Hair-Trigger (12 page)

16

T
he telephone brought Jack Lofton out of a fitful sleep that had been broken earlier by a hangover that he'd subdued with two shots of tequila and an aspirin. The digital radio clock said
9:47
. He made it to the bottom of the sofa-bed and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”

“So, you're
there
.”

He lay on his back and opened one eye again. Near the top of the wall behind him, light was coming through the curtains inside the window ledge. “Hi.”

“I've been calling,” Marva said, “but apparently you're never home.”

“I've been kind of busy.”

There was a half-hearted laugh. “I thought you were dead or something. I heard the gunshots the other night, and got a call from Tyrone who said that he and his friends were blasting you. And you were shooting too? I could not
believe
it.
The police were around, knocking on doors, but I said I didn't know anything.”

The off-white walls around him had a bluish tint that reminded him of a gas station washroom, though the cupboards over the sink in the kitchenette were a modern design of fake wood, and the counter and stainless steel sink looked new. But now, lying naked and a little sick, he saw his bachelor apartment as a cell with a puke green carpet.

“So, what's going on?” she asked. “You didn't get shot or go to the hospital or anything?”

“No, your friends can't aim.”

“I think you hit their mirror.”

He reached up to the small table behind the TV for a can of stale beer, but it was empty. “One of the side mirrors?”

“I don't know, but I think they're still gunning for you.”

Checking another can, he tasted ash as a butt floated against his lips.

“So, why haven't you phoned?”

He wiped his mouth as he went back on one elbow. “I don't know. . . . Maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while.”

“What?
Why—because of Tyrone?”

“No, it's just not working out. The hassles you give me about sex—”

“Because of
sex
?
You would break up with me because of that?
I never would have believed you were like that.” Whether there was some kind of stupid religious conflict at work or she'd been telling the truth about being fucked up, he didn't care. Not with a posse trying to put a bullet in him when he didn't even know where his own gun was. “I used to get into trouble for wanting sex
too
much,” she said.

As long as she didn't think he was afraid to see her. After he hung up, Lofton crossed the few feet of carpet to the tile that marked the boundary of the kitchen, and went into the tiny bathroom to the left of the refrigerator.

He was flushing the toilet when the telephone rang. He knew it was Marva again. When he picked it up she asked if he was really serious about not seeing her anymore. Lofton sat on the edge of his bed and tiredly advised her not to play head games with men if she wanted to stay with them.

“You know, I can get even with you—just ask anyone,” she said. “I called a guy's wife one time and told her all about him and me. And I once called the po
lice
on a boyfriend and told them he stole my jewellery. They took him to the police station and kept him there for, like, five hours. I could tell them that it was you shooting on the street, and that I saw your gun too.”

“If you did that, then they'd have to know about Tyrone, and I don't think he'd be too happy about that.”

“I don't care about Tyrone!
Or
,” she said, “I could tell Tyrone where you live, if he still wants to find you. If I wanted to.”

Her threats were triggering an unexpected response. She was, in effect, showing him that she cared for him. Maybe staying with her would be a notch above getting shot when he walked out his door. Lying back, he closed his eyes and asked, “Why are you even bothering? Obviously it wasn't really working.”

“It was okay. I was wondering what you were all about. If you were real or not.”

“So you're saying you still want to go out.”

There was a pause. “I thought you're saying you don't want to.”

“I'm just trying to weigh my options.”

“So . . .
you
want to still?”

“Well, maybe, if you still do. But listen, and this is important: I don't give a shit about your ex-boyfriend or his friends, but between the two of us, I had to get rid of my gun, so don't be telling him about me—when I'm over there, or anything like that. I could kick his head off if I had to, but I don't want to be shot at. That would just be fucking stupid, wouldn't it?”

“Yeah, I don't want to have anything to do with him. They're crazy, all of them.”

“All right. And maybe it's better if you come over here more, instead of me going there.”

“Yeah. So, do you want to come over now, or me go there, or what?”

