Blizzard Ball (9 page)

Gisele, open …” Roddy said, trying to keep his voice from echoing through the apartment hallway.

Gisele, barefoot, pulled her robe tight, eying Roddy through the chained door. “Christ, it’s 6:00 a.m., what are you doing here?” She ran her fingers through sleep-matted hair. “And keep your voice down; my daughter’s sleeping.”

“There’s been an accident,” Roddy said as he pushed his way into her apartment. He smelled of stale booze and his shirt was ripped. “One of those crazy bicycle couriers ran into me, but I am talking about the professor.”

“Omigod, what happened?”

“I left the professor at the club just after midnight with the hockey dancers.” Roddy paced between the small apartment living room and kitchen. “Next thing I know, I get a frantic call from the Duck. The professor’s dead.”

“I don’t even want to hear this,” Gisele said, feeling her blood pressure rise and her face flush with heat. She took a step backward and collapsed onto the couch.

“Your professor was into some twisted shit,” Roddy said.

“He’s not ‘my professor,’” Gisele snapped.

Roddy walked into the kitchen, allowing the air of shock and tension to diffuse a bit. He returned with a bottle of cold beer and held it to the side of his face. “As you wish. The ‘professor’ hung himself to get his dick up.”

“What are you talking about?” Gisele’s face grew pinched and sour with disgust.

“Here, let me give it to you in black and white,” Roddy said, reaching into his rear pocket. He pulled out a first responder investigative report obtained from the Vancouver Police Department by the HM Club’s lawyers. He dropped it on Gisele’s lap. “It’s all there.”

Gisele turned on the table lamp and angled the photocopy of the report into the light. The report, dated December 28, 2010,

4:29 a.m., was from Spt. J. Rothmeyer, VPD, Investigative Services.

In a statement provided by Ms. Belinda Weir, aka the Duck, a Sergei Petrov, aka Professor (passport identification, Russian national), had propositioned several women at the HM Club. He flashed a significant sum of cash and the Duck accepted the offer. The Professor and the Duck went to her apartment (approximately 1:30 a.m.) and had sex for hire. With the agreement fulfilled, the Duck told the Professor to leave. The Professor, however, insisted upon another sexual encounter. He then rummaged through the Duck’s bedroom closet, found a scarf, tied the ends together to form a loop, and secured it high on the hinge side of a bedroom closet door. He stuck his head in the scarf loop and made a 360-degree turn to cinch the scarf tight around his neck.

“This is totally insane,” Gisele said, rubbing at her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to be done with Roddy, the lottery business, and the Professor, but she read on.

The Duck was instructed to have sex with the Professor, who was standing up against the door, when he reached the state of arousal. The Professor pounded on the door in anger when he failed to become stimulated and lowered his weight, putting more pressure on the scarf. The Duck, who was lying in bed watching the “freak show,” as she called it, became alarmed when the Professor’s legs buckled and his eyes bulged. Seeing he was in trouble, she then tried to lift him to take the pressure off his neck, but could not manage the weight. Finally, she secured a serrated steak knife and cut the scarf free. The professor collapsed on the floor. She tried shaking him back to consciousness, but there was no response. In her panic, she called Roddy Pitsan, an acquaintance from the HM Club, who in turn called Emergency Services. (Call registered at 2:29 a.m.) The medical examiner has reported (3:33 a.m.) the cause of death: strangulation by means of autoerotic asphyxiation. The Professor’s blood alcohol was at a level of severe intoxication.

“I knew your name would show up in this somehow.” Gisele looked up from the report and eyed Roddy suspiciously.

“Don’t even go there,” Roddy said, twisting the cap off the beer. “All I know is the police are holding the Duck. The Club got her an attorney. Aside from a prostitution charge, she should be off the hook.”

Gisele grabbed at a sofa accent pillow and clutched it to her chest. “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“I need you to go to St. Paul’s Hospital,” Roddy said evenly, aware he was on thin ice, “and identify the professor. Make a personal connection.”

“Bullshit!” Gisele exploded off the couch. “This is your problem. You directed him to the club. Those are your sluts you set him up with. Now get the hell out of my apartment.”

“Gisele, settle. You’ll wake your daughter.”

