Читать книгу A Hard Winter Rain - Michael Blair - Страница 7

Monday, December 13

Until this moment, he hadn’t realized just how much he dreaded this meeting.

“Sit anywhere, dear,” the matronly, bottle-blond waitress said, as she swabbed the table of an unoccupied booth near the back of the restaurant.

He took off his coat and slid into the booth.

“Do you need a minute?” the waitress asked, handing him a dog-eared, vinyl-bound menu.

“Just coffee,” he replied, handing the menu back.

A two-minute walk from the Waterfront SkyTrain and SeaBus terminal in the refurbished Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the restaurant was two-thirds filled with a rainbow coalition of commuters, students, office workers, early-bird Christmas shoppers, and off-season tourists seeking shelter from the penetrating damp of a Vancouver winter. Over the mid-afternoon buzz of conversation and the clatter of dishes, Bob Seger sang about turning the page.

After the waitress brought his coffee, he unfolded his rain-damp newspaper and tried to read, to occupy his mind while he waited, but it was impossible to concentrate. He put the paper aside. Was he doing the right thing? he asked himself for the umpteenth time since arranging this meeting. Maybe it would be better to just let sleeping dogs lie. Sleeping dogs had a tendency to snap when disturbed. And what if he was wrong? He had no proof, circumstantial or otherwise, just conjecture and supposition, a feeling in his gut that he was right. It was too late to back out now, though, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t.

He breathed deeply, slowly, trying to relax. No, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting at all. But it was going to be a walk in the park compared with his next conversation with Victoria. Christ, he thought, in the eight years he and Victoria had been married he couldn’t remember her ever being as angry as she’d been last night. The depth and intensity of her anger had shocked and surprised him, although in retrospect, perhaps it shouldn’t have done either.

“Goddamnit, Patrick,” she’d said. “This is our life you’re screwing with. You could have at least discussed it with me first.”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he’d replied.

“Oh, bullshit,” she’d snapped.

It was bullshit, at least partly. The main reason he hadn’t told her he’d handed in his resignation, effective immediately, was because he knew she’d have tried to talk him out of it. She might have succeeded, too. He’d been with Hammond Industries for ten years, more than half of his professional life, and the decision to leave had been hard enough as it was.

“What are you going to do?” she’d asked, worry ringing in her voice.

“I’m looking into a couple of things,” he’d replied, uncomfortably aware that he was evading the question. “Worse comes to worst,” he’d added with a grin, “I can always accept Sean’s offer to manage his campaign.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Patrick, what do you know about politics? In any case, I thought you already told him no.”

“I did,” he’d said, sighing. “Jesus, Vee, the way you’re carrying on you’d think we were two meals away from starvation. In any case, you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? You’ve got your trust fund.” Which, he could have added but hadn’t, had more than doubled since he’d started managing it. “All I’ve got,” he’d said, trying to lighten the mood with an atrocious Irish brogue, “is me wits.”

It hadn’t worked, of course. She’d turned cold and distant after that, responding in flat monosyllables when she responded at all. He’d let his anger get the better of him then. “Oh, for god’s sake, Vee,” he’d said. “Stop behaving like a spoiled child. It’s about bloody time you grew up and accepted that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”

She’d slept in the spare room.

He looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty. If he didn’t get this over with soon there was no way he was going to make Horseshoe Bay in time to catch the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo. And if he didn’t make the five o’clock ferry, he wasn’t going to make the seven o’clock meeting with the Geeks, as he had dubbed the motley crew of post-adolescent programmers at LogiGraphics. Why they couldn’t work reasonable hours, like normal people, was completely beyond him. He might as well reschedule for Tuesday morning, just in case. He took out his cellphone and made the call.

The Geeks were more than happy to accommodate him. After all, their business plan was an absolute shambles, poorly thought out, sloppy, and full of inconsistencies, and their marketing projections were pure caffeinestoked fantasy. But if they’d been businessmen, he thought, a bit smugly, they wouldn’t have needed him. And they needed him very much indeed.

He wished he knew more about computers and the Internet. He felt fairly confident that the Geeks were on to something interesting, perhaps even revolutionary, but too much of what they’d told him had gone right over his head. Sandra St. Johns, his assistant—his former assistant, he amended—knew a lot about the Internet, but he’d well and truly burned that particular bridge, hadn’t he? Sandra was almost as pissed at him as Victoria was, maybe more.

Christ, what a fool he’d been to have had an affair with her, if affair was the right word for it. Sandra had called it recreational sex, more fun than squash or racquetball, with no club fees, and almost as good for the cardiovascular system. But of course affair was the right word, he berated himself. He couldn’t weasel out of it that easily. Things may not have been going very well between Victoria and him lately, especially where sex was concerned, but that was no excuse for cheating on her. Despite their problems, he still loved her. Trouble was, though, he couldn’t erase the memory of Sandra, skirt hiked up around her hips as she writhed atop him on his office sofa, humming deep in her throat as she neared orgasm. Even now, his pulse quickened and the god-damned one-eyed worm raised its single-minded head.

Christ, life could be complicated sometimes.

“More coffee?” the waitress asked, hovering over him with the coffee pot in her hand.

“No, thanks,” he said. She went away.

He looked at his watch again. Almost four. He’d give it ten minutes more, then he was out of here. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe he was meant to let the sleeping dogs alone after all.

