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  Willows reached for the door, but Parker got it first. They stepped into the alley behind 312 Main. It was raining. The rain fell through the tangle of electrical wires, past ranks of desolate pigeons and into the narrow space between the Public Safety Building and the towering red brick wall of the Remand Centre and City Jail. On the cracked, uneven pavement of the alley, shallow puddles showcased pretty pink-and-blue doilies of oil.

  Willows and Parker walked down the alley towards the entrance to the police garage. They walked purposefully but without haste. Neither of them hunched their shoulders or otherwise indicated in any way that the rain concerned them.

  Both coppers had learned early in life that looking miserable in a shower doesn’t prevent you from getting wet.

  Parker’s Mazda 626 was parked on the third level. She unlocked the car and got in and reached across the seat to unlock Willows’ door. He got into the car and fastened his seatbelt as she reversed out of the parking stall.

  As they drove out of the garage and into the rain, which seemed to be coming down a little more briskly than it had only a few moments earlier, Willows said, ‘Want to get a bite to eat?’

  Parker shook her head, no. Earlier, she’d been starving. What had happened to her appetite? Not that she was complaining. She turned on the wipers.

  Willows’ stomach rumbled. No problemo.

  They were on their way to Parker’s one-bedroom apartment on West Eighth, just off Burrard. She’d hired a couple of guys with a cube van to move her sofa and matching chair, as well as a few pieces of antique pine, to Willows’ house. The other larger pieces, the kitchen table and two chairs she’d bought at Ikea, the bed and night table from The Brick, had been sold to a used-furniture store. She hadn’t liked any of that furniture when she’d bought it, and she was glad to get rid of it now. Most of it was so badly worn she could easily have thrown it out without feeling wasteful or guilty. It was odd how a person’s taste could change over the years. Or maybe it wasn’t.

  Now, all that remained was a small antique pine chair and a circa-1920s mahogany serving cart. She’d inherited the cart from her mother. She hoped to have children of her own to pass it on to, some time in the vague, distant future.

  Willows said, ‘Pull over at the end of the block, will you?’

  Parker signalled, checked her mirror. The street was metered, and there were several parking spots available.

  Willows said, ‘Yeah, right here.’ He had unbuckled his seatbelt, and began to open his door before the car had fully stopped.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Willows pointed at a crude hand-painted sign.

  A pizza joint. Pizza by the slice. Why wasn’t she surprised? Because repetition dulls the senses.

  Willows paused with his hand on the door. ‘Want a Coke?’

  ‘No thanks, Jack.’

  ‘Diet Coke?’

  Parker shook her head. Willows shut the door and strode across the sidewalk. The business was take-out only. Parker adjusted the wipers, speeding them up. Willows stood at the white-painted counter, opposite a man in a white chef’s cap. The man said something. Willows pointed. The man separated a slice of pizza from the mass, slid it onto a paper plate and put the plate down on the counter. He turned his back on Willows and swung open a refrigerator door, reached inside for a bottle of pop. Willows paid for his meal, pushed open the door with his shoulder, crossed the sidewalk. Parker opened the car door for him. Willows put the slice of pizza down on the dashboard and shut the door. The pizza was steaming up the windshield.

  Parker said, ‘What’ve you got there?’

  ‘Green pepper, mushrooms, anchovies.’

  ‘No, I mean that.’

  Willows held up the bottle of pop. It was a lovely shade of clear pink. ‘Cream soda.’

  ‘They still make that stuff?’

  Willows fastened his seatbelt. He picked up the slice of pizza and took a big bite, chewed and swallowed. ‘I guess so.’

  Parker said, ‘I haven’t had a cream soda in about thirty years.’ ‘C’mon, it couldn’t have been that long.’

  ‘A quarter-century, minimum,’ said Parker. ‘Can I have a sip?’ ‘Nope.’ Willows bit into his pizza. He chewed and swallowed. Parker put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Willows said, ‘One large slice of take-out pizza requires, for purposes of balance, one bottle of cream soda. The beverage of choice doesn’t really matter, because the equation remains constant. If I share my soda with you, I’m going to have to toss the last bite of pizza out the window.’ Willows lowered his voice so he sounded mock-ominous. ‘That just doesn’t make sense, Claire.’ ‘How about if you give me a sip of pop and a bite of pizza?’ ‘Now you’re talking,’ said Willows. But the truth was, when it came to food, he wasn’t a nineties, sharing kind of guy.

