Boy From Under

The shutter opened, admitting a brief defining effulgence. The image, its form and colour, rendered digitally, Pauline and Rick’s passionate contortions captured in binary code. He zoomed in so his subjects filled the viewfinder. Wanted nothing else in the frame but their interlaced fingers, the arch of Pauline’s back, Rick’s muscular torso against her breast, the crook of an elbow.

Click. The camera blinked. Click. Click. Click.

He moved like a dancer. Graceful, choreographed steps around the edge of the bed, over the bed on a step ladder, sometimes crouching low, sometimes on tiptoe. He was part of the ritual, a spirit hovering at the stretched boundary of Rick and Pauline’s intimacies. The image catcher at work.

Pauline gasped, Rick held off a teetering moment, then succumbed, thrusting, grunting.

Done…

Victor retreated, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him. It had been an intense, draining session. Incredible, really!

Done! he celebrated, his chest tightening…

Inhale. Exhale. Let go, he breathed.

Quickly he reviewed the photos. Even in the camera’s miniature screen they looked good. “Very good,” he murmured, setting the Nikon aside on the kitchen counter and pouring himself a drink. “We’re done,” he couldn’t help repeating again, the affirmation a mantra that somehow brought him closer to the truth.

Behind the bedroom door, Pauline and Rick were getting dressed, their muted voices indecipherable. He allowed a brief smile. How like labourers they behaved, hurrying home after an evening shift. The ensuite door banged shut and a second later he heard the sound or water jetting through the pipes. A belt buckle clanked. The bed squeaked—Rick sitting on a corner of the mattress, pulling his shoes on.

Inhale. Exhale. Let go. 

As usual, Rick emerged first. He padded down the hall, left without a word. A few minutes later Pauline followed. “See ya tomorrow,” she waved, a pantomime of coyness.

“Yeah,” Victor answered. “I think that’s a wrap, Paul.”

She paused. He could feel her thoughts, expanding toward the verge of language, but she departed in silence too. Like a nun in communion with her own austere vision of a god.

He liked to be alone after their shoots. To acclimatize. Pauline never quite believed he didn’t derive some kind of prurient pleasure, filming the sweaty ballet of their love-making. Perhaps she was right. Maybe the trace scent of nausea that percolated into consciousness after their sessions hinted at a deeper reservoir of doubt about taking pictures of other people screwing. Maybe there was a pornographic angle to his art after all?

Inhale. Exhale. Let go. 

~~~

Victor’s back ached. He was in the half lotus position, legs folded under him, body slumped forward. He remembered falling asleep in his bed. Now he was in the closet… again.

What had awakened him? Not the discomfort of being stacked away like a folding chair (although he was acutely aware of the pain in his joints), or the full bladder, or his parched tongue. All that was normal. It was as if he’d heard a sound, but awakened too late to decipher its diminishing source. Perhaps I dreamt it. Whatever it was, he couldn’t resolve his uneasiness into meaningful form.

Listing sideways, he unfolded his legs on their rusty hinges and reached for the edge of the sliding door. Just as he was about to pull it open, he froze. What was that? He’d definitely heard something—could have sworn it. Fabric rustling against skin. Rick? Pauline? Absurd! They’d left hours ago, and he’d gone to bed. Toob? An intruder?

He closed his eyes and listened with intent.

Silence reasserted itself. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a predatory calm. Something had entered his room, a malevolent force that could not be exorcised by mere logic. The presence, whatever it was, affected the very gravity inside Victor’s apartment, the molecules of air becoming so heavy he could almost feel them colliding with his skin.

Crystal!

“Please! Please don’t!” she pleaded. Victor ripped open the closet door and tumbled out, prepared to wrestle with this thing seeping into his life—whatever it was. Panting, he scanned the grayscale contours of his room: tussled bedclothes, night tables, curtains. Nothing.

“Get out!” he shouted.

But the presence couldn’t hear him, and he realized too late that it hadn’t simply vanished, dissolved into hidden dimensions of consciousness, a virus infecting the history of who he was, the story of what he was about to become.

This is nuts, he wanted to shout. Instead, he summoned calm.

Inhale. Exhale. Let go.

The mantra washed over him, a sensation like gentle waves on a warm beach, lapping at a body in the sand.

~~~

Laurence placed the page he’d been reading facedown on the stack. On the final page the concluding paragraphs of Maria’s application quivered slightly in his hand. “Bitch! Stupid bitch!”

He’d been prepared for this, of course, but in the same way you might prepare for a plane to crash on take off. It had factored into his calculations, but only as a remote possibility.

Now it had happened and he had to do something about it.

A curt rap interrupted his cold fury. His study door opened a crack and Gordon stuck his head in. “Sir?”

“Get out!” Laurence shouted. “Call that stupid prick Wojek and get him over here. Tell him I’ve got some legal shit needs reading.”

Gordon retreated like a snail into its shell, the door clicking shut behind him. His footsteps padded down the hall. Wojek didn’t specialize in family law, but he would know who to get—aside from Victor Daly.

Victor Daly?

No.

If he hit Daly the cops would be all over it. They’d rifle through his pending cases, find the Family Court application, then come knocking—just the type of excuse they’re looking for to turn up the heat.

But Daly would pay… eventually.

What about Queen Bitch herself? He rocked back, toying with the notion. It would feel good, all right. To have her offed would almost be worth the dangerous publicity. He imagined the charade of a funeral, his stoic displays of mourning, the media hounding him, cops trying to trip him up…

Not yet.

A smeared reputation would do damage to both his legitimate and clandestine affairs.

Maria’s friend, Cathy? Laurence rejected the notion out of hand. The connection was too obvious, and she’d already been targeted once. A second hit, a kill, would have the cops and media swarming like bees. Besides, she wasn’t a big enough fish.

Aaron? If he really wanted to get back at Maria, he would abduct their son…

Abduct! He shot forward in his chair, hammered his fist into the desk top. “He’s my son, for Christ’s sake!”

Laurence sighed, raked his hair. Don’t be stupid. Snatching Aaron would be playing right into her hand, especially with Victor Daly in her court.

Don Pirelli? 

Laurence paused, staring at the signature concluding the PI’s summary report, which had been appended to Maria’s application. A lot of the most damaging information she’d held back… a tactical move, he guessed. My reputation dented, not trashed. The truly damning chips were contained in the full report, which she’d sent direct to him.

Pirelli? Laurence mulled the idea.

It made sense. There would be tactical and logistical considerations, of course. But the private investigator was close enough to Maria that she’d get the message; far enough removed from Laurence that the cops and media would not be able to connect the dots to him. A man like Pirelli would have lots of enemies; any one of them could be a suspect.

“Good,” Laurence decided.

Besides, Pirelli deserved to pay… nobody spies on Laurence Selkirk and lives to talk about it.

He placed the last page of his wife’s application on the stack, facedown.

~~~

Laurence was sure to respond to her Family Court challenge, and the thought of being alone in the house, waiting, unnerved her. She could have called Cathy, but her quirky best friend was just getting acclimatized to her restored apartment, after having spent the better part of a month camped out on Maria’s sofa. It didn’t seem right to drag her out of her own home again.

Well, that and I need some space, Maria thought. Cathy had been an annoying roommate. 

Well, that and… Laurence would probably threaten legal action. She wanted Victor in the room.

Well, that and… she liked him.

So she called. “I want some company. Wanna come over?”

“Sure.”

“Can you pick up a movie or something on your way? I need a distraction.”

“I’ll bring Toob.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“On my way,” he laughed.

Maria busied herself with a frantic round of cleaning and grooming. She checked in on Aaron, who was sleeping soundly; tidied the kitchen and living room; even made her bed, which she’d left a rumpled heap that morning. When the doorbell rang, she was in the bathroom freshening up. You’re pathetic! she grimaced into the mirror. Still, a pleasing jolt of adrenaline tingled, and she found herself smiling, grateful for a moment’s happiness.

“Hi,” Victor beamed when she opened the door.

My God! He arrived with a spectacular bouquet cradled in his left arm, a bottle of wine in his right. He twisted, shifting the flowers closer to her. She gathered in the colourful spray of lilies and orchids. “Where did you get these at this hour?” she wanted to know. “They’re beautiful!”

“Emergency order; special delivery.”

“Only a man who’s had to make spectacular amends on plenty of occasions could have pulled this off,” she teased.

Laughing, he followed her down the hall into the kitchen, where she laid the flowers on the counter and began trimming the stems. “Corkscrew?” he asked. She pointed to a drawer. He set to work beside her, peeling away the bottle’s plastic seal.

“How are you doing?”

She thought for a second. “Scared shitless. Other than that, fine.”

He leaned with his back against the counter, watching her arrange the flowers in a cut-glass vase.

She sighed. “I want to take that damn phone and throw it out the window,” she said. “It’s worse when he doesn’t call because the whole time I’m waiting for my mobile to go off.”

“He knows that, of course.”

“Of course.” She stood back, admiring her arrangement.

“What’s his game, then?”

“Silence speaks. He wants us to think he’s planning something other than talk as his answer.” She headed out of the kitchen, her floral arrangement held in front of her, an offering to the gods.

“That’s what he wants you to think… could be a bluff?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” She placed the flowers on the dining room table and faced him.

“Pardon?”

“You’re so used to people playing by the Queensberry Rules, you can’t imagine someone really not giving a shit. Laurence isn’t bluffing. He plays the game his own way. Usually it’s in his best interests to act like Mr. law-abiding, donation-making arichtocrat. But it is an act. If he figures he can get away with it, he’ll switch to the fast lane and break the world’s land speed record… and he’ll run over anyone in his path to get where he wants to go.”

“So, what’s he going to do?”

Maria shrugged. Then, before he could respond, she leaned forward, touched his cheek and kissed him, a sudden peck. Then, as if nothing at all had happened, she led the way into the living room. “He’s not going to let this go, I know that for sure,” she said over her shoulder.

Flustered, Victor followed, placing the wine bottle and glasses on the coffee table, then pouring as she snuggled into her end of the sofa.

“So, what have you got?” she wanted to know, eyeing the DVDs he’d placed on the coffee table. “No horror movies I hope.”

“Nothing but comedy… and one serious title.”

“Oh?”

He held up a DVD. On the cover a naked man and woman entwined in an erotic embrace. Following the arc of her back, the title said, Inside Out: The Gravity of Love. Reversed into the right-hand corner, in small spindly script, were the credits: Photographs by Victor Daly. Enactments: Pauline Anderson & Rick Blumfeldt.

“It’s a rough cut of the video that will be released at my upcoming show,” he explained. “You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to…”

“The show that includes live, public sex acts?”

“Well,” he looked surprised. “Not exactly public, and ‘sex acts’ might be an overloaded descriptor… but yes.”

“And are there live, sort-of-public sex acts depicted on the DVD?”

“All the images are stills,” he obfuscated.

“I think maybe I’ll go for a comedy,” she demurred.

~~~

He sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, Maria stretched out on the cushions behind him. She had chosen Little Miss Sunshine from his selection of rented movies. “She reminds me of me,” Maria said of Olive Hoover, the diminutive heroine of the story. Her hand, which had fluttered by in Victor’s peripheral vision, alighted. He pretended not to notice, let it settle the way you would a mythical bird that has somehow mistaken your shoulder for a safe perch, a place of refuge.

“This is pretty black humour,” she observed.

The Hoover family was wrestling the body of their dead, cocaine-snorting patriarch out of a hospital window.

“Painfully funny, I would say.” He sensed her approving nod. “You really, really want these people to get their acts together, but you don’t want them to change too much in the process because you love ‘em just the way they are…

“Does Olive Hoover remind you of you?”

“I never stood a chance of winning a child beauty pageant, if that’s what you mean,” she laughed. “I was a bit of an ugly duckling, to be honest, and clumsy as a puppy.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” he prodded.

“My family was poor, screwed up, but not in a way you could laugh at, like theirs. Abusive dad, alcoholic mom, addicted brother. Not the kind of stuff you can turn into farce. Just nasty and brutish. There was none of Little Miss Sunshine’s witabout my clan, but—like Olive—I was an innocent. I had no idea how weird we were until I was exposed to normal families. That was one of the first things I learned at school: how truly fucked up we were; then later, how fucked up the rest of the world was when it came to responding to dysfunction.”

“From there to the Taj – that’s a pretty steep climb.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I did my share of clawing and scratching…

“But the funny thing is the Taj has completed my circle in a way: I’ve ended up at the place I started, only on a higher plane. It’s easier being dysfunctional in a West Van mansion, but you’re still fucked up. You just get to choose from a broader range of antidotes, is all.”

“How did he abuse you, Maria?”

She thought about it a second or two. “Laurence is a master,” she said. “He doesn’t leave any visible scars, but his cuts are deep, if you know what I mean?

“My father used to come home drunk at least a couple of times a week. We’d scurry like cockroaches into our corners and hope to God he wouldn’t notice us. He worked on the docks. Hated every second of it and took it out on us. I guess he figured we were the reason he had to keep his shitty job, so we should feel some of his pain. When he was in his early teens my brother confronted him once. Dad beat the crap out of him. He was strong as a bull and just as stupid. But at least with him you could figure things out. We learned to cope. I don’t even hate him anymore. That would be like hating a snarly old dog you’ve lived with for twenty-odd years. He’ll be dead soon anyway, so who cares?

“Laurence is a different animal altogether. With him nothing’s predictable. If you stood back and analyzed, I suppose patterns would emerge. My guess is you’d see a progression to ever more complicated and sadistic modes of domination, a never ending quest to get a stranglehold on everyone around him and claim their successes as his own… their lives as his own. That’s Laurence.”

“Typical profile of a tyrant-narcissist.”

“You got it. The Calvin Klein version of Idi Amin Dada, a designer makeover of Saddam Hussein. He doesn’t want me back because he loves me; he wants me back because I’m one of his possessions, and for me to remove myself from his house is a form of theft. Same with Aaron…”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Still playing the solicitous solicitor?” she teased. “Yeah, I’m sure.

“If it was just me, I wouldn’t be so worried. It’s Aaron I’m afraid for. Laurence will bend him to his will. He won’t let Aaron grow up like a normal kid. He’ll force him to become a mini-Laurence – an Armani thug. Damned if I’m going to let that happen. Aaron is beautiful. He’s sensitive, intelligent, kind. Once Laurence gets through with him he’ll be a heartless moron who calculates every move in equivalents of power and wealth… either that or an addict, trying to blotto the ghost of his psychopath father with booze, floozies and drugs. Laurence will kill the magic in my child.”

~~~

Aaron had obviously awakened and come looking for his mother. He’d drifted from his room to her empty bed, then into the living room, where Maria had fallen asleep on the sofa. Now the boy didn’t know what to do because a strange man, slumped in the half-lotus position, blocked his way. Victor feared that if he moved, even to console Aaron or let him by, it would be like a terrifying sphinx suddenly coming to life. So he pretended to be sleeping, an inert obstacle the boy could figure some way around.

He could feel Aaron’s intense, gleaming eyes upon him. Victor knew the boy’s mind was racing, formulating explanations, coming to conclusions. The ghostly form floated toward the end of the sofa, by Maria’s feet. That’s it, Victor coaxed, hoping his thoughts would somehow reassure the waif, willing himself to become… non-existent, invisible… gone…

I’ve done this before, he thought. Tried to disappear, like the image on a TV screen when you switch it off, vanishing into its diminishing point of light.

He shivered…

Emanon shivered, as if someone had injected ice water into the mesh of arteries and veins that clung to his heart and brain. A jolt so intense, it stopped his breathing.

I’ve been here before!

But he couldn’t remember the place, except as a dimension of fear and terror. His eyes widened, heart pounded. He was in a closet.

The Closet, he corrected.

Nora and Richard did not exist in this place. He did not exist as their adopted son, a graduate of Britannia Secondary School, then the University of British Columbia. This closet opened into another world. The hems of anonymous garments brushed against him. They seemed to be gathering round, a tribe of nameless, faceless giants come to smother him in his dark prison.

Terrified as he was, he didn’t try the door. It had to remain shut. The best he could do was make himself very small. Some air came in through a chink underneath. If he pressed his face down he would be able to see something of the world outside—shadows moving through spectral light.

Sounds infiltrated his prison, grunts and moans. Voices. Her voice and another’s—a gruff voice that made him cringe with fear and rage…

Victor convulsed.

In an instant his phantom world imploded, echoes and mist absorbed by the surrounding dark. He was back in Maria’s living room. Behind him, the boy had crawled onto the sofa and wriggled up into his mother’s arms. Victor sensed the movement, the heat of Aaron’s small body. Maria shifted, cuddling her son in her half sleep. “Hello love,” she soothed.

Then all three of them became very still, Victor praying his episode had passed unnoticed, that Aaron would not connect ‘weird’ to the list of adjectives applicable to the man who hoped to be his friend. He waited until he thought Maria and Aaron were asleep, then edged quietly away, getting up to go.

“Good night,” Maria whispered.

Her eyes shimmered in the dark.

“Good night,” he said. “I’ll call.”

~~~

Don Pirelli rinsed his coffee mug and put it back in the cupboard. He took one last look round the kitchen. Satisfied everything was in order, he headed out into the hall. Grabbing his jacket from the closet and pulling it on, he checked the left breast pocket to make sure his wallet was there then patted his right hip pocket. His car keys jingled. He stepped out of the apartment and closed the door after himself. At 6:30 in the morning the exterior hallway was deserted—it was still too early for most people to be heading for work. He punched the elevator button and waited impatiently.

Work? He hated the word. Life’s a calling.

Speaking of which… he’d received a strange call the night before from a woman, who thought her husband was about to skip out on her. She wanted surveillance right away, beginning that morning. So he’d agreed to meet extra early at a greasy spoon where he sometimes breakfasted. She claimed her husband was violent and unscrupulous. She was afraid.

Pirelli didn’t like taking on clients without due diligence, he’d look into the woman’s background and her would-be errant husband’s later. Take care of the preliminaries then get a contract and retainer in place. Not his preferred way of doing business, but… she sounded seriously stressed. Like someone was holding a gun to her head. There’s been something strange about their conversation, though, a troubling, off key note. In his years as a cop, then a PI, Pirelli had learned the timbre of fear, its range from anger, to the clench of terror, to outright panic. The woman’s voice didn’t match the sketchy profile she’d given.

She’s holding something back he thought.

The elevator door rumbled open and he stepped in. It swallowed him whole, then lurched into free fall, disgorging him at the P1 level. He hurried through the underground to his grey Chev Cavalier, a car he’d chosen for its plainness. Who would notice a vehicle like that? You could tail someone for hours and the Cavalier wouldn’t register. It blended into every background. He climbed in, latched the seatbelt and turned the key in the ignition.

Levering himself with his right hand against the passenger headrest, he twisted round to navigate out of the stall. He grunted, acutely aware of his middle age stiffness. Get a partner. A young guy, an apprentice. Easing off the brake, he edged the car backward.

There’d been something else about his phone exchange with the woman that troubled Pirelli, a discordant note, like the off-key instrument in an orchestra. Then he remembered: she didn’t whisper. Didn’t even lower her voice. But she said she was calling from home, that her sleaze-bag husband was sleeping upstairs. Even if there was no chance of being overheard people adopted a conspiratorial tone in situations like that; Sandra had sounded more like a nervous actor trying to get her lines right than a woman who was scared of her husband. The words were okay, the story plausible, but there had been a blandness to her tone, a resignation out of sync with her supposed situation.

Was she being coached?

A shiver ran up his spine. Spooked, he jammed on the Cavalier’s brakes and jerked round in his seat just in time to see a gloved hand, a gun. He never saw the muzzle flash. The bullet slammed into his temple, burrowing through flesh and bone like a voracious insect. Two more bullets followed in quick succession. Before the impacts blossomed into pain Don Pirelli slumped over, dead. His Cavalier idled backward until it bumped into a concrete pillar on the opposite side of the parkade.

~~~

“This better be good,” Cathy took up a spot on the sofa. “Television before noon does irreparable brain damage.”

“Sorry, hon, but the thought of watching it on my own gives me the creeps.”

Did Victor leave the DVD intentionally? Or had he been afraid to rummage around in the dark, possibly waking up Aaron? She couldn’t say. Either way, there it was on the coffee table, Inside Out: The Gravity of Love.

What’s to be afraid of?

Maria couldn’t say, but the thought of watching the DVD on her own unnerved her. So she invited Cath to the preview… As a witness. Someone to confirm the viewing of Victor’s ‘ritual enactments’, which seemed somehow obligatory, had been conducted in the right way. The right frame of mind.

“Shove it in. Let’s go,” Cathy ordered. “My shift starts in an hour.”

Maria opened the plastic case and slid the DVD into the player. “It’s meant to be sold at the Inside Out exhibit itself,” she explained. ”It’s explicit without being pornographic… I hope,” she said, repeating Victor’s contrite, unconvincing prelude.

How can you make a distinction like that? What nuances of light and composition made one image pornographic, another art? She couldn’t say for sure, but the pictures in Victor’s apartment? They’re art, surely?

Thought so at the time, she remembered.

“Come on! Roll it!”

Startled, Maria shook off the spell of soft music, tinkling wind chimes, shushing trees – the DVD’s overture. One of the menu  icons said “Intro,” another “Back Story,” the third “Inside Out.” She selected the introduction.

“Skip that!” Cathy objected.

“What’s wrong?”

“I want to see the show raw. I don’t want to be exposed to a bunch of bafflegab beforehand. You’re procrastinating, babe. Go with it.”

Sighing, Maria moved the selector over Inside Out and clicked. The opening screen dissolved. At first Maria couldn’t make out the emerging image. Buttocks, she thought. But just as pattern recognition was taking shape, the viewer was drawn outward and the composition turned out to be the crook of an elbow.

“Ha, ha,” Cathy laughed.

Cleavage turned out to be the seams between toes; what might have been the base of a penis, a thumb entangled in hair. Image after image turned out not to be what you’d expected.

Cathy cheered.

“What are you on about?” Maria complained.

“It’s brilliant! What’s pornography and what isn’t? What’s erotic and what’s not? He’s taking mundane appendages of human anatomy, getting us all worked up because we think they’re erotic—or pornographic if you’re a prude—then he changes perspective to show they’re not erotic at all or that any bit of anatomy can be erotic. They’re elbows, toes, thumbs! Don’t you see? It’s wonderfully understated.

“Hilarious!”

The transitions continued, but morphed into movie clips of real erotica. The ‘enactors’ were captured in pose after pose. Hips, genitals, breasts, hands moving over satin contours of skin, tongues, eyes… Maria lost track. Victor had created a kaleidoscope of imagery, the nuances of love-making captured in a thousand facets, dissolves and zooms.

“Exquisite!” Cathy sighed.

“But live, on stage?” Maria wondered, remembering the ballet of sexual acts promised in the Inside Out review Cathy had shown her.

Cathy shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because when you get right down to it love-making is private, Cath. Put it on stage and something that’s wonderful becomes… well… tawdry.”

“Let me get this straight,” Cathy bristled. “Pictures are okay, but a live performance of two people making love would be gross?”

“Well, no! Not gross. Intrusive is a better word.”

“Huh? How so? These are consenting adults here, and nobody’s being forced to watch. So whose privacy or ideology is being intruded on?”

“Everyone’s!” Maria startled herself with her own vehemence. “Love-making is a sort of rite. I didn’t know that until now, so I suppose I have Victor to thank for the insight.

“Photos are okay. They capture exquisite moments. A movie’s okay, if it’s sensitively edited and produced. But live, on stage?”

“So, you’re saying these ‘exquisite moments’ would be degraded if the sweaty exertions of achieving them are revealed?”

Maria felt trapped. Resented Cathy’s haughty tone.

“I guess so.”

“Likewise, the beauty of the Sistine Chapel would be ruined if we ever learned how many workers had been crushed to death in its making? And our designer lifestyles would be marred if we were ever forced to look at what goes on in Third World sweat shops?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“You can’t just pick the highlights and say something’s beautiful, Mar. You have to honour the gristle and bone. The tedium. The dirt. The oppression. The work. Otherwise art becomes a lie, a form of propaganda like the gorgeous imagery of television ads and commercial packaging.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Maria snapped. “For me, art reveals beauty and horror, not the drab interludes.”

Cathy smiled, cunningly. “You’re beautiful when you’re angry,” she said. “And a bit of a horror, too.”

“Shut up!”

~~~

 The murder had been all over the morning news: man killed in an underground parkade in the West End, not far from Victor’s place. Police hadn’t released any details, not even a name, but information ferreted out by reporters indicated the man had been shot in his car and that the murder had all the traits of a ‘targeted killing’.

