Julian by William Bell

Author:William Bell [Bell, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-68206-0
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2014-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

After dinner I took a walk up to a food market on the Danforth. The day’s heat lingered in the pavement and seeped from the buildings, and the sidewalk patios were going strong.

I left the market weighed down by two bulging plastic bags and a full backpack, vowing not to let my food supply get so low again—a promise I had made to myself before. The Danforth had settled into a steady rhythmic hum, a peaceful contrast to the frantic daytime bustle. My street was quiet, the street lights flickering to life in the dusk, throwing the shadows of trees across the road.

I almost missed the stakeout. It was a different car this time, parked facing south, but once again with a clear view of my house. I reminded myself that the man in the car could also observe a half-dozen other houses from where he sat, that there was nothing to prove my house was his objective. But I memorized the plate number anyway.

I sauntered past as if I hadn’t noticed him. Another Asian, taller than the first one, sitting with his head back, the smoke from a cigarette curling to the ceiling. I turned up my sidewalk, strolled through the pool of darkness under the oak, up onto the verandah and through the door. I turned on my living room light, went to the kitchen and put away my groceries. In my notebook I jotted down the time and the stakeout car’s license plate number.

Two Asians hanging around outside my place went way beyond probabilities. Police? What were the chances that two different plainclothes city cops staking out the same neighbourhood would be Asian? If not cops, who? Were they in any way connected to Bai or Chang? Could they be the “business rivals” Chang had vaguely mentioned when I asked him who had tried to snatch Wesley?

I picked up the Chang phone, set to show Unknown Caller and to block my own number, and punched in the memorized number.

“It’s Julian,” I announced, and relayed my telephone number.

Chang called back five minutes later. I related the details of the two different watchers in two different cars, wondering if Chang would conclude that I was losing my brains.

“I’m not sure if it’s this house they’re watching,” I added. “Do you want me to go down and speak to the guy? I could—”

“No. Do nothing. I will deal with this.”

“Okay.”

“You did well to call, Julian,” he said, and clicked off.

Chang hadn’t seemed surprised by my information, but then nothing seemed to ruffle him. He seemed to accept as a fact that it was my house the watchers were scoping out, so I supposed I should too. I turned on the lamp beside my reading chair by the bow window, opened the sash and picked up my book—coincidentally a cops-and-robbers thriller set in the city where at this very moment I was pretending not to notice the guy smoking in a car on the street outside my house. The watcher had opened a newspaper, folding it lengthwise against the steering wheel.

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