Shadow Puppet

by Jeffrey Round

  “You look different,” Dan said, without knowing how or why.

  The man set a glass of water and a menu on the table and patted his waistline. “Bariatric surgery — a hundred-

  and-forty pounds gone just like that.”

  Suddenly Dan saw him as he had been, jolly, hearty, and triple-large. Now his jaw-line sagged, his face was gaunt as if an invisible plague had decimated his body, eating him away from within. Fittingly, he was dressed all in black, a sombre spectre come to join the feast.

  “Mandy’ll be out in just a sec,” he said before hurrying off.

  It was another five minutes before Mandy appeared, patting the golden curls on her head with one hand and carrying an order pad with the other. Her hairdo seemed to be in imitation of some popular singer, though Dan couldn’t bring to mind who she was trying to be in a forlorn effort to brighten her early shift. At a guess, he might have said she looked like Dolly Parton circa 1978, though whatever plastic surgery she’d endured to facilitate the crossover had not held up as well as Dolly’s.

  “Coffee, hon?” She raised a pot and flashed her white-

  as-snow dentures.

  “Thanks.”

  She turned his cup and poured. “What can I get ya ta eat?”

  “Pie,” he said. “Apple.”

  “Ice cream on top?”

  “Yes, good. Thanks.”

  She was back in less than a minute with the largest slice of pie Dan could recall ever being served. A giant mound of ice cream slid off to the side. She looked concerned by Dan’s surprised expression. He took a bite and smiled to reassure her all was well.

  At 5:29 the front door opened with a soft click. A cool gust blew through the place. The chief clocked Dan the moment he entered. He came over and dropped wearily onto the seat as though impersonating someone much heavier, a diminished sovereign exhausted by the daily rituals and unable to rise to his station in life. Or perhaps he really was that tired old man, Dan thought, and the facade he put on every day — that of a resilient police chief — was the real impersonation, an impressive sleight-of-hand performed over and over on a daily basis, of which few were privileged to witness the behind-scenes reality.

  Dan had once done the chief a favour and, tit for tat, the chief had done him one in return. It didn’t mean they were best buddies or even that they had each other’s backs, though Dan suspected the latter might be true if push came to shove. For now, at least, it simply meant he could confide in him and ask questions others might not dare. Hard questions that elicited hard answers. If there was one thing Dan knew about the chief, it was that he wasn’t afraid to admit when he made a mistake. It was the sort of blatant honesty that impressed Dan and encouraged trust. How far it extended was impossible to say.

  Dan hadn’t seen the chief in a couple of years, but judging by his looks, they hadn’t been good ones. He’d never stopped to wonder if police chiefs suffered from burnout and PTSD, but of course they would. Then again, they were on the city payroll and would at least have something to fall back on if they ever cracked up. Dan never let the recurring bouts of traumatic stress he suffered hold him back, though they increased his anxiety and played havoc with his workload. Still, he could happily have done without the ongoing nightmares about the people he failed to save — the ones who eluded his grasp and ended up suicides or worse — or the nagging inner voice whispering in his ear to say his life had been lived in vain and that he was just taking up space on the planet. Some days it felt like that was all there was, but for a few bright spots like his son and his friends.

  When Mandy returned she seemed unnerved by the chief’s presence. Maybe she was on the Ten Most Wanted list and one glance from the chief would put her behind bars for the rest of her life. Golden curls notwithstanding, her disguise had been seen through. Dan made a mental note to suggest putting the faces of fugitives on coffee cups in diners the way they did with missing kids on milk cartons.

  She took the chief’s order, her sweaty fingers fumbling the pencil like a five-year-old learning her alphabet. Then she was gone back to the kitchen where she would no doubt report the presence of heavy brass in the diner.

  The chief held out his hand. Dan saw a distinctive tremble. “My nerves are shot,” he said. “My wife’s leaving me. After thirty-six years, she wants out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dan said.