“Fuck you,” Gisele said, cutting him a hard look. “And don’t ever mention my daughter again,” the fury raising a visible vein on her forehead.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Roddy said with a wounded look, in the manner of a chastened little boy. He walked over to the apartment window, as if a taking a bad-behavior time-out, and watched the morning rain run wormlike down the glass. “You’re the only known contact the professor had in Vancouver,” Roddy said, turning back to Gisele. “Besides, there’s probably a hotel surveillance video showing you waltzing in with the professor and planting him in the room you booked for him. The police are going to want to talk with you. You’ve got to head this off.”

“I’m not getting involved,” Gisele said. “No way. No how. This is your mess, leave me out of it.” She could feel the approach of a monster headache.

“Don’t high-horse me,” Roddy said, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he closed the distance between them. “You stroked the professor for a lot of money and agreed to, perhaps even encouraged, his visit because he was going to cut you in on the lottery winnings.”

“I was only doing business,” Gisele said, feeling cornered. “I had nothing to do with him being snuffed by a whore or however you’re spinning it.” She threw the police report at Roddy and stormed out of the living room into the bathroom, her face tight with anger. She swung open the medicine cabinet, pinched the cap off a bottle of aspirin, shook out four tablets, put her mouth to the faucet, and washed them down.

Roddy followed, stealing a look at his sleep-deprived face in the hallway mirror, and stood in the bathroom doorway. “Just tell the police that you met this guy on the Internet, nothing serious. You did a little online flirting but in no way encouraged him to visit. His arrival in town was a complete surprise. You’re shocked and embarrassed that the guy turned out to be a pervert.”

“You think the police are not going to seize on the fact this guy just won seven hundred and fifty million dollars?” Gisele said, pressing her head against the bathroom mirror and letting a washcloth run under cold water.

“Technically speaking, without a ticket in hand the professor has not won anything.”

“Out of my way,” Gisele said as she lowered her shoulder into Roddy’s solar plexus, shoving past him out of the bathroom. His breath left him with a strained auuuuh. Gisele dropped into the living room sofa. Spent by the stress, she laid the washcloth on her forehead. “You have to be crazy to think this guy left Russia and didn’t tell someone he had purchased the wining ticket,” she said, staring at the ceiling.

Roddy was hopeful that the lottery investors referenced by the professor might stop to consider the professor’s curious death, now under police investigation, before they too chased an illegally gotten lottery ticket across the globe.

“I’ve already instructed Claude to alter the transaction file, swapping out the professor’s winning numbers for losers,” Roddy said from a safe distance, wary of another attack. “If someone comes snooping, even the police, they’ll only find more proof that the nutty professor was not operating with a full deck.”

Gisele kneaded at her temples. “Somebody let me out of this nightmare,” she said, emotionally drained.

The pad of small feet on the linoleum floor interrupted the exchange. “Mommy, who’s that man?”

“He’s just leaving,” Gisele said, gathering her daughter close.

Roddy bent down on one knee to the height of the little girl. “Hi, I’m Roddy, a friend from Mommy’s work.”

Gisele opened the apartment door to facilitate his exit. Roddy stood up to his full size and smiled at the little girl. “Gisele, make this thing go away, and I will throw in a five-thousand-dollar kicker and a trip to Disney World for you and your princess.”

“Mommy, yippee. I want to go to Disney World!” The little girl tugged at Gisele’s sleeve.

Roddy waved goodbye to the child and walked past Gisele out into the apartment hallway to the reverberation of a slammed door.

The white lights of St. Paul’s Hospital bounced off the brightly polished floor and bleached Gisele’s sleepless brain. She approached a heavyset nurse in starched whites and pink tennis shoes, who ushered her down a long corridor into a small windowless office. An elderly administrator looked down her half-rim glasses at Gisele before setting her dark liver-splotched hands to the keyboard in search of information on the professor. As Gisele was not an immediate family member, little in the way of the medical report could be divulged. Gisele attempted to make a point of saying she was only a casual acquaintance of the deceased, but was met with indifference. The administrator said something about a yet–to-be-performed autopsy and efficiently moved her along, as though on a conveyor belt, and dropped her into the hospital’s morgue. When the refrigerated drawer opened, Gisele buckled into the arms of the medical examiner, who was as practiced as a trapeze artist in catching falling bodies. He planted her in a chair outside the morgue, where she was set upon by two grouchy male detectives. She recited to the investigators the fabricated account about her very brief long-distance Internet relationship with the professor, only to be challenged with sarcasm and humiliation. After the third tortured recitation, she told the sadistic pair to fuck off. She was dismissed with the stipulation that she make herself readily available, should homicide want to question her further.

