Authors: Daniel Kalla
The panic welled in my chest like an expanding balloon. I eyed the door, with a view to bolting. Then Joe reached out and gently laid a hand on my wrist. “Sit, Peter, please.”
Slowly I turned and sat back down in the chair. “Joe, I can explain the mix-up.”
“I also spoke to the College of Physicians and Surgeons,” he went on calmly. “According to them, your papers are in order and you are legally licensed to practice in the province.”
I gaped at him, sensing silence was my only option.
He broke into a half-smile. “If nothing else, I pride myself on being a decent judge of character. I am going to assume the Medical Association’s information is out of date, and that you left Taipei without bothering to tell them that you had come back. Is that right?”
The balloon in my chest deflated. I nodded my gratitude. “It’s complicated.”
Joe arched one of his bushy eyebrows.
Though I barely knew Joe, I already trusted him. I would have liked to come clean, but aside from the enormous risk of exposure, I realized that the truth would place Joe in a difficult dilemma: If he didn’t call the police, technically he would be guilty of aiding and abetting a felon. I’d already asked that of Alex and Kyle; I wasn’t about to throw Joe into the same quandary.
I met his stare. “I didn’t do anything wrong or illegal, but I had to leave in a hurry,” I said, deliberately vague. “I’m working on clearing my name, but it could take a few more weeks.”
Joe’s eyebrow fell. “As I told you earlier, I always give people the benefit of the doubt.” Then, as before, he added: “Once.”
“Thank you.”
Joe picked up his coffee cup and rose from the table. “Come. We’re not going to get rich wasting the whole day at a café.” Before turning for the door, he flashed his very white teeth. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me about your Eliska, and how she led you into your troubles?”
I assumed he was speaking figuratively and didn’t actually know anything about Emily, but by this point, I wasn’t sure what to believe. “Someday,” I mumbled, heading for the door.
I worked through the afternoon on autopilot. Joe’s acceptance of my bogus cover story brought with it a degree of relief, like unloading a dark secret on a friend, but it also heightened my sense of exposure. If Joe could work through my cover that easily, others could, too. And now that Marcus knew where I was, I wondered how long it would take him to figure out my alias.
Much as I tried to concentrate on the steady stream of patients, my thoughts kept drifting to the tasks that preoccupied me. The clock ticked louder. My existence in Vancouver as Peter Horvath came with a rapidly approaching expiration date. I had to speak with Drew Isaacs and/or Malcolm Davies. Maybe one of them could lead me to the truth about my brother or NorWesPac’s Whistler development.
Halfway through the afternoon, I headed out of the clinic, claiming I needed another coffee. My offer on the way out the door to buy one for Edith was met with a cold shake of her head. “I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon,” she snapped, as if I should have known all along.
I went straight to the pay phone at the street corner. I dug Malcolm Davies’s number out of my pocket, deposited a quarter, and dialed the number. I heard a series of escalating beeps and was then informed by an electronic operator that the number was out of service. Frustrated, I dropped in another quarter and tried Drew Isaacs’s cell number again.
“Yeah?” a gravelly voice answered.
“Drew?” I said. “Drew Isaacs?”
“Who is this?”
I froze, uncertain as to the right answer. The line clicked and I heard the dial tone.
I kicked the base of the phone booth so hard that my blistered toe ached. I wanted to rip the receiver off the phone and smash the window with it.
What an idiot!
I willed myself calmer. I wondered how I was going to convince Drew Isaacs to discuss his criminal issues with a complete stranger. I decided that a variant on the truth was my best approach. After all, how could Drew know that Kyle didn’t have another cousin in the drug business?
I deposited my last quarter and dialed again. “Yeah?” the voice answered warily.
“Drew, I’m sorry we were cut off.”
“Who are you?” he barked.
“I’m Kyle Dafoe’s cousin.”
“Aaron?” He laughed. “Aaron, you son of a bitch, are you back in town?”
It never occurred to me he would assume I was Aaron. Even more shocking was the complete lack of surprise in his voice.
“You still there, Aaron?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How are you, Drew?
“Same old, same old. Christ, it’s been almost a year. How goes it?”
Almost a year!
My heart was pounding so fast that I felt lightheaded. “You know what it’s like being dead,” I said, controlling my breathing.
He laughed. “Still keeping a very
low
profile, huh?”
“Exactly.”