  *

  Parker’s one-bedroom apartment, stripped of furniture and her collection of colourful framed prints, was gloomy and depressing. A tightly rolled carpet leaned dejectedly into a corner. The carpet had served to cover most of the apartment’s green shag. Exposed, the shag looked every bit as ugly-grim as the day she’d moved in.

  The bare walls cried out for a fresh coat of paint. In the bedroom stood the few lonely boxes of possessions she hadn’t sold or already moved over to Willows’. The boxes contained clothing she had outgrown, or that had gone out of style, as well as a dozen pairs of unwanted shoes, and a few serviceable but also unwanted odds and ends. Cleaning out her closet, she had been surprised and a little dismayed to learn that she owned three hair dryers, not one.

  Parker finished cleaning the kitchen while Willows carried the boxes down to the car. She’d left an opened bottle of wine in the refrigerator, and they sipped from disposable plastic glasses while they waited for the landlord to arrive. He’d insisted on inspecting the apartment before returning Parker’s damage deposit - half a month’s rent plus ten years’ accrued interest. Fair enough. But where was he?

  Parker checked her watch. ‘I told him three-thirty. It’s quarter to four. Where is he?’

  Willows shrugged. He sipped some wine. Parker had rented a heavy-duty carpet cleaner from a Safeway, but the bile-green shag carpet in the living room had laid down and died a decade or more ago.

  At twenty past four, a key turned in the lock. The door swung open and the owner, a bland, determinedly middle-aged man named Owen Hackler, strolled in. Hackler had told Parker when she’d first rented the apartment that he owned five buildings, all of them three-storey walkups. Hackler had inherited his mother’s house and promptly sold it, using the cash as down payments. During the first two years, Hackler had done all his own maintenance work, as well as holding down two full-time jobs. In the third year, selective renovations and drastically increased rents had produced a positive cash flow.

  In the fifth year, he’d sold the smallest of the buildings. Benefiting from grossly inflated land values, he netted just under a million dollars, and paid out the other four mortgages. Parker estimated Hackler’s worth at somewhere between six and eight million dollars. Hackler’s wealth had honed his hunger for more wealth. Every year he raised the rent the legal maximum. He never did a penny’s worth of repairs until he was nudged by a court order. He was so reluctant to return damage deposits that he had become locally famous. If Parker had expected trouble, she wasn’t disappointed.

  Hackler wandered around the apartment for a solid fifteen minutes, taking notes. Occasionally he pointed his cheap disposable camera at something or other that only he could see, and feigned taking a picture. When he’d finally played out his little charade, he cleared his throat, checked his indecipherable notes and said, ‘I believe you owe me one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty-eight cents, Miss Parker.’

  Parker hated being called Miss Parker. Hackler was well over six feet tall, but she stepped towards him, getting in his face, so close she could smell his lunch. ‘I don’t owe you anything, Hackler. You owe me three hundred and fourteen dollars and twelve cents.’ ‘I
beg your pardon?’

  ‘I phoned the Rentalsman’s office. I gave them the numbers and they did the math. Pay up.’

  Hackler’s face puckered. ‘I got to paint. Look at the carpet; it’s a mess!’

  ‘It was a mess when I moved in. I’ve painted the place myself, three times in the ten years I’ve lived here. I’m not responsible for normal wear and tear, and you know it.’

  ‘Well, that’s your opinion… ‘

  ‘It’s the law,’ said Parker firmly.

  ‘The law?’ Hackler was surprised. He appeared never to have heard of such a thing.

  Willows put his arm around Parker’s shoulder. The gesture of solidarity was unmistakable. He said, ‘There are all sorts of laws, Mr. Hackler. A man in your position could go crazy, trying to keep up with all of them.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Write the cheque.’

  Hackler smiled, and turned his minuscule charm on Parker. ‘Okay, fine. I’ll send it to you in the mail.’

