Burn, p.15
Burn, page 15
part #1 of Vancouver Series
This girl was already getting on his nerves, trying to appear all soft and gentle like a little newborn bunny. He took a deep breath and said, “The police officer who was working to find whoever assaulted you was killed a couple of nights ago.”
Alla stayed silent, staring up into Chendrill's eyes, then said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So am I,” replied Chendrill. “Do you have any idea who may have done this to you or to my friend?”
Alla shook her head. “A man came to my apartment and hit me.”
“You’re saying one of the men who came to your apartment for sex hit you?”
Alla looked away from his face and down to the patterns on his shirt. She knew this guy with the moustache and hair and the loud Hawaiian shirt from somewhere. She’d seen him before, but not as a client. Those she always remembered. She looked back up to his face and said, “Think of it whichever way you would like to. He hit me, and now I’m here. Not all people out there are good.”
“And what did he look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Correct.”
“Was he a white guy, a black guy, a Latino guy, or maybe Asian? A mix, perhaps?” Chendrill persisted. He took a deep breath. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t want to tell me. Was it this Dennis then?”
Alla shook her head. “The man who hit me was Asian-looking.”
Chendrill stared at her, thinking. “What do you mean? He was half-European?”
Alla shook her head again. “No, he was Asian, but not from the Far East.”
“So who’s Dennis then? Your boyfriend?”
“Husband.”
Chendrill smiled, glad to be getting somewhere. “And does he know you’re here?”
“He’s been to visit me, yes.”
“And does he know what you’ve been doing for a living?”
Alla lay quiet, and her silence said it all.
Answering for her, Chendrill said, “I’ll take that as a no then. Patrick told me you had certain pictures of him that my friend found. Did you have any other pictures of him?”
Alla stared up at the man and wished for the life of her she could sit up. “I don’t know what pictures your friend found. I had some of us playing around together. They were going to be a surprise.”
“What, like a birthday surprise?”
Alla looked away. “Kind of.”
“And did you keep birthday surprises for any of your other clients?”
“There were no clients. Patrick and I, we were in love.”
“In love?”
“Yes—in love,” Alla snapped, wishing she could get up, stand by the bed, and tell this fuckhead where to go.
Chendrill leaned forward and whispered quietly into Alla’s ear. “Remember, I’m not a policeman—all I need to know is that you don’t have any other photos of Patrick.”
She claimed she didn’t and the only photos would have been the ones Daltrey found. But where were they now? Chendrill wondered as he pulled Mazzi Hegan’s Ferrari into the fast lane of the highway and gunned it. And were there any more? he thought as he slipped the car down a gear and whipped past on the inside of a guy doing a hundred in the fast lane. Dan’s mum had liked it this morning when he’d done the same, and he’d liked the way her legs had squeezed together in the process, her jeans clinging tightly to her calves all the way down to her little shoes.
Daltrey had to have hidden the photos somewhere, if indeed she had them at all. Knowing her, they’d be in a safe deposit box, and the key would be hidden a long way away from her desk on Main Street.
Three people had been intentionally burned to death over the last couple of years, two within the last few days, Daltrey included. And she was linked somehow to the guy with the fancy shoes she’d found floating out on False Creek like an overdone piece of chicken.
He shifted gears again and moved Mazzi Hegan’s Ferrari back into the fast lane, accelerating into the long, smooth bend that took him high up and onto the Port Mann Bridge. Ripping along under its long wires stretching hundreds of feet above him and reaching its crest, he hit the floor and gunned it down the other side, crossing the deep brown water of the Fraser River two hundred feet below in a matter of seconds.
Still going, Chendrill kept his foot to the floor and flew off the bridge and onto the clear, straight stretch of highway on the opposite side. This car was fine, he thought, as he passed all the seemingly stationary cars to his right. In a flash, he passed the next junction and then another, then some small road repair stations, and then a policeman standing on the shoulder holding a speed gun in his hand.
