Serpents Rising

by David A. Poulsen

  I resisted the urge to turn and see if everything behind us was going as Cobb and Mrs. Scubberd seemed to think it would. Cobb opened the door, held it for me, then followed me onto the street. The air outside was oppressively cold but it was the most welcome air I had breathed in a couple of decades.

  We walked toward Cobb’s Jeep. “Audi across the street.”

  I looked where he was pointing. “That’s the one I saw outside Zoe’s building.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t see it again anytime soon.”

  Once we were inside and Cobb had started the Jeep, I turned to him. “Who were those guys?”

  He knew which guys I meant. “Ex-cops, one retired, the other on disability.”

  “And they do this sort of thing?”

  “Freelance like you. I called in a couple of favours.”

  “That’s what the texting was about.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I got the impression Mrs. Scubberd isn’t just eye candy.”

  Cobb nodded. “I’d say she’s a player. Maybe not on the same level as her husband but, as you say, a long way from a bad guy’s bimbo.”

  The Jeep’s heater had kicked in and I leaned forward to put my hands next to the floor vent. “All we were missing in there was Doc Holliday.”

  Cobb had been looking straight ahead. Now he turned his head to look at me.

  “Something you need to understand, Adam. This isn’t some Bruce Willis action movie and that wasn’t make believe back there. I had my two guys there because I figured without them there was a pretty good chance that some very messy stuff could happen.”

  “So why did you want to go face to face with Scubberd at all?”

  “Desperation. I haven’t been able to find the kid. And if they found him before I did, they’d have snuffed him out like a candle on a birthday cake. When I heard about the shipment of drugs destined for whatever warehouse the MFs use for storing their merchandise, I figured it was worth a shot.”

  “Scubberd says there is no shipment.”

  “That was bullshit. He couldn’t acknowledge it to me because that would mean that I actually had something on him. This way he pretends he’s making nice and sparing the kid out of the goodness of his heart.”

  “Will he keep his part of the bargain?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing maybe sixty-forty in our favour. Honour among thieves and all that. Mrs. Scubberd assured us that he’s an honourable man. We better hope she’s right.”

  “I still think it’s risky. You made Scubberd look bad in there. He might be thinking payback.”

  Cobb looked at me in the semi-darkness of the Jeep. “He might. But I played the only cards I had. What we better hope for now is that the cops don’t find out about the drug shipment and stage a raid and blow the whole thing to hell.”

  “Because if that happens, the Scubberds will think the information came from you and —”

  Cobb shook his head. “I don’t think so. He knows I wouldn’t have gone to him asking for him to leave Jay alone if I was planning to let the cops in on what I know. But he would be worried that there are too many people in the know. And he might decide to start removing those people and anybody he even suspects of having some insider access to what’s going on in the MFs world. Then it gets ugly.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have your job,” I said.

  Cobb pulled out into traffic, driving slowly. “At the very start you told me you were in this for the story you’d be able to write when it was over. You want to write this story, you need to see it all, be part of it. Because if you’re not, you could wind up dead in a Dumpster about four hours after your story hits the streets.”

  “Memo received. Now what?”

  “I drop you off at your house. We get a good night’s sleep and give Jay another shot in the morning.”

  I thought about that. “If you just made a deal with the MFs not to waste the kid then what difference does it make if you find him or not? Why bother?”

  “I don’t like stuff left unfinished.”

  “Yeah.”

  We drove in silence for a few more blocks. We came to the lights at 9th Avenue and 19th Street where you turn left if you want to get to the Deerfoot. Cobb didn’t turn. Instead he drove on into an older residential neighbourhood for a couple of blocks then turned left, then left again, and one more left to get us back to 9th Avenue. I wasn’t paying much attention. A lot had happened and I was still trying to process it. As Cobb turned back onto 9th Avenue heading back toward where we’d just been, I finally broke the silence.

