“Jesus!” barked Robert.
“Robert!” Kathy shouted from the top of the road. “What are you doing?”
“There’s someone here!”
Robert dropped to his knees and tucked his face into his jacket up to his eyes. He crawled towards the prone human form ten metres away. Later, in the hospital, he would find the details he remembered strange, like how the body had its hands up, as if surrendering to some unseen foe and how he’d wondered why the person appeared to be wearing sunglasses.
“Robert! Don’t!” shouted Kathy, starting down the road.
Robert stopped and turned. He was about to shout at his wife to stay put when a movement to his right near the river caught the corner of his eye. As he twisted around to see what it was, there was a second eruption from the car. The gas tank had exploded and Robert was knocked flat by a wall of heat, flames, and fumes. Knocked unconsciousness by the searing shock wave that slammed into him and roared past, he did not feel his eyebrows and lashes being singed off. Nor did he feel Kathy desperately dragging him away from the blaze by his collar. His last thought was how lucky he was not to have invested in that pension fund scheme. There wasn’t much likelihood of him needing a pension now.
Kathy, possessed of a strength she never suspected she had, managed to haul Robert to the top of the driveway without realizing she had in the process torn a shoulder muscle and sprained her left ankle. The adrenaline masked all pain and the urgent need to get help for Robert overrode any other sensation. She grabbed Robert’s smouldering jacket and yanked out his cellphone. She dialed 911.
“Police, fire, or ambulance?” asked the despatcher.
“All three,” said Kathy. “My husband and I are in the 3000-block of Marine Drive, by the old sawmill site. There’s a fire. I think someone’s dead. Please hurry.”
A part of Kathy’s mind was quite detached from the scene before her — blackened frame of a car, the stench of burned plastic, fabric, and flesh. The part of her mind floating above the havoc wrought by the fire complimented her on how swiftly she had acted to save her husband and how remarkably calm she was now, talking quietly on the phone to the dispatcher as sirens wailed in the distance. It was only later — much, much later — when they played the tape of the 911 call at the inquest into the bizarre death of Sam Schuster, that Kathy Chan realized she had been screaming.
“Ronald, Ronald, I’m telling you, my friend — get in on the action while you can, buddy.”
“Not on your life, Hakeem.”
“I’m letting you in on the ground floor, for God’s sake!”
“Yeah — the bottom of the pyramid scheme.”
“It’s not a pyramid scheme! I’m Kenyan, not Egyptian!”
Ronald Sanderson looked at his friend Hakeem Jinnah and slapped his forehead in exasperation. Jinnah often provoked this response. He sat at the desk next to Sanderson and they had to share a computer terminal that swiveled back and forth. His slender, brown face framed by gold glasses could often be seen leaning out beside the computer screen as Sanderson tried to work. Today however, Jinnah sat back in his chair, feet calmly planted on his desk, stirring a cup of coffee with four creams and four sugars in it, head angled to one side alternately begging and berating Sanderson in an attempt to coerce his friend’s life savings out of his RRSPs. Around them, most of the Vancouver Tribune news room staff were silent. They were watching the daily Jinnah-Sanderson show with amusement and wondering how today’s battle would turn out.
“You don’t have to be Egyptian to build a pyramid scheme and I doubt Cheops could have come up with a bigger shell-game than you have,” replied Sanderson. “I ought to set the law on you.”
Jinnah snorted into his coffee.
“Ronald, it’s an introduction service, nothing more.”
“Most introduction services don’t get listed on the Canadian Venture Exchange.”
“This one does,” said Jinnah, calmly sipping his coffee. “It is, as you know, international in its scope. It requires a great deal of capital.”
“The capitals being Beijing and Moscow. Pairing lonely Chinese bachelors with Russian women desperate to immigrate? Are you nuts?”
“No, just logical, my friend. Think of it — because of Beijing’s one-child policy and the Chinese preference for male babies, within the next ten years, there will be over one hundred million Chinese men looking for wives that aren’t there! The Russian women are already on the market. I say strike while the iron is hot, buddy.”
“It’s immoral,” said Sanderson. “You’re selling Chinese men and Russian women in batches of twenty —”
“Units, Ronald, units,” Jinnah chided his friend. “Let’s be professional about this thing. And use the proper name for my venture: The Orient Love Express.”
“It’s dishonest.”
“It’s a legal way to make money, Ronald.”
“There’s more to life than money, Jinnah.”
“Tell the Aga Khan — he gets 10 percent.”
“To think you work at a newspaper that just won the city’s humanitarian award!”
Jinnah took a long sip of his coffee and pointed a long, dark finger at his friend.
“Ronald, don’t blame me when I make a fortune and you remain a destitute hack working at this Godforsaken rag until they wheel you out the door when you’re sixty-five — first, of course, they will have a security guard search your desk for stolen stationery. I am offering you riches.”
“You are offering me a one-way ticket to a medium-security facility for fraud.”
“Think of it as an early-retirement package.”
“Jinnah —” Sanderson started.
And stopped. He had been about to sharply rebuke Jinnah when he saw the smile creep around the edges of his friend’s mouth, eyes glinting like the heavy gold jewellery he wore on his chest and wrists. Jinnah had done it to him again, baiting him and playing him like some cut-throat trout, pulling on the line until he roared with the hook in his mouth. It was now Jinnah’s turn to roar, the laugh shaking his long, slender frame.
“What is it your Jesus said about gaining the whole world?” he laughed.
Sanderson snatched the paper off his desk and unfolded it with a snap. His face was burning red behind the pages. He did not turn around to see the smiles and grins on his co-workers’ faces, but he knew they were there. He could hear them chuckling and chortling as Jinnah looked over at them with that grin of his. Really, one day Hakeem was going to go too far. Even now, his voice floated over top of the newspaper to Sanderson’s ears.
“Ronald, Ronald, seriously — are you in or out?”
“Don’t you have any work to do, Hakeem?” said Sanderson, keeping his round, rubicund face behind the protective shield of newsprint.
“Things are slow on the crime front,” said Jinnah, reclining back into his chair.
“There was that sudden death in South Vancouver last night.”
“The Cadillac crispy critter? Bah!” snorted Jinnah. “A man dies in a car fire. Big deal. I wouldn’t go near it. Let a junior reporter cover it. Yourself, perhaps. I have other fish to fry. Although,” said Jinnah, grinning wickedly. “I hear this guy’s last words were to his father.”
“Oh?” said Sanderson, sounding disinterested. “What were they?”
“Hey,