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post-secondary education, I dropped out of college and applied for the job.
    It didn’t work out. Which is why, on a cool Friday in September, three days before Labour Day, I was staring up at my grandfather’s face, a stranger amid the day-to-day traffic of the Main Street station.
    Gavin Fisk had said he’d be down in a minute. Seventeen minutes later he strolled out of the elevator, a hockey bag slung over his shoulder. A tall, muscular white man with a stubble-dotted head, wearing grey sweats and a shirt that said P OLICE: T he W ORLD’S L ARGEST S TREET G ANG .
    He grinned and grabbed my hand in an alpha-male handshake. I upped the torque of my own grip. Rule one for dealing with people like Gavin Fisk: never show weakness and never back down. Otherwise you’ll spend every morning handing over your lunch money.
    â€œEncyclopedia Brown,” he said. “What’d you want to see me about?”
    He didn’t wait for my response but kept moving. We walked out of the station, down Wylie to the high-fenced lot beneath the Cambie Street Bridge that contained the motor pool and the staff parking.
    â€œOne of Lam’s Missing Persons cases from earlier this year. Django James Szabo?”
    â€œLunatic father,” Fisk said. We stopped by a white F350 spotted with gull shit, parked over the white line so it took up two spaces. He unlocked the canopy and hefted his hockey gear into the bed.
    â€œI talked to him,” he said, “took him through his story a couple times. He was real calm till we get to the questions nobody likes — did he hit his kid, did he fuck his kid, and I’m being diplomatic as hell — then out of nowhere he overturns the table and lunges at me.”
    â€œHe was distraught.”
    â€œYes, Mike, I guessed that too.”
    â€œYou look into his story?”
    Fisk unlocked the door of the cab and propped one foot on the running board. He rolled down the window and threaded his arm through.
    â€œIf I remember right, he’d dragged his kid to a bunch of junk shops. They all remembered him, frequent customer or seller or whatever he was. He sold some old junk to a music studio. The hot piece of ass that owns the studio said the same thing, though I grilled her very thoroughly on the subject.”
    That wolfish grin. “What about the pawn shop?” I said.
    â€œNot much to get out of them. Store tape shows the kid goofing around, his dad sending him to the car. Dad leaves, comes back, acts upset or a reasonable facsimile. They call the cops, the cops show up.”
    â€œAnything suspicious on the tape prior to their arrival?”
    Fisk’s good humour chilled a few degrees.
    â€œNo,” he said. “’Magine that, no one walked in with a sign round their neck saying ‘I plan to take a kid.’ Has the dad unloaded his conspiracy theories on you yet?”
    â€œHe thinks it’s a kidnapping.”
    â€œOf course. Because the idea his kid took off on his own is hard to take.”
    â€œYou think he ran away?”
    â€œFrom that nutjob? Wouldn’t you?” Fisk sat and pulled the door closed. “Herb Lam had the same thought. Know what clinched it for me?”
    Anything other than facts , I thought, but shook my head and said nothing.
    â€œSzabo taught the kid to drive. Lanky kid, he could reach the pedals with the seat all the way forward.”
    â€œSo nothing ever came up, no evidence someone might have taken the car with Django in it?”
    He shook his head and started the engine.
    I shouted, “You or Lam ever run down a list of carjackers?”
    He shifted out of park but the truck didn’t move. His gaze had frosted over.
    â€œThere’s no way in your mind we could be right about this, is there?”
    â€œI have to check either way,” I said.
    â€œYou talk to Roy McEachern yet?”
    â€œWon’t return my calls.”
    â€œDrop my name if it helps.”