“Later. I have some appointments first.”

After he hung up, Lofton lumbered over to the kitchenette for a beer. There was a
Playboy
calendar and a faded
Clockwork Orange
poster on the wall. Taped to the back of his door was a picture of his favourite superhero, Batman, which he'd carefully cut from a large graphic book with a razor. He regretted having been wasted when he got the Reaper tattoo. It had no doubt seemed appropriate at the time, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, but it didn't have the philosophical depth of the Dark Knight, whose story, in its purest form, had all the elements of a Greek tragedy. It should have been emblazoned on his shoulder instead. At the end of the day, Bruce Wayne was just a man trying to do the right fucking thing.

As he sat on the edge of the fold-out couch, Lofton looked down at his barbed wire and the lightning zapping up his arms, then at his beer belly and partially swollen penis. He held it at the base and gave it a slow shake, then took a drink. A half-boner for a girl threatening to have him killed because she wanted him. Now that was something special.

17

R
owe was pleased when Patricia called him the next day to let him know that she'd enjoyed their night together. He wasn't quite sure what to make of her soft-spoken intensity and those remote, slightly crossed blue eyes. Her hat conjured the image of a tall, depression-era lady outside a country church. She was a mother from southwestern Ontario after all, but she'd married a punk, and there was that unexpected passive-aggression thing in bed.

She was renting the main floor and basement of a house. There had been dirty dishes, papers and art magazines, dolls, aluminum and various other materials lying around. From a photo on the refrigerator he could see she also wore librarian-type glasses. Most of the furniture was secondhand or even antique, some of it bare wood, some of it with flaking paint. Downstairs in the basement, between the washroom and girl's bedroom, there had been a bookcase with university texts, poetry, feminist journals and medical books like
Our Bodies, Ourselves
, organic healing, something to do with witchcraft, novels about vampires, and nonfiction dealing with sadomasochism and fetishist fashion.

A week later, as he was going through invoices, Rowe thought about Jack Lofton.
After letting him sweat for a couple of days he'd let him know that he'd confiscated the gun for having almost been shot, and got rid of it.

Lofton said he'd woken up on a pile of garbage in Chinatown at six in the morning with no recollection whatsoever of having seen Rowe that night. His knuckles were scraped, he was missing his cane, a shoe, his belt, and a few hundred dollars. Although he didn't know how he arrived there, he had a vague sense of being mugged by three Asians, and still claimed that he'd been in a shoot-out in Parkdale.

Rowe was printing up a purchase order when Robert O'Hara walked into the store. For the most part his face had healed.
When Rowe told him that he had some returns to ship back to Prentice Hall and Wiley, O'Hara checked his tray in the back room and put his attaché case down. He'd apparently replaced the textbooks he used to carry with issues of
The
Financial Post
and stock reports, but Rowe assumed he was packing coke and a gun.

He tore a sheet from the old dot matrix printer and put it aside, then took the purchase binder from the shelf behind him and phoned McGraw-Hill Ryerson. As he was negotiating the steps in the voice mail to reach the trade desk, the second line began ringing. O'Hara picked it up in the other room. Rowe gave the order taker the account number, and looked out the window while she keyed it in. Across the street, sunlight on a house faded as a cloud passed the sun.
A thin tree, roped to a metal pole, blew in the wind.

O'Hara came into the room wearing a slick pink and turquoise dress shirt, his hair in a ponytail, and went into the main computer to check the price and availability of
Introduction To The Mathematics Of Demography
.

A little later, Rowe went into the back where O'Hara was cutting down a box, and asked if he'd returned to his apartment yet. O'Hara said he had, but his girlfriend was trying to get him to move for real in case those assholes came back. He'd shown her the Glock and Ruger so she'd stop ragging on him, but swore that he hadn't told her anything about the holdup.

