Live Bait (10 page)

"You look as if you've done that before."

So I explained about my father, the ex-commando from Lancashire who had come here in 1946 and found work in the nickel mine at Coppercliff, Ontario. He met my mother, a French girl from Callander, the town where the Dionne quints were born, and they married and lived happily ever after. It's not the most exciting story in the world, but because she asked the right questions I found myself telling it to her, and of the ending, for them, six months apart, during my last year in high school. My father's death, in a preventable cave-in at the mine, had soured me on my home town. I'd sent my kid sister to stay with our mother's sister, later on sending money for her to go to university, and I had dropped my own plans for more education. I joined the U.S. Marines instead and did my sociology and political science studies firsthand with an M16 in my fists, while I boiled the anger out of my system.

It wasn't a monologue on my part. I'm old enough to know that war stories are the origin of that old line, "I guess you had to be there." Nobody cares how close you came to not being wherever you are now, bending their ear with yet another retelling of your adventures. They may even get to wish you hadn't been quite so lucky. Fortunately, in a way, for us Viet Nam vets, the whole social structure was slanted against us from day one. Talking about Nam is like discussing the state of your psoriasis. Personally, I'm proud of the fact that I was there and came under fire without flinching and fired back and did the job I'd been trained to do, even though the politics of the war still confuse me and I wouldn't want to defend its principles. So when I mentioned Viet Nam, without drawing any pictures, and Su took a careful sip of her drink and said nothing for a moment, I figured she was another of the anti's I've met. But the war was not her prime concern. She lifted her eyes to me, over her drink and asked, "Did you know many women there?"

The question startled me. It's what men ask, with a smile and a nudge if they're young, a wistful look if they're older. But Su was straight-faced.

"One in particular." As I spoke I could remember Li's face.

She had been more delicate than this woman, slimmer even, almost translucent in her beauty. And I remembered that last night. We were in a bar in Saigon. The terrible band was playing something they thought the Beatles had written, requested by some homesick grunt who was wearing a Dear John letter like a purple heart. "Yesterday," just slightly off key. And then the shoe-shine boy's cleaning box blew up. It killed him of course but they, perhaps even he, had known it would. It also killed seven Americans, wounded eleven others, and punched a piece of the brass footrail from the bar cleanly through Li's chest. I carried her out to the ambulance when it came, adding my shouts to all the others clamoring for aid but the big black medic just looked at me. "She dead, man. Git, there's PEOPLE inside an' they need me." And when I tried to stop him he had pushed me over and shouted, "F' crissakes. She dead, man. 'Many times you gotta be told?" He ran back into the bar and I was left, sitting there on the ground holding her until the young guy she had called her brother came for her, as angry at me as if I had personally set the bomb. I suppose he had to work for a living after that.

"She was killed by a bomb," I told Su, and reached for my beer but noticed that my hand was unsteady and changed my mind.

Yin Su was looking at me, closely. "I'm sorry. I did not mean to remind you of something hurtful."

I waved one hand, wishing that I still smoked and had something to do with myself for a minute until the memories stopped chasing one another through my mind. Soon Li had been a bargirl, maybe the same as all the others but never to me. I had known her only weeks when I was nineteen and she maybe two years younger but she was a part of my life that would never leave me.

"The reason I asked is selfish," Su said. "I have met men who think that women like me are exotic. It seems demeaning."

It gave me a chance to change the subject. "Then allow me to apologize for the collective bad manners of all rednecks. Please excuse us for acting attracted. You're very attractive, and not just to us typical Kwailos."

"Kwailos?" She laughed, surprised, "You are not a typical foreign devil, not if you know the word."

"I try not to be. That's why I was sorry to have to act like one this afternoon. I didn't see how to cut the usual law office red tape any other way."

"Well, it worked," she said. "Mr. Straight never sees people without an appointment. I was surprised when he said he would make an exception for you."

"I thank you for that. I didn't really expect to get through to him."

She shrugged and smiled. "That's what I'm there for."

