by Sam Wiebe
“So think it.”
“Hard when last night you nearly beat a guy to death.”
“We’re never going to agree on that,” I said. “So let’s not hash this out again.”
“I think we should.”
“All right. You were the one who pointed a gun at Cody Hayes.”
“To rescue you.”
“Yes, and thank you again. But Jeff, he’s afraid of the gun, not of you. He’s a bully. His whole point, the fire, the weapons, was to scare me. Intimidate us into doing what he wants. We needed to show we can’t be intimidated.”
“So what’s to stop him from getting a gun of his own and coming after us?” Jeff said.
“There’s no guarantee, but he’s afraid now. Bullies prefer easy targets.”
“Know what I think?” Jeff said. “He did scare you, and you wanted to pay him back for that.”
I handed him the parcel, a square the size of a hand wrapped in cheap brown paper.
“What the hell is this?”
“Your wedding present.”
He tore away the paper, revealing a mocked-up book jacket. A giant magnifying glass on the cover, the lens raising details on a fingerprint and a Sherlock Holmes hunting cap. The words “Advanced Techniques for the Contemporary Interviewer by Jun Fei Jefferson Chen” in a bland default font. I’d wrapped the cover around an old copy of Tai Pan someone had left in our waiting room.
“Not the actual cover, of course,” I said. “There’s a publisher on the North Shore. They mostly do cookbooks. Got the idea from Tabitha’s mother. They’ll work with you and put this out professionally. No money, but such is the writing life.”
He held the book up and grinned. “Holy shit.”
Jeff was a notoriously difficult person to shop for, and it felt good to hit the mark. At Christmas the year before, he’d walked into the office on December twenty-third holding a copy of Nomeansno’s Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed, the same album I’d just finished wrapping to put on his desk. “Look what was on sale,” he’d said, and I’d taken his present home with me.
Now he turned the book over in his hands. “This is great. Thanks, Dave. Thank you.” Suddenly serious: “So’s this mean you’re gonna stop teasing me about writing it?”
“Not a fucking chance,” I said.
Thirty-Two
I had two hours to kill before Sabar Gill’s shift started at the library. With the office abuzz with last-minute wedding preparations, I headed out early, walking up Beatty. Past the viaduct, past the decommissioned tanks outside the drill hall. The bruise on my hip meant each step was accompanied by a jab of pain.
As I neared the sandstone coliseum that housed the library, I detoured into Yaletown, stopping outside Anthony Qiu’s restaurant.
The Monte Carlo attracted a lunchtime crowd of yuppies and swells. A few couples lingered on the heated patio despite the light spatter of rain. Music blared from inside the restaurant, some radio station playing all your soft-rock favorites.
I took a seat on the patio with my back to the glass. The lunch menu presented an array of thirty-dollar salads. I ordered a double Bulleit with an ice water chaser and told the waitress I wanted to see Anthony.
“Mr. Qiu is very busy,” she said. I gave her a business card to take into him. She looked at it and smiled and disappeared into the restaurant. I never got my drink.
Before Qiu showed himself, two heavies came out and took up position at a nearby table. One was Chinese, acne-pitted, with the bulge of a gun under the breast of his burgundy suit. The other was white, in khakis and suede, with a face like a ruined holiday. Neither made any pretense of ordering anything.
Eventually Anthony Qiu strolled out. He draped his tan blazer over the back of the aluminum chair opposite me. The top button of his dress shirt was undone and his sleeves were rolled up. A handkerchief spotted with diamonds bloomed from his breast pocket. His smile showed patience and poise and very little humor.
“David,” he said pleasantly as he sat. “You moved up in the world. Business is brisk, unh?” His grin was a gleaming white parody of cheerfulness, a botched take on warmth.
“It’s picking up,” I said.
“Good, good. I’m happy for you. What’d you want to see me for?”
“Just to visit,” I said. “How’s Mr. Leung doing?”
Qiu’s smile tightened, gained a remonstrative edge. One of the two men behind me shifted his chair.
“He’s fine,” Qiu finally said. “Has some issues with his health. You know him?”
