“Can you open a window, Rock. It’s boiling in here,” he asks and then seems to forget about it. “I went into her ward in the hospital and she let me talk to her. I told her that I loved her and wanted to be part of her life and yours. She said OK. I guess she just didn’t see any other way out.”
He is having to take a laboured breath every few words and I worry that his exposé is tiring him too much. As much as I want to hear more, I can’t bear to see him struggling. “Why don’t we take a break Roy? Give you a chance to get some sleep and heal a bit more. I can come back later and we can carry on then. I’ll bring some beers along too.”
His hand holds mine like a vice. “No. I wanna tell you everything now. You waited a long time to hear this and I won’t have you wait any longer. I’ll be all right. I can have a nice sleep later and enjoy that beer this evening.”
True to his word, his breathing seems to even out. “I rented an apartment and got it furnished and we all moved in. I was still making good money dealing acid, so we was OK. She insisted on having you christened California. She said she always wanted to go there. I said it was a stupid name but she put her foot down.”
“I wish you’d changed her mind. I hated being called that. I always insisted on going by Cal but then some kid would always find out and sing that Chilliwack song ‘California girl, California girl.’ I got in more fights over that…”
He chuckles. “Some chance. You know yer mother once her mind was made up.”
I do indeed.
Even the chuckle has worn him down. He takes a full minute to breathe deeply before he can continue. “Once you was about eighteen months old, she started going out to work nights, cleaning offices. I told her she didn’t need to do that but there was no telling her.” I recognize my mother in those words, too. “I used to stay at home and look after you. We’d play with yer toys or watch television for a bit then I’d put you to bed.” I try hard to stir a memory of this. I want to remember. But no memory of the father I never knew will come.
More deep breaths. “After you was in bed I’d usually drink myself to sleep.” A thought lights up his face. “You loved that cartoon about the squirrel and the moose, so I started calling you Rocky. It annoyed the hell out of your mother; so I did it all the more, eh.” Another piece of the puzzle clicks in place. “I even started calling her Bullwinkle and did she ever get mad.” This time his chuckle turns into a cough and it takes him a long time to recover.
The thought of having had a normal, warm, though somewhat quirky family life stirs in me a strong feeling of loss.
“Why did you leave, Roy?” I ask.
He shakes his head and stays silent, struggling for breath.
The crushing sadness of being the kid without a father, for years being the kid who didn’t even know who his father was, comes screaming back into my soul.
“Why?” I demand, giving his hand a rough shake as the pent up anger of my childhood loss comes pushing to the fore. “Why, Roy?”
“It all fell apart.” Ragged breaths are heaving in his chest. “My buddy who was making the LSD got busted and so I lost my source. I had nothing to sell and anyways people was losing interest in acid. When I started hanging round the house all day, your mother got a day job as well as her office cleaning job and for a while I looked after you full time, a regular Mr. Mom, until one day I got drunk and fell asleep with a cigarette in my hand. When she came home after her daytime job, I was asleep on a smouldering chesterfield and you was upstairs, in yer crib, hungry and crying, with a full diaper. She threw me out. Got the police and had me removed. Court order, the whole nine yards.”
He is interrupted by the arrival of a young nurse. While she is tending the old man in the other bed, Roy takes the time to marshal his strength. She comes over, listens to Roy’s heart.
“Is there any improvement?” I ask.
“Not really.” She gives me an awkward smile and leaves.
He continues his story. “She never talked to me again. I tried sobering up and I’d go round to see you but she wouldn’t even open the door. For a few years, I managed to work at different jobs, some of ’em a bit crooked, and every so often I’d leave an envelope of money on yer doorstep for her. But then…”
His voice peters out. He looks like he can’t go on. His eyes have closed, his hand feels like ice and his breath has become heavier. I press the call button beside his bed and the nurse is there in seconds. She listens to his heart and watches the monitor. She signals for me to come with her but I will not let go of his hand. I won’t leave his side until either he’s better or…
I look at her and at my hand holding Roy’s and she seems to understand. She comes and sits on the chair beside me, pats my forearm and whispers. “He doesn’t have long now. I’m sorry.” She waits for a moment. “Do you have any questions?” she asks. I shake my head and she leaves. Despite her words, something in me knows that he will get through this.
There is so much I want to say and to ask but it will have to wait until later; I just hold Roy’s hand in both of mine and think about what might have been.
“I’m sorry, Rock.” His eyes are still closed and he is crying.
“What for, Roy?”
He takes three big breaths. “The heroin.”
I catch my breath. He is referring to the night after the trial that sent two gang leaders to jail, thanks to Steve and me. After the celebratory party, I went to the downtown east side and found Roy at his hang out, Beanie’s Eatery. We were both hammered.
“It’s OK Roy. I just don’t understand why?” The accustomed anger, which accompanies memories of that night, comes flooding in but I don’t want to be angry with him right now. “Why did you do it?” I ask as evenly as I can.
His voice is a whisper and I have to lean closer to hear. “Do you remember… what we… talked about…? In Beanie’s…”
It all comes back in an unwelcome rush.
