Scheer gave himself a quick once-over to confirm that he agreed. “Yeah, not too shabby. Soooo, what exactly is going on here? All’s I know is Fiddy said it’s kinda important.”
“Kinda,” Mahoney said. He grabbed the box of wine coolers, worried that Scheer might lose his grip when Mahoney dropped the bomb on who Heather was. He put his hand on Scheer’s shoulder, guiding him as they went. Scheer looked at the hand, then at Mahoney. “So, what’s going on?”
They were almost at the threshold. Mahoney stopped and looked at Scheer. “You remember Heather?”
Scheer smiled. “Yeah, sure I do. What about her?”
“She’s a ghost.”
“Say again?”
“She’s a ghost.” With that, Mahoney gave Scheer a quick shove through the open door, almost tripping him onto the floor of the garage as he closed the side door firmly behind them.
The garage was getting crowded. Fiddler had placed the pizzas on the workbench, with no ham and pineapple in sight. Petkau was nervously munching on a slice of pepperoni, standing as far away from the Camaro as the space would allow. Diana introduced herself to Scheer, then returned to setting up her ghetto blaster to record the interview. Scheer was looking around the garage, still processing what Mahoney had told him. He was smiling as he did.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re saying that Heather is a ghost, right?”
“Right,” said Mahoney. “The one you were talking to in the car the other day.”
“The girl in the green sweater?”
“Yeah. I mean, no.”
“No, she isn’t a ghost?”
Mahoney was having a hard time breaking through. “She doesn’t like being called a girl.”
Scheer started to laugh, shaking his head. He lifted his arms to show off his jacket. “So I guess I should’ve dressed up for Halloween instead, right? Un-fucking-believeable!”
Mahoney pressed on. “I’m serious, Rickles. I’m not making this up, I swear.”
Scheer grinned at Mahoney. “Bull-fucking-shit!” He looked at the rest of the attendees. “Okay, you guys, you got me. Very funny. Fiddy, did you put him up to this? Fiddy?”
Mahoney decided that he had to get the ball rolling, regardless of Scheer. “Well, thanks for coming everybody, I guess. So, the, we’re gonna try to . . . the thing we want to figure out is . . . uhm . . .”
Diana cleared the confusion. “Okay, here’s what we know. The woman in the car is Heather Price, the one they found in the car in the river. She says she didn’t kill herself, and she’s told us that she doesn’t remember how she got there or who put her there.”
“Oh. So now she’s been murdered,” Scheer had found himself a Club in the beer fridge. He grabbed a slice and looked at Diana. “Please, continue!”
“She keeps telling us that something is in the car, and that she needs to get home, wherever that is.” She motioned to Mahoney. “Steve checked her car at the compound, and we brought back the stuff that was in it.” She pointed to the Eaton’s bags, which had been laid out on the workbench, next to the pizzas. “We went through it all with her, and there’s nothing there.”
“This is fucking hilarious,” said Scheer. He looked around the garage, still smiling. He poked Petkau as he nervously chewed. “Okay, Howie, where’s the camcorder? Beta or VHS?”
Mahoney continued. “The Sentinel said she was some kind of accountant.”
“Who’d she work for?” Fiddler asked, his mouth half-full of pizza. The revelation of something spectral in Mahoney’s Hot Rod hadn’t fazed him in the least. He’d seen enough of Biddy’s conversations with the afterlife to know.
“I plan to ask her tonight,” said Mahoney. “She might’ve been killed by someone she knew.” He was about to continue when he heard a pizza slice fall onto the floor, then another, then the shatter of a half-full bottle of Club. Mahoney looked over at Petkau and Scheer. Petkau’s mouth was wide open, half-chewed pizza in view. Scheer’s mouth was also open, equally stunned. Mahoney turned back to his Hot Rod and saw the reason why: Heather Price’s grand entrance had just begun. Diana pressed Play and Record at the same time on the cassette deck. Fiddler chewed his pizza and sipped his beer with a collected casualness. The light show started to dissipate and Heather appeared, sitting in the driver’s seat, her head resting on her crossed arms on the top of the driver’s door. Her red hair was flowing slowly back and forth, the underwater effect. She decided to start with Scheer.
