His phone twittered. He fumbled for it. His palms were sweaty, and the phone slid onto his takeout tortilla. “April? I mean, hello, Wentworth Chance here.”
A gruff male voice. “You know where I can get ahold of your boss, counsellor?” Hank Chekoff, out of the blue. Wentworth was on alert.
“Mainstreeting in the Cowichan Valley, I believe, and he’s not taking calls. What’s up?”
“I guess I better talk to you. This is serious.” He suggested his favourite doughnut shop, a Tim Hortons in the Park Royal Mall. That was a haul, all the way to West Vancouver, but Chekoff couldn’t make it over the bridge, he had a heavy day at the office. So Wentworth put on his helmet and pedalled off to the SeaBus.
As the boat planed across placid Burrard Inlet, he sat at the stern watching the spires shrink while fussing on the phone, trying in vain to locate Arthur. He was taut with apprehension, he couldn’t tell if Chekoff had good news or bad. Maybe Silent Shawn has confessed. Maybe Shiny Shoes has resurfaced as a suspect. Some crushing blow to the defence? The perp list had shrunk, the defence couldn’t afford to lose any more. Carlos was still a solid prospect, but Ebbe, Silent Shawn, Loobie, the Ottawa hit man, all were connected by the slimmest of threads.
At the North Shore terminal, he jumped back on his bike and lit out for the mall, weaving his way through tied-up traffic. A call to April to say he’d be late getting back. “I’ll be here,” she said.
Chekoff was at a table in the back, behind a newspaper. Coffee and a puffy doughnut shiny with glaze. Wentworth didn’t go to the counter, instead pulled a bottle of Zap from his pack.
Chekoff put down the sports section “Watch the game last night? ’Nucks are on a roll.”
As Wentworth tilted his Zap, a woman came over, the manager, he guessed. “Sir, can I ask if you bought that here?”
“Take a powder,” said Chekoff, lifting his lapel, showing his badge. She backpedalled away. “Okay, you get a head start on this. This here disclosure should come through the prosecutors, but they’re all up at Whistler. This sucks, what I got to tell you, believe me. Watching this trial unfold, I figured Cud for a square guy, a typical working-class Joe but with talent. Faults, yeah, maybe a few too many beers on a Saturday night, punches some guy’s lights out, that’s normal. I had actually bet on Carlos for perp, pinned my hopes on him in fact, the fucking sleazebag.”
He attacked his doughnut. Wentworth was holding his breath, waiting for the crippling blow.
“DEA had eyes on him last fall, an undercover sting in L.A. Carlos had a nice business going there for a while, but he went off the radar somewhere around New Year’s. That’s when he showed up here, I guess, for a week of fun and frolic at Lighthouse Lane. The border’s a sieve, illegals pour across it, hell, he could’ve strolled over and back ten times.”
Wentworth let out his breath, slumped. “Where was he on October 13, Hank?” End the suspense, damn it.
Chekoff set a portable DVD player on the table. Fuzzy figures, a restaurant. Coming into focus, a table of five men in casual open-necked gear, and there was Carlos Espinoza, laughing at some joke. Voices couldn’t be made out, too much restaurant clatter.
“Saturday, October 13. The Palm, it’s where the shitheads to the stars gather, lawyers, agents, managers, connections, dope suppliers. Takedown is today, right as we’re talking; it’ll be all over the TV. But they ain’t going to nick Carlos. Last trace we had, he was in Colombia.”
“You just learned this?”
“Yeah, they held on to it until the last minute. Didn’t want their case to be compromised, is the way they put it. They’re Americans. They’re secretive. They don’t tell us shit.”
Wentworth was back on the SeaBus, staring forlornly out at the downtown edifices shining gold against the lowering sun. He’d taken a long run to Lighthouse Lane. What had he expected to see there? Shawn Hamilton’s car? A pickup full of potted plants, that’s all he saw, the gardener unloading them, a gnarly old guy, not a perp, not Lady Chatterley’s lover.
