“I’m thinking the latter. Makes more sense. Only those close to a child would call her baby.”
“Which means they were a couple. A man and a woman.”
“Not necessarily a man and woman. Time to join the twenty-first century, Dave.”
He gave her the eye. “Yes, I know, not necessarily, but probably, right?”
Hadn’t Dion presupposed there was a woman on the scene, back when he was still part of the team?
JD agreed. “Probably, yes, a man and a woman.”
A faithless couple, if the better half had scooped the baby bootie, and the gin bottle vase, combined them for some wacky reason, and flung them out to sea. A betrayal, or a statement of some kind, or a meth addict’s illogical head game?
“But Joey only mentioned a man.”
“She maybe came in later, when he was already hiding.”
Leith left JD to her Liu mystery and turned his thoughts back to Cleo Irvine. Melanie’s alibi wasn’t so tight. She had been at home that morning, she said. Alone. She could have run out and done the deed. But he doubted it. It was a simple matter of power balance; Cleo was the tall, wiry, athletic type, and Melanie … well, not so much. Even if Melanie came with a gun and said “Get up on that desk and jump,” he imagined Cleo would have outmanoeuvred her.
He tried to imagine a hitman walking into the mansion, finding Cleo there. Maybe she had been standing by the open window, preparing the curtain for others to come along and install. Maybe she turned, mistook the hitman for the potential buyer arriving early for a look-around. Maybe he had taken advantage of her surprise, strolled up to her, hoisted her up, and tossed her. But if she’d been manhandled, she would have acquired at least one small bruise or scratch that would stand out as inconsistent with the fall. There was nothing like it in the pathologist’s preliminary reports.
Maybe the intruder had cajoled her at gunpoint up onto the desk and given her the choice of a bullet or a leap, and she’d chosen the latter.
Frankly, Leith didn’t buy the hitman theory, either. Accidents did happen, even within the murk of a murder investigation, and it was quite possible their imaginations were firing off unnecessarily.
“Anyway, I’m outta here,” JD said, cleaning up her dinner and paperwork with sudden zeal. “Brain is stuck in a loop, and it’s time to get back to real life. Bye.”
“See you tomorrow.”
She was gone, and Leith dug into the Oscar Roth file, viewing the attack through the lens of new developments.
Could little Dallas be the prize?
The child would be a dependant all her life.
Whoever controlled the child controlled the money held in trust for her.
It would be a slow payoff, but a payoff all the same.
But even with the shares thrown in, was it worth killing for? Really?
* * *
Jamie and Dion sat side by side on the sofa in the den, brushing up on the rules of the road. Jamie was surprisingly literate. She took notes, and her handwriting was loopy and childish, but not hesitant. Her spelling, grammar, and punctuation were good, too, better than Dion’s. When he quizzed her, she was more often right than wrong.
“Lookit, they’re talking about a four-way intersection,” she said, and fell back, laughing. “How kinky is that?”
He tried to turn the page, but she was bored with lessons. She leaned to turn up the music, then crawled to the soft Persian rug to lie beguilingly before him, giving him his own private, professional, and irresistible floor show. “Ever done a four-way intersection, Cal?”
“No. Have you?”
“Three-way, four. Once I did five.”
He didn’t want to hear of her record-breaking orgies or who she had done them with. He hoped it was a thing of the past, but wouldn’t ask. He was too afraid of the answer.
She said, “Come here.”
And he did, there in the Yorks’ living room, when Jon or Melanie could walk in on them any moment. Not that it mattered. They would just step around the couple on the carpet and carry on with whatever they were doing. The nightclub mentality of “anything goes” was all around; like the pull of a strong current, wade in too deep and he’d never see shore again. Like it or not, soon it would draw him in, too.
Twenty-Nine
Sinker
Progress on the Oscar Roth/Cleo Irvine case was showing the first signs of decay, yet another day passing with no new leads. But on the other major file that was also growing colder by degrees, the death of the Liu family, Lance, Cheryl, and little Rosalie, there was news. Not much, but some. On a Tuesday afternoon, Leith’s last day before his weekend, a constable from Drumheller, Alberta, was patched through to his desk. The constable said he had found Sigmund Blatt. There in the Alberta badlands, of all places.
