by Daniel Kalla
Always the wildest of our bunch, Kyle had brought over some cocaine that his college buddies had sold him. A few weeks earlier, Kyle had introduced me to coke by teaching me how to snort it through a straw. He’d convulsed with laughter as I sneezed for about five minutes after my first snort. The high that followed was almost too intense—the colors too bright and the sounds too exquisite. But maybe because of the drug’s inherent taboo, I was keen to give it another try.
And I lobbied Aaron to join me.
Kyle led the rest of us over to the coffee table in the living room. He pulled a foil packet out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. Sitting down cross-legged on the carpet, he unwrapped the edges to show us the bleached white powder inside. Eyes burning, Kyle flashed us a wicked grin. “You boys up for a sniff?”
Aaron, who barely drank in high school, viewed me warily. “I don’t know.” His eyes searched mine for backup. “This is pretty serious shit, isn’t it?”
“It’s just coke,” I said, assuming a worldliness I didn’t possess. “What’s the big deal?”
“None, I guess,” Aaron said. “Come on, Ben, let’s get a couple of beers to chase it with.”
I followed him into the kitchen. With the fridge door open, he looked over to me. “Ben, I don’t know about this.”
I shrugged. “Aaron, if you don’t want to, don’t do it. No one is going to care. But you’re not stopping me from taking a toot.”
I turned and headed back to the living room. By the time I reached the entryway, Aaron was on my heels. “I want to try it,” he said. He brushed past me into the living room and knelt down beside Kyle.
Like a flight attendant sharing airplane safety instructions, Kyle gave a brief tutorial on how to snort coke. He pointed at me with a laugh. “And don’t try to inhale the whole pile in one shot like Keith Richards over there.”
Aaron insisted on going first. He snorted a whole line of coke. He sat back and twitched and sniffed for a moment, suppressing a cough. “Wow,” he said, though I knew it was too early for him to feel anything. “Jesus.”
After Jeff, I dutifully did my line, managing to avoid a sneezing fit. Feeling my nose congest on contact, I never would have guessed it would turn out to be the last time I touched coke or any illicit drug again. After a few minutes, the same warmth overcame me, but it was even deeper than last time. The euphoria bordered on discomfort. Every sense was so heightened that I wanted to crawl into a dark quiet corner until it passed.
Kyle and Jeff were overcome by the giggles. I looked over to Aaron. He sat with his back against a couch gazing at the ceiling. His lips were fixed in a dreamy smile. His glassy eyes focused on nothing.
My high turned into a sense of dread verging on panic. Maybe the coke had made me paranoid, but I was convinced something had happened to my brother. The guilt sobered me up like a bucket of ice water.
Somehow, I knew I had just led my twin into a very dangerous world.
I forced the memory away and focused on my rapidly upcoming meeting. With no idea what Drew Isaacs looked like, I vacillated on whether I should be at a table, so he could spot me, or walk in late and pretend not to see him so he would have to flag me down. Neither option seemed ideal, but I decided there was less risk in getting there first.
I arrived on foot at Club Vertical just before 10:30. A tired nightclub, the place reminded me of the Hudson Room where Alex and I sometimes met. Like its Seattle counterpart, Club Vertical had several booths and a small uninhabited dance floor. The feature I appreciated most was its dimness; I had to squint to adjust to the weak light.
I claimed a corner booth. When the waiter approached, I resisted the urge to order a double scotch, and instead chose a bottle of Canadian beer. Its cool, sweet taste on my lips was medicinal, and I polished it off in a minute. Realizing I needed every ounce of my focus, I forced myself to nurse the second beer. I was still working on it at a quarter after eleven when I spotted a man walk in. He stopped near the front to hug a lonely-looking waitress, and they shared a laugh at one of his comments. He handed her his coat and then scanned the bar. I offered a slight wave from the booth. The moment he spotted me, he rushed over.
