Disposable Souls

by Phonse Jessome

  Gunner leaned his bike into the turn ahead and accelerated up into the public-housing complex turned shooting gallery. I rolled on the throttle and chased him in, knowing the patch would make people more talkative than the badge. Greystone is home to a hardscrabble mix of people on the way down or struggling to get back up. In between, you find drug dealers and prostitutes who decided long ago up isn’t worth the effort.

  Cookie-cutter triplexes line the small lanes that make up Greystone. Some housing-authority bureaucrat tried to bring a little cheer to the ’hood by naming the side streets Lemon, Orange, and Cranberry, and painting the two-storey units in sunny yellows, reds, and sky blues. Bullet holes look even more disturbing in the happy paint on Cranberry Court. The forensic teams have a system they use in places like Greystone. They photograph the holes left after a round of gunplay. Then they use a permanent ink marker to draw a circle around each hole. Next time they catch a call, they just look for the holes without circles. Saves time.

  Gunner rolled to a stop in front of a cheery yellow triplex on Lemon, near Goldfinch. A few bullet holes showed near the door on one of the units. They were all circled. Quiet Saturday night here, at least. I started to ease into the curb next to him. I throttled up and pulled away when I saw the broken glass and needles pooled near the storm drain at my feet. When you only have two tires, you tend to get sensitive about stuff like that. I parked at a cleaner spot near the next triplex, walked back, and checked Gunner’s tires. They were okay. He was admiring an rx-8 parked across the street. The car was tricked out to the tune of fifty grand, and it sat there unmolested. Easy to see who was running things in the ’hood these days.

  A heavyset guy with short, spiked red hair sat on the stoop in front of the unit on the far left. He looked to be about twenty-five. He was punching the keys on his cellphone. He looked up at us and clicked a picture with the phone. If the patches impressed him, he didn’t show it. We walked over, and he leaned a little onto his hip, making sure we saw the flat black grip under his sweatshirt.

  “Delete that picture, asshole,” Gunner said, standing over him.

  “Delete it? Fuck that, man. I’m gonna tweet it. Badass bikers in the ’hood.” He looked down at the phone and kept pushing keys with his left thumb. His right hand was resting on the butt of the gun now.

  Gunner was about to grab the cellphone when the door above opened, and a guy wearing a clean, white T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and a sideways ball cap walked out. He stepped past the muscle on the stoop and offered a fist bump to Gunner. Two guys stepped out on the stoop next door wearing hoodies over the same kind of baggy jeans. Both had their hands stuffed inside the pockets in their hoodies. More guns at the dance. The guy standing with Gunner gave me a long hard look. Pretty sure I busted him once, but I couldn’t remember his name. Looked like the smell of the badge was still on me. I hoped it didn’t complicate things.

  “Hey, man, that guy’s a cop,” he said to Gunner.

  A flash of fear lit up the face of the guy sitting on the stoop. Hate quickly replaced it as he shifted his weight back and tried to hide the gun.

  “Not anymore, he’s not,” said Gunner. “He’s with us.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but it’s not your problem, T.J. Your problem is explaining why you weren’t back at the clubhouse yesterday. I thought I made myself clear,” Gunner said.

  T. J., Tyler Jones, I remembered him now. I remembered the bust. We bagged him for selling stolen car parts. Nothing big, but nothing he’d forget. I took another look at the guy on the stoop. I remembered Tyler had a younger brother. If that was him, he’d been hitting the weights pretty hard and probably juicing to help things along.

  “Man, I came to see you.” He looked at me as he spoke to Gunner. “I went over, but there were cops outside and a bunch of squares hanging around. I had a nine in the car with me and didn’t want to bring any heat your way, so I kept on rolling.”

  “What, your phone not working? Never mind. Fuck yesterday. Look, we need some information now.” Gunner doesn’t waste a lot of time.

  “Sure, man, let’s talk inside.” T. J. moved past the guy on the stoop. I got the impression he was trying to lead Gunner away to avoid dealing with me.

