The crew was sitting at a red light at Portage and Broadway when they heard the rumble coming up on the passenger side. A black ’64 Rambler American sedan was doing its best to keep idling, with a supercharged Chevy 427 Big-Block hanging out of the hood. The driver shouted to Scheer with a familiar handle. “Hey, Rickles! Is that you?”
Scheer returned a friendly wave. “Hey, Jamie! How’s the Rumbler?” Jamie Johnston’s Rambler was something of a local legend, with a nickname to match. It was hard to miss the car, in visual and in tone. The Rumbler was a Pro-Street build, a street-legal drag racer, with more tire than axle visible at the rear. The entire car shook, something that most 500-plus horsepower cars will tend to do. Johnston said what most men do while behind the wheel of a roll-barred monster. “What?”
Scheer stepped up the volume. “How’s the Rumbler?”
“The Rumbler? She’s fucking awesome! Hey, is that the U-boat Camaro?”
Word had got around regarding the Autopac salvage Camaro. The car, and Unit 36, had been splashed across the front pages of the Sun, the Free Press, and the Winnipeg Sentinel earlier in the week. The Sentinel picture had a pretty clear shot of Mahoney. The flashbulb had hit him just right as he crossed the North Perimeter Bridge.
“It’s a lot better now,” said Scheer. “It’s got the guts from Mahoney’s Super Sport!”
“Sweet!” said Johnston. “See you at Polo!”
The light went green. The pair kept their speed respectable, as they drove past the flapping streamers strung atop the new Jeeps at Commonwealth Motors.
Chapter Twelve
June 16, 1985
8:59 p.m.
Dick Loeb heard the rumble. He knew of such things better than most. Sitting in his Commonwealth office, he looked up at a black-and-white picture of his own Hot Rod, taken around 1956. It was a 1940 Ford coupe, fitted with a Cadillac V8 that he had pulled out of a wrecked hearse. Part of him wanted to open the lot on Sunday nights, clear the front row, and spend some time just hanging out with the gearheads. Two wood-panelled Grand Wagoneers stood sentry over the dealership’s Portage Avenue access points. It was Scrapneck’s idea, keeping out the riff-raff, minimizing the litter. Loeb looked at the keys to the Wagoneers, keys that Scrapneck had thrown on his desk before he left. If only he had the time.
The white noise from the cruise night cars and the Nash clock helped him concentrate, as he looked over the plan that could get him out of the car business for good. The stack of news clippings told the story of the new portable phone service known as cellular. Cantel had been granted a national license for cellular service in Canada, while the Manitoba Telephone System would surely transition from its current mobile operator phone system to the new cellular technology in short order. Loeb felt that Cantel was too “Toronto” to make it on the prairies. He cringed every time he went to dealer meetings and his plane started its bumpy descent into Toronto’s Pearson airport. Most Easterners still viewed Winnipeg as a hick town, especially after former Blue Bomber’s quarterback Dieter Brock had dubbed the local zoo the only attraction worth visiting. Loeb knew that view could work to his advantage. No one would expect a car dealer from Winnipeg to become a major player in the uncharted world of portable telephony in Canada. Loeb was betting on it, big time.
He flipped through the feasibility reports, prepared by a cellular provider out of Los Angeles. Putting up towers in the rural areas wouldn’t be a problem. Most farmers would welcome the extra dollars to lease a site on their land, especially when the footprint would take little away from their canola crop or grazing plots. Downtown was the challenge. The only way to ensure calls wouldn’t drop was to place multiple antennas. Loeb looked through his folder of lease agreements for downtown rooftops in Winnipeg. The property management companies had looked at him sideways when he had made the arrangements in the spring of ’84, paying for space on top of buildings where he didn’t even have a key for access. That didn’t stop them from sending their monthly invoices. Loeb did the math on what was outstanding for June. It came close to the price that was scrawled across the windshield of the Eagle that nobody wanted in the showroom. What Loeb wanted and what the property management companies saw little concern in providing was exclusivity for that rooftop space. He had secured the best possible antenna placement points in the downtown area for the next five years. The only way any cellular provider could secure the site leases would be to buy him out, and that wasn’t going to come cheap. Loeb figured that the payout would be enough for him to retire comfortably and even afford a messy divorce.
