Stray Bullets

by Rotenberg, Robert

  “You’ll be fresh meat for the press,” she said.

  “See that picture of me in the Sun? Whole fucking front page.”

  “Don’t sound so proud of yourself.” She handed him an envelope. “Take this. The letter inside says you’ve been informed of your right to remain silent and that you don’t wish to make any statements at this time.”

  “Me talk to the cops?” St. Clair chuckled. He had a deep, engaging laugh. “Not this time, not any fucking time. ‘We don’t rat, we don’t crack,’ that’s our motto, man.”

  “Just show it if you need it.”

  “I’m zipped,” he said.

  “Ha.” She knew St. Clair had a near-pathological need to talk. Befriend everyone. Showcase his larger-than-life personality.

  In a few blocks she crossed the bridge across the Don Valley and the city burst into view, the downtown office towers a forest of gleaming glass. The sunshine glistened off a gold-plated building and spangled across her windshield.

  “And watch out for the phone. No blabbing to one of your girlfriends the minute you’re in jail,” she said. “They’re going to have you wired for sound. And don’t yak to your cell mates.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said. “How’s your knee?”

  This was classic St. Clair. Just when you wanted to punch him in the face, he turned charming. Knew the right button to push.

  “I was back on the ice this week for the first time.” Parish was a hockey player and had won a full scholarship in the States for university. She loved to play. Last winter she’d had a major injury, and, Larkin being Larkin, he had caught her at a weak moment and she’d told him about it. Now, whenever the temperature was rising between them, he asked about it just to show how damn much he cared. “Knock it off, Mr. Master Manipulator. I’m not kidding about keeping off the phone.”

  “Hey, don’t tell me how to handle my women.”

  She was over the bridge now. She slammed on the brakes. Hard. He smashed up against the front seat.

  “What the fuck,” he yelled.

  “Get out of my car.” The street was deserted. She clambered out of the driver’s seat and yanked open the back door. “Now.”

  “No one tells me what to do.” He threw off the blanket and sat up, his eyes blazing.

  “Wrong. I’m telling you. Out. You want to be the Man? Face on the front page? Brag to your girls? Be my guest. I’m not losing a murder trial because my client wants to showboat.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing.” She checked the street. Still no one was around. The wind was whipping up through the valley. She pulled the top of her coat tight around her neck. “I’m going to Mexico. You can talk yourself into a first-degree murder conviction all by yourself. Call me in twenty-five years.”

  He bent his head between his legs and stomped his feet like a child. “Fuck. Fucking fuck, fuck.”

  “Larkin, out.”

  “I’ll keep my trap shut. I promise.”

  “Larkin.”

  “You can’t dump me now. I’m your original client.”

  This was his trump card, and he played it when he really needed her.

  On a Monday morning ten years before, St. Clair was in custody for the first time. Parish had just been called to the bar and it was her first day at work at Grill & Partners, a criminal law sweatshop filled to the rafters with young, underpaid, overworked juniors. Alvin Grill, the senior partner, walked into the bull pit—the huge room where six defense lawyers were hemmed in like cattle.

  “Who’s free to run down to Jarvis Street and interview a kid?”

  The other five lawyers were grinding away, with a fistful of trials set for that day.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Lucky you. His name’s Larkin St. Clair,” Grill said. “I’ve represented his father for decades. Kid’s going to be some lawyer’s legal aid ticket for life. Every shark out there will want to get their hooks into him.”

  That first meeting, St. Clair had sensed right away how green she was. “I’ve already had three lawyers try to sign me up,” he said, looking right at home in jail. “You look like a rookie. How many trials you done?”

  She met his eyes. “None. Believe it or not, this is my first day. You’re my first client ever.”

  He was taken aback by her honesty. She could tell he liked it.

  “Why should I choose you?” he asked.

  “Because I’ll work harder than anyone you’ll ever meet,” she said. “And I’ll always tell you the truth.”

  He hired her, she beat the charges on a technicality, and they’d never looked back through a decade of trials. In every case, they’d either made the best possible plea bargain or won outright. Never lost an actual trial.

  Parish looked at him, hunched over in her car. He’d grabbed the blanket and pulled it up to his neck. Her hands were freezing. She couldn’t believe it was this cold already, and only the middle of November. Last winter she’d splurged and bought a real nice pair of leather gloves that, inevitably, she promptly lost.

  A taxi passed, and more traffic was on the way. She closed the back car door halfway. “Larkin, you’ve never kept your mouth shut.”

  “I will, you’ll see. So will Dewey.”

  “Dewey?” St. Clair had met Dewey Booth years before when they were in juvie, the name all the kids had for the young offenders’ detention center. St. Clair was sixteen and already about six foot four. Booth was a fifteen-year-old pipsqueak. Hardly five feet. He’d been in jail for a week when St. Clair arrived and hadn’t eaten a thing. Everyone was stealing his food. Larkin was enraged. He beat up three or four guys on the range, made sure Dewey got double portions, and their lifelong bond was formed.

