Last of the Independents

by Sam Wiebe

  “You’re taking a Gender Studies course, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t shut it down like that. It’s helping me articulate what I’ve been dealing with since I started working with you.” She squared her shoulders. “At times you can be like the guy who makes sexist jokes in the workplace, and when someone calls him on it, says, ‘Why can’t you women have a sense of humour?’”

  “I defy you to name something misogynist I’ve done or said to you, ever.”

  “It’s not about you, Mike, don’t get defensive. It’s about our relationship.” Quickly adding, “At work. This is the second time you’ve put me in a position where I either have to put myself in harm’s way, or else have you think I’m a ball buster. And don’t say it’s because you care so much about the Szabo kid. I know your intentions are good. This is about the way you do things, not what you’re trying to do.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to act like my main objection hadn’t just been kicked out from under me. “You know I respect your opinion — least I hope you know that. Why else would I want you to stay on? Far as putting you at risk, you’re not supposed to work today. Last thing I want is to get you in any kind of jackpot.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll admit that this confrontation with Atero could be a mistake. I took a shot with the pawn shop and I’m taking one here because I don’t see any options. And I hope you appreciate that.”

  “I do,” Katherine said.

  “And I can’t promise you that however this resolves itself, I won’t head right into another pile of shit. It’s how I work. It’s not a perilous job but it does have its risks.”

  She was nodding, ready to reply, but I was fired up now.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “I like that part of my work. Yesterday I disarmed a lunatic, put my cousin at risk, almost got myself shot.”

  “On Thanksgiving?”

  I nodded. “Best holiday I’ve had in a while. I’m not an adrenaline junkie, but I won’t deny that part of me wants to push things. I like putting people under pressure and seeing what happens. And I like being put under pressure. You learn things that way. My grandfather was like that, and I can see my cousin’s going to be, if she isn’t already. So maybe it’s genetic.”

  “And I’m not like that, is what you’re saying.” Katherine withdrew her hands from the table. “You don’t even know me, what I’ve been through.”

  “It’s not about you,” I said, quoting her. “It’s how you react. Me, I jump into the fray.”

  “Or start the fray.”

  “Right,” I said. “And you’re more staid. More prudent. But we seem to work well together.”

  “Occasionally.”

  “So how do we make this work? Do you want out?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want out.”

  “Do you want to stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should decide that soon.”

  So often after a blow-up, the easiest way to go on with things is to act as if it never occurred. Katherine studied and I sent out emails to the various groups and agencies that make up my Monday morning mailing list. Weekly emails aggravate some people, but most are sympathetic to a missing-child inquiry. I worked through the list for Django James Szabo and then ran the same list for Cynthia Loeb.

  I had a message from Pastor Flaherty saying he’d set up an interview for Mr. Szabo with the local news. He asked if I wanted to be present. I wrote him back saying that if Mr. Szabo requested it, I’d be there, but otherwise no. I hate being on television — I look greasy and eager, and since I don’t censor myself with any consistency, I tend to say the least helpful thing.

  At ten past ten, three people came through the door, none of them Zak Atero. Two looked to be in their sixties and all three were Chinese. We shook hands. When they seated themselves, the elderly couple sat across from me, while their grandson or nephew interpreted. The elderly man wore a blue short-sleeved dress shirt, red and black tie, dark blue pants with a sharp crease, and a digital watch with orange buttons. His wife wore black slacks and a green padded jacket, and sunglasses she never took off. Their grandson or nephew wore hip hop brands, cutting edge, but out of deference to his elders, his jersey was tucked in and his baseball cap was spun brim forward. His name was Frank, and the family name was Ko.

  Their story was a straightforward custody-related trace job. The Kos’ youngest son had married a white woman and they’d had a child, named Michael of all things. The son had flown to Taiwan on a business trip a year and a half ago. He’d been killed when his taxi was broadsided by a bus. In the aftermath, his wife Rita managed to piss away her share of her husband’s life insurance, from what I understood not an insignificant sum.