  “Cruising, are we? Hoping to see Jay just walking down the street?”

  “No.”

  “Okay … any ideas? It seems to me this kid is proving to be pretty elusive.”

  “That’s true and I’d like to discuss that with you, but not right now.”

  That response made as much sense as everything else that had happened so far on this night. And, like most of what had happened so far on this night I didn’t like it. “Look, if there’s —”

  He held up his hand to stop me. “We’ve got a tail.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look back there but someone is following us.”

  “Shit. An Audi?”

  He shook his head, casting a casual glance now and then at the rearview mirror. “Pickup. This guy’s an amateur. Following too close. Easy to spot. He picked us up leaving the restaurant, which means he knew we were there.”

  “How would anybody know that? I didn’t even know that.”

  “He followed us there.”

  “But if the guy’s an amateur how is it you didn’t spot him back there before?”

  “I was careless.”

  “Just one guy?”

  “Unless someone else is hunkered down in there out of sight. We’ve got a driver, male it looks like. Dodge half or three-quarter ton, not a dually, I’d say early 2000s vintage.”

  “So what now?”

  “So now we see if we can find out who this person is.”

  As he finished speaking, Cobb swerved to the right and slid to the curb between a Chevy Nova and a MINI Cooper. As we stopped both of us tried to get a look at the driver of the pickup as it went by. The driver lifted his arm and covered his face as he rolled by so we saw nothing that would help identify whoever was following us.

  We waited until the pickup was out of sight down the road. Cobb pulled back out into traffic and drove for a block or so with the lights out, finally turned them back on as we rolled through the traffic lights at 12th Street. The pickup was visible ahead of us but Cobb, unlike the “amateur,” stayed well back with two vehicles between us and the Dodge.

  I said, “To repeat, what now?”

  “Not sure yet. We play it by ear.”

  Up ahead, the pickup turned right at 8th Street opposite the historic Deane House. Cobb moved into the right lane, slowly eased around the corner. The pickup was nowhere in sight. We drove north one block and turned right again. Cobb and I spotted the truck at the same time; it was pulled into a driveway at a two-storey red brick house on the opposite side of the street. Someone, it might have been the driver, was walking away from the truck and the house. He was walking quickly. Cobb pulled over and we parked alongside a park, neither of us taking our eyes off the guy walking, almost running now.

  “Let’s go,” Cobb said and we both jumped out of the Jeep. “You check the pickup. I got the guy on the street.”

  We were running now and so was the guy ahead of us. I figured my stop at the pickup was a waste of time — it seemed pretty clear the guy on foot was the same man who’d been at the wheel of the truck.

  I did what I was told and ran to where the pickup was parked. I slowed as I got there, and ducked down next to a fence, thinking for just a second about all the things that could go wrong if I just ran up to the driver’s side door without thinking.

  Unless someone else is hunkered down in there out of sight.

  I waited, li
stening hard, and peered through the darkness at the truck, trying to get a look inside. Not seeing anyone in the truck from my vantage point next to the fence, I slid slowly up alongside until I was even with the back door. Still no one inside that I could see. I yanked the driver’s door open and went into a crouch, mostly because that’s what I’d seen law enforcement people on TV do. Of course most of those people were pointing guns at whoever was in the vehicle at the time but, as I didn’t have that option I hoped the crouch would suffice on its own.

  It did but only because there was no one in the truck. I peered around the interior, saw nothing much of value. A couple of screwdrivers, a flashlight, some empty candy bar wrappers and a coffee travel mug lay spread over the middle and passenger seats. And a box of Trojans, open, a couple gone.

  I leaned in, flipped the glove box down, and pulled out a small plastic carrying case that housed the vehicle’s registration and insurance. The truck belonged to Roland Nill. I didn’t take the time to try to learn more in case Cobb needed my help in the pursuit of Mr. Nill or whoever had been at the wheel of the pickup moments before.

