by Sam Wiebe
“To kick my ass?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t have the worst claim in the world for it,” I said. “How long do you want me up on Chambers?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it was a stupid idea.”
Sonia got in the car. Lit by the interior light her face looked beyond physically fatigued, as if the workout had tapped into her reservoir of hope.
Twenty-Three
Chris Chambers’s Lexus was parked in front of his house, amid the dark sedans of his white-collar neighbors. Lights on in the kitchen, television flicker from the upstairs den. Other lights snapped off individually. Shutting down the house for the night.
I wondered what their bedroom ritual was like. Did they wear pajamas, did they brush their teeth or piss with the bathroom door open. Who initiated sex. Who doled it out. Oral? Toys? It wasn’t voyeuristic. It was time-passing. Like wondering what they’d ordered in for dinner.
When the last light blinked out I started the engine. I was pulling up the block when Chambers left the house.
He’d donned a leather bomber jacket and a baseball cap, and what looked like steel-toed work boots. I pulled over and killed the lights but let the engine idle. Chambers passed me, driving his customary thirty over the limit.
I followed with the lights out, glad when he pulled onto Hastings. Traffic slim but enough to keep a few cars between us. Back into the city we went.
I was half-expecting a turn into Yaletown, another meeting with Qiu. Instead Chambers drove to Main, to the stretch of bar-hotels that began with the Waverley and ended in Chinatown. Chambers parked on the street and stuck something on his dash. I waited till he ducked into the Cobalt, then parked a few spaces behind him.
He was all of six minutes, and when he came out he started walking down Main toward the waterfront. A one-person foot tail was dicey, but the only option.
All kinds of desperation huddled under the awnings. Chambers nearly collided with a dreadlocked man pushing a shopping cart, its casters squealing as Chambers shoved past.
He was asked for change and cigarettes and so was I. Chambers didn’t look back.
I crossed the street and watched him turn in to a by-the-slice pizza joint. He came out sans food or beverage, went up another block and ducked into the Electric Owl. A moment later he was back outside, this time heading for the Crossroads Inn, sharing a gruff hello with the doorman as he entered.
I loitered by the bus stop and wished I still smoked cigarettes. Two weeks of breathing wildfire smoke had cured me, at least temporarily. The urge flared up as I watched the door of the Crossroads.
A bus shuffled by. Chambers didn’t come out, which meant he’d found whatever he’d been chasing. I headed inside.
A karaoke party in full swing, drunken warbling and peals of laughter from the corner stage. Flock of Seagulls bleeding into Paula Abdul. Scattered barflies at the tables. The bar itself was a battered wooden island holding tubs of ice and beer. Behind it, a mosaic of liquor bottles on the shelves, lit by naked bulbs framing a greasy mirror.
No Chambers.
At the bar a slim young man in a suit monopolized the bartender’s time. He was drinking from a pint glass filled with something silty and yellow. His suit was rumpled and the hat he wore seemed to have been fetched from the closet of an elderly relative. He kept up a steady patter, punctuated by nods and yuh-huhs from the bartender as she filled a tray with shot glasses.
I sat down and had a beer brought to me, left the change on the table. The room was dim, what light there was tinged green. Heat and volume beyond comfort. A few singles talked and made sorties to the bar.
The man in the suit rapped on the counter and grabbed his crotch, smiling and still speaking. He made what he thought was a straight line for the toilets.
He was intercepted by a hand reaching out from a booth. It settled firmly on the suit’s shoulder and shoved him toward the back of the club. The hand belonged to Chris Chambers.
The cop’s face was a blank, his jaw clenched as if holding back disgust. The suit’s grin was pure fear.
Chambers marched him down a hallway and out the service door. I followed, putting on a drunk act in case anyone was watching Chambers’s back. The door was wedged open and I could hear the sound of a hat being knocked off someone’s head.
“—and then three days later here you are drinking imported beer with his money, ’stead of paying him back.”
“Chris, not like I was—”
“Shut up and turn your bitch pockets out.”
A rustling sound, coins hitting concrete. Then a fabric swish as the suit bent over to retrieve them.
“Where’s the rest?”
“What rest, if I had more don’t you think I’d give it to you?”
“This goes easier I have something to show the Restaurant Man.”
The sound of clothing being adjusted, the revealing of someone’s hidden cache.
“Kind of mutt buys dope with his boss’s money?”
“I know I got problems. Please. One more day, everything’s squared. I’ve got things playing out.”
“Let me see that hand, Miles.”
“Please. One day.”
“Double. One day.”
“Sure, of course, I swear.”
“Good.”
“Thanks, Chris. Thank you.”
“Welcome. Now your hand.”
“Please.” The word stuttered and blubbered out in half syllables.
“Stick it in the door. Whole hand.”
I stepped back as Chambers’s foot kicked out the wedge. I saw a hand placed tightly on the frame. The door opened slightly and swiftly swung closed. A scream carried inside and the fingers retracted.
“Put it fucking back,” Chambers’s voice said.
The hand was replaced. Chambers stamped the door. Three heavy bootfalls on the hollow metal along with the agonized whimpers of Miles.
