Last of the Independents (7 page)

“Ten minutes before we walked in here I told them how this would go down. I explained to them what a cold reading was. How you'd single out the mother 'cause she's emotionally vulnerable, easy to manipulate. I told them you'd say something cryptic, wait for our response, then build on it. Fact is, the morning Cynthia Loeb disappeared there wasn't a raindrop in sight. But you built your story on that, keeping it just vague enough so you'd have an out.”

“I never said her daughter disappeared during a rainstorm.”

“You never said anything substantive. You're a fraud, how could you?”

I stood up. The Loebs followed suit.

I'd like to think my speechifying left the Madame torn up inside and repentant, but all I'd succeeded in doing was tearing off the last scrap of pretense. Our eyes met. I also like to think that beneath the mutual disdain and scorn, we shared an admiration, or at least an honest appraisal of the other's nature. But all of that might be romanticized, two worn-out hookers trying to claim emotions they had no right to.

“You're a bastard,” she said.

“Pretty much. Mrs. Loeb would like her money back.”

Looking up at us, Madame Thibodeau took the envelope and passed it to Mrs. Loeb, but not before withdrawing two of the bills. “Cost of doing business,” she said, smiling.

I looked at Mrs. Loeb, who nodded, her stoic good cheer already returning. She knew she was getting off cheap.

“That should at least buy one fortune,” I said as the Loebs headed out of the parlor. “Any sooth for me before I leave?”

The Madame remained in her seat staring at the portraits of Robert Borden on the currency, an absent glaze to her eyes. Without looking up she said, “How 'bout, ‘beware the ides of March?'”

“
Ah, it was worth a try,” said Mrs. Loeb. She dropped me on the corner of Beckett Street. As I climbed out of the car, she killed the engine to rummage through her purse, coming up with the envelope which she offered to me. I waved it away.

“Your money's no good.”

Ben had climbed into the front seat. Leaning with his elbow out the window of the Town Car he said, “That was a bravura performance, Mike. Really restored my faith in you.”

“Shucks,” I said. “Pissing off the clairvoyant is easy. They never see it coming.”

He shook his head at the cornball joke. “It's always the ides of March you have to beware of, never the nones or the calends. The calends are my favorite.”

“The calends are under-utilized,” I agreed.

Alone in my office I made tea and answered an email query about my fee structure. I made the calls that needed to be made and fired off emails to people who deserved them. During our Staples spree I'd picked up a scanner, and I spent time making digital copies of the Szabo documents, including Django James's birth certificate and baby footprint.

It was dark out and the usual Hastings Street crowd was gathering under the awnings at the end of the block. Sex trade workers, homeless persons, a whole lot of substance abusers, some of whom encompassed both the other categories. We are all of us whores of one kind or another.

I worked until nine. When the mundane chores had been knocked off, I stood out on the balcony with the dregs of my tea and thought hard about the Szabos and the owners of Imperial Pawn. Ramsey and his daughter knew something. Theirs wasn't a silence built around staying away from the police at all costs. If you run a pawn shop in Vancouver it's inevitable you deal with the law. It could be gang-related: it's hard to make a store owner talk when the person they might finger has friends who enjoy playing with matches.

I wondered if Gavin Fisk sweated Ramsey or his daughter. I wondered if he gave a shit. About the Szabo case, about anything. I hoped he made Mira happy.

T
he day I moved into my office on Beckett Street I was struggling up the stairs with the table when a woman named Darla spotted me from the street. She held the door open for me and helped me schlep the table into my office. I knew who and what she was: not many occupations called for fishnet stockings and a faux-leather fanny pack. I also knew she was momentarily forgoing any solicitation in anticipation of a larger contribution to the Help Darla Get High Fund once the furniture had been stowed. So we acted cordial to each other and I paid her thirty dollars for her help, making her swear she wouldn't let the rest of the neighbourhood know I was a soft touch.

The next day she reappeared with a fresh pink and purple bruise on her jaw, her shirt stretched and ripped and her fanny pack gone. She explained that she'd cut ties with her pimp and was raising money for a bus ticket back to Banff. I suppose there are more obvious scams, but not many. I didn't so much fall for it as allow myself to get swept up in the story, because I like the idea of being a hero. By the time I'd realized the lie, I'd been parted from another fifty dollars, and Darla was on her way anywhere but to a Greyhound terminal.

That same evening I was on my balcony when she passed below me in the slipstream of a fiery little pimp juggling burner cellphones. A look passed between us not unlike the one between me and Madame Thibodeau. I'd been outgunned by a faster draw. Lesson learned.

