The taxi let me off at the corner of Seymour and Davie. Davie was blocked by a pair of police cars parked nose to nose across the street. I explained to the cops manning the barricade that I was a tenant in the building that had received the bomb threat and that I needed to check on my employees. They let me past, but told me to stay on the other side of the street. They needn’t have worried; I had no intention of getting any closer than necessary.
I found Bobbi and D. Wayne Fowler standing amid the rubbernecks on the sidewalk across Davie from the entrance to our building. Meg and Peg Castle, too, as identical as clones, in spray-on jeans and extra-large “Free Willy” T-shirts, talking into cellphones. And the staff from Zapata’s, the Mexican restaurant on the ground floor, mostly Asian, chattering in their melodic language and laughing. The big VPD bomb disposal truck stood in the middle of the street, massive rear doors open. By the truck two men were being assisted out of their bulky, air-conditioned bomb suits. Uniformed cops were taking down metal barriers and wadding up ribbons of yellow crime scene tape.
“Are you guys all right?” I asked.
“It was a hoax,” Bobbi said with a fearsome scowl.
Suddenly, though, she smiled brightly. I turned and saw Sergeant Matthias striding toward us from the other side of the street, the tails of his long, dark coat flapping around his legs, a serious expression on his face.
“Hi,” Bobbi said to him as he joined us.
He nodded at her, said to me, “You seem to have truly pissed someone off, Mr. McCall. Any idea who?”
“I’ll make a list,” I said.
“I’m glad you find this amusing,” he snapped. “I don’t. Bomb threats are not a laughing matter. This is the second one this morning. If you think you know who called it in, tell me. Now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t think it’s at all amusing. Where was the other one?”
“At a toy company’s offices in Richmond.”
“Then I can shorten the list to one name. Willson Quayle. Two L s in Willson, Quayle as in Dan, not the bird.”
“The guy you think trashed your van? What’s he got against you?”
“Like you said, I pissed him off. He worked for the toy company, an account manager in the marketing department. We were supposed to do some work for them, but he kept missing deadlines so we had to tell him to take a hike. The toy company fired him for screwing up the project. Talk to a woman named Beverley Wong, VP of marketing.”
“Was it Quayle who broke into your house?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. He’d’ve shit in the corners.”
He scribbled furiously in his notebook. His shorthand looked like drunken pigeon tracks.
“They should be giving you the all-clear in a few minutes,” he said, putting his notebook away. “Thanks for your help.” He turned to go.
“I have another name for your John Doe,” I said. He waited for me to go on. “Conrad Eberhardt. According to two men who approached me near my home last night, claiming to be private cops, Eberhardt stole a pound of uncut diamonds being transported from Sierra Leone to Antwerp.” I described my encounter with Evans and Rogers.
“I don’t suppose there’s any reason to think that Evans and Rogers were their real names,” Matthias said when he’d finished scribbling in his notebook.
“No reason at all.”
“And they think Eberhardt stashed the diamonds in your house before he died? Maybe we should take another look around.”
“If you say so,” I said. “But you didn’t find anything the first time.”
“We weren’t necessarily looking for something that had been deliberately hidden.”
“Nor did whoever broke in on Thursday.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because the whole house was searched and — ”
“All right,” Matthias cut me off. “Maybe there’s nothing there to find. On the other hand, maybe it’s just well hidden. Too bad it’s not drugs or explosives. We could use dogs.”
“How about a portable x-ray machine,” D. Wayne Fowler said. We all stared at him. He blushed furiously and stammered, “D-d-diamonds f-f-fluoresce when exposed to x-rays. M-m-mining companies use x-ray m-m-machines to scan the kimberlite ore for diamonds. Some also use them to screen employees leaving the mine.”
I eyed him suspiciously. Since when was he an expert on diamond mining?
“Unfortunately,” the sergeant said, “we don’t have access to that kind of equipment. Thanks, though.”
Bobbi gave Wayne a “way-to-go” punch in the shoulder. His blush deepened.
“It’s up to you,” Matthias said to me. “Let me know. In the meantime, I’ll run Evans, Rogers, and Eberhardt through the system, see if anything turns up. I’d watch my back, if I were you.”
