Shutterbug

by Laurence Gough

  ‘We’re done,’ said LoBrio. ‘Twenty apiece should cover the bill, including tip.’

  Willows had already calculated the tab. To Parker he said, ‘I’ll get it.’ He opened his wallet, dropped a ten and a five on the table. DelMonte said, ‘It’s like that, is it?’

  ‘Exactly like that,’ said Willows. Since he hadn’t finished his Coke, he took it with him.

  Chapter 19

  A horn blared endlessly. Lewis, his bathrobe flapping in his wake, stumbled along behind Wayne as the foul-mouthed biker hurried outside to see what the hell was going on, and hopefully pound some thoughtless creep into something akin to mush.

  April had parked the leased Jaguar at a rakish angle across the gravel driveway. Her boots were up on the steering wheel, and this accounted for the racket.

  She lifted her feet off the wheel as Wayne, gravel crunching underfoot, stormed towards her. Into the choking silence he yelled, ‘Pull down your skirt, April!’

  ‘Don’t look, if it bothers you so much.’ But April demurely pulled her skirt down to her knees. She smiled past Wayne at Lewis. ‘Hi! Nice outfit! You look like a movie star!’ She peered more closely at him. ‘Oops!’

  Wayne said, ‘You’re late. Where were you?’

  ‘Nowhere. At the Safeway, that’s all.’

  ‘Shopping,’ said Wayne heavily.

  ‘You are so suspicious! Yes, shopping! This really nice checkout boy in a cute red vest helped me carry my groceries to the car, and then he said he had an hour off for lunch, and would I like to spend some time with him, so we could get to know each other, or was I in a hurry to get home before my ice cream melted.’

  Wayne slumped against the car.

  ‘How could I say no? I mean, I didn’t buy any ice cream.’

  ‘So, where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘The checkout guy. Is he in the trunk?’

  ‘No! Certainly and absolutely not. How could you even think such a thing?’

  Wayne jerked a thumb at Lewis, who stood shivering in a patch of sunlight.

  ‘That’s different. You know it is.’ April’s adorable little fist thumped the steering wheel. ‘That’s so unfair. You kept making hints. You as much as ordered me to go get him, for God’s sake!’ Wayne made desperate, inadvertently comical shushing motions all through her little speech. April had been checking her lipstick in the Jag’s rearview mirror, so she hadn’t noticed.

  Lamely, a wary eye on Lewis, Wayne said, ‘Well, yeah. I guess you could say I encouraged you to go hunting. But I didn’t know you were gonna actually do it.’

  Lewis said, ‘You told her to go and get me?’

  ‘Well, no. Not exactly. Not you in particular.’

  Wayne took his time firing up a Marlboro. He said, ‘Don’t feel singled out. Nobody’s been picking on you.’

  Lewis walked unsteadily over to Wayne and bummed a cigarette from him. He went over to the Jag and opened the door, leaned past April and plugged in the cigarette lighter.

  He said, ‘I feel sick.’

  She stroked his hair. ‘I just bet you do, you poor thing.’ ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I know I am, and I’m so sorry.’

  The lighter popped out of its socket. April helped Lewis fire up his Marlboro. Smoke leaked out of Lewis’s mouth. Wayne said, ‘You better get back inside, Lewis.’

  April’s jaw tightened. ‘First things first.’ She used the remote to unlock the trunk, waved Lewis out of her way and pushed open the door. Her skirt rode high up on her slender thighs as she eased out of the car. She sauntered around to the trunk, opened it wide, snapped her fingers and said, ‘C’mere and give me a hand.’

  The trunk was full of plastic Safeway bags full of groceries, but no cowering, red-vested Safeway employees.

  Lewis grabbed a few bags and headed back down the driveway towards the house. Wayne trudged after him with the several bags that were left. April slammed shut the Jags trunk.

  In the kitchen, Wayne discovered that one of the bags was leaking Neopolitan ice cream. Gobbets of the stuff lay in an easily followed trail that led from the front door and along the broad, carpeted hallway that split the house more or less down the middle, and emptied into the kitchen.

  Stuffing shrink-wrapped chunks of meat into the freezer, he said, ‘I thought you told me you didn’t buy any ice cream.’