A month later, on a July night when I'd succumbed to depression and despair, I found myself thrusting my condom-sheathed cock into Darla as she lay face down on the office table, the tendrils of her dirty hair draped over the Loeb file. A hundred dollars, the last currency that would ever pass between us, was clutched in her palm throughout the entire transaction.

One of my grandpa's favorite sayings: “When you've only got a hammer you treat every problem as a nail.” Sometimes your options aren't limited by your tools so much as by the mindset you bring to them. But that doesn't mean that mindset is necessarily wrong. Sometimes the problem really does call for a big fucking hammer blow.

On the balcony thinking of the pawn shop owners, I had an epiphany. I went to one of the new file cabinets and opened the bottom drawer. I had another camera like the ones planted in the Kroons' embalming room. I had parabolic microphones and some rudimentary bugging equipment. But I doubted I had enough to cobble together what I needed.

I phoned Amelia Yeats, using a number I'd gleaned from Cliff Szabo's address book. I told her why I was calling and reminded her who I was.

“I remember you, Mike,” she said. That was heartening.

“I got a hunch that you're a night owl,” I said. “Do you have time to meet me for coffee?”

“You know Kafka's?”

“Is that the place where you order coffee, it never comes, and the next day you're tossed in jail for an unspecified crime?”

“Funny,” she said. “Eleven fifteen?”

“I'll be there.”

I pissed out two pots of tea and sat and listened to Chris Whitley scrape his dobro on “From One Island to Another”. Another brilliant musician who'd burned out early. I put my feet on the table and tipped my chair back against the wall.

It wasn't a simple plan but it was based on who people were. The hard reality was that I could never make the pawn shop owner and his daughter talk.

To me.

The Hastings Street Irregulars, Part I

K
afka
's was busy given the hour. The couches near the window were occupied by bearded, scarved screenwriter types, clacking away on their laptops. Women sat at the back tables, talking or texting on cellphones. Neither group paid much attention to the other. Fifteen adjacent bubbles of solitude. A pair of old men played timed chess at a table in the far corner. Another two looked on.

I was early; I'd brought my book but didn't need it. Amelia Yeats pushed away a crumb-covered saucer and stood up. She deposited the section of the
Province
she'd been reading in the recycling bin and led me back out into the night.

“We might as well grab dinner,” she said. “There's a noodle house round the corner that stays open till two.”

She was wearing a black warm-up jacket with an orange mesh lining, a magenta T-shirt with an indie band's logo on it, the name something long and literary-sounding. Black leggings tucked into calf-length brown boots and half-rimmed eyeglasses. I think glasses look sexy as hell on women. I may be alone on this. As we walked up Main she pulled hers off and slid them into a case, then dropped the case into her scale-covered purse.

Most of the buildings we passed were closed and empty but not dark. Secondary lights burned in the windows of a Korean grocer's, a Legion hall, a gelato parlor with a fenced-off patio. People congregated under awnings to smoke cigarettes and talk hockey. Others hustled down side streets clutching brown paper bags or cases of beer with the receipt threaded through the handle. Main Street at night can be quiet and bustling and yuppie and traditional all at the same time.

The restaurant was low-ceilinged and required descending four stairs to reach the entrance. The menus and signs were in Chinese only. They were doing brisk business among a certain clientele: boisterous, drunken, middle-aged Asians. I was the only white person in there. Amelia Yeats ordered: duck feet, Chinese cucumber, a vinegary chicken dish, mushrooms, egg rolls and Cokes.

“What are you grinning at?” she said.

“I was telling someone earlier today that my job was mostly drudgery.” I gestured around, as if to add, “And yet here I am.”

“I get that sometimes,” she said, missing my point. “Any job that's a bit off the path, people think it must be super-glamorous. You can't believe how often I have to tell people, it's not all about snorting coke with rock stars. Mostly it's me alone in the control room, trying to get the drums to sit just right in the stereo field.” She cracked her Coke and jabbed in the straw. “Not that I'd ever want to do anything else. I bet you're the same.”

“Working for myself seems to suit me,” I said. “Any situation involving red tape or a holier-than-thou boss, I become a liability. I like to be left alone to do things how I see fit. There's not a lot of those type jobs left anymore. It's nice to have a niche.”

“Isn't it?” She clinked her can against mine. “To everybody everywhere finding their niche.”

After our food arrived I worked the conversation around to my plan.

