Funny Money, page 12
part #12 of Willows and Parker Mystery Series
“Broadway and Main.”
“Very good, a wonderful destination. Tell me now, and make me wiser, do you think the word destination comes from the same root as destiny?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Well, what better time?” He backed the car onto the street, braked to avoid a passing patrol car. He chuckled. “Have you observed that the police are like taxi drivers? Never around when you want one, always there when you don’t.” He pulled in tight behind the pretty white-with-scenic-blue-and-green-trim patrol car. Nick had told Chantal that Vancouver cops used to wear pale-blue shirts and drive black cars. Now they drove white cars and wore black shirts, like the infamously brutal LAPD thugs. What, Nick asked, did the local cops’ wardrobe tell you about their mindset? Nothing you really wanted to know. Chantal relaxed a little as the police car turned left and the taxi made a sweeping right.
In a few minutes they were on Broadway, heading east into a pale, silvery glow in the clouds, and thickening traffic.
Chantal pulled crumpled bills out of her pocket. Three twenties, two tens, and four fives. One hundred dollars, exactly.
The cab stopped for the red at Granville. A woman was led across the road by a large poodle so ornately clipped it more closely resembled a carefully tended plant than a living animal. The poodle tossed its head, giving the leash a yank, hurrying the woman along. So little time, so many fire hydrants. Tears welled up in Chantal’s eyes. Poor Tripper! But she was on her own now, and so was Tripper, because Nick was dead and he was going to stay that way forever. So there was no turning back, and anyway, Tripper was a handsome and reasonably obedient dog, so she’d probably land on her feet. It wasn’t as if she’d been living in doggie heaven. Chantal was pretty sure Nick made a habit of slipping a little coke into Tripper’s dinner dish. Not everybody had a dope addict for a pet. In certain circles, it was probably considered hip.
They were cruising along Broadway now, driving past the big Toys “R” Us sign. Broadway was a main artery, but it was weird how it physically dwindled, the stores and shops shrinking and somehow becoming less and less interesting as you drove east, until finally you reached the city’s boundary, home to the last McDonald’s in town.
Had they buried Nick yet? Probably not. He’d be in the morgue. The phrase “cooling his heels” slipped unbidden into her mind. She shuddered.
Chantal concentrated on cataloguing what she knew about the disposition of bodies, the few facts at her disposal. The police would locate his parents, and make them identify the body. Then what?
They’d stopped. The driver turned towards her. He smiled good-naturedly. “Broadway and Main, correct?”
Chantal nodded. She passed him a twenty, told him to add a couple of dollars for a tip. It took him a long time to make change. What was he up to? She pushed the door open and climbed out of the car. He glanced up, startled. She slammed the door behind her and walked hurriedly away.
“Lady, your change!”
She waved dismissively, without looking back. She had no idea why she’d asked to be let off at Broadway and Main, and then, as she walked around a corner, it hit her. This was where she’d first met Nick.
Right there, at that bus stop.
*
She’d been sitting on the wooden bench when he walked up to her and asked her for a light. He sat down at the far end of the bench and smoked quietly for a couple of minutes, then introduced himself, and asked her name. He had a nice smile, cocky but warm. They talked for a while and she told him she was new in town, had been staying with a friend, but it hadn’t worked out, and now she was basically homeless, on her way downtown to try to find a job …
Nick told her, fuck that, she was too pretty to sling burgers. He asked her how old she was. She lied and told him nineteen, just a couple of days ago.
A bus came along and they both got on, not saying anything, Nick slinging her backpack over his shoulder. As they rode downtown he told her he made a living on the street, hitting people up for spare change, sometimes moving a little dope. Not smack, he assured her, as if she cared one way or the other. They got off the bus at the south end of the bridge and walked down the street, past the bars, porno joints and clubs. He’d been in the city almost a month, and as they walked down the strip, it seemed to Chantal that he knew just about every street person in the city. Twice he left her to duck into a doorway to make a furtive exchange of cash and drugs.
