Vancouver Noir

The Demon of Steveston by Kristi Charish

Britannia

I crouched down over the white plastic bag and carefully teased it away from the baby formula bottles, all sealed, still filled with the grayish-beige liquid.

“The formula might be what did it,” I said, surveying the cordoned-off docks for the fourth time, trying my best not to look at the body or the open dead eyes, lined with a smattering of heavy, dark eyelashes. “Unnerved them. I can’t see why else they’d leave the body here.” I stood with a small groan, my rubber shoe taps scuffing against the dew-laced dock. The plastic bags stirred with the morning breeze that buffeted the sea grass flats off the Britannia shipyards. “That or the milk stains.”

“Jesus Christ,” Murray whispered, more prayer than statement.

I shoved my hands in my pocket to keep Murray from seeing them fidget. I suspected he’d called me out here for charity more than necessity, but still I felt obligated to muster my best. I squinted against the sunlight coming off the water, only now high enough to sting my eyes, and tried remembering the last time I was up at daybreak. I didn’t feel the need to apologize for the cigarette I lit, stashed in my pocket months ago for a rainy day.

Or a dead body.

“Runaway, prostitute — or a little of both?” Murray asked.

A long drag did wonders to calm my jitters. I forced myself to scan the woman’s meager possessions once again — and then her.

Young Asian woman, hair bleached within an inch of its life, small frame yet I’d guess athletic. Dressed in a vintage-looking cargo jacket, combat boots, and a matching canvas backpack lying off to the side. Her skin only now starting to lose color. Not dead long.

On a hunch I turned her ankle to check the brand of her boot. It took a lot of money to look that disheveled. As I suspected it was expensive. I could see where Murray’s mistake had been made; the diaper bag could have been a backpack.

“She isn’t a street kid.” I indicated the embossed mark on the heel. “Not with these boots.”

He swore and stepped out of earshot before pulling out his phone.

“I banked on her being a heroin hippie or a fentanyl elf,” he said when he returned. “Figured she was Native.” As if that was an explanation in and of itself.

“Chinese. And you’re a racist asshole.”

Murray had the good grace not to argue. It was an unspoken rule that if a victim were an addict, runaway, prostitute, or combination of the three, no one blinked an eye if you phoned in the investigation. Murray had a full caseload, and with no ID he’d been hopeful — 999 times out of 1,000 when a girl was found like this, it was one of the three.

I glanced up at the tall lamps that overhung the docks. Most were still on, even with the morning light. “Those two are out.” I nodded at two dead lights overhead. “She probably didn’t even notice. Who sounded the alarm?”

“Night guard heard shouting. Stepped out of the shed and swears he saw someone crouched over her. Took off before he got a closer look.”

I frowned as something metallic glinted just underneath her jacket, where metal shouldn’t have been.

I motioned for Murray to hand me a pair of gloves. “Search the area yet?”

“Mike’s bringing the dogs. If she’s like you said, chances are there’ll already be a report.” He added something else about searching social media. I half-listened, gingerly pushing open the lapel of her jacket.

A few feet away on the dock stood an Asian woman, black hair done at the nape of her neck and wearing a calico-print dress that would have been more appropriate on a woman in the twenties or thirties. She was staring straight at me. An exhibitor from the museum here early? I opened my mouth to interrupt Murray but the sunlight flickered with a passing cloud. The woman flickered as well.

Not again.

I shut my eyes tight, willing the woman to disappear. I was lucky to catch it so quickly, especially since cutting my meds in half. They made me so damn sluggish.

“Ricky?” Murray had crouched down beside me. “You having one of your — episodes?” It was impossible not to miss the hidden distaste and suspicion. “I thought the doctors said you were better now.”

“They did. I mean I’m—” I stopped my defense. The ghostly woman was back, this time hovering over the tidal flats, the edges of her old-fashioned dress tinged dark with water. She stared sadly, not at the strangled dead girl, but at me.

Best to ignore these slips. They couldn’t be helped, and worrying only made them worse. At best they were rabbit holes. At worst?

The woman vanished. I covered the momentary lapse with another drag from my cigarette, feigning concentration directed back on the body. If Murray suspected, he pretended not to. He’d always done that better than the other detectives. It was why I’d taken his call. That and my own curiosity.

I nodded at the strap and refocused the conversation. “Thing is, Murray, you aren’t asking the most important question.” I pulled the jacket the woman had been wearing aside, exposing the source of the metal glint. A strap, innocuous at first, unless you knew what it was. I glanced up at him. “If she was wearing a baby carrier, where’s the baby?”

Murray swore something foul but it was lost in the phone as he retreated to his car. I stole another glance at the tidal flats. The ghostly woman was gone.

I gave the dead girl’s possessions one last glance, but I already knew what was there — a mix of baby supplies: wipes, diapers, formula — all strewn across the dock and into the mud below. They held no more clues.

I paid attention to the docks instead, well lit for tourist season. Warm night, the watchman would have been looking for kids sneaking into the park. If it was premeditated, it hadn’t been well planned...

Opportunity? A chance encounter? Not impossible, but odd considering the remote location and the groceries. As if she was meeting someone.

Back to premeditated. But then why not dump the body in the water? Unless they intended for her to be found? An argument gone wrong? An accident? Or just inexperience.

Not something I was used to seeing. Not for the runaways, drug dealers, and trafficked prostitutes I consulted on. Without knowing who she was and why she was here, I had no motivation. A field full of rabbit holes.

“Ricky, I need you to do your thing,” Murray said, back from his call.

I swallowed and resisted the urge to take another drag. “I find teens and women. Missing babies are outside my social circle.” Verbalizing what it was I was good at always brought up a familiar ball of guilt.

“I’ll pay you the same rate as last time. Off the books.”

I bit back a hiss, taking in a mouthful of smoke. Of course off the books. There were some things you just couldn’t be forgiven for in the court of public opinion.

“No one finds people like you do, Ricky.”

Because I knew where they went.

“Get your forensics to canvas the docks,” I told him, avoiding a solid answer. “Then we’ll see.” I kept my eyes on the mud as I retreated to my car, an antique VW Bug that needed a key to open its dulled yellow doors, the necessity of it ruining whatever ironic fashionable veneer it had once held. I didn’t bother searching the lot for the ghostly woman and whatever it was my mind imagined she wanted. Instead, I stared at my hands until the engine in my car turned.

No rabbit holes this time, Ricky.

Cigarette still lit and without saying goodbye to Murray, I peeled out of the parking lot before anyone else arrived to find me at the scene.

An hour and another cigarette later, I arrived home at my condo in a refurbished heritage building on the edge of China and Gastown. My living space clashed with my income and what I alone could afford — or deserved. A peace offering from my father when he’d paid the deposit on an exorbitant North Van home, a wedding gift for my brother. Not wanting to break a streak in fairness, he’d purchased this place for me. The fact that it was now worth well over four times what he’d paid in the nineties just dug the knife in deeper.

I dropped my coat on the wooden stand by the front door and headed straight for my desk. I didn’t smoke inside — it was the one concession I’d made to my ex and the only lifestyle improvement I hadn’t been able to renege on. The ashtray was still out on the porch with a view into the gated alley — turned-garden two stories below.

I put the coffee pot on, then headed into the shower, something I hadn’t had a chance to do before Murray had called. It wasn’t until I was dry and had a warm mug in my hands that I checked my phone.

I was relieved not to see a text from Murray. Trafficked babies weren’t the same as trafficked girls. I had half a mind to go visit my brother for the weekend in North Van, just to avoid being useless.

The scrape of the metal gate outside distracted me.

Sliding my phone in my pocket, I took my coffee out to the porch, knowing who would be below.

Sitting on the rim of one of the large flowerpots was a woman in her fifties, face framed in a brown bob, with high cheekbones, tanned skin, and a slimness that hid or flattered her age well. I guessed First Nations, but had never gotten up the courage to ask, and she’d never brought it up.

This morning she had the same stroller I’d noticed last night squeaking down the sidewalk. Her other grandchildren had grown well beyond it, so this one must be new. I smiled as I leaned over the rail. “Marnie.” She was the only neighbor I knew by name.

“Ricky.” She offered me a warm smile and settled the baby on her lap — a girl in a pink outfit with black hair and expressive eyes that searched the courtyard.

The infant gave me a brief glance before fixating once again on her fingers, apparently much more interesting. I noted a darkened birthmark on her leg, exposed by bare feet.

“Haven’t seen you in a couple weeks,” Marnie said.

She had lived in the building since the eighties, before it was fashionable to live in Gastown. I had no idea what her financial situation was, if she’d been married, widowed. I’d never seen a man or her adult children, though they must have existed as she had three grandchildren. Two boys and now the girl. I had no idea what their story was. Marnie had never once asked me about the tabloid-like stories in the paper. Maybe that was why we were tentative friends — we didn’t bother each other with the usual details. Our acquaintance was centered around living proximity. No need to pollute it with the outside world.

“You going to show that coffee up in my face, or get your manners together?”

I headed back into my kitchen and filled a second mug, adding the cream and sugar Marnie preferred. She nodded in thanks as I passed it down.

Marnie and her grandchildren were the only ones who used the garden regularly. The rest seemed either ignorant or uninterested in frequenting an alley in Vancouver, however gentrified. Creatures of our environment. It took someone who knew what a dangerous alley looked like to recognize when there was no danger. Maybe another reason we were friends.

Juggling the infant on one knee, Marnie took a deep sip, savoring the warmth. “How are things?” she asked. “More dead girls?”

That took me aback. Marnie had an unhealthy interest in my obsessions. There was something ironic in that — or comical.

She tsked. “The only thing that gets you out of your bed before noon is a dead girl.” The baby fussed and Marnie jostled her until she stopped. “Well?”

I shouldn’t tell her, in theory it was confidential with Murray... Screw it, I wasn’t even an official consultant anymore.

“False alarm so far — not a prostitute or a runaway.” Though that didn’t make it more or less tragic. I sipped my coffee. “Missing baby though.”

Marnie made a cross sign over her chest and out of reflex held the infant tighter. “That’s much worse.”

“Depends on whether the baby is still alive.”

I inclined my head as my phone buzzed in my pocket. Murray. I excused myself from the balcony and closed the door before answering.

“We found the SUV,” Murray said. “Empty car seat, no sign of the baby anywhere.”

So much for finding the baby. “Who was she?”

“June Xian. Kitsilano housewife, first kid born five months ago, named Blossom. June was born in Hong Kong, the husband and baby here.”

Despite my reluctance, my brain churned through the possibilities. “Suspects?”

“Husband. House and most of the cash is in her name. Her parents used her to invest heavily in real estate.”

“Money for motive?”

“According to the neighbors and a slew of noise complaints, the two have been fighting. Apparently she kept threatening to take the baby back to Asia.”

Money and children, common enough motives. “Affair?” I asked, completing the trifecta of domestic discourse. Still not in my realm, but closer.

“That’s what the husband claims.”

Maybe some of my old vice channels would prove useful. More rabbits ducked in and out of their holes. “Whoever killed June might simply have gotten rid of the baby—” I froze. The Asian woman in the old-fashioned dress was standing in my kitchen, her translucence unmistakable in the sunlight. She lifted a finger and jabbed it at me, her face, almost featureless, twisted in anger.

“Shit,” I said to myself. No, not here, anywhere but here.

“Ricky?” Murray’s voice on the phone.

“Yeah.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Where’s forensics at?”

“Waiting on the preliminary.”

“In the meantime I could tag my old contacts and dig up dirt on the husband.”

“Just — can you be discrete? We, ah, don’t need a repeat of last time.”

The professional thing would be to assure Murray there wouldn’t be a repeat. I decided not to jinx it and risked opening my eyes. She was gone from my kitchen. I stifled a sigh of relief while Murray carried on, as if lack of my response was normal. “I really appreciate it, Ricky.”

My goodbye verged on rude. It was almost eight a.m. now. I made my next call.

“You realize I’m Japanese?” said the young, attractive man in his twenties as he slid into the booth across from me. Today he was wearing waxed jeans and an expensively cut leather jacket, tattoos visible under the cuffs. Yoshi was more fashionable than I’d had any chance of being, even a couple decades ago.

“You realize I like the tea?” I said.

He snorted but didn’t protest further. It was the same every time. He thought I invited him here because I couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese and Chinese. I always insisted it was because I liked the tea — which I did. We agreed to disagree. I wasn’t changing the spot, especially if I was the one buying.

“Did you bring my payment?”

“Depends. Do you have what I want?” I silently chided myself. I wouldn’t be that snippy if it wasn’t for the Asian woman following me. I’d spent the entire walk here searching for her in the faces of passersby.

Yoshi didn’t care. He nodded and slid a tablet across the table to me. I slid an envelope to him.

Phone records, bank statements, e-mails, police reports highlighting domestic disputes, dates and times she’d crossed the bridge, locations where she’d opened her social media. All her life in painstaking detail. I glanced up at the preliminary autopsy report. “You’re not supposed to be able to access these.”

He shrugged. “I was already on their servers. Figured you’d appreciate it. Besides, I was curious. Girls like her don’t end up dead often.”

Death by strangulation, relatively healthy — I frowned at the mention of marks carved into her bare shoulder. Not a birthmark, not a wound. More like a brand, as if the skin had been filleted out. Three lines, too parallel and straight to be anything but deliberate.

