When Brazuca wakes, a pounding in his head reminds him of the time last year when Nora hit him with a tire iron, but much worse. Curtis Parnell didn’t hold anything back, whereas Nora had clearly wanted him to live another day, maybe so that she could use him for sex and leave him hanging.
It’s unfair, because he partly deserved what he got for being dishonest with her, but Brazuca isn’t in an especially charitable mood. He’s in what looks to be a basement, with his hands and feet tied, his knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrenched behind his back. The light in the room hurts his eyes, so he closes them again. He’s about to slip back into unconsciousness when he senses someone above him.
Smack. A stinging slap to the face. “You awake, faggot?”
Brazuca groans, but doesn’t open his eyes. On principle, because slurs aren’t something that he’s in the habit of acknowledging anyway.
Another slap. “Hey!”
Brazuca allows his head to loll, the side of his face pressing into the ground.
“Shit.” Parnell moves away. There’s the sound of a door opening.
Through slitted eyes he watches as Parnell rummages through a hockey bag full of weapons that he’s pulled out of a storage compartment under the stairs, carefully selecting an assault rifle before putting the hockey bag back and locking the compartment with a padlock. The assault rifle seems more to make a point than anything else. In close quarters, he could have made do with a good old-fashioned pistol. Like the one he hit Brazuca with, which is now tucked into Parnell’s waistband.
Parnell leans the rifle against the wall and reaches for a meat cleaver in the basement’s tiny kitchenette. He proceeds to wipe the blade down with a cloth. “You know what I liked about them chinks that used to run around a lil while ago?”
Brazuca gives up the game and opens his eyes. Only because a disgusted sigh won’t work if he continues to pretend he’s asleep. He once again reconciles himself to the fact that he has a kind of face that bigots seem to trust. Feel open to speak their minds around. It is a quality that he would gladly give away if he could but so far there have been no takers—only an endless line of dangerous losers.
Parnell examines the blade, his dead eyes reflected back at him in the stainless steel. “Yeah, those cats, they knew what they were doing. Puts a kind of fear in a man, don’t you think? Hack something off and people will tell their whole life story. So tell me,” he says, moving toward Brazuca. “Who the fuck are you and why were you watching my house?”
“Three Phoenix,” Brazuca says, on a sudden hunch.
Parnell stops. The name has surprised him, though he tries to hide the quick dart of fear in his eyes. “The fuck did you just say?”
“They sent me to check up on you.”
“And who are you?”
“Ask them.” Brazuca closes his eyes and leans his head back, channeling an arrogance he hasn’t felt in over twenty years. A young man’s cockiness.
Parnell yanks his head back and holds the blade to his throat. Brazuca wills himself to keep still. His eyes, when they meet Parnell’s, are calm. Though his palms are clammy from the effort it takes.
“This about the chick?” Parnell asks, his eyebrows knit together. He seems nervous, the hand holding the cleaver damp with sweat.
“Of course it’s about her. What did you think?”
“Fuck!” Parnell screams suddenly, moving away. A drop of blood beads at Brazuca’s throat but there’s nothing he can do to wipe it away. “Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck! I told them I got guys in Detroit on it. It’s just gonna take a bit longer. That bitch is as good as dead.”
“Well, she’s not yet, is she?” Brazuca has no idea what Parnell is on about, but whatever it is has created some much-needed distance between them.
Parnell paces the small basement, then swings around to face Brazuca. “Hey, this is a favor, alright? They ask me to get some guys to keep an eye on her and I did. Followed her for months now. I dunno what they wanted from her anyway, never said a word about that. She was boring as shit. Only walking that ugly dog, taking the sick guy to the hospital, and then a couple night classes at UBC—”
“What dog?” Brazuca asks, but Parnell isn’t listening.
“—and I was the one who took it upon myself to find out where she went when she skipped town. That wasn’t part of the deal. Plus, I’m doing them another favor. I didn’t have to call those guys in Detroit to take care of her. They—I offered up an option, on account of our close relationship, and y’all said that’s what you wanted. Her gone for good. These things take time, you know.”
“We did want her gone, but someone’s got to be held accountable for the delay.” And maybe he’s not thinking clearly because, before he can stop himself, he repeats, “What dog?”
This time Parnell hears him. There’s a moment of confusion, then he turns hostile. “What do you mean, what dog? The dog that’s in the pictures we keep sending.” He narrows his bloodshot eyes. Takes a closer look at Brazuca. “What did you say your name was? Oh, wait. You didn’t.” He puts the cleaver down and pulls his phone out of his back pocket—the same phone that Brazuca picked up from the driveway. Parnell grabs Brazuca by the hair once more, yanking his head back, and takes a photo of his face with the camera on his phone.
When he releases Brazuca’s head, he makes sure to slam it on the ground. Lights explode in Brazuca’s brain and he lies there gasping. Parnell disappears up the stairs, taking all the weapons with him, even the cleaver, and switching off the lights. The lock turns on a door upstairs.
