Authors: Laurence Gough
“Okay,” he said at last, “I was on the bus to do some business.”
“Who with?”
“I give you a name, it’s the same as if I punched myself in the mouth until all my teeth fell out. You understand what I’m saying? I’d get hurt.”
“If you don’t give us a name, how are we going to confirm what you say?”
Rice spread his arms wide, a gesture of helplessness. “What if I saw something last night, something that could help you with the shooter?”
“Depends what it was.”
“Hey, aren’t we both supposed to bend a little?” Giving Willows a wide berth, Rice went over to the chair closest to the fireplace, and sat down. “As soon as the bus stopped, I jumped out. I wasn’t sure if that woman was dead or what, but I’d heard the shot and I knew I had to get out of there. I mean, I was carrying enough of a load to get me sent so far up shit creek it’d never even been surveyed.” Rice drummed his fingers nervously on the arm of the chair. “Anyhow, right after the bus stopped, it got hit by a car. Rear-ended. That jammed up the traffic and gave me a chance to scoot across to the other side of the street.”
“Towards the gas station,” said Parker.
“Yeah, right.”
“What did you see, Shelley?” said Willows.
“A yellow Honda. One of the real small ones, a Civic.”
“You get the plate number?”
“No. I couldn’t even tell you if it had plates.”
“You notice anything unusual about the car? A dent or scrape, rust, maybe a decal on the window, anything at all?”
“Nothing.” Rice paused, and then, trying hard to play it casual, flashed his whole card. “I was too busy looking at the driver to pay any attention to the car.”
“You saw the driver, is that what you’re telling me? That you saw the driver?”
“That’s right.”
“What did he look like?”
“It wasn’t a man. It was a woman.”
Willows stared at him. “A woman?”
“It was dark, and it was raining, and the car was moving along at a pretty good clip. But the driver was a blonde, wearing a lot of makeup, and she was old.”
“How old?”
“Old enough to be my grandmother,” said Rice. He leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes, exhausted.
AT THE TENDER age of eighteen, Phasia Palinkas had kissed her parents goodbye and emigrated from sunny Thyrea to rainy Vancouver, travelling all those thousands of lonely miles from the shores of the Aegean to marry her childhood sweetheart, Giorgio.
Nine years later the childhood sweetheart misjudged a curve in the highway on his way home from an evening spent at a suburban bar. His late model Subaru slewed broadside across a grass divider and three lanes of oncoming traffic, hit a drainage ditch and rolled. Giorgio’s door popped open and was torn free as the Subaru cartwheeled spectacularly into a thick stand of young alder. The trees shattered with the sound of a ragged volley of pistol shots. The Subaru came to rest on its side. Fastened in place by his seatbelt, Giorgio was pierced through and through by the sharp, jagged stumps.
The widow Palinkas soon discovered that because of her late husband’s constant efforts to expand, his construction business was cash poor. Giorgio had borrowed heavily against his life insurance. The house had been remortgaged and the monthly payments were immense. There was a little money in the bank, but not much. Five minutes with the accountants convinced her that by the time the creditors had finally finished picking over the crumbs, her plate would be spotlessly clean.
Within six months she had sold the house and moved her two young daughters from the pleasant tree-lined streets of Kitsilano to a modest two-bedroom apartment in a stucco block on East Eleventh. The building was old, but clean. The rent was much cheaper than it would have been on the West Side. There was even a Greek community of sorts, though it was smaller and poorer than the one in her old neighbourhood.
But the main reason she’d moved to the apartment on East Eleventh was because it was just around the corner from her new business — a decaying pool hall on Commercial Drive.
She still hardly knew how she’d come to own the pool hall. But if the decision to buy had been made partly as a consequence of her belief in the work ethic and the immutable value of land, it was also due to her luck in happening across a particularly handsome and persuasive real estate agent.
Her first month as a businesswoman was spent overseeing the many renovations she felt were necessary. The drab interior of the pool hall was transformed by a fresh coat of cream paint, more lights, a carpet salvaged from a demolished office building. Three pool tables were replaced by five of the smaller — and more lucrative — fooseball tables. Video games were installed next to the door, in full view of the street. And, finally, Phasia Palinkas lengthened the coffee shop counter and added half a dozen more stools. It was this last move that was most responsible for her sudden success. Her home cooking was excellent, her prices low. If her customers sometimes dawdled too long over their capuccino, she never seemed to notice.
Within a month of opening, her gross had tripled and she was showing a substantial profit.