It wasn’t until early afternoon, while he was doing some research at the Vancouver Public Library, that he opened a tweet identifying the victim as Don Pirelli. He called Vanessa Kormer and told her to cancel his appointments for the rest of the day.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Good question. “Yeah, I’m alright,” he brushed it off, then disconnected.

Scrolling down to Maria’s number he jabbed the call button, sighing impatiently as her phone rang. “Hi-ya,” she said.

“Can I come over?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Tell you when I get there.”

“Victor?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen,” he said. “Gotta go.”

He gathered up the clutter of Crystal Doer clippings he’d printed off and shoved them into his briefcase. There were five or six more microfilms to scan, but they’d have to wait. He rewound the roll already threaded into the reader and placed it in the return tray, then he dogtrotted to the elevator. Five minutes later he was weaving his way down Richards, making for the Burrard Bridge.

He squeezed the steering wheel, maneuvering aggressively through traffic, the world streaming by like an abstract movie, a gaudy montage of buildings and billboards that seemed almost transparent, a composition of mist that might be blown away by the next puff of wind.

Don Pirelli dead! Maybe someone else had it in for the detective. Maybe it was a coincidence? A man in Pirelli’s position would have lots of enemies. Victor was still sifting possibilities when he pulled up to Maria’s place.

His heart sank.

“Jesus, Victor!” she sobbed, meeting him at the front door. “I knew something was going to happen. I knew it!”

He wrapped his arms around her, held her tight. “I’m sorry Maria. I’m so sorry,” he said, his words of consolation dropping like stones into a very deep well.

~~~

He set the teapot and cups down on the patio table, where they usually retired on his visits. The hours since Don’s murder had passed in excruciating slow motion, and she appreciated his companionship. They gave some definition to her guilt ridden existence, like familiar landmarks on a highway.

“You okay?” he asked.

Maria nodded, wiping her red rimmed eyes with her sleeve. Course not, if by ‘okay’ you meant same as before. As if life were a place setting that could be perfectly arranged every time you came back to the table. Victor had seen her symptoms often enough: a client bearing up. But she’s not just another client, is she?

“It’s pathetic, really,” she said thoughtfully. “You look at Laurence and think of him as a violent, evil man. And he is. A prick of the first order. But he’s also a little boy, frightened of losing mum and ready to kill to make sure he doesn’t lose his place in the pecking order.”

“What’s his mum got to do with anything?”

He poured the tea. A breeze tickled the cedar hedge, making it swish and dance.

“That’s what we wives and girlfriends become, isn’t it: surrogate moms. I think if you scratch the surface of patriarchy, you’ll find a bunch of old men who suffer from prolonged separation anxiety. Mummy is the central figure in their lives, so instead of letting go, they replace her with the wife then, to make sure they never lose her again, lock their darlings up, beat them if the spousal unit dares question the arrangement, stone them to death if a rule gets broken.”

“You don’t think we’re all like that, do you?”

“Some men have evolved,” she allowed. “But the instinct is still there, coiled in the gut.”

He looked astonished. “You think I’ve got a cobra coiled inside me?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you?”

“No fair!” he protested, cheered by her wisp of a smile.

“Don Pirelli wasn’t like that,” she said. “I really liked him.”

“He struck me as a man’s man.”

“A big, friendly bear,” she smiled. “I didn’t know him very long, but some people’s energy you can read right away. His animal spirit was bear. I picture him shambling through a forest, swatting aside bees when he wants some honey, shoving his way through the underbrush, not giving a damn what anybody thinks.”

“Bears have their nasty streaks. The males can be snarly bastards.”

She frowned. “He might have been like that, but I never saw it. I saw an honest, gentle man. There was no pretence with Don. He was protective without ever being possessive…” Maria held up her hand to stop Victor’s objection. “I know,” she continued. “I was just a client. But it never felt like that. He genuinely cared in his gruff way.

“I think he would have been like that with a lover.”

“Did you ever feel that way toward him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She sipped her tea. “But sometimes I do size men up. It’s a sort of game we women… or at least this woman plays. What would he be like as a lover? As a husband? As a father?

“Do guys do that?”

Victor looked thoughtful. “This guy doesn’t,” he said.

“You stop at: What would she be like in bed!”

“No fair again!”

“Don’t be ridiculous again.” She dismissed his plea with a wave of her hand. “You’re normal, aren’t you?”

“And do you like men who achieve the sublime stature of ‘normal’?”

“I would have been disappointed if Don had showed the symptoms.”

“Symptoms!”

She sipped her tea. Victor couldn’t help feeling flustered, happy… and guilty. Don Pirelli’s dead, for Christ’s sake.

The phone interrupted them. Maria glanced at it, scowled, let it jangle… Victor gestured, pointing at himself. She nodded. He snatched it up from the patio table before the answering service kicked in. “Hello,” he barked.

For a surprised second Laurence didn’t reveal himself. “Is Maria there?” he asked at last.

“She’s not taking calls right now.”

“Oh? And who might you be? Her personal secretary?”

“Her lawyer actually, Victor Daly.”

“Ah, Mr. Daly. A lawyer who does house calls! Now I understand even better why you couldn’t accept my request for your services. You got a better offer at half the price, eh?”

“Your wife has suffered a shock, Mr. Selkirk. I’m here to help her.”

“What’s happened?” Laurence demanded. “Is Aaron alright?”

“Yes, Aaron is fine.”

Maria shook her head sadly.

“And Maria?”

“Maria will be fine, too. But, like I said, she’s in shock right now.”

“Could you please be a bit more precise, Mr. Daly,” Laurence griped “What’s happened.”

“A friend of Maria’s was killed this morning. I’m checking up to see if she’s okay. Now if you don’t mind, perhaps you could call back another time.”

“What friend?” Laurence blustered. “I’ll remind you Maria’s my wife. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Victor hesitated, then said, “The gentleman’s name was Don Pirelli…”

“The man who was shot in the West End?” Laurence sarcastically feigned shock.

Nothing provable or even admissible in court, Victor thought, which made the taunting all the more infuriating.

“Yes,” he said. “You do know who Don Pirelli was, don’t you?”

“Do I?” Laurence allowed a few seconds of dead air. “My God! Not that detective Maria hired!”

“Yes, the same. It’s not a common name, Don Pirelli.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m a bit surprised you hadn’t made the connection, that’s all. I mean, how many Don Pirellis are there who are private investigators in this city? It’s been mentioned in the news reports that Mr. Pirelli was a PI, hasn’t it?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. I’m a busy man, Mr. Daly. Sometimes connections don’t get noticed when they’re not important.”

“Well, Mr. Pirelli was important to Maria, and that’s why she can’t come to the phone right now.”

“Put her on please,” Laurence demanded.

“I’ve told you already, she’s not ready to talk to anyone at the moment.”

“Then let her tell me so. I want to talk to my wife, sir, not her overpaid lawyer—you are being overpaid aren’t you, even at half your usual rate, which makes me wonder where Maria is getting her money.”

“Arrangements between me and my client are between me and my client, Mr. Selkirk.”

“It’s something I need to think about, though. Isn’t it, Mr. Daly? My son has been abducted by her. Maria has a limited list of skills in her resume. How is she earning the money she needs to provide for my son and pay the fees of one of the most overpriced family lawyers in Vancouver? It’s a fair question, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s any of your business, Mr. Selkirk.”

“Ah! Lawyer-client privilege, Mr. Daly. Is that what you’re claiming?”

“Like I said, it’s none of your business.”

“Good god! You’re a lawyer, man. Surely you are aware no stones can be left unturned in these types of situations.”

“Oh, I’m very aware of the muck that exists under stones, Mr. Selkirk…”

Maria gestured angrily for the phone.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Victor said.

“You want to talk to him?” he whispered.

“If I refuse, he’ll just call back after you’re gone. He’s like a wasp. I might as well smack him right now and get it over with.”

“And risk getting stung? You sure?”

She gestured again, with a resigned smile.

“I think you’ve been stung enough times for one session, don’t you?”

~~~

“Hello.”

“Ah! So kind of you to accept my call, dear, under the circumstances.”

Maria let his bland condolence settle, then said: “What do you want?”

“I want to end this nonsense and come to terms.”

“What nonsense are you referring to, Laurence?”

“Our separation. Me not having access to my son. That nonsense.”

“You want to end it, do you? How?”

“Might I suggest a mediator, Maria. If we can’t achieve a reconciliation at least we can engineer amicable terms of separation, don’t you think? Then get on with our lives.”

Opening move, she figured. Claim the high ground… Next? Let the goading begin. Maybe he could get her to hang up, prove her unwillingness to make even the slightest effort to work things through; or better yet, get her raving like a mad woman…

Is he recording this?

“I don’t think we’re ready for mediation yet, Laurence,” she parried.

“Aaron is our son, Maria. Yours and mine. I don’t think I’m asking for a compromise when I suggest that as a starting point. At least we can come to term on that.”

Careful. Maria clamped her mouth shut.

“What grounds could you possibly have for limiting access?” he pressed. “This is ridiculous, can’t you see? The whole thing will backfire. You’ll be the one who ends up with limited access, having proven yourself intransigent and spiteful… trying to punish a man’s alleged indiscretions by denying him access to his son… no judge is going to buy that.”

“Alleged!” she laughed. “I think we can safely say the evidence of your philandering and criminal activities constitutes more than allegations, wouldn’t you? Any reasonable person exposed to the record would have to conclude you are what you are, Laurence. And any mother would want to protect her son from the kind of behaviour and business dealings you indulge in…”

“Has he been coaching you?”

“Who?”

“Your lawyer friend, Mr. Daly.”

“Lawyer-client privilege, dear. You should know better than to even ask.”

“So Mr. Daly says. What kind of privileges has he been granted, my dear?”

“Fuck you, Laurence,” Maria said sweetly.

Victor rolled his eyes and made a slashing motion across his throat.

“Strike a nerve, did I?”

“I’ll grant you that, Laurence. You’re good at striking nerves.”

“Just be reasonable and all this can stop.”

“All what?”

He hesitated.

“It was you, wasn’t it? I’m not saying you actually pulled the trigger, but…”

“What are you talking about?”

“You hire people to do your dirty work, Laurence, but the blood and guts end up on your shirt,” Maria said, calmly. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“If you’ve got something to accuse me of, come right out with it,” he challenged. “What I do know is things are going to heat up if you don’t come to your senses. Do you think for a second I will allow you to separate me from my son?”

“We’ll see you in court then.”

“Maria!”

“Do you think for a second I’m going to knuckle under to your gangster tactics?” she seethed.

“Gangster tactics?”

“Oh, and you should know that any future conversations between me and you will be recorded. I want this harassment to end. In future, you can contact me through my lawyer.”

“What?”

“Goodbye, Laurence.”

She cut him off. Smiled at Victor, who shook his head grimly. “Thanks for that,” he said.

~~~

Al Periconi stared at the sheet covered body for a long time, then nodded. The Coroner’s attendant folded down the shroud. “Shit!” he gasped. It was Don alright… “Shit!” Al wanted to kill somebody then and there. Smash something, anything in this hard, sterile place. There were times you just hated the whole fucking species. He nodded, and the attendant covered the mess that had been his brother’s face.

Who did this? Why?

The painful truth ached inside Al’s flesh, inside every cell. That’s my little brother laid out on the table—the ‘white sheep’ of the Periconi clan. Al had never minded Don’s ‘special’ status. He’d been closer to Don than anyone else in the family, and the first to predict the youngest Periconi would one day refuse his place in ‘the business’. But not even he had guessed that Don would become a cop and move across the continent.

A Periconi becoming a cop! Al allowed a grim smile, remembering the shock waves that shook the family tree. Their father never really got over it. A priest they could have accepted, forgiven; a legit businessman, perhaps, because he could maybe have worked with them… as far as we Periconis are concerned, business is what we’re all about.

But a cop!

As if that wasn’t bad enough: a Periconi becoming a Pirelli! Mother, who had perhaps harboured a secret pride at her son going legit, screamed when she learned Don had changed his name. But he’d been straight up about it: “You can’t be a Periconi—not a real Periconi —and a cop,” he’d explained, “not even as far away as Vancouver.” They almost disowned him… Almost. But it was hard to stay mad at Don. He was too nice a guy. Too nice to be a real Periconi, Al had to agree. They’d made their peace, and he brokered a rapprochement with the rest of the family.

Then Don surprised them again, taking early retirement and setting up as a PI. Al had never figured that one out. Don loved his job.

“I know too much,” was all he ever said about it.

“Too much about what?”

“Can’t say, or you’ll know too much.”

The special one. Don needed protecting, not because he wasn’t tough – anybody with any brains would think twice before taking on Don. But he wasn’t mean. Didn’t have it in him. And unless you were mean, downright vicious, you gave your opponent a split second benefit of doubt. He’d trusted; now he’s dead.

Somebody will pay for this. Al glared at his brother’s shroud… eyes for an eye, teeth for a fucking tooth.

First, though, he had memorials and a funeral to plan. They’d hold one in Vancouver, mainly to see who shows up; another in Montreal, where Don still had ex-lovers and friends who’d want to pay their last respects.

Don had made it known he wanted to be interred on the West Coast. Fuck that, Al Periconi declared. You’re coming home, little brother, but whoever did this is going to be buried here—alive if I can arrange it… one piece at a time.

~~~

Most of all, Victor wanted to be with Maria. But she’d shooed him out of her house, made it clear she’d be fine. “Thanks for being here,” she said. “I needed someone.”

But now, she wanted time alone ‘…to sort out my grief.”

“You’ve got other things to do, no?” she said.

Yes, he had to admit.

He would have dropped them, too, but Maria wouldn’t allow it.

“Call tomorrow. We can talk.” She cut him off.

“I love you.” The declaration surprised Victor, as if a spasm at the core of him had forced the avowal out before he could shut his mouth. It escaped like a panicked bird flying out an opened window. “How unprofessional of me,” he added as a humbled footnote.

Maria smiled. For the second time in their lives, she caressed his cheek and kissed him lovingly. “Call tomorrow,” she said.

So he carried on with his evening arrangements: a conference with Pauline and Rick at The Naked Truth Gallery, where they were scheduled to meet owner Knute Nielsen to talk through the final details of Inside Out.

“From master painters to masturbators,” was how Nielsen described his strange mix of clientele. A skinny, chain-smoker with watery blue eyes and a mop of sandy, grey hair, Knute knew nothing about art and less about running a retail business. What he did know was that war would be less likely if the world went naked; therefore, nudism was a movement that needed backing; therefore, the universe needed a place like the Naked Truth Gallery, even if it didn’t turn many heads or a profit. “I’m retired, eh,” he explained. “Got all the time in the world to sit here and greet the weirdos—present company excluded.”

“You’re too kind,” Pauline retorted, coolly.

He bobbed his head and grinned, accepting her sarcasm graciously.

“The space is barely big enough,” Victor launched into his presentation after shooting her an annoyed glance.

Knute had agreed to the Inside Out show because it matched the Naked Truth’s mission, and because Victor’s quirky notoriety would be good for business. He’d exhibited Victor’s photos several times before, and even managed to sell a few of them “to clients who were ready to reach into their pockets for money instead of something else.” In truth, he was perilously close to  declaring ‘financial if not moral bankruptcy’. He needed to bring in some paying customers. Inside out might be his last, best grasp for survival.

“Gawd!” Pauline groaned, rolling her eyes. Apparently, the abstract nudist art presently on display was not to her liking.

Knute smiled as if she’d just dropped a compliment.

“The static display will be set up here.” Victor paced off the front portion of the gallery. “The photos will be hung around the perimeter, and screen printed banners will be dropped throughout the space. Viewers will have to make their way through a forest of imagery.” Excited, he hustled across the floor, brushing aside imaginary banners. “At the very centre of this forest, in a little clearing, the video display will be set up. The effect will be almost like a camp fire in a wilderness of imagery…”

“A reference to the primitive urge?” Pauline guessed, still out of sorts.

“Yes!” Knute seconded, excited by the concept.

“How will people find the canapés and drinks?” Rick wanted to know.

“I want them to come face to face with the art,” Victor forged ahead. “To have to work their way toward it, bushwhacking. They will be glad to take a breather in this sanctuary space, this clearing where the video rendition of the show will be playing. People will tend to congregate here, but it will get too crowded and they’ll be forced to re-enter the erotic hinterland…”

He paused, expecting some comment. But all three of them were staring at him as if he was a species of mad scientist, enunciating principles beyond comprehension.

“The forest of imagery and light will shade quickly into darkness right about here.” He scuttled toward the back of the gallery. “They will experience a feral sensation, like what it is to be nocturnal animals hunted and hunting. In another clearing, right about here…” he strode deeper into the Naked Truth Gallery. “You two will be performing. The audience will never get a clear view of the live show. They will see splintered images of your love enactments through the surrounding banners, but won’t be able to get any closer because an encircling barricade will keep them from interfering.”

“Interfering?” Pauline echoed.

Victor hesitated. Should he explain the set up fully? Can I trust her to understand? He sighed, then steeled himself. “The second grove serves two purposes, actually,” he began. “It establishes a zone of privacy around you two. The fractured imagery will intrigue viewers, but the essence of your intimacy will remain concealed. It won’t be exposed to public view except in flashes.”

“And how will these flashes be achieved?” Rick asked.

“You will be strobe-lit from above and the pulses will radiate out through the spaces between the hangings.”

“Amazing!” Knute cried.

“Sounds like hot, sweaty work,” Rick complained.

“We’ll figure out some way to keep you cool.”

“I don’t need any techie apparatus to keep me cool,” Rick bragged.

“Idiot!” Pauline slapped his shoulder. “So, what’s the second purpose?” she wanted to know.

“What?”

“You said the ‘grove’ would serve two purposes. What’s the second?”

“Oh! Yes. Well, the truth of the matter is, an unobstructed view of human mating has… how shall I put it… awkward moments. It’s not really all that graceful to watch. By partially shrouding and strobing your movements I think we will be able to make a statement celebrating the art of love without taking away from the dignity of what is essentially a private act.”

Victor winced inwardly, expecting a full-blown tantrum.

Pauline only looked at him thoughtfully, then stroked his cheek with her slender, white fingers. “You are a genius,” she announced. “I hate to admit it, but I didn’t know how we were going to go about this part of the exhibit without looking stupid. You’re brilliant!”

She drifted over to the spot he had chosen for the second clearing. Standing in its exact centre, she rotated slowly through 360 degrees, an expression of childish awe lighting her face. “It’s beautiful, man,” she said. “It’s going to be so fucking beautiful!”

“Why d-don’t we d-do it in the ro-o-oad,” Rick chimed in.

~~~

Vague recollections of The Naked Truth Gallery, Don Pirelli murdered in an underground parkade, Maria’s lament, Laurence’s snide voice extruded through the apparatus of a mobile phone network… He drifted in and out of consciousness, aware of a dark, irresistible influence—the voracious gravity of a black hole.

He’d worked on the Inside Out exhibit for a while, then gone to bed, exhausted and alone. He woke up on his side, puzzled by the glare of sunlight seeping under the closet door.

As usual, he had no idea how he’d got there. All he knew was that Larry might buzz from downstairs any minute, summoning him to Saturday morning roller-hockey. That would set Toobee off, barking like a banshee.

Get up! 

His inert limbs refused, the panic of sleep paralysis taking hold.

Inhale. Exhale. Let go.

Fighting would only make things worse.

If you struggle, you lose.

Harmless. That’s how it was described online. A temporary condition between sleeping and waking, meant to prevent us from flailing about, injuring ourselves during REM sleep. You’re awake, the dream has evaporated, but you’re still paralyzed, your brain become a conscious, willing stone—your body dead weight.

Harmless? Easily said, but to him it always felt like the condition might become permanent. Then what?

Inhale. Exhale. Let go.

Channel consciousness into a point of will.

The bleed of light under the closet door connected to a familiar reality that must still exist on the other side: his rumpled bed, the patterned light slanting in through Venetian blinds, the crystalline structures of the downtown peninsula that would appear if he raised those blinds, the glittering ocean.

All of that was out there, if he could only make remembering real…

Inhale. Exhale…

Quiet! she hushed urgently. Quiet! He’s coming!

He’d been sleeping beside her, curled up in the warmth of her embrace. He remembered vividly now that he never wanted to move beyond the bounds of her encircling limbs. Had he really experienced those sensations, or were they dream-fragments?

He couldn’t say.

But she was real.

He knew the resonance of her breathing and the throb of her heart. Her blood coursed through him, as if the umbilicus was still attached…

Umbilicus?

He stumbled on the word. Why these memories if it wasn’t true? Why this irrefutable recall of lying next to her, enfolded in her arms as if time was an extension of her womb?

Why the panic as she bundled him into the closet.

No! he’d protested.

But she had no choice. He had no choice.

He wanted desperately to escape, but paralysis held him fast. The stagnant, cloistered air of the closet permeated flesh and bone.

Quiet! He’s coming!

Who’s coming!

Then he remembered the closet door banging shut behind him, the grunts and moans from the other side.

Let me out!

The intercom rasped down the hall and Toobee went nuts.

Still, Victor could not move. Am I dead? he wondered.  He had to ask, because even with Toobee choking in a territorial frenzy, and Larry persistent as a horsefly, he couldn’t break the spell, imagined the police arriving, bursting into the apartment, approaching grimly when they noticed Toobee sniffing at the sliding door.

“No!” What about Maria? His parents? Friends? Clients? What about the Naked Truth Gallery and Inside Out? He homed in on the crescendos of Toob’s frantic barking, which merged into long, harrowing wails. Strained toward those siren calls, trying to move an eyelid, a finger, a toe. His whole future teetered on the fulcrum of a moment…

Suddenly his right index finger twitched and the spell released him, gasping like a man emerging from the ocean depths, sucking in the reviving air.

Rolling aside the door, Victor struggled to his feet, staggered down the hall, punched the intercom button. “Okay!” he barked. “I heard ya!”

“Christ, man, you’re hard to get up these days.”

“Come on up,” Victor said, buzzing Larry in.

~~~

Larry wolfed a forkful of western omelet and hash browns, swilled the partially masticated mass down with a gulp of coffee and emerged grinning.

“Come on! It wasn’t that funny,” Victor griped.

“It was too funny, man. He shoots! He scores!”

That morning Victor had sealed his reputation as ‘possibly the worst player’ in the Saturday pick-up league by scoring his first ever goal—on his own team. The opposition players had cheered him tauntingly as he tried to explain to his angry teammates how he’d got trapped in their own zone; was afraid he might lose the ball, which could easily have resulted in a breakaway; so he decided to flip it to his own goalie, who could either trap it, or shoot it down the rink.

“The pass was just a little harder than intended!”

“It was the hardest shot anyone’s seen you take all season, Vic,” Larry hooted. “You cranked it, man.”

Larry’s humour was contagious, even when it came at your own expense. Victor smiled, happy to be teased, to forget about his real problems for a few minutes, bantering about the exploits of a bunch of guys and gals chasing a plastic ball around a parking lot. But inevitably the play-by-play analysis ran out of steam, so…

Now or never, Victor thought.

“Do you ever have dreams?”

Larry looked enquiringly across the table. “No,” he said. “Or if I do, I don’t remember ‘em.”

Victor didn’t know how to proceed. He and Larry didn’t often talk about serious stuff. Usually their conversations were boisterous and funny, kernels of metaphysics concealed in candy wrapper prose. In an odd way, that’s why he’d chosen Larry to talk to. He wasn’t ready to talk seriously about Crystal Doer. Didn’t want his troublesome visions recast through the lenses of esoteric theories or new age philosophies. Perhaps Larry’s wit and incredulity would be just the antidote I need.

“Why do you ask?” Larry coaxed.

“I’ve been having this recurring dream. It’s weird.”

Victor hesitated. Not too late. He could cut things short and that would put an end to it. The accusing ghost of Crystal Doer would remain forever sealed in his mind-vault. As soon as he started talking, though, she would fly out with his words and – in a sense – become real. Victor feared the damage she might do. Larry waited. His expression changed from puzzlement to calm concern, at odds with the clatter of breakfast dishes and the hum of gossip around them.

Victor sighed. “Did you see that news item a couple of weeks ago about a girl named Crystal Doer, who was kidnapped back in the early ‘70s?” he began.

Larry shook his head.

Victor described the item, expanding on the CBC report with information he had researched himself and explaining that no trace of Crystal Doer had ever been discovered since that August day in 1972. He showed Larry a photocopied image of Crystal from a newspaper clipping. His friend looked fleetingly worried as Victor slipped the image from his wallet.

“Okay?” Larry nudged. “I can see you are obsessing over this missing girl. But can you make the connection for me?

