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  Because it was late. The kids would be starving. Jack, too. If he hadn’t already started cooking when she got home, she’d suggest they go out to dinner.

  She felt a lot better, now that she had clarified her thoughts, and acknowledged her fears, and worked out a simple but effective way to deal with them. Communication, isn’t that what all the experts said was the secret to a successful relationship?

  But sometimes the most satisfactory conversations were the ones you had all by yourself.

  Chapter 9

  The TV perched on the fridge blared inanely as April mashed half a dozen - six nights’ worth - of the small yellow pills she took when she absolutely had to get a good night’s sleep. The pills were so powerful that they made her want to curl up on the kitchen floor and fall unconscious just looking at them. She hoped she wasn’t about to feed Lewis a fatal overdose. Maybe she’d mix half the powder into his stew, and wait for a little while, see what happened. If he didn’t conk out, she could pour the rest of the powder into his beer, or wine, or whatever.

  If that didn’t work, maybe she could sneak into the garage, borrow one of Wayne’s precious box wrenches or a ballpeen hammer, and give Lewis a gentle whack on the head. April smiled. She’d think of something. Some crazy thing. Didn’t she always? Of course she did.

  Her last night as a lap-dancer, she’d come out of the bar and Nicky was parked on the street, the Caddy’s engine rumbling, a peppy tune from the movie Showgirls blaring from the car’s speakers. Nicky’s idea of a sophisticated joke. He’d bought the fifteen-year-old car for one thousand dollars and had spent at least twice that much on the stereo. The Caddy was a high-fidelity sound system on wheels. The ugly damn beast weighed as much as an elephant, got about ten miles to the gallon, and burnt a quart of oil every time you started the engine. But all Nicky cared about was the big fins, the chrome, the shape of the taillights.

  April’s mental bitching was cut short when she noticed Wayne leaning casually against a slightly off-vertical parking meter. His smile was a mile wide. He pushed away from the meter and started towards her, burly arms extended. He meant to hug her! April couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged. Nicky sometimes gave her a friendly pat on the rump, on those rare occasions when he wasn’t actively pissed off at her. But a hug? Never.

  She realized how desperately she needed to be hugged. To be cherished for herself, for who she was, rather than how many crumpled bills were stuffed in her sequined purse. She was starved for affection. How had Wayne known?

  She melted into his arms. He enfolded her. She hadn’t fully realized how huge he was. He loomed over her. Looking up, all she could see was beard. He smelled good. Home cooking, cigar smoke, brandy, and the rich scent of honest sweat. April vanished into him. He was all around her, encompassing her. He was her safe harbour. She felt like a kitten, snug and warm on the family hearth.

  The Showgirls tune rattled the windowpanes and then there was nothing but broad-band silence. Nicky was always doing that, turning the volume knob the wrong way. Would he ever get it right? Maybe, if he lived long enough.

  The Caddy’s door creaked open and slammed shut. Nicky’s steel-capped boot heels grated on asphalt.

  April heard the scrape of the key in the trunk, a dull click as the trunk popped open.

  Wayne tried to step away from her. She clung tightly to him, not wanting to let go. He gently disengaged, and turned and strode towards the gleaming overripe-plum-coloured flank of the Caddy.

  Nicky had originally intended to use his new number-one wood. But the club had cost him several hundred dollars, and he was loath to risk damaging it. Maybe the putter? Better not, because he was sure to tighten up, check his swing. He settled on a five-iron. His favourite club. He’d take a dinner-plate-size divot outta that punk’s skull…

  Wayne yanked Nicky away from the trunk, spun him around.

  Nicky had to tilt his head slightly to look the guy in the eye. He was big, but Wayne was bigger. And heavier. Nicky stepped back. He was acutely conscious that his back swing was a little too rapid, but felt it was understandable, given the circumstances. He bent his right knee as he whipped the club around.

  The air was bruised by the hard smack of accelerating metal impacting on vulnerable flesh.

  Nicky’s physiognomy buckled. It was as if he had metamorphosed in a split second from a more or less standard-issue human being into an animated three-dimensional cartoon character. His sallow, unshaven cheeks collapsed. His hair rose up off his sweat-drenched scalp. His mouth was full of snaggly teeth, and his eyes bulged so much that they threatened to fall right out of his head.