Who was left? Cudworth Brown was who they had left. Cudworth Brown, who’d been jacking them around. Who didn’t deserve the sweat put into his case, who didn’t deserve Arthur Beauchamp. Maybe what he deserved was twenty to life.
Still no response from Arthur to increasingly urgent calls. Meanwhile, a DEA agent was on his way from Los Angeles to give evidence. This case was starting to look like a big fat loser. Is this how Wentworth’s hero will end his career, with a thud? Wentworth Chance, archivist and co-counsel, may have to commit hara-kiri as a gesture of loyalty.
Dodging rush hour traffic, he finally pulled up in front of the Leap of Faith Centre, a sandwich board proclaiming this was “Happy Hour with Pastor Blythe.” The cherry-cheeked proselytizer was on a platform with a mike, revving up two dozen wretches waiting for their soup. Wentworth slipped past their barker. “Have you given up hope, my friend?”
Everyone had fled the office but April, supposedly lonely April, braless in tight skirt and loosely hanging top. The kind they just pull over their heads, no zippers, just a little tie in front.
She looked up from a page of Brian’s composition. “Was he having an affair with his secretary?”
“Roseanne, yeah. But his marriage was already kaput.” When he told her of the latest disaster, she smiled in sympathy and said, “Fortune seldom repeats, troubles never occur alone.” Then she asked him out to dinner to celebrate the year of the rat.
He quivered as she took his arm, leading him down crowded Pender, Chinatown, its glitter and neon, the tourist restaurants and souvenir shops. He was thrilled by her closeness, the scent of her, of apple blossoms, but he felt awkward, still unsure of her intentions. She’d insisted on buying, wouldn’t go halfers, a modern woman. What did she want in return?
She took him down a street of gingerbread houses and tidy narrow yards, one of them lit by a beckoning strand of yellow lights leading to a back entrance. “It’s not legally zoned but has good feng shui.” A mom-and-pop operation, Wentworth guessed, known to the favoured few. “I live three doors down.” Pointing to a two-storey frame house. “Basement suite. Even better feng shui. Maybe you will come over after for a glass of wine?”
“Maybe…I mean yes, of course. I guess they don’t serve wine here.” A dumb comment, but he couldn’t think what else to say. It wasn’t like his heroic dreams, where he always had the right line. Did she actually ask him over for a glass of wine? Somehow he was going to blow it tonight, he was convinced.
“My landlord bottles his own Merlot, very pleasant, but potent.”
That’s how he’ll blow it, he’ll get drunk, throw up on her rug.
He followed her into a funky small salon, jade plants, a blackboard with chalked Chinese offerings. He listened politely to the sing-song Cantonese of mom and pop and April, but felt out of place, disoriented, as if catapulted into some bizarre fantasy, with possibilities dangerous and erotic, a place beyond imagining, beyond where daydreams dare to go.
He wasn’t sure what he was ordering, number two, something called ginger noodles. He was tongue-tied, grateful she carried the conversation, listened in a haze as she spoke of her long-held dream of fleeing the crowded East for Canada, where there was air to breathe. How she’d nearly botched this dream. How she was terrified she’d be deported after she spilled the truth to Arthur. How grateful she’d been when forgiven. Grateful to Wentworth, for taking her side.
That was true, he’d worked at it, entreated Brovak, pitched Arthur hard. Was that was this was about, was she paying off a debt? He worked clumsily with chopsticks, twirling his noodles. Finally, after a long, searching look at her, he asked, “What’s the catch?”
“What do you mean, Wentworth?”
“I mean why me? You seem interested in me. I don’t get it.”
“That’s what I like about you. You don’t get it. You’re not aware of what an attractive man you are. I’ve known many lawyers. I’ve not worked with many I liked. Most are full of themselves. You’re quite the opposite. So I want to celebrate with you. The year of the rat. It’s my birth sign.”