Striking Out (19 page)

The evening showed me another side of Walt Stimac. That prudish-looking exterior hid a wicked sense of humour, and he had us both on the floor with impressions of some of the more colourful people he’d encountered on both sides of the law during his thirty years on the force.

We stayed up far too late and drank far too much, but it was worth it to see Andy really laughing again.

We poured Walt into a cab just before two and went to bed without even thinking about cleaning up. At eight-thirty the next morning, we weren’t having quite so much fun.

“Remind me next time . . . ,” I started.

“Don’t say it,” Andy groaned.

“Remind me how revolting a congealed roasting pan is in the morning.”

“Please, no, don’t go on.”

“Remind me how gravy looks when it’s been left on the counter all night.”

“One more word, and I’m history.” he said.

“Oh, look, a half-full brandy glass. Want a pick-me-up?”

“That’s it. I’m going back to bed.”

“Chicken.”

“No.” he said, pointing. “That’s chicken. I’m Convalescent Man, and I’m going back to bed.”

I was about to remind him that the mess was caused by his friend, not mine, but a second look at his face convinced me that such a line of logic would be unsuccessful. He staggered back to the bedroom. I put on the coffee, took a couple of headache tablets, and began scraping and stacking.

By the time the coffee was ready, I had loaded what I could into the dishwasher and put the pots into hot soapy water, so I allowed myself a break. That’s when I discovered that I was out of cigarettes.

Walt and Andy are both typical reformed smokers, ones who lapse under the influence. It’s all very well for them. Next morning they’re back on the straight and narrow while the smokers they’ve bummed from are searching desperately through the ashtrays for long butts.

I managed to hold off through my first cup of coffee and a quick skim of the paper. Maybe today was the day I’d quit. But I caved in when I got to the crossword. A nicotine-starved brain can’t decipher anagrams.

I left a note for Andy propped against the coffee machine: “Gone for smokes. Back in a minute. XXOO.”

It was pouring rain, of course. I grabbed my jacket and an umbrella and walked the three blocks to the variety store on Broadview, questioning my sanity with every splashing step. I bought two packs of cigarettes, and red licorice for a treat. It’s a well-known hangover cure.

I had to pass the adult video store on my way back. I saw Ed taking his garbage out to the curb and started to cross the street to avoid him, but he spotted me and called me over.

“Wait a minute, miss,” he called. “I want to talk to you.”

I crossed the street.

“Come in out of the rain,” he said. I followed him to the back door. Once inside, I propped my umbrella in the corner by the door and pulled a pack of smokes out of my jacket pocket. I offered one to Ed.

“Just put one out. I’ll get the ashtray.”

He took a cracked saucer out of the dish drainer and dried it with a stained cloth. He put it on the kitchen table. It was the old blue willow pattern, which flashed me back to my grandmother’s kitchen. I thanked him, as she had taught me to.

“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

I looked around the sad room. Martha the dog was on the couch and I didn’t want to wrestle her for it. The red armchair had an uncomfortable-looking lean to it, so I sat gingerly on one of the straight-back kitchen chairs with my back to the stairs. Ed fussed around, wiping off the table with the same cloth.

“Coffee,” he said. “Fresh made. I’ve got cream, too.”

“That would be lovely,” I said, like a parishioner at one of my mum’s socials, if she had held them in the back of porn stores. If my head wasn’t pounding I might even have enjoyed it.

“So, they find out anything new about the guy in the alley?”

“No. They’re still looking for Maggie,” I said. “I guess you know the victim turned out to be her husband.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.”

“And now her family’s all here, too.”

“What family?”

“She has four grown kids.”

“Maggie had kids? I never knew that. I figured she might be on the run from an old man, maybe, but never kids.”

“How come?”

He handed me my coffee, which smelled good.

“Woman leaves her kids, there’s something wrong with her,” he said.

I waited.

“Maggie didn’t seem like the type to do that.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

Ed sat down in the chair opposite me. It was gloomy in the room. What little daylight there was was blocked by a torn green roller blind on the only window. The glass at the top of the side door had been painted black, with a peephole scraped into it in one corner. There was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, spilling a little light.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Ed said, pulling out a pack of Player’s plain and lighting one with a kitchen match, which he struck on his nail. He was nervous, his eyes darting.

“Here’s what I want to tell you. I told the police the same thing when they were around asking questions. Maggie wasn’t a violent woman.”

