The Vanishing Track (9 page)

Nancy allowed herself to be led inside the building.

“This was the lobby,” said Beatta. Nancy saw a twenty-foot-long check-in counter, with old-fashioned key boxes behind the desk and thick Plexiglas separating the clientele from the hotel staff. Half a dozen cracked and faded vinyl club chairs were scattered randomly throughout the dingy room. It smelled of cigarette smoke and cooked food. The carpet was so worn that plywood could be clearly seen along the most commonly traveled path. The ceiling soared above them, crafted from ornately tooled tin. Two decorative chandeliers hung down on heavy black chains, but they no longer cast illumination. Instead, floor lamps of various design were scattered here and there, throwing a sickly yellow light around the room.

“We'll take the stairs,” said Beatta. “The elevator is unreliable on a normal day. Today . . .” She shook her head and frowned. “Not a good idea.”

They walked up a flight of stairs, Beatta breathing hard and holding the hand rail. “Let's look in on some of the guests,” wheezed Beatta. They stopped and knocked on an open door. Beatta took a breath, then called out in a singsong voice, “It's Beatta from the Advocacy Society!”

“What's that?” said an older woman, looking around the door.

“It's Beatta,” she repeated, “from the Advocacy Society.”

“You come to help me with my things?”

“We've got people coming this afternoon,” Beatta smiled.

“I could use a hand with that dresser,” the old woman said, pointing a crooked finger at a bright purple dresser that was pasted with children's stickers.

“We'll have someone here soon to help.”

“What's that?” The old woman was stuffing a few knick-knacks into a shopping bag.

Beatta smiled at Nancy. “This is Nancy. She's a reporter.”

Nancy stepped into the twelve by twelve room. Along one wall was a slouching bed that nearly touched the floor. The linoleum was worn and peeling. No curtains adorned the single window, but a flowery sheet over the opening kept out the light.

“There's a common bathroom on this floor, where about thirty or so people wait in line for the toilet or the shower,” said Beatta.

“We'll have someone come by later,” yelled Beatta as they left.

The old woman didn't turn.

“That's one of the cleaner rooms. The old girl takes care of the place,” said Beatta, walking down the hall, Nancy following behind. The corridor was dark and smelled thickly of fried food, grease, marijuana, and urine.

Beatta stopped at another door that was ajar. The noise of a television blared from within the room.

Beatta knocked loudly and raised her voice over the sound. “It's Beatta from the Advocacy Society!” She pushed the door open, which hung on the frame by a single, rusting hinge. She looked into the room, Nancy right behind her.

“Hi, it's Beatta,” she said to the thirty-something man lying on his bed. The room was smaller than the last one, not quite ten by ten. The mattress was bare of linen, yellowed and stained with what looked like spots of blood. The man was dressed in faded blue jeans and a dark hooded sweatshirt with the right sleeve rolled up to his biceps. There was no sign of a hot plate. Two needles lay on the floor beside a small black and white television with a clothes hanger for an aerial. The young man looked up at them, glassy-eyed.

“Don't step inside,” said Beatta, looking back at Nancy.

Then she turned to the young man, “You okay?”

The man seemed to be looking right through her, his eyes thick and colorless. He nodded.

“Can I get you help?”

The man shook his head.

“Did you shoot twice?” Beatta looked at the syringes on the floor. The young man held up a single finger.

“Okay, I'll be back to check on you in a few minutes.”

The young man turned back to the television.

“Prime candidate for an
OD
,” said Beatta, as they moved down the hall.

They looked in on half a dozen other hotel guests on that floor and then climbed up to the second. The stairwell was dark and wet and reeked of cigarette smoke. Residents pushed past them, the contents of their lives crammed into boxes and bags. One man bumped down the stairs with a shopping cart.

On the third floor Beatta knocked on a door and said to Nancy, “This gentleman has been here for twenty years. He's got throat cancer. He's a hoarder.
OCD
,” she said, knocking again and announcing herself. A wall of debris could be seen through the crack in the door. The stench emanating from the room was putrid.

“Where does he sleep?” asked Nancy.