“Can’t blame you. Have you heard about all the shit your brother is mixed up in back in Seattle?”
“That’s why I came back,” I blurted. “To help him out.”
“How can you help him?”
“Not sure yet. Hey, Drew, I wanted to ask you about Whistler—”
He cut me off. “Listen, Aaron, I’m running late. Very late. Let’s grab a drink tonight. We’ll catch up then.”
“No, that’s not going to work,” I said, struggling to sound calm. “I just wanted to pick your brain on a couple of small points.”
“Tonight,” Isaacs said. “Don’t sweat it. We’ll go someplace quiet. Let’s say Vertical at eleven?”
“Vertical?”
“Remember? On Richards. Where we went there last time you were in town. See you at eleven.”
He was gone before I could squeeze in another word.
I held the phone to my ear and listened to the dial tone. My head swam.
“It’s been almost a year
.” His words echoed in my brain. For days I’d been assuming, against reason, that Aaron somehow survived the blood-soaked trunk of his burned-out car two years earlier, but Isaacs’s offhanded remark was the first scrap of evidence I’d come across to support the belief.
As my pulse slowed and I began to touch down, my thoughts again turned to a subject I’d avoided: Aaron’s blood on Emily’s wall. The idea of someone stealing his blood or coercing his involvement struck me now as far-fetched. And yet, I still wasn’t willing to believe that Aaron could have been involved in her brutal murder. My stomach flip-flopped as I went over it again and again.
Despite having my best lead yet, I wandered back to the East Hastings Clinic more unsettled than when I’d left. Distracted earlier in the day, I bordered on oblivious as I churned through the rest of my list, watching the clock and obsessing over my looming rendezvous with Drew Isaacs. If a mimicker had crept into the mix of patients, the poor bastard wouldn’t have stood a chance.
We finally emptied the waiting room at 6:35
P.M.
Leaving my charting for the morning, I said a quick good-bye to Joe and Edith and hurried out the door.
I’d intended to head straight back to my room at the YMCA, but the walk home took me past the bike store window. Aware of Joe’s cash burning a hole in my pocket, I ducked into the store. Brushing off the redheaded salesman whose chin looked like it had yet to feel a razor, I chose a sturdy secondhand road bike from the rack and bought it, along with the cheapest lock, headlight, and helmet the store offered.
After adjusting the seat, I knelt beside the bike on the street and tucked my pant leg into my sock. The chain’s grease smell drifted to me, as welcome as the aroma of Mom’s cooking. I had a flashback of Aaron and me sitting happily at the kitchen counter and joking with Mom as she cooked up a meatloaf, our favorite. Dad wasn’t around much for those family meals; or if he was home, he was usually well into his fourth or fifth cocktail and quietly embarrassed about the many times he fumbled his drink or spilled his food.
Shaking off the memory, I strapped on my helmet, stood up, and hopped onto the seat. Comparing this bike to the one at home was like putting a Yugo up against a Cadillac, but the grip of the handlebars’ hard rubber and the tension of the toe straps around my feet soothed my nerves like three fingers of scotch.
I tightened my knapsack’s shoulder straps and began to peddle. Though heavier than the bike I was used to, the pedals were responsive and the gearshift smooth. I slipped into the traffic on Robson Street. Already dusk, I planned on only a short ride around downtown to get the feel of the bike, but half an hour later, I found myself on the other side of the Burrard Street Bridge peddling up the steep climb toward the University of British Columbia. Sprinting up a hill in work clothes, I didn’t care that the drivers around me eyed me as if I’d lost my mind. I welcomed the warm ache in my thighs and the burn in my lungs.
By eight o’clock dusk had given way to night. The bike’s weak headlight illuminated only a few feet in front of me, and I relied more on the streetlamps and the cars’ headlights. I rode directly back to the YMCA, arriving pleasantly spent. Ignoring the inquisitive glances from the people in the lobby, I carried the bike over my shoulder into the stairwell. Maneuvering it up the tight stairwell, I wished for the first time the building had an elevator.
I’d planned to spend the evening searching for new housing, but instead I focused my thoughts on Aaron as I prepared to impersonate him. As kids, we’d swapped roles a few times to play pranks on our parents, who never fell for it for very long. I would have to do better with Drew Isaacs. I tried to recall Aaron’s little nuances and tics, like the way he peeled the labels off all his beer bottles or how he tapped his teeth together when agitated. I remembered how his focus sometimes drifted away in the middle of a conversation, as if he suddenly heard a favorite song in his head, though this usually meant he was high. Drugs changed Aaron in so many subtle ways. And the familiar twinges of guilt resurfaced, as I remembered the first time I saw his floating gaze.
