Detective Salt-And-Pepper was busy directing the team. “Okay, everybody, it looks like we got a suicide here.” He motioned to a group of firefighters. “I need somebody to cut the handcuffs off her.” One of the firefighters took a peek inside the car to decide on the right tool. “Hey, Whitney!” said the firefighter. “Get me the bolt cutters out of engine six!”
The bolt cutters made quick work of the handcuff chain. The body almost fell out of the vehicle when the chain snapped. The crime techs caught the corpse, quickly transferring it to a body bag that was unzipped and at the ready on a lowered gurney next to the Camaro.
Salt-And-Pepper motioned to the other firefighters. “I need someone to punch holes in the floorboards to get the water out!”
“Why don’t you just pop out the fucking drain plugs?”
Salt-And-Pepper looked in the direction of the tow truck. Mahoney stared back at him with blazing eyes. “You can get the water out without ruining the fucking car.”
“Ruin the car?” The detective looked the Camaro over. “Looks pretty ruined to me,” he said, kicking the tires for good measure.
“Let me grab my tools,” said Mahoney. “It’ll take me ten seconds.”
The detective turned to the group and gave a why-not shrug. Mahoney retrieved a box cutter, a greasy ball-peen hammer, and a large screwdriver from the toolbox in the truck bed. The group parted like the Red Sea as he headed into the Camaro cabin. A quick slice through the carpets revealed the four drain plugs. Mahoney wondered if Chevrolet engineers thought this day would come for some Camaro owners. The plugs were at the lowest point of the floorboards. He was ready to pry up the first plug when he stopped. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to catch whatever comes out?”
The detective agreed. He motioned to the crime techs, who placed two large metal trays underneath the Camaro. Mahoney pried up the first plug, then the rest, allowing the brown water to run through. He looked underneath the car at the rushing flow from the front and rear foot wells, a gush that quickly calmed itself to a spattering trickle. The trays had a fine mesh bottom for catching larger objects as the water drained out around them. Mahoney stood back as the crime techs retrieved the trays, placing them on portable sawhorses to examine their contents. It didn’t look like much: a few gum wrappers, a couple of pens, and a half-dozen sticks of Big Red that had fallen out of a larger Plen-T-Pak. There were a few cigarette butts, which received the special treatment of clear plastic evidence bags. Mahoney thought that he saw lipstick on one of them. It was red, just like the gum.
“Okay, Tow-Job, you can take it to the Plessis Road yard,” said the detective.
Mahoney turned around. “Plessis? Don’t you mean the traffic garage?” Mahoney didn’t know its exact name, only that it was usually the first stop for a car that had very recently had a body in it. The garage for the traffic division investigations unit was in a converted power station on Princess Street, with a high brick barrier and a sliding privacy gate to keep out the eyes of the media and the car crash voyeurs. The crime techs would process the vehicle from top to bottom, then make the short walk to the offices of the robbery-homicide unit at the Public Safety Building — a journey that seldom occurred, since most Winnipeg murders involved a mix of a drinking party, an argument, and a knife.
Salt-and-Pepper didn’t feel that this unfortunate event qualified for Princess Street. He made it clear to Mahoney, without all the annoying tact. “I beg your fucking pardon, Tow-Job?”
“I just thought all the body stuff goes —”
“It goes exactly where I fucking say it goes, dipshit. Hook it up and get it out of here now. This ain’t an episode of Night Heat, it’s a fucking suicide!”
“Whatever you say, Detective.”
“Detective-Sergeant Milroy, Tow-Job. Now get that piece of shit out of here, if you think your piece of shit is up to the job.” Mahoney looked over at Unit 36 as Milroy chuckled. He silently agreed with the Detective-Sergeant. Even a dirty Red River Camaro was a step above his recovery vehicle of choice. It probably ran better.
