The Fourth Betrayal

by Bruce Burrows

  There was a long pause. Finally, “I guess that’s not exactly classified information. It was Steadman1, the numeral one, at gmail.com.”

  “Thanks. I’ll drop by around two.”

  Next, I implemented Phase II of my cunning little plan. I referred to it as Phase II rather than phase two because I was damn proud of it and, frankly, it was worthy of Roman numerals. I had realized that if I was going to continue to use the computers as bait, they would have to be of some interest to the bad guys. But now they would presumably know, through Alex, that there was nothing on them of interest except for one innocuous e-mail from Cliff Ernhardt to Dougie. I needed to change that.

  I booted up the hotel computer and changed the date setting to November 28, 2004. Then I opened the mail program and wrote the following e-mail.

  From: Steadman1@gmail.com

  To: Dtarkenen@OttawaTimes.com

  Cc:

  Subject: Matters of mutual interest

  Mr. Tarkenen:

  I’m new in town and Cliff Ernhardt told me you were “the man” when it comes to savvy newspaper guys. I’d like to have a drink with you, maybe pass on a few tidbits that may be of interest.

  Cheers

  Gerry Steadman

  From: Dtarkenen@OttawaTimes.com

  To: Steadman1@gmail.com

  Cc:

  Subject: Meeting

  Sure. Friday at Sollie’s. Say 6:00 PM. I’ll have a table on the patio.

  I then advanced the date one day.

  From: Steadman1@gmail.com

  To: Dtarkenen@OttawaTimes.com

  Cc:

  Subject: Meeting

  Dougie:

  It was great to meet you. As I said, I mainly wanted to give you a little background before you met Cliff. Cliff has a lot of irons in the fire. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a good guy, but he’s a hell of a lot more complicated than I am.

  Cheers

  Gerry

  I advanced the date two more days.

  From: Steadman1@gmail.com

  To: Dtarkenen@OttawaTimes.com

  Cc:

  Subject: Unmentionables

  Dougie:

  Cliff said something to me that rattled me a little bit. Drop by tonight and I’ll explain it to you.

  One more day ahead.

  To: Steadman1@gmail.com

  From: Dtarkenen@OttawaTimes.com

  Cc:

  Subject: Your worries

  Gerry:

  You’re right. To hear Ernhardt come right out and say that is a bit disconcerting.

  But don’t worry. I’ve got records of everything you’ve told me and everything my informant has told me about Cliff, plus lots of juicy stuff from Mr. Fix It. It’s all on my computer, but it’s stealth filed so it should be secure.

  I’ll drop by again tonight.

  Doug

  I figured what the hell. Steadman was dead so he couldn’t deny any of it. And when the bad guys got wind of the e-mail, they’d come after the computers like Bobby Hull coming down the wing: with intent!

  Next I phoned Alex and made a lunch date to talk about this exciting stuff I’d found on Dougie’s computer. I printed the whole correspondence, then met Alex at a deli just down the street from his paper. “It’s a good thing we took the computers to Custom Electronics. Otherwise we’d never have seen this stuff.”

  Alex looked a lot less boyish and a lot more serious as he studied the printout. “How are we going to get at these stealth files? If Dougie knew what he was doing, he could rig virtual trip wires so unauthorized entry would destroy the files.”

  Before I could answer, my phone rang. It was Jim Hernandez. “Oh, hi, Mr. Hernandez. Listen, I can’t really afford the full-meal deal on the surveillance. Let’s scale it back to just nighttime, say, six at night to six in the morning. Right. Okay, thanks for calling.”

  I turned back to Alex. “I put the computers back in the storage container. They’re safer there than in my hotel room. As for Dougie’s stealth files, let me think about it. I know how his mind works—worked.”

  Alex said, “This looks like the beginning of a falling-out between Steadman and Ernhardt. It might relate to the murder. You should probably go to the cops with it.”

  “I’m seeing Staff Sergeant Stala this afternoon. You know him?”

