It took five minutes for Waller to get to the offending pony car. He didn’t see any damage, other than the usual Winnipeg rust on the rear fenders. It was one of those Mustang II hatchbacks, or as one of his Ford-hating friends had said, “The nicest Pinto ever built.” Whoever had stolen the car must have had the keys to do it with; the steering column hadn’t been cracked open. Nothing on the visor, nothing under the floor mats. They had probably been tossed in the tall grass.
Waller got out of the Mustang. He walked back to the open window of Unit 32, reaching inside the cab to flip on the overhead beacon. He turned towards the rear of the tow truck just in time to hear the throttle open on a dark shape that was almost on top of him. The mass hit Waller, slamming his body against the driver’s door of Unit 32 as the mass flew past him. Waller couldn’t feel much of anything after the impact. He thought he would have fallen to the ground by now. He slowly looked down to see why.
The side mirror of the tow truck was lying on the ground. The support arm that secured the mirror to the door was sticking through Waller’s chest. His shirt was soaked with blood, a sensation he couldn’t feel. He was starting to slip off the supports. His arms couldn’t help him; he hit the roadway with a sickening thud. He figured it wouldn’t be long until he bled out.
The last thing he heard was the sound of the same dark mass, coming back to make sure.
Chapter Forty
June 25, 1985
9:43 p.m.
Steve Mahoney’s Plymouth was almost at capacity. Diana had squeezed next to him as close as she could. Scheer rode shotgun. Fiddler and Petkau were in the back seat, quietly processing the evening’s events. They were heading to the intersection of Wellington Crescent and Hugo Street. Mahoney hoped that the intersection could provide some answers. Whoever the thief was, he wasn’t out for a joyride. The bag, the book, Scheer’s new jacket. The guy was a pro. Was. Mahoney knew that the thief’s attempt to steal his Camaro may have cost him his life. There had to be a way to confirm it.
Mahoney parked in front of the Pasadena Apartments, a sandy brick-and-stucco building that probably rented for three times a McTavish Street mortgage payment. The Plymouth dieseled for about five seconds after Mahoney had shut it off. Fiddler tried to use the automotive concern to break the tension.
“You know, my Coronet was doing that for a while, and I figured out that . . .”
“Fuck the car,” Mahoney growled. He exited the Plymouth as its coughing fit ended. Diana followed. The rest of the group got the hint, meeting at the rear of the car. Mahoney looked towards the intersection. He had stared at it for an entire traffic-light cycle before anyone spoke.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Scheer.
Mahoney turned back towards the rest of the group.
“I have no fucking idea.”
Diana pointed to where the Camaro had been parked on that Wednesday. “I think the car was on the next block.”
Mahoney nodded in agreement. “That’s right. All the spots in front of the apartment building were taken.”
“So, the guy got creamed by the bus?” Petkau had finally returned to the land of the living.
“I think I saw something about it in the Sun,” said Fiddler.
Diana stepped out from the group, looking at the intersection. “So, we’re actually going to do this. We’re going to try to talk to two ghosts. In one night.”
“That’s the plan. Unless anybody else has any suggestions,” said Mahoney, looking back at the intersection. The westbound Route 68 bus had just passed. “Shit! The bus will be here soon! Let’s go!”
The group trotted the short distance to the bus stop shelter, an aluminum frame with half of its windows broken. The smell of urine was enough to keep a five-foot buffer from its entrance. The eastbound bus approached. Mahoney checked his pockets. He wasn’t sure what the rate was for regular fare, not since he had aced his driver’s test on his 16th birthday. He pulled a couple of two-dollar bills out of his pocket. One of them was pretty old; the Queen looking back at him was kind of hot.
“I got four bucks. Is that enough for all of us?”
“Should be,” said Fiddler. “I think it’s like eighty cents or something.”
The Winnipeg Transit bus rolled to a stop in front of them. The rear door hissed and popped as a rider exited. The driver looked at the group, waiting for one of them to make a move. No one did.