  “I said, ‘Do you want a career? Something to do with your time while I’m at work?’ But that wasn’t it.” He eyed Dan like a stand-up comic waiting to deliver the punchline. “Said she can’t take it no more. Doesn’t want me to be on the force, doesn’t like it when I’m in the public eye. She can’t stand it. All these years and she never told me.”

  They sat in silence a moment as though neither of them could think of a worthy follow-up to the statement.

  Mandy returned with the chief’s coffee, fumbling the saucer and slopping the coffee onto the table. The chief’s hand shot out and deflected her arm like a mountain lion taking a swipe at a careless coyote. Instinctive, reactive. Dan could imagine him killing like that. Without a second glance over his shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry!” Mandy exclaimed, mortified at having imperilled such an important customer. After all, it wasn’t every day one got to serve royalty.

  The chief looked up from the stain on the white cloth and faked a smile. Noblesse oblige. “I’ll live.”

  Dan wondered if there were days when the chief thought he might prefer the alternative. It would be tough having to constantly deflect not just coffee, but also the harshest criticism from both outspoken city officials and the public, your every action mirroring a landscape of anxiety and demands as unending as the flow from Niagara Falls. Perhaps being on the public payroll wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

  “You know why I like this place?” the chief asked after Mandy had sopped up the spill and returned to the kitchen.

  “The decor?”

  The chief looked around as though he’d never considered it. “Not really.” He gestured over his shoulder. “You see that high-rise across the street?”

  Dan looked to the window and nodded.

  “There’s a water tower on the roof. Just imagine, a place in downtown Toronto with a water tower on its roof.” He shrugged, as though it were all but incomprehensible. “Anyway, my last shift as a detective on the street I get a call — they want me to climb to the top of the friggin’ tower and talk down a psychiatric patient. Skinny little thing in a nightdress. No shoes.” The chief’s gaze drifted off, all misty and faraway, making Dan expect a sad ending to the story. “Anyway, I talked her down, so all good on that end.” He paused, dumped cream into his coffee and stirred. “God, I miss those days. But we’re not here to do therapy on me. I guess you got something you want to tell me.”

  “Not tell. Ask.”

  The chief looked up with a wary expression. “Is it to do with the murder of that doctor last week?”

  He’d do well to be wary. The pressure to arrest the suspects had to be enormous. Or perhaps free speech was on the chief’s endangered-species list at present. In any case, he had no choice but to press on. The worst that could happen was that the chief would tell him the information was off limits.

  “Not directly,” he said. “Though it might be connected. Your officers may not notice these things, but there was a poster pasted around the gay community of a man who vanished from a bar back in spring. There was another one in the summer. Then a week and a half ago a third man was reported by his brothers as having vanished without a word that he was going anywhere. He didn’t frequent the bars, but he was a regular at the downtown Y. I’ve been hired by his family to find him.”

  “Okay.” The chief stirred the coffee, tasted it then set the cup down with something like disdain written on his face. “I’ve been coming here for thirteen years and they have yet to make a good cup of coffee.”

  “Have you thought of trying another place?”

  “It’s not the place I want to
change, just the coffee.” He grunted. “So, go on.”

  “Recently I learned about yet another gay man who disappeared, maybe end of last year. A guy who makes puppets, apparently, though I can’t say for sure if he’s really missing. But for the record I don’t think these disappearances have anything to do with the murder of Doctor Melchior. It sounds like Melchior was a casualty of street violence, not homophobia. But with these others, my concern is that someone may purposely be targeting gay men.”

  The chief looked gloomily around, as though bad news was waiting to waylay him at every corner. Did his wife badger him about unsolved crimes? Ask him about drug busts gone wrong, perpetrators of violence against women? Dan could imagine him turning to her and saying, Hey! I don’t ask you about every stain on the tablecloth, do I?

