Last of the Independents (6 page)

“I don't want to get mixed up,” he said in explanation to his customer, who had withdrawn from the counter, leaving the bracelet.

“You put your own convenience over a missing child?”

“I don't know anything.”

“Not what he said on Tuesday,” I told the woman.

She said something to Ramsey that I didn't catch, but couldn't have been too different from “I want nothing to do with you, asshole.”

After he had buzzed her out, Ramsey turned to me, dull fury written on his face.

“She looked like a good customer,” I said. “That would've been, what, a four-hundred-dollar sale?”

“Get out of my store.”

“Where's your daughter?”

“She doesn't know anything. Go.”

“We both know you were there,” I said. “You think Szabo didn't tell me? Or that the cops wouldn't back him up, I ask them?” I picked up the bracelet and let it fall. “The fact you tried to game me tells me something.”

No answer, just a sullen, unblinking stare. I pounded my fist on the table, causing the jewellery to rattle and Ramsey to wobble on his stool. He was squat and solid-looking, but age and a sedentary lifestyle were working against him. Once he regained his balance he was quick to sweep the jewellery back into its display box.

“See, I don't think you'd hurt a child. You have one of your own, which generally means you have some degree of empathy. But why run interference for someone like that? Kind of parent does that to another parent?”

“I know nothing,” he reiterated. I could tell by his expression the words sounded false even to his ears. I could also tell that he'd cling to them as long as he could.

“How 'bout you talk to me and let's decide that together. Doesn't have to involve the law or anyone else. Or you could talk directly to Mr. Szabo.”

The door to the back room opened. If Ramsey had wavered at all during our conversation, at the sight of his daughter his will was re-forged. Lisa was about my age, pear-shaped, with a face buried under bronzer and red lipstick.

“You get the hell out of here,” she said to me. “He's not talking to you. Ever. Understand?”

“He said you were the one who dealt with Szabo.”

“You're a police officer?”

“Private detective working for —”

“I don't care,” she said. “Get out or I call the real police.”

I nodded and walked to the door to wait for her to buzz me out. Propping the door open, I turned back to hurl some scathing putdown at them. I started to point out that between the two of them they had one pair of eyebrows, but it was too much of a mouthful. I drove home alternating between coming up with better insults and telling myself I was the bigger man for holding my tongue. The perfect ending for a day/week/month full of mistakes, false starts, and what-could-have-beens.

T
hursday, 7:30 p.m.

P
lace: Szabo residence, a small house with a wide paint-stripped back porch.

S
peaker: Agatha Szabo, aunt of Django James.

“I can tell something about you, Mr. Drayton. I can tell you were a lonely child. So you know what it's like. I was like that. So is Django. Cliff? No, he was always too angry to be lonely.

“Django is quiet. He sees everything — that he gets from his father. It's hard for him to fit in.

“I know what his teachers think — that he was unhappy at home, or that Cliff was a bad father. It's not true. He's strict about business, yes, but he loves his son. And Django loves him. When Django was younger, Cliff would read to him every night.

“Since he's been gone, Cliff has become short-tempered. He's angry at himself. His business has been slow, and he makes mistakes he never would have before. He was distraught when Marisa died, but it was easy for him to know what emotion to feel. He's lost now.

“The policeman, Fisk, seemed to think Django might have taken off in the car. I don't believe it. He wouldn't leave his father and I. He was very well-behaved.

“What do I think happened? I haven't said it, even to myself. It's too horrible to say. But I think it all the time. My beautiful nephew.

“I dream about him often.”

The Ethereal Conduit of Madame Thibodeau

“H
e
's been sleeping for the last two hours,” I heard my grandmother say as she led someone down into the basement. I imagined them in single file, proceeding cautiously down the stairs, the only light my grandmother's torch. And me, lurking in that basement like some cut-rate Cthulhu, waiting for the seals on my sarcophagus to be broken.

The expedition reached the lower depths of the household. I emerged from my room stumbling and rubbing my eyes. I saw Katherine and Ben, noted their reactions, and debated whether they'd think less of me if I turned around and retreated back into my room.

“Did you forgot Monday's a work day?” Katherine asked.

“I didn't forget.” I took the mail from my grandmother. “Just felt like taking a personal day.”

“Usually you phone in and tell the office.”

I tore up the flyers and subscription renewal warnings. “Usually Mondays the office is empty.”

“Would you like some lunch?” my grandmother asked me.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Well, would you mind putting on some pants?”

I stepped into a pair of jeans, turned on the light and ushered them inside. My grandmother retreated to the sanctity of the upstairs. I sat on the bed, motioned Katherine into the threadbare love seat. Ben stood against the wall. Usually he needed to be at the centre of any discussion. Today he held back.

“So what's going on?” I said, groping behind the headboard to find my moccasins.

“You tell us,” Katherine said. “Mr. Szabo dropped off some money. About sixty bucks in change. I put it with the rest.”

“Good,” I said. “Any other developments?”

“Like what?”

“No messages?”

“None,” she said. “Oh, except for that skinny record producer chick. What was her name?”

“Amelia Yeats,” I said. “What did she say?”

