Last of the Independents

by Sam Wiebe

  “What do you want to record?”

  “A conversation in a locked room.”

  “You want to bug someone?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “Is this legal or illegal?”

  I waved my hand, comme-ci, comme-ca. “With these kind of people, I’m not sure that distinction really applies.”

  “Gangsters?”

  “No, but if I’m right, they’re connected to something they’d rather people didn’t know about. What kind of gear would I need for that sort of job?”

  She pinched a morsel of chicken from my plate and sucked it up the way the other customers were. I fumbled with a clump of rice and managed to get it to my mouth without getting any on my shirt. The kitchen staff, visible and audible through the glass partition in the back, matched the patrons in volume. Except for the cucumber, the food was excellent.

  After thinking it over Amelia Yeats said, “You could run a bug through FM radio, but to guarantee sound quality, at the very least we’d need an interface, a wireless system and a battery-powered mic.”

  “It has to be impossible to detect. High-powered, enough to pick up low voices clearly. At least one of the speakers is a mumbler.”

  “How much time do I have to plant it?”

  “Ten seconds, probably less. And I can’t guarantee we’d get the chance to retrieve it.”

  She broke the last eggroll in two and slathered her half in plum sauce. “High-fidelity, invisible, battery-powered and disposable. On what kind of budget?”

  “What can you make do with?”

  She started scribbling on a napkin. “I have most of the gear,” she said. “I can probably pick up the rest of the parts at Radio Shack.”

  “You make your own microphones?”

  She shrugged. “When I was thirteen I made a decent low-frequency mic out of a reverse-wired Kenmore woofer. I still use it occasionally for kick drums. Not exactly a Neumann U-87, but it serves a purpose.”

  “What’ll it cost?”

  Another shrug. “If it’s to help Cliff, no charge,” she said. Then looking up at me: “But I get to be the one that plants it.”

  I wanted to object. I started to. But the waitress buzzed by to clear the empty plates and ask if we wanted coffee or sponge cake.

  “Just the check,” I said.

  “Like me to split it?”

  “Please,” Amelia Yeats said, but I handed the waitress two twenties. “I got this.”

  “What’d you do that for?” she said after the waitress was gone.

  “It could be the only money you get out of this. Private detection isn’t a thriving business.”

  “When will you need the mic by?” she said once the waitress had returned with the change. I left it on the table as we pulled on our coats.

  “Tuesday work?”

  “I can do that, long as the parts are in.”

  “Great.” I slid my card across the table. “Tuesday at eleven, my office. Two-eight-eight-two Beckett Street.”

  “Should be fun,” she said.

  I crawled through another weekend in the Kroons’ office.

  Sunday I took my grandmother to the flea market in Cloverdale. The admissions girl found it funny I didn’t want my hand stamped. As we pushed into the throng of poorly-dressed and irritable bargain-hunters, my grandmother said, “I don’t see why we didn’t just go to the one on Terminal.”

  “The one on Terminal’s nothing but dealers and junk,” I said. “This one’s worth the drive. At least they don’t get offended when you try to bargain. Plus it’s near the Pannekoek House.”

  “You’re taking me to breakfast?” she asked.

  “I will if you don’t piss me off.” I squeezed her shoulder.

  Later, as we walked through the parking maze, her searching her pockets for the keys and me carrying an azalea in a hanging pot, a pair of drapes, and a brass samovar, she looked at the latter and said, “I don’t know what you need with that thing.”

  “It’s for the office.”

  “Who drinks that much coffee? You don’t even like coffee.”

  “Maybe I just like samovars.”

  She shook her head, ready to up-end her purse on the concrete if the keys didn’t materialize. She checked the zippered side pouch.

  “Your mother loved knickknacks and junk, too. She used to collect old typewriters. Never wrote a word on any of them. There!” She came up with the keys. “And do you know how hard brass is to clean?”

  “A little CLR and water, good as new.”