  “For the record, I had heard about the two poster guys. But not the others. And yes, Melchior was the victim of casual street violence.” The chief looked off for a second. “Okay, I can tell you a little something on that one. But keep it to yourself.” He shrugged. “You always do, so I don’t know why I bother telling you that. You’re a credit to your profession, such as it is.”

  Dan smiled at the backhanded compliment.

  “You may have heard about the CCTV footage?” His eyebrows went up. Dan nodded. “Good. We’re not ready to release details just yet, but we know where these two are holed up. Check the news this evening.” He nodded — message delivered. “The problem with the disappearances, as I’m sure you know, is making connections between missing men without the bodies turning up. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do missing ones. Have you found any connection between the vics?”

  “Possibly. Two of them were involved in the leather community.”

  “Rough crowd, I hear. But it’s an interesting point. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.”

  “The man I’m looking for also had a pay-for-play online sex site. One of the others was an exotic dancer and a third appeared in porn films. Have you heard of a Toronto-based company called Star-X Productions?”

  The chief grunted. “The local porn industry is no longer a cute little diversion for bored suburbanites. It strikes me I’ve seen something on your Star-X cross my desk recently. We know these companies hire illegals. They work sex shows for under-the-table money, not just in the gay community. We’ve got multiple strip clubs in the city, but most of them say they’re private clubs so we can’t just walk in on them. It’s hard to keep tabs on all of them.”

  “What about a guy named Zoltan Mirovic? Have you heard of him?”

  The chief took a little longer to reply this time. Dan wondered what he was holding back. At last, he said simply, “Again, sounds familiar. I’ll look into it. Anything else?”

  Dan looked carefully at the chief. The little he knew of the man could be put on the back of a postage stamp. “There is something else. It strikes me that, apart from the murdered doctor, all of the men are Muslim.”

  The chief’s spoon cracked against the tabletop. “Shit!” He stared at Dan with baleful eyes. “Are you telling me someone is kidnapping Muslims in this town?”

  “Not just any Muslims. Gay Muslims.”

  “But why target gay Muslims? They’re already pariahs in their own community.” He looked across the room as though the answer might lie on the TV screen silently broadcasting weather reports, traffic updates, stock exchange results, and the news, simultaneously. Finally, he turned back to Dan. “So, we’re looking for someone who targets gay Muslims because they’re easy to isolate and victimize. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Dan shook his head. “It’s not that simple. I think we’re looking for a man who may hate gays in general, but has a vendetta against gay Muslims in particular.”

  Dan saw the click.

  “A Muslim targeting other Muslims?”

  “Yes, specifically because they’re gay.”

  “Holy shit. It’s a fucking fatwa.” The chief sat back. “I came here this morning thinking my life couldn’t get worse. And now you’re telling me I’ve got Muslims killing other Muslims because they’re gay. That’s going to cause a media frenzy.”

  “No doubt,” Dan said.

  The chief’s mind was already churning through the possibilities. “If you’re right and we keep it quiet, then how can we warn other potential vics? And if we don’t and someone else disappears or gets killed, this could get a lot worse.”

  “That’s what I think,” Dan said. “There’s a meeting group for LGBTQ Muslims. At least one of the men was involved with them briefly. I’m going to contact them and see if we can’t get the word out that way at least.”

  The chief looked skeptical. “It’s a start, I guess.”

  Mandy arrived with the breakfast special, a mountain of hash browns in a pool of grease piled alongside three fried eggs, and set it on the table.

  The chief looked down at his plate. “Why do I order this shit?”

  “To keep yourself alive,” Dan said, noting Mandy’s grateful look at his reply.

  The chief looked up at him with baleful eyes. “Remind me again — what’s the point of that?”

  FOURTEEN

  Resistance

  IT WAS A LITTLE PAST seven by the time Dan left the diner and headed over to Church Street. Half of the faces he encountered looked fatigued from lack of sleep, forced out of bed to get to work on time. The other half were glassy-eyed from being out all night and only now slowly wending their way home. He wasn’t sure which group he pitied more.