It takes several long, sweaty minutes for Brazuca to thread his aching legs through his bound arms so that his hands are now in front of him. He just manages to pull himself into a seated position when the door opens again. The light switches on. There’s a moment of blindness, then his vision adjusts.
“Jesus,” says Stevie Warsame, as he comes down the stairs. “You alone down here, Bazooka?”
“Yeah,” Brazuca says, falling back against the wall. “Where’s Parnell?”
“Took off in his truck.” Warsame cuts through Brazuca’s bonds with a penknife attached to his keychain. “Those two assholes I was following were headed for the U.S. border, so I turned back. Good thing I did, too.”
Brazuca nods, shakes the kinks out of his limbs.
Warsame glances toward the stairs. “We better go.”
“He won’t be back anytime soon.” If the photo Parnell had taken of Brazuca’s face could have been sent via the phone, he wouldn’t have left. Which means that he had to go somewhere physically to get in touch with his Three Phoenix contacts. “Got a storage compartment full of weapons down here,” he says, rising to his feet. He owes Lee a tip and can’t, in good conscience, let a stash of weapons like this go unreported. It isn’t strictly homicide related, but it’s the best he’s got.
It’s only much later that Brazuca takes a ride from Warsame from the police station, where they’d given their statements, back to his MINI. Curtis Parnell is officially in the wind, with a photo of Brazuca on his phone, but Brazuca pushes it from his thoughts. He has another worry on his mind.
Warsame glances over at him. “What?”
“How the hell did you find me, anyway?”
“Needed some info for my invoice, so I tried to call. You weren’t answering.” Warsame shrugs. “Tracked you through the camera. It put you in the house, and I figured you were in trouble when I saw Parnell leave in his truck.”
Brazuca reaches into his jacket and pulls out the small Canon that he’d borrowed from Warsame. The lens is smashed beyond repair, but on the underside of it is a dark, almost unnoticeable sticker just beginning to peel off at the edges.
A sticker apparently monitored by Warsame’s phone. “You track your spare camera?”
Warsame shrugs. “I don’t lend my shit out without some assurances.”
Feeling a migraine coming on, Brazuca reaches over to turn off the radio. His head can’t take Warsame’s house music right now. He’d refused to go to the hospital, because why waste time? It would be a miracle if he doesn’t have a concussion. Apparently Warsame thinks the same thing because when they reach Brazuca’s MINI he insists on following Brazuca back home.
“I’m not going home,” Brazuca says, as he gets out of the car. Down the street, the Parnell house is still blocked off by police. A group of neighbors gather around the police cordon, trying to get a glimpse inside. According to the cops at the station, they’d found a veritable arsenal of guns stashed in the basement, along with bricks of heroin and cocaine, which may or may not be cut with fentanyl and Wild 10. “I’ll take it from here. Thanks for the ride.” He fishes for his spare key from the magnetic case under the muffler, trying to ignore that Warsame has followed him.
Warsame shakes his head at the muffler key, but Brazuca has his reasons. Last year he’d been stranded at a remote gas station when a woman had thrown his keys into the bushes. He never wanted to experience that level of panic again.
“Amateur,” Warsame says. He leans against the driver’s door and stares hard at Brazuca. His famous smile is gone now. “You’re being reckless, dude. That ain’t like you. You won’t let me drive you to the hospital or even back home. There’s something you’re not telling me. I’m all about the war on drugs and shit, but I’m not your sidekick. I didn’t save your ass just to keep on doing it because you’re on some mission. You hear? You need to tell me what’s going on. Right the fuck now.”
In another universe, one where his leg wasn’t shot to hell, his head wasn’t pounding like someone had taken a drill to it, and a great urgency hadn’t taken hold of him, maybe he could have moved Warsame out of the way. But they are in this universe, and Brazuca can’t remember the last time he ate anything or where his real keys are. He just doesn’t have the strength to keep quiet anymore. A cold fear has been building inside him parallel to his headache, each feeding and giving life to the other. And there’s the knowledge that the woman who left him stranded without car keys is once again at the center of his problems.
It’s like karma walked up, kicked him in the nuts, and then stole his lunch money.
He tells Warsame about the conversation he had with Parnell, who confirmed the Three Phoenix link. The triad had gone quiet in Vancouver after the disappearance of their head honcho Jimmy Fang but, the last time Brazuca checked, still had a presence in China where, according to Grace’s research, there was easy access to those underground chemical labs that produce synthetic opiates like fentanyl and Wild 10.
But that’s not exactly what’s on his mind.
“Nora’s got a dog, Stevie. And she was taking care of Crow, who’s sick. Until she left town a little while ago.” He rubs his head, tries to remember the date she left but can’t seem to pin it down.
“Where did she go?”
“She never said.”
Warsame goes silent for a moment as it hits him. “You don’t think Parnell was talking about her?”
Brazuca doesn’t say anything. The biker had said he knew some rough people in Detroit. That the woman was in danger. A woman with a dog, who was taking care of a sick man.
He pulls out his phone and dials a number.
He’s not surprised when Nora doesn’t answer.