I looked at the cart. I couldn’t wheel it in past the large unconscious man on the floor outside my bathroom, only feet from the door, but I was starving, suddenly. I pulled the cart over so it propped the door open, put the bottle I was holding back into the bucket and carried it into the room, stepping over Nicholas, and set it on the credenza. Then I carefully picked up the plate and the cutlery, and set it down as well.
“We’re fine,” I said. “I’m very hungry, and it’s paid for, right?” I smiled at the kid again, who looked like he wished I hadn’t. “Oh!” I said, and stepped over the body on the floor and picked up the twenty I’d had in my hand for his tip, before I’d been doored in the face. “Here,” I said, and handed it to him. “Thanks. Just tell the police we’ll wait for them.” I pushed the cart back toward him, unblocking the door, and stepped back into the room, waving.
Then I opened the door again, and the kid was still standing there, his phone in his hand. “Forgot this,” I said. I grabbed one of the two wine glasses on the cart. “Should really be flutes for Prosecco,” I said. “Just so you know for next time. But this will do.” The kid nodded, staring at me.
I settled in, sitting cross-legged on the bed and eating twenty-four-dollar macaroni and cheese and guzzling Prosecco. When I heard the police in the hallway, I sighed. This was going to take hours, and I doubted they’d let me bring the Prosecco to the police station.
Just my luck. I couldn’t even enjoy my own suicide without someone trying to kill me.
ONE
Toronto
Present, four months later
I lay still and waited for the man’s breathing to change.
The room smelled like cigarette smoke and sweat, with a layer of something rotting underneath. A bag of forgotten takeout under the bed, perhaps. That was the best-case scenario.
A lamp was still on in the corner: a blessing and a curse. I would be able to find my clothes on the floor, and not have to make sure my jacket was zipped up all the way because I couldn’t find my shirt. But I would also be forced to look at the squalor I lay in.
That I had chosen to lay in. Chosen. A clean and sober choice, even.
At least he wasn’t a cuddler. He was curled up on his side of the bed with his back to me, and a good foot and a half of mattress lay between us.
He wasn’t sleeping yet, but I couldn’t wait any longer. No longer attempting quiet, I got up and pulled my jeans on, slipping my underwear off the floor and into my back pocket. I pulled on my t-shirt and then my socks and boots, as quickly as I could. Behind me, I heard the man turn over, and seconds later the flick of his Zippo as he lit a cigarette. I didn’t turn around.
“You want some eggs or something?” he said. I looked at my phone. It was two a.m. I didn’t answer, but rifled through my bag to make sure nothing had slipped out, that no wallet or keys had made their way under the bed, and that I wouldn’t have to come back here again. I could walk out the door and pretend this had never happened.
“Not much of a talker, are you,” the man said.
At the bedroom door, I saw his wallet where he’d dropped it when he took off his jeans. I picked it up and flipped through it.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he said. “You think you’re going to rip me off?” He was sitting up now.
“No, your five bucks are safe.” I looked at his driver’s license. “Jeffrey Duncan.” I chucked the wallet at him. He misjudged the catch, and it hit him in the forehead.
He was calling me some very unpleasant names as I walked out. I doubted I would be invited back.
When I got outside I pulled my shoulder bag across my body and started running toward home. I was far uptown. I never went out on the prowl anywhere near home. I’d started thinking of myself as a hunter, like a serial killer in search of victims. I knew my shrink, Dr. Singh, would have a field day with that. When she got back from holiday and we started our Skype sessions again, I would probably tell her. I trusted her. She knew more about me than anyone did. More than I did, probably. I’d been a bit lost these last few weeks, while she went wherever she went on vacation. She was so careful, Dr. Singh; she never told me anything personal about herself. She kept our boundaries tight.
I’d started to refer to this as the Summer of the Prowl. I never hurt anybody, of course. They got what they presumably wanted – although I didn’t really care what they wanted – and I got what I needed. Drug-free oblivion, and a new batch of self-loathing to run off, to cleanse myself of, so I could rest.
The air was August humid but somehow cool at the same time, and I could feel my muscles loosening into the run. I thought about keeping my footfall light in my combat boots, each strike of my foot potentially hitting the landmine that would blow me away. Instead of crying, I sweated. Weeks ago I had started visualizing my sweat as the tears I could no longer shed, coming out of my pores. By the time I reached home, my body would be soaked, and alive, and I would feel cleansed. I would shower for a long time, the longest showers of my life.
As I ran, I counted things. Dr. Singh had advised this, back in rehab in Nova Scotia. She called it counting my blessings. It had changed for me, now. I counted the number of days since my twin sister was murdered. The number of days since my husband was murdered. The number of people I had killed. The number of people I had to protect.
Sometimes, I would count the number of months until Matthew and Luke, my nephews, would be safely launched into the world. Happy in their lives. They were in training, now, to be able to protect themselves against almost anything. The older they got, the smarter they would get, and stronger, and eventually they wouldn’t need me anymore. Eventually, I would be able to slip out of my life, out of this life, and go back. Go back to crack, maybe. Go back to when Jack was with me, and Ginger. Live with them in my head, or die and live with them someplace else. Though I knew enough not to tell Dr. Singh any of this. She could have me institutionalized if she suspected I was suicidal.