Of average height and with a slight paunch, Drew Isaacs wore jeans and an untucked floral shirt with the top two buttons undone and sleeves rolled up. He had flowing, shoulder-length brown hair peppered with gray and a beard, but unlike mine his was kept trimmed short and limited to the front of his chin. To me, he looked like an aging rock star.
I rose from my seat and extended a hand to him. Ignoring it, Isaacs threw his arms around me and drew me into a tight hug. “Good to see you, man,” he said warmly, as he released me from his grip with a slap to my back. “Been too long.”
“You, too, Drew,” I said, willing the acid to stay in my stomach. “I like your hair.”
He ran a hand back through his thick mane. “It’s how the women like it these days.”
I mustered a laugh. “On them, or you?”
His expression hardened a moment. I wondered if I’d pushed my old boy routine too far, but then he broke into a smile that turned into a laugh. “Shit, Aaron. I’ve missed you.”
He dropped down across from me in the booth. He hailed the waiter, who greeted him by name, and ordered a Stoli vodka on the rocks. I ordered another beer.
“So where are you living now?” Isaacs asked.
“You know…” I shrugged, searching for the most plausible answer. “Probably better if I don’t say.”
He bit his lip and nodded. “I guess that’s right.”
I sipped my beer while I searched Isaacs’s face for a hint of suspicion or recognition, but I saw none. “Drew, am I still as unpopular around here as ever?”
“Oh, yeah,” He stretched out the words. “These guys don’t forget five million dollars easily. But I think they’re convinced you really are dead now.” He raised an eyebrow. “If I were you? I wouldn’t give them a chance to think otherwise.”
“Maglio?” I said, taking a stab.
“Among others.”
“That Whistler deal really went to shit, huh?” I said with a sigh, as if reminiscing on the old days.
“Maglio took a bath.”
“He blames me, doesn’t he?”
Isaac’s head seesawed from side to side. “Not just you.”
“Emily, too?”
“Emily broke the golden rule.” Isaacs pointed his glass at me. “You have to keep your nose clean when doing business. Bringing coke and E and all that crap to a launch party…” He shook his head. “A rookie mistake. And it pretty much sunk the development.”
“Maglio was really pissed, huh?” I played along as if dissecting a ball game my home team had lost. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved Emily. She was basically my sister-in-law, but it seems to me she got a bit of a free pass out of the whole mess.”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean ‘of course’?”
Isaacs held up his palms. “No disrespect to your brother, but how do you think she got the job in the first place?”
“They weren’t…”
“Emily was fucking the boss.”
Suppressing a wince, I nodded. “I should have figured.”
“Maglio even brought that big hitter attorney of his up here to get Emily out of jail after she was busted.”
The remark hit me like a punch. “Michael Prince?” I blurted a little too quickly.
Isaacs squinted in surprise. “Yeah, he’s the guy.”
“I had no idea he was involved,” I said as much to myself as Isaacs.
“Very involved. I heard Prince was even one of the investors in Whistler.”
That son of a bitch! But I nodded as if I knew it all along. “Drew, do you think Maglio might have killed Emily?”
Isaacs smiled knowingly. “That’s what you’ve come back to Vancouver to find out, huh?”
“Among other things.” I shrugged. “I just thought if Emily lost Maglio tens of
millions at Whistler—”
Isaacs shook his head with certainty. “But that’s not what sent him over the edge!”
“No? What did?”
“Word was that Maglio went ballistic when Emily was diagnosed.”
“Diagnosed?”
“AIDS.”
It was all I could do to keep my jaw off the floor. “Are you saying Emily gave Maglio HIV?”
Chapter 23
I stumbled back to the YMCA still reeling from my meeting with Isaacs. Overwhelmed by his disclosure that Emily exposed Maglio to HIV, I completely forgot to use the lines and gestures I’d rehearsed beforehand, but Isaacs never once seemed to doubt that I was anyone but Aaron.
