by Scott Mackay
Lombardo came with him.
Kennedy’s arraignment was held in a modern, efficient-looking courtroom in Osgoode Hall. Gilbert was surprised to find Rosalyn Surrey there.
“Julie Winslow has just stepped down as Chair of the Police Services Board,” she told Gilbert. “She felt she had to resign over this. She felt she wasn’t vigilant enough, considering my persistence. I’m the acting chair right now, and this is important to me. This was my ball of yarn right from the start.”
She looked better. She looked revived. Now that she had a cause, now that she was acting chair of the Police Services Board, she looked…resuscitated. Gilbert was happy for her. Lombardo stared at Rosalyn in a soft romantic way during much of the arraignment.
The arraignment was short. The Justice listed nine felonious charges against Kennedy, charges that could put him in jail for fifteen years, then set bail at ten thousand dollars.
Lombardo stared at Rosalyn Surrey even when the judge whacked his gavel down.
“You should ask her out,” said Gilbert, once they were standing out on the courthouse steps.
“Really?” said Lombardo.
“Go on. Ask her. Before she gets in that taxi. A young detective and the acting chair of the Police Services Board. It couldn’t be better. Go on. Ask her. Before she gets away.”
Lombardo hurried across the broad open space in front of the courthouse and caught Rosalyn just as her taxi was pulling up to the curb.
While Lombardo spoke to Rosalyn, Donald Kennedy came out of the courthouse with his lawyer. Gilbert looked at the man. Big beefy face, with that perpetually contemptuous expression on his brow, as if he believed the world were full of idiots. Those small blue eyes of his must have looked particularly terrifying staring out of the eyeholes of a black ski mask. Gilbert’s anger flared. He thought of Regina getting pushed on the icy parking lot behind the school. He thought of big fists smashing into her face, of her head hitting the rearview mirror, and of her blood dripping darkly all over the ice as Kennedy whispered the warning into her ear, thought of her nine stitches and how stoically she had endured the whole frightening episode. That was his wife, and no one was going to do that to his wife. No one. Before he could stop himself, he marched toward Kennedy, his jaw set and his fists clenched.
He grabbed Kennedy by the front of his coat and shook him. “I bet you beat your own wife too,” he said. “I bet wife-beating is your specialty.”
Kennedy gazed in alarm at Gilbert, recoiling from the attack, and turned to his lawyer. “Billy, for Christ’s sake, help me, will you?” he said.
The man sounded pathetic. Gilbert felt his anger draining away. He stared at Kennedy in a new light. He saw that Kennedy was scared. That Kennedy was a coward. His strategy for dealing with the world was to cheat, steal, and victimize. Gilbert couldn’t prove anything. Had he taken the towel away? And was he the reason Edgar had bled to death? Had he ransacked the apartment? And what about the Chinese man? Had Dock Wen originally seen Tony Mok and later on confused him with Garth Surrey, whom he might have also seen? Had Kennedy really brutalized Regina? Maybe. Gilbert couldn’t prove any of it. But he thought he saw a cold and helpless guilt lying like a curse in the man’s eyes. He could have trashed Kennedy right then and there. But he realized he didn’t have to. Kennedy had already trashed himself. Kennedy would never be the same again. His job, his pension, his reputation, and his freedom were gone. He gave Kennedy a shove, then turned to Kennedy’s lawyer.
“Good luck,” he told the lawyer. “You’re going to need it.”
Kennedy and his lawyer moved off. Gilbert let them go. Kennedy was ruined. That was enough. He took a deep breath. He pitied the man. He looked up at the sky. The sky was blue. For the first time all winter there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The city felt buoyant around him. He could feel its three million inhabitants coming alive in the sunshine. January, the beginning of a new year. He would forget about Kennedy. To Kennedy, this blue sky meant nothing. To Kennedy, January and a new year wouldn’t amount to much.
He watched Lombardo talking to Rosalyn.
He watched Rosalyn shrug, then shake her head. She gave Joe the smile all women gave potential suitors when they were turning them down. Lombardo accepted the rejection gracefully. He turned to go. He walked toward Gilbert, a distressed expression on his handsome Mediterranean face. Gilbert thought he’d never seen the man look so defeated. For the first time in living memory, Detective Giovanni Lombardo, the Don Juan of the Homicide Squad, was having a hard time getting a date, hadn’t had one in over four and a half months now. At least not a real date. Gilbert discounted his dates with Jennifer. Could it be true? Was the playboy of the Western world really losing his touch? Would celibacy indeed become a habit for Lombardo?
Gilbert was just beginning to give up hope entirely when Rosalyn reached out and grasped Lombardo by the sleeve. A relinquishing grin came to her face. Joe turned around, surprised. She opened her purse, took out her card, and handed it to Lombardo. She said a few more words, then got into her taxi and drove away.
Lombardo stood there for a moment, looking at the card, perplexed. Then he turned around and came Gilbert’s way. He was now smiling like a boy.
“Well?” asked Gilbert, when Lombardo reached him.
“She didn’t want to at first,” said Lombardo.
“But…”
“But I got her card.”
“I saw that.”
“She says I should call her in a few months. She wants to have a few months to get over things. She says wait until spring.”
Gilbert nodded. “Spring’s a good time,” he said. “A great time to fall in love.”
Lombardo’s smile broadened. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I think I’m getting my touch back.”
