Last of the Independents (17 page)

I pointed to the narrow door in the corner by Katherine's desk. “Washroom's in there if you want to clean up.”

“Appreciated but not necessary,” he said. “As to our business, I'll take the advice of my security consultant and wash my hands of the entire matter.”

“Thank you.”

“You shouldn't.” Crittenden snorted back a trickle of blood. “I have some say over Zachary, but Theo keeps his own counsel. What he chooses to do is up to him. All I can promise is I won't involve myself. As far as I'm concerned, the matter is between you and the Atero family. I wish you luck.”

He stood up, folding the handkerchief and tucking it into his jacket pocket.

“Cliff Szabo isn't a close friend?” he asked at the door.

“I don't even like him all that much.”

“You don't seem to be involved for the media exposure, and I doubt he pays you more than a pittance.”

“Less.”

“Altruism?”

“I'm sure Freud could trace it back to my mother.” I walked him to the door, pointing to my upper lip to signal him to wipe his. He shook out the handkerchief and held it to his face. He held out his other hand for me to shake, withdrawing it when he noticed the rivulet of blood run down the knuckles to the palm. I shook his hand anyway.

As he made his way down I said, “I had to guess, I'd say it's because I can't countenance what happened to Django Szabo.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, turning. “You can't what?”

“Countenance,” I said. “It means ‘Give approval to.' It also means about ten other things. I had to look it up in Oxford's.”

Crittenden grinned. Condescension, admiration, pity.

“Look up the word ‘Thanatos,'” he said. “That might come nearer the mark. We're an infernal mystery to ourselves, aren't we? Goodbye, Michael.”

The Cat House

T
he
tapes took three days to circulate. When mine arrived, I stashed it unopened in the bottom of the filing cabinet. I was alone in the office, waiting for Fisk's call. Outside, low charcoal-coloured clouds sped across a blank sky, threatening to burst into rain or hail.

The day before, I'd driven by the house on Fraser and spotted the graffiti-defaced, stand-alone garage. The street was clogged with cyclists and pedestrians. I walked up to the garage doors and peered through the sliver of light between them. A car was there. No child. Whatever else could wait for the police to cut the padlock.

That morning I'd run down a bogus lead on the Loeb case, forwarded the school's refusal of payment to my attorney, and dealt with the issue of the Ko family's relocated grandson. I asked the nephew over the phone to ask the grandparents if they wanted me to talk to the daughter-in-law. After a brief consultation he said no, they'd prefer to handle it themselves. I was prepping the invoice when Gavin Fisk phoned me on the office line.

“We need to talk, Encyclopedia Brown.”

“You used that one already,” I said. “You're running out of sleuths, Gavin.”

“You made this tape?”

“Tape?”

“The one that came in the mail today while I'm having my McMuffin, that shows a guy named Zak Atero talking about jacking the Szabos' car.”

“Great news,” I said.

“Oh fuck off, Drayton. This has your pawprints all over it.”

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “something like that showed up in the mail today, no return address. Is that what yours looked like? I wonder who else might've got one?”

“Yeah I wonder. You do know this would never stand up in any court of law, don't you? You're not that deluded to think Atero's going to jail on account of this?”

“You think my primary concern is seeing him in jail?”

“Who knows what your concerns are,” Fisk said. “Couple years ago I fucked your girlfriend and now it's any chance you can to make me look bad.”

“The main concern is finding the kid. Making you look bad would be an ancillary benefit.”

“So how long do I have till this tape finds its way onto the web?”

“My best guess? I'd say you probably have two to four days to talk to this Atero, ‘discover' the car, and convince Mr. Szabo you're doing everything you can.”

“And I'm sure you'll be real helpful in that regard, right, Mike? That cheap bastard already hates my guts. Imagine what nightmare scenario the two of you come up with.”

I tipped my chair back to the wall, hanging a foot over a corner of the table.

“Far as I'm concerned, Gavin, you find the kid, I'll say you've been walking point this entire investigation.”

Fisk voiced his appreciation by saying nothing for almost a minute. When he came back he said, “I'm on my way to the address Atero mentions. I guess it wouldn't botch things too bad if you came along.”

“I'll meet you there,” I said.

“You think there's a chance this kid's alive?”

“No,” I said. The terribleness of not knowing.

“Me neither.”

“Though if he made it into this Dominique's hands alive, and she's got no cause to harm him, then it stands to reason he'd be in that same condition.”

“Possible.”

“Maybe they fell in love.”

