Ocean Drive, page 12
“I swear,” he said.
“’Member I said that Harv had plans to make a move on White Rock? Build the League up out here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Tequila was gonna handle that for us. Get things rolling.”
“So why’d he disappear?”
“I don’t know,” Sukhi said. “Harv doesn’t tell me the details, but I pick up on things. But this, no one’s saying shit.”
“Could the Vipers have taken him out?”
“Not without us knowing.”
Cam wondered what that meant. “The other day I read about a fire,” he said. “A girl who was murdered and torched. Could it be connected?”
Sukhi didn’t answer.
“Just find him, okay?” she said. “Please.”
* * *
One of the places near the bottom of the list was the South Surrey Athletic Park, known as Softball City. Four diamonds with bleachers and dugouts, a large all-purpose sports field, a skate park, hard courts and acres of parking. As a kid, Cam had seen punk shows in the rec centre, the audience lounging on couches and stools while the bands rocked out in front of the kitchen. The place didn’t look much different from his childhood.
At night Softball City was closed up and dark. Not much need for softball in the heart of winter, the fields slushy, heaps of snow in the corners of the parking lots.
The roads looped around the diamonds and between the buildings. A dope dealer’s paradise. Cam parked the Civic in the central lot, slumped down in his chair. Rain fell over the windows, and the daylight sunk behind the treeline of Sunnyside Acres.
Cam saw a patrol car creep through the parking lot next to his. No other cars between them. He got his driver’s license out, prepared a story about working late and needing to sleep before driving home to Surrey. But the car prowled by.
Soon it was night and the stadium lights burst on, lighting up the parking lot and the softball diamonds.
Cam cracked a window and lit a cigarette. Another fucking waste. In the meantime he had to get working again. Maybe approach Doppler & Doppler, ask for a few containers. Not that he wanted honest work, but this—what the hell was this?
What had happened to him, these last months?
You’re working for Zoe Prentice, he reminded himself. Getting in good with the League. That is your job. Your top concern. Finding Tequila is only a step toward that. Make Sukhi happy, maybe win some points with Harv.
You aren’t one of them. You’re only pretending to be because that’s what Zoe wants.
A car drove through at the other end, high beams on. It passed by the entrance to the lot. Cam rolled the window farther down, watching. The car’s driver did the same.
For a second they looked at each other. There were two bearded men in the front seat of a dark blue Honda Prelude. They glared at Cam, as if judging him.
Cam’s cigarette had burned down to the filter. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, roach style, and made a show of bringing it to his lips. Inhaled deeply. Held it, coughed.
The men in the Prelude laughed at him, some working stiff just off shift, smoking half a joint. They rolled by. Cam noticed they pulled into the lot closest to the 24th Avenue exit.
The Prelude stopped but left its lights on. A few minutes later an SUV passing along the avenue spun into the lot, pulling up alongside them. A Navigator. Difficult to tell the colour in the dark, from far away, but possibly champagne. The SUV continued through the winding road of Softball City. The Prelude spun around and followed. It parked next to the Nav, at the front of the rec centre. The men in the Prelude climbed out and stood under the building’s overhang, one of them smoking a cigarette. After a minute the door to the Nav opened and a third man joined them. Even at that distance Cam caught the glimmer off the man’s Thrive or Die jacket. Tequla Narwal. He was sure of it.
Tequila gave each of the men a chest-thumping hug and a right-angled handshake. They passed around a joint. More than a deal. These were friends.
Cam couldn’t see them closely. He started the car, keeping the lights off, and crept closer. Parked again, facing the other way.
Both of the others wore black nylon jackets that added bulk to their small frames. One wore a black patka, the other a purple snapback. They’d looked older in the car. Their movements with Tequila were playful. Back slapping, fists tapped against their hearts as they nodded to what he was saying.
A minivan sped through the park from the north end. Cam squinted and saw a woman at the wheel, what looked like a kid in the backseat. Someone taking a shortcut home. The van crossed the parking lot, turned onto 20th.
When Cam turned back he saw the three men looking at his car.
Cam hadn’t considered he might be spotted. Now Tequila was pointing at him. Despite the distance, he felt their eyes locked on him. Cam tried to reach for the ignition column, wondered why his hand wouldn’t move.
The man with the purple ball cap unzipped his jacket.
Cam didn’t hear the gun’s report but heard clearly the spang as the bullet ricocheted off the light a few spaces to his left. He ducked down, started the engine. Heard the next shot and saw the right-side mirror spin off at a wild angle.
He backed up over the edge of the concrete and found the car sliding down a hill onto the field. Something pelted the windshield, spreading a crystal web across the glass. He stomped the accelerator. The car slogged across the field, broadsiding a mound of dirty snow.
Spinning the wheel, trying to see through the glass, the rain, hearing the shots now, some louder than others, Cam put the car in drive and floored it. The wheels spun—
The back window burst.
The car leapt forward and Cam banked right, seeing as he turned the men approaching, fire bursting from the gun in Tequila’s hand. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.
The pop of a tire, the car rocking, going too slow.
He was going to die.
