Mahoney's Camaro

by Michael Clark

  He put his foot on the brake to move the shifter, but that’s when his luck ended. It wouldn’t come out of park. Double fucking shit. He jiggled with the shifter as much as he could, worried he might break it. When the car stalled, Clairmont reinserted the lock picks into the cylinder. The assembly turned, but the idiot lights didn’t come on. The car was dead. Clairmont was debating on how much time he had left to try again. That’s when the door lock buttons clicked downward, the driver’s side that he had just opened first and the passenger side second, since Diana had forgotten to push in the button on the exterior door handle when she closed the door. Clairmont couldn’t believe that he had forgot to try it. He checked for a power lock switch on the door panels and on the centre console. There was none to be found. How could they work without power? Did a ’67 Camaro even HAVE power locks?

  Clairmont pulled out the lock button. He watched wide-eyed as it locked back into place. He did the same to the passenger-side door, with the same result. The door release handles wouldn’t budge. The windows wouldn’t roll down. Clairmont was trapped. And then brown water started rising up from the floorboards. The water was cold. It stank like hot-buttered assholes. And it kept rising. Clairmont struggled with the door handles. He hammered on the side glass. There was no one to help. The water was up to his mouth. He went under. He closed his eyes and waited for both the inevitable and the unbelievable: an inland drowning in a car parked off of Corydon Avenue.

  A second later, he opened his eyes. The car was full of water, but it was clear, not brown. He could see outside. He was still parked on Hugo Street. He could breathe. There were bubbles, like he was attached to unseen scuba gear. And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman in the passenger seat — at least, he thought it was a woman. There was a certain ethereal quality to her features. Her red hair floated lazily in the liquid. Her dress wasn’t like anything from off the rack at Clifford’s. It was moving, shimmering, just like the hair.

  She looked at Clairmont, her green eyes backlit by some unknown source. She moved towards him in the mystical Camaro water. She was almost close enough to kiss. She closed her eyes. Clairmont closed his. He didn’t feel anything on his lips, but he did on his wrists. He opened his eyes. He was securely locked to the steering wheel with handcuffs. He screamed, and the water that he’d been able to breathe in before now flowed into his open mouth. He knew he was drowning. The woman wasn’t shimmering anymore. She was covered in brown silt. She opened her eyes, and they were just milky-white orbs. She grabbed him, pulling him close. He heard her words clearly.

  “I think you’re in the wrong car.”

  Clairmont let out a flurry of screaming bubbles. The cuffs were gone. He grabbed the handle and opened the door. He fell out of the car and slammed the door to keep whatever it was trapped inside. He ran in a panic and didn’t stop until he reached the intersection. He was still backing up from whatever was in the Camaro as he tried to catch his breath.

  He never saw the Route 68 bus.

  Chapter Sixteen

  June 19, 1985

  9:58 p.m.

  Jerry Waller checked the time on his digital Seiko Pulsemeter as he sat in the cab of Unit 32 at Higgins and Meade. It was coming up on 10 p.m. He held his finger on the watch’s touch sensor to check his pulse. The watch warbled for a successful recording. He tapped the backlight to read it. He wasn’t sure if 90 beats-per-minute was a good or bad thing. All he knew for sure was that the mirrors at the European Health Spa were filling up with his chiseled physique. One of the regulars had even suggested he try out for an upcoming amateur bodybuilding competition. He had regretfully declined. He was far too busy for any additional extracurricular pursuits.

  The night was slow for tricks, which was to be expected for a run-of-the-mill Wednesday. Waller kept his eye on two of the Hook Me Up girls across the street. One was talking to the driver of a silver ’70s Trans Am. Waller had checked his plate log to confirm that the Trans Am driver was a regular, and a fan of the number three. The two girls got into the car. Waller would follow to confirm the destination, which according to his plate log would be the La Salle Hotel, just over the Louise Bridge. Mr. Trans Am would usually take a two-hour block of time and had no issues with pre-payment at the Unit 32 cab. Waller stuffed the four fifties into his shirt pocket. He watched as the john took the girls into the hotel. Waller wondered if the john’s feet were even touching the ground.

