“Frosty. You’re looking ravishing this morning! What can I do for you?”
“Some work!” snapped Frosty and winced at her own volume. “You haven’t filed a story in two days. Don’t make it three.”
“It’s ridiculously early,” protested Jinnah. “I shall rise again on the third day. Don’t worry — News God will provide.”
Despite her foul mood and her habitual hangover, Frosty almost smiled at this. Jinnah must be really desperate to invoke the name of the fickle deity quietly worshipped by all good news reporters.
“News God helps those who help themselves by doing cop checks,” she growled.
Jinnah was about to take a cheap shot, something about scotch and corn flakes, when, as if in answer to the invocation of the Name, his telephone rang. He looked at the call display and smiled. Thanks to Allah. It wasn’t that damned doll supplier wondering where his money was. Jinnah snatched up the receiver as Frosty stood, arms crossed, making sure he wasn’t freelancing on company time. “Y’ello, Craig.”
“Would it hurt you to address me as ‘Sergeant Graham, sir,’ just once in a while?”
Sergeant Craig Graham’s voice faded and surged over his cellphone. Jinnah grinned. Aside from being in a bad cell zone, Graham was sounding persecuted, and that usually meant he had something good. Graham was the closest thing Jinnah had to a friend on the Vancouver Police force. Frosty, satisfied Jinnah was not persisting in the sin of sloth, returned to her desk.
“Where the hell are you, Sergeant Graham, sir?” Jinnah yelled into his phone. “Outer Mongolia?”
“Close. Corner of Main and Terminal. Get your brown ass down here.”
“Is it good?”
“Spec-bloody-tacular.”
“Be there in five.”
“Bring a barf bag. It’s not pretty.”
Jinnah hung up. He grabbed his coat, notebook, and microcassette and called out to Frosty at city desk. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours with the front page story, Frosty,” he said smugly.
“Got a hot one?” chirped Sanderson from his desk.
Jinnah wasn’t fooled. Sanderson couldn’t get around him by appealing to his massive ego. Well, not all the way around him anyway.
“Yes. And while I’m gone, keep your filthy, white, effeminate hands off my Babjis.”
“I had no intentions —” sputtered Sanderson, but Jinnah cut him off.
“Remember, Ronald: News God is watching you.”
As he slammed out of the newsroom, Jinnah was delighted when Ronald actually looked involuntarily over his shoulder.
* * *
Jinnah walked down to the company parking lot and climbed into his van. His colleagues had dubbed it the “satellite-guided Love Machine” because, in a moment of weakness, Jinnah had tried to convince Crystal Wagner that he had a waterbed in the back. He didn’t, really; just a small fridge and a propane stove. He did, however, have a satellite guidance system, which was his prized possession. He loved seeing where he was on the digital map screen, plugging in coordinates, having the computer remind him, “You must turn right at the next intersection to reach your preset destination.” His son, Saleem, had helped him alter the system’s voice menu and now Jinnah could be prompted to change course by Ensign Sulu’s voice. But Jinnah didn’t need satellite guidance to reach Main and Terminal. It was all too familiar territory.
“Name of God,” Jinnah whistled when he reached The Corner.
Main and Terminal was a three-ring media circus, complete with freak show in the heart of the concrete jungle. A phalanx of TV camera crews, print and radio reporters, and photographers were pressed against the circle of yellow and black crime scene tape that protected the centre of the park from their advance. Wandering around the edge of this massive scrum were the drunks, the deinstitutionalized, and the druggies, displaced from their sleeping quarters, taking the opportunity to tell their life stories to the cameras and bum a little change. Their ranks were swollen by the squeegee kids, who had forsaken hustling to take in the spectacle.
But it was the third ring that caught Jinnah’s attention. About a dozen clean and sober youths dressed in white bomber jackets marched back and forth, carrying signs bearing slogans like “Repent!” and “Jesus Died for You.” All the while they and anyone else who cared to listen were being harangued by a white-haired man in his fifties, who looked like Elijah in a cheap suit, shouting through a megaphone. Jinnah groaned. He always did when the Reverend Peter Hobbes and his God Squad manifested.
Jinnah felt sorry for Graham. Investigating a murder was a tough job at the best of times, but how the hell was he going to work in this kind of zoo? He decided to park in the MacDonald’s lot a half block away. It was free, unlike the more secure pay parking at Science World across the street. But unless you had a good car alarm, you could find your tires slashed or your stereo gone if you tarried too long. Fortunately, Jinnah had rigged his alarm to let out an ear-bleeding shriek, followed by the booming voice of Lieutenant Worf crying, “Phasers on kill, Captain! Fire!” It was remarkably effective, in even the toughest neighbourhoods, and Jinnah left his van feeling only slightly uneasy about its well-being.
Crossing the street, he skirted the side of the scrum where Hobbes was berating the crowd. Jinnah had had more than one visit from the Reverend over the years. His very first week at the paper he’d made the mistake of writing an article about Hobbes’s unceasing campaign against Lionel Simons, a former shock-rocker turned cult leader. Hobbes claimed that Simons was really a Satanist. Lionel Simons was no saint, but you certainly couldn’t prove he was a Satanist. Not with his legal team. Jinnah still winced when he remembered the crawling retraction he’d had to write to avoid a lawsuit. He’d been wary of Hobbes ever since, but the Reverend was nothing if not dogged in his crusade against Simons, aka “The Rock Messiah!”
Jinnah squeezed through the crowd, taking care not to step in anything that would irreparably soil his new Gucci loafers. He peered past the tape into the centre of the crime scene and saw the sad ritual following a violent murder being performed by a full complement of death’s acolytes: the CSU guys in their white suits; the coroner, the only guy wearing street clothes besides Graham; uniforms, looking bored and apprehensive, holding the crowd back and taking considerable abuse from the street people. He caught Graham’s eye and waved.
Craig walked over to the edge of the tape. “About time, Hakeem.”
“Traffic was murder. Pun intended,” said Jinnah. “What’cha got, buddy?”
Graham looked pointedly at several street people who were standing against the tape beside Jinnah. “Beat it,” he said.
One, a short but muscular, bare-chested young man drinking a beer for his breakfast, glared belligerently. “Free country, man. Make us,” he said, mulish.
“Want me to check and see if there are any outstanding warrants for you and your pals?”
The dissipated muscleman snorted, belched, threw his beer can at Graham’s feet, and stalked off with his buddies. Jinnah and Graham had near privacy for their chat. Jinnah took out his notebook and looked at his contact expectantly.
Graham spoke in his clipped, curt manner. “One victim. Male, aged twenty. Name, Thad Golway.”
“So? What makes this special? Guys get knifed down here all the time,” said Jinnah.
“They don’t often get