“Roy, why don’t you just stop drinking? You’ve got a lot on the ball; you don’t have to live like this.”
He gets mad. “You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about. You can’t just stop. It’s easy for you to say but you don’t know what it’s like.” He slams his hand on the dirty table.
And I, in my hubris, drunk beyond caution, on the high of success, say the wrong thing. “Bullshit, Roy. That’s just a lame excuse. You don’t want to stop drinking. You’re just like all these junkies around here. They’re bums. They’d rather live on welfare and do dope than sort themselves out.”
“Who you calling bums?” He spits the question at me.
“Anyone who hasn’t got the strength of character to just stop doing the thing that’s gonna kill them.” My logic is irrefutable.
“You couldn’t stop.” Roy throws it out, not as a statement but as a challenge.
“Of course I could.” It is a pissing contest now.
“You really believe that?” he asks.
“Yeah. Absolutely.” I finish my beer in one long draft, as if to emphasize my point. I have no doubts. I’ve seen it time and again on the streets. “Junkies are all lowlifes. A normal person isn’t going to get hooked taking one shot of dope once in his life. That I know for sure. I have more character than some bum, for God’s sake.”
“OK.” Roy has that sly look that sometimes takes over when he’s drunk. “You come with me and we’ll see.”
He takes me to the alley. The alley that terrifies me.
There’s a dealer. It costs me ten bucks. The dealer shows me how to do it and throws in a clean syringe and all the fixings. Great marketing he thinks… but I know better.
Sure I’m nervous, I’ve seen the effects. But that was on degenerate junkies, not Cal Rogan, ace detective, Master of the Universe, buster to drug gangs.
But I hesitate. Unsure for a moment.
Roy is laughing and gulping from a bottle of no-name vodka. “I knew you couldn’t go through with it,” he jeers. “You know as well as I do that not ev
en the great Cal Rogan will be able to stop once he’s started.”
“Fuck off you old drunk,” I shout at him. “I could stop any time I wanted and you know it.”
“So do it, Detective… Fuckin’… Rogan.”
His contempt triggers something in me. I am not some degenerate junkie. So, armed with the courage and lack of inhibition imparted by the beer and with the sure knowledge that I am a Master of the Universe…
I do it…
Then I’ve done it…
Then I’m done.
Then I think of Ellie and Sam.
“You hurt my feelings… Called me a bum… an old drunk…I just wanted to… lash out at you… I’m sorry,” he gasps and I understand. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, to have a thankless child. A wounded father stirred with a cocksure son: a recipe for disaster.
Once again the anger dissipates. “It’s OK, Roy. It wasn’t your fault. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
And it is true. A part of me has hated Roy for so long because he introduced me to heroin but I know in my heart that he is not the reason that I took that first needle. He brought me to that water, it was my choice to drink. I wanted to try it, wanted to know what it was all about.
He is fighting for every breath now. His lips are moving and I lean closer.
“I don’t have… nothing… to give you… except… your name… Be Rocky… and remember… me.” The breaths are racking his body. “Tell… Ellie… her grandpa… loves her.” He has not the strength to say more.
I squeeze his hand. “Just try and sleep now, Roy. We can talk again this evening.”
It’s my fault. The only reason he is here is that the gang wanted to draw me out. By getting him to help me, I gave them license to use poor old Roy as a pawn in their game. He deserves better. Roy may have been absent in my childhood and he may have been the catalyst to my addiction but he has been a true friend to me since I have been a junkie. Without him, I would not have survived on the streets.
My earlier anger, in fact the anger which is never far from the surface, was not directed at Roy. It was directed at me, at the mistakes I have made with drugs, with Sam, with Ellie and now with Roy, with my father.
“I love you Roy… Dad…” and I do truly love this quirky old man with the battered leather hat. I let the tears flow down my face and fall on our clasped hands.
His head nods a fraction and I feel the slightest pressure from his fingers.
I weigh the scales of our relationship. “You were a good father to me.” This time there is no response.
Then he gives one deep, deep sigh and the monitor beside his bed screams at me.
He is gone.
51
Cal
I see Brad first. He has been here in the ER waiting room while I have been with Roy. His face changes as he looks at me. He knows. He gets up and walks to me. “I’m so sorry, man.” He envelopes me in a hug and my grief wells up, stronger than ever. I sob in his arms. I cry for the friend I have lost, the father whose death I precipitated, the grandfather whom Ellie will never know and the gaping hole that his passing has left inside me.
Brad just holds me, without speaking.
Then, through the tears, I see a face I know. On the day of Kevin’s death, he smashed into my room at the Lion Hotel and for his trouble earned a shattered elbow from Goliath. He is on his cell standing guard near the door.
The words of Laertes come unbidden into my head: Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’d, Most thoroughly for my father. And a white heat subjugates all other emotions. These bastards killed Roy. Rage rejects reason and he is the focus. I rush past Brad and go for him. His eyes widen as he reads my face. His last two encounters with me have brought him nothing but pain. He stamps on the rubber mat in front of the doors; they hiss open and he hares through. As I come out the doors, he is halfway across the tarmac area where the ambulances park. I love you Roy. You were a good father to me. Now I am going to avenge you.
