WHITE NOISE
A HELEN KEREMOS MYSTERY
(It should be noted that Sabriano is a fictitious island.)
WHITE
NOISE
A HELEN KEREMOS MYSTERY
by
Eve Zaremba
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. The author has used names of some existing places and organizations in the interest of verisimilitude, but any resemblance to real people and places is coincidental and unintended. It should be noted that there is no island called Sabriano off the coast of British Columbia.
CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Zaremba, Eve
White noise
“A Helen Keremos mystery”.
ISBN 0-929005-97-X
I. Title.
PS8599.A74W44 1997 C813'.54 C97-930335-4
PR9199.3.Z37W44 1997
Copyright © 1997 by Eve Zaremba
Printed and bound in Canada
Edited by Sarah Swartz
Copyedited by Deborah Viets
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
720 Bathurst Street Suite 301
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2R4
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
PART I
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
PART II
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
POSTSCRIPT … EVER AFTER
For Ottie, who is Helen Keremos’s biggest fan. And for all of Helen’s fans — past, present and future.
PROLOGUE — SONNY BURKE
He stepped out of Vancouver’s fancy new airport terminal, looked around anxiously and waited until a cab pulled up in front of him. With an obvious sign of relief, Sonny Burke threw his bag inside and slid into the back seat. Once he had gotten off the plane from Hong Kong, he’d done all the time-honoured things that travellers do — changed a handful of HK dollars for Canadian currency and bought phone cards. Now he was safely in a cab and on his way into the city.
Sonny Burke was a neat, handsome black man in his forties, his closely cropped hair greying at the temples. For this, his first trip out of Hong Kong in many years he wore his usual chinos, a blue cotton sport shirt, expensive sneakers and a name-brand wind-breaker. His cheap nylon bag, purchased from a street merchant just off Nathan Road in Kowloon was new and didn’t look very full. He was travelling light.
Never having been to Canada before, he looked out the cab window curiously as they left the airport. The Lower Mainland of British Columbia was at its best this August morning. From the bridge over the Fraser River he saw the Coast Mountains in the first dim glow of the rising sun, and for a moment the city of Vancouver spreading out before him. Then the cab hit traffic and the early stop-and-go of Granville Street, which was taking him right into the heart of downtown.
Sonny Burke made a living as a middleman, a fixer. He either sold information outright or contracted for jobs. Not that he ever soiled his hands by actually performing any of the tasks for which he was paid. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of who, what, where, how and especially “how much,” he would subcontract jobs for somewhat less than his quoted price and keep the difference. Someone else always did the work and took all the risks.
In essence his forte was information, his competitive advantage a phenomenal memory and his assets contacts throughout the world. This allowed him to do all business via the phone lines — mostly voice, some e-mail — with no other records, no paper trail. Totally safe. He had an enviable reputation, satisfied clients and attracted much repeat business. And no wonder, he was knowledgeable, always available, reliable and not too greedy.
He operated his one-man business from a second-floor bar called Waltzing Matilda in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong. Actually Sonny owned the whole five-storey building, which in addition to the Matilda bar housed a storefront restaurant of the same name on the first floor, Sonny’s private sanctum on the third and on the fourth and fifth floors quarters for the large extended family of Bill Kui. Bill Kui was the manager of the Waltzing Matilda restaurant and bar, besides being Sonny’s sometime sex-partner.
Sonny was an American Vietnam War veteran who had managed to stay in Asia after 1973. Where he came from, how he happened to have acquired the building and established himself and his business in Hong Kong is a long and not absolutely clear story.
As Sonny told it on the rare occasions when he bothered to talk about his past, his hometown was Detroit. His father had migrated there along with thousands of other blacks from segregated South Carolina late in World War II to work for Ford. His father worked hard, married a local girl and together they started a family. Sonny’s childhood was spent in a small working-class house on a quiet street of similar houses before urban decay, crack cocaine and globalization undid many of the promises of the sixties.
Sonny joined the US Army and was sent to Vietnam before his nineteenth birthday and before he knew or understood much about the world. That education was provided by the military and the war. As happens even in the best families, Sonny’s family life unravelled. First his sister married and moved away. Then his mother died. Consequently, his father quit his job and moved back to his South Carolina extended family, which Sonny didn’t know and by then didn’t care to know.
With no home to go to, Sonny stayed in the army. By the time the US abandoned the war, he had gotten smart, been made master-sergeant and had a lot of money. How? he didn’t say. It was generally assumed that he came by it the usual way — selling army supplies and equipment to the Vietnamese and selling dope to American GIs.
