by Sam Wiebe
I chewed a granola bar. Burl Ives was singing “Streets of Laredo.” Odd to think of the snowman from the stop-motion Rudolph singing anything other than “Holly Jolly Christmas.” I realized this would be the first Christmas without the dog. I finished my bar and stowed the wrapper in the ashtray.
Porch lights snapped on up the block as robed women dragged garbage cans and blue bins out to the curb. Zak Atero’s brother Theo came down the front steps of his house and plunked a knotted green bag by the edge of his car. He wore red dotted boxer shorts and a brown tank top, showing tanned muscular forearms that connected to pale hairy upper arms thick with wobbly flesh. His horseshoe of hair stood at all angles. He was barefoot.
Theo disappeared inside. Leadbelly, Victoria Spivey, Dick Justice and Mississippi John Hurt took their turns on the car stereo. When Theo exited his front door for the second time, he was dressed in a pale blue short-sleeved dress shirt. He carried a brown suede jacket and a suitcase with gouges in its vinyl covering. He stored jacket and case in the trunk of a late eighties Mustang, its deep red paint scarred and flecked with rust. Theo started the car and let it idle a moment, kicking out enough black soot to suggest a problem with the exhaust system. Eventually he turned on his lights, swung the Mustang around and drove past me. I waited until the end of disk one before climbing out of my car with my gym bag and walking around to the back entrance of the Atero household.
The back door had a pet flap. I wondered when the last Atero pet had kicked off and what it had died from. I couldn’t quite reach the handle when I put my arm through the flap, but the porch window was wide and low and unlocked.
I searched the upstairs and the ground floor, finding stacks of car repair manuals and plates covered with congealed grease and cheese. I found two thousand dollars in twenties and a .22 target pistol in the bottom drawer of Theo’s armoire. His pay stubs, a messy pile on the shelf beneath his nightstand, showed he worked as a floor manager for a warehouse in Coquitlam. The other room on the top floor contained a queen-sized mattress stripped of coverings and boxes piled everywhere. I opened a few of them: knickknacks belonging to their parents, tax returns, old Chatelaines and Car and Drivers. Nothing to link them to Django Szabo, but I hadn’t expected anything. Whatever connection existed would be found in Zak’s room. I made sure the gun was empty, left everything, and took two flights of stairs down to the basement.
The television was running some early morning exercise show where a woman with a beatific smile put a class through yoga positions. Atero was asleep on the couch. I turned the television off and sat on the armrest by his feet so my shoes were resting on the seat cushion. My gym bag sat on the floor within easy reach. The room was dirty and bare, quiet except for Zak Atero’s soft snoring. I stared down at him. He was wearing an orange shirt with an Atari logo, blue briefs with white trim. He was still wearing socks.
I prodded his stomach with my shoe. “Wake up, Zak.”
He snorted and tried to roll over towards the back of the couch. I jabbed him in the ribs. His breath caught and his eyes opened. I waited for him to focus.
“What’s going on?” he said through a yawn.
“Sit up and look at me.”
He propped himself on his elbows, the situation starting to focus for him. I kept my hands in the pockets of my coat.
“You’re the guy,” he said, “from the office on Hastings.”
“Two-Eight-Eight-Two, cross street Beckett, anytime you want to find me.” Confident, easy. “I also make house calls.”
His head sunk to the left and he stared at the clock above the TV. “It’s five already? Shit, I’m late.” His legs stirred, testing to see if I’d allow him to stand up. I shook my head.
“It’s 5:00 a.m., Zak. Your brother won’t be back for ten hours, you don’t have anywhere to go, and we have a lot to cover.”
“I told you already, dude —”
“None of this ‘I told you already’ shit,” I said. “I want to know what happened on March the 6th. Leave nothing out.”
“How can I tell you what I don’t know?”
“Understand something, Zak.” I looked down at the gym bag, made sure he saw me look at it. “Neither of us is leaving this room until you tell me what happened to Django Szabo. Now, I don’t want to lay hands on you, which I’m sure you’re not too keen on either. But I will beat you till you beg me for permission to die if that’s what it takes.”
