Читать книгу Last of the Independents - Sam Wiebe - Страница 8

The Blessed Peacemakers

In the lobby of the Cambie Street police station, above the plaques commemorating the dead, is stenciled an excerpt of witness testimony from the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Every time I step inside I’m drawn to that wall. I look from the scripture to the plaque beneath the word peacemakers. I stare at the bottom row. I find the photo of the clean-shaven man fourth from the end, and I lock eyes with him.

It’s a photo my grandmother doesn’t display. He is so eager to do good. His is the expression of a man who has never reckoned with deep uncertainty. His world is one where the law, the Sovereign, and God are perfect and infallible and in no way contradict one another. It’s hard to look at that face and believe he would know anything about living in the world today.

My grandfather, Jacob Kessler, was born the year of Stagecoach and Gone with the Wind. A rawboned Mennonite from Moosefuck, Manitoba, he rebels, runs away from home, gets drunk, and enlists. After a stint in the navy he moves west, joins the Vancouver Police, meets a thin, sharply beautiful girl with a glint of prairie poverty in her eye. They have a son and a daughter: a nuclear family in the nuclear age. The son eventually hangs himself. The daughter meets the draft-dodging scion of the Drayton & Kling Paper Products empire. They’re together twelve years before they have a kid. The pressure gets to Jacob’s son-in-law and he splits for an ashram in Southern California. His daughter follows as soon as she sheds the pregnancy weight. The kid only knows them as abstracts.

Around the house, Jacob was a dark presence, a stoop-shouldered, apelike, Victor McLaglen-type who drank lemon juice during the afternoons and Crown Royal in the evenings; who watched hockey scores and Hee Haw and owned three long-playing records, all of them Merle Haggard. Doted on me, took me camping and hunting, always teaching.

As a cop he never sought advancement and hated the brass. He stayed CFL, Constable For Life. In the seventies, his heyday, he was part of an anti-gang unit charged with taking the neighbourhoods back from the local gangs. Rumours abound about members of the H-Squad descending on the East Vancouver parks, preying on the predators, beating them senseless or worse. He didn’t talk much about those days.

Six weeks before mandatory retirement, Jacob rousted a drunk who had passed out after rubbing fecal matter on the cenotaph in Victory Square. The drunk stabbed him in the throat with the broken-off handle of a sherry bottle, then hightailed, taking his gun and radio.

Legend has it Jacob completed the walk to St. Paul’s Hospital, passed out at the door, and never woke up.

Four years later, the moment I’d met the recommended minimum of post-secondary education, I dropped out of college and applied for the job.

It didn’t work out. Which is why, on a cool Friday in September, three days before Labour Day, I was staring up at my grandfather’s face, a stranger amid the day-to-day traffic of the Main Street station.

Gavin Fisk had said he’d be down in a minute. Seventeen minutes later he strolled out of the elevator, a hockey bag slung over his shoulder. A tall, muscular white man with a stubble-dotted head, wearing grey sweats and a shirt that said POLICE: The WORLD’S LARGEST STREET GANG.

He grinned and grabbed my hand in an alpha-male handshake. I upped the torque of my own grip. Rule one for dealing with people like Gavin Fisk: never show weakness and never back down. Otherwise you’ll spend every morning handing over your lunch money.

“Encyclopedia Brown,” he said. “What’d you want to see me about?”

He didn’t wait for my response but kept moving. We walked out of the station, down Wylie to the high-fenced lot beneath the Cambie Street Bridge that contained the motor pool and the staff parking.

“One of Lam’s Missing Persons cases from earlier this year. Django James Szabo?”

“Lunatic father,” Fisk said. We stopped by a white F350 spotted with gull shit, parked over the white line so it took up two spaces. He unlocked the canopy and hefted his hockey gear into the bed.

“I talked to him,” he said, “took him through his story a couple times. He was real calm till we get to the questions nobody likes — did he hit his kid, did he fuck his kid, and I’m being diplomatic as hell — then out of nowhere he overturns the table and lunges at me.”

“He was distraught.”

“Yes, Mike, I guessed that too.”

“You look into his story?”

Fisk unlocked the door of the cab and propped one foot on the running board. He rolled down the window and threaded his arm through.