  ‘I must’ve forgot.’

  ‘What a fucking disaster! Take a look in the hall, go see what you did to the rug.’

  ‘It’s just ice cream, Wayne. You act as if it was nuclear waste.’ April shoved a clear plastic bag of McIntosh apples into the crisper. ‘If we had a dog, everything would already be cleaned up.’

  ‘If we had a dog? Well then, why don’t you go get a dog.’ ‘Maybe I will.’

  ‘Fme,’ said Wayne.

  ‘But right now,’ said April, ‘Lewis needs me. He needs to shoot up. I mean, look at him. He’s a wreck!’

  This time, ex-addict April made Lewis do all the work. It was time for him to fly solo. She’d patiently shown him how to heat the spoon, dilute the heroin, manipulate the hypodermic, let slip the air, plump up a vein, slide in the needle. If he was going to take his addiction seriously, he’d better learn how to take care of himself. Hadn’t she repeatedly warned him that this moment was coming? She sat cross-legged on the bed, and chewed her way right around a McIntosh apple’s diminutive equator, as Lewis put all his hard-gained knowledge to work.

  She watched, fascinated, as Lewis depressed the plunger and the drug squirted into his vein.

  ‘Better?’

  He nodded. He felt great, for now. Soon enough, he’d nod off. April led him through the house to the front door, yelled at Wayne that she was taking Lewis for a drive. No reply from Wayne. She was careful to lock the door behind them, led Lewis down the sun-dappled driveway and opened the Jag’s front passenger door for him.

  ‘Where are we going?’ mumbled Lewis, not really caring.

  April fastened his seatbelt, shut the door, walked around to the far side of the luxurious automobile and got in and started the enormous, gas-guzzling twelve-cylinder engine.

  Traffic was light to moderate. There was nary a cloud in the sky. April stopped at a Chevron station, and had the car gassed up. Feeling lucky, she bought ten 649 lottery tickets.

  April followed South-West Marine to Commercial, turned left and headed north, crested the big hill that ran on an east-west axis from one end of the city to the other. They dipped down to Fourth Avenue, cruised past an unassuming industrial district and ended up, not forty-five minutes after they’d begun their journey, at 1205 East Seventh, the Vancouver regional branch of the SPCA. The cinderblock building was painted a washed-out blue. Inside, it was warm and comfortable. A wire rack held information pamphlets pertaining to various breeds. To their left there was a low wooden counter, computers, a cash register. A notice board was buried in black-and-white photocopies of beloved pets that had gone astray.

  Lewis listlessly followed April down a short hallway and into an open courtyard. Two dozen spacious wire-mesh cages held roughly thirty mostly lackadaisical dogs. The vast majority were of indeterminate, that is to say mixed, breed. The cages were smooth concrete boxes. Each held a large bucket of clean water. If the dogs so desired, they could pass through a low doorway into an area that was heated and out of the weather.

  Slips of paper on the cages provided minimal information on the occupants.

  The first cage held a spayed pit bull/lab cross named Josie and a neutered shepherd/collie cross named Bob. During her life as a stripper, April had heard countless bad-taste jokes about the sexual proclivities of shepherds, but she had never believed any of them, until now. Was it actually possible? The place was swarming with volunteer labour, so she supposed she could ask. But the thing was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  She knelt, and rubbed her thumb and index finger briskly together. ‘Here Josie, here girl!’

 
The pit bull/lab eyed her for a moment, and then, very carefully, turned in a half-circle and sat down with her back to her unwelcome visitors.

  April vented her charm on Bob, with similar results. ‘Okay, fine. If you want to be stuck-up, suit yourself. Just don’t come whining to me when it’s your turn to take gas.’

  Most of the other dogs, though there were close to three dozen of them, were oddly similar. Crossbred, but without purpose, the children of anonymous parents driven by pheromones and a base, inflexible will to reproduce, they were the sad progeny of chance desire, and fleeting passion. Though they varied in size and colour and even temperament, none of them could be considered fetching. What they had in common, most of them, were stumpy legs, dull eyes, and tails that were rather longish, in proportion to their chunky bodies.