  “What was Dewey doing there?” she demanded.

  “He’s like my little brother. One hundred percent rock-solid,” he said.

  “This just keeps getting worse.”

  “Anyhow, the cops’ll never find him.”

  “Spare me,” she said.

  “If they do, he’ll keep his mouth shut.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Parish couldn’t stand Booth. At least with St. Clair, despite all his bluster, all his lying and half-truths, he had a code. She had never known him to fire a gun or wield a knife. He hated bigots in jail and guys who hit women. Just before his eighteenth birthday, the two of them broke into some rich people’s house one weekend when they thought the family was skiing up north. They were surprised to find the nanny’s teenage daughter in the basement, studying for her exams. They tied her up and Booth wanted to rape her. The girl’s statement to the police made it clear that St. Clair, who loved to brag that he’d never lost a fight, kept his young partner in crime off her.

  Over the years, Parish read the statement many times to remind her of why, despite all the trouble he caused her, she remained so loyal to Larkin St. Clair. She knew it by heart:

  “I was studying chemistry and they came in and tied me up with a rope. The tall one with long hair went out to get some duct tape for my mouth. The short one was real scary. He just went crazy. Panting like a dog. He grabbed my breast and started ripping off my skirt, but the tall one ran back in and pulled him off me. Threw him against the wall. ‘You just go nuts, don’t you, every fucking time,’ he said. ‘Don’t lay a hand on her again.’ He was very angry at his short friend but he smiled at me real nice. Said he was sorry they had to tie me up and told me not to come to court. Said no one would hurt me. I knew he was telling the truth. They left the room and I heard them breaking things all through the house but I never saw them again.”

  Parish’s coat wasn’t heavy enough and her body wasn’t accustomed yet to the cold weather. The wind seemed to cut right through her.

  St. Clair rubbed the blanket under his chin. His eyes were bloodshot. His badly cut hair was ragged. “How old was the kid who took the bullet?” he asked.

  “Four years old,” she said.

  “My aunt’s son Justin is five.”


  St. Clair had been living with his aunt, Arlene Redmond—the only person in his family without a criminal record—since he’d got out of jail. Did some cooking and gardening for her, babysat her son.

  She got into the backseat and shut the car door. It felt good to get out of the cold. He put his head on her shoulder.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  She stared at him.

  “Nancy,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re not going to believe me.”

  “You lie to me all the time, especially at the beginning of a case.”

  His always-hyper body didn’t move. “For once in my life,” he said, “I’m not guilty.”

  In her head, she didn’t want to believe a word St. Clair said. But in her gut—that intangible thing that Parish knew made her a good lawyer—she could feel it was true.

  8

  Morning was finally coming, and Daniel Kennicott hadn’t stopped working for a moment. Yesterday afternoon, when Detective Greene arrived at the Tim Hortons, he had quickly taken charge of the scene. With so many witnesses to deal with, he’d told Kennicott to bring Tim Hortons employees back to police headquarters to interview them.

  Kennicott knew Greene assumed they’d all been working behind the counter when the shooting happened and probably didn’t have much valuable evidence to give, so he was giving him the assignment more for the experience than anything else.

  Goes to show, you never know what you’ll find. He’d spent the night following up on what he’d learned and was glad was when Greene finally called.

  “Any luck with the employees?” he asked.

  “Yes. There’s more to the story than we realized,” Kennicott said.

  “Okay, come on over. You still in uniform?”

  “No, I changed.”

  “Good. The press are crawling all over this place, looking for coppers in police cars. Just walk down, and they probably won’t notice.”

  It was cold out, even though the sun was coming up, but Kennicott was glad to be outside. The fresh air felt good. He counted six television trucks parked across the street from the doughnut shop, nose to nose, like cattle at a trough. Technicians were outside, setting up their cameras and lights.

  Overnight a spontaneous shrine of cut flowers and cards of condolence, many of them clearly handmade by children, had burgeoned on the sidewalk and a tentlike police canopy had been erected to protect them from the elements.

  Greene must have been watching for him, because when Kennicott approached the big police mobile unit, he walked outside.

  “Let’s get out of here before the press sees us.” He blew warm air into his bare hands.

  “I brought you a hot tea, extra-large,” Kennicott said. He knew Greene didn’t drink coffee.

  “Thanks,” Greene said, cradling the paper cup. “You hungry?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “If we’re not going to sleep we need to eat,” Greene said. “We’ll walk and talk. How did you do with the employees?”

  “Four staff were working when this happened. Three were serving customers and didn’t see anything. Fourth was a baker in back named Jose Sanchez. He didn’t stick around.”

  Greene stopped in his tracks. “He left?”

  “Gone.” Kennicott had been a cop long enough to know that it was highly unusual for people to not stay to help the police when something horrible like this happened. Especially employees.