  Parker shook her head. ‘That’s not good enough. I want it now. Right this minute.’

  Hackler sighed, and slowly reached for his chequebook. He had to borrow a pen. He had to be reminded to return it.

  *

  Willows drove down Burrard to Broadway, made a left and drove west until he got to the Salvation Army retail store. Parker helped him carry in the boxes. Carrying two instead of one, she lost her balance and dropped them both. The contents erupted across the sidewalk. One box was stuffed with unwanted sweaters. The other was filled with shoes and boots, boots that were made for walkin’. Parker wondered if her travelling days were over. She hoped so. She hoped next time she moved, it would be to a retirement home. Or, better yet, a graveyard.

  Chapter 7

  Wayne knew April was out hunting for somebody like Lewis, but that didn’t mean he was going to be happy she’d bagged him. Wayne didn’t like surprises, no matter how predictable they might be. April wanted Lewis to be just perfect. Since Wayne was a cleanliness freak, she meant to do everything she could to improve Lewis’s personal hygiene. She led him back into the bathroom, dropped the toilet seat and sharply told him, as if he were a recalcitrant puppy, to sit.

  Lewis sat.

  She told him to open wide, and wider.

  April had never flossed anybody’s teeth before. It was hard work. Really hard work. And not that pleasant, actually. Add dental hygienist to the long list of jobs she wasn’t interested in, should she happen to be reincarnated.

  Lewis was cooperative but very sleepy. When she’d finished with the floss, she made him rinse his mouth with Scope. Then she kissed him, just a quick smooch. Tasty. She told him to smile, and stood back, hands on hips, admiring her handiwork.

  What next? His fingernails were fine. She got a box of Q-tips and assiduously cleaned a few scraps of wax out of his ears. The wax was golden and creamy. April rubbed it between the tips of her fingers until it had disappeared into her skin. She combed Lewis’s hair, and then she plugged in her Lady Braun and carefully shaved him.

  It was nice to be with a clean-shaven man. Wayne was all beard. He had hair all over him. He shaved his neck with a straight razor, but his beard and sideburns covered his whole face, almost. He kept it trimmed of course, didn’t let it grow down to his belly button like those weird ZZ Top guys. And another thing, Wayne had gained a lot of weight, fifty or sixty pounds, since April had first met him. He was a pretty big guy, six-four, three hundred and twelve pounds, and he had a gut hanging off him that didn’t exactly make her wild with desire. When he was riding around on one of his big Harley-Davidson motorcycles, his hawgs, he looked just fine. But he never rode his Harley into bed, did he?

  April unscrewed the cap from Wayne’s aftershave, and then, just in time, came to her senses. If Wayne smelled his lotions on Lewis, there was no telling what he’d do. Well, yes, there was. He’d go crazy. He’d do bad things, which couldn’t be undone. Things he would apologize for a few days later, when he’d finally cooled down. Not that his apologies meant anything to April, because by the time he got around to falling to his knees, she’d already have forgiven him anyway.

  Lewis, doped-up and drowsy, was led back to bed. Exhausted, he nodded off. April lay down next to him. His hair smelled faintly of pepper spray, and Wayne’s shampoo, weird organic stuff that came in inconvenient Mylar bags. Wayne bought shampoo from his hair stylist, a thin woman named Audrey Kong, who was deeply into body-piercing, good Scotch, and guys who drove Harleys. Wayne was two out of three, so far. April had coolly decided that, if he ever came home with a chunk of stainless steel hanging off his face, she’d zap him until he looked like that stuff that collects on the grill of a barbecue, torch his motorcycles, grab the on-hand cash, and run like hell.

  That last part, running like hell, would be absolutely necessary, even if she’d killed him. Because Wayne, that miserable, happy-go-lucky sonofabitch, wasn’t the kind of guy who’d stay dead.

  April lay in bed with Lewis for half an hour or so, admiring him, and then got up and went into the kitchen. She tore the plastic wrapper off a brand-new syringe, cooked up an extra-diluted hit of heroin, and hurried back into the bedroom.

  Lewis was dead to the world.

  April sprayed the crook of his arm with a local anaesthetic. His skin was pale and almost hairless. His veins, fat as worms, lay just beneath the surface of his skin.

