The Caper’s mob had chased him down Fourth Avenue to the end of the block. Harvey had turned the corner, thinking he would lose them during the sprint through the Safeway parking lot to the car, but abandoned that idea when he saw how many people were gaining on him. These people were fast.
Harvey sprinted into an underground parking garage. Some kind of weird spray-on insulation made the low ceiling look like a great big fluffy white cloud. He ducked behind a van and kept low as he scuttled down the narrow space between two rows of parked cars, until he dead-ended at a glass box. There was an elevator inside the box. He jumped a low divider and trotted around to the far side of the glass box and pressed the up button. The elevator door immediately slid open. The mob screamed at him as he stepped inside. He’d expected a row of buttons, but there was only one; the elevator only had two stops, at the parking lot and at ground level. He rode the elevator up to the sidewalk. The door slid open. The mob had taken the stairs. Harvey held the door open as he waited patiently for the mob to reach ground level. He heard the thunder of feet on concrete and then the door to the stairs burst open. Harvey yelled, and they turned towards him like a flock of birds or a school of fish. He waited until they were right on top of him and then pushed the down button. The elevator door slid shut, pinching off screams of rage. He glided down to the parking lot. Nobody was waiting to ambush him. He stripped off the yellow suit and balaclava and fedora and strolled casually out of the parking lot. Nobody paid any attention to him. That was a good thing, because the silver Mercedes SUV he’d parked behind was gone, and it took him way too long a time to locate his low-slung Firebird, hidden behind the looming bulk and tinted windows of a Dodge Caravan.
Now Harvey sat down and leaned his back against Anders’ apartment door. An hour crawled past on its hands and knees. Harvey almost, but not quite, dozed off. The stripper’s music from the bar had given him a hellaciously painful headache. The music was so loud it made the wooden floor vibrate under his ass. He swore on his own grave that if they played “Stairway to Heaven” one more time, he’d torch the joint. All patience lost, he stood up, and pounded on the door. Still no answer. Where was that moron Anders? A thought burst suddenly into his consciousness with all the noise and force of an F-16 fighter plane on full throttle: Maybe the door isn’t locked.
A second F-16 made a low-level pass across the shadowy landscape of his brain. Why not give it a try?
Ten seconds later, Harvey eased the door shut behind him, and stealthily shot the bolt. No wonder Anders hadn’t been able to hear him — Bette Midler was beating up the stereo. “Some say love … ” Harvey followed the music into the living room. Anders lay on his back on the screamingly ugly couch. A thread of drool trailed from the corner of his open mouth to the collar of his paisley shirt. Harvey went over to the stereo and yanked the plug out of the wall socket. Anders was snoring lightly. The silver thread of drool trembled with each slow exhalation. Harvey pressed the defective Smith’s barrel against Anders’ forehead. Anders’ eyes popped open. Harvey pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. He pulled the trigger several more times, and stepped back. A cigarette butt was wedged between Anders’ ear and temple. He fumbled for the cigarette, wiped drool from his face, lit up.
He said, “Talk about a wake-up call. You’re the world’s scariest alarm clock, Harve.”
“Harvey.”
Anders squinted up at him through a roiling cloud of smoke. Vertebrae crackled as he sat up. He warily eyed Harvey as he took a hard pull on his cigarette. “You look pissed, Harve. Whatsa problem?”
“The gun don’t work. You might as well have sold me a cap pistol. I’m in the middle of a holdup, there’s a certain amount of resistance, kid’s giving me lip, I decide to blow his toe off, pull the trigger. All I get is click click click.”
“Bummer.”
Harvey said, “There was a big crowd. I got chased down the sidewalk. People were yelling, throwing food. A dog tried to bite me. It was humiliating.”
“That’s too bad, but there’s nothing wrong with the gun.” Anders held out his hand. “Lemme see it. Did you have the safety off?”
“There’s no safety on a revolver.”
“You sure about that?”
“Quit foolin’ with me. What am I, some kinda dumb mook?”
Anders studied Harvey as carefully as a small child might study a butterfly that had alighted on the tip of its nose. After what seemed to Harvey to be a very long time, he said, “No, I guess not.”
