“I’ll ask around,” he said.
“I’d appreciate it,” I said. And left him there, looking woebegone and staring out at the boat traffic on False Creek, waiting for Apophis.
“She was right there,” Art Smelski said, pointing to a spot on the rocky shoreline by the civic marina docks beneath the Burrard Street Bridge. Late evening traffic rumbled high overhead and the gloom deepened as the sun went down over Vanier Park. “It looked like maybe she’d crawled out of the water a bit,” he added, “then passed out. The tide was starting to fall, so it’s a good thing I came along when I did or she’d have been swept all the way out into Burrard Inlet.” He gestured toward the dark expanse of water beyond the civic marina. “I got her out of the water, called 911, then started CPR.”
“You carry a cellphone in your kayak?” I said.
“Sure do. It’s waterproof.”
The shoreline sloped steeply down from where we stood at the edge of the path that looped through the small park called Cultural Harmony Grove, virtually treeless except for a handful of saplings. At that time of night, despite the lights from the surrounding marinas, Smelski wouldn’t have seen Bobbi at all if he hadn’t been on the water in his kayak.
“Do you always go kayaking at eleven at night?” I asked.
“Not always. Depends on which shift I’m working. Helps me relax. Most o’ the time,” he added with a shrug.
“Did you see anyone else nearby? On the path, maybe.”
“Nope. Can’t see the path from down there. And I was kinda busy.”
“Sure, I understand. You saw nothing out of the ordinary at all?”
“Nope. Just your friend in the water.”
“What about on the boats?”
“Nope. It’s fairly quiet that time of night. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Your friend, is she going to be okay?”
“I think so,” I said.
“That’s good, because she was in pretty bad shape. Whoever …” He stopped.
“Whoever what?” I asked, my voice hollow.
“My job,” he said awkwardly. “I mean, I see a lot of what people do to other people. Whoever beat up your friend, well, it was nasty. She’s lucky to be alive.”
“It’s thanks to you she is, Mr. Smelski,” I said. I offered him my hand. He took it. “You saved her life,” I said, voice cracking.
“Maybe so,” he said self-consciously. “But, well, I guess it’s what I do. And call me Art. Mr. Smelski is what my kids’ friends call me.”
“Okay, Art, the next time you’re in Bridges, tell Kenny Li, the manager, who you are. Drinks and dinner for you and your wife are on me.”
“That isn’t necessary,” he said. “But thanks. I appreciate it. So’ll my wife.”
As we walked along the footpath back to the False Creek Harbour Authority where I’d found him working on his partly converted fishing boat, I asked him if he knew anything about the Wonderlust. He didn’t recognize the name, he told me, but when I described the boat to him, he said he knew it to see it.
“Do you know who owns it?” I asked.
“Nope,” he replied. “Whoever it is, they sure don’t take very good care of it, though. Older boat like that needs a lot of TLC.” He shrugged as he stopped at the top of the ramp to the long dock on which his boat was moored with dozens of other fishing boats. “You know the definition of a boat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A hole in the water you fill with money.”
“Glad to hear your friend is doing okay,” he said.
I thanked him again and trudged homeward to my very own hole in the water. I was no sooner through the door than exhaustion hit me like a load of bricks. I staggered upstairs, I gave my teeth a perfunctory scrub, dropped my clothes onto the floor, and fell into bed. I was unconscious before my head hit the pillow.
chapter six
Thursday morning, rather than taking the ferry across False Creek, I drove to work. Parking the Liberty in the loading bay behind the building, where we normally parked the van, I took the rickety freight elevator up to the studio on the third floor. Garibaldi Air Services had recently acquired a new Bell 412 passenger helicopter for the Vancouver to Whistler run, just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and wanted a series of interior, exterior, and in-flight photographs for a promotional brochure and website. It was a two-person job — well, two and a half, really, if you counted Wes Comacho, whose helicopter I’d chartered for the morning to take the aerial shots. I’d thought about cancelling, but we couldn’t afford to lose the work. Normally, if Bobbi was busy, I would have taken Wayne along, but he was so afraid of flying that he broke into a sweat and stammered uncontrollably at the very thought of going up in a helicopter. Mary-Alice had volunteered, but aerial photography could be tricky and I was afraid that despite her good intentions her lack of experience would be more hindrance than help, especially since I would have to use the Hasselblad and the Nikon 35 millimetre film cameras. I had managed to borrow a decent “prosumer” digital camera from Meg and Peg Castle, the twin sisters who ran an escort service and soft-core porn website out of their offices on the second floor — I hadn’t asked what they used it for — but I wasn’t sure it was up to the job.
At ten, as I was about to lug my gear down to the Liberty, someone knocked on the door to the stairwell. I unlocked it, and when I opened it there was a waspish, sharp-featured man standing on the landing.
“You Tom McCall?” he asked.
He was dressed in a dark suit and maroon tie, with a raincoat slung over his arm, even though the weather was fair. He had dark, liquid eyes and his thick, slicked-back black hair had an oily sheen. His voice had a nasal quality that made me think of Joel Cairo, Peter Lorre’s character from The Maltese Falcon. The climb to the third floor seemed not to have winded him at all.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “But if this is about a job you’ll have to speak to one of my associates. They’re not in yet and I’ll be late for an appointment if I don’t leave now. You’ll have to come back, I’m afraid.”
“This won’t take long,” he said as he stepped into the studio. His cologne was sharp and salty and he wore too much of it.
“I hope not,” I said. “I really am in a hurry.”
“I want to know who hired you to take pictures of that boat,” he said.
“The Wonderlust?” I said.
“Of course the Wonderlust,” he said impatiently.
“I’d like to know who hired me, too,” I said. “Who are you? Are you with the police?”
“Never mind who I am. Who hired you to take pictures of that boat?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
“You’re telling me you don’t know who hired you?” he said skeptically.
“That’s precisely what I’m telling you. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.