These reputedly ill-gotten gains bought Sonny Waltzing Matilda and permitted the establishment of this black American ex-pat as a small-time but reliable fixer on the fringes of Hong Kong’s mighty underworld. “Reputedly” because nobody knew very much for sure about Sonny Burke.
Now it was August in British Columbia, and Sonny Burke was making his first foray out of Hong Kong in a long time — that mighty by-blow of Western capitalism and Cantonese enterprise soon to revert to China’s control.
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
“Hello, Helen? Helen, wake up! I need help. Bastards are after me!”
There are a number of possible responses on hearing this at dawn over your bedside phone. Like “who is after you?”, “why are they after you?” and even “what do you expect me to do about it at this time of the morning?”
All Helen Keremos could think of in her groggy state was, “Who the hell are you?”
“Sonny Burke, for Pete’s sake! How soon they forget!”
“Sonny! What’s up, man? Where are you?”
“In Vancouver! Damn it, woman, you invited me, remember? You and Julie. Where is she anyway? She doesn’t answer her phone. Her voice mail is no use to me. Man, oh man! This is an emergency!”
“Wait a minute. Sure we invited you but you never answered! You never told us you were coming! Damn it, Sonny, you could’ve let us know ahead of time!”
“Details, details. Like I started to say, I think I need to disappear for a little while just about now …” Sonny’s tone, which was normally energetic and confident became tentative, almost frightened.
“OK, you have an emergency, so questions can wait. No point spending time on the phone. Where are you?”
“Coffee shop in this sleazebag hotel. The Gateway. It’s on Granville Street, I think. The taxi brought me here from the airport. I’ve been trying to raise either you or Julie …”
“Stay put. I’ll pick you up. Bye.” Helen hung up.
Next to her Julie stirred, raised her head and sat up.
“Don’t tell me. Sonny Burke is in town. He actually walked out of Matilda! I cannot believe it. He never left that place once all the time I hung out with him in Hong Kong.”
“Doesn’t sound like he left of his own free will. More like escaped. I’ll know more soon. I’m picking him up from a hotel coffee shop on Granville.” Helen hastily threw clothes onto her lanky frame. Jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. She stood for a moment in front of the dresser mirror and ran her fingers through her thick grey hair.
“Well, get some breakfast for us while you’re at it. There’s nothing in the house.”
“Sure. You going to be here when I get back with him?”
“Too right, I’ll be here. Why not?” Julie pretended not to understand. She and Sonny had been lovers not that long ago … Now she was having an affair with Helen …
“Just askin’.” Grinning, Helen blew Julie a kiss. “I think I’ll take your wheels, OK? Save opening the garage.”
Without waiting for an answer, she picked up a set of keys from the dresser and sped through the door.
“Do I have a choice?” Julie shouted after her. “Just get lots of muffins. And butter. I’ll have coffee on.”
CHAPTER 2
It had rained that night in Vancouver, but with the dawn the sky had cleared. Helen drove with the top down in the pale early morning light through almost empty streets. Through amber lights blinking nervously, high above intersections. Between rows of small shabby homes and ugly lot-line to lot-line mansions all made of the same stucco-covered plywood. Through neighbourhoods bursting with year-round greenery and between accretions of run-down storefronts. Tires hissing on wet pavement, she took shortcuts through the lanes and alleys that bisect this comfortable city. Julie’s bright yellow, almost-new Suzuki Sidekick, with No Fear on one side and No Problem on the other, raced over Granville Bridge.
The rising August sun hit the edge of the mountains that frame Vancouver and illuminated the waters of English Bay and the condos of False Creek below. Someone had once described a view of Vancouver as a magnificent setting without a jewel.
Granville Street between the bridge and West Georgia Street is no urban gem. “Sleazy” says it best. A few blocks down the wide one-way street lined with adult video stores, bars, cheque-cashing emporiums, dingy diners, pawnshops and cheap hotels is the Gateway, its corner twenty-four-hour coffee shop a big draw at this time of day when most everything else is closed.
As Helen drove up in front of it, she saw Sonny looking out anxiously through a rain-spattered window of the café. Immediately she waved, and immediately he waved back in reply, quickly turning away to collect his belongings and get out of there.