“Of him. Doesn’t surprise me about his health. Crime has to weigh on you, doesn’t it?” I scratched my cheek idly, watching Qiu watch me. “All that added stress, spending your time wondering what other people know, when the other shoe will drop. ’Less you’re a psychopath. Then I guess it’s easy.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Qiu said. “I just run my restaurant.”
“Of course you do.” I looked at his hired muscle. “Who are these charmers?”
“Waitstaff,” Qiu said.
“They do look like minimum-wagers.” I nodded to the one in khakis. “’Specially that one. He looks like he’d be a very dangerous man to someone tied up and unconscious. Which with a face like that is probably what he calls dating.”
The man in khakis rattled his table getting to his feet. He shoved his chair out of the way, moving toward me.
“Nagy,” Qiu said, holding up a hand. “Have a seat.”
“Yeah, Nagy, have a seat.” Nagy didn’t move. To Qiu I said, “How much of your crew do you actually control?”
Qiu’s eyes hadn’t left his subordinate’s. Nagy blew out a sigh and returned to his chair. The diners left on the patio avoided looking at us.
“What exactly did you come here for, David?” Qiu asked.
“I heard you do a splendid salmon penne.”
“Be serious.”
“Every year this city changes,” I said. “Developers move in. We lose whole neighborhoods. Rate of change like that, sometimes I wonder who I actually know that’s still here.”
“I’m not likely to leave Vancouver,” Qiu said.
I shrugged and stood up. I looked at Nagy like I wasn’t impressed. Back to Qiu to nod and make my exit.
“Is that it?” Qiu said. He was scrutinizing me like a poker player watching for tells. “Last time we spoke longer.”
I smiled at him. “Last time you were more generous with the whiskey.”
Thirty-Three
Sonia once told me I had a knack for completing the kind of tasks that shouldn’t be started in the first place. I’d set out to frustrate and mystify Anthony Qiu, and to do so without breathing a word about Chris Chambers and what I’d seen behind the Crossroads Inn. What remained was to see how Qiu would jump.
As I opened the front door of the library, a sparrow brushed past my ear. It fluttered and gained altitude, sailing up to the heights of the crescent-shaped concourse. It settled above a large reading-is-good banner featuring a quote from Milton. I walked past the pizza and coffee shops and through the scanners. I zigzagged up the escalators to the seventh floor.
Near the help desk, a bearded man in a starched paisley shirt and suspenders was laying out a display under glass. History books with black-and-white photos on their covers showing haggard Sikhs, placed next to a model of a cargo vessel turned on its side. The man adjusted a piece of Bristol board with the title pasted to it, “Rethinking the Komagata Maru.”
I leaned over his shoulder to examine the display and to make sure I was talking to Sabar Gill. “What’s to rethink?” I asked. “Wasn’t it a bad decision?”
“It was a horrific decision,” Gill said. “A Japanese ship full of Indian passengers denied entrance into the country for no reason other than they were the wrong skin color, spoke the wrong language. British citizens, but of the second class. It’s an event that’s still being reinterpreted, hence the display.” He grinned. “But if I have to explain the title, maybe that’s no
t a good sign.”
I examined the craftsmanship of the boat, which lacked only a miniature crew and passengers.
“A local artist,” Gill said. “She donated it for this exhibit. Did you need a hand finding something?”
“I’m looking for a Mr. Gill,” I said. “Unfortunately I dinged a car in the underground lot. Someone told me it was his and he’d be up on this floor. Know where I could find him?”
“That would be me.” Gill’s expression soured a little. We shook hands and I noticed the wedding ring.
“I think I only kissed the fender,” I said. “Why don’t we take a look and then decide how to make this right.”
Sabar Gill replaced the glass lid of the display. I looked around baffled and said, “Mind leading the way? I’m not even sure how I got up here.”
“There’s an elevator this way,” he said. When we were on board I asked him how long he’d been working here.
“Close to four months,” he said. “I was part-timing during grad school. I finished and took some time off, but then a position opened. It’s pretty much the job I’ve always wanted.”