  The two-way crackled to life. Dolores Favel’s voice crackled as well. “Base to thirty-two, base to thirty-two, what’s your twenty? Over.”

  Waller picked up the microphone and clicked to talk. “Lockout at the La Salle on Nairn. Just finished, over.” Waller would always throw in a plausible deflection for his location.

  “Got an abandoned over on Union west of Roch,” said Favel. “Prepaid, customer wants it dropped at General Scrap. No plates, busted side window, ’66 Strato Chief, dark red.”

  “Got it, ’66 Ponti-crap, over and out.”

  As promised, a tired red Pontiac sedan presented itself, with a flat tire on the rear driver’s side, a dented driver’s door, a pushed-in rear bumper, and the trunk lid held down by a piece of nylon rope. Waller hooked up the Pontiac from the rear, locking the steering wheel into place with the lap belt to keep the wheels more-or-less straight for the tow. He stopped at a closed gas station to retrieve the crack pellets from under the spare tire, which was slashed to deter the neighbourhood delinquents from stealing it. Peter Scrapneck had dropped the car on Union Avenue. Waller was his guy.

  Waller knew he was playing with fire, or at least hot coals. Perhaps the steroids had started to instill a feeling of invincibility, a bravado to match his bulky biceps. The nightly hits of dashboard coke probably helped. He was still selling the regular Heaven’s Rejects drug selection. The HRs didn’t know about the steroid sales, which was still at a volume that wouldn’t be of interest to manage, let alone discipline. Ballendine made sure that anyone dealing the HR’s drugs was on the up-and-up. The drug accounting records were tighter than that for the Hook Me Up day-to-day. The HR’s accounts would sometimes be settled before the outstanding Hook Me Up bills for tires, fuel, and hydro at the office. The same practices were used for the prostitutes. At best, Hook Me Up was little more than a franchisee for the Heaven’s Rejects’ street operations. Waller wanted to be much more than that.

  A few chance meetings with Scrapneck in the Rear Row of Rust at Commonwealth Motors had got the ball rolling. Scrapneck had been buying his pharmaceuticals from Waller for about a year, usually delivered when Waller picked up a car on its way to the shredder. Scrapneck would throw news magazines in the front seats of the crusher wagons for Waller to mull over, with stories about the rise of crack cocaine in the United States. Waller wondered if all the cocaine that Scrapneck was snorting helped his attention to detail. The articles were often modified by Scrapneck for easy reading, with many of the points on the financials of the crack-cocaine business treated to the neon yellow glow of a highlighter marker. Being much more was looking achievable. All that was needed was a serious infusion of capital. That’s where an unwitting Dick Loeb came in.

  Waller knew as much as Scrapneck had told him about Loeb’s idea for the cellular phone business. Judging from Scrapneck’s exuberant updates, Waller figured that he had told him just about everything. As far as Loeb knew, the money funnelled into the shell companies had gone towards securing the downtown antenna sites. What Loeb didn’t know was that a quarter of the sites had been cancelled for about eight months, allowing for the capital needed to buy the cocaine from Scrapneck’s connection, a wholesaler that he had met at a stateside auction. The cocaine had tested at 90 percent pure in the Twin Cities. It had been separated into two shipments. The first had just arrived in the battered Dodge trunk lid, its potency confirmed by Scrapneck’s cook. The second shipment would be on the next trailer load of used cars, which would arrive on the 24th. Loeb had been led to believe tha
t the investment into the narcotics side of his portfolio was 20 grand. It was actually closer to 60.

  Waller remembered how Scrapneck explained it after taking a coke bump off the roof of a rusty Mercury Capri that Waller was hooking up. “He’s not even going to know that the money is missing. The coke gets cooked into crack, hits the street, hits the right people, and then we jack up the price. We’ll have him paid back in a week, get back the cancelled leases on his pipe dream, plus put some serious cash in his pocket to keep his rooftop bullshit going.”

  Waller needed a little more convincing. “And you’re absolutely sure that this book-fudger isn’t going to hamstring you? It’s an awful lot of money. People get ideas when there’s an awful lot of money.”