  As Frank told it, Rita had made unreasonable financial demands on the Kos, which had been turned down. A month ago, in retaliation, she took her son out of school, cleaned out her condo, and skipped town, leaving no note and no contact information.

  It sounded to me like a leverage move rather than a genuine attempt to sever ties. Rita seemed to be hoping that the family would be more supportive if she denied them access to Michael for a time. My suspicion was that she’d moved out to the suburbs, or possibly the Island, and was living under her maiden name, Riley. Sure enough, when I found them a week later, they were subletting a basement suite in an area of Fort Langley called Walnut Grove. Rita was working part-time in a strip mall electronics store, shtupping the evenings-and-weekends manager while little Michael languished in daycare.

  When Frank and the Kos had signed the contract and left, I said to Katherine, “You plan on moving to Montreal when you graduate?”

  “Haven’t thought about it,” she said. “I guess I’d go if a job was there. Why?”

  “You’re learning French.”

  “You might not be aware, Mike, but Canada is a bilingual nation.”

  “French won’t help you much if you stick around Vancouver. Why not learn Mandarin?”

  “Why don’t you learn Mandarin?”

  “I’m sitting here thinking that myself,” I said. “Might increase my client base, give me an edge. Learning French is like learning Latin, least if you live in B.C. Aside from reading the back of a Cheerios box, it’s of little practical use.”

  “I’ll inform the millions of Francophones you feel that way.”

  “You do that.”

  A while later she said, “You don’t know any French?”

  “‘Est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes?’ is about the sum of it.”

  Katherine left at one to catch a bus to the college. I pretended it was a work day like any other and sat at my table fielding emails. After a point preparation becomes counterproductive. The readiness is not all.

  Atero appeared on the stair camera at four. I was on the phone with Cliff Szabo finalizing plans for the interview. The journalist had talked his station into filming a news segment on Django James, replete with a rundown of the case, interviews with the principles, and probably a lot of shots of Django’s father walking the streets alone, turning his grief-stricken visage off-camera and sighing wistfully. Horseshit, yes, but that’s what it takes to get on the box.

  I made Atero wait on the landing until I’d concluded with Szabo, then ushered him in. He took in the room with brief sweeps of his head, nodding hyper-actively. Tweaked, possibly. I sat down and motioned for him to do the same.

  Up close Zachary Atero exhibited several signs of drug use, most obvious being the grey pallor to his skin. He clasped his hands, rubbed them, turned his wristwatch and fiddled with his cellphone, all before we even began to speak.

  “So, yeah,” he said, rubbing at his temple.

  I tipped my chair back. “So.”

  “You got something for me, is what you said.”

  “Did I?”

  “Some sort of paper bag, I think it was.” He sniffed, ran his hand under his nose reflexively, caught himself, and wiped his hand on his sequin
-covered hoodie.

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  Perplexed and grinning, Atero said, “You called me.”

  “But why are we here?”

  “Why are you —”

  “Why am I sitting behind this table, across from you? Why would I want to do that on a Tuesday afternoon?”

  Grinning still, all a misunderstanding. “How exactly would I know, dude, when you’re the one that set this up?”

  “Guess, Zak. Guess why I’m talking to you. What I want from you.”

  Eyes narrowing, cagey. “You’re a cop?”

  “I’m a botanist,” I said. “Answer the question. What could I want from you?”

  Snorting, sniffing, standing up. Pushing back from the table, glancing towards the door. His movements circular, hesitant.

  “Not sure ’zactly what you want me to say.”

  “Django James Szabo.”

  One eyebrow raised. “What’s that?”

  I pushed Django’s Missing flyer across the table. Atero took a step forward, looked down, then back at me. Dead-eyed, trying his best to keep me from reading his reaction.

  Child abductor, I thought.

  “I don’t fucking know anything about a missing kid,” he said.