  The redhead stood after Gunner moved past him toward the door. He smiled and looked down at me. “He stays out here,” the kid said. If there was a signal between T. J. and the guy, I missed it. The two guys next door stepped down off their stoop.

  T. J.’s brother weighed in somewhere north of two-hundred pounds, not much of it wasted. He tilted his head to the left, smiled at me, letting me know this was his turf. He had the look of a guy used to having people do what he said. I ignored him and kept moving toward the door. He grabbed the front of my cut with his left hand and held me in place as his right moved to the gun. I couldn’t believe the move. Back in the day, these thugs wouldn’t even give lip to a Stallion. Touch one? Not a fucking chance. People in Greystone hate the police. I’d been forced to swallow shit here before. You stand behind a badge you hope people respect, but don’t take it personally when they don’t. Mostly you try to defuse a situation like this. It works out better for everyone that way. I wasn’t behind the badge, and disrespecting the patch was an entirely different thing. Especially in a place like Greystone.

  I moved into him before he could touch the gun. I grabbed the back of his neck with my left hand, locking his head in place as I drove three fast rights into his face. He let go of the leather and grabbed my left forearm, pulling it down to try to free his head. I tightened the grip and reached my right around behind his head. I pulled hard, adding to the force he was applying to my arm. His head came down as I shot my right knee up with brutal force. The knee connected with his chin, and he was drooling bubbles of spit and blood before he hit the ground. I straddled him, dropping to my knees and pressing them into his hips to give me leverage. I let loose with my best ground and pound, the kind that had ended fights in the ring in seconds. He was unconscious; but there was no ref here to stop me from raining lefts and rights into his unprotected head.

  It was overkill, but it was what Greystone would expect from a full-patch Stallion. I needed the clout the club carried in the street, and that meant protecting its vicious rep. I kicked him once in the ribs as I smoothed the front of my vest. Red would live but he’d be a little uglier, and sore for a while. His phone was still on the step where he’d been sitting. I picked it up and snapped a picture of his bloody face, a souvenir from the badass bikers in the ’hood. I looked at the two guys from the second unit. They hadn’t made a move. Smarter than the punching bag on the ground.

  “Either one of you know how to tweet with this thing?” I asked.

  “Yeah, sure.” The taller of the two answered first, and I tossed him the phone.

  “Okay, you delete the picture of us and send that one out.” I looked at his friend. “You. Clean Stupid up. Then the three of you watch the bikes.”

  T. J. shook his head and led us inside. The door opened into a living room filled with car parts. It looked like most of it had come from Jap sports cars like the rx-8 out front. T. J. was obviously still in the midnight auto-parts game. Meant the fifty-grand estimate on the Supra was too high. Probably outfitted it for nothing. When Gunner and I ran with the Litter Box, freelancing was forbidden. I figured that hadn’t changed, so the club must be into stripping down stolen cars now. Probably into a lot of things I didn’t know about. A hallway led past the parts collection to the kitchen. I could see through a window into the backyard where a couple of guys were unloading a grey panel van. They were carrying wheels into a small shed. Something in the fog of my mind was trying to get my attention, but I couldn’t force it into the clear. My head was still buzzing a little with the juice from the beating outside.

  I stood at the kitchen counter and watched the guys outside through the window as Gunner explain
ed what we needed to T. J. I knew he wouldn’t want to give me any information, partly because I used to be a cop, and partly because I’d just kicked the shit out of his brother. One of the guys unloading the van was rifle-barrel thin and maybe fourteen years old. He couldn’t lift the wheel he was unloading, so he rolled it out of the van and chased it to the shed. The polished black rim caught the morning sunlight. It was one of those water-cut wheels that were the rage. It had five wide daggers sculpted into the metal. The tips of the daggers met at the hub, the hilts reached out to form a supporting web for the outer rim. The dagger blades glistened with chrome polished edges that really stood out against the glossy-black painted surface. I wondered what they would fence for. You could drop four grand on a set of two like that for a motorcycle, and these rims were huge, had to be off an SUV. And there it was, that nagging thought burst through the fog like a beacon. I turned and grabbed T. J. by the arm.

