The Goldfish Bowl (14 page)

The rain was falling more heavily now, hissing on the asphalt and in the wide, shallow puddles. Parker turned on her heel and started back towards the station house.

A dark green Impala pulled into the lot, George Franklin hunched myopically over the wheel. He waved at Parker and gave her a big, sloppy grin. She waved back at him, and slowed her pace. Franklin parked the Impala in the space vacated by Bradley. He got out of the car and slammed the door shut, hurried towards Parker. His raincoat hung on him like a shroud, and as he came closer, Parker saw that his face was thin and pale, his eyes sunk deep in shadow.

“Haven’t seen you for a couple of days,” said Franklin. “You hear the news?”

“What news is that?” said Parker.

“Internal Investigations finally decided I hadn’t been such a bad boy after all. Decided to let me keep my little gold badge. Suggested we all get together sometime for a couple of beers. Handshakes all around. A pat on my back.”

“I’m glad you’re off the hook,” said Parker.

“So am I,” said Franklin. “So was the little woman.” He splashed through a puddle without seeming to notice. “We just had lunch at Puccini’s. A celebration. You ever have lunch at Puccini’s?”

Parker smiled, shook her head. “Was it a good lunch, George?”

“Terrific. Very tasty.”

“What did you eat?”

“Numerous martinis. Some kind of green-coloured pasta. Bottle of white wine. Tomato salad. A couple of liqueurs to finish.” It was an effort for Franklin to climb the steps leading to the rear entrance of 312 Main. He reached for the door handle and missed by a foot. Staggering, he bumped his head against the wire-mesh glass.

Parker heard him giggle, saw him wipe a tear from his eye.

He tried the door again, and this time managed to get it open. Standing to one side, he waved Parker into the building. As she walked past him, she noticed a small patch of stubble under his chin, a bevelled cut high up on his cheek. She had a sudden, vivid image of him standing at his morning mirror with his razor in his hand. Full of remorse, trembling, barely under control. Listening with one ear to the little woman down in the kitchen, patiently making a breakfast her husband would not eat.

Franklin had managed to keep his badge, but when Dave Atkinson had died, Franklin had lost something a lot more important than a shiny piece of tin. As they walked down the hallway together, Franklin trailing a cloud of alcohol fumes, Parker wondered if there was any way he could ever get it back.

XV

THE ROSE & THISTLE was crowded, hot, and very, very noisy. Norman Tate, Ron Moore, and Terry Foster were sitting at a corner table with a view of the dart boards, the bar, and the door to the ladies’ washroom.

But the subject wasn’t darts or women, it was hockey. For the past half hour Foster and Moore had been exchanging Wayne Gretzky anecdotes, making snaking motions in and out of the clutter of empty glasses on the table as they took turns describing yet another miraculous rush up ice.

Tate scowled into his beer. He was bored and he was restless, verging on irritable. Leaning back in his chair, sipping from his glass, he regarded his two friends with that special degree of fond acrimony accessible only to drunks.

Foster could have been Moore’s brother, and he, Tate, might have been kin to either of them. All three could have been brothers. Triplets. Of course, Moore’s complexion was a little on the dark side, and Foster had lost most of his hair. But all three men were in their early thirties, average height, a few pounds overweight. They were all single and determined to stay that way. And despite the amount of skull Foster was showing, all three continued to look two or three years younger than their actual age.

Why was that, exactly? Suddenly, without consciously thinking about it, Tate had the answer. It had nothing to do with being young at heart, the luck of the genetic draw, magic. It was an excess of fat and a lack of ambition that had, so far, managed to keep the lines and wrinkles of old age at bay.

Tate’s heart ached.

Smoke got in his eyes.

He drained his beer, slammed the empty glass down on the table and yelled, “Shit!” into one of those freakish glades of silence that, from time to time, inexplicably occur. Every female within a twenty-foot radius turned towards him, glaring. This is no rowdy hotel bar, those sleek and youthful faces reproached.

The waitress, standing at an adjoining table, gave Tate a look of bleak revulsion. His eyes wandered over her gold lamé jumpsuit, which she must surely have climbed into one thread at a time. He smiled, and gave her the finger. Turning, she tried to catch the bouncer’s eye. In a few short seconds, Tate was the only male in the bar who wasn’t looking at her. Responding to her audience, her gestures became less hectic, more graceful and theatrical.

Tate leaned over and helped himself to a beer from her tray, tipped her with a pinch.