He looked up as the door opened, letting in a blast of cold, damp air. A man came into the restaurant, a street person from his raggedy appearance. He had a great, bushy moustache that almost completely covered his mouth and his hands were shoved into the pockets of a grimy green parka, shoulders darkened by rain. A filthy scarf muffled his chin and the hood of the parka was up, cinched tight against the chill, and from it protruded the curved bill of a baseball cap. Despite the overcast sky, he wore big wraparound sunglasses. He stood by the entrance, surveying the room, as if looking for someone. It might be easier, Patrick thought sourly, looking at his watch again, if he removed the bloody sunglasses.

The man in the parka approached Patrick’s booth and stared down at him, eyes invisible behind the dark lenses of the glasses.

“Can I help you?” Patrick asked irritably.

The man didn’t answer, just continued to look down at Patrick. Even though his face was almost completely obscured, Patrick felt there was something vaguely wrong about him. Then the man took his hands out of his pockets. He was wearing gloves and had something in his right hand. It took Patrick a fraction of a second to realize that the object in the man’s hand was a revolver. It was the longest fraction of a second of Patrick’s life.

He looked up from the gun. The ridiculous glasses had slipped. Patrick looked into the familiar eyes of his killer. “No,” he said, starting to stand. “Wait. It’s—”

The gun roared and leapt. Patrick felt a massive impact as the first bullet struck him in the sternum, mushrooming and slamming him against the backrest of the bench. The gun roared again, and the second bullet struck just to the right of the first, pinning him momentarily against the backrest. Patrick didn’t feel that one. Nor did he feel the third, which struck on a downward angle as he rebounded, shattering his left clavicle, flattening and tumbling, shredding his lung and blowing apart his heart.

Witnesses would later tell the police that the killer then placed the muzzle of the revolver against the side of Patrick’s head and fired once more, after which he dropped the gun on the table and walked out of the restaurant as calm as could be.

Shoe stood under the awning of a Chinese pastry shop on Cordova, coat collar up and hat brim down, watching the front of the dry cleaning store across the street. Despite the rain, the sidewalks were busy, but at six-foot-six he had no trouble seeing over the heads of the majority of pedestrians, most of whom were Asian this close to Chinatown and Japan Town both. A few held surgical masks to their faces as they hurried along on whatever urgent business occupied them this day.

Through the misted window of the dry cleaning store Shoe could see the woman behind the counter. She was talking to a hirsute, pigeon-breasted man wearing a sleeveless undershirt. From their body language, it seemed to Shoe that they were arguing about something. The hairy man’s name was Seropian and, according to the sign above the storefront window, he was the proprietor. The woman’s name was Barbara Reese. She worked in the store from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. She also held down a second job: from four to midnight, every day but Sunday, she waited on tables in the lounge at the North Burnaby Inn on Hastings, east of Boundary Road, a forty-minute bus ride from the dry cleaning store. It was almost three-thirty, though, and even if she left this minute, she was going to be late.

Rain drummed on the awning over Shoe’s head and the late afternoon traffic crept through the gloom, brake lights flashing, tailpipes smoking. His breath steamed and condensed on the tips of his coat collar. A few degrees colder and the rain would turn to snow. The smell of coffee from a nearby coffee shop was almost irresistible.

It was 3:45 when the woman finally emerged from the dry cleaning store. The rain had let up, but it was getting colder. Shoe watched as she ran to catch the trolley bus that had pulled up to the stop at the corner, holding her red beret on her head with one hand and waving her long black umbrella with the other. The bus left without her.

Abandoning the shelter of the awning, Shoe crossed the street to where the woman waited at the bus stop. The rain began again and she opened her umbrella. Two ribs were broken and it sagged asymmetrically. Shoe’s umbrella was in his car, parked around the corner. The woman smiled tentatively at him as he approached, as if she thought she might know him, but her eyes were wary.

Although middle-aged, she was still very attractive, Shoe thought, in a bruised, shopworn kind of way. She had high cheekbones, a full mouth, and a long, straight nose. Her eyes, though, were her most striking feature. Nested in web of fine, spidery wrinkles, they were a clear, luminous blue and almost rectangular. With a jolt that squeezed his heart like a fist, he realized that she looked a lot like he imagined Sara would have looked now, had she lived.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Ms. Reese?”

“Yes?” She held her umbrella higher, to look up at him. Moisture beaded in her thick dark hair where it curled from under her beret. There was a thin, almost invisible furrow of old scar tissue under her left eye, and another slightly longer one on the edge of her jaw. Sara, too, had had a scar, he recalled, the result of a training injury, half hidden by her right eyebrow.

“My name is Joseph Schumacher,” he said, giving his full name. “I wonder if I could have a word with you.”

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “Are—are you a policeman?”

“No,” he said again. Once upon a time, though, many years ago, after graduating from the University of Toronto with a liberal arts degree and no marketable skills to speak of, he’d for a short while been a member of the Toronto Police Service. He didn’t think it still showed. “I knew your husband,” he said.

“My husband?” she said, eyes widening now. “Were you a friend of his?”

“Not exactly. An acquaintance.”

“He’s dead, you know,” she said.

“Yes, I know. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

“But that was twenty years ago,” she said.

The rain intensified. It ran from the rim of his hat onto the shoulders of his coat. The seams of her misshapen umbrella leaked and water dripped from the ribs and trickled down the handle, soaking her glove. The next bus wasn’t due for another few minutes.