Again, Rowe told him that he should either get rid of the guns they'd used, or keep them stashed off his property. Only after things died down would he bother taking a look for the Beretta. O'Hara didn't seem overly concerned, and just wanted to know when they were going to do their next bank.

Patricia Meredith made a bookmark for Rowe using a photocopy of an original illustration of Winnie the Pooh with his head in a jar of honey. Underneath was a verse about not knowing which was better: the eating or the anticipation, and on the back she'd written, “To Derek: The Best Honey Eater, Ever.”

Despite the gesture she still seemed intellectual to him in a way that wasn't susceptible to his line of talk. For a woman who'd placed a lonely hearts ad and accepted him in her bed that first night, he sensed a resistant undertow that gave him the feeling that he was in uncharted waters. She had university degrees and friends who were dykes and poets, plus she was sort of an artist herself with a vaguely prickly personality.

He was to meet her with a few of her friends at the Black Bull on Queen Street West, where someone's band was playing. Lofton, who'd grudgingly agreed to join him, walked with a slight limp as they approached an older brick building. Period lamps on the patio glowed over nearby motorcycles.

Lofton hung back looking surly when they found the booth where she and her friends were sitting. There were three other women, two of them around forty, and a younger one whose boyfriend was one of the musicians. There wasn't enough room for both of them, so Lofton said he'd go stand at the bar. Rowe, knowing he'd leave, went with him to find another booth.

Patricia looked unusually elegant in a black dress among the bikers, bums, students, arty types and old speed freaks. Rowe saw from the instruments set up by the window that the makeshift stage had been moved since the last time he'd been there, though paintings by local artists still hung on the walls.

“She's good looking,” Lofton remarked as he tapped out a cigarette. “She's probably got very lickable feet.”

“I haven't gotten around to that.”

“You're not into it?”

“I'm into anything if a girl's been in the shower.”

Lofton looked around as he exhaled. “I want a woman's feet to smell like feet. Natural. I don't want them smelling like fucking soap.”

“I'm into them not smelling like anything.” Rowe glanced over his left shoulder at the players at the pool table.
The one with the blue hair and red beard had a cobra on his neck. “Want to play a game later?”

“Maybe. Where's the waitress?”

“She'll be around.”

“I've gotta get some chips or something.”

“Get me a Blue while you're up. I'll get the next round.”

Lofton stayed where he was.

“Don't bother. Here she comes.”

Ten minutes later, Patricia walked over and sat down beside him. Her breeziness was belied by a curious squint and a note of reproach as she tilted her head and said, “My friends don't think you're being very nice to me.”

“There wasn't any room. I couldn't leave Jack with nobody to talk to.”

“Don't worry about me,” Lofton said.

“Which one of your friends said that?” Rowe asked, looking over at her table.

“Maggie, mostly. She looks out for me.”

“Who's Maggie?”

“In the green sweater.”

“She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth,” Lofton said, in what might have been a put-down or a compliment.

Patricia folded her arms. “I like your tattoos. I almost got one once but I chickened out. I was going to get a butterfly or maybe a bird.”

“You want to go to Way Cool Tattoos near Yonge and Wellesley. Ask for Rex, and say Jack sent you.” He took a drag, and flicked his cigarette over the ashtray. “He's a fucking artist.”

“I don't think I'll do it now. This was back when my husband and the people we hung around with were into that kind of thing.”

Rowe was wondering if she was being a bit too friendly with Lofton.

“Hey freaks, what's happening?”

Robert O'Hara was standing behind them with Betty, who looked like a goth Natasha in torn fishnets, and some pencil-necked, leather-clad asexual with short green hair. O'Hara looked wired as he glanced around, snapping his gum. “Hey, there's Rusty.” He tossed his hair back and leaned down to Rowe. “I saw those guys on the street tonight. You know, who I had that trouble with.”

“Oh? Anything happen?”

“No, I don't think they saw me. It'd be nice if I had a couple of friends with me next time I run into them, or the circumstances are different. You know,” he said, cocking his finger, “bang bang.”