While she waited for him to come out, Helen looked around her. Besides her little car, there were six others parked at the Gateway Hotel corner plus one dirty blue delivery van, which had an address in the Delta. Visible through the mud on the van’s sides were Chinese idiograms and in bold letters “FRESH” GARDEN VEGETABLES. What do sign painters think quotation marks mean? she wondered, not for the first time. The cars were empty of occupants. But someone was in the driver’s seat of the van; the motor was running and two youths were sliding quickly out of the side door. She had just time to note these facts, when Sonny shouldered his way through the coffee-shop entrance, bag in hand.
What happened next took only seconds. Before the door shut behind Sonny, the two young men from the van had him between them and were hustling him into the already moving van. It sped off in a cloud of dirty exhaust, taking Sonny and his bag away, right in front of Helen’s nose!
Muttering under her breath, Helen took off after the van in grim pursuit. She was angry, mostly at herself. Obviously she should have taken Sonny’s words more seriously and gotten more information out of him over the phone. “An emergency,” he’d said. “They are after me” he’d said. Well, “they” certainly were. They were Chinese judging by the men in the van. Probably gang members connected with some Hong Kong triad. After all, Sonny had been operating there for years and sooner or latter was bound to come up against a situation that even his considerable connections couldn’t handle. Now, judging from the speed with which this “emergency” situation had followed him to Canada, Sonny’s trouble involved a powerful Hong Kong triad. If so, he was in bad, bad trouble.
And here he was, having brought his trouble with him to Vancouver, asking for her help! As she sped up so as not to lose the van, Helen remained unenthusiastic about Sonny Burke. For one thing Sonny’s sudden arrival was bound to put some strain on her already rocky relationship with Julie. Not that she thought for a minute Julie would take up with Sonny again. That affair was well and truly over, having ended more than a year ago with an ectopic pregnancy, which had almost cost Julie her life. Still, Helen did not particularly care to have Sonny around even as a visitor and even less as a fugitive from something heavy. Go to the wall for the likes of him!?
Whatever was behind his panic he most probably had coming to him. There was nothing she needed less just at this moment than to take on a triad with which she personally had no quarrel. Damn!
Keeping the blue van in sight, Helen didn’t try to catch it. It would have been pointless. What could she do if she caught it? Ram it? Force it off the road? This wasn’t a Hollywood movie and besides Julie would never forgive her if she put as much as a scratch on the Suzuki. All she could do was follow the blue van as it buzzed across town heading east. For some moments, Helen thought it was making for the Trans-Canada Route 1, but it turned right onto Boundary Road and accelerated. Up, up and away across Kingsway and past Central Park. On top of the hill, high above the north arm of the Fraser River, it made a sudden sharp turn left at a light and disappeared from Helen’s view into Burnaby. She shifted down and raced after it.
For a few long seconds, the street around her seemed empty. Then out of the corner of her eye, Helen saw the back of the van disappearing down a lane. She followed, breaking wildly, turning the little car and plunging at the van’s brake lights just as they vanished behind a closing garage door. Crash! The overhead door stopped on the bumper of Julie’s almost-new car. Without a second’s hesitation, Helen was out of the stalled car, down on her belly through the seventy-centimetre gap between the door and the bumper — and inside the garage. As she stood up, adjusting her sight to the dim light, she saw Sonny being bundled out of the sliding side door of the van into the space between it and the garage wall. Two young men were trying to hurry him towards a small door at the far end of the garage and out of her sight.
“Sonny!” she shouted, “This way, man, this way! Under the door!” and dived back out, hoping he could follow.
CHAPTER 3
Turning abruptly, Sonny broke away from his captors, dropped to the ground and slid, headfirst and arms outstretched like a base-stealing runner, along the cement garage floor. Before Sonny’s captors could get untangled from each other in the narrow space, Sonny was out of there and sitting next to Helen inside the Suzuki.
It restarted obediently. Helen slipped into reverse, the car moved backwards and the garage door immediately swung all the way down, trapping under it the two young men, who were struggling to follow Sonny out of the garage. If they could reach him before the rescue vehicle could be manoeuvred out into the street, it was game over. Using every one of the few precious seconds of delay, Helen frantically backed down the lane. She hit the roadway at speed, straightened out and aimed back the way they had come. Engine screaming as she forced it into first, second, third gear as fast as it would go, the Suzuki took off down the hill, was lucky to hit Marine Way with the intersection clear and sped on west, back to town.
“Whew! Man, oh, man, that was close! Are they following us?” Sonny’s voice was still full of adrenaline. Automatically, Helen looked in the mirror for the tenth time.