“May I offer you a ride?” Shoe said. “My car is just around the corner.”

“You’re sure I don’t know you?” she said, peering up at him. “You look familiar.”

“We’ve never met,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve seen me in the neighbourhood.”

“I guess that’s it,” she said.

He repeated his offer of a ride. She looked at him for a long time before answering. He knew from the look in her eyes, however, what her answer would be.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Thank you, though.”

This wasn’t working out quite the way he’d hoped. “Perhaps we could meet later?” he said. She had a half-hour break at eight, took it in the Starbucks up the block from the North Burnaby Inn. “I really would like to talk to you,” he said. He became aware that the other people waiting at the bus stop were looking warily in his direction.

“I don’t know,” she said.

The bus came, slowing to a stop with a hiss of tires and a whine of worn brake linings. The doors opened and the people at the stop began to board.

“I have to go,” she said. Without looking at him, she closed her umbrella and climbed aboard the bus.

Shoe watched the bus grind away, trolley poles popping and sparking on the overhead wires. He then crossed the street and went into the coffee shop, where he bought a black coffee to go and carried it around the corner to his car, an aging grey Mercedes. He unlocked the door, got in, and started the engine. Turning the heater up high, he put a tape in the cassette player. The coffee had smelled better than it tasted, but it was hot, so he drank it anyway, sipping slowly as he listened to David Helfgott playing Rachmaninoff’s C Sharp Minor Prelude. He felt detached and vaguely depressed. The shortest day of the year was a few days away. Then Christmas. Shortly after that, his fiftieth birthday. What did he have to be depressed about?

The first fat flakes of snow began to fall.

Victoria O’Neill stood at the broad living room window of the house high in the British Properties of West Vancouver. A thousand feet below her, beyond the hazy lights of West Vancouver, English Bay was strewn with strings of light from the half-dozen or so freighters at anchor there, waiting their turn to enter Vancouver harbour. She pressed her palms against the cool glass and pushed, imagined she felt it give ever so slightly. She pushed harder, putting her whole weight against it, and in her mind’s eye saw it burst, setting her free to tumble out over the rooftops of the houses farther down the slope and drop into the bay, to sink out of sight below the waves, embraced by the cold and the dark and the deep. The window did not break, of course, and she was not set free. Perhaps if she threw herself against it from across the room, she thought foolishly. She knew even that would not do it; the glass was half an inch thick, the kind of stuff they used in hotels and office buildings and shopping malls.

She laid her forehead against the cool, hard surface and closed her eyes. The big house thrummed around her, the sound of its emptiness amplified by the stiff membrane of glass, as if conducted directly into her brain through the bones of her skull. Behind closed lids, her eyes burned with incipient tears. A pressure built within her chest, expanded, forcing a silent sob from her throat. Christ, she was so fucking tired of it all she could scream. Tired of this ridiculous house and the ridiculous life she lived in it. Tired of silly neighbours and their silly dogs and sillier children. Tired of always waiting for Patrick to come home and tired of always waiting for him to leave when he was home.

On a sudden impulse, she opened her mouth and screamed against the glass. It was a muted, restrained scream, however. Taking a breath, she opened her throat and tried again, but succeeded only in bringing on a coughing fit, forehead jouncing painfully against the glass with each spasm.

“You are hokay, Miss Victoria?”

Victoria straightened with a start. Consuela, their middle-aged, part-time housekeeper, stood at the top of the steps to the sunken living room.

“Yes, Connie. I’m okay.” Victoria’s hands and forehead had left oily smudges on the glass of the window. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her blouse.

Consuela’s expression was stern. “Nothing is wrong?”

“No.” Victoria picked up her wineglass from the coffee table, but it was empty. “I was just being silly.”

“I stay if you want.” But she was already wearing her old navy peacoat and carrying a purse that looked large enough to hold a week’s groceries.

“No, no,” Victoria said. “Go home. I’m fine, really. Just tired. I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

After Consuela had left, Victoria climbed the steps to the kitchen. She poured another glass of white wine from a bottle in the terra cotta cooler on the counter. Picking up the cordless phone, she carried it and the wineglass upstairs to her bathroom and set them on the rim of the big square tub. She started the water, adjusted the temperature, and poured in four caps of bubble bath. While the bath filled, she undressed and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the dressing room door. A little doughy, she thought critically, twisting to look over her shoulder, and her butt was beginning to pucker a little. God, she was only thirty-five. What would it look like when she was fifty? Turning to face the mirror again, she hefted her breasts in her palms. Although they probably wouldn’t pass the pencil test, they didn’t sag too badly. She’d certainly seen worse at the health club. Much worse. She’d seen better too, though. Much better.

She stepped into the tub and slowly lowered herself into the foaming water. Settling back, she let the heat soak into her. She’d told Consuela there was nothing wrong, that she was just tired, and maybe that was all it was. After all, she hadn’t slept very well last night, after the argument with Patrick. She knew there was more to it than that, though. Fear clawed at the back of her throat. Damn Patrick. How could he have been so inconsiderate and insensitive? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he understand?

No, he probably didn’t understand, she thought. Sometimes she felt that the only person in the world who really understood her was Kit Parsons. Kit wouldn’t run out on her, abandon her like everyone else had. Would she?