  “By reputation. Smart, hardworking, bit of a temper problem, which may have held him back a bit.”

  “Can he be intimidated?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Can he be bought?”

  “What currency?”

  “Good point.”

  I paid the bill and we went our separate ways. I had time for a walk so I explored Ottawa while I thought things through. The story Dougie had been working on was serious enough to scare some heavyweight people. I could deduce that from the few tapes I’d listened to, plus the fact that they’d gone to a lot of trouble to steal them back. At least, it would have been a lot of trouble if I hadn’t been so gullible. And somebody had been snooping around Dougie’s canoe, probably looking for anything else that might be incriminating.

  And one of the guys Dougie had secretly taped, Cliff Ernhardt, may have murdered some oil lobbyist named Gerry Steadman. I wondered if Dougie had met Steadman. And what the hell had Dougie done with all his money? Our individual shares from the big heist had been over eight hundred thousand dollars. It had taken a few years to launder it all into our bank accounts, but once invested in term deposits, the money had averaged about 6 percent interest over the years. I’d spent about three hundred thousand on my boat and my house and I still had almost eight hundred thousand. Dougie hadn’t spent a nickel except maybe fifty thousand on his degree. He should have had over a million in his account. Had he given it away because he was depressed?

  Perhaps the scariest thing was that Dougie had given at least the first part of his story to his editor, Lou Bernier, but Bernier denied any knowledge of it. Dougie had obviously trusted Bernier and been betrayed. Betrayal was rampant in this case.

  At two that afternoon I walked into the downtown police building and asked for Staff Sergeant Stala. When Stala came out to greet me, I was surprised at how small he was. Maybe five foot nine and lightly built. But he had hard eyes and a permanent frown. He attempted to smile and almost succeeded. “Mr. Swanson, come into my office.”

  I followed him down a hallway, through a coffee room and into a windowless space that he apparently thought of as an office. He gestured toward a chair, and we sat down on opposite sides of a desk. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Swanson. Staff Sergeant Karavchuk assured me that you are not a typical West-Coast yahoo.”

  I nodded. “Not typical at all.”

  This seemed to reassure him. “I understand that your friend disappeared last February and you think there might be a connection to Gerry Steadman’s murder.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Dougie was connected to Cliff Ernhardt. He’d made surreptitious tapes of Ernhardt and some of his cronies for a story he was doing on political corruption. After Dougie’s death I ended up with the tapes, and then they were stolen from me by someone I presume was acting for Ernhardt. But as of yet I haven’t found any connection between Dougie and Steadman, although it wouldn’t surprise me. Steadman was exactly the type of guy that Dougie was focusing on: big business reputation, big money, looking for political connections.”

  “And what was on the tapes?”

  “I listened to six of them, and they showed clear evidence of influence peddling and general sleaze, but probably not outright criminality.”

  “And who was speaking?”

  “Mostly Ernhardt, with Dougie asking the questions. And one other person I haven’t been able to identify.”

  “Describe the person who stole the tapes.”

  “Five eight, stocky, dark hair cut short. Vague resemblance to Sylvester Stallone, but not as pouty, you know?”

  “Doesn’t fit anyone we’ve seen so far. So what exactly is your purpose here in Ottawa?�
�

  “Long term: publish the story that Dougie was working on. Short term: recover the tapes.”

  “And how do you intend to do that?”

  Trust no one. “I was hoping you could help me with that.”

  Stala stared at me. When he finally spoke, it was as though he were reading from a script. “If, in the course of our investigation, we come into possession of the tapes you’ve described, and if we determine that they are not relevant to our investigation, they will be returned to you.”

  “Thanks. That would be great. Um, is Ernhardt a suspect in Steadman’s murder?”

  “He remains a person of interest and is assisting us with our inquiries.”

  “What would his motive be?”

  The frown on Stala’s face progressed to a scowl. “We’re considering a number of possibilities, none of which we’re at liberty to discuss.”