I skimmed through the rest, but the symbol had my attention now. The rabbits didn’t want to let it go...

Credit cards showed she’d purchased the groceries at eleven thirty p.m., then crossed the toll bridge at eleven fifty p.m. Yoshi also confirmed the husband had been home, according to his phone and the voice-activated alarm system. I found the confirmation I was looking for in her e-mail. “An affair,” I said.

Yoshi arched an eyebrow at me. “You should see the texts, and the pictures. I didn’t know pregnant ladies—”

I shushed him and he fell silent. Where you had money and marital discord, you usually had the third. Still, it left a dry feeling in my mouth. Couples were assholes to each other all on their own, they didn’t need a third-wheel catalyst.

Yoshi of course had included the catalyst’s details, his name, Victor Miller, and his work and home addresses. He lived right near the Britannia shipyards. Well, now I knew what she’d been doing in the area. Miller worked downtown as a bartender. I finished my tea and tossed some bills on the table.

“What’s your hurry, Ricky?” Yoshi said.

“To find out just what June saw in this guy.”

I tapped the bottom of my soda on the bar as I watched Victor restock the bar, it being early in the afternoon and slow.

He eyed me every now and then — in the mirror mostly, discretely. He didn’t recognize me but he knew what I was. Had been, I corrected myself. Once learned, you never lose the identifying affectations. No one does. Like a permanent scarlet letter — or brand, not unlike what had been carved out of June.

He wasn’t my type but I could see why June had chased him — roughly the same age if not younger, attractive in a surfer bum way. The opposite of the husband who looked at home in a three-button suit as he pleaded on TV and in the papers for information on his daughter. Victor didn’t strike me as the kind of man a woman like June was serious about, more a tool to get a rise out of her husband.

I held up the empty soda glass and smiled as I figured out the best way to broach June and her baby, how to phrase it just right. It was harder when I wasn’t officially on a case.

I could lie, tell him I was one of June’s friends, or hired by her friends to find the baby. It was all over the news now. Usually Murray had these conversations, not me.

I’d half decided on lying when his eyes drifted to a spot behind me. Something about the way he frowned made me pause. He called for one of his coworkers to fill in before abandoning the bar.

Not wanting to give myself away, I shifted on the barstool until I got a good glimpse of the doors in the mirror. Between the bottles of Grey Goose I made out two detectives, one of which I recognized, Mike. He’d called me a parasite and worse to Murray on more than one occasion. They flashed their badges at Victor and though I couldn’t hear details, I could well imagine the line of questions.

I watched his face carefully as he responded. Great boyfriend he was not, but he wasn’t a killer. He didn’t have the markers for violence. Those I could spot, my other talent from a previous life.

The other detective started scanning the bar, his eyes in the mirror falling on my back. I left cash under my empty glass and nodded at the bartender who’d replaced Victor, before heading for the washroom to slip out the back.

I was past the kitchen, almost to the back door, when she appeared. Not the Asian woman in the calico-patterned dress, but June, wearing a white T-shirt over simple blue jeans. Her eyes were red, her expression angry. A grotesque welt, red and purple against her graying skin, burst across her cheek in the shape of the carved brand. She bared her teeth at me, like a wild animal.

I shut my eyes and counted to ten before opening them, but she was still there. They always lingered when my mind made them grotesque like that.

No, not now. I ran through her, hitting the door open with a bang. They aren’t real, they’re never real.

I raced the block back to my car and shoved the key into the lock. Come on. The door finally opened before either woman reappeared. I slid behind the wheel and scrambled to open the glove box. It was still there. I swallowed two of the Risperidones, hoping the high dose would drown them out faster. I’d taken too few over these last weeks, trying to strike a hard balance between crazy and vegetative. I shut my eyes and counted until the panic ebbed. The ghosts didn’t bother me here, not where I might kill myself driving. The ghosts had their own sense of self-preservation.

Once my heart stopped racing, I opened my eyes. She was gone. I turned the ignition over and headed back home before the Risperidone made me drowsy. As I drove I focused on what I knew: the boyfriend wasn’t the killer.

I waited until I was through the front door before checking my e-mail. It had been a half hour drive back, and I’d stopped twice to rest my nerves.

There was a single missed call from Murray. If Mike had recognized me, there would have been a lot more. Returning Murray’s call could wait.

The brand carved out of June haunted my thoughts. I searched my shelf for a yellowed plastic binder I hadn’t perused in years, one filled with details from a decade-old criminology class. The early West Coast had bred a different kind of criminal, specializing in vice: Shanghaiing unsuspecting travelers to fill crews, trading in Chinese slaves, Gold Rush scams of every which way and flavor.

I found it, and my fingers tripped over the pages until I reached the familiar passage. A group of Chinese shipbuilders and canners at the Britannia docks in the early 1900s had been some of the first victims. Later ones had included fishermen and cannery workers, Native and white. The murders had largely been ignored by the press at the time, only linked in later years by historians who found the circumstances curious. I remembered it vaguely, it having piqued my interest in class when described as one of BC’s first modern serial killings. The occult-minded of my classmates had been riveted by the circumstances.

I brushed my fingers along a grainy black-and-white photo. The same three parallel lines carved into June decorated the bodies in the photo.

That’s why my mind must have concocted the ghosts, a long-forgotten lecture resurfacing. Murray would have missed it. He hated the occult as much as he hated history. I snapped a picture and texted him: It’s not the boyfriend.

“That’s not what our guys think,” Murray said when I answered his call.

“Mike is a bigoted idiot,” I responded.

He sighed. “He’d vehemently disagree.”

“I know what the brand is.” I filled him in on what I’d discovered, omitting June’s ghost.

“It’s interesting, and I’ll be the first to say it’s suspicious, but all it points to is that the killer is either into the occult or a history buff.”

“Did you see the photo? Those carvings are the same.”

“They’re 120 years apart. And I didn’t hire you to look for a killer. I hired you to tap your old trafficking contacts and see if anyone was offloading a baby.” A slight pause. “Ricky, are you taking your meds?”

My meds. The only way Murray would talk about my condition — writing off my insights as an odd, useful quirk of a broken mind, not unlike the brand on the body. My finger paused over one of the pages, over a photo that stared up at me. The woman in the calico-patterned dress, the same brand on her arm still distinguishable in the grainy image.

“Ricky? You still there?”

“I might have found something, just... this isn’t one of my mad goose chases.” I didn’t give him the chance to interrupt me before hanging up the phone, hoping my mind hadn’t tricked me into lying once again.

I stared at the photo and the caption underneath. A cook who’d worked at the cannery, one of the Chinese shipbuilders’ wives—

There was a rap at my balcony window. I turned but there was no one there. I swore and folded the binder back up. I wasn’t that high up... it could be a burglar.

“Hello?” I called out. No answer. I swallowed. It’s not real. I searched my drawer for the Risperidone, thinking I never should have quit.

“Ricky?”

Marnie. I breathed a sigh of relief.

She narrowed her eyes at me as I stepped out onto the balcony. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Just the case getting to me,” I settled on. I told her about the brand on June’s shoulder, and the historical connection — more to settle my own thoughts.

The glance she gave me was sharp as I passed her a mug of coffee. “Brands carved into the flesh? Like strips of bacon taken out for a frying pan?”

At the look I gave her she was quick to shake her head. “Just thinking about old stories — stupid ones, but...” She shrugged. “Your dead girl with that brand reminds me of one.” She jostled the baby, who was also examining me now. “Ever heard of a wechuge?” She pronounced it way-chu-gay.

I shook my head and her lip twitched as she tsked. “Didn’t suppose you had — but you never know. It’s like a windigo.”

I searched my Risperidone-addled brain. “North American monster. A demon or something, no?”

She half nodded. “A cannibal to be precise, with maybe a little magic thrown in — don’t look at me like that, Ricky. It’s not some mystical insight. I studied First Nations culture and legends as part of my anthropology course in the nineties. Was interested in the stories my grandfather used to tell me.”

Marnie coddled the baby. A bottle appeared from inside her bag, the nib disappearing into the baby’s eager mouth. “Wechuge is the Western, not so psychotic version of the windigo — if there is such a thing as a nicer, nonpsychotic cannibal.”

I gave her a terse smile. “I’m pretty sure Murray won’t go for a cannibalistic First Nations monster as a murder suspect.”

Marnie shook her head. “Never said it was. One of the stories my grandfather told was about a Ukrainian fellow out in Saskatchewan in the early twenties. According to my grandfather, the Ukrainian fellow made a deal with a wechuge spirit to get vengeance on the folks he thought wronged him — farmers, local police, and then a priest, though the priest probably deserved it, even if the others didn’t.”

I shook my head and braced myself as the Chinese woman in calico appeared behind Marnie. She was a faded visage now, barely perceptible if I angled my head the right way so that the sunlight drowned her out. “Completely different from a dead Chinese woman.”

Marnie shrugged. “Wechuge or not, the man was real enough. Caught and hanged him for murder — and worse.” Marnie tsked again. “The wechuge’s price was flesh from the victims. He ate a bit of all of them, strips of flesh, fried up like bacon with his breakfast. Farfetched, but still, my grandfather described those same markings. Three strips carved out of the skin. There’s even a public record. I found it a few years back. And you’re missing my point.”

“Which is?” I did my best to ignore the ghost’s grotesque pantomime of strangling Marnie. The figments of my imagination no longer satisfied with misbehaving, now acting out. I clenched my teeth and forced a smile as Marnie placed the baby back in the stroller, pocketing the bottle and accessories.

“If a crazy Ukrainian man a hundred years ago figured he’d made a deal with a devil to exact mystical vengeance on a whole town through consuming their flesh, who knows what your killer came up with? That’s the thing that doesn’t change about people. They always try to justify their craziness.” Marnie winced as she stood, from sore joints and stiffness. “And on that morbid note, I hope you find the baby.”

“You say that every time.”

She waved over her shoulder. “I mean it every time. And try to take care of yourself. You never do.”

I focused away from the ghost on the baby fussing in the stroller, her bare foot with the dark birthmark kicking free.

I went back inside and checked through the pictures that both Yoshi and Murray had sent me of June. None of my contacts had given me any inclination they’d heard of a baby being moved. It had been a long shot at best. I stopped the scroll of my screen on one of June’s social media images. A birthmark, dark and prominent on the baby’s foot. Very much like Marnie’s granddaughter’s.

My hands shook. It couldn’t be. I’d seen the baby with Marnie before... starting the night June had died.

Halving my Risperidone had been a mistake.

But what if it wasn’t? Marnie would understand if I just went to check.

I ran up the steps to her apartment — 308 was what she’d told me. I banged on the door three times. “Marnie? Answer the door, it’s important.”

The door swung open before I could knock a fourth. The woman who answered was blond, late thirties or early forties, Caucasian. It took a moment for my mouth to recover.

“Ah, is Marnie here?” I asked.

She stared at me as if I were crazy.

“I’m sorry, I live in the building,” I stammered. “She must have moved out. I’m sorry.” I hated my fluster, I’d had enough practice with this over the years, but when they surprised me...

I stumbled back and waved as she closed the door. My heart pounded so hard on the flight of stairs back to my own apartment that I barely noticed turning my lock.

I opened my laptop and entered: Marnie Wallace 1990s. That was the decade Marnie had said she’d graduated in. There she was staring back at me from the screen. Marnie Wallace, Criminology, third year, survived by a daughter. Death, 1997.

I closed the computer, my mouth dry. My memory had conjured her from a case file I’d read. My mind had fooled me. Worse than last time.

Yet I’d seen the baby before I’d seen June’s body, the night before, the stroller creaking down the sidewalk.

It took me two tries to raise the phone to my ear.

“Ricky?” Murray answered on the fourth ring.

“Murray, I’m—” Where to start? I couldn’t get the image of the birthmark out of my mind.

“You don’t sound so good.”

I had to tell him, to say something. “I think I’ve got a lead. On the baby.”

“Won’t do much good, Ricky. We found her in the water an hour ago.”

“I know this is going to sound crazy — crazier than normal.” How to convince him? I wetted my lips. “Have you ever heard of something called a windigo?”

More silence, followed by a sigh. “I knew it was too soon to bring you back in.”

He didn’t believe me. My heart pooled into a dark pit. “No, I’m fine.” I ran my hand violently through my hair, longer than I should have let it grow.

“No, you’re not.” His voice was firm. “Just stay there. I’m coming over.”

“Murray, wait. Shit.” He’d hung up. I redialed but there was no answer.

“Don’t feel so bad, Ricky.”

I spun around. Marnie was behind me, holding the infant. This time I could make out their faint translucence.

“You weren’t exactly coming into this with a full deck of cards.” She smiled at me, a glimpse of teeth that were dark, pointed, menacing. She nodded at the binder and laptop. “Was supposed to have a granddaughter but my daughter wasn’t so good with keeping to the straight-and-narrow. Little girl didn’t stand a chance. Died a few days after she was born, a poor sick little thing.”

I tried to speak but words caught in my mouth, dry from the medication.

“Reality is such a strange, fragile thing, isn’t it? And sanity. That’s something I suppose you value, though, Ricky, much like I value my grandchildren.”

June appeared behind Marnie, wielding a kitchen knife that she drove into her back, over and over. It made no difference.

“You can’t be real,” I finally managed.

Marnie arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you like to know? That’s the problem with the sane nowadays, they never believe what’s possible until it’s too late.”