  “I don’t know where you get that stubbornness, Michael. Certainly not from my part of the family. That’s a Kessler trait.”

  “What exactly are the Drayton traits?” I asked her.

  “Oh, don’t worry, you’re not much like him.”

  Him.

  “So all the virtues come from your side, and all the riffraff from the Draytons and Kesslers?”

  She answered, “My side did quite well for itself. And we did it without ever buying a dirty used samovar.”

  I don’t understand why people talk to their dogs, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t engaged in that practice myself. At the park on Monday night my dog shot me a look of admonishment, as if to say, “So you’ve added criminal invasion of privacy to your job description? And you think it’s going to work out? Or stop there?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her.

  Tuesday I picked up Katherine from her boyfriend’s parents’ house and Ben in front of the Djembe Hut. I swung by a Tim Horton’s and bought an assorted dozen. At the office I steeped a gallon of tea in the samovar and cleared the table of everything except the Loeb file and a pad of graph paper. Katherine folded back the flaps on the doughnut carton and set out napkins in a neat square pile. Ben deliberately mussed up her pattern. We set up folding chairs and waited for the others to arrive.

  They weren’t long. Cliff Szabo was there at two minutes to eleven, Amelia Yeats at eleven ten. Katherine glared at her. Ben tucked the manga he was reading under his chair.

  When they were seated, all eyes drifted to me. I’d never chaired a meeting in my life.

  “Here’s the situation as it stands,” I said. “Mr. Szabo’s son disappeared from outside Imperial Pawn. More specifically, Django was in a car that disappeared, along with the car’s contents, including a bicycle.”

  “A Schwinn Bicentennial,” Szabo clarified.

  “It is entirely possible that the pawn shop owner, Mr. Ramsey, and his daughter Lisa, know jack-shit about this disappearance. But I don’t get that feeling.”

  “They’re liars,” Szabo said. “Tried to cheat me every time.”

  “Then why do business with them in the first place?” Ben asked.

  “I have options?”

  “We’re getting off track,” I said. “They know something we need to know. They won’t talk to us. I want to make them talk to each other.”

  Nods, silence. Katherine said, “Well if nobody else is going to have tea, I will.” That prompted paper cups to be filled and passed out, and the box of doughnuts to make the rounds.

  “So what’s your plan?” Ben said.

  “Bug them and make them frightened enough to talk,” I said. “That requires someone to cause a distraction while someone else plants the bug.”

  “Which I’m doing,” Amelia Yeats said.

  “Isn’t that up to Mike?” Katherine said.

  “It’s part of our arrangement.” I flipped around the graph pad so they could see the sloppy floor plan of the pawn shop I’d drawn from memory. I pointed to the squiggle that stood for the back room door. “In there is where the bug has to go. Tomorrow Katherine will drop in and try to get a glimpse of what’s back there, so we can hide the mic in something appropriate.”

  “Why me?” Katherine asked.

  “Because they don’t know what you look like, and if you pop up later it’s unlikely they’ll find you suspicious.”

  “Meaning I have a forgettable face?�
�

  Amelia Yeats made the tiniest of shrugs.

  Ben said, “I could do that.”

  “No you can’t,” I said. To Katherine: “On the day of, I want you to go in there with money and pretend to be shopping for something, maybe a camera. I need you to get lots of merchandise out on the counter, so the Ramseys’ attention will be split between the merch and the customers. Then Mr. Szabo enters and yells at them. That way, even if they re-check the security tape, all they’ll focus on will be the cluster of people around their high-end gear.”

  “What will you do?” Yeats asked.

  Szabo had been sipping his tea, eyes gravitating to his son’s face on the stack of flyers atop the cabinet.

  “Mr. Szabo will storm in and accuse them, loudly, of knowing about Django’s disappearance. I’ll go in and pretend to wrestle him out of the store. My hope is, in the aftermath, the Ramseys will retreat to the back room and discuss things, maybe even contact whoever did it.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to break in at night and plant the bug?” Ben asked. “You could do that yourself, when they’re not around, then wait for them to bring up Django.”