“I want my money back.”
Anders snapped his fingers in a dismissive way. “We don’t do cash refunds. You want an exchange, I could handle that. Got a prime .44 Magnum belonged to a little old lady, only fired it once because she missed and it got took away from her by the burglar sold it to me. It’ll cost you an extra fifty, you want it. Or I could let you have a .22 Colt semiauto with a silencer, a very nice inner-city weapon.” He scratched his nose. “Also, it’s probably out of your league, but I got a very rare and unusual piece that might interest you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s a 50-calibre Desert Eagle. Titanium gold finish with custom pearl grips and a six-inch barrel. Shoots 350-grain jacketed hollow-points would drop a bull elephant. But like I said, there’s nothing wrong with the piece I sold you.” He snapped his fingers again. “Gimme it, lemme see.”
Harvey saw no harm in giving Anders the pistol, mostly because Anders was so fried his eyeballs were steaming. Harvey knew he could take him easy as cracking an egg, if he had to. He handed the fully loaded Smith & Wesson to Anders.
Anders flipped open the cylinder. He worked the ejector rod. Six fat .38-calibre bullets fell into the palm of his hand. He put the revolver down on the sofa by his hip and rolled the bullets around in his hand, picked them up one after another until he’d examined all six. He looked up. “Nothing wrong with the bullets.”
Harvey said, “That’s what I’m telling you. The gun don’t work. It’s broke. There’s something wrong with it.”
“We’ll see.”
Anders reloaded all six chambers and snapped shut the Smith’s cylinder. He cocked the hammer and tilted his massive head for a better look at the firing pin. The smoke from his cigarette made his eyes water.
He said, “Everything looks okay to me.”
“What’s that mean — it’s fixed? You an authorized repairman, Anders? All you do is say it don’t look like there’s nothing wrong with it, and, just like magic, there ain’t?”
“I’m not following you.” Anders took a bead on his TV and pulled the trigger. The gun went click.
Harvey said, “What’d I tell you?”
Anders said, “Must be a dud round. That ain’t my fault. If you remember, all I sold you was a gun. The bullets were like a free bonus I threw in at absolutely no cost to yourself, as a goodwill gesture. You may recall that I offered no representations as to their lethal killability.”
“Stop talking like that, you’re giving me a headache.”
Anders said, “You think you got a headache? Watch this.” Grinning, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang. The window behind him shattered, smashed to pieces by bullet fragments and fragments of Anders.
Harvey’s mouth fell open.
Anders dropped the revolver and rolled off the sofa, knocking over the coffee table. He lay face down on the scuzzy carpet, his hands at his sides.
Harvey said, “Anders?”
There was blood on the sofa, blood splattered on the chintz curtains and what was left of the window, blood on the carpet, blood leaking out of Anders’ good and missing ear and mouth and eye. Harvey stood there, listening to the silence, waiting for screams and sirens. The silence lengthened and drew taut. He stepped over Anders and climbed up on the sofa and looked out. The view was of a dead-end alley. He picked up the Smith. The barrel was warm. There was blood on the front sight and muzzle. He was careful not to disturb the blood as he wiped the handle and cylinde
r of the gun clean with his shirt-sleeve, hoping to obliterate his fingerprints. When he’d finished wiping incriminating fingerprints off the gun, he jumped down off the sofa and fitted the weapon into Anders’ dead-slack hand. He squeezed Anders’ limp fingers around the butt, held on a moment, and then let go. The .38 thudded onto the carpet. Anders’ fingers slowly spread out until his hand looked like a great big spider. Harvey studied the crime scene. The gun. Anders. The sofa, speckled with blood and fragments of glass. He took note of how the light streaming in from the bullet-punctured window was artistically stained pink by the blood smeared across what was left of the glass.