There was a knock on the door. “Ricky?” Murray called.

“You should get that,” Marnie said, but both she and June were standing in my way.

I let the knocking continue. I didn’t plead for my life, didn’t beg. I still wasn’t sure any of it was real.

“You killed them,” I whispered.

She inclined her head and tsked. “Think of me less as a cannibal, more of a carrion cleaner. I take people’s burdens, the ones festering under their skin. June’s unwanted family, this woman’s guilt over not raising a child right, the Ukrainian man’s vengeance for a murder left unpunished. I take their despair.” Her eyes glowed with warmth. “Your madness. I’m not just a killer or a cannibal. I’m a release.”

“Ricky? Open the door!” The knocking continued but I was fixated on Marnie.

“You want your sanity, Ricky? To be free of the ghosts stalking you at every turn?” She nodded to the counter. Right beside the Risperidone was a plastic bag that hadn’t been there before. Something red and raw inside. Three strips of flesh.

“Taken in context, it doesn’t seem like such a steep price to pay.” She nodded to the door where Murray still pleaded. “And time is running out.”

I swallowed. Sanity, something I’d never had, the lack of which had crippled my life. Both June and the calico woman were standing behind Marnie, shaking their fading heads at me.

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

A pointed, toothy smile. “Everything hurts.”

I picked up the bag of June’s flesh.

The banging continued. Baby on the hip of the younger, stronger body, I answered the door. The madness was still there, but fading into the background of me now.

“I’m still me,” Ricky said out loud.

The voice tasted strange on my mouth.

Yes, of course, I whispered. Now wipe your mouth before you answer the door.

Murray stood in the hallway, angry. His eyes drifted from my new face to the baby. “What the hell?” Confusion, and fear. That was a familiar smell.

Smile, just smile.

“Come on inside,” Ricky said. “I’ll explain everything.”

Stitches by Don English

Crab Park

No one sees as he wrestles her plastic-wrapped body out of the backseat of his Volvo and carries it down to the beach in Crab Park. He’s sat alone in his car every night at this time for two weeks; he’s confident no dog walkers or drifters or kids smoking a joint under the stars will be around as he lays her body down gently behind a log. He walks close enough to the ocean that when he kneels in the sand the waves lap his knees. The wind blowing in over the water seasons the air, heightens the smell of the still-warm pavement, the sunburned grass, and the overflowing trash bins.

He’d seen her waiting on the sidewalk on Hastings Street and there was room enough for him to pull over right in front of her, like it was meant to be. He’d leaned over to lower his passenger window and asked her if she did Greek. He’d heard that on TV once and thought it sounded good.

“Nope, I took French in school for a bit but I dropped it. I know a bit of Spanish. Chinga tu madre.”

She was trying to be funny and he didn’t want her to be funny. He had to deal with enough women trying to be funny whenever he went on the Internet. For a minute he was angry and thought about driving away, but she looked too perfect in the short skirt and the jean shirt tied under her breasts. She leaned into the window looking impatient.

“Are you supposed to be lost? Should I pretend to give you directions or something? No one gives a shit. Thirty bucks and I’ll take you where you need to go.”

“Thirty is too much. Twenty bucks. For mouth stuff.”

“Twenty-five for mouth stuff.”

He unlocked the door in a hurry and told her to get in. She was beautiful; he didn’t like that she tried to be funny, but she was beautiful. Confident too, she took one look back over her shoulder before she got in the car and then sat with her arms crossed, glaring a hole in his windshield. He decided to break the silence.

“What’s your name?”

“Pilot.”

“That’s a funny name, did your parents want you to fly?”

“You’d have to ask them.”

He wanted her to smile a little. He thought the look on her face would be better later if she smiled. “I don’t know much French or Spanish. But I learned a lot of Japanese in high school.”

“So you didn’t need the subtitles on the cartoons, right?”

He blushed a little. “Right! That’s exactly right. My favorite was—”

She clicked her tongue against her back teeth. “We’re not doing small talk unless you’re paying me more, sport.”

She looked different to him then, more like the girls at work. Another reality TV watcher. He was looking for a genuine connection with someone who liked substantial things, things out of the ordinary. A girl who lit up when she saw you, listened to you, had a laugh that coated you like butter. Not someone who looked at you funny in an elevator when you told them their hair smelled nice. He nosed his car into an alley between a warehouse loft space and the chain-link fence that separated it from the railway tracks. It was always deserted there. They sat for a minute listening to the engine ticking and he waited for her to reach into her purse for condoms before he grabbed her by the throat.

Pilot Cassidy is lined up to get into a concert at the Astoria and is amusing herself by eavesdropping on the two women behind her in line. The sound from the bar leaking out into the street is brutal, but the women are drunk and loud and Pilot can’t help but overhear. One of them had met a guy though Craigslist who was willing to exchange a six-pack of beer for a hand job, any kind of beer, and so she’d done it and would totally do it again.

“Weren’t you afraid he was going to murder you or something?”

“Nah, he wanted to meet in Dude Chilling Park, daylight and everything. It took about five minutes, max. Didn’t even get any on me. I told him in advance what kind of beer I wanted and he had it right there in the trunk of his car.”

“You went with him to the trunk of his car? You are so stupid!”

“Bitch, I shared that beer with you!”

Pilot lies on her mattress after the show, the room lit only by her phone. She makes herself scroll through pictures of the night first — a sea of raised hands obscuring the shitty opening band, a bloody-nosed selfie taken in the bathroom mirror after someone threw an elbow back and hit her, one of her roommates barfing with scary accuracy into a pint glass — before opening Craigslist and cruising Men Seeking Women. She answers the first one that seems weird, offers the most money, and doesn’t get specific about what her body looks like.

Rob messages bright and early the next day, tells Pilot he hasn’t had many replies so far, and she blinks through her hangover and tells him that she doesn’t imagine vaguely worded ads involving punishment has ladies beating down his door. He seems quiet, rich, and boring, and he likes it when Pilot tells him she isn’t scared of anything. He sends Pilot a series of wardrobe ideas, tells her not to wear underwear (followed by a wink emoji that curls Pilot’s lip), what corner to stand on, and what he’ll be driving.

He struggles to keep the plastic wrapped around her. He wasn’t sure if he should buy it all in the same place so he went across the city to multiple dollar stores to buy shower curtains that he stapled together. His hands tremble as he tries to tear off strips of the duct tape.

Pilot walks out of her house and makes it a quarter of the way down East Pender toward Heatley Avenue before her brain starts to pester her about whether she locked the door. She’s almost all the way to Hastings when she realizes it’s no use arguing with herself and she heads back. Her annoyance dissolves the second she sees the house; she’s lived here for a year and her heart still swells to look at it.

When Pilot first came to Vancouver she lived in a shelter, and then a tent, and then a car that wasn’t hers. She lived in a house with three pregnant vegan Wiccans where the black mold was so bad the city inspectors Pilot called walked out when they saw it, said their union wouldn’t let them be in an environment like that. After that she moved to an unfinished basement where a series of bedsheets on a clothesline separated her “room” from a ska band’s rehearsal space.

This new house is a little two-story postwar Special, covered in purple bottle-glass stucco. The front yard of this house is small and ratty with weeds choking everything. Cracks spiderweb the stucco and it looks like a stiff breeze could pull it down in big powdery chunks. The front porch is crowded with a never-ending supply of empties that the homeless binners can’t seem to carry away fast enough. Standard exterior of a punk house in Strathcona, but this is just camouflage, something to keep the landlord from venturing in for a closer look.

Over the last year, Pilot and a hurricane of new roommates have salvaged materials and fixed up the busted hardwood floors, painted, put tile in the kitchen, and installed a hardwood bar in one corner of the living room. The backyard is even better, there’s a huge vegetable and flower garden, a big plum tree, and a little greenhouse where Pilot grows tomatoes. Benefits of living with some budding carpenters and landscapers.

She won’t let herself put the key in the lock because she knows later she’ll convince herself she somehow unlocked it by checking like that. She turns the knob and pushes but the door doesn’t budge. Her satisfaction evaporates when she turns to leave and sees her landlord’s son walk around from the side of the house. Her landlord is a failed hippie who didn’t manage to alienate his parents enough in the sixties, so they left him a bunch of properties when they died. He’s a wearer of socks with sandals who once told Pilot, straight-faced, that an infestation of raccoons in the attic was a standard feature of a heritage house. His son is the type who asks his dazed-looking girlfriend to hold his shirt before he fights someone outside a nightclub. Pilot used to sell drugs to people like him and he makes the bottom of her stomach drop out.

“What are you doing here, Jimi?”

“The backyard looks amazing. How long have you been working on that?”

“You have to let us know when you’re coming by. You know that.”

“Just business, huh? That’s cool. I came to talk about your rent increase.”

He’s standing too close to her. His breath smells like those mouthwash strips that dissolve on your tongue. “You can’t give us another rent increase, your dad just gave us one.”

He smiles like he just silently farted and no one has smelled it yet. “Yeah, see, when you didn’t complain, I knew I had to come down here. I’m like, Dad, that house is a fucking pit, no way will they pay more rent. So when you just paid up without bitching, I thought for sure you were growing weed or something. And then I saw your backyard. Walked through the house too. Sweet setup you got, but you didn’t ask to make all these changes.”

“What do you want?”

“Three hundred dollars per month paid to me, and my dad doesn’t have to know how I suddenly want to move into this house.”

Pilot’s block has three houses on it full of dude anarchists. If a car backfires, six of them run into the street, hoping the revolution has started. Of course, none of them are around now to hang Jimi from a lamppost, there’s just Pilot’s ancient next-door neighbor who’s come to her window to make sure she’s okay. Pilot gives her a little wave.

“You’d never live in this house or anywhere around here.”

“Of course not, my condo is totally the bomb... but I could have some great house parties here before I decided it wasn’t for me. My dad respects my life journey. Your band could play the parties or something. You’re in a band, right? Everyone in East Van dresses like they’re on their way to band practice.”

“Three hundred dollars is too much. I can’t swing that, none of us can.”

Jimi’s eyes flicker over the new sleeve tattoo that glistens on her arm. “Nice ink.”

Pilot fights the urge to tuck her arm behind her back. She saved for months to get the work done, and the artist cut her a break on the price. None of this is Jimi’s business. She grinds a thank you between her teeth.

“Hey, I know how hard it is to get by these days; it’s a good thing you’re so industrious, you’ll figure it out. Or you can get kicked out and wander from shack and shack to fix them up before they get torn down. Like a shitty East Van Johnny Appleseed. We got a deal or what?”

She could explain it to her roommates tonight and they’d all be angry for a while, but they’d just move on. She likes her roommates, they’re kind people who don’t make her feel like she needs to padlock the door of her room. One of them just got a job in a kitchen and has started bringing home Cuban sandwiches for everyone when he gets off work. Pilot will figure something out, anything to get Jimi and his plastic mint breath away from her.

“Deal.”

Pilot picks up shifts in four bars along the Hastings strip and one illegal booze can above a closed artisanal butcher shop on Powell. Tonight’s shift is at Dumpster Fire, the newest and by far the nicest of them. Dumpster Fire is a gentrification special, once a hot underground club, now home of the third-best burger in Vancouver. Unlike her other workplaces, this bar doesn’t smell heavily of bleach and rot, and no fights break out that aren’t solved with sarcasm.

Tonight it’s only half full, and Pilot is thankful for the quiet. The soundtrack inside is third-generation alt-country. Drinkers periodically interrupt the flow of conversation and hold their phones up to identify a song. The beer taps are topped with doll heads and the walls are dotted with flat-screens. The TVs play clips of skateboarding injuries, old chat line ads full of women with giant eighties hair, and YouTube stars giving commentary as if they’re astonished or angered by everything in the world.

Charlotte, the other bartender working tonight, finishes lashing her dreads into a thigh-width ponytail and frowns as Pilot checks the time again. “You okay?”

“I guess I am. I’m meeting that guy.”

“Creeptastic?”

Pilot nods.

“Gross.” Charlotte slices bar fruit while Pilot pulls a pint for herself. Charlotte shifts uncomfortably. “Did you get my text?”

Pilot nods and slurps foam off the top of the glass. “Yep. I can cover your shift, no problem.”

“Thanks, I wouldn’t ask only my mom comes into town tomorrow and she’s really freaked out someone is going to, like, abduct her as soon as she gets off the bus, you know? Small-town moms are scared of everything, I guess.”

“Yeah, my mom’s scared of everything too.”

Charlotte is six foot one and wide, with biceps built for crushing. Pilot has seen her lift full kegs one-handed, toss drunk bros out onto the street like they were inflatable dolls. With her hair tied back like that, she looks like a Geiger painting. She is sure to give her mother city confidence.

“You texted me this guy’s details, right? Phone number? License plate?”

Pilot nods, takes a drink of the cold and bitter beer, something local named after a cartoon she’s never watched, and sets the glass behind the bar. “Watch this for me? I have to change.”

Pilot heads to the storage room, waving at the kitchen staff as she walks past. She stowed her backpack full of slut clothes in the corner earlier, behind stacked flats of cheap pilsner. She thinks about her mother, a woman she dearly hopes has a rich interior life, who has said about ninety words to Pilot, ever. Pilot actually thought she saw her dad in the bar at the Balmoral Hotel two nights ago and she nearly fainted, but it was just someone who could have been his twin: long wild gray hair, wiry bordering on skeletal, and dead eyes like a shark.