  I closed the door of the pickup and started off down the street in the direction Cobb and the guy on foot had taken. I went at a steady, medium-fast jog thinking it could be a long run and that I better conserve some energy for later if I needed it.

  I’d gone about two blocks, my head moving from side to side the whole time, hoping to spot either Cobb, his quarry, or both.

  I heard them before I saw them. Loud, high-pitched swearing from one voice, Cobb’s base growl interrupting it from time to time to state, “Shut the hell up.”

  They were standing next to an older sandstone building that had been converted to a set of offices. A sign announced that the building housed Jackson MacArthur Enterprises, an accounting firm.

  Cobb had hold of someone who was struggling and swearing, neither of which seemed to be having much impact on Cobb, who looked at me as I arrived and said, “Adam, say hello to Jay Blevins.”

  Seventeen

  Jay Blevins’s face hadn’t been washed in a very long time. That was the first thing I took note of as I looked at the kid we’d been trying to find all this time and who, instead, had found us.

  Cobb had a firm grip on the twisting mass that was Jay Blevins but didn’t look like he was hurting the kid at all. It also didn’t look like keeping him under control, except for his mouth, was much of a job. The kid was as tall as I was, but there was nothing to him.

  Jay bore the malnourished, emaciated look I’d seen on the faces and bodies of countless addicts I’d encountered before. Sadly, wasted was the perfect descriptor for what I was seeing.

  Owen Harkness all over again.

  And like Owen, Jay’s mouth was the one part of him that seemed to work just fine.

  “Listen, Dipshit, you’ve got ten seconds to get out of my face, then I call the cops and nail both your asses for assault.”

  Cobb moved his face to maybe two centimetres from Jay’s and said again, slightly modified this time, “Shut the fuck up.” Less a directive and more of a threat.

  Thankfully it worked. Jay fell silent.

  Wrestling with Cobb, if that’s what you could call the kid’s feeble attempts at resistance, quickly took its toll and he stopped moving except for the heaving of his pathetically small chest. No longer the athlete. Once a football player, now Ichabod Crane.

  Cobb released him, straightened the worn jean jacket Jay was wearing, a jacket that was far too light to be even remotely effective in fending off the cold of this night. He wasn’t wearing gloves but did have a toque that, like the jean jacket, had seen better, and cleaner, days.

  Jay stood up a little straighter, brushed imaginary snow from the shoulder of the jacket, and glared at Cobb, with the occasional unpleasant glance in my direction.

  Cobb said, “Okay, Jay, let’s start with question number one. Why were you following us?”

  Jay shook his head. “Oh no, uh-uh, that’s not the question. The question is why have you been following me?”

  Despite the dishevelled, unhealthy look to Jay Blevins, there was something about him that differentiated him from the majority of crackheads, cokeheads, and other addicts I’d encountered over the years. It was the eyes.

  This wasn’t the wide-eyed, wildly out of control look I had become all too familiar with over the years.

  “How long you been clean, Jay?” I asked.

  “What’s that to you? And who the fuck are you anyway?”

  Cobb shook him a little, sort of a show-some-respect shake.

  “My name’s Cobb. This is Adam Cullen. We’ve been looking for you. We knew your dad.” Cobb said it gently, especially the last part.

  I watched Jay contort his face, straighten his shoulders. Trying for tough. “Yeah, well … what’s that got to do with me?”

  “How about we go someplace a little warmer, maybe get some coffee, and we’ll tell you exactly what it has to do with you.”

  “I don’t have to go with you.”

  “No, you don’t. You can stay out here and freeze your ass off. Or we can call the cops — who are also looking for you — or we can go have a cup of coffee and talk a little bit.”

  A few seconds passed while he thought about it. I hoped he’d make up his mind soon because that “freeze your ass off” thing Cobb had mentioned applied to more than just the kid.

  “Where?”

  “How about someplace that has some food. Maybe we can get a bite to eat to go with the coffee?”

