The Darkening Archipelago (4 page)

He examined his face. The twisted white scar that cut across his right eyebrow was still visible after ten months, and likely always would be. The disfigurement on his left cheek was also plainly evident. They were ugly reminders of his time in Oracle, Alberta last spring, when he had come face to face with a killer and had nearly become a victim himself. It was hard to believe it had been almost a year.

He pushed back the memory and studied the most recent round of bruising. His left cheek was red and a little puffy. Maybe he'd put some ice on it when he got home. Or he might find a cheap cut of steak in his fridge and slap it on like they did in the movies. Either way, by morning he'd have a good bruise. He pushed his hair into some semblance of order and stepped out of the locker room.

“How you doing, Cole?” asked Denman Scott. Scott was seated on a plastic orange chair in the dim lobby of the East Hastings Boxing Club. He wore a jean jacket over a hooded sweatshirt and sported a tan flat cap on his closely shaved head.

“I'm all right,” Cole said.

“Sorry about that. About distracting you.”

Cole smiled at him. “I'll never learn, it seems.”

“Aw, come on now,” said Denman, rising and moving toward the flimsy doors that opened into the night. “You're looking really good in the ring. Really.”

Cole smiled again. “I actually feel pretty good. Lighter, you know? I feel like my movement is coming back. Like I'm actually moving like a fighter again. But I'm slow with my hands, and when I fight a guy like Fingers, who's what, half my age? Man, it's tough going.”

“I'm proud of you, Cole.”

“Thanks, Denny.”

They stepped into the night. The air was damp but mild.

“Where to?” asked Denman.

“I've got to head downtown. Go to the office. Make a few stops.”

“You want to catch a bite to eat and a pint?”

Cole sighed. “Can't say no. Could use a few jars right now.”

They walked west along Hastings, past Main Street and the crowd of drug dealers, prostitutes, vagrants, homeless people, and frightened tourists in front of the Carnegie Centre. People nodded to Denman, a few said his name, and three or four stopped him to chat briefly. All Cole warranted was, “Up, down, or rock?” A query about his preferred narcotic. He smiled and said he was just passing through, and nodded toward Denman. “You're quite the celebrity these days,” Cole said.

“Depends on who you ask.”

“Those folks think you're a hero. A modern-day Robin Hood.”

Scott smiled. “That would make the mayor Prince John, wouldn't it?”

Cole looked serious. “And the chief of police the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

Denman smiled even wider. “Guess you're Little John then?”

“Who you calling Little John?” Cole tried to punch Scott in the arm, but his friend simply shifted his weight and Cole slipped past him and down onto the street. Scott pulled him back by the sleeve of his jacket. “Easy there, slugger.”

“You're a slippery little bugger. ”

“Not so much slippery as sleek.”

“One of these days you're going to have to teach me how to do that.”

“Anytime. The offer stands. But you've got to leave your boxing gloves at home.”

“One step at a time. It took a near-death experience to get me back in the ring. I don't know what it's going to take to get me to dress up in those pyjamas you wear and prance around your dojo.”

“How about a near-life experience?” asked Scott.

“Don't start on me tonight, Denny.”

Scott simply smiled. “As you wish, grasshopper,” he said with an accent more practiced than real. Cole couldn't keep the grin off his face, though it did hurt to smile.

They arrived at the corner of Hastings and Cambie and waited for the light, while the working poor and the desperate did business in the Quick Cash store on the corner, making criminally large interest payments to cash a cheque without an address. The light changed and they crossed the street to the Dominion Building, an ancient office tower that was home to Cole's Blackwater Strategies and another dozen lost causes. The building had been the tallest in the British Empire in its day, but it was now dwarfed by dozens of office towers, condominiums, and the phallic Harbour Centre a few blocks away.

“Stairs?” asked Denman, turning to start the climb to the eighth floor.

“Not tonight,” said Blackwater, pushing the elevator button.

“Come on, you promised.”

“And I take them every morning, I swear it, Denman. But Mary is waiting.”

Denman chuckled and positioned himself next to his friend.

“I mean it. Every morning.”

“I didn't say a word,” said Scott, looking up at the floor indicator above the elevator.

Blackwater Strategies had been on the eighth floor of the Dominion Building for nearly four years. When Cole Blackwater had signed the lease on the two-room office, he had promised himself that he would take the stairs up in the morning and down at night, but soon he had abandoned that pledge, slipping into a self-imposed sloth. His arrival in Vancouver, in pursuit of his estranged daughter and in deference to the will of his ex-wife, Jennifer Paulson, had marked the nadir in his short life. The lethargy it induced was a vicious cycle, thought Cole, waiting for the elevator. You stop exercising, and your body starts to go to pot. You start to go to pot and you get depressed. You get depressed and you want to eat more. You eat more and you get more depressed. You get more depressed and it gets harder to exercise. So you lie around and watch television and feel sorry for yourself. Okay, Cole admitted to himself,
he
felt sorry for himself. But Oracle had delivered the much-needed slap on the side of the head that Cole needed to get off the couch and back into action. When he'd returned from Oracle, he'd started visiting the gym and taking the stairs again.

It hadn't solved all his problems, not by a long shot. But it had helped.

The elevator chimed and the two friends waited for the door to open.

“Last chance,” said Denman.

Cole shot him a look and stepped into the waiting elevator.

Another thing had changed since his return from Alberta. Cole had begun spending more time with Denman Scott. He had considered the compact aikido master his best friend since moving to Vancouver four years ago, but when Cole came unravelled the previous spring, it was Denman who had helped him pull himself back together.

The door to Blackwater Strategies was ajar when the two men stepped onto the eighth floor.