Gisele bolted through the tiled bowels of the hospital, spotted an exit, and pushed through the revolving door into the rain. On the sidewalk, her stride lengthened into a run in an attempt to dispel the morning’s events.

“Stop!” a familiar voice said. “Please wait,” Claude gasped, catching Gisele four blocks from the hospital. ”You blew right by me at the hospital entrance,” he said, sucking air, bent over at the waist. “You trying to kill me or what?”

Gisele lifted her face to the drizzling sky, trying to flush the smell of the morgue out of her sinuses. Watery beads caught at the corners of her eyes and tracked lines of mascara down her cheeks. She shook uncontrollably.

“Come on. Let’s get out of the weather.” Claude pulled Gisele into a nearby tavern and planted her in a booth. The air was dead and musty. He ordered a couple of coffees and two snifters of brandy. The place was crowded with press operators, typesetters, and warehousemen from the just-completed graveyard shift at the Vancouver Sun Press. The patrons leaned on the bar with feet on the brass rail and bellyached about this and that while watching the muted TV mounted overhead. A moose and waterfall were etched into the large mirror behind the bar. Gisele’s wavy reflection in this silvery scene only added to her confused state.

A flannel-shirted printer with a full beard stumbled over and dropped a fat ink-stained hand on the table. He glared at Claude, then looked at Gisele. “How ‘bout a dance, sweetheart?” he muttered, his boozy breath landing hard.

“How ’bout you take a hike, Raccoon Face?” Gisele said, loud enough for the men at the bar to hear. The printer retreated to the laughs of his coworkers. “Oversized delinquents,” Gisele said.

Claude gulped at his brandy and exhaled the tension.

“I speak six languages,” Gisele said. “And I am reduced to supporting my daughter selling lottery tickets.” She looked at her rippled reflection in her brandy. “I’m totally through with this scam. How in the hell did I get into this mess?” She tilted back the amber drink and let the liquid linger in her mouth, numbing her lips. “Men, always men,” she muttered, answering her own question.

Gisele grew up in Switzerland which explained her propensity for languages. She worked as a manager at a hotel in Zurich where she met Leon Hirshman, a big time building contractor. They married and traveled the world together visiting his building projects. Gisele serving as an interpreter. They lived the high life until a 7.4 earth quake shook the Philippines and rattled a Hirshman built hi-rise residential complex to its foundation, taking the occupants with it. A subsequent investigation found Hirshman’s firm skimped on the rebar and cement to boost profit margins. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to eternity in a Manila prison.

Her second husband, Eldwin Parker, a Brit, worked in human resources for the international bank HSBC. A job transfer brought the pair to Vancouver. Soon thereafter their love nest was feathered by a baby girl. All appeared well until a video of Parker, anonymously posted, went viral on the internet. Parker, as it turned out, had a penchant for hiring attractive young females, especially those willing to show a little appreciation for the opportunity. Parker was caught on a security camera with the trousers of his Bottega Veneta suit bunched around his sleek Compton monk strap shoes, receiving some appreciation from a new hire. Also visible on the video was the bank’s signage and its advertising tag line, HSBC— Turning Banking On Its Head. Gisele, out of her mind with anger, cleared out her husband’s expensive suits and torched them on the back yard gas grill. She then set about to look for a job—she had a daughter to support.

“You can Take This Job and Shove It” boomed from the Wurlitzer. The song lines were picked up like an anthem among the bar patrons.

Gisele looked at Claude and considered their intersection more than a coincidence. “You got something to tell me, Frenchy? Or are you just trolling the neighborhood?”

“Kieran’s missing,” Claude said. “Mexican bandits.” He signaled for a couple more brandies. “Before Kieran disappeared, he collared one of the thieves, who claimed he and his partner were set up to believe the FedEx boxes, full of our lottery tickets, contained cash. Said the tickets are with his cousin, a woman who works as a local bank teller. We’ve been able to track her down, and Roddy’s on his way to deal with the situation personally.”