The blond nodded twice.
"Meet me out back in five," he said. Then the Indian turned away.
It was at that moment that they both saw the black man who had just walked in through the door. His shoulders were thick, usurping the space where his neck should have been, and his chest strained the material of his blue denim shirt. He wore wide bell-bottom blue trousers without a belt which looked as though any second they'd be down around his ankles. Under the edge of his white toque peeked a receding hairline. His face was round and he sported a pencil-thin moustache on his upper lip. The man was weighed down with jewelry: several gold chains in the hair of his chest, eight small rings on his manicured hands, a single stud in his left ear. Judging from his look, however, there was little chance that even in this part of town anyone would try to take them off him.
The Indian blinked at the man who nodded toward the back door. Then the black turned on his heels and left by the front. The Indian slipped among the tables and went out through the rear.
When they were gone, the blond stood up and quickly made her way to the back of the pub. As she entered the hall leading to the washrooms a man of about fifty with running pimples all over his face slipped a hand between her thighs. She pushed him away and entered the women's room.
The room stank.
There was the smell of urine everywhere and three separate puddles where people had puked on the floor. A soiled Kotex floated in one of the puddles. The only window was open to the alley as if the smell of garbage would somehow freshen the air.
The blond entered the toilet cubicle that was directly beneath the window. The seat was missing from the toilet. She stood up on the edge of the porcelain bowl and peeked out through the window.
For less than a minute the woman watched the black man and the Indian talking. They exchanged something. Then they turned away from each other and walked in opposite directions.
Once they were gone from sight, the blond climbed down, took out a pen and a matchbook, and began to make some notes.
5:40 p.m.
From somewhere out there came the squeal of wheels on rails and the smash of train cars being shunted. From somewhere else came the sound of a foghorn lost on the edge of the harbor. For now the fog had come rolling in from the sea, swallowing up the physical world and disembodying its sounds. For the month of October, the weather was back to normal.
The railroad hut sat on the edge of the National Harbors' Board property, twenty feet from the Pacific Ocean and several thousand yards from the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was here in a synapse now shrouded with vapor that four thousand miles of rail linked up with the shipping routes of the Pacific Rim. Here was the reflex ganglia of the country's nervous system.
The man who sat at the single window of the railroad hut was smoking yet another cigarette. It was an Export A, no filter. He was one of those men who are politely described as being corpulent. His beer belly pushed out the front of his suit, permanently stretching the leather of his belt out of shape. The butt of a Smith and Wesson.38 stuck out from the top of his pants.
He turned at the sound of the door behind him being opened.
It was the blond from the beer parlor.
"I think I'm onto something," she said. There was excitement in her voice.
"Yeah?" the man replied with no emotion in his tone.
"Problem is I might just blow my cover getting to it."
As she spoke, the woman removed two No. 5 gelatin capsules from the pocket of her jeans. She walked over to a shelf on one side of the hut and picked up an envelope, then she sealed the caps inside it and marked the exhibit with her name, her Regimental Number, the date and the designation 56 C. In an RCMP undercover drug operation each person the operative scores from is given a number. Their picture then comes down from the target board and goes up as a hit. The letter "C" in this case indicated that this was the blond's third buy off this particular hit.
"Outrageous price," the woman said, handing the envelope over to her cover man. He put it in an "E" exhibit pouch. Then the blond sat down by the heater near the door and began making notes in a large black court book.
"You said you were onto something," the man reminded her. Again without emotion.
She looked up. "Before the buy, 56 made connection with this black dude in the alley. He had that swagger of the nouveau riche,you know what I mean? Flaunted jewelry. Arrogant air. That sort of shit. I think he's one step up and probably a link. I'd like to go after him and forget single cap sales."
"Well you can't," the man said, bitterly. "Spann, you've been pulled."
"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked, frowning.
The man grunted and lit another cigarette. His fingers were dark orange from nicotine stains.
"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked again.
"Clean up. Fuck off. Report to Heather Street. They just sent word down you made the Headhunter Squad."
The woman tensed, involuntarily. Now her heart was pounding fast.
"It should have been me-, lady. It should have been me." Then he turned back to the window to stare out at the fog. "Write out notes on this big connection before you go. Give me something to do."
"Yeah, sure," the woman said, almost in a daze. Then she added very quietly, "Who do I report to?"
Snorting, the Corporal turned slowly from the window. On his face there was a faint sardonic smile.
"The news is big, Spann. About as big as it comes. Chartrand, our bloody Commissioner, is bringing back Robert DeClercq."
Eyes
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1957
Jazz was in the streets, and it wafted up on the warm night air, a musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of the Mardi Gras revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingle and jumble of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, up, still up over the surging crowd of people lined eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes. The music rose over the parents who sipped pink liquid from hurricane glasses as they pushed and shoved their children to the front of the line, children munching on peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs and apples-on-a-stick, everyone shuffling through a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. The jazz rose up over the sea of costumed masked revelers infiltrating the crowd, the "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, a King Kong here, a Zigaboo there, the Queen of Hearts and a fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Away from "the Big Shot of Africa" and the Zulu King's retinue, away from a one-eyed cyclops, away from the white leather cowboy garbed in front and bare-ass naked behind, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and its streamers, up until the jazz slid softly through the wrought-iron balcony where the black girl stood at the window.
The black girl was naked.
Crystal stood with her back to the room, swaying, her breath quietly hissing through white, even teeth. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades toward the small of her back. As her body was still tingling with the aftershock of orgasm, the fireworks that exploded over the city seemed to explode in her head. She felt good. Secure. For just a moment she wondered if her father would turn his sexual advances on her younger sister now that she was gone. Then she managed to push the thought aside since it spoiled her mood. From fifteen feet away, Elvis begged her,"Don't be cruel."Crystal smiled and slowly rocking, began to sing along.
"You want some of this?" a voice asked, louder than the radio. "It'll ice the top of your head."