As they entered the brightly lit room, Mary Patterson was seated behind her desk, talking on the phone. Cole looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty on a Friday night. Denman sat in a club chair opposite Mary's desk, while Cole opened the door to his own office and entered to turn on the desk lamp. When Mary hung up the phone, she greeted Denman. Cole emerged and said hello.

“Grace Ravenwing is hoping for a call, Cole. And I've looked into tickets to Port Hardy as you asked.”

“Thanks, Mary, you're amazing. What's it going to set me back?”

“About five hundred round trip, with taxes.”

Cole sighed. Five bills was still big money for the financially challenged Cole Blackwater. “Okay,” he said. “Go ahead and book the flights. But just one-way. I have no idea when this thing is going to happen. I can book the return myself when I'm there.”

“When do you want to leave?”

“What did Grace say?”

“She was pretty upset. I think she could use your support.”

“Okay, book it for tomorrow afternoon. I'll clear it with Jennifer. And I guess we'll have to postpone the Nexus Energy thing.”

“I'll take care of it, Cole,” said Mary.

He didn't like putting off a paying client, especially one like Nexus Energy, who held the distinction of being his first business client who paid him a monthly retainer. And all he had to do for them was join a weekly conference call to discuss communications and government relations. It was easy money.

“What are you doing for Nexus?” asked Denman, leaning against the door frame.

“Going to get all the company brass in a room next week and talk them through the government-relations angle of this big tidal power project they want to do. See if we can't pry some cash out of the feds for something other than the tar sands. Maybe get some diversification happening in our national energy policy.”

“Can I tell them that you can be available by phone if they need you?” asked Mary.

“Sure, that's great. Please,” said Cole. “You'll have to give them Archie's — Grace's number,” he said, his face growing pale. “I never can seem to get a strong cell signal up there. And no internet on Parish Island.”

Cole busied himself in his office. Denman stepped inside. “Jesus, Cole, this place is a shithouse. When are you going to let Mary get this place organized?”

Cole was seated at his desk, which was buried beneath papers. His laptop was open on a stack of newspapers nearly a foot high. He held a wireless keyboard on his lap. “It's all good in here, Denman. I know where everything is.”

“This place is a fire hazard is all I'm saying.”

“Out,” he said, not turning to look at his friend.

They crossed Cambie between traffic and threaded their way between college kids smoking outside the doors of the Cambie Hotel. Always the same every Friday night, the Cambie was a raucous riot of sound and sight and smells. Televisions playing a hockey game blared from every corner. The dozen round and rectangular tables were crowded with young men and women from the surrounding campuses, along with a rougher assortment of mostly men, but some women, from the eastside neighbourhood. Cole and Denman pushed their way to the bar, Cole performing his perfunctory scan of the joint for friend or foe. He'd been doing this for so long that it was second nature. And though he'd had the snot beaten out of him in a bar in Oracle when he failed to notice three thugs lying in wait for him, he felt he could let his guard down a little when he drank with Denman. Not only was Denman a black belt, but he was universally respected in East Vancouver. College kids didn't pick fights with the stout Cole or the solid Denman, and the locals knew that Denman was on their side, watching their backs.

The men ordered pints of Kick-Ass from the bar, and Denman paid for the beer with a ten-dollar bill. They touched glasses and drank deeply.

Cole sighed appreciatively. Denman licked a bit of foam from his lips and looked around the room. Denman nodded toward the far corner of the bar, past the pool tables. “Over there,” he said, distracting Cole from the twenty-year-old college girl he was admiring. “Marty and Dusty.” Cole looked up to see Dusty Stevens waving.

“I don't want to get into it with those guys tonight, Denman.”

“Then don't,” said Denman, deftly slipping between bodies to make his way toward the waving arm.

The four men sat at a long rectangular table occupied by half a dozen other drinkers, only a few of which had retained all their teeth. The further you got from the door, thought Cole, the older and rougher the clientele got. But Cole didn't care. He had finished his second pint and was well into his third, and dinner in the form of a greasy hamburger and fries had just arrived. Cole bit into the burger and felt relieved. It had been two hours since he had left the East Hastings Boxing Club, and he was famished.

“Sorry to hear about Archie,” said Dusty Stevens, looking over his spectacles at Cole. “From everything you've told us, he was a stand-up guy. A good man.”

“He was,” said Cole, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and taking a gulp of Kick-Ass. “He was one of the good guys.”

“How'd he die, if you don't mind my asking?” said Martin Middlemarch, sipping his orange juice. Cole had chided him upon joining the table, saying he didn't even know they served oj at the Cambie. “They call it mix,” grinned Middlemarch as he raised his glass, explaining that he had stopped drinking altogether and was training for an ultramarathon that would take place in June. That had taken the wind out of Cole Blackwater's sails, given that Middlemarch was ten years his senior.

Cole regarded his friends across the table. He had known Martin and Dusty long before he had scuttled across the country from Ottawa four years ago. Now they managed to meet at least once a week at the Cambie to hoist a few and swap war stories.

“Are you okay, Cole?” asked Martin.

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

“Not going to ride us about the latest green-washing from the forestry or mining sector?” asked Dusty, almost sheepishly.

“Not tonight,” he said, shoving french fries into his mouth and chasing them with the last of his third pint.

“Don't get him started,” said Martin, smiling.

“Oh, I still think you're both sellouts. Hell, if Archie was here he'd probably tie you into the whole salmon farming thing he's been working on. Likely pin the death of wild salmon stocks on logging in old-growth forests that the two of you used to fight for when you were with Greenpeace, and now try to spin for the forestry giants.” Cole spoke low and fast.