The all-clear was announced and everyone trooped into the buildings that had been evacuated. I called Beverley Wong to confirm that our afternoon meeting was still on. It was. We exchanged bomb scare stories, speculated about Willson Quayle’s whereabouts and mental stability, or lack thereof. Ms. Wong had a light, musical voice and I built a picture in my mind of a young, petite Chinese woman with shining eyes and jet-black hair. However, the woman who walked into my office at two that afternoon wouldn’t have looked out of place at the helm of a Viking longboat, big and blond and blue-eyed. When our business was concluded, she shook hands with Bobbi and me, apologized for any inconvenience or concern that her former employee may have caused, and said she looked forward to working with us.
After Ms. Wong left, Bobbi told me she’d been thinking over Mary-Alice’s proposal and thought that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Anything that brought in more business, obviating the need to do weddings or doggie portraits, was okay with her. It was okay with me, too, I told her, but I still wasn’t sure about taking my sister on as a partner.
“Mary-Alice is just too goddamned bossy,” I said.
“Lighten up a little,” Bobbi said. “Maybe she’s just got a little more to prove than you do.”
“Fine,” I said. “But she’d better not give us a hard time about Meg and Peg’s calendar shoot.”
“Oh, lord, it’s not that time of year again, is it?”
“It is indeed,” I said, rubbing my palms together.
Shaking her head, Bobbi left my office.
Despite getting off to a rocky start, the day had gone pretty well and I was feeling upbeat as I disembarked from the ferry and did a little shopping at the Public Market. However, as I walked along Johnston past the Emily Carr Institute, I sensed something amiss. There was an eerie caterwauling coming from somewhere ahead, and the closer I got to Sea Village, the louder it grew. When I got to the parking lot I saw a couple dozen people standing shoulder to shoulder on the raised pad of the old freight crane in the centre of the lot. They were dressed in long white robes, waving placards, and howling out an unidentifiable hymn at the tops of their collective lungs, more or less in time, but definitely not in the same key. And there, leading the screech-along, was none other than Barry Chisholm.
“Help stamp out smut!” commanded one of the placards, in blood-red lettering.
“Down with pron!” shrieked another.
“Is this what YOUR children are watching?” demanded another.
“Clean up the flith!” implored yet another, undoubtedly penned by the same individual who’d written “Down with pron.”
The object of their discordant and dyslexic wrath was, of course, the crew setting up for the Star Crossed shoot.
Although parking is at a premium on Granville Island, the western half of the parking lot, normally reserved for staff and students of the Emily Carr Institute, had been given over to the production company. Along the western edge of the lot, adjacent to the art institute, from Johnston Street to the embankment, was a double row of trucks from which were being unloaded the tonnes of equipment required for a location shoot: scaffolding, reels of cable, camera and light stand
s, plus cameras, lights, reflectors, control boards, and power junctions. Portable dressing rooms, a portable canteen, and a mobile diesel generator had been shoehorned into the space between the boardwalk atop the embankment and the rear of the Emily Carr Institute. Metal barricades had been set up along the edge of the boardwalk the length of Sea Village.
Keeping a row of parked cars between me and the protesters, I made my way along the line of trucks to the boardwalk, then along the barricades. As I passed the base of the freight crane, I heard Barry Chisholm’s voice rise above the others as he exhorted his flock to crank up the volume. Despite their efforts, I could still not identify the hymn.
There was a gap in the metal barricades at the top of the ramp to Sea Village, manned by a bulky bear of a man with a clipboard and wearing a reflective vest emblazoned with the word SECURITY. He had a thick salt-and-pepper beard and a mobile communications headset clamped over an X-Files baseball cap.
“One moment, please, sir,” he said politely, tipping his head forward and peering at me between the tops of his sunglasses and the bill of his cap. “Are you a resident here, sir?”
“I live in number six,” I said, pointing toward my house, riding low on the outgoing tide.
“Would you mind telling me your name, sir?” I did and he consulted his clipboard. “Yup. Here you are. Sorry about this, sir, but we’ve been instructed to be a little extra careful about letting strangers onto the docks.”
