“What d’you want?” he said. He peered over Mannie’s shoulder and said, “Alvin!”
“Alvin’s taking a nap,” said Mannie. “Bowser’s taking a nap too.” He started to move in on Walter. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Fuck you,” said Walter. He threw the full can of beer at Mannie and Mannie swung late. The beer caught him high on the cheekbone. He dropped the bat but kept moving forward. Half-blinded by pain, he took an exploratory swipe with the knife and gouged a curving line of enamel out of the refrigerator door. The chicken leg bounced off his shoulder and then Walter smacked him on the side of the head with a five-pound bag of frozen peas. The bag burst, and Mannie went roller-skating. His feet flew out from under him. He landed on his ass on the linoleum.
Walter started throwing things. More frozen vegetables, an aluminium tray of ice cubes, cardboard cartons of milk, the rest of the chicken, a dozen eggs, yoghurt, a pound of coffee, more cans of beer, a slab of back bacon, half a lemon meringue pie that hit Mannie square in the face.
A head of lettuce followed, and then a plastic bag of tomatoes, a foot-long English cucumber, limp bundle of celery.
Scattering of radishes.
One wrinkled apple.
Walter swore. In the space of a few short seconds he’d clawed his way from the freezer all the way down to the crisper, and now he was out of ammunition.
Mannie scrambled to his feet. He wiped meringue from his face.
Walter lashed out with a bottle of white wine he’d yanked from a shelf set in the refrigerator door. The bottle struck Mannie on the elbow of his raised left arm; it was a classic defensive wound. Blood bubbled thickly out of a ragged tear in his flesh. He screamed with rage, and stabbed at Walter with the knife. Walter danced away, the yellow nightshirt billowing. He moved in again, slashing at Mannie’s eyes with the jagged neck of the bottle. Mannie retreated. Walter skittered sideways, circling to his left. Mannie suddenly understood that all Walter wanted was a way out, to scoot.
He let Walter get himself in line with the door, retreat shuffling through the mess on the floor. When Walter’s hopeful face was framed in the doorway, Mannie let him have it.
Walter saw Mannie’s arm come up, saw Mannie point dramatically at him as if accusing him of something. At the same instant he felt a blow to his throat, just above the collarbone. He tried to look down. His chin bumped against the stubby hilt of a knife. Blood, hot and viscous, filled his throat and trickled down into his lungs. Gagging, he dropped the broken bottle and fell on his side.
Mannie pushed the refrigerator door open a little more, so the widening beam of light fell across Walter’s body.
Walter raised his right arm. He brought his fist down hard, with all the strength that remained in him. A quart of milk exploded in a white froth.
Mannie stumbled through the apartment, turning on lights wherever he came across a switch. Eventually he found the bathroom. He turned on the cold water tap, washed the larger fragments of glass out of his arm and bound the cut with a clean washcloth and a pressure bandage from the medicine cabinet. Walter’s estate was further diminished to the tune of five aspirins and several little red pills Mannie ate hoping they might be speed. He’d never before had anybody throw a grocery store at him. It was an experience that took a great deal out of a man. He felt real run-down, in need of a boost.
He sat down on the rim of the bathtub, his head cocked to one side, waiting for the pills to do their stuff. Blood seeped through the pressure bandage. It ran down his arm and across the back of his hand, painted his fingers red and dripped slowly to the floor.
After a little while Mannie gave up on the idea of feeling any better. He staggered back through the apartment and out to the hall, grabbed the stiffening doberman by an ear and hauled it inside the apartment.
Kicked shut the door. Locked it.
His arm ached something fierce. Holding it close to his body, he crossed the living-room and sat down on the chesterfield to wait for the girl, Carly.
Minutes and hours slipped by. He dozed, came half-awake, drifted off again. A car stopped out on the street. Mannie heard a door slam shut. He looked out the window and saw a taxi idling at the curb. As he watched, the roof light came on and the taxi drove away.
He went over to the dead man in the shorts, knelt beside him, lifted his left arm and peered at his watch. It was a few minutes past four o’clock in the morning.