Chendrill glanced into the rear-view mirror at the policeman, now just a tiny blur behind. He looked back at the road ahead and then quickly at the speedometer, which read just under 300 kph. Shit!
Keeping his foot to the floor, he glanced in the mirror again. Nothing happening. No cars chasing him or lights flashing in the distance. He took the next exit and headed south toward the U.S. border, and then took a sharp right back toward Vancouver. He knew the procedure—by the time they’d reacted to the report that would come in, put their coffees down, and checked the cameras, they’d first estimate he’d be heading east and would be by now another ten miles or so in that direction. It was possible they’d start looking at cameras and data tapes—if they could be bothered—and if they did, there was a chance Mazzi Hegan was going to have a whole lot of talking to do.
The basement where Dennis Willis now lived looked decent enough and pretty much the sort of place in which Chendrill had found many a divorced man living, except Dennis Willis wasn’t divorced. He walked up the graveled drive, looking at the windows that needed painting, knocked on the door, and waited for Dennis to get off the sofa.
Chendrill liked Dennis from the moment they met. Maybe it was because his teeth were the shiniest things in the room or just the fact that he was one of a rare breed of person who were simply decent. The first thing he said to Chendrill as they sat at a table on old, ill-matched chairs by the window was, “If you think the chairs are bad, then you should see what’s under the tablecloth.”
Chendrill smiled and said, “The chairs are fine.” They were. In Chendrill’s mind, he could see nothing wrong with them, but he knew most women would moan.
Dennis said, “I think that almost everything in here is pulled together from someone else’s vision. I don’t think there’s a single piece of cutlery in the kitchen that matches.” He smiled and stared at the table. Then, looking up, he said, “Are you here about my wife?”
Chendrill nodded.
“Is she in trouble?”
Chendrill paused for a moment then said, “I’m not sure. Health-wise, yes, I don’t doubt it. Elsewhere, I can’t answer. I’m not the police—I work privately.”
Dennis smiled. “So how’s business in the world of private investigation?”
“Good, for now. I’ve got a couple of clients.”
Without hesitation, Dennis asked, “And they’re interested in me?”
Chendrill shook his head. “No one’s asking about you, and that goes for the people I’m working for. I’m here for myself and for an old friend who was talking to your wife the day before she died.”
Dennis closed his eyes and said, “I’m sorry for your friend.”
Chendrill nodded his thanks. “We weren’t close. In truth, I can’t really say she was a friend, but I liked her and respected her.”
“Her?”
“Yes. She was a cop. I knew her when I used to be one.”
“I used to be a dentist,” Dennis said. “You know what a dentist and a cop have in common?”
“What?” Chendrill asked.
“Everyone hates you until you get your teeth smashed in, and then they love you.”
Chendrill smiled. “Until they get the bill.”
Dennis nodded. “And I don’t get to send them out anymore. That’s one of the reasons I’m living down here.”
Chendrill looked around the basement suite. It was tidy enough, but there wasn’t a thing in there that didn’t look worn and tired, and Dennis fit right in. “I’m sure you’ve got your reasons,” he said.
Dennis stayed quiet for a moment, then said, “Yeah. But for the moment, though, till I get my license back, I’m a movie man. And when I get work, I sit most of the day on an apple box, then move stuff for other people who are making the kind of money I used to make.”
“I take it you and the wife are no longer living together?” Chendrill asked, stating the obvious.
Dennis took a deep breath. “Sadly, no. I lost my dental practice, and I became a different person, you know. I think I just wasn’t good to be around.”
Chendrill nodded. He could relate to that. He’d been a complete pig just after he’d quit the force, and it had taken him a while to settle down into a new life. He looked up and asked, “So she left?”
Dennis nodded. “She moved in with a friend.”
“Does she work?” Chendrill asked, already knowing the truth.
“Yes, she’s a hostess. You know…she’s pretty. She works at trade shows, that kind of thing.”
That kind of thing, Chendrill thought.
“But soon I’ll be staring into people’s mouths again for a living, and maybe she’ll come home.”
