Corkscrew

by Ted Wood

  "Bennett from Murphy's Harbour." I kept the pressure on his neck. The kid had lied about Andy being worked over. I didn't know who to believe anymore. His reaction convinced me. He relaxed, his cheek against the forest floor, talking through the duff, the piled-up needles of other years. "Thank God," he said quietly. "Corkscrew. Corkscrew. Corkscrew."

  I put my gun away and stood back. Slowly he rolled onto his side, then stood up and stuck his hand out. I didn't take it. I was still wary. "We'll do the civilities later when I'm sure," I told him. "Right now you owe me. I've been in a whole lot of grief over you."

  "It's over now, I'd say." He dusted his knees off with one hand. "What say we go down the house there and tell the OPP we're safe?"

  "Okay. But I've got an injured man here. And anyway, how come the kid told me it was you they were torturing? How did he know the code word?"

  "I told him the word." He had straightened all the way up, not impressively tall, but he was moving like a policeman, not a biker. "When he saw the gang with his grandfather, it made him think. I figured him for the best bet if there was trouble. I could tell he was scared and wouldn't blab to any of these guys. I just wanted you or whoever to believe him when he came for help, and I knew he was going to have to."

  Corbett with the gang? It needed explaining, but later. I stuck my hand out now. "Nice going, Andy. I hope you've got them dead to rights."

  "Dead to rights," he said, and then I heard Russ speaking, growling again in his deep, professional tough-guy voice. "An' I got you dead to rights, as well, Morgan. Outa' the way, Bennett. I got no fight with you after what all you done."

  I didn't even turn. I remembered the shotgun against the tree, too far for Russ to reach unless he was in fear of his life. But now he was, facing years in the pen with a disaffected gang of killers around him. I shoved Andy sprawling and rolled the other way, shouting, "Fight."

  Sam grabbed Russ by the arm. The shotgun blasted once, digging a hole in the forest floor, showering me with needles and gritty soil, but then I heard the gun clatter down. I stood up, pointing my pistol at Russ. "That wasn't very friendly," I told him.

  He stopped struggling and lay still, all the fight gone out of him. Sam's jaw was still clamped on his right arm, but the battle was over. And then the back door of the house behind us banged open, and three men in coveralls and bulletproof vests came racing out into the bushes with their M16s at the ready.

  "It's okay. Bennett here. Corkscrew," I shouted. They didn't slow up, but they put lights on as they ran, flashing the beams over us.

  One of them said, "That's Bennett," and the lights left me and played over the other two. Andy had his hands on his head, and when I called, "Easy," to Sam, he let go of Russ's hand, and Russ, too, slowly put his hands up on his head.

  They took no chances with us. I liked that. They didn't give up their weapons or let me carry mine. They picked up the shotgun and made Andy and me carry the wounded biker back past the house, out to the paddy wagon they had parked fifty yards down the road. They were going to put Russ in the back, but Andy said, "Don't put him in with the rest of 'em. You can see what they've done to him already. They'll kick him to hell. Put him in one of the cars."

  "Dammit, he's a biker, ain' he," one of the men said, but Andy shook his head.

  "If you don't want to act like they would, segregate him," Andy said.

  "You're just a goddamn constable, same as me," the OPP man snorted, but Andy shook his head. "Not on paper. I'm acting sergeant until this caper's over. So play nice, eh?"

  The OPP men said nothing else. They put Russ in the back of a scout car and led Andy and me back down toward the house. The bikers were filing out, handcuffed to one another. There were eight of them, snarling and spitting but effectively controlled. I stood back in the shadows as they passed. The less anybody knew about my involvement the better. They might decide they owed Murphy's Harbour a grudge and come into town and burn the place down some night.

  The last policeman out of the house was a guy of medium height, a single eyebrow like an iron band across his forehead. He spoke to the men who had found us, then walked off the road and into the shadows to where I stood. "Giacomo Positano. They generally call me Jack," he said, and stuck out his hand. "We owe you one, Reid is it?"

  I shook hands. "Yes, I guess you do. I'd never have gone near the place if I'd known they were just putting the blocks to one of their own. I thought they were going over this guy here."

