“Friday, March 6th was the day he went missing. I pulled Django James out of school to take with me. I had things to sell. An Ampex reel-to-reel, some coins, and a BMX bike. He was very fond of the bike. He helped me clean it, paint it, replace the chain. The previous owners hadn’t cared for it, even though it was a Schwinn Stingray, the Bicentennial model. I let Django choose the new colour. He chose blue.”
“The cleaning et cetera happened prior to that Friday?”
“Yes. We loaded the car in the morning. I sold the Ampex around ten to a music studio. Twelve hundred dollars. Cost me ten dollars fifty cents.”
“Name of the studio and address?”
“Enola Curious. Broadway near Cambie, a couple of blocks from the Skytrain station.”
“Who did you sell to?”
“Amelia Yates, she owns the studio.”
“Is that Yates with an A or Yeats with an E-A?”
“I’m not sure,” Szabo said. “She’s bought from me in the past. We finished about 10:45, then Django and I went to some coin shops Downtown, but I didn’t sell anything else.”
“Let me stop you for a second,” I said. “Why exactly did you pull your son out of class?”
“To show him.”
“Show him what, exactly?”
“How the world works.” He sat down, not on the bench, to the left of the desk in Katherine’s chair. I watched him flex his left knee several times.
“School is important, of course,” he said. “He has to get an education. But school doesn’t tell you how to make money. How to survive. They teach you Tigris and Euphrates. Tigris and Euphrates is good, but try and pay the Hydro with Tigris and Euphrates.”
“You pull him out often?”
“Once a month, usually. We go on holidays and Pro-D days as well.”
“After the coin shops?”
“Lunch,” he said. “We went to Little Mountain. He rode the bike around. He wanted to keep it. I told him we had to sell that bike, but we’d find another. Bikes are easy to find, but original BMX bikes are too valuable to keep.”
“And he was upset over this?”
“Not upset. He’s very well-behaved.”
“Disappointed? Bummed out?”
“Yes, a bit. When I went to the bike store he sat in the car.”
“What time was that?”
“One.”
“One,” I repeated, typing it into the file. “And after you sold the bike?”
“I didn’t sell it,” Mr. Szabo said. “The bike shop low-balled. Times are tough, he said. Not tough enough to give away a Stingray Bicentennial for chicken feed.”
He waved his hand in dismissal of the owner.
“After, we went to a pawn shop, and that’s where it happened: Django and I went into the store. I was talking to the owner. Django asked could he wait in the car. I gave him the keys. I made a deal with Mr. Ramsey who owns the shop. I came out and the car was gone.” Anticipating my question he said, “2:43 p.m.,” and repeated “Friday, March 6th.”
“The car was never recovered?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Make and model?”
“Brown Taurus wagon, 1994. Transmission not so good, few dents in the passenger’s side door. Previous owner practically gave it away.”
“What happened then?”
“I was in shock for some time. I checked my watch. I looked around to see if I had parked somewhere else and forgot. I went into the store. I told the owner and his daughter my son had been taken. They smirked like I was joking. I kept saying it until they saw I was serious. They called the police for me. I repeated to them what happened again and again. An officer named —” He dug through his wallet, shuffling through business cards and creased scraps of paper. “Sergeant Herbert Lam.” He offered me the card. I waved it away, aware of who Lam was.
“Any phone messages after?” I asked. “Any response to the news stories?”
“Someone said I should check a house on Fraser. Three tips said that, but it turned out to be the same person each time. Sergeant Lam said the woman had a problem with her neighbour and was trying to get the police to arrest her.”
“Sounds like my grandmother.”
I saved the file as Szabo-prelim.txt and sent it to the LaserJet.
“I’ll need all the missing persons data, including a full description of Django, what he was wearing, dental charts if you’ve got them, the plate and VIN numbers from the car.”
“I’ll bring them tomorrow.”
“Make it Monday,” I said. “Give me time to run some of this down.” I brought out the client and contract forms. “And I’ll need everything McEachern worked up.”
Mr. Szabo looked at the door. “I don’t have that,” he said.
“McEachern didn’t give you a copy?”
“He did, but I was angry. I threw it at him. I told you, I overreact.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said. “I’ll talk with him.”
We shook hands. On his way out Cliff Szabo turned back and said, “I love my son, Mr. Drayton.”
“Never doubted it.”
“They’ll tell you I didn’t,” he said. “I’m not good at sharing such things. But I do love him,” he reiterated, and was gone.
In my brief time on the job, I’d met few cops better than Herbert Lam. He’d been one of the legends of the VPD, up there with Kim Rossmo and Al Arsenault, Dave Dickson and Whistling Smith. Lam was probably responsible for half a dozen missing children ending up back in the arms of their loved ones. A legacy to be proud of.
One evening in July, Lam and his family were driving home from Spanish Banks. A semi-trailer crossed the median, flipping the car, killing Lam and injuring his wife and daughter. I found this out from the front desk of the Main Street station. The news floored me. I wasn’t Lam’s age and I hadn’t worked with him on the job, but I felt a sense of loss. In the movies the great detectives are obsessive geniuses. In real life, too often they’re hard-working family men and women who don’t deserve the ends they meet.
When Katherine came back at half past four I was on the phone trying to figure out who had taken over Lam’s workload. I’d negotiated through the VPD phone maze to Constable Gavin Fisk’s desk, only to get his voicemail. Fisk I knew. I’d gone through training with him. We’d once been friends.
Katherine read through the file while I waited for Fisk to pick up. He didn’t and the call went to message. “Gavin, this is Mike Drayton. Concerning the Szabo kid. You have my number.”
I hung up and tried Aries again, to no avail.
“He’s so precise about the time,” Katherine said.
“What does that tell you?”
“I guess it’s possible he looked at his watch just before he noticed Django was missing.” She studied my expression. “Is it possible he’s lying?”
“Is that ever impossible?” I hung up the phone. “Sometimes an abundance of details means you’re trying hard to convince someone something is true. More likely, though, after being grilled by the police several times, being interviewed by the press, not to mention McEachern, Szabo probably committed his best