  “Who would you suggest I ask?”

  “Man, how would I know? I look like I should have a kid around me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So why ask me?”

  “I figured you might know.”

  “Well I don’t.” He moved towards the door, then spun back, angry. “And I shouldn’t be made to answer questions like a common criminal and be treated like that. It’s against my rights.”

  Now I stood up and came around the table and looked down into his hatchet face. “Why, ’cause you’re a bag boy for some dipshit bookie?”

  Grinning and pulling back, he said, “You don’t have a clue who I represent, do you?”

  “Ask me if it keeps me up nights.”

  “Lloyd Crittenden. Know who he works for?” A broad smile, about to play his trump card. “Tony Chow.”

  The name resonated. “He’s incarcerated.”

  “Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what goes on,” Atero said. “Or that he won’t stick up for his boy.”

  “And you’re his boy?”

  “Like this,” he said, folding his middle finger over the index.

  The grin lost its voltage as I stared at him, a standard police issue eye-fucking, driving his grand rebellion back down to a petulant defiance.

  “This Crittenden,” I said, “he’s your boss?” Making it sound demeaning.

  “We work together,” Atero said.

  “You work for him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take me to him.”

  Eyebrows shooting up. “Pardon?”

  “Let’s go see him,” I said.

  “I can’t just do that.”

  Reaching to the table without breaking eye contact, I picked up one of my cards and handed it to him. “Give this to Crittenden,” I said.

  “Michael Drayton Hastings Street Investigations Last of the Independents,” he read without inflection or pause.

  Atero turned the card in his hand, probably weighing the pros and cons of tearing it up and throwing the scraps at my feet. Eventually he nodded. “I’ll tell him.” He left, pausing at the top of the stairs for one last scowl before the descent.

  It took me hours to unclench. When I got home my grandmother was watching some sort of crime drama on TV, the kind that adds a gloss of titillation to the weekly rape-murders before wrapping everything up by 7:58 sharp.

  I fixed dinner and then dragged my dog for a walk. I tried to tell myself, and the dog, that I’d actually done something to advance the case. Neither of us seemed all that certain.

  XIII

  Snake’s Eye

  Crittenden waited until Friday to contact me. Cliff Szabo had come by that morning for our weekly meeting, and I’d given him a rough account of what I’d been up to, omitting Crittenden and Zak Atero for the moment, which meant I told him nothing. Better nothing than not enough was my thinking: after his reaction to Ramsey, I was reluctant to give Cliff any provocation. All I had was a tenuous thread connecting a pawn shop owner to a car thief and the thief’s boss. Adding an irate father to the mix wouldn’t help anyone.

  When Crittenden phoned, I was leaning back in my chair, mind on Amelia Yeats. Ben was chewing Katherine’s ear about the superiority of Christian Bale’s Batman to all others. I took the call on the balcony, trying to distance myself from the conversation in the office and the steady hum of my own dirty thoughts.

  “Mr. Drayton? Michael Drayton?”

  “This is he.” Up the block two silver-haired cops were talking to a woman with a shopping cart full of liquor boxes and camping gear.

  “You’ve been expecting a call from me.”

  “Mr. Crittenden.”

  “Do you know me?”

  It seemed a strange question to ask. “I know you’re married to the niece of Anthony Chow, who owns property around the Lower Mainland, some of which might be legitimate.”

  Laughter over the cell-to-cell static. Up the street the cops were trying to calm the woman down and help her collect the mess of tent pegs and string which had fallen through the grated bottom of the cart and wound around the rear axle.

  “You’ve done your homework,” Crittenden said. “In point of fact Anthony is chiefly a restaurateur, and I oversee a few of his establishments.”

  “Making Zak Atero, what, delivery boy?”

  “How about we continue this conversation in person?” Crittenden said. “Do you know Blue Papaya on Richards? I can send a car for you.”