Mahoney went about the business of cinching up the Camaro. He took longer than he normally would have for a typical river retrieval car, ensuring that no damage would occur to the front bumper and valance. Mahoney inched the sling upwards. He looked over at the scene as it started to wind down. The morgue-mobile pilots were busy loading the body. The crime-scene techs were fishing through the meagre droppings from the Camaro’s floorboards, tagging and bagging. Detective Milroy continued barking orders to the rest of the police and fire personnel. Sorry, thought Mahoney. Detective-Sergeant.
The start-up of the fire engine’s diesel snapped Mahoney back to reality. He confirmed the Camaro’s shifter was in Neutral. He would pull the car up the hill to a level grade, then drop it down for a preferred rear-end sling attachment. All routine, but Mahoney was working slower than usual. Slow enough to document everything he needed to know. Slow enough to confirm what he already knew. It wasn’t just any Camaro. It was Mahoney’s next Camaro.
Chapter Three
June 9, 1985
2:09 a.m.
The news vultures were waiting at the end of the service road, as expected. Mahoney knew the best way to disperse the local news media was with high beams, a touch of speed, and an air horn that sounded like an apocalyptic trumpet. The black-and-white roadblock saw him coming, backing up just in time for Unit 36 and the watery Camaro to pass. A few reporters seemed about to block the path with their microphones and cameramen, but quickly thought better of it with the first horn blast. The Camaro’s lights were still doing strange things, flickering on and off as Mahoney’s rig headed north on Main Street towards the North Perimeter Bridge. He pushed Unit 36 to somewhere around 50 miles an hour as he passed the reporters on the bridge, the speedometer needle still reporting a bouncing 20.
Mahoney needed about 10 minutes with the car. That would be enough to confirm what he already knew about it, perhaps a little bit more. The Camaro was a ’67. He knew that because of the vent windows on the doors, a feature that was gone for the ’68 model year. The car had minimal options. Mahoney had noticed that it didn’t have a centre console when he first cut the carpet. There was zero evidence of a motorhead owner. It still wore factory hubcaps, the “poverty caps” expected for an entry-level car. It didn’t appear that any of the newshounds were in hot pursuit, so he turned off at the service road that connected De Vries Avenue with Raleigh Street, a left at Knowles, then a right into the parking lot for the Gateway Community Club.
Mahoney grabbed the magnetic-mount flashlight off his glovebox door. There were still a few trickles of brown water under the Camaro as he lowered it to ground level. He unlatched the hood, raising it with minimal creak. Straight six, he thought, as he surveyed the simple in-line engine. Hasn’t had the living shit driven out of it yet. The few options he noticed were the column-shift automatic, a push-button AM radio, power steering, and a fan-driven rear defroster on the rear parcel shelf.
The paint appeared to be original. The body was surprisingly intact, with no rust coming through the usual lower extremities. Sometimes the cheap cars had their advantages: option packages like the Rally Sport had all kinds of trim pieces that loved to trap mud and promote rust. The rear bumper had been tapped at some point in its life on the passenger side. Judging by the frost shields on the side windows, somebody’s grandmother had owned it and was no doubt the one who’d backed into something. A few door dings and a slight crease in the driver’s side front fender were the car’s only visual scars. There were no license plates. Mahoney wondered why the detective-sergeant hadn’t picked up on that.
Mahoney was checking on the VIN plate inside the driver’s door when the lights started to weakly flicker again. The dashboard lights fluttered along with the overhead courtesy lamp. The odometer was highlighted in the flashes, a reading of just 77,657 and five-tenths. The reading appeared to be original; Ma
honey had seen enough tampered odometers, with their telltale jumbled digits, to know that the numbers were right. That’s when he noticed the keys, still stuck in the dashboard ignition switch. They seemed to be swaying more than expected, buoyed in some way by the rabbit’s foot on the key ring. Mahoney grabbed them and stuffed them in his shirt pocket. The rabbit’s foot was still wet and stank like the Red. He took one last look at the steering wheel. The top portion was bent forward, looking much like the steering wheels that feel the full force of a body slamming into them at life-ending speed. He raised the rear of the Camaro skyward for the journey to the Plessis Road compound. The lights flickered twice more and then went dark.