Mannie let the arm drop. He eased the skinning knife out of its sheath and went over to stand beside the door.
In a few minutes Carly would be all his. He told himself not to get excited, not to finish her off until she’d led him to Felix Newton’s partytime video cassette. He was looking forward to viewing the tape, punching it into his VCR and settling back with a cold brew and a bowlful of taco chips. If he liked what he saw maybe he’d make a copy. For insurance, just in case Felix took out his pocket calculator and decided it’d be a whole lot more cost-effective to wipe Mannie out than pay him the ten grand he was gonna owe him in about ten seconds.
Mannie heard Carly’s heels in the hallway. He tensed, getting set.
Nothing happened. He waited maybe a minute, maybe two. Then he lost patience and slipped the lock and yanked open the door.
When Carly had reached the top of the stairs she’d flipped on the hall light. Where the Doberman had died there was a swamp of blood and faeces. The smell was awful, bad enough to chase the flies away.
Mannie heard a noise downstairs. He went after her, taking the steps two and three at a time, crashing into the darkness with fear and murder in his heart.
Chapter 31
The City of Vancouver employs ten meter maids to patrol the downtown core. During a typical shift each woman will issue between fifty and eighty tickets; in the course of an average week approximately four thousand individual tickets are written. Computer records are kept and notices of non-payment of fines together with the empty threat of a summons are mailed automatically to the registered owners of offending vehicles. The paper carbons of the original tickets are filed in heavy cardboard cartons in a city-leased warehouse. At the end of four years, unpaid tickets are written off as a bad debt. The paper is recirculated — reduced to pulp.
It took Willows and Parker and the three junior clerks they’d recruited to assist them less than an hour to unearth the second of the tickets Judith Lundstrom had slapped on the windscreen of the black Trans Am.
The two detectives took the ticket back to 312 Main. A priority telex to the Motor Vehicle Branch in Victoria was answered in just under three minutes.
The car was registered in the name of an American woman named Misha Yokóte. Residences were listed as Laguna Beach, California, and 616 Greenbriar Lane, in the nearby municipality of West Vancouver.
“Let’s check out Laguna Beach first,” joked Parker.
Willows smiled politely, and kept reading. According to the MVB telex, Misha Yokóte was twenty-eight years old, a spinster. She had black hair and brown eyes. Her height was five foot one and she weighed one hundred and four pounds. Miss Yokóte had no visible scars. She was restricted to driving with the aid of corrective lenses. Her British Columbia driver’s licence had been issued in June of 1982. It was clean: no wants, no warrants.
“I wonder who’s been driving Misha’s car,” said Parker.
“Let’s go see Bradley,” said Willows. “If we’re going to stake out a West Van address, he’s going to have to know all about it.”
“And so will the West Van cops.”
Willows nodded glumly. West Vancouver had its own police force, and they were responsible for maintaining the peace in an area where the inhabitants were noted for their advanced age and high incomes. Willows had worked with the West Van cops before, and knew that they’d be a lot more concerned with serving their own interests than cooperating with a couple of hotshot dicks from the big city. He folded the telex in half and put it in his wallet.
*
Bradley moved the
area map around on his desk like a shirt on an ironing-board, flattening out the wrinkles with the palm of his hand. He found Greenbriar Lane in the index, then used the coordinates to locate it on the map.
“Nice neighbourhood.”
“We’ll try not to create a disturbance,” said Willows.
“You talk to the West Van cops?”
“We thought we’d let you handle it.”
“Thanks a lot, Jack. How many teams are you going to need?”
“We can do it with three.”
“If you say so.” Bradley studied the map. Ash fell from his cigar, polluting several scale miles of the West Vancouver foreshore. “You can have Farley Spears. I’ll try for Ralph Kearns and Eddy Orwell. Orwell’s been pushing for a transfer, let’s see how he does.” He gave Parker a bland, depthless smile. “You’re a man short, somebody’ll have to double up.”
Out in the squad room, the telephone on Willows’ desk rang harshly.
