by Adam Knight
Chapter 40
Mom wasn’t impressed when I finally came home at six in the morning.
Thankfully she was groggy and in a medically induced sleep so I only took a modicum of shit before she collapsed again.
Couldn’t wait until she saw my face in the daylight.
I managed to stumble down the stairs without too much noise, stripped out of the filthy jeans and had my second shower in as many hours. The aches and pains that I’d managed to ignore for a time began to reassert themselves as the hot water scalded my flesh.
After leaving Tamara’s apartment it had taken me almost an hour to hobble back up Ellice Avenue to where I’d parked my Windstar. Thankfully the shit-kicking I’d received hadn’t included theft so I still had the keys to fire up my poor battered baby and slowly drive it home.
The man staring back at me in my bathroom mirror was even uglier than usual. My eyes were red rimmed from fatigue and emotional exhaustion. The purplish swelling around my left eye seemed to have reached its peak and was now settling into a steady black color. Tamara didn’t think I would need any stiches for my lip, but since she was going to school for massage therapy instead of nursing I probably should have gone to the neighborhood walk in clinic and waited for …
“No doctors,” I muttered, turning away from the mirror and the judging look my reflection was giving me. “No doctors.”
Staggering weakly into my bedroom I dropped my sodden towel in a heap on the cracked linoleum floor before collapsing as gingerly as possible onto my bed.
I was unconscious within moments.
Dreams.
I hate dreams.
Mostly because every dream I’d ever had for myself had been abandoned.
So I figure if I can’t have any dreams in the waking world, why should I have any when asleep?
They only let you down.
I was in a classroom. Mr. Cooper was at the front of the class droning on about TV processes and procedures. Something about politics in the workplace or some such nonsense. All around me were my fellow classmates as I remembered them. Bright eyed, hopeful for the future college students.
Cathy sat off to my right and near the front of the class. Shorter hair up in a top knot, pink hooded sweater and a rapt expression. Her writing hand making notes like crazy, which was impressive considering how infrequently she checked on her scribbling.
Yay. Dreams.
Mark stood off to my left, lounging at the doorframe to the classroom. No door, just the frame. He was in his more familiar Cowboy Shotz gear. Long sleeved black tee, faded jeans and a smirk. Mr. Cooper ignored him completely as he droned on, full on Charlie Brown’s teacher voice wah-wah-wah-ing away unintelligibly.
I rubbed at my eyes with a groan, trying to will away the image.
No such luck.
My body squirmed uncomfortably in the desk chair. Damned college takes thousands of dollars from me in tuition you’d figure the least they could do in return is have appropriate sized desks for every potential student. My damned knees were squeezed in tight enough to make me wince.
Seriously, even in my dreams the desks were uncomfortable? For fuck’s sake.
The big flat screen TV that Mr. Cooper was standing in front of and gesturing at began to flicker and strobe with images.
Not images.
Memories.
Cowboy Shotz.
Packed dance floors.
Candace Cleghorn. Smiling and dancing with others.
Aaron and Parise looking on from a distance, talking amongst themselves. Surrounded by Asian businessmen and more well attired young ladies.
The Native Posse’s gang house. The wall of victims.
Officer Miller, his brutish face and those massive fists.
Officer Mackie, his face buried in a glass of whisky.
Cathy – modern day Cathy – on the screen, her face confused. “It doesn’t make sense. Not all of the victims are ….”
“Indians?” spat Posse member Shaun from off screen.
“… They came from all walks of life. All circumstances..”
“So. What do you think, son?”
To the immediate right of the big screen stood my Dad exactly as I remembered him. Ball cap on his head, belly protruding slightly over his belt line and a lit cigarette in one hand. His face was wistful and sad.
“Wh … What?”
He smiled gently, gesturing with his hand towards the TV. A trail of smoke flowed in the same pattern of his gesture.
“What Cathy is saying,” he continued, nodding to young Cathy seated in front of him. “Does it make sense?”
More images flashed on the screen. Stories of the missing women of Winnipeg from the papers I’d read. An affluent lawyer gone missing from her condo late one night. A mother of three disappeared after dropping her children off at daycare, her minivan found abandoned at the outskirts of town. A middle aged grandmother - young for the title - on her way to the airport; no one knew she was missing until after her plane had landed in Halifax.