They walked for a few more blocks and then he said he was hungry. She followed him into a restaurant, they sat down at a booth and he ordered two big breakfasts, bacon and eggs and hash browns, coffee, without looking at the menu or asking her what she wanted.
Later, as the waitress was refilling their coffee cups, Nick told her he had a room in a nearby hotel. He asked her if she’d like to move in with him, since she didn’t have a place to stay. He somehow made it clear that she wouldn’t owe him anything for the favour. He told her to take her time thinking about it, but reminded her that the streets could be dangerous.
But really, what was there to think about?
*
Chantal waited for the light to change, and then crossed the street, hurried past the bus stop and turned into a mini-mall in the middle of the block. There was a chain convenience store, a drug store, liquor store and low-end clothing store, and a small restaurant named Jack’s. Inside the mall, the liquor store was closed but the restaurant was open. She sat down at a booth with a view of the street. The waitress yawned as she slapped a menu down on the red Formica table. Chantal ordered coffee and toast.
“What kinda bread you want? We got …”
“White.”
“Cream with your coffee?”
Chantal nodded. The waitress went away and came back with the pot. Chantal poured a container of cream into her coffee, stirred it with her knife, just like Nick.
She stared out at the street, concentrating on the people walking by, seeing as many details as she could, trying to think of names, occupations, anything that would stop her from thinking about him.
Her toast arrived, and a plastic container of jam the colour of dried blood. She called the waitress back, and asked for peanut butter.
Outside, a woman wearing a dark-green coat walked past. She wore a pink scarf laced with silver threads, and her hair was in curlers. Pink curlers. Her chin was tucked into the scarf and her eyes were on the sidewalk. She was about fifty years old, maybe sixty. Old was old. Chantal thought she’d probably worked as a secretary but was now on welfare. Her coat was several sizes too large, which meant she’d lost a lot of weight recently. Was that because of grief or poverty or sickness? Maybe a social worker had given her the coat. Take it or leave it, look scrawny or be cold. Chantal thought that sometimes a long life was no great blessing.
The waitress dropped a couple of packets of peanut butter on the table. Squirrel, Chantal’s favourite brand. She opened one of the packets and picked up her knife.
She’d ordered white toast but this was whole-wheat. She looked up and caught the waitress staring at her, smirking as if at some great triumph.
Chantal’s sudden anger twisted into her like a corkscrew and faded away in an instant, leaving her feeling empty and tired. She stared blankly down at her plate. Maybe she should turn herself in. There was a pay phone by the door to the washrooms. All she had to do was walk over there and dial 911.
A burst of laughter made her look up. A quartet of girls in their early twenties sat down a couple of tables away. She sipped her coffee and secretly studied their plump, well-fed faces. They looked, if not exactly happy, then self-contained. How did you get to be a normal, everyday person? What did you have to do to get there?
Probably you didn’t run away from home at age sixteen, sneak into the barn and kiss your 4-H calf goodbye, and not even give a thought to your parents because you hated your father and didn’t care about your mother any more than she cared about you.
The girls ordered coffee and toast, a cinnamon bun. One of them ordered pie, and her friends gave her a hard time about it, poking and giggling. The waitress knew them. Her broad back was to Chantal as she effortlessly joined in the conversation, made a joke that was well received, and laughed loudly at her own wit.
Two of the girls wore dark-blue sweaters with the mall grocery store’s name embroidered on it in white letters. So they were checkout girls, trapped in dead-end jobs, their youth and brains withering away day by day. Just look at them. What were they so fucking happy about, a special on dairy products?
Chantal nibbled her toast, sipped at her lukewarm cup of coffee. She wished desperately that there was someone she could talk to, someone she could trust. She missed Tripper more than anything. She missed her dog even more than she missed Nick.
Tears welled up in her eyes. She wiped her face with a fistful of napkins yanked viciously from the chrome dispenser, blew her nose and tossed the napkins on the floor. The stupid waitress and stupid checkout girls were staring at her as if she had a major infectious disease. Fuck them all.
