‘You and your dancers.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘You know who you’re really after.’
‘Don’t say that.’
He went over and modestly tucked the bra behind the suitcase. Next to it, his old guitar stood propped against the wall. He picked it up and sat on the bed, resting the guitar across his lap. The body was battered and chipped and one of the strings was missing but I was glad to see it. If he still had his guitar it meant something. He plucked the E-string and let it quiver, resonating.
I said, ‘You going to tell me?’
‘I don’t know all of it.’
‘Do you know any of it?’
He squinted through the cigarette smoke. ‘I know we got to make a delivery.’
‘Something stolen.’
‘Probably.’
‘Then what?’
‘We’ll find out more tonight.’
‘And then it’s done?’
‘Then it’s done. And we get paid, too.’
‘I don’t want any money. I’m not doing it for money.’
On the top shelf of his medicine cabinet were two teacups and a twixer of Black Velvet. I got down the teacups and rinsed them in the sink. The water smelled brackish and a ring of rust encircled the sinkhole. I dried the cups on the inside of my shirt and poured us each a few ounces. I took one over to Jake and he accepted it and we each pinched our cup by the handle, very genteel, like a pair of elderly gentlemen having afternoon tea.
We clicked the cups together and drank.
‘Was the old man choked at you?’ Jake asked.
‘Said he wouldn’t take me back.’
‘Damn, man. What about your girl?’
‘Tracy ain’t my girl.’
‘She’s something to you.’
I said I hadn’t even had the chance to break it to her. I didn’t know how she’d react.
‘But maybe she’ll see my side of it,’ I said.
We looked out the window together. Directly opposite was the Paradise, this dive bar and hotel where hipsters go to drink. Compared to the Woodland, the place might as well have been paradise. Out on the patio, a handful of customers stood in a herd, smoking and laughing. Every so often cars hummed along Hastings Street. A few blocks down somebody shouted, though whether in anger or merriment it was hard to say. Either way, things were in motion. Time hadn’t stopped. Already the boat and my chaste relationship with Tracy seemed very distant, like some other life. A better life, maybe. But not my life.
‘So where the hell are we going tonight?’ I asked.
In Jake’s truck we headed east on Powell, then merged with McGill and got onto the Second Narrows Bridge, which connects Vancouver to the North Shore, where we grew up. Beneath us Burrard Inlet shimmered and rippled, a dark swathe of water burnished by city lights, and up ahead the mountains stood out blackly against the night sky. On the far side of the bridge we kept going along the Upper Levels and the Cut – this long stretch of highway hacked into the hillside. Drizzling rain smeared the windscreen and one of Jake’s wipers was busted, so the blade flopped around all crazily, like a snake having conniptions.
Along the way, Jake forgot to act grave and compassionate about the loss of my job. My presence had cheered him up some and as he drove he whistled through his gap tooth – some little ditty that was irritating as all hell.
‘It’s good to have you along, bro.’ He leaned over, punched me in the shoulder. ‘Good old Poncho. The handsome old buck, with a busted hand.’
He was smiling reminiscently.
‘What are you grinning at?’
‘Just thinking. Having you involved always made my schemes seem more legitimate, somehow. You were the respectable one. If you were part of it then Sandy and Ma figured it had to be okay.’
‘Even when you were up to no good.’
‘I was always up to no good.’
‘What are we getting into, man?’
‘You remember the Delaney brothers? Mark and Patrick?’
‘From back in the day? Sure.’
They had grown up on the North Shore and gone to a rival high school, around the same time as us. I’d come across them a few times. Back then they’d had a reputation as badasses but there were a lot of posers around who dealt a bit of weed and pretended to be gangsters and most of the time it didn’t amount to anything.
Jake said, ‘They’ve been busy since then.’
‘I heard something about that.’
‘They’re making a name for themselves.’
He told me that two years ago they’d formed this new gang that was causing quite a stir. Most of the gangs in the Lower Mainland were one ethnicity or another, but theirs – the World Legion, they called it – had done away with that, and they were muscling in (that was the term Jake used) on the turf of the older gangs: the Triads and the Hells Angels.
I said, ‘Equality among criminals, eh?’
‘They’re the ones who helped me out inside.’
‘Because you’re North Shore?’
‘An old friend vouched for me, and Mark Delaney remembered me.’
‘So that’s why you owe them.’
‘Now you’re getting it, Poncho.’
We’d followed the highway past the Lynn Valley turn-off and took the exit at Upper Lonsdale. We swung north, going up the hill towards the mountains, past the Queen’s Cross pub and the squat apartment buildings near there. The area beyond was leafy, suburban, and pleasant-looking.
‘This is where we’re meeting them?’ I asked.
‘They use their house as a base,’ Jake said. ‘Their mom’s house, actually.’
He laughed, and snapped his fingers, as if that was the punchline to a joke.
Of all the outrageous parts of this story – and I admit there are many – the one I find hardest to get a handle on is the existence of the Delaney brothers. For the same reason, they