One night, three months before our high school graduation, Kyle, Aaron, and I were at Jeff Nolan’s house. Jeff lived down the block from us, and his parents never seemed to be home on weekends. Consequently, Jeff’s house became the default destination if we didn’t have another party to go to.
Always the wildest of our bunch, Kyle had brought over some cocaine that his college buddies had sold him. A few weeks earlier, Kyle had introduced me to coke by teaching me how to snort it through a straw. He’d convulsed with laughter as I sneezed for about five minutes after my first snort. The high that followed was almost too intense—the colors too bright and the sounds too exquisite. But maybe because of the drug’s inherent taboo, I was keen to give it another try.
And I lobbied Aaron to join me.
Kyle led the rest of us over to the coffee table in the living room. He pulled a foil packet out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. Sitting down cross-legged on the carpet, he unwrapped the edges to show us the bleached white powder inside. Eyes burning, Kyle flashed us a wicked grin. “You boys up for a sniff?”
Aaron, who barely drank in high school, viewed me warily. “I don’t know.” His eyes searched mine for backup. “This is pretty serious shit, isn’t it?”
“It’s just coke,” I said, assuming a worldliness I didn’t possess. “What’s the big deal?”
“None, I guess,” Aaron said. “Come on, Ben, let’s get a couple of beers to chase it with.”
I followed him into the kitchen. With the fridge door open, he looked over to me. “Ben, I don’t know about this.”
I shrugged. “Aaron, if you don’t want to, don’t do it. No one is going to care. But you’re not stopping me from taking a toot.”
I turned and headed back to the living room. By the time I reached the entryway, Aaron was on my heels. “I want to try it,” he said. He brushed past me into the living room and knelt down beside Kyle.
Like a flight attendant sharing airplane safety instructions, Kyle gave a brief tutorial on how to snort coke. He pointed at me with a laugh. “And don’t try to inhale the whole pile in one shot like Keith Richards over there.”
Aaron insisted on going first. He snorted a whole line of coke. He sat back and twitched and sniffed for a moment, suppressing a cough. “Wow,” he said, though I knew it was too early for him to feel anything. “Jesus.”
After Jeff, I dutifully did my line, managing to avoid a sneezing fit. Feeling my nose congest on contact, I never would have guessed it would turn out to be the last time I touched coke or any illicit drug again. After a few minutes, the same warmth overcame me, but it was even deeper than last time. The euphoria bordered on discomfort. Every sense was so heightened that I wanted to crawl into a dark quiet corner until it passed.
Kyle and Jeff were overcome by the giggles. I looked over to Aaron. He sat with his back against a couch gazing at the ceiling. His lips were fixed in a dreamy smile. His glassy eyes focused on nothing.
My high turned into a sense of dread verging on panic. Maybe the coke had made me paranoid, but I was convinced something had happened to my brother. The guilt sobered me up like a bucket of ice water.
Somehow, I knew I had just led my twin into a very dangerous world.
I forced the memory away and focused on my rapidly upcoming meeting. With no idea what Drew Isaacs looked like, I vacillated on whether I should be at a table, so he could spot me, or walk in late and pretend not to see him so he would have to flag me down. Neither option seemed ideal, but I decided there was less risk in getting there first.
I arrived on foot at Club Vertical just before 10:30. A tired nightclub, the place reminded me of the Hudson Room where Alex and I sometimes met. Like its Seattle counterpart, Club Vertical had several booths and a small uninhabited dance floor. The feature I appreciated most was its dimness; I had to squint to adjust to the weak light.
I claimed a corner booth. When the waiter approached, I resisted the urge to order a double scotch, and instead chose a bottle of Canadian beer. Its cool, sweet taste on my lips was medicinal, and I polished it off in a minute. Realizing I needed every ounce of my focus, I forced myself to nurse the second beer. I was still working on it at a quarter after eleven when I spotted a man walk in. He stopped near the front to hug a lonely-looking waitress, and they shared a laugh at one of his comments. He handed her his coat and then scanned the bar. I offered a slight wave from the booth. The moment he spotted me, he rushed over.