Lying in bed, my head spun as I sorted through Isaacs’s revelations: Aaron absconding with five million dollars of drug money, Prince’s involvement in Whistler, and Emily sleeping with Maglio and perhaps infecting him with HIV.
After a fitful sleep, punctuated by nightmares about missed exams and missed diagnoses in the ER, I woke up at 5:15, impatient for dawn to break. By six o’clock, I deemed it light enough for a ride. I grabbed the bike and lugged it down the stairs and out to the street. As I stepped onto the street, my breath froze in the air. Without my Lycra riding jacket and pants, the coldness of the morning seeped through to my bones, but the chill invigorated me. I jumped on the bike. A couple of hills later, I’d already begun to warm up.
Pumping the pedals hard, I rode out around the University and along the southern border of the city beside the Fraser River. I rode past the column of rush-hour cars and trucks, their brakes and tires squeaking in a staccato of stop-and-go noises and their exhaust fumes misting the air, as I headed south over the river on the Oak Street Bridge and into the suburb of Richmond. I would have continued cycling to the American border had I not a full morning’s work awaiting me. Reluctantly, I stopped and turned back for home.
I locked the bike out front of the YMCA and ran up the stairs to my room. After a quick shower and change, I returned to the lobby, but I no longer had the floor to myself. At the phone booth, a guy with a ponytail leaned against the wall with his jacket off, obviously settled in for a long call. Across the room, I saw my bald neighbor waving and trying to hail me over. I pointed at my watch and yelled, “Sorry, Ray, I’m late.” I jogged for the door.
I unlocked my bike and rode to the clinic. Arriving at 7:45, I found the door open and Edith already seated behind her desk, but the waiting room was empty. I summoned my best top-of-the-morning smile. “I kind of assumed the patients began lining up at four A.M.,” I said.
“They’ll come at eight,” she grumbled without looking up from her computer. “They always do.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to grab a coffee,” I said. “Do you want—”
“No,” she cut me off. She flashed her catlike green eyes at me, her lips fighting back a scowl. “And Dr. Horvath, if you want a chart, ask me for it next time.”
“Will do,” I chirped. I wondered if Joe had told Edith that I’d been nosing around her space for charts, but I decided that she probably had hidden cameras, tripwires, body heat sensors, or more likely some kind of witch’s crystal ball that let her know.
I walked out to the pay phone on the street corner, dialed Alex’s cell number, and again reversed the charges.
“Ben?”
Her one syllable conjured a mix of relief and melancholy in me. “Alex, where are you?”
“A gas station in Renton,” she said, referring to the suburb southeast of Seattle. “What’s the latest?”
“Don’t know you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
I gave her the lowdown on my meeting with Drew Isaacs.
“Oh my God,” she said slowly. “Maybe Aaron is still alive!”
“Maybe.” Without thinking, I touched the side of the cold sticky pay phone. “But with or without Maglio, I still have no clue how Aaron’s blood got onto Emily’s wall.”
“You’re making progress,” she soothed, but then her tone hardened. “Listen, Ben, last night Detective Sutcliffe came by the ER to see me again.”
I straightened up and glanced over either shoulder, as if suddenly watched. “Just Rick? No Helen?”
“He was alone.”
I tasted acid. “What did he want?”
“To know if you had contacted me.”
“And?”
“What do you think?” Alex said with a trace of indignation. “I told him I hadn’t seen or heard from you since that day at the coffee shop.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Think so. He asked me some questions about your parents, and whether you had relatives outside of King County. He wanted to know if you had any favorite getaways or escapes.” She uttered a soft-pitched laugh. “I was singularly unhelpful.”
“I bet he never shed that hundred-kilowatt smile of his,” I grumbled, irrationally resentful at the thought of Rick spending time alone with Alex.
“Not once.”
I changed hands on the receiver and took another scan around the phone booth. “You don’t think Marcus tipped him off, do you?”