  April, too, was a little startled.

  Wayne moved plenty fast, for a big man.

  He’d caught the head of the five-iron in his meaty fist. Now he rotated his wrist, and pulled. The club leapt out of Nicky’s two-handed grip. Wayne bent the shaft until it snapped. Nicky, sucking wind, sounded an awful lot like an overworked sump pump. He pulled a rusty Tijuana switchblade. Wayne dropped the two pieces of the shattered club in the gutter. He hit Nicky in the belly with an economical left hook. Nicky folded like a cheap suitcase. But he gamely held onto the knife, you had to give him that much.

  Wayne said, ‘April ain’t your sweetheart no more, get it?’

  Nicky tried to stab Wayne in the knee. His movements were sluggish and entirely predictable. Wayne disdainfully slapped away his arm and popped him with a stiff overhand right. His fist couldn’t have moved more than six inches, but the punch was power-packed. The back of Nicky’s skull shattered the Caddy’s curbside taillight. His flailing elbows dented the fender. Yellowed teeth clattered on the pavement like a pair of desperately thrown dice. He uttered a garbled wailing sound, high-pitched to low, that was like the death rattle of a mortally wounded set of bagpipes, and sat down hard on the pavement. His shirt was splattered with blood. He was unconscious, or near enough to unconscious not to be concerned about it. His knuckles grazed the oil-stained asphalt. His head lolled slowly forward until it settled onto the curb.

  A small crowd had gathered. April recognized several of her fellow indentured workers. They eyed her jealously.

  Wayne grabbed a handful of lapel and lifted Nicky clear of the road, lowered him none too gently into the spacious trunk. Then he went around to the front of the car, killed the engine and walked back and tossed the keys in the trunk and carefully shut it.

  Somebody in the crowd said, ‘Man, that guy licked Nicky like he was a two-cent stamp!’

  April saw her ex-boyfriend about a week later, on the BCTV noon news. The illegally parked Caddy had been towed to a chain-link-and-razor-wire-wrapped compound. The tow-truck’s unintelligent driver readily admitted he’d heard Nicky’s frenzied screams but assumed the racket was due to mechanical problems. He explained to the viewing audience that he’d diagnosed a broken drive shaft or maybe a thrown rod. Nicky’s face was streaked with gore and puffed up to approximately twice its normal size. He blamed the towing company for his injuries, and righteously squawked that he was going to sue their miserable asses into bankruptcy. But his eyes had a furtive, hunted look, and he gratefully settled, on the spot, for a sum equal to the towing and storage charges, plus one hundred goodwill bucks.

  The camera zoomed in on him as he duct-taped a ragged square of red plastic over the Caddy’s shattered taillight lens. Asked about his plans for the future, Nicky muttered a few words about friendlier climes, as he scrambled into the car and fired up the big V-8 engine. The Caddy and superficially-attractive-but-perhaps-overly-persistent BCTV reporter vanished in a roiling black cloud of forty-weight smoke.

  April, jiggling the little vial of yellow pills, said, ‘Thus endeth Nicky’ Wayne filled the kitchen doorway and then he was through it. April didn’t try to hide the fact that she was startled.

  ‘Jeez, Wayne! How long have you been here?’

  ‘Just drifted in this very minute.’ Wayne shrugged out of his jacket, slung it over a chair. His nost
rils flared. ‘Somethin’ smells better’n a dead horse. What’s for supper?’

  ‘Beef stew.’ April eyed his new freckles. ‘What’s that stuff on your hands? Wayne, is that blood7’

  Wayne frowned. He stared down at his hands for a moment and then lifted one to his mouth, gave it a lick. His frown deepened. He got that dark, glowering look in his eyes that April had learned to dread. ‘You say somethin’, honey-pie?’

  ‘Not really.’ April hit the remote. Baywatch.

  Wayne, switching gears, said, ‘You could be on that show.’

  ‘Get out of here!’ April was pleased. She tried not to show it, but really, what was the point.

  ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘Yes you are.’ Wayne went over to the sink. He squeezed a dollop of Sunlight detergent onto his open palm, turned on the taps, and began to wash himself. Glancing at April over his shoulder, he said, ‘I go crazy with desire just lookin’ at you. I gotta squeeze one eye shut, to avoid sensory overload.’ He turned off the taps, used a dishtowel to dry his hands. ‘C’mon over here and gimme a smooch.’

  April wandered over, pursed her lips, and received a cursory peck on the cheek.

  Wayne said, ‘You ever miss him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Cadillac-trunk boy.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Miss him? Don’t make me laugh!’

  ‘But do you?’

  April shrugged. ‘Not much. Sometimes.’ She whistled tunelessly, and kicked out her foot, suddenly restless as a wayward child.

  Wayne said, ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You do?’

  Wayne looked her in the eye. He said, ‘I know every last little thing about you, baby. Parts tiny as the cogs in a watch.’ He vented the low rumble she’d eventually learned to identify as an amused chuckle. ‘I know what makes you tick, sugar-lumps.’

  And he did, too. He knew her inside out and upside and down, from top to bottom and backwards and forwards. He knew her too darn well, when you came right down to it. In a way, his constant insights into her motivation and behaviour were kind of frustrating. She’d open her mouth and he’d provide her with a deadly accurate line of dialogue. She’d cock her hip or flash an eye and he’d know what was bothering her and, every last nut and bolt, what he had to do to make things right.

  Frustrating?

  No, it was a lot worse that. It was downright irritating.

  How could she ever be on equal terms with somebody who was always one up on her?

  April turned up the gas under the big stainless-steel pot. The stew began to bubble. She turned the gas down a smidgen, and then cut half a loaf of French bread into fat slices and put the bread in a bowl.

  ‘Want the bread heated up?’

  Wayne grunted. April put the bowl in the microwave, punched buttons. Thirty seconds on high heat ought to do it. She uncorked a bottle of red wine and poured a half glass into the stew.

  Wayne said, ‘Damn, but I’m hungry. Nothing like hard work to give a man an appetite.’ A sudden thought lit up his face. ‘Not that I’m through yet,’ he added.

  ‘You going out again?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  April’s mouth was dry.

  The microwave beeped. The machine advised them, via its miniature electronic message board, to enjoy their meal.

  She thought, Stew needs bread just like I need Wayne. But then she found herself wondering if she had it backwards, if maybe it wasn’t Wayne who was the truly needy person in their relationship.

  Chapter 10

  Lester Rules’ dingy two-room apartment was located a block off Main Street, directly above a corner store locally famous for the huge quantities of potent Chinese ‘cooking wine’ it sold to the area’s inhabitants - the mostly down and mostly out. The building was falling apart; sheets of lead-based paint scaled off the wooden siding, and the siding itself was pulling away from rust-pinched nails. The owner, under threat of imminent demolition, had patched the leaks in the roof and recently brought the sprinkling system up to code, but otherwise hadn’t spent a penny on the building in the past fifteen years.

  Inside, there was more scaling paint, the pervasive smell of damp, and mould, and intensive rot.

  At the top of the stairs a dead lightbulb dangled from a frayed cord. Willows reached up and flicked the bulb. It was loose in its socket. He screwed it in. Forty watts, but it would do. There were at least a million ways for a cheap landlord to save a buck, and that was just one of them. Parker turned off her flashlight, saving the city a few precious pennies that she doubted would be spent on social housing. Her stomach was bothering her. Maybe it was the Chinese dinner, which she was still digesting.

  The door to Lester Rules’ apartment was wide open. A uniformed constable stepped aside as Willows and Parker made their way down the narrow hallway towards him. The cop held a delicate bone-china teacup in his massive hand. His eye on Parker, the cop said, ‘You just missed the paramedics.’

  ‘Who called them?’

  The cop jerked his thumb. ‘Woman down the end of the hall. The door was open, she looked inside, saw the body.’

  Parker said, ‘Get her name?’

  ‘Marjorie Berg. You want to talk to her, she’s more than ready.’

  Parker smiled.

  The cop, emboldened, said, ‘She offers you a cookie, don’t make the mistake of turning her down.’

  ‘How’s the tea?’

  ‘Hot and sweet.’ The cop almost said, ‘Just like me.’ But didn’t, though he let Parker read the message in his eyes, as Willows brushed past him.