He processed this as he undid his seatbelt, popped open the door and rolled out onto the spongey grass. He was going to die here, in Softball fucking City of all places. He’d had time to consider death in prison, and while he’d faced a few close calls, it had been the slow, lingering death of incarceration that he’d feared. Not that he didn’t fear this—he was terror-stricken—but it wasn’t inside.
And at least he could make it hard for the fuckers.
Running bent over, hearing them slop and splash behind him, he bolted west toward the forest. There weren’t other options, unless he wanted to run onto the road, hope that the cop car might go by again.
The last five metres to the forest was uphill. He pitched forward, scrambling as his feet sought purchase in the muck. Grabbed handholds, moving forward on his knees. Then he was up, crossing through the wall of ferns and brushes, thinking it had been a while since he’d heard a gunshot. Maybe they were out.
His shoulder caught fire. Cam pitched forward.
Inertia, that disconnected feeling of rising out of a dream, when you tell your body to move and watch it sit there, ignoring your commands.
His arm hurt and he felt his right hand slick with blood. He broke his command into smaller commands. Left arm forward. To his relief it began to nudge over the fern he’d trampled.
He’d fallen down a slope, into a grove between the winding bike trails of Sunnyside Acres. Downed trees and limbs obscured his view of the trail ahead. Unnatural light fell from behind and to the left, the direction from which he’d fallen. He nudged himself closer to the trees.
The last time he’d been in here—
Twelve or thirteen, sneaking out for a camping trip with a friend. Smoking a joint they’d rolled out of shake stolen from the Folgers tin where Uncle Pete kept his stash. Neither of them able to roll worth a shit. The thing had been conical, flat at one end, but they’d gotten two puffs each before it exploded onto Cam’s chest. They’d spent the night drinking Old Grand-Dad mixed with Mountain Dew, reading Hustlers they’d found on previous trips through the forest, each pretending not to see the other jerking off. Lying down and staring up at this same canopy of trees. Watching it spin like a kaleidoscope as the pot and booze kicked in.
If you were going to die, it was a hell of a view.
Crawling forward, Cam dropped beneath a fallen Douglas fir, its root system upended, brown shelf fungus growing along the side.
The left shoulder screamed. A similar feeling to when Roger Garrick had slashed him. Cam’s breathing was ragged and his feet frozen.
He dragged himself forward, up against the trunk of the tree. With his left hand, he crossed over and slipped his phone from his right pocket. The cheap clamshell seemed to be working. Who to dial, though?
He heard rustling and clutched the phone within the folds of his shirt, extinguishing the glow from its screen.
At least two sets of footsteps proceeded down the hill, stumbling, pausing to look around. One shone the light from his phone across the tree, above where Cam lay hidden. He closed his eyes.
“Never gonna find him,” the one voice said.
“And who’s fault is that, fucknut?”
“Don’t yell at him, Tequila. You fired first, remember?”
“Like you were holding back, Gurv.”
“Shut up.”
The voices moved off, grew softer.
“Man, fuck this.”
“He didn’t vanish.”
“Fuck you. Your fucking problem.”
“Yeah?”
“Asked to fuckin meet like it’s some big secret, then go all paranoid, some fool smoking a joint in his car.”
“Think this is a fuckin joke?”
“See me laughing?”
“Both of you, just keep—”
“Aw, this little bitch is gone, man.”
“I fucking clipped him.”
“Clipped his fucking car and it took you all ten rounds.”
“I saw the dude fall.”
“Yeah, down the fucking hill. American Sniper over here.”
“Stop fucking arguing,” the third voice said. “The three of us gotta fix this together. We get a few of our people in here to look for him, smoke his ass out. That work for you, Tequila?”
“Whatever.”
“Good.” The third voice sounded relieved. “See, Gurv? We all on the same page.”
“Either of you got any lighter fluid?” Tequila asked.
“Nah, man. Why?”
The gunshot caused Cam to jump, hitting his head against the bottom of the trunk. The first voice, Gurv’s, saying “What the fuck—” before another shot quieted him.
No sound after that for what felt like a minute.
“Doesn’t work for me,” Tequila said, and giggled.
* * *
Cam heard rustling, Tequila searching the pockets of the men. A body flopped over, landing in mud. The suck of boots moving to dry ground. The log bounced, Tequila stepping over it, heading up the hill.
“Call Sukhi,” Tequila commanded his phone, and muttered “Pick up, bitch,” as he waited. Then his voice became sunnier, pleasant. “Hey sis… Just been busy, lots going down… I know he’s looking for me, I’m’a talk to him when I’m ready. Explain everything… Yeah. I know. Don’t tell Harv shit. He asks, tell him that Alexa bitch probably made it up… That’s right… no, I don’t got it.”
He muttered “fucking bitch” again as Sukhi’s voice continued on.
“Shut up for a second, okay? Tell Mom you need the car, then come pick me up… Yes right now. Would I ask it wasn’t important?… The forest, right next to Softball City. You know the place… See police, you just drive past, loop back… No, I’m just saying if they’re there… Just do it, will you?… All the shit I do for you?… Thanks.”
Cam looked up and saw Tequila crest the top of the hill, disappearing into the white stadium lights.