Oh, stop feeling so goddamned sorry for yourself, Victoria thought angrily. Most people would think she had it made. A house in the British Properties, a closet full of clothes, a BMW convertible, and a husband who at least said he loved her. She was healthy—physically, anyway—reasonably attractive, and still relatively young. What more could she ask? Happiness? A highly overrated commodity, in her experience.

She reached for the wineglass, but it was empty. She should have brought the bottle.

The mixture of heat and alcohol had made her light-headed and loose-jointed, so when the telephone rang she almost dropped it into the water as she fumbled to answer it.

“Hiya, kid.”

“Hello, Kit,” Victoria replied, instantly recognizing Katherine “Kit” Parsons’ scratchy voice, ravaged by the almost two packs of cigarettes she smoked every day.

“Whatcha up to?”

“Nothing much,” Victoria said. “Taking a bubble bath and getting stewed on white wine. Patrick’s taking the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo.”

“It’s not healthy to drink alone,” Kit rasped. “Want some company? I haven’t had a bath today.”

Victoria laughed. She was tempted, but said, “I don’t know, Kit. I’m really very tired. I think I’ll just watch a little TV and go to bed early.”

“Have you eaten? I could pick up a pizza or something. A video, too. We’ll just veg out. I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

“Kit, please. Not tonight. I wouldn’t be very good company.”

“All right,” Kit said, voice flat with disappointment. “But call me if you change your mind.”

“Yes, of course,” Victoria said guiltily and pressed the disconnect button.

As soon as she had disconnected she regretted not letting Kit come over. She could have used the company. Reaching out with her foot, she toed the faucet on. Hot water roared into the tub. Despite the rising heat of the bath, the familiar icy emptiness gnawed at her insides and the cold black tendrils of dread that always lurked just beyond the threshold of her awareness slithered into her mind. The flesh of her face grew stiff and numb. The numbness spread, invading her chest. Her heart pounded. She took an unsteady breath, and as she lifted leaden arms to pull herself out of the bath she saw the faint white lines across her wrists and recalled from years earlier the red blossoming into the bath water, frothing pink where the water from the faucet foamed, and her aunt Jane’s screams...

Victoria rinsed off with the hand shower, towelled herself dry, and, wrapped in a thick terry bathrobe, went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The dinner Consuela had prepared needed only to be heated in the microwave, but even that seemed like too much trouble. She closed the door and poured more wine into her glass. Her head buzzed and she knew she would have a headache soon.

She keyed Kit’s number into the phone, but stabbed the disconnect button before the call was completed. It would not be a good idea, she knew, considering her mood and the amount of wine she’d drunk, to be alone with Kit tonight. In the four months Victoria had known her, Kit had never made any overt moves, but neither had she hidden her feelings, apparently satisfied to let things develop on their own. Victoria wasn’t at all certain how she felt about the situation. Not that it was a line she hadn’t crossed occasionally before, but she wasn’t sure it was a line she wanted to cross with Kit. Not now, anyway.

The doorbell rang, playing the opening bars of Beethoven’s Für Elise, which she had once loved but now loathed, thanks to that doorbell. Half hoping Kit had decided not to take no for an answer after all, Victoria went to the door.

It was raining again at five-thirty when Shoe nosed the Mercedes up against the door of the garage in the lane behind the peeling, wood-frame house on West 3rd between Balsam and Larch in Kitsilano. Retrieving his purchases from the back seat, he locked the car and pushed his way through the wet, unkempt jungle of the yard to the front of the house to check the mail. Rainwater dripped off the dark green leaves of the huge old magnolia that loomed over the front walk.

January Jack Pine sat on the porch, out of the rain, leaning on a canvas duffle bag, smoking a roll-your-own, and reading a tattered copy of The Portable James Joyce by the yellow light of the coach lamps on either side of the front door. He stood as Shoe climbed the steps. He wore a long Australian stockman’s coat fastened to the chin, but no hat or gloves. Shredding the cigarette, he brushed the remains off his palm into the front yard.

“You still got that spare bed?” he asked as Shoe peered into the empty mailbox. Shoe’s spare bed was a folding cot with a foam rubber mattress that he had used with a sleeping bag when he’d first moved into the house a year and a half ago.

“What’s the problem this time?” Shoe asked as he unlocked the door. Last winter Jack had stayed for a week when the water lines to his houseboat had frozen and burst, but it hadn’t been that cold yet this winter.

“Some damn kid rammed my house with a speedboat,” Jack said. “Put a hole the size o’ yer head in one o’ the pontoons. Damn near capsized, right there at the dock. Bernie Simpson, the salvage guy, he raised her up and patched the pontoon, but it’ll take a while for things t’ dry out.”

Jack lugged his duffle inside, depositing it with a thud at the foot of the stairs. He took off his coat and hung it on the coat tree in the vestibule. Under the coat he wore a red plaid lumberjack shirt over a black denim Levis shirt. His jeans were worn but freshly laundered and his creased boots were polished.

January Jack Pine was a full-blooded Squamish Indian, or so he said. He looked the part, with strong, hawkish features, sharp dark eyes, and thick greying hair worn in two long braids. His grandfather’s father, he claimed, had been born in 1859, the year the English first came to the tidal basin that is now False Creek, in a village by a fish corral on the big sandbar that was to become Granville Island, the former industrial area that had been converted in the seventies by the federal government into a popular shopping, cultural, and tourist centre. Of indeterminate age, between sixty and seventy-five, Jack made a modest living as a poet, painter, and part-time actor. He could have lived on the Squamish reserve on the North Shore, but he didn’t. With the connivance of some of the residents of Sea Village, a community of a dozen or so floating homes moored along the seawall between the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the refurbished Granville Island Hotel, Jack had obtained a slip in the marina adjacent to Sea Village where he moored his makeshift houseboat, an old Airstream trailer body mounted on pontoons.

