The Goldfish Bowl (16 page)

When Corporal Bernie Watts pushed his way through the door carrying two thick white mugs of steaming coffee, Willows didn’t bother to look up. Watts was the duty officer. He came into the room like a man on a tightrope, moving slowly and cautiously, holding the mugs of hot coffee well away from his body. Despite his caution there was a certain amount of spillage as he pivoted towards the desk, and he was forced to perform an impromptu little jig to save the mirror polish on his shoes.

“Damn it,” Watts said, “those last couple of steps are always the hardest, aren’t they?”

Willows considered the question for a moment, and then said, “What?”

Watts shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Have some coffee, Jack.”

Willows accepted the proffered mug, sipped gingerly, winced.

“Too strong, is it?” said Watts.

“If you have to ask, Bernie, your taste buds are in real serious trouble.”

Chuckling, Watts knelt and unlocked the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk, pulled the drawer all the way out. He had a bottle of Lambs Navy Rum tucked away at the back of the drawer, hidden behind a stack of old
Playboy
and
Penthouse
magazines. There was about an inch and a half of liquor in the bottle. Watts poured it equally into the two mugs, stirred it in with his Bic pen.

Willows held up his mug. “Thanks, Bernie. Mud.”

The rum had given the coffee an extra dimension of warmth. Willows felt a slow trickle of energy seeping back into his body. He sat back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk.

Watts pulled cigarettes and matches from the breast pocket of his starched blue shirt. He lit up and tossed the spent and smoking match halfway across the desk, into an ashtray made out of an automobile piston. Waving the cigarette at the evidence bags scattered across the surface of the desk, he said, “Real weird case, eh Jack?”

“Looks that way,” said Willows tersely.

It was clear from Willows’ tone of voice that the subject wasn’t open to discussion. Watts frowned. Nobody but nobody ever told him what was going on upstairs. All he ever heard was faint whisperings, uncertain rumours. Frustrated, he flicked half an inch of ash into the piston, and decided to attack Willows from another angle. What he’d do was ramble on about nothing in particular until Willows had to say something back, speak up in self-defence, even if it was only to shut him up. Once he got Willows talking, he’d gradually work the conversation around to the string of unsolved shootings, find out if the papers were right about the homicide cops not knowing what the hell was going on, or if homicide was all over the case and getting set to make a bust.

“Speaking of coffee,” Watts said to Willows, “do you by any chance remember a guy named Phil Taylor?”

“Skinny face, jug ears?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Well, whenever Phil wanted a coffee, he’d take a hike all the way up to the third floor and steal a cup from that machine they got in vice. Said vice had a special blend you couldn’t find anywhere else in the building.”

“No kidding,” said Willows. Because he was drinking Watts’ rum, he felt a minimal obligation to hold up his end of the conversation.

“Even then,” said Watts, “he wasn’t all that happy with the situation. I told him, hey, if you don’t like anybody else’s brew, why not bring an electric kettle down here and make your own? Charge fifty cents a cup and get rich, retire early. You know what he said? That he was a cop, not a fucking caterer.” Watts flicked another length of ash into the piston. “It must’ve been a year at least before I found out all those trips upstairs every day had nothing at all to do with coffee.”

“Oh yeah?” said Willows.

“Turns out he was dating one of the clerks up there on the third floor. Or he’d been going out with her and they’d broke up and he couldn’t handle it. Or maybe it was just that he was hot for her and kept asking her to go out with him but she wasn’t interested. I dunno. Point is, and this is what I’ve been getting at, the coffee’s equally bad all over the building, upstairs and down. Doesn’t matter where you work, more than a couple of cups a day, you’re asking for trouble.”

Willows lifted his feet off the desk and leaned forward in his chair, was swallowed by the shadow of the dead horse. “Here’s to democracy, Bernie. Equally bad coffee for one and all.”

“I’ll drink to just about anything,” said Watts, raising his mug, “but to tell the truth I tend to favour the Police State. And not just because I’ve got an inside track, either. I’ve thought about it a lot, Jack, and the way I see it, the main problem with society is a lack of organization. People have too many choices, too much to choose from. Doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about haircuts or microwave ovens. Too much choice breeds nothing but confusion and discontent. Like Phil Taylor, wasting his time running around trying to find the perfect cup of coffee. You want to know what my motto is? Give Fascism a chance.”

Watts winked broadly to let Willows know that he wasn’t a nut, that he was at least partly kidding. He took a long last drag on his cigarette, and leaned across the desk to squash out the butt in the ashtray.

Willows suddenly came alive. Jerking forward in the chair, he grabbed Watts’ wrist and snatched the cigarette out of his hand. Watts stared at Willows as Willows pinched the cigarette in two pieces, and dropped the burning coal in the ashtray.

“Hey,” said Watts, finally reacting, “what d’you think you’re doing?”