“I’m guessing one of you guys needs a ride?”
All at the same time, the group went for the open door. The driver watched as the mash of humans made their way to the fare box.
“How much for five adults?” asked Mahoney.
“Four bucks,” said the driver. “Unless one of you guys has a student card.”
Mahoney looked at the group. He smiled at the thought of any of them furthering their education. “Naw.” He went to stuff the pair of twos in the fare box. The driver slammed his hand over the opening.
“No bills, jams everything up.”
Mahoney panicked. “Uh, okay. Guys?” The group started digging in their respective pockets, depositing what they had found in Mahoney’s palm.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. I got a schedule to keep here.”
Mahoney looked at the driver’s name tag. “Sorry, Mr. Blatz, uh, we’re just, I mean we should —”
“I can tell from here you don’t have enough.” The driver’s hand was still covering the fare box.
“How about just one of us?” Mahoney asked.
The driver looked at the pile of change. “Yeah, just one of you guys. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon . . .”
Diana looked at Mahoney. “Who’s it going to be?”
Mahoney looked at the group. He grabbed Scheer, pushing him in front of the rest. “Here’s your guy.”
“Here’s your what?”
Mahoney patted Scheer’s shoulders. “You’re the only one the jacket fits.” He backed down the steps with the rest of the group, tossing him the notebook of the jacket’s former owner. He gave Scheer the thumbs up as he left. The door hissed and popped as it closed. Scheer looked out the window as he saw his “friends” waving goodbye.
Driver Blatz jolted him back to reality. “Behind the yellow line, sir.”
Rick Scheer hadn’t been on a bus in a long time. It almost felt like he was on a boat, a sensation that he had always felt uneasy with. The bus was practically deserted. He headed towards the rear, using the grab handles at the top of the seats to steady himself. He chose one of the empty elongated benches that straddled the rear inner fenders, the one with the least amount of graffiti on its heavy blue vinyl hide. He looked towards the front. Someone was reading what looked like a textbook and was wearing cheap Sony Walkman–knock-off headphones. A little old lady was sitting on one of the elongated benches near the front of the bus. She appeared to be sleeping, though the pitch and movement of her body led Scheer to believe she was awake, just not up for company. Even her snore sounded rehearsed. Scheer breathed as calmly as he could, and closed his eyes to try to steady his resolve. They didn’t stay closed for long.
“Nice jacket,” said a voice. “I used to have one just like it.”
Scheer opened his eyes and looked to the right. A man wearing a navy-blue hoodie was seated on the bench that bordered Scheer’s. His left hand was stuffed in the front pocket, and he was steadying himself from the to-and-fro motions of bus 751, his left foot pressed against the bottom of Scheer’s bench. Scheer knew he should say something. The man beat him to it.
“You won’t find anything in that book.”
Scheer looked down. He was gripping the notebook like a waterski tow-rope in choppy waters.
“Hey, don’t come down on me, man. I don’t know anything about this shit. They pushed me on the bus because of the jacket.”
The man smiled. “Wow, with friends like that . . .” He chuckled as
he looked out the window. Scheer followed his gaze. He immediately wished he hadn’t. While the man before him exhibited none of the trauma that would have occurred from an impact with a city bus at roughly 35 miles-per-hour, the face in the reflection was a bloody pulp of tissue and bone. His right eye had completely dislodged from its socket. He wasn’t sure if the man could see his own “after” picture.
“I got that jacket at Maxy’s Leather. They sell this stuff, “leather honey” I think. Make sure you hit it twice a year — keeps it from cracking.”
Scheer looked at the jacket. The man was right: no cracks.
“Uh, thanks. I, I’ll take good care of it Mr., uhm, Mr. . . .”
“Clairmont,” said the man. “My friends call me . . . called me Guy.”
“Got it. Guy.”
“So, what can I help you with? I’m assuming that’s why you’re here.”