  A few seemed to have been drugged. Perhaps they had simply lost their lust for life. One brute snarled incessantly at a flock of sparrows cavorting in a nearby tree. Several spent the scant time remaining to them barking forcefully but without apparent reason.

  April failed to read the printed warning on one cage and nearly lost a finger to a justifiably maladjusted afghan/cockapoo.

  She came very close to overlooking a pair of dalmatians that were reclining at the back of their pen, in the heated area of the compound. According to their scanty information sheet, the dogs were fourteen and eight months old. They were unrelated. Both had been spayed, which, if she properly understood the jargon, made them bitches. The dogs had been given up for adoption by their previous owner. The spotty dogs were designated ‘house-trained’ and ‘not good with children.’ April, with Lewis lagging along behind, followed big red arrows around a corner and down a corridor and past a metal-clad door to the heated run. There they were. ‘Esmeralda’ and ‘Conchita.’ What crappy names. She knelt, and snapped her fingers. The larger of the pair, Esmeralda, presumably, sauntered over and leaned against the mesh.

  Lewis thought they looked like black and white jigsaw puzzles that had partially melted. Ugly things.

  April fished around in her purse, dipped the tip of her index finger into a plastic bag of white powder, and then stuck her finger into the unfortunate dog’s wet black nostril.

  Esmeralda staggered back, whoofed uncertainly, pirouetted in tight, nearly concentric, circles, and staggered sideways. Her four legs splayed out. She fell on her chin.

  ‘Good girl!’ said April.

  Esmeralda’s tongue left a wet smear of drool on the concrete as she crawled determinedly towards her saviour.

  ‘Be right back!’ promised April.

  At the reception desk, she flung down the information slips she’d plucked from the mesh, and said she wanted to buy a couple of dogs.

  The woman behind the counter drolly asked her if she had any particular animals in mind.

  ‘The purebreds!’ snapped April. She opened her purse. ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, how much do they cost?’

  April soon discovered that the SPCA was a large bureaucracy. There were rules, and plenty of them. She was required to prove to the satisfaction of one and all that she lived in the city, had a fenced yard, loved dogs, was a responsible adult human being, would keep the dogs for at least a year, swear not to roll them over for a quick profit, sell them dead or alive to an institute of higher learning for purposes of vile research, or otherwise abuse or take advantage of them in any way.

  Yadda, yadda, yadda.

  The grand total, including collars, leashes, tags, the spaying and first inoculations, came to $246.57.

  April didn’t get it. What kind of scam were they trying to pull? How could an even number of dogs total out at an odd number of pennies? April angrily slapped her gold Visa card down on the counter, signed with a flourish, roused Lewis, and got out of there. What a bunch of crooks!

  On the way home they paused at a pet-supply emporium. Lewis dozed blissfully while April purchased several twenty-kilo bags of dry dog food, stainless-steel feeding bowls, boxes of biscuits, durable rawhide chewing bones, and a brace of sturdy leather muzzles that had been manufactured in Espaha, and would have looked right at home in a book about the darker side of the Inquisition.

  She could hardly wait to show off her new pets to Wayne. But by the time they got home, he was gone.

  And so, April discovered when she checked Wayne’s closet, was another of his shiny bug-suits. Her stomach coiled in on itself. She experienced a sick feeling of inevitable disaster. Had she bought the dogs as replacements for poor, doomed Lewis? God, she hoped not! If it was true, how in the world could she ever again trust her subconscious?

  Chapter 20

  Alice was in her late sixties, going on mid-seventies. Poor eating habits had made her severely overweight. Her feet were splayed. Her puffy ankles were wrapped in Tensor bandages. Her hands were red and permanently wrinkled. Her back was stooped under the weight of a long lifetime of hard, underpaid labour. Her dark eyes were tired and sombre, centred in whirlpools of wrinkly flesh. Her thinning grey hair was untended. Willows couldn’t help wondering about the effect of all those years of close encounters with the myriad industrial-strength chemicals her work would inevitably expose her to.

  Alice worked as a house cleaner, floating domestic help, for a Burnaby-based company called Minute Maid. She’d already explained to Willows and Parker that she had been cleaning Sammy Wu’s luxurious downtown apartment twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, for the past five years.