“Just that she really enjoyed meeting a famous detective and wanted to have dinner with you tonight. I told her you were busy.”

“Really?”

“And afterward you might want to come back to her place and share a nice bubble bath. Come on, Mike.”

I collapsed back onto the bed. “So sorry for having a dick.”

Ben had begun inspecting the room. “You have a Sega,” he said.

“If you listen closely you can hear his fanboy-itis wearing off,” Katherine said to me.

“No, it's a nice room,” Ben said. “It's fine. It's just —”

“Not very glamorous, is it?”

“Well,” he said, “you live with your grandmother.”

“She lives with me,” I said. “And it beats living above a djembe store.”

“Smells kind of funny,” Ben said.

“It does smell awful,” Katherine agreed.

“It's the dog,” I told them. That prompted an explanation and medical history. By the time I'd finished, the dog had clambered down the stairs and buried her face in Katherine's crotch. She pushed the dog away firmly and crossed her legs.

“What's her name?” Ben asked.

“When she was a baby we called her Babe — real creative, I know. Years later we decided she needed a real name, so I named her Odetta, after the blues singer. Only she doesn't look like an Odetta and she doesn't answer to Odetta, so I went back to calling her Babe. But she's not a baby anymore and that doesn't fit, and because it's been so long, she doesn't come to that name either. So I just call her ‘dog', or
the
dog if I have to differentiate her from other dogs.”

The dog in question walked to her corner and with a laboured wheeze collapsed on her mat.

“Poor girl,” Ben said, stooping over to rub two knuckles against the dog's skull.

“Anyway,” I said, “there anything else going on?”

“I just drove here because he asked me to,” Katherine said, pointing at Ben. “If it was up to me I'd've let you sleep.”

“Are you pissed at me?” I asked.

“Of course not,” she said, in what she probably thought was a convincing tone.

I turned my attention to Ben. “Out with it.”

“Not a big deal, really. It's just my mother wants to hire someone else.”

“I see,” I said, leaning back against the head-board. I hoped at least it wasn't McEachern. “She's entitled to do that, of course. Tell her I understand.”

“No, she doesn't want to replace you.” Ben held up a card, pink with blue script. “It's just that someone told her about this and now she can't get it out of her head. I was actually hoping you could talk her out of it.”

I looked at the card. M
ADAME
T
HIBODEAU,
E
THEREAL
C
ONSULTATIONS
followed by an address near the foothills of Burnaby Mountain.

“She's serious?”

“'Fraid so.”

“Who told your mom about her?”

“No idea.” His expression turned strangely credulous. “It's all bullshit, right?”

“What do you think?”

I got up and walked to the washroom and splashed cold water on my face.

“I know your mother,” I said. “The more we try to talk her out of this the more she'll want it. So let her book the session.”

“She already did. Sundown tonight.”

I sat back down on the bed and started buttoning my shirt. “If it's one session and your mom is willing to waste the dough, there's no real harm. But some of these people are lampreys. They'll string her along, week after week, with nothing to show for it.”

“And that's our job,” Katherine said. Immediately she added, “I'm kidding, of course.”

“We'll go and see,” I said, ignoring her. “And if Madame Thibodeau starts with that ‘To find your daughter you must purify your bank account' shit, we'll call her on it.” Looking at Katherine I added, “After all, we can't have her honing in on our turf.”

B
efore the illness, when I took the dog to Douglas Park, she'd take off across the field, ruining ball games, harassing little children and stalking the wildlife. Now when I loosed her collar and tossed her ratty tennis ball, she loped after it as if the activity held no pleasure for her, like it was a huge favor to me. The next time she ignored the ball and squatted behind the home team dugout. I watched a crumbling deuce fall from between her legs.

“Lovely,” I said.

I was sitting on the bleachers on the Laurel Street side, watching the convoy of SUVs and minivans pick up kids from Day Care. I watched the vehicles recede down the block. An assembly line of similar kids and similar cars.

I thought about Cynthia Loeb. I do that often. I know more about her than anyone except her mother, more even than Ben. I'd read her journal eight times. I knew the seating plan of her second-grade art class. I could draw her dental charts from memory. I felt like the host of some sort of virus.

My last girlfriend, Mira Das, walked out after seven months of listening to me babble about time tables and partial license plates. She told me she'd slept with Gavin Fisk just to feel like she mattered in some way to someone. What kind of a non-entity do you have to become to make a woman feel like that?

But at least with the Loebs I'd exhausted everything. With Django there were the pawn shop owners. They weren't speaking, though that could be due to healthy distrust rather than conspiracy. That left me at an impasse. The Ford Taurus wasn't recovered. Ditto the bike. I'd exhausted a comprehensive list of people who knew Django or saw him that day. Everyone else thought Django had run off or Cliff had been complicit in his disappearance. I didn't believe either scenario.

Eventually the dog brought the ball to me. I stood up and pocketed it. We started home to get ready for the psychic.

