Hair-Trigger (2 page)

2

T
he holding cell had a bench, cement floor, steel door, no window. The detective came on tough. “Okay,” he said, “that's not your real name. What's your real name? What's your address?”

Jack Lofton looked up at him. “John Malone, like I told the police who arrested me. Thirty-three Rosedale, apartment fifteen-fifteen.”

The moustache and military haircut didn't buy it, but he went away.

Lofton had been grabbed by a security guard outside Canadian Tire for shoplifting a hunting knife. He hadn't hit him on the assumption that the police were on their way and he'd be fighting an assault charge too, which was a mistake since he'd ended up having to make conversation with the guard for over two hours in the basement of the store while they waited for the law to show. When he went to the washroom he slipped his only piece of ID, a plastic library card, inside the torn lining of his black leather jacket.

While they drove along Dundas Street W., one of the two arresting officers told him, “Look, I
know
you're lying to me. Don't make me have to bring in the detectives and start an investigation.”

Once inside the station they went through his pockets and confiscated his cigarettes, checked his jacket and even his bandanna. Although there were no cards or licenses in his wallet, they found a paper with phone numbers on it and might have made some calls.
The cop who seemed to be working in tandem with the detective came back into the cell and said, “Okay, you've got two choices. There's no way we're going to put you in jail with all these spikes on your shoulders. Now, we can cut the epaulets off, or you and I can sit here with screwdrivers and take them off.”

“I guess I like the second choice.”

“I thought you would.”

As they worked, Lofton had asked, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“I don't give a fuck.”

“Um, you wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

The big walleyed cop gave him one, then went outside and found a pair of pliers when one of the steel studs wouldn't unscrew.

Now the detective was back. “What's your address again?”

“Thirty-three Rosedale. Apartment fifteen-fifteen.”

“You're lying. We just called that building. The floors only go up to twelve, so there's no
way
you live in fifteen-fifteen. If you don't tell us the truth you're going to be charged with obstructing justice on top of whatever outstanding warrants you probably have. You're getting into deeper shit every minute.”

After he left, Lofton looked at his watch. It was going on ten-thirty. Aside from an armed robbery charge that was thrown out in California, he'd managed to sidestep legal trouble throughout most of his life. This recent string of fuck-ups was a bad joke.

Though he'd been trying to appear affable or at least convey an impression of good faith, he knew his pale eyes had an unfriendly cast, even in repose. Not to mention the scrapes on his face from an altercation he barely remembered after waking up drunk behind a dumpster two nights earlier.

Just past eleven-thirty, they let Lofton use the phone on the wall outside the cell. Detectives in the large room were sitting at desks questioning suspects and typing reports. He called Derek Rowe, and not knowing if he was being taped, left a message simply saying that he'd been arrested and needed him to stand up for him in court at the Old City Hall the next morning at nine. He gave him the room number and added, “You have to do this for me, man. It's very,
very
important.”

They had met a decade earlier at a singles bar near Yonge and Eglinton where he'd been working security and Rowe was a regular who thrived in that meat market scene. There had been years of drinking together since, and the guy had money.

Later, the cop took him downstairs to have him booked. They fingerprinted him and stood him in front of a computer camera which processed his image into a data bank. At that point the arresting officer said, “Listen, let's have another look at that jacket of yours.” Lofton took it off and handed it to him. He went through the pockets a second time and checked for hidden compartments, then concentrated as he manipulated the leather. “What's this thing in here? I feel something.”

“Probably just the padding.”

“No, this thing here. . . . Feels like it might be a wallet.”

The cop found the rent in the lining and felt around inside, bringing out the library card. “Oh, whose name's on this? Let's see . . . ‘Jack Lofton'.”

“That's a friend of mine. I borrowed his card.”

“Uh huh.”

They put the name through the computer. The booking officer at the desk said, “Take off your shirt.”

Lofton unbuttoned it, knowing what was coming.

“Come here, look at the screen. ‘Born May
12
,
1961
—thirty-eight years old. Grim Reaper tattoo on left shoulder, barbed wire on right biceps, lightning bolts inside of forearms.'” He turned to Lofton with a hint of a smile. “How many people in Toronto do you think have a fucking Grim Reaper on their left shoulder?”

“Well, nobody, I would hope.”

“You better pray your picture doesn't come up.”

“Oh, fuck,” Lofton said, “you got me.”

“Well, well. And look at these outstanding warrants: ‘Possession of a Prohibited Weapon', ‘Failing to Appear'.”

“You can add ‘Theft Under' and ‘Obstructing Justice',” the other cop said.

After he was charged and booked, he was ushered into the overnight holding area: a hallway lined with cells, each of which was monitored by a camera. Prisoners' shoes had to be left outside. It was almost two o'clock. Lying down on the metal cot, he pulled the blanket over himself and looked at the sink, the steel toilet, the ceiling.

