BRUNO CAN’T SLEEP. HE gets enough to operate, but nothing more. By nine o’clock he’s out in the water, attempting to surf, but quickly finds he can’t do that either. He settles for sitting in the dunes, thinking about Pete Reynolds and his depressing story. There are implications. Connections. He’s still there ruminating on it when a woman in black comes ambling down through the beach grass.
‘You got a minute?’ she says.
‘I don’t think so,’ says Bruno, taking her in.
‘You know who I am?’
He does, after a moment. Her name is Amy Owens. She’s one of Colleen’s minions. Amy has spent a few nights in the lock-up for public intoxication. Could be that she’s headed back there this morning.
‘What do you want?’ he says.
‘I’m the one who put the photos under your windscreen wipers.’
Bruno doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Working for Colleen Vinton all along.
Same as Pete.
‘What does that mean?’ is all he can muster.
‘I think we’re both into something here,’ the woman says. ‘Don’t suppose I can buy you breakfast?’
‘Can we do it down at the station house?’
‘It’s a bit early for that.’
Bruno looks out at the surf. ‘Okay. Let me get changed.’
To her credit, Amy comes through with breakfast. She disappears for fifteen minutes and returns with takeaway teas and two rounds of toasted cheese sandwiches. They stand across the street from the Cavill Avenue Mall and eat without saying much to each other. The shrieking of children echoes out of the Grundy’s water slides.
‘I hate that thing,’ says Amy, nodding at the slides.
‘It looks like the plumbing under my sink,’ says Bruno. ‘So, what are we doing here?’
Amy shakes her hand like she’s trying to sling water from it. It’s a nervous tic of some sort. ‘I think we can help each other.’
‘You mean, I can help Colleen?’
‘I have some information to share.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Bruno folds up the white paper bag his sandwich came in.
‘I need a straight copper.’
‘And yet here you are, trying to turn me out? I was a straight copper until those photos turned up.’
‘I’m not the one jerking off guys behind a shopping centre.’
And there it is.
The other photo.
The bottom of the deck. The one in his bedroom safe.
‘No names.’
That was one of the first things Bruno said to him.
He was beautiful, though. Had a face like a cigarette model—a cowboy—but maybe a foot too short, and a touch too blond, to pull it off.
Bruno met him in the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre about a week after his dad’s cancer diagnosis. He was out with Danny at the time. It didn’t matter. The attraction was immediate and obvious. They hooked up a half-hour later. They exchanged numbers when it was done.
Bruno would call.
The man would answer.
It was good. The whole thing was primarily about fucking, but the clarity of it made it easy. In a lot of ways, the relationship ran counter to all of Bruno’s impulses, but it never felt sullen and it always felt tender. He looked forward to their time together. His breath on Bruno’s neck. The man’s hands. It all worked.
Until it didn’t.
Turned out the guy wasn’t quite so taken.
He cut it off fast.
Bruno now knows why.