“Hey, Rickles. You clean up pretty nice.”
Scheer blinked. He rubbed his eyes a few times to make sure he wasn’t dreaming the visual in front of him. “Uh, uhm, uh, thanks?”
“Who’s your friend?”
Petkau realized she meant him. “Uhm, I’m how, how, how . . .”
Heather pointed at Petkau’s face. “You’ve got some . . .”
Petkau just stared. Scheer looked over at him slowly. He carefully flicked the piece of pepperoni that was stuck to Petkau’s chin onto the ground.
Heather smiled. “Yeah, that’s much better.”
Mahoney got things back on track. “Heather, we’re going to, uh . . . record this, if that’s okay.”
Heather looked at Mahoney, her hair still flowing. “Audio or video?”
“Uhm . . . just audio.”
“Good. This sweater looks like shit.” Mahoney never thought a ghost would be vain.
Diana leaned in. “Heather, who were the guys you worked for?”
“They were . . . uhm . . . how do I put this?” She tapped her fingers on the top of the door. “They were all looking to cook their books, someway, somehow. There were a couple of construction companies. Inflated invoices and stuff, sticking it to the City. There was a sand and gravel outfit. Some quarry out of town . . . can’t remember where. There was an RV store. I think they sold motorcycles too. A few car dealers, a couple of swimming pool contractors . . .”
Now they had something. “Car dealers?” Diana said. “What kind of car dealers?”
Heather rubbed her forehead. “Let’s see. There was a used car place in Transcona, Jeep guy on Portage, a Mazda place in Steinbach, a Chevy dealer in . . .”
Jeep guy on Portage. Mahoney knew that it had to be Commonwealth Motors. The Concord that he had dropped there. Wallbanger in the parking lot. The manila envelope changing hands. The Miami Vice guy with the fancy signature, even the shit-brown Aspen. It was all starting to come together. “Heather, what was the name of the dealer?”
Heather wagged her finger. “Yeah, the one by Midway Chrysler. Commonweath Motors.”
Mahoney pressed. “Yeah, Commonwealth. What was going on there?”
“Commonwealth . . .”
Diana chimed in. “Something in the car.”
“What car?” Everyone turned to look at Scheer. It was finally dawning on him: this wasn’t a joke. This was happening. A fucking ghost in Mahoney’s car. For real. Scheer repeated the question. “What car?”
Heather Price’s expression had suddenly changed. She looked at Mahoney.
“The car . . .”
She had remembered.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
June 6, 1985
10:24 p.m.
Heather Price paid no attention to the banging noise from the floor below her Silverfish apartment as she rode her casual partner. She had named the tenant “Broom-Hilda,” from the comic strip. She had assumed it was a witch, or at least a woman with a high-pitched shrieking voice who had initially tried to shout for quiet in the wee small hours. When that didn’t work, the banging commenced, most likely the whack of a broom handle on the stipple ceiling below. So much for your damage deposit, bitch.
There was plenty of banging, creaking, and squeaking coming from Heather’s bed, as she searched for her elusive orgasm. Before she was hit by the car in front of the Silverfish, the accident tha
t had pushed her into an escalating dependency on painkillers, and eventually heroin, she had enjoyed sex with the cliché fervor that most men had associated with redheads. Now she didn’t feel much of anything anymore.
Judging by the noises from her partner, Heather realized that she would have to fake it. She looked down at the contorted face of Peter Scrapneck as he came. She dismounted. “I gotta go pee,” she said, as she finished off with a sloppy, slightly detached kiss. She could still hear his panting as she headed down the hall.
Heather flicked on the fluorescent fixture, illuminating the bubble-gum pink tile. She turned on the sink tap before she sat on the toilet, a trick for number one that had worked since grade school. She silently wondered why she bothered with such a mediocre lay. Peter Scrapneck was convenient. He was her contact at Commonwealth Motors, for the cellular antennae sites that were the brainchild of the owner and the hinkey drug shenanigans that were Scrapneck’s bailiwick. He’d helped her when she needed wheels, financing her new-to-her Concord when nobody else would lend her a nickel. She thanked him by introducing him to the needle.