Scheer drew a blank. His recruitment as ghost whisperer happened so quickly, there hadn’t been any time to discuss a game plan. Mahoney had mentioned trying to talk to the man that the bus had creamed, though he wasn’t sure if getting slammed by the front of a city bus would automatically transfer the spirit of the mashee into one of the blue vinyl seats. “That’s gotta be one hell of a whack,” Mahoney had said. “It might’ve, I dunno, absorbed him.”
Scheer heard the finger snap. He turned to look at the late Guy Clairmont and saw the reflection in the window. The view was the back of Clairmont’s post-impact head, a cracked mess of hair, blood, skull, and brain. Scheer looked away from the reflection. He knew he still had to answer before he threw up.
“Uhm, uh, I think I, uhm we —”
Clairmont helped fill in the blanks. “The guy whose car I tried to boost.”
“Uhm, yeah. the Camaro.”
“And the girl with the big tits, right?”
Scheer thought about it for a moment. Yeah, they are pretty big. “Why were, I mean, why were you —”
“Good fucking question. All’s I know is Scrap wanted this car bad.”
Scheer honed in on the scrap mention. “Scrap? You mean General Scrap?”
Clairmont chuckled. “There are plenty of rust buckets out there for General Scrap. They don’t need, and they can’t afford, my help, not for thirty bucks a ton. The guy’s name is Scrapneck, over at Commonwealth on Portage. That American Motors place.”
“He hired you to boost it?”
“Not at first. He wanted me to buy it at the Autopac auction, then get it crushed and melted down in Selkirk. ‘Leave no trace’ is what he told me. Then your buddy comes along and outbids the shit out of the thing. And then he fixes the submarine! I’ll bet it still smells like hot-buttered assholes!”
Scheer thought about it for a moment. The Camaro did have a slight funk. Anything old did. Even after reupholstering the bench seat in his truck, a tinge of sweaty farmhand lingered, the kind who rolled their own and didn’t care where the ashes landed.
Clairmont continued. “Anyway, the next step was just to steal it, then get it crushed. I was inside that thing faster than the guy who actually had the keys. Everything was going fine until she showed up.”
Heather. “What happened?”
Clairmont looked at Scheer, puzzled. “What happened? Look in the fucking window!”
Scheer didn’t want to see it again. Whatever Heather had done to spook Clairmont, it had worked like gangbusters.
“So, it’s Scrapneck, right?”
“Right. Tell him I said, ‘Hi.’ Hell, send him over. I’d love to say hi in person.”
“I’ll bet you would.”
Clairmont chuckled at the thought and turned back to the window. Scheer kept his eyes forward at a downward angle.
“Oh, there’s one more thing,” said Clairmont.
“What’s that?”
“I think I saw your buddy tow my car from that condo on Wellington, black Merkur. Not much else to do all day on the bus, you know? Anyway, there’s a spare key in the tire well, assuming he can open the door without fucking up the weatherstripping.”
Scheer flipped open the notebook. He made a note about the key, worried that he might forget in all the excitement. “Okay, I’ll let him know. Thanks Guy. Guy?”
Scheer turned slowly to the blue vinyl seat next to him. The late Guy Clairmont was gone.
Chapter Forty-One
June 25, 1985
10:07 p.m.
Peter Scrapneck was wondering when the vomiting would stop. He had parked the rusted-out ’71 Buick Centurion behind a motor home, at the Shell service station on the corner of Douglas and Henderson Highway. He wouldn’t report the car as stolen until the morning. Around 5 p.m., a couple had traded the Buick in on a Renault Alliance and had decided to treat themselves to a new set of license plates. That meant the Buick’s tags would still be active for the evening.
Scrapneck was trying to be as self-congratulatory as he could, in-between the queasiness of his first kill. He had thought about playing damsel in distress, luring Waller the way that he had when he had stuffed Heather Price’s overdosed body into the back seat of his shit-brown Dodge. There was only one problem with that scenario: Waller could have just as easily told him to go fuck himself. Waller was getting ready for outboard motors and pickerel jigs in Northwest Ontario; he wouldn’t be rescuing anyone from their own stupidity, especially not for a second time. Instead, Scrapneck had bought a portable scanner at RadioShack and followed Waller at a distance, providing the all-important element of surprise.