She hasn’t seen either of them in eight years. Last time she’d been crouched in their little kitchen listening to her father explain himself to a poor legal aid lawyer who’d been foolish enough to make a home visit, foolish enough to try and help her dad.

“Let me tell you something right now — these charges against me are bullshit. I picked her up hitchhiking, no panties, and her skirt was so short you could tell she kept it shaved down there. She told me she wanted it, so I pulled off the road and gave her one. Tell you the truth, it was the easiest piece of ass I ever got.”

Her mother was sitting next to him staring at her hands gripping her coffee cup. Her husband snapped his fingers and she jumped, coffee spilling a little into the saucer, lit a cigarette for him, and handed it over. Pilot packed a bag that night. She was sixteen, with a fake ID and enough money saved for a bus ticket.

Pilot pushes those thoughts away, hard. She ditches her jeans and a torn Sepultura T-shirt, changes into the slut clothes, and walks back out into the bar. Charlotte has put a beer mat over the top of her glass. Pilot takes another sip, thinking the beer tasted better when she was dressed more like herself.

Charlotte raises her eyebrows at Pilot’s wardrobe change, but a big group has come in and they’re too slammed for her to comment. Pilot doesn’t notice the time pass until she’s nearly late.

“Shit, mind if I ditch out a little early?”

Charlotte waves her off. “Yeah, I got this.” She takes Pilot’s hand. “Be careful, okay? I really need you to cover that shift. Hey!” She’s raised her voice and glares at a table sitting close to the bar that’s started to get a little rowdy. They turn around, see her, and immediately quiet down.

Pilot heads out the door, pushing past a clot of smokers. She’s glad someone like Charlotte has her back.

Pilot hustles down Hastings Street; her slut skirt keeps riding up and she’s worried that she’ll be late. She pulls out her phone and checks the time. There’s a new text from her boss at one of the other bars she works at: The ceiling over the bar collapsed. And part of the floor. Don’t come to work this week. No point in asking for an advance on her check then.

There’s a mailbox on the corner and she wants to knock it over and stomp it flat, or pick it up and throw it through a car window. She counts to twenty instead, spaces the numbers out by muttering Motherfucker under her breath. Her footsteps could crack the pavement by the time she reaches the meeting spot, where she lights a cigarette, takes deep, starving drags.

She leans against the shuttered window of a paint store. A white two-seater Porsche convertible with the top down slows in front of her. She’s about to yell at the driver to move on when she realizes he isn’t looking at her, but at the storefront. Regardless, she gives him the finger and he speeds away. Another property developer wearing sunglasses at night, rolling down Hastings Street, probably touching himself while looking at vacant buildings.

She’s just ground out her cigarette when a car pulls up to the curb. The driver lowers the passenger window and asks her if she does Greek. She can’t remember what she’s supposed to say to him so she opens with a joke.

Now, he’s trembling slightly under the full moon, kneeling in water gas-slicked by the tankers floating offshore.

The plastic wraps her up tight, but her face is exposed, head pointed toward the water. Pilot can’t resist it anymore and opens her eyes.

She thinks that if he was really going to kill her, he probably would have done it by now, and she unclenches her fists a little. She rolls her eyes back and looks across her forehead at him. A wave hits him with enough force to splash his face; water flies into his open mouth and he chokes a little. Pilot almost laughs and closes her eyes before he catches her. She doesn’t mind this location. The sand is more comfortable than being laid out across tree roots in Stanley Park, or against a stinking dumpster in an alley. She can’t remember the last time she went to the beach.

Pilot doesn’t know if it’s some ritual he’s actually thought through or it’s just a pantomime of what he thinks he should be doing. Whatever it is, it’s taking forever. After he grabbed her throat, he ranted at her about how she’s just another sheeple. She recognized some of what he was saying from Fight Club. Some of it he must have thought of himself, which was only a little bit worse.

Finally, she hears a little splash as he gets up and walks over. Pilot has worked up a sweat under all this plastic. She’s starting to feel cold and her tattoo itches like mad. She doesn’t fidget — he might get mad if she spoils the fantasy so close to the end. She can hear the jingle of change in his pockets and it sounds like he’s messing with his belt. She swears she’s going to demand extra if he’s standing there jerking off while she’s freezing amongst the sand fleas and half-buried cigarette butts.

“You can open your eyes now.”

She does, and is relieved to see it’s still in his pants.

He tears at the duct tape that’s holding her cocoon together. She wriggles free and stands, pulls her skirt down, brushes sand off her knees. She’s only wearing one of her stilettos, on her foot that has a razor blade taped to the bottom of it. She’s painted one edge of it with rubber cement so she can grip it easily.

He crumples the plastic sheeting, shuffles his feet, avoiding eye contact. All the bravado seems to have spewed out of him. Pilot flamingoes on one leg, slips off her shoe, then tears the razor free and palms it, just in case.

“Can I drive you somewhere?”

“You expect me to call a cab?”

His stammering small talk starts up while she searches through his car and pretends to listen. She finds her other shoe behind the passenger seat along with her purse. Pilot digs her cigarettes out as the car rolls past grain silos, old warehouses, and new microbreweries. The Volvo is spotless and well maintained but old enough to still have a cigarette lighter in the dash. Pilot enjoys the novelty of lighting up that way.

“I’d prefer you didn’t smoke in my car.”

Pilot rolls the window down. “You should do something that frightens you every day, Rob.”

The wind is bringing the scent of rancid chicken fat from the rendering plant toward them and she blows smoke out her nostrils to cover up the smell. Rob turns up the volume on the stereo, the one modern thing in the car. Pilot doesn’t know the band but it’s statement music, banjos and smugly clever lyrics about an ex-girlfriend. She snaps the volume down.

He turns onto Hastings Street a little too hard and she’s pulled a little closer to him. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and she thinks he’s reaching toward her. Pilot can still feel his hands around her neck, can still smell him on her. She reaches for the razor blade she’s tucked between her thigh and the car seat but grabs the wrong edge and slices open her thumb. She barely feels it cut her, but it’s deep and the volume of blood is substantial. Drops splash onto the ugly tan seats.

Rob pulls his hand away when he sees the blood, clears his throat. “Sorry, I was just reaching for the volume! I hope you don’t think... I mean, I would never have really...”

“You owe me three hundred dollars.”

He’s already got it in the pocket of his coat, wrapped up with a rubber band.

“When can I see you again?” Rob looks at her so earnestly she wants to leave a bloody handprint on his face.

She drops the razor in her purse, grabs a pack of tissues, and wads a few of them around her thumb. She reaches to tamp out her smoke but the ashtray is full of loose change so she drops the butt out the window.

“I’ll text you,” she says as she gets out.

There’s a prowl car approaching and Rob’s already rolling before Pilot has the door shut.

She keeps her shoulders back as she walks home. She can feel the bruises forming on her lower back, her arms, her ribs. Jimi has left a cheap cardboard For Rent sign leaning against the porch. There’s a Post-it note stuck to the front: Just kidding. Don’t forget my rent. xoxo. Pilot tears the sign into four pieces and stuffs them in the recycling bag next to the front door.

The door is propped open with a skateboard and a fan is blowing the scent of weed out onto the street. Inside they’ve got the music playing loud — someone else must have gotten paid today because she can hear the beer bottles clinking together over the sound of the stereo. No one hears her come in and walk into her little bedroom at the side of the house.

Pilot texts Charlotte to say she’s still alive, and Jimi to tell him she’s got his money. Then she texts Rob to set up another date. Outside in the living room the music changes to a song that she likes. Pilot walks toward the noise, debating how many rounds she will let them talk her into.

The One Who Walks with a Limp by Nick Mamatas

Greektown

Papou’s apartment was on West Broadway in Kitsilano, or at least the door was. Step inside, like Manolis did most every afternoon to check in on his grandparents, and the place was Greece. White walls and fake marble floors, ANT1 news on the TV featuring politicians shouting at one another at jet-engine volume, the smells of rigani and lemon and oil wafting out of the kitchen. Instead of books on the shelves, cheap but well-dusted statuettes — The Discobolus and the headless but winged Nike of Samothrace, next to an old bottle of ouzo in the shape of a white-skirted soldier. And Papou, stationed at the head of the table in the living room, a pair of Greek-language newspapers from Toronto and Montreal spread out in front of him. Manolis bent over and kissed the old man on both cheeks.

“Did you get the money?” Papou asked.

“Sure, Papou, sure I did. Five hundred. I’ll give it to Yiayia later,” Manolis said. He actually only had a hundred dollars for Yiayia, from his job as a personal trainer. That would keep the lights on. Papou would worry if he thought Manolis wasn’t rich, so the boy lied frequently. In the old days, nobody would dare have lied to Papou, especially not about money.

Once, Papou had been the man, and West Broadway had been Greektown. If you owned a restaurant and wanted your windows intact and the soft drink truck to deliver on time, you gave Papou a few dollars and everything would be all right. It wasn’t just a racket, either. Papou once punched a Hell’s Angel so hard the man started convulsing at Papou’s feet, and it was just for saying something dirty to Rhodanthi Kostoulas, who wasn’t even a favorite waitress of Papou’s. And he kept the Chinese gangs, all the ξένοι gangs, off the block too. Ξένοι, the Greeks called everyone else, as if Greeks weren’t foreigners in Canada.

But now there was no more Greektown. Kits was Yuppietown, and there were more vegetarian restaurants than souvlaki joints. Manolis had tried, years ago, as a big and muscular sixteen-year-old, to collect, but at his very first stop the staff just laughed at him. The restaurant was going to be shut down the following week, and the building torn down and replaced with a new condominium complex in six months. Ευχαριστώ, μαλάκας! Some protection!

Yiayia came out into the living room and called Manolis to set the table and bring out the food. There was a knock on the door and Papou shuffled over to answer it — it was his old friend Stelyo, who had a truck and a bread route. Other people trickled in — cousins Nikki and Popi, Vasso and the baby, even Rhodanthi. She came with her face all painted, and had even plucked the hairs on the mole atop her lip, Manolis noticed. She’d always had a crush on Papou, that one.

In the old days, Papou’s apartment had been busy like this every night. Three chickens, or a leg of lamb. Guests brought pastries and wine. It had been a long time; Manolis remembered when Stelyo had brown hair, and Popi was thin, when Mikey and Greek Mikey were both in the closet but not the same one. They all still loved Manolis’s grandfather, but not enough to come around regularly now that the old man was powerless. Nobody but Manolis lived anywhere near West Broadway anymore. They all passed the baby around — her name was Georgia, after Papou — giggling and tickling her chin, making ritual spitting noises to keep away vaskania, the evil eye. Can’t admire or love anything too much if you’re a Greek, or it’ll be taken away. That was the lesson the Turks had taught the family in the nineteenth century, and the German occupiers in the twentieth.

Papou spoke in Greek, which Manolis mostly understood, but Papou was talking about people Manolis didn’t know, and places he had never been. Manolis had baby Georgia on his lap, and that occupied him. He’d held all sorts of babies, but never one for so long, and never one without the constant direction and critique of three or four of his aunts.

Stelyo leaned over and said, “Eh, you know how to work this?” He had in his hand an iPod Touch. Vintage 2008. “My boy Vangelis put my old rebetiko records on it, but it’s all Chinese to me.”

“Sure, it’s like a phone. It’s easy.”

“No,” Stelyo said. “It’s not.” He shook his head.

“Like a smartphone. You press the screen. No real buttons.”

Manolis found the list of songs and chose, randomly, “Ένας μάγκας στο Βοτανικό.” “A Manga in Votaniko.” A manga — one of those swaggering men who affected limps and wore thick mustaches and pointy shoes, who patronized the hashish dens of Athens. Hustlers and ne’er-do-wells. Papou had told Manolis all about the manges, hinted that he had been one of them. “They’re like pimps without whores,” he’d told an eight-year-old Manolis, “though sometimes their girlfriends are whores,” and somehow that conversation had ended with Yiayia slapping Manolis for letting his grandfather’s words into his young ears.

The iPod had an internal speaker, and the volume was loud enough for mostly deaf Stelyo to enjoy, but it sent the baby crying, and the family yelling. Then Papou slammed his palm against the table and stood up. He wasn’t angry though. He snatched the baby from Manolis’s lap and shuffled away from the table, his legs finding some old rhythm. Papou started to dance the zeibekiko, his free arm outstretched, fingers snapping, his knees bending like he was a man forty years younger. The women began clapping along to the rhythm of the song. Greek Mikey flung a five-dollar bill at Papou’s feet, and the old man bent low and swung to snatch it. Georgia howled, and finally Vasso clambered to her feet and rescued the baby. Papou staggered like a sailor on deck, like a happy drunk, and winked when everyone grew afraid, but then his face turned ashen and he took to one knee. Yiayia got to him first, her meaty hands on his thin shoulders.

“Tέλειωσα,” Papou said. I am finished.

Yiayia snorted and helped him to his feet. The table cheered.

“Bravo!” Stelyo exclaimed, and like a criminal he snatched the iPod Touch out of Manolis’s hand and shoved it back in his pocket.

“Enough playing,” Yiayia said. When she spoke, people really listened. Imagine a classically trained contralto dedicated to telling people to be quiet and clean their plates. “George has something important to say.”