But, no. I would never leave the boys now. I was working very hard, with Darren and Fred, to build a place and a life for my sister’s twins, and give them safety and security and fun. I faked it. Faked it every day, being the Fun Aunt. Faked being relatively carefree, when my mind was filled with worry and revenge.
I knew that I was being hunted. That we were being hunted. And I was going to make damn sure that if we were found, we’d be ready. All of us.
When I got to the last traffic light before home, I picked up the pace and sprinted. I ran like the devil himself was chasing me.
TWO
On a November evening, some twenty-one months earlier, I had a phone call that would change my life forever.
My twin sister Ginger was dead. A man named Michael Vernon Smith – who at that time was living under the alias Chandler York, and was my brother-in-law’s lawyer – was responsible. He was the head of a cult-like group that he referred to as his Family. Some of them had been his former foster children, and he had inculcated them into targeting wealthy, vulnerable people, getting inside their lives and tearing their worlds apart piece by piece. The only way to stop them was to sign over ninety percent of your assets to whatever offshore tax havens or phony charities Smith had set up. If you didn’t, Smith promised that the lives of everyone you loved would be ruined, and ruined in very imaginative ways. It was a psychological master play; there was no way out. Even those who didn’t value their own lives usually had people they wanted to protect.
The Clearys were high on The Family’s hit list. My late husband Jack had been one of Smith’s foster kids, and he had bought himself a new identity to escape. In the course of targeting my sister and her husband, The Family had stumbled upon their long-lost brother, my estranged husband. And in the ensuing melee, I had killed three of them, Jack had been killed, and Michael Vernon Smith had lost his eye. But he’d escaped. And before he had, he’d promised that my nephews would be next on The Family’s list.
I hoped I would personally get a cha
nce to end Smith’s life, mostly because I had more blood on my hands and my soul than anyone in my family ever would, and I wanted to keep it that way.
When my marriage to Jack had broken down, I’d drifted into being a regular at my local bar. I wasn’t a big drinker, but it seemed essential to avoid being home alone in my head. Soon enough, I’d found my way to the cocaine that half the staff and many of the regulars seemed to be slipping into the washrooms for. I’d finally found my drug. It took surprisingly little time for my habit to slide into an impressive crack addiction. I took to avoiding my phone, even when it was my twin sister Ginger calling. For the first time in our lives, Ginger didn’t understand me. Like anyone in the throes of a full-blown addiction, I was selfish, and didn’t think about how my actions would affect the people who loved me. Especially my twin. She jumped down the rabbit hole herself, to understand me. To save me. And in doing so, she helped Michael Vernon Smith and his Family take her life.
As long as my family stayed safe, I’d be happy if Smith simply keeled over from a fatal heart attack, or preferably contracted Ebola somewhere far away and died in agony, bleeding through his eyes. As long as he was dead and we could be sure none of his followers kept after us, it didn’t matter much to me how it happened.
* * *
Now I was back from my rehab stint in Nova Scotia – well, to be more accurate, being chained to piers while the tide was coming in, or chasing around a serial killer who liked to remove body parts. Darren and our brother Skipper had found what they thought was the perfect solution to our housing issues. They were at the airport, all of them, Matty and Luke as well, to welcome me, and drive me to what they excitedly referred to as our new home.
The boys were so excited, they blindfolded me for the drive. And I actually allowed it.
I was nervous, on that drive. And a little carsick. But the boys were practically ricocheting off the seats, they were so excited, and I knew that whatever it was, whatever building I was being driven to, I was going to make it work. Matty and Luke had lost their mother the day I got that horrible phone call, and had been packed up and moved to another country. If they were excited about something – and if Darren was too, and he knew the challenges any living space we took would have to face – there was no way I was going to be the voice of doom.
I could tell by the traffic, and by the angle of the sun warming my face behind the blindfold, that we were driving east from the airport. I was relieved that we were driving into the city. Darren, Fred, and I had been exchanging email photos of huge country properties north of the city, where we could live in quiet, and get a relatively good deal on a large property. Room for everyone, and all that. And I tried to get excited about it. I loved the country. But after what I’d just gone through in Nova Scotia, I wanted concrete under my feet, and a cop at every corner.
When the car finally stopped and Luke whipped the blindfold off my head, I was stunned.
“You wily fuckers,” I said, and slapped my hand over my mouth. I was trying to reign in my potty mouth, or at least I had vowed to try. Darren raised his eyebrows, but the boys hooted.
We were in front of what looked like an abandoned factory of some kind. And from the sound of the streetcars in the middle distance, we were downtown. It wasn’t an area of town I knew well – I could tell we were east of the city’s core – but if I had my bearings right, we were in a not-quite gentrified area, not terribly far from Lake Ontario.
“It was a bakery!” Luke said. “You can still smell bread in there! Almost!”
The brickwork was so dark it looked sooty, like something from Dickensian London. From what I could see, more windows than not were broken or boarded over, and there was some very interesting graffiti repeated along the exterior of the second floor involving multiple depictions of the male anatomy.