3

R
owe decided to find some music. He got back on the subway and rode north to College, then caught a westbound streetcar to Spadina and disembarked by the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. White bulbs rolled across the sign outside the Silver Dollar bar in the Waverley Hotel on the other side of the street.

He passed the pink and green neon palms of the El Mocambo as he drifted into the outskirts of Chinatown. Paved islands with shelters paralleled the streetcar tracks. The broad road was a long-time artery of the garment trade and home to various Asian restaurants and many disparate, shabby-looking businesses. There were window displays with dusty fedoras, wingtip shoes, X-rated videos. He paused by a striped pole to browse the designs inside the fly-specked glass of an apparent tattoo parlor/barber shop. Across the street and through the blocks around Baldwin, Kensington Market's shops and gamy stalls were closed until morning.

Blues chords could be heard over scattered applause as Rowe approached Grossman's Tavern. He opened the door and walked through the front area between some wooden tables and the bar, where an old hippie was nursing a draught and a Chinese woman was loading a tray with bottles.
Two people were playing pool.

The adjoining room on the right was dimly lit and crowded. Rowe scanned the customers as he pulled out a rickety chair and sat down. There were primitive paintings of the building, and countless faded black and white photographs of
regulars from decades past on the walls.
The band was in the middle of a Sonny Boy
Williamson cover.

Half an hour later he finished another drink and left while the musicians were on break. As Rowe stepped off the curb near the side of the building, he happened to notice a woman looking back his way while she walked up Cecil. It was just a passing glance, a wary gesture on a dark street, but he decided to follow her along the opposite sidewalk. When she emerged from the shadows into the light, he could see her long black hair and what appeared to be a pale trench coat. She looked back at him again.

The only sounds were their footsteps and the leaves rustling in the breeze. A white cat slunk beneath a car. Although Rowe kept a casual pace with his hands in his pockets, not wanting to alarm her, he was gradually overtaking her. Perhaps she was slowing down. He wondered if he should say something. Even in his unfettered state of mind he could see the unlikelihood of managing a conversation with her in such lonely and potentially dangerous circumstances, but there: she glanced back again. His pulse quickened. As they approached the first intersection almost parallel to one another, he caught her eye and said, “Excuse me. Would you like a cigarette?”

“Okay,” she answered in a small voice.

They met in the centre of the road.

“My name's Derek,” he said as he held out the pack.

She took one, smiling shyly. “I'm Sarah.”

Up close he didn't find her very attractive, but she was unexpectedly young and there was something appealing in her suppliant stance and the tender way she was looking up at him. From her swarthy complexion he thought she might be Portuguese. “It's a nice night,” Rowe said, lighting her cigarette, then his own.

“Yes.” She barely inhaled.

“You're very pretty.”

“Thank you.”

He couldn't place her accent and wondered what to say next. It felt as if anything at all were possible. “May I give you a little kiss?”

She shrugged. “Um, okay.”

He leaned over and put his hand on the side of her head, bringing his lips down to hers. She kissed him back. It was like a strange dream. “I'm certainly glad to meet you. Maybe we should go sit down so we can talk.”

He took her by the hand and led her to a slight knoll partially concealed by a small tree just off the sidewalk. After they lowered themselves, he flicked his cigarette into the street and kissed her more seriously, slipping his hand inside her open coat and holding her by the waist. Then, moving upwards over her ribs, he palmed her small breast through her blouse and caressed it, feeling the outline and then the growing distinction of nipple unencumbered by bra.

Rowe looked into her dark eyes while he fumbled with the buttons and pulled open her shirt, trying to commit her tits to memory in case they vanished. As he caressed them she put her hand over his and nervously whispered, “People are there.”

There was a couple walking up the next street. He leaned back on the grassy dirt and shifted his prick while she rearranged herself, and asked, “Would you like to come back to my place?”

“Okay.”

She dropped her cigarette and stepped on it as they began walking. Rowe put his arm around her. He tried to piece together the apparent facts: her hair looked clean, the coat and slacks were all right, she didn't appear to be crazy, and her seeming naiveté didn't fit the standard hooker profile. Maybe she was some kind of angel. He asked, “Do you live around here?”

“On Beverley Street.”

“Were you coming back from somewhere when I met you?”

“I was in the bar. Where you were.”

“You were there too? I didn't see you.”

At the corner of Huron and College they got into a cab. He took her hand in the back seat and said he was happy they'd met, but was surprised she wasn't worried about talking to strangers on dark streets.

“I was bored in my room. I didn't want to go back.”

“You were looking for adventure.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a boyfriend or anything?”

“Yes.”