There were other messes that were more pressing. Loeb picked up the Monday edition of the Sentinel. The front-page image was split in two. One half was a picture of a car being pulled out of the Red River, taken from the North Perimeter Bridge. On the other side was a graduation picture from the University of Manitoba, of a red-headed woman by the name of Heather Price. The story, entitled “Watery Grave,” delivered the basic facts: 33 years old, divorced, no children, parents were dead, lived at the Silver Heights apartments, worked as a freelance bookkeeper for multiple clients. Foul play was not suspected, according to Detective-Sergeant Patrick Milroy, the lead investigator. Commonwealth Motors did get a mention of sorts, the nameless Portage Avenue car dealership that had reported the car stolen from its used inventory.
There was a secondary story at the bottom of the page. The police department’s auto theft unit commented on the rash of thefts of pre-1969 cars in the city, which pre-dated locking steering columns. Loeb knew that auto-theft was a problem at most dealerships, when lot boys more concerned about their hot dates forgot their jobs and left keys in unlocked cars. Commonwealth lost some four cars a year because of it, along with four lazy lot boys. The possibility was plausible. That was all that mattered.
Loeb put down the newspaper, returning to the rest of the files. He came across one entitled Ventura Communications. The folder had additional invoices for rooftop leases in Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, plus details of money transfers from Commonwealth Motors (1967) Incorporated to Ventura. There were two files sandwiched into the folder. The first file had the word Real written in red Sharpie across the top. The second file said Inflated. Loeb had explained to the now-late Heather Price that he had been receiving cash payments from a few select customers. He needed a way to make the numbers jibe with what was in the accounts. Price had found a way. The actual source of the cash was from a second mortgage that Loeb had taken out on the Wellington Crescent house, forging his wife’s signature to get the funds. Price did her magic, adjusting all manner of accounts payable and receivable to present two business ventures that, on paper, looked as solid as a new Jeep. Loeb figured he could keep making the payments on the leases until September with the current kitty. Scrapneck had assured him that the cocaine venture would stretch that buffer to the spring of ’86. Loeb figured that Cantel and the provincial telecommunications companies would have realized what he had done by late August, as they prepared for their expected rollouts. That’s when the phone would start ringing, along with the cash register in his head.
Loeb stopped sifting. He went back to the front page of the Sentinel. Scrapneck had told him it had to be done, an unfortunate turn of events that no one could have predicted, that there wasn’t any other choice. Loeb wondered if there was anything more to that story.
He only wondered for a moment.
Steve Mahoney and his crew pulled into his driveway just after 11 p.m. The inside of the Camaro had been getting a little rank, thanks to the after-effects of the beers and pizza. At least there weren’t any strange smells from the car itself. It wasn’t pulling to the left or to the right. The brakes felt firm. Nothing was leaking from underneath. There wasn’t even the expected dieseling event when the engine was finally turned off. For a Chevy, Mahoney thought, it was about as perfect as it could get.
