“If I didn’t know any better,” Ozeroff said to Wexler, “I’d say Casey’s in love.”
A Message from the Angel of Death Maggoty: I have proved that I can do what I like when I like, and there is nothing you can do about it. Beware! Harlots are everywhere! I deal with them in fury. You cannot stop me. I am the avenger, and my hand will not be stayed. Turn away your eyes from a shapely woman. Sirach 9:8. And behold, there met him a woman with the attire of a harlot, and wily of heart. Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: Yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell. Proverbs 7:10–27. I shall strip her naked and make her like a wilderness and slay her. I will uncover her lewdness and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. Hosea 2:10.
Casey ran in the morning rain.
Later, when he got to work, Percy called for a lineup meeting. He was wearing a brown suit that looked like it had been found in a dumpster. His eyes seemed more prominent than usual.
“I’ll be doing a short piece on the second murder victim,” Wexler said.
“Whaddya know about her?” said Percy.
“Japanese-Canadian, born in Vancouver, thirty-one years old, married to a policeman, no children. Worked in a duty-free shop on Alberni Street, where the Japanese tourists off the cruise ships go to spend their yen.” Wexler glanced at his notes. “Husband picked her up from the gym, took her home, left for the night shift soon after. She let someone into their apartment. The first murder was committed in the street, which raises the question as to whether there’s a second killer on the loose. Talked to a few of the residents in the building. One man saw a pizza delivery man that night. I got an interview lined up with the victim’s mother. Lives in Richmond. That’s it for me this week, except I’ll help Casey cover some of the face-to-faces after the Liberal nomination meeting.”
“Good work, Jack,” said Percy. He turned his head. “Deb?”
Ozeroff looked smart in a high-necked maroon wool dress with matching enameled crescent earrings. She glanced at her appointment book. “Movie review. Then a piece on the Mole Hill heritage houses that the city plans to bulldoze so they can let the developers in to erect another phallic tower. It’s the last goddamn complete block of turn-ofthe-century houses left. Not just in the West End, but in the whole goddamn city. And the cretins want ’em down, can you believe it?”
“Save the speeches, Deb,” said Percy, rubbing his dark eyebrows.
“You’re just like the rest of ’em, Perce. You don’t care if the goddamn philistines win.”
Percy sighed. “Is that your lineup, Deb?”
“There’s more. I’ll try to cover designer Rosemarie Kwan’s spring collection in Gastown. Also, there’s the Joico Hair Competition and a short piece on the Vancouver Opera. That’s it for now.”
“Thanks, Deb. Casey?”
Casey nodded. “Follow-up piece on trustees playing hooky at the school board. City council update on the wards system. Whether council will allow it to go to the taxpayers in a referendum in the spring. Then there’s the expected infighting at the Liberal nomination meeting, which promises to be fierce. Jack’s with me on that. And there might be something new on the Save the Whales bunch and the dismantling of the Stanley Park Zoo, which is taking too long, according to the Friends of the Park Society.”
Percy said, “Okay. Sounds like we got a lineup. But what’s the biggest item right now?”
“Joico Hair Competition?” suggested Wexler.
“The murders,” said Ozeroff gloomily.
“Right. So what about a cautionary piece, a list of do’s and don’ts for the women of the West End? Deb, you’re a woman-”
“Holy fuckoly! I’m a woman, am I, Perce? The way you’ve got me crammed into that shoebox with three men I didn’t think you’d noticed.”
Percy sighed.
“Forget it, Perce. Anyway, how about your editorial? Why don’t you do a piece on the murders, too, instead of your usual shit-nosed, right-wing prose poem.”
Percy winced. “I already did. ‘Violence Makes Victims of Us All.’ How you like that?”
Ozeroff said, “Sounds like I might agree with you, Perce, for once. And as regards advice for the women of the West End, I’m seriously thinking of packing a piece, and I plan to tell them to do the same.”
Percy’s protuberant eyes popped.
“Packing a what?”
“Every woman should carry a gun,” said Ozeroff. “We don’t stand a chance unless we’re armed.”
“Serious advice for West End women, Deb, okay? Even if you gotta miss the fashion stuff. You know what I’m saying?”
“You wouldn’t want to read my advice, Percy. We women are mad as hell, and we’re not gonna take it anymore. Castration’s too good for these-”
Percy’s eyes popped again. He waved his arms. “Deb? Deb? Could you cool it? You’re makin’ me ill. All I’m askin’ is a few hundred words on precautionary-”
“I hear you loud’n clear, Perce. No need to get your underpants in an uproar. I’ll do it, okay?”
Percy propped his elbows on his desk, sighed, and massaged his hair with his fingers until it stood up like a gray toilet brush.
Casey raised an eyebrow at Wexler as they carried their chairs back to the reception area. Wexler grinned back at him.
At the fitness center that evening, Casey said hello to Emma Shaughnessy.
“Hello, Casey.”
“I lost one pound.”
“Ah, that’s brilliant right enough.”
Pope heard what he’d said and came over. “Ah, then you are on the road to magnificence, Sebastian, like myself.”
“Casey,” said Casey.
“One pound is a beginning,” said Emma after Pope had gone off. “The main thing is, how do you feel?”
“I feel fine.”
He wanted to ask her out. There was an Irish movie playing, but while he was waiting for the words to come, she had moved on to one of the machines.
Pope told him later that the police had doubled their evening patrols. Black-booted plainclothesmen hung out on the Denman and Davie restaurant strips. Pope said he was sure that some of the extra people working out in the gym were cops. They probably were. Pope knew everybody.
Later that evening Casey walked through the rain to Granville Street to see the Irish film. It was still raining when he got out. He dropped into O’Doul’s Bar on Robson for a beer. Then he walked home.
Casey enjoyed a morning cup of tea with Matty in her kitchen as they talked about the murders.
“Do you think the police will ever catch him, Casey?”
“He’s sure to make a mistake eventually, and when he does…”
“I hope so. I hope it will be soon. Those poor women.”
“Thanks for the tea, Matty.”
Roseanne Agostino finished her workout a few minutes before the gym was about to close. Her black cotton-polyester tights were damp with sweat, as well as the matching bra top and the bare midriff that showed off her tiny waist.
She would be thirty-two next week, and she felt better than she had at twenty.
She hurried downstairs and sweated in the sauna for ten minutes, then showered. She stepped out of the