  Andy stuck his hand out to Jack. "Sorry about the confusion. I was a jump ahead of them. I got into Corbett's car. I'd told the kid the code word a little earlier, when we picked up his granddad, and I could see he was worried for the old guy's safety. Then, when they started working on Russ there, I guess he got scared they'd kill 'im and figured he'd lie about it being me. Him and Russ had something going."

  "Kid gay, is he?" Positano asked. "What is he, this Russ guy's boyfriend?"

  "Looks that way," Andy said. "Lemme save it for the debriefing. I've got a full slate of charges to lay. Pornography, extortion, wounding. We can wipe out the Devil's Brigade before they set up here."

  "What about murder?" I asked.

  "Murder? You mean the little boy?" Positano was frowning, his one eyebrow tugged down in the middle.

  "They didn't do it," Andy said. "And they didn't trash the Corbett place. That was the Diamonds did that."

  "The trashing or the murder?" This was where I came in. If I got the answer to that question, I could go home a happy man. Happier, anyway, until I walked into the empty house again with Fred gone.

  "The trashing, anyway," Andy explained. "I'm going to go through all of this later for the record, but you've earned an answer, Reid. Thing is, Corbett was getting girls from the Diamonds for a couple of his bars in Hamilton and one in Toronto. He kept it at arm's length as far as the public was concerned, but the bikers knew, and when the Brigade came in from Vancouver and started squeezing him to do business with them instead, the Diamonds got mad."

  "Why'd he even listen to the Devil's Brigade?" Positano asked.

  "Had to. They were blackmailing him with a videotape of the boy and some guy."

  "I've seen the tape," I said. "So when he looked like he was going to do business with the Brigade, the Diamond gang came up here and leaned on him a little."

  "Looks that way to me. And then the kid wandered in when they were working the place over to teach Corbett a lesson. One of them slugged him in the head. That's the way it reads to me."

  I held up one hand. "Listen, we can't go over all of this out here, slapping mosquitoes. Let's go do it at the station."

  "Good idea," Positano said. "I'll take this bunch back to your place. See you there."

  They both shook hands with me, and Andy thanked me again. Then one of the Task Force team gave me my shotgun back, and I whistled Sam and walked back down the road to my car. I got in, wearily, and drove back to the station. The same OPP uniformed man was on duty, and I handed over the gun and asked him, "What happened to the woman who was here earlier?"

  "She left, Chief." He sounded apologetic but with that competitive male edge to his voice that implied she would not have left him, only a rogue male like myself, a clean-shaven guy in his late thirties instead of a mustached model ten years younger. I nodded to him, and then the OPP arrived and started unloading their bikers.

  To start with, we booked them all for creating a disturbance, unlawful discharge of firearms, possession of unlicensed and illegal weapons—to wit, a sawed-off shotgun and four unregistered pistols. Then the other OPP men came in, the last two who had already started going through the saddlebags of all the bikes, the Brigade bikes that I had sabotaged and the working bikes belonging to the Black Diamonds.

  "It's gonna take all night 'less we can get a couple more guys up there," they complained.

  "You've got all night," Positano said. "Waddya expect for one lousy raid, a night off?"

  They all grinned and started listing what they'
d found. They'd done the job properly, making a list of the license plates that matched each bag, and we went through the contents one by one until we came up with an item I recognized. A Nikon camera.

  "What was the license on the bike this came from?" I asked. The OPP man checked his list.

  "Four-oh-seven-two. Belongs to a Charles McCluskie."

  "That's one of the Diamonds," Andy said. He had relaxed a little over a cup of coffee fortified from the station bottle.

  "That camera belonged to the murdered boy," I said. "Get McCluskie out of the cells. Let's find out where he got it."

  One of the OPP men brought McCluskie in. Still arrogant but diminished by the absence of his boots and belt and the chain he'd been wearing with a padlock around his waist.

  I sat him down, and Positano took over. "Charles McCluskie, you are arrested on a charge of possession of stolen property, to wit, a Nikon camera. You are not obliged to say anything—"

  The biker cut in. "Okay, I know the routine, an' you can save your breath. I ain' telling you nothin'."