The bouncer started towards them, taking a straight line through the crowd. Tate watched him through the sudsy bottom of his glass, marvelling at the way he seemed to double in volume with every stride he took.

He looked at his watch. It was getting late, it was time to leave.

Foster dropped a five-dollar bill on the table, timing it perfectly. The waitress swooped down like a shapely, golden vulture. The bouncer, in order to avoid knocking her flat, was forced to swerve sharply to his left. He hit a chair and knocked it over, lost his balance and threw out an arm to steady himself. Knocked a rye and ginger into a customer’s lap.

Moore was first out the door. Foster was right behind him. Tate brought up the rear.

It was raining, but only just. A gentle wind drifted up the street from the harbour, half a mile away. The air smelled of salt and mercurocrome. Tate belched and said, “Where’s your car, Moore?”

Moore lifted his nose and sniffed the air, pointed towards a multi-storey parking lot at the far end of the block.

“There’s no way I can make it that far on foot,” said Foster. “Somebody’s gonna have to call a cab.”

“Walk or die,” said Moore.

Tate belched again.

“That reminds me,” said Foster. “I’m hungry. After we get the car, let’s drive over to the Fresgo and grab a burger and a brew.”

“Good idea,” said Tate.

“Let’s do it anyway,” said Moore.

Moore’s dark green Triumph TR3 convertible was parked on the fifth level of the lot, sandwiched between a silver Cadillac and a dark blue Buick. Moore rapped his knuckles on the roof of the Caddy. “Detroit shit comes in big lumps,” he said, and eased down into the soft leather bucket-seat of the Triumph.

Tate beat Foster to the single passenger seat by a half-step. Foster gave Tate a sneer as he wedged himself sideways into the small space between the seats and the rear deck of the car.

Moore slipped on a pair of black leather racing gloves, flexed his hands, and jammed an undersized tweed hat on his head. The hat gave him an obtrusive, ferrety look. He patted himself down, found his keys and started the engine.

Tate made a show of fastening his seatbelt.

“Fuck off,” said Moore, “I taught Mario Andretti everything he knows.”

“That’s the Mario Andretti who tends bar over at the Phoenix,” said Foster.

Moore adjusted his rearview mirror, smiled at Foster’s reflection. “You comfy back there?”

“No.”

“Good.” Moore lit a cheap cigar, flicked the burning match out on to the oil-stained concrete. He put the car in gear, red-lined the engine and popped the clutch. The rear end dipped and the little car shot forward. Moore spun the wheel, and they slewed sideways towards the exit ramp. He shifted into second gear and they powered through the descending spiral tunnel, the rich clamour of the exhaust reverberating off the concrete walls.

Foster hung on tight as they rocketed around the final turn and down the straight towards the Richards Street exit. He braced himself against the back of Tate’s seat as Moore took his foot off the gas and let the transmission and high compression engine work to slow their approach to the small, white-painted collection booth. Moore tapped the brakes, and the Triumph stopped opposite the booth.

The attendant’s sliding window was shut tight. It was made of plexiglass that was badly scratched and yellow with age. Foster saw a shadowy figure move inside. A hand pressed against the plexiglass and then fell away.

Tate watched Moore search through his pockets, frown, glance at the dashboard and then at the floor of the car.

“What is it, you lose your parking ticket again?”

“Just misplaced it,” said Moore. His cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, he leaned across Tate and flipped open the glove compartment. The Triumph’s insurance and registration papers were crammed in there, along with maps of the province, Washington state and California. Under the maps Moore found a wrinkled apple, a handful of Chevron receipts, a pen that didn’t work and a battered paperback copy of a bestseller he’d never read.

But no parking ticket.

Which meant he was going to have to do some fast talking or pay the maximum day rate: triple the amount he actually owed. He slammed the glove compartment shut and turned towards the collection booth.

The attendant had opened the plexiglass window, and he was watching them. He had clear blue eyes, and he was crying. Tears streamed down his coarse and stubbled cheeks, smearing his thickly applied makeup.

Moore blinked. There was too much to take in at once. His focus shifted from the cheap blonde wig to the violent slash of bright red lipstick that angled across the mouth and over the left nostril.

The man turned to face Moore more squarely. The lace trim of his white dress rippled, and then lay still.

Moore disengaged the clutch. He shifted from neutral to first gear.

