Reluctant Detective

by Finley Martin

  The clerk’s swaying body slowed like a pendulum in a wound-down clock. For a heartbeat or two the clerk’s eyes looked like those of a little girl, lost but not quite frightened. Then they brightened as if she suddenly remembered where she was, and she smiled knowingly. “Yeaah,” she said. “I do. I’ve been there, too.”

  “Cool store!” said Anne looking around. “Do ya have any buds to go with the bongs?”

  “No,” said the clerk with disappointment. “Not a leaf.”

  “So what’s that smell?”

  “Black Afgano,” she giggled, “by Nasomatto.”

  Anne looked quizzically at her.

  “Perfume. My favourite perfume. Try some?” she asked and pulled out a square bottle from her purse.

  Anne shook her head. The clerk continued.

  “I know what you mean, though. People keep asking the same question, and I keep telling Sean that we should get some in stock – Black Afgano, not the weed. But he just says ‘no.’”

  “Sean is funny like that,” said Anne. “Is he around?”

  “He was here. You just missed him.”

  “Ohhh man,” Anne moaned. “This is crap. He was supposed to meet me here. Any idea where he went?”

  “He took off with some kid.”

  “Carson? Skinny kid? Backpack?”

  “Yeaah, that’s him.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Maybe he went home. Maybe he went to that bike club for a drink or something.”

  “That sucks. Where’s home?”

  “I can’t say. Sean says it’s private stuff. He’ll get mad.”

  “Of course he would. And if I were you I wouldn’t tell either, but he’s going to be pissed if we don’t meet up. I’ve got some money for him. He must have forgot. Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been there before. It’s just that I was kinda stoned, and I can’t remember exactly which place it was.”

  “I guess,” said the clerk with a measure of reluctance, “… if you’ve been there before, he’d be okay with it.” She took a pencil and scrawled his address on a pad of paper and gave it to Anne.

  Anne had her hand on the doorknob and the door half-open when she stopped, turned around, and called out to the clerk who had returned to her ritual swaying: “Ya know I would have gone over to his house last night, but I called and there was no answer. If I got hold of him then, I wouldn’t be in this spot now.”

  “Wouldn’t ’a’ done no good,” said the clerk. “Sean and Carson were cruisin’ round town half the night, so he says.”

  “Huh!”

  Anne felt emboldened and a bit heady when she stepped onto the sidewalk outside the shop. Finally, she was making progress. She had put Sean McGee and Carson White together on the night her car was burgled. Carson had a pile of money he couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. So that made them the pair who had taken the valise.

  What didn’t make sense was that Carson had any money at all. Sean was older. More experienced. He would have been the brains behind the theft. But he wasn’t stupid. He would never have let Carson walk away with that amount of money… and American bills at that. It would have drawn too much attention to Carson and, if he were busted, then Sean knew that he would be next.

  No matter how that scene had played out, Anne knew a couple of things for certain. Either Sean or Carson had her money; there would be a showdown tonight; and she had to prepare herself for whatever that meant.

  A deep, dark pool of blue was filling the sky, and shadows were long and black on the old brick façades of Victoria Row. Anne’s cell phone rang as she mounted the stairs to her office.

  “Ben? Hi… You ran the plate? Wait ’til I write that down.” Anne unlocked her office door, turned on the light, and grabbed a pencil from the desk tray. “Go ahead… Devon MacLaren, KT7-169. Got it. Address? 27 Wigmore Street, Summerside, PEI. Anything else? Previous violations? Arrests? Convictions? Nothing? Okay. Thanks, Ben. Jacqui? She’s on vacation.” Anne’s suspicious eyes quickly surveyed the room. “I’ll tell you and Sarah all about it maybe tomorrow… Are you’re going to The Blue Peter for happy hour. Yeah. See you then.”

