“It’s thanks to you she is, Mr. Smelski,” I said. I offered him my hand. He took it. “You saved her life,” I said, voice cracking.
“Maybe so,” he said self-consciously. “But, well, I guess it’s what I do. And call me Art. Mr. Smelski is what my kids’ friends call me.”
“Okay, Art, the next time you’re in Bridges, tell Kenny Li, the manager, who you are. Drinks and dinner for you and your wife are on me.”
“That isn’t necessary,” he said. “But thanks. I appreciate it. So’ll my wife.”
As we walked along the footpath back to the False Creek Harbour Authority where I’d found him working on his partly converted fishing boat, I asked him if he knew anything about the Wonderlust. He didn’t recognize the name, he told me, but when I described the boat to him, he said he knew it to see it.
“Do you know who owns it?” I asked.
“Nope,” he replied. “Whoever it is, they sure don’t take very good care of it, though. Older boat like that needs a lot of TLC.” He shrugged as he stopped at the top of the ramp to the long dock on which his boat was moored with dozens of other fishing boats. “You know the definition of a boat.”
“Yeah,” I said. “A hole in the water you fill with money.”
“Glad to hear your friend is doing okay,” he said.
I thanked him again and trudged homeward to my very own hole in the water. I was no sooner through the door than exhaustion hit me like a load of bricks. I staggered upstairs, I gave my teeth a perfunctory scrub, dropped my clothes onto the floor, and fell into bed. I was unconscious before my head hit the pillow.
chapter six
Thursday morning, rather than taking the ferry across False Creek, I drove to work. Parking the Liberty in the loading bay behind the building, where we normally parked the van, I took the rickety freight elevator up to the studio on the third floor. Garibaldi Air Services had recently acquired a new Bell 412 passenger helicopter for the Vancouver to Whistler run, just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and wanted a series of interior, exterior, and in-flight photographs for a promotional brochure and website. It was a two-person job — well, two and a half, really, if you counted Wes Comacho, whose helicopter I’d chartered for the morning to take the aerial shots. I’d thought about cancelling, but we couldn’t afford to lose the work. Normally, if Bobbi was busy, I would have taken Wayne along, but he was so afraid of flying that he broke into a sweat and stammered uncontrollably at the very thought of going up in a helicopter. Mary-Alice had volunteered, but aerial photography could be tricky and I was afraid that despite her good intentions her lack of experience would be more hindrance than help, especially since I would have to use the Hasselblad and the Nikon 35 millimetre film cameras. I had managed to borrow a decent “prosumer” digital camera from Meg and Peg Castle, the twin sisters who ran an escort service and soft-core porn website out of their offices on the second floor — I hadn’t asked what they used it for — but I wasn’t sure it was up to the job.
At ten, as I was about to lug my gear down to the Liberty, someone knocked on the door to the stairwell. I unlocked it, and when I opened it there was a waspish, sharp-featured man standing on the landing.
“You Tom McCall?” he asked.
He was dressed in a dark suit and maroon tie, with a raincoat slung over his arm, even though the weather was fair. He had dark, liquid eyes and his thick, slicked-back black hair had an oily sheen. His voice had a nasal quality that made me think of Joel Cairo, Peter Lorre’s character from The Maltese Falcon. The climb to the third floor seemed not to have winded him at all.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “But if this is about a job you’ll have to speak to one of my associates. They’re not in yet and I’ll be late for an appointment if I don’t leave now. You’ll have to come back, I’m afraid.”
“This won’t take long,” he said as he stepped into the studio. His cologne was sharp and salty and he wore too much of it.
“I hope not,” I said. “I really am in a hurry.”
“I want to know who hired you to take pictures of that boat,” he said.
“The Wonderlust?” I said.
“Of course the Wonderlust,” he said impatiently.
“I’d like to know who hired me, too,” I said. “Who are you? Are you with the police?”
“Never mind who I am. Who hired you to take pictures of that boat?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
“You’re telling me you don’t know who hired you?” he said skeptically.
“That’s precisely what I’m telling you. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“That’s certainly your prerogative,” I said. “But why would I lie?”
“For the same reason most people lie,” he said. I waited for him to continue, thinking that perhaps he was about to impart some deep philosophical truth, but he just smiled thinly and said, “Let’s try a different approach.”
“Fine by me. But not now. Do you have a card? I —”
“Someone hired you to take pictures of that boat. Why?”
Who was this guy? I wondered. I didn’t figure him for a cop; a cop wouldn’t have refused to identify himself. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said he was a lawyer. Representing whom? Again, if I’d had to guess, I would have said that he represented the nameless corporation that owned the Wonderlust, perhaps concerned about liability issues. “Who are you?” I asked again. “What’s your name?”
“You don’t need to know that,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t tell me. I’ll just have to call you ‘Mr. Cairo,’ then.”
He blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ve got to go. I’m late for an appointment.” I pulled open the door to the stairwell.
“I don’t care if you’re late for your own funeral,” he said. “I want to know who hired you to take pictures of that boat.”
“I told you,” I said. “I don’t know who she was.”
“It was a woman that hired you?” he said sharply. “What did she tell you her name was?”
I didn’t know the real Anna Waverley from Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, but the chances were good that she too was an innocent bystander, like Bobbi and me, so I was reluctant to tell this man her name. “She gave a false name,” I said.
“What’d she look like?”
“Good day, Mr. Cairo,” I said, urging him out the door.
“Just hold on,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere till you answer my questions.”
“No, you hold on,” I said. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to answer your questions. They might have a few of their own, too.”
He stared at me for a long moment, dark eyes hardening, before finally shrugging slightly and stepping through the door onto the landing.
“We’ll talk again,” he said and began to descend the stairs.
I closed the door and locked it and took the freight elevator down to the loading dock.
I got back to the studio at 2:30. I gave Wayne a dozen rolls of exposed film to send to the outside lab