The secretary opened her eyes, uttered a strangled cry and came around to the front of the desk. She seized the envelope and pen from Jinnah, hastily scrawled down the address, then held it up in front of his face, her hands trembling.
“It’s Hermes Products, two-two-two West Pender Street, suite two-twenty-two. Got it?” she cried.
Jinnah took the envelope gently from her hands and glanced at it. Hermes Products. No mention of its president in the title. He’d never have found Thompson without this woman’s help. He felt almost grateful and bowed low.
“I am humbly thanking you Madame and my family also too,” he said. “Good day to you and yours.”
Jinnah opened the door. The secretary could not resist a parting shot.
“When are they going to insist you people learn proper English before they let you into this country?”
Jinnah turned around and held the woman in his suddenly tightly focused eyes.
“Pardoning me, Madame, but Immigration Officer was saying that we speak proper English on coming to Canada when English here learn proper manners. Good day to you and up yours.”
Jinnah left the secretary with her mouth open, regretting she hadn’t asked the name of Jinnah’s courier company so she could file a complaint. Jinnah noted on climbing into the satellite-guided Love Machine that he still had two minutes left on the meter. He glanced down at the address on his envelope and smiled. He turned his computer on.
“Ensign! Set a course bearing two-two-two West Pender!” he cried, punching the co-ordinates into the keyboard.
The computer chattered happily as it accessed the data, enabled the satellite hook-up, pin-pointed Jinnah’s position to within a metre and then, as Jinnah had custom programmed it to do, responded with Ensign Sulu’s voice.
“Engaged. Warp Factor Ten, Captain!” it chirped.
Jinnah pulled out and looked for the first opportunity to turn around. He was headed for the opposite end of the galaxy.
Neil Thompson’s new office was just off Howe Street, the financial heart of Vancouver where the bank towers, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and other institutions clustered around the stock exchange. So concentrated was the mass that reporters like Grant used the phrases “B.C. business interests” and “Howe Street” interchangeably. Jinnah was impressed as he cruised past Thompson’s new digs. They were in one of the looming, black glass towers that did their best to obscure the mountains and the sea around them, sucking up the view like Thompson’s eyes sucked up light. The view was reserved for the people on the upper floors of such buildings and number two-twenty-two on the twenty-second floor had a magnificent panorama of False Creek and the Fraser River beyond. The carpeting was deep and rich, the paneling mahogany and the musak classical. So it came as a considerable shock to Jinnah that the first thing he noticed upon entering the offices of Hermes Products was an erection.
It was a massive organ, Jinnah realized after his initial start, a good three feet in length despite having been apparently cut in half. The spongy interior tissue glowed pinkly and the blue of the veins was breathtaking. The impressive phallus was actually an artist’s rendering immortalized on a large, four-foot long by three-foot wide colour poster hanging in the outer office. It bore large, black letters proclaiming: “Chubby — your friend for life. TM.” Widening his field of vision slightly but still retaining the poster as his central image, Jinnah noted the whole of the outer office that wasn’t in the process of being unpacked from the dozen or so boxes scattered about it was devoted to similar images. Chubby? Was Thompson now dealing in penile implants?
“May I help you?” asked a voice.
The voice was young, pleasant, and utterly unlike that of the secretary at Thompson’s East Vancouver office. Jinnah tore his eyes away from the penile poster and was rewarded with the soft gaze of large, brown eyes belonging to a secretary Thompson obviously felt was more in tune with his high-powered surroundings. She was tall, slender and her long, reddy-brown hair framed a creamy white face and a dazzling smile. She wore a brown velour dress and platform heels that Jinnah estimated at six inches in height and weighing about five pounds each.
“Ah, Mademoiselle,” said Jinnah. “I have a package for Mister Thompson —”
Jinnah held out his now-battered envelope. The young secretary held out a hand. It was all Jinnah could do to stop himself from seizing it and smothering it with kisses.
“I’ll take it,” she said sweetly.
“Ah,” said Jinnah, withdrawing his package with regret. “I am supposed to give it to him personally.”
“Oh, yes,” said the secretary, abruptly turning on her considerable heel. “The old office called. You’ll find Mister Thompson through there.”
The old office was not what Jinnah would have called the rude woman he’d left behind on Kingsway, but he bowed low and mumbled how enchanted he was and pushed past the reception desk and into the inner office. Behind a rather more substantial desk than in his old office, Thompson sat, crammed into his suit, sweating and hammering away on his laptop while yelling into the phone.
“No, I said move it now!” he barked. “Don’t give me any thirty-day notice shit!”
Thompson glanced up at Jinnah and waved a hand at the edge of the desk.
“Put it there. I’ll sign for it.”
Jinnah smiled and slapped the envelope down right in front of Thompson with a considerable smack. Thompson looked up, startled, and finally recognized him.
“I’ll call you later,” he said, hanging up while simultaneously closing his laptop.
“Your package, Mister Thompson,” said Jinnah with satisfaction.
Thompson turned his light-sucking eyes on Jinnah, a blank look on his face.
“Is this your idea of some kinda joke?” he asked quietly.
“No. It’s actually your secretary’s idea of some kind of stereotype. She’s the one who mistook me for a courier.”
“Yeah, she called. Well, what the hell is this shit anyway?” asked Thompson, lifting up the envelope. “It ain’t from Lavirtue.”
“Your dossier, Mister Thompson,” said Jinnah gravely. “I would like to ask you a few questions about Sam Schuster.”
Neil Thompson did something Jinnah had not previously seen him do. He laughed. It was a hollow laugh devoid of warmth or humour. Jinnah sat down.
“He’s dead,” said Thompson. “Wanna know anything else?”
“Yes,” said Jinnah, calmly taking out his notebook and pen. “I want to know if you had anything to do with his death.”
Jinnah had been hoping to provoke some kind of reaction, but Thompson remained unmoved. He was his usual, blunt self.
“I wouldn’t have paid for the match, let alone the gas. Sam Schuster and I are ancient history.”
“You can account for your whereabouts on the night in question then?’
“You a reporter or a cop?”
“A bit of both, Mister Thompson.”
“I got about five-hundred witnesses saw me at the Rotary dinner. My wife can vouch for my presence at home that night. You want more detail, Diedre out there can give you an hourly itinerary. If that’s all you need, you can get the hell outta my office.”
Jinnah’s eyes searched the room for a conversation-prolonger. Another penis poster was hung right behind Thompson’s desk. It seemed a good place to start.
“What the hell is Chubby anyway? Some sort of penis enhancement operation?”
“It’s