  Devon MacLaren was owner of the truck that tried to pick up the suitcase at the industrial park last night. It’s likely he was the driver, too, thought Anne, but she couldn’t follow up on that tonight. Tonight she had some thinking to do and some precautions to take. She might get the money back easily from Carson, but if she had to confront Sean, that was unlikely. He was dangerous. Ben had warned her about him. Nor could she be sure whether they were still together or headed in separate directions. And which of the two had the money? Obviously Carson had only a portion of it in his backpack, and the vacuous blonde clerk hadn’t mentioned Sean with a suitcase. Even her capricious attention would have stumbled over a curiosity like that.

  Anne wasn’t sure what approach she would use. There were too many variables. But the basics were always clear to her: to catch a rat you need the right bait and a strong trap. To that end, she freshened up in the washroom and took a change of clothes from her closet in the waiting room – a cherry blouse, snug navy jeans, and a black leather dress jacket. She brushed out her hair. Golden hoops gleamed under each ear.

  Anne rarely wore makeup, but tonight she made an exception and transformed herself from a pleasantly attractive but plain woman to one much more interesting. She examined herself in the mirror, practised a playful wink and a pout, and pursed her lips. When she was satisfied with the look, she grabbed an atomizer and encircled herself with a man-sized cloud of perfume. As a final touch, Anne undid the first three buttons on her blouse. Again, she looked at herself in the mirror. She refastened two of the buttons. She was satisfied. This was as alluring as she dared to become.

  Anne opened the safe door. She took the .32 cal. revolver from the gun rack and matched it with a holster which fitted discreetly in the small of her back and well-hidden above the hem of the leather jacket. She was no stranger to guns. She had spent many hours at the firing range with her uncle. Then her hand dipped into one of the drawers and drew out a lipstick-size container of pepper spray and a handful of plastic ties. She slipped them into her right-hand coat pocket.

  Anne felt a quiver of anxiety as she strode out the door and down the staircase to the main floor. Her footsteps echoed noisily and the clatter of them made her feel suddenly clumsy and fallible.

  She made a phone call from the street as she walked to her car. It rang at the home of Dit Malone.

  Dit’s house was an impressive two-storey brick building on the Stratford side of Charlottetown Harbour. From his living room window, he could look across the water at an unencumbered view of the city’s skyline. A glass display case held an arrangement of hockey trophies Dit had been awarded as a tough, hard-hitting defenceman. He had become a local hockey star as a teenager, and he was being actively scouted for a Quebec major junior team when a summer diving accident left him paralyzed at eighteen. His dream of a sports career disappeared with his mobility, but in its absence he discovered a special talent in electronics.

  “Hi. Whatcha doin’?” Anne asked.

  “Not a thing,” he said, turning his wheelchair around. His elbow knocked over a jigsaw puzzle he had been working.

  “Then what took you so long to pick up?”

  “If you must know, I was working out.”

  “Weights?”

  “No. On the treadmill. I do a couple miles a day. Great aerobics. I feel pumped. Might even qualify for the Paralympic marathon.”

  “Very funny.”

  “What do you need?

  “What makes you think I need something? I call you whether I need something or not.”

  “You don’t need anything?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Out with it. Come on. I’ve got a house full of guests I’m trying to entertain
.”

  “Well… I need a side of beef.”

  20

  Young Carson White sat quietly in the chair. The chair was in a storeroom. It was cluttered with boxes brought up the stairs and hastily dropped in the first available space found near the door. A decade of dead flies and dust covered them. Fifteen or twenty bar stools, leftovers from a previous remodel, occupied a back corner. A damaged neon sign advertising Dempsey’s Deadhead Bar and Grill leaned against a wall. Flakes of broken glass lay scattered along the floor and marked the trail to a large scuffed mirror adorned with shamrocks. Nearby, four sections of a mural showed a narrow-gauge steam engine, crossing an Island bridge, and approaching the perimeter of a nineteenth-century Charlottetown.

  Music from the saloon downstairs was loud and resonant, but Carson could only make out a driving thump of bass, a muffled kick of drums, and the contemptuous, garbled eruptions of an unidentifiable singer. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself wading through the mire of a drunken nightmare, except that this was no nightmare. It was real. He could taste the blood of it in his mouth, and he could feel the helplessness of his state each time he tried to squirm loose from the ropes which bound his hands and seized his ankles to the chair in which he was held.