“I appreciate your diligence,” I said.
“Thanks. Wish everyone did.”
A silver BMW X5 sport utility vehicle pulled up to the boardwalk by the Granville Island Hotel. The passenger door opened and Reeny climbed out. Although she was in street clothes, Barry Chisholm evidently recognized her, as the caterwauling of the protesters on the crane pad increased in volume yet again.
“What in god’s name are they singing?” I said to the security chap.
“I think it’s ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ Either that or ‘Froggy Did A-Wooing Go.’” He tugged on the bill of his cap, said, “Have a good evening, sir,” and moved off to intercept a pair of leggy and sun-browned girls who, despite the slight autumnal edge in the air, were dressed in cut-off jean shorts and skimpy halter tops, looking to be discovered, perhaps. Not by a security guard, though, judging by their expressions.
Reeny was standing next to the SUV, talking to a scruffy, chicken-legged fellow in a black nylon jacket with DIRECTOR displayed across the back in big white letters. Kenny Shapiro, I presumed, a.k.a. Mr. See-em-sweat. He looked about seventeen. Reeny looked pissed. She waved at me, said something to the director that he didn’t appear to like, then walked over to me, leaving him standing by the car with a dark look on his face. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see cartoon steam coming out his ears.
“Stupid prick,” she hissed.
“What have I done this time?”
Her smile was tight. “Not you. Him. God, he’s an asshole. Wait till Ricky hears about the changes he wants to make to the scene. She’ll have a shit fit.” We reached the bottom of the ramp. She took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m venting.”
“Vent away,” I said. “What sort of changes?”
“The scene calls for Star to fight the stooges of an alien outlaw posing as a pornographic filmmaker,” Reeny said as we walked along the dock toward my house. “He’s captured Virgin and wants to put her in one of his porn flicks. Don’t waste your time trying to make any sense of it,” she added parenthetically. “It was written as a straightforward fight scene, but Kenny wants to make the chief stooge a woman who, by the time she gets knocked off the roof into the water, will have most of her costume torn off. He’s got a porn starlet who’s trying to break into legitimate film, if you can call this legitimate, to play the part. You should see her implants. They’re grotesque.”
“Mmm,” I said noncommittally as I unlocked the door to the house. “But what does it matter to Ricky Rice?”
“Ricky and the stunt guy for the original chief stooge have worked together a lot, know each other’s moves, trust each other not to misjudge and sock each other in the eye. Now she’s going to have to work with a stuntwoman she doesn’t know. God forbid god’s gift to plastic surgery wants to do her own stunts.” Inside, Reeny said, “He also wants to change my costume.”
“Oh,” I said with interest. Maybe he wanted to make it smaller.
“Instead of one of my regular costumes, he wants me in some kind of ‘dance of the seven veils’ thing. Trouble is, it’s damned near transparent and there isn’t enough support for the prosthetic boobs. They’re water-filled, so they jiggle more or less realistically, which makes them heavy. He wants me to go au naturel, maybe so he can make a case with the producers to put more pressure on me to get implants.” She sighed. “He’s got a goddamned tit fetish,” she said. “He had this coffee cup shaped like a breast till someone crazy-glued it to the hood of his SUV and he had to smash it to get it off. Thank god there’s only one more episode after this one.”
“Have you made up your mind about leaving the series?”
“Not quite, but if they don’t get a new director next season, I might not be the only one to leave. The show might survive without me, but not without Ricky. Certainly not without both of us.” She paused, then said, “What about you? How was your day? I thought you were going to call.”
“Oh, Christ,” I said. “I forgot. I’m sorry.”
Reeny looked at me for the space of half a dozen heartbeats, then smiled crookedly and said, “I’ll get over it.”