  “That’s where I’ve got an ace up my sleeve,” said Scrapneck. “Actually, it’s up her sleeve.”

  Waller remembered how Scrapneck had tapped his arm a few times to drive home the fact that the bookkeeper used. Waller wasn’t sure if the bookkeeper was shooting heroin, Ts and Rs, or a combination of the two. The whole thing felt dangerous. The whole thing started feeling very dangerous on the evening of June eighth. Waller had been keeping an eye on one of the girls in a suburbs-friendly station wagon, who was with one of the eight-seconds-to-love high school grads that he would joke about with Larry Ballendine, in his Hook Me Up office the next morning. His Motorola numeric pager started to beep as the wagon pulled away. He checked the number. It was Commonwealth Motors, with Scrapneck’s extension and a “911” next to it. He dropped the girl off at the Mount Royal Hotel for a regular customer and then went to the pay phone in the lobby. Scrapneck answered on the first half-ring. That couldn’t be good, especially at 10:30 on a Saturday night.

  “Wallbanger! Where are you?” Scrapneck sounded like his brain was on fire.

  “Working the day job,” said Waller. “What’s the problem?”

  “Come to the dealership. I got . . . just . . . FUCK!”

  “What the fuck is it?”

  “I think she OD’d.”

  “Who OD’d?”

  “The bookkeeper. She’s in the back. Jesus, man, I need your fucking help!”

  “Gimme ten.” Waller hung up the pay phone. As promised, Waller and Unit 32 arrived at the rear of the dealership at 10:40. Scrapneck was peeking from behind the rear man-door when Waller pulled in. Even in the minimal light, Waller could see Scrapneck was in bad shape. His hairpiece had slid halfway off his head. He was sweating bullets. His eyes were darting around frantically. “Quick!” he yelled, pulling Waller inside with coke-laced strength.

  Waller squinted in the near-darkness. An older purple Camaro was parked in the middle of the shop. Waller could see that someone was in the passenger seat. A redhead, out cold, crumpled against the door. Scrapneck was pacing back and forth. “Jesus fucking Christ. Sweet Jesus motherfucking tap-dancing Christ.”

  Waller looked through the open driver’s door. He didn’t know if the woman was alive or dead. Scrapneck was still doing panic laps next to the car. “Is she still alive?” Waller asked him.

  Scrapneck hit the brakes. “How the fuck should I know? This is a car dealership, not the Health fucking Sciences Centre!”

  Waller figured he should check to be sure. He slid behind the wheel. The woman had not appeared to have moved since he arrived. He pushed up each eyelid, although he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for. Nothing appeared to be looking back at him. Waller remembered his Seiko. He placed the woman’s index finger on the touch sensor and waited for the warble. It didn’t come. He tried again. This time, he got a sound he hadn’t heard before. He hit the backlight to check. The screen said ERROR. Waller had hoped that it would simply say DEAD or ALIVE. He figured that ERROR was close enough.

  Scrapneck finally came over. “So, is she, is she . . .”

  “I think so. Either that or she’s really, really close.”

  “Then we gotta get rid of her!”

  Waller put the woman’s hand back. He turned to Scrapneck. “What the fuck do you mean by we?”

  “Jesus, Wallbanger, she’s the bookkeeper!” said Scrapneck. “She’s got all the records on the money that old man Loeb doesn’t know about!”

  “And she’s also dead. Who the fuck is she gonna tell?”

  Scrapneck pointed over to a Dodge Aspen; its trunk was filled with file boxes. “I’ve got all the paper I could find at her place. I don’t know if there’s any more. I gotta get rid of it. We gotta get rid of her.”

  “How the fuck did she get here?”

  “I went to her place to pay for the accounting,” said Scrapneck. “I found her on the floor with a needle in her arm!”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I threw her in the Aspen and grabbed all the files.”

  “So why is she in the Camaro?”

  Scrapneck blinked. “Because we only put a hundred bucks into it on the trade-in! I’ll get at least fifteen hundred on the insurance claim when I report it stolen!”

