Overexposed

by Michael Blair

  “Sit, sit,” she said to me. “Reeny, come help me with the tea.”

  I looked around for a place to sit that wasn’t already occupied. They weren’t many. Mona had cats. At least a dozen of them, of every size, colour, pattern, and stripe. And those places to sit that weren’t covered with cat were covered with cat hair. One or two cats I could handle, maybe three in a pinch, but a dozen, in a confined space … I could feel my sinuses beginning to clog.

  Reeny and Mona returned from the kitchen, Reeny carrying a tray, which she placed on the coffee table after Mona shooed away the fat white Persian sprawled thereon. It mewed petulantly, leaving a cloud of fine cat hair floating weightlessly in its wake. I resisted the urge to rub my eyes.

  “Sit, sit,” Mona said again, indicating a straight-backed chair upon which perched a tabby, a younger and sleeker version of Bodger. “Spike,” Mona said sharply. Spike’s ears twitched. “Move your fat lazy arse.” Spike blinked disinterestedly. Mona tilted the chair forward, tipping him to the floor. “There you go.”

  “Thank you,” I said, as I lowered myself onto the thick mat of cat hair.

  Reeny poured. When we all had cups in our hands, she said, “Mona, have you heard from Chris recently?”

  “Goodness, no, dear. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the ungrateful bugger in ages. Not in ages. Are you a friend of my son’s, Mr. McGee?”

  “You could say that,” I said, breathing in the steam rising from my tea in the vain hope that it might soothe my inflamed sinuses.

  “Are you or aren’t you?” she snapped in her corroded voice.

  “I know him,” I said, “but I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mona,” Reeny said, “when did you hear from him last?”

  “Christopher? He called me at Christmastime, I think. Yes. Christmas. Not a word since. I haven’t actually seen him since — well, not since before he went away.”

  Reeny nodded. “Has anyone come around in the last couple of weeks asking about him? A man in his late fifties or early sixties, perhaps. Well dressed. Distinguished. May have spoken with a slight foreign accent.”

  “No, ah, no one like that. I’d remember someone like that, wouldn’t I?”

  Reeny nodded, but her eyes were hooded. She sipped her tea. “How are you doing?” she asked, placing the cup in the saucer with a gentle tink.

  “Oh, you know, dear,” Mona said. “There are good days and there are bad days. Everything seems to be getting more expensive all the time. Each time I go to the market or to get my hair done, it costs so much more.” She had a great mass of dyed blond hair piled high atop her head. I wondered if it was all hers.

  “Mm,” Reeny agreed.

  “I’ve got my health, though, that’s what’s important.”

  “You’re all right, then?”

  “Oh, yes, dear, I’m managing.” She looked at me. “No thanks to that wretched son of mine, though. I hope you treat your mother with more respect than my son treats me, Mr. McGee.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She snorted dismissively.

  “Did you know that Chris was in Vancouver at the end of August?” Reeny said.

  “If he was,” Mona said, “it’s news to me.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t call or come to see you?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Why would he?” To me: “He’s just like his father, he is. Thinks only of himself, not a jot for his poor mother. Why — ”

  “Mona,” Reeny said sternly. “You know that’s not true. He still pays your rent, doesn’t he?”

  He does? I thought, surprised. How? According to Mabel Firth, shortly before he’d disappeared, Hastings had cashed out the pitiful remnants of his trust fund, citing a family emergency.

  Mona said, “Well, yes, but — ” She held out her cup. “May I have some more tea, please, dear?”

  Reeny picked up the pot and poured. Smiling, she held the pot out in my direction. “Mr. McGee?”

  “No, thank you,” I said. Maybe Mona — not to mention yours truly — was misjudging her son. Perhaps before disappearing Hastings had made arrangements for her rent to be covered. People will fool you. Some of them. Some of the time.

  “Mona,” Reeny said. “I want you to think very carefully. Have you talked to anyone recently about Chris? Perhaps at the market or in the park. On your way to the salon. Anyone at all.”

  “I’m not feeble-minded, dear.”

  “No, of course not. There’s no one, then?”

  “Mr. Morrissey.”

  “Who’s Mr. Morrissey?”

  “He lives in 608, down the hall. He was complaining to me the other day that his daughters never visit and that he hasn’t seen his grandchildren in months. I might have mentioned Christopher to him. Yes, I very probably did. I told him he was fortunate to have grandchildren,” she added pointedly.

  “Besides Mr. Morrissey,” Reeny said.

  “Well, the police, of course.”

  “The police were here?”

  “Yes. A policeman spoke to me last week. Or was it the week before? In any event, he asked me if I’d heard from Christopher or if I knew how to get in touch with him. He was just tying up loose ends, he said. And now that you mention it, he did have a slight accent of some sort. I thought he might have been from Quebec. They speak French there, you know?”

  “Yes, I know,” Reeny said. “What did he look like?”

  “Who?”

  “The policeman.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Like a policeman. Sort of ordinary.”

  I unfolded the flyer and showed her the computer-enhanced photograph of John Doe.