I was all out of things to say. She reminded me so strongly of that vanished portion of my life that I couldn't see the day, the golden quality of the light that poured through the low window of the pub, as mellow as English ale. Instead I was standing in the smoke and noise of that bar in the long seconds when I could have said, "Let's go some place else?" and we could have headed for the door, in time to move out of the path of that shard of brass. It was the thought that had filled my whole head for months afterwards, leading me into crazy risks as I did my best to join her. I guess I would have if the mortar shell had landed a meter closer to me. Instead I woke up in bed in a hospital, among round-eyed nurses and guys who had lost so much more than me that I slowly climbed back out of the crater Li had left in my life and rejoined the world.

All of this went through my mind in moments, but not quickly enough to be invisible to this strangely familiar woman. She had the same fragility I had loved in Li, overlaid with a Western assurance, in place of the artificial hardness Li had put on with her makeup. Now this one cocked her head, twisting her mouth in a wry grin that forgave me everything. "I seem to have touched a nerve."

I tried out a tight little smile of my own. "Sorry, ma'am, I was just woolgathering."

She twisted her wrist towards her so she could see the pretty little gold watch with no numerals. "The subway has to be empty now, except for me, and you, if you're heading north."

I had a car but this was not the time to offer her a ride; already I felt grubby, the redfaced recruit making googoo eyes at the pretty city girl. I could almost feel the straws in my hair.

"No, I have some things to do before I head home. I don't get into the city very often."

She stood up, picking up her purse, rehearsing the usual politenesses. I was anxious to hold on to her, somehow. I said, "I'm sorry this has been such a crazy first meeting, I'd like a rematch, so you can see that I'm not usually this much of a turkey." She said nothing, but she was smiling, so I asked, "Are you busy later this week?"

As I spoke I was aware that I had not yearned like this for any woman, including my wife, in fifteen hungry years. Maybe she was right, maybe there are some men who are intoxicated by Oriental women. If there are, I'm one of them, for life.

She did me the courtesy of looking at me, squarely as she thought about my words for perhaps ten seconds. Then she smiled and said, "I think I'm free on Thursday," in a serious tone that collapsed in helpless laughter. "Try me," she added.

"Thursday?" I echoed. We both laughed and she told me where and I suggested when and that was it. I walked her to the door and up to the corner. I don't know what I was thinking or expecting. I'd known a lot of women in those years, some of them important to me. Hell, I had even been married. But I was still breathless around this girl.

We parted at the corner. She walked through Simpsons to the subway and I went back to my car, paid five dollars ransom and drove off with Sam, baleful and mistrustful, in the back seat.

Louise was in the kitchen, tearing lettuce. She smiled at me and said "You look like you just won the sweep."

I waved one hand, elaborately casual. "Nothing so grand." She pulled the "Oh, yeah" face that kid sisters grow up with and then stopped her work and dried her hands on her apron.

"This package came for you, about ten minutes ago, in a cab."

It was a manilla envelope, eight by fourteen, legal size. There was no monogram on it, just the plain white type-written label addressed to "Mr. R. Bennett" and the address of Louise's house.

I took it and looked it over, wondering automatically who could have sent it to me. If it had come from Fullwell it would have carried the Bonded Security crest and I couldn't think of anyone else who knew where I was staying. I hadn't even left the information with George at the police station in Murphy's Harbour.

I must have looked mystified enough to prompt Louise to say, "Why not open it, then you'll know who it's from."

I tore it open and tipped it out. It held a sheet of paper, folded around a bundle of other papers. I opened it and whistled with surprise. I was holding a solid wad of twenty dollar bills.

I counted them, while Louise watched. They added up to one thousand and eighty dollars and I frowned. People who send unmarked envelopes full of cash usually have a good reason. You don't expect them to make mistakes in arithmetic. The figure must have some significance, but not for me. There was another paper enclosed. I pulled it out and looked it over. There were four words on it, typed in some sans serif electric typewriter face. They were: Wait for our call.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Louise said. She was looking at me over the bowl of salad, wondering perhaps if I was going to go bright red and confess that I was on the take from a bunch of hard cases.