  "I thought you might have wanted to," Positano said easily. "This belonged to a boy who was murdered. We thought if you'd found it somewhere, you'd tell us, to save the embarrassment of being charged with killing the kid."

  "I never killed the little bastard." The biker was on his feet, furious.

  "No, you just clumped him in the head, right?" Positano said easily.

  The biker swore, and Positano nodded to the man who had brought him in. "Put him back, change his charge sheet to include murder."

  "Murder?" The biker bellowed again. "I never murdered him!"

  "Sure, Charles," Positano said. "Okay, Off'cer, put him back."

  The biker licked his lips. "Now listen. I'm telling you, I didn't murder him. I hit him a good crack on the head, that's all. It couldn've killed him. Hell, I've wasted guys, an' I know."

  "Okay. Let's suppose you didn't kill him. Who did? And what were you doing in that house when you found him? And where did you dump the body?"

  The biker looked all around, but there were none of his brothers there, just policemen with grim faces. "Look. We was trashin' the house, okay. An' the kid came in an' I hit him. Then we split. And that's the truth."

  "Sure, Charles," Positano said easily. "And then you appear at the Bardell house with your buddies. Who set that up?"

  The biker frowned, surprised at the change in the questioning. "We got a phone call. That's all. An' the guy's took the call, he says, okay, the Brigade is up at this place, le's get 'em."

  "Who phoned?"

  "Shit. I dunno. Talk to Tom."

  "We will," Positano said, and motioned to the policeman. "Put him back."

  "One last question before you go, Charles," I told him. "Which room of the house was the kid in when you found him and hit him?"

  "The goddamn kitchen, by the back door." He gave me the answer and then shut his mouth like a trap. I nodded to him, and the uniformed man led him out.

  Andy set down his coffee cup. "I know who phoned. It was Corbett. He's got a phone in his car. He knew where the Brigade was."

  Positano looked at him and frowned. "What makes you so sure it was him?"

  "He's in over his head with the Diamonds," Andy said. "That's at the bottom of the whole mess. The way I see it, the Brigade started blackmailing him over that tape. So he went along, started doing business with them. He must've thought you can switch suppliers of women the way you switch laundries. Only they didn't go for it. They came up here and went over his place to teach him a lesson. He went to the Bardells' place, and the Brigade found him."

  "Just a minute," I said softly. "He told me the place he planned to stay at was locked. I saw him at the coffee shop at the Hungry Hunter. Said he was grabbing a cup before he drove back to Toronto."

  Andy shook his head. "No way. He was with the Brigade on that one. They sent him there to check you were there alone, waiting for their instructions about delivering the cabinet."

  "Slowly," Positano said, "slowly. You saying he was involved with the bikers?"

  "Up to his gray-flannel armpits," Andy said. "Like I say, they were blackmailing him, the Brigade were. But the Diamonds wouldn't let go."

  "And the Diamonds knew about the file cabinet down in Toronto and went and snatched it. Is that it?" Positano asked. Nobody answered, and he took a long swig of his fortified coffee. "Shit, this is complicated."

  "Kind of," Andy said. "Thing is, the Brigade talked to him when they turned up at the Bardell place, which is where he went after he left the station here. They threatened to hurt him, and he sang. Said the Diamonds knew about the Spenser connection. So they put pressure on Reid to recover their file of tapes. That was what's in that file cabinet, by the way." He paused to make a joke of it. "Feelthy peectures. Seems they used Spenser to pass the tapes over the border to a connection in Buffalo. He could go in unquestioned, a professor going to a convention or whatever. No customs man would bother checking his material. It got them into the big money in the States."

  I frowned. "He must have spoken to the Diamonds, told them about the Spenser connection. They came up to the place where Spenser was staying, iced him, and called Toronto to get the cabinet with all the Brigade's tapes in it. Big money for them instead of the Brigade."