I moved my leg to the floor and kicked the gym bag, hard enough so Atero could hear the clank of metal beneath the canvas. I grinned down at him.
His arm extended to the pipe resting on the ottoman. “I got to at least get a little high. You got to at least let me have that.”
I booted the ottoman hard enough to send it rolling into the wall with a thud. The pipe, the bag, the ashtray, and clickers all hit the floor.
“Man —” he began.
“— Tell it and then you can get as fucked up as you want.”
He nodded.
“What happened was, a friend of mine had a similar car to the, whatever their names are, their car.”
“Szabo. What kind of car?”
“Four-door Taurus wagon, brown, 1997 I think. Seven or eight. So anyway, their car and my friend’s car —”
I swatted him on the side of the head. He looked up at me incredulously. “What’d you hit me for?’
“You lied to me. Don’t want to get hit, don’t lie.”
“I was explaining —”
“You don’t have any friend, Zak. You were ripping rides in front of the pawn shop.”
He nodded. “So I walk by it and see one of the pegs is up. The door pegs, like for the locks.”
“Go on.”
“Car’s empty, least I think that. I go around the block, come back, street’s clear, I take another look, see that there’s no club on the wheel. Not like I brought a slim-jim and cutters with me. I mean, I suffer from impulse control and this car’s sitting there with a bow on it. So I open the door and start it up.”
“How long till you realized the kid was on board?”
“I was almost at the handoff,” Zak admitted. “I called Fat Rick, told him to meet me under the bridge at Marine, usual place. I’m on Cambie, within three blocks, and I see these little eyes staring at me in the mirror. Like to have a heart attack when I saw him.”
“What happened at the handoff?”
“Didn’t make the handoff,” he said, shaking his head as if the wisdom of that decision was apparent. “Rick’s not like that. I hand him a car with a faulty taillight I never hear the end of it. ’Magine what he does I hand him a car that’s still got a passenger?”
“So you went where?”
Atero shrugged and snorted. “I don’t remember.”
“Where, Zak?” I raised my hand and he flinched.
“Hey, look.” Eyes fixed on me, his version of sincere. “I look like a pedophile to you? Someone who hurts kids?”
“Prove to me you’re not.”
His head collapsed back onto the armrest. “I can’t help you.”
I said, “I can imagine a scenario where, you’re driving, you see the kid, he’s scared, you’re scared, and maybe he’s acting up in a way that’s dangerous. Maybe you try to keep him still, in the interest of safe driving. And maybe the kid hit his head, or passed out and never woke up. Or you didn’t know your own strength.”
Atero’s eyes were closed, tears forming in the corners, a bubble of spit between his lips.
“My point is, Zak, these are things the court would take into account were you to come forward and show remorse. But you’ve got to tell me where you stashed that kid’s body. That’s the only way you’ll earn yourself a break.”
“I wouldn’t hurt anyone,” he blubbered. “I just like cars.”
I prodded him. “We’re doing good being truthful to one another. Let’s not louse it up now. Tell me where the body is. After that you can get good and high.”
“I don’t kn
ow.”
“Zak, another second I’m going to start beating on you.”
“Look look look,” he said, scooting up to a sitting position, putting negligible distance between us. “Look, okay? I didn’t hurt him. If anything’s happened it is not my fault.”
“Where’s the body?”
“There’s no body is what I’m telling you,” he said.
“Meaning he’s still alive?”
Zak Atero nodded. “I mean, far as I know.”
Of course I’d considered it as a possibility, a hypothesis. Not every missing child turns up dead. Usually, though, the fortunate ones get fortunate within a few weeks. With runaways, sometimes they show up years later, living their lives, their parents forgotten or at least out of mind. Intellectually I’d entertained the possibility, but my gut sense of things had written Django James Szabo off as dead even before my first meeting with his father. I’d had the same feeling with the Loeb case.