Willows stripped the thick paper wrapping from the filter and tore the filter in half lengthways. He held the shredded material up to the light, turning it slowly on the pedestal of his fingers, examining it from every angle.

“Smoke much, Bernie?”

Watts shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so. Pack and a half a day, maybe. Why d’you ask?”

“You always smoke filter tips?”

“No, I switched over a couple of years ago.”

“Why?”

Watts shrugged. “The usual reasons. Cut down on the tar and nicotine, all that gunk. Get the wife and kids off my back. Live for ever.” He drained his mug. “Why all the questions, Jack?”

“The filters really work, do they?”

“Yeah, they work.”

“Watch,” said Willow’s. He opened one of the plastic evidence bags with an uncharacteristic flourish, and shook out several lipstick-stained cigarette butts. “These were found in the ashtray of the car used in the murder of the second victim,” he said.

“Phasia Palinkas, right? The Greek woman. And the car was a silver Mercedes.”

Willows smiled. “Been following the case, Bernie?”

“In the papers,” said Watts diffidently. “Off and on.”

Willows nicked up one of the butts that had spilled from the evidence bag. He used his thumbnail to split the filter in half and put the two halves down on the desk next to the filter from Watts’ cigarette. Watts watched carefully, as if Willows was an accomplished magician who might inadvertently let slip a trick or two. Willows nudged the torn filters across the desk towards him. “Notice any difference between the filter from your cigarette and the one from the Mercedes?”

“Sure,” said Watts, nodding. He picked up the filter from the car. “Mine is stained with nicotine, this one’s pure as the driven snow.”

“How do you explain that?”

“Could only be one reason, Jack. Whoever lit this one let it burn down without actually smoking it. So no smoke was drawn through the filter, you see what I mean?”

Willows tapped the evidence bag. “They’re all like that,” he said. “The whole bag full.”

“What that means,” said Bernie, “is that the killer lit almost a whole pack of cigarettes but didn’t smoke a single one of them.” Comically, he scratched his head. “I don’t get it. What’s the point?”

Willows glanced at his watch. It was quarter past two. The government liquor stores were all closed and the nearest bootlegger that he knew about was more than five miles away. Smiling, he said, “Why don’t you haul out that spare bottle of yours, Bernie. We’ll talk it over, see if we can come up with something.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Watts. “Break the case wide open.” But his voice betrayed his excitement, and he was already groping in his pants pocket for the key to the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk.

XVIII

MIRIAM OKAHASHI REMOVED her designer prescription glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose where the stylish oversized plastic frames had left painful little dents in her flesh. She sighed imperceptibly as she put the glasses back on, stole a peek at her brand new Piaget.

It was 4:54 p.m. There were six more minutes remaining in the session, only six more minutes left in the week. Miriam had spent much of the session silently counting off the seconds, but there was only the faintest hint of impatience in her almond eyes as she glanced across the broad expanse of beige carpet at Raymond Cooley. Cooley was sitting hunched on the edge of the black leather Chesterfield, staring sightlessly down at the carpet with his elbows resting on his bony knees. His dirty blond hair, which he liked to comb straight back from his narrow skull David Bowie style, hung down in front of his sallow face like a frayed curtain.

Miriam listened to the sound of the rush-hour traffic floating in through her open window, the translucent green curtains. Perversely, she wished that she was out there, part of the jam. This was her fifth session with Cooley, and it was turning out to be even more of a waste of time than the first four hours had been.

As always, Cooley was wearing his dark blue suit, the white shirt with the ink-stained breast pocket, a pair of black slip-ons, no tie. He habitually sat in absolute silence, perfectly motionless, for as long as fifteen minutes at a time. Miriam had quickly learned that any attempt on her part to encourage Cooley to speak before he was ready would only result in a lengthier silence.

When he finally did decide to talk to her, he often strung his words together so rapidly and with so little concern for subject matter or syntax that she had difficulty understanding him, following his train of thought. But if she interjected, no matter how delicately, to ask him to repeat a word or a phrase, he invariably retreated into himself, became surly and uncommunicative. Even when he was allowed to speak without interruption, he always stopped talking as abruptly as he’d begun, often in mid-sentence or even in the middle of a word. Then, nervously pressing back the soft flesh of his cuticles with the edge of his thumbnail, he’d resume staring blindly down at the carpet. Miriam found it all rather boring. She took another peek at the Piaget. One minute down and five to go.