  Waller was starting to realize how much of an amateur Scrapneck was. The fucking idiot could have just left her there! Waller knew what he was dealing with: too much coke and not enough brain. He could understand the file grab, but why all of them? After a few days, the smell would have attracted the landlord. It could have been so easy! And now, he was smack dab in the middle of Scrapneck’s fuck-up. The realization cocked his anger. He leaped out of the driver’s seat and grabbed Scrapneck by his jacket. He walked him quickly backwards, slamming him against the back of the Aspen, knocking his head against the open trunk lid. “Are you completely fucking mental? All her files? Do you think the cops might notice that when they search the place?”

  “Why would they search it?” said Scrapneck. “There’s no body in there. It won’t smell up the place.”

  Waller tightened his grip, giving Scrapneck another head whack before he continued. “All you had to do was grab what pointed to us, but you couldn’t even keep your fucking head straight for five minutes to figure that out.” Waller looked at the woman in the Camaro. He turned back to Scrapneck. “So, what’s your genius plan to get rid of her?”

  “That’s why she’s in the fucking car!” Scrapneck yelled. “We can dump it in the river, make it look like a suicide! Then report it stolen.”

  Waller released his grip on Scrapneck’s lapels, but only by half. “How the fuck does she drive the car into the river from the passenger seat? That’s not a suicide. That’s a fucking murder.”

  Scrapneck didn’t have an answer. Waller did. He let go of the sales manager and headed out the man door. He returned with a small nylon duffle bag, small enough to stow behind the seatback of a truck like Unit 32. He opened it on the hood of the Camaro. He fished around inside it, removing a few items as Scrapneck cautiously approached. A handful of sex toys hit the surface of the hood one by one. Scrapneck blinked. “What are you gonna do, stick a dildo up her ass?”

  Waller picked up the largest dildo, a Day-Glo orange model more horse than human. He turned to Scrapneck. “I’m gonna stick this up your ass for being such a fucking moron.” Waller finally found what he was looking for: a pair of handcuffs covered with pink fake fur. “Find me an X-acto knife,” said Waller. “I gotta cut this shit off first.”

  Scrapneck wouldn’t be much help for what was going to happen next. Waller knew that going in. The good news was that the Camaro was a runner. The bad news was that it had no plates. A dealer plate would stick out like a sore thumb. Waller decided on borrowing a set from an engineless Matador parked in the service lot. He moved the woman to the back seat while Scrapneck swapped the plates with shaking hands.

  This old Chevy runs pretty good, Waller thought, as he headed east on Portage to Main Street. He told Scrapneck to follow as close behind as possible to hide the rear plate from a cursory check by a black-and-white. Waller knew he was taking a ch
ance on Scrapneck rear-ending him. He came close a couple of times.

  Waller had told Scrapneck to circle though the cloverleaf system on the Perimeter Highway for a few minutes before picking him up at the exit to the North Perimeter Bridge. He killed the lights on the Camaro before he headed down the darkened service road to the boat launch. The car’s dark colour would help hide it from anyone passing over the bridge.

  Waller decided to let the car roll backwards into the river, hoping that an air bubble in the trunk might carry it farther into the water to submerge the car. He moved the redhead to the driver’s seat, securing her to the steering wheel with the fuzzyless handcuffs. He had seen it done before, at a water recovery he had been called to near Selkirk three years earlier. Some bigwig from the financial district had decided to check out from his charges of embezzlement the old-fashioned suicidal way. There had been rumours that the waterlogged owner of the Mercedes-Benz might not have had the final say in his demise. He had been linked to a few of the HR’s business fronts. Whether it was his decision or not, the silt of the Red River erased any of the forensic evidence that could have proved otherwise. Waller rolled up the windows. He removed the license plates. He made a final check under the woman’s eyelids. Nothing indicated that she was still alive. He shifted the Camaro into neutral.

  The car rolled backwards into the water. It floated for a moment, as though equipped with some amphibious option that wasn’t standard equipment. The momentum of the car carried it about 15 feet from the shore. The weight of the engine started to pull the front end below the water. That’s when Waller saw it, and his blood went cold. The woman was alive. She was awake. Her head thrashed madly. He heard her muffled screams. The headlights came on. Then the Camaro slipped below the surface, and everything was quiet.