Mahoney gave the crew a prolonged, oversized wave as they back
ed out of the driveway. Mahoney rolled down the garage door to encase the warmth of the Camaro’s engine. He switched on the fluorescent tubes overhead. It made for a weird effect on the Camaro’s hood, as though the car was still moving under the street lamps of Portage Avenue. Mahoney opened the driver’s door and stretched out in the seat. He turned the key to the accessory position. The radio fired up halfway into “Bust the TV” by The Pumps on 92 CITI FM. He turned the tuner dial to the right. KISS FM was playing something by some guy named Gowan, who was quite concerned about strange animals. Mahoney thought the song sounded more AM than FM. He checked the AM band. Sure enough, KY-58 was playing the same song. On 13 CFRW, it was Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night.” Ugh, Corey Hart. He pulled out the mix tape from his jacket pocket, the one that had appeared in his mailbox from the spastic Diana, the leaver of voice messages. She must have dropped it off tonight. They had finally connected by phone on Saturday, before he left for his last night shift. He had given her his address while making plans for Monday night, after her suggestion of cooking up some hamburgers on his barbecue. When he mentioned that he didn’t have hamburgers or a barbecue, she offered to bring both. He listened as the first song kicked in. It was Foreigner, though not the “Dirty White Boy” cruncher that Mahoney preferred. Lou Gramm wanted to know what this thing called love was all about, and that it would be nice if the girl in question could show him. After a few bars, he hit fast-forward. More Corey Hart, needing more time than Mister Hart had allotted for, in his pursuit of true love. Ugh.
Mahoney hit the fast-forward button, hard. He landed on a blank spot in the tape. Perhaps this was Diana’s first mix tape. Mahoney doubted that, judging by the expert spacing of Diana’s lettering on the cassette tape’s liner. He listened as the next song started up. There was something that sounded like a synthesized organ. Then, a strong guitar riff. Substantial bass. Mahoney played around with the tone dial to get the sound right. There was a lot of talk about pain as the song began, pain that the female antagonist couldn’t ease. A lot of infidelity going on, even less truth. The guy was pretty broken up about the whole thing. According to the cassette liner, his name was either Godley or Creme. Maybe Godley Creme? A single word comprised the title. Mahoney heard the word leave his lips.
“Cry.”
He liked what he was hearing, something that seldom happened when the Rolling Stones were excluded from the Supertuner. He turned up the volume to the edge of distortion. He leaned back in the bucket seat. He rested the back of his neck on the top of the seat. He stared at the backlit courtesy light on the roof as his reference point. He closed his eyes as the Godley, or possibly the Creme, spoke of the action that occurred when water filled theirs.
Mahoney held the top of his steering wheel as he listened to the lyric fade into the music. That’s when the tape died, but it wasn’t the only thing that went dark. The fluorescent tubes overhead flickered out as well. The only light in the entire garage was the courtesy lamp directly above Mahoney’s head. That went out too, slowly, the way the tube on a TV set dies out when it’s turned off in a dark room.
Mahoney sat up. There was a strange hum coming from behind the dashboard. The dial on the Supertuner started to flicker. Then it started to move. The car’s exterior lights started to flicker as well. The radio dial stopped on 680 CJOB, on the AM dial. The radio transmission was cutting in and out. Then it tuned in.
“It’s 8 a.m., and it’s time for the news on 680 CJOB. I’m George McCloy. Winnipeg Police are investigating the discovery of a vehicle in the early morning hours yesterday . . .”
Yesterday?
“. . . submerged at the boat launch near the North Perimeter Highway. The body of a woman found inside the vehicle appeared to have drowned. Winnipeg Police are not revealing any additional details at this time but are appealing to the public for any information. The vehicle is described as a dark-coloured, older model Chevrolet Camaro two-door coupe . . .”
Mahoney watched wide-eyed, as the radio self-tuned again, this time to Information Radio 990 AM, the CBC. Mahoney heard the date come in for the newscast during the tuning. It was for June 11th. Five days ago.
“. . . the woman found in a vehicle in the Red River early Sunday morning has been identified as Heather Price, a thirty-three-year-old St. James resident. Price was last seen by neighbours at her residence at the Silver Heights apartment complex around six o’clock Saturday evening . . .”
Mahoney didn’t know what to do. His mind was telling him to run, while his body was fused to the bucket seat. The random tuning continued, returning to Information Radio. He thought he heard the date as June 14th. The story wasn’t fractured like the other transmissions. It came through loud and clear. No hiss. No pops.