“Take the plunge, Vic. What does this girl, Crystal Doer, mean to you?”

Victor sighed. “I think I’m her son,” he confessed.

Only the slightest hint of a frown creased Larry’s brow, but Victor sensed a massive recalculation going on behind his friend’s inquiring expression. “What makes you think that, Vic?”

“That’s where the dreams come in.”

Larry waited.

“You know I’ve never met my birth mother, right? You know as far as I’m concerned Nora has always been my real mom, and Richard’s my real dad.”

Larry nodded.

“What you don’t know is they didn’t adopt me until I was about five years old. I’ve never told anyone that until recently; Mom and Dad never talk about it either. They say they don’t know anything about the time before, and I don’t ask. “It’s like a family pact.”

“So, you recognize this Crystal Doer as your biological mother?”

“No!” Victor rubbed his face. The ghost of Crystal Doer materialized, shimmered briefly, then evaporated, leaving hologram traces. “I don’t have a single recollection from the time before. Not one. It’s all been erased.”

Again, Larry waited.

Victor sighed and gulped down some water.

“Are you beginning to remember things?” Larry asked.

“Not exactly. But Crystal Doer comes to me. She talks to me…”

“Waking dreams?”

“Sometimes. I can’t call them memories because they’re completely new, and I can’t even say for sure yet whether they relate to anything real. I’m scared, Larry. I have to tell you, I’m scared shitless. I keep thinking things like schizophrenia, and I want to chase her out of my brain. But another part of me wants to reach out and grab her and yell ‘Where the fuck have you been all my life!’

“In these dreams I get shoved into a closet, then something terrible happens. Something really bad…”

“What, Victor?” Larry pressed because he knew Victor had to say the awful thing, formulate it into words, sentences, paragraphs.

“I think… I think someone was raping her. Over and over again. Christ, it’s sick. She hides me in the closet and tells me to be quiet, then this guy I never get to see comes in and he rapes her. I can hear him going at it outside the door and even now I’m so fucking ashamed because I didn’t jump out of there and hammer the dirty prick into a pulp…”

“How old were you in these dreams?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter!” Victor shouted. Then he blushed under the curious stares from surrounding tables. “It doesn’t matter, Larry,” he insisted in a harsh whisper. “It still feels like I’m being buried alive under a mountain of shit and boulders. My mother was being raped; I should have done something. I need to do something.”

“What can you do?”

“Find her,” Victor affirmed. “Find the bastard who raped her, too.”

Larry looked astonished. “Vic, you don’t even know if any of this is real. And if it is, it happened more than thirty years ago. The cops haven’t been able to turn up a thing; her parents haven’t heard a peep out of her; how the hell are you going to locate Crystal Doer?”

“This part’s going to sound strange, partner,” Victor cautioned, straightening in his chair, “but I think she’s guiding me. The television coverage triggered things, but now that she’s locked on she’s not going to let go until I find out the truth.”

“I’ve never known you to place much stock in ghosts and the afterlife.”

“How do we know she’s dead?” Victor countered.

“Huh? I just assumed that after a sudden disappearance and thirty-plus years of silence…”

“But that doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because if she was murdered, how did I get here? She must have been around long enough to give birth to me and raise me until I was old enough to have recollections of being with her. My guess is she ran off with somebody—maybe a pimp. Things went off the rails and she’s been too ashamed to call home ever since.”

He’d heard stories like that. It was possible.

Larry arched his brows, but said nothing. “Where do you begin?” he asked at last.

“With Crystal’s parents. My maybe-grandparents.”

“I wouldn’t introduce myself that way,” Larry advised.

“No,” Victor agreed. “Course not.”

“How then?”

“As a lawyer acting on behalf of a client who has a great interest in the case, someone who feels he might have new, relevant information about Crystal Doer.”

“You know the old saying about lawyers, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“That the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.” Larry paused, sipping his coffee thoughtfully. “And I might add that the nutter who analyzes himself has a madman for a psychologist.”

“You think I should get professional help?”

“Might be worth looking into. Whatever you do, Vic, don’t keep this to yourself. My couch is always available, buddy. No charge.”

~~~

An obituary notice had appeared in the Vancouver Sun a few days after the murder. Fifty-nine year old Don Pirelli was survived by his loving parents, Alphonso and Nina Periconi, a brother and two sisters. He had ‘been taken suddenly’ the notice said.

“Periconi?” Maria pointed out. “His parents have a different name.”

“Blended family?” Victor guessed.

They couldn’t find a space near the funeral home on Broadway, so he circled the block and parked on Tenth. The sun blistered the sky overhead. God must be angry, Maria thought. Armageddon won’t come as a barrage of fire and brimstone; it would begin just like this. Intensifying day by day, until hell-on-earth is achieved.

She recalibrated. God wasn’t necessarily angry, just fucking insane.

She remembered, as a child, watching the kid next door roasting ants under a magnifying glass one day, watching them shrivel and writhe on the pavement. How puzzled he’d been when she begged him to stop. “Why?” he complained. “They’re just ants.”

Victor stroked her back. “You okay?”

She managed a wan smile, trying to please him.

“Laurence?” she said. “He’s pathetic, really.”

There was still a charming awkwardness to their intimacies, and Maria appreciated them—had come to expect them, truth be known. A lingering kiss, a gentle stroke, an arm around her waist or draped over her shoulder—these gestures sustained them. She wanted more, but they were both reluctant. He’s holding back as much as me, she figured.

“At least he doesn’t flinch any more if I touch his shoulder,” she’d joked with Cathy, whose interest in Victor seemed insatiable… Carnivorous!

Walking down the street beside him Maria, indulged in a moment’s elation. She’d reached the point where it was hard to imagine him out of her life. Too bad we’re going to a memorial service, not a concert or a play.

They entered the funeral home’s cobbled courtyard through a wrought-iron gate. The place looked more like a B&B than the final stop for people’s earthly remains. Stucco, wood and tiles, put together in a vaguely Spanish style. An attendant ushered them into an antechamber where small groups of mourners in drab dresses and dark suits clustered uneasily, engaged in murmured conversations. Off to the side, a curtained passage was available for those who wished to pay final respects to Don.

“It’s not obligatory,” Victor whispered.

“I don’t know what to do. Is it disrespectful not to say goodbye?”

“Pirelli won’t care, and nobody else will notice if you give it a pass.”

He was right. I’m making too much of this.

“Why don’t we go into the chapel and wait there,” he suggested.

Maria let him guide her toward the entrance, but part of her resisted. Don’t be stupid! she thought, but found herself turning, drawn inevitably toward the black curtained mausoleum where Don Pirelli rested.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Maria answered as they passed through the curtains into the softly lit chamber. The coffin had been placed on trestles against the far wall, its lid open like a clam shell concocted of wood and fabric. Maria studied everything around Don Pirelli without actually looking directly at him: the floral arrangements, a photo of him as a younger man in VPD uniform, the polished wood and brass fittings, all in order. Satisfied she finally looked at him.

His hands were folded over his stomach. You could tell right away they were the hands of a dead man—that the fingers had been arranged one by one in an unnatural rendition of repose. She followed the blaze of his tie up to Don Pirelli’s face. What she saw there was a graven image, a mask sculpted in a wax museum. The features bore a pale resemblance to Don, but you could tell at a glance it was dead matter, not living flesh. To conceal what they could of his wounds they had nested his head in fabric.

“You knew my brother?”

Maria spun round, startled by the man who had obviously been watching as they paid their final respects. “I was one of his clients,” Maria said. “Your brother was a wonderful man, Mr. Pirelli…” She paused, hoping he wouldn’t notice her mistake. “He was a generous, brave human being,” Maria covered quickly.

“Periconi, actually. The last name is Periconi,” the man corrected politely, but firmly. “Don changed his name, much to the annoyance—I might even say grief—of my poor mother and father.”

Victor squeezed her arm, a signal that did not escape the sharp eyes of Al Periconi. She judged him to be a man whose anger seared like dry ice. She had met his type before, in back rooms and gritty alleys. A man who could grab an enemy by the throat and smile, choking the life out of him.

“You said my brother was brave?”

“Yes. I think Don was brave, Mr. Periconi. I think he would have done whatever it took to act in the best interests of a client.”

“Do you think that’s what got him killed, Miss…?”

“Ms. Selkirk,” Maria answered. “All I know is I liked Don and I wanted to pay my respects. My condolences to you and your family.” She stuck out her hand, which Al Periconi grasped in his huge paw.

“I’ll find whoever did this, Ms. Selkirk,” he vowed. “I will find him.”

She stared back at him, restraining an intense urge to nod in agreement, until they released each other. He turned and walked slowly away, heading to the opposite side of the room, to a spot where he would not be noticed by mourners as they entered.

“Not a man you would want to cross,” Victor said as they left the room and followed the stragglers into the chapel.

“No,” she agreed. “I wonder if Laurence knows about Don’s friends and relations. I’ve got half a mind to introduce them.”

“We’re not certain, Maria,” he cautioned. “Remember that.”

“Just venting.” She squeezed his arm.

~~~

Victor punched in the number. He’d been staring at the phone for a good half hour, remembering Larry’s remarks about lawyer-fools and psychologist-madmen. No turning back, though.

A distant ring sounded at the other end of the line. He imagined the summons echoing through the Doer household, Mr. and Mrs. Doer interrupted from their evening routine. Based on the CBC newscast about their missing daughter, he imagined a quiet house full of knickknacks and frills, a house where you could hear a clock ticking in the background, the sound of a dog’s claws clicking on hardwood. At the fourth ring someone picked up.

“Hello?” Barbara Doer said in a careworn voice.

“Mrs. Doer?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Victor Daly. I’m a Family Court lawyer here in Vancouver.” He paused a second to let her get her bearings, needed to slow his delivery.

Relax.

Inhale. Exhale. Let go.

“I would like to come out and see you and Mr. Doer if I may…”

“Because of that CBC report?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve had just about enough with creeps and crackpots, Mr. whoever-you-are!”

“Please, don’t hang up. I’m not a crackpot, Mrs. Doer. I’m a successful, highly regarded lawyer. I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t believe what my client has to say is important.”

“Then say it over the phone, please.”

“Mrs. Doer,” he pushed on, stumbling over his words. “I have information which I believe is relevant to your daughter’s case. I need to meet with you and your husband.”

“You have information about Crystal?”

“I believe so.”

“I have to tell you Mr. Daly, we have received a lot of calls. None of them has shed the faintest glimmer on what may have happened to our daughter. Many of them have been very unpleasant. We’re thinking of getting an unlisted number.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Victor commiserated. “But please, don’t give up. You agreed to the CBC interview hoping to get some fresh information about Crystal. I really believe I may have something valuable to share…”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No. I can’t promise anything. All I can say is I might be able to put us on the right track.”

“Us?”

“My client and yourselves.”

“Wait just a minute.”

The phone clunked onto a hard surface and he heard her tired footsteps receding. A door opened and banged shut, a screen door, he guessed. A few seconds later the door opened again and footsteps approached. A man’s.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Doer?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“As I was saying to your wife, sir, my name is Victor Daly and I’m a Family Court lawyer in Vancouver. I know you two have been bombarded with crank calls because of the CBC segment. I’m not a crank caller, Mr. Doer. I need to talk to you and your wife. I have information I believe is relevant.”

Mr. Doer sighed wearily. Victor imagined the man, eyes closed, head bowed, beseeching the god-beyond-ceilings to end this, to help him and his beleaguered wife let go of it all, forget, pretend they’d never had a daughter.

“When would you like to come out, Mr. Daly?”

“As soon as it’s convenient.”

“Tomorrow afternoon? About two o’clock?”

“That would be fine,” Victor agreed. “Thank you.”

“We can’t pay you anything Mr. Daly. Not now, not ever.”

“I don’t want any money, sir… ever. I only want to…”

The line went dead.

~~~

Cathy and Maria sat with their backs against a log while Aaron got to work with his diggers, constructing another channel down to the water’s edge. Patiently he bulldozed and smoothed the way, intent on his project. Maria smiled. It made her happy to see him lost in play.

“Does he ever miss Laurence?” Cathy wondered.

Maria didn’t think so. Aaron never asked after his father, because Laurence hadn’t spent enough time with him, she guessed. Even when Laurence did make time, he didn’t really get to know his son so much as bully and taunt, trying to ‘toughen him up.’

“I think Aaron is in paradise right now, having his Mom all to himself,” Maria said.

A gentle breeze tousled Aaron’s hair, the same breeze that sent the pillow clouds gliding like ships through a perfectly blue sky. Idyllic, Maria thought. Perfect. Where to from here?

Problem with fantasies was… well, they’re fantasies.

“Loonie for your thoughts,” Cathy interrupted.

Maria sighed, recalibrating.

“Over the years we’ve talked a lot about Laurence, Cath,” she hesitated. “But there’s a lot I haven’t told you, too—stuff I was afraid to bring up because, if Laurence ever found out, he would go ballistic.”

“Afraid?” Cathy probed.

“Yeah. There’s things I’ve kept from you, hon, on a need-to-know basis. Things about Laurence. After all that’s happened, I think I have to bring you a little more into the loop.”

Am I exaggerating? she fretted. Truth was I inhabited my own fantasy world at the Taj. She’d been married to Laurence eight years and, aside from occasional glimpses behind the laundered scene, had lived the good life without qualm. Even if she hadn’t been able to bring herself to believe in Laurence—the fine, upstanding citizen and patron of the arts—she could at least pretend it didn’t matter what he really was.

Then came Aaron and the equation changed.

Now, revealing the Taj’s sleazy underpinnings to her friend, the weight of her own testimony accumulated until she could barely speak. She pushed on, though, laying out the sordid details Cathy needed to know.

“I’m sorry,” she concluded miserably. “I should have told you a lot of this stuff before.”

“Jesus!” Cathy took Maria’s hand and squeezed.

Maria wiped her eyes.

“I didn’t think about it much, Cath,” she continued. “You sort of get used to it, shove it all into the skeleton-closet along with the rest of your crap. But now I’m a mom. At first that was okay. Babies are immune to a lot of stuff just because they’re babies. But as Aaron began to show his personality, Laurence right away wanted to reshape it. He’s as fanatical as any religious nut, Cath, only his religion is greed and violence and ego. He doesn’t give a good god-damn whether he’s swimming toward the light or in the murky currents of the underworld, anything that leads to more power, more money, a bigger empire, that’s all he cares about. It’s an ugly, brutal game and he’s good at it. The thing about empires though is they’re meaningless unless there’s a future partner and heir. For Laurence to succeed he has to perpetuate himself in Aaron.

“I can’t let that happen. I have to get out.”

“Fuck!” Cathy erupted. “How long have I known you—since before you met this creep—and I never once suspected any of this stuff. Well, I suppose my apartment makeover should have been a heads-up. But, really, I can hardly believe what you’re telling me.”

“Believe it! You have to believe it, Cath.”

“Yeah, I get that message loud and clear.”

~~~

From the head of the drive the Doer house looked like something you might have seen in a Reader’s Digest Magazine… circa 1950. The stucco bungalow sat in the midst of an immaculately maintained lawn and flower garden. Blue with white trim. Frilly drapes hung in the windows. A big old maple, holding up a rustling canopy with its gnarled wooden arms, cast dappled shadows. Victor imagined a swing hanging from those branches in happier days, a young girl named Crystal kicking up her feet, flying through the air in a giddy arc.

He parked behind a tandem axle Ford pickup, switching off the Porsche’s engine with a definitive flourish. A burly chocolate lab trotted out from the back of the house, barking half-heartedly. “Not much of a guard dog,” Victor chuckled, opening the door. The dog thrust his big head inside, sniffing at Victor’s pants, his tail wagging recklessly. “That’s Toobee,” Victor introduced himself, patting the curious animal. Nudging the lab aside, he swung his legs out and levered himself onto the crunching gravel.

No sign of welcome showed from inside the house. He walked jauntily up the path and knocked. The lab, sitting beside him, woofed a couple of times in a friendly display of diligence.

Victor was about to knock again when he heard footsteps approaching. The knob twisted, the door swung open, and Albert Doer stepped onto the threshold, filling the frame. Victor stuck his hand out; Albert shook reluctantly. “Come in,” he said. “Don’t bother,” he instructed when Victor bent down to untie his shoes. They turned right, just past the vestibule, and Albert gestured to an armchair.

“May I use your bathroom?” Victor asked apologetically. “I shouldn’t indulge in lattes every time I go for a drive.”

Albert Doer frowned. He was a tall man with chiseled features. His strong, calloused hands suggested a life of honest work, perhaps in construction. He might have been handsome, except for his dour aspect, which Victor took to be more or less permanent. You would have to work very hard to get a smile out of Albert Doer, he figured.

“Second door on the right down the hall,” he directed.

Victor hurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He opened the toilet seat and forced himself to pee loudly. As his bladder emptied he scanned. Like the rest of the house the bathroom was immaculate. Too clean. You’d have trouble finding a fingerprint in the place, let alone anything that could yield a snippet of DNA. Finished relieving himself, he flushed, then opened the sink faucets. The jet of running water masked his hurried search. There was no waste basket next to the toilet, where he kept his, so he looked under the sink, where he found a plastic pail. Victor rummaged through it, plucking out a couple of items that would likely provide the genetic material he needed – that is if the Doers leave genetic traces in their saliva and hair. He stuffed the samples into a plastic bag he had brought with him, then rinsed his hands and headed back into the living room.

Albert and Barbara were sitting together on the sofa when he returned: Albert ramrod straight, hands grasping his knees; Barbara angled slightly toward him, and perched on the edge of the cushions, legs tucked neatly underneath her. Still in their Sunday best, they were a handsome couple, Victor thought. Strong, upright folk, who suffered quietly and prayed privately. Barbara had brought out a tray of tea and cookies.

Victor contemplated them through an interlude of awkward silence.

“It was a Sunday our daughter disappeared, Mr. Daly,” Barbara began at last.

Victor watched and waited as she poured his tea.

“A day much like this. We came home from church and Crystal wasn’t here. We thought that a little strange, but didn’t panic or anything. She might have gone for a walk, or a friend might have come along and picked her up—she had lots of friends. We told her over and over to leave a note if she went anywhere, but she always forgot, so we weren’t alarmed… Do you have any children, Mr. Daly?”

“No,” Victor said, accepting his tea from her shaking hands, the cup rattling slightly in its saucer, its contents precariously close to spilling.

“Please.” She gestured to the milk, sugar and cookies on the tray. “Help yourself.

“Perhaps someday you will have teenage children and will understand how difficult it is to keep track of them. Crystal was in a rebellious phase. The last thing she wanted to do was report her movements to us. I don’t think it was so much a case of her forgetting as deliberately refusing to leave notes when she went out. It was frustrating. It made us angry. But what can you do?”

She shrugged. Barbara Doer’s features reminded Victor of her daughter. She had the same Slavic cheekbones and blond, shoulder-length hair. Her clear, blue eyes alighted on him briefly then flitted back to the tray, where she was pouring a second cup of tea.

“By evening we were very worried, and began calling her friends. No one had seen Crystal. No one had been round to pick her up. These days, I guess you can reach your kids with cell phones, but then we had no way of connecting with our daughter or confirming there might have been a problem. By eleven o’clock that night we were frantic. We phoned the police. They did their best, Mr. Daly. A huge search was mounted. Hundreds of people volunteered. But it’s as if the earth opened up and swallowed our little girl…”

She choked back her tears. Albert reached across and rubbed her back. “Honey,” he admonished. “You don’t have to do this.”

“So you see, Mr. Daly,” she continued, “it’s been thirty-five years, but for us it’s like Crystal vanished yesterday. You read about other people’s lives in the newspaper over breakfast, and you’ve forgotten about it by lunch. But in real life—when it’s your child—the pain doesn’t go away. Nobody can ever know what it’s like to lose a child until it’s happened to them. It leaves you empty inside, Mr. Daly.

“Now, what is it you wanted to talk to us about?”

Victor didn’t know how to begin. He couldn’t tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. It would simply be too much for the Doers. But to lie? Even dissemble? How could he do that to these strangers, who might turn out to be his own kin?

He coughed, kick-starting his voice.

“I have a client who believes he may have had contact with your daughter after the period when Crystal disappeared. I can’t reveal the circumstances to you—my client is very reluctant to expose himself to any sort of publicity. But when he saw the television coverage recently, he recognized Crystal immediately.”

“Who is this man?” Albert demanded.

“He doesn’t want to take any steps to identify himself until he has confirmed his suspicions.”

“Confirmed? Suspicions? How?”

Victor hesitated, staring first at Albert, then Barbara. There was no turning back; no other way of doing this. He swallowed. “My client would like to have a DNA analysis done. He believes it will confirm that he is Crystal’s son.”

The Doers stared as if the significance of what he’d just said hadn’t sunk in.

“My client believes he is your grandson,” Victor repeated. “He is absolutely certain he recognized your daughter in the photos that were aired on CBC, but wants to confirm his suspicions through DNA analysis. If the test result is positive, he will introduce himself to you and do all he can to help locate your daughter. He is a man of some means who could bring useful connections to bear on the case.”

“Why didn’t he come himself if he thinks he’s our grandson?” Albert demanded.

“As I’ve explained, before he introduces himself he wants to verify his relationship to you. He was adopted at an early age and has only faint recollections from the time before. But Crystal’s picture on TV triggered a cascade of memories and feelings. He is convinced she is his birth mother, and has retained me to act as intermediary.”

Barbara stared as if in shock, tears rolling down her cheeks. She placed her teacup in its saucer with a clatter. “Excuse me,” she stammered, then left the room.

“You can see how upsetting this is to us,” Albert said.

“I do understand, Mr. Doer,” Victor apologized. “But I assure you my client has very good reasons for pursuing this matter.”

“We need more information, Mr. Daly. We need to know who your client is; then we can talk about giving you what you need to verify his claim.”

“Okay,” Victor agreed. “I’ll try to persuade him. I’ll do my best.”

Albert Doer did not look pleased, looked more like a burly bouncer with a hate on.

~~~

“Shit! Give me a break,” Victor griped. Five messages had been logged while he was out at the Doer place. He’d switched his mobile off, going in, not wanting to be interrupted while he talked to them, not even by its vibrating urgently in his hip pocket. Forgot to turn it back on until he got home.

An ‘Unknown Caller’ topped the list. He poked the playback button, annoyed already at the likelihood of some kind of marketing scam.

For a second, silence, then a robot-like voice threatened in garbled deadpan. “Victor Daly! You have been convicted of sins against God and humanity. The New Covenant Society has postponed your punishment to give you a chance at atonement. If you do not fulfill the Conditions of Clemency immediately, your sentence will be carried out…”

Huh?

“Here are the Conditions of Clemency: you must cancel the abomination called Inside Out and publicly apologize to God and humanity for this grave offence; in your apology you must vow to never again pollute the world with the obscene filth you have perpetrated—you must renounce your so-called ‘art’ and plead for forgiveness.”

“Like hell!”

“If you agree to these conditions, you must immediately offer a Demonstration of Atonement. Go to the Holy Rosary Cathedral on Dunsmuir Street. Upon entering the church, kneel and pray for mercy. This demonstration of remorse and the fulfillment of the other Conditions of Clemency will be enough to stay the Hand of Retribution, but it will not be enough to save your mortal soul.

“Pray sincerely, Victor Daly. Pray to God Almighty. Therein lies the true Path to Redemption.

“You are being watched.”

The line went dead.

“Ass holes!”

“Breathe deep,” he sighed.

Inhale. Exhale. Let go. 

The New Covenant? He’d never heard of the… cult… and wondered if it really existed. The caller might have been a crank, but Victor didn’t think so. Too much preparation, he figured. The voice had been disguised, but despite the monotone delivery, Victor sensed an underlying earnestness, a core of self-righteousness, fanaticism.

Anger morphed into sadness.

“The narrow-minded shall not inherit the earth,” he vowed.

Did this New Covenant outfit really have him under surveillance? If so, they’ll call again. As soon as they figured he wasn’t going to obey their instructions. I’ll be ready.

Think!

Play along? Call the police? Do nothing? Stepping out onto his penthouse balcony, he scanned the street below. One thing was certain: Inside Out would not be canceled.

No way! he thought. The whole point of the show is to confront nutters like this.

“Guess I’m right on track.”

His previous exhibits had been obscure events, spottily covered by the mainstream media. Add explicit sex and…

Presto!

Note to self: Talk to Pauline, Rick and Knute. Would they be willing to go ahead? Victor didn’t anticipate a problem. Pretty Boy might waffle, but Pauline and Knute would be in agreement and between the three of them they’d persuade him to do the right thing.

Opportunity knocks; sometimes in disguise, Victor thought, hurrying into his den, Googling the phone number for the Vancouver Sun newsroom. Sunday afternoon: they should be working on the Monday edition.

“I have a story for you,” he said when somebody picked up. “My name is Victor Daly. I’m a photo-artist. I have received a threatening message concerning my upcoming show from an organization called the New Covenant Society. I will be responding on the steps of the Holy Rosary Cathedral in one hour.”

The reporter wanted more, but Victor cut him off. “I’ll be releasing details in one hour,” he repeated. “This is not a prank. My name is Victor Daly. You can find out more about me online.”

Judo. Use your opponent’s momentum to your own advantage. Redirect the negative energy to positive effect.

He’d called BCTV, CKNW, and The Province before his phone jangled, announcing an ‘Unknown Caller’. Victor turned on the digital recorder he’d placed next to his mobile, then answered with the phone’s speaker turned on.

“Hello?”

“Victor Daly?” the garbled voice demanded.

“Yes.”

“Did you get our message?”

“I listened to it, if that’s what you mean. Can’t say I got it.”

“This isn’t a joke, Mr. Daly! You are being watched. The instructions were to act immediately, or suffer the consequences.”

“Who are you and what right do you have to threaten me?”

“I am sworn to uphold the New Covenant and denounce and punish those who would undermine its moral strictures.”

“I haven’t sworn allegiance to your so-called covenant.”

“You are bound by God’s law, as is everyone. We will not allow you to pollute the world and corrupt our minds with your obscenities.”

“What do you want?”

“I think we have made ourselves clear, Mr. Daly. Your punishment has been determined. You have one last chance to make amends under the Conditions of Clemency. Do you intend to seek mercy and stay the Hand of Retribution?”

“What’s the punishment?”

“We do not bargain. The will of the New Covenant will be known when it is carried out. I can say the punishment will be severe in your case. You have caused great harm, led many souls astray with your hedonism. Will you seek mercy?”

“I’m preparing to leave for Holy Rosary as we speak…”

The caller hung up.

Hurriedly, Victor punched in as many newsroom numbers as he could, giving out the time and location of his impromptu media scrum.

Am I making a mistake, he hesitated, then thought, Too late to think about that now.

He’d set events in motion; his counter-offensive had generated way too much momentum to be stopped. The next move would be up to the New Covenant Society, once they’d seen his media show. He figured he had about ten minutes to type up a quick release, run off a few copies, and make a dash to the Holy Rosary Cathedral.