“Keep in touch,” said Bradley, waving them out of his office.
Willows picked up the phone. It was Pat Rossiter, the Mountie from Squamish.
“Bill Lister, Naomi’s father, killed himself first thing this morning,” Rossiter said without preamble.
Willows was stunned.
“His gas station opens at seven. The mechanic found him in one of the service bays, sitting in his car. He’d run a hose from the exhaust pipe in through the back window, and gassed himself.” Rossiter paused. “You still there, Jack?”
“What else have you got?”
“He wrote a suicide note. A confession. He murdered his daughter.”
Willows thought about the carving in Lister’s living-room. Christ on the cross, the face twisted in anger.
“The note was hand-written,” said Rossiter. “There’s no question it’s authentic. Lister drove up the mountain in a four-wheel drive Jeep that was in the shop for a lube and oil, and a new section of exhaust pipe.”
Willows nodded into the phone. He was thinking about the smear of fresh grease he’d found in the grass by the creek, the traces of carbon-monoxide poison in Naomi Lister’s blood.
“Bill Lister wrote down the Jeep owner’s name. We checked the work records. The vehicle was left at the station on August thirteenth, and picked up three days later. The owner was down in Seattle for a dirty weekend with his girlfriend.”
“You talked to him?”
“Both of them. The guy was planning to write off his expenses. He’d kept all his receipts. The girl corroborated his statement. They’re both clean, no doubt about it at all.”
“Why did Lister kill his daughter? Was there any explanation in the note?”
“The girl was a fornicator and a sinner, a dreadful abomination in the eyes of the Lord.” Rossiter sighed theatrically. “Why didn’t we think of that in the first place, Jack? We could’ve solved the damn case the same day you found the body.”
“Tell me something,” said Willows. “Did Lister mention any other names?”
“You think he might’ve sliced up the kid in the van?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Solve your case for you, wouldn’t it?” said Rossiter cynically.
“Say hello to Katie for me,” said Willows, and hung up.
“What was that all about?” said Parker.
Willows told her about Lister’s suicide and the note he’d left behind.
“Somebody who works in a service station,” said Parker thoughtfully, “would know how to hot-wire a car. Or an Econoline van.” She frowned. “Maybe Lister thought the kid was pimping for his daughter, got her involved in the business.”
“Could be,” said Willows. “But I’d say Bill Lister was about fifty years old, and that he looked every minute of it. The man we’re after is only about thirty.”
“According to that old Chinese woman we talked to. But she must be in her eighties. Who knows what kind of shape her eyes are in.”
Willows nodded. He’d been thinking along similar lines. The old lady had impressed him, but what if she’d been wrong?
“Are you going to tell Bradley about this?” said Parker.
“What do you think?”
“I think we should give Spears and Orwell the first shift. We can take over after dinner, watch the Trans Am until whoever’s living at Greenbriar Lane packs it in for the night.”
*
There was a Block Brothers “For Sale” sign in front of a large mock Tudor house diagonally across the street from Misha Yokóte’s sprawling L-shaped rancher. Eddy Orwell parked the unmarked police car in the driveway, which was hidden from the street by a dense hedge of dwarf cedars. Farley Spears unbuckled his seat belt. He climbed out of the car and went over to the house, pressed his nose against a window and came away smiling.
“It’s empty. No furniture, nothing.”
“Perfect,” said Orwell, reaching for the Zeiss 7x50s on the seat beside him.
The rancher was white, with dark green trim. There was about a hundred and fifty feet of frontage, all gently sloping lawn. The driveway curved up the left side of the property and disappeared into an attached double garage. The garage door wasn’t completely down, and with the aid of the binoculars, Spears was able to see the licence plate of the car parked inside. The plate number was identical to the number on the parking ticket issued by Judith Lundstrom.
Spears lit a cigarette. Orwell glared at him, but didn’t say anything. Orwell was a vice cop working on a homicide investigation, and he knew he had to watch his step. Spears was a jerk, but what Spears said to Bradley could have a serious impact on Orwell’s career. He moved upwind of Spears, and Spears smiled at him, smoke dribbling out of his mouth and nostrils.
