Thankfully, 544 Hastings Street is still in the shitty part of town. It means that there are no upwardly mobile citizens in their business-casual wear to sneer at me while I linger in the back alley of the office, watching the lights inside switch off. Stevie Warsame left a half hour ago, but he’s not the one I’m waiting for.

I watch from behind a dumpster, settled next to a young woman with piercings at her brow, one nostril, and both earlobes and helices, as well as a single flash of silver at her upper lip. When I saw her here, wrapped up in her sleeping bag, I couldn’t hear her breathing. So I put a finger under her pierced nostril and waited until I felt her shallow breath. Satisfied that she was alive, I turned to watch the back of my old office.

It begins to rain.

Brazuca exits the building and pauses in front of his MINI. It’s possible he’s considering why the hell he even bothers cramming his long limbs in such a tiny space. Eventually, he comes to terms with his poor taste in vehicles and gets in. I watch him leave, even trailing out of the alley afterward to see if anyone’s paying close attention to his disappearing taillights from the street.

Nothing stands out.

If there’s surveillance on him, it’s not an amateur job. The downtown eastside is at once derelict and bustling, as it always is, but no one here seems to care about Brazuca’s movements.

When I return to the dumpster my friend is stirring. I leave quickly so she doesn’t have time to take in any identifying details. People would be surprised at how much a body on the street can observe. I would have asked her if she’d noticed anybody watching the place, but I don’t want her to pay any particular attention to me. It could be self-defense, a hunch, evidence of a life lived in the shadows. Whatever it is, I simply don’t want anyone to get a good look at my face. There’s a man who’s made a target of me. No woman in her right mind can shake that.

As I walk back to Chinatown I feel more myself with every step, finally back in a city that has come to be my home. The rain falls in a fine mist, and I’m soothed by the slick of moisture it leaves behind, until it turns to snow again, and my mood changes along with it. Winnipeg, where I grew up, was far, far colder than this. In my youth, I would even consider this to be T-shirt weather. But I am old now, or, at least, older. I am no longer an idiot.