When Young returned to McCully’s twenty minutes later, Trick was still there, his wheelchair parked at the same table as before. There was no sign of Priam Harvey.
Young sat down. “I realized you had no way of getting home.”
“If I’d wanted to go home,” Trick said, “I would have done just that.”
“How?”
“Boum-Boum.” Boum-Boum was a cab driver who drove a wheelchair-accessible Econoline van.
“What if Boum-Boum wasn’t available? Maybe it’s his night off, or he phoned in sick. Don’t be stupid. Any other cabbie’d probably just dump you on the sidewalk. How would you get up the stairs?”
“I’d pay him extra if I had to. Don’t worry about me. And don’t call me stupid. Dropping Mr. Harvey on the floor, that was stupid. Don’t you need him for the investigation?”
“Yeah, well, he’s got a big mouth. Anyway, you could do just as good a job. Better.”
“I already told you no. No means no.”
“Mr. Harvey was supposed to dig up the dirt on Percy Ball, who my guess is the key to the whole business, but he just keeps on finding excuses. What do you want, your own office down at Homicide?”
Trick shook his head. “I’ll admit I’m interested in the case, but the way things are today, unless I knew how to operate a computer and the Internet and web-sites, all that sort of thing, I’d be no use to you.” He lifted his left hand, palm up. “Look at me, Camp. I’m a prisoner of my limitations.”
“So that’s what you want? You want somebody to give you lessons on how to operate a computer?”
Trick didn’t answer.
Young said, “At home or at Homicide?”
Trick said, “At home.”
“Why not at Homicide? I’d get a car to pick you up every morning, bring you to work. Drop you off at home, too, unless we’re coming here, which in that case I could drop you off myself if I’m not too drunk.”
“When are you not too drunk?”
“Hey, be nice, I’m offering you your old job back.”
“I’m not sure you have the authority.”
“You watch. I’ll talk to Bateman, and you’ll be back at work on Monday.”
“No, brother, I’m tempted, and I’ll take a computer course if you think you can set it up, but I’d rather work at home.”
Young spread his arms. “Why?”
“I don’t want people looking at me.”
“They look at you here.”
“No, they don’t. They just stare in their beer.”
Sunday, June 11
Four races in, Young and Debi and Trick were up almost a thousand dollars. They had boxed three horses in the third race triactor, and the horses had finished in the optimum order: the 12-1 long shot had won, a 5-1 overlay finished second, and the 9-5 favourite was third. Furthermore, Young was happy because Trick was officially on board with the Shorty Rogers case. Young had phoned Staff Inspector Bateman early that morning and caught him just as he and his wife were going out the door to church. He spoke to him of Trick’s willingness to help out with the investigation, as well as Trick’s need to feel useful and productive. Bateman said that although Trick’s acceptance of the long-term disability package prevented him from being rehired by the Force, he could work in an advisory capacity, and he okayed Young’s request for a consultancy contract and computer training for Trick.
When Young mentioned all of this as the three of them were sitting down to eat their lunch in the clubhouse, Trick just nodded. Debi clapped her hands, came around the table, hugged her father, and kissed Trick’s cheek. “That’s wonderful news!”
“Yup,” said Young, “your uncle’s back in the world again.”
After the fourth race, Debi left. Bing Crosby was running in the seventh, and she had to meet Mrs. McDonagh at the backstretch gate. Before each of Bing Crosby’s races, Mrs. McDonagh visited him in his stall and gave him a brandy-soaked sugar cube. It was one of those extra little indulgences good trainers allow their more eccentric owners.
Shortly after Debi left, Young stood up to use the men’s room. Just inside the entrance, a man in a wheel-chair was urinating into a plastic bottle, which made Young think of the Maxwell House jar wrapped in silver duct tape that Trick kept in the backpack he carried on his wheelchair. Another man was standing bare-assed at the urinals, his pants down around his ankles. Young took a spot three down from the bare-assed man and unzipped. He heard the man in the wheelchair fussing with his paraphernalia and then heard him propel himself out of the men’s room. The bare-assed man looked over at Young and said, “Fix was in on that last one, eh. Fuckin’ jock on the seven rode right into traffic.” Young stared at the white ceramic tiles in front of his face and said, “Maybe you just picked the wrong horse.” He waited for the bare-assed man to say something back, but he didn’t. A few seconds later the bare-assed man pulled up his pants and wandered off. Young heard the door swing to behind him, and he started thinking about the whole hand-washing thing, how neither the man in the wheelchair nor the bare-assed man had washed his hands, but really why should they if they didn’t get piss on them—after all, their dicks were probably as clean as any other part of their bodies; well, maybe not the bare-assed man’s dick, he definitely needed a bath, nor, for that matter, the other man’s dick, because sometimes personal hygiene can be a challenge for the handicapped—when he sensed that someone was standing behind him.
“Don’t turn around.”
Young felt something hard press into his back, just behind his heart. Startled, he suddenly had urine on his pants and on his hand.
“I got some advice for you, mister, and it be free so you better listen.”
The pressure was removed from his back, and Young relaxed slightly. He could hear the man’s breathing, shallow and rapid, behind him. The man’s breathing sped up, then stopped. Young stepped quickly to his left, spun, and assumed a defensive posture, his knees bent, arms spread, hands fisted. In front of him stood a black man with one arm frozen in mid-air like a pitcher halfway through his delivery. The hand at the end of the arm held a crowbar. The man’s eyes locked on Young’s, then panned slowly downward. When they reached Young’s still exposed penis, they widened, then panned back up to Young’s face.
The man lowered the crowbar and slapped it against his palm. He smiled and shook his head in apparent good humour. “You wet yourself, man. And look how small it be. How come it so small?”
The door to the men’s room swung open and in wheeled Trick. As soon as he saw the man with the crowbar and Young in a linebacker’s stance, he steered his wheelchair around behind the man.
The man’s head swivelled from Young to Trick.
Young eased himself away from the man, his back to the bank of urinals.
Trick stopped and aimed his wheelchair at the back of the man’s legs. He said, “What up, motherfucker?”
“It okay, mister, I got it covered.”
Trick said to Young, “What’s going on?”
The man looked