"Makes no sense to me," I told her. I didn't let her read the message. I was worried by it. My benefactor, whoever he was, knew where I was staying. The knowledge made me uncomfortable. I've had my share of adventures, in and out of the service, but they were always one-on-one affairs that affected me alone—not my sister and her kids.

We ate supper and I kibitzed with the kids, and worried. They were young and fragile and precious, like all kids, and it seemed I had turned over a stone that hid some ugly kind of creature. I decided I would wait in for the call, no matter who or where it came from.

It happened at seven-thirty. I had just piggybacked Katie up to bed and was heading downstairs for a last game of snap with Jack when the phone rang. Louise picked it up, in the kitchen, then called me, her voice yodelling up cheerfully, "It's for you."

"Thanks." I took it in her bedroom. She hung up down below when I picked up the receiver and for a long moment there was nothing on the line but the faint electronic sighing as if this were an overseas call. Then a voice said. "Yeah, Reid. Some friends of mine asked me to give you a call."

"About what?" There was nothing distinctive about the voice, no accent or tone that would have helped me pick it out again. It was just a plain, businesslike telephone voice, a little slow but not loaded with menace or anything that might have made a normal person suspicious. But then, not many normal people get care packages containing over a grand in unmarked bills.

"Le's jus' say about the way you been spending your nights lately."

"Man's gotta work." I tried to make myself sound petulant, not intrigued. I wanted him to volunteer more information.

"'Preciate that." The voice was toneless, like a tired grade schoolteacher in the last period. "Question is what he's gotta work at. I mean, there's people would say you're pushing kind of hard on something that don't matter a hill of beans to you."

"I'm just helping out a friend."

Now the voice took on an edge, exasperation at my stupidity. "Bullshit. You're jus' playing a game o' cops'n'robbers. Hell, if you wanna do that, why come down here? You wanna kick ass an' take names, you can do that up in Murphy's Harbour."

"Why's it upsetting your friends?" I knew why. The money alone would have told me, the call was spelling it out. I had gotten too close to somebody. Automatically I thought of Cy Straight with his unstraight back and his law office, where a man would be able to stretch out his hand and pick up a legal-sized envelope without any trouble at all.

"I don' have to draw you no pictures, 'kay?" The voice was showing signs of stress. I had obviously had my quota of kind words, now it was time to wrap up, to take the money and run.

"Why'd you send me the cash?"

"Token of good will. A man shouldn't have to work two jobs to make a living."

"I appreciate the thought. What if I tell you I like working two jobs?"

There was a heavy rasping, like a man rubbing a file over a spade. "Yeah, well, my friends think you should retire."

"And if I don't."

Again the rasp and then the words I had dreaded but expected, "Yeah, 's up to you. But, in case you forgot a'ready, we know where you live." There was a short pause, as if a man with a long arm were reaching out slowly to the cradle, and then the phone clattered down.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 12

 

 

I
replaced the phone at my end and stood looking at it and worrying. I'd seen these people at work. If someone ordered a guy like Kennie to come over here and play handball with the kids' heads, he would do it, no questions asked. And he would enjoy doing it, picking a time when I wasn't there and counting every blow a direct pain to me. There was no question. I had to change my way of working, or give it up altogether. I couldn't put them at risk.

I went downstairs and played a game of cards with Jack, then put him to bed and went back to the living room where Louise was sitting listening to background music and fiddling with a note pad on her lap, working on some problem she had brought home from the office. She looked up when I came in. "Hi, who called?"

"A guy from Bonded. They want me to go out tonight and check on their properties again." Lying doesn't hurt a bit, compared with the real thing.

"When will you be going?" she yawned as she glanced around at the clock. It was close to eight, dark outside.

"I think soon, then I'll head back early, I'm not going to put in any more nights than I absolutely have to." As I spoke I was making a plan for my night's work.