Papou hadn’t had anything important to say in a long while. He read the papers, he walked around the block, he even learned to use Skype and talked to the relatives he wasn’t feuding with back in Greece twice a year, on Christmas and Easter. But his world got smaller as Greektown did, and he’d had little to say since Manolis was a kid.

“When I was a boy,” Papou started, “I had four first cousins from my mother’s favorite brother,” and he named them: Manolis, Michalis, Vasso, and Nikos. Names repeat in Greek families. This is how the story went: When the Nazis came, and brought with them violence and hunger, the cousins made their choices. Nikos was a Red and joined the Communist underground, and little George helped by sneaking him food and information. Michalis joined the National Republican Greek League, which kept things in the family reasonably harmonious until the civil war. Only after the Germans left were the brothers at each other’s throats. Vasso had a baby while her husband was off in the mountains as part of a Trotskyist guerrilla group. During her pregnancy, when Vasso was questioned by the local Nazi captain, she patted his arm and explained her swollen belly with the words she knew — “Guter Soldat” — and a smile missing three teeth from malnutrition.

“But Manolis...” Papou did not look at Manolis when he spoke. Big Manolis, Papou’s cousin, had decided to provide for the family by joining the Security Batallions, the Nazi collaborators who were mostly just out for whatever they could steal from their neighbors. Vasso turned down the spoils Big Manolis brought to her, spit in his face, and refused his protection. “Manolis became one of them. It’s been war between us since then.”

“Is that why they’re not in the family pictures, Papou?” Manolis asked.

Yiayia held up two fingers and made a clipping motion. “We cut them out.”

Rhodanthi spoke up: “Yes, cut them out! What are you going to do about the Nazis we have now, Uncle?” Papou was not her uncle. “The new ones, from Greece?”

“Easy, easy,” said Vasso, dangling the baby over her lap. “We just got her to stop crying. Don’t shout.”

Greek Mikey said something fast in Greek, and Mikey repeated it in English: “Greeks are like dogs sometimes, always seeing each other on the street, sniffing asses, and ignoring everything else. Ever see a dog look at a bus, like he knows how to read the sign on the side? There’s a whole world out there, and we have police now, and the college kids will rally or do something. Don’t worry about it. Take it easy, Papou.”

“Don’t worry about Nazis?” Rhodanthi said, still loud. Then to Papou: “Uncle, you have a responsibility.”

Popi said, “It’s not about Nazis, really. Is it? How could anyone even join the Nazis anymore.” She looked to Papou, but he was done for the night, staring at his glass, into the gray fog of ouzo and water. Yiayia had moved on as well, to and from the kitchen with a pair of trays — one of small glasses, the other of bowls of rice pudding.

“They’re here,” Rhodanthi said. “They’re in Parliament in Greece, in the police force, in New York, now they’re coming here. Why does Canada even let them come over from Greece, I want to know! Let them starve with everyone else over there. They come to the store, they’re looking to recruit...”

Papou exhaled deeply. “I read the papers. Χρυσή Αυγή opens a chapter in Montreal, no one cares. Now Vancouver? My own cousin was a Nazi, I...” He paused, looked over to Yiayia, then to the baby, then his eyes lost focus. “I never talk to my cousin again. Tέλειωσα.”

It had taken a couple of weeks of nightly walks, but the manga was used to the snickering. It was the other Greeks who most often guffawed, pointed at him from across the street, yelled, “Hey, nice hat!” or simply nudged one another and muttered, “Mαλάκας,” as he passed.

The normal white people in the neighborhood, with their tight old-man sweaters, all-weather scarves, and arms covered in tattoos, didn’t matter at all. They were just in the neighborhood to raise the rents, and to annoy waiters with obnoxious questions — Where do you get your beef? and Are you people really like that movie about the wedding? Their women were like titless little boys; like hippies from old TV shows, except that they didn’t believe in free love.

The manga knew they didn’t matter, because when he walked down West Broadway, normal white people lowered their eyes, suddenly very interested in their smartphones. Occasionally, one would sneak a picture or a quick video of the manga in his big hat, with one sleeve of his long jacket hanging from his shoulder, the practiced limp that ostentatiously suggested a hidden weapon or stamping along to music in a hashish den.

The manga was a modern man, his sartorial choices aside. His thoughts were still his own, even if everything else belonged to the past, to another continent. He even thought of himself as “the manga” when taking his nightly promenade down the streets. The outfit — a costume, really — helped. The fedora, the striped pants and pointed pimp shoes, the mustache he waxed and twirled at either end. Greektown was all but a memory, so it was easy to search West Broadway — Ουέστ Μπροντουέι, as they used to say with their accent — from end to end. The people knew who he was, yet nobody dared snicker at his suit. They stared, but nobody would tell him where the Nazis were, or even if they’d ever shown up for a meal.

Finally, Stelyo’s son Vangelis spotted them while eating dinner out, and snuck a picture with his phone. Minutes later the photo showed up in the manga’s Twitter feed. Now his walk tonight had a purpose, a destination.

The manga eased his large frame through the door of the Dionysus Diner. “Diner” was a stretch, really. Dionysus was a lunch counter with three four-tops up against the wall. There weren’t even mirrors lining that far wall; the place felt like a furnished alleyway. The daily specials were written on the backs of white paper plates with black markers, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t very busy. It had opened after the decline of Papou’s business, after Greektown was nothing more than a parade one day each June.

There was a girl behind the counter. Rhodanthi, who worked there, had taken the night off, but the manga had come by often enough even when she wasn’t working. The girl’s name tag read, Anita. Too embarrassed to be called “Athena” by the ξένοι, eh? the manga tsked. This waitress normally frowned and turned her head when he walked into the Dionysus Diner. This time she smiled.

“Hey, Χαλιαμπάλιας,” Anita said. The manga had no idea why the last name of an old Greek soccer star was an insult, but it was something their parents used to shout at one another. Usually the girl’s eyes were brown and half-dead, like a cow’s. Tonight they burned with glee. She was with the Nazis now, happy her family had an edge on Papou after all these years.

From one of the four-tops, a man said, “Haliabalas! Shitty baller. Welcome to the 1970s! Nobody says that no more. Vancouver’s like a time warp.” The guy’s accent was thick. If immigrants still arrived via boat, he’d have been fresh off of one.

He stood up. A young guy — maybe just out of his teens. Muscular, like an underwear model with a broad chest and flat stomach. The manga was simply large — a Volkswagen Beetle with arms and legs. The kid wore a black T-shirt with an odd symbol on it — a white swastika on a blue field, like the canton on the Greek flag. Χρυσή Αυγή. Golden Dawn.

The kid said, in Greek, “Get the fuck out of here, mafia. You dress like a rebetiko album cover. A Greek preying on Greeks? Who do you think you are?”

The manga laughed. “How much is she paying you?” he said, tilting his head over to the girl. The few customers at the lunch counter looked up from their coffees, interested. The four-top at the back emptied out. Two other young men, both wearing the same black T-shirts, took up positions right behind him.

“You’re the one who’s going to pay, μαλάκας,” said the first one. These men were new in town. They weren’t backing down. The manga realized that, and he was afraid.

But he was afraid only inside. The manga was outside, with his coat slung over one arm. There was a reason for that, now and then. The arm is quicker that way. The manga’s knife was in his hand and slicing up into the first man’s nose before anyone knew what was happening. It was like a blood-filled balloon popped in midair. Everyone started shouting, but the first man’s shriek stood out. The manga kicked him in the crotch to make him stop.

The guy on the left flew at the manga and ran face-first into the coat the manga has just shrugged off his shoulder. The third man followed the first to the floor, kneeling and clutching at his comrade. The first man’s hands were up at his face, blood pouring out from between his fingers. The manga glanced down and decided to take the third man’s ear off, then spun and plunged his knife into the flailing second man, piercing his own long coat. He finished with a kick to the second man’s head.

“I’ll call the police!” Anita shouted from behind the counter. The manga briefly considered throwing his knife at her, but instead just covered the ground to the countertop in two steps, leaned over it, and smacked her hard across the face.

“Money! Four hundred dollars,” he said. “And you owe me a new coat.”

As Anita was falling to the floor, he said to her, more calmly, “I see another Nazi in this place, it burns down.”

It was a very late night for the manga, and for his Papou. There were calls for the old man to make, and even a two a.m. meeting with a few of the friendlier police officers from the old days. Self-defense, sure. It was three on one. And the fascist with the stomach wound had been carrying a pistol. Not on him, but in a knapsack under the booth. The one with his EU passport in it.

All three of the men were named Nikos. They were being stitched up. The one guy might even be able to use headphones again one day. It would be easy for the police to get them back to YVR, so long as Anita insisted that she had seen nothing at all, not even the manga, and that the bruise from her face came from slipping on a spilled egg in the kitchen earlier during her shift. Another phone call, from Papou to her parents’ home, made sure she would.

As the sky lightened Papou slept finally, his snoring audible from the living room. Yiayia came out with a plate of scrambled eggs, made the way Manolis never liked them — with olive oil instead of a pat of butter and a splash of milk. It was the first time in his living memory that his grandmother served food without a smile.

“Why you take Papou’s old clothes, eh?” she asked. “Don’t you have money for your own?”

“The Nazis, Yiayia.”

Yiayia clucked her tongue. “The Nazis.”

“Papou hates Nazis. You hate Nazis.”

“You don’t know what Papou thinks of the Nazis,” Yiayia said. “Half his family was Nazis. Papou waves whatever flag someone gives him. Nazi, Communist, Canada. That’s what’s good for business.”

“But he never talked to Big Manolis again,” Manolis said. “Because he was a Nazi collaborator. Manolis’s sister turned down his food, she—”

“Shut up,” Yiayia said. Manolis flinched as if smacked. Yiayia hated shut up. She used to scold Manolis when he was young, telling him never to tell Mikey or Popi to shut up. When you say shut up, your face ends with a frown; it’s the devil in you, she’d say. When you say, “Be quiet, please,” your face ends with a smile.

“Oh, baby-mou,” she said. “Yiayia’s sorry. Big Manolis wasn’t a Nazi; he was just pretending.”

“Then why’d you cut him out of the picture? Why did Papou never speak to him again?”

“During the war, he went to his sister’s with food and money. She’d just had her baby, little Toula. Beautiful baby. And Manolis gave Toula so many kisses and held her and told her of all the good things he could bring her, and then she died.”

“But that wasn’t his fault...”

“Manolis, he said all these beautiful things, then forgot to spit. Vasso was so angry, she sent him away.” Yiayia crossed herself three times. “Then the baby got sick, got sick and died. The devil took Toula away; it was the vaskania. Manolis had given her the evil eye and killed a little girl. All he had to do is spit, and he wouldn’t. He said it wasn’t modern. He liked to be modern, not messing with goats and olives like everyone else. It’s like he didn’t want to be Greek.”

“Come on, Yiayia, it was war. She was probably starving, sick and weak. The evil eye?”

“Vasso’s husband was a Communist. Everyone in the village knew it. She was too ashamed to go to the priest and have him make the prayers to save Toula.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” Manolis said.

“In Greece, that is how it works. Vasso wanted to be modern too.” Yiayia looked over Manolis’s borrowed clothes again. “It’s good you’re not modern.”

Manolis didn’t correct his grandmother. He ate his eggs quietly, and kissed both her cheeks, and shuffled out the door, one foot dragging, and got the hell out of that apartment before sunrise, before his grandfather woke up.

Survivors’ Pension by S.G. Wong

Victoria-Fraserview

They’re waiting for me as I leave the cemetery.

The hefty one gives a slight bow of the head, then grabs me by the elbow. His friend, tall, slender as a reed, gives our surroundings a quick assessment. My heart races. I know everyone else is gone. The open grave awaits the digger, the massive backhoe parked ten feet away, on the paved path.

“You were a good friend to Mrs. Lin. We saw the happy photos on her phone,” says the hefty one, gaze flat. “She pointed you out to us.”

“Before she died.” The reedy one has a deep voice, like a bass singer.

“I don’t know what...” I try quavery puzzlement.

“Skip the theatrics.” The hefty one twists my fleshy arm in his hold until I hiss. “She told us about your insurance scam.”

I bite down on my tongue, taste blood.

“And your ghost.” His breath smells like cigarettes and something overly sweet, Coke maybe. “We’re gonna take over the scam, then we’re gonna take the ghost.”

“You can’t just—”

He tugs me toward the mausoleum, his companion close behind. I have a hard time keeping up. The reedy one slides past me, opens the door, checks for bystanders. His shoes squeak on the marble floor.

The hefty one shoves my shoulder, rotating me sideways as I stumble over the threshold. My face collides with the doorframe. I feel a splintering pain in my left eye, a vertical line of agony. My sharp cry echoes across two floors of empty, dead space.

I shake my head, wince at the resulting throb from my eye. “Whatever Stella told you, the scam’s over. Everyone’s gone.”

The hefty one flicks his hand. I reel from the slap. “You’re not,” he says.

His partner looms inches from my face. “Heal it. Show us the goods.”

Damn it. Damn Stella and her big mouth to the eighteen hells.

The big one pushes his thumb against the top of my left cheek. I smell earth and copper on his meaty hand. “Do it, old woman, or I break a bone.”

No good choices. “Just... gimme some air, all right? I can’t work with you breathing in my face.”