*
On Saturdays, she closed at midnight. By quarter to twelve that night, there were only two customers left in the pool hall. Apostolos and Nichos were both regulars. Both men were in their late thirties, a bit overweight, prematurely balding. They looked so much alike that they were often mistaken for brothers.
Phasia Palinkas glanced up at the clock over the sink. Nichos was fiddling with a fooseball machine, twirling one of the protruding metal handles and making a brightly coloured row of plastic players twitch and wiggle like a chorus line. Apostolos was sitting at the counter, on the stool nearest the cash register.
The widow Palinkas turned away from the sink, a froth of soap on her hands. She could tell that Apostolos had been watching her. His eyes were full of lust as, smiling sheepishly, he pushed his empty coffee cup towards her.
“It’s so late,” she said in mock amazement. “Why don’t you go home to bed, Apostolos?”
“It’s lonely at home.”
The widow Palinkas’ eyes expressed grave concern. “Is your wife not at home?”
“Always.” Apostolos smiled sadly. “Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely. What do you think?”
Nichos, unable to hear what was said, strolled over to the counter too late to hear the punch line but just in time to join in the laughter. He put his capuccino cup down on the counter with a courtly, old-world gesture, and slapped his friend robustly on the shoulder.
“Come along, Apostolos. It’s late, time to say good night.”
Apostolos looked at the clock on the wall. He sighed heavily, pushed himself to his feet and gave Phasia Palinkas a regretful wave of his hand. “Until we meet again, dear lady.”
Phasia Palinkas nodded, and suppressed a yawn.
At the door, Nichos stood to one side and waved Apostolos past him. When his friend was safely out on the sidewalk, Nichos turned and looked back at Phasia Palinkas. She was standing behind the cash register, her hands full of nickels and dimes and quarters.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Nichos softly.
“No doubt.” Her dark eyes were expressionless.
“Sooner, if you like.”
She continued to count the coins, and the impressionable Nichos thought the sound of them clinking together must surely be the sound of his heart breaking apart under the strain of anticipated rejection. A strand of hair fell across her down-turned cheek. She brushed it away with the tips of her fingers, and at the same instant darted Nichos a sideways glance bursting with passion and heat.
He was electrified, struck dumb.
Phasia Palinkas forced herself to concentrate on the day’s receipts. After a long moment, she heard the door shut, the click of the latch. She looked out the window and saw the two men crossing the street. Forcing the thought of Nichos’ body from her mind, she went back to her counting. The sooner she was finished, the sooner she would be in her lover’s arms.
As Nichos and Apostolos walked across the street towards Culver’s Sports Shop, Apostolos held his hand out palm up, as if he could not bring himself to believe that it had actually stopped raining. Then he blew the widow Palinkas a kiss she did not see, and laughed when Nichos punched him lightly on the shoulder. They paused for a moment in front of the store to discuss the merits of a new line of soccer balls displayed in the window. Above them, the hundreds of red and blue aluminium discs that formed the word CULVER’S whirled and tinkled in the cold damp wind that swept down from the mountains.
As Nichos and Apostolos turned and began to walk down Commercial, Phasia Palinkas finally finished counting the day’s take. There was more than a hundred and fifty dollars in her hands, the bills arranged according to denomination. She secured the money with a wide rubber-band and then shoved it in a canvas bank bag with a locking zipper. She put the bag in her purse, and then moved down the counter to the main electrical panel and switched off all the lights except the one by the rear door and the ceiling fixture over the cash register.
Having shrugged into her thick wool coat, she picked up her umbrella and went over to the door. She was about to leave when she noticed Nichos’ capuccino cup on the counter. She walked back to the sink with it and ran a little cold water into it, to stop the sediment from congealing overnight.
Outside, she briskly rattled the door to test the lock.
A car raced past, stereo booming.
She clutched her purse tightly in her hands and began to walk rapidly down the cold, wind-swept street. The sidewalk was still wet from the rain. She could feel the chill seeping through the thin soles of her shoes. Her thoughts returned to Nichos, who by now must be waiting impatiently in the lobby of her apartment block. She and Nichos had been lovers two months now. He was very skilled, and despite the children in the adjoining bedroom, she was often noisier than she meant to be.
There was a sporty-looking little silver car parked in the middle of the block, and as she drew nearer she saw that it was a Mercedes. The windows of the car were fogged with condensation. As she walked past, she thought she noticed a vague movement behind the clouded glass.
