January Jack Pine was a full-blooded Squamish Indian, or so he said. He looked the part, with strong, hawkish features, sharp dark eyes, and thick greying hair worn in two long braids. His grandfather’s father, he claimed, had been born in 1859, the year the English first came to the tidal basin that is now False Creek, in a village by a fish corral on the big sandbar that was to become Granville Island, the former industrial area that had been converted in the seventies by the federal government into a popular shopping, cultural, and tourist centre. Of indeterminate age, between sixty and seventy-five, Jack made a modest living as a poet, painter, and part-time actor. He could have lived on the Squamish reserve on the North Shore, but he didn’t. With the connivance of some of the residents of Sea Village, a community of a dozen or so floating homes moored along the seawall between the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the refurbished Granville Island Hotel, Jack had obtained a slip in the marina adjacent to Sea Village where he moored his makeshift houseboat, an old Airstream trailer body mounted on pontoons.
“When you gonna get some furniture?” Jack asked, the worn heels of his boots clicking hollowly on the bare hardwood floors. Since moving into the house, the only major purchases Shoe had made had been a bedroom suite and a kitchen set, both from IKEA.
“It’d just be in the way,” Shoe said, gesturing toward the painting supplies piled by the entrance to the living room.
Until a year and a half ago Shoe had lived on an old converted logging tug in the False Creek Harbour Authority marina between Granville Island and the Burrard Street Bridge. The Princess Pete had been cramped and dark and worm-eaten, but she’d suited him. One evening, though, while he’d been at the launderette, some fool had flipped a cigarette or a lit match into a box of oily rags, setting fire to the dock and burning the Pete and two commercial fishing boats to the waterline. Shoe had lost everything but his car and his laundry. The house on 3rd was too big for him and suffered from years of neglect, but it was structurally sound and conveniently located within easy walking distance of Granville Island, as well as the Safeway and other amenities on 4th.
Jack hefted his duffle and went upstairs. Shoe hung his soggy coat and hat on the coat tree. The light on the answering machine on the table in the hall was blinking. He pressed “Play.”
“Um, Joe?” Muriel Yee said, her voice soft and tentative. “I’ll never get used to your answering machine.” Shoe’s answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, then just beeped. “Anyway, I’m still at the office. Would you mind picking me up here? We can grab something to eat before the concert. I know I promised you a home-cooked meal, but Bill’s been like a bear with a bellyache all day. Damn Patrick. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to quit. See you. Thanks. Bye.”
Shoe made sure there were towels, toilet paper, and soap in the main upstairs bathroom. Then, leaving Jack to his own devices, he took his purchases into the master bedroom. He showered, shaved, and dressed. At 6:15, he went out to the car. The temperature had dropped a couple more degrees. It was snowing in earnest now, big heavy flakes materializing out of the darkness above the streetlights and plummeting earth-ward. He scooped the stuff off the windshield with his hands, got into the car, and drove downtown.
William Hammond was not in a good mood, but even when he was in the best of moods, Charles Merigold could usually be counted on to piss him off somehow. “Charlie,” Hammond said, because he knew how much Merigold hated being called Charlie, “I’m seventy-five years old, for crissake, and not getting any goddamned younger. Will you get to the bloody point? And speak English. I’m not a fucking MBA.”
Charles Merigold’s blandly handsome face reddened. He disliked profanity even more than he disliked being called Charlie.
“I think we should pass,” he said stiffly.
“From what I can see here,” Hammond said, tapping the laser-printed graphs and tables spread out across his broad, black marble desk, “it’s a nice solid little business. Doing better than a lot of my other holdings.”
“Yes, sir,” Merigold agreed. “However, in the last year their operating costs have gone up almost ten percent while their revenues have increased by only three percent. Unless they bring operating costs into line, profitability will continue to be negatively impacted.”
Hammond sighed. Profitability will be negatively impacted. Goddamned bean counters, he thought sourly. When the hell had they taken over? He knew the answer, though. It had happened the day computers had got cheap enough that any idiot could have one on his desk. A pox on the inventor of the microchip, he grumbled to himself.
“Frankly,” Merigold went on, “I don’t know what Patrick and Sandra St. Johns were thinking when they put this deal together.”
“You wouldn’t,” Hammond said.
“Pardon me?”
“Forget it,” Hammond said. He leaned wearily back in his chair. Patrick, he thought, wherever the hell you are, I hope you’re having as lousy a time as I am right now. “Is there anything else?” he asked.
“One more item,” Merigold replied. “It concerns Irene Oswald.”
“She that tall woman in personnel that looks a like camel?” Merigold nodded. “What’s her problem, besides being terminally homely?”
“Ms. Oswald alleges that her supervisor, um, sexually harassed her. He evidently propositioned her, and when she refused him he gave her a poor evaluation when she came up for promotion.”
Hammond closed his eyes. What had he done to deserve this? he groaned inwardly. Christ, maybe he should have handed the reins over to Patrick after all, let him take the company public, and retired. But even as the thought formed in his mind, he knew he couldn’t have done it. Notwithstanding Patrick’s argument that not only would going public provide capital for investment, it would also make anyone who got in on the ground floor very rich, there was no goddamned way Hammond was going to let a bunch of investment bankers and mutual fund managers, not to mention the fucking securities commissions, tell him how to run the business he’d spent his whole life building. Besides, he was already rich. So would Patrick have been if he’d been patient, if he’d given Hammond a little more time. He just wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet.
“Sir?”
Hammond opened his eyes. Merigold was still there, as bland and obsequious as ever. “What?” Hammond snapped.
Merigold blinked. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather, the Oswald situation can wait.”
“No, I’ll take care of it now. Who’s her supervisor?”
“His name is Arthur Somes.”
“And did he make a pass at her?”
“Apparently he’s propositioned a number of women in his office. Ms. Oswald is the only one who’s complained.”
“And this Oswald, she’s good at her job?”
“According to her co-workers, she’s competent and conscientious. They like her.”
“Who’s next in line for the supervisor’s job?”
“I suppose she is.”
“Then find some excuse to let him go and give her the job.” Merigold nodded. “But make sure she understands it was her complaint that cost him his job. Now, get out. And send Muriel in.”
At 6:40, Shoe parked in his reserved space in the underground garage of the headquarters of Hammond Industries, next to the empty space that still bore Patrick O’Neill’s nameplate affixed to the concrete wall. The Hammond Building occupied the same block in the heart of the Vancouver business district as had the original headquarters of H&L Enterprises. That dowdy old structure had been torn down in the eighties to make way for this glittery new edifice.
When Shoe had first washed ashore in Vancouver in the early seventies, he had taken what work