  “Airtight plan,” I said. “Except that A, I’m not a fucking ninja and I don’t break into places, and B, I don’t have an inexhaustible supply of manpower to listen to them for weeks and weeks. And C, if they know about the kid, I want to know now, not when they feel like talking about it. That’s not something that comes up in day to day conversation.”

  “Okay,” Ben said. “But if you think they might try to contact the guy, why not tap their phones?”

  “Yeah, and I’ll calibrate my infrared geo-satellites to peer into the store. And I’ll hire Gene Hackman and John Cazale to record every word the Ramseys say.”

  I took a breath and a bite of doughnut.

  “Fact is, if I get a name I’ll be happy. A name is somewhere to start.” I looked around. “Any other poorly conceived objections?”

  “Do you know how much of this is against the law?” Katherine asked me.

  “Ten percent?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “It’s academic because we’re not going to get caught.”

  “Right,” Amelia Yeats said. “The useless shitheads on the VPD couldn’t help Cliff, so why worry that they’re going to be able to catch us?”

  “Most of the cops mean well,” I said.

  “Bullshit. They’re thugs who beat gays and immigrants just for being different. Any excuse to shoot or Taser someone.”

  Katherine looked at me, grinning, like, “You’re gonna take that?”

  I said, “All we have to agree on is that this could help. Could. No guarantee. But I don’t see any alternatives.”

  Whatever energy was in the room dimmed and the meeting was over.

  “Someone want to take the rest of these doughnuts home?” Katherine asked as she swept up the coffee cups into the trash basket.

  “I’m sure you do,” Amelia Yeats said.

  Katherine bit her tongue and looked away.

  To me Yeats said, “Can I speak to you alone for a minute?”

  Outside on the pavement she handed me the bug, which, with battery, was about the size of my thumb. “Twelve bucks seventy cents in parts, including battery.”

  I dug out my wallet as Cliff passed us, heading towards where he’d parked his car. We nodded at each other. I offered Amelia Yeats the money but she pushed my hand away.

  “Anything for Cliff,” she said. “Especially if he comes through with that two-inch tape.” She lit a cigarette, offered me one, du Maurier Lights. “My friend’s band’s playing the Commodore next week. They’re not bad for a tribute band, although the new rhythm section hasn’t gelled yet. You’re welcome to come.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, trying to think of the last concert I’d been to.

  “I can put her on the guest list too.”

  “Katherine? We’re not together.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Both feet weren’t in the office before Katherine said, “She is such a bitch.”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  “And her ‘fuck the police’ rant? I’d’ve clocked her there and then.”

  “Katherine’s experiencing what the French call l’espirit de l’escalier,” Ben said without looking up from his book. “Stairway wit. She’s thinking of all the great comebacks she should’ve said ten minutes ago.”

  “I should’ve shoved her down that stairway,” Katherine said.

  “I had a talk with her about that,” I said. “I straightened things out. It won’t happen again.”

  “Good,” she said.

  VIII

  The Hastings Street Irregulars, Part II

  It rained Wednesday night. In the morning there was a rainbow over Cordova Street, its apex above the train yard along the waterfront. I didn’t know what that could portend.

  Katherine’s boyfriend and his parents shared a condo on Wall Street. I parked behind their Odyssey and followed the walkway around until I saw their slice of ground-floor terrace. I leaned over the guardrail and tapped on the sliding glass door. The boyfriend looked up from his yogurt and reached over to unlatch the door and pull it open. I climbed over the rail and wiped my feet on the concrete before stepping inside.

  I don’t like Katherine’s boyfriend, Scott Shipley. I’m not quite sure why. I get the feeling he doesn’t like me, or doesn’t approve of Katherine working with me. Tall and pasty with an over-pronounced Adam’s apple, red stringy hair that comes over his brow at an obtuse angle, like Gyro Gearloose from Duck Tales. That morning he was wearing blue briefs and a two-tone long-sleeve shirt.