Dad gestured again. More images.
Young women, mostly of aboriginal descent - though not exclusively so - flickered across the screen. These images were added into the stories about missing women, though now many of them began to look familiar. Either from the images on the wall from the Posse’s hangout or from my own memories of having seen the girls at the club.
I blinked, rubbing at my eyes. When I opened them again the screen was black and filled with static. Dad was enjoying his smoke. Mr. Cooper’s droning became more pronounced, his hand gestures emphasizing his points as he paced in front of the class. Mark stifled a yawn from his position at the doorframe.
“What? Dad, what are you talking about?”
His expression became faintly disappointed. I hated that look. Made me feel like I was twelve years old again and caught in a lie. I swear Dad, Donald broke the vase! He touched the screen. Static cleared. Ran through the cycle again. Clippings to images. The disparity between them. Over and over it ran in a dizzying blur.
“Enough, stop.” My hands went up in front of my face, though of course it couldn’t keep the images out. Nothing could. The images being in my head and all.
“Does it make sense?”
“No, of course it doesn’t! Now make it …”
The whole room changed. Everyone stayed exactly where they were but we were no longer in a classroom. A large space, completely dark but everything still perfectly visible. Hell it might’ve been space. Like, outer space. My fucked up head after all. I wondered if the Millenium Falcon was about to make a fly by.
Dad was still there, the smoke from his cigarette curling up into a cloud above his head. Framing him ethereally, which I suppose was appropriate.
“What doesn’t make sense, son?”
“None of it makes sense,” I muttered. Cathy still sat near the front scribbling away madly in her notebook as Mr. Cooper continued his inaudible lecture. “None of it.”
“How so?” That was Mark from his position at the doorframe. Really, a doorframe and no walls? I hated the Twilight Zone.
“Cathy’s right,” I muttered. Ahead of me I could see Cathy’s head nodding in agreement. “The missing women reports don’t add up to what’s happening at the club.”
“What is happening at the club?” Mark asked, somehow sounding curious and disinterested at the same time.
“Prostitution for sure. Parise all but confessed to that.” Right before going all karate class on my fat head anyway. I scratched at my scalp with both hands, trying to clear my mind. “But that’s the part I don’t get. Sure, prostitution is bad and all. But why the heavy hitting on me? Aaron admitted to bringing in a few of the guys to help with extra security, likely for the girls I figure. So why beat the hell out of me? He’d wanted to bring me in the fold. All I can figure is …”
“Would you have done it?” Dad asked neutrally.
“What?”
Dad’s expression went cold, faintly disap
proving again. “Would you have gone along with things if you’d been told what was going on?”
Just like when I was twelve. “I don’t … Maybe. I don’t know…. Money’s tight, Dad.”
He frowned at me but didn’t say anything further.
“You wouldn’t have done it,” Mark said from off to the side.
I scowled at him. “You don’t know that.”
“I’m not really here, dipshit. You’re arguing with yourself. So somewhere deep inside you know you wouldn’t have done it.”
My scowl deepened. “Fuck you, then. Or fuck me. Or, I mean … shit this is confusing.”
Dad’s sigh was as exasperated as I remembered it. He shook his head.
“What?”
“Joe, they killed a girl.”
“At least one,” Mark chimed in.
“And now they know that you know.”
“But why?” I burst out, smacking my palms down on the desk in front of me. “Why did Candace die? Was it an accident? Did she threaten to leave? Turn herself in? And what does whipping my ass and letting me live solve? They think I’m not going to tell anyone about their little whorehouse now?”
“They couldn’t kill you, people knew you were there.” Mark said, his voice distant. Only vaguely interested again. Seriously, what’s up with that? “Shelby saw you get attacked. She’ll tell the others. You turning up dead? Brings too much heat down on the club. Parise and his crew can suppress your assault.”
“You won’t tell, son.” Dad’s face was sad now. He took a drag, the cherry illuminating his face eerily in the already eerie semi-darkness. “ You know you won’t. Your mother needs to be protected, taken care of. These people … Well. You already know what they are capable of.”