Chapter 23
Marty sat on Melanie Martel’s enclosed balcony, looking down at the harbour. If his mind were viewed as a pie chart, a large slice of it would have been occupied by warm sexual thoughts of his gorgeous blonde sweetheart. A much smaller wedge of the chart busily counted the sailboats neatly arranged in the slips almost directly below him.
But the largest slice of all was scurrying around in a cage, chasing Carlos and Hector. It was a futile exercise, because there was no point running them down until he’d decided what to do with them. Marty gulped the last of his champagne and fresh-squeezed orange juice and put the glass gently on the patio table.
He had lived on the West Coast, hilariously referred to by newcomers as the Wet Coast, his entire adult life. He still wondered how the sky could hold such a vast weight of rain.
Marty had seen enough rain in Vancouver in one winter to flood the Amazon basin. No wonder the city had been built on the ocean. There had to be someplace for all that water to go. He’d been told stories of first-generation Vancouverites who had moss growing on them.
Half the buildings in town leaked so badly they’d been covered in mammoth blue tarps. The eternal dampness had turned thousands of apartments into mushroom farms. What did the unlucky people who lived under those tarps think about, as they drifted through their deep-blue worlds?
Never mind all that. Carlos and Hector — what should he do with them?
Melanie pushed open the sliding glass door and sat down opposite him. She wore a tight black skirt, a silvery sleeveless T-shirt kind of thing with spaghetti straps, and stilettos in shiny translucent blue plastic, generously sprinkled with red and blue and silver and gold sequins. She helped herself to one of his Camels and lit up. Her hair was still damp from her shower, and hung in loose curls. Her lipstick and impossibly long nails were Spontaneous Combustion Pink and she wore just a tad too much eyeliner.
Marty loved her for it.
She exhaled and said, “What d’you think?”
“About what?”
“Me.” She held out her arms, stretching the silvery fabric. No bra, but then, as far as he knew, she didn’t own one.
He studied her for a moment. “What’re you trying for?”
“You tell me.”
“Sexy, and cheap. But pricey.”
Melanie leaned across the table, flash of cleavage, and kissed his mouth. “Thank you so much.” She saw he was preoccupied, and frowned prettily. “Still worrying about Carlos and his dimwit pal?”
Marty nodded. There were about three dozen sailboats moored down there. Most of them were in the thirty-foot range, but a few of them were big fifty-or sixty-footers. What was a sailboat worth, about two grand a foot? He started to do the math and then let it go, seeing that it would take more time than it was worth. Lots of money down there, for sure.
He said, “Is there any more coffee?”
“I just put on a fresh pot. Here, let me get it.”
Melanie started to get up, but Marty put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Stay put, I’ll get it.” What smooth, creamy skin she had.
Inside, the off-white berber carpet was soft and warm to his bare feet. He got the sterling-silver creamer from the fridge, found the matching sugar bowl, poured cream into a cup and tonged in half a dozen sugar cubes. In his youth he’d eaten anything he saw and liked the look of, and never gained an ounce. Now that he was in his late thirties, he had to let his belt out a notch every time he glanced at a dessert tray. He poured the coffee. Time was a train that never missed a passenger. The main thing, as you got older, was to maintain a relentless fuck-you attitude.
As he stepped onto the balcony Melanie said, “I meant to ask you, and then we got caught up in all that other stuff, but how’s Jake coming along?”
“Not too bad.” Marty stretched out his arms and heard and felt his joints creak. Gotta join one of those fitness clubs, get sweaty. The treadmill was originally a means of punishment in Victorian-era prisons, but so what, because he didn’t remember seeing pictures of chubby Victorian-era prisoners. Things sure had changed in the past hundred years. Nowadays, prison was where hardened criminals went to relax, play a little golf and get focussed on the next big scam.
He said, “Jake’s okay, for a guy who’d draw a big crowd at the ‘Antiques Road Show.’” Melanie giggled, and Marty managed a wan smile. He said, “They got him on morphine, and that pisses him off something awful.” Like most high-level dealers, Jake was deathly afraid of drugs, contemptuous of addicts.