Pressing her purse to her breast, she quickened her pace,
On the corner, no more than fifty feet away, there was a streetlight. Phasia Palinkas knew that once she stepped into that inviting pool of light, she would be safe. She tried to lengthen her stride, but the heavy wool coat made it difficult to hurry.
A sudden movement to her right startled her and she shied sideways, stumbled and almost fell. A face, eyes wide and mouth agape, peered out at her from the darkened window of a secondhand clothing store. She waved frantically. Her reflected image waved frantically back.
Behind her, the sniper stepped out of the Mercedes. The hem of his mauve vinyl raincoat caught on the doorhandle, and he yanked it free. Standing with one high-heeled shoe in the gutter and the other on the sidewalk, he carefully fitted a pair of fluffy pink earmuffs over his head. Then he put on the Bausch & Lomb glasses and reached behind him for the rifle.
It seemed to Phasia Palinkas that she had been fighting a treadmill, but finally she stepped out of the shadows and into the welcoming pool of light. Her panic had begun to subside. There were no footsteps behind her, and it had finally occurred to her that anyone who could afford a Mercedes would be unlikely to have much interest in her small bankroll. In fact she was beginning to wonder if she really had seen a movement inside the car, heard the soft click of a door opening behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw a woman in a shiny plastic raincoat standing on the sidewalk next to the open door of the exotic little car. The woman’s feet were wide apart and she seemed to be leaning slightly forward. Her right arm, elbow bent, was held out from her body parallel to the ground. Phasia Palinkas squinted into the gloom, and realized with a shock of horror that the woman was pointing a gun at her. Her heart thumped in her chest, spewing an adrenalin-rich mix of blood through her veins. She lurched into the centre of the puddle of light, and stood stock still.
The protection offered by the streetlight had been nothing but an illusion, no more substantial than a painted scrim.
A bright disc of light winked at her, reflected from the lens of the telescopic sight.
The sniper peered through the scope into a field of blackness irregularly sprinkled with a dozen tiny pinpoints of iridescence. Frowning, he moved the barrel laterally. The lens filled with light. In the lower left-hand quadrant there was a fuzzy black slope; the material, twice magnified, of Phasia Palinkas’ black cloth coat. The iridescence, he saw now, had come from the many loose filaments of wool standing out from the mass. He tracked across the width of her shoulders, gauged the span, and tracked halfway back. The viewfinder was filled once again with blackness. He was, in a sense, shooting blind.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
Once again, the lens suddenly filled with light. He blinked. The crosshairs were focused on the shiny green metal of the lamp-post. It was as if he was looking at a slide show which made no sense and over which he had no control. He looked up, perplexed, and saw that Phasia Palinkas had moved and that she was in full flight.
He tried a snap shot, firing from the hip.
The bullet slammed into the small of her back. It threw her forward and knocked her down. Her head hit the sidewalk hard enough to fracture her cheekbone. She lay on her side on the cold wet concrete with one arm trapped beneath her and the other fully extended. The sound of the shot echoed down the length of the street, marching inexorably away from her.
Dimly, as if from a great distance, she heard the door of the Mercedes slam shut.
She opened her eyes. Her purse had burst open, spilling the contents across the sidewalk. Blurred scraps of paper drifted across her line of vision, past her key ring, a yellow nylon comb that belonged to her younger daughter, a scattered handful of coins that gleamed under the light.
The Mercedes coughed into life. She listened carefully, straining, as the muted clatter of the diesel engine faded to a perfect silence.
Everything kept shifting out of focus, sliding away from her. Suddenly the keys and comb and small change and the meaningless scraps of paper became enormously important. She was determined to retrieve them, to tidy up this last small segment of her life. Her fingers scrabbled spasmodically on the roughly textured surface of the sidewalk. A nail splintered. Minute laminations of polish crumbled and fell away along the irregular edge of the fracture. Never had her perspective been so small, details so significant. She stared at her hand as it staggered sideways of its own volition. The tendons in her wrist bulged. The fingers were arched and rigid. She watched the maverick hand march out of her line of sight and back again, pause six inches from her nose with the index finger flexed in mid-stride.
The air filled with mist. It began to rain. The streetlight above Phasia Palinkas retreated into a thick grey haze, slowly faded to black.
Nichos was in the lobby of Phasia Palinkas’ apartment building when the fatal shot was fired. He was leaning against the steam radiator, idly running his fingers over the dusty leaves of an artificial rubber plant. As the blast of the sniper’s rifle echoed down the street, he hurried to the double glass doors, and outside, into the rain. A silver Mercedes 450SL turned off Commercial and raced past him down Eleventh, headed west.