“Let me put this to you,” I said. “Unlike most people our age, I'm not tech-savvy. It took me a week of reading the manual to figure out how to hook two surveillance cameras up to my Mac, and those things are supposed to be idiot-friendly. I need someone with expertise recording sound.”

“What do you want to record?”

“A conversation in a locked room.”

“You want to bug someone?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Is this legal or illegal?”

I waved my hand,
comme-ci, comme-ca.
“With these kind of people, I'm not sure that distinction really applies.”

“Gangsters?”

“No, but if I'm right, they're connected to something they'd rather people didn't know about. What kind of gear would I need for that sort of job?”

She pinched a morsel of chicken from my plate and sucked it up the way the other customers were. I fumbled with a clump of rice and managed to get it to my mouth without getting any on my shirt. The kitchen staff, visible and audible through the glass partition in the back, matched the patrons in volume. Except for the cucumber, the food was excellent.

After thinking it over Amelia Yeats said, “You could run a bug through FM radio, but to guarantee sound quality, at the very least we'd need an interface, a wireless system and a battery-powered mic.”

“It has to be impossible to detect. High-powered, enough to pick up low voices clearly. At least one of the speakers is a mumbler.”

“How much time do I have to plant it?”

“Ten seconds, probably less. And I can't guarantee we'd get the chance to retrieve it.”

She broke the last eggroll in two and slathered her half in plum sauce. “High-fidelity, invisible, battery-powered and disposable. On what kind of budget?”

“What can you make do with?”

She started scribbling on a napkin. “I have most of the gear,” she said. “I can probably pick up the rest of the parts at Radio Shack.”

“You make your own microphones?”

She shrugged. “When I was thirteen I made a decent low-frequency mic out of a reverse-wired Kenmore woofer. I still use it occasionally for kick drums. Not exactly a Neumann U-87, but it serves a purpose.”

“What'll it cost?”

Another shrug. “If it's to help Cliff, no charge,” she said. Then looking up at me: “But I get to be the one that plants it.”

I wanted to object. I started to. But the waitress buzzed by to clear the empty plates and ask if we wanted coffee or sponge cake.

“Just the check,” I said.

“Like me to split it?”

“Please,” Amelia Yeats said, but I handed the waitress two twenties. “I got this.”

“What'd you do that for?” she said after the waitress was gone.

“It could be the only money you get out of this. Private detection isn't a thriving business.”

“When will you need the mic by?” she said once the waitress had returned with the change. I left it on the table as we pulled on our coats.

“Tuesday work?”

“I can do that, long as the parts are in.”

“Great.” I slid my card across the table. “Tuesday at eleven, my office. Two-eight-eight-two Beckett Street.”

“Should be fun,” she said.

I
crawled through another weekend in the Kroons' office.

Sunday I took my grandmother to the flea market in Cloverdale. The admissions girl found it funny I didn't want my hand stamped. As we pushed into the throng of poorly-dressed and irritable bargain-hunters, my grandmother said, “I don't see why we didn't just go to the one on Terminal.”

“The one on Terminal's nothing but dealers and junk,” I said. “This one's worth the drive. At least they don't get offended when you try to bargain. Plus it's near the Pannekoek House.”

“You're taking me to breakfast?” she asked.

“I will if you don't piss me off.” I squeezed her shoulder.

Later, as we walked through the parking maze, her searching her pockets for the keys and me carrying an azalea in a hanging pot, a pair of drapes, and a brass samovar, she looked at the latter and said, “I don't know what you need with that thing.”

“It's for the office.”

“Who drinks that much coffee? You don't even like coffee.”

“Maybe I just like samovars.”

She shook her head, ready to up-end her purse on the concrete if the keys didn't materialize. She checked the zippered side pouch.

“Your mother loved knickknacks and junk, too. She used to collect old typewriters. Never wrote a word on any of them. There!” She came up with the keys. “And do you know how hard brass is to clean?”

“A little CLR and water, good as new.”

“I don't know where you get that stubbornness, Michael. Certainly not from my part of the family. That's a Kessler trait.”

“What exactly are the Drayton traits?” I asked her.

“Oh, don't worry, you're not much like him.”

Him.

“So all the virtues come from your side, and all the riffraff from the Draytons and Kesslers?”

She answered, “My side did quite well for itself. And we did it without ever buying a dirty used samovar.”

I
don't understand why people talk to their dogs, but that doesn't mean I haven't engaged in that practice myself. At the park on Monday night my dog shot me a look of admonishment, as if to say, “So you've added criminal invasion of privacy to your job description? And you think it's going to work out? Or stop there?”