“No. No sight of anything. I think we are OK for now. So keep breathing, Sonny, soon have you safe.”
“Safe! For now … you better believe it, just for now! How long will it be till they find me again? …”
“Long enough for us to get some breakfast, anyway. Julie is waiting for her muffins.” Helen looked over to gauge his reaction. Sonny was huddled in the passenger seat, his eyes wide open, his face contorted. He was holding his left hand awkwardly in front of him. “Hey, man, you’re hurt!”
“Thanks for noticing. Yeah, I scraped it good getting out of there. Never in my life been happier to see anyone than you in that garage. I thought I’d had it for sure …”
“Hey, what are friends for? So what’s the story? Who were these guys anyway?” She was now sincerely curious.
“Oh, they aren’t important. Small-time local punks, I guess. But somebody is mad at me in Hong Kong. And they won’t quit.”
“Yeah, that’s clear.” Helen looked over at Sonny, “Hey, you lost your things. That’s too bad. What did you have in your bag? Anything important? Money, papers? Not your address book, I hope.”
“How soon they forget! Helen, this is me, Sonny Burke! I don’t own an address book, I never forget. Remember now?”
“Right. My error. Sonny ‘Mr.Total Recall’ Burke. So what was in that bag?”
“Nothing that cannot be replaced. Clothes. Gifts for you and Julie. For you, a bottle of single malt Scotch.”
“I’ll miss that.”
“You should only worry about missing some Scotch! Small-time or not, when these guys get to us, they won’t be real nice to you for messing up their snatch.”
“Like I said, I don’t intend to let them get you just yet. After breakfast maybe. Or get me for that matter.” Helen added after a long breath. She knew that by then the distinction was academic. By rescuing Sonny she’d become one of the players. But what was the game? “So what’s the problem? What does that Hong Kong mob want you for?”
“I don’t know, honest to God, I don’t know!”
“You kidding me? And you, the smartest fixer in Hong Kong, which means in the business, and you don’t know whose toes you stepped on? I don’t believe it!”
“Would I shit you? I don’t know. Give me time, maybe I can figure it out …”
“Yeah, you do that, do that …” Helen fell silent thinking over the situation. Her thoughts weren’t happy. Then, “Here we are. Just sit here, I’ll get our breakfast.”
Helen pulled into a parking space in front of a donut shop in a strip mall. From there she went next door to a convenience store and came back laden with food. “OK. Next stop, my place. Look, Sonny I’ll have to ditch this car, so I’ll leave you at the door with this stuff and see you later. OK?”
“Julie?” Sonny began tentatively.
“Julie. She’s there. Still in bed, probably. Remind her to make the coffee so it’s ready when I get back home. By the way, I did remember about you and your Diet Coke. Six-pack, right here.”
“All is forgiven. Hey, thanks, Helen.”
“Save it. Ah, here we are.” They turned into a driveway, drove past the house and stopped at a two-storey garage facing the back lane. “That blue door up those stairs. Get Julie to look after that arm of yours. There are bandages and vitamin E in the bathroom. See you.”
Helen and the little yellow car disappeared. The blue door opened and Julie, stunning in short shorts and a minimalist tank top, looking like the perfect advertisement for Australian beaches, admitted Sonny into Helen’s home.
CHAPTER 4
The best part of an hour later, Helen climbed up the red cedar stairs, fitted her key into the blue door and stepped into her living quarters. The home and office of Helen Keremos, Private Investigator, was perched over a garage, where she kept her ancient pickup. It consisted of a small bedroom, office, bathroom and one large living room-cum-kitchen with a walkout to a west-facing deck.
She had a long-term lease on the place from the owner of the property, who lived in the house at the street side of the lot. This owner was a friend and an ex-lover.
Sonny sat neatly at the table in the centre of the room dressed only in his jockeys and a T-shirt with “Gallerie WOMEN ARTISTS” on the front. Borrowed from Julie, of course. He was holding a Diet Coke in a freshly bandaged hand and watching Julie busily mending his torn pants. His jacket hung over the back of a chair.
The broadcloth shirt he’d arrived in, now freshly washed, was dripping over the sink. The large round table was spread with muffins, bread, butter, marmalade and a jar of Julie’s Vegemite. A carton of orange juice and a carton of milk sat together on the kitchen counter. The smell of coffee filled the air.
Julie looked up at Helen, who was observing the scene.