“Guy got in a fight outside the Dollarama,” the constable explained. “No bloodshed, no big deal, but after we broke it up we had a look at him, figured he’s a little dusty-looking, a little on the vagabond side, and so we engaged him in conversation. He said he’s in the process of moving, no fixed address, lost his ID. Said his name was Dean Broadfoot from Portage la Prairie, out job hunting in the promised land. Sounded credible enough, but I didn’t believe him. Probably ’cause the a la.”
“The what?”
“Portage a la Prairie, he says. For his alleged hometown. Should’ve picked something easier, like Newton. Anyway, ran his plates, belonged to a Marcia Tannenbaum …” he spelled it out for Leith “… from Airdrie. He says it’s a friend who lent him the truck for his job hunting. I poked around. He seemed to be living out of the vehicle, by the looks of it. And by the smell. Carting around a big, ugly bird in a cage, too. Fucking thing told me to kiss its tail feathers. In perfect English, would you believe it? Anyway, the guy was reasonable enough, after we bought him lunch. Convinced him to take us out to his campsite down the 840 around Rosebud there, a pretty good little hideout in the bluffs by the river.”
“How did you figure he was Sigmund Blatt?”
The constable’s voice remained deadpan. “How many homeless types haul around parrots? I read my bulletins, sir. I asked him straight out, your name’s Blatt, right? And he fessed up. So what do you want me to do with him? He’s cooperating so far, seems happy sitting in the holding cells eating jail food. But can’t very well hold him overnight, can I? Even if he’s okay with it, I’m not. The bird’s here, too, and he’s a noisy bastard.”
“Can you put Blatt on the line?” Leith said.
After some background mumbling, Sigmund Blatt said, “Hello.” He sounded tired, fed up.
Leith said, “I told you to remain in contact. Instead you disappear. What are you afraid of, Mr. Blatt? Time to tell the whole story, don’t you think?”
“You’d be scared, too, if your best buddy and his family got massacred practically before your eyes,” Blatt said.
“And you have no idea who’s behind it, but you believe this killer’s after you next, no particular reason?”
“It was no random act. He was after something. Maybe something I have.”
Leith tried out Joey Liu’s verbatim words. “Do you know someone named Noon?”
“No.”
“Anyone that sounds like Noon?”
“No.”
Leith made a note. He said, “Can you hazard a guess as to what this thing he was after could be?”
“No, sir, I have no idea.”
“Something you’ve seen? Something you know? A password? Top-secret microfiche?”
He could feel the dusty refugee glowering at him over the line. “No clue,” Blatt said. “And I’m not going to hang around like a sitting duck and wait for it, either.”
“Did you do something to piss this guy off? Is that what this is really all about?”
“No, I did nothing. Nothing at all.”
“S
o let me get this straight. You didn’t feel safe, even fifteen hours away from the scene of the crime, way over there on the other side of the Rockies, so you took to the hills, living rough. Sounds kind of extreme. I’m thinking you must have got tipped off. Did you hear something? See something? Get some kind of message?”
“No, sir. Just a bad feeling.”
Leith rolled his eyes. He went on to give Blatt the lowdown, that he couldn’t detain him, couldn’t even order him to stay in touch, but was asking him, politely, to please keep him, Leith, apprised as to his whereabouts from now on. And not to leave the province without saying so.
For what it was worth, Blatt swore to God he’d stay in touch.
Leith spoke to the constable once more, then hung up and added a note to the Liu file: contact information for one Marcia Tannenbaum of Airdrie, Alberta. If Blatt disappeared again, this time Leith would have someone to harass about it.
* * *
Dion’s cellphone had turned up at Diamonds, lodged in the VIP booth seating. Odd. Checking it after several days of being misplaced, he found it not as loaded with messages as he expected. The force had given up on him, then. They had received his resignation letter, and that was that. He’d been cut loose. Good.
He went to Hami’s for a trim. The barber had switched the radio station back to Persian Pop, Dion noticed, and he remarked on it. Assimilation shouldn’t be rushed, Hami said. Hami noticed changes, too. “Nice neck-chain. Never seen you pimping heavy metal before.”