“You talk to him about Carlos and Hector?”
“Yeah, on the phone, about an hour ago. Told him straight out I didn’t understand why he wanted them squibbed.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing much. Thought about it for about an hour, while I read the paper, and then told me to forget it, but keep a close eye on them.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Whatever you decide, please don’t invite them over here.”
“You’re a real mind reader, aren’t you?”
Melanie laughed, a nice, throaty chuckle. She reached out and patted Marty on the knee, and Marty lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers each in turn. He’d just phoned Carlos on his Pay As You Go cellphone, tried to make an impression without saying anything incriminating. He’d arranged a meeting with him and his five-watt partner for later that afternoon. He hoped it would go well.
A few months ago he’d recruited some fresh muscle, a couple of North Korean thugs recommended to him by a chartered accountant he more or less trusted. The C.A. had described the Koreans as tough, brutal, and completely lacking in imagination. Marty liked the N.K.s, because he knew that imaginative muscle was muscle that couldn’t be trusted. A person cursed with a lively imagination was a person who knew fear, and the first-born child of fear was foul betrayal.
He sipped his coffee and studied the landscape, how all the disparate and clashing parts of it merged effortlessly together to form a pleasing panorama. Funny how the long view was pretty much black and white and shades of grey. Where did all the colour go? He wondered if he’d enjoy sailing; decided he probably wouldn’t, but that it might be fun to own a sailboat. He imagined making love to Melanie on the frolicking sea, and then realized there was no imagining involved, because she was a frolicking sea, restless and full of motion. What had that Irish guy with the skinny face and glasses written about the ocean? The great grey mother of the sea.
Marty butted his cigarette and resumed kissing Melanie’s soft hand. He licked wetly at the little flap of skin between her fingers, and then snuck an under-the-eyebrows look at her to see how he was doing. Her eyes told him he was doing great. He stood up, helped her to her feet, scooped her up in his powerful arms.
“Bedroom?”
She leaned into him, and whispered into his ear that she didn’t think she could make it past the couch.
Chapter 24
Homer Bradley had started losing his hair in his mid-forties. Baldness attacked him from all sides. He dreaded stepping in front of the shaving mirror in the morning. His hairline receded so fast he was surprised he didn’t get a ticket. The widening expanse of worm-white, glistening skin never ceased to shock him, even though he came to expect it. He learned to comb his remaining hair as delicately as if it were made of spun glass. He stopped using the hair dryer because the blast of hot air seemed to have the effect of clear-cutting his scalp. Soon his time in the barber’s chair was reduced from half an hour to less than ten minutes. No drop in price, however. He took to wearing a fedora, soon discarded it in favour of a beret. He secretly wasted a great deal of money on restoratives and other arcane, laughably unlikely treatments. Finally he bought a cheap wig, which he tried on in the safety and comfort of his bathroom. Oops. He burned it in the fireplace, and had to open all the windows to air out the house. After sulking for a week or so, he went out and bought a hairpiece so expensive that he had to finance it with his Visa card, over ten equal monthly payments.
He wore the wig for the better part of a month, until he happened to overhear a halfwit Crown prosecutor compare his head to a clear cut.
That same afternoon, he drove miles out of the city, nailed the wig to a tree and spent the better part of an hour and three twenty-round boxes of nine-millimetre hardball ammunition blasting the damn thing to pieces no larger than a vole.
That was it for Bradley. No more pills or ointments, pricey fad diets, hats, toupées, or comb-overs. He suffered from male-pattern baldness because he was a man!
His hairline continued to recede until he had an ear-high fringe of hair around the sides and back, like a villain in a Charles Dickens novel. As the years slipped by, his hair turned from a murky brown to a pristine, snowy, high-altitude white. For two decades he looked old before his time, but then his age caught up with him, and he was transformed almost overnight into distinguished and wise. A flurry of articles relating premature balding to astronomically high testosterone levels made him feel even better about his new self.