Scrapneck was lying in the same position that she had left him in, his soldier more at ease. She curled up next to him, running her fingers through the shag carpet on his chest. His breathing was sounding less and less like a medical emergency.
“That . . . that . . . really . . . hit the spot,” Scrapneck gasped.
“It sure did,” said Heather.
“Did you come?”
Heather lied into her pillow. “Absolutely!”
“Awesome.” Scrapneck stood and began to rummage through the inner pockets of his Miami Vice linen sports coat. “I got you a little present.”
Heather looked up from her pillow. “It better not be an engagement ring from Consumers Distributing.”
“Better.” Scrapneck dangled the tied-off balloon in front of her. The carrier and its contents were obvious to anyone who used heroin regularly. The amount within the balloon appeared to be meagre. Heather said as much to Scrapneck.
“Looks more like a grade nine promise ring to me.”
Scrapneck explained. “I got it from my Minneapolis guy. He says this is sirloin, the best shit out there.”
Heather took the balloon from Scrapneck, checking the heft. “I hope so.” She put the balloon on the opposite nightstand. “I’ll save it for a rainy day.”
“Be careful with it, babe. My guy says it’s high-grade.”
Heather rolled her eyes. “That’s what they all say.” She grabbed a pack of Matinées from the same nightstand, a blue Bic lighter in the empty half pack. After a healthy drag, she put the cigarette in Scrapneck’s mouth. “Minneapolis,” she said, as he inhaled. “You sure like to live dangerously, don’t you?”
“It came in with that coke I told you about, the test run.”
Heather couldn’t remember. “Test run?”
Scrapneck handed the lit cigarette back to Heather as he exhaled. “The coke I need for the crack. It was in one of the auction cars.”
“Don’t they check those cars when they come across the border?”
Scrapneck chuckled. “Well, if they did, you wouldn’t have your promise ring right now. Besides, the border guys like us. They’re all driving Commonwealth Jeeps.”
Heather took another drag and handed the cigarette back. “So how much can you make off this crack shit?”
“Enough to buy out the old man,” said Scrapneck. “Oh, and I don’t think he has any idea about those rooftops that got cancelled.”
Heather chuckled. “Portable phones. You couldn’t pay me enough to carry one of those things around. I hate answering the one that’s bolted to the wall.”
“Just as well,” said Scrapneck. “You probably couldn’t afford it anyway.”
Heather took the dig but threw in an elbow to his side that was enough to get his attention. “Fuck you, Scrapheap.”
“Fuck you, Price is Right.”
At that moment, they decided to act on their suggestions.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
June 25, 1985
8:37 p.m.
Heather Price had remembered quite a bit.
She explained what she knew about select used cars that came into Commonwealth Motors. She was a little fuzzy on the details, but she remembered the “it” in the car was cocaine, probably as much as a kilo per damaged trunk lid. Mahoney knew little about the coke trade, other than what he’d seen for sale by Jerry Waller. He knew nothing about crack, aside from the odd news report from the States. He remembered the kid at the Ex, the one who was flipping like a fish in one moment and still and unresponsive in the next. He hadn’t heard if the kid had lived.
The crew shouted questions.
“How much is this crack shit worth?” said Scheer.
“Is it on the streets now?” said Fiddler.
“Do we go tell the cops?” said Diana.
“So, she’s like a ghost, right?” asked Petkau, taking his time to catch up.
Mahoney shouted over the din. “HEY!” Everybody clammed up. Mahoney grabbed one of the rolling stools to park himself. He held his hands over his eyes for a moment, massaging his temples with his fingers. Then he stopped. He looked up at the rest of the crew, Diana, and Heather. He got up from the stool, walking briskly to the back of the Hot Rod. He opened the trunk and removed a blue Adidas bag. He grabbed a pair of fender covers, slapping them on the hood of the Camaro, then emptied the contents of the bag. He stood back from the items.
