by R. D. Cain
There was a tap at the door; North’s heart skipped a beat. He was giddy with excitement. He was going to do her every way he could possibly think of. He peeked out the eyehole and saw her standing there. She was wearing her black hair down past her shoulders and had on a business suit. You’re about to become a part of movie magic, Ms. Dewar. He craned his view to the far left and right; he could see no one with her. She had come alone. He opened the door. “Right this way, Ms. Dewar.” He waved his arm into the apartment.
“Thanks.” She gave him a seductive smile and let her eyes run down his body. She put her purse on the kitchen counter, then she turned to watch his face as it flushed. His eyes fixed on her waist when she hung her jacket on a hook by the door and started unbuttoning her shirt.
She paused. “You better be serious — I need my tapes. If I do this and you don’t deliver . . .”
She had nothing to threaten and they both knew it. He let her squirm for a moment. “Don’t worry, they’re here. You’ll leave with them.” North still wasn’t sure that was the case, but she seemed to believe him. She left the shirt hanging open. He could see the white lace bra against her brown skin. No, he corrected himself, not brown skin, chocolate. It’s a flavour, not a colour. He stopped breathing when she approached him slowly, meeting his gaze. He watched in near rapture as a wicked smile crept across her lips and she reached down and gently squeezed his crotch with one hand.
“Hope you don’t go off too fast on me; you should at least show a lady a good time.”
His throat felt dry. With her so close, he found himself observing the part in her hairline. He began to wonder what she’d look like just a little further down when she squeezed his shoulders and spun him around so that his back was toward the front door and he was leaning against the kitchen counter. “Why don’t you just lean back here for a second and let me take care of the developing situation you’ve got going on here.” He vaguely remembered that he hadn’t locked the front door yet and that there wasn’t a camera capturing anything in this room. Who cares?
North didn’t hear Nastos come around the corner and by the time he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, it was too late. Nastos pounded him in the neck as hard as he could with a hammer fist. North’s knees buckled and he dropped, his head smacking the ground. The next thing he knew, his eyes were fluttering open. It took him a minute to realize where the hell he was — lying on the floor of his apartment — and that the voice in his ear was real, not a dream.
“I have a silencer,” the guy said. “No one will notice a thing until your brains start leaking through buddy’s ceiling below us. Should take a few days.”
“Gotcha, thanks,” he said.
North certainly felt something pressed against the back of his head that could be the silencer on a gun. He stayed frozen, still trying to take deep slow breaths. He realized that his hands had been bound at his lower back with duct tape and there was a throbbing ache spreading over his right temple, but he forgot all about it when he tried to lick his lips and exquisite pain shot through his jaw. He began to figure out that this man must have hit him while he had been busy checking out Dewar and then he or both of them made a quick job of restraining him. He wanted to put together a plan to get out of this, but he knew for the time being that it was best to stay still and learn as much as he could about the people in his condo before trying to do anything.
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“You know,” Nastos said.
“Find it yourself.” He could hear another person in one of the back rooms, likely Dewar, ransacking the place to get her stuff back. It was just a matter of time; he had to think fast. He snuck a quick peek over his shoulder and recognized the man on top of him: Nastos.
Nastos was pressing him down with a left knee on the back of his neck and his right foot planted on the ground. He saw that Nastos was twisted around and had noticed the tv and the image on it.
“Nice tv show, North. Ang, check it out!” North heard the person in the back room come out to the living room. Courtesy of Nastos, he now knew it to be Dewar. He would not do well fighting two rounders, but a woman and pussy Nastos from the other night was a different story.
Dewar saw the image of herself on the tv, naked and bending over with her bum to the camera as she plucked her eyebrows. She found the dvd player and ripped the disk from it. North heard a lamp being toppled, the corner of the room got a little darker, then heavy footsteps come his way. The first lamp strike to the back of his head hurt much worse than the second, mostly because it was just a glancing blow. His scalp opened up, and thick, dark red blood oozed down the back of his neck and welled onto the tile floor.
His world began to spin and he was glad that he had not been standing or he might have lost a few teeth in the fall. He wanted to have his arms free to give her a taste of the rough stuff, to see how she liked it, but the duct tape was impossible to remove without a knife.
“Well, you do have nice legs, Angela.” She hit him again, this time in the back.
His shoulders and upper back flexed him up into a convex posture, then he twisted and dropped back down to the floor.
He waited; he couldn’t do anything else. Dewar dropped the lamp to the ground in front of North’s face, then went back to trashing the place.
“We know what we’re doing, North. We can clean this place up in a way that will never be traced to us. The cops will think it was a drug deal gone bad, a homosexual domestic, who knows what, but they sure as hell won’t be asking me about it. Hell, I’m on bail. I can’t leave the house.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll kill me right now. I’ll hunt you down, that’s a promise.”
“I don’t think you’ve really thought this through. My lawyer has defended the Crips, the Bloods, Asian gangs, the mob. All self-admitted murderers, any of whom would be more than happy to show some appreciation for getting them off multiple murders by dismembering you while you’re still alive. How long do you think you’d last?”