~~~

By the time Cathy got to the parking lot the sun had dipped toward the horizon, lengthening the jagged shadows of the buildings. The heat of the day dissipated in shimmering waves from the walls and pavement. She twisted the key once, twice, and her battered Toyota clattered to life. “Good girl,” she murmured. The car didn’t have long for this world, but she hadn’t been able to save enough to buy a newer one, so she nursed it along. Cathy cursed her bad habits, meagre income, and pinched lifestyle.

Since her talk with Maria about Laurence’s criminal side she had kept an eye on her rear-view mirror. She felt exposed now, like a squirrel dashing across a long stretch of open ground.

She sighed, turning into the Sunday traffic inching along Broadway. She blushed to think how naive she had been. But then, why should a photo tech at London Drugs and part time student at Emily Carr College of Art and Design know anything when it came to a man like Laurence Bloody Selkirk?

That Maria hadn’t warned her about Laurence’s shady side irked her. Get over it, she told herself, wincing again to think she still couldn’t imagine him as kingpin of some underworld empire.

What? You expecting a black hat or something?

Then she remembered his strong-arm man hustling her out of the Taj, and Laurence’s fierce look of contempt after she’d dropping her incriminating photos at his feet… Gawd! What an idiot! She cringed.

“Believe it,” Maria had warned about Laurence’s propensity to violent retribution.

I do now, honey.

Cathy’s thoughts were interrupted by the grill of a Hummer filling her rear-view mirror. “Moron,” she muttered. She hated Hummers. The muscular vehicles epitomized everything that was wrong with consumerist society, with the ‘global elite’ that shaped the market to its purposes and profited enormously, growing ever more wealthy and powerful in the process.

Ass-hole.

Suddenly her outrage morphed into fear. Is this guy following me?

The question seemed so obvious, now she’d asked. When traffic ground to a halt near Oak, she glanced in her side mirrors, praying that the doors to the Hummer wouldn’t burst open, loosing a couple of muscle-bound thugs. Don’t be stupid! she groaned, angry at herself. Get your mind off it. The light turned green and she drove on.

Cath thought about Victor Daly, and smiled. To her he seemed a version of the desirable bachelor, mysterious quirks and all. But she frowned, thinking of Victor and Maria together. Mar doesn’t know what to make of him…

The light at Granville winked yellow. She hesitated a second then braked hard. Still on her tail, the Hummer pulled up close behind. “Give me some room, jerk!” she yelled at the menacing grill, then ducked lower in her seat to get a glimpse of the driver. A square, menacing face, he stared over the top of her car like a robot, not responding to her accusing look. That relieved her.

Idiot.

The Broadway herd stopped, traffic started moving along Granville, a torrent of jostling metal funneling toward the Granville Street Bridge and the gigantic magnet of the city core. Cathy watched the remorseless flow. No stopping it, she thought. Concerns over the environment, the misappropriation of spending for highways and cars, the Balkanization of the city with asphalt barriers… none of it mattered. The automobile had become an extension of the human psyche, an expression of mass will. Nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of drivers’ rights…

Her thoughts were scattered by a sudden roar from behind. The guy in the Hummer was revving his engine insanely. What are you? Nuts?

Then the thing lunged forward, smashing into her back bumper.

“What the…”

Cathy jammed on the brakes, pushing herself against the back of the seat as if she was trying to restrain the monster with bodily force. It was hopeless. The Hummer bulled forward, shoving the Toyota out into the stream of traffic on Granville. It happened so quickly the oncoming drivers didn’t have a chance to stop. One car swerved to avoid her, colliding with a vehicle in the inside lane. Horns blared. A following car couldn’t maneuver at all in the unfolding chaos. Cathy twisted left, saw the panicked look in the driver’s eyes, then screamed.

The crunch of metal on metal registered, then… nothing.

~~~

“What is the New Covenant Society?”

“Why would this group target you in particular, Mr. Daly?”

“What is the subject matter of your exhibition?”

“You don’t think that’s obscene, Mr. Daly?”

“Have you contacted the police?”

“Do you take this threat seriously?”

“How do you know it’s not a hoax?”

“How do we know this news conference isn’t a publicity stunt?”

“What do you think they will do if you go ahead with Inside Out?”

Victor rated his news conference a success. A small scrum had developed on the steps of Holy Rosary Cathedral, the cameras and microphones pointed at him. Most of the reporters didn’t know anything about Victor Daly or the Inside Out exhibit. He handed out clippings from the Georgia Straight and copies of his brochure for the show. To prove he’d been threatened he played back his conversation with the New Covenant Society’s mystery caller. They’re biting, Victor thought. He was pretty sure the story would make the evening news and the next day’s papers. It had all the necessary elements: drama, controversy, quirkiness. Tens of thousands who had not heard about the Inside Out exhibition before would hear about it over the next twenty-four hours, thanks to the New Covenant Society.

That ought to bite ‘em in the ass.

The next move would be up to the holy rollers, whoever they were.

In the midst of the interview, Victor’s attention was drawn by the reporters’ glances to the arched entrance of the church. He twisted round in time to see a young man watching the scrum from the top of the stairs. As soon as Victor glanced, the observer descended the steps quickly, taking a position on the perimeter of the scrum. He leaned forward, listening intently to the questions and answers, his young brows furrowed. Curious parishioner? Victor hoped.

“You have been told by these people to go and pray for forgiveness in the Holy Rosary Cathedral. Are you going to do that?” a reporter asked.

Victor hesitated. He knew it would make great theatre to march right into the church and deny any need for sanction, much less forgiveness from the New Covenant—to proclaim his natural right to celebrate the human body and the act of sexual union unimpeded by ‘religious authority’. It might clinch a better spot for him in the news line-up.

The newcomer watched with obvious interest.

“I do not believe the New Covenant is sanctioned in any way by the Catholic Church,” Victor responded to the reporter’s question. “So I don’t think it would be fair for me to intrude on the meditations of those for whom the Holy Rosary Cathedral is a sacred place.”

“Then why did you convene your media conference here?”

“This is where the New Covenant caller instructed me to come. I wanted to show that I am not intimidated by their threats, and felt I needed to respond from these steps. I do, however, honour this place. The Church is a cornerstone of spirituality for millions of believers. I won’t desecrate one of its cherished sites by disturbing the legitimate devotions taking place inside.

“But I won’t be dictated to by those who use or abuse the name and authority of the church. Their threats have no moral or legal basis, and if they carry them out they are behaving as mere thugs. I wanted to deliver that message in the shadow of the Holy Rosary Cathedral.

“I think that’s all I have to say. Thank you for coming.”

Victor turned and walked briskly away, ignoring the reporters’ shouted follow-ups. He’d made his point, now it was time to go. No doubt they would look for an official church spokesperson. They would also want to hear from the Vancouver Police Department, and Victor intended to file a complaint as soon as he got home.

But until the New Covenant made its next move, he was finished talking…

“Mr. Daly!”

He ignored his pursuer, striding left up Richards Street, along the northeast side of the cathedral.

“Mr. Daly, please!”

Victor stopped and turned, tensing instinctively. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The young man who had joined the scrum from inside the church trotted up to him. “I wanted to thank you for respecting the sanctity of the church,” he said, scanning Victor’s face with penetrating, dark eyes. “It was a gesture of respect, very much appreciated.”

“Who are you?” Victor repeated.

“Father Damien Pearson.” The priest fumbled in his pocket, extracting a slim silver casket, which he flipped open, handing Victor a card. “One little luxury I permit myself for many denied,” he added, noticing Victor’s admiring glance at the card holder.

“You’re not in your frock and collar, Father.”

“Let’s keep walking,” Damien urged. “I’m not sure the media pack has lost your scent. I doffed my official garb when I saw the scrum in front of the cathedral. I assumed the conference had been called because it related in some way to the church. I wanted to find out more without attracting questions that I might not be prepared to answer.”

“Maybe you can answer a couple for me?”

“I can try.”

“The New Covenant Society. Let’s start there, Father. Can you shed any light?”

“That’s why I followed you, Mr. Daly…”

“Please, call me Victor.”

“Thank you. And I don’t mind being called Damien. I followed because I wanted to warn you about the NCS. They are a radical sect, not sanctioned in any way by the Catholic church. In fact they are on the brink of being declared heretical.”

“Which means they consider themselves disaffected members of the Catholic Church?” Victor suggested.

“That might be true, but we can’t say for sure. They may simply be using the church to raise their profile… the religious equivalent of appropriating someone’s brand, if you know what I mean.”

Victor smiled.

“Anyway, you should not treat their threats lightly. They have followed through in the past. They feel they have a duty to purge the world of… um…”

“Filth?” Victor offered.

“That’s how they would put it, yes.”

“And how would you put it, Father?”

“I understand what you are trying to achieve; I cannot condone the means. The Catholic Church recognizes the beauty of the human form. Adam and Eve were, after all, created in the image of God. But the act of sexual union can only be blessed within the sanctified bonds of marriage. Anything else is outside our precepts, and anything that encourages uninhibited sexual activity must be declared anathema by the Church. I am bound by my vows. They guide my thoughts.”

“You put it more elegantly than some I have met, Damien, but the message is the same, isn’t it: you believe I am damned to burn in hell for what I am doing. It’s a mortal sin to make art of the human body and promote the natural expression of sexual desire?”

After a few thoughtful seconds the priest said, “Have you ever looked up, into the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Victor? Or been enraptured by the power of Handel’s Messiah? The human body is to be celebrated as God’s creation, and as an instrument of divine being. But perhaps we can have this discussion another day?

“All I wanted to do was warn you against these people, not engage in a theological debate. You have no doubt fanned their anger by what you’ve done. They won’t let this go, I’m sure. They will almost certainly mete out an even more drastic retribution because of your public defiance.

“You must have known the risk.”

“Yes I am aware of it.”

“You are a man of principle.” Damien extended his hand. Victor shook it, surprised by the firm grip and the glint of laugher in the priest’s eyes. “Bless you,” Damien said.

The benediction caught Victor off guard. He stepped back and stared in mock surprise. Again, Damien smiled. A pulse of warmth irradiated Victor, a feeling he would later describe as a glow.

~~~

A night of tossing, turning, waking every time a car passed, and frequent checks on Aaron left Maria grumpy and disheveled. She sat at her kitchen counter, sipping coffee tentatively, like bad-tasting medicine. The Vancouver Sun lay unopened in front of her. She stared uncomprehendingly at the nested compilation of headlines and photos, wondering why she bothered with the daily chronicles of doom, disaster, murder and famine. What’s it got to do with me anyway?

“Chaos Theory,” she mumbled, slurping at her coffee and wrapping her housecoat around her a little more snugly. She had read somewhere that there were intelligent people who believed in the amplification of innocuous events through chance permutations into cataclysms. An ant farting in the deserts of Mongolia might lead to a Tsunami funneling up the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Third World War, the collapse of the global economy.

Aaron hadn’t woken yet. She cherished the quiet interval between six and eight in the morning. Was that selfish? No, Maria decided. She had a right to a peaceful prelude to her day, a few contemplative moments. Why, then, did she fill her awakenings with random headlines? Habit? she guessed, still averting her eyes fromthe day’s top stories: a car bomb in Baghdad; a strike by civic workers, and….

She locked onto a teaser in the newspaper’s banner. What was Victor doing up there on the front page, looking very emphatic next to a caption that said, ‘Erotic artist told to repent… or else?’ She shuffled the A Section aside and there on B1 was a full-blown photo of him on the steps of the Holy Rosary Cathedral. “Jesus Christ!” An ant must have farted somewhere in the universe.

Radical Christian sect threatens art show

Vancouver photo-artist Victor Daly has received threatening phone calls, warning that, if he doesn’t cancel a planned erotic art show and publicly repent, he will be subject to reprisals.

“Victor Daly! You have been convicted of sins against God and humanity,” an ominous phone message from a religious sect called the New Covenant Society begins. If Daly doesn’t cancel the show and recant publicly, he faces unspecified reprisals. The group says he must carry out the terms enunciated in its ‘Conditions of Clemency’ to avoid their wrath.

“Here are the Conditions of Clemency: you must cancel the abomination called Inside Out and publicly apologize to God and humanity for this grave offence; in your apology you must vow to never again pollute the world with the obscene filth perpetrated in your photography—you must renounce your so-called art and plead for forgiveness.”

But in a move which Vancouver police are characterizing as rash, Daly has turned the tables on his persecutors. At a hastily arranged news conference on the steps of Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver he defended his erotic art and blasted the “narrow minded zealots, who think they have the moral authority of gods.”

“Inside Out will not be canceled. The show is intended to expose the kind of bigotry that is being shown by the New Covenant. They do not have the moral or legal authority to impose penalties on me or anyone else, and if they carry out their threats they are acting as religious thugs.”

He defended the show’s most controversial element—the performance of sexual ‘enactments’ live on stage—as a statement against the “lingering sexual repressiveness of modern society”, denying that it was lewd or pornographic. Civic officials and the police feel differently. They are taking a wait-and-see attitude themselves, but have indicated they are prepared to stop the Friday performance at the Naked Truth Art Gallery if it is deemed to be ‘lewd’.

“We will monitor the event and if any laws are broken appropriate action will be taken,” said police media relations officer Howard Chow. He urged the public to let the police do its work and not to take the law into their own hands. “Any attempts to intimidate or injure the producers of this show will be treated as a criminal offence,” Chow warned.

He said the VPD has no information about the New Covenant Society, and urged others who may have been intimidated by the group to report the matter to police. Asked if he was concerned that Daly went public, Chow said, “In situations like this we appeal to people to step back and reflect. We would hope they would look for resolution, and avoid making things worse.”

Daly said he launched his counter offensive on the steps of the Holy Rosary Cathedral because that is where he was instructed to show ‘atonement’ for his actions. “This is where the New Covenant instructed me to come. I wanted to show that I am not intimidated by the church or the caller’s threats,” he said. 

“I won’t be dictated to by those who use or abuse the name and authority of the church. Their threats have no moral or legal basis, and if they carry them out they are behaving as mere thugs under the pretext of being righteous followers of Christ. I wanted to deliver that message in the shadow of Holy Rosary Cathedral.”

Church spokesperson Father Damien Pearson said the New Covenant has “no status whatsoever within the Catholic Church” and that he was ‘mystified’ as to why the sect would choose Holy Rosary Cathedral as a place for Daly’s ‘enforced penance’.

“He should have called,” Maria muttered, glaring at the article. Then she remembered getting in late the night before, and not answering her vibrating phone for fear it might be Laurence… again… and because she had Aaron sleeping in her arms and wanted to get him to bed.

Shit! She grabbed her phone. No messages, but Victor’s number was at the head of her recent calls list. She punched in his office number. No answer. Tried his cell. “Call me, you sinner!” she teased when his answering service kicked in.

The New Covenant Society? The name conjured an image of earnest young men in casual cloths, sitting around a kitchen table plotting acts of violence in the name of the Lord. They could have been Muslim, just as well as Christian. Or Sikh. Or Hindu. “Even Buddhists, for Christ’s sake,” she grumbled. Who are these people anyway? Why don’t they live their perfect lives in their own glass houses and leave everyone else alone?

Maria sighed. Enough already! But as she was folding the paper to toss in the recycling bin a picture at the bottom of the page caught her eye. A mangled Toyota Tercel sat in the middle of Granville Street amid a litter glass, metal and plastic. In the background an emergency response crew was loading someone into an ambulance. Car’s the same colour and make as Cathy’s. It was also on the route Cathy would have taken home from work.

Woman deliberately rammed into busy intersection

In a bizarre incident a Toyota Tercel was rammed into the intersection of Granville and Broadway Sunday afternoon. Witnesses say the Toyota, driven by an unidentified woman, had stopped for a red light, heading west on Broadway. A yellow Hummer deliberately rammed the Tercel into Granville traffic, where it was struck by a northbound vehicle. The driver of the Hummer then fled the scene.

The woman sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries, police said. They have not yet released her name. They are looking for the yellow Hummer and are asking for information about the driver and vehicle. They will not confirm speculation that the incident was a case of extreme road rage.

“We do not have enough information at this point,” media relations officer Howard Chow told reporters. “Right now we are trying to determine who owns the Hummer and who was driving it. We ask the public to please phone us with any information they may have.” Witnesses to the accident were unable to get the license plate number of the Hummer, but Chow said it is a relatively rare vehicle and police are hopeful they will be able to find its owner soon.

Traffic on Granville and Broadway was blocked for hours as emergency crews and police worked on the scene. Because of construction on Cambie Street, and restricted access to the Cambie Bridge, a huge traffic snarl developed…

“Please, God, no!” Maria studied the photo of the smashed Toyota for any identifying features. Nothing. Still, she couldn’t avoid the looming certainty that the Toyota was Cathy’s, and that her weird best friend was at that very moment in Vancouver General Hospital, being treated for ‘serious’ injuries.

Maria grabbed her phone again and punched in Cathy’s number. She waited, praying, but… no answer. She phoned London Drugs, but the store wasn’t opened. She and Cathy moved in different circles so Maria couldn’t think who else to call. She was reluctant to contact the police or Vancouver General Hospital. As a last resort, perhaps, but she wasn’t ready to leave any telephone trails leading back to her. There were too many awkward questions that might be asked. Then she remembered the Street Level Society and punched in the number.

“Hello?” a gravely voice answered. “Street Level. Can I help you?”

“It’s Maria Selkirk,” Maria said.

“Maria who?”

“I used to do volunteer work for the society,” Maria explained.

“Oh yeah. I’ve heard your name. What can I do for you?”

“I’m trying to get in touch with Cathy Vermeer. I saw a picture of a traffic accident in The Sun this morning and it looks like it might be her car. I’m really worried.”

For a second, dead-air. “You’re the third person to call,” the woman told her. “We’re pretty worried, too. We’ve tried the police and the hospital, but they won’t tell us anything. We can’t tell for sure from the photo if it’s Cathy’s car, but it could be.”

~~~

“I don’t get to say this often, so I’m not going to miss my cue: you’re a very lucky woman, Cathy.” Doctor Bjornson stood beside the bed, looking down from what seemed a great height. She was a big woman, whose presence filled the room. “A broken leg, cuts and contusions and possibly some internal bruising—nothing that won’t heal. Normally after an accident like this we’d have to plaster and stitch you up like Frankenstein.”

Cathy didn’t feel lucky. Every joint ached. She couldn’t twitch without painful shock waves rippling through her nervous system. Simple acts, like taking a sip of water or shifting her weight on the mattress, were punctuated with yelps and groans. She wondered what’s it going to feel like taking a shit!

“Can’t you give me something, Doc?”

“If your discomfort is too severe we can increase the dosage of pain suppressants.”

“Discomfort! It feels like I’m being acupunctured with railway spikes.”

The doctor smiled. She was in her late forties, Cathy guessed. Not what you’d call beautiful, but intriguing… no, on second thought, perhaps beautiful.

“We could increase the dosage immediately,” Dr. Bjornson offered.

“I think I’ll be okay,” Cathy decided, not wanting to wimp out.

“The police have requested an interview. Do you feel up to it?”

Cathy sighed. “Yeah. I guess.”

Dr. Bjornson nodded curtly. “I’ll be back to check on you later,” she said. “Let the nurse know if your crucifixion by railway spikes continues and we’ll do something about it.” She walked briskly toward the door. Just before she exited Dr. Bjornson paused. “You can have visitors now, too, if you want” she said.

Then she was gone, and Cathy let herself drift, imagining what it would be like for a fallen leaf to land on a perfectly calm pond on a bright summer day…

“Ms. Vermeer?” she was summoned back into consciousness by a stocky young woman looking in at the door. “Inspector Diane Reger, Vancouver Police. Is it okay if I ask a few questions?”

“Can I see your badge?”

Inspector Reger fished a leather holder out of her jacket and flipped it open. Satisfied her identity had been confirmed, she flipped the wallet shut.

Cathy smirked. “I’ve always wanted to say that. Too many crime shows on Knowledge Network, I guess. Ever watch Inspector Morse? That’s my favourite.”

“How are you feeling?” Inspector Reger pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed.

“Like I’ve just been rammed by a god-damned Hummer, then run over four or five times… that, and pissed off.”

“Can you tell me what happened.” Inspector Reger flipped open her notebook, using her knee as a writing surface. She jotted occasional entries as Cathy went over events at Broadway and Granville.

“Did you see the driver?”

Cathy remembered the square face peering over the Hummer’s grill. “He was Caucasian,” she said. “He looked to be pretty big and muscular—at least between the ears. Blond hair. That’s about it. I didn’t see much more.”

“Was there a passenger in the vehicle?”

“Didn’t see anyone.”

“And you didn’t recognize the driver?”

“Yeah. I saw him in a movie once: Planet of the Apes.”

The inspector smiled politely, then looked official again. “Do you have any reason to believe this man may have known you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think this attack might have been something other than a random incident?”

Caught off guard, Cathy hesitated a second. “No,” she said.

Diane Reger folded her hands over her notebook, fixed Cathy with a sympathetic gaze, her dark eyes probing. “Sometimes we’re really afraid to talk about things that are happening in our lives,” she said. “We’re embarrassed, or ashamed, or we don’t want to get people into trouble. There’s a million reasons people keep dangerous secrets. If someone’s threatening you Cathy, you should tell me.”

Cathy’s chest tightened, the bottled up truth expanding against her rib cage. But she clamped her mouth shut.

“Someone broke in and vandalized your apartment just over three weeks ago. Is that incident related to yesterday’s accident?”

“No,” Cathy lied.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just am!”

“Okay,” Inspector Reger said. She thumbed back through her notebook. “When you vacated your place so it could be fixed up, you stayed with a Maria Selkirk. Who’s she?”

“A friend,” Cathy said. “Are we just about done? I’m getting tired.”

Inspector Reger closed her notebook and tucked it into her pocket. “We’re done for now, Cathy. But I’m worried, I have to tell you. I don’t want anything else to happen before we talk again.”

Talk again?

Inspector Reger pushed her chair back. “If you remember anything else, give me a call.” She placed her card on the bedside table, then left.

~~~

“You didn’t tell the police about Laurence!”

“You didn’t tip them off about Pirelli, did you?” Cathy rebutted.

Slam-dunk comeback, Maria had to admit.