  Lester Rules’ tiny apartment was furnished with a swayback single bed, a tallboy bureau, and a wooden kitchen table and three mismatched chairs. If Lester had owned more furniture, there wouldn’t have been any place to put it. A slump-shouldered refrigerator and ancient gas stove crowded up against the far wall. The door to the bathroom was off the hinges. The tub had been white, but now it was green. A tap dripped steadily into a cracked and badly stained pedestal sink. The floor in both rooms was covered with linoleum so old it had lost all its colour. Rules didn’t appear to have owned a broom.

  Popeye Rowland, Willows’ second-favourite Medical Examiner, sat at the table in the least uncomfortable of the three kitchen chairs. As Willows and Parker walked into the apartment he wriggled his bushy black eyebrows, encouraging his pince-nez to fall out of his left eye socket and into the cupped palm of his hand. He turned the disc of glass over, and put it carefully away in a fitted leather case. He slipped the case into his pants pocket. Dolefully, he said, ‘Got some bad news, folks.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Parker.

  Popeye reached out and gently gripped her arm. ‘Steel yourself, young lady. Be brave. Be strong.’

  Popeye was wearing two pairs of throwaway latex gloves, and who could blame him - Lester Rules was an addict, and the HIV infection rate among the approximately one thousand injection-drug users crammed into the city’s downtown eastside was an estimated 25 per cent. Parker wore black leather. She disengaged from Popeyes wrinkly fingers one by one. ‘You’re going to tell me he’s dead, aren’t you?’

  ‘Deader than Ringo Starr.’

  ‘You’re thinking of John Lennon,’ said Parker.

  Popeye shrugged. He’d never been able to tell them apart; why start now.

  Willows said, ‘Time of death?’

  ‘His time came when his time was up,’ said Popeye with heavy-handed playfulness.

  Willows held his temper in check. ‘Could you please be less specific, Popeye?’

  ‘I’d say he died late this afternoon. Or maybe early this evening.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘This trained professional is willing to hazard an educated guess that the poor guy suffered a self-inflicted drug overdose. Heroin, most likely.’ The M.E. sighed theatrically. ‘But for all I know, he might’ve pumped
a solution of rat poison into his vein. Forgive me for flaunting my hard-earned medical knowledge, but I’m here to tell you that people do the weirdest goddamn things.’

  ‘Art Linkletter,’ said the cop by the door.

  ‘You’re hereby promoted to Chief,’ said Popeye.

  The M.E. was no Sherlock. He was barely a Watson. The squalid little room was littered with schoolboy clues. Burnt paper matches and a bent, fire-blackened spoon lay on top of the bureau. So did several balls of tinfoil, and a small bottle of bleach. A syringe was clenched in the dead man’s hand. The plunger had been fully depressed, and there were traces of blood in the barrel. A frayed shoelace was tied tightly around the corpse’s grossly swollen right arm, an inch or two above the elbow. The tiny puncture had leaked a thin line of blood.

  If that wasn’t more than enough evidence to point the M.E. in the direction of a heroin overdose, there was more.

  Rules’ face was barely large enough to contain his smile. He looked as if he’d gone to Heaven, and then died.

  Willows crouched. Rules was about five-foot-six, on the thin side of emaciated. He needed a shave, and a haircut. He was probably past due for his weekly shower. Willows took his wrist in his hand. The flesh was cool, and yielding. Rigor had come and gone. Willows checked Rules’ watch against his own.

  Popeye said, ‘You were hoping for a cracked crystal, minute and hour hands and maybe even second stopped at the precise time of death, weren’t you?’

  Willows ignored him. Lester’s watch was a virtually indestructible Timex Ironman. There was almost no chance that it had stopped ticking at the time of death. But though Willows would never admit it, Popeye was at least partly right. For as long as Willows could remember, there’d been a running bet among the homicide detectives that, sooner or later, a victim’s watch would be stopped by a blow at the time of death. Every detective in the squad added a dollar a month to the kitty. After eight years, when the total reached five hundred dollars, Inspector Homer Bradley had reluctantly accepted custodianship. Now the pot was well over a thousand dollars, and was prized as much for the hundreds of old one-dollar bills it contained as for the cash value of the money.