  “Is that him?” I asked her. I sniffed and rubbed my upper lip; my nose was beginning to itch ferociously.

  She leaned close and peered at the flyer, adjusting her glasses. “I don’t know. It could be. He was wearing a hat, though. And dark glasses.”

  “Did he show you any identification?” Reeny asked.

  “Yes, of course. He showed me his badge.”

  “Did you get a good look at it?”

  “Well, no, not really. He just showed it to me and put it away.”

  “You said he was wearing a hat and dark glasses,” I said. “Did he keep them on the whole time he was in the apartment?” I rubbed my nose.

  “Oh, he didn’t come here,” Mona said. “He came up to me and introduced himself while I was sitting in the garden. The doorman told him where to find me.”

  I sneezed. Mona jumped and cats scattered. I sneezed again.

  “I think we’d better be going,” Reeny said.

  “You’re paying her rent, aren’t you?” I said in the car, when I was able to breathe again.

  “Yes,” Reeny said. “Chris had been paying it, but a month after he disappeared the building manager called and told me the pre-authorized withdrawal had been cancelled. I’ve been paying it ever since.”

  “But she thinks Chris is still paying it.”

  “I didn’t see any reason to tell her otherwise.”

  “You wrote her a cheque before we left. Did you tell her that money was from Chris too?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s very generous of you. Maybe to a fault. Not many people would do it. I’m not sure I would.”

  “I can afford it. Besides, I can hardly let them throw her out into the street, can I?”

  “But are you going to assume responsibility for her for the rest of her life?”

  “If I don’t, who then? Chris?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her.

  As we turned onto the short neck of land that connects Granville Island to Kitsilano and drove between the massive piers of the Granville Street Bridge, I noticed a dirty grey Toyota in the rear-view mirror. If I were going to follow someone, I’d do it in a Toyota Corolla, the most nondescript, anonymous car on the planet, with the possible exception of the Honda Civic, vehicles m
y father, a retired civil engineer, calls generic cars. However, I wouldn’t do it in one with a bashed-in front left fender and wonky headlight. And I’d stay a little farther back, whatever the car or its condition.

  “What is it?” Reeny asked.

  “That grey Toyota,” I said. “I think it’s following us. It’s been behind us since just after we left Mona’s.”

  Reeny turned and looked out the rear window. It was heavily tinted, though, and the curve of the spare tire bolted to the rear gate obstructed the view somewhat as well.

  “I can’t make out the occupants,” she said. “But there are two of them.”

  “Could it be the Yeagers?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  I turned right off Armstrong onto Cartwright and the Toyota turned with us. I stopped in the middle of the narrow one-way street.

  “What are you doing?” Reeny asked as I opened the door and got out.

  “Be right back,” I said and walked toward the Toyota. Despite the threat of more rain, the street was busy and I was suddenly uncomfortably self-conscious. Was I making a fool of myself? Probably, but it would-n’t be the first time. A pair of middle-aged and over-weight American tourists emerged from the Granville Island information centre, the man wondering loudly to his wife about the jackass who’d parked in the middle of the street. A woman pushing a double stroller shot me a worried look, then picked up the pace. A car horn bleated impatiently. A man stuck his head out of the driver’s side window of the Toyota.

  It wasn’t Carl Yeager. He had more hair.

  “What the bloody hell you doing?” the man demanded.

  He was forty-odd, wearing a suit and tie and blue-and-white striped shirt with a solid white collar. He looked like an insurance salesman, a very angry insurance salesman. The man in the passenger seat was dressed more casually. He was black. Very. And he looked nervous. So would I be if I’d been minding my own business when some lunatic stopped his car in the middle of traffic and, for no apparent reason, accosted me in my car.

  “Sorry,” I said and, to the accompaniment of more bleating of car horns, got back into the Jeep. “Boy, do I feel stupid,” I said to Reeny as we got underway.

  “How do you know they weren’t following us?” she asked.

  She had a point.

  I parked in the shadow of the old freight crane — or where the shadow would have been had the sun been shining — in one of the row of spaces reserved for residents of Sea Village. I looked around but didn’t see the Toyota anywhere.

  “Would you like to get some dinner later?” I asked as Reeny and I walked down the ramp to the docks. The tide was out and the ramp was steeply sloped. For some idiotic reason I felt like one of those little plastic toys I’d loved so much as a child, Disney characters such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and Goofy — my favourite — that had waddled stiff-leggedly down inclined surfaces.

  “I’d love to,” Reeny said. “But I usually have dinner with my folks on Sunday night. Rain check, though.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Where do your parents live?” I asked, opening the Sea Village gate for her.

  “Langley,” she said. “They have a little horse farm there.”

  “You grew up on a horse farm?”

  “Heck, no. I’m a city gal. My dad bought it about ten years ago, for his retirement.”

  “Well, you might as well take the Porsche.”

  “Thanks, but I usually get a ride from my brother and his wife. That way I don’t have to worry about how much wine I drink. And drinking wine is about the only way I can get through the evening.”