His feet are leaving a trail through the light carpet of snow that must have started falling while Roy was dying. He looks over his shoulder towards me and the change of posture is fatal. His foot slips on the snowy surface and he falls, landing inevitably on his broken arm. His cry of pain spurs me forward. He is struggling to get up when I reach him. He is on one knee and his good arm, which allows his face to receive the full force of my kick. His head snaps back and his body slumps. I draw back my foot for a second kick, this time to his ribs but, just in time, I catch sight of his cohorts.
The hard faced one is close and I see the knife in his hand. It’s Roy’s knife! He is going to regret this theft. That knife was part of Roy. I am determined that he will be buried with his knife in his pocket.
In the background I glimpse Blondie and two others running towards us. But I ignore them as training takes over—in a Scottish accent. Go in close on a man with a knife, laddie—I step towards him as he slashes up toward my stomach. I block the blow with my left forearm and then pivot and grab his wrist with my right hand. My blocking arm slides under his elbow and my hand drives the knife hand down as I jerk his elbow up. The loud crack and his accompanying scream drown the sound of the weapon falling to the ground. Still holding his wrist, I disengage my left arm and drive the elbow into his face. He drops to the tarmac and I turn. They are upon me.
Blondie is leading the trio from behind, but he is my goal. Whoever delivered the fatal blow to Roy’s chest did so on his orders.
I crouch down, grab Roy’s beloved knife—now it’s my talisman—and flow upwards towards the nearest target. A slash of the knife towards his face causes him to jerk his head back so hard that his feet slip in the snow and he lands on his back with a loud exhalation. Another score for Roy. I slip around him with my eyes locked on to Blondie. A battle lust I have never before experienced courses through me and makes me invincible. He can see it in my eyes. I bring the knife up to belly button height and he takes a step back.
As I advance, a hand grabs my ankle and pulls hard. On the snow-dusted surface, I am down. Too late, I remember von Clausewitz: over ninety percent of battles are won by the side with the bigger numbers.
A foot stamps on my wrist causing both the knife and my invincibility to clatter away. I roll on my side just in time to see Blondie produce an aluminum baseball bat from behind his back. In the heightened perception that battle endows, I see bloody marks on it and know that this was used on Roy. My rage ramps up a notch and I know I must control it or risk a fatal error. He brings the bat up over his head, both hands clamped firmly on the grip and steps into the blow. I tense my muscles ready to roll away from its trajectory.
“FREEZE!” The shout from behind me causes Blondie to check his swing and look up. His eyes widen. “DROP IT!” He lets the bat fall from his upraised hands. I roll over to follow the line of his gaze and see the gun pointed at Blondie’s chest. Not just any gun. A Steyr .357 semi automatic. Even more surprising than the presence of the weapon is the identity of the person wielding it.
“Get up Cal. Quick.” I am not about to argue.
“Wait,” I tell him.
I retrieve Roy’s knife. It will stay with me until it goes into the ground with him.
Not taking his eyes off Blondie, Brad describes a wide circle around the stationary group, moving towards the road. In his inexperience, he almost positions me between himself and Blondie but I move quickly ahead of him. When we reach the sidewalk, Brad slips the gun into a shoulder holster under his rain jacket and points to his Toyota parked on a meter. We dash through the snow to the car, get in and take off down Burrard. I look back. Blondie has just appeared on the sidewalk, too far back to read Brad’s license plate. He is not going to follow; he has to deal with his fallen soldiers.
I look across at Brad. He is staring ahead through the snow with an almost maniacal grin on his face.
“Where the hell did that come from?” I ask.
He chuckles. “I’ve had if for ag
es. Never thought that I’d get to use it but hey, like Al Capone said: You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.”
I find myself laughing at Brad’s positive-thinking take on what’s just happened, but I can’t stop. The laughter becomes uncontrollable and then turns to tears. Reaction, I guess.
I finally stop and take a couple of deep breaths. “When I saw you standing there with that in your hand, I nearly laughed. I don’t know who was more scared, you, me or Blondie.”
“Me. It was definitely me.” He is laughing again.
“Let me see it.” He pulls it out of his holster and hands it to me. It’s not a Steyr, as I first thought, but some sort of cheap knockoff, not in great condition either. The safety catch is still on and I don’t remember him switching it. I’m guessing that it was on all the time.
“When did you get it?” I cannot get over the fact that Brad actually owns a weapon that can stop just about any man in his tracks.
“D’you remember when we were kids and we used to watch those Dirty Harry movies?” he says. I nod. “Well I always wanted a big assed gun like Clint Eastwood. You remember after I graduated I went to work in the States for a year? When I was down there, I bought it, second hand. Smuggled it in when I came back home. I never told you or Kev. I always figured you guys would take the piss out of me and with you in the VPD, you’d probably have made me turn it in.”
“Have you ever used it?” I still cannot believe that Brad has a gun.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set) Page 28