Cooley’s eyes appeared to be closed, but he was covertly watching Miriam through his curtain of hair. She was a real dish, no doubt about it. He loved those big brown eyes, her small, pouty mouth, the glossy black hair. She had a nice body, too. Slim, but with curves in all the right places. He thought about what it was going to be like when he finally decided to make his move, the move he knew she’d been waiting for ever since he’d first walked into her office. What he’d do was keep it simple. Stand up right in the middle of one of his silences, take her by surprise. Women liked to be surprised. He’d maybe flick a bit of lint off his sleeve, and then stroll casually over to her desk. He’d hold out his hand as he stepped towards her, and she’d come gracefully to her feet, reaching out to him. He would gently kiss the palm of her hand and then suddenly thrust the tip of his tongue between her fingers, shocking and arousing her, giving her just a taste of what he had planned for her.

He imagined her gasp of pleasure, the look of yearning in her dark, liquid eyes. Somehow they would end up on the black leather couch. As he began to take off her clothes he kissed her tenderly on the throat, murmured endless reassurances.

Her bra was lacy and insubstantial, just like the ones they wore in the magazines. The clasp fell apart at his touch. He threw the bra over his shoulder and kissed her high, firm breasts, watched the nipples rise like mushrooms. He pushed her skirt up around her waist as she wriggled and squirmed beneath him. Her panties were black silk, provocatively cut. He raised an enquiring eyebrow, teasing her, and she blushed, her smooth skin darkening. He slid the panties down around her ankles and then crushed them against his month. As he inhaled the musky fragrance of her perfume, his need for her became overpowering. He sat up and began to undress, forcing himself not to rush, to take his time, Miriam couldn’t wait. She had completely lost control. She reached blindly towards him, shamelessly tearing at his clothes …

Sweat stung Cooley’s eyes. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, blinking rapidly. Miriam was admiring her new watch again. He took his comb out of the breast pocket of his suit, ran it vigorously through his listless hair.

Miriam was watching him. Now that he had her attention, he began to speak.

“I was thinking on the way over that this is our fifth session together and that we …” He frowned, running out of juice. He had lost, as he feared he would, the thread of his intent. He looked down, staring into the depths of the carpet, and then looked quickly up. Miriam was paying strict attention to him, doing her best to help him along. He ran the comb across the back of his hand. Each tooth left a fading white line across his skin. He pressed harder, making the skin turn red.

This week the comb was white. Last week it had been yellow. The week before last, blue. Miriam idly wondered if the changing colours were of any significance, or if Cooley was simply the kind of man who kept losing things.

As if sensing her thoughts, Cooley slipped the comb back into his pocket. He was ready to start talking again.

“After all the time we’ve been together, wouldn’t you agree that we’re getting to know each other pretty well?”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Miriam. She mustered a smile. “Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about today, something you’d like to discuss now that we’ve spent some time together?”

Cooley shrugged, the heavily padded shoulders of his suit jacket rising and falling comically. “I’ve been losing a lot of friends lately. Not that I had all that many to begin with. It seems to me that I should try to make some new friends, replacements. Out with the old and in with the new. But it’s hard to meet people. If you walk right up to them, they become frightened. So would you mind telling me what the hell I’m supposed to do? Is there a secret, some kind of trick I don’t know about?”

“Why have you been losing friends?” said Miriam.

“It’s your fault,” said Cooley. “You told me I’d feel better about myself if I was more assertive. So I’ve been making a real serious effort not to let people walk all over me. For example that time at the zoo. But half the time I get so worked up and things get out of hand or I wait until it’s too late. Time passes too fast. The guy is way down at the other end of the block and I’m still figuring out what to say to him. Or I go overboard and get physical.” Cooley took out his comb. The comb had a handle about four inches long, that tapered gradually to a needle-sharp point. “I stuck it in a pencil-sharpener,” Cooley said. “Maybe one of these days I’m going to stick it into some wise guy who makes a smart remark.”

The intercom buzzed, harsh, persistent, very loud. It was Miriam’s secretary, alerting her to the fact that it was five o’clock and that the last session of the day was over, that it was time to go home. Miriam reached across her desk to turn the buzzer off. She looked openly at the Piaget. The small but perfectly cut diamond set in the crown of the watch was reflected in the polished mahogany of the desktop. It reminded her, as it was intended to, of her latest lover, Norbert. Norbert was a pro football player, a tackle for the BC Lions. Miriam had met him a little over a month ago, at a party in Caulfield Cove given by one of the team’s directors. Even in the crowd of jocks, Norbert had stood out. He was six foot four, weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, and was as hard and black as a lump of anthracite. Miriam had initially been attracted by the sheer size and bulk of him, but as the evening progressed and she slowly learned to decipher his Mississippi accent, she discovered that there was a pretty good brain lurking under his unruly Afro. So they could talk, too, when they were in the mood.

Miriam leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on the desk and making a tent of her fingers. “I think you should get rid of that comb,” she said quietly but firmly. “If the police happened to find it on you, they could lay a charge.”

“Like what?”

“Carrying a concealed weapon”

Miriam tried to make eye contact, but Cooley kept his head down. He glared at the carpet, his eyes hot and wet. “What if I told you that sometimes I get so mad I’m afraid I’m going to lose control, go completely crazy!”

