you watch his movies?”
“Sure.”
“But do you watch his movies?”
“Once in a while I’ll put on Touch of Evil.” I turned to Katherine. “Why, who was he saying was better? He never makes one of those grand dismissals without an equally absurd replacement.”
“I don’t know the name,” she said. “The guy who directed Speed.”
“Not what I said, I said it was a better film than Citizen Kane.” Ben rolled the strip of cardboard into a makeshift filter and affixed it to a slim joint he produced from his pocket. I scanned my table carefully and found particles of bud, mostly stems and seeds.
“Go outside to do that.”
“Not till you hear me out on Speed,” he said. He began counting the virtues on his fingers. “It’s got at least as many fully-developed characters. It’s better paced. The effects are better. It’s got as many memorable lines of dialogue. It obeys the laws of Aristotelian unity. It’s better acted.”
“Better acted,” Katherine said. “Keanu Reeves?”
The buzzer saved me from responding. On the monitor I saw Cliff Szabo start up the steep stairs. “Troll somewhere else,” I told Ben. To Katherine I added, “The bonus for the Laws job is yours provided you pick up the check from him.”
“Why so generous?” she asked, as Ben ducked out of the room, pawing his pockets in search of his Zippo.
“You did the work.”
“That the only reason?”
“It’s not the highest paying job, I know.”
“How about fifty-fifty?”
“Where I come from we don’t turn away money.”
“You just did.”
Cliff Szabo stepped past her. Katherine shut the door as she left, shooting me a look that was equal parts “thank you” and “you’re insane.”
Szabo tested the bench before sitting down. “I overreact,” he said by way of apology.
“I’d like to help,” I said.
“I’m still not sure,” he said. “What can you do the cops can’t?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” he repeated.
“That’s right. The police have resources and connections I can’t begin to compete with. They’re your best hope to get your son back. Any PI who’s not a fraud will tell you the same.”
“So why hire you?”
“Because, statistically speaking, the more people looking, the better. And because sometimes people get lucky.”
I gestured at the kettle. Szabo shook his head.
“Most missing persons the police find, or they come back on their own. Of the three I worked where that wasn’t the case, I found two. And both were due more to luck and patience than skill.”
“You said three.”
I nodded at the Loeb file on the corner of my table.
“I want you to understand,” I said. “The best I can do is work this efficiently and diligently. I can’t make your son appear. When you feel that what I’m doing isn’t helping, say so, but know going in that it’s expensive and time-consuming, and there are no guarantees.”
He stood up and walked to the table. He produced a thick roll of twenties, stretched the elastic around his wrist, and began counting out piles of five.
“You don’t have to pay up front,” I said.
He didn’t reply until there were six piles of five, fanned across the table like a poker hand.
“Six hundred is all the money I have,” he said.
We both looked at the money silently.
“I can also pay you ten percent.”
“Of what?”
“My business,” he said, his posture perfect, dignified.
I was going to object, because I didn’t want his money and because it wasn’t nearly enough. It was an insult to say anything either way. I nodded and created an empty file on the Mac.
“Tell me everything,” I said.
“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.