“What’s this about ‘ditching’ my yellow darling? And what took you so long? And … hey, that’s my duffel! How did you get hold of that? What’s in it?” she asked, her nerves showing.
Helen put down the bag she had been carrying, poured herself a mug of coffee, added milk and sat down at the table facing Sonny.
“Hi, Julie, I’m glad to see you too! To answer your questions, your ‘darling’ is parked at the back of Jessie’s, where it should be OK until we know what’s what. Your duffel is full of your stuff, which I just cleared out of your place. Mostly papers, anything that might lead them to this place. To us here, understand? I had to clear your phone too; it had my number in the speed dial. I brought you some fresh clothes … no, don’t thank me, my pleasure. Now can I have breakfast?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Julie took a deep breath smiled at Helen and said, “Sorry, mate. I’m sorry. Have your brekkie now. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that it’s all so frightening … Sonny has been telling me …”
“Sure. That’s OK. We got him away and that’s what matters for the moment. See, I bet they got your darling’s plate number. They will be checking it out momentarily. Registration will lead them to you, to your apartment, right? If they are who I think they are, they will toss it, looking for a lead on Sonny’s whereabouts. So I had to make it harder for them to find us here. Break the connection between you and me. Let’s hope they don’t know about me from some other source. Perhaps we have a breathing space. Do we, Sonny? Want to fill us in?”
Both women looked at Sonny, small and vulnerable sitting there in his skivvies, nursing his arm. He looked years older than the last time Helen had seen him. There were wrinkles on his handsome face that she hadn’t noticed before. His skin normally light brown, the warm colour of old ivory, had a grey tinge to it. He was obviously tired and jet-lagged. Julie and Helen watched silently as he pulled himself together.
“Yeah, right. I don’t know much. The word was out that they were after me, so I hopped a plane and here I am. And if it wasn’t for Helen they would have shipped me back to Hong Kong. No question … And, no, nobody knows about you, Helen, no name or address. Not from me, man, no way.”
“Good. Probably didn’t see me that well either. OK. So what do you want from us, Sonny?”
Before Sonny could answer Julie broke in, urgently. “You mean I cannot go back to my place?” she asked. “Ever? That’s impossible. Besides, we cannot stay here forever, all three of us. Oh, Helen, this is your turf. Can you think of something to do?”
“The problem isn’t you or me, Julie. It’s Sonny. But you’re right. If we hide him in Vancouver, then you also have to disappear. But before we start worrying about that, I for one would like to know just what we are up against. Come on, Sonny, give! Just why are Hong Kong bad guys after you? What the hell have you done? I thought you were too smart to get up their nose. Well?”
Early in the conversation Sonny had switched his attention from Julie to Helen. Now instead of answering he reached under the T-shirt and produced a fat money belt of fine, beige shammy. One by one he emptied two compartments, stacking over US$5,000 in $100 bills in front of him. Then from another sweat-soaked pouch he produced a Baggie of grass.
“Anyone got papers? If you don’t have the real thing, fax paper will do,” he said, looking at Helen. She shrugged, rose, opened a kitchen drawer and passed him a package of Export brand cigarette papers.
“Helen, you’re hired. Take this on account. Now I’m your client,” Sonny pushed the stack of dollars towards Helen.
“You were preparing to split Waltzing Matilda and Hong Kong for some time, eh, Sonny? Before all this happened, right? In case the commies took a dislike to you,” Helen said, ignoring the money.
“Yes, yes, but not like this!” Sonny toked and tried to pass the freshly rolled joint to Helen. She shook her head. So did Julie. He toked again. “Look, what can I say? I don’t know who exactly is after me or why! No, I really don’t know, believe me! Would I shit you about that? Why would I? All I can tell you is that all of a sudden the roof fell in. First I knew, one of my contacts, a street kid, got strong-armed. Then Bill — you remember Canton Bill — well, he told me that the word was out to quit dealing with me. Then a bunch of heavies came by to pick me up and take me to someone who wanted to talk to me, so they told Bill. I didn’t wait to find out more. Just grabbed what I could and jumped the first plane out of there. And here I am. Sure, I’m asking for your help. I need it real bad. But I can pay my way. There is more where this came from. Much more. Just look at this as a business proposition. Helen, you’re a private investigator, this is your line of business. It’s a job like any other, so why would you turn it down? I’m here because you are the best, I’m counting on you.”