Miriam smiled sympathetically. “This may come as a surprise to you, but every once in a while I feel that way myself.”

“You do?” said Cooley, incredulous.

“Yes, of course.” And right now is one of those times, thought Miriam. According to the Piaget, it was now two minutes past five, and she was running on a very tight schedule. Her thoughts drifted to the evening that lay ahead. She and Norbert had planned an early dinner, and left the rest of the night free. Which meant, she fervently hoped, that they were going to spend the time pounding the stuffing out of Norbert’s kingsize Sealy Posturpedic.

Miriam jerked upright and almost cried out loud as something warm and moist fell across her wrist. It was Cooley’s hand. His face was so close to hers that she could smell his breath, sour and defeated. “Shall I make another appointment with Sheila on my way out?” he said.

Miriam nodded, unwilling to trust her voice.

Cooley reluctantly let go of her wrist, turned his back on her and strode out of the office. Miriam looked at the Piaget. Five minutes past five. The crystal was wet with Cooley’s sweat, and the gold numerals beneath the thin film of salty liquid seemed distorted, as if they had been warped by the heat of his sad embrace.

*

The building directly across the street from Miriam Okahashi’s office was three storeys high and faced with red brick. The building was in the midst of extensive renovations, and it was vacant. The sniper weaved his way through the clutter of construction materials, took the steps up to the top floor two and three at a time. He was wearing a new pair of shoes, and the high heels clattered on the naked concrete as he climbed.

There was a small landing with a steel rail around it at the top of the stairs, a hatch that had been built to provide access to the roof. The sniper paused to catch his breath, then unbolted the door and pushed it open. Except for half a dozen looping high-voltage lines, the view across the flat tar-and-gravel roof was completely unobstructed. Crouching, he snapped open the rifle case and removed the Winchester. Peering through the scope, he was able to detect a vague movement through the pale green curtains. He checked his watch. It was three minutes to five. He lowered the rifle and drew back the bolt, jacked a round into the chamber.

Nothing to do now but wait. He only had a few minutes to go, but he knew from past experience that a few minutes could be a very long time. He thought about lighting a cigarette, decided against it. Miriam Okahashi’s window was wide open, even though it had been raining steadily all day long. She had to be a fresh-air fiend. Or maybe she had a problem with the fruitcakes’ smoking. A pigeon flew across the sniper’s field of vision, and settled on one of the high-tension wires. He lifted the rifle and took a bead on the bird’s ridiculously puffed-out chest. It blinked at him with little yellow eyes, and edged nervously sideways along the wire. The sniper’s cheek itched fiercely. He scratched himself and then stared in mute surprise at the smear of bright pink makeup on the blunt fingers of his glove. Cursing, he tore off the glove and flung it across the roof. He was going to have to remember to buy a few-more pairs, his supply was running low. The cost of keeping up appearances, the high price of success! The sniper chuckled, his mood changing. There was a movement in the office. The curtains shifted as if from a slight gust of wind. The sniper raised the rifle, pressed his cheek against the stock.

Miriam shrugged into her bright yellow Baert raincoat and picked up her purse and her umbrella. She was halfway to the door when she remembered the open window. Her heels, as she hurriedly retraced her steps, left an almost perfectly straight line of dimples in the beige rug.

The window opened outwards on a complex double-hinge mechanism. Miriam brushed aside the curtain and pulled on the handle. The window glided smoothly shut. She fastened the lock and let the curtain fall softly back, turned to leave.

The curtain ballooned towards her as if someone standing behind it had suddenly thrust out his arm, reaching towards her. In the same instant there was the sound of a shot, and the impact of the bullet slamming into her throat, cutting off her scream, slicing through both carotid arteries and her spine. She staggered backwards, her head lolling, chin on chest. Her hip struck a corner of the desk and she spun sideways, dead on her feet, then fell across the black leather couch and slid on a river of blood, face down on to the carpet.

*

Inspector Homer Bradley stood at his window with his hands in his pockets, staring morosely down through the slanting rain at the adjoining construction site. The foundation of the new building had been laid a week ago, and now men in black rain slickers were removing the plywood forms and exposing the raw, green-tinged cement beneath. Soon the framework of steel I-beams would come spouting up towards him, plunging his office into eternal shadow, stripping him of his view. He lifted his eyes, and looked out across the dark and gloomy harbour.

A Russian freighter pushed against the wind and outgoing tide towards the grainery next to the Second Narrows bridge, the bow wave out of all proportion to the vessel’s slow progress through the water. High above the ship a dozen or more herring gulls flew on a direct line towards the rocky, protein-rich shores of Third Beach. As Bradley watched, the hindmost gull suddenly peeled away from the formation, spiralling swiftly down until it was lost among the confusion of the waves.