What Atero told me sounded genuine. I’d heard every permutation of lie from him already. This was different. Determining veracity is not a science, but I’d stake my reputation that he wasn’t lying when he said that Django passed from his hands alive and unharmed.
After he’d run through his story I unzipped the gym bag and removed a black metal tripod. I spread its legs, took an old-fashioned VHS camera from its travel case and threaded it onto the base of the tripod. I trained the lens on a medium closeup of Zak Atero.
“Tell it all the way through,” I said, focusing and pressing play.
My first thought was returning him, but I didn’t know where the boy lived, and I couldn’t just drive up and drop him at the pawn shop.
I thought of the pawn shop owners, the Ramseys. They seemed to know the boy’s father. How do I know the Ramseys? I work for a guy — don’t ask me his name — and Ramsey has a deal with him. I try not to know the details about things like that. Ramsey and I also have a sort of side agreement with regards to his parking lots. I’m not saying I tell him when I take a car, but there’s not much in his area that escapes him.
So I phone Ramsey on a burner and tell him I’m swinging back with the kid. He says no good, he’s not getting involved. Hangs up on me. ’Magine hanging up when there’s a kid involved.
Anyway, it’s no secret I suffer from certain weaknesses. It was getting pretty bad and I was desperate to ditch the kid. It was a weird situation. He’s sitting in the back staring at me with his little eyes. I’m freaking out more than him. He just kind of accepted it.
So I try to think where can I take him that’s safe, that there won’t be five-oh, and that I can get this other problem sorted out at the same time. I can’t go home and I can’t stay out on the road. There’s this girl I know, Dominique, don’t know her last name, couldn’t swear that was the name she was christened with. She and a couple of girlfriends have this house over on Fraser. Big empty garage out back.
Yes they were hookers, but when I say that, understand I’m not talking about rock hos from Surrey. These are nice girls. No pimp. They get protection from the same guy I work for. They do their business in the first floor and live upstairs. The other two were dykes, I do remember that. Always bitching to Dom about having me over in their house.
I drive over there and one of the other ones comes to the door and says Dom’s got a party, I should leave. I say I’m not going anywhere ’cause I need to get that car off the street, and I’m’a put it in the barn. She says no good, the john’s car’s in there. I’ll spare you the whole comedy routine, but I get the john’s keys and pull his car into the alley, then stow the Taurus inside. The kid’s just sitting in the back seat all this time.
Far as I know the car’s still there.
All the while the kid says nothing. Just watches me. I tell him come inside with me. He just nods.
Inside, Dom’s friend, the older one, Barb I think her name was, she sits him down in front of the TV, starts asking him does he want a sandwich, juice, that kind of thing. Never offered me a sandwich, I’ve known her three years. I’m halfway thinking she’s going to offer to take the little guy’s cherry for him.
Anyway, Dom calls this guy she knows and we go pick up what we need to. When we come back the kid’s still watching TV. The other girls are working, so Dom and I see to our business. Next thing I know it’s the next day. I see the kid sleeping as I head out on account of some pick up I have to make. I’m careful not to disturb him.
That’s the last I ever saw of that boy. Sure I’ve seen Dom and Barb and the other girl a couple times since, but never at their place.
Last time I saw any of them was two months ago. I ran into Dom and the other one at a club, might’ve been the Roxy, maybe the Commodore. I remember Dom was pissed at me, thinking I might have taken a bit more than my share of the dope, and that I was ducking her. Anyway, we made up.
Remember that freak summer storm that one weekend? Think it was July. Anyway, it’s raining when I go into the club, and on our way out it’s a righteous thunderstorm. Wind, rain, the whole bit. We went out to my car.
We attended to business, then we sat there, in the rain and thunder, counting the seconds between the flash and the rumble. The subject of the kid didn’t come up.
XVI
Staring Down the Hydra
Amelia Yeats answered her studio door in a long magenta T-shirt, hair clipped haphazardly out of her face. Seeing it was me at the door she pried open the clip and shook out her dark curls.