“Besides, they know something’s not right, and they’re gonna be knocking at your door soon. The officer who interviewed me asked about the attack on my apartment, so they’ve connected those dots. I think they suspect I’m under siege by a jilted lover… I wish!”

Maria suppressed a smile. That Cathy had survived without major injuries seemed a miracle, considering the ‘twisted wreckage’ of her Toyota.

“Cath,” she began gingerly, “I’m grateful for your protectiveness, but we’ve got to tell the police what happened, right? I mean, you could have been killed.”

Cathy grimaced. The left side of her face was bruised and swollen and Maria felt sick imagining the pain it must have been causing her friend to talk. “I’d agree if I thought he was going to strike again, Mar, but I figure he’s done with me.”

Maria looked desperately to Victor for support.

“She’s right,” he said. “I don’t think Laurence would risk another attack on Cathy at this point. She’s not his target, you are. Cathy’s just a proxy.”

“Thanks!” the patient grumbled.

“Then we need to go to the police.” Maria said angrily. “How long can I let this continue? If Laurence is prepared to push this far he’s not going to stop at anything. He’s murdered one person already, and look what he’s done to Cathy. He’ll keep hitting and hitting until I either give in or I’m dead.”

“I’d hold off a bit longer, Mar,” Victor advised.

“Why? What’s the point?”

“He’s been very careful not to show himself, but he’s left a trail. Like Cathy said, the police have ‘connected the dots’ between the trashing of her place and the ram and run. There’s also the paintball incident in Stanley Park. Alone, none of those would sway a judge. Taken together…?”

“So, you’re suggesting we wait around until he strikes again. Christ, Vic, what will it take? One of us getting killed?”

“There’s risk no matter how we play it, but we know what’s going to happen if we go to the police right now. They’re going to focus their investigation on Laurence. They won’t have enough to nail him, so he’ll be on the loose. There’s not even enough evidence to get a restraining order, for what that’s worth. And how do you think Laurence is going to react once we’ve sicced the cops on him?”

He paused, waiting for Maria to agree, then pushed on when she maintained her silence. “The only reason Laurence hasn’t filed an application to have access to Aaron, or even custody, is the risk of exposure. Play your hand now and he won’t have anything left to lose. He’ll be in Family Court tomorrow with an application for access and custody, and there’s a real risk a judge might grant both.”

He paused again, letting her frustration levels come down, then continued doggedly. “There’s a tendency to leave a child in his familiar environment, in the family home,” he concluded.

“But what about everything that’s happened!” Maria cried. “The calls, paintballs, Pirelli, now Cath? What about all that?”

“You know that’s all inadmissible, Mar. It’s all inferential or circumstantial, nothing that will stick.”

She stared blankly at Victor, not wanting to believe the arguments that were hemming her in. “He’s winning, isn’t he,” she sighed. “The fucking bastard can do whatever he wants and there’s no way we can stop him! It makes me so mad I want to scream!”

“We’re not done,” Victor promised. “That’s what he wants us to think, that we’re trapped. But we’re not in the end game yet. There’s still room to maneuver.”

“Where? You can wriggle around in a coffin, but you can’t get out. Eventually, you’re going to run out of air.”

He reached across to touch her shoulder. Maria spun away.

“I’m sorry,” she pleaded, confused. “It’s just too much, Vic. I know you’re trying, but it’s just too much.”

“Mar!” Cathy urged. “Hang in. He’s right. You’ve got to hang in.”

She stared from one to the other of them. What do they want? What did they expect from a former wanna-be prostitute, gold digger, soon-to-be-bitch-divorcee if not a corpse?

Vic and Cathy didn’t waver. They held her in their gaze. In the end she had to give in, leave them with their hopes intact.

~~~

Knute yawned and sat on the edge of his cot. If business didn’t pick up after the Inside Out show, he might have to close The Naked Truth Gallery for good. That was the stark reality confronting him. He’d already given up his apartment and set up housekeeping in the back office to save money. Even so, revenues didn’t stack up against expenses… not by a long shot. Did he feel depressed about this? Knute scanned his inner psychic network for signs. “No.” Just because something doesn’t work doesn’t mean it’s a failure.

People spent too much time fretting over corporate notions of ‘success’ as far as he was concerned. If ‘getting ahead’ by crawling over the backs of your bested colleagues was success he could do without it. If the Downtown Eastside was a byproduct of the vaunted Fraser Institute brand of success, then the pasty-faced wunderkind of the business world could have it. To him success was being able to stand naked under the sun in the presence of your fellows and not feel a twinge of shame. He could have that any time. All he had to do was pack up for a day trip and head to Wreck Beach.

But for Knute that wasn’t enough. He wanted to be able to step onto a bus stark naked, ride his bike down Denman Street in the buff, drop into his local coffee shop without a shred of fabric hampering his movements. Knute doffed his last encumbering stitch of clothing and stretched out on his cot. Before he closed the Naked Truth he would make one final statement. He would run the business the way it should be run—stark raving naked! He smiled thinking about it. The look on his customers’ faces, the furor, the inevitable arrival of the cops, whose duty it was to enforce Victorian notions of dress and manners.

Sleep, perchance to dream, would come quickly and tonight I welcome it. He didn’t like admitting he was on the back side of the wave when it came to aging, but sagging muscles and skin wrinkled as falling leaves belied his stout denials. That and his fatigue. He had worked all day setting up the Inside Out exhibit and felt it in his muscles and joints. Victor had dashed in and out to help, but for the most part the lawyer-cum-artist had issued quick batches of instructions, pitched in for fifteen minutes or so, then charged off to meet a client or appear in court. That left Knute on his own to hang the photographs and the dozens of banners that would define the ‘Groves of Eros’ as Victor insisted on calling the video display and performance spaces.

“Ridiculous!” Knute muttered. It was a small matter, but irritating. He preferred plain speaking to the affected language of the arts. That quibble aside, he knew the Inside Out show was going to be sensational, and Knute was proud to think he’d had a role to play, giving Victor a venue. That in itself made the whole Naked Truth enterprise worthwhile. Knute yawned again, hugely, then settled into sleep.

~~~

Glass shattering, a heavy object thudding and skittering across the gallery floor. Knute woke with a start, uncertain if he’d really heard something or if he was experiencing the fading echoes of a dream. He couldn’t identify what the noises might mean.

Then another crash reverberated in the gallery. Bolting upright, he swung himself off the mattress and stumbled toward the office door. He yanked it open just in time to hear the sinister whump of igniting air, similar to the sound of a gas barbecue lighting up, only softer and infinitely more threatening. A garish splash of orange light danced on the walls.

He knew instinctively what had happened. Somebody had thrown a Molotov cocktail or some type of incendiary device into the shop. Through the intervening forest of banners the flames flickered. Knute switched on the lights and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the back wall. Running, he pulled the release pin and began systematically knocking back the flames. In less than a minute he had subdued them.

~~~

“If you hadn’t been here the whole place would have burned down. All my work, poof! Up in smoke.” As it turned out the damage was minor: smashed windows, a few singed banners, some burn marks on the gallery floor. Then there was the graffiti in the back alley, proclaiming cryptically, ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’, ‘Fornication’, ‘Strange Flesh’, ‘Damnation’, ‘Eternal Fire’.

“Strange flesh?” Knute wondered. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The fevered flesh of diseased brains?”

“Barbarians! I wonder what they would have done if they’d known I was here? Would they have started their fire anyway? Deliberately risked killing me in my sleep?”

Victor shrugged. “No way of figuring what these nut-bars might do.”

“But the exhibit? It will go ahead as planned?”

“Damned rights!” Victor said. “It will go ahead better than planned, my friend. They’ve done us another huge favour, the New Covenant clan. Just wait till the media get hold of this. We’ll have a lineup all the way round the block opening night. The place will be so jammed the cops won’t be able to get in to arrest me!”

Knute nodded, a quick bob of his head, but Victor caught a glint of worry in the old nudist’s eye.

“What?” he said.

“The official opening is a ways off, Vic. Who’s to say what might happen between now and then, eh?” He gestured at the damage done to the Naked Truth Gallery. “These are not the type of people who will be deterred easily. They’re fanatics.”

“I won’t back down,” Victor promised.

“Of course not. I didn’t think you would—not even over my charred body”

Victor laughed slyly.

“What?” Knute wanted to know.

“Maybe we need to get you a set of protective clothes, an asbestos suite to sleep in?”

“No, no!” Knute raised his hands in protest. “I can run much faster in the nude.”

“I guess you’ve got a new work experience to add to your resume.”

“What’s that?”

“Nude firefighter. I think that’s a job description with a future.”

Knute bobbed his head in agreement.

~~~

Laurence clicked the off button, killing the morning news. He leaned back in his swivel chair, savoured the moment, allowing himself a satisfied smile, his hands locked behind his head. For weeks, he had been looking for his opportunity, a way to get rid of Maria and reclaim his son without doing irreparable damage to his legit reputation. The last thing he needed was the cops paying more attention to him. Now he’d get his shot.

Yes! A clear shot.

There were still logistical considerations, of course, always are. He’d leave the tactical elements up to a pro. Maria would have to be in the company of Victor Daly. That shouldn’t be too hard to arrange. Two love birds with one burst.

He visualized the headline: Erotic artist gunned down with companion. The media would instantly jump to the conclusion that Victor had been murdered by the New Covenant jerks; Maria had simply been in the wrong place, at the wrong time… with the wrong guy. They’d rerun clips of Victor yapping to the media on the steps of the Holy Rosary Cathedral, and in front of the Naked Truth Gallery. They’d dig a little deeper into Daly’s bio, discover his legal credentials.

“Shit, this weirdo is a top Family Court lawyer!” Who would want to hire a porn merchant to represent them in court? I’ll be doing society a favour.

Of course the cops wouldn’t be thrown off-scent. But a quick risk-benefit analysis confirmed Laurence’s gut instinct. He would be a suspect, no doubt. They would root through everything in Maria’s Family Court application, and gain access to the stuff she had stored in her safety deposit box. They’d grill him, but in the end there’d simply be too many complicating factors. Yes, I was angry with her, he would confess. No, I’m not involved in organized crime. That was Maria’s delusion. No, I didn’t want to see her dead. I wanted to work things out. I still loved her, even though I was angry. Then if they continued pushing: She was the mother of my son, for God’s sake! How could I possibly even think of harming Maria?

His denials wouldn’t convince them, but they would never get approval from Crown to lay charges. Not when their prime suspect’s motives were eclipsed by the avowed intentions of a tribe of fanatical Christians, who wanted to punish Victor Daly for his pornographic sins and big mouth.

And with Maria gone, the Family Court file slams shut, too.

The plan stood every chance of success. A definite go.

It took competence and jam to organize a hit. It was the ultimate expression of who he was: a man who didn’t live by ordinary rules, who would hurt you—destroy you—if you got in his way… no matter who you think you are. He punched the intercom and summoned his bodyguard. Contact with The Hunter would be made from a secure, untraceable phone; final arrangements for a high-priority hit in a dark booth at the back of a secluded restaurant.

~~~

“Not now, for god’s sake,” Victor vented.

Yes, he’d ordered the DNA analysis; yes, it confirmed what he’d suspected. “But God damn it, not now!”

He plucked out his ear bud and tossed his mobile onto the passenger seat.

Stop. He pulled out of the traffic stream on Robson into an empty parking spot. Sat for a moment, his head resting on the steering wheel.

Barring a minuscule fraction of possible error—a probability as slender as dropping a marble into a pop bottle from the top of a skyscraper—Barbara Doer was his biological grandmother; Crystal Doer, his mother.

He couldn’t process the news. It’s crazy. Left him panting like a confused dog. He sensed passers-by gawking, perhaps mistaking him for a stock investor in the throes of a market crash. Fuck you!

He’d requested confirmation as quickly as possible, and the lab had offered a turn around of three to five working days. “We’ll courier the actual analysis to you today, Mr. Daly,” the representative had informed him.

Victor didn’t want to see the results. Wanted to forget them. His verified hunch about Crystal Doer made the rest of his life a non-sequitur. He shook his head violently. He, Nora and Richard had tacitly, doggedly avoided this discovery. Now this girl—this mother of mine—had crept out of the forgotten den where she’d birthed him, and he had to find her.

He bolted upright, surprised to discover his cheeks damp. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and gripped the steering wheel firmly, as if he was already speeding away from the ghost of Crystal Doer and the upheavals he foresaw. But he couldn’t move and felt like a fool, sitting there in his Porsche, the engine idling expectantly, him not knowing which direction to go.

“What’s outside that God-damned closet door!” he yelled.

Now he sensed the passers-by pretending not to notice. They must have heard his anguished cry reverberating through the windscreen of the badly parked Porsche. But it was too obviously none of their business. Just another instance of corporate meltdown. Best look away. They hurried by, oblivious.

Ain’t nobody’s business but my own! He shook off Taj Mahal’s misplaced lyric.

His mother’s clothes were still draped on hangers in his before-time closet. Chiffon and satin, Sexy. Rustling in quiet admonition. Was she out there, keening, wailing over her loss? The loss of her child, he suddenly mourned with her. The loss of me!

Wherever she had been—I had been—it was a place called hell.

And she let me out!

He gasped. Couldn’t breathe. Uttered a strangled cry of atonement.

The habits and the burqas and all the other paraphernalia imposed by old men in robes were in that closet, too They concealed her power—the regenerative source of all being. Replaced it with an arid intellectualism as fecund as dried leather.

Chiffon and satin?

Victor knew beyond doubting that his mother, the girl named Crystal Doer, had been raped, a victim of tribal brutality… and that his father was a monster who dressed her up in forbidden clothes…

He slammed the car into gear and peeled out into traffic. Had to get out of there, get anywhere but the place I am. He wouldn’t allow the passers-by to watch him, condemn and categorize his anguish. Victor saw through their ugly truth.

That’s what Inside Out is all about.

He hadn’t known it until then, but the freedom Pauline and Rick had granted was a sacred trust. To have allowed him the fringes of their intimacy—even their freelance intimacy—was a selfless act. It was the absolute opposite of pornography, even though it appeared as smut to vulgar eyes.

No one’s going to stop this fucking show!

These thoughts propelled him through the city, into Stanley Park, where he screamed around corners, passing anything that moved, until he found himself at Prospect Point, overlooking English Bay and West Vancouver.

~~~

In other circumstances Maria might have liked Inspector Diane Reger. She could certainly imagine Cathy falling for the policewoman. Meticulous and precise in thought and action, qualities Maria admired. There was an economy and directness about her that made you think you could get to know the inspector quickly, but not deeply. Maria was pretty sure more than one criminal had been outfoxed by the woman sitting opposite at her kitchen counter.

“How well do you know Cathy?”

“She’s a good friend.”

“Can you think of any reason anyone might want to ram her car into oncoming traffic on Granville Street?”

“No,” Maria sounded unconvincing, even to herself.

“No ideas at all?”

Maria shrugged. “Road rage?”

Inspector Reger shook her head. “I don’t think so. Witnesses say the Hummer followed Cathy for several blocks. There were no signs of aggression before the incident took place, and nothing occurred at the intersection that would have triggered a rage episode. Witnesses describe what appears to be a deliberate attack.”

“Who owns the Hummer?”

“It was stolen. That’s another thing that puzzles us: the vehicle was completely clean. No prints, no hair, no forensics at all that could help identify the driver.”

“So?”

“If there’s no forensic evidence, Ms. Selkirk, it means somebody went to great lengths to cover their tracks. This wasn’t some joy rider out to cause mayhem. That Hummer was stolen by somebody who knew exactly what they were doing… And why they were doing it. It was a planned hit.”

“I see.”

“A couple of weeks ago Cathy’s apartment was vandalized.”

Maria nodded.

“And she stayed with you while her place was being repaired.”

“Yes.”

“Did she receive any phone calls or visits during that time?”

“Yes. Of course she did.”

“Any you would have considered suspicious for any reason?”

“Look, officer,” Maria sighed. “If she had, and I knew about it, I would have told you already…”

“But?” Inspector Reger had zeroed in on a microscopic shift in Maria’s demeanour, a barely perceptible quaver in her voice. She bore into Maria with her steady, imperturbable gaze.

Maria stared back while a series of intricate calculations sorted themselves out beneath the level of consciousness. Mostly she was trying to determine if she could trust this woman—this cop. “Look, I’ve had problems of my own, Inspector. I might not have been as aware of Cathy’s situation as I should have been.”

“What kind of problems?”

“I’m separated from my husband. We’re trying to sort things out.”

Inspector Reger arched her eyebrows inquiringly.

Maria flushed. “It has nothing to do with anything. Forget it.”

“What’s your husband’s name, Maria?”

“Laurence Selkirk.”

“Address?”

Maria recited the Taj’s address and phone number, while Inspector Reger scribbled frantically to keep up.

“Where does your husband work?”

As Maria rattled off the contact information for Selkirk Shipping, Inspector Reger stared straight at her, not writing. “Thank you, Ms. Selkirk,” she said. “That will be all for now.”

“My personal situation can’t be connected to this, Inspector,” Maria protested.

“I’m sure you’re right. But we have to investigate every line of inquiry. We’re especially discreet when it comes to ‘pillars of the community’.”

“You know my husband?”

“Like I said,” Inspector Reger put her notebook away, “all lines of inquiry have to be followed up. Thank you. Contact me if you remember anything else.”

~~~

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s where Cathy wanted to be when she hobbled home from hospital. But she couldn’t resist Maria’s invitation to a coming out party at Ogden Drive. “Nothing elaborate,” she assured: Cath, Maria, Victor, Aaron and Toobee ‘as Aaron’s guest’.

“So?” Cathy sipped her margarita, watching ‘the boys’ play down at the far end of the yard.

“So what?”

“Have you bedded him yet?”

“Jesus, Cath!” Maria almost choked on an hors d’oeuvre. “Even for you that’s a bit forward.”

Cathy smirked. Wickedly, she thought.

“Well?”

“No. I haven’t! As if it’s any of your business. We’re content with a Platonic affair for now.”

It was Cathy’s turn to choke, laughing. “Quick!” she gasped. “Somebody in the house do the Heimlich Maneuver on me. I think I’m going to die…”

Maria smacked her on the shoulder. “Oh, sorry,” she winced empathetically when Cathy grimaced. They laughed harder. “I’m glad you’re back hon. The bottom fell out of my world when I saw that picture of your car in the paper. It scared the crap out of me.”

“I wonder what kind of favour old Laurence is going to do for yours truly next. I’ve already redecorated my apartment, thanks to him. Now I’m going to get a new car… well, the insurance payoff will give me a small down payment on a newer used car..”

“Who says you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?”

“Find a silver lining around the darkest cloud.”

“Transform lead into gold.”

“Hey you two! Keep it down!” Victor yelled. “We can’t hear ourselves play.”

They smiled and waved. Cathy sipped her drink. “It looks like they’re really having fun,” she said.

“He’s been like a real dad to Aaron. It scares me, Cath.”

“There’s that word again, scaredy-cat.”

“Everything’s uncertain,” Maria sighed. “I don’t want Aaron getting attached only to have things fall apart. It’s so natural, so physical between them. They really like each other. But what’s Aaron going to do if Vic and Toobee step out of our lives?”

“What are you going to do, my dear? It would seem the Toob is the only one willing to hump you at the moment.”

Outraged, Maria slapped Cathy again, provoking another yelp’n’laugh.

“Seriously, though, why are you so afraid Mar?”

“His photographs. His quirky friends. I guess that’s got me on edge. The fact that he’s my lawyer, and all this is a huge conflict of interest.” She glanced down the yard to where Victor and Aaron were wrestling. “Not to mention his personal foibles,” she frowned. “How will they play out in Aaron’s life?”

“Foibles are his business, Mar. He’s an artist…”

“Whose subject matter is couples coupling, for god’s sake.”

“The study of nudes has been a part of the art scene since the Renaissance and earlier, in case you hadn’t noticed my dear. Why don’t you try catching up with the Fourteenth Century?”

“Not the study of two nudes together, fucking!”

“He’s pushing boundaries, true.”

“Live sex on stage!”

Cathy shrugged. “Sometimes art takes us places we’re uncomfortable being, at least art that’s worthy of the name. You’ve seen Victor’s work; you know it isn’t porn. It’s the most gorgeous treatment of human sexuality ever—even if it is strictly hetero. Take the controversy out of it, reduce to its essence, and all that’s left is beauty.”

“Try telling that to a five-year-old kid when you have to explain the etchings on your boyfriend’s walls.”

“Good point.”

For a while they sat in silence, mulling what had already been said. Like sitting at the bottom of a drained swamp, Cathy sighed. Any joy left in the yard emanated from the far end, where Toob had tackled Aaron and was licking him into submission.

“That’s not the only thing this fraidy cat has on her mind, though.” Maria said mournfully, like someone lamenting the joyful whooping of an endangered, exotic bird.

“I don’t see any way we can survive, Victor and I,” she said. “Laurence is a predator Cath, a killer. Look at you! You’re just his latest victim. What do you think he’ll do to Victor and me once he figures he can’t get his way legitimately? You two persuaded me not to go to the police, and perhaps you were right. But that would only have postponed the inevitable….”

“What do you mean ‘would have’, Maria? Have you gone to the cops?”

“They came to me,” she answered. “Your Inspector Reger stopped by for a little afternoon chat. I didn’t tell her about Laurence in so many words, but when I dropped his name, she clued in pretty quick.”

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t think Don Pirelli was the only one to have Laurence under surveillance, my dear. The VPD is onto him, too. She perked up like a pit bull.”

“And where does that leave us?”

Maria frowned. “The hunted animal is the most dangerous species, isn’t it.”

~~~

Maria smiled. Aaron chatted, rosy cheeked and full of tall tales about Toobee and Vic, as she pulled the covers up to his chin. “Go to sleep now, buster. And I mean it,” she admonished, switching off the light and closing the bedroom door.

“Not all the way!”

“Okay.” She nudged it open a sliver. “But you have to promise.”

“I promise.”

“Night, hon.”

Then she, Cathy and Vic talked on until midnight, their voices floating into the blackness that pooled at the perimeter of her back yard. Maria was happy to listen while Cathy and Victor yakked about photography, the politics of sexuality, all that stuff. They were getting along famously.

Why am I surprised? she wondered. Why do I always put a sideways spin on things?

Something to do with her upbringing, no doubt. But she was tired of blaming my fucking tyrant of a father for what she called the disaster reflex—that flinching of soul in anticipation of the sudden random vicious events that ensued whenever happiness struck…

She remembered how Victor had recoiled that first time she touched his sleeve in Stanley Park, and wondered What happened to you in that ‘before-time’ of yours, mister?

As she pondered, she listened to his elaborate explanation concerning the relationship of form to composition in the physical realm. “Spirit is the emergent expression of self in the material world,” he proclaimed. “There’s no such thing as spirit separate from its embodiment, and sex is the prelude to embodiment.”

Why do you have to work so hard to prove it isn’t a sin?

“There’s not a shred of doubt in my mind that this world is an expression of universal spirit,” he argued. “Spirit, manifesting as conscious, willing being, shapes the primordial chaos. It contradicts entropy.

“That omnipotent, infinite being classical religions call god—if heshe exists—experiences hisherself through the creative expression of individuated souls. But individuated spirit is in some mysterious sense mirage—it comes into being, makes its difference in the world, echoes through procreation, then goes under, leaving room for new forms of expression and knowledge. In fact, the individual never really existed, except as an expression of ‘species will’.”

“Now wait a minute!” Cathy objected. “Are you telling me I don’t really exist?” She patted her head by way of demonstration.

“Of course you do.”

“But only as a facet of what you’re calling ‘universal spirit’ or ‘species will’.”

“We’ve hit on the conundrum of human existence.” He gestured grandly toward the darkness at the foot of the yard, the way it blended into the night sky. “What you are experiencing is the tension between existentialism and what latter day Christian interpreters call ‘intelligent design’.”

“What the fuck are you on about?” Cathy objected. “And what the fuck does any of this have to do with photo art… that’s what we’re discussing here, remember? Can you capture this ‘individuated spirit’ with the click of a shutter?”

“Art experiences and expresses the very essence of humanity,” he cried with another sweeping gesture. “In one form or another, art manifests our reason for being. In terms of earthly evolution, we as humans have expanded the ability of nature to understand itself. But we’re still enmeshed in nature, an extension of universal consciousness. My photography is all about pushing that envelope of spiritual discovery into the sexual realm. Every artist chooses a focus, but we’re all engaged in the same unfolding…”

It’s like a court case to him. An undercurrent of pleading had entered his voice, and Maria sensed Victor was talking to her through Cathy. He needed her to appreciate the spiritual essence of Inside Out, the powerful nuances that separated his imagery from the puerile fantasies of the pornographers… why he was willing to risk his career for the sake of his art… and for me.

