by Warren Court
I flip through the book, which has all of the local moves in it. Long-distance moves are entered into the computer. I flip through to the date Lent wanted to move and I write her name, address and estimated weight down. It’s a good move, or would have been had I not killed her. Ten hours to load and unload, three hours of travel. If I could have landed two or three of these a week, I wouldn’t be under the gun now. I also book the other move from Fintona, Lent’s neighbour.
“You book something?” It’s Mike.
I swing around. I hadn’t heard him sidle up to me. “Yeah, just a small local.”
“That’s about all we’re getting from you these days.”
The gloves are off now. He’s letting me know that I’m doomed. He’s a good guy but a straight shooter, and he’s been here twenty-one years. Started off as a junior mover and moved his way up. He has seen them come and go.
Back up in my office I slump in my chair and just stare straight ahead at my blank computer monitor.
“Something else, huh?” Ida says. She’s come out of her office to talk to me.
“Huh? What’s that, Ida?” I respond, not even turning my head to look at her. Go away, spy. Leave me alone.
“Your call from last week. She was the woman who was murdered.”
I snap out of it. “How do you know that?”
“We log all the cards the girls get.”
I forgot about that. Of course they record them. Rick wants to see how many leads each salesman is getting and how many they’re closing. Those stats are talked about at our biweekly sales meetings. Rick calls it our closing ratio. Plus, they pay the girls for each lead they book. Girls – old hags, more like it. They come in in the evenings and sit at bunch of desks down at the far end of the sales floor. They call real estate listings and book the appointments. They’re good at it, I suppose; I don’t remember a day where I didn’t have at least one of their leads on my desk. Sometimes they put out lousy ones, like that guy down on Barton Street who was being evicted, but most of the time they are good, solid leads that a real salesman should have no problem closing. Lent’s appointment would have been recorded and scratched off the list so that they didn’t keep bothering her, but I had no idea they kept a record of who’s got what leads.
It’s only a matter of time before Detective Marco comes to see me again, then, and this time it won’t be for watching kiddie porn on my computer at work. He will want to know how my meeting with the dear, departed Mrs. Lent went. The only thing I can cling to is the faint hope that my subsequent return visits have not been logged, but now I have the Lent move in the book.
Instead of going to my desk, I leave through the rear entrance. I just want to get out of there. Laura is outside talking to two of the movers, and she looks at me and smiles. I wave back but don’t go over. I don’t want to share her attentions with those two guys. I wonder if she’s ever seduced either of them. I hear them talk about her down in dispatch. She loves it, flirts with them constantly, but it’s not the same when she does it with me. And now we’ve sealed the deal, done the deed. We’re past all that.
I drive around aimlessly for about half an hour, then head over to the mall. The theatre has matinees and I choose one that seems mind-numbingly dull, a love story. The other film is a murder mystery. Definitely not what I need right now.
I buy two movie theatre hot dogs, a container of popcorn and a large Coke and head in. Except for an older couple sitting in the middle of the theatre I’m the only one there, and I sit up high in a dark corner.
I wolf down the dogs and munch on the popcorn until I start to feel a bit better. The caffeine in the Coke helps, but despite the rush I feel from it I drift off to sleep. Surprising, considering the circumstances I am in. Correction: the circumstances I put myself in.
I’m wakened by the security guard’s flashlight poking me in the stomach. I leap up like a shot and scare the kid, and he backs off.
“Sorry… Sorry, man,” I say to him. “I fell asleep.”
“It happens. This movie is a real snoozer,” he says.
I brush popcorn off me and collect my trash and head out. It’s after two. Good; I want this particular day to be a distant memory. The quicker I can be done with it the better.
I sit in my car for a half hour waiting for the news to come over the radio. The story on Lent’s death has no more updates; the police are appealing for any witnesses. Body won’t be released for the funeral until next week. Relatives are flying in from BC.
Laura calls my cell.
“Where are you?”