“If I remember right, he’d dragged his kid to a bunch of junk shops. They all remembered him, frequent customer or seller or whatever he was. He sold some old junk to a music studio. The hot piece of ass that owns the studio said the same thing, though I grilled her very thoroughly on the subject.”

That wolfish grin. “What about the pawn shop?” I said.

“Not much to get out of them. Store tape shows the kid goofing around, his dad sending him to the car. Dad leaves, comes back, acts upset or a reasonable facsimile. They call the cops, the cops show up.”

“Anything suspicious on the tape prior to their arrival?”

Fisk’s good humour chilled a few degrees.

“No,” he said. “’Magine that, no one walked in with a sign round their neck saying ‘I plan to take a kid.’ Has the dad unloaded his conspiracy theories on you yet?”

“He thinks it’s a kidnapping.”

“Of course. Because the idea his kid took off on his own is hard to take.”

“You think he ran away?”

“From that nutjob? Wouldn’t you?” Fisk sat and pulled the door closed. “Herb Lam had the same thought. Know what clinched it for me?”

Anything other than facts, I thought, but shook my head and said nothing.

“Szabo taught the kid to drive. Lanky kid, he could reach the pedals with the seat all the way forward.”

“So nothing ever came up, no evidence someone might have taken the car with Django in it?”

He shook his head and started the engine.

I shouted, “You or Lam ever run down a list of carjackers?”

He shifted out of park but the truck didn’t move. His gaze had frosted over.

“There’s no way in your mind we could be right about this, is there?”

“I have to check either way,” I said.

“You talk to Roy McEachern yet?”

“Won’t return my calls.”

“Drop my name if it helps.” His warm, predatory smile flashed through. “You know Mira and I moved in together.”

“Tell her I’ve still got her Jeff Buckley record if she wants it back.”

“I’ll make sure to tell her that. Take care, Mike.”

The pickup peeled out in reverse, launching into traffic with a guttural roar of exhaust.

I walked back up Main to where I’d parked the Camry, wondering if Gavin Fisk was right, if I did want him to have made the wrong call so I could wave his failure in his face. Any chance I was that petty? I asked myself. Maybe a little.

Ben lived a block off East Broadway in a standalone building leased by reasonably-trustworthy Bohemians. The street-level storefront sold pottery and hand-carved African djembes. Four or five people lived on the second floor, sharing a kitchen and bathtub and toilet. “One of those old claw-footed tubs,” Ben said with obvious pride. “The kind that pop up in novels about struggling artists in Manhattan lofts.”

“Oh those kind,” I’d said.

Today he was waiting on the corner across from the Fogg’N Suds, dressed in a black raincoat and matching vest, navy slacks and a pearl-coloured shirt and red and black silk tie. Except for the vest, it was the same outfit I was wearing.

“Jesus,” I said. “Do I have time to go home and change?”

“Company uniform,” Ben said.

“Why don’t you stay home and brainstorm like you’re supposed to?”

“I was,” he said. “I had three pages of ideas this morning. I was working on a prequel game about Rosalind and Magnus before they met, showing how they were always just missing each other as they chase the same assassin. The player would alternate characters on each level. But the logistics sunk it. Too many coincidental near-misses and it becomes cute. And my audience hates cute. They want to see them tear someone’s larynx out, not narrowly avoid meeting each other like some bad Robert Altman movie.”

“I’m no expert on anything game-related,” I said, aiming the car toward Kroon & Son. Up Granville then left on Marine Drive, then right into a cluster of industrial parks. Midday traffic on Granville was slower than usual, and I saw why: up ahead, flaggers in hard hats and reflective vests were funneling traffic down to one lane.

“You were saying?”

“Sorry?” My thoughts had been on the Szabos.

“You were saying,” Ben said, “that you’re not an expert on games.”

“I’m not.”

“But?”

“But what?”

“Weren’t you getting ready to upbraid me about not working?”

I made the left. Marine Drive was no less busy, but traffic flowed more efficiently. “I don’t get why you don’t just write game three, you know? Like we were discussing the other day, how Indiana Jones is better than Star Wars ’cause at least the series moves forward. No one gives a shit about stuff that already happened.”

“That’s your entire job, isn’t it? Telling people things that already happened?”

It was a fair point. “But yours is to tell people what happens next,” I said. “So why not pick up where you left off?”