2:44 a.m.
The Manitoba Public Insurance compound was a 24-hour operation, with a security shack at the main entrance. Most people referred to it as the Autopac yard, the popular marketing name for the provincial automobile insurer. It was surprising how busy the lineup was at almost three in the morning. Mahoney waited his turn as other wreckers rolled in. Even the guard was enough of a car guy to notice what was on Mahoney’s hook. “Oh, man, a submarine Camaro. What a fucking waste.”
“It’s just a six,” said Mahoney. “Nothing special, plus it’s got bad mojo.”
“Mojo?”
Mahoney drew a line across his neck, enough for an indifferent wave-through. Mahoney idled lazily through the yard, past varying degrees of demise for the automotive form. He glanced at the Camaro through his rearview mirror. He couldn’t tell if the taillights were still flickering or if the light was simply the ricochet from the overhead sodium fixtures. He found an oversized spot in the line reserved for fresh recoveries, easing the Camaro between a fender-bashed Ford Maverick and a late-’70s Pontiac Firebird that was in two pieces, which tended to occur when Firebirds were slammed sideways into hydro poles. BLOOD written in grease pencil on the windshield stated the obvious.
Mahoney lowered the Camaro into the parking spot. The ride had shaken out most of the river water, with drops where there were once trickles. The lights had gone dark for good. He raised his wrist, pressing the backlight on his digital watch. It was coming up on three in the morning. Six more fucking hours, he thought. Six more hours until the Bowman.
The rest of the morning was routine. Mahoney attended to a few lockouts in the downtown Exchange District, convincing a semi-soused permed blonde 20-something in a red leather miniskirt to take a cab instead of drive home in her equally red, late-model Ford EXP. She was planning on jamming two of her friends into the cargo area of the two-seater, a pair that were in a condition that reminded him of the Country Squire brunette at Boondoggles. One of the girls had forgotten to wipe the cocaine from under her nose, most likely a backroom bonus from the head bouncer at the Rorie Street Marble Club. She didn’t pick up on her friends’ over-the-top pantomime to dispose of the evidence.
Mahoney scribbled the make, model, and plate number on the invoice. He would usually scrawl cash sale in place of a customer name on the late-night lockouts, but Mahoney thought he saw a little more than booze in her eyes. He went with a smile. She smiled back. Mahoney felt his cheeks warm as he scribbled.
“So, I just need a name for the invoice.”
“Diana McRae,” said the woman. “That’s with an ehm-cee.”
“Ehm-cee,” said Mahoney. “Got it.”
“And that’s Miss Diana McRae. Miss.”
“Got it, Miss Diana McRae.”
Diana dug into her purse for the cash, pulling out plenty of crumped singles and two-dollar bills to add up to the $25 fee. “I’m always doing this, locking my keys in it.”
Mahoney went all in. “Then maybe I should give you my number, for when it happens again.”
Diana smiled. “Yeah, that would be handy to have.”
Mahoney detached the invoice. He scribbled his number on the corner of the invoice, as the Red Patch taxicab pulled up. He tipped his trucker cap as the cab pulled away.
The last calls on Sunday morning were usually from early rising apartment block managers, thinning out their parking lots of drivers who chose to ignore their No Overnight Parking signs. These were typical one-night stand cars: newer Camaros, Firebirds, Mustangs, maybe the odd import. Mahoney had to use the wheel dollies for the last pickup of his shift, a red Porsche 944 at the Parkside Plaza on Henderson Highway. He thought he heard the owner yelling at him from an upper balcony as he left the parking lot. His digital watch said 8:17 a.m. A good time to head to the Bowman.