The door opened. Two heavy hands inspected the mangled one. Chambers shushed him.
“Lucky the Restaurant Man didn’t send someone enjoys this shit,” Chambers said. “Else it wouldn’t be your hand, Miles. Count your fucking blessings.”
A rustling sound I could barely hear over the drone of the music. “Pizza napkins’ll do till you get your ass to St. Paul’s, get a real bandage.” Chambers’s voice held some concern. “Holding?”
“Nah.”
“I search your pockets—”
“All right, all right. Shit.”
A vigorous snort from Chambers, one from Miles.
“Good. Get yourself fixed up and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t care how. And don’t make me hunt for you.”
“Won’t, I promise.”
“Make me waste my goddamned time tracking you down. You should fucking know better, Miles. And you’re running out of hands.”
“I know. Won’t happen again.”
“This shit isn’t fun for me.”
“I’m sorry, Chris.”
I backed out of the hallway and turned away. Chambers passed and entered the washroom. The bartender asked if I wanted something and I asked if I could call a cab. She said that was against the rules, that drunks tended to get sentimental and dial Mom and Dad in Saskatoon, but she’d order me one if I wanted.
In my peripheral I watched Chambers head toward the front, dropping a brown paper towel on the dance floor as he passed. I put two twenties on the bar.
“Order one for the guy in the alley,” I said. “Give the cabbie one of these up front, tell him St. Paul’s.”
“Do I want to know?” she asked. Then, answering her own question, she picked up the receiver.
Twenty-Four
Sonia wasn’t answering her phone. I thought of leaving a message but figured she wouldn’t want that. But then I wasn’t sure I cared what she wanted. Images came to mind: Miles’s mangled hand and the nauseating way he’d apologized to Chambers. If Sonia had known—and if sh
e hadn’t known—
I stayed with the Sorenson case. It was more manageable, if no less perplexing. A picture was emerging of Tabitha Sorenson. Clever and foolish, furious and ironically detached. She’d see the injustices of the world as justification for fraud. When the opportunity to borrow the money was practically dropped in her lap, it was too good to pass up.
That was the key—opportunity.
Tabitha was smart, maybe brilliant. She’d executed her scheme well. But she’d planned it on the fly. Emotion had guided her—exhilaration, fear, and something else that I couldn’t think of.
In the small office on Pender I cracked the window, allowing the chill and the sound of rain to lull me to sleep. When I woke someone was coming through the door. Kay, carrying coffee and a paper sleeve holding a bagel.
“Your phone’s dead,” she said. “You weren’t at your place or Hastings.”
“Something up?”
“Just worried,” Kay said.
“Don’t be.”
I dumped the remnants of last night’s tea in the trash and plugged in the kettle.
Stringing a tea bag around the handle of the mug, I said to Kay, “Sake of argument, let’s say Tabitha made off with half a million dollars. What would a young, somewhat educated woman in her twenties do with that kind of money?”
“She doesn’t seem like she’d be into ponies.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
“Well, I’d never work again,” Kay said. She thought about it. “I do like horses. Travel, maybe. You?”
I took the seat by the window. “Get a house. Maybe buy this building, fix it up.”
“My half brother, the landlord-slash-private eye. Or would you quit?”
“I’d probably pick my clients more carefully.”
“You’d never quit,” Kay said. “Without this job you’d be like that old guy from Shawshank, end up hanging from a ceiling beam somewhere.”
“Thing is,” I said, “it’s not that much money. Whatever Tabitha did, she’d have to be careful. She could get out of the country, but where would she go? Did she use a false passport? Or sneak into the States?” I thought of something. “You know if Tabitha took a language course?”
“Which question did you want me to answer?” Kay said.
“Last one. How much French did she learn?”
“As much as you need to pass high school in Vancouver,” Kay said. “Which is—”
“Next to none. And college?”
“Spanish Zero Nine Nine, ‘Intro to Latin American Culture Through Film.’ That’s all.”
“Tabitha’s not a career criminal,” I said. “She’s getting by on brains and audacity. Remember, she didn’t high-tail after the scandal, she was around for the first part of the audit.”
“And then split after because why? Waiting for the right time?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Or maybe something scared her,” Kay ventured. “Like what if Tabitha was in on it with one of the others. Dhillon, maybe, they were close. They could’ve had a falling out. Or they could all be in on it together.”
“If she did have an accomplice, I’d bet on Mastellotto. More of a political angle than a financial one. That’s who she looked up to, her last couple semesters.”
“What about Dana Essex?” Kay said. “Don’t laugh, she would’ve seen a lot of Tabitha, same as Mastellotto. Plus she was on that events committee.”
“Possible,” I said, “unless you’ve met her and seen she’s the type who looks both ways before crossing her own driveway. She doesn’t know Tabitha well. And I don’t think she has the first clue about money.”
“She’s paying us,” Kay said.
“Which tells you plenty.”
Down the other end of the street, a tour bus rolled by at full speed. Detour, maybe. Or maybe they were including this area in a “Seamy Side of Vancouver” tour. Not too much seaminess in the middle of the day.