  Two men in their twenties, one fat and one thin, stood outside Starbucks arguing.

  “Meth is something I only use once in a while as a little pick-me-up,” the larger one explained to his companion. “That way I can’t get addicted.”

  “Yeah, dream on,” said his skinny friend. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen you passed out in the baths. You probably don’t even remember when you’re high.”

  The other looked indignant. “Well, at least I’m not a full-time junkie like you.”

  “I like getting high. I’m just not in denial about it.”

  Dan passed by, shaking his head.

  He paused inside the entrance to Second Cup to look over a community billboard covered with invitations to LGBTQ groups alongside bicycles for sale and notices for drag bingo. Dan scanned the circulars till he found the one he wanted: Almusawa — Equality. He took a shot of the invitation to the all-gender Muslim support group and was about to turn away when he caught sight of a card tucked into the corner: Edie Foxe — Sexual Contortionist. He recalled her attack on the drunken man at the leatherman contest. You are on my radar far more often than I would expect, he thought.

  He lined up and ordered a coffee and muffin. Funny how life seemed to take him from one coffee shop to another. He chose a plush armchair on the upper level and sent a text to Terence, asking if he remembered the address of the puppet maker. Next, he dialed Almusawa. An authoritarian-sounding message directed him to leave his name and contact info. It felt as if he were applying for a job.

  He sipped his coffee and surveyed the other customers. They seemed by and large an unremarkable bunch. If it weren’t for the high percentage of men, he might not have known he was in a gay establishment. It was ironic how ordinary the ghetto had become. After Stonewall and AIDS, the community had settled for some sort of hyper normalcy, as though fitting in with the social fabric was what they’d wanted all along. If so, it simply meant becoming invisible in the long run. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard of a queer protest or boycott. Now it was all gaybies and marriage. Even the corporations were far too concerned with soliciting the support of the LGBTQ community to risk offending it. Even a company as solidly establishment as IBM, which once refused its employees same-sex spousal benefits, now proudly proclaimed to have been the first to offer what was simply the status quo when all was said and done. And thanks very much. Scratch the surface, however, and Dan knew you’d find a struggle by gay rights acti
vists in the background forcing the corporation to its knees and setting off a landslide of change around the world. And it had all begun in Toronto, where the world’s first legal same-sex marriage took place. So how could it be that someone was killing gay Muslims in this great country of history-making social reforms and cultural freedoms?

  His phone rang, startling him out of his reflections.

  “You called about Almusawa,” a woman’s voice said.

  “That’s correct.”

  “What’s your interest in the group?”

  “My name is Dan Sharp. I’m a private investigator —”

  “Are you with the police?”

  “No, I’m —”

  “Are you Muslim?”

  “No. I’m the father of a son with a Muslim woman.”

  “Is the son a practising Muslim?”

  “No, but if I could just explain —”

  “This group is for practising Muslims who wish to pray in peace.”

  “I understand. I’m phoning because I’m concerned for the safety of your members.” This was met with silence, so he went on. “The gay male members of your group in particular —”

  “If you are talking about the recent murder of a gay doctor then you are mistaken. He was not a Muslim. Someone may be targeting gay men, but that does not mean they are targeting gay Muslims.”

  “There are at least three, and possibly four, Muslim men who have gone missing from the community. I don’t think they’re connected with the doctor’s murder. I was hoping for a chance to address your group to see —”

  “It’s a violent world out there. Many LGBTQ people are being hurt right now. It’s not just Muslims who are being attacked. What does your wife think?”

  Dan felt his ire rising, but he held back. “I don’t have a wife.”

  “You just said —”

  “I said I fathered a child with a Muslim woman. I’m not married. I’m gay.”

  “But you are not Muslim. I cannot invite you to speak to my group. I have to be concerned for their safety. We are like a resistance group during the war. I cannot risk exposing the members for fear of their safety.”