There was something else, too—an edginess that couldn’t be put to words so long as Cathy was present. He glanced at her furtively….

What? Maria wanted to shout, as if she didn’t already know, deep inside.

She yawned pointedly after a polite interlude. “This gal needs her beauty sleep,” she announced, gesturing toward the house. “I’ve got a little angel in there who’s going to wake up in the form of a whirling dervish at the crack of dawn.”

Her comment triggered a flurry of activity. “Don’t be stupid,” she scolded Cathy, who insisted on bringing in her own dishes, hobbling through the house on her crutches. “Shh,” she warned Victor, making his way into the kitchen with a clinking, clanking collection of bottles and glasses.

“Here.” She handed him the keys to her SUV as the three of them headed down the hall to the front door. Victor had offered Cathy a lift home. “She isn’t going to squeeze herself into that car of yours without re-breaking her leg.”

“What about the keys? Should I put them in your mailbox?”

“I’ll be up.”

“I’ll be up,” Cathy mimicked.

~~~

They couldn’t wait. Not for a second. The moment Victor stepped inside they let themselves go. “Not here,” she breathed. “Aaron.”

They drew back

a moment, 
a surging tide 
between waves 
abandoned the sofa,

fled up stairs…

Then fell in

and in, and in
bodies merged
boundaries blurred
hungering, each
for the other.

~~~

“I love you. I loved you the instant I saw you. Even knowing you were married. Even knowing you might be my client. It’s a good thing Laurence is such a prick or I’d end up feeling like one myself.”

They lay side by side, noses inches apart, seeing each other in each other’s eyes. He stroked her auburn hair, letting his fingers follow the silky nap across her temple, around her ear, down the back of her neck. “I’ll be thinking about you all day, every day.”

They kissed, content for now with the gentlest brushing of lips, the most sensuous traceries of fingertips over tingling contours. The electricity of love-making had not dissipated. It flowed between them, an unstable flux shivering in the neural network.

“This is delicious,” she sighed.

Then she frowned. “But it isn’t the only reason you wanted to be here tonight, is it?”

“No,” he admitted. “There’s something I needed to tell you.”

“Well?” she prompted.

Why dredge things up now? He wanted to seal his before-time past into its crypt forever. That’s what Victor wanted to do. But the ghost of Crystal Doer wouldn’t rest.

“I’ve found out who my biological mother is.”

Maria propped herself on her elbow, looking down at him, surprised. “I thought you weren’t interested in finding her.”

“I wasn’t.” He described the television documentary he’d seen that night at his parents’ house, Crystal’s face appearing like a ghost from his non-existent past.

“I knew instantly who she was, like I’d been tasered and a forgotten part of me got jolted back to life.”

“You don’t seem very happy about it.”

“She’s been missing thirty-five years, Maria. Everyone presumes she’s dead and that the missing person file should really be a murder file.”

“Are you sure she’s your mother? Maybe you’re projecting.”

“I visited her parents out in Abbotsford—my maternal grandparents—collected some biological material. The DNA analysis confirms Barbara Doer is my grandmother. Crystal was their only child. She’s my mother.”

He watched as Maria took in the implications. “My God! What are you going to do?”

“I have to go see them again. The biological sample wasn’t obtained, uh, willingly…”

“Huh?”

“I recovered it from the waste basket in their bathroom.”

“So, they don’t know you’re their grandson?”

“Not yet. And, to be honest, they’re not going to be thrilled. They’re staunch Christians, Maria, the kind of folks my art riles. DNA be damned, they’re not going to welcome the creator of Inside Out into the branches of their family tree.”

Maria shook her head. “And I thought my family history was twisted.”

He drew her to him. “A part of me wants to chuck it all. What matters is you and me. But I can’t walk away from it. Crystal Doer is in my genes.”

Her face loomed above him, intense, blissful. She kissed him hard. They fell into each other again, bodies merging inside their whorl of space and time.

~~~

Dead! The both of them. They would feel the sting of avenging lead. Daly, the bastard, was spending nights at her place now. “Some fucking lawyer.”

He waited impatiently for the call to come through. Arrangements had to be made to ensure it could not be traced or recorded, a necessary inconvenience, especially considering the heightened police interest in Selkirk Shipping. No question they were sniffing. His intelligence on that score was solid. Perhaps they hadn’t figured out the operation was being run from inside the president’s office, but they certainly knew that Selkirk Shipping was a conduit…

Dead! He banged his fist on the dash.

The burner phone sitting in the cup holder buzzed.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Selkirk,” the hunter rumbled. “You wanted to talk?”

“Yes.” Laurence kept any hint of peevishness out of his voice; this was a professional conversation between equals. Business. “I’m just wondering why I haven’t had any good news lately.”

“These things take time. Bringing the right people together in the right circumstances isn’t something I can make happen.” The Hunter’s voice conveyed no emotion. “If you just wanted me to take care of either of them, that could be done pretty quick. But together… that complicates things.”

“They have to be together. It’s got to look like she just happened to be there,” Laurence insisted. “Would a bonus rider help?”

There was a thoughtful pause at the other end. “It might.”

“I was thinking we could double your fee.”

Again, the pause.

“Based on a timeline, of course. Would that help?”

“What sort of timeline?”

“Say a week?”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. Selkirk. It would be easier if I could do the job with a third party in the frame…”

“No! Absolutely not.”

“He wouldn’t get hurt.”

“No!”

“Anything else?” the hunter asked, as if he’d just shrugged.

“That’s all,” Laurence said.

The line went dead.

~~~

“Until now I haven’t really appreciated what your photographs are all about, Victor,” Nora Daly was saying. As she spoke she yanked weeds out of their backyard vegetable garden. Angrily it seemed to him.

“In other words, you’ve always considered my art suspect, Mom. Admit it.”

She tugged another weed, grunting with the effort. “Okay! Okay already! So, Dad and I don’t often raise the subject of your art over cocktails with our socialist friends. That doesn’t mean they’re not exquisite or that we haven’t been trying to understand them on a deeper level.”

Oops. She was in no mood to be humoured. He hadn’t even broached the subject of his parenthood yet, and Nora was already out of sorts. Explaining the real reason for his unexpected visit would tip things over the edge. He was sure of it.

How could you tell your own mother that a creature was growing inside you—a mutation of arms, legs, heart, and lungs that was coalescing into something monstrous, but undeniable. Something you would one day be forced to call your father. He wanted his old life back, the poster-boy image of new age success that had been his before Laurence. Before Crystal. Before Inside Out… Before this.

Nora ripped up another weed, tossed it on the growing mound.

That’s what Nora and Richard wanted, too—a son whose lifestyle made them look askance just a little, but which followed a trajectory they could describe with modest pride as up-and-coming.

“You’ve always challenged our notions of who we are Victor,” Nora sniffed. “I suppose that’s what children do. We’re dyed-in-the-wool socialists, and that’s never going to change. But we both feel old. Socialism was a solution for our century, and it’s still relevant, even in the post-industrial age. That said, we can see the possibility of something beyond socialism. I suppose that’s what you’re living.”

“That sounds like a concession speech, Mom.”

“No! Not at all.” She forced a smile. “Socialism has been the bulwark of change my whole life, Vic. Medicare, Employment Insurance, improved working standards, equality for women and minorities… all those things have come about because socialists like your Dad and I fought hard for them. And we still have work to do. Us old-guard socialists still have to hold the old-guard capitalists at bay while your designer society unfolds. We’ll be fighting that fight into the grave, but I’m certain now the new world won’t have much to do with our brand of socialism.”

She’s never talked like this before, he thought warily.

Nora grunted, pulled up another weed.

“How does that make you feel, Mom?”

“Like I’ve done what I was sent here to do: forced a smidgen of reluctant change on a brutal world, and raised a wonderful son, who’s going to be part of a future neither me nor your father can quite bring ourselves to condone.”

She stood up, stretched, pushed her straw hat back so she could see him better. They hugged. “Enough with the political philosophy, though,” she said. “You didn’t stop by in the middle of the week to listen to your mom’s Grade 12 Socials lecture, I bet. Let’s go in and have some tea.”

As they climbed the back steps and she put on the kettle, he wrestled with the appalling truth of his mission. How can I say the things I have to say to her? This woman, plump and wrinkled now, had taken him in, raised him, loved him since he was a child. Since the before-times ended.

“It’s about the girl, isn’t it?” Nora interrupted his anxious thoughts.

“Huh?”

“The girl in that newscast; she’s been on my mind, too. You’re going to tell me something about her aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mom,” he admitted, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Well? Spit it out!”

“She’s my biological mother” he reacted, stunned by his own brutality.

His truth landed like the thud of a guillotine—a horrible sound that left a ghastly pause in its wake. A sound that sealed their fate.

Nora stared, eyes brimming. Then her features hardened.

“How can you know this?”

He told her about the DNA.

“If only. If only! IF ONLY!” She trembled, pouring the tea.

“If only what, Mom?”

“If only you’d just let it go. Ignored intuition. We’ve been happy all these years, Victor. Haven’t we? How is this going to add to our happiness, your discovery of a mother who disappeared thirty-five years ago and hasn’t been heard from since?”

He hadn’t expected bitterness, and struggled against his sense of disappointment. He’d thought Nora would be sympathetic; hurt, but understanding.

“She’s alive, Mom. I know it.”

Nora put the teapot down. Waited.

“I’ve been having these dreams ever since I saw that newscast. They explain so much about who I am. They’re from that time we never talk about, my first five years.”

She bumped his cup down in front of him, sagged back into her chair.

“I need to know anything you can tell me, Mom.”

“About what?”

“About the time before you and Dad—the time I can’t remember.”

For a second she looked fierce. He’d never asked this of them, not once. Silence had become a family pact. But now the questions could not remain unasked. Nora sighed, a long heavy sigh like the sound of a tire deflating. Then without a word she got up and left the room. He heard her heavy tread going upstairs then, after a minute or so, coming back down. A scrap of paper fluttered in her hand.

“That’s all I know,” she said, thrusting the clipping toward him. “You’re mother’s dead, Victor. That’s what we’ve always thought. We should leave her that way. I’m your mother.”

Then she left him alone to read.

~~~

The story had appeared on the front page of the Vancouver Sun’s final edition for Friday, September 18, 1978.

Abandoned child struck by car

Police in Langley are looking for the parents of a four or five-year-old child who was struck by a car while wandering unattended on a rural road at about 2 a.m. this morning. The child sustained serious injuries and is being closely monitored at Langley Memorial Hospital, where he was driven by the distraught motorist who hit him.

“We are looking for the parents of this child, and ask them to please come forward and identify themselves,” RCMP Lower Mainland District Chief Superintendent Bruce McCallum told a hastily convened news conference. “We have no idea who his parents are, or what the child was doing out at that time of night. There is nothing to suggest at this point that the driver of the vehicle that struck the boy had any foreknowledge of the child in question.”

McCallum said he has never heard of a case similar to this in his 30 year’s experience. “We don’t know if the boy lives nearby, or if he somehow got out of a vehicle that may have been passing through the area.”

The boy was wandering, naked in a gully where the Salmon River crosses 56^th Ave. in the Township of Langley when he was struck. It’s a rural area and it was a foggy night. “We’re hoping other motorists may have seen something,” McCallum said. “We urge anyone who witnessed anything that night to contact us…”

“Me?” Victor choked. “Was that me?”

He could hardly believe it. First his mother vanishes without a trace. Then, five years later, abandons him in the dead of night on a country road where he almost ends up as road-kill.

Rereading the article, more memories began to surface. He remembered a hand, stroking his hair, then a police officer—or was it a social worker—questioning gently, probing, asking about how he’d ended up on a dark road, alone, in the dead of night. Remembered not remembering, not having any recollection of what the woman was asking about.

All that had spiraled into the obliterating gravity of before-time. But it had happened. There was no denying the scrap of yellowed newsprint in his had, or the tattered memories it conjured.

What am I getting myself into? he sighed. Then, heaving himself out of the kitchen chair, he went to find his mother… his real mother.

~~~

Once the truth is out you can’t put it back in its box. Victor swirled his scotch round in his glass. Some bits of truth, though, you could leave lying about like bent, rusty car parts in a wrecker’s yard; others you had to track down and assemble into something meaningful.

Crystal Doer? He had a few pieces to the puzzle, her parents would be able to tell him more. Have to go see them. Much as he wanted to avoid it, he punched in their number. Waited, remembering the phone on its stand in their spick-and-span hallway. There must have been other phones in the Doer bungalow, in rooms he’d never seen. But he imagined Mrs. Doer—has to be her—picking up the phone, sighing irritably, but agreeing to his request, being at least somewhat sympathetic.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mrs. Doer? Victor Daly here.”

“Oh.” She wilted, barely concealing her distaste.

“I have to talk to you and Mr. Doer right away. It’s urgent.”

For a moment, silence. Then she said, “My husband and I don’t want anything to do with you, Mr. Daly. We just want to be left alone.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option, ma’am.”

“Not an option!” Her voice cracked with anger. “Look, we’re devout Christians, Mr. Daly. We watch the evening news. We read the papers. We don’t want anything to do with the likes of you.”

“One meeting, Mrs. Doer, then you can disown my client.”

“Disown! What do you mean by that?”

“Sorry,” he retreated quickly. “Bad choice of words. You can dissociate yourself from me and my client if you want. But I need to meet with you at least once more. When we last talked your husband said I should provide more details as to why my client believes he is your grandson. I can now provide very compelling evidence that will link him to Crystal.”

Cornered, she didn’t respond.

He waited.

“Can’t your client get another lawyer, Mr. Daly?” she said at last. “I think my husband and I would be more amenable to meeting with him if he was represented by someone other than you. That would be in everyone’s best interests, don’t you think?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He stiffened.

“But we don’t want you in our house.”

“Then you and Mr. Doer can come and see me in my office, if you prefer.”

“Can’t you say what you have to over the phone, or send it by registered mail?”

“No. I’m sorry, Mrs. Doer, but I can’t.”

She sighed peevishly. “Let me speak to my husband, Mr. Daly, then he or I will get back to you. Is that satisfactory?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you… When will you get back to me.”

“Tomorrow,” she snapped, then hung up.

~~~

“For a down-home girl you seem to have some pretty upscale tastes,” Maria griped.

“Shut up and drive,” Cathy countered.

Aaron giggled from the back seat.

“What are you snickering at, buster?”

“Auntie Cathy should have a time out,” he ratted.

“Oh, you little stinker!” Cathy shrieked. “I’m never going to sneak you another Mars Bar as long as I live.”

“What!” Maria squawked.

Now he was laughing out loud at the two bickering women in the front seats. Maria and Cathy exchanged a quick smile, soaking up his gleeful appreciation of their shtick.

“Time to get serious,” Maria announced, pulling off Fourth into the Safeway parking lot. The plan was to nip in, buy some essentials, then hit a couple of nearby thrift shops where Cathy could tick off a few of the items on her ‘upscale’ list. “I’ll let you off near the Safeway entrance. Me and Backseat Driver here will meet you inside,” Maria said.

She pulled up to the curb. Cathy twisted, retrieving her crutches then wrestling them out the door.

“Come on!” Maria mimicked a cranky bus driver. “We haven’t got all day, lady.”

Cathy swung herself out gingerly, wobbling precariously on the pavement beside the SUV.

“You okay?” Maria fretted.

“A stabilizing drink would do me good right about now.”

“See you in a sec.” Maria assured as the door slammed shut.

A car honked. Annoyed, Cathy glanced left, scanning the line of vehicles, hoping to ID the impertinent oaf. Imagine, honking at a woman on crutches! The driver of the closest car shrugged, pleading innocence. Her accusing stare flicked to the second in line, a black compact, driven by a square faced gentleman with wavy blond hair.

Cathy blinked, did a double take…

Her heart stopped. She let out an involuntary gasp—it was the guy who had rammed her with his Hummer. She was sure of it. He stared straight ahead as if he wasn’t aware of her; and she pretended not to have noticed him, continuing her quick scan of the gridlocked cars. Then Cathy twisted round as if she’d forgotten something, and called out to Maria. Too late. Maria was out of earshot and the last thing Cathy wanted was to draw attention to herself by yelling again.

What’s he doing here? Planning another attack?

As the line of cars inched forward, Cathy executed an awkward pirouette and hustled into the store, doing her best to make like nothing was out of the ordinary. Once inside, she turned again, watching him muscle ahead. License plate number! In a panic, she clattered out the ‘IN’ door. “S’cuse me,” she mumbled at the annoyed shoppers.

Too late. The plate was hidden behind the line of following cars.

Nine-eleven! Wrestling her satchel over her head and onto the sidewalk, she rummaged for her mobile, flipped it open, dialed.

“Emergency services. Which service do you need: ambulance, fire or police?”

“Police!”

Another voice came on the line. “Vancouver Police Department, how can I help you?”

“My name is Cathy Vermeer,” she panted. “A few days ago I was rammed from behind into the intersection of Broadway and Granville…”

“You reported that incident, ma’am?”

“Yes,” Cathy barked. “It was all over the news. And just a second ago I spotted the guy who rammed me. He’s driving though the Safeway parking lot at Fourth and Vine. I think he’s following me again. I’m scared.”

“Did you get the plate number of his vehicle, ma’am?”

“No, but he’s driving a black compact, headed west through the parking lot. If you get a couple of squad cars down here now, they won’t be able to miss him.”

“Are you safe where you are, Ms. Vermeer?”

“Yes! Can you get some cops down here now?”

“They’ll be on their way, Ms. Vermeer. Stay on the line.”

“Are you sending them now?”

“They’ll be on their way. Are you sure you’re safe?”

“Yes. But my friend Maria and her son Aaron have gone to park their car. They’re coming in to meet me. He might be following them, not me!”

“Stay where you are, ma’am,” the operator advised. “Officers are on their way…”

Cathy broke the connection. She had to warn Maria. Hop-skipping she darted across the entrance road, tottering between the cars. Where are they? Where was the bastard who’d tried to ram her into oblivion? He had to be one of Laurence’s henchman.

The target’s Maria… she figured. Or Aaron! He’s going to snatch Aaron?

“Maria!” she shouted.

Then she saw them. A row over, heading toward the store. “Maria!” she shouted again.

Startled, Maria looked her way, smiled, then looked puzzled, seeing the panic in Cathy’s eyes. Holding Aaron’s hand, she cut between the parked cars, making her way toward Cathy.

“Get back in the SUV!” Cathy shouted. “Lock the doors, Mar!”

Off in the distance a siren wailed. Then another.

Fear and confusion contorted Maria’s face into the prelude of a scream. “What’s wrong!” she shouted. “What’s going on, Cath?”

A third siren picked up the mournful dirge.

Suddenly there it was, the black car, turning into the aisle Maria and Aaron had just left. It fishtailed, then straightened as the driver accelerated. “Get down!” Cathy yelled, lurching toward them. “Get down Maria!”

Grabbing Aaron, Maria crouched. Cathy bustled on, cursing her ungainly gait and the clattering crutches. The car roared past, the driver intent on making his getaway. Cathy watched as it swerved left at the end of the row, then accelerated out of the parking lot.

“What the hell’s going on?” Maria demanded, picking herself up when Cathy reached them, trying to console Aaron and listen at the same time.

“They guy who rammed me, that was him.”

“Jesus Christ!” Maria sagged against the door of a parked car.

Dejected, the three of them waited as the chorus of wailing sirens converged like fate.

~~~

“We’ll have to stop meeting like this,” Inspector Reger said, closing the interview room door.

Maria managed a polite smile.

“So, tell me what happened out there today.”

“We were going to do a bit of shopping…” Maria launched into her statement, recounting how she’d dropped Cathy off, parked the car, and was walking toward the supermarket when all hell broke loose.

“Did you see the guy?”

Maria shook her head.

“Any idea who he might be?”

“No.”

“Let’s go over a few things, shall we?” Inspector Reger continued doggedly. “A couple of months ago you left your husband, taking your five year old son Aaron with you. Three or so weeks ago, your friend Cathy and you get together for a coffee at the local Starbucks. Her place is trashed while you’re sipping lattes. Then your friend’s car gets rammed into traffic on Granville Street. Now, the guy who did that follows you and Cathy into a Safeway parking lot… but he’s not following her, he’s following you. Do you see a pattern in all of this, Maria? A common denominator?”

“My magnetic personality?”

“I’m glad we’ve got to that same page. So why do you think this guy was following you?”

“You know why!”

“This is your statement, not mine.”

“I think he was hired by my husband.”

“To do what?”

“Intimidate me. Maybe grab Aaron, if it comes to that.”

“Tell me a little bit about your husband.”

“I can tell you he would be royally pissed if he knew I was talking about him to the cops.”

“How pissed?”

The question caught her off guard.

“Pissed enough to hurt you, or your friend?”

“Yes,” Maria admitted.

“Pissed enough to have an ex-cop gunned down in a car park?”

Maria felt as if she was sitting on a trap door. Any second now Inspector Reger might push a hidden button and send her hurtling into oblivion. Her mouth opened, but she had nothing to say.

“You were Don Pirelli’s client. I’ve seen his file on your husband,” Inspector Reger said matter-of-factly.

“But how…”

“We cross-referenced Don’s case files against names on our data base. Yours lit up like a winning bingo ticket. Your husband’s, too. You could have saved us a lot of trouble by making that connection. Why didn’t you?”

Maria froze.

“Don found out a lot about Laurence, a lot of stuff we’ve been trying to dig out for years.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“That it’s dangerous to know too much about a man like Laurence Selkirk. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s dangerous to leave a man like him?”

“Yes,” Maria confessed.

~~~

“I think you and Aaron need a break,” Victor announced, glancing up from the chopping block, where he was preparing kabobs for the barbecue. He left work early when he heard about their encounter in the parking lot, did some shopping, and took charge of prep for a late dinner.

“I’ll phone Laurence right away and put in my request,” Maria said.

Cathy was sitting with her leg elevated on a dining room chair; Maria with her elbows on the table, her head propped on the slender struts of her arms. Normally a stickler about video games and TV, she had allowed Aaron unlimited access for the evening. He needed the distraction; they needed some adult time.

“I’m serious,” Victor said. “Remember I told you I had a place you could go if things heated up? I think now’s the time. It’s a cottage up on the Sunshine Coast: ocean view, walking distance to anything you might need, electricity and running water, Jacuzzi. I also have a friend who’ll fly you up there. No chance of Laurence tracking your movements.”

She looked uncertain.

“Look,” Victor pressed, “Laurence has decided to make his move. And now that you’ve made a statement to the police implicating him in the Pirelli murder, it’s likely to get a whole lot worse. Which is why I’m suggesting Plan B: get you and Aaron the hell out of here.”

“Will they question Laurence tonight, do you think?”

Victor shrugged. “I suppose if they want to catch him off guard.”

“The cops already knew about his shady dealings.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Inspector Reger hinted in her not so subtle way. She was pumping me for as much info as she could get. Wanted to know about his business, what kinds of ‘merchandise’ he transports, who his ‘contacts’ are… I don’t think much of the stuff I’ve ferreted out will be news to them, but with Pirelli they hit the jackpot.”

“Pirelli?”

“Yeah. When he was shadowing Laurence, I guess he saw a lot more than seamy trysts with the wives and daughters of the rich and famous, he must have seen plenty of other stuff that would raise an ex-cop’s eyebrows. It wasn’t all in the report he gave to me, but I think he might have been planning to use the info to buy some favour with the VPD.”

“Oh,” Victor clued in. “So, they know you’re at risk.”

“Inspector Reger told me to be careful.”

“We’ve got to get you and Aaron out of here, Mar!”

“Somehow your ‘safe house’ doesn’t seem far enough away.”

“You will be safe there.”

“For how long?”

The phone rang, interrupting their conversation. Maria glanced at the call display. “Private Number,” she reported, pushing the talk button.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Yup.” “Right now?” “Okay.” Then she hung up.

“Vancouver police. They think they’ve identified our parking lot friend. They want me to come down and take a look at his mug shot.”

“Right now?”

“If they get a positive ID, they’re going to move quickly. So yeah, right now.”

“I’ll drive,” Victor offered.

“You okay to stay here with Aaron?” Maria asked Cathy.

“Sure,” she said, doubtfully.

“What’s wrong?” Victor wanted to know.

“I just don’t like the thought of you guys out on the street tonight. Why don’t they bring a copy of the photo here for you to look at? Wouldn’t that be safer?”

Maria and Victor exchanged a glance. True, they thought.