“When you gonna get some furniture?” Jack asked, the worn heels of his boots clicking hollowly on the bare hardwood floors. Since moving into the house, the only major purchases Shoe had made had been a bedroom suite and a kitchen set, both from IKEA.

“It’d just be in the way,” Shoe said, gesturing toward the painting supplies piled by the entrance to the living room.

Until a year and a half ago Shoe had lived on an old converted logging tug in the False Creek Harbour Authority marina between Granville Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. The Princess Pete had been cramped and dark and worm-eaten, but she’d suited him. One evening, though, while he’d been at the launderette, some fool had flipped a cigarette or a lit match into a box of oily rags, setting fire to the dock and burning the Pete and two commercial fishing boats to the waterline. Shoe had lost everything but his car and his laundry. The house on 3rd was too big for him and suffered from years of neglect, but it was structurally sound and conveniently located within easy walking distance of Granville Island, as well as the Safeway and other amenities on 4th.

Jack hefted his duffle and went upstairs. Shoe hung his soggy coat and hat on the coat tree. The light on the answering machine on the table in the hall was blinking. He pressed “Play.”

“Um, Joe?” Muriel Yee said, her voice soft and tentative. “I’ll never get used to your answering machine.” Shoe’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, then just beeped. “Anyway, I’m still at the office. Would you mind picking me up here? We can grab something to eat before the concert. I know I promised you a home-cooked meal, but Bill’s been like a bear with a bellyache all day. Damn Patrick. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to quit. See you. Thanks. Bye.”

Shoe made sure there were towels, toilet paper, and soap in the main upstairs bathroom. Then, leaving Jack to his own devices, he took his purchases into the master bedroom. He showered, shaved, and dressed. At 6:15, he went out to the car. The temperature had dropped a couple more degrees. It was snowing in earnest now, big heavy flakes materializing out of the darkness above the streetlights and plummeting earth-ward. He scooped the stuff off the windshield with his hands, got into the car, and drove downtown.

William Hammond was not in a good mood, but even when he was in the best of moods, Charles Merigold could usually be counted on to piss him off somehow. “Charlie,” Hammond said, because he knew how much Merigold hated being called Charlie, “I’m seventy-five years old, for crissake, and not getting any goddamned younger. Will you get to the bloody point? And speak English. I’m not a fucking MBA.”

Charles Merigold’s blandly handsome face reddened. He disliked profanity even more than he disliked being called Charlie.

“I think we should pass,” he said stiffly.

“From what I can see here,” Hammond said, tapping the laser-printed graphs and tables spread out across his broad, black marble desk, “it’s a nice solid little business. Doing better than a lot of my other holdings.”

“Yes, sir,” Merigold agreed. “However, in the last year their operating costs have gone up almost ten percent while their revenues have increased by only three percent. Unless they bring operating costs into line, profitability will continue to be negatively impacted.”

Hammond sighed. Profitability will be negatively impacted. Goddamned bean counters, he thought sourly. When the hell had they taken over? He knew the answer, though. It had happened the day computers had got cheap enough that any idiot could have one on his desk. A pox on the inventor of the microchip, he grumbled to himself.

“Frankly,” Merigold went on, “I don’t know what Patrick and Sandra St. Johns were thinking when they put this deal together.”

“You wouldn’t,” Hammond said.

“Pardon me?”

“Forget it,” Hammond said. He leaned wearily back in his chair. Patrick, he thought, wherever the hell you are, I hope you’re having as lousy a time as I am right now. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

“One more item,” Merigold replied. “It concerns Irene Oswald.”

“She that tall woman in personnel that looks a like camel?” Merigold nodded. “What’s her problem, besides being terminally homely?”

“Ms. Oswald alleges that her supervisor, um, sexually harassed her. He evidently propositioned her, and when she refused him he gave her a poor evaluation when she came up for promotion.”

Hammond closed his eyes. What had he done to deserve this? he groaned inwardly. Christ, maybe he should have handed the reins over to Patrick after all, let him take the company public, and retired. But even as the thought formed in his mind, he knew he couldn’t have done it. Notwithstanding Patrick’s argument that not only would going public provide capital for investment, it would also make anyone who got in on the ground floor very rich, there was no goddamned way Hammond was going to let a bunch of investment bankers and mutual fund managers, not to mention the fucking securities commissions, tell him how to run the business he’d spent his whole life building. Besides, he was already rich. So would Patrick have been if he’d been patient, if he’d given Hammond a little more time. He just wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet.

“Sir?”

Hammond opened his eyes. Merigold was still there, as bland and obsequious as ever. “What?” Hammond snapped.

Merigold blinked. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather, the Oswald situation can wait.”

“No, I’ll take care of it now. Who’s her supervisor?”

“His name is Arthur Somes.”

“And did he make a pass at her?”

“Apparently he’s propositioned a number of women in his office. Ms. Oswald is the only one who’s complained.”

“And this Oswald, she’s good at her job?”

