffee cup and rose from the table. “Come. We’re not going to get rich wasting the whole day at a café.” Before turning for the door, he flashed his very white teeth. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me about your Eliska, and how she led you into your troubles?”
I assumed he was speaking figuratively and didn’t actually know anything about Emily, but by this point, I wasn’t sure what to believe. “Someday,” I mumbled, heading for the door.
I worked through the afternoon on autopilot. Joe’s acceptance of my bogus cover story brought with it a degree of relief, like unloading a dark secret on a friend, but it also heightened my sense of exposure. If Joe could work through my cover that easily, others could, too. And now that Marcus knew where I was, I wondered how long it would take him to figure out my alias.
Much as I tried to concentrate on the steady stream of patients, my thoughts kept drifting to the tasks that preoccupied me. The clock ticked louder. My existence in Vancouver as Peter Horvath came with a rapidly approaching expiration date. I had to speak with Drew Isaacs and/or Malcolm Davies. Maybe one of them could lead me to the truth about my brother or NorWesPac’s Whistler development.
Halfway through the afternoon, I headed out of the clinic, claiming I needed another coffee. My offer on the way out the door to buy one for Edith was met with a cold shake of her head. “I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon,” she snapped, as if I should have known all along.
I went straight to the pay phone at the street corner. I dug Malcolm Davies’s number out of my pocket, deposited a quarter, and dialed the number. I heard a series of escalating beeps and was then informed by an electronic operator that the number was out of service. Frustrated, I dropped in another quarter and tried Drew Isaacs’s cell number again.
“Yeah?” a gravelly voice answered.
“Drew?” I said. “Drew Isaacs?”
“Who is this?”
I froze, uncertain as to the right answer. The line clicked and I heard the dial tone.
I kicked the base of the phone booth so hard that my blistered toe ached. I wanted to rip the receiver off the phone and smash the window with it. What an idiot!
I willed myself calmer. I wondered how I was going to convince Drew Isaacs to discuss his criminal issues with a complete stranger. I decided that a variant on the truth was my best approach. After all, how could Drew know that Kyle didn’t have another cousin in the drug business?
I deposited my last quarter and dialed again. “Yeah?” the voice answered warily.
“Drew, I’m sorry we were cut off.”
“Who are you?” he barked.
“I’m Kyle Dafoe’s cousin.”
“Aaron?” He laughed. “Aaron, you son of a bitch, are you back in town?”
It never occurred to me he would assume I was Aaron. Even more shocking was the complete lack of surprise in his voice.
“You still there, Aaron?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How are you, Drew?
“Same old, same old. Christ, it’s been almost a year. How goes it?”
Almost a year! My heart was pounding so fast that I felt lightheaded. “You know what it’s like being dead,” I said, controlling my breathing.
He laughed. “Still keeping a very low profile, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“Can’t blame you. Have you heard about all the shit your brother is mixed up in back in Seattle?”
“That’s why I came back,” I blurted. “To help him out.”
“How can you help him?”
“Not sure yet. Hey, Drew, I wanted to ask you about Whistler—”
He cut me off. “Listen, Aaron, I’m running late. Very late. Let’s grab a drink tonight. We’ll catch up then.”
“No, that’s not going to work,” I said, struggling to sound calm. “I just wanted to pick your brain on a couple of small points.”
“Tonight,” Isaacs said. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll go someplace quiet. Let’s say Vertical at eleven?”
“Vertical?”
“Remember? On Richards. Where we went there last time you were in town. See you at eleven.”
He was gone before I could squeeze in another word.
I held the phone to my ear and listened to the dial tone. My head swam. “It’s been almost a year.” His words echoed in my brain. For days I’d been assuming, against reason, that Aaron somehow survived the blood-soaked trunk of his burned-out car two years earlier, but Isaacs’s offhanded remark was the first scrap of evidence I’d come across to support the belief.
As my pulse slowed and I began to touch down, my thoughts again turned to a subject I’d avoided: Aaron’s blood on Emily’s wall. The idea of someone stealing his blood or coercing his involvement struck me now as far-fetched. And yet, I still wasn’t willing to believe that Aaron could have been involved in her brutal murder. My stomach flip-flopped as I went over it again and again.
Despite having my best lead yet, I wandered back to the East Hastings Clinic more unsettled than when I’d left. Distracted earlier in the day, I bordered on oblivious as I churned through the rest of my list, watching the clock and obsessing over my looming rendezvous with Drew Isaacs. If a mimicker had crept into the mix of patients, the poor bastard wouldn’t have stood a chance.
We finally emptied the waiting room at 6:35 P.M. Leaving my charting for the morning, I said a quick good-bye to Joe and Edith and hurried out the door.
I’d intended to head straight back to my room at the YMCA, but the walk home took me past the bike store window. Aware of Joe’s cash burning a hole in my pocket, I ducked into the store. Brushing off the redheaded salesman whose chin looked like it had yet to feel a razor, I chose a sturdy secondhand road bike from the rack and bought it, along with the cheapest lock, headlight, and helmet the store offered.
After adjusting the seat, I knelt beside the bike on the street and tucked my pant leg into my sock. The chain’s grease smell drifted to me, as welcome as the aroma of Mom’s cooking. I had a flashback of Aaron and me sitting happily at the kitchen counter and joking with Mom as she cooked up a meatloaf, our favorite. Dad wasn’t around much for those family meals; or if he was home, he was usually well into his fourth or fifth cocktail and quietly embarrassed about the many times he fumbled his drink or spilled his food.
Shaking off the memory, I strapped on my helmet, stood up, and hopped onto the seat. Comparing this bike to the one at home was like putting a Yugo up against a Cadillac, but the grip of the handlebars’ hard rubber and the tension of the toe straps around my feet soothed my nerves like three fingers of scotch.
I tightened my knapsack’s shoulder straps and began to peddle. Though heavier than the bike I was used to, the pedals were responsive and the gearshift smooth. I slipped into the t
raffic on Robson Street. Already dusk, I planned on only a short ride around downtown to get the feel of the bike, but half an hour later, I found myself on the other side of the Burrard Street Bridge peddling up the steep climb toward the University of British Columbia. Sprinting up a hill in work clothes, I didn’t care that the drivers around me eyed me as if I’d lost my mind. I welcomed the warm ache in my thighs and the burn in my lungs.
By eight o’clock dusk had given way to night. The bike’s weak headlight illuminated only a few feet in front of me, and I relied more on the streetlamps and the cars’ headlights. I rode directly back to the YMCA, arriving pleasantly spent. Ignoring the inquisitive glances from the people in the lobby, I carried the bike over my shoulder into the stairwell. Maneuvering it up the tight stairwell, I wished for the first time the building had an elevator.
I’d planned to spend the evening searching for new housing, but instead I focused my thoughts on Aaron as I prepared to impersonate him. As kids, we’d swapped roles a few times to play pranks on our parents, who never fell for it for very long. I would have to do better with Drew Isaacs. I tried to recall Aaron’s little nuances and tics, like the way he peeled the labels off all his beer bottles or how he tapped his teeth together when agitated. I remembered how his focus sometimes drifted away in the middle of a conversation, as if he suddenly heard a favorite song in his head, though this usually meant he was high. Drugs changed Aaron in so many subtle ways. And the familiar twinges of guilt resurfaced, as I remembered the first time I saw his floating gaze.
One night, three months before our high school graduation, Kyle, Aaron, and I were at Jeff Nolan’s house. Jeff lived down the block from us, and his parents never seemed to be home on weekends. Consequently, Jeff’s house became the default destination if we didn’t have another party to go to.