I back up against the wall. The two brace themselves, bouncing on the balls of their feet. I want to laugh. Like I’m going to fight.

I stare across the foyer, at the wall of rectangular brass placards fronting niches full of urns and ashes. I breath in deep, focus my mind on the area around my left eye, sensing its wrongness. I hold that feeling and reach outward, to the ether. Its energy fills the spaces in and around us, invisible and indispensable. I direct a thin band of it inward, to my bruised face, until the wrongness dissipates. Slowly, the pain fades and disappears.

The reedy one’s staring at me, avid. “So that’s how it works.”

Shit. He could see it.

“It’s just guesswork far as I’ve managed.” I mask my curiosity. He might be one of the touchy ones, sensitive about a diluted talent. Me, I been called lucky, among other things. I can do the most minor of healing. Others can do inconsequential spells. Some just aren’t good for anything but seeing ghosts.

Wait a minute. I say, “You saw it, how it was done? You don’t need me then?”

The reedy one crowds me. “Nhuh-uh. Ain’t got enough talent for that.”

His partner chuckles darkly. “Old woman, you’re gonna be a gold mine.” He grabs me by the back of the neck, pinching up the loose skin there, between his palm and fingers. “Mrs. Lin said you’re the brains of the operation. So tell us how it worked, this scam a yours.” He squeezes.

I yelp. Is this how they got Stella to talk?

I lick my chapped lips. “The girls find a good corner, look for morons driving and on their phones. When they judge it right, they pick someone turning the corner. Slow enough not to risk death, but fast enough to startle the driver. Then they step in the way, get clipped.” I swallow. “We’re old, we have no extra health coverage. We claim against their insurance. We use the physio on Victoria and 46th. She’s a heavy gambler, needs the extra money. She bills up to three treatments a week, for maybe two months. No one’s gonna look too closely ’cause everyone knows seniors take longer to heal. She does the fake paperwork, creates fake appointments. I do my thing. We split the money.”

“So,” says the reedy one, “you can heal anything?”

I push away thoughts of Stella. “I can’t do broken bones, all right? No healer can, without a doctor to reset first, and no way we’re involving a doctor too. But cuts, bruising, sprains, strained muscles, those I can do. Just no head injuries.”

“What’s the split on the take?” The big man twists the hand holding my neck.

I wince. “Seventy-thirty.”

“Mrs. Lin said sixty-forty.”

“That’s how I split the seventy from the physio with her, yeah.”

He stares at me. “How much you take in a week?”

“Each girl got maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty a week.” I have a fleeting image of my old friends, hearing me call them girls. It hurts.

The reedy one glares. “Chump change.”

“It’s enough for pin money, okay? We only got old age pensions otherwise, and they don’t stretch far. Not in this city.”

His partner shakes me by the scruff of my neck. “How many in a day?”

I gasp. “Not every day. The physio can only claim three sessions a week. Per patient. Too suspicious otherwise.”

He’s scowling. I don’t know if it’s the math or he’s trying to be intimidating.

“Also, I can’t heal that many so quickly. Mine’s a small talent.” The back of my neck’s gone numb. “Can you let go now? I’m cooperating, all right?”

The hefty one releases me, with an extra shove to prove his point.

I rub my neck. It stings. Then I rub my nose, hard. Can’t get his scent out.

He points a stubby finger at me. “That means you’re making up to $450 a week, old woman. That’s more than just pocket money.”

“Yeah, well, I was. It’s over now. Like I told you. Mabel and Mary and June, they were the oldest ones. They died over the past six months. Betty and Liza moved away. It was just Stella and me the past two months.”

“And you went and got her killed,” says the reedy one.

“It was an accident,” I counter hotly. “She miscalculated. It was raining too hard and she slipped.”

“Got her head bashed in.” The hefty one waves a hand. “Yeah, we saw her in the hospital. We know.”

“How?” I narrow my eyes. “How do you know her anyway?”

“She’s my great-aunt,” he says. “Was, I guess.”

I feel sick.

He pokes me on the collarbone. “You’re gonna run the scam again. ’Cept this time, we get the money.”

I scowl, rubbing the sore spot. “Why should I? You gonna hurt me more if I don’t? Go ahead. I can heal it. The rest is just pain. You break bones, it takes me time to heal normal, your gold mine’s out of commission. You kill me, you get nothing.”

“You got a son, a daughter-in-law, grandkids.” The reedy one pokes my forehead, his fingernail breaking the skin.

I heal the shallow cut as he watches, lay on the bravado. “No way am I gonna do this for free.”

They exchange a look, surprise clear on their hard faces.

I barrel onward: “You find six old women. No men, too whiny. Three accidents a week, they switch off weeks. Different neighborhoods. The physio’s split stays the same. We can’t afford to squeeze her. We split the 70 percent.” I run the calculations. “If you pay your seniors 25 percent, you still get 225 a week.”

“Chump change.” The reedy one shrugs. “But easy money.”

Stella’s great-nephew is squinting at me. Clearly the smarter one. I keep my eye on him.

“I deal with the physio,” I say. “If she gets wind of you, she’ll fold.” I make a face. “Took me months to suss her out. No time to find another.”

He gives a short nod. “Got just the place for the money drop. Ming Dynasty on Victoria at 41st. That’s, what, five blocks from your son’s house?”

I nod, my mouth suddenly dry. “You trust them to hold your money?”

“They know what happens if they don’t.” He reaches out. I cringe. He taps my forehead. “Soon as it’s set up nice and smooth, we get the ghost. Got a spell caster ready to pull it into a nice little containment trap.”

I frown. “What are you going to do with him?”

“None of your business.”

“But it could kill me.” The quavery note’s not fake this time. “Or turn me into a vegetable, as good as dead.”

“Not our problem.”

I narrow my eyes, thinking frantically. “If I come out of it normal, I want a cut of whatever you’re gonna do. It must be a decent payoff, right?”

Stella’s great-nephew shoves me. “Get this straight, old woman. You may be smart enough to run some penny-ante scam, but I’m out of your league.” He pokes a finger into my collarbone, twists it hard. I swear I can feel the bruise forming.

He grabs my purse, finds my phone, thrusts it at me. “Unlock it.”

I do, watching my hand shake.

He takes it back, taps the screen. A low buzz from his pocket. “We’ll be in touch. You better pick up or text me back, old woman.”

The reedy one snatches my purse from his partner, pulls out my wallet, empties it of cash. He drops the wallet and purse onto the floor. They land with a thud, the metal purse clasp clinking against the tiles.

I watch them as they push through the doors, back out into the early-winter drizzle. I crumple against the door as soon as they peel out of the parking lot, in some low, mean-looking muscle car.

I’m spent, panting like a dumb dog. Pain flares in knees, shoulders, elbows, wrists. Of course. What else is new.

I crouch laboriously and gather my belongings, cursing my useless magic. Can’t even heal my own damned chronic pain. I stuff things inside my purse, sling it over my head and crosswise over my chest, brace against the wall to stand.

At least they left me my Compass pass.

I hobble four blocks west to the SkyTrain station. I sweat and sway with the movement of the train, thinking, thinking, thinking. Bus ride’s no different. When I get home, Lauren’s already there. She gasps when she sees me.

“Lai-lai, are you all right? Did you overexert yourself again? You look exhausted. Why didn’t you call me to come get you? You know I’m done work by two.”

As always, she manages to be accusatory and patronizing even while being solicitous. If she weren’t so obviously gwai, with her red hair and green eyes, and her atrocious Cantonese, I’d swear she was Chinese.

I wave her off. “I’m fine. Where are the boys?”

“They’re playing at Adrian’s. I was just leaving to get them. I’ll settle you upstairs first, though.” She takes a gentle hold on my shoulders.

I stop, twitching her hands off. “No, no. I’m slow. Take too long to go up.” I make a shooing motion. “The boys’re waiting. I rest in my room. See them soon.”

“All right. No rush though, okay? We’ll be back in about an hour.” The front door closes with a solid thud as she leaves.

Instead of the stairs, I move to the rec room and stand at the window, just to the side, lifting away the edge of the blinds to peer out. I watch her walk under her gaudy flowered umbrella, those huge masculine strides of hers eating up the sidewalk.

It takes me forever to climb the stairs, clutching the railing, huffing and hissing through the effort. No Chinese designed these old seventies Vancouver Specials, that’s for damn sure. They’re clearly not for people who live with aging parents. There are stairs everywhere, long ones. I’m out of breath by the top, need a glass of water and a sit to calm my heart.

I worry at my situation some more.

Four hundred and fifty bucks a week is a decent take, sure. Multiply by three and now we’re talking a serious game. Three concurrent scams, eighteen girls, 1,300 a week. That was worth my time. I could’ve continued at least another year, but truth is, after Stella’s death, urgency’s been hammering at me. So I shut down all the scams. If any of the others can find another crooked, half-assed healer, they’re welcome to her.

I’m counting on the two thugs not having a stable of larcenous seniors at the ready, but who knows. I suppose they have family too. Still, it’s gotta take them at least a couple days to get six old women, still mobile and game enough for our purposes.

Not that I have any intention of going through with it.

But it gives me a few days to sort things out. Damned if I’m letting them get anywhere near my ghost. That dead husband of mine tricked me into this, sure, but I got my own plans to be done with him.

And it’s not fear that’s keeping me from freedom. It’s money — what else. I just needed a few more weeks from Stella. I have a monk, ready to cut the magical tether to my parasite. All that swindled cash put toward my retirement, budgeted to the cent, and I’m a thousand dollars short of the monk’s fee.

I’m this close.

I grind my teeth, itching to break something. Damn Stella for getting greedy. She shouldn’t have demanded a larger cut. She should’ve had a handle on her gambling. What was she thinking, arguing with me in broad daylight? Threatening to expose the whole goddamned thing, as if anyone’d believe her. She should never have slapped me. What did she expect? Of course I was gonna push her away.

But I never meant for her to fall into traffic. That was the rain and a slippery curb. That wasn’t me.

I rub my gritty eyes. Things are quickly accelerating out of my control. Gotta handle the things I can.

Used to be, when I first came to Vancouver as a young woman, you’d have to actually go to Chinatown to get decent groceries. These days, I’m only a ten-minute walk away. We’ve our own little community, along Victoria from 41st to 49th. The fishmonger’s got as fresh as anyone in Chinatown and he’s not a forty-minute bus ride away. The cheapie salon across the street from him cuts my hair for thirteen bucks. There’s barbecue on the corner, fresh produce at two different stores, and a musty dollar store rip-off too. We have an apothecary when we want herbal remedies, and a London Drugs when we want the other stuff. It’s not glamourous. The sidewalks are always grimy and spotted with crushed gum and wet gobs of spittle; the air smells like bus exhaust; the rain never washes anything clean — but it’s home.

Joint pain or no, I make that walk every day. It’s something to do with the long hours and it’s good to get my grandsons out of the house. They’re four years old, twins. Happy and rambunctious, dark of hair and light of eye. They take turns pulling our small, wheeled shopping cart. I’m sure we’re adorable. I’m going to miss seeing them and caring for them when I’m out of the house. They start kindergarten in the fall.

“Are we going yum-cha, Mah-mah?” Ewan is always hungry.

“After we visit Brother Wing.” I hurry them along. “We have a bus to catch first.” That gets them running. Austen falls and skins his hands. He brushes himself off, matter-of-fact, not a tear in sight. That’s my boy.

Life is pain, I tell them. Best get used to it and move on.

I let Austen beep my Compass pass on the reader as we board. It’s a twenty-five-minute bus ride west on 41st, into the leafy streets of Kerrisdale. Wing’s house is a half-block from the stop. The twins point at the tree on the corner.

“A monkey puzzle tree,” I say. They giggle.

Brother Wing’s house is small. I imagine it must be worth millions. I climb the outside steps to the front door, the twins scampering up and down twice before I’m done. Wing welcomes us inside. I’m surprised at how bright and airy it is.

Wing isn’t actually a monk. He left the temple years ago, but it’s a harmless honorific and it makes him feel better. I need him to feel good.

I settle the twins on the plump sofa in the front room, sharing their old froggy-shaped electronic reader toy.

Wing looks awkward, ushering me across the narrow hall to a smaller reception room. “I wasn’t expecting you to bring your grandchildren. I can’t perform the dissolution ceremony with them here.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I had to talk to you, but I care for them while my son and daughter-in-law work.” I pause, settle my nerves. “Something’s come up. I need to have it done tomorrow.”

He looks at me, wary. His bald head gleams palely.

I pull a manila envelope from my bag, fat and crinkling. “I don’t have the full six thousand, but I have five, now. This is two thousand if you can do it tomorrow. I’ll bring the remaining three when I come back.”

Ewan shouts as the frog-reader beeps a saccharine-sweet song. I look over. Austen reaches over and pushes a sequence of buttons. The reader’s song cuts out abruptly. Ewan laughs.

I see Wing move in my peripheral vision, reaching for the envelope.

I pull it back. “You’re sure you can do it, right?”

Wing raises a brow, calm. “You came to me. I told you the odds.”

I realize I’m chewing on my lip. I straighten up, relax my jaw. “I just want to make sure. It’s a lot of money for a risky result.”

Wing sighs. “I’ve been up front about that from the start.”