There was an element of self-conscious irony to his dress and mannerisms, but Gill spoke with a genuine reverence for his vocation. He was almost bashful about it. Curating library displays and wading through the stacks wasn’t everyone’s dream. But it was his, and he accepted that.
“What does a librarian do when he takes time off?” I asked.
“See a bit of the world. Relax.” He stared at me. “What do you do for a living, Mr.—”
“James,” I said. “I install security systems. I know that might sound boring, but it’s actually fascinating work. Are you in the market? Because I can get you a honey of a deal. Person can’t be too careful.”
“Maybe,” Gill said.
“We should swap insurance info.” I dug out a Manitoba driver’s license in the name of William J. James. I took Gill’s and copied down his details. The 400 block of Quebec Street. A Mount Pleasant address, not an apartment.
I followed Gill as we threaded through the parking level, an ominous maze of concrete and flickering neon. He stopped by an SL-series Mercedes and crouched down to examine the fender.
“Not a scratch,” he said. “No harm done. Where’s your car?”
I looked at the oil stains on the concrete. “I feel pretty stupid about this. The car I touched was a Honda. I think I’m parked on the other end.”
“I don’t know anyone who drives a Honda,” Gill said. “Hope it works out.”
“I’ll muddle through.”
Thirty-Four
Jeff and Marie had rented the dining hall at the Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club for the wedding reception. The décor was classy and the food was a hodgepodge of traditions and styles, from shark fin soup (Jeff’s mother insisted, even though it was illegal and damn near tasteless) to filet mignon. The Bon Ton Bakery outdid itself with a tiered matrimonial cake, topped with figures that vaguely resembled the bride and groom.
The newlyweds shared a microphone, mangling Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Jeff’s uncles traded cigars and dirty stories. His cousin Shuzhen, our former receptionist, emerged from the law library long enough for the ceremony and left after the second dance. Kay skulked by the bar with one of Marie’s cousins.
I’m not a party person. I mingled as long as I could, then drove to Hastings and took the work van over toward Mount Pleasant. I parked opposite Sabar Gill’s house on Quebec Street. Seated in the back on a milk crate, I could stare through the tinted panel at Gill’s front door.
Gill lived in a renovated Vancouver Special, a facade of masonwork below a gray-painted top story with a Juliette balcony. All lights soft, all curtains drawn.
The rain slid over the windshield and crackled off the roof. I’d liberated a flask’s worth of Macallan Ten from Jeff and Marie’s open bar. Gill’s television glowed through the curtains. He stood and moved left, his frame appearing in the kitchen. Simultaneous movement in the living room. Another form stood up in front of the television. Gill’s date, maybe. Popcorn and late-night TV, probably what Chambers and the waif were doing.
I opened the back door and climbed down, putting my feet in a stream of runoff from a clogged storm drain. I crossed to the sidewalk in front of Gill’s house. From here the shade in the kitchen seemed feminine, the other shade, slinking back onto the couch, more closely resembled Gill.
I took two steps onto the lawn and was bathed in cold white neon. Motion-activated lighting. I stepped back and walked to the corner, hooked left and then down the alley.
At the back of Gill’s small untended yard stood a rotting garage with one door hanging askew. The same drapes hung on the house’s rear windows as out front, no movement behind them.
In an adjacent backyard I spied a dog’s chew toy. I hopped the low fence and retrieved it. No lights, no alarms. I returned to the van.
The Wakeland & Chen work vans contained audiovisual equipment, a camera and tripod, microphone and field recorder. I extended the tripod legs and threaded the camera onto the base, training it on Gill’s door. The window of the van had a slight overhang, which kept the glass clear. I adjusted for low light, zoomed in, and focused.
If only Kay or anyone else had been free—but they were all busy living it up. The entire population of the world was paired off, reeling drunkenly toward the doors of their rented suites, to fuck and tell each other sweet nothings.
This was how I spent my time—peering through strangers’ windows. How I spent birthdays, holidays. Alone with the work. It was sick, perhaps, but it was a choice I’d made. Like Gill and his love of books.