She went upstairs, showered, and came down in sweats, then left for work. Shooting wasn’t scheduled to begin until after dark, she said, but it took a couple of hours to get her made up and into costume, such as it was. I put the frozen pizza I’d picked up at the market into the oven, trans fatty acids be damned, and opened a bottle of Chilean Merlot to dilute the cholesterol. When the pizza was ready, I went up to the roof deck. The tide was out and the deck was almost level with the top of the embankment. At the far end of the boardwalk, where the portable dressing rooms were parked, technicians had assembled a scaffolding platform overlooking Lionel Oliphant’s house and were now installing a camera under a protective canopy. Someone in the neighbourhood or on the film crew had rigged outdoor speakers and was blasting Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” in a valiant but ultimately futile effort to drown out or discourage Barry Chisholm and his flock of protesters. Wagner only made matters worse, though, and it wasn’t long before the Valkyries gave it up and galloped off into the sunset.
A fair crowd of onlookers had gathered along the barriers by the boardwalk. From my vantage point I had a limited view of where they’d be filming, but an unrestricted view of the action on the boardwalk. The security people kept the spectators from crossing the barricades and getting underfoot. I caught sight of Mabel Firth and Baz Tucker, bulked up by their Kevlar vests, standing by their patrol car and keeping a watchful eye on Barry Chisholm’s flock, who were being pretty much ignored by everyone else. I put the remains of the pizza in the fridge, returned to the roof deck, refilled my wine glass, put my heels up, and settled in to enjoy the show.
An hour or so passed without anything much happening. I saw the bearded security fellow talking to a girl in jeans and a T-shirt, hair the colour of burnished gold in the setting sun. Tough job, I thought, until I realized that the girl he was chatting up was Hilly. What was she doing here? Was her mother with her? I wondered, although I didn’t see Linda amongst the other onlookers. I called Hilly’s name and waved, but she didn’t hear me over the discordant caterwauling of the protesters as they responded to the appearance of the Star Crossed cast, in full regalia, trooping along the board-walk from the portable dressing rooms to the ramp. The security people ran interference, keeping the onlookers behind the metal barricades.
For a moment I thought I was seeing double. There were two of almost every character: two Stars in belts and buckles, two Virgins in minimalist harem gir
l outfits, two men in comic-book pimp suits, and two improbably proportioned women in red leather mini-dresses and thigh-high stiletto boots. The look-alikes, of course, were the principal characters’ stunt doubles.
Locking up, I went to see what Hilly was up to. On the dock, I passed the cast on their way to Lionel’s house. Reeny winked at me. At least, I was pretty sure it was Reeny. Her stunt double, as she’d said, looked very much like her, especially when made up as Virgin in the short red wig and yellow contact lenses. Enough like her, I wondered, to fool diehard fans if Reeny decided to leave the show? Why not? A good many of the diehard fans probably never raised their gaze higher than Virgin’s chest.
Hilly stood by the barricade at the top of the ramp talking to a couple of boys wearing baseball caps askew, oversized sports jerseys, and ridiculously baggy jeans with the crotches around their knees. I wanted to chase them off with a stick. “Dad,” I imagined Hilly saying. “This is Cubed Beef. We’re going up to my room to study and listen to Eminem.” Fortunately for the boys, I didn’t have a stick.
“Hi, Dad,” Hilly said. “This is so cool.”
“Hiya, Scout,” I said. The boys slunk away, pant cuffs dragging. “What’re you doing here? Where’s your mother?”
“At the hotel,” Hilly said. “I had to get away from her. She’s driving me absolutely crazy. God, I don’t know how you stayed married to her as long as you did.”
“Does she know where you are?”
“Like she’d care.”
“We’d better call her anyway.”
“You talk to her,” Hilly said. She dug a tiny phone out of her waist pack and handed it to me. Then she handed me a card with the hotel’s number on it.
The crowd stirred. The protesters ratcheted up the volume.
“You guys want a closer look?” the burly security chap said from the other side of the barricade. “They’re gonna rehearse the scene.”
Hilly looked at me. “Dad? Can we?”
I said, “Sure,” and the security fellow let us onto the boardwalk. He spoke into his headset and a moment later a young woman who didn’t look much older than Hilly came over. She wore headset, too, and a badge that read “L. Mallette, PA,” which I knew stood for “Production Assistant.” She gave us a couple of visitors’ badges and escorted us along the boardwalk until we were almost directly opposite the roof of Lionel’s house.
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