~~~

“I think you’re right, Vic,” Maria said. “It’s time for me and Aaron to go into hiding.” She folded her legs into the Porsche and he closed the door behind her. She looked up at him through the window, sweeping back a loose strand of auburn hair. Smiled uneasily.

Walking round to the driver’s side he scanned up and down Ogden. Nothing. But what did that prove? You’d need night vision goggles to be certain no one lurked behind the neighbour’s hedge or in the darkened precincts of the Maritime Museum across the street. And even then you couldn’t be absolutely certain, could you? That was the terrorist’s edge—that and a bloodthirsty psychosis that allowed them to kill without compunction.

All you could do was be ready. For anything.

He pulled the driver’s door shut and inserted the key in the ignition. The Porsche purred, eager as always. As he straightened out on Ogden, Victor noted a black SUV pulling out of Cypress Street. Its headlights swept the Maritime Museum lawn as it turned toward them.

Headlights! What’s wrong? Something. But Victor couldn’t say what.

“What is it, hon?” Maria sensed his nervousness.

Then he knew. Like a jigsaw thrown in the air and landing completed on the table, the danger suddenly became real, imminent. The SUV was burning holes in his retinas with its high beams. They had been lighting up the museum lawn when he checked up and down the street. He hadn’t noticed it then, but now he remembered the bright spray. The SUV had been sitting there, waiting while he and Maria buckled up.

“Hang on!” he barked.

Braking, he slammed the Porsche into reverse and punched the accelerator hard. The tires screeched in grotesque harmony with Maria’s scream.

“What’s wrong!”

“The SUV!” he commanded. “What’s it doing?”

Victor was craning round in his seat, steering the rocketing Porsche backward.

“My God! My God! He’s coming after us Vic!” she shouted. “He’s going to ram us!”

Victor cranked the wheel, sending the Porsche careering into a sharp reverse left, thumping over the curb onto the museum lawn. The car spun out, its front end whipping into the momentum of the turn. As it came to he jammed the gearshift into first then, steering left, hit the accelerator hard again. Too late. The SUV clipped the rear driver’s side, staving in the trunk, then skidded on down the slope. Ignoring the rasp of rubber against twisted metal, Victor peeled the crippled Porsche back onto Ogden. He raced away, watching in his rear-view mirror as the SUV reversed, swung round and fled in the opposite direction.

“Call 911,” he shouted over the sawing and clattering of his battered Porsche. “Tell them there’s a damaged, steel blue Porsche headed from Cypress and Cornwall, over the Burrard Bridge. It will be speeding, running lights and making erratic movements… Tell them not to shoot!”

“Is he chasing us?”

“Dunno,” Victor said. “But I’m not stopping until we’re swarmed by cops. Tell them to send a squad car to your house, too!”

“Go back, Vic!”

“No! They’re after us Mar. We need to stay away from the house.”

~~~

Inspector Diane Reger didn’t let Victor out of her gaze for an instant. Her pale grey eyes were not hard or aggressive, as he’d expected. They were imploring. Either she genuinely cared or she was putting on a pretty good act.

“So, you realized when the vehicle approached that it had been sitting on Cypress Street, waiting, because of its headlights?” She repeated, doubtful.

“I know it sounds crazy, but yes. That’s exactly what happened. It must have been instinct. I was in a state of high alert after the incident in the Safeway parking lot, and Maria’s friend Cathy had expressed doubts about the call summoning us to come here to the police station. So I was on edge.”

“And what do you think the SUV driver intended to do?”

“For Christ’s sake, the guy chased us onto the museum lawn. He rammed me. I think his intentions were pretty obvious.”

“And you believe Laurence Selkirk was behind this?”

“Yes! Without a doubt!”

Inspector Reger shoved back her chair, got up and started pacing behind the interview table. “You know of course, there is another explanation.”

Victor waited.

“You have received very public threats from an organization known as The New Covenant Society. You have made a point of challenging them in the media, and are going ahead with your Inside Out show, despite their threats.”

“The New Covenant nut-bars weren’t responsible for this attack. It has organized crime written all over it: the planning, the logistics. A bunch of raving, religious radicals couldn’t have carried it out.”

“A bunch of ‘religious radicals’ brought down the World Trade Center, Mr. Daly. Presumably the raving radicals you refer to tossed Molotov cocktails into the Naked Truth Gallery. Never underestimate the ingenuity of fanatics and lunatics. We don’t.”

Victor blushed. “Okay. Point taken. But why would the New Covenanters be stalking Maria in a Safeway parking lot when I wasn’t even there? That doesn’t add up. Selkirk has hired a hit man. The killer was tailing Maria, looking for an opening.”

Inspector Reger considered this.

“He used the same guy that rammed Cathy’s car into Granville Street. She recognized him in the Safeway parking lot, remember?”

“Why would Mr. Selkirk, a successful businessman, very highly regarded in the community, go to these lengths, Mr. Daly? Why wouldn’t he simply hire a good family lawyer, like yourself, and take his wife to court?”

“You know the answer to that,” Victor sighed. “You’ve seen the material in Don Pirelli’s file. If the media gets its hands on that, Selkirk’s glittering carriage turns into a rotten pumpkin overnight.”

“Your client has been coercing Mr. Selkirk with this information, no?”

“My client has been trying to extricate herself and her son from the clutches of a ruthless bastard who has connections with organized crime! He wants her dead because he knows the Family Court case dies with her, and her death will clamp a lid on the other incriminating evidence PI Pirelli dug up.”

“That material could still be leaked,” Inspector Reger pointed out. “And I believe Ms. Selkirk has strongly suggested it will be if she dies unexpectedly.”

“Outside the privileged venue of a court most of that stuff would be libelous. He could contain the damage. From his perspective, limited exposure in the form of rumour and innuendo is the lesser of two evils”

“So, what do you intend to do at this point, Mr. Daly?”

“I’m going to get Maria and Aaron to a safe house.”

Reger nodded approvingly.

“She’ll leave first thing in the morning by seaplane from Coal Harbour.”

The Inspector continued nodding.

“All I ask is that she have police protection from now until the time she leaves.”

“A squad car has been assigned to her home in Kits Point, and Vanier Park is a crime scene. I will see to it that she is escorted to the seaplane terminal. Are you certain this safe house is really safe?”

“She will be flown to Gibsons by a trusted pilot, then driven to Pender Harbour, where the house is located. The house is not registered in my name and cannot be traced back to me. It’s safe. I’ve used it before.”

“And what about your own safety?”

“He’s not after me, Inspector. He’s after Maria. Killing me would only make things worse… unless Maria’s with me.”

Insp. Reger raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

Victor explained the theory he’d pieced together: Laurence, using the New Covenant ultimatum as a screen. “That’s why he attacked when Maria and I were together. His hired gun has been waiting for that situation—engineered it with a phony call to get us in the same car, headed here. The set up created an alternative suspect and motive. You would never be able to get a conviction unless you caught the killer red-handed.”

“Possibly,” Inspector Reger agreed.

“Almost certainly,” Victor insisted.

“The Twin Towers, Mr. Daly. Don’t ever underestimate the power of cold-blooded fanaticism. It wouldn’t be safe to assume you’ve heard the last of the New Covenant or that they can be ruled out as suspects in tonight’s attack.”

Victor nodded curtly. He’d been stupid. Hadn’t seen, as Inspector Reger clearly had, that he and Maria faced a double jeopardy whenever they were together.

“I understand,” he acknowledged in a voice that sounded like surrender. “Thank you, Inspector.”

~~~

The sun skimmed the southeastern sky as they sped over the Burrard Bridge, heading toward Coal Harbour. A police cruiser led the way, an unmarked car followed. Up front their driver and another cop concentrated on the job at hand, getting Maria to the seaplane dock and off their turf.

Inspector Reger had said goodbye at the house. “Keep me informed, Victor,” she’d advised. “If you hear or suspect anything—and I mean anything—call me. You too, Maria. You won’t be phoning each other, I presume.”

“No, we won’t,” Victor confirmed.

“But we need to communicate somehow,” Maria complained in an emphatic whisper, now they were counting down their final minutes together.

“I’ve set up a Hotmail account, Toobeeornottoobee@hotmail.com. I did it from a remote computer that will never be accessed from my home or office…”

“Toobeeornottoobee, nice touch.”

He passed her a note. “User ID and access code. Don’t send the messages anywhere but to the Toobee inbox. We can both open them there.”

Sitting between them, Aaron asked where they were going.

They both looked down and smiled. “On a little holiday, honey, to a house near the ocean. You’ll be able to play outside again.”

He looked worried. Another move to another place where he’d have no friends and only a starter set of toys. Maria stroked his hair, kissed the top of his head.  “It’ll be okay, honey,” she consoled.

“Are you coming, Victor?”

Victor’s heart clenched. He forced a smile. “Wish I could, Airy, but not this time, buddy.”

He sensed Maria crying silently, sort of understood, but a part of him was confused. Repentant, he realized. He reached across and squeezed her hand, not so much a gesture of strength and assurance as an admission of…

What?

He glanced from Aaron to her. She looked straight ahead, eyes fixed on a vanishing point beyond the crystal canyon of office towers, condos, hotels.

Of vulnerability, determination, guilt, love… humanity.

They lapsed into nervous silence until Coal Harbour glimpsed into view between the thrusting formations of the city. Then Victor leaned close and whispered, “We have to do something, Maria. Have to put an end to this.”

She turned her face toward him, puzzled, afraid.

“How?”

“I’m not sure. But I need your permission to do whatever it takes. He’s not going to stop until somebody stops him.”

She swept a few loose strands of hair away from her face, fixed him with a hard stare. “Victor? What kind of craziness are you thinking?”

“Don’t ask. Just give me permission.”

“I can’t do that!”

“He needs to be stopped, Maria. He’s getting away with murder and nobody can do anything about it. We can’t do anything about it… except turn the monster on itself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Al Periconi,” he whispered.

He hadn’t wanted to let her in on it, but saw now they had to agree. There could be no heroes—no silent saviours acting invisibly like benevolent gods in the mechanisms of their past and future history. What he proposed was dirty, dangerous work, beneath the dignity of angels.

“Jesus, Vic!”

“It will be the biggest risk I have ever taken in my life, but there is no other way.”

Maria looked straight ahead, her profile juxtaposed against the scrolling streetscape. She nodded once, with conviction, mustering every ounce of courage that could be squeezed out of her clenched gut, jaw, fist.

Nothing more needed saying.

~~~

Laurence paced outside the curvature of glass that separated the pool deck from his living room. “Scrubbed,” the hunter had said.

“What do you mean ‘scrubbed’?” Laurence had demanded.

“A bust! Washout! Screw up! What the fuck do you think I mean?”

Laurence winced, remembering the cold fury in the hunter’s voice. Somehow Victor had read the situation. Escaped.

“Dumb luck,” Laurence grunted.

Seems to be a lot of that going around. Cathy spotting the hunter in the Safeway parking lot; the seeming impossibility of getting Daly and Maria alone together so the hunter could move in for the kill; now this!

Perhaps it’s not luck at all. Maybe some guardian angel was looking out for them. Laurence snorted derisively. Only angel you’re ever going to see is the Angel of Death, my dear.

Maybe he was being outsmarted. He laughed. “Dumb luck,”he said.

Their unseemly survival was causing him trouble though, he had to admit. He’d played his high card and lost; now Maria would go into hiding. Bitch!

Not a stupid bitch, though. She’d known from the outset he’d keep pushing, pushing, pushing until she gave in… or he killed her. There’d never been any doubt about that. But the failed hit changed the board. Two things were now inevitable: Maria would pursue the Family Court action vigorously; and she would go into hiding. Daly would be able to make those kinds of arrangements, and argue in court that her safety required tight security.

Unless? He grinned at the prospect. Unless I can make the case that he was the target of the hit, not Maria. Then the tables would definitely turn. Her safety would be best served by finding a new lawyer, rather than sticking with her ethically challenged lover.

Tipping his glass to the gods, he laughed, then drained the scotch he’d been drinking. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” he grunted, happily. It was a long-game, but the odds were still in his favour.

On the plus side, the cops still couldn’t establish beyond reasonable doubt he was responsible for the attempt on Maria and Victor’s lives. Not as long as the New Covenant wackos were out there confusing the issue. Obviously they were incompetents, who had botched their own operation, which clearly put them in the frame. He knew it; the cops knew it; he’d have to play cat and mouse for a while, but they had no case.

Gordon stepped out onto the patio and walked in his peculiar stiff way toward his employer. “Inspector Diane Reger of the Vancouver Police Department to see you, sir.”

Right on cue. “Show her in,” Laurence said, returning a smirk for Gordon’s disapproving glance at the emptied scotch glass. The valet turned, retracing his steps back inside.

Maria would have done her worst. Daly, too. Their worst won’t be good enough. The most Laurence could be labelled at the moment would be ‘a person of interest’, and to say even that publicly would be more than the evidence would bear. Take the upper hand, he thought, stepping into the living room.

“Hello, Inspector,” he greeted as Gordon ushered the woman in. “What brings Vancouver’s finest across the Lion’s Gate onto foreign soil, so to speak?”

“I have a few questions to ask about an incident involving your wife, sir. Are you aware of what I’m talking about?”

Laurence gestured toward an arm chair. “Maria and I aren’t communicating very well these days. So I’m afraid I don’t know. I do hope she hasn’t got herself into any trouble.”

“What kind of trouble might she get herself into?” Inspector Reger wondered.

“I’m not one to spread gossip, Inspector, especially about my own wife, but Maria does have a past that strays pretty close to the line. That’s as much as I care to say about it. If you want to know more, you should ask her. My only concern in the matter is that, on her own and under stress, she may relapse. That affects the safety of her and my son.”

Laurence couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw something like disgust briefly disfigure Reger’s features. The woman was too stony-faced to read, though.

“You and your wife are separated?”

“Yes.” Laurence quelled a sardonic impulse. “Look, officer, is Maria all right? What’s going on?”

“When was the last time you talked to your wife, Mr. Selkirk?”

“I’ve asked you a question, Inspector. If I’m going to be interrogated, I demand to know what’s going on. Is Maria okay?”

“Your wife is fine, sir.”

“Then what are you doing here, grilling me as if I was some sort of criminal?”

“We’re investigating an assault on your wife, Mr. Selkirk. That’s all I can say. You haven’t heard about it?”

“No, I haven’t! Would I be asking you what happened if I already knew?”

“Perhaps.”

Laurence feigned confusion, then outrage. “Are you suggesting I am somehow implicated in an assault on my wife? That’s absurd.” Time to plead a little. “Look, we’re in the middle of Family Court proceedings, Inspector. She has virtually abducted my son. Do you think I would do anything that might jeopardize my chances of getting him back?”

She stared, unmoved. Then said, “If your wife was dead, where would your son end up, Mr. Selkirk?”

“For God’s sake, that’s ridiculous. I didn’t have anything to do with whatever you’re talking about, Inspector, and I don’t know why anyone would want to harm Maria unless she has slipped back into her old ways.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“Drug dealers and pimps are dangerous people,” Laurence said with a show of disgust. “If Maria has looked up some of her former associates, she may well have put herself—and my son—at risk.”

“Are you very familiar with the drug and sex trades, Mr. Selkirk?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your wife has suggested you have… um… connections. She says she’s concerned for her own safety and the safety of your son Aaron.”

“I’d sue anyone who said the same outside the protection of the courts. It’s a load of crap, spouted by a woman who is both paranoid and a chronic liar. You are being manipulated, if you are following the trail laid out by my wife, Inspector. After eight years of marriage, I can tell you she is an assiduous schemer. I suppose she’s got you, God and the angels on her side by now.”

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s a choice between Maria’s story and mine, who are you going to believe? A beautiful, defenseless mother, who has learned to comport herself well in high society and to lie skillfully; or a hard-nosed businessman, who speaks his mind without any—how shall I put it—embellishments?”

“I believe the facts, Mr. Selkirk, and go where they take me.”

Laurence nodded appreciatively. “I’m glad to hear it. And I can tell you, there’s not a single fact in all the nonsense Maria has spewed about me and organized crime. I’m not a saint, officer, but I’m not a criminal either.”

“Where were you last night, sir?”

“Here. My man, Gordon, will confirm that.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Selkirk.”

“You’re not going to tell me what happened?”

“As I’ve said, we’re conducting an investigation into an assault on your wife, which occurred last night. I’m not at liberty to say anything more.”

“And I’m a suspect.”

“We’re checking all possible lines of inquiry, Mr. Selkirk. It’s our job.”

With that, Inspector Reger turned and headed for the stairway. “I’ll see my own way out,” she said when he made a show of escorting her.

Laurence followed anyway. “Goodbye,” he said pleasantly at the front door.

Bitch!

~~~

When he got home, Victor soothed Toobee, who scrabbled and clawed at his master in a delirium of ecstasy and complaint. Then he made himself a pot of coffee and settled in to check his emails. Over a hundred messages. He groaned. A blitz, organized by his New Covenant friends, no doubt. He clicked open the first missive….

Have you no shame? I am the father of two teenage girls. We have raised our daughters to be self-confident, respectful, intelligent young women. Now you come along with your sick ‘performance art’. Can’t you see how disturbing and corrosive your Inside Out show is for most families? You disgust me…

Next…

Remember Sodom and Gomorrah, Mr. Daly. They were destroyed by ‘brimstone and fire by the Lord of Heaven’ and so shall you be. The judgment for your sins shall be awful and eternal and richly deserved…

Next… Next… Next…

WARNING TO VICTOR DALY…

He paused, heart quickening, before clicking the message…

We have warned you, in the name of God, to put an end to the abomination you are perpetrating with your so-called art. Your Inside Out show is an affront to every decent minded Christian man or woman. For too long you have undermined the moral foundations of society with your pornography and lies. The righteous shall rise up against you, Victor Daly. The New Covenant will strike you down, the same way a rabid dog would be struck down in the street. You are an animal, driven by animal lust. As an unrepentant sinner you are incapable of receiving God’s eternal mercy. We pray for you, sir. But pity will not stay our hand. For the sake of God’s children you must be stopped and WE WILL STOP YOU!

Victor stared at the screen, imagined the words being pecked out angrily on the keyboard of some untraceable computer, promulgating ancient tyranny through its latest technology—the same tyranny that had been shouted from the rooftops and pulpits for thousands of years, and still was being promulgated. How many people had been whipped, stoned and burned in the name of decency and religion? How many had been forced to swallow the bitter pill of salvation? 

Victor sagged. What am I getting myself into?

He yearned for Maria and Aaron and a quiet life of modest, atheistic bliss.

“I don’t want to do this any more,” he confessed.

Who cares what I really think, anyway? Who listens?

He waited. Not for an affirming answer, but for confirmation of the eternal, all-engulfing silence that existed beyond anything he could know or love.

“Value life!” He repeated his morning mantra. That was enough. Value life!

~~~

I listen! she whispered.

Victor froze.

And I have waited your entire life to speak.

“Crystal?”

Forgive me for I have sinned… and sinned and sinned.

You were sixteen, he pleaded.

Forgive me, for I have been sinned against… again and again and again.

Suddenly he remembered. He was staring at her, could feel affection welling, a sacred fragrance inside him. They were on a mattress. A naked bulb hung over their heads, glaring. To Victor it seemed a mockery of his imagined moon, forcing him to squint against its harsh effulgence. She curled around him, shielding his spindly body with her own. Over the emaciated landscape of her hips loomed the walls of a cinder block cave. He had never been outside this cell… had no concept of outside, except what she had described or they had read in story books. No real contact…

Except her tormentor comes from there… comes at her.

They lived in fear. When the light blinked, she would bundle Emanon up and lock him in the closet, where he would lay in darkness while they did the things they did. He had no notion of what those things might be, except for the sounds—grunts, moans, slaps and the rhythmic complaint of springs. He wished he’d never heard the sounds. Wanted to stop up his ears against them. They were the muted ejaculations of something pent up and deformed, let loose upon their world. The sounds of something perverted, sinful.

“He has a name!” Victor shouted. “Tell me his fucking name!”

But the vision dissipated, slipping into the unconscious folds of time and space without answering. Alone, Victor accepted the full weight of his past. He made his way to the kitchen. A scotch, he thought. That’ll help…

Then he remembered his first appointment next day: The Doers, 10 a.m.

“Know something, god?” he grumbled. “Sometimes you’re a real bastard.”

~~~

“Mr. and Mrs. Doer to see you sir,” Vanessa said through the intercom, an inflection of doubt in her voice.

“Send them in, Vanessa. Thanks.”

He quickly closed the file he’d been working on, placing it back on its stack. Should have tidied up, Victor thought, surveying the clutter on his desk and comparing it to the immaculate state of the Doer household—counters and tabletops all cleared and scrubbed, knick-knacks in their proper niches. The organized chaos of his office would add to their sense of unease, to the feeling that they had entered a zone of iniquity.

The door swung open. Vanessa stood aside, shooting him a worried look as she ushered the Doers in.

“Good morning!” Victor greeted them gingerly. “Please,” he gestured to the leather chairs in front of his desk.

Victor resisted the impulse to extend his hand. It was obvious they were there under duress and the formality of a handshake would only heighten the tension. Albert Doer would likely rebuff any conciliatory gesture. Barbara hurried across the carpeted expanse first, as if the chairs were a place of refuge. Albert followed, shepherding his wife into the seat to Victor’s right, then lowering himself heavily into his own.

“Thank you both for coming,” Victor said.

“What is it you have to say to us, Mr. Daly?” Albert demanded.

Coughing to cover his consternation, Victor thumbed through a stack of folders to his right, pulling out the DNA analysis on Barbara Doer and himself. He’d highlighted the report’s conclusion in yellow: “The results provide conclusive evidence that the profile obtained from the submitted tissue belongs to a female grandparent of Victor Daly—it is 29 million times more likely that this is the case than otherwise,” it said.

He’d thought it might be best to conceal his subterfuge, plot some way of getting the Doers to submit willingly to a redundant test… maybe a staged meeting through Ancestry.com? In the end, he rejected the idea with an almost convulsive vehemence. Enough! he thought. Enough denying! Still, he balked, handing the incriminating sheet to them.

“I’m asking you both to promise what gets said in this room will remain strictly confidential…”

“I can’t promise that without knowing what you’re sharing with us,” Albert cut him short.

“It’s information that could lead to Crystal, and will certainly provide details about her whereabouts after she went missing, that’s all I can say without a commitment from you to keep this meeting strictly confidential.”

“Look, you called us here, Mr. Daly, so don’t tell us what we…”

“Agreed,” Barbara Doer cut in.

Albert glared at her, but said nothing.

Victor waited a few seconds for the commitment to sink in, then began.

“What I have here is a report from a very reliable laboratory. It’s a DNA analysis confirming beyond any reasonable doubt the maternal relationship between my client and you, Mrs. Doer…”

“DNA analysis?” Albert’s brow creased.

“There was no other way, Mr. Doer.”

“But you can’t do a DNA analysis without samples, Mr. Daly.”

Swallowing, Victor forged ahead. “I took the liberty of collecting a sample when I visited your home.”

Barbara gasped. Albert tensed as if he was about to lunge over the desk. Victor wondered what he would do if that happened. Submit passively? Fight back? Plead forgiveness? 

“I’m a religious man, Mr. Daly. A peaceful man,” Albert threatened. “But if there was anyone in this world I was going to tear limb from limb, it would be you. You’re despicable. I hate what you’re doing to us. I hate what you stand for…”

“Albert!” Barbara snapped.

The rebuke stunned him. He opened his mouth to reply, but then thought better of it, letting out a long, mournful sigh. “You’re right, dear,” he apologized. “I’m sorry.” Then he sank back into his chair.

“Go on, Mr. Daly,” she said stiffly. At the same time, she reached across and squeezed her husband’s hand.

Victor slid the report toward them across his desk. After a long moment Albert leaned forward and scanned it, his eyes flicking back and forth, his expression changing from puzzlement to astonishment. “For the love of Christ!” he wailed.

Barbara made ready to chastise him again, but Albert shot her such a look of anguish that she froze, her commandment lodged in her throat. “What is it, dear?”

“Who’s your client, Mr. Daly? The ‘match’ listed in this report is you.”

Victor said nothing, letting the indisputable truth take hold. For a moment Albert clung to the desperate notion that the document was a monstrous mistake, some kind of cruel joke. He looked pleadingly to his tormentor. “Victor Daly, that’s the other name in this report,” he repeated uncomprehendingly. “You and Barbara. Your DNA profiles match as grandson and grandmother?”

“I’m sorry,” Victor said softly. “There is no mistake.”

“What are you saying, Albert?” Barbara stared at her husband.

He couldn’t speak.

“I’m your grandson, Mrs. Doer, Crystal’s son,” Victor said.