Fiddler broke in. “What is all this shit?”
“Wait,” said Mahoney. He went over to the workbench, retrieving the notebook that someone was using to log his movements in his Hot Rod. He tossed it onto the pile. “Okay, so Heather’s it’s-in-the-car stuff is drugs. This is my it’s-in-the-car shit.”
“Where did it come from?” Scheer asked.
“It was in the back seat,” said Mahoney. He looked at Diana. “I found it after we went for dinner on Corydon. I thought it was your purse or something.” He addressed the group. “Then I found this shit inside, and the book, and Rickles’s jacket. Somebody was casing the car, and I don’t mean a bunch of junior-high dropouts.”
Scheer looked down at his new-to-him leather jacket. “This was in there?”
Mahoney flipped through the book page by page. “Whoever’s shit this is, it wasn’t anything they thought they’d ever lose.” Mahoney thought a little more about why the bag would have been left in the back seat of the Hot Rod. Then it hit him: they left in one hell of a hurry. Mahoney remembered back to his own hurried escapes from the front seat of the Camaro, the freak-out spin out on Highway 59. He looked over at Heather.
“Heather, did you scare the fucker out of the car?”
Heather looked down at the floor. “Uh . . . maybe.”
“It would have been helpful to know that.”
That set her off. “I thought you’d be happy to not have to take the bus home after your hot date. So, fuck you, fuck you very much.”
Diana hoped to calm the situation. “Heather, what did the guy look like?”
“I don’t know, just some guy. Had a blue hoodie, I think. And . . .”
Mahoney leaned in. “And what?”
“Sunglasses. I, I think he had sunglasses.”
Mahoney remembered the pair of Ray-Bans he’d found on date night, well-worn but in one piece. He pulled them out of his front pocket. “These sunglasses?”
Heather’s eyes went wide. “Yeah! That’s them! I . . . I think they were pushed up on his head. They must have fallen, when he, when . . .”
Diana was right there. “When?”
“I scared the shit out of him, and he ran.”
Mahoney thought back to the events of the date night. The sunglasses, the flashing lights on Wellington Crescent. The body covered with a sheet in fron
t of the bus. “Heather, which way did he run?”
The group waited patiently as Heather remembered.
“To the rear.”
Mahoney moved in closer. “The rear? The rear of what?”
“The car. The rear of the car.”
“So, away from Corydon?”
“Yes, away from Corydon.”
Mahoney looked at the items on the hood. He looked over at Scheer and his new-to-him leather jacket. “Well, Rickles, I think you’re wearing a dead man’s jacket.”
Scheer looked down at the coat of the dead John Doe. He stepped back and gripped the lapels. “As long as it ain’t haunted like your car.”
June 25, 1985
9:06 p.m.
Jerry Waller was sitting in the cab of Unit 32, letting the truck warm up before he started his shift. He had received plenty of messages on the new pager Peter Scrapneck had recommended. The crack had been very good for business, contributing to increased sales for the regular menu of drugs from Unit 32. The Monday night at the Ex had been responsible for a much fatter envelope for Scrapneck. Waller let his mind wander to baiting hooks and cleaning walleye, somewhere in Northwest Ontario.
The two-way crackled to life. “Base to thirty-two, base to thirty-two, what’s your twenty? Over?”
Waller gave the air horn a quick blast before picking up the mic. “Look out the window, Dolores Over.”
She continued the call-out without a snide comment. “Got an abandoned over on Douglas, west of Rothesay. Mustang coupe, red. No plate, over.”
Waller confirmed he would take the call, then signed off. Douglas Avenue was a rough stretch of asphalt that ran east to west. There were houses set back from the street on the north side, with a large green space to the south and the street’s dim lighting made it a good dump spot for stolen joyride cars.
He stopped at the 7-Eleven on Edison first, pulling the trigger on a hot dog with the best cooking marks off the stainless-steel rollers. He bought a six-pack of Pepsi to help fuel the evening. He alternated between bites, sips, and gearshifts as he headed towards the call.
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