He crawled free, saw the bodies of the two men. He bent at the waist, feeling his vision swim, but managed to retrieve their wallets. Between them they had six hundred dollars.
Cam took the larger one’s coat, noting the man’s arms were tattooed with serpents. Tequila had been meeting with two Vipers.
Both men had been shot in the head. Cam tried wiping the blood off the coat, finding his hands only added mud to the stains.
He hated to leave his car, but the police might be there already, and anyway, Cam was too weak to crawl up that hill.
Draping the coat around him, he limped farther into the forest, and when he found the trail marker, he followed it to the exit. From there he called a taxi.
* * *
The driver dropped him off two buildings over from his home. Cam tipped him an extra hundred. The driver nodded and cleared the meter.
Fatigue hit him as he mounted the steps to his apartment. Once inside, he stripped and stood in front of his bathroom mirror, craned his neck and examined the wound.
Once the blood was wiped off, it was a small black circle punched in the flesh of his tricep. It stung. There was no exit wound, which troubled him.
The sight of the blood and dirt pooling around the drain in his shower stall made his stomach roil. He threw up in the toilet, then turned the shower tap and drank and wiped his chin. He leaned back, worrying he might pass out again. Managed to hold up his phone and dial Ivan’s number.
No, not Ivan. He cancelled the call before it had rung. Dialed Brad instead. Ivan hadn’t taken part in the warehouse job, and Cam still couldn’t figure out why. Brad felt he owed Cam—the five grand had meant a lot to him.
“What’s up, bro?” It was two in the morning and Brad sounded more awake than Cam had ever seen him.
“Need a favour,” Cam said. “How do I get in touch with that doc?”
* * *
The doctor wouldn’t leave the house until six, and even then, only for one thousand dollars. “House calls are extra,” he said.
He showed up, dressed in a sweatsuit and a foam-front Blue Jays cap. He used tweezers to prod the wound, pronounced the slug unremovable, and asked for his fee.
“I want it out,” Cam said.
“Can’t be done, buddy, not unless I take you to admittance.”
“It went in straight. It’s right in there.”
“Yes, but it can’t be done.”
Cam stared at the doc till the older man looked away. “Cody said you’d get it out. Want me to tell him I asked and you said no? That the message you want me to take to Cody Hayes?”
The doctor put on a tough face. Cam didn’t have to—the heavy-lidded sneer was created by pain and fatigue, and he wore it because there was nothing else.
“You should be anesthetized,” the doc said. “All I have are tweezers and my prod. Nothing’s even sterilized.”
“So stick the fucking kettle on,” Cam said.
* * *
He spent a day in bed, clutching the gun he’d taken from one of the dead men. The .22. A fifty percent chance it was the gun that had shot him.
Any time he heard noise on the landing outside his place, he grasped the gun and waited. The door would burst open, either Tequila or an army of the Vipers, or the League, his so-called friends, ready to finish him off.
He ran a fever. He sweated through his sheets. Then shivered with the wet fabric wrapped tightly around him. When he was lucid, he stared at the small piece of shrapnel the doc had removed from him. Thinking of what to do next.
Something had broken inside him. It was obvious his first trip outside, to buy scissors and peroxide and a case of soup from the CVS. He watched the other shoppers and couldn’t care what they thought of him, standing there in his dirty jeans and the only clean T-shirt he had left, the one Tito had given him, with the League of Nations slogan across the front. He enjoyed the way the pharmacist rang up his purchases without making eye contact.
His strength came back to him. He checked his messages. His PO had called, something about his car. Cam told him he’d been sick, but would come two days later, and if the PO didn’t like it he could come around to his place and check the puke bucket for himself. Okay, okay, the PO said. We’ll reschedule for early next week.
Next was the car. Cam walked into the nearest police station and told them he’d been sick for the last week, and that when he’d opened his front door this morning his Civic wasn’t there. No, he hadn’t heard anything, but please, officer, it’s got my stuff inside. I don’t make much at my warehouse job, and I know it’s a beater, but I need it to make my living.
Then there was the warehouse. He’d need to show income, and he couldn’t spend his life climbing through cans. He phoned Scott Doppler and asked for a meeting. Scott told him of course, any time you want to come back, you’re welcome. Cam said thanks, he’d be in next week to discuss terms.
That left only Tequila.
* * *
Sukhi Kaur opened her parents’ door, moving aside as Cam entered.
“Just let yourself in,” she said.
“Your parents home?”
“At work.”
“Good.”
He sat down at the kitchen table, ignoring her request to take off his shoes.
“Sorry I haven’t called,” he said. “I’ve been looking for your brother.”
“That’s all right.” She was dressed in an oversized shirt, shorts, hair still wet from the shower. She offered him a beer and took one for herself.
“You still want him found?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it was dumb to ask you. Let’s just drop it, ’kay?”
“It wasn’t dumb.”
“I’ll pay you anyway. Half, okay? Just drop it.”
He pulled off his T-shirt, exposing his bandaged shoulder.
“Your brother shot at me,” he said. “One of his friends hit me. In the forest near Softball City. About an hour before you picked Tequila up.”