I
expected the parlor of Madame Thibodeau to be dusty and low-lit, the shelves crowded with occult knicknacks. I was half-hoping for a crystal ball. She ushered Ben and Mrs. Loeb and I into a sparse eggshell-coloured room, drew the teal drapes and sat us on a pair of L-shaped couches that formed a U facing the Madame's rattan throne. The Madame herself eschewed kerchiefs and beads in favor of a teal pants suit with silver hoop earrings and a half-dozen silver bracelets on her left wrist. Her hands were soft and she had honey-coloured press-on nails. Her hair was blonde and swept back from a puffy pink face with a hefty amount of concealer. Her expression was earnest.

“I'm not a fortune teller or a prognosticator,” she said. “I think of myself as part of a conduit. What comes through the conduit depends on what is put in.”

Mrs. Loeb, perched on the edge of the sofa cushion, nodded. She held clutched in her hands a folded photo of her missing daughter. Ben sat on her other side, stealing glances at me over his mother's head. I fiddled with my wallet.

It was a slick pitch, delivered directly to Mrs. Loeb's heartstrings, ignoring the scoffs of her son and the disinterest of their family friend. The Madame cautioned her on what not to expect, in a way that would produce in Mrs. Loeb's mind a strong hope for the miraculous without making any claims to it. At the end of the spiel Mrs. Loeb handed over her daughter's picture and an envelope containing five hundred dollars. Madame Thibodeau did not accept checks.

Before she could stow the money in her pocket, my wallet slipped out of my hands, spilling business cards across the floor. The Madame used the toe of her slipper to scoot a pair of cards towards me. Each card said M
ORRISS
C
ARGILL,
I
NVESTMENT
S
TRATEGIST
. They'd come with the calendar.

“We'd like to speak to Cynthia,” the Madame said. “We'd like to talk to someone who knows her. This woman is her mother. She must be allowed an audience.”

Ben looked at his mother, who had closed her eyes, and at me, who shot him a look that said: patience. Madame Thibodeau did not close her eyes, but kept them trained on a corner of the room, at the juncture of walls and ceiling. I could almost imagine a disembodied torso floating there.

“Someone is telling me that your uncertainty is almost at an end,” the Madame said. “They want me to tell you to be strong. That hope is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.”

“How powerful?” Ben said.

His mother shushed him.

“They are sending me an image of water.”

“It was raining the morning Cynthia disappeared,” Mrs. Loeb said. The Madame nodded knowingly.

“The image is of two silhouettes in the rain, a larger silhouette and a smaller one. I can't make out their faces.”

“Can you tell where they're heading?” Mrs. Loeb said.

“They are two shadows in the darkness and the rain. They are moving through the darkness and the rain towards a green light.”

Her eyes settled on Mrs. Loeb's.

“I've been given a glimpse,” she said. “It takes time and patience to interpret what comes through the conduit.” She patted Mrs. Loeb's hand. “I know you're eager. This will take some time. But I'm willing to make your daughter my highest priority.”

Mrs. Loeb nodded gravely, thankfully.

“I believe two sessions a week would be the most productive. I will consult the literature and try to find out exactly who is trying to contact us.”

“What will that work out to a week?” I asked. “A thousand dollars? Is there a punch card for a free session with ten of equal or greater value?”

Madame Thibodeau never looked at me. “Some people,” she said to Mrs. Loeb, “simply can't understand or won't accept the science of what I do.”

“What science?” I asked her. “Cold reading and five minutes on the web searching the kid's name would've given you every detail you just fed us.”

Mild annoyance stoked to anger. “My gift is to ask questions of the spirit world.”

“I don't dispute that, just that the spirit world answers you.”

“I can sense your frustration,” she said.

“Not exactly a divine revelation, is it?”

Madame Thibodeau said, “When you dropped those cards a moment ago, I knew your heart wasn't open to this experience. No doubt you expected me to use the information and pretend it came to me supernaturally. I don't know what your name is and I don't claim to be clairvoyant. As I explained, I am just a woman who is open to what pours forth from the conduit. People who are deaf to it can't help but be jealous, but I sense frustration from you, also. You have exhausted your abilities and the poor girl is still missing. I can't guarantee a result, but isn't it only fair of you to let Mrs. Loeb decide whether or not she wants to employ someone with a different set of skills? Aren't you letting your jealousy and prejudice stand in the way of what's best for Cynthia?”

The Loebs looked at me, anxious for a response. Madame Thibodeau drew herself up in her chair and rotated some of her bracelets. Feline satisfaction seemed to radiate from her, but her face remained meek, her eyes imploring me to relent, to forgive, to apologize. Her words were not without effect. She'd used the same word I'd thought of back at the park.
Exhausted
. It was true. I felt a trickle of shame in my blood.

I said, “You've got some inarguable points there. You're perceptive. I appreciate that quality. I like to think of myself as the same. And I am frustrated.”

She smiled sympathetically.

“I don't claim to be a great detective. Most detective work is drudgery. It's reading through a transcript for the umpteenth time in the hope that something jumps out, some overlooked clue. I'm also prejudiced against anything that takes a leap of faith. I hear you say to a woman who's lost her kid, ‘I see two figures in water, give me five hundred dollars,' well, the hackles go up.”

Madame Thibodeau began to protest but I held up my hand. My turn.