North shrugged, “Oh, not long I guess.” He wanted to keep Nastos talking. If these gangs owed Carscadden so much, they’d be in here right now. You’re full of shit, Nastos. North was beginning to get less nervous. They weren’t going to kill him and that meant that sooner or later he’d be loose. It would be their turn to be tied up and he planned to have much less mercy.
“You’re going to put this one down as a loss and move on, Jimmy-boy. Now, where is it?”
“Bedroom closet, false wall,” he said. The sooner they’re out of here, the sooner I’m free and hunting these walking dead.
“Bedroom closet, Ang!” Nastos shouted.
“On my way.” North heard her in the closet tossing his clothes out onto the bed. Blood was slowly beginning to congeal, gluing his face to the tiles. He could smell its coppery salt odor; the taste made him want to puke.
Dewar came back over with the box of tapes. She cracked it open and saw that the list was in there too. She showed it to Nastos, who let out a deep breath, relaxing the hand with which he was holding the point of a curling iron against North’s head. North detected the movement of the object against his head and pressed back a little, testing Nastos and the object. It feels more like plastic, North considered. He became a little angry with himself realizing that he had been held at bay by nothing. It wasn’t a silencer, so it wasn’t a gun either. North tested the duct tape. All he needed was a paring knife — and he had one in the second drawer down, next to the fridge.
Dewar closed the box and hugged it close to her. “Time to go.” She left through the door as quickly as she could, taking the case and grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter. Nastos waited till she was out of view, then got up himself.
“Good night, North.”
“Till next time, Nastos.”
Nastos backed out the door. “Just let this one slide.
”
“Sure thing.”
CARSCADDEN SAW NASTOS AND DEWAR running for the car, so he hit the unlock button and moved to the back seat. Nastos got into the driver’s seat. Dewar took shotgun as Nastos put his hand on the key and started the engine, locking the doors and turning the lights on.
“You know, Dewar, that went pretty —” The back window of the car exploded as a bullet burst through it. Carscadden shrieked covering his head with his arms as fragments of pulverized glass sprayed past them. Through the side mirror, Nastos saw a figure charging toward them. The figure raised his right arm, then the side-view mirror shattered as another bullet ripped through it. There was barely any sound from the gun. He must have a silencer, a real one. Nastos floored the gas pedal and the truck lurched forward as he pulled out into the middle of the road. “You okay back there?” He shouted more loudly than he had intended.
“Does every road trip we go on have to involve gunfire?” Carscadden asked.
“Me? I thought it was you!”
Dewar peeked back between the front seats. “He’s calling your bluff, Nastos, now what?”
“We go to the cops — what else can we do?” Tears ran down Dewar’s face; she pursed her lips but said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. Once they were at the police station everything would come out — those names on the patient list that she wanted to keep private, the fact that she had a relationship with Nastos. How would she explain that she knew him to be innocent, but was running a show trial at his expense because she had been bullied into it by Scott and Detective Koche? As far-fetched as it seemed, they were being shot at and she was more scared of the police.
Nastos sped around a corner, east on the Danforth, at first unsure where he was driving to. He considered getting on the 404 northbound but disregarded the idea. Highways were fatal funnels and North would only have to catch up to find them. No, he preferred to keep to the surface streets, where he could drive in every direction, maybe even find a place to duck in and hide. It occurred to him that they could go to the warehouses on Eastern Avenue at the south end of town, near the lake and the beaches. Too bad he’d turned the wrong way. Eastern was an industrial area, with dealerships and junky plazas. He could try to lose North in there. He had only been there a couple of times, but he was sure he knew it better than North. And for whatever reason, the name Viktor Kalmakov came to mind. “Hey, Carscadden?”
“What?”
“Does Viktor still have a warehouse on Eastern?” Nastos looked back through the spider-webbed remnants of the back window. He saw a dark sedan come around the last corner sideways with the hubcaps all but flying off. It recovered from the driver’s over-correction of the wheel and accelerated smoothly toward them, getting within a hundred metres. There was muzzle fire from the driver’s window but only the third bullet thumped into the back of the car. “Never a traffic cop when you want one.” Nastos smiled at Dewar, but she didn’t smile back; instead she started to cry.
“We’re going to die,” Dewar said, “I can’t believe this.”
Glass on all sides of the car began to explode as more bullets ripped through the car.
“What are we going to do?” Carscadden asked.
Nastos spun his head to the left and caught a glimpse of North’s position. “Lean back!” he shouted. With his right hand, he pushed Dewar’s chest back into her seat as he floored the brake pedal. The truck screeched and slid uncontrollably at first and he had to put both hands on the wheel. Through the sedan’s window, Nastos saw North’s eyes shoot wide open as he narrowly avoided hitting the car by swerving to the left.
Dewar and Carscadden flew forward. Dewar was held back by the seat belt. Carscadden, who wasn’t wearing one, landed between the front seats and would have impaled himself had there been a floor shifter. Nastos threw the truck into reverse and floored the gas pedal, backing into a closed gas station, smashing over several garbage bins, then hit the gas to go back the way they had come. North saw the impending collision and hit the brakes, careening right. When he over-corrected the wheel, he sideswiped two parked cars, coming to an abrupt stop.