“The kid and the hooker?”

“Puberty changes everything.”

“How would you know?” Fisk said before hanging up.

F
isk was waiting in a patrol car across the street from the house. He climbed out of the passenger's side as I pulled in ahead of him. From the driver's side came Mira Das in her uniform and rain gear, her hat under her arm and a notepad and pen in her other hand. When I opened my door it brushed a thick pile of wet leaves away from the curb.

The street was residential and the condition of the houses varied from well-maintained to decrepit. Some houses had been subdivided into three, even four suites, with little attention paid to uniformity or symmetry. A bungalow-style dwelling had a second story of cheaper materials grafted on top, and other additions made to that. Dominique's was such a house, with two front doors facing the street and another along the side, each with a brass letter above the knocker. A, B, C.

We took our chances with the sagging paint-flaked porch. Knocking on the two front-facing doors yielded no answer. Mira rang the bell on the side door and we heard signs of life from the other side of the nearby window, through which I could see a tub of cat litter on the kitchen counter, along with an ice cream pail full of kibble, an overflowing ashtray, and two bottles of hundred-proof rum.

Fisk peered in and noticed the same things. “This'll be a fun conversation.”

After two minutes of waiting and pounding and ringing the buzzer there was still no answer. I reached in the window, slid it fully open and began retracting the bent slats of the Venetian blinds. Two break-ins in one week — in the event the business ever went under, I could add cat burglar to my list of alternate career paths.

“We should probably try to get a search warrant,” Mira said.

I handed her my trenchcoat and heaved my bulk onto the sill. “Just don't tell the cops.”

I dropped down into a dining nook full of broken and mended furniture. Four litter boxes dotted the floor, all overflowing. I crunched cat shit, cat food, and cereal underfoot.

Every surface had a thick film of dust. A sour smell hung in the kitchen, distinct from the stench of the litter boxes. A cat made a padded landing off another windowsill and scurried by me, a bolt of orange and brown.

The kitchen cupboards were all open. Amidst stray cans and a bag of rice that had been clawed open and overturned was the corpse of a shorthaired grey.

I stamped to the door and opened it. As Fisk and Das filed in I said, “I feared the worst so I climbed through the window. Then I invited you both in.”

“You're going to tell me how to write a report now?” Fisk said.

Mira tried two light switches. “Hydro's been turned off,” she said. “The place has been empty for at least a few months.”

“Possibly since the disappearance of Django Szabo,” Fisk said. He waded across the kitchen and opened a closet. “Think this is the result when some rich asshole dies and leaves everything to their cat?”

“Least when they left they had the good sense to leave a window open,” I said, poking through an overturned garbage bag. A few pieces of junkmail addressed to M
IRABELLA
S
WAIN OR
C
URRENT
O
CCUPANT
. A slit brown government envelope addressed to B
ARBARA
D
ELLA
C
OSTA
.

“No note on the fridge,” Fisk said. He opened it, peered inside and slammed it shut. “Didn't bother cleaning out the milk products, either.”

“So they didn't pack,” Mira said, “which means either they weren't planning to be gone long or they weren't planning on coming back.”

“The second, judging from the troughs of cat food.” I swung open the bedroom door. Two sets of feline eyes, a used condom on the floor, a ratty-looking mattress, and a mouse carcass near a puncture in the drywall.

“That poor child,” Mira said over my shoulder.

“We've all seen worse,” Fisk said. “I don't see any trace of the kid.”

“There's two other suites.”

One of the cats nuzzled my ankle, not quite feral even after the months on her own. “I could use some air,” I said. “How 'bout the garage?”

“How'd you get clued in to Atero?” Fisk asked me as we watched Mira attempt to unthread the rusty padlock on the garage doors.

“Do you believe in the divine conduit, Gavin?” I handed him Madame Thibodeau's card, which he read and flicked back at me in disgust.

“He and his brother work for some heavy money-lenders,” he said. Mira had borrowed my knife to force the lock. She scraped away a layer of oxidation, the blade slipping and catching the cuff of her jacket.

“Careful,” I said. To Fisk I answered: “His employer wants nothing to do with this mess, but he made it clear he won't stop the Ateros from coming after me.”

“Theo is a shylock when he's not unloading trailers at the warehouse. Zak's a bag boy who moonlights as a car thief, or vice versa.” Fisk watched Mira tug on the lock and spat. “Point is, they're not going to let bygones be bygones. Whoever made that tape should be careful.”

“If I find out who did it I'll pass the message along.”