“What about the businessmen?” Cathy’s younger form asked, not turning away from Mr. Cooper’s lecture but entering the conversation. Her voice crisp, precise and clear. “Those men definitely weren’t local types. Too much broken English. Chinese? Japanese?”
“What’s so special about this week?” Mark asked then. “That’s what Aaron kept saying. This isn’t a good week. Well why not?”
“What makes this week different?” Cathy echoed.
“What is … “
“Who cares?” I blurted out as my frustration boiled over. “Seriously, who the fuck cares at this point?”
Everybody froze and turned to stare at me. Mark. Cathy. Dad. Mr. Cooper. Every person in the class sitting at a desk.
Not creepy at all.
“Honestly,” I continued, suddenly less full of vitriol. “Who cares? They’ve won. Whatever they’re doing, they’ve sent a message loud and clear.” I shook my head sadly, frustrated tears once again forming in my eyes. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Everyone vanished save for Dad. Suddenly I wasn’t in a college desk anymore, I was standing directly before my old man, looking up at his towering figure. Which was ridiculous now that I think about it, since I had been a half foot taller than him before the car wreck.
Dad stood there, his cigarette puffing away above my head.
“What?”
“Why can’t you do anything?”
“You just said it! I can’t leave Mom. She needs me.”
“What about those missing women? The ones at the club trapped in this prostitution ring?”
I scoffed, trying to sound as convincing as possible.
“They have help. The police and every media outlet in town is looking for those women.”
“How’s that search going so far?”
“How should I know? I’m just a lousy nightclub bouncer who’s in over his head.”
“You’re more than that, son.”
“Whatever. What has this got to do with …”
“And the girls at the bar? Who’s helping them?”
“Dammit Dad, those girls could be having the time of their lives for all I know. The ones I recognized from the club were always smiling, getting drunk. Living the party lifestyle!”
“Were they safe?”
“They were when I was working.”
“So you do care what happens to them.”
“Of course .. I .. No, not like that.” I closed my eyes in frustration. “It’s not that simple, Dad.”
“Yes it is, Joe.” He reached out, his massive hand engulfing my shoulder. It felt warm. Tingly. Real. “It is simple.”
I threw my hands to the sides in complete exasperation.
“How? How is it simple? How is anything simple? How is anything in my whole fucking messed up life simple, Dad?”
His hand squeezed my shoulder again. More warmth. Another tingle.
He gave me a small smile. The same one I use all the damned time.
“Life is only as complicated as you make it, Joe.” I always remembered his voice. That strong, certain voice. Always had the answers. Always reassuring.
“Dad?”
“You know what’s right. We taught you well enough to know that. You know that something’s not right here.”
I stared at him in frustration. “What I know and what I can do about it aren’t the same thing. I’m not a cop, and even if I was there’s cops involved in this. They can make this go away. Make me go away.”
“Are you going to go away?”
My head drooped.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“You know why. People’ll get hurt. Mom. Cathy. Mark and Tamara maybe. Hell, I’ll get hurt. I am tired of getting hurt, Dad. I am tired of having to fight my way clear of every shitty thing in life and still end up right where I started.”
“No one says you have to be stuck in this life, Joe. If you don’t like where you are, change it.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“Yes, it is.”
My fists clenched and a howling scream wanted to burst out from my lips. Dad saw the frustration on my face and actually laughed.
“What?” I growled not so charitably.
His small smile returned.
“One day - hopefully soon – you’re going to learn that you have the power to change anything you want to in your life.”
My mouth turned into a grimace. “You working for a greeting card company in Heaven, Dad? That’s some pretty weak sauce.”
His fingers squeezed my shoulder one last time before releasing, leaving behind a sense of loss and a numbing tingle that rolled up my shoulder and into my neck.
“This is a time you can help, son.”
I shook my head sadly. “It’s not like I don’t want to.”
Dad stared at me a moment longer. Then he pulled another cigarette out of the ether and lit it with a sulphur heavy match strike. Deep inhale and more smoke billowed.