“According to her co-workers, she’s competent and conscientious. They like her.”

“Who’s next in line for the supervisor’s job?”

“I suppose she is.”

“Then find some excuse to let him go and give her the job.” Merigold nodded. “But make sure she understands it was her complaint that cost him his job. Now, get out. And send Muriel in.”

At 6:40, Shoe parked in his reserved space in the underground garage of the headquarters of Hammond Industries, next to the empty space that still bore Patrick O’Neill’s nameplate affixed to the concrete wall. The Hammond Building occupied the same block in the heart of the Vancouver business district as had the original headquarters of H&L Enterprises. That dowdy old structure had been torn down in the eighties to make way for this glittery new edifice.

When Shoe had first washed ashore in Vancouver in the early seventies, he had taken what work he could find—barroom bouncer, professional wrestler, deckhand on a salmon boat, landscape gardener—before landing a job with a private security firm as a night security guard in the old H&L Building. It hadn’t been the most promising of careers, but it had vaguely resembled police work. It had also afforded him plenty of time to read and, on his days off, to “mess about with boats,” as Ratty in Wind in the Willows put it.

It was also how he’d met William Hammond, then co-owner with his father-in-law, Raymond Arthur Lindell, of H&L Enterprises, at the time the twelfth largest privately held corporation in Canada. After Shoe had been fired by the security firm for running personal errands for Hammond, Hammond had hired him as his chauffeur and general dogsbody—his “dofer,” as Hammond had put it. Twenty-five years later Hammond Industries, as the company had been renamed after Raymond Lindell’s death, had become the eighth largest privately held corporation in the country, and Shoe still worked for William Hammond, although his personnel file now described him as “Senior Analyst, Corporate Development.” He was taking a couple of weeks off, though, to look after some long overdue personal business.

When he pushed through the glass doors into the executive reception area on the twenty-third floor, Muriel Yee smiled at him from behind her desk. Muriel was slim and long-legged, with delicate features, a flawless ivory complexion, and glossy jet hair. She was forty-one, but didn’t look a day over thirty. Shoe thought she was the most exquisitely beautiful woman he’d ever known.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said, tapping at her computer keyboard. Her voice was soft and surprisingly deep, but not at all masculine.

“We’ve got plenty of time,” Shoe said. The concert didn’t start until nine. He dropped into the casual chair beside her desk. “How was your weekend?”

“You know what he had me doing?” she said. “Nothing. Not a damned thing. But he had me doing it here. Just in case.”

“You shouldn’t let him take advantage of you,” Shoe said. Muriel had worked for Hammond Industries for sixteen years, not as long as Shoe, but longer than anyone else in the office save Bill Hammond himself. For eleven of those years she’d been Hammond’s executive assistant.

“I’m well paid,” she replied. She shrugged and grinned, black eyes mischievous. “Besides, it’s not like I have a husband to go home to, is it? How about it, Joe? You know what they say about Chinese women, especially the old-fashioned kind. They make the best wives.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Shoe said. “In case I ever meet one.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

Muriel was about as old-fashioned as the computer on her desk. She’d never married, but until about a year ago had been more or less permanently engaged to an engineer from Hong Kong. Shoe didn’t know why it had ended and wasn’t going to ask.

“Is that a new jacket?” she asked.

“I bought it this afternoon,” he said. “Along with the shirt and the tie. I would have bought new slacks, too, but they didn’t have time to make the alterations. The girl in the store said I looked very dashing.”

“She has excellent taste,” Muriel said. She shut down her computer. “I really appreciate this, you know.” Her date for the concert, she’d told him, had had to beg off at the last minute.

“I like Bach,” Shoe said.

“It’s Brahms.”

“Oh?” Shoe said. “Forget it then.” Muriel made another face at him. Shoe gestured with his chin toward the closed door to Hammond’s office. “He’s still here?”

“Oh, yes,” Muriel replied. “But I wouldn’t go in if I were you. He’s in a truly pissy mood. Charles is with him.” She stood. Shoe stood with her. “Give me a couple of minutes to change,” she said. “Then we can go.”

A lean, flint-faced man came into the reception area.

“Good evening, Miss Yee,” he said.

“Good evening, Mr. Tilley,” Muriel replied.

He turned to Shoe. “Mr. Schumacher,” he said coolly.

“Mr. Tilley,” Shoe replied.

Del Tilley was Hammond Industries’ Chief of Security. In his mid-thirties, he was of average height, which made him at least a head shorter than Shoe, but he held himself so stiffly erect that he seemed taller. He had close-set yellow eyes, his hair was buzz-cut to within an eighth of an inch of his scalp, and his ears stuck straight out from the sides of his head like the handles of Shoe’s mother’s consommé bowls. He wore custom-made black cowboy boots, the high-heeled kind, not the flat-heeled city boots. Shoe thought they might have had lifts in them.

Two years ago, shortly after Del Tilley had joined the company, acquired along with a building security and maintenance firm Hammond Industries had taken over, Shoe had been working out on the treadmill in the small exercise room the company provided. He was almost done when Del Tilley had come in with one of his massive security gorillas, a former BC Lions line-backer named Ed Davage. Both men wore judo gis. Tilley’s had a black belt. Davage’s belt was green. The two men did some stretches, followed by some formalized routines, then began to spar. Davage, not as tall as Shoe but broader, looked slightly embarrassed whenever he let his boss throw him. Still, Tilley’s martial arts prowess was impressive.