  It had been a mistake to trust Sean. He’d learned that too late. But when the boss at C. C. Rider turned him away, he’d felt that he had no choice. He couldn’t just take hundreds of thousands of US currency to the bank. They’d call the cops in a flash, but Sean… he could handle it. He had the contacts.

  So Carson had caught up with Sean at Smoke Signals, showed him samples of the money, and offered Sean a deal – fifteen per cent to convert it to Canadian dollars. After all, it was his money, Carson told himself. Sean had kept all the rest of the loot they had stolen. And hadn’t Sean thrown the suitcase at him just before he booted him out of the car last night? A deal’s a deal, isn’t it?

  Carson struggled to make some sense out of what had happened to him over the last few hours. Then he heard a noisy shuffle of boots. The sound of them rose up the rear stairwell of the biker club. They had a menacing quality. Suddenly, all of the scenarios and strategies which Carson had cobbled together in his mind became stale and pointless and crumbled like fragments of a dried-up manuscript. His chest heaved, but he felt like he was suffocating.

  Mike Underhay opened the door to the storeroom and stepped inside. Mike owned the bar, and he was unchallenged as leader of Satan’s Chosen. He was a thick, muscular man with a lumbering gait and thinning blond hair. He grinned his crooked grin at Carson. It hid the stump of a tooth, broken by Guy de Bois in a fight over cigarettes at Dorchester prison. Guy de Bois had won. Underhay spent six weeks in hospital for a ruptured spleen, four broken ribs, and a fractured skull. Three years later, de Bois was found badly crippled behind a New Brunswick night club. The letter M and U were carved into his forehead. Though he denied it, some gave Mike Underhay credit for it.

  Mike Underhay hadn’t been called by his real name in years, not since someone had nicknamed him “the Woodcutter.” He’d liked the irony in that, but eventually the nickname had been shortened to “Cutter” or “Cut.” Underhay liked that even better. It suggested a contempt for any sentiment of pity the same time as it inspired a fearful respect.

  The Woodcutter silently watched Carson. He savoured the fear reflected in Carson’s eyes, something his mere physical presence could produce. He enjoyed the kid’s utter helplessness – no defensive tugs at his ropes, no involuntary twitches. Carson was like an animal in plain sight playing dead, and that made Cut grin his twisted grin again. His tongue flashed across the stump of tooth a couple of times. Then he spoke:

  “If this hadn’t been where you said it was, you’d be dead right now.”

  Cut tossed the leather valise into the room. It hit the floor with a solid thunk. Carson’s knees and shoulders jerked reflexively at the sound. His lips and tongue laboured to find a trace of moisture in a dry mouth. His eyes struggled hopelessly to find tears. His voice strained to find a few useful words.

  “What… are you going to do… Mr. Cutter?”

  Cut burst out in a great howl of laughter that left Carson even more profoundly frightened. His mouth gaped, and his eyelids fluttered wildly.

  “Oh god, you’re funny,” said the Woodcutter, recovering somewhat and stamping his foot several times to shake off the source of the humour. “It all depends,” he added, choking back his last mouthful of laughter. “It all depends.”

  The Woodcutter’s grin was gone when he withdrew from the storeroom. He said no more. He turned out the light. He closed the door, and the shuffle of boots faded.

  All that remained was a soft whimpering in a blacked-out room.

  21

  Carson White or Sean McGee? It didn’t matter which, but she had to pin down one or the other, or both. Anne had Carson’s phone number. She tried that a few times. No answer. The third try brought Carson’s father to the phone. Carson hadn’t come home. He didn’t know where the boy had gone, but he expected him back soon. He thought Anne sounded like a nice person, and any friend of Carson’s was more than welcome to come over and wait for him. Besides, the father said, he would like to meet more of Carson’s young friends. The father slurred his words. Anne could almost smell his sour beer breath over the phone. She hung up without reply, and suddenly she felt rather sorry for Carson White.

