The Homeless Millionaire

Harry went down to Vancouver early next morning. He told me he was going to be away until Monday, and asked me if I wanted to take him down to Lion's Bay. That way, I'd have the boat at my disposal: he said he was sure one of the guys at the marina would give him a ride to the island if needed.

"They owe me a few favors, those guys," he explained. "The shop will be likely closed Monday, but I've got their phone numbers. So no worries."

I passed on his offer. I said I could manage over the weekend without the boat. To be honest, I thought the cruiser guys might come around during the weekend. When they saw that the boat was gone, they'd assume there was no one at the house. I'd spend the weekend alone and in peace, and I'd paint half a dozen watercolors that would blow Chaz away.

As it turned out, I was wrong.

I helped Harry mount the engine onto the boat, and waved him goodbye from the pier. Then I went back inside the house, and the first thing I saw was my sketchpad. It was flipped open on the coffee table, and the big page was blank except for the number written down by my own self, top center: 13-K-487431.

My paranoid friend had been remarkably quiet over the past two days. He'd been hit twice in quick succession. The first punch, the contract I'd signed, was strong enough to make him reel, although he still managed to get some mileage out of the contract's starting date - the first of December. That contract wasn't real, he'd said. It would be five weeks before it became real. A lot could happen in five weeks.

But then came the second punch, delivered by Johnnie Walker, and it was a knockout. Johnnie Walker was an experienced fighter; he'd taken part in millions of brawls. F.u.c.k.i.n.g with a big, heavyweight Johnnie Walker had serious aftereffects. Me and my paranoid pal were hungover as hell the day after, and he didn't feel like talking at all. He still took down a lot of notes, though. The cruiser and the guys aboard it had provided plenty of material.

That Friday, my paranoid friend kicked things off by snickering a lot while pointing to the last three digits of the boat number I'd written down: 4-3-1. I countered this by telling him we wouldn't be getting high on pot that day. That made him angry. He liked pot, especially its ability to magnify minor mishaps into life-changing catastrophes.

So when I told him there wouldn't be any, he said it made him sad to look at me. Getting all excited about a contract that was invalid, and giving away all my best pieces into the bargain! Pointing guns at people while the police were rightly suspecting me of involvement in Peter Schmidt's death! I'd killed the guy, for f.u.c.k's sake. Yeah, so maybe I would get to sell a couple of pictures. I could console myself with that as I cried myself to sleep inside a prison cell, having just been gang-r.a.p.ed in the shower by a bunch of King Kong-sized convicts, with King-Kong-sized d.i.c.ks.

He ran out of breath when he got to the size of the convicts' d.i.c.ks, so I took advantage and did some quick constructive thinking and went to the kitchen and got myself a beer. I had two, in quick succession, walking around the kitchen and smoking and occasionally stopping to stare at the trees through the window. I had this feeling something or someone could be lurking there, hidden. I saw no one and nothing but the trees. There just wasn't anything else to see.

But the feeling persisted, so I got a third beer and went to sit on the sofa and stare at that number instead. I sat down and had a swig and lit a cig and right away I noticed that the first three digits, 13-4, were good old 4-3-1 in reverse order. I hadn't noticed that right away because of the K letter in between.

That's right, my good pal said. You can exercise your free will all you like, but you'll follow a preordained path. It will be set by yourself right at the beginning of your journey through time and space. It will be set by what you think and what you feel and what you do. And it's what you do that's most important, more than any sum of thoughts and feelings.

My good friend invited me to look at what I'd done over the past couple of months. I told him to f.u.c.k off, and decided that I would fetch some firewood from the lean-to at the back. There was none left inside the house, and the fire had almost died out: it was reduced to glowing embers.

I guess that it was just as well that the cruiser guys chose that moment to show up.

I was just about to fetch the firewood so that I could rip out my entrails in warmth and comfort, and as I approached the door I saw the cruiser through one of the front windows. I didn't hear its engine, it must have been running on idle - the boat was moving very slowly.

It was headed straight for the pier.

I moved to the front door and locked everything I could lock, which wasn't much: a crude lock under the handle, and a pretty solid cast-iron bolt. It was much more solid than its mounting, but there was nothing I could do about that.