When his half-hour was up, Shoe shut down the treadmill and started toward the shower. Del Tilley disengaged from his sparring partner with a bow.

“I heard you used to be a cop,” he said to Shoe. He kept his distance so he wouldn’t have to crane his neck to look Shoe in the eyes.

“A long time ago,” Shoe said.

“You must still remember some of your cop training,” Tilley said.

“I suppose I do.”

“Would you care to spar?”

Shoe looked at Ed Davage. His dark face was impassive. His bulky musculature was imposing. “No, thanks,” Shoe said.

Tilley’s jug-handle ears had reddened. “Not with him,” he’d said stiffly. “With me.” A grin, quickly gone, had tugged at the corners of Davage’s mouth.

Shoe had felt his face colour. “Sorry,” he’d said. “Some other time, perhaps.”

Ever since then, Del Tilley had treated Shoe with stiff formality bordering on contempt.

“Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Tilley?” Muriel asked.

“No, thank you, Miss Yee,” he replied. He looked at Shoe. “However, since you’re here, Schumacher, perhaps we could take the opportunity to discuss some organizational changes I have in mind.” Keeping his expression carefully neutral, Shoe waited for Tilley to explain exactly what sort of organizational changes he had in mind. Finally Tilley said, “In light of Mr. O’Neill’s resignation, I’m going to suggest to Charles Merigold that your responsibilities be transferred to my department.”

“Your department?” Shoe said.

“Yes,” Tilley said. “Despite your rather grandiose title, your duties are essentially investigatory in nature and as such fall more properly into my bailiwick.”

“Your bailiwick?” Shoe said.

“Security,” Tilley responded. “And I think Mr. Merigold will agree with me.”

“I’m sure he will,” Shoe said amiably. “There’s one little problem, though.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“I don’t work for Mr. Merigold. I work for Mr. Hammond.”

Tilley’s face hardened. “I was under the impression,” he said tightly, “that you reported to Mr. O’Neill. He was VP of Corporate Development, after all.”

“An understandable error,” Shoe said, smiling. “Given my rather grandiose title. But an error nonetheless. However, don’t let that stop you.”

“I won’t,” Tilley replied. He turned on his heel and stalked off down the hall toward his office.

Shoe looked at Muriel, who shrugged eloquently. Picking up a small overnight bag, she said, “Mind the fort while I change.” She headed toward the women’s washroom.

Shoe was minding the fort when Hammond’s office door opened and Charles Merigold came out. Merigold was Hammond Industries’ Managing Director. He was a handsome, somewhat effeminate man in his late fifties, whose suit looked as though it had been made an hour ago. Did he ever sit down? Shoe wondered.

“Hello, Charles,” he said.

Merigold nodded. “Is Muriel still here?” he asked in his smooth, modulated voice. Shoe said she was. “Mr. Hammond would like to see her.”

“I’ll tell her,” Shoe said.

“Thank you,” Merigold said and went into his own office.

Shoe wrote the message on a sticky-note and put it in plain sight on Muriel’s phone. He then knocked on William Hammond’s office door and went in without waiting for an invitation.

“What are you doing here?” Hammond growled from behind his big, marble-topped executive desk. “Where the hell’s Muriel?” With a gnarly, liver-spotted hand, he lifted a tall crystal tumbler and drank a third of its contents. He’d lately developed a liking for Bloody Caesars.

“She’s getting changed,” Shoe said.

“Humph,” Hammond said and set his drink down with a hard chink of glass against stone.

“How are you?” Shoe asked. “You look tired.”

Hammond grunted. “I haven’t had a decent crap in weeks,” he said. “And every morning it seems to take longer to piss. On top of that, I don’t have any fucking backpressure anymore, dribble all over the god-damned floor. I’m going to have to start sitting down to piss, for crissake.”

“Sorry I asked,” Shoe said. He sat in one of the black leather wingback chairs facing Hammond’s desk. It was still warm from Charles Merigold’s body heat.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Hammond said. “I thought you were taking a couple of weeks off.”

“Muriel and I are going to a concert,” Shoe said.

“Humph,” Hammond said again.

“Are you all right?” Shoe asked. “I could cut my vacation short if you like.”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Patrick’s resignation must have come as a shock,” Shoe said.

“Bah,” Hammond said, waving aside Shoe’s concern. He cocked a raggedy eyebrow. “Have you spoken to him?”

“Not since Friday,” Shoe replied. At a little past five on Friday, Patrick O’Neill had stuck his head into Shoe’s office and said, “Got time for a quick one downstairs?” When they were seated in the bar of the restaurant on the ground floor, Patrick with a vodka and tonic, Shoe with a club soda, Patrick had said, “I just thought I’d warn you, before the shit flies, that I’ve resigned.” Shoe had known Patrick was unhappy, but he hadn’t expected it to come to this. When he’d asked him when he was leaving, Patrick had looked at his watch and replied, “Fifteen minutes ago.”

“He didn’t even have the gumption to tell me to my face,” Hammond growled. “He wrote me a god-damned letter.”

“Would you have accepted his resignation if he’d given it to you in person?” Shoe asked.

“No,” Hammond replied. “I still don’t.”

“I don’t know that you have much choice.”

“We’ll see about that. Talk to him. Find out what he wants to come back.”