  The cops up the street were moving on, leaving the shopping cart lady to work out her own problems.

  “I can walk it,” I said.

  “If noon works, I’ll see you then.”

  It was 10:14 a.m. by the computer’s clock. In the time I was on the balcony Ben and Katherine had resolved nothing.

  “Can I be honest?” Katherine said to him. “Much as I love elaborate theories about different incarnations of Bruce Wayne, know what I like better? Getting my work done so I can study. Some of us have jobs that require we do them.” With a false smile she turned back to her keyboard as if the matter were settled.

  “Did your first-person shooter problem resolve itself?” I asked Ben, settling into my chair so I could view the clock without straining my neck.

  Ben shrugged. “They’re going ahead with it. Evidently I don’t have as much clout as I thought.”

  “None of us do.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “I was asking Hough what she was going as for Hallowe’en, and that prompted me to recall the most traumatic incident of my pre-teen years. Do you want to hear it?”

  “God no,” Katherine said without looking up.

  “Well in that case,” Ben said, and launched into his anecdote.

  I was weighing the idea of taking my gun with me. I decided against it. I decided if Crittenden wanted a shootout he wouldn’t have invited me so cordially, and if he wanted to threaten me, then possessing a gun wouldn’t tip things in my balance. Better he saw me as a civilian.

  Ben said, “It was right after the Animated Series came out, and guess what I wanted to go as for Hallowe’en. I remember they had an amazing costume at the mall, utility belt, cowl, the works. My mom said we couldn’t afford it.”

  “What a hardship,” Katherine said.

  “I begged and pleaded, and eventually Mom said she’d make me one. Her mom was a seamstress. Mom didn’t carry on that tradition — too bourgeois for her when she was growing up — but she had all the sewing stuff, her mom’s Jay-gnome and the rest.”

  “It’s pronounced Ja-no-me,” Katherine said. “Janome. In Japanese it means ‘snake’s eye.’”

  “Anyway, day and night Mom worked on this costume. I think she actually had to start over again because the first one was too
small. Day of the class Hallowe’en party she let me try it on. I was so stoked.”

  While Ben spoke I thought, I am scared shitless. I put that thought under glass and examined it, like a fresh specimen on a lepidopterist’s table. I decided that instead of the gun I’d bring my fold-out pocket knife. Useless in a fight, but it worked well enough as a totem. I ran my hand over the wood handle with its steel fasteners and felt a little better.

  Ben said, “My Mom’s costume, God bless her, was a mess. The cowl was a toque with floppy triangles stitched on. The cape was safety-pinned to a pair of my dad’s long underwear. Brown long underwear. A utility belt made of yellow felt, and for some reason, fingerless gloves. I mean, just picture a fat kid in that getup.”

  Katherine was laughing despite herself.

  “So I get to the party and of course there’s eight other Bat-men, all in their badass store-bought costumes, and me, looking more like the piano-playing dog from the Muppets. Believe me I got my ass kicked. I put it all on my mom. She was so upset she swore off sewing. When I think back I remember the physical beating, then the anger at my mom for trotting me out in that sacrificial lamb costume, and then the shame from years later over how bad I made her feel after she worked so hard. ‘It’s the thought that counts’ doesn’t fly with kids. That is trauma.”

  “I went as a spider one year,” Katherine said. “Cotton batting web draped around my real arms to hold up the two fake ones, and yes I know a spider has eight, but mine had four. I remember everything coming loose and unfurling, and some poor girl, I think it was Sarah Whitehead, tripped over it and sprained her ankle.”

  “Homemade costumes are the worst,” Ben said. He turned to me. “Any horror stories?”

  “I went as a cop for seven years running,” I said. “One year, though, I was big into pro wrestling and I went as —”

  “Macho Man?” Katherine asked. “Jake the Snake?”

  “Worse. Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart. Pink leotard, drug store shades, Intercontinental championship belt made of aluminum foil. Now that was an ass-kicking.”