Nastos never looked back, but if he had, he would have been disappointed. North rocked his car forward and back, flooring the gas to break free of the twisted metal, then took a wide lazy turn to the left, running up the curb on the far side of the street and speeding after the two lawyers and Nastos once again.
Nastos saw that Carscadden had taken out his cell phone and was dialling.
The shards of glass remaining in the side-view mirror showed more muzzle flashes. “It’s ringing,” said Carscadden tersely.
“Here,” Nastos said, reaching back. “Pass me the phone.”
Viktor answered. “And Mr. Carscadden, how are you?”
“Viktor, this is Steve Nastos — you busy?”
“Nastos, nice to here from you, actually I’m just out of town right now, why?”
Nastos took a corner fast and gunned the engine on the straightaway. He zig-zagged to avoid being shot, but found it slowed him down, so he went straight up the centre of the road. “I’m driving like a maniac with some asshole shooting at me. I’m driving to Eastern Avenue, to your warehouse.”
“Is this guy North also the driver?” Kalmakov asked impassively.
“Yeah.” A bullet whistled between Nastos and Dewar, striking the windshield. Fragmented glass burst into the air like fine powder, leaving a finger-sized circle between them.
Dewar shrieked, “Hang up and drive, Nastos!” and tried to crouch in the front foot-well on the passenger side.
“Well, don’t believe that junk on tv, there’s actually quite a knack to shooting from a car, especially for a driver. I wish I were better at it.”
“Jesus Christ, Viktor, can you help or not?”
“I’m way up in the north end of town; I had a meeting with my accountant. I’m thirty minutes away, which might as well be an eternity, but I’ll start down right now, okay?”
“Okay, I’m going to your warehouse.”
“And Nastos, if this guy hurts you, I’ll send him to hell one piece at a time.”
“Great, thanks.”
Nastos tossed the phone into the back seat. With something of a plan thrown together, he felt that he had more time to think. He considered the neighbourhood; no one was going to be calling the cops. Madeleine must have been scared when North was following her — he thought of how violated she must have felt when he came into the house. What would North do to her if Nastos wasn’t around to protect her? He shook his head. He wasn’t going to jail with this asshole on the loose. That wasn’t going to happen.
An observer might have noted a stoic calm washing over his face. Relaxed, he felt his shoulders drop and he took a deep breath. He turned around so they could both hear. “I have an idea,” he said. “I’m going to do something here. But Ang, you have to promise me something first.”
“What?” Dewar shouted.
“Ang, if I take care of this guy, will you drop the charges?”
“Of course I will.”
“What are you doing?” Carscadden asked, totally confused.
Nastos ignored the question. “Carscadden, how much did you pay for this piece of shit truck?”
“Two grand, why?”
NORTH RIPPED THE MAGAZINE OUT of his Glock and replaced it with a full one. You have to love this city. There are so many gang shootings, domestics and shit like that — as long as we stay away from the nice parts of town, we can go like this all night. He found that Nastos was not such a bad driver under the circumstances, but he was done fooling around. He seemed to be leading him to the industrial district by the lake, which suited North just fine. He used to work patrol down there; he knew the area well.
The terrain rolled up and down, like a saw’s teeth, eventually working its way down to the lake. They cr
ossed over the last of the railway tracks, until there were just one or two little hills to go — then he’d be able to shoot again. He felt a buzz in his chest pocket and realized that his phone was ringing. Oh, what the hell, he thought and put the gun down to check it. The call display said Nastos, so he answered it.
“Tired of getting shot at, Nastos?”
“You could say that,” Nastos said, sounding exasperated. “I give up — just promise you won’t shoot us. What do you want?”
A smug smile slid across North’s face. “You’re going to jail, so there’s nothing I want from you. Put Dewar on the phone — she’s got money.”
“What the hell makes you think you can get away with this? She’s a goddamned prosecutor. Don’t make me have to call the cops, North — I’m trying to avoid that, but it’s my only option.”
“I’ll tell you why I can get away with this. Because I know her name is on the list. She’s the one that killed the child molester, or at least she was involved. I know all of her little secrets, so I know she won’t go to the police.” North paused a moment. Why is this guy asking such stupid questions? Unless he doesn’t know, he mused. She hasn’t told him. There was silence on the other end of the phone. Poor Nastos finally figured out that Dewar has been playing him the whole time. He realized that he was in a position to get everything he wanted. Nastos would go to jail, for Koche and Scott; he would blackmail Dewar to put Nastos away and take some cash just for the hell of it, or else he would take what he knew to the police and she’d be the one in jail. It was going to be perfect.
North eased off the gas a little, but kept close enough to them that they couldn’t slip away. He saw that they were driving more predictably. If he decided to shoot again, he’d have a much better chance of hitting. He sped up, just a little bit. They were nearly over the crest of the last hill before the topography flattened out.