“Why?”
“You missed an appointment. The woman called. She spoke to Darryl.”
“Jesus. I’m heading right back.” I never went to my desk to check my cards.
I floor it back to the office. I actually get the front wheels of my Pontiac Sunfire to chirp. The revs go up dangerously close to six thousand, the red line. Yeah, go blow the engine on your car, jackass. You’ve blown the engine on your life, nearly – what’s a four-thousand-dollar car?
Everyone else’s car is in the parking lot. What is going on? Middle of the day, we should all be out. Ricky Boy’s Intrepid is there. Darryl’s Lumina too. Only one missing is the old man’s rusting Jag. Small compensation.
I hustle it in. Rick and Dennis, the rep from our national carrier, are standing in the hallway. Rick ignores me. I get it immediately. It’s our monthly meeting with Dennis.
“Excuse me, gents,” I say. Dennis is a great guy. Fit, handsome. Natural salesman. Making big money. He slaps me on the back.
“Get in there, boy,” he says. His slap betrays no inkling that he knows I’m on my way out. I’m grateful for it.
I slide into the meeting room where the rest of the guys are, Kevin and John and Tom our office manager and dispatcher Mike, his dispassionate face registering nothing.
Dennis and Rick come in, and then Darryl, who slides in last and takes a seat in the corner.
Rick does a preamble. Still ignores me. Won’t look at me. For some reason, this is more unsettling than if he had bored down on me with those little rat eyes of his.
Dennis is a natural presenter and salesman. For an hour he enraptures us with the wonderful advances and updates in the world of international moving. He has slides. The projector conks out and without skipping a beat, Dennis starts drawing on a whiteboard. Rick goes all red and yells for Laura to come in and swap out the projector. He has to show everyone how powerful he is. I look at Kevin and he rolls his eyes and grins.
Laura comes in and I don’t make eye contact with her, not with the others around. She is in command of the electronics and eventually gets Dennis’s presentation back up on the screen.
While we’re sitting here, I’m thinking about the cards up on my desk, the appointment I just missed and whether or not I’m missing one while we’re in this meeting. Normally if there is a conflict, I would have called the customer and rebooked. The women who book the sits don’t give a goddamn if we have meetings scheduled or not when they make their appointments and fill their cards out; they just book the slot whenever the person selling the house is available. I cringe. Missing two sits in one day is bad. Might be bad enough for them to walk me right out the door.
The meeting goes over an hour both because of the electronics snafu and because of the time Dennis takes to answer every question, no matter how stupid or repetitive. I watch Ricky Boy puff his chest up and try and take on some sort of air of command, like he’s the colonel and we’re the lieutenants. What a pompous ass. Why couldn’t I have killed him instead of the sex-crazed Mrs. Lent?
On the way out, I feel a tug at my sleeve and then an arm on my shoulder. It’s Darryl.
“Talk to you a sec?”
“Sure, Darryl.”
We head to his office. He doesn’t offer a seat; it’s just a quick chat.
“Here.” He hands me my chit cards; I haven’t had a chance to retrieve them.
“You were supposed to do this sit
this morning. This lady is a friend of mine.”
“I’m sorry, Darryl. I screwed up. I’ll call her and make it right.”
“No bother. I went over and did the estimate myself. It’s booked for the end of the month.”
He sees I’m uncomfortable.
“Relax. Rick doesn’t know you messed up. I booked it under your name.”
“Thanks, Darryl. I don’t know what to say.”
“Where were you?” Then he holds up his hands. “Forget it – I don’t want to know. At least you’re not drunk. You got another appointment there.”
I look at the second card. It’s for four o’clock. I have ten minutes to get to it.
I dash upstairs and grab my clipboard and briefcase. I thunder down the back stairs and out to my Sunfire and do my best to beat the all-time speed record across town to make this appointment.