  Having no luck with Carson, she drove to the street where Sean lived. Once, this area had been a comfortable residential neighbourhood. The homes were spacious. Windows were large. Most had verandas, garden plots, neat fences, and small trimmed lawns. But now the lawns were spotty, the fences needed painting, the roofs were acquiring a mossy veneer, and the houses had been subdivided into apartments. Sean’s apartment was on the second floor front.

  Anne cruised by every half-hour from seven until nine o’clock and had seen no sign of life, but at nine-thirty she spotted a light behind his closed curtains. She made one more phone call and waited impatiently.

  Anne’s side of beef arrived fifteen minutes later. It came in the burly, looming shape of Tim Perkins, one of Dit’s friends. Perkins had been the enforcer on his Newfoundland hockey team, and he’d exacted vengeance on the slashers and body-slammers who hadn’t been caught by a referee, but he was only a mediocre hockey player at best. He was slow on skates and slow to react, but his size, strength, and brutish appearance eventually earned him a try-out as offensive tackle on Acadia’s football team. Football was a better fit for Tim’s skills, but his miserable academic record tripped him up, and he flunked out. During the years that followed, Tim had been content to work the logging camps in western New Brunswick during the fall and winter months and to haul lobster traps during the spring on Prince Edward Island. Somewhere between the solitude of the forest and the undulations of the sea he found Jesus. Regularly during the summers he volunteered as a counsellor at a camp for disabled children. That’s where he met Dit, who was also a volunteer. The kids loved Tim. They called him the gentle giant, something which always made him smile. But the truth of it was that, in addition to his bone-crushing strength, he also had a genuine care for those who were weakest in society and felt almost a personal obligation to protect the endangered. Strangely, this odd brew of frightening and redeeming characteristics made Perkins one of the best bodyguards in the Maritimes.

  “Tim, I want you to stand right there under the street lamp. I’m going to be in that apartment… up there… the one that has the light on. I’ll be fifteen minutes, no longer.”

  “Got it. You want me to do anything special?”

  “Are you dressed?”

  Tim said nothing, but he pulled back the long coat he wore and revealed the butt of a pistol in his belt.

  “.357?” asked Anne.

  “It’s a .177… a pellet gun. It has a frame which looks like a .357. It’s for show. An arg
ument-breaker. I don’t want to shoot anybody.”

  “Nor do I,” said Anne. “So this is what I want you to do…” Anne gave Tim a brief run-down on Sean McGee and what she was planning for him. The plan was simple: “When the drapes are drawn and Sean looks down and sees you, give him your best Grim Reaper imitation, and flash your piece. That should bring him to his knees. I’ll handle the rest.”

  Tim nodded. Then Anne walked up the steps to the front door of Sean’s house. The front door opened into an entryway. A flight of stairs led to the second floor and, at the top of that landing, Anne stood for a nervous moment and took a couple of deep breaths. Then she knocked on Sean McGee’s door.

  The man who opened the door was lean and wiry. Clumps of brown hair drooped lazily over his forehead. His eyes were watery, and the rims were slightly reddened like those of a regular drinker. A cloud of perfume floated ahead of Anne and enveloped Sean. She watched his eyes soften and his facial features lose their tension. He almost smiled. Then he took a half-step back. His eyes grew cold again, and he barked gruffly:

  “Whaddya want?”

  “I’m sellin’ Girl Scout cookies,” said Anne, leaning up against the doorjamb and looking bored.

  Sean stared at her as if he didn’t know what to make of her.

  Finally, Anne said, “Are you going to be a gentleman… or do I have to invite myself in?”

  Sean stepped aside, and Anne strode boldly past and into the living room. His apartment was neat, shabby, and plain. She walked around a spacious, stained sofa and stopped in front of the picture window. The drapes were closed. She turned around just as Sean closed the door behind him.

  “What if I don’t like Girl Scout cookies?” he asked.

  “Well, I suppose we could find something you like better,” she replied. Anne smiled. Both her hands were jammed into the pockets of her leather jacket. Her right hand gripped the trigger of the pepper spray. She felt her heart beating against her blouse, and she felt a quiver of fear and a certain light-headedness as a jolt of adrenaline shot into her veins.