Giving up, we ascended the concrete stairs to street level, leaving the urine-smelling stairwell and alcove behind.
“Thoughts?” I asked as Diem scanned the street in both directions, scratching his unshaven jaw.
It was a busy area. Two bustling lanes of traffic plus an extra lane on both sides of the street for parking and tracks down the middle of the road to accommodate streetcars. Although not a main thoroughfare, it was not a quiet side street. A conglomeration of low-end shops and boarded-up windows occupied one side, while multilevel brick houses monopolized the other. The homeless camped in alcoves. Pedestrians bustled along in both directions.
“He has to come home or go out at some point,” Diem said. “We’ll wait. Confront him when he shows his face.”
I spun on my trendy loafers and clutched my chest, dramatically gasping. “Say it ain’t so. Puuuleeze tell me you’re suggesting a stakeout. I love stakeouts. I never get to do them.”
“Surveillance.”
I swatted the air andpffed. “Same difference. I’m calling it a stakeout. We need a better spot and snacks. You can’t have a stakeout without snacks.” I analyzed the street, but every available parking slot was taken as far as the eye could see.
“We’re fine where we’re at, and we don’t need snacks.”
“Location, location, location. It’s imperative we have a good view of the building. The Jeep is much too far away.”
“It’s two houses down, Tallus. It’s fine.”
“Not in my books. I need front row seats. If a spot opens up, we’ll move the Jeep, okay?”
He glared.
“Agree with me, Guns.”
“Fine. We’ll move the Jeep if necessary.”
“Yes! Echo, we get to have a stakeout.”
Echo tilted her head, tongue lolling as she stared at me with golden eyes.
“We’re doing surveillance,” Diem corrected.
Echo chuffed and nudged his leg with her snout.
“I hate that she always takes your side.”
“She’smydog. She knows better than to argue, unlike my boyfriend.”
“I’m not arguing.” I was and decided to stop. I wasn’t worth it. I rarely got to partake in stakeouts—surveillance operations—since they often occurred late at night and were part of the infidelity cases Diem worked, or they involved tracking thugs who thought they could screw their bosses over or avoid parole meetings.
Although Diem was highly intelligent, if not more so than me, his six-and-a-half feet of height and two hundred and sixty pounds made him the automatic brawn in our partnership. He wasthe one who got his hands dirty in the field. He was the one who got to growl and intimidate and threaten those who needed a little threatening.
While I got to use my cunning social skills to the best of my ability, it was not nearly as fun.
We returned to the Jeep and commenced Operation Stakeout sans snacks, which was truly disappointing since I was hungry.
As we whiled away the morning, watching a rundown building for any sign of the kid from the video, I quickly remembered the flip side of the coin. Stakeouts, although cool and fun-sounding in theory, were boring as shit. Watching grass grow would have been more exciting, but god help me, I couldn’t say it out loud. Not now. Not after I kicked up a fuss.
Although the streets of Toronto were ripe with entertainment of a different sort. I got to witness a drug deal in action, a near fight between an Uber Eats driver and some punk with a skateboard who almost ran him over, and a homeless man who dropped his drawers and took a shit beside a lamppost. All this happened to a soundtrack of honking horns, sighing air brakes, a construction drill I couldn’t see, and a female pedestrian belting out the lyrics to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” as she clunked down the street in a fur coat and four-inch heels.
When I struggled to sit still, I used the iPad to create a thin profile of our impostor. The information we’d collected was scarce. We knew the boy bore a striking resemblance to the real Kael, and Elwood confirmed he had dark hair that often tumbled in his face and covered his blue eyes.
The photos of Benaiah’s son on social media showed a man without facial hair, but Elwood distinctly remembered a wispy moustache, one that wasnot well developed, he’d said.Like fuzz, he’d said. It suggested our perp might be younger than the real Kael.
I included the tattoos Marcy recalled, the fidget ring, and jotted notes about his anxious demeanor. Under that, I wrotepossiblyon drugs?
Diem remained quiet as I worked, gaze never straying from our point of interest. He was good at this stakeout thing. The man barely blinked. When Echo poked her head between the seats, he absently scratched her ear.