All in all, everything looked just about right. He approved of the way all the junk that had been on the overturned coffee table — magazines and butt-filed ashtray, TV remote, cribbage board and deck of cards — had spread across the carpet. But there was something wrong with the coffee table itself, something that didn’t quite work … Harvey struggled to pin it down. Something didn’t look right, but what was it? He had a sudden flash of inspiration, and kicked a leg off the table. There, that was much better. But not perfect. He scooped up a handful of cards and scattered them more widely across the floor.
Getting there …
Harvey continued to fiddle with the crime scene, trying his best to make it look perfect. It took a while. There were so many details to attend to that it was hard to keep track of them all. He’d shift something over an inch or two, and what he’d done would somehow, in way he didn’t understand, make everything else look wrong, and then he’d have to go back and start all over again …
Anders’ cigarette had been quenched by the flow of blood. Harvey was trying to decide if it was a good idea to light a fresh cigarette and stick it in Anders’ mouth and let it burn down to his lips, when he suddenly pictured himself as a kind of morbid Martha Stewart, a kind of interior decorator to the dead. Disgusted with himself, he surveyed the scene one last time.
The titanium gold Desert Eagle was wedged between the sofa cushions, where Anders could get at it in a hurry, if he needed to. The gun was huge, but the balance was dead-perfect.
Harvey shoved the pistol in his waistband and got busy searching the apartment. He was discreetly strip-mining Anders’ bedroom for cash or drugs or more guns or even a pair of clean socks, when the silence started to wrinkle his forehead.
It sure was quiet.
Why couldn’t he hear the thump-thump of music from the bar?
Had Charlene or one of the other strippers or the bartender or a waiter or a semi-sober customer or somebody he couldn’t even think of heard the shot?
Harvey decided he ought to beat it.
Just as soon as he found out where Anders had stashed his bankroll.
Chapter 11
Close but no cigar
Sandy liked his detached apartment. The little garage that could. He’d moved into the apartment six months ago, and it was a good fit. He’d spent a few bucks on a used carpet, sofa, small wooden writing desk, and a couple of lamps for area lighting. A phone line had been installed by a previous tenant, and he had the satellite dish. The TV was on now, NASCAR, a race in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Speedvision. The hushed roar of the cars and mundane chatter of the sports crew generating white noise as he worked at his desk, the laptop’s screen angled to minimize the glare from the skylight.
Sandy didn’t consider himself a writer, even though he never failed to laboriously type anywhere from one to five pages of notes a day; a kind of diary of certain aspects of his life. Mostly he wrote about people he met or spent time with who were of special interest to him. At the moment he was writing about Jan’s plans to rob the Vancouver Block diamond merchant. As his index fingers banged away at the keyboard, he found himself thinking about the armoured-car employee who’d been shot during the ATM robbery. The man’s death, together with intense pressure from his employer and his grieving, and photogenic, family, had galvanized the VPD to revisit the case. An Indo-Canadian associate of Harvey’s named Matt Singh had always been a prime suspect. Harvey had the bad luck to be released from prison within days of the armoured-car employee finally succumbing to his wounds. Matt Singh had been gunned down not long after Harvey made parole.
Sandy leaned back, and flexed his fingers. Jan was an adult, a single parent with a lot of responsibilities. But at the same time, in many ways she was like a child, wasting a lot of energy on a fantasy life that would never materialize in a hundred years. He clicked the mouse to save the file, and then sat back and read over the day’s notes.
Jan’s plans for the robbery were haphazard and incomplete. Her story about an accomplice who’d been untimely murdered would have seemed even more ridiculously dramatic and unlikely, if it wasn’t true. Sandy wondered if she intended to set him up for a fall. He dialled up his Internet server and searched the archives of his favourite Web site.
Matt Singh had been gunned down in Metrotown Mall, in the adjoining suburb of Burnaby. He’d been killed in the mail’s cavernous underground parking lot, as he sat behind the wheel of his mammoth black Cadillac Escalante SUV. There was a picture of the vehicle being loaded onto a flatbed trailer. There was also a picture of an attractive female RCMP officer named Constable Ginger Greenwood, who was quoted as saying the murder was believed to be gang-related. She’d stated that there were no suspects, but the investigation was in the early stages, and they expected to make an arrest in due course. Sandy wondered what Escalante meant. Probably it didn’t mean anything, was just another one of those made-up words Detroit was so fond of. He spread his arms wide, stretching. His wrists were bothering him. He wasn’t much of a typist, though he liked to think he became a little faster and more accurate every time he sat down at the computer.