Fuck me, Chendrill thought and took a deep breath. If you only knew. Then he asked, “When did you last see her?”
Dennis smiled. “Recently…at the hospital.”
“Do you know who hurt her?”
Dennis shook his head. “Maybe a boyfriend I suppose, or maybe her brother.”
“She has a brother here?”
Without looking up, Dennis nodded. “Yes—but I didn’t tell the policewoman that when she came to tell me about Alla.”
“Why not?” Chendrill asked.
“Because I don’t think he’s supposed to be here, and I don’t want anything coming back on Alla.”
******
Charles Chuck Chendrill drove along the outskirts of Surrey until he reached the highway and then headed back toward Vancouver. So Dennis, the nicest dentist in town, had been played. If he hadn’t known it before, then he certainly did now; after all, sometimes it’s not only pythons who wrap themselves around their prey before they eat them. But for some reason from what Chendrill could tell, Dennis still didn’t seem to care. They say love is blind, but who was he to talk? Where was the woman in his life? Who did he love, and most of all, who loved him as much as Dennis loved his beautiful wife, a whore lying in the hospital? The answer was obvious—no one.
Looking down, he checked his speed. Again, he was way over. Slowing down, he brought the car back to ninety, and it felt as though it was not moving at all. He checked his mirror and remembered himself gunning it earlier on the way out of town when he saw a police car way in the distance. He thought he’d leave the car parked in town tonight and maybe report it stolen. Say he’d left it in the morning, and now it was gone, taken on a 300 kph joyride on the highway by some crazy nut. That would nip that little problem in the bud.
He shifted the Ferrari down a gear and slipped in between two trucks as the police cruiser passed by. Just as it did, his phone rang. Slowing down further, Chendrill answered. It was a very irate Sebastian with another emergency.
“Chuck, your man’s been taken to the hospital. You’ll need to go pick him up.”
“Who’s my man?” Chendrill asked.
“Dan, of course. He’s at the hospital.”
Chapter Nineteen
Dan sat in the waiting room of the STD clinic, an offshoot to the Vancouver General Hospital, and wondered what problems below the belt everyone else in the waiting area had going on. One thing was for certain—none of them were itching like he was. In his mind, some were so ugly he couldn’t imagine how they even managed to contract a disease in the first place.
Then he heard his name. “Dan Treedle?”
The nurse directed him along a short, sterile corridor to a little room. She was wondering what could possibly be wrong with the first person she’d ever seen brought into a sexually transmitted disease clinic by ambulance. Opening the door, she introduced him to a doctor with lenses in his glasses so thick Dan had no idea how the man could see at all.
“Hello, my name’s Dr. Samuelson. How can we help?”
Dan stood, then sat, then stood again and said, “I think I’ve got crabs.”
Dr. Samuelson stared at Dan’s face and said, “You look like you’ve been hit in the face.”
“Yeah, I was in this guy’s place the other day, and he hit me with his man bag and broke my nose.”
“Okay,” the doctor continued, “you need to get that looked at or you may develop serious respiratory problems. Now, you say you feel you’ve got some kind of lice?”
“Yeah, there’s definitely something running about down there.”
The doctor stepped back, pulled a pair of surgical gloves from the drawer, and put them on. “Well let’s take a look,” he said. “Please pull down your trousers and lie down on the bed.”
Embarrassed, Dan undid the tops of his jeans and pulled them down. He lay back, Mazzi Hegan’s underpants glistening in the bright, high-powered inspection light.
The doctor turned quickly, shielding his eyes from the glare. “My goodness! You’ll have to lose those, son, or I may never see again.”
Dan slipped the underpants down and away from the bright light, and the doctor leaned in and began carefully inspecting Dan’s pubic region. Digging down to the roots of his pubes, he pulled out a piece of breakfast cereal and held it up to the light.
“Oh, what do we have here?”
Dan looked at it closely and said, “It looks like a Cheerio.”
The doctor carefully placed the Cheerio in a metal bowl and went back in.