“I don’t know, Ed. I was talking to someone who said she threatened him with a knife.”

“Well, yeah. She’d do that. I remember she cut a guy once. But he was messing with her. She had to protect herself.”

“What if she thought she needed to protect herself against her husband?”

“She might cut him. But the way I heard it, this guy was really butchered. Maggie wouldn’t do that. Maggie hated blood. I know that for a fact.”

He was adamant. Sweat beaded his brow, even though the day was cool. I thought I heard a noise up the stairs. I turned and looked. Nothing. I turned back to Ed.

“Well, even if you don’t think Maggie did it, the police still want to talk to her,” I said.

“They think she did it, eh?”

“They say they’re keeping open minds about the whole thing,” I said. “I don’t think she’s the only suspect.”

“Who else is?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, they say they just want to talk to Maggie because she might have seen something. They’re looking for witnesses.”

“Who else?”

He was persistent. I shifted on the uncomfortable chair, suddenly aware of the two cups of coffee I’d consumed in the past half hour.

“Listen, Ed. If you know where Maggie is, you’ve got to tell the police. They want to talk to anyone who might have seen Mr. Carlson before he died. Like Hoss, too. Has he been around?”

“Hoss? No, haven’t seen him.”

“Isn’t that unusual? I mean for him to be gone so long? I was talking to the inspector in charge of the case, and he told me that they couldn’t find him, either.”

“This cop said he’s looking for Hoss?”

“Just to talk to. If you see him, tell him that.”

“I will.”

I got up. I wanted to get home to my own bathroom.

“Well, thanks for the coffee,” I said. “I’d better be off. I’m sure you’ve got work to do.”

“Well, yeah.” he said, very uncomfortable. “But there’s just something else I want to tell you about. It might be something the cops want to know.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there might be someone who saw something. Sit down. It’s kind of complicated.”

“In that case, would you mind if I used your washroom?”

“Be my guest.”

He got up and flipped the light switch by the door.

I went in, locking the door behind me. I looked around. There was mildew in the tile grouting and the toilet hadn’t been scrubbed in a while. The bathtub had a grimy ring around it, too. But I’d seen worse. I sat.

The room was small, and half of it was taken up by green Formica kitchen cabinets on the wall opposite the toilet. I had to sit at a slant. There were two high-quality video recording machines hooked up together to a colour monitor on the counter.

Curious, I leaned forward on the toilet seat and opened the bottom cupboard door as quietly as I could. Inside were shelves of videos. I pulled up my shorts and moved in for a closer look.

The titles told the story:
Bangkok Lolita . . . Boys in Heat
. . .
Daycare Delite . . . Father Goose’s Fairy Tails . . . Little Boy Blew . . . Little Girls, Lollipops, and All Day Suckers.

I’m not sure how long I had been snooping when I heard the sound of feet coming down the stairs in the next room. I flushed the toilet, then ran water in the sink. I could hear voices in the next room, then a knock on the bathroom door.

“I’ll be right out!”

Then I heard another voice that wasn’t Ed’s. It was a higher-pitched man’s voice.

“Think again,” he said, with a laugh. Then I heard a click.

I went to the door and grabbed the handle, found the lock switch and pushed it with my thumb. It wouldn’t budge.

I banged on the door, and when that didn’t do any good, I kicked it. I could hear Ed arguing with someone.

“Ed, let me out,” I yelled.

“Shut up!”

It was the second voice. I realized who it had to be. He’d been upstairs listening all along.

“Hoss, let me out.”

“I said, shut up.”

“You’re making a big mistake, Hoss. You’re just going to get into more trouble.”

“I’ll let you out in a minute. Just shut up and give me time to think.”

I banged on the door a few more times in frustration, then sat back down on the toilet. The argument outside the door continued, but I couldn’t make out what it was about.

Finally I heard Ed angrily agree to whatever Hoss was suggesting. Then there was a tap on the door.

“Listen, lady, just sit tight in there.” It was the second voice. “Me and Ed are going out for a while. Then we’ll let you out.”

I jumped up.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said, trying not to whine. “You can’t just leave me here.”

“Wanna bet?”

Then he laughed and the lights went out. The back door slammed shut. I sat back down and put my poor aching head in my hands.

I’m not afraid of the dark, luckily. My phobias are very specific. Like heights. But not the dark. Just heights. And did I mention enclosed spaces?