Orwell found another gap in the trees and scanned the front of the house. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows, either for privacy or to keep out the heat of the afternoon sun. Orwell fine-tuned the binoculars until he could make out the warp and woof of the fabric. It didn’t help much.
Farley Spears finished his cigarette and lit another one.
The house shimmered in the heat.
Spears looked down at the city, ten or more miles away and lost in a poisonous grey haze. “I wonder how much it costs to live up here,” he said.
“Lots,” said Orwell.
“That much, huh.” Spears dropped the butt of his cigarette on the asphalt and ground it under his heel. Orwell had a real talent for small talk. It was going to be a long afternoon.
There was a garden tap sticking out of the house to the left of the front door, just above ground level. Spears knelt and turned the handle. The tap made a gurgling sound and a single drop of lukewarm water fell into his cupped hand. He turned the tap off. Smoking dried him out, but he was wired, he couldn’t quit. He glanced at Orwell. They only had one pair of binoculars and it was clear that Orwell wasn’t about to give them up. He went over to the car and sat down and lit his third cigarette in twenty minutes.
At half-past four, Farley Spears decided to relieve his boredom by taking a short walk. He’d noticed that there was an almost perpendicular wall of rock behind the rancher, about a hundred feet away from the house. The rock wall was at least fifty feet high, topped with a mix of dense shrubbery and stunted evergreens. If he could manage to get up there, he’d have a great view of the fenced back yard, maybe even be able to see inside the house.
“Maybe even fall and break your neck,” said Orwell when Spears told him where he was going.
Spears walked up Greenbriar Lane until he was out of sight of the rancher, then cut through somebody’s yard and followed a split rail fence up the flank of the cliff. Within a few minutes he was breathing heavily, winded. He paused, and loosened his tie. The air smelled of resin. Insects buzzed wearily past. Spears looked around. He was all alone. He unzipped his trousers and urinated against a cedar fence post, aiming at an ant but missing. When he was finished, he started up the hill again, climbing slowly but steadily, pacing himself.
&nb
sp; Ten minutes after he’d left Orwell, Spears was feeling anything but bored. Squatting in the bushes at the top of the cliff, he looked down on a heart-shaped pool, a barbecue full of dead ashes, and a man and a woman making love in the middle of a tiled patio, their dark bodies reflected in a windbreak of glass blocks.
The woman was lying on her back. Spears could see her face. She was Japanese.
“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Yokóte,” he said softly.
Inside the house, a telephone warbled.
The man continued his steady rhythm. The woman’s hands slid down his back. She gripped his buttocks and squeezed hard. Spears watched the index finger of her right hand disappear between her partner’s cheeks. The man began to move a little faster. The telephone warbled musically. Sweat glistened on the man’s back. Misha Yokóte slowly lifted her arm, withdrawing three feet of gaily coloured silk scarf from the man’s anus. Spears’s mouth gaped open. The man bucked and lurched. His knees thumped on the tiles. He cried out, and Misha laughed.
The man rolled off her, on to the hot tiles of the patio. He still had an erection. Spears saw to his surprise that he wasn’t Japanese at all, but that he had a very deep tan, that he was tanned all over, every last inch of him.
The telephone hadn’t quit. Misha jumped lithely to her feet and padded into the house.
No visible scars, thought Spears. Terrific legs. The phone had stopped ringing. His thigh muscles ached. He shifted his stance and a handful of pebbles rattled down the slope and fell to the narrow strip of lawn between the face of the cliff and the pool.
Misha came out of the house and said, “It’s Felix. He wants to talk to you.”
Junior nodded. He scratched his groin and strolled into the house.
Spears watched Misha walk along the edge of the pool towards him, climb up on the diving-board and test the spring of it. She stood in profile, perfectly still, as if listening. Spears stared at her breasts. She flexed her knees and began to work the board, got some altitude and arced cleanly beneath the flat pink surface of the water.
Willows and Parker Box Set Page 36
