Diamond Run

by Michael Croucher

  I knew what else Jack had in mind. If we gave Marco some slack, and watched him run a bit, the more likely it was that we could broaden the net and scoop the Lustre and Sure Clean jerks. At the very least on a conspiracy angle. But I thought about the mess Marco had made of Zip, and I had no doubt that it was him. This maniac was going to close in on Sue. I couldn’t stand the thought of using her, or her place, as bait. Jack would argue that I should do what I could to protect her, but keep my mouth shut and not compromise the project. I took a deep breath before I answered.

  “Maybe, maybe not, Jack. Step one is to find this prick, and he’s the kind that knows how to make that real tough.” I let Jack take a few more drags and then changed the subject. “Do we still have Borg’s business records?”

  “Yeah, they’re stored in the Commercial Crime property room. Nathan’s business is pretty well shut down. Why are you asking about them?”

  “The line didn’t stop at Borg, so why not recover the goods; find his stashes. And if we get people who know what they’re doing to pull his books apart, we could get pointed in the right direction. I want every entry explored to find a link between him and those morons I was just listening to.”

  Jack nodded and butted out his smoke. “I’ll get someone from Commercial Crime to start things rolling.”

  He stood up. We walked out of the office and to the elevators. Just as I put a finger out to hit the elevator call button, he stopped me.

  “Listen, Phil, Sue will be hearing some pretty heavy footsteps soon. But for now, you have to be careful what you tell her. When you need to get her out of there, use your imagination, lie if you have to. Set up some observation points around her property. Hopefully Mobile Support can pick up this guy’s trail. They’re stretched out on other projects for a few days, so it’ll be hit and miss. Montreal’s been trying to sniff him out as well, but he’s likey out of there by now.”

  “Thanks for trusting my judgement about Sue, Jack.”

  We shook hands and I got on the elevator.

  He’d put his ass on the line for me. I’d never forget that. And I hoped like hell he’d never regret it. Right now, we just needed to find Marco.

  Chapter 9

  My phone call pissed off Ernie. He was enjoying a back-yard barbeque. I could hear ice cubes rattling. I pictured him swirling a tumbler of scotch as I told him why his plans for the day had just changed. There was a pause before he barked into the phone. “For Christ’s sake, Phil, it can wait for another bloody day. He’s going to cool his heels and scout things out before he starts digging around Hamilton. You can bet your ass this stuff is well and truly hidden. Let the surveillance team do their work on him.”

  “I’ll pick you up in half an hour and fill in the blanks. Throw a change of clothes in a bag, just in case, maybe a few changes.” I heard him swallow, probably draining his drink.

  “Alright,” he muttered. “But fair warning, I’m throwing in some Johnny Walker miniatures. If we get some downtime, I’ll be having my nightcaps.”

  “No sweat, partner, you’ll get a few hours here and there. And you’ll probably need the odd shot. Maybe it’ll make you a little less menopausal.”

  “You prick. I’ll see you when you get here.”

  ERNIE WAS SITTING ON his front porch when I arrived. He jumped right into the car.

  “I was just going to go around back and say hello to Jane,” I said.

  “I’d let her alone, old son. She hasn’t finished bellyaching about your call yet. Next time you come by she’ll be fine. Let’s do what we’ve got to do... So, what do we know about this asshole Marco?”

  I handed him a copy of the Sure Clean transcript. He was my partner and had every right to know that I was working under a microscope.

  He took his time going over it. “Bunch of shitheads.” He dropped the transcript back on his lap. “Okay, other than Marco running scams in New York, and being a maniac, what else have we got?”

  “In Toronto and Montreal, he has street crews. Like those kids over on Wood Street. They pull off anything involving diamonds: jewelry store hits, break-ins, high-end house and hotel prowls, you name it. He provides drugs and a payoff for his crews. Usually has a local yahoo running things while he’s off working the bigger scams.

  “Sometimes his associates wind up dead. He’s paranoid about anyone knowing too much. The analysts had someone work up a profile on the guy; likes to kill, and he’s vicious when he does. Anyone who rats him or any of his operations out, he likes to take out himself. That hit on Zip was right up his alley.”