  “Where’d those rims come from?” I shoved him to the window.

  “Easy, man.” He pulled his arm free. “I don’t know. That’s some stuff the boys picked up last night.”

  Gunner moved to the window.

  “What is it, bro?”

  “Those rims, they could be off the shooter’s Caddy.”

  “Was it an Escalade?” I asked.

  “Yeah, man, that could be. We torched one last night.” T. J. moved to the back door and opened it.

  “Yo, li’l man. Those off the Darkside ride? Cool, man, thanks.” He closed the door. “Yeah, man, we gassed one of theirs. Probably sell the rims back to those fools, too.”

  Slammed and tricked black Escalades were a favourite among the dealers and pimps on the Dartmouth side of Halifax Harbour. The Litter Box Boys were still at war with the Darkside dealers. Had a Darkside hit team taken out my brother? The harder I looked at it, the less sense this case made.

  Chapter 17

  Sunday night

  Nicholas Mapp’s estate hugs the North West Arm, due south across the waves from Point Pleasant Park. The Arm is home to some of the most expensive real estate on Canada’s East Coast. Those exclusive homes sit just a pistol shot below the streets of Spryfield. It would be tough to spend a night sipping single malt on a patio and not hear the nocturnal symphony of gunplay and sirens heralding the urban decay above. Ignoring it is easier from a private dock.

  Mapp’s 26,000-square-foot, glass-front sanctuary overlooks his private cove. A two-storey boathouse sits where a wooden wharf cuts the beach. Near the end of the wharf a cigarette-hulled speedboat bobbed in the waves, straining against the lines that secured it. A forty-foot cabin cruiser rose and fell against rubber bumpers that protected its polished fibreglass sides from the dock.

  White light poured into the blackness from spotlights suspended beneath the eaves of the boathouse. The light floated in the mist above every surface as the heavy rain bounced. Serpentine streams rolled down the curved glass solarium that covered the pool at the back of the house.

  Mapp sat in a canvas deck chair beside the pool, a cigar in one hand, a cut-crystal lowball in the other. He dipped the end of the cigar into the amber liquid in the glass and savoured the flavour of the whiskey and tobacco as he took a slow pull. He wore a thick blue robe with silver trim over a set of black swim trunks. Stallion colours in honour of his guest.

  Yves Laroche was swimming laps in the pool, his deep tan cutting the pale blue chlorinated water that rolled over his muscled back. He sliced through the water with long easy strokes. Graceful technique for a thug, Mapp thought. Sometimes these guys still surprised him. Laroche was the president of the Nomads, the most ruthless and profitable charter in the Stallion stable. He hadn’t gotten that job swimming laps. The trouble at the Church of Salvation brought him from Montreal. The murders were bad. The fire at the ranch was worse; numbered companies and titles can only hide so much. Behind them hid Laroche’s own name. Arson investigators were sniffing around in dangerous territory. Anything beyond a half-hearted investigation would uncover the Nomad president hidden in the records. An unexpected visit from Laroche was bad news. If the Nomads were getting ready to clean up in Nova Scotia, Mapp could be in trouble. He’d have to convince Laroche he could handle cleanup on his own.

  The biker pulled himself out of the pool and walked to the deck chair beside Mapp. He was naked. His clothes sat in a heap on the leather sofa at the far end of the pool. Striking blue eyes glistened under woolly blonde eyelashes. The deep tan shaded sharply cut muscles. Beads of water dripped from a smooth bald head. A jagged pink scar dropped from his left shoulder and disappeared under his right arm. The word Nomad tattooed in deep blue arched left and up from his navel. It was identical in size and shape to the bottom rocker on his Stallion cut. It ended beneath the Satan’s Stallion crest inked above his heart. The small Cavallino Rampante over his right hip matched the one on Mapp’s own. The prancing stallion signified membership in a different club. Mapp’s friends all thought it was a bit of vanity ink to let everyone know he had a priceless Ferrari. They were wrong.