The barrel of the Winchester came up. Moore saw himself in miniature, his fear reflected in the polished lens of the Redfield scope.

He started to let in the clutch.

There was a deafening explosion, a scorching flash of light. Five hundred grains of copper-jacketed lead alloy punched a hole in him the size of a grapefruit, killing him instantly. His foot slipped off the clutch. The Triumph crawled forward a few feet, and then the engine coughed and died.

Tate stared uncomprehendingly down at the corpse lying across his lap. The huge wound in Moore’s back was streaming. The inside of the car was splattered with gouts of blood, chunks of flesh, startlingly white splinters of bone.

Tate screamed. He tried without success to push Moore away from him. A piece of Moore’s shirt came free in his hands. There was blood all over him. He tried to stand up, and was contained by the seatbelt. Clawing at the corpse, struggling to free himself from Moore’s sticky embrace, Tate bared his teeth and shrieked with frustration, rage and fear.

Foster scrambled to his feet and twisted to face the rear of the car. Richards Street was less than twenty feet away. If he hit the concrete on the run, the killer would have time to fire no more than a single hurried shot. And he’d still have Tate to worry about. Would he choose the moving target instead of taking the easy shot? Foster didn’t think so. He got a foot up on the Triumph’s sloping trunk, and jumped.

The bullet caught him on the wing, at the apex of his flight. It smashed his hip bone and deflected upwards to plough a vertical path through his stomach wall, eviscerating him with all the force and delicacy of a blunt axe.

He hit the concrete face down. There was a third shot, but he didn’t hear it.

XVI

WILLOWS LAY ON the Chesterfield with an arm flung across his face to fend off the flickering light of the television. On the coffee table in front of the Chesterfield there was an empty highball glass and an old Hardy split-cane flyrod. Willows had spent much of the evening drinking Scotch, retying the rod’s guides and ferrules, carefully cutting away and replacing worn thread with new, applying a thin layer of clear varnish. At eleven o’clock he’d turned on the television to watch the news. Now, at twenty past, Pamela Martin was reporting on an East End warehouse that had gone up in smoke, and Willows was sleeping soundly.

The telephone rang fifteen times before the harsh jangling finally penetrated Willows’ consciousness, his restless dreams. He yawned, stretched, and his outflung arm knocked over the empty highball glass. The tip of the Hardy quivered.

Willows got up and turned off the television, hurried down the short hallway to the bedroom. The telephone was on the night table beside the bed. He picked it up on the nineteenth ring.

“Jack?” It was Inspector Bradley. He sounded as if he’d run out of indigestion tablets a long time ago.

“What happened?” said Willows. His voice was hoarse with sleep. He coughed, clearing his throat.

“We’ve had another shooting. A multiple.”

“Where?”

“A parking lot, over on Richards.”

“What’s the address, Inspector?”

Bradley sighed wearily into the phone. “It happened an hour ago, Jack. The party’s moved across town, to the morgue.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Bradley hung up.

Willows sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in his lap, staring down at the silver-framed photograph of Jean, Mickey, and Laura. The picture had been taken the previous July, at a backyard barbecue. Jean was in shorts, a halter top. The kids had been splashing in the plastic pool and were wearing matching Speedo bathing suits. Willows missed them more than he cared to admit, even to himself. A month ago, Jean had announced without warning that she’d bought three Air Canada tickets to Toronto. She was going to spend some time with her parents, decide what to do with her marriage. She was taking the children.

Willows had left her alone for a week, then called on the telephone. She hadn’t been pleased to hear from him, and he hadn’t called again, deciding that the best thing to do was to do nothing but sit quietly, and wait, and hope.

*

The city morgue, with its pale orange brick façade and white mullioned windows, is located on Cordova Street, just around the corner from 312 Main. The first and second floors were dark, but there was light leaking from the windows up on the top floor, where the cutting was done.

Willows parked his Oldsmobile next to a fire hydrant. He locked the car and hurried, shoulders hunched against the rain, across the sidewalk and around to the rear of the building. A wide asphalt driveway provided ambulance access from the lane to the service elevator. Willows stepped into the elevator and pushed the UP button. The doors slid shut and an overhead fan rattled noisily. Drops of water fell from the hem of Willows’ coat to the bare metal floor. He wiped the rain from his face, and put his wife and children out of his mind.