  She went upstairs to shower while I moped around, shuffling through my CDs trying to find something worth listening to, riffling through the untidy heap of magazines on the coffee table trying to find something worth reading, and watching the clock, waiting for the sun to pass my personal yardarm. She came back down at 4:ffl, hair loose and wearing slacks and a roll-neck sweater.

  “Have a nice evening,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You too. I should be back around eleven,” she added. She shouldered her bag and left.

  The heck with waiting for five o’clock, I thought, and poured myself a Scotch, settling for The Glenlivet. I slouched on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, sipping whisky and contemplating the bleakness of my existence. I was going to have to do something about it, I decided. I wished I knew what, though. At five-thirty, whisky finished, I put on a jacket and walked the length of Granville Island to Bridges for a beer and a burger, then walked the length of the island back home again, a total distance of maybe two kilometres. I wondered how far Reeny went on her early morning runs. Probably to Whistler and back. A little more exercise wouldn’t do me any harm, I thought as I waddled down the ramp to the docks. Maybe I should start running with her. I laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?”

  I almost jumped out of my shoes as a tall man stepped out of the shadows.

  “Jesus, don’t do that.”

  He laughed. “Long time no see, McCall,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Other than having the bejeebers half scared out of me, just fine.”

  I almost didn’t recognize him. He’d put on weight. Not a lot, but enough to soften the rawness I remembered. And his hair was shorter, making his face look fuller, and darker, making him look paler. Or maybe he just wasn’t getting as much sun as he used to.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d turn up,” I said.

  “Well,” Christopher Hastings said, “you can stop wondering.”

  chapter eleven

  “How long have you been lurking around here?” I asked him.

  “Not long,” he replied.

  “Reeny’s not here,” I said.

  “I know. It’s Sunday. She’s visiting her parents, right?”

  “You know she’s staying with me, then?”

  “Yeah, but it isn’t her I’ve come to see. I’ve come to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “We need to talk,” he said. He looked up and down the dock, a bit nervously, I thought. “Preferably inside.”

  “What do we need to talk about?” I asked. Reeny? John Doe? I didn’t think he wanted to talk about the weather.

  “I’ll explain inside.”

  I unlocked the door, then stood aside to let him precede me into the house. For some reason I couldn’t pin down, I didn’t want him behind me. The Virgin action figure Reeny had brought back from the studio was still on the desk in the front hall. Hastings took no notice of it that I could tell. He did, however, glance briefly at the coroner’s office flyers beside it.

  “Nice,” he said, looking around the living room. “Smaller than I imagined.” He turned to me. “Not going to give me the twenty-five-cent tour? How about a drink then?”

  “How about you tell me what it is we need to talk about.”

  He shrugged. “Tobias Zim.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Tobias Zim. The chap on the flyer.”

  “That’s his name?” I said. “Tobias Zim?”

  “That’s what he called himself,” Hastings said.

  “What makes you think I know anything about him?”

  “He died at your fortieth birthday party, on your roof deck, didn’t he? At least, that’s the buzz. You’re almost famous. Happy birthday, by the way.”

  “You knew him?”

  “After a fashion.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I dunno, it’s a figure of speech.” I glared at him. “Actually,” he said, “I’ve never met him. In person, anyway. Traded emails with him, though. Spoke to him on the phone a couple of times. I was supposed to meet him last Sunday night, but he never showed. It wasn’t until I saw that picture of him in the Sun that I knew why.”

  “How did you know it was him, if you’d never met him?”

  “I had a good description. And the timing fit.”

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “
A business associate,” Hastings replied.

  “What sort of business?”

  “That’s not important,” he said.

  I let it go. “What was he doing at my party?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Hastings said. “I was supposed to meet him on Sunday at the Hotel Vancouver.”

  “He was staying there?”

  He shook his head. “No. At least, I don’t think he was.”

  “Have you contacted the police?”

  He laughed. “What would be the point? Zim probably wasn’t his real name. In fact, I’m almost certain it wasn’t. Besides, the police would just ask awkward questions. Look, how about that drink?”

  I gestured toward the sideboard I use as a bar. “Help yourself,” I said.

  He opened the cabinet and examined my meagre collection of spirits. He selected vodka, poured a couple of inches into a tumbler.

  “Was your business with Zim legal?” I asked.

  “How ’bout some ice?” he said.

  I went into the kitchen and scooped some ice from the freezer bin into a cereal bowl, took it back to the living room. Hastings was slouched on the sofa, feet on the edge of the coffee table. He put them down and sat up as I placed the bowl of ice in front of him. He dropped two cubes into his drink, swirled them with his fingertip.

  “You’re not joining me?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Cheers anyway.” He drank deep, downing half the contents of the glass, ice rattling.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “What question was that?” he said.

  “Was your business with Zim legal?” I asked again.

  He shrugged, reduced his drink by half again. “What difference does it make?” he said.

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “Fine by me. Do they know what Zim died of?”

  “Last I heard they weren’t sure.”

  “Did you speak to him at all?”