It was huge, it was dilapidated, and it was an eyesore.
“It’s absolutely perfect,” I said. Darren nodded, looking pleased behind his sunglasses.
“Sold?” Matty asked me, his arm slung over my shoulders. He was nearly my height.
“Hmm…” I said. “What do you think, Fred?”
“It’s going to cost more than we probably have to make it livable,” he said, gazing up at the third floor, which looked like it had been hit by a small airplane. “I don’t know.”
“You’re right,” I said. “D?”
“The asking price is ridiculous,” Darren said. “I mean, I’m sure we can bargain them down, but we’d probably have to tear the whole thing down and start fresh.” He was keeping his face neutral, unable to look at me, kicking at the ground.
But I knew my brother.
“Good point,” I said. I looked at Luke, and I looked at Matty.
“Auntie,” Luke started to say, serious and man-like, about to start in, I could tell, on the merits of the place. But I’d heard enough.
“This building,” I said seriously, “is ugly as hell.” The boys were quiet.
“And, I love it,” I said. “If everybody agrees, I think I’ll buy it.”
Even Fred was smiling as the boys tried to hoist me onto their shoulders. I twisted my bad ankle when they dropped me, of course, but it was still a good day.
* * *
If you’re pretty sure someone wants you and yours dead – or worse – it’s handy to have bushels of money. Because I am here to tell you: state-of-the-art security does not come cheap.
Even when one of your best friends is a security expert. Maybe especially when one of your best friends is a security expert – whatever you think might be good enough can, in the right hands and with enough ready cash, be improved upon. The bullet-proof glass that’s good enough for the pope is not quite up to snuff, apparently. Not when there are new polymers on the market that could stop anything up to a direct missile hit.
You get the idea.
My brother Darren and I had been bickering about how we were going to find a place – a very, very safe place – for all of us to live together in Toronto. All of us meaning our nephews Matthew and Luke – who each seemed to grow an inch a month – and their father Fred, along with plenty of room for whichever other family might want or need to stay. Oh, and of course the staff that Matty and Luke had grown up with in southern California, who had watched over the boys since they were born and needed remarkably little convincing to up sticks and move to Canada. Rosen was the former Israeli commando whom Fred had hired back in the day when he started to make real money, and get the attendant threats, and Marta had been their cook-slash-housekeeper. Rosen had no family ties – at least that we knew of, and if he did, he didn’t want to bring them to Toronto – but Marta came with a teenage son and her aged, cranky mother, whose English was as nonexistent as the chance of seeing a smile cross the woman’s face.
In exchange for the procurement and sometimes installation of our security systems, I’d agreed to house Dave and his jolly band of mercenaries whenever they needed a safe house in town. Or, of course, if they just wanted to visit. After our adventures together, Dave et al had begun to seem like a distant branch of the Cleary clan. Not surprisingly, they fit right in. We all had a screw or ten loose, and we had all seen a lot of death and pain – and had, to greater or lesser extents, gallows humor about it. Our respective quirks seemed to gel pretty well. Especially since we all had one major common goal: protect ourselves, and particularly the twins, from Michael Vernon Smith, and whatever followers he might still have wandering around.
Or better yet, as far as I was concerned: find him before he found us. Find him, and kill him. No courts and no prison, no chance to influence people from behind bars. I hoped I would be the one who could do it, could be the one who got to end the life of the man who had brought about my sister’s ruin and death, and left my nephews to grow up without a mother. I had been so close once, and Smith had gotten away.
That would not happen again.
* * *
From the outside, the changes we made to the old factory
were mostly cosmetic. We left the brickwork as it was, and had the windows replaced. The interior – at least the top three floors – we gutted. Marta and her family had the second floor, and Darren and I had the top level, the fourth floor. The boys and Fred took the floor between us. It made us all feel safer, to have them sandwiched on a floor between us. No one would get to Matty and Luke without going through Rosen, who took a small apartment of rooms at the back of the ground floor, or Marta’s fiercely loyal family.
The rest of the main floor was a gym. The gym was going to be both our front – a way to get around the zoning by-laws – and a sort of ad hoc Boys & Girls Club, a place for kids to come after school or on weekends to get in shape and, hopefully, learn some of what Rosen liked to call “the honor code”.
For a while, at least, it was everything I could have hoped for.
Until that summer weekend, that is.
THREE
“Another run of shame? This is getting old,” Darren said. I’d bounded up the stairs pretending I still had something like energy left, and found my brother lying on the floor of the living room we shared. His feet were on the couch, and he was holding an Archie comic at an awkward angle over his head.
“Pfft,” I said. I grabbed the beer on the floor next to him, felt it was still cold, and took a long swig. “If I were you, I don’t think I’d be throwing that word around so randomly. You’re looking at comics with reading glasses on,” I pointed out. “At three-thirty in the morning.”
“Can I get away with calling Archie a graphic novel?” he said. He stuck his hand up and snapped his fingers at me. He wanted his beer back. I handed it to him and went to the kitchen.
“Go to bed already,” I said over my shoulder. “The boys start back to school in a few weeks. We’ve got to get on some kind of sleep schedule.”
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