I waited for a commercial break, a bathroom trip, something. At last the couple stood up and stretched. The shapes diverged, Gill this time heading to the kitchen. I felt the weight of the rubber toy. I jogged toward the house, hucked the toy at the living room window. I saw the throw was good and ran.
Two blocks up I paused, shivering. I went right, a long circuit to Broadway, past the darkened storefront of Mountain Equipment Co-op with its windows advertising backpacks and skis. Before I turned back down Quebec I made sure no one was waiting outside of the Gill house, no extra lights on. All told it was twenty-three minutes since I’d thrown the toy.
I crept back to the van, then drove a few minutes before stopping to check the camera. In the viewfinder, I saw myself throw the toy and run out of frame.
A moment later the curtains parted in both kitchen and den. It was clearly Gill in the kitchen window, but the woman was out of focus, and she quickly snapped the curtains closed.
The shades reconverged. I swore. Drenched to the bone and nothing to show for it.
Then the front door of the house opened and Gill stepped out, triggering the motion-activated porch light. He studied the ground and found the toy, smiled, relieved by such a harmless explanation for the noise. He turned toward the door and held up the toy.
And framed in the orange light of the doorway, evidently sharing his relief, Tabitha Sorenson smiled back at him.
Thirty-Five
That it was her, no question. The face and eyes and freckles hadn’t changed. She’d altered her hair—darkened it, cropped it Jean Seberg short. She was holding a wine glass and dressed in flannel and sweats. Shorter than I’d expected, with a more mature and slightly weary posture.
The biggest difference from any pictures I’d seen of her was that Tabitha seemed happy. When Gill returned to the house she kissed him and they went in, arms around each other.
That was the case. And yet finding her begged a whole series of other questions.
It was Dana Essex’s money I was taking, so she’d be the first to know. How to tell her would be the problem. She’d seen Tabitha as her romantic salvation. But Tabitha was involved with someone, which Essex would also have to learn. However I broke it to my client, the news meant a broken heart.
Well, hearts break. They break and break. Hers was no different.
I hunt-and-pecked out my report, then saved it to the company’s cloud storage. I thought of Tabitha and the modest house on Quebec Street. What was that saying about fortunes and crime? Some fortune. All the risks and manipulations had been done so that she and Gill could live in a real house, in a real neighborhood, like their parents had done. It put her suburban rebellion in perspective. But it also served as a sad commentary on the city and the times. You want to live here, on your own terms? Be prepared to steal.
I was reading over the report, sitting near my window on Pender Street, when a knock on the office door interrupted. I opened it, thinking it would be Kay, hungover and looking for clerical work to kill the afternoon.
Instead, Chris Chambers leaned on the frame, grinning down at me. Dressed in slacks and a suede jacket, a peaked tweed cap on his head. He had a brown paper bag in his left hand.
“Dave,” he said, grabbing my hand. “You remember me? We met a couple of times when you were still on the job. Rough deal, that. Feel like a taste of Glenlivet?”
I showed him in. Chambers took in the room, not impressed but keeping it amiable. I poured some of his scotch into two office mugs and took mine to the chair behind the desk.
“Main office is on West Hastings,” I said.
“And this is your fortress of solitude?” He showed his capped teeth. “Place to get away. I understand. Sláinte.”
He raised his mug and drank to my health, refilled and topped mine up liberally.
“Might seem funny,” he said, “but I feel I know you pretty well. You’re the subject of a lot of conversations I’ve been having.”
“Oh?”
“From what my partner tells me, you and she are close. Sonia Drego?”
“I know Sonia,” I said.
“From what I hear.” He mock-saluted. “She’s a fine girl. And not a bad little police, either.”
“Much better than I was.”
“You feel safe going through a door with her, which is not something I can say about every female officer I’ve served with.” He drank quickly and shuddered. “Male either. Also knew your foster father a bit. He was still walking the Sixth when I was coming up. Good man and a goddamn shame what happened to him. Car accident, wasn’t it?” I nodded and he reiterated, “A damn shame.”