She hesitated. “If he did, then why would Rick come to see me? Wouldn’t he already be looking for you up there?”
“I guess,” I said, unconvinced.
“Oh, Ben,” she said with a sigh, and the intimacy in her voice tugged at my heart. “Marcus has always been a bit jealous of our relationship, but I can’t see him turning you in.”
I could, but I kept the thought to myself. Eager to change subjects, I asked, “How’s Talie?”
She was quiet a moment. “Marcus is taking her on Saturday for her first full week with him.”
“It’s going to work out, Alex.” I suppressed a groan at the hollowness of my reassurance.
“I know,” she said, sounding more like her old self. “Talie will cope. I’ll cope. It’ll even give me a chance to tackle the list of the hundred things I’ve meant to do around the house.”
“There you go.”
“We need to get moving, Ben,” she said, suddenly all business. “I’m turning your cell on now. Call me right back.”
With a quick glance, I ensured no one was waiting for the pay phone and then I called my number collect. Alex accepted the charges. “Okay. Hang on, I’ll get her.” The line clicked once. When it clicked a second time, I heard the phone ringing.
Helen answered on the next ring. “Sergeant Riddell.”
“Helen, it’s Ben.”
“Oh, we’re playing this game again, are we?”
“This is no game.”
“My thoughts exactly. So what the hell is the point of these hide-and-go-seek phone calls?”
“To try to convince you that I’m innocent.”
“If you want to do that, Benjamin, come sit down in my office and convince me.”
“Can’t.”
“Because you’re not?”
“Because you refuse to believe it’s possible I am,” I snapped. I took a big breath, swallowing the rest of my anger. “I need to tell you something.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Did you know that Philip Maglio and Emily used to be an item?”
There was a slight pause. “Go on.”
“Emily was the sales director on a big NorWesPac resort development. It all fell apart and cost Maglio a fortune, in large part because of Emily’s drug habit.” I gave her the details without mentioning Whistler specifically, as I didn’t want to point her in my vicinity. “Apparently, Maglio took it a lot harder when he found out later that Emily had exposed him to HIV.”
She didn’t comment. I imagined she was busy scrambling the troops to trace my call.
“His money and his health!” I stressed. “How’s that for motive, Helen?”
“I’ll give you this, it’s quite a yarn.”
“But not worth looking into?”
“Of course it is!” Helen said. “I would investigate Philip Maglio for an out
standing parking meter violation if I thought there was a chance of nailing him.”
“So you’ll follow it up?”
“What makes you think I haven’t been looking into other suspects all along?” Helen sounded disappointed in me.
“I assumed you’d focused exclusively on me.”
“You assumed wrong, Benjamin. Problem is that the search for you is consuming so much of our time and resources that it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling apologetic.
“Granted, you’ve turned into a regular Sam Spade.” She couldn’t resist a chuckle. “I never realized fugitives had so much leisure time. I pictured you holed up in a cave with Osama bin Laden.”
“Yeah, it’s nothing but caviar and champagne. You ought to give it a whirl.”
“You can’t have investigated this all on your own.” Her tone stiffened. “You’re getting help, aren’t you?”
I didn’t reply.
“Please listen to me, Benjamin. If you piss off people like Maglio, and they get to you before we do, a bum murder rap will suddenly seem like a minor inconvenience by comparison.”
“I know,” I said, aware that Helen’s remark came from protectiveness, not manipulation.
The line beeped three times with Alex’s warning signal.
“Aaron is alive, Helen.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“No, but I spoke to someone who had drinks with him a full year after you found his burned-out BMW.”
“Who?”
“I can’t say tell—”
The line clicked and the connection was gone.
Pacing back and forth by the phone booth, I gave Alex five minutes to clear out of the gas station before I called her back on her own cell number. “Did you get out okay?”
“No problem,” she said. “I took off the moment I saw the first flashing light. I drove right by the cruisers heading the other way.”
“Good. Do you have call number blocking on your cell phone?”