“I was just fixing this bass part,” she said as we climbed the staircases. I rationalized the attention I paid to her ass as precautionary, since at any second she could slip and I’d have to catch her.
I put the gym bag down in the corner of her control room and pulled up a chair. Yeats worked the faders on the console and made some judicious mouse clicks. “Pro Tools is the necessary evil of what I do,” she said. “Eli, the bass player, took seventeen passes on this song.”
“That a lot?”
“Not if you’re a perfectionist. All he has to do is play the root, but his tempo drags, he misses notes. Not every bass player has to be Carole Kay or James Jamerson, but I shouldn’t have to cut and paste each note just to get a few bars I can loop.” She sighed. “I hate people who don’t love what they do enough to do it well.”
She had assembled the equipment I’d asked for on the phone, a VCR and an old Sony Trinitron and a few cables. I hooked the camcorder up and began dubbing copies of Zak Atero’s confession. I had similar equipment in my office, but I was avoiding that place until I got the phone call. I’d told Katherine and Ben to do the same.
“Funny,” she said, “I don’t even know what kind of music you like.”
“All kinds,” I said.
“Everyone says that.”
My iPod was in my jacket pocket. I surrendered it to her and fought the urge to justify every sound file on it with a lengthy explanation or excuse.
“Curious,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Joe Strummer but no Clash. Iggy but no Bowie. I’d’ve thought you’d have more Rush.”
“I don’t really like Rush.”
“But you’re Canadian.”
Zak Atero’s mouth moved silently on the monitor. Yeats handed me my iPod back.
“It says your most listened-to song is ‘That’s What Love Will Make You Do’ by Little Milton. In fact, almost all your Top Twenty-Five are blues or R&B.”
“I like blues.”
“What do you think of Canned Heat?”
I made a face. “Can’t stand that guy’s voice. Plus their big hit song is lifted from Henry Thomas’s ‘Bull Doze Blues.’ Note for note down to the flute solo.”
“I’m not their biggest fan,” she admitted, “but you have to hear the double LP they put out with John Lee Hooker. Do you have a turntable?”
“Probably my grandmother does,” I said.
“I’ve got one back at the house, I’ll bring it by for you.”
Once
I had three copies I destroyed the original tape. I wiped my prints from each one. My hope was that using outdated technology would make it harder to trace back to me. Before I arrived I’d stopped at a PharmaSave and bought mailing envelopes and postage and a blue marker. I had Amelia Yeats address the envelopes: one to Gavin Fisk, one to Nate Holinshed at the Vancouver Sun, and one sent to my office. Once that was done, I cleaned up the mess and headed out to dump the garbage and mail the tapes.
“You have any kind of security in here?” I asked Yeats.
“I have one of these.” She pointed to a rusty aluminum bat in the corner. “Alarms, cameras, et cetera.”
“Don’t buzz up any strangers,” I said, feeling ridiculous saying it.
“Ever met a musician? How am I supposed to make a living?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “No unnecessary risks.”
“Besides hanging out with you.”
“That falls under the category of necessary risks,” I said, squeezing her shoulder on my way out.
At the top of the stairs she stopped me. “I want to tell you something.”
“Yeah?” Nonchalantly, which I managed only because her expression wasn’t hesitant.
“I take drugs,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Coke. Sometimes others. I don’t use needles and I’m not an addict. I don’t score on the street and I don’t fuck people for drugs.”
“Okay,” I said.
She swallowed. “And I wanted to tell you because last night I felt I had to hide it from you, because you’re a cop, or were, and I didn’t want to see that disappointed look on your face, and I didn’t want to hear a lecture on how I should stop. But I figured you should know.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want us moving any further without you knowing that.”
“Thank you.”
We regarded each other. I couldn’t recall seeing her exhibit any of the symptoms. Had I been so love-and-sex-obsessed, so infatuated, that I’d overlooked them? Or was her use so minimal and so regulated that she had it under control? Was that even possible?