  ‘He lived here for the past five years?’ Parker hadn’t believed the building was that old. But then, she could scarcely believe Sammy Wu had so recently been the topic of jovial lunchtime conversation, and was now reduced to lunch.

  ‘No, he changed addresses many times. But he always took me with him. He appreciated my work.’ There was no hint of pride in Alice’s voice. She was simply stating the facts, ma’am.

  ‘Did you know him very well?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘After all that time? I’m surprised.’

  ‘When 1 come, he’s gone. Always. No exceptions.’ Alice paused, reflecting. ‘No, wait. One time only, he is here. He gives me fifty dollars, and sends me away.’

  ‘When was that, Alice? Recently?’

  ‘No, many years ago.’ Alice shifted from foot to foot. She said, ‘Maybe I could sit down a minute.’

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ said Parker.

  Alice settled deeply into an upholstered chair. She smiled. ‘I always wonder, is chair as comfortable as it looks? Now I know.’ Willows said, ‘When you were cleaning Mr. Wu’s apartment, did you ever find anything unusual?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Willows shrugged. ‘Anything at all, that you can think of…’ ‘He was a bachelor. No wife, no kids. He was a drinker. Vodka. He had many women visitors. I can tell you he liked to watch TV. The set was always turned on.’

  ‘He left the television on when he wasn’t home?’

  ‘Yes. Very loud.’

  ‘Anything else?’ said Parker.

  ‘He was a slug. Filthy. Disgusting. Dirty dishes everywhere. Clothes all over the floor. Empty bottles, filthy ashtrays. Sometimes, he would not clean up after his sex adventures.’ Alice fixed Parker with her beady little eye. ‘I never complained. Or shirked my duties. But this is too much. A dead body! There are limits. I am not going back in there. I refuse, and if I am fired, so what!’ ‘It’s all right,’ said Parker. ‘We don’t expect you to go back in there. It’s a crime scene.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But it has to be cleaned up sooner or later, yes? I won’t do it, that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Parker. She patted Alice’s arm. ‘You must have had a key to the apartment.’

  ‘I have many keys. Many. But when I come to work, the door is already open. As I told the policeman.’

  ‘We need to hear it from you,’ said Parker.

  ‘Okay, fine. The door is open. Wide open.
I knock. No answer. I smell burnt meat. Okay, in I go, with all my equipment. I shut the door and lock it, so nobody bothers me. I turn down the TV sound, so it is not hurting my ears. I go into the kitchen, look in the oven. Nothing. The electricity is off. No heat. Now I am not worried. I go to work. First the kitchen, then I rest. Five minutes. Now the bathroom, and then the hall, the living room and eating area. I rest again. Five more minutes. I watch the TV. Then it’s time for the bedroom. The door is open. I am picking things up off the floor, and I see him lying on the far side of the bed. He is naked. I never see a dead person, except my poor husband, in his coffin. But I know right away that Mr. Wu is dead. Very, very dead. Yes?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Parker. She glanced at Willows. He apparently had no supplementary questions, for now. She said, ‘We’d like you to go to police headquarters on Main Street, to make a statement. An officer will drive you there, and then take you back to your car.’

  ‘What about my equipment?’

  ‘You can take most of it. We’ll need to keep the vacuum cleaner, but you can have it back in a day or two.’

  ‘That’s no problem. My company has many vacuum cleaners. But I would like to ask you a question, if you don’t mind.’

  Parker nodded encouragingly.

  Alice said, ‘I only met Mr. Wu that one time, but he was very serious. So tell me, now he is dead, why does he look so happy?’

  *

  Sammy Wu lay on the carpet, belly up. Sammy was tall, but thin. His glossy head was turned towards the carpet. His right hand rested over his heart. The inevitable syringe lay on the carpet within a few inches of his unblinking eye. He was smiling broadly. Had he died laughing? Willows doubted it.

  The bed was a mess. There had been no sign of forced entry, but Willows believed Sammy had been surprised in bed. There were signs of a protracted struggle. The sheets were blood-flecked, and badly scorched by an intense, tightly focused flame. Sammy had been severely beaten; his face and upper body were bruised and swollen.