“I think you are too. I was worried about you. I thought we’d seen the last of the man with all the moves.”
“No,” said Joe. “No, I’m still here. And I think I’ll be here for a long time.” He stared longingly after the taxi. “Unless of course Rosalyn Surrey turns out to be the one.”
Gilbert left work early that day. He just wanted to go home. Jennifer was still home but would be leaving to go back to school in the next couple of days, had taken an extra week off to pull herself together. She was feeling better. They were feeling better. He just wanted to put Pearl and Edgar behind him, put Kennedy behind him, move on, recharge himself for the next difficult and complicated homicide that would inevitably come his way. Nothing could revive his spirits better than some time spent with his daughter. He wanted to be with Jennifer. Regina was at work, Nina was at school, and Jennifer, with a longer Christmas break, was the only one home. As he got out of his Windstar, he waved at the two plainclothes officers parked in the unmarked Caprice across the street. His security detail. To protect him and his family from triad reprisals. Bing Wu would no doubt be furious about the part he had played in Pearl’s arrest.
The television was on in the den. The sound of ocean waves came from the television. He shook his head, smiled. Jennifer was watching her videotape again. He put his briefcase on the floor, took off his coat, and walked to the den. The door was ajar. He pushed it open.
Jennifer was sprawled on the couch drinking 7-Up and eating ketchup-flavored potato chips. A kid again. His daughter again.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She looked up, grinned. “Sure,” she said. She sat up, made room for him on the couch.
He sat next to her and turned his eyes to the television. The video, shot on consumer-quality camcorder stock, showed twenty-foot waves, gray and cold, rolling to shore at Lockeport, Nova Scotia. Winter on the North Atlantic. Far in the distance, Gilbert spotted two icebergs. Jennifer was standing on the beach watching the waves, her dark hair flicking in the wind. A bereft scene, a stark and frigid seascape that made Gilbert want to shiver. But then suddenly, out on the waves, a
figure emerged, dressed in a wet suit, riding the crest of the tallest wave on a surfboard. The man riding the surfboard through the sub-freezing water was Karl Randall. Patchy gray clouds roved southward, pushed like a pack of marauders by the relentless north wind. The morning sun rose to the left of the screen, backlighting the waves, making their crests translucent. Karl Randall did a lot of crazy things—stealing his friend’s car, using heart medication as a recreational drug, driving drunk—but surfing the North Atlantic in the middle of winter, when the waves were at their biggest and the temperatures at their coldest, had to be one of the craziest. Yet Gilbert had to admire it. He glanced at his daughter.
“You loved him, didn’t you?” he said.
She looked at him, surprised. Perhaps she heard the acceptance in his voice. Or the fatherly tenderness. Or the unspoken apology. Or the sorrow he felt for Pearl. She moved closer. He put his arm around her. She nodded.
“Yeah, Dad,” she said. “I did.”
They sat there and watched Karl Randall surf the winter sea. And as they watched, Gilbert couldn’t help thinking of Pearl again. He wondered where Pearl’s father might be. Whether he was grateful for the sacrifices Pearl had made for him. Whether he loved his daughter the way he loved Jennifer. And whether he would ever see Pearl again. Gilbert realized he was lucky. He had his daughter. He would always have his daughter. No matter what happened out there…out on the street…she would always be here.
And that made him feel like just about the luckiest man alive.
More from Scott Mackay
Cold Comfort
In the midst of a record-cold winter, the stepdaughter of a government official is found dead on a snow-swept pier at the harbor. Overworked and underpaid Detective Barry Gilbert is called to investigate. The Metropolitan Toronto Police Force is already beset by political maneuverings that threaten their jobs, and the sensitive nature of this case may increase that risk to the point where detectives from Gilbert’s own squad are chopped. All of this is before the victim’s autopsy reveals a seemingly unsolvable enigma: the victim froze to death first and was shot later, after she was already dead.
So begins a treacherous trail of evidence that leads Gilbert to the coldest zones of the human heart.
As the investigation takes unexpected and baffling turns, he at last suspects an outside manipulator, and must use all his skill to untangle clues that at first defy explanation. Probing deeper in the victim’s dark past, he discovers the terrible secret she's hidden all her life. He's forced to confront his own values, and learns that even the most superlative detectives can lose their judgment at the most critical moments—often with the deadliest of consequences.
Old Scores
When a music mogul is found strangled in his apartment, Detective Barry Gilbert immediately finds out he is no ordinary victim: music-producer Glen Boyd has a prodigious list of enemies,men and women who have any number of reasons to kill him. Even Gilbert once wanted to murder the man for nearly stealing his wife.
From Boyd's own world-famous ex-wife, to a rock guitarist, to a notorious drug kingpin, Boyd's shady business dealings have affected the wrong people in the wrong way. But there is one suspect Gilbert is too close to, and refuses to include even though evidence keeps piling up,Regina, the woman he has been married to for the last twenty years. With outside pressure mounting, time becomes critical, and Gilbert must embark upon a distressing and personal journey to find the true culprit behind this sad but vengeful crime before his family is torn apart.
Connect with Diversion Books
Connect with us for information on new titles and authors from Diversion Books, free excerpts, special promotions, contests, and more:
@DiversionBooks
www.Facebook.com/DiversionBooks
Diversion Books eNewsletter