  I was gripping the wheel so tight, my knuckles were pale. All I could think about was this madman closing in on Sue. I couldn’t even tell her about it, Jack had made it real clear that my best option was to get her to go away for a bit, by dropping a few hints. I wasn’t convinced that approach would work with her.

  Chapter 10

  A loud and continuous banging woke her. Sue lay in bed and tried to muster the courage to investigate. The noise didn’t let up. She swung her feet out and sat on the edge of the bed, squinting through the darkness at her alarm clock. It was 2:45 a.m. She stepped onto the small Oriental rug in front of the night table, put on her slippers, and moved across the hardwood floors towards the heavily draped window. She pushed at the edge of the drapes with the back of her hand, immediately feeling a thin flow of cold night air. Peering through the gap between the drapes and the window frame, she gathered the top of her nightdress around her throat.

  The barn door swayed as if it were in a strong breeze. Not possible, Sue thought. The air outside was moving, she could see the leaves fluttering, but it was a light flow, far too feeble to move the huge door. The door kept swinging, and its old hinges squealed in protest. It bounced against its frame every few seconds.

  Sue watched for nearly three minutes and the swinging stopped. The barn door stayed partially open. The darkness of it’s interior was hypnotic. She shivered and willed her eyes away, scanning the property for any sign of trespassers or unusual shadows. Beyond the barn, the dark shapes of the tree tops moved against the night sky. She was sure that something was out there. Maybe not someone, but something.

  Eventually, Sue turned away and moved across the hall to her office. She switched on the overhead light, and looked out the window, reassured slightly by the lights of the village below the escarpment, and the glow across the lake from the heavily populated north shore of Lake Ontario.

  Perhaps some work on my paper will put my mind at ease.

  Sue took the cover off the typewriter and placed some blank sheets and a carbon paper on the desk. There was a full electric kettle and some tea bags on a small table by her book shelf.

  Good thing. No way I have the nerve to go down to the kitchen. Not tonight!

  She made a mug of tea and retrieved her field notes from the bookcase. For over a year, she had been researching the site of the most westerly British fort during the War of 1812. It was on a small island off the U.S coast of Lake Superior. She’d spent a few weeks on location last fall, combing through the heavily treed island with a small team of American and Canadian archeologists. The notes brought back a clear image of the place in her mind.

  After rolling two sheets of paper and the carbon into the carriage, Sue sat with her fingers poised over the keyboard. She was starting a chapter devoted to the fort’s provisions, and its supply lines. With her notes in front of her, she thought through the next few chapters of her paper. She knew how this part of the process worked: it was simply a matter of getting those first few lines going. Normally, after an opening sentence or two, the writing would start to flow.

  But tonight, it didn’t happen. Her nerves were too jangled. Within moments, her mind was wandering, and it became evident that any attempt at writing was futile. She was determined not to think about what had happened with the barn door. Instead, she found herself recalling the night that her relationship with Nathan had ended. Phil and a squad of plainclothes police officers ha
d barged into Nathan’s Niagara-on-the-Lake home. They had produced a search warrant and immediately placed him in handcuffs. His body language and responses during and after the reading of his rights on the list of charges had really disturbed her. The charges he faced would have been beyond belief before the police came through the door, but Sue noticed inconsistencies in what he’d told the investigators. She didn’t say so to the police, but the inconsistencies were so obvious and puzzling to her, that she quickly saw that Nathan was a liar, a phony and a cheat. His problems with the police were likely self-inflicted.

  When the police left with Nathan, he made eye contact with her. It was the first time he’d done that since the cuffs were snapped on. He was teary-eyed and pleading. “It’s a big mistake, Sue. I’ve called my lawyer. This is all bullshit. Total bullshit!”

  Sue glared at him. He’d turned away with a whimper.

  She soon broke their long-term engagement, washed her hands emotionally of Nathan, and set out to recover whatever she could financially.