I nod. “It’s just... I don’t know how the ether works. I only know how to use it.” My face tightens. “Barely.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” he says. “Healing’s not spell casting. I’ll be cutting the tether to your husband, simple enough. Since you’re only the secondary host, you should be all right. As should he.” Wing pauses. “That’s what you want, correct? You don’t want him permanently dispersed? Because that’s a different price. Much bigger risk to you and his main host.”

I think of her. Winnie. Frank’s American mistress. His host. “No, I don’t want to be responsible for that. I just want him to stop siphoning life energy from me.”

“It’s more common than you think.” Wing shrugs. “Ghosts are becoming rarer, even in Crescent City. That’s where your ghost is, right, and his host?” I nod. “Energy tithes there are costly. All that infrastructure.”

I blink at him.

He frowns, takes the money from me. “One thirty, tomorrow.”

I’m abruptly light-headed.

We make our goodbyes and I take the boys back eastward on another bus, then yum-cha at the corner dim sum shop, as promised. I’m inside before I remember.

Ming Dynasty.

Too late now. The staff greet us with smiles, showing us to a table near the fish tank. Distracted by worry, I let the boys order their favorites. Soon, our table’s filled with enough steamers and plates for six full-grown adults. I’m so busy cleaning faces and wiping hands that I don’t notice company until he pulls out a chair.

“Hungry little monsters.”

I gasp, swiftly cover my terror with a fastidious manner. “Boys, this is Pau-pau Stella’s great-nephew. Say hello.”

Ewan remains silent, staring and suspicious. Austen obeys in a whisper, cringing away, moving closer to his brother.

“We’re just finishing up and I’m afraid this table’s a mess,” I say. “You’ll be better off at a different table.” My heart’s hammering so hard, I think I’m going to vomit.

He’s taken the remaining chair, between me and Austen. He ruffles my grandson’s hair. Austen scrunches away. Ewan begins to cry.

“That’s enough.” That damned quavery note again. “You’ve frightened them. Please leave.” I move to Ewan, pull him up, slide onto his chair, and hold him tight in my lap. I draw Austen into my side.

Stella’s great-nephew shrugs. “Making sure you understand your priorities.” He rises, saunters to a different table, sits with his back to the wall. A waiter places a Coke and a plate of rice and chah-siew in front of him, then backs away with a nervous nod.

None of the staff will meet my gaze.

I pay the bill hurriedly and take the twins home, searching the bushes we pass for lurkers, looking over my shoulder, wondering if the reedy one’s set up to ambush us. I fumble the key in the door, lock it firmly behind us. I can’t stop trembling.

When I’m ready, I put on an old DVD of that strange blue dog the twins like so much and pull out my phone. In the kitchen, I take a long, deep breath, then tap my son’s contact.

“Hi, Ma. What’s up?”

“Listen, a-jaiy, can you take tomorrow off? I have an appointment. I want you to stay with the boys.”

“What kind of appointment? What time? Lauren’s home by two thirty.”

“It’s nothing serious, don’t worry. I want to see a medium, but she’s way out in Coquitlam. It’s a long way, but Mrs. Chiu, you know her? She says she’s worth it.”

“Ma.” I picture his boyish face, that half-grin, half-frown when he’s exasperated.

I firm my voice: “Christopher, I want it to be you. For the boys. Would it kill you to take a day off for them? You’re always checking your phone anyway, even when you are here.” I huff. “Call it working from home. I don’t care.”

He laughs. “Okay, okay, don’t guilt-trip me.”

“Mother’s prerogative.”

“Fine. I gotta go. Bye, Ma.”

I swallow past the thickness in my throat. “Goodbye, a-jaiy.”

I hang up, go sit between the twins again, pulling them into the circle of my arms. I don’t want to let them go.

My heart sinks soon as I knock on Brother Wing’s door — when I abruptly register the scent of cigarettes and Coke. Copper and earth.

The door opens before I even have a chance to turn tail. Not that it would matter.

Wing doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. He pulls me inside. The thugs are in two armchairs by the window in the front room. They stand when I enter. I doubt it’s from manners. Wing ushers me toward the sofa, pushes me to sit. I hiss at the jolt of pain in my knees.

The reedy one kicks the wooden coffee table out at an angle, then sits on top of it.

Wing leans against the archway, half in the hallway, watching.

Stella’s great-nephew drags a straight-backed chair from the room across the hall, plants it two feet from my knees.

“How do you know Brother Wing?” I say.

His hand flicks out, quick as a snake. My head snaps back at the impact. I rub the stinging patch on my cheek.

“Cut the shit, lady,” says the reedy one. “You tried to fuck us over.” That smooth bass voice, so at odds with his words. “You have any idea how much we can sell your ghost for?”

I shake my head. “What’s his cut?” I point at Wing.

Stella’s great-nephew kicks my foot. “We ain’t here to negotiate, old woman.”

I grimace at the zing shooting through my knee.

The reedy one sits back, smug.

I clench my fists against the urge to slap him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why ghosts were banned in Canada?” I say.

“I know my history,” replies Wing, bland as you please.

I speak directly to Stella’s kin: “Too many people tethered to dead World War Two soldiers, driven mad by grief and shell shock. When you try to break a tether between ghost and host, the host could die or become separated from their soul. They may as well be a vegetable, then. Not to mention, the ghost usually disappears for good. It’s called a dispersal, you know. Tethers are serious business.

“My dead husband told me all about it. Crescent City’s really the only place left with a strong culture of ghosts. They got the real deal — healers, spell casters, ghost catchers, monks and nuns for reincarnation, all that stuff.” I meet his flat stare. “The rest of us out here? We’re just making shit up. We don’t have any formal training. There’s no guarantee this is gonna work.”

“Brother Wing explained it.” He shrugs. “High reward, high risk.”

“Yeah?” I say. “And you trust him, do you? Guy’s got zero training in this and you trust him to capture a ghost from thousands of miles away in the ether and keep it for your highest bidder?”

The big man smiles. “He’s family.”

I gape at him.

“I have training, actually,” says Wing. “I completed a full conjurer’s degree at the temple in Crescent City, as a matter of fact. Lied to cross the border. There’re only a few collectors up here, but they all need a decent spell caster to help use up their ill-gotten ghosts. It pays the bills quite nicely.”

Damn it. If I weren’t so bloody terrified, I’d be laughing my poor head off.

“What’s so funny, old lady?” says the reedy one.

“Are you family too, then?” I shake my head, feeling well and truly had. “Stella’s really got the last laugh, doesn’t she?”

Her great-nephew shrugs again, turns to Wing. “Let’s do it.”

“Wait, just wait. Can you at least tell me what my death is going to bring you?”

He growls. “Jesus, old woman, cut the melodrama already.”

“Six figures, at the low end,” Wing says. “Some have fetched a million. Like you said, they’re illegal here. Some people want special spells, big ones, and ghosts are the key to those.” His face is placid. “Which reminds me.” He comes forward, pulls my purse above my head. “Three thousand, you said.” The large envelope crinkles as he pulls out the money. The reedy one stands, expression eager.

I sit, numb. I can’t believe it never occurred to me to sell my husband’s ghost.

They leave me on the sofa. I think over my choices while I watch them move furniture, clearing space around me.

Wing returns from wherever he’s squirreled away the cash, face still bland.

I say, “Will you abide by our original deal, at least, Wing?”

“Your wishes, you mean?” He nods. “It’s easy enough.”

Stella’s great-nephew finishes drawing the blinds. The room grows shadowy. “What wishes? There something extra we gotta deal with?”

“No,” I respond. “If I die, he said it’ll look like a brain aneurysm. If I’m a vegetable or I go crazy, I’d just as soon die the same way.”

The reedy one looks impressed. “Fuck. You can do that?”

Wing nods. “It’s actually a pretty easy spell.” He peers at Stella’s great-nephew. “I call 911. I say I was teaching her meditation, to help with her chronic pain. Next thing I know...” He mimes shock, then resumes a mild expression. “Her family gets her body, etc. All above board.”

The reedy one shrugs. “Fine with me. Don’t gotta take care of the body.”

The smarter one, though, he considers me for another beat. “What if you’re fine?”

I glare. “Don’t patronize me. We all know how this ends.”

He nods, turns away.

You’d think I’d be frightened or sad — or angry at the thought of dying at the hands of three heartless assholes. But what’s the point?

I planned it out as soon as I discovered Brother Wing last year. Started up the health insurance scam. Bought a life insurance policy. Socked away money like a madwoman. Had the will drawn up, nice and proper. Spent as many waking moments as possible with my little monkeys.

I clench my hands, thrust away thoughts of them now.

I let myself smile, just a little, imagining Christopher’s bewilderment at the windfall: five figures placed in low-risk bonds, a separate trust fund for the twins — and a million-dollar life insurance payout. Enough for him to buy that ugly house outright.

Oh yes. I knew where I was headed. And why not?

Life is pain. Best to move on.

The Threshold by R.M. Greenaway

Waterfront

Blaine is out before daybreak, shooting the city as it begins to stir. He’s up on the curved Main Street overpass, leaning on the rail above the train tracks. A cold, quiet morning.

No, not quiet. The docks are crashing and beeping. There’s a howling noise he can’t source — omnipresent, the sound of industry, and the ruckus of wind in his ears.

There’s the whiff of the strait waters, and no signs of life at this hour, except a wandering methhead down at Crab Park, minding his own business. And of course the pigeons, great flocks of them rising and settling.

He casts the eye of his telephoto at the harbor. Endless good imagery down there. Fuck the beauty of mist, water, and blue-layered mountains — it’s the man-made chaos he’s after, badly coordinated prime coloration, chipped and rusted, bent and broken, to fill the pages of City.

He focuses on the tracks, then sweeps toward the harbor, at mammoth container cranes fouling the North Shore view. Pans down across Canfisco, the sprawling red fisheries plant, to the more immediate moored tugs, blackberry bushes encircling a parking jetty, sleeping tankers. Then, with a jerk, back to the bushes.

He adjust his stance, zooms, switches to manual focus to fight the interference of dumpsters and razor wire. Is that an arm sticking up from the brambles? Or driftwood? Too distant to say, even zoomed in to max. Probably just a trick of the light.

Still...

Like any good mystery, this has to be checked out. What would be faster — continuing along the overpass and zigzagging down on foot, or returning to his car on Powell and driving along Waterfront Road?

He chooses the wheels. In minutes he’s entering the parking jetty he had seen from above. He doesn’t drive right in, but parks near the entrance. If it’s a body in there he has to tread lightly, to not mess it up for the cops.

From the safety of his car he studies the area. Nobody down here. Not even a hobo, not even a pigeon. Skies are brightening, but the sun has yet to rise. The arm or stick in the brambles is not visible from where he sits. He’s got to leave his car to be sure.

Blaine walks over, clutching his camera bag, and stares down at the man.

Dead. The body lies on its back, spine arched over lumpy ground. Dark clothes, soiled and gored. Face to the sky, eyes open but past caring. Bloodied nose points toward the mountains to the southeast. One leg is on the pavement, the other lost in the arching, tangled nastiness of blackberry stems. The arm that flagged Blaine’s attention is sticking up, wedged in the thicket, and the hand dangles at the wrist.

Must call 911. Blaine snaps to life, digs in his pocket for his phone, can’t find it, and realizes it’s in his camera bag. He swings the bag off his shoulder and kneels to unzip it.

Glancing at the dead guy again, it occurs to him, this is the epilogue he’s been looking for! The final shot. He squints at the sky. The lighting is intense but fragile, filtered by mist, in peril of sliding into mediocrity once the sun pops over the mountains and the rays lose their dramatic slant.

He switches lenses, chooses the 50mm, no zoom but great for low light conditions, and amazing depth of field. Something large is moving at his back and he glances around, but it’s just the dawn creeping over the tarmac as the planet rolls. The rays pierce the clouds, and Blaine moves with anxious speed, worried more about the light than the assailant who could be still lurking about, knife in hand.

But unlikely. This is the morning after. The dead guy is leftovers from the night’s fun, and the knifer is long gone. He’s a gang guy, by the looks of him, sparkle of bling at his throat. It’s a drug deal gone wrong, or turf wars, or he got jumped for his wallet. Happens.

Telephoto packed away, 50mm out, along with a brief pause: what if Blaine is caught here and accused of the crime? He shakes his head, standing now, attaching the new lens. It clicks in place, and he checks the glass for specks. He’s still thinking about consequences. He’s still thinking about 911. But not before he gets his prize shot.

So long as he doesn’t touch anything, no blame, no sweat. He steps back to get the whole body in the viewfinder, but decides a close-up would be cleaner, more dynamic. He shifts the ISO down far as he dares — doesn’t want grain — and inches in closer. The body is a white male about his own age, early thirties, in expensive black jeans and pricy Nikes, leather jacket awkwardly shoved up to the waist, gray T-shirt underneath steeped in blood. Hair is buzzed short except for a fashionable bit of forelock that lifts in the breeze.

The dead man twitches, and Blaine gasps aloud.

Not dead, but dying. Blood still creeks from the nostrils. The head tilts so the open eyes are taking in a sort of upside-down view of the exquisite skies, a gathering bank of clouds.

It’s the dying man’s hyper-awareness that fascinates Blaine. The open eyes, the rising sun, death, a fabulous convergence. He edges around so he can see the face directly. Within arm’s reach, fingertips on pavement, he says, “Mister? Can you hear me?”

The irises swim, and though the pupils don’t shift to focus on Blaine, they seem to search and sharpen. The mouth moves, just a feathering attempt.