The elevator jerked to a stop. The doors slid open and the fan rattled and died. Willows walked down a long, unusually wide corridor and then pushed through double swing doors into the operating theatre. Claire Parker was leaning against the wall next to a window overlooking the lane. The window was open. Parker was getting a breath of fresh air. Willows said hello, and she gave him a wan smile.

The operating theatre was a large, perfectly square, brightly lit room. The floor and two walls were covered with small, glossy blue tiles. The other walls were lined with refrigerated stainless steel drawers resembling huge filing cabinets. Two zinc tables stood directly beneath a massive cast-iron and frosted glass skylight, a faintly glowing, distorted slice of moon. Each table was seven feet long and three feet wide, and stood exactly forty-two inches above the tiled floor. A constant stream of cold water ran across the tops of the tables and down chrome drainage pipes that vanished into the tiles. Norman Tate’s body lay on the nearest of the tables, concealed by a bloody lime-green sheet.

Inspector Bradley leaned against the other table. His hands were in his pockets and there was an unlit cigar clenched in his unhappy mouth. He glanced up as Willows entered the room, and then his eyes drifted back to the lime-green sheet.

The pathologist, Christy Kirkpatrick, stood at a sink with his back to Willows. The water was running hard, splashing in the basin. Something glinted in Kirkpatrick’s large, freckled hands. He shut off the water, dried his hands on a threadbare white towel. Turning, he saw Willows and gave him a cheerful smile.

“How goes it, Jack?”

“You tell me,” said Willows.

Kirkpatrick folded the towel and hung it up, taking his time. He was a large, loose-limbed man in his early sixties, with pale blue eyes and the complexion of a cherub. Despite his age, he had something of a reputation as a rake. There was a longstanding rumour, unsubstantiated but persistent, that he’d ended an affair with Superintendent Ford’s wife only a week before she’d initiated divorce proceedings against her husband.

Bradley took the dead cigar out of his mouth. He lifted the lime-green sheet.

Willows took a look, and said, “Who was he?”

“His name’s Norman Tate.”

Willows said to Parker, “Was he a member of Flora McCormick’s club?”

Parker nodded. She looked cold, but she was staying close to the window.

Willows turned back to Bradley. “Why wasn’t I called before the bodies were moved? Why did you wait more than an hour before you phoned me?”

“Don’t blame me, Jack. George Franklin was supposed to take care of it. Maybe you should talk to him.”

“If I can sober him up long enough to get a straight answer out of him.”

“The man’s taking it hard, Jack. Can you blame him?”

Willows made an impatient gesture of dismissal. “You said it was a multiple murder. How many bodies have we got?”

“Three. The other two are in the basement of the General, waiting for an autopsy. I had this one brought over here because there was no exit wound, and that isn’t consistent with the pattern.”

“Neither is a triple shooting.”

Kirkpatrick walked towards them, his crêpe soles making little sucking noises on the tiles. He handed Bradley a battered rifle bullet. The misshapen chunk of metal reflected light as Bradley turned it over and over in his hand.

“Four-sixty Magnum,” said Willows.

“Retrieved only after a long and arduous search,” said Kirkpatrick.

“Why wasn’t there an exit wound?” said Bradley.

“Nothing tricky about that,” said Kirkpatrick. He grasped a corner of the lime-green sheet and flung it dramatically back, exposing the naked corpse from head to toe.

“That’s the entrance wound right there, just to the left of the sternum.”

Kirkpatrick’s finger hovered over the mutilated, badly bruised flesh. Willows noticed that the fingernail was bitten to the quick. Kirkpatrick traced the twisting, convoluted path taken by the bullet.

“The bullet penetrated the upper left part of the heart and the left lung. It then deflected off the eighth thoracic vertebra, passing through the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, sliced down through the thigh parallel to the bone, and finally came to rest below the lower end of the femur.”

“Could we have that in layman’s language?” said Bradley.

Kirkpatrick smiled benignly. “The bullet bounced around inside the guy like he was a human pinball machine, and ran out of juice behind his knee. He was shot and killed.”

“There was no particular reason that the bullet stayed inside the body?”

“A weird flight path, that’s all.”

“Why were you in such a rush to dig out the bullet?” Willows asked Bradley.

“I wanted to make sure we were dealing with the same shooter, not a copy-cat. The other two bullets hit concrete and disintegrated. They were too broken up to make a comparison.”

“Why not compare the brass, check out the ejector marks?”

