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chapter one
Monday, December 13
Until this moment, he hadn’t realized just how much he dreaded this meeting.
“Sit anywhere, dear,” the matronly, bottle-blond waitress said, as she swabbed the table of an unoccupied booth near the back of the restaurant.
He took off his coat and slid into the booth.
“Do you need a minute?” the waitress asked, handing him a dog-eared, vinyl-bound menu.
“Just coffee,” he replied, handing the menu back.
A two-minute walk from the Waterfront SkyTrain and SeaBus terminal in the refurbished Canadian Pacific Railway Station, the restaurant was two-thirds filled with a rainbow coalition of commuters, students, office workers, early-bird Christmas shoppers, and off-season tourists seeking shelter from the penetrating damp of a Vancouver winter. Over the mid-afternoon buzz of conversation and the clatter of dishes, Bob Seger sang about turning the page.
After the waitress brought his coffee, he unfolded his rain-damp newspaper and tried to read, to occupy his mind while he waited, but it was impossible to concentrate. He put the paper aside. Was he doing the right thing? he asked himself for the umpteenth time since arranging this meeting. Maybe it would be better to just let sleeping dogs lie. Sleeping dogs had a tendency to snap when disturbed. And what if he was wrong? He had no proof, circumstantial or otherwise, just conjecture and supposition, a feeling in his gut that he was right. It was too late to back out now, though, even if he wanted to, which he didn’t.
He breathed deeply, slowly, trying to relax. No, he wasn’t looking forward to this meeting at all. But it was going to be a walk in the park compared with his next conversation with Victoria. Christ, he thought, in the eight years he and Victoria had been married he couldn’t remember her ever being as angry as she’d been last night. The depth and intensity of her anger had shocked and surprised him, although in retrospect, perhaps it shouldn’t have done either.
“Goddamnit, Patrick,” she’d said. “This is our life you’re screwing with. You could have at least discussed it with me first.”
“I didn’t want you to worry,” he’d replied.
“Oh, bullshit,” she’d snapped.
It was bullshit, at least partly. The main reason he hadn’t told her he’d handed in his resignation, effective immediately, was because he knew she’d have tried to talk him out of it. She might have succeeded, too. He’d been with Hammond Industries for ten years, more than half of his professional life, and the decision to leave had been hard enough as it was.
“What are you going to do?” she’d asked, worry ringing in her voice.
“I’m looking into a couple of things,” he’d replied, uncomfortably aware that he was evading the question. “Worse comes to worst,” he’d added with a grin, “I can always accept Sean’s offer to manage his campaign.”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Patrick, what do you know about politics? In any case, I thought you already told him no.”
“I did,” he’d said, sighing. “Jesus, Vee, the way you’re carrying on you’d think we were two meals away from starvation. In any case, you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? You’ve got your trust fund.” Which, he could have added but hadn’t, had more than doubled since he’d started managing it. “All I’ve got,” he’d said, trying to lighten the mood with an atrocious Irish brogue, “is me wits.”
It hadn’t worked, of course. She’d turned cold and distant after that, responding in flat monosyllables when she responded at all. He’d let his anger get the better of him then. “Oh, for god’s sake, Vee,” he’d said. “Stop behaving like a spoiled child. It’s about bloody time you grew up and accepted that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
She’d slept in the spare room.
He looked at his watch. It was almost three-thirty. If he didn’t get this over with soon there was no way he was going to make Horseshoe Bay in time to catch the five o’clock ferry to Nanaimo. And if he didn’t make the five o’clock ferry, he wasn’t going to make the seven o’clock meeting with the Geeks, as he had dubbed the motley crew of post-adolescent programmers at LogiGraphics. Why they couldn’t work reasonable hours, like normal people, was completely beyond him. He might as well reschedule for Tuesday morning, just in case. He took out his cellphone and made the call.
The Geeks were more than happy to accommodate him. After all, their business plan was an absolute shambles, poorly thought out, sloppy, and full of inconsistencies, and their marketing projections were pure caffeinestoked fantasy. But if they’d been businessmen, he thought, a bit smugly, they wouldn’t have needed him. And they needed him very much indeed.
He wished he knew more about computers and the Internet. He felt fairly confident that the Geeks were on to something interesting, perhaps even revolutionary, but too much of what they’d told him had gone right over his head. Sandra St. Johns, his assistant—his former assistant, he amended—knew a lot about the Internet, but he’d well and truly burned that particular bridge, hadn’t he? Sandra was almost as pissed at him as Victoria was, maybe more.
Christ, what a fool he’d been to have had an affair with her, if affair was the right word for it. Sandra had called it recreational sex, more fun than squash or racquetball, with no club fees, and almost as good for the cardiovascular system. But of course affair was the right word, he berated himself. He couldn’t weasel out of it that easily. Things may not have been going very well between Victoria and him lately, especially where sex was concerned, but that was no excuse for cheating on her. Despite their problems, he still loved her. Trouble was, though, he couldn’t erase the memory of Sandra, skirt hiked up around her hips as she writhed atop him on his office sofa, humming deep in her throat as she neared orgasm. Even now, his pulse quickened and the god-damned one-eyed worm raised its single-minded head.
Christ, life could be complicated sometimes.
“More coffee?” the waitress asked, hovering over him with the coffee pot in her hand.
“No, thanks,” he said. She went away.
He looked at his watch again. Almost four. He’d give it ten minutes more, then he was out of here. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe he was meant to let the sleeping dogs alone after all.
He looked up as the door opened, letting in a blast of cold, damp air. A man came into the restaurant, a street person from his raggedy appearance. He had a great, bushy moustache that almost completely covered his mouth and his hands were shoved into the pockets of a grimy green parka, shoulders darkened by rain. A filthy scarf muffled his chin and the hood of the parka was up, cinched tight against the chill, and from it protruded the curved bill of a baseball cap. Despite the overcast sky, he wore big wraparound sunglasses. He stood by the entrance, surveying the room, as if looking for someone. It might be easier, Patrick thought sourly, looking at his watch again, if he removed the bloody sunglasses.
The man in the parka approached Patrick’s booth and stared down at him, eyes invisible behind the dark lenses of the glasses.
“Can I help you?” Patrick asked irritably.
The man didn’t answer, just continued to look down at Patrick. Even though his face was almost completely obscured, Patrick felt there was something vaguely wrong about him. Then the man took his hands out of his pockets. He was wearing gloves and had something in his right hand. It took Patrick a fraction of a second to realize that the object in the man’s hand was a revolver. It was the longest fraction of a second of Patrick’s life.
He looked up from the gun. The ridiculous glasses had slipped. Patrick looked into the familiar eyes of his killer. “No,” he said, starting to stand. “Wait. It’s—”
The gun roared and leapt. Patrick felt a massive impact as the first bullet struck him in the sternum, mushrooming and slamming him against the backrest of the bench.