I didn't have an answer for her.

T
uesday I picked up Katherine from her boyfriend's parents' house and Ben in front of the Djembe Hut. I swung by a Tim Horton's and bought an assorted dozen. At the office I steeped a gallon of tea in the samovar and cleared the table of everything except the Loeb file and a pad of graph paper. Katherine folded back the flaps on the doughnut carton and set out napkins in a neat square pile. Ben deliberately mussed up her pattern. We set up folding chairs and waited for the others to arrive.

They weren't long. Cliff Szabo was there at two minutes to eleven, Amelia Yeats at eleven ten. Katherine glared at her. Ben tucked the manga he was reading under his chair.

When they were seated, all eyes drifted to me. I'd never chaired a meeting in my life.

“Here's the situation as it stands,” I said. “Mr. Szabo's son disappeared from outside Imperial Pawn. More specifically, Django was in a car that disappeared, along with the car's contents, including a bicycle.”

“A Schwinn Bicentennial,” Szabo clarified.

“It is entirely possible that the pawn shop owner, Mr. Ramsey, and his daughter Lisa, know jack-shit about this disappearance. But I don't get that feeling.”

“They're liars,” Szabo said. “Tried to cheat me every time.”

“Then why do business with them in the first place?” Ben asked.

“I have options?”

“We're getting off track,” I said. “They know something we need to know. They won't talk to us. I want to make them talk to each other.”

Nods, silence. Katherine said, “Well if nobody else is going to have tea, I will.” That prompted paper cups to be filled and passed out, and the box of doughnuts to make the rounds.

“So what's your plan?” Ben said.

“Bug them and make them frightened enough to talk,” I said. “That requires someone to cause a distraction while someone else plants the bug.”

“Which I'm doing,” Amelia Yeats said.

“Isn't that up to Mike?” Katherine said.

“It's part of our arrangement.” I flipped around the graph pad so they could see the sloppy floor plan of the pawn shop I'd drawn from memory. I pointed to the squiggle that stood for the back room door. “In there is where the bug has to go. Tomorrow Katherine will drop in and try to get a glimpse of what's back there, so we can hide the mic in something appropriate.”

“Why me?” Katherine asked.

“Because they don't know what you look like, and if you pop up later it's unlikely they'll find you suspicious.”

“Meaning I have a forgettable face?”

Amelia Yeats made the tiniest of shrugs.

Ben said, “I could do that.”

“No you can't,” I said. To Katherine: “On the day of, I want you to go in there with money and pretend to be shopping for something, maybe a camera. I need you to get lots of merchandise out on the counter, so the Ramseys' attention will be split between the merch and the customers. Then Mr. Szabo enters and yells at them. That way, even if they re-check the security tape, all they'll focus on will be the cluster of people around their high-end gear.”

“What will you do?” Yeats asked.

Szabo had been sipping his tea, eyes gravitating to his son's face on the stack of flyers atop the cabinet.

“Mr. Szabo will storm in and accuse them, loudly, of knowing about Django's disappearance. I'll go in and pretend to wrestle him out of the store. My hope is, in the aftermath, the Ramseys will retreat to the back room and discuss things, maybe even contact whoever did it.”

“Wouldn't it be easier to break in at night and plant the bug?” Ben asked. “You could do that yourself, when they're not around, then wait for them to bring up Django.”

“Airtight plan,” I said. “Except that A, I'm not a fucking ninja and I don't break into places, and B, I don't have an inexhaustible supply of manpower to listen to them for weeks and weeks. And C, if they know about the kid, I want to know now, not when they feel like talking about it. That's not something that comes up in day to day conversation.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “But if you think they might try to contact the guy, why not tap their phones?”

“Yeah, and I'll calibrate my infrared geo-satellites to peer into the store. And I'll hire Gene Hackman and John Cazale to record every word the Ramseys say.”

I took a breath and a bite of doughnut.

“Fact is, if I get a name I'll be happy. A name is somewhere to start.” I looked around. “Any other poorly conceived objections?”

“Do you know how much of this is against the law?” Katherine asked me.

“Ten percent?”

She rolled her eyes.

“It's academic because we're not going to get caught.”

“Right,” Amelia Yeats said. “The useless shitheads on the VPD couldn't help Cliff, so why worry that they're going to be able to catch us?”

“Most of the cops mean well,” I said.

“Bullshit. They're thugs who beat gays and immigrants just for being different. Any excuse to shoot or Taser someone.”

Katherine looked at me, grinning, like, “You're gonna take that?”