The slang startled Dion. The silver around his throat was an impromptu gift from Melanie. She had taken it from Jon’s collection and put it on Dion, so he would show proper respect for Oscar at his wake, she said — he wasn’t sure how serious she was — and afterward Jon told him to keep it. Looks better on you, anyway, man.
Hami stood with scissors and comb in hand and again suggested Dion might relax the FBI look a bit. Either go longer or shorter. This time Dion agreed. Longer.
“I quit the force,” he told Hami. “I’m looking for an apartment.” He no longer believed he had the courage to move east, start over in the prairies. He had Jamie now, though he already saw their relationship as a rough road in dense fog. With a washed-out bridge somewhere ahead. But Jon had made him an offer he was considering, working security at the club. “Know of any leads?”
“I got an uncle, owns the Belleview Apartments up here,” Hami said. “Bit of a waiting list, but I could maybe pull some strings.”
Dion went to check out Hami’s uncle’s apartment. The pad was on the second floor of a blue-collar low-rise up on 14th, with no view whatsoever, and he couldn’t move in till June 1st, which was still over a week away. Another week living with Jon, Melanie, and Jamie, who seemed to expect him to stay forever. He said yes to the apartment.
His days were empty, but not peaceful. Jamie had her learner’s licence, and he was taking her out on the road, teaching her to drive. He was also learning more about her, filling in what Melanie hadn’t been able to tell him. Melanie spoke of the changes Jamie had gone through, from a thin but gregarious brunette to a hot but reclusive blonde. Happened pretty well overnight, Melanie said, and not long after Oz picked her up.
How long was not long, Dion wanted to know.
Maybe a month, Melanie said. She attributed the shift to sudden wealth and the pandering but possessive reins of Oscar. Such a new lifestyle, both liberating and stifling — who wouldn’t go through a dramatic metamorphosis?
What Dion discovered from Jamie herself, in their stop-and-go conversations as she learned to drive, was that she was an only child; she had grown up in South Vancouver; she had been Little Miss This or That from kindergarten onward. Cosmetics and pretty dresses, subjected to perms and pedicures, being touched and stroked, put on a stage, turned around, taught to wiggle her butt. “So, yeah,” she said. “Pretty early on I looked in the mirror and went ugh.” Soon as she grew gangly, she was in high heels and push-up bras. Riding in parades, waving at people. When she was in her teens, her mom started to hate her, and her dad started to love her. It got so weird, she had to leave home. Right away she was snapped up by an entertainment agency. Out of one weird and straight into another.
On Friday morning Dion also learned she had a mean streak. The driving challenges were getting tougher, and today she was learning to merge onto the highway. She happened to not merge fast enough, causing a Chev truck coming up behind to step on the brakes. The Chev blasted its horn at her. “Don’t worry about it,” Dion told her, but with a flare of temper she floored the gas, passed the Chev, cut him off. More horn blasting. Dion bellowed at her to pull over. She did, and so did the other driver, the two out of their vehicles, balling up their fists. They fired words at each other, from insults to threats of bodily harm, and if Dion had not stepped in fast to calm the situation, it would have ended in tears. And a police report, as he told them both.
The Chev driver backed off, swearing all the way back to his cab, and pulled out. Jamie slipped behind the wheel. She was no longer cursing, but laughing like it had all been a spin on the tilt-a-whirl. “What an asshole,” she said.
Dion began to worry about the day she would receive her full licence and be set free on the roads. If she lived that long.
On Friday at noon Jon York texted him, telling him to drop by the club; he had momentous news. The news wasn’t so momentous, as it turned out. The club wasn’t open yet, the overhead lights on, and Jon only wanted to tell him of plans he was hatching for tomorrow, for Melanie’s surprise birthday party. “We’ll move those tables out to the edges, set up a buffet along there. I’ve got Darcy doing up a birthday soundtrack with all Mel’s favourite dance tunes.”
Ziba joined them, telling Jon with delight, “Hey, I’ve got Tony lined up.”
“Tony, you know Tony, right?” Jon asked Dion. “Was here the other day, flashing his headshots around?”