  I said, “There’s a place down 9th Avenue a few blocks. Harriet’s. Should still be open.”

  “We talk for a while, then we drop you off wherever you want to go. Fair enough?”

  Jay looked at Cobb, assessing the possibility that there was any truth in what he was hearing. I hated to imagine the lies the kid had heard during his time on the street.

  Jay shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  Harriet’s wasn’t fancy but given the state of our guest, it would do nicely. Better yet, we were the only ones in the place. Cobb parked behind Harriet’s next to a Dumpster, which meant the Jeep wouldn’t be seen by anyone driving by.

  Once inside, Cobb selected a table near the back, again well out of view from the street. This time he sat facing the front door.

  Two restaurants in an hour. With interesting people for company in both cases.

  To his credit, Jay suggested maybe he should wash. Cobb went with him to the john and stood outside the door to ensure that Jay didn’t try to escape out the back. I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to take off and miss out on a free meal but I wasn’t sure, even if he was clean, how lucid the kid’s thought processes might be.

  He was in the bathroom long enough to have me wondering if he’d decided to vacate via a window, and I could see from his body language that Cobb was having similar thoughts. He looked about ready to kick down the door when it opened and Jay stepped out.

  He hadn’t been able to effect a miraculous change, but I could see that he’d tried. The hands and face were cleaner and he’d stashed the toque in a pocket and tried to get most of his hair going in roughly the same direction.

  I got out of the booth and let Jay slide in first. Cobb sat opposite us. A girl, not much older than Jay, came to the table snapping gum and looking like customers were the worst part of her day.

  “What can I get you?” She was looking at Jay with something less than cordiality. In fairness to her, one of the things that the enclosed quarters of the restaurant revealed was that Jay had been less successful eliminating the smell he was emitting than he had been in scraping off some of the surface dirt.

  The waitress actually took a step back.

  Cobb said, “Jay?”

  Jay shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Cobb looked back at the waitress. “What’s your soup, Miss?”

  “My name’s not Miss.”

  “What is your name?’

  “Virginia.”


  “My mistake, Virginia.” Cobb smiled pleasantly. “What’s your soup?”

  “Mushroom.”

  “Great. Bring us three bowls of soup, three coffees, and some sandwiches.”

  “What kind of sandwiches?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “We’ve got ham and that’s it.”

  “You just spoiled the surprise, Virginia.” Cobb was working at looking pleasant. “Bring us a plate of ham sandwiches as well.”

  “How many?”

  “Surprise me.”

  She started to answer, changed her mind, and turned away.

  “Thank you, Virginia,” Cobb said.

  She didn’t acknowledge his thanks.

  “Well, Jay.” Cobb smiled. “It’s nice to finally meet up with you. We’ve been looking for you a long time.”

  “Yeah. And why is that?”

  Cobb set his big hands on the table, looked over them at Jay.

  “I’m a private detective. Your dad hired me to try to protect you after he killed those two men at the crack house.”

  Jay’s shook his head hard from side to side. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “Maybe. But I think he was desperate to do something to get you out of the crack scene and he’d run out of ideas. Besides, he didn’t really plan to kill anybody. He went in there to try to scare them off — so they wouldn’t sell to you anymore. Things got out of control; he lost it and started shooting.”

  “What the hell was he thinking?”

  “I don’t know what he was thinking, but I just told you what he was thinking about — that was you.”

  “And this was supposed to help me how?”

  “I’ve encountered desperate parents before, Jay. They’ll do anything to try to get back the kid they used to have. I suspect that was the place your old man was at.”

  Bubble Gum Girl returned with the soup and the sandwiches. She set the tray down and said, “I’ll go get your coffees.”

  I busied myself distributing the food. I was glad now I hadn’t got very far with the chili earlier.

  Jay looked at the food as he spoke. “So I don’t get where you come in. The old man had already killed those guys. What do I need protecting from?”