“There was no brass,” said Bradley. He chewed on his cigar, spat out a shred of tobacco. “That’s what aggravates me, Jack. That there were three shootings, instead of one. That only one of the victims was a member of the singles club. And that there wasn’t any brass left at the crime scene. The pattern’s been broken, and it bothers me. That’s why I wanted the bullet, so I could get it down to the lab and stick it under a spectroscope and make damn sure it came from the same gun that killed the first four victims. Because if it didn’t, we’re in real serious trouble.” Willows held up his hands, palms out. “Okay, okay. I was just asking. Didn’t the killer leave anything behind?”

“Half a roast beef sandwich with a big bite out of it. A plastic container of coleslaw.”

“We can get a blood type from the saliva on the sandwich.”

“If we’re lucky.” Bradley spat another shred of tobacco. “There were prints all over the lid of the coleslaw container.”

“Retrievable prints?”

“Goldstein seems to think so.”

“Our witnesses have the killer wearing white cotton gloves.”

“Don’t be a pessimist, Jack, Pessimists go home early and sleep in late. I only want winners on my team.”

“So do I,” said Willows. “If George Franklin screws up again. I want him off the case. I mean right out of it, I don’t want him even keeping track of the paper clips. And I don’t give a damn how he feels about it, understand?”

“Sure,” said Bradley.

*

Willows started the Olds and turned on the heater and windscreen wipers. Parker sat quietly on the far side of the seat, staring out through the glass at the rain drumming down on the hood of the car. Willows switched on the lights and released the emergency brake. He made a wide U-turn and then a left on Main, drove two blocks and swung right on Pender, down the gently sloping hill that bisected the heart of Chinatown — or at least the Chinatown the tourists knew about. The dozens of restaurants were closed and dark, but there were lights glowing dimly on the top floor of several of the taller buildings. Illegal mah-jong games, probably. Every two or three years the department made a highly publicized attempt to shut the games down, but the raids were more a public relations gesture than an attempt to end the gambling. In 1887, the Chinese had built a high wooden fence from Shanghai Alley across to Canton Alley. The fence had been built to safeguard the population from attacks by hostile whites, and in a sense it had never come down. There were more than a hundred thousand Chinese in the metropolitan area, and only four of them were members of the police force. The community policed itself. It always had, and likely always would.

Willows stopped for a red light at the corner of Pender and Homer. He watched a fat man in striped coveralls conduct a delicate investigation into the soggy contents of a fire-blackened litter bin. The man came up with an empty Pepsi bottle. He caught Willows’ eye, and grinned a toothless grin.

The light changed. Willows turned left, south on Homer. The heater was working now, and he switched the fan on to maximum. A blast of warm air flooded across his legs. He glanced over at Parker. She was sitting bolt upright with her hands clenched firmly in her lap, staring straight ahead.

“Are you all right?” he said quietly.

No response.

He reached out and gently touched her arm. She turned slowly towards him and gave him an odd look, an off-balanced look, as if she couldn’t quite remember who he was.

Willows pointed at the glove compartment. “There’s a bottle in there. Would you mind getting it out for me?”

Parker thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. She opened the glove compartment and a mickey of Cutty Sark tumbled into her lap. Wordlessly, she passed the bottle to Willows. He broke the seal and unscrewed the cap, passed the bottle back to her. She lifted the bottle to her lips, sipped delicately.

At Granville Street, Willows was forced to stop and wait for a break in the traffic. Parker’s hair, backlit by red neon, looked as if it was on fire.

A bus shot past in the opposite lane, throwing up a huge sheet of dirty grey water. Parker handed the Scotch to Willows. He sipped companionably, and handed it back. She helped herself to another hefty shot. He watched her throat move as she swallowed. The lines of tension around her mouth and eyes seemed a little less deep now, and there was a hint of colour in her skin.

Willows made his left, heading towards the Granville Street bridge. They were more than halfway across the bridge when Parker finally started talking.

“Two of them were in the car. The other one was lying on the concrete beside the car. He was curled up on his side, as if he was asleep. I’ve never seen so much blood. There was blood everywhere I looked. I could smell it. I can smell it now.”

Willows took the Fourth Avenue off-ramp. He was driving automatically, all his attention on Parker, and he almost failed to see the girl walking against the light at the corner of Fourth and Burrard. Cursing, he hit the brakes and leaned on the horn. The girl didn’t look up. The big Oldsmobile skidded across the wet asphalt and came to a stop inches from her right hip.