I’m two minutes late. There’s another salesman there; he’s just leaving. One of the competitors. This happens every once in a while. Some homeowner thinks we’re going to compete and give her a deal if we know she is getting other quotes. I don’t care. I nod hello at the guy. He’s a seasoned pro, the competitor’s version of Kevin from a Toronto-based mover.
I do the sit-down, go over it all. I ask for the business and she says she has one more quote coming in. Colossal waste of my time.
“Fine,” I say. “Let us know.” I could care less. I’ve got my one move for the day, courtesy of Darryl. I think on how decent that was; he could have booked the move for himself. A cozy couple of hundred in his pocket. Could have spent it on his kid he had with the sandwich truck lady. I make a mental note not to join in the razzing of Darryl the next time Kevin and John start it up.
I call Laura.
“That lady was furious,” she says.
“I know, I know. I completely screwed it up.”
“Where were you?”
“Listen, what are you doing tonight?”
“Dyeing my hair. You could come for dinner. Then I could dye my hair.”
“What time?”
“I’m home now. Come on over. I’ll have a martini waiting for you.”
“No. No booze. My head still hurts.”
She sighs.
“Okay. One martini. Two olives.”
“Greedy boy.” She laughs and hangs up.
Only bright spot in my day. Well, this morning was good, but this is going to be better. For a couple of hours, I can push Lent and Marco and Waltz and Rick the Prick out of my mind.
THIRTEEN
“Stan stop it!” Laura yells and pushes me at me. I’m naked in her bed. My hands are around her neck but my dream and the six martinis and bottle of red wine have sapped all my strength, not to mention putting a damper on the good times with Laura in the sack.
The room is spinning. I come out of it a little more. For a second, I see Gillian’s face next to me instead of Laura’s and I scream and reach for her throat again. She slaps my hands away from her.
I scramble out of bed. Thank god there’s a slip of light coming from under the bathroom door. I dash to it and toss up that awful mixture of alcohol. I roll on to my backside and cough and wipe spittle from my mouth with some toilet paper.
“Stan, you all right?” Laura calls from the bed.
I kick the door closed.
“Yeah. Fine. Sorry. It’s the booze.”
I dry heave again and then I know I’m done. At least I won’t have a raging hangover this morning. Better to purge at the start of the day. I run some cold water and splash it on my face and dry off. I stare at myself in the mirror. I have bloodshot eyes from the retching. I turn the fan on in the bathroom. It reeks of booze and puke.
I go back into the bedroom and sit down on the edge of the bed, my back to Laura. She’s up on one elbow and scratches my back.
“What were you dreaming?”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. Were you trying to hug me?”
“I was dreaming of when I was six and my mom went on a business trip,” I tell her. What a crock; the dream was horrific. Gillian Lent, all moulding and grey, was scratching at me and her fingernails were coming off, getting imbedded in my chest, and I was trying to fend her off but my arms had no strength. And she just kept cackling and laughing and screaming, ‘Hit me, hit me!’
“Who is Gillian?” Laura says.
“Gillian? Huh? Oh. My mother.”
“You call your mother by her first name?”
“Yeah, it was a little game of ours when I was young. I’d forgotten about that.” I flop back down on the bed. “I guess I’m not used to martinis.”
“Plus the red wine,” she says. “You’d never make it over in England. Not even a week, I don’t think.”
“You drink like that regularly?”
“Back home? Every day after work, in the pub. Couple of Martys and then on to the Cab Sauv.”
I gag and puff out my cheeks and put the back of my hand to my mouth.
“Sorry, love,” she says. Her breath smells of morning and vermouth.
I get up to get showered and dressed. I’ll be going to work in the same clothes I had on yesterday. I need to pull a Christopher Waltz and put a shirt in Laura’s closet. Maybe some pants and small bits. A razor and shaving cream and toothbrush in her medicine cabinet. If I play this right, I could start putting down some roots here, just little ones that could easily be torn out by either party, but roots just the same.