“There's a bed in there, somewhere.”

Nancy looked at her watch. “Beatta, I have to go. I'm meeting Denman Scott for lunch.”

Beatta turned. “Okay, dear. Will you be covering the rally?”

“I will.”

“Good, then maybe we can talk after that. Need me to show you out?”

“I'll find my way.”

“YOU'RE LATE,” GRUMBLED
Cole as Nancy walked into the pub. He looked at the bleak expression on her face. She was flushed from her rapid walk to the Lamplighter. Cole and Denman were sitting at a table near the windows.

“Nice to see you too, shithead,” Nancy managed a half-hearted grin. Denman rose and Nancy gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Hi, Denman,” she said.

“Nice to see you again, Nancy.”

“Can you believe it's been over two months since we were in Lostcoast and we haven't had lunch yet?” Nancy opened a menu. “What's good here?”

Cole sipped his beer. “It's standard pub fare. Roll it in flour and breadcrumbs and throw it in the fryer.”

Nancy looked at Denman, “What's up with Mr. Grumpy here?”

Denman smiled and shrugged. Since they had arrived at the Lamplighter, Denman had watched as Cole's buoyancy of that morning descended into a dark funk. They ordered and Cole asked for another beer.

“I want to get over to the rally for one o'clock. It's only a few blocks, but we should talk business now,” said Denman.

Cole looked down at his beer. “I think the two of you need to discuss what's going on around here,” he said, looking behind him, as if he was peering beyond the walls of the pub. “Denman, why don't you tell Nancy what you told me this morning?”

They spent the better part of an hour discussing the general situation in the Downtown Eastside, focusing on the closure of the Lucky Strike Hotel. Nancy colored the conversation with her observations of the hotel itself.

Their food arrived. While Denman and Nancy talked, Cole found himself bewildered at how hard it was to be in the same room with Nancy. For the last two months she had been on his mind almost constantly. After their lives had become re-entangled in Oracle, Alberta, because of the bloody Mike Barnes affair, she had been haunting his thoughts. Cole chalked that up to their troubled history and the affair in Ottawa: the lie, the dismissal, the exodus, the heartache. She had as much as admitted she still loved Cole, and he knew he still loved her. But instead of feeling good, he felt an icy fear. And it wasn't just Cole's run-of-the-mill fear of commitment. It was much, much darker than that.

Sitting at the table with her, Cole felt that dark fear taking hold. The last time they had spoken at any length was in July in Port Lostcoast, in the Broughton Archipelago. Watching her now, he could vividly recall that exchange.

“WITH EVERYTHING THAT
has gone on over the last few months, I'd almost forgotten how beautiful it is here,” Nancy said, looking east toward the Coast Range and the narrow waters of Knight Inlet. It had been three months since they had scrambled to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Archie Ravenwing. Now they were standing together on the bluff near Archie's house. Maybe they were finally at the conclusion of a desperate and deeply troubling time for both of them.

Cole still had his doubts about what motivated Nancy. She clearly wasn't sure about why she became involved in the Ravenwing affair, and Cole's personal nightmare. Was she there as a friend or as a journalist? Cole could not forget how she had chased down the story of his father's suicide, even going to the family ranch and questioning his mother and brother while he was in Port Lostcoast investigating Ravenwing's disappearance. He knew she had harbored a suspicion that Cole had pulled the trigger of the shotgun himself; revenge for years of physical abuse that Cole had suffered at the old man's hands.

“Listen,” said Nancy, which is what she always said when she was about to broach a difficult subject.

“Don't,” Cole said.

“Cole, I'm sorry.”

“Just don't. It's okay. You're right.”

“I am?”

“Don't let it go to your head. It doesn't happen very often.”

Nancy punched him in the arm. “What am I right about?”

“That I'm rotten at talking about these things . . . About my father.”

“You can't keep it bottled up inside.”

“I know that.”

“It's eating you alive. All your friends can see it.”

“Denman says he's got something that's going to help.”

“What is it?”

“He won't tell me. Says I have to trust him.”

“That sounds interesting. Can I watch?”

