That’s actually what Brian had been doing Tuesday night, lustily carolling Caroline, “Good King Wenceslas,” “Adeste Fideles.” Standing below her window, reminding her through song of the coming celebration of the great Christian miracle-what could be wrong with that, he asked the judge, a young woman, unimpressed. She sought the view of Caroline in the gallery. “Just tell him to stay away from me. Especially when drunk.”
Brian felt more rested today; he’d got four hours’ sleep last night, the most in weeks, and four hours more than the night before, on a musty mattress in a barred room of the Redcoat Inn in North Vancouver. The disturbance charge has been bumped four weeks. Access rights are cancelled in the interim. Now he must confront Christmas on his own, without his three Costa Rican adoptees, Gabriela, Amelia, and Francisco, who always helped him survive the annual banality. He must show grit, suck it up.
He bent to the mirror, checked his eyes for wackiness. He did two more lines.
While his computer warmed up, he studied the wall prints. The unhorsed cowboy among the stampeding longhorns. A rider slouched over his galloping steed, two arrows sticking from his back. Four cowpokes sitting around a fire at night-a placid scene until one noticed the eyes glinting in the blackness. Ravenous wolves, maybe, scalp-hunting Apaches. The artist had captured the essential futility of trying to stay alive.
A pop-up screen, Widgeon’s admonition-of-the-day. Dialogue must sound natural to the ear, yet unembellished by the chaff of common parlance-the hideous “uh” and “um” and “er”-or by the repetitious four-letter obscenities of the ill-bred.
Despite all his complaining and wanking, Inspector Grodgins doesn’t say shit, piss, or fuck. In fact, none of Widgeon’s characters commit such acts-especially Inspector Grodgins. His ungainly sidekick, Constable Marchmont, seems entirely asexual. So might be the author, whose manuals offer no aid for the sex scenes, let alone tips on how to write with a hard-on. Without Widgeon’s guidance, Brian must walk alone into the valley of concupiscence.
Cudworth Brown, slouched in a chair, chewing on a toothpick, and staring with woeful eyes, conjured in Lance Valentine the image of a ruminating ox. What Cud was staring at was Rosy’s bottom in a tight dress as she bent toward her printer.
“Let me get this straight. That centrefold, your secretary, is the wife of one of the crime-stoppers who busted me.”
A tug at her blouse, a hand to her piled hair-she had a sixth sense, Rosy, knew when she was under scrutiny. Using this power, she often intercepted Lance’s admiring looks, which she returned with knowing, teasing smiles. It had been a grave mistake to hire her. Too distracting. Too married. To a cop.
“That’s right, old boy. Case officer, I would suspect.”
“You bet he is. Detective Sergeant Henry ‘Call-Me-Hank’ Chekoff. I had a hangover like a spike through my head, and he cathauled me for two hours. Told him a thousand times I want to see my lawyer. Chekoff has a huge fucking interest in sticking it to me for the max.”
“I shouldn’t doubt that at all.” Lance bent to the rose and sniffed it to mask the man’s nervous sweat.
Cudworth bounded to his feet. “I’ll take my chances with Pomeroy, you tin-star shamus.” He stamped to the outer office, grabbed his poncho from the coat rack, slammed the door on his way out.
Rosy came in with the pages she’d transcribed, a divorcee rich already, seeking more in settlement. “What got him stoked?”
“He thinks you’re a spy. You’d never disclose anything to do with my clients, would you, my love?”
“Of course not, Lance.”
“Even to your husband.”
“Especially him.”
“He needn’t know I’m working for Mr. Brown.”
“You were working for Mr. Brown.”
“He’ll be back.”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you, boss?”
Her hand lightly touched his shoulder as she leaned over him. L’Eau d’Hiver, complicated by breath mint. A braless breast brushed his shoulder while she guided his hand down the page. “This word, just before ‘dirty whoring old goat.’”
“Scrofulous.” He picked up yet another scent from her, an essence of something glandular. This dangerous woman was not just flirting with him. She was daring him.
“Here, line fifteen, she’s describing how she caught her husband with the maid.” Rosy’s nipple scuffed his shoulder, hard as a pebble. The smell of her. She quoted the divorcee: “‘I opened the door and they were on the floor.’ It rhymes! Then…I’m not sure, I think I heard, ‘with his hand between her thighs.’”
“His head between her thighs.”
The beast below had begun stirring. He quickly swivelled to the window, and stood, trying to concentrate on Cud Brown jaywalking to the honky-tonk bar. Girls! Girls! Girls!
When he turned back, she was bent over the desk, displaying, offering her behind, heart-shaped in a tight skirt. He couldn’t take much more. He reached behind the forensics texts and fumbled for his sixteen-year-old Laphroaig. Women didn’t usually unsettle him this way. Maybe it was the L’Eau d’Hiver-how did she know he fancied that scent, with its subtle sillage? He poured an ounce and downed it.
Rosy turned, caught him staring. “Thanks, I’ll have one.” She hoisted herself onto his desk, her skirt riding up. “At first, with your little earring and your morning rose and all, I thought you were gay. But you’re not, are you?”
He couldn’t hide the proof of that as he passed her a drink. His breathing had become irregular. Lance couldn’t bear not being in control. He was not in control now, the woman was exploiting his one great weakness-it was as if she’d known about it, the flaw that persuaded the Yard to quietly let him go.
She ignored the drink he sought to hand her, and without warning she grabbed his belt and pulled him on top of her, open wet mouth finding his, fingers sliding toward his groin.
In less than a minute her panties were dangling from her ankles, and Lance was between them. At the transcendent moment of merging, it came to him that he hadn’t locked the outer office door. This ugly realization was confirmed when Hank Chekoff walked into the inner office, red-faced and spitting bile as he yanked out his police issue Smith 9 mm.
“It’s her fault!” the coward screamed, and the burlesque queen died in a hail of bullets.
It had to be done. The author had lusted for Rosy but never loved her, and she must be buried in the graveyard of the stereotypical. The subtle essence of L’Eau d’Hiver was wasted on this femme pornographique, save it for a sidekick with cool, with class.
Widgeon, Chapter Nineteen, “The Credible Sidekick.” Ever since the pioneering Dr. Watson, the role of best supporting actor-the foil, the mirror against whom your hero humbly shines-has been crucial to the success of mystery series. If I may be allowed to drop the name of my own Constable Ed Marchmont, it was no easy task to create a totally humourless character and make him interesting!
Brian remembered to back up, then put his weary old Mac to sleep. He must gird himself for the office, for Cudworth Brown and his ill-meant apologies for his ill-mannered accusations. He cut up some coke for the road, poured it into a little envelope torn from a Craven A packet.
He didn’t feel especially bonkers now that he was off Xanax, which had done little, merely stabilized him. Cocaine seemed a more natural remedy, curative; he felt healthier after a snort or two, sharper, confident. And it helped cut down the drinking.
He shrugged into his coat and descended into the bowels of downtown, a gloomy day, a cold drizzle. An ATM on Georgia Street coughed up three hundred dollars. He was going through his account fast, that was the drawback of his mood enhancer of choice.