Last of the Independents. Sam Wiebe

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СКАЧАТЬ brats she’d have to shoot that morning, telling the kid, “Don’t you want to look nice in the yearbook?” The kid thinking, “Hell no.”

      Above the photo were the words

      DJANGO JAMES SZABO.

      TWELVE YEARS OLD.

      DISAPPEARED MARCH 6th.

      MISSED BY HIS FAMILY.

      IF SEEN, CONTACT VPD MISSING PERSONS

      SO WE CAN RETURN DJANGO TO HIS FAMILY.

      Phone number and email address followed.

      “He’s been on the news off and on,” Ben said. “He’s not the most photogenic kid, and the dad’s six kinds of crazy. It never became the big news story it should’ve.”

      “The dad goes to those meetings?” I said. “After six months?”

      Ben said, “No, but Pastor Flaherty is campaigning for him to come. Mr. Szabo mentioned he was unhappy with the people he hired, so the Pastor asked me to ask you if you’d see him. Will you?”

      “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Who did Szabo hire first?”

      “Aries Security and Investigative Consultants.”

      “There’s ten grand down the toilet,” I said. “Tell the Pastor I’ll meet him tomorrow morning at the mission, nine if he can make it.”

      The new door I’d put on my grandmother’s house was wedged in its frame. The book on household carpentry I’d been following recommended shaving the frame down half an inch, but in my wisdom I’d thought I could get a more perfect fit by only shaving a third. Now that winter was slouching towards us the wood was expanding. The crown moldings I’d installed in the living room had cracked and the banister on the basement stairs had started to warp. The doorframe was only the latest casualty.

      I wrenched the door open and found myself enfolded in the smell of chicken and pipe smoke. She was asleep on the couch, her TV trays in front of her, a separate one for the ashtray and clickers. Some asinine game show silently emitting from the TV.

      I found a plate waiting in the oven, baked chicken, boiled and buttered potatoes, green beans, and corn. Everything cold, waiting for me to flick the dial on the oven.

      The pile of dishrags and dirty laundry in the middle of the floor raised its head and whimpered in my direction. I put down a plate of dry kibble moistened with chicken juice. The dog made no move to get up. I took the cold plate from the oven and headed downstairs.

      Despite the water-stained concrete and exposed ceiling beams, the basement was comfortable, warm. Everything I’d taken from my apartment that had survived the breakup had found a place in the long low-ceilinged room. I put some McCoy Tyner on, cracked a beer from the mini-fridge, and sat on the corner of the bed, eating dinner and reading part of an Elmore Leonard western. The plot seemed familiar, either because I’d read it before, or I’d seen the movie, or a character in one of Leonard’s crime novels had read the book and used it for inspiration. Eventually the dog joined me, hobbling over to the stiff-bristled mat. I scrolled down my iPod from Tyner to Sam Cooke, lay on the bed, and drifted off thinking of Django James Szabo’s Missing flyer, sitting on my table in the shadow of the Loeb file.

      II

      Last of the Independents

      Pastor Titus Flaherty had fashionably cut hair, black with a white streak that ran temple to sideburn on his right side. His teeth were widely spaced and jutted at odd angles, and when he spoke he vivisected you with enormous, soulful John Coltrane eyes.

      “Cliff Szabo is a difficult person to maintain a friendship with,” he said as we crossed the parking lot in the direction of the mission.

      I drank some of my London Fog. “I’m not trying to marry into his family,” I said. “Long as he’s somewhat close to sanity, I can work with him.”

      The rain had abated by the time we started back from the café. The Pastor had ordered a pumpkin soy latte and a whole grain fudge bar without a hint of shame. Vancouver. Water droplets from leaky awnings hit our shoulders as we walked along Cambie Street.

      Over my shirt and jeans I was wearing a tan trench coat that had been liberated by an ex-girlfriend from the wardrobe department of a local television show. Due to a romance that ended with the girl abandoning her possessions and fleeing to the Maritimes, I’d inherited the coat of the show’s tough-as-nails, murder-solving coroner. Forget that in the real world coroners don’t usually solve murders — neither do private investigators. The coat had taken a beating over the years, and I’d lost the belt, causing it to billow out unglamorously as the Pastor and I walked into a strong wind.

      “I didn’t mean to imply Cliff isn’t a good-hearted person,” Pastor Flaherty said. He rolled up his sleeve and tapped the face of a large-dialed, numberless watch that looked out of place on its simple leather band. “My father’s. When it was stolen Cliff tracked it down and paid for it out of a pawn shop window. He wouldn’t let me reimburse him.”

      “Almost like giving to the poor,” I said. “If he called the cops he could’ve got it back for nothing.”

      “That’s what I’m getting at. Cliff can be suspicious. Truculent. Especially with agents of authority. He will scorn your help. He will make this about anything other than the matter at hand. Just bear in mind, Michael, whatever he says comes from a man dealing with unfathomable heartbreak, pain, and guilt.”

      “Guilt?”

      “I’ll let him tell you, if he decides.”

      The mission took up both floors of the leftmost building on a block of similar-looking grey rectangles. I stood under the canopy on a walkway of crushed stone while the Pastor went inside to find Mr. Szabo. I read the list of activity groups and meetings booked into the top-floor common room for the coming week: NarcAnon, AlAnon, Overeaters Anonymous. Coping Without a Loved One met Monday afternoons excluding holidays. I flung my tea bag into the rusted ashtray mounted by the door.

      Szabo came out alone. A short man, bald, with a dark beard and thick dark eyebrows. He wore a light grey polo shirt and slate grey slacks, polished black shoes, and a cheap digital watch. He glared at me for a moment.

      “Mr. Szabo,” I said. He nodded. “My name’s Michael Drayton. I’m a private investigator.”

      He nodded again. We’ll see.

      “I understand from Pastor Flaherty your son is missing and you’re thinking of hiring someone to look for him. I’ve a certain amount of experience in this.”

      “In kidnappings?”

      “Beg pardon?”

      “Django James wouldn’t run away. He had to have been taken.” The earnest expression on his weathered face challenged me to disagree.

      “By whom?” I asked.

      “If I knew that, would we be talking?”

      “How do you know?”

      “I don’t know my own son?”

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