Scrapneck’s stomach was finally empty. He checked the damage on the front of the dark green Buick. The initial hit had done little to the front of the car, with the exception of a broken low beam headlamp on the passenger side. The passenger-side mirror had been instrumental in pushing Waller into the framework of the tow truck’s exterior mirror. It had broken free of its moorings, though still technically attached, thanks to the cable that controlled its adjustments from the instrument panel. Scrapneck knew that the heavy chrome mirror wouldn’t break off easily upon impact, not like the plastic ones that were on much of the new inventory at Commonwealth. He’d seen enough of them broken off by fired lot boys to know.
The light was dim on the driver’s side, though the spray of blood and brains could still be seen on the lower part of the front fender. Most of it was caked on the inside of the fender well. Waller’s head felt more like an annoying bump than a living breathing thing when Scrapneck hit it. I’d better make sure. He was hoping for joyride-gone-horribly-wrong, in the eyes of the traffic division, but Scrapneck knew that his insurance policy had taken this from an unfortunate roadside accident to murder-by-Buick.
Scrapneck removed a couple of grease rags from his pocket. He wiped down the obvious bits that he would have touched: steering wheel, seatbelt buckle, and the door-mounted controls. He had thought about setting the car on fire, though a fire would attract immediate attention, which could involve the questioning of his pedestrian shoes by a curious black-and-white. He was only about three blocks from the Nor-Villa Hotel. There would be a cab or two in the parking lot. He gave the keys a good wipe before throwing them and the scanner in the bush.
June 25, 1985
10:12 p.m.
Steve Mahoney had been following bus 751 since he had shoved Rick Scheer into the capable hands of Driver Blatz. The bus was easy enough to catch up to, especially when the driver stopped to pick up a takeout coffee at a mom-and-pop convenience store on Stradbrook. It was hard to see exactly where Scheer was on the bus, or how things were going inside.
When Scheer had made his way off of the bus, he looked anything but right. Mahoney gave the horn a quick tap to get his attention. Scheer didn’t get the cue.
Diana touched Mahoney’s shoulder. “I’ll go get him.” She exited the door, slowly walking up to Scheer. He was exhibiting much of the catatonic tendencies that Petkau was first
displaying at the garage. She knew she had to be careful not to spook him.
“Hey, Rickles. How’s it going?”
Scheer looked at Diana. It took a moment to remember he actually knew her.
“Uh, I think I’m okay. I guess.”
“Wanna get out of here?”
“Yeah, that, that’d be nice.”
Diana led Scheer back to the open door of the Plymouth. She motioned him into the middle seat position, next to Mahoney. There was at least 15 seconds of awkward silence after she closed the door. Mahoney took second 16 as his opening.
“Who’s hungry?”
“I am,” said Fiddler.
“Me too,” said Petkau.
“Maybe a little something,” Diana said.
Mahoney put the shifter into drive. “Junior’s?” He looked around the car to get the needed nods. Scheer stared straight ahead.
“Four outta five,” said Mahoney. He hit the gas to make the yellow light.
Junior’s could be relied on for two things: easy parking and burgers that truly needed both hands.
Mahoney leaned up against the window, picking away at his French fries. Diana had a cheeseburger with extra chili, sloppy enough that a plate and utensils were mandatory. Petkau and Fiddler were halfway through their Double Fat Boy’s. Scheer had yet to say much of anything since the curbside pickup and looked the same as he had in the Plymouth. The rest of the group gnawed in silence until he spoke.
“Cheeeburger…”
Diana perked up. “Cheeseburger?”
“You want a cheeseburger?” Mahoney asked.
Scheer finally started smiling. He looked at Mahoney, then Diana, then Fiddler and Petkau.
“C’mon, you know. Cheeeburger, cheeeburger, cheeeburger . . .”
The rest of the table wasn’t getting it. Scheer continued.
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