I could start getting my dry cleaning sent here and move right in. Not a bad prospect. Certainly beats my apartment in Hamilton. God knows, with the way my life is going, I’m never going to be able to scratch together a down payment for a house. Maybe this is my ticket out of my twenties and on into a slightly delayed adult life.
Driving into the Henderson parking lot, I see Detective’s Marco’s car, and I almost pull right around and head back out. I can sense him looking at me through the meeting room windows. I have to swallow hard and dive right in. You knew this was going to happen. Maybe I should have gone to Marco first?
Despite showering at Laura’s, I can smell myself. I’m going to pick my cards up and go back to my place if I can. Take a snooze and change if my appointments will let me.
Darryl’s office door is open. I hear a conversation, one-sided. Phone call. I move down the hall and past the door and pause. Catch a glimpse of Marco on a cell phone. Darryl has let him use his office for cop business.
“Get the address in Brantford,” Marco says. “I know a guy on the force. Should make a courtesy call before we head out there. Uh huh. Right.”
I move further down the hallway, my mind racing, my mouth twitching into a smile I can barely control. Marco is headed to Brantford, to talk to Waltz, no doubt. See if he knows if Lent had any enemies or bad relationships. Maybe he’ll see the insignia on Waltz’s shirt and put it together?
But first I have to get past the inevitable. I know he’s come to talk to me. At least there isn’t a phalanx of cops waiting to take me in. I suspect Marco knows I will offer no resistance. Like a python about to eat a rabbit, he knows I’ll just stay in the corner of my cage, shivering, waiting to be devoured.
I go into the main office where Laura is. I let her get here twenty minutes ahead of me to keep up appearances. She’s on the phone and I walk over to her desk. She puts her hand over her receiver. Wrinkles her nose.
“You’re kind of ripe.”
I smell myself. “Really? I think I smell good,” I whisper. “Maybe I should leave some clothes at your—”
She holds up a hand.
“Yes, I’m still here. Uh huh. Right. That was thirty-two thousand pounds to Dallas. Cleared customs yesterday.”
I walk way over to the water cooler I never use. We have one of our own on the sales floor. I’m not bothering to go up to my desk; I know what’s happening. I position myself. I can see the top of Ricky Boy’s blonde head in his father’s office and I can hear them talking.
Detective Marco co
mes into the main office putting his phone away. He sees me and smiles a big shit-eating grin. Cat that ate the canary.
“Hey, there’s the guy I came to see.”
FOURTEEN
“Morning, Detective.” I extend my hand and see that he’s reluctant to shake it, but he does. His grip is rock hard like I knew it would be. He pumps my hand once. A little victory for me. Rick hears the conversation and pops out. He ignores me completely.
“You can use my office, or the meeting room is empty,” Rick says.
“Meeting room is fine. Don’t want to disrupt your day,” Marco says.
“We’re here to help in any way we can.”
Marco stands at the meeting room door and I have to slide by his squat, bulky frame to get in. I put my things down on a chair and take my jacket off, conscious that I look like I haven’t been home in days.
Marco sits across me and checks a text first and then looks up at me. He removes a clear plastic bag from his jacket. It has a red band along the top where the seal is and is marked Evidence. Inside the bag is the estimate I left Gillian. I can read it from where I sit.
“Recognize this?”
“Sure do. Gillian Lent’s place. I was going to talk to Rick about that. What a shame.”
“You left this there. I noticed the date. Two days before she was murdered.”
“Yeah, it’s shocking. I had an appointment to go see her. She’s moving – uh, she was moving to Brantford. And then possibly the States. Her company got bought out and they’re moving a whack of people down there. I just booked two moves from her company.”
“Is that coincidence? Or did she help with that?”
“She most certainly did help with that. I book corporate moves. When I hear that someone works for a company, I try and find out if our corporate relocation services can be of value to them. I struck gold with Midi. I was looking forward to nurturing the relationship with Mrs. Lent—”