  “How’s your day going?” I asked.

  “All right I guess.”

  “Katherine about?”

  “Changing.”

  I sat down at the table and watched him spoon up yogurt.

  “You’re taking the van again?” he asked. “Do me a couple favors? First, could you please fill it up with gas if you drive it for any length of time? Second, in the future, when my mom says specifically to bring it back for noon, could have it back for noon, not two fifteen?”

  “Reasonable requests,” I said.

  He nodded and resumed eating and scanning the newspaper.

  I asked him, “How’s that Flesh Light working out for you?”

  I don’t see how yogurt could catch in someone’s throat, but Scott covered his mouth and coughed, his spoon clattering back into the bowl. I heard Katherine bounding down the stairs and I stood up.

  “Sex toys are nothing to be embarrassed about,” I said. “Personally I’m content with the hand, but some people like to explore the frontiers. And shouldn’t we be glad to live in a pluralistic society that welcomes those differences?”

  By the end of the coughing fit Scott’s face had turned pink. Katherine strode into the kitchen, school bag over one shoulder. She pulled out a chair from the table and sat down to pull on her hiking boots. After a minute of pure silence she looked up and said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” Scott said.

  “We’re good,” I said.

  She insisted on walking out the front door instead of going over the back rail. Out of earshot of the apartment she said, “I don’t know why you two can’t get along.”

  “Jealousy,” I said. “He’s not the first to be driven to it. I have that affect on people. It’s something I’ve learned to live with.”

  “You could be more considerate.”

  “True. But I bet you don’t chide him the way you do me.”

  “We argue all the time,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  At the curb I opened the trunk of the Camry and began shifting gear into the van. I folded down the Odyssey’s back bench and took out one of the seats in the middle row.

  “It occurs to me,” I said, carrying the seat over to the trunk of the Camry, “that we have the opposite of a professional relationship, where
you think being an employee gives you the right to criticize the boss.”

  “Is it criticism to ask you to observe the bare minimum of etiquette?”

  “I paid to borrow the van,” I said. “If I’m a couple minutes late and I forgot to top up the tank —”

  “So a ‘please’ and ‘thanks’ are out of the question, Mike?”

  She settled into the driver’s seat, me sitting shotgun with an eye to the gear in the back. She made a left to get us onto Hastings.

  I said, “Please convey to the Shipleys my immense gratitude for the usage of their conveyance.”

  “More like it,” Katherine said.

  We picked up Ben. Then we swung by my grandmother’s house. I ran inside and came out cradling my dog. I connected her leash, handing it to Ben before letting her down onto the floor of the van.

  “You can’t bring that thing with us,” Katherine said.

  “She’s good luck.” I caught Ben breaking off a piece of muffin. “Do not feed her that.”

  Katherine had reconnoitered Imperial Pawn Tuesday after the meeting. She’d measured the distance from the entrance to the back room (eight strides to the counter, two more to the back wall, five at most to navigate around the counter and the floor junk). She’d seen into the back room. It was dark but she was sure she’d seen a box full of blue VHS cases. So that was what we encased the bug in. Amelia Yeats had taken an old head-cleaning tape, scooped out the guts, and mounted the bug inside. I’d visited four Salvation Army stores before finding an identical blue plastic VHS case. The cashier had registered shock when I forked over two quarters for Don Cherry’s Rock’Em Sock’Em Hockey Volume Four, only to dump the cassette and the cardboard insert in the trash and walk out with the case.

  The jump-off point — it had taken all of a day for Mission: Impossible lingo to invade the office — was two blocks up the street in the parking lot behind a Ricky’s. Cliff Szabo and Amelia Yeats were waiting for us. They hunkered down on the floor of the van while I outlined the order: Yeats first, then Katherine, then Szabo and I. I would drag Szabo out, Katherine would linger, Yeats would leave after us as soon as seemed reasonable.