The Bowman Industrial Park was quiet most Sundays. In addition to the Hook Me Up Towing offices and vehicle compound, the Bowman was home to a revolving door of automotive tenants, the kind that did anything but legitimate nine-to-five business. One such shop was Panhead Motors. It was listed in the Yellow Pages as a Harley-Davidson service centre, though it was best described as a satellite location for the Heaven’s Rejects Motorcycle Club, better known as the HRs among Winnipeg’s criminal element and the various divisions of the Winnipeg Police Department. The HRs had been increasing their presence in a variety of enterprises since the mid-’70s. Drugs, prostitution, and the theft of anything wheeled, from Cadillacs to Electra-Glides. Most of the Harleys that made their way into the motorcycle shop were freshly stolen, awaiting their turn with the cutting torch. Panhead was two doors down from Hook Me Up, which made for easy transfers of drugs and cash. They didn’t have to go outside to do the exchanges, thanks to access that had been jackhammered through the cinder-block walls. The middle business was vacant, rented out as storage by an HR friendly. The holes between the businesses were each covered by a triplet of public school–style surplus lockers that swung out on hidden hinges when necessary.
Mahoney drove past the Hook Me Up office to the fenced compound at the rear of the Bowman complex. He dropped the Porsche as gingerly as he could in the rutted gravel, knowing full well that the owner would be accusing Hook Me Up of inflicting thousands of dollars in damage to his car. They always did, especially if the car was German and expensive. He figured he might as well get started on the Hook Me Up special treatment. He whistled towards a rusting Crescentwood Dairies delivery van, and three mutts with varying degrees of German shepherd scampered out. Mahoney knelt to give each a healthy ear scratch before he stood up and pointed at the Porsche. “Douchebag,” he said. The dogs understood the command, taking turns relieving themselves on the tires.
Chapter Four
June 9, 1985
8:42 a.m.
The dogs continued to mark their territory on the Porsche while Mahoney hosed off the Red River sludge from the tow cable and his rubber boots. He parked Unit 36 next to the compound, making sure to grab his clipboard and money bag, a weathered night deposit satchel in another life. The newer trucks were driven by the better producers and had earned the luxury of parking in front of the office. Mahoney had tried to steer clear of becoming an outright pimp, or dealer, or both. The dream was to open his own service garage, which was something he could have easily bankrolled after two months of criminal activity. But then the Heaven’s Rejects would see his business as one that they had indirectly financed, which would mean freebies for most of the upper HRs and the possibility of paying “insurance.” Failure to pay protection premiums could put you out of business, with either a sign in the window or a well-timed act of arson.
He opened the front door, activating a distorted buzzer somewhere behind the ceiling tiles. The morning light accented the dust in the air and the haze of smoke coming from the dispatcher’s desk. Dolores Favel was on the phone with the victim of a fresh tow. Dolores was probably around 40: an assumption based more on general condition than birth certificate. Her usual outfit was a sweatshirt and sweatpants combo. She certainly smelled the part of gym rat, though that had more to do with the occasionally washed 200 pounds that she carried on her five-foot frame. She turned to see Mahoney standing at the front counter. She muffled the handset, motioning him over with a triplet of head
shakes, shaking her bleached blonde ponytail as many times in the process. “Did you pick up a red prick-mobile on Henderson?” Dolores whispered as best she could, not an easy feat with her smoker’s rasp. “He’s going off about his dad being some big mucky-muck.”
“It’s in back, getting marinated,” said Mahoney. “If he wants to fuck Nor-Villa girls, he should know the risks.”
“Hey! I’m a Nor-Villa girl!” Dolores let out a laboured cough. The Nor-Villa Motor Hotel was the closest watering hole to the large footprint of cheap cinder-block apartments on Henderson Highway and Valhalla Drive. “You gotta qualify to get a piece of this.” She motioned over her barrel-shaped physique with the muffled handset. There was nothing to see.
Mahoney leaned over the counter, listening to the muffled tirade of the Son of Mucky-Muck. “The three D’s for Delectable Dolores dates: deaf, dumb, and most definitely demented.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it,” She added another swirl of her unremarkable bosom to drive the point home.
Mahoney pulled a Colt cigar out of his pocket but stopped short of putting the tip to his lips. “Well, Dolores, it’s either my Colts or penicillin. I can’t afford both.”
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