  Trying desperately to keep any hint of sarcasm out of my voice, I thanked him for “all his help,” promised to stay in touch and stood up to leave. He accompanied me back to the foyer, we shook hands, and I left.

  As I walked back to my hotel, I thought how, in many ways, it had not been a good meeting. It had, in point of fact, been the very antithesis of a good meeting, a veritable train wreck, a massive-mudslide-causing-ancillary-flooding-that-destroyed-five-villages sort of meeting. I would have to have more meetings to practice my meeting skills. But as I regarded the harried, briefcase-toting denizens who rushed by me with eyes averted, I couldn’t see anyone I’d really like to meet with.

  And so I wandered, lonely as a cloud, all the way back to my hotel, where I wondered, thoughtful as a stone, what the hell to do with the looming evening. I decided to have a meeting with a clubhouse sandwich and a six-pack of boutique beer. I was masterfully in control and the meeting went well.

  Then I returned to Dougie’s journal. Reading sequentially now, halfway down page one, there was this:

  I need to connect the dots to the formal party structures, libs and cons. They each have their own spin masters, bagmen, and fixers. But at the center of the power structure, the lines of force converge to a singularity, a black hole of evil that even Stephen Hawking would be unable to explain.

  There were a couple of pages of similar forebodings, and then this:

  The web of deceit encompasses the entire city. The web of deceit is the city. I live in fear of the spider, whose venom threatens democracy.

  Following this was a rambling four-page quasi book review of Man and Superman, which concluded, I agree with Shaw when he says, “We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters?”

  Dougie had always had a taste for existential angst, but here he was poisoning himself. Had he forgotten that in Sointula, at least, there were no governance problems? Everything could be left safely in the hands of the preschool mothers or the rec committee. Surely we could scale up. I couldn’t read any more so I switched on the news, only to see a series of earnest people deploring the sponsorship scandal in Quebec. Didn’t they realize that politics was the art of the affordable?

  After that I desired only darkness and dreams, a temporary gift of madness that was too brief a respite from belligerent reality. And the evening sky imagined our fate.

  Eleven

  THEN FOLLOWED TWO DAYS DURING which absolutely nothing happened. I mean, nothing to do with the case. News broadcasts were not suspended or anything, and I’m sure events of some nature did transpire in various locations. But nothing happened that related to me, Ollie Swanson, and my mission of enlightenment or whatever it was.

  My suffering reached a peak on Thursday evening, and I thought seriously about booking a flight home. But as they say in the fishing racket, “Stick and stay and make it pay.” My patience was finally rewarded at five thirty on Friday. I was lounging on my hotel-room bed, going through the TV channels for the hundredth time, when Jim Hernandez from Capital Investigation Services phoned.

  “Your computers are on the move.”

  My blood pressure surged. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the office, tracking the transmissions on a GPS. They’re heading west from the storage park, toward the Overbrook area. I’ll call again when they stop moving.”

  I turned off the TV and stood in front of the window, staring out at the city in twilight. After a while the lights seemed brighter and more distinct. I realized some time had passed and it was now fully dark. The phone rang again.

  “The blips have stopped moving. They appear to be inside a house, 721 Belmont Street.” There was a pause. “Are you going to call the police?”

  “I don’t think the police would be interested, Jim. I believe I know the perpetrator, and I should be able to deal with him with no problems. But if I don’t phone you within an hour, you’ll know I was wrong.”

  After I hung up I checked an online map and found 721 Belmont Street and noted that my route went right by Westbrook Mall. I retrieved my envelope of mad money from its hiding place in my good shoes, and divided the hundred-dollar bills into bunches of ten. Then I took the elevator down to the underground parking.

  Dougie’s dirt bike was where I’d left it. I mounted and took off for Westbrook Mall, where I found a sporting goods store and bought a forty-two-ounce Louisville Slugger. I then rode to within a half block of 721 Belmont and parked the bike between two cars.