“You stubborn son of a —” Mira put her boot on the door and pulled. The chunk of rotten wood anchoring the bolts on the lock came away in her hand. Fisk and I wasted no time in ripping the doors open.

The floor of the garage was clean-swept, though a rainbow of machine fluids stained the concrete. Cliff Szabo's Taurus was inside.

“Nary a scratch,” Fisk said.

I checked the passenger's door. The handle was broken. The brown core of a pear sat on the dash. The back was empty. No blue Schwinn.

“No bike,” Fisk said, echoing my thoughts. “Could be a good thing, letting him take his toy.”

The plastic panel beneath the steering column had been ripped away, exposing a coil of wires.

“If he'd only screamed when Atero broke in,” Fisk said. “If he hadn't frozen up.”

“Maybe if he had he'd be dead,” I said.

“Assuming he's not dead now.”

“Which we're not.”

The three of us stared at the empty car before heading back to the prowler to call it in.

I
left so they could cordon off the house and summon the technicians. Fisk told me he'd keep me informed, but I didn't hear back from him that night.

Thursday morning was cold and clear skied. I piled the dog in the car and took her to Jericho Beach. I gave her the full length of the retractable leash and watched her paw at driftwood and inspect broken seashells, working her way to the edge of the surf.

When we were back in the car I drove by the office. I didn't see either of the Ateros or their vehicles, though a car thief could be driving anything. The window of the diner across the street showed only the usual patrons. That was the logical place for them to set up, but then neither brother seemed to adhere to logic with any consistency. I did get the feeling that it was Theo who wanted to hurt me. Zak seemed either to hide behind his brother or not to care.

With the cameras and locks the office was a safe place to be, but the surrounding streets, with their dark doorways and alcoves, could hold any number of surprises. I made this clear to Katherine and Ben after my talk with Crittenden.

“You expect them to try and kill you?” Katherine said on the phone Thursday morning.

“No, but they'll try something.”

The topic shifted to Hallowe'en. Katherine was going to some party with Scott, but she'd have time for dinner and drinks before. Did we want to celebrate?

“Depends if I can wrap up the Kroon job before then. Otherwise I'll be locked away in the mortuary.”

“Kind of fitting,” Katherine said.

“Course, if anything breaks in the Szabo case, that takes precedence.”

After I checked out the office I drove to the vet's, which was on West Broadway, sandwiched between a taqueria and a Black Bond Books. In the waiting room a young woman sat texting while her terrier scampered and yipped. I signed in with the receptionist and sat on a hard plastic chair across from the woman. The terrier showed interest in my dog, who scratched her own shoulder and regarded the younger dog with irritation.

“Hi Mike,” Deb the vet's assistant said, taking the leash from me and leading us into the examination room. It was well lit and decorated with posters of nutritional information and cat taxonomy. A beige travel cage sat on the floor by the examination table.

“Hi pooch,” Deb said. “How's she been feeling?”

“I guess okay. Still some irritation, some leakage.”

“Looks like you two had a nice walk on the beach. She's got sand on her paws.”

“You should be a detective,” I said.

Deb pulled down the dog's gums to inspect her teeth. “Rhonda told me that's what you do.”

“Private investigator, yes.”

“That sounds neat. Could you hold her front paws while I adjust her tail out of the way? There.”

The dog whimpered as Deb prodded her sensitive area. The checkup was quick. The vet stopped in, she and Deb consulted, then they led me back to the waiting area, leaving the dog sequestered in the examination room.

“It's proceeding as expected,” Rhonda the vet said. “In my opinion you won't get a better time to put her down. She's not in too much pain, she had a nice walk this morning. It's entirely your decision, but I want you to understand that things won't get better from here.”

“You said the same thing a month and a half ago.”

“She was in pain then. I recommended putting her down to spare her the intensification. Now, maybe the metastasis has been slower than anticipated, but that doesn't mean she's not hurting, or that the diagnosis was wrong. I'm spelling this out for you, Mr. Drayton, because I don't want you to entertain any illusions. She's very sick and she'll only get sicker. Now is the optimum time.”

I sat down, rubbed my palms into my eyes. “So what's the earliest appointment you have?”

“We could fit her in within the hour.”

I looked down at the dog. She wasn't meeting my gaze. I nodded to the vet. “Yeah, let's do this now.”

She smiled conservatively. “Okay. Deb and I will get things ready. You and she wait here.”

Deb carried the dog back to me and set her on my lap in the waiting room. The girl with the terrier had disappeared.