“You know what he wants,” Shoe said.

Hammond growled inarticulately, then said, “I’ll bet she put him up to it, just to spite me.”

Shoe sighed. “I don’t think she knew anything about it,” he said. “He told me on Friday he was worried about how he was going to break the news to her.”

“He hadn’t told her?” Hammond said.

“Apparently not,” Shoe said.

“How long have you known?” Hammond asked.

“Just since Friday.”

“You mean he hadn’t told you either?” Hammond said. “You’re his best friend, for crissake.”

Shoe shrugged. “Victoria’s his wife.”

Hammond waved that fact aside. “There are times when it’s best to keep wives in the dark,” he said. “Saves a lot of trouble, believe me. But not telling your best friend, that’s different.”

Shoe reserved comment.

“You’re a goddamned fool, you know,” Hammond said.

“Thank you,” Shoe replied.

Hammond grunted. “She’d’ve married you, you know, if you’d asked.”

“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t ask,” Shoe said.

“You’re probably right,” Hammond agreed sourly. “You might be big and tough, but she’d’ve eaten you alive.”

“Can we change the subject, please?” Shoe said.

“Sure,” Hammond said. “What would you like to talk about? Let’s see. Are you enjoying your vacation? What are you doing to keep yourself busy?”

“Nothing much.” Shoe replied. “Working around the house.”

“Sounds exciting,” Hammond responded.

The door opened and Muriel came into the office. She had changed into a plain red silk Chinese-style dress that covered her from throat to ankles, perfectly cut to fit to every line and curve. The skirt was slit almost to her hip, exposing an immodest length of silk-sheathed thigh.

“About goddamned time,” Hammond grumbled. “Abby’s hosting the monthly meeting of the board of directors of one of her damned charities. Bunch of cackling hens with egg salad between their teeth. I’m going to spend the night here.”

“Yes, sir,” Muriel replied, glancing at Shoe. “But why don’t I get you a hotel room? It would be more comfortable?”

“What’s it matter to you where I sleep, for crissake? Just make up the goddamned bed.”

“Yes, sir,” Muriel replied.

Hammond finished his drink and thrust the empty glass in Shoe’s direction. “Fix me another, will you?”

Shoe went to the liquor cabinet. He caught Muriel’s eye as she squatted to take bedding from the bottom drawer of a similar cabinet next to the long leather hide-a-bed sofa. The move seemed contrived to cause the slit of her skirt to part high on her thigh. She winked at him and he felt the heat rise in his face. He returned to Hammond’s desk and handed him his drink.

Hammond watched Muriel as she removed the cushions from the sofa and opened it into a queen-sized bed. Shoe recalled Muriel once telling him that Hammond liked to watch her whenever he thought she wouldn’t notice. “Although I don’t think he really cares if I notice or not,” she’d said. “It stopped bothering me a long time ago. In fact, from time to time I give him a little show. What can I say? I’m an exhibitionistic hussy. I’d faint dead away, though, if the old bugger ever called my bluff and did anything about it.”

Hammond sighed suddenly and slumped back in his high-backed chair. Shoe was shocked at how old he looked. His balding pate was a sickly and scabrous yellow and the flesh of his face was creased and folded and sagging. His hands protruded from the sleeves of his suit coat like bundles of bent sticks.

“Why don’t you take some time off?” Shoe said. “Take Abby on a cruise over the holidays. Charles can handle things around here.”

Hammond grunted. “Charlie Merigold can’t jerk himself off without someone to hold his hand,” he said. Across the room, Muriel chuckled. “Anyway,” Hammond went on, “Abby hated that cruise we took three years ago. So did I.”

When Muriel had finished making up the bed, she said, “Can I get you something to eat before we go?”

“I’m not hungry,” Hammond said.

“You should eat something.”

“All right. Anything to stop your goddamned nagging. A sandwich.” He tasted his drink, then held it out to Shoe. “Put some damned vodka in this,” he said.

The telephone in the outer office began to ring. Muriel went out to answer it.

“Perhaps this isn’t the best time to bring this up,” Shoe said as he added a splash of vodka to Hammond’s drink, “but I’ve been thinking about retiring.”

“Eh?” Hammond said. “What’s that?”

“Not right away. Maybe not even soon.” Shoe passed Hammond his drink. “But it’s something I’ve been thinking about.”

“You’re what, fifty?” Hammond said. “No one retires at fifty, for crissake.”

“And maybe I won’t,” Shoe said. “I don’t want to work for Del Tilley, though.”

“Eh? What are you talking about? You don’t work for Del Tilley. You work for me.”

“Tilley thinks that despite my ‘grandiose title,’ as he put it, I should be working for the security department,” Shoe said.

“Your job is to investigate companies we’re thinking of buying. What’s that to do with security, for crissake? Forget Tilley.” Hammond’s eyes suddenly sharpened. “Unless you want his job. You’re as qualified as he is to run security around here, maybe more so.”

“I like the job I have,” Shoe said.

“So what’s all this blather about retirement then?”

“As I said, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about.”

Muriel came back into the office, expression troubled. “That was the security desk in the lobby,” she said to Hammond. “The police are downstairs.”

“Eh? What do they want?” he asked.

“They want to talk to you.” She gestured to the phone on his desk. “Shall I tell security to send them up?”

“I suppose so,” Hammond said. Muriel picked up the phone. “See what they want,” he said to Shoe.