“I can’t,” Ben said, exasperated at the question. “It has to be note perfect. After three years’ hiatus, if it’s not note perfect, exactly the right blend of wisecracks and philosophy and gore —” He shrugged. “It’ll let down the fan base.”

“Hell with the fan base.”

“But I’m one of them,” he said. “We’re Legion. It’s got to be true to the original vision. If it’s not, I’ve let myself down.”

I ticked off the street addresses as we passed them, eyes out for 851. “You were seventeen when you had this quote-unquote original vision? Nineteen when game one came out?”

“Your point being?”

“You’re not a teen anymore. Few years you’ll be thirty. What people like changes. I haven’t listened to Screaming Trees since high school, and back then I didn’t know about Stax Records or Blue Note.”

“Your point being?” Teenager-sulky.

“Stop moping and come up with some new shit.”

Silence until we pulled to the curb at the end of a long line of hearses. Of course it wasn’t that easy for him. His work had ground to a halt in the years after Cynthia disappeared. Getting back to work frightened him. I didn’t understand that. In the years after leaving the job, I’d have been happy to have work to cling to as everything else crumbled. Learning the ins and outs of private investigation had consumed a lot of nights that could have been spent self-destructively. In times of grief, the work is always there. I hoped one day I could make him see that.

As we exited the car, Ben said, “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles went backwards.”

The younger Thomas Kroon ushered us into an office that was tastefully accoutered, the huge brass-rimmed desk and the wall panelling a matching walnut. The word sumptuous came to mind.

“Pop can’t make it,” Younger said. “I’ll give you a tour, introduce you as our security consultant. Then you’ll have the run of the place.”

I nodded my head at Ben. “My secretary here has never seen a decomp. You by any chance have some Vaseline?”

Younger looked at Ben. “Maybe he should avoid the back rooms,” he said.

The outer office had two facing desks and a smaller empty desk behind, and an entire wall given over to a dry-erase board covered in inscrutable shorthand.

Carrie, a cheerful woman of about forty, handed a sheaf of papers to Kroon the Younger. Together they loaded the Xerox. At the opposite desk a portly young man worked the dispatch lines. He nodded at us as we passed.

“She did have the code,” Younger said as we passed out of the offices, down a grey carpeted hallway to a wood door. Even before he opened it, the death-smell filled our nostrils. I looked over and saw Ben rock as if slapped in the face.

I dashed back down the hallway to the office. “Anyone smoke here?”

Carrie held up a pack of du Mauriers. “Down to my last three.”

I broke a smoke in half and ripped off the filter. I handed Ben the two halves and instructed him how to wedge them into his nostrils. We followed Kroon inside the back room. A decomposing body has a cloying, tangy odour. There were several in the room, on gurneys, in bags. A wide-hipped black woman sat at the embalming table reading a Walter Mosely novel while the fluids drained out of a Caucasian lady, green-skinned by now, weighing conservatively five hundred pounds.

“Meck,” Ben said.

I noted the camera above the door, its red light on. The wire ran down to a plug to the left of the basin. “Back up power source?” I asked.

“The battery is supposedly good for eight hours,” Younger said.

“Guh,” Ben said.

We toured the freezer, the storage room, the freight elevator. The crematorium was in a separate building out back. The burying ground and all-purpose chapel was a few blocks east.

“Keys to the back door?” I asked.

“Pop and Jag and Carrie and I. Though I assume anyone could duplicate them.”

“What about the elevator?”

“Locked at night.”

“Chuh,” Ben said.

“Rest room?” I asked.

“Hallway, second door on the right,” Younger said. Ben took off, sprinting.

I held out my hands apologetically, what can you do?

“Good help is hard to find,” Younger said.

Back in his office I said, “I’d like to put the building under physical surveillance. That means staying overnight. Most of these people work Monday to Friday?”

“Except Vonda, our part-time embalmer, and Kurt the dispatcher. And my father and I.”

“I’m going to disconnect the red LEDs from the camera,” I said. “I want you to tell everyone just before closing, tonight and tomorrow and the next, that the camera isn’t working and that the system will be down for the next few days. Remind them to lock up.”

“I could tell them there have been vandals in the area, which is why we’re upgrading security. I could even advise them to take all their valuables home.”