A thirty-year veteran of sexual health medicine, Dr. Samuelson had seen it all—until now. Reaching over to the counter, he grabbed a magnifying glass and looked closer.
Straining to look himself, Dan raised his head. “Can you see them?” he asked.
Without looking up, Dr. Samuel replied, “I see what looks like the residue from the bottom of a packet of Corn Flakes.”
Dan looked surprised. “I don’t like Corn Flakes.”
The doctor lifted Dan’s testicles and moved them to the side, looking more intently. “Seems to me you’ve got yourself a yeast infection mixed in with what looks to me like breakfast cereal. Could be the remnants of Corn Flakes. Maybe Frosties.”
That was it, Dan thought. The way his mother had been carrying on with this guy from the bakery every other day, it was no wonder he’d picked up something from her in the bathroom. That and the fact he’d had a huge pig-out on a couple of packets of breakfast cereal earlier then fell asleep with the bowl on his face.
Dr. Samuelson stepped back, turned off the light, and asked, “Have you been somewhere hot and sweaty?”
Dan nodded, remembering the heat from the lights in the stuffy studio the day before. “Yeah, they had me on this stage yesterday with my feet screwed to the floor.”
“Really? When did you last have a bath?”
Dan couldn’t remember at first, then he said, “I had one last Sunday at the guy’s place who hit me with the bag, except it was a shower if that counts.”
Dr. Samuelson lifted a clipboard. “When did you last have sex?”
Dan thought about it. That was a tough one. Shrugging his shoulders, he answered, “Last night.”
“Full penetrative sex?”
Dan sat up and began to pull up his trousers. “Not really,” he said.
Dr. Samuelson waited then asked, “That’s a no then?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have oral sex?”
“We were kissing.”
Dr. Samuelson ticked another box. “No again. Are you sexually active at the moment?”
“I’ve been with a few girls lately, but we didn’t go all the way, because with the first one, her guide dog bit me, and then the second one thought I was gay. The one last night didn’t like it when I called her Margaret Thatcher.”
Lowering his clipboard, Dr. Samuelson stared at him for a moment, then said, “Really? May I ask if you are gay?”
Dan shook his head. “No, I’m not. Actually, you might know the girl I was with last night—she’s that supermodel, Marsha.”
Dr. Samuelson stared at Dan a moment longer. This guy was priceless. He couldn’t wait to get back to the nurses’ station to tell them what he’d heard. Lowering his bottle glasses, he looked at Dan, his eyes sunken and red. “You were with some girl who looked like Marsha last night?”
“Yeah, I was with some girl who looked like Marsha last night, because she was Marsha. You can’t get much closer than that.”
“And you say you didn’t have full penetrative sex with this girl, but there could be a chance that your pubic area etcetera rubbed against hers?”
Dan nodded. “It did, but she doesn’t have a jungle down there like me. Hers is more like one of those landing strips the girls you seeon the telly late at night have.”
Dr. Samuelson nodded, not quite understanding. “But not full of food?”
Dan shook his head and said, “No, she’s a supermodel. She doesn’t eat.”
******
Mazzi Hegan sat in the boardroom and flipped through the stills he’d gotten of Dan in the toilet. Pissed off, Sebastian paced up and down behind him. He didn’t know what on earth was going on. No one had gotten back to him to tell him anything. The only information he’d received was secondhand from the girl in reception saying that Dan was seriously ill and being taken by ambulance to the hospital. Luckily, he’d managed to pass that on to Chendrill as soon as he’d answered his ruddy phone, and then, all worried, he’d walked into the boardroom and found Mazzi in there, his feet propped up on a table, eating cheese and drinking wine while looking at the stills of Dan struggling in the toilet of the yacht he’d just spent five thousand dollars to hire for the day.
Mazzi Hegan listened to his partner—who knew more about advertising and design than anyone he’d ever known—unload and waited until he’d finished. Then, looking up at him, he said, “Yeah, but have you seen these shots? They’re bloody good, though.”
