The Vanishing Track (29 page)

“Yes, but you're spending as much to build there and only getting two-thirds the price per unit, and half the height.”

“You worry too much, Charles,” said Frank.

“That's what you pay me for.”

“What do you think?” Sean heard Frank say.

The third man in the room had been silent through the exchange so far. “I think this is damn fine port,” he said, with only a hint of a Chinese accent. “And I think that the two of you are overlooking the best development opportunity this city has to offer.”

“Where's that?” asked Sean's father.

“Chinatown.”

His father laughed quietly.

“Laugh if you like. It's already started. Tinseltown is done, and it's attracting more people every day. New condos around the SkyTrain station are going up quickly. Smaller units next to the American and Cobalt hotels are proving to be a good investment. Mr. Ainsworth here already owns one across from the Central Pacific Station. Why is that so funny?”

“It's not,” said Frank Ainsworth.

“I'm not laughing at the idea. It's just that the obstacles are enormous. Yes, you call it Chinatown, but the rest of the city calls it the Downtown Eastside. It used to be called Skid Row until twenty years ago. And while you might have pretty street lamps and ornate buildings in a few areas, the rest of the place is a shithole, pardon my French.”

“You see only the problems. I see a solution,” said the third man.

“Here's what I see,” said Sean's father. “I see a massive swath of this city that is overridden with drugs, violence, organized crime, poverty, and homelessness. What are there, a thousand people on the streets?”

“Closer to three thousand.”

“My case in point, and it's an open-air drug market. The place is run by people like Hoi Fu, who don't want condominiums, because that brings an additional police presence, and pushes the drug market upscale. Cocaine, rather than crack. Hash, rather than meth.”

“Hoi Fu won't be a barrier. He's a businessman, as am I.”

“What are you saying?” asked Ainsworth.

“Only that Hoi Fu knows that to succeed in
his
businesses, he must walk the tightrope between two worlds. In one, violence and intimidation get you what you want. In the other, influence does.”

“Don West will be elected but he will be a lame duck mayor. The whole city knows that Fu supported him in the last election. West will get one term but then he is on the way out,” said Sean's father.

“But I am on the way up.”

“Mayor Ben Chow,” said Ainsworth. “It's got a nice ring to it.”

“Hoi Fu understands this. He understands that the next mayor of this city will have to solve the problem of the Downtown Eastside. Don West will be a place holder while we work behind the scenes. We are an international city, with international visitors, and they don't want to be tripping over drunks. They don't want to stub their toes on
HIV
-infected needles or to have their kids solicited by whores.”

“So what do we do?” asked Ainsworth.

“We make a plan.”

“A plan for what?” asked his father.

“For the redevelopment of the Eastside. Twenty years from now, Oppenheimer will be the new West End. Chinatown will be as trendy as Kits was in the '80s.”

“And what do we do about the homeless?”

“Move them out,” said Chow.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. We'll think of something. We'll get some of the liberal poverty people on board. Give them their say. Make sure they are a part of this, but not
too
much a part.”

“It's an opportunity for you to become mayor,” said his father.

“Oh, yes. And for you, gentlemen, to become very, very rich.”

“Who else needs to be a part of this?” said Ainsworth.

“We need someone in the bureaucracy who can smooth the way inside the system. I know a few people I can speak with discreetly,” said Chow. “And we need the cops. Without them, we're going to be running into trouble, left, right, and center.”

“You think the cops are going to sit down with the likes of Hoi Fu?”

“They already do. The
VPD
also knows that men like Hoi Fu keep order, such as it is, in the drug trade and in the gang rivalries. Without him and others of his ilk, the Downtown Eastside would resemble Afghanistan. The
VPD
won't mind knowing that Fu is in the background. We, like they, need him, if only in the shadows.”

“I don't know,” said Sean's father. “My job here is to keep Frank's business safe from harm. Having Fu involved—”

“Having Fu involved is the only way we're going to make things happen, and happen fast.”

“Who else?” asked Ainsworth.

“Someone from the bleeding hearts club,” said his father.

“That lawyer, Denman Scott?” asked Ainsworth.

“Too much of a hard-ass,” Chow stated. “He'd never go for it.”

“No, we need someone who is tired. Who's anxious for a solution? Whose ego is big enough that we can pander to it?” asked his father.

“Beatta Nowak,” offered Chow.

“From the Community Advocacy group?” asked Ainsworth.

“That's the one,” said Chow.

“Isn't she a bit of a raging bull?”

“It will probably seem like that for the first few meetings,” Chow replied. “She'll come around and she can control things. It will be perfect.” Sean could almost see him rubbing his hands together. “Nowak can run interference for us, keep the End Poverty Now people from getting on top of this.”

“She can't know about Fu. That would never wash,” said Ainsworth.

“She won't,” assured Chow.

“What's in it for her?” asked Ainsworth.

“We build some low-cost housing.”

“Where?”

“We throw some in the mix, but we build the bulk of it out of the main economic zone. We rezone and work with the Burnaby Council.”

The room was silent. Sean thought that maybe they were done and he began to slowly back down the hall, and then he heard his father speak.

“Okay, how do we get started?”

“Let's invite some folks to supper.”

“Not here,” said his father.

“No, let's get a space in the Eastside. I know a place on Pender Street that's perfect,” Chow laughed. “We'll get takeout from the Golden Dragon. Fu will love it!”

“It's got to be quiet. We can't afford to attract attention to this,” said his father. “If we attract attention to ourselves before all the pieces are in place, then this won't work. We're sunk.”

Sean couldn't help but smile, listening outside the door.

“We'll need to slow down the rest of the development community,” said Ainsworth. “We're not the only ones waking up to the fact that the last place to build in Vancouver is the Downtown Eastside.”