  “So, Nick, Halifax is gone to shit. Time to cut and run, I think.” Laroche stood naked and dripping as he sipped Scotch from a crystal glass.

  “Not everything, Yves, and even what may seem bad will be good again. Trust me.” Mapp hated being called Nick, and Laroche knew it. Still, he raised his glass in salute.

  “We’ve made money together for a long time, long enough for me to know I can trust you. But only so far. My brothers wonder if maybe it is time to end our relationship with you.”

  Mapp knew how the relationship would end. These bastards would cut his throat and dump his body in the ocean. Use one of his own boats to do it, too. That was the risk of doing business with clueless muscle heads. No vision.

  “I’m hurt, Yves. The club has nothing to be concerned about. We lost our facility, but we have enough fresh material on hand to keep us in money until we find a new place. We still have the supply line. Our partners are as eager to protect what we have as we are, more so, perhaps.”

  “The supply is the only fucking reason you are still sitting here talking to me, Nick. Getting into business with these kiddy diddlers was a mistake. You should have stayed with coke. We should all have stayed with coke.”

  Laroche drained his glass and tossed it onto the patio stones surrounding the pool. Tiny bits of crystal dropped like rain on the surface of the water. If they got past the filter, it would be impossible to save the pump. Mapp clenched his hand tightly around his own glass as he raised it to his lips. The warmth of the Scotch calmed him.

  “Look, Yves, I can still save this thing, so relax. Gardner’s wife is a better fit for us, anyway. He took too many stupid risks. It’s probably what got him killed. Brenda Gardner is more cautious. She cares about two things—money and prestige. We can give her both. She, too, is a pastor and has been waiting to step out of the shadow and into his pulpit.”

  “Those risks Sandy loved to take were our hold over him,” Yves said. “How can we control her if— and that’s a big if—we can salvage this thing?”

  “We already own her. Sandy was simply the face; she’s been the brains behind the Little Maria Foundation from the beginning. She knew what happened to those special children who ended up at the ranch. She’s been looking the other way for years. Too late for her to claim innocence now.”

  Laroche stood and placed his hands on his hips, leaned left and then right, stretching out the muscles in his sides. Mapp wanted to offer his robe to the naked Frenchman. It was the first time he was glad his useless wife and her sisters were off in New York wasting his money.

  “Okay, even if we agree that she can run things, I believe it is still too far gone for her to get the chance,” Laroche said as he continued the stretching routine. “The police will never walk away from a gunned-down cop. And three murders. This thing is as fucked as it can get.”

  “Not too fucked to fi
x. We have a stripper who may be connected to the Gardner murder. You can deal with her. She’s one of your circuit girls. Maybe a suicide with a note. We’re covered on the Waters woman. It can’t come back on us. She had to go, she was going to tell the police everything. Her death sent a strong message to the others who know. Their silence suggests the message got through.”

  “So we do have a problem,” Laroche said. “You ordered her killed and did not consult with me?”

  Mapp could not believe Laroche was trying to turn this on him. He’d followed the Stallion rule of three. If three people know about a contract kill, one can always be convinced to talk. The person who gives the order and the person who carries it out are both guilty of first-degree murder in the eyes of the court and can’t cut a deal. The third person can go from co-conspirator to witness at the stroke of a prosecutor’s pen.

  “Look, she made her choice. She told our friend Bobby she was going to the police with everything. He contacted me. I made a decision, suggested a certain level of brutality to ensure the message carried weight. I didn’t feel it necessary to bother you with something that obviously had to be done.”

  “I suppose you are right. The killer: are we exposed? Do we need action there?”

  Mapp smiled, noticed Laroche did not mention Bobby’s name or ask if he did the work. Smart.

  “The only exposure is his. Action against him would be a waste. He seems to have an appetite that could benefit us in the future.”