Bad mojo. That’s what he himself had said about the car.
“Winnipeg Police announced today that the cause of death for Heather Price, a St. James woman found in a stolen car in the Red River on June ninth, has been officially ruled a suicide. Detective-Sergeant Patrick Milroy of the robbery-homicide division made the announcement at an early morning press conference at the Public Safety Building . . .”
Mahoney listened to the detective tell the official police version of events. Oops, he thought. Detective-Sergeant.
“We believe there is no reason to suspect foul play. Investigators recovered a note from the victim’s apartment, speaking to her intentions. There was also evidence of drug use that was discovered at the apartment and during the autopsy.”
Mahoney’s legs were starting to cramp up. The CBC announcer continued with the story.
“The vehicle was discovered during the early morning hours on June ninth, after passengers on the MS Paddlewheel Queen noticed lights shining underwater at the North Main Street boat launch. In Sports, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers will host the Calgary Stampeders for the second game of the pre-season this Sunday at the Winnipeg Stadium. Head coach and general manager Cal Murphy said the loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Monday . . .”
The radio dial went dead. The lights came back on in the shop. The radio went back to playing the tape. Bruce Springsteen was apparently on fire. Just like Mahoney’s brain.
Mahoney hit the eject button, hard. He pulled the key out of the ignition, and finally found the strength to spring from the driver’s seat.
Chapter Thirteen
June 16, 1985
11:57 p.m.
It was coming up on midnight. Steve Mahoney had momentarily forgotten where to knock his foot to open the bungalow’s sticky door. Truth be told, he had almost taken the door off its hinges with his body weight. He was trying to catch his breath from the garage-to-house sprint. It wasn’t the Colts, the pizza, or the four-ish bottles of Club that needed to be drained. It was the car. Or maybe it was the garage, and that stupid ballast resistor messing with his eyes. Maybe Loveday Mushroom Farms had mixed in a batch of shrooms by mistake into their fresh manure base, which had somehow made their way south onto the Mahoney property and into his olfactory receptors. Whatever it was, the experience felt very real. Not even a skunky Club could do this, Mahoney thought. Black Label maybe, but not a Club.
He turned on every light in the bungalow. He checked under the bed, in the closet, and under the kitchen cupboards, somehow convinced this was all part of an elaborate prank by the crew. There were no tape recorders, no electrical connections, no snickering friends in any hiding places that could have concealed them. He peeked through the curtains at the front of the house. None of the crew’s cars were in the driveway or on the street. The only sounds were from the nearby rail line, an oversized freight, heading east.
There was one tape recorder that had been working throughout the evening. Mahoney walked over to the flashing red light of the answering machine. He pressed play.
“Hello, this is Video Stop on Provencher calling about your late videos . . .”
Mahoney looked at the top of the TV. The video
s were right where he had left them. He hit the fast-forward button.
“This message is from the Winnipeg Water and Waste Department. We have been unable to obtain a meter reading from your residence for . . .”
Mahoney hit the fast-forward button. The machine beeped with the next message start. It was Diana.
“Hi, Steve, it’s Diana. I hope you don’t mind, but I dropped off a mix tape. It’s in the mailbox. Maybe we could, uhm, listen to it together tomorrow? I could bring some candles I got from Avon. What is it with the stink in Saint Bee anyway? I’ll give you my pager number just in case. It’s . . .”
The message had gone too long, again. Diana called back, apologized, then somehow managed to squeak the pager number in within the allotted time. It did cut off all her additional ramble. The last message was from the manager at Video Stop. He sounded pissed. A robotic voice announced that there were no new messages. Mahoney rubbed his eyes. The switch to days would take some adjustment. He changed the alarm clock on his digital watch. He doubted that sleep would come as he curled up on the couch. One thought filled his mind. What the fuck was that all about? The rumbling of the eastbound freight helped silence it.
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