Last of the Independents. Sam Wiebe
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Fisk sat and pulled the door closed. “Herb Lam had the same thought. Know what clinched it for me?”
Anything other than facts, I thought, but shook my head and said nothing.
“Szabo taught the kid to drive. Lanky kid, he could reach the pedals with the seat all the way forward.”
“So nothing ever came up, no evidence someone might have taken the car with Django in it?”
He shook his head and started the engine.
I shouted, “You or Lam ever run down a list of carjackers?”
He shifted out of park but the truck didn’t move. His gaze had frosted over.
“There’s no way in your mind we could be right about this, is there?”
“I have to check either way,” I said.
“You talk to Roy McEachern yet?”
“Won’t return my calls.”
“Drop my name if it helps.” His warm, predatory smile flashed through. “You know Mira and I moved in together.”
“Tell her I’ve still got her Jeff Buckley record if she wants it back.”
“I’ll make sure to tell her that. Take care, Mike.”
The pickup peeled out in reverse, launching into traffic with a guttural roar of exhaust.
I walked back up Main to where I’d parked the Camry, wondering if Gavin Fisk was right, if I did want him to have made the wrong call so I could wave his failure in his face. Any chance I was that petty? I asked myself. Maybe a little.
Ben lived a block off East Broadway in a standalone building leased by reasonably-trustworthy Bohemians. The street-level storefront sold pottery and hand-carved African djembes. Four or five people lived on the second floor, sharing a kitchen and bathtub and toilet. “One of those old claw-footed tubs,” Ben said with obvious pride. “The kind that pop up in novels about struggling artists in Manhattan lofts.”
“Oh those kind,” I’d said.
Today he was waiting on the corner across from the Fogg’N Suds, dressed in a black raincoat and matching vest, navy slacks and a pearl-coloured shirt and red and black silk tie. Except for the vest, it was the same outfit I was wearing.
“Jesus,” I said. “Do I have time to go home and change?”
“Company uniform,” Ben said.
“Why don’t you stay home and brainstorm like you’re supposed to?”
“I was,” he said. “I had three pages of ideas this morning. I was working on a prequel game about Rosalind and Magnus before they met, showing how they were always just missing each other as they chase the same assassin. The player would alternate characters on each level. But the logistics sunk it. Too many coincidental near-misses and it becomes cute. And my audience hates cute. They want to see them tear someone’s larynx out, not narrowly avoid meeting each other like some bad Robert Altman movie.”
“I’m no expert on anything game-related,” I said, aiming the car toward Kroon & Son. Up Granville then left on Marine Drive, then right into a cluster of industrial parks. Midday traffic on Granville was slower than usual, and I saw why: up ahead, flaggers in hard hats and reflective vests were funneling traffic down to one lane.
“You were saying?”
“Sorry?” My thoughts had been on the Szabos.
“You were saying,” Ben said, “that you’re not an expert on games.”
“I’m not.”
“But?”
“But what?”
“Weren’t you getting ready to upbraid me about not working?”
I made the left. Marine Drive was no less busy, but traffic flowed more efficiently. “I don’t get why you don’t just write game three, you know? Like we were discussing the other day, how Indiana Jones is better than Star Wars ’cause at least the series moves forward. No one gives a shit about stuff that already happened.”
“That’s your entire job, isn’t it? Telling people things that already happened?”
It was a fair point. “But yours is to tell people what happens next,” I said. “So why not pick up where you left off?”
“I can’t,” Ben said, exasperated at the question. “It has to be note perfect. After three years’ hiatus, if it’s not note perfect, exactly the right blend of wisecracks and philosophy and gore —” He shrugged. “It’ll let down the fan base.”
“Hell with the fan base.”
“But I’m one of them,” he said. “We’re Legion. It’s got to be true to the original vision. If it’s not, I’ve let myself down.”
I ticked off the street addresses as we passed them, eyes out for 851. “You were seventeen when you had this quote-unquote original vision? Nineteen when game one came out?”
“Your point being?”
“You’re not a teen anymore. Few years you’ll be thirty. What people like changes. I haven’t listened to Screaming Trees since high school, and back then I didn’t know about Stax Records or Blue Note.”
“Your point being?” Teenager-sulky.
“Stop moping and come up with some new shit.”
Silence until we pulled to the curb at the end of a long line of hearses. Of course it wasn’t that easy for him. His work had ground to a halt in the years after Cynthia disappeared. Getting back to work frightened him. I didn’t understand that. In the years after leaving the job, I’d have been happy to have work to cling to as everything else crumbled. Learning the ins and outs of private investigation had consumed a lot of nights that could have been spent self-destructively. In times of grief, the work is always there. I hoped one day I could make him see that.
As we exited the car, Ben said, “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles went backwards.”
The younger Thomas Kroon ushered us into an office that was tastefully accoutered, the huge brass-rimmed desk and the wall panelling a matching walnut. The word sumptuous came to mind.
“Pop can’t make it,” Younger said. “I’ll give you a tour, introduce you as our security consultant. Then you’ll have the run of the place.”
I nodded my head at Ben. “My secretary here has never seen a decomp. You by any chance have some Vaseline?”
Younger looked at Ben. “Maybe he should avoid the back rooms,” he said.
The outer office had two facing desks and a smaller empty desk behind, and an entire wall given over to a dry-erase board covered in inscrutable shorthand.
Carrie, a cheerful woman of about forty, handed a sheaf of papers to Kroon the Younger. Together they loaded the Xerox. At the opposite desk a portly young man worked the dispatch lines. He nodded at us as we passed.
“She did have the code,” Younger said as we passed out of the offices, down a grey carpeted hallway to a wood door. Even before he opened it, the death-smell filled our nostrils. I looked over and saw Ben rock as if slapped in the face.
I dashed back down the hallway to the office. “Anyone smoke here?”
Carrie held up a pack of du Mauriers. “Down to my last three.”
I broke a smoke in half and ripped off the filter. I handed Ben the two halves and instructed him how to wedge them into his nostrils. We followed Kroon inside the back room. A decomposing body has a cloying, tangy odour. There were several in the room, on gurneys, in bags. A wide-hipped black woman sat at the embalming table reading a Walter Mosely novel while the fluids drained out of a Caucasian lady, green-skinned by now, weighing