  April knelt beside him. She held the syringe up to the light and, very deliberately and slowly, depressed the plunger, so all the air was expelled and a tiny spurt of liquid erupted from the point of the needle.

  She had been calm, but now April was swept up in a tremendous rush of excitement. Her heart rate accelerated. Her vision blurred. Her hands shook uncontrollably. Lewis was so wonderful. Such a handsome man. He was exactly what she’d wanted. She’d been anticipating this moment for so long. She had dreamed about it, night after night. Lewis was all hers. She’d never realized how incredibly thrilling it would be, to take control of a life, guide someone through whatever door she chose to open.

  She had worked so hard, to nab Lewis. Wayne thought he was so smart. He’d laughed at her. He hadn’t believed in her. Well, he’d believe in her now. He needed a Lewis. Somebody who could be manipulated and then disposed of. And look, there he was! She couldn’t wait to see Wayne’s face. He was going to be so pleased with her.

  Hopefully.

  She repeatedly pressed the tip of the needle against Lewis’s arm, dimpling the pale flesh.

  April pressed her thighs together. Now was the moment. She took a deep breath, and tried her very hardest to hold herself steady as she poked at a bulging vein. The needle was unbelievably sharp. April’s concentration was intense. She bit down hard on her lower lip.

  A rush of blood swirled into the syringe’s barrel, and she exulted in the certain knowledge that she had hit a vein.

  Fascinated, she stared at the bloom of crimson as it migrated into the barrel. It was a cloud, a beautiful, feathery, amazingly delicate and complicated, miniature, sunset-red cloud. April tried to remember the names Wayne had told her. Cumulus, those were the great big ones, big as mountains, that towered up into the sky. Wayne had explained that they were so big because they accumulated. He was so smart, the way he explained things to her. Cirrus, those were the ones like feathers. Wayne had asked her if she’d ever wanted to run off and join the circus, so she could wear glittery clothes with lots of feathers. Nimbus. She wasn’t too sure about that one. Jack be nimbus, Jack be quick…

  She kissed Lewis’s fingers.

  If she mainlined him, he might die. But then again, he might not. But if he died, then what? He’d have been wasted, ditto her hard work. How would she get him off the bed and out of the house, if he died? She studied him. Wayne clocked in at a little over three hundred pounds. Lewis, soaking wet, was about one-sixty, tops. Even so, no way she’d get him out of the house in one piece.

  April withdrew the needle from the vein, and plunged
it somewhat petulantly into Lewis’s biceps. Skin popping, it was called. As slowly as was humanly possibly, she depressed the syringe’s plunger. A tributary of heroin flooded into Lewis’s flesh. He moaned softly.

  She kissed his smooth, freshly shaved face. He was so handsome he could’ve been a movie star, or a model.

  She decided to buy him some clothes. A suit, maybe. It would be fun to dress him up, and undress him.

  Lewis’s breathing was slow but.steady. His eyelids fluttered. Was he dreaming? April thought about how sweet it would be if she could slip into his dream. She imagined him strolling across a flowery meadow. He was wearing corduroy pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had his hands in his pockets, and he was chewing on a blade of grass. She ran up behind him, surprising him. No, it was better if she was sitting under a tree, in the dappled sunlight, perhaps reading a book. And he was walking through the field of flowers and he looked up and saw her, and it was as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  April shut her eyes. She saw that she was wearing a frilly white summer dress, and a straw hat, and that she was irresistibly beautiful.

  Lewis saw her and broke stride and turned involuntarily towards her. He was smiling.

  Both of them saw right away that they were made for each other. Love at first sight. How romantic.

  April’s eyes popped open. She’d been lap-dancing at a cheesy downtown bar when she’d first met Wayne. By then, Arturo and all the rest of Wayne’s associates were long gone, Wayne having learned the hard way to depend on nobody but himself. He’d been sitting there, alone at a ringside table, drinking pint mugs of beer. Looking, from April’s point of view, pretty cool in his black leather Harley-Davidson jacket, faded jeans and sexy black leather chaps. His shiny, pointy-toe, black, size-twelve stomper boots up on the table next to his helmet, a Bell Eagle shorty.