  Nathan had a string of jewelry stores, the Niagara-on-the-Lake home, and the nice old Victorian in Stoney Creek. Within a month of his guilty plea, Sue moved into the Stoney Creek property. Embracing a less opulent lifestyle, she focused on her career at Brock University, and sought out projects that appealed to her combined interests in anthropology, archeology, and Canadian history. She was surprised at how little she missed the life she’d had with Nathan, and how much the breakup had revitalized her career and her friendships.

  The relationship with Phil had developed slowly. A few weeks after Nathan’s sentencing, Phil returned some property to her. It had been seized during the raids, had no evidentiary value, and was, in fact, hers. He delivered it to her at the house. His partner, Ernie, was in court.

  They conducted the business out on the porch. She’d brought out coffee. Once the receipts had all been signed, the talk became casual. To Sue, it had been therapeutic. Phil’s relaxed manner and comments while he completed the paperwork made her realize that he believed the statements she’d made throughout the investigation. This tough-as-leather cop actually believed that she’d been a victim of circumstance. Phil’s rough outer shell had softened considerably, and they’d shared the occasional laugh.

  Phil had called her about a week later and asked if she would meet him at a coffee shop in Burlington. He wanted to tie up a few loose ends on the investigation and return an envelope with some other personal things in it. She’d chuckled when he handed her the envelope. It could easily have been mailed. All it contained was a thin pocket book with telephone numbers. The pocket book was Nathan’s. Sue figured it was at least ten years old. She suspected that Phil was interested in her. Although this hadn’t seemed an ideal match, Sue was intrigued. She’d decided to put it to a test, right then and there.

  “Are we on a date, Sergeant Mahood?”

  Phil grinned through a slight blush. “Only if we finish our coffee and go to the steakhouse next door for dinner.” They didn’t. But she invited him to another dinner, this one at her house, the following weekend.

  As he was leaving her place, Sue gave him a hug and a tentative kiss on the cheek. She stepped out on the porch with him, a little saddened that the night was coming to an end. “Phil, it’s a long drive back. You’re welcome to stay the night.” He stayed, and slept on the chesterfield.

  Occasionally, whenever their work schedule permitted, they got together, went for drives and visited wineries and museums – both firsts for him, he’d said. The relationship gradually heated up and became serious. He’d stayed a few more nights, but not on the chesterfield.

  For the last two weeks, Phil’s schedule had tightened beyond belief, and he’d seemed tense and preoccupied. Something was eating at him. Now they’d had their first big spat. He’d behaved like a vulgar kid and stormed off, back to his safety net: the job. Sue wasn’t about to give up on him, and was sure that he felt same way. But she was starting to realize that he struggled with the optics of dating her. Along with the day-to-day challenges of his work, he was dealing with the department’s concerns about him dating a felon’s ex-girlfriend. She reasoned that the blow-up might have had more to do with that struggle than with his concerns about Charles. Time would tell. She’d just let him cool off.

  Sue’s mind came back to the present and the things going on around her house. The paper in the typewriter was still blank. She knew there was no way she could focus on her project. She eased her work from the machine and dropped it on the desk.

  Remembering the barn door, she shuddered, moved away from the desk, and crossed the hall to her bedroom. When she was about ten feet from the window, she heard several sharp taps against the glass. As if someone had flung pebbles. She gasped and stood a moment before going to the window and looking out. The barn door was still open. As she watched, it wavered and then slammed closed with a thud. Sue jumped and let out a shriek.

  Through the darkness she saw two figures near the back of the property. They were about two-hundred and fifty feet from her window. One looked to be an adult woman, her dress trailing beneath her cloak. The other appeared to be male, slightly shorter, in britches; a young man or teenage boy she thought. She couldn’t make out their faces inside of their dark hooded cloaks. They drifted towards the barn.

  Sue shifted to the side of the window and stayed back, out of sight. The female figure looked up at the window and pointed to the ground near the barn wall. She stayed that way for about twenty seconds. Suddenly, both figures stepped back from the barn, and dissolved into the darkness.