Harry had taken the scoped .22 into his room, but the shotgun was standing in its usual place, next to the box of cartridges. I grabbed both, and cautiously looked out of the front window that gave the better view of the pier.

The cruiser had already drawn up alongside. There were five guys on board this time, and they were in the process of coming ashore. The first two guys were already in the process of tying the mooring lines. The last two guys were wearing peaked caps with broad yellow bands that meant the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I told my paranoid pal he was mistaken, but then they climbed out onto the pier and I saw they were wearing RCMP uniforms.

There was nowhere to hide but in the shower, or on the landing in front of Harry's room. I would be spotted through one of the windows anywhere else. The shower made more sense but it felt wrong. I didn't fancy sitting on the chemical can while straining to hear what went on outside.

So I ran up quickly up to the landing, and lay down on the floorboards right in front of Harry's door. I could just about see the tops of the front window frames from there. I broke the shotgun open and saw that it was empty.

It was a totally stupid thing to do, but I scrabbled around in the box of cartridges until I'd found the ones loaded with rock salt, and loaded them in both barrels. The shotgun closed with a snap that resonated around the house loud enough to be heard right outside. That f.u.c.k.i.n.g landing was acting like a resonance chamber. If someone stepped inside the house and listened hard enough, they would probably hear me breathe.

I heard someone step onto the porch. There were a few sharp, loud knocks. Then a voice called:

"Hey! Anyone there? It's the police! Please answer the door."

I didn't. I flattened myself on the landing, facing the front. I could see the light in the room change as someone put his face close to the window.

"Hey!" another voice called. "No walking around the property! Get back here."

More knocking. Then:

"This is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police! Is anybody there?"

I wasn't moving. I wasn't breathing. I'd officially ceased to exist.

There was a third series of knocks, but they definitely sounded less determined.

"Hey," the get-back-here voice said, "You want me to have a look around the back?"

Those mounties were sure fond of saying 'hey'. Maybe because it was because of their close relationship with horses. Maybe they were trained to start every utterance with 'hey' because 'hay' meant food, to their mounts. Any horse would enjoy hearing that.

"Naah," said the mountie on the porch. "It's a washout. I said so right away when I saw there's no boat. Time to go home."

"What do you mean, go home?" a new voice demanded angrily. "He lives here! We saw him! Right, guys?"

Two new voices weakly attested that it was right, indeed. The mountie said:

"No one in their right mind lives here at this time of the year. There's no boat moored, and there's no smoke coming from the chimney."

"But he threatened us with a gun!"

"Didn't you say earlier he threatened just one of you with a gun?"

"I meant, one of us. He pointed a gun at Joey and threatened to shoot him."

"Did you see that happen?"

"No, but Joey said - "

"Did anyone see that happen, apart from Joey?"

"No."

"Which one of you is Joey? You're the one, right? Listen, Joey. There's no one here. What we can do is take you to the station, and take down a formal statement. But we've got a couple of things to attend to, in the meantime. So if you want, you can wait for us at the station and when we get there, we'll take down your statement and make everything nice and official. Or you could go home, and we'll drop by tomorrow evening. We'll give you a call beforehand. You said you're living with your parents, right?"

I couldn't hear exactly what Joey said, but it sounded like a lengthy 'yes'. He sounded pretty depressed about living with his parents. The mountie said:

"It's your choice. Now let's get out of here, we've got work waiting. You can make up your mind on the way back."

I heard the mountie step off the porch and the mutter of voices, fading as they all walked down to the pier. After a few seconds I risked crawling closer to the edge of the landing to get a view through the window. But at that angle, all I saw was the ground in front of the house.

So I stayed up there, and waited until I heard the fart of the cruiser's engine starting up. I crept down and put away the shotgun and the cartridges and crept up to the window. I was just in time to see the cruiser going out of sight.

"Shit," I said out loud.

My paranoid pal agreed this was an accurate description of my circ.u.mstances. I really needed some help to deal with this guy.

It was time for Johnnie Walker to enter, and deliver the knockout punch.

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