He closed the Internet connection, and returned to the start of the day’s notes. There was nothing in there that hinted of the sexual aspect of his relationship with Jan. Anyone reading his notes would think that the only thing he and Jan had in common was their mutual interest in crime. He made a few minor changes, deleting or adding a word here and there for purposes of clarity, and then hit the computer’s Enter and Tab keys, and devoted a six-line paragraph to Jan’s request that he meet Aldo and Jackie, expatriate Iranian diamond wholesalers who had tentatively agreed to take the stolen diamonds off their hands. Sandy had told Jan he wasn’t quite ready to take that step. Armed robbery was a serious business. He’d told her he wanted to think it over for a few more days. His indecision had frustrated her and made her press him even harder.
He’d almost felt sorry for her, and for Tyler. Almost, but not quite.
*
Unbridled joy
Michael Hughes’ twenty-fifth-floor downtown office had a view over the city and right across the Pacific as far as the low mountains of Vancouver Island, twenty-five miles distant. Willows idly wondered how much farther he’d be able to see if the Island weren’t in the way.
Hughes’ secretary had introduced herself as Mary. She was in her early fifties, very well dressed, and exuded an air of quiet competence. She motioned Willows and Oikawa towards the pair of wing chairs facing Hughes’ desk.
“Please make yourselves comfortable. Mr. Hughes will be with you in just a few moments.” Willows nodded amiably, and wandered over to the picture window. He looked down. The double-glazed window was about six feet wide and ten feet high. In the city, the roar of traffic was a constant, but the thick glass sealed out every decibel. All he could hear was the faint hum of the air conditioner, and the persistent ringing of a distant phone. Oikawa had been about to sit down when he saw that Willows had no intention of sitting. He stood awkwardly between the chairs and the desk.
Mary said, “Would you like coffee?”
Willows said, “No thanks.” Oikawa gave him a look but didn’t say anything. Mary noticed. She smiled graciously. “Would you prefer tea, or a soft drink, bottled water, Detective Oikawa?”
Oikawa grudgingly said, “I’m fine, thanks.”
Mc
Donald and Hughes’ company occupied the entire top floor of the building. Willows had no idea how many thousands of square feet that added up to, but it was a lot. The overhead must be staggering. Maybe it really was true that you had to spend money to make money. But if that was the case, why wasn’t he rich, since he spent every cent he earned … ?
Hughes’ secretary fiddled with the paperwork on his desk, straightening things out, killing time, hanging around to make sure Willows didn’t poke his nose where it didn’t belong.
She said, “Quite a view, isn’t it?”
Willows ignored her. Vancouver was hemmed in on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and the Fraser River. To the west, Boundary Road was the demarcation line between the city and the sprawling bedroom community of Burnaby.
In terms of growth, Vancouver literally had nowhere to go but up. Willows had lived almost his entire life in the city. He couldn’t believe how change had accelerated in the past thirty-odd years, especially since development had begun on the north shore of False Creek, and in Coal Harbour and Yaletown. In another hundred years or so, Vancouver would be as dense as Manhattan, if it existed at all.
A mahogany door, subtly fitted into the wall behind Hughes’ desk, swung open, and Michael Hughes swept into the room. Hughes was a large man, about six-foot-six, two hundred and fifty pounds. He carried his weight well, and exuded energy, and a calculated charm. He wore a banker’s suit, dazzling white shirt and conservative dark blue silk tie. The tie was loosely knotted and the top button of his shirt was unfastened. He extended his arm as he circumvented the desk and strode briskly towards Willows.
“Detectives Willows and Oikawa. Michael Hughes. Pleased to meet you.” The three men shook hands, Hughes retreated behind his desk.
Mary said, “Will that be all, Mr. Hughes?”
“Yes, thank you, Mary.”
A Cloud of Suspects Page 13