I took deep breaths and tried not to think about the walls.

Mercifully, the door was old and I could see an inch of pale light under it. Where there’s light, there’s air, I reasoned. I told myself that I wasn’t going to suffocate, took some more deep breaths, and considered my options. There was no window (breath in, breath out). The door was locked. It was dark. I reached into my jacket pocket for my lighter so I could at least see to get my bearings in the room.

When my fingers came up empty, I remembered where my lighter was. On the table in the next room, with my cigarettes. Fine. Now I was in a locked room in the dark without any smokes.

“Except the second pack. You bought two packs.”

And now I was in a locked room in the dark, talking to myself.

“But at least you’ve got smokes,” I said.

A search of all my pockets came up with one crumpled book with three matches in it. If I’d been carrying a candle, I’d have been set for life. Illogically, I thought of my father and his cautious little rules of the road.

Because of the cruel winters in Saskatchewan, where I grew up, my father always insisted we have a candle in the glove compartment of the car. He’d read somewhere that a candle can keep two people warm all night inside the car in case of a breakdown.

We also had to carry a bag of sand, for traction, and a blanket, presumably in case the candle wasn’t quite toasty enough. The emergency pack also contained chocolate bars, so stale they were probably grey and speckled, and a mirror. I was never sure what that was for. Signalling, maybe.

The blanket came in handy, from time to time, in my high school dating days, but I never needed the other things and laughed at poor Daddy for being a worry-wart. As soon as I got out of this mess, I would phone him and tell him to revise the emergency measure. From now on candle in jacket pocket, not in glove compartment.

I decided to spend one of my matches right away. I found a piece of paper in my pocket and rolled it up tightly to make a small torch. I unwrapped my cigarettes and took one out, then lit the torch, and the cigarette, and went exploring.

I opened the upper cupboards. Boxes and boxes of blank videos, still wrapped in plastic. I opened drawers looking for something I could use as a tool to jimmy the lock, but the torch burned down before I could find anything. I dropped it onto the floor and stamped it out, then continued the search, carefully.

Feeling through the drawers, I recognized string, labels, and a magic marker by shape, but nothing in the way of a lock pick.

“If you used hairpins, you’d be all set.” I told myself, then lit another smoke from the ember of the first. I felt along the wall until I came to the towel rack. There was a thin towel on it, which I folded up to cushion my bum and settled in on the floor against the wall next to the cupboard, far enough from the door so that I could see anything coming.

After my third cigarette, I gave up on the chain. The second-hand smoke was getting to me. I switched to red licorice.

I tried to figure out what time it was, and imagined Andy waking up and finding the note. I wondered how long it would take for him to get alarmed. Chances of him finding and rescuing me were slim, anyway. I hadn’t even told him about my first visit to this place. If I had driven my car, he could find me in a flash. But no, I had to be responsible and get my exercise on the way to the smoke store.

I was bored. My head throbbed from last night’s wine. I went through mental gymnastics to keep the panic at a manageable level. I imagined myself sitting on the porch at my family’s cabin on a summer evening, listening to loons calling on the lake. I replayed past Titan ballgames in my head. I thought about Andy. I thought about T.C. I thought about Maggie and her family. I breathed in. I breathed out. I listened to Martha the dog scratching her fleas in the next room.

I crawled over to the door.

“Hey, Martha, here girl.” I called through the crack.

Silence. Then a creaking yawn followed by the sound of claws clicking on the linoleum. I saw the shadow of her nose sniffing at the crack.

“Good girl.” I said. (Lassie! Go get help!)

She lost interest, lay against the door and sighed, her tail gently wagging and batting against the floor. At least she was company.

I used the toilet, just to break the monotony, then decided to have one more go at searching blind. I felt my way back to the cupboard, and opened the bottom doors, where I’d seen the kiddie porn. As my fingers traced along the line of videos, I realized that four of them were out of line with the rest, stuck out a few inches. I pulled them out all the way and put my hand through the gap. Lying on the shelf was what felt like a wallet.

I picked it up. I opened it and went through blind. The bill compartment was empty, but I could feel credit cards and some other papers. This was worth a match.

I crawled back to the john and unrolled some paper to make another torch. I had just lit it when I heard the back door open and footsteps cross the floor. Quickly, I held a credit card up to the flame.

The name on it was John N. Carlson.