“As long as it doesn't involve needles, crystals, or someone purging my body of all its worldly desires, you can.”

“Can I write about it? I've got to make a good impression on the people of Vancouver.”

He shot her a look and she laughed.

“Thank you,” he said, turning toward her, strands of his hair lifting in the breeze.

“For what?”

“For
not
writing about it.”

She looked at him a moment, her dark eyes meeting his. “You're welcome.”

He looked away, toward the harbor. “I thought you were just in it for the story.”

“I wasn't sure myself what I was in it for.”

“And now?”

“Now I'm sure,” she said.

“DOES THAT SOUND
about right?” asked Denman, bringing Cole back to the present and making him aware of the silence.

“What?”

“Does that sound about right?” asked Denman again, smiling.

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch that last bit.”

“Denman is speculating about the connection between the timing of the closure of the Lucky Strike and these disappearances that Juliet Rose told him about,” said Nancy.

“Do you think there might be a connection?” asked Denman.

“Anything is possible.” Cole looked at Denman.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Blackwater?” demanded Nancy.

“Nothing,” he said defensively.

“‘
Anything is possible
,'” she mocked. “What the hell kind of mush-ball line is that?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were on the record here,” he said, his voice rising sharply. “Let me see if I can come up with something sensational enough for you. How about, ‘I have no doubt that the City of Vancouver is snatching the homeless from the streets and dumping them in Burrard Inlet to make way for ritzy high-rise condos.' Or how about, ‘I won't rest until every one of the vanished have been found!'”

Several people in the pub stopped talking and were looking at him. Nancy and Denman were silent.

“Cole . . .” said Nancy.

“No, I'm sorry,” he stood up. “My work here is done. The two of you are talking. I'm through with this shit.”

He stood up abruptly, knocking the table and spilling his beer. He dug a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket, receipts and lint cascading onto the floor, and threw the money on the table.

“I'm going to a rally,” he barked, and made for the door, leaving Denman and Nancy bewildered.

IT WAS LIKE CHRISTMAS MORNING.
The dregs of society spilled out onto the sidewalk as the news of the closure of the Lucky Strike Hotel spread, and Sean Livingstone stood on the corner watching. He leaned against a wire fence, selecting and dismissing over and over again candidates for his special arrangements. There were so many to choose from that he felt like the proverbial kid in the candy store. He straightened up and made his way to the front of the hotel. He sat down on the steps just as television reporters approached several of the newly homeless. The familiar woman from the community group ushered a womtan who was also likely a reporter through the front doors.

A scrawny woman in an oversized hooded parka meandering through the crowd caught his eye. She was casually picking up things from the piles of belongings and stuffing them into her coat. It's your lucky day, he thought. Lady Luck is on my side, too.

He stood up and dusted the dirt from his jeans, adjusted his backpack, and set off to follow her. She wove her way in and out of the crowd, and at the street corner, turned west on Hastings, heading toward a row of pawn shops near Cambie. She went inside the first one. Sean stopped two doors up and waited for her to emerge. It was twenty minutes before Lady Luck came out, and when she did she turned and threw something back into the shop. Sean watched as the owner came to the door and threw whatever it was back at her, hitting her in the shoulder. She screamed obscenities at him, and the man told her to stay the fuck out of his shop or he'd call the police.

Sean leaned against the wall of an adjacent pawn broker and watched the entertainment. Passersby gave Lady Luck a wide berth, and when she started walking again, she went east, right past Sean. Her face was crooked and twisted with rage. She walked with a slight limp and wore her heavy parka open, exposing a thin frame in dirty loose-fitting clothes. Sean felt a moment of elation as he thought of his arrangements. Lady Luck posed a challenge he would meet willingly.

She circled back past the Lucky Strike for another pass at the accumulated detritus of people's lives. She got in a fight with the large black woman when she tried to steal a small portable radio, and got punched by a man when she was caught looking over his things. The police arrived as the crowd grew, and Lady Luck fell in with the throng being corralled toward Pigeon Park by youths in black shirts who were from the End Poverty Now Coalition.