Dion didn’t know who Tony was, but was starting to guess.
Ziba said, “Professional boy-toy with tear-away cavalry stripes.”
“And,” Jon said, “a fabulous cake from Thomas Haas. I’m really stretching the budget for my Mel, but you only turn forty once, right? This is a special occasion. And we’re doing good, financially-speaking.”
“Really?” Dion was pleased. Maybe he was wrong; the place wasn’t in trouble. The future was solid. His new life was secure.
Ziba said, “Yes, and that’s because, all due respect, Oz has stepped down. I’m sorry, Jon, but much as we all loved him, he had his ideas. Didn’t he?” She smiled at her boss, with a message behind the smile that Dion couldn’t read. “Once Oz had his mind set, you couldn’t budge him with a bulldozer. Which is a virtue, Jon. I’m saying it’s a good thing, just a little too much of it.”
“Bulldozers or dynamite,” Jon agreed with a laugh. “We’re also going to have a little guest of honour tomorrow,” he told Dion. “Dallas. Just got the word, the adoption’s going through. Big relief. Mel and I couldn’t imagine that kid in an institution. Couldn’t bear the thought.”
Dion congratulated him on the good news. Ziba and Jon then went on to discuss last-minute logistics around the birthday bash. When Ziba left, Jon picked up where he had left off, describing to Dion what would go where and who would do what tomorrow night.
Dion listened and nodded and watched him talk. He was fairly certain that somewhere along the line, something had undone Jon’s good mood. The sunniness had cooled by several degrees, hadn’t it? And the enthusiasm was now false. Working back through the conversation, he could even pinpoint at what point the clouds had moved in: right around the word dynamite.
* * *
Leith was in the middle of his three-day weekend and fast asleep when his BlackBerry woke him with an urgent buzzing. He pushed himself off his pillow, reached for it, noted the time — 1:15 a.m. — and rasped, “What?”
JD Temple was in his ear, sayin
g, “Sorry, did I wake you?”
“No. Just wait a second.” He put her on hold and looked at the curvaceous mound of blankets beside him. Alison was a light sleeper, and he didn’t want to bother her. He took the phone to the living room and dropped heavily to the sofa. “Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked JD.
“Because the Internet’s more interesting. I found something. I think it’s a game-changer.”
Leith rubbed his eyes till they could stay open on their own. “Fire away.”
“I did some trolling,” she said, “since I don’t trust those financial docs that the Diamonds’ CA dump-trucked on us following our warrant. Want to hear what I trolled up?”
“Yes, please, tell me.”
“This is one nightclub operation that threw it all in and crossed its fingers,” JD said. “Well, the wheel’s about to stop spinning, and the number’s off. The strip-bar dance-club combo idea, jazzy but not so wise. Strip bars are a thing of the past, ’cause guys get their rocks off at their computer screens these days. Tourism’s down, staycations are in. Nightclubbers are young, and the young don’t have jobs, so they’re not dancing much, and if they do, they go across to the big city where the in-crowd goes. So it’s pretty grim.”
Leith wasn’t impressed. “So what? He’ll scale back the dancers and raise the cover charge. Anything else, JD?”
She sniffed, maybe disappointed that he wasn’t excited by the breaking news. She said, “York’s cancelling contracts for a courtyard extension at the dock-front, and sounds like he sank a lot of money into some charter yacht scheme for nothing. The rumour mill says he’s firing staff left, right, and centre, trying to recoup. But too little, too late. The big payees are waiting, and they’re hungry.” She paused, probably for dramatic effect. “No doubt about it, Diamonds is sinking.”
Thirty
Blue Sparks
Some nightmares were small-scale and disturbing, and others were larger-than-life and terrifying. Tonight’s was epic. Dion stood on the tenth-floor balcony of his old Seacrest apartment, transfixed by an eerie glow on the horizon, against which he could see the furthermost buildings crumbling to dust. Destruction spread like spilled ink toward him and toward the RCMP detachment he could see from where he stood. He knew those within wouldn’t know it was coming. They would all be crushed in seconds if he didn’t do something. So he climbed onto the railing and leapt, waking himself with his own frightened yell.
Undertow Page 22