  "That's right." Andy nodded. "Then he went to the Bardell place, and the gang came right after him. His grandson had told Russ about the place being vacant this weekend. Then they used him to check you at the greasy spoon, then came with them to the drop-off. He was going to carry the cabinet back to the Bardell house in his car. They were all on bikes. Then, after the explosion and after I gave you my bike, I hitched a ride back to the road and went off with him. He dropped me down there, a half mile from the Bardell place, and said he was going to Toronto.

  "Only he must have been scared of the Brigade. He thought that the Diamonds had the tapes by now, he might as well keep up his arrangement with them. So he told them where the Brigade was hiding out."

  "That way he gets rid of the Brigade. Chances are they would be wiped out or so badly beaten they wouldn't try blackmailing him anymore. Makes sense," Positano said. "But it still doesn't tell us who killed the kid. A biker wouldn't have smothered him, would he?"

  Andy shook his head. "I don't think so. They're violent. Smothering's not the kind of killing a biker would do."

  "I think we're going to have to wait for the autopsy on the boy," Positano said. "That might tell us more."

  "Maybe," I said, "but it won't explain why he was dumped in deep water. That had to be done by somebody who knows the lake pretty well."

  "We have to talk to Corbett," Andy said. "He's heading back to Toronto. I'll put it on the wire. And I'll get the Toronto guys to wait for him at his apartment."

  "Good." Positano stood up. "Meantime we'll sort out this mess the best we can."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Andy went to the telephone and put out the word on Corbett, telling the OPP he was wanted on suspicion of first-degree murder but not to arrest him, to tell him his assistance was needed in our investigation of the trashing of his house. The man on the other end asked a few questions, but Andy told him, "Be charming. He may not want to come back. If he does, fine; if not, detain him and let us know. We'll send an officer down to interrogate him."

  He hung up and rubbed his face with both hands wearily. He had positioned men on the highway, and they were picking up survivors of the Devil's Brigade as they clawed their way out of the bush, fly-bitten and scared. Another team of detectives, including Werner and Kennedy, were cataloging the belongings of all the bikers from their saddlebags and from the van that had been found parked on the far side of the Bardell house, a place I hadn't searched. They were finding drugs as well as unregistered guns and homemade weapons like maces with four-inch nails hammered through them. If any of us had needed convincing, the haul reminded us that bikers are bad people.

  The noise level was rising, especially when riv
al gang members were brought within shouting distance of one another. It made things easy for the arresting officer to know which outfit a man belonged to, but the uproar in the station was way above my comfort zone. As I paused for coffee, I heard one man shouting, "How come that pretty little thing's not in here? Don't you trust me?" and the others all laughing.

  "That'll be Reg Waters they're talking about. Better bring him out here," I said. "He's been hanging around with the Devil's Brigade. I guess he's scared witless of the Diamonds."

  "Good, may get him talking," Positano said agreeably. He nodded to the uniformed man, and he led the boy through to us. He looked frightened.

  "Sit down, Reggie, isn't it?" Positano said. "Did anybody offer you any coffee?"

  The kid looked up, grateful for the kindness. "I'd like some, please."

  Positano poured the coffee and then sat down next to the boy. "Right now I guess you know that you're in a lot of trouble, Reggie. You've been running with a bad crowd of people."

  He paused for a moment, and Waters sipped his coffee, his hand trembling as he raised the cup. He lowered it and said, "I didn't do anything."

  "You're an accomplice," Positano said patiently. "But you appreciate that I don't want to see you locked up, not with a bunch of guys like those out the back there. We both know what would happen if I did that. So I'm willing to do my best to get you off as lightly as possible, to keep you out of Millhaven."

  "Millhaven?" The boy's voice quavered. His biker friends had told him what that place was like on the inside.

  "That's where they put all the bikers," Positano said evenly. "And you're a biker as far as the court is concerned. But, like I said, I'll do my best to have the charges against you dropped. And in return you have to tell us what we want to know." He paused precisely the right length of time, then asked, "Deal?" and the kid nodded.

  While he talked, the phone went a couple of times, and the uniformed man took messages, which he was obviously impatient to pass to Positano, but the detective just looked up and gave a tiny shake of his head as Waters told the whole story.