“This point it’s all conjecture,” I said. “She might’ve had help, but she kept her family and schoolmates out of the loop. We’ll learn more from her credit report than we did from them.”
“All those people we talked to,” Kay said, “and we still don’t know who she is. How can someone hide so much of themselves? It’s like maybe even she didn’t know who she was.”
Twenty-Five
The credit report finally came in. After lunch I walked over to the Hastings office. I picked the form out of my in-box along with the rest of the correspondence and locked myself in the boardroom.
Tabitha Sorenson’s credit score was in the high 700s. Good for anyone and miraculous for a college kid. She’d made regular credit card payments. Same with her student loan. No other borrowing, no serious delinquencies, zero cases of fraud. Credit card paid to nothing and then canceled. Except for her apartment, Tabitha had settled all her financial affairs before she disappeared. The document told me little.
I phoned her credit card company. It took patience to get through to a human, and the tiniest of deceptions to speak to a manager with the authority to pull up a client’s records. I asked about large purchases, anything out of the ordinary.
“One sec, sir.” Clack clack clack. I tugged at the corner staple of the leatherette covering on the boardroom table.
“Mostly just bookstores and coffee shops,” the manager said. “Two thousand eight hundred dollars to something called Surrey Polytech.”
“Tuition,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Forty-two hundred dollars paid to a Luxuria Travel, also in Surrey. Hmm.”
“‘Hmm’ what?”
Clack clack. I pulled out the staple and tried to reinsert it. The holes in the leatherette wouldn’t line up with those in the wood.
The manager came back on, saving me from a second chorus of “Highway to the Danger Zone.”
“The purchase was made on March seventh and then the same amount was refunded on April third. Five months ago.”
“Her last purchase?”
“May twenty-eight, coffee shop. Her balance was one thousand eight hundred and forty and thirty-two, with a minimum payment of forty-eight fifty. Then came the refund, and on June fifth the balance was paid down completely.”
“Can you tell if that was by check?”
Clack clack. The Danger Zone segued to Black Velvet in that slow southern style. “Online payment through her credit union,” she said. “No activity since.”
I thanked her and hung up.
On June fifth she’d paid her debts in full. It was hard to know what to make of that. There were enough credit card alternatives that it didn’t explain where she was or what she was up to. However Tabitha Sorenson was making her way in the world, it wasn’t by paying eighteen percent.
As I was thinking about how to proceed, Jeff knocked and entered. He tapped his phone and held it so I could view the screen. A text from a number I didn’t recognize.
NEWTON XCHANGE
TONITE @ TEN
ALONE
Jeff sat next to me. “From Hayes, I assume. How are we gonna play this?”
“Much as I’d like to sit back and let you go, it has to be me. You don’t know the case. Plus it’s your wedding tomorrow. I’ll take the Hayes brothers over what Marie would do to me, you got hurt.”
“So what do I do?”
“Hang back, plan your wedding.”
“Dave,” Jeff said, “you know there’s a good chance this is them trying to hurt you.”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“Which taught you nothing?”
Jeff stood up abruptly, put a hand on his stomach. He shushed me when I asked what was going on with him.
After five slow diaphragmatic breaths, he returned to his seat. “Chest pains. Doctor says they’re brought on by anxiety.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
He moved his gaze to the floor and said, “It’s more to do with the wedding. I just want it to go well. I mean, for Marie’s sa
ke. It means a lot to her.”
I suspected there was more of Jeff vested in the wedding than he’d admit, but it wasn’t the time to pry. I told him to leave the meeting to me.
Twenty-Six
Luxuria Travel was on the lower floor of the Surrey Central Mall, sandwiched between a TNT supermarket and a passport office. The sandwich board outside the travel agency offered a list of airfares in red, with PLUS APPLICABLE TAXES AND FEES below each quoted price.
“Weird,” Kay said. “It’s cheaper to fly to Paris than to London.”
“Different airlines,” I suggested.
“But you fly over England to get to France.”
A woman in a brightly colored chunni sat behind the laminate counter. On the wall was a business license and a community service award for Bhavya Brar, owner-operator. She smiled and shook our hands.
I asked her about the two transactions from Tabitha’s credit card, the purchase and return. She opened her spreadsheet program and scrolled down.
“I know who you mean,” Brar said. “She come in a second time and I know, one day, I have this conversation with you.”
“She just felt wrong to you,” I said.
“Yes. When she come the second time she look different. Her hair is shorter and much redder. She’s very worried.”
I held up Tabitha’s photo. Brar nodded, it was the same woman.
“Where was she going,” I said, “and why’d she cancel?”
While she was looking it up, a customer entered the store. Brar asked us to come back in half an hour and excused herself.
We bought London Fogs at the Waves Café and sat outside on the concrete bench. It was raining lightly. The only people around us were smokers, huddled under the small patch of awning away from the doors. We watched a woman in drawstring sweatpants drag a ten-year-old toward the parking lot while pushing a two-child stroller.
“This place makes me never want to have kids,” Kay said.
It was after four o’clock when we drifted back. The customer had gone and a child in a dress shirt and a black patka sat on the edge of the counter. Bhavya Brar came out of the back office carrying a two-page printout.