Rowe assumed that she'd misunderstood, and didn't pursue it. As he looked out the window it occurred to him that they weren't far from Beverley, and suggested that they go to her place instead.
After telling the driver to take the next right, he asked her where she was from and was perplexed when she said India. It was getting so he couldn't tell where anyone was from anymore. The cabbie, glancing at them in the rearview mirror, could have been from India, Iran, or fucking who-knows-where himself.

“How long have you been here?”

“Three years,” she said. “First year I was in Montreal.”

“Is your family here or back home?”

“Home. I came here myself.” She squeezed his hand and added, “I had a friend who came first.”

The cab turned onto Dundas from McCall, a few blocks from
52
Division, passing the Henry Moore sculpture outside the Art Gallery of Ontario. As they drove down the next street she pointed out a three-storey building set back from the road behind an iron gate. After paying the driver, he followed her up a path past some bushes and a bicycle rack.

While she was unlocking the second door, Rowe looked through the window to the office, and scanned the mailboxes, bulletin board and list of tenants. They walked by a community room where people were watching TV, and climbed the stairs. On the third floor a girl coming out of a small kitchen said hello to her.

After they reached her room he went back down the corridor to the men's lavatory. It looked sterile for a rooming house. Flushing the urinal, he took a long drink of water from one of the taps to try to dilute the alcohol, and looked himself over in the mirror.

Her single bed was pushed against the wall. Above the opposite counter was a shelf with a few books and papers, then a row of cupboards where a photo of her with short hair was taped. “Nice picture,” he said. “Where was it taken?”

“In Montreal. A place like this.”

Her window overlooked Beverley. “If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“You look younger.” Rowe checked the foreign literature on her shelf and noticed a copy of what seemed to be
The Koran
. “I thought people in India were Hindus.”

She giggled and pushed herself against him with her head down. “I lied.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm Afghan.”

“Afghan?”

“I'm from Afghanistan.”

“Why did you say you were from India?”

“It sounds better. It's a very big country next to us, and it's more . . . interesting.”

He put his arm around her. “I don't know much about Afghanistan, but I'm sure you can be proud of it. And maybe you're too pale for an East Indian.”

After helping her out of her clothes, he set her down on the edge of the bed and stood in front of her while he slowly unzipped his pants. She sat awkwardly with her thin arms crossed, then looked up at him with a shy smile as he touched her cheek. Rowe noticed her downy mustache as she put her fingers around the base of his erection and took most of it into her mouth.

Later, lying beside him, she fingered the greying hair on his chest and wanted to know if he had a girlfriend. Rowe said he'd been seeing someone, actually, and asked if he could smoke. She told him apologetically that it was against the rules. He lay back again, glancing at his watch as he put his arm around her. “So, what do you do for a living?”

“I'm getting welfare.”

Her looks seemed to be waning as he took in her thick brows and the circles beneath her eyes, noticing that her face was quite gaunt. He still found her fragile body language disarming, however. “What kind of work have you been looking for?”

“Anything, I think. I had an interview at a restaurant, it was for a dishwasher, but the man started touching me in the kitchen and wanted me to . . . have sex with him. He had my address when I filled out the paper, and wanted to come here. I didn't know what to do, so I said yes. It happened quickly and I didn't have time to think about it, but I didn't want to do it.”

“That doesn't sound too good.”

“No. And I probably wouldn't get the job, either. It would be for nothing.”

“Did he come over?”

“He came but I didn't answer the buzzer. He was pressing it for half an hour, and finally went away. I saw him leave out my window.”

After a while she fell asleep.
When he heard her light snoring, Rowe saw that it was after three. As he tried to ease himself from the bed, she woke up. “Where are you going?”

“I have to get up early.”

She watched him pull on his pants. “When will I be seeing you?”

“Well . . .” Tucking in his shirt, he turned to reach for his coat. “Since I'm going out with someone and you said you had a boyfriend, it'd be a bit hard right now. But why don't I take your number?”

“I don't have a telephone.”

“Oh.” Rowe sat down beside her. “It'll get complicated if the woman I'm with hears other women phoning my place. If it's all right, why don't I come down and call on you sometime?”

“This week?”

“Soon.”

“I might have to leave here. My welfare is stopping and I think I'm going to get evicted.”

“How long have you been collecting it?”

“Here, two years. Maybe . . . maybe I'll look for you in the bar. Where we were tonight.”

“Sure, if I don't see you before that.”

Outside, Rowe lit a cigarette. While waiting for a streetcar, he decided that she was probably looking for a meal ticket now that her dough was getting cut off, and thought about her lying about being East Indian. Now, there was a whole different Third World hierarchy for you. Christ, if she'd lied about that, she'd probably lied about Afghanistan too. She was probably one of those Gypsies.