Chow laughed. “I will take care of that. I'll introduce a motion at council at just the right moment to put a freeze on conversion of
SRO
s to condos. That will allow us to put our pieces in place, and then when we're ready, I can repeal and we can move forward.”

“So where do we start, property-wise?” asked Ainsworth.

“The Lucky Strike,” said Chow.

“It's not on the market,” said his father.

“Not now.”

“Who owns it? We looked into that last year, didn't we, Charles?” asked Ainsworth. “It's a numbered company.”

“The property, dear friends,” said Chow, “belongs to Mr. Hoi Fu. I imagine he'd be willing to take a reasonable offer.”

SEAN SAT IN
the sun and listened to the birds. That was two years ago, he mused.

For the last two years his father's life had been wrapped up in the pursuit of a hotel, many hotels in fact, but one hotel in particular. For almost as long, Sean had been thinking of ways to make his father pay for what he had done. The Lucky Strike had become Ground Zero in the old man's life, and now Sean had made it the epicenter of his own arrangements.

He stood up from the chair and stretched. It was time to check in on his guests.

COLE SAT SILENTLY IN THE
back of a cab, Denman next to him. It was Monday evening.

“I still think—a few beers and this whole problem would disappear.” Cole looked out the window as they crossed the Burrard bridge.

“Yeah, for you. For me, it would just amp up.”

“Well, then it's you who needs the treatment,” Cole said, turning to his friend, his mouth drawn back in a half grin.

“You don't have to be nervous, Cole. The guy we're going to see, well,
you're
going to see is a straight up Doctor of Psychology.”

“Didn't you say something about wiggly eye treatment?”

“It's called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.”

“You read about that somewhere on the internet, didn't you?”

“Yeah, but it's a common treatment these days for post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“That's what I've got?”

“The doc will make that assessment.”

Denman paid the cabbie and they both got out and walked around the side of the house, following signs to the office portion of the home. They mounted a set of stairs and knocked. A compact man in his forties answered the door. His salt and pepper hair gave him a look of maturity, while his face, tanned and finely lined around the eyes, gave him a youthful air.

“I'm Greg Brady,” said the man, inviting them in. “You must be Cole,” Brady said, extending his hand. Cole introduced himself.

“This is Denman Scott, my cheerleader,” said Cole. Brady shook his hand.

“Slip your shoes off here and follow me upstairs.” They followed the man as he mounted the stairs to a small room containing several chairs.

“You can have a seat here, Denman. If you would like tea or coffee or water, help yourself.” He motioned to a small serving tray with a kettle and the fixings for hot drinks. “Cole, would you like anything?”

“Have you got Kick Ass Lager?”

“Afraid not,” smiled Brady.

“Just a glass of water then.”

Cole waved to Denman, like a child leaving his parents on the first day of school, and followed Brady into his office. “Have a seat,” said Brady, motioning to two leather club chairs by the large windows.

“No couch?”

“I'm not a Freudian.”

“Good, 'cause I'd likely just fall asleep.”

“Denman tells me he believes you're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“That sounds serious,” said Cole.

“It can be,” said Brady. “It's a common issue. We first started diagnosing it in war veterans. We now know that many people who have been exposed to a terrifying event, something that threatened them with physical violence, or actually resulted in them being subjected to it, suffer from
PTSD
.”

“That sounds about right. I got the hell beaten out of me as a kid.” They spoke for a while longer about Cole's childhood. Then Brady asked, “Is there a single event that is haunting you?”

“Yeah.” Cole took a deep breath, then began to tell the whole story. Half an hour later Cole was exhausted. He leaned forward with his face in his hands. “I guess this is pretty much hopeless,” he said, looking up and rubbing his face with his hands.

Brady smiled. “On the contrary,” he said. “What we're going to do, Cole, is take away the anxiety that you feel when you think about that event.” Brady shifted in his chair. “
PTSD
often means that things that you associate with that event now bring you great discomfort. When you are in a situation that reminds you of the event, you become anxious. You startle easily. You can't sleep. You have flashbacks. Maybe you feel depressed, or even suicidal. You avoid contact with places or people that you associate with that event. Maybe you're moody . . .”

Cole grinned.

“Sound familiar?”

“It's just that I've been moody all my life.”

Brady smiled again. “Well, we can work on personality issues some other time. Tonight, we're going to do something that will help your brain process the stress it is feeling about the traumatic event that has occurred in your life, and make it so that you don't keep reliving it over and over again. We're going to do something that will mean you don't associate people or places with that event.”

Cole nodded. “Wiggly eye.”

“Right. You've heard of
EMDR
.”

“Wikipedia.”

“Hmm, not sure if that's the best source. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing was first developed by a Doctor Shapiro in the late 1980s. She happened to notice some troubling thoughts were resolved when her eyes followed the waving leaves during a walk in a neighborhood park. She developed a clinical model for this.”

Cole interrupted. “Doc, I've been walking in parks all my life. Big parks. Jasper, Banff, Pukaskwa. Looking at lots of leaves blowing in the wind. Still feel like shit.”

Brady laughed. “Cole, the idea is really very simple. Our brains process thousands of thoughts and emotions every second. Sometimes when something really traumatic occurs to us, our brains can't process it, so it keeps spinning around and around. Sometimes seemingly unrelated events can become associated with this trauma. What
EMDR
does is help your brain reprocess the information around the traumatic event, so that you don't feel anxiety or depression when you think of it. Does that make sense?”

Cole nodded.

“So the first thing we're going to do is get you to focus on the traumatic image. Cole, it's really important for you to be honest with yourself during this. If it helps you to close your eyes to recall this traumatic image, then do so. It's not necessary, but if you like, you can say out loud what the image is.”