  Sue crossed the hall and sat at her desk. Fingers trembling, she made notes for the calls she would make to Charles and Gloria in the morning. She also put together a to-do list.

  Damn It. One way or the other, I’m going to find out what the hell is going on here.

  Chapter 11

  Ernie and I booked into a cheap motel on Highway 8. The same place our thrown-together surveillance crew was using, just down the road from Stoney Creek, on the outskirts of Grimsby. It was about a ten-minute drive to Sue’s place, but only if you drove like a maniac.

  The motel had sixty rooms. It catered to budget conscious business travelers from the St. Catherine’s auto industry, or truckers and seasonal workers from the wine and fruit operations nearby. It was not unusual for people from the same company to have rooms at the motel, so a group of guests who knew each other would not seem unusual.

  Tony Gratton, a former partner of mine, was a member of the crew. His room was two doors down from mine. I knew his Harley was parked in the lot at the Stoney Creek police station for safe keeping. I had a favor to ask him. I also knew he’d give me a good briefing on any activity around the place.

  Ernie and I could smell cigar smoke and pizza before we got to Tony’s door. Since the door was ajar, we walked right in. Three guys were in the room, all attacking the pizza. I held up a tin box of dominoes I’d brought, and looked through the smoke at a table near a small fridge. There was a deck of cards on the table. I shook the box and put it on the table by the cards. The guys liked to play a game called bump; a form of euchre with dominoes.

  Tony clapped his hands. “Good man, Phil! Cards are a pain in the ass, boring unless you’re plastered. Those bones will be rattling after midnight. Unless things pick up, that is.”

  I grabbed a piece of cold pizza and sat in a chair. Ernie came in. He grabbed a slice and parked on one of the beds

  “Ernie and I’ll be around a lot from now on,” I said. “We should be able to expand the crew soon, so we’ve booked some more rooms. What’s the scoop on the motel management?”

  “Solid,” said Tony. “The motel is a mom-and-pop operation. She’s a farm-girl from around Cambridge and he’s retired military, ramrod-straight with a brush cut.”

  “Good, how are the observation points working out?”

  “Okay, but it’s a tough place to watch. A parked car sticks out like a cheap hooker. We’ve gotta keep rolling a
round the area and rotating the vehicles. It wouldn’t be hard to miss something important.”

  “I’m going to figure out a way to set up better locations,” I said. “Crap should be going down within a week. We can’t risk missing anything. I’ll see what I can dig up.” I brought up the favor. “Tony, do you mind if I use your bike for a while?”

  “No. Take it. I brought it because I’m planning a ride up to Grand Bend after we wrap this job up. Why do you need it?”

  “I don’t want to burn any of our cars by parking them at Sue’s place. They know she’s dating a cop, so seeing a bike that I ride is okay. I want to be a little bit visible, without the on-duty look.”

  “I hear you, bud.”

  I’d finished my wedge of pizza and grabbed a napkin. “Mostly I’ll just use it to go back and forth from Sue’s to the Stoney Creek cop-shop. I’ll hook up with Ernie there. If you want a set of wheels for your own time, Tony, arrange a ride back to ‘O’. You can take my car. It’s in the north lot.” I gave him the keys

  “No problem,” Tony fished the bike key from his pocket, and grabbed his helmet from the closet. “Hang on to the bike for the duration. If things heat up, you’ll need to be around Sue’s more often.”

  “I’ll keep it away from the motel.”

  “Sounds right, Phil.”

  “Let the rest of the crew know that this file could get its legs in a hurry,” I said. “Tell them to stay sharp and watch their backs.”

  “It bloody well better get legs,” said Ernie as we climbed into the car. “I had some nice cookouts planned before you buggered up my shifts.”

  I looked over at Ernie as we drove. “I don’t know when this thing will go down, Ernie. But I’m hoping like hell, it won’t be for a few days. I need to give Sue a heads-up, but I can’t. The department would see it as a risk to the project. They’d bust my balls. I’m going to have to find a way to get her out of there for a while.”