“Crystal’s son?…” Her voice trailed off in utter confusion as she slumped into a faint.

“Leave us alone!” Albert shouted when Victor hurried round the desk to help. “For God’s sake, just leave us.”

Victor crept toward his office door and let himself out while Albert revived to his wife. “Albert? Is this true?” she cried just as Victor closed the door behind him.

“Vic?” Vanessa said. “Are you okay?”

He leaned his forehead into the wall. She guided him to the office sofa then hurried to the cooler for a cup of water.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Christ, Vanessa, don’t ask. It’s too fucked up to put into words.”

~~~

A short hop by float plane seemed hardly enough to prevent Laurence from tracking her down, Maria thought. He would already be sniffing about, trying to get wind of her hiding place. But for a couple of weeks, perhaps, she and Aaron would be safe.

The trade-off?

Once again, they found themselves displaced. Refugees. The cabin was nice enough. If they’d truly been on holiday, they would have been pleased. But it wasn’t home. It seemed a stark, official place to Maria, just what she would have imagined a safe house to be. To Aaron it was a house minus all but a few of his favourite toys. His crate on Ogden hadn’t contained a fraction of the selection he’d had at the Taj, but at least he’d got started rebuilding a make-believe world. Now it was back to ground zero.

Not having Victor and the Toob around made things even worse. Funny how quickly routines established themselves: the casual phone calls, unannounced visits, evenings sitting around watching TV while Aaron and Toobee roughhoused. She felt banished from a life that had become comfortable and—she’d dared to think—happy.

Now what?

The excitement of the seaplane flight had sustained Aaron for most of the first day. Because there were no other passengers he’d got to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. “Wow!” was about all he could say about that. The pilot, a grizzled specimen named Blackie, had banked sharply once they’d climbed over Stanley Park and the Lion’s Gate Bridge, making his pint-sized passenger squeal with delight.

Blackie had craned round and winked at Maria.

“Where’s our house, Mom?” Aaron had yelled over the clatter of the Beaver’s engine.

“It’s over there,” she pointed out her window. “You won’t be able to see it from your side, hon.”

She’d made the preemptive assumption that he was referring to Kits Point, not the Taj, and her prayer that Aaron not look to West Vancouver was answered. His old world was too much at odds with the new; how could you expect a child like Aaron to bring those poles together?

By bedtime the excitement of the day had worn thin and the prospect of boredom loomed large. What would they do tomorrow, and the day after that? Maria shoved these troublesome thoughts back into the subconscious twilight. Let tomorrow happen when it happened. Tonight she wanted to be with Victor, in spirit, if not in body.

Careful, my love, she prayed.

She remembered Al Periconi. He was one of those men who emanated power, a bear that would keep charging no matter how much his opponents kicked and screamed. In the end, he would get his way because men like that always did, or died trying. Al Periconi would kill anyone connected with his brother’s death. If he suspected Victor had been a factor, he would kill Victor.

A moth fluttered around the cabin’s porch lamp, pinging against the glowing globe. She watched for a while, amazed at the creature’s dumb persistence. Then she went inside to switch off the light.

~~~

Victor was scared. Everything he knew, everything he loved or believed in was on the line; past, present and future.

Has to be. He skirted the hood of his courtesy car, an Echo. ‘Abe’s Auto Body’, the sign on the door said. ‘You bend ‘em; we mend ‘em’. Then he glanced up at the sign above the Hot Shot Café. A front, he judged by the state of the place. Why would Al Periconi want to meet in a dump like this.

He imagined a back door, an alley, dumpsters, a route for taking out the garbage.

Get on with it. Victor pushed through the plate glass door. The inside was even grubbier than he’d expected.

“Back here, Mr. Daly!”

Al Periconi summoned from a table located in an alcove at the back of the room. A sulky barmaid watched suspiciously as Victor made his way between the clutter of tables and chairs to Al Periconi’s lair. She flipped back her stringy brown hair for a better look.

Sizing me up? Victor suspected. Determining through some mysterious calculus if I deserve even a show of respect?

“Coffee?” Al asked loudly as Victor approached.

“Yes, please.” Victor didn’t really feel like another hit of caffeine, but it might be taken as a snub if he refused.

“Make the man an Espresso, Tara,” Al ordered. “He looks like he could do with a jolt.”

Sitting in a chair opposite, Al watched Victor with an air of authority. “You are a cautious man,” he said. Victor couldn’t tell if the remark was meant as compliment or criticism. “You call me from a phone booth; won’t talk even from there. It must be important, what you have to say.”

“It is. And I don’t want anyone to be able to trace it back to me.”

“Dangerous, perhaps?”

“Very, I think.”

“Not to you, I hope, Mr. Daly.”

“No, Mr. Periconi. I’m just a messenger.”

“This is about Don? What do you know?”

Victor unzipped his satchel and pulled out the manila envelope that contained Don Pirelli’s report on Laurence Selkirk. He placed it on the table and slid it toward Al.

A part of him winced, remembering another folder full of disturbing information that he’d shoved at the Doer’s the day before. He seemed to be making a habit of shocking people. The wrong kind of people.

Al Periconi thumbed open the flap and pulled out the contents. The picture of Laurence at the Kingsway Motor Inn sat on top of the stack. Al flipped through the material, uncomprehending. He looked at the date on the report. “This would have been one of the last investigations my brother carried out as a PI,” he said.

Victor nodded.

“Can you tell me the significance?”

Victor began. The room lurched into a ponderous spin as he described the events triggered by Don Pirelli’s last case.

Periconi didn’t move, didn’t interrupt. He sat stony faced, studying his informant for the five minutes or so it took to detail the file’s contents and link them to the string of events that ended in Don Pirelli’s execution. His right hand, resting on the table between them, slowly balled into a fist, the knuckles white. Tara slid Victor’s coffee toward him, glanced once at Periconi’s hardening gaze and backed off quickly.

Finished, Victor slumped back into his chair. I rest my case, he thought, knowing there would be no careful deliberation, no process of appeal, only swift and brutal retribution, if Al Periconi believed what he’d just seen and heard.

“Thank you, Mr. Daly,” Al said as he gathered up Victor’s papers, squared them into a neat pile and slipped them back into the envelope, which he then slid across the table toward Victor.

As Victor stood to leave, Al added in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Don was a wonderful guy. A hero, really. He deserved to die a hero’s death. That, I could understand. Maybe. But for him to be gunned down like this, a sacrificial pawn in someone else’s dirty little game…” He shook his head, unable to find the words he needed to describe his outrage.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said.

“Goodbye, Mr. Daly. And thank you.”

~~~

To: toobeeornottoobee@hotmail.com

Hello My Love.

It’s wonderful here. I know Aaron and I are living in a fantasy world right now, but we’ll make the most of it as long as it lasts. I don’t even want to think about the ‘real world’ for the time being.

Flying up from Vancouver, it seemed the spaces were so vast between the humpbacks of land in the Strait of Georgia. One could almost believe she could get lost and never be found. You and I both know that’s not true, though. I think of us as cells, all connected to a vast organism that spans nations and continents. We cannot detach ourselves from that all-encompassing reality. The roads, telephone lines and computer networks are the ganglia of this gargantuan beast, and we are neural hubs transmitting signals into the unknown. Someone will spot Aaron, tell a friend, who will tell another friend, who will meet Laurence at a business luncheon. Then word will be out. We have found temporary haven, but can never be truly safe.

I have this dread that, sooner or later, Laurence’s thugs are going to show up, bundle me into the back of a van, and that will be the end of it.

In the meantime, Aaron and I enjoy our walks down to the government wharf and into the town of Madeira Park. There’s a daycare close by and they’ve agreed to take Aaron short-term in the mornings. It gives him an opportunity to make some friends and me a few minutes to myself. He misses Toobee, and you, of course. He really wants you to visit. So do I. Who could have imagined a month ago that things would have turned out the way they have?

I’ve been thinking a lot about you, love. I don’t know exactly what you have in mind, Victor, but I hope you’re not going to do anything dramatic or stupid. Please be careful.

Tell me how preparations are going for Inside Out. A part of me wishes I could be there; another part of me is glad to have an excuse to be out of the hurly-burly. I must confess to a lingering sense of prudishness when it comes to explicit sex on stage. Sorry love, I still have a difficult time thinking of that as art. I’m not quite as vehement as the New Covenant types, but I do have my limits. Still, I appreciate what you are trying to achieve. My heart will be with you Friday.

Say hello to Cathy for me.

Love, Maria.

~~~

To: toobeeornottoobee@hotmail.com

Hello Maria.

You and Aaron are safe and I will do anything humanly possible to keep you that way. I love you so much I dare not think of you during the day. I have to banish those happy thoughts because they would inevitably dissolve into the depressing reality of life without you. How Shakespearean I’m sounding (I think I might even write you a sonnet!). I hadn’t realized in the weeks we spent together how much my love has grown. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, they say. I will never stop loving you; never stop doing whatever it takes to keep you and Aaron safe. 

And I will be careful, because I long to see you again.

Preparations for Inside Out are in the final stages. I know, dear, how uncomfortable you are with the work. I still wish you could be here for the opening. If the New Covenant crusaders don’t crash it—and crucify me while they’re at it (irony intended)—I think it will be a magnificent show. Pauline, Rick and I are meeting this evening to work out any last-minute details, or perhaps I should call them kinks. I think she is going to request some changes, but don’t know what they might be.

Truth be known, my feelings toward the work have shifted. If I had it to do over again, I would be less explicit with the performance element. Not because it’s shocking. Certainly not because it’s taboo in and of itself. But I’m moving toward the opinion that it’s best to keep love making—even representational love making—private and avoid the kind of righteous furor a public display is bound to incite. Our moments of intimacy are sacred and to expose them to the vulgar criticisms of sexual and artistic cretins seems questionable to me now,  even in the name of art.

Enough palaver about Inside Out, though. I’ll let the critics over-analyze it.

What a week this has been! I met with the Doers the day after you left. They are anything but happy to have me as their grandson. They are such staunch Christians, I’m not sure they are quite prepared to accept the admissibility of DNA evidence. If anything, they must think I am the devil’s seed. Mrs. Doer actually fainted when I broke the news, and they left the office without uttering a word. I have no idea where this DNA trail might lead, but fear it will obey the laws of gravity.

Love, Victor.

~~~

He’d expected this day. Feared it. If that stupid prick Selkirk had known what he was doing, he never would have gone after Periconi’s brother, for Christ’s sake. But that was the problem with pinstripe crooks: they had the power and the greed, but no connections. They didn’t know who was who in the intricate maze of the underworld. The hunter hadn’t known that Don Pirelli was the brother of Al Periconi either. Why should he have? It’s up to the guy ordering the hit to know who-the-fuck is being taken out. Even if the guy had changed his name.

Now Periconi had phoned to say he needed a job done. He’d invited the hunter to the Hot Shot Café to set things up. The Hunter wasn’t buying. He’d figured it was only a matter of time before Periconi found out who had done his brother. Time was up. The hunter wouldn’t set foot inside the Hot Shot Café because he’d never come out alive. He parked a block west and phoned on his cell, keeping an eye on the front door. “Al Periconi,” he demanded when a woman answered.

“Who’s calling?”

“None of your business. Put him on.”

After a lengthy pause Periconi came on the line. “Where are you?” he demanded.

“What I need you to do, if you want to see me, is step out the front door of the Hot Shot and start walking east along Hastings, Al. I need to see you walking away from the restaurant at the far edge of the sidewalk. Nobody else comes out the front and nobody comes out the back. I’ve got it covered. Follow these instructions or I’m gone.”

“Whoa! What’s up?”

“You’ve got ten seconds, or I’m out of here.”

“Is this any way to treat a client?”

“Ten seconds starting now!” the hunter snapped. “Or I’ll be hunting you.”

There was no back door lookout, but Al couldn’t know that, a calculated risk.

The hunter wouldn’t be surprised if Periconi didn’t show. Even if they did parley, was there any chance at all Periconi would accept what had gone down in Pirelli’s underground parking as a mistake—Selkirk’s mistake? Were there any terms they could work out? The hunter had to know, and you could only negotiate that kind of deal face-to-face.

Al stepped out of the Hot Shot and sauntered east along Hastings.

“Yeah?” he barked, when the hunter dialed his mobile.

“Cross the street and keep walking east. I’ll meet you and we’ll talk. Try anything and one of us is going to end up dead. If it’s me, the cops will know who did it. There will be plenty of witnesses around to confirm my written version of events. I don’t intend on it being me, though. Got it?”

“Okay.”

“I want you to know what happened, Al.”

Silence.

The hunter waited until Periconi was a block and a half away from the Hot Shot. Getting back in his car, he pulled out and headed east along Hastings, past the café, past Al, pulling into a side street a block farther along. He parked, then got out of his car and waited. The hunter could still see the front of the Hot Shot. Nobody had left the place. They might call somebody in from outside, but there wouldn’t be time for a back up to arrive. The hunter stuck his right hand inside his jacket and watched Al Periconi approach. “It’s warm out,” he said. “Why don’t you take off your jacket, Al.”

Al followed instructions without protest. “You drive,” The hunter said, gesturing toward his parked car. “I’ll put your coat in the back seat, okay?”

Al nodded.

“We can talk, eh?” The hunter said.

~~~

“Where’s Rick?”

“He had to leave,” Pauline said in her haughty, how-should-I-know tone.

Victor pulled up a chair and dropped his latte onto the table. There was nothing left to say. As far as he was concerned the meeting was a formality, like the official signing after a wedding. Pauline looked uneasy, though. Which made Victor uneasy.

“Anything wrong?”

She hesitated. Looked around the coffee shop as if she’d misplaced a friend or something, then stared at him with her shocking blue eyes. “I want to go representational,” she informed him.

He laughed. “What does that mean?”

She sighed. “It means I don’t want to fuck live in front of a bunch of people whose idea of art is a peep show. I don’t even want to pretend to fuck!”

Victor looked serious. “And what does Rick think about this?”

“He doesn’t want to do it either.”

“Is this a performance issue?”

Despite herself, Pauline smirked. “I don’t think Rick would admit to that,” she said. “But I think he’d be happy not having to prove it.”

“I see.”

“It can still be a great show,” Pauline encouraged. “We can go through the motions, but maybe wearing tights is all. I want to transform it into dance. It’ll be powerful.”

“But not what people are expecting.”

She shrugged. “Since when is it our mission to give people exactly what they expect?”

He guffawed. Loudly. People at the surrounding tables looked askance. Pauline scowled. “It’s hilarious,” he said. “Don’t you see, we’ve been behaving like a bunch of kids on a dare—none of us wants to back down, even though we don’t really want to go ahead with it either…”

“You mean…?”

“Yes!” he grinned. “I’ve been looking for a way to ‘go representational’ too. Probably for a lot longer than you guys. I just didn’t know how to break it to you, or how we’d re-stage things. Body condoms, maybe?” He took her hand and squeezed joyfully. “It’ll be terrific.”

“Body condoms? You’re weird!”

“You don’t know the half of it luv,” he agreed. “I’m assuming the stills and videos are okay?”

“The stills are terrific. They’re gorgeous. Videos too.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. I mean, we have to have something on the walls to work the New Covenant crowd into a lather.”

“Are you going to let people know?”

“I’m going to extend an olive branch, say we’ve made a concession to defuse what could end up being a dangerous situation, and hope the New Covenant crowd will dial it down. They can claim a moral victory; I get an excuse not to go to a place I’ve discovered I didn’t really want to go; and Rick won’t have to prove himself.”

Pauline smiled knowingly.

“What!” he protested.

“You’re quite the manipulator, aren’t you?”

“And you?”

She conceded with a barely perceptible nod.

~~~

Laurence didn’t care if the hunter was a cold-blooded killer. I’m going to give the guy a piece of my mind. The man hadn’t sounded the least bit contrite over the phone. “I’ve got some info,” he’d said. “It could lead us to your wife, Mr. Selkirk. I want to show it to you, then you can tell me what it’s worth.”

“What it’s worth?” The man had let slip the perfect opportunity to nail Maria and Daly. Now he had the gall to demand money for information that might lead them to Maria and Aaron. He must think I’m some kind of rube?

Victor’s gala would be over that very night, and with it the best opportunity to frame the New Covenant types.

They hadn’t taken the limo. Too conspicuous. Instead they arrived in his luxury SUV. It didn’t have the security features of the limo and his bodyguard had complained about that, but a limousine would have drawn attention. We don’t need that.

The Slumber Inn was located on 200^th Street, out in Langley. Why the hunter had picked it as their meeting place, Laurence couldn’t say. It was almost an hour each way, about as far removed from the glitzy hotels of downtown Vancouver as you could get. But the hunter preferred seedy dives in remote settings. He must have had a Rolodex listing of every flophouse in the Lower Mainland, Victor thought. In North America. They’d never met in the same dump twice. This venue lived up to Laurence’s expectations. “Definitely the kind of place that rents rooms by the hour,” he said.

Room 205 was one of the anonymous doors that opened onto a second-floor balcony that ran the length of the motel. Laurence’s bodyguard knocked and stood back, waiting. There was a scrabbling sound as the chain was removed, then the door swung open. Laurence gave his man a second or two to check out the room, then followed him in. The usual: sagging mattress, battered bureau, discoloured walls, the smell of booze and sweat. This was a place of illicit comings and goings, where the unsophisticated lived out their brutish fantasies.

“I’m not happy with your services this time around, my friend.”

The hunter shrugged. “People don’t always walk into your sights when you want ‘em to. If my job was easy, I wouldn’t have a job, eh? People like you wouldn’t hire me. You’d just go out and do it yourself.”

It irked Laurence that the man showed no regret or embarrassment. He swallowed his pique. If the hunter had information that would lead to Maria, Laurence wanted to see it. Maybe they could come up with another plan. It would be a shame not to include Victor, though. A bloody shame. “What have you got?”

The hunter grinned. “I have friends in high places, Mr. Selkirk. They have access to information people want to keep secret.” As he spoke he picked up a satchel from the floor next to the dresser. He placed it on the chair, unzipped it and reached inside…

It all happened so quickly, a gun, the zip-flash of bullets spit out its silencer-fitted barrel, Laurence’s bodyguard slumping like a rag-doll, propped dead by the wall next to the door. Then the business end of the barrel pointed right at him.

“One sound and I’ll blow your fucking head off,” the hunter warned.

“What are you doing?”

“Shut the fuck up!” With his free hand the hunter manipulated the keypad of his cell mobile, punching in a number. “We’re ready,” he said.

That was it. We’re ready! As if he was a chef talking about lunch.

“Why are you doing this?” Laurence pleaded. But he knew the answer already, a sense of resigned desperation was taking hold. He was in a game with men bigger than himself. His dead bodyguard had understood the brutal rules, The hunter too. Laurence was only now beginning to see how the ritual must play out.

“Just let me go! I’ll give you a million bucks. Anything. Just let me out of here.”

The hunter laughed. “You stupid shit. I told you what Al Periconi would do if he ever found out who killed his brother. I told you…”

“But I didn’t know!”

“It was your fucking business to know! Your million bucks isn’t worth a thing to me because I’m a dead man unless I can clear my name with Al. You’ll have to make your peace with him.”

“Please!”

“I said shut the fuck up.”

Footsteps approached. The door swung open. Al Periconi strode into the room. One look at the man and Laurence knew he was done. “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “Honest to God, Mr. Periconi, I had no idea he was your brother.”

Al didn’t say a word. He smacked Laurence on the side of the head, putting the full weight of his massive body into the blow. With a yelp, Laurence slewed sideways and fell to the floor. He lay there, limp, not wanting to move. He smelled the dust and mold of the soiled carpet. It was good enough for him. It was where he wanted to stay. But Al Periconi had him by the collar and lifted him up so they were staring at each other eyeball to eyeball.

“You’re going to get a little taste of hell on earth before I send you down to the devil himself, Selkirk,” the man said. “You’re going to beg for a bullet between the eyes before I’m done, and you know what? Once I think you’ve squealed long enough, you fucking pig, I’m going to grant your wish.”

Periconi nodded, his lieutenant zipped a layer of duct tape over Laurence’s mouth.

“You can scream all you want,” Periconi grinned. “It won’t bother anybody here.”

~~~

A squad of police enforced the peace between the Naked Truth Gallery and a group of protesters across the street. A cluster of television cameras recorded the action. “Shame!” one placard read. “Dignity, Decency, Devotion,” another. “God Loves You; Why Not Love God?” proclaimed a third. “Sinner!”

Victor tried not to gloat. This was his moment and he was not in a generous vein. If the protesters broke through, smashed his show, roughed him up, he would still have made his point. In fact their iconoclasm would become part of the living art, he’d opined to Rick and Pauline. The New Covenant Society tactics had backfired. Completely!

“I can’t believe they’re still coming.” He gestured toward the lineup snaking into the gallery. “They’re actually braving the gauntlet of righteous indignation to come and see our show, Knute! It’s wonderful.”

“Idiots,” Knute glared at the protesters outside.

“No,” Victor corrected magnanimously. “We need them as much as they need us. It’s all part of the dialectic.”

Knute gave him a sour look. Victor smiled sheepishly.

He’d announced in a release the ‘representational approach’ he, Pauline and Rick had agreed to. The performance element was no more risqué than what you might see in almost any contemporary ballet. As for the photo and video elements, they were well within accepted limits of artistic freedom. Really, there was nothing controversial left to protest…

But a coterie of New Covenant types had gathered to display their moral outrage.

They’re doing us a favour.

“Absolutely gorgeous!” one woman exclaimed ogling his photographs of Rick and Pauline. “Never give in to the cretins.” “It’s like dancing through an enchanted forest,” another enthused. “Fantastic,” was the general consensus. Victor could hardly believe the effect himself. Participants meandered through the forest of banners in a state of bemused wonder, just as he’d planned. They clustered round the video monitors, the latter-day equivalent of a clan at its fire pit.

As for Rick and Pauline, they danced like satyrs. Seen through the slits in the surrounding ‘artscape’ their performance acquired a heightened sense of mystery and—Pauline would have hated the word—sanctity. Of course, some of the shock value had been lost in the representational translation, and Knute in particular accused them of artistic cowardice for allowing skin toned tights. But for Victor a new balance had been struck.

Almost went too far with this one, he admitted.

“I guess I’ve discovered my boundary,” he explained to Maria in his nightly email.

“I must confess I’m relieved,” she answered.

He smiled. If only she could have been there. He was recording everything, but a digital rendition couldn’t capture the essence of what they’d achieved. That intoxicating atmosphere of defiance and delight could only live on in the minds of those who had actually been there.

He and Knute raised their glasses in a silent toast.

“They should have been nude,” Knute felt obliged to complain, but he laughed it off. Even he rated the show a sensation.

Victor savoured the wine’s absolving flavour. Then he noticed a face in the crowd, a face he had not expected. Inspector Diane Reger talked briefly to the cop at the door, locked-on to Victor with her calculating grey eyes, then made her way across the room to where he and Knute stood. “Good evening, Mr. Daly. I need to talk to you,” she said.

Blinking, Victor waited.

“In private, please.”

Knute put down his glass and drifted off.

“What can I do for you, Inspector?”

“I need to ask you a few questions about Laurence Selkirk, Mr. Daly.”

“Here? Now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I’m in the middle of an art opening.”

“And I’m in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“Murder?”

The room lurched. He steadied himself, grasping the edge of the wine table. A burning flux rose in his throat. He had no idea how Inspector Reger was reading him, but she watched his reaction with clinical intensity.

“Mr. Selkirk has been found dead, sir. Murdered,” she said.

Laurence? Dead? A terrible conclusion he’d set in motion had come to pass quickly; foreknowledge and intent hadn’t prepared him for the dreadful denouement. Inspector Reger’s gaze never wavered. He could see why people would want to tell her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but.

“Does Maria know?”

“The victims’ names have not been released pending notification of next-of-kin.”

“Names?”

“A second victim was found on the scene with Mr. Selkirk.”

“Who?”

“His bodyguard we think.”

“Jesus!”

“Do you have anything more to say?”

He looked at her, genuinely puzzled.

“Anything that might help with our investigation?”

Victor shook his head. “I’m shocked, Inspector.”

“Where were you this afternoon, Mr. Daly?”

“Here. Preparing for the opening.”

“Who with?”

“Knute Nielsen, the man I was just talking to. He owns the gallery. Rick and Pauline too, they’re performing right now, but they were helping and getting ready all afternoon.”

“And you don’t have any other information that might help with our investigation?”

“No. Nothing I can think of.”

“We’ll talk again,” Inspector Reger said as she walked away.

Next: Kicking down the closet door