“Don’t worry, bud,” Blaine whispers, “I’ll get help.”

He squints up. The light is blurry but evolving, about to spill. Two minutes, three max, before the rays slice over the ridge.

Blaine fumbles with the Nikon, checking settings. His heart is thudding. The air is salty and brisk, warm in the sun and cold in the shadows. Gulls circle with thin cries. He crouches and takes three fast setup shots, bracketing the exposure.

He checks the tiny images on the monitor, imagining them enlarged and cropped. It’s an interesting angle, with restless water for a backdrop, wobbly splashes of red and blue bleeding off boats and cranes, the dying man angling into the foreground and tapering away to an out-of-focus thigh. Even if he’s overestimated the end result, even if the visuals stink, the concept remains dynamite, and Photoshop will do the rest.

Sun rakes across the water. It touches the dying man’s hand. It spreads its gold down the arm clad in leather, seeking the face. Safe now, prepped, another minute to wait, Blaine calls 911. He gives directions. The operator wants to keep him on the line, but that precious moment has arrived, and Blaine needs both hands. He’s done his duty. He interrupts the questioning, promises he’ll wait right here, and closes the call.

Then squats, camera supported on knee, molding his body into a tripod. He’s got the man’s face in the viewfinder. He shifts closer till he’s framed those eyes, waits till they’re soaked in amber, brilliant and pure.

“What are you seeing?” he whispers. Snick.

The sunlight spreads and dulls, a stone-cold stillness comes over the man, and from a distance the shrill rise and fall of sirens approach, one, two, three, like a chorus of angels coming to take him away.

What a morning. Minutes after the call, the police and paramedics noisily arrive in fleets of strobing light. Shunted to the sidelines, Blaine catches a few more action shots before he’s told to cut it out. A uniform tells him to hang tight — Detective Dixon will talk with him shortly.

Dixon turns out to be a bulky woman with messy brown curls, tired eyes, and mannish clothes that look hastily chosen, like she’s been flipped out of bed without warning. She leads the way down the road, into the chilly interior of the Canfisco building, the only nearby shelter from the threat of pending rain.

Inside, fishery staff are being questioned in various locations. Dixon and Blaine go upstairs to escape the noisy machinery of the fish plant, into a large lunchroom. The swing doors wheeze shut behind them. In one corner, a woman who might be a janitor is being questioned, struggling with her English. Dixon and Blaine take a table at the far side of the room.

The detective unbuttons her coat, then flips through a small notebook. She searches her pockets, finds a phone, and a pen, places both on the table in front of her, then tucks the phone away again. Finally says, “So.” She looks at Blaine with distant interest. She studies her notes again, appears to hold her breath, exhales, and out it comes in a blurt of indifference: “Your name is Blaine Burrows and you’re an artist and you live on Union Street, is that correct?”

Blaine agrees it’s correct.

Dixon says, “What kind of artist are you?”

He doesn’t like the way she flattens the noun. “Visual.”

Dixon seems to doodle in her notebook. Seems to be etching triangles, over and over, triangles within triangles, and doesn’t ask for elaboration.

Blaine says, “Digital photography, collage, cyber-manipulation. Cold kind of art, my dad called it. His name was Stan Burrows, maybe you’ve heard of him?”

Dixon shakes her head.

“One of yesterday’s celebs. Big in the photographic world, mostly landscapes. The old silver halide dynasty, black-and-white, chemical trays, red lights. Amazing how far we’ve come, hey? Too bad Stan didn’t live to see that my cold art is being published too. This fall. The collection is called City. That’s all. City. Lot of structure, not a lot of people shots, ’cause that’s been done to death. But they’re in there, like puzzle pieces, just part of the chain-link, right? Or the asphalt, or the puddles. Except for on the cover I’ve got an old guy. I met him on Alexander. He was sitting on the curb, mad as a hatter. Fabulous cover, ’cause it’s man as city, right? Bang, centered, all face, like this.” He crops his own face with his hands to show the detective his focus. “Pale-blue irises, shiny like moonstone, shocking against dark dust and wrinkles. Symmetric wrinkles, like a network of streets and alleys. Super super high-res with just a small glitch over one pupil. Titled the shot Pixelize. Play on words, right? Pixel... eyes.”

Dixon says nothing. Blaine watches her, but his mind is elsewhere, moving between the book launch and the shot he’s going to load tonight, highlights and shadows tweaked. His heart still hammers like he’s won the lotto. He’ll call it Threshold, back of the book, the visual he’s been looking for, the perfect exclamation point to end his five-year collection of urban blowdown. Threshold. A lead-in to Book II?

Dixon says, “So what brought you to this particular parking lot?”

“Chance,” Blaine says. “Was out at dawn, taking shots. Up on the overpass, scanning the harbor and tracks. Viewfinder caught what I thought was a body. An arm, anyway. Zoomed in, went, Oh my god. Drove right over and checked. Called 911.”

He smiles at her, wanting her to smile back. Even women of her age are taken by him, and flush pink when he turns it on. He’s a good-looking guy, and he knows it. But cold shoulders make him nervous, and he doesn’t like being nervous.

“What time did you first spot the guy with your zoom?”

Blaine blinks. He places his hand on his camera, as if to shield it from flying debris. “Just about sunrise. Sorry, I never thought to check.”

“Sure. Well, let’s do it this way. Your call came in at 5:54. That help?”

Blaine shifts in his chair. So he hadn’t called 911 as soon as he might have, and it hits him, the proof is time-stamped on the chip. But a minute here or there wouldn’t change the end result. The only difference was that he had seized the chance to immortalize a nobody. If anything, he should be thanked.

He says, “Took awhile to drive over, then to find him. I guess five, six minutes from the time I spotted him to making the call.”

Dixon makes a note. And then, oddly, she seems to drift. Big woman, yet light as a bubble. She’s watching him, but seems abstracted. Her face is more interesting than Blaine had first thought. He imagines her on the cover of Book II. Stark, artificial light coming in from the side. Maybe even backlit to shadow. The Soul of Authority.

But back to his immediate problem, he decides to protect himself with a little white lie: “The guy was dead when I got here.”

Her brows hitch without interest, like she doesn’t get it and doesn’t really want to. She’s jaded beyond care. She sits here, half-asleep on the job, thick as mud. He mentally throws a frame around her jowls and brows, cutting out the extraneous, keeping to the theme of face as metaphor. He’s nailing down the brand. He’ll run it by his editor when he’s done here today. Meanwhile, get on this lady’s good side, ask if she’ll sit for him.

She says, “You see anybody at or around the scene? From the overpass, say, or as you were driving in?”

“No ma’am. I only wish.” He slouches, hooking bicep over chairback, showing off his hard-earned muscles.

She almost smiles, finally thawing. He’s got her.

He says, “Detective, I know I’m being nosy, but any idea what his story is? Drug deal gone wrong?”

Dixon surprises him with a fairly concise answer: “Drugs, oh, for sure.” She closes her notebook, rubs her nose, and says in the casual way of shutting down, “Get any good sunrise shots?”

Just being polite, but the question galls Blaine, pulling him out of his reverie. He straightens. “No sunrise shots, no. They’re kind of done.”

“Done to death,” Dixon murmurs.

It’s an echo of his own words and it startles him. Now she’s the one doing the flirting, a twinkle in her eye. She says, “Take any pictures of the dead man?”

Blaine hesitates.

“It’s just, I see you don’t have your telephoto on.” She’s pointing at the Nikon. “Not much distance with those 50 mils, is there? I take it you switched lenses, sometime between the overpass and now.”

Her stare is piercing into him, and for the first time he’s afraid.

“You got me,” he admits with a boyish shrug. “While I was waiting, I got a shot or two. Hope that’s okay.”

He won’t tell her it’s going in a book. He doesn’t know the legalities at this point, and doesn’t want her to shut him down before he can talk it over with his copyright people. He’s also having second thoughts about putting her on the second book’s cover. Sometimes ugliness reaches a certain bar...

She has extended a palm, and at first he thinks she wants to shake, but it’s a demand. “I’ll need to take the card.”

He stares. “What? No. Why?”

“You’ll get it back safe and sound, Mr. Burrows. You want to give it to me now, or do I get a warrant?”

Scowling, Blaine hands over the SD card from his camera, with its shots of the golden God-seeking eyes. “I get to keep the images, right? There’s a whole week of work on there.”

“Long as there’s nothing incriminating on it.” She gestures impatiently. “Let me see the camera too.”

He hands over the Nikon, still sulking about the chip. Of course there’s nothing incriminating on it. Ghoulish, maybe the cops would think — they wouldn’t recognize art if it waltzed up and spat in their faces — but hardly criminal. And disrespectful, but respect for what? As un-PC as it might be, cops have their priorities. They know what’s what and care accordingly. This dead man’s true name to them is One Less Drug-Dealing Shithead.

Dixon has studied the camera’s settings and made a note, and she hands it back. She deals with the paperwork of the seized chip, then both she and Blaine are on their feet. She’s so tall that they’re eye to eye. She says, “Got anything else you want to tell me, Mr. Burrows? Now’s the time.”

He doesn’t. He hoists camera bag to shoulder and stalks out.

Dixon stands looking at the blackberry bushes and the dead man. He has been eased free from his cradle of prickles and laid out on a stretcher, eyes now closed. The coroner has told Dixon how skin-of-the-teeth close they were, that the Lang kid just missed the train. Lost too much blood. “Betcha five minutes sooner, we’d have kept him here in this mortal coil.”

Five minutes.

Dixon bows her head, studying the area around the body. No weapon found, that would be too obvious, but all the proof she’ll need is here somewhere. Between trace evidence and autopsy table, the evidence will point unerringly to the killer: Harrison, a fifty-three-year-old hard-nosed pile of shit, known to police for his temper. His weapon of choice is the butterfly knife, fairly rare in Canada, being illegal, and therefore the perfect signature. It’ll be found on or near him, crudded with the dead man’s DNA. Harrison, Dixon knows, is somewhere in the city. His body will surface in a day or so, stuffed in some back-alley grotto, and both cases will be neatly shut.

Or will they? She grimaces at the unexpected complication. Five minutes. Who the fuck recruited Harrison, who for all his talk couldn’t leave a man properly dispatched? Those murders he’d claimed ownership of, were they nothing but hot air? Had he ever actually used that fancy knife for anything besides yo-yo tricks to impress his drinking buddies?

The team continues at their tasks, mostly silent now. Clouds have blotted out the sun and a light rain is starting to fall.

“Okay, Dix?” someone asks.

She waves her fingers like the pope. She watches as the body is enclosed in poly, zipped up, hoisted into the back of the removal van. The vehicle’s doors bang shut, and she reflects that the dead man, Andy Lang, is — was — a windbag just like Blaine Burrows. Burrows’s fixation is art, while Andy’s — when he wasn’t busy blowing whistles and ratting out his partners — was forensics. Infrared-this or 3D-that, technology as investigative tool. Trouble is, distracted by magic, young Detective Lang forgot that he’s only human, and that like any human, he bleeds.

“Didn’t I say so,” Dixon tells him as the van begins to roll. “All the high-tech foofaraw in the world won’t be worth a nickel if you come face to face with a real-life bullet.” Or blade, in this case.

The ambulance is gone. Another VPD SUV rolls in and idles. Inside are colleagues, Detectives Khan and Purley. Dixon heads over and stands by the lowered driver’s window. She doesn’t speak right away, but her shrug says it all — things are not good.

Khan in the passenger seat looks like he’s been crying. Purley is grim. Both men are staring at her. Purley says, “What’s happened?”

The SD card in its small exhibit bag, not signed, sealed, or logged, is clutched in Dixon’s fist, fist jammed in pocket. She’s thinking about Andy Lang lying there, possibly alive, while Burrows pulls off his artsy shots. The chip’s time stamps — she’s already confirmed them on her laptop — establish opportunity. The photos themselves — not bad, actually — have told her Lang was indeed alive. She could see it in his eyes. Cognition. And he was looking right at the photographer, like they were engaged in conversation. About what? The weather?

Probably nothing, but it left enough of a doubt to foul her day.

If Burrows wasn’t such a fuckhole, she wouldn’t worry. But he’s complicated, his mind ticking away behind weasel eyes as he babbles about his dead father or some scrapbook project he’s working on. It’s a nervous babble, like verbal thumb-twiddling. What was he thinking about, staring at her, smiling like a third-rate actor? Whatever he had to say, he kept it close to his chest.

Why not share the victim’s last words with the cop who’s questioning him? Because those last words had spelled out loud and clear to Mr. Burrows that not every cop can be trusted, that’s why.

The day is in full swing around Dixon, the port noisy with commerce. Trucks roar by under darkening skies, and the cranes are shifting containers like there’s no tomorrow. She imagines the happy snapper back in his apartment, looking at his phone, wondering, If you can’t trust the law, who can you trust? Sooner or later he’ll make a decision.

Meaning time is of the essence.

She hands Purley a piece of paper, name and address. Blaine Burrows.

“Soon as fucking possible,” she tells him.

Purley takes the piece of paper, looks at Khan, looks at Detective Dixon. The window rolls up and the SUV pulls out. Dixon gets a final glimpse of Khan in the passenger seat. He’s staring back at her, and he looks scared shitless.

And so he should. He’s here on the threshold, after all.