“You could mention it,” I said, “but don’t overdo the theatrics. We don’t want this to look like a trap. Best to just add a few words to the bottom of a memo or post it in the break room.”

“Understood,” Younger said. “You’ll be here tonight?”

“After closing.”

“I’ll inform Pop.”

I stood up. “I’ll let myself out.”

Ben was leaning on the hood of the Camry, vest off, shirt unbuttoned, a touch of sick around his mouth.

“Can you bring the car back for seven tomorrow?” I asked him as I unlocked the trunk.

“You’re really going to stay there overnight?”

“Looks that way.”

In a nylon tech bag in the trunk I keep a laptop and a pair of battery-operated wireless cameras. I also keep an overnight bag. Depending on the situation, I sometimes bring a gun.

I opened the suitcase, pulled out enough clothes so I could fit the tech bag inside, and covered it with a toiletries kit. Ben looked like he needed some encouragement.

“You get used to it,” I said. “It’s like if you lived near a rendering plant. You stop minding after a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“It’s less of a shock every time.”

“When’d you see your first?” Ben asked.

“August, year before I graduated high school. Victim died of exsanguination, meaning he bled out from a neck wound.” Adding the inevitable, “My grandfather.”

“Oh,” Ben said. “Hey. Sorry.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

I took out the suitcase and closed the trunk. “I’ve got two hours to kill. Drop me at the Wendy’s just up the street.” Then, to lighten the mood, I added, “You know the sound maggots make when they’re gnawing on soft tissue?”

“No.”

I simulated it.

Ben doubled over and puked straight into the gutter.

Later, in the silence and darkness of the office, with the cameras up and trained to cover the perimeter of the embalming room, I sat back in the sumptuous leather chair in the Kroons’ sumptuous office and dialed the number for Aries Security and Investigations.

“May I ask who’s calling?” the office manager said.

“Bill Billings. I’m phoning on the recommendation of Constable Gavin Fisk. Would it be possible to speak to Mr. McEachern, please?”

“Just a moment, sir.”

The dominant sounds in the still evening were the hum of the freezer in the adjacent room and the whir of the laptop’s hard drive. No movement in the embalming room.

“Roy McEachern speaking. Mr. Billings, is it? What can I do for you?”

I said, “You could have the courtesy to return a fucking phone call.”

“Is that Michael Drayton?” McEachern laughed, staccato bursts that taxed the phone’s speaker. “Well, Mike, you got through. I have to hand it to you.”

“You blocked my caller ID?”

“We had several offensive crank calls from that number.”

“What a pity. That robot who answers your phone must be quite distressed.”

“We could go back and forth all night,” McEachern said. “My time’s too valuable, I don’t know about yours.”

“I’ve inherited an ex-client of yours named Cliff Szabo.”

More of McEachern’s easy laughter. “Mike Drayton and Cliff Szabo — a match made in heaven right there. Did he try to pay you with ten percent of his business?”

Ignoring him I said, “He was your client from April till August.”

“Off and on, depending on when he felt like paying us. When he laid that ten percent scheme on me I told him I’d love to work for free, pal. Just convince my ex-wife and two kids in college. All seriousness, Mike, don’t allow a client to gyp you out of dough just because he’s got a sad story. Sad stories are free.”

“I’d like an overview of what Aries did for Mr. Szabo. Who you interviewed, what information you gathered.”

“All in the report we prepared for him.”

“Which he left in your office.”

“After tossing it at me.”

“He was distraught.”

“Sure,” McEachern said, “but not about his poor little kid, about paying us the nine grand he owed us.”

“He’d like his copy of the report.”

“That ship has sailed.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“You I like even less than him,” McEachern said. “Only reason I haven’t told you to go fuck yourself yet is on account of your grandfather. Tell you what, though. Szabo comes up with the nine he still owes us, I’ll c.c. you all the copies you want.”

“Any media coverage he gets he’ll be speaking about the investigation,” I said. “You want me to recommend he tells the CBC that you took his money and were no help to him?”

“You really think you’d come out ahead in a PR war, Mike?”

I took a breath through my nostrils and held it until I could pick out the Pine Sol and the death-smell and the lingering aftershave of Thomas Kroon the Younger.

I said, “How about for a few minutes you not be a prick and email me the report so we can maybe find this kid?”

“Fuck yourself, Mike.”

Click.