  I slid the handle of the bat up the right sleeve of my jacket and cupped the head in the palm of my hand. A quick walk-by reconnoiter showed 721 to be a small bungalow, almost identical to its neighbors. The lights were on but the curtains were drawn.

  I walked silently up the flagstone path and then across the lawn to the curtained window. I could hear a TV but no other voices. A slight gap in the curtains gave me a narrow line of sight into the living room, but all I could see was the opposite wall. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  I returned to the front door and knocked loudly. I stood with my back to the peephole and was pleased to hear the sound of a bolt being slid back and the door opening. I immediately spun and slammed into the door with my left shoulder. Being what my mother refers to as a “big-boned Swede” made the fact that the door was still on the chain irrelevant. The door crashed inwards, knocking whoever had opened it to the floor.

  I took one more step inside and simultaneously kicked the door shut and slid the bat down my sleeve, so I could grip it firmly by the handle. Recognizing the person on the floor as my old friend Phil Davis, I gave him a tap of greeting on his kneecap. The way he screamed, you’d think I hit him hard. When his screams had subsided to groans, I initiated the conversation.

  “Phil, buddy, good to see you again. What were you planning on doing with my computers?”

  “Fuck you!”

  I took a half swing at his other knee, sort of like a golfer hitting a short iron. But it was a forty-two-ounce bat and the knee is a very tender spot. Phil gasped and turned very white and arched his back in some sort of spasm. While waiting for him to recover, I reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. It contained a driver’s license and a private investigator’s ID with the name Phil Trimmer.

  “Phil, I’m glad your name really is Phil. You look like a Phil. About those computers?”

  His eyes were squeezed shut and he spoke quickly, through a clenched jaw. “In the morning I’m handing them over to some techie guy.”

  “Name?”

  “Pat. Works in a shop in Bytown.”

  “Who hired you?”

  It was almost as if a pained look superimposed itself on his already pained face. “I can’t tell you. Please . . . oh fuck! ”

  This in response to the gentlest of pokes to his left knee.

  “All right, all right. Don’t. Shit. Ahhh. Shit, fuck.”

  “You’ll have to b
e a little more articulate, Phil. It’s a simple question. All I want is a name. But”—and I waved the bat gently—“it has to be the right name.”

  “Cliff Ernhardt.”

  “Well done, Phil. We’re making excellent progress here. Now, you might not know this, but the last time I saw you, you somehow screwed up the tape-copying deal. Inadvertent, I’m sure. But I do need the originals.”

  He was still speaking breathlessly, between groans. “Can’t. Gave them to Ernhardt.”

  I decided to eschew the stick and employ the carrot. “How much did he pay you for that little caper?”

  “Ten grand.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “No, Christ no.”

  “Well, maybe I can help make it up to you, Phil. Being the type of guy you are, and having access to that handy dandy little copier you had, I’ll bet you couldn’t resist making a set of copies for yourself.”

  He said nothing, only continuing to groan in pain. I took the envelope of money out of my pocket and three bunches of hundred-dollar bills out of the envelope. I removed the elastics and scattered the bills on his chest. “Where are the tapes, Phil?”

  He continued to groan, but I could almost see the mental gears rotating with ill-meshed clanks and clunks. However, he continued to say nothing. Well, perhaps one should not be too dependent on the carrot. I cocked my wrists as if preparing for another swing.

  “Backyard, backyard, Jesus. They’re in the backyard.”

  “Now Phil, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you, but I can’t leave you alone. I’m going to gently drag you across the floor to the back door. Be brave and think of England.” I gripped the back of his shirt and slid him as gently as I could across the floor to the back door. He groaned constantly but with no increase in intensity. I turned out the lights and opened the door.

  “Where exactly?”

  “Third tile, second row, as you’re looking at it.”

  There was enough light to see a sort of paved patio. The tiles were foot-square concrete blocks, about ten rows of ten. I lifted the third tile from the left, second row, and discovered a shallow hole, and in the hole, a plastic baggie, and in the baggie, some tapes.