Sonny was smart. He knew that sheer altruism alone wasn’t likely to make Helen drop everything and help him. Money as such wasn’t the issue either. But an appeal to her professionalism was hard to turn down. Helen, well aware that she was being manipulated by an expert, fell silent.
Now in her late fifties, Helen had been a private investigator, a detective, most of her adult life. Trained initially in counter-intelligence she’d worked for a number of years for an international detective and security agency in California. Since returning to Vancouver — her home town — in the mid-seventies she’d been on her own which was how she liked both her professional and personal life. She was Helen Keremos, Private Investigator, no bosses, no long-term commitments.
Julie muttered “damn” under her breath. Chronically self-absorbed, she tended to miss much of what went on between other people. She made a face at Sonny and lashed out at him. “Will you quit grandstanding, Sonny! Get on with it. Let’s have the story. It’s bad enough you descended on us without any warning and with a whole gang of yellow peril on your tail so that I cannot go home, even. You’ve got a nerve, waving money at us!”
“Watch your language, Julie!” Helen said sternly, “And don’t be a fool. Money’s good. Sonny’s just showing us he isn’t without resources. Just as well, if what he claims is true.”
“Of course it’s true! Why would I be here asking your help if it wasn’t?”
“You bludger, Sonny! God, why couldn’t you stay an arrogant bastard as I remember you. Much preferable to this snivelling.”
“Come on, Julie, cut me some slack. I don’t have much choice.”
“No, you don’t have much choice,” Helen broke in. She’d made her decision. “And we don’t have a hell of a lot of options either, since you’ve already involved both Julie and me. So I guess that means I’ll have to take your case whether I want to or not.”
“Great! …”
“Not so fast! Let me spell it out for you, Sonny. What you’ve done is put Julie in danger. She cannot stay away from her place and keep hiding here or any place else either. Which is why she’s being so crabby. She’s got a job teaching at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. She’s been teaching summer school and has a gig for the fall as well. Not much but still a job, see? So she has to be able to get her car back, go home again and live the life of the solid citizen that she is. I’m taking your case, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t get to fuck her over ever again. Believe it, Sonny!”
“Hey, Helen, never mind about me. I’m a big girl and you’re not my mother, OK? This is no time to bring up the past. What happened back then wasn’t all his fault. Drop this protective stuff and get on with it.”
That Julie, as contrary as ever, Helen mused.
Suddenly Sonny’s head almost hit the table. He started up with a yelp as the joint flew out of his hand onto the floor, then he nodded off again. Helen picked up the roach and killed it.
“Wipeout. Let’s get him to bed.”
The two women trundled a half-conscious Sonny into Helen’s bedroom, tucked him into the unmade bed and left him sleeping the sleep of the exhausted if not innocent.
CHAPTER 5
Back in the kitchen Helen proceeded to demolish muffin after muffin. Julie poured more coffee and continued as if there had been no interruption:
“You’ve got to help Sonny.”
“Always the quick change artist, eh, Julie. Now you want me to help him, ten minutes ago … whatever! For Pete’s sake, woman, I’ve taken him on, haven’t I? I wasn’t going to hang him out to dry! Would I treat your ex-boyfriend like that? I notice you were giving him a hard time too. He’s bad news, agreed? We have to save his sorry ass, regardless.”
“He cannot stay here!”
“Absolutely, he cannot stay here. Or in Vancouver at all. This isn’t a real big city. These Hong Kong guys obviously have a chapter — or a what-do-you-call-it — a lodge, here. Good contacts, anyway. In Vancouver they’d find him sooner rather than later. And you too, don’t forget. In any case we cannot hide him indefinitely.”
“Nobody said ‘indefinitely,’ Helen. Just till it cools off.”
“Yeah? And how long is that going to take? A week, a month, six months, years? You prepared for that, sweetie? And supposing we can hide you both real good, how can we tell when it’s OK for you and him to surface, eh?”
“Oh, come on, Helen. There has to be a way out of this mess.”
“Only one I can think of. Sonny has to quit being wanted. There must be a reason those dudes are after him. We have to find out what that reason is so it can be removed. None of that is possible without Sonny and he hasn’t been real forthcoming, you know.”
She’d finished her breakfast and proceeded to count the bank notes Sonny had stacked on the table.
“Hum. Almost six grand.”
“You think he’s lying to us?” asked Julie. Helen made two bundles with the money, putting one in her own pants pocket.
“You keep that,” she said, handing the other to Julie.
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