  “Any idea where he went?”

  Kennicott shook his head. “No. I interviewed the owners of the Tim Hortons, a Chinese couple named Yuen. All their employment files were in the office. I got Detective Ho to retrieve them for me. This Jose Sanchez only gave one phone number. A cell.”

  “And?”

  “Line’s out of service. One of those cheap throwaway phones like all the drug dealers use. He could have bought it anywhere. Impossible to trace.”

  “Address?” Green started walking again, east from the hospital down an alley by a parking lot.

  “He gave the Waverley Hotel.”

  “Great.” The Waverley was a flophouse that rented rooms out weekly, for cash. “Let me guess, the hotel has no record of a ‘Jose Sanchez.’”

  “None.”

  “Does Tim Hortons pay his salary into his bank account?”

  “I asked that. He just takes a check.”

  “Which he cashes at some money mart. Could be anywhere. Jose Sanchez. Sounds like John Doe to me.”

  “He’s probably illegal,” Kennicott said.

  “And wants nothing to do with the cops. Top priority, we have to find him. You get a description?”

  “Thin, dark hair, about five-seven. According to his file he’s twenty-five years old. Everyone mentioned he had a small birthmark beside his left eye, about the size of a thumbnail.”

  “Any of them know him personally?”

  “No. They said he was friendly with a server who worked there named Suzanne Howett. Used to go out back and smoke with her all the time.”

  They headed south on McCaul Street. The air filled with the smell of baking bread. Kennicott felt his stomach churn. An involuntary reflex.

  “Where is she?” Greene asked.

  “Her shift had ended. She has a boyfriend named Jet. Sounds as if he’s the real possessive type. Drives her to work and picks her up every shift, here and at her other job she’s got at a gas station. Owns an old Cadillac. One of the staff saw her run across the parking lot to him before the shooting. The car took off as soon as the shots ended.”

  “You get in touch with her?” Greene asked.

  “I checked her out on the police computer first. Twenty-two years old, doesn’t have a record, but a few years ago she was charged as an accomplice in a late-night robbery. Allegation was she was the getaway driver. The two young guys who went with her pled guilty, and the charge against her was dropped.”

  They walked by a long brick building, where the words “Silverstein’s Bakery” were written in flowing red script over the first-floor windows. Greene turned at a beat-up orange door with a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and yanked it open.

  “Where we going?” Kennicott asked.

  “I thought you were hungry,” Greene said.

  Inside, they descended a few concrete steps and Greene directed Kennicott to the baking floor, where loaves of bread were cooling on a huge, circular metal rack. The smell of yeast filled his nostrils. Out of the wind, the air was luxuriously warm.

  A tall, balding man looked up from his clipboard and smiled when he saw Greene. “Ari, what can I get you?”

  “Brian, this is Officer Daniel Kennicott,” Greene said.

  “You have to work with this guy?” Brian asked, shaking Kennicott’s hand.

  Kennicott smiled. “Sometimes.”

  “We’re on the Tim Hortons shooting around the corner,” Greene said.

  “Un-fucking-believable,” Brian said. He hauled up a handful of bagels from a deep plastic bin and tossed them into a paper bag. “City’s going to rat shit. Take these for the crew, they’re hot.”

  Greene gave him a five-dollar bill.

  Brian shook his head, took the bill, and rang up five dollars on the old brown cash register by the wall. Underneath a handwritten sign that said CASH ONLY. He looked at Kennicott. “Only known this guy since we were on the basketball team together in high school. Do you think he’ll let me give him a stupid bagel?”

  Outside in the wind, they both ate. The bagels let off steam in the cold air.

  “Tell me more about this robbery,” Greene said. “You have the names of the two co-accused.”

  Kennicott swallowed down a chunk of fresh dough. “Happened at a pharmacy late at night. I saw the press release you put out a few hours ago. Larkin St. Clair was one of them. The other was named Dewey Booth.”

  Greene let out a loud whistle. “Booth was almost certainly the other guy there last night, but I’m not releasing his name yet. What did the report have
on the getaway car?”

  “An old Cadillac. There was a license number. It’s registered to a James Eric Trapper.”

  “Jet,” Greene said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “His first initials, they spell Jet.”

  “I didn’t see that.” Damn, Kennicott thought. “He’s got a minor record. Mostly fencing stolen goods. One possession-of-a-gun charge. Lives in an apartment in the Beaches with a woman named Rosie Lazar. She had a baby five months ago and he’s on the birth certificate as the father.”

  “Jet’s a busy fellow,” Greene said. “This means Larkin and Dewey knew Suzanne.”

  “Especially Dewey. I contacted Kingston Pen, where he spent the last three years, and dragged the records guy out of bed. She visited Mr. Dewey Booth for the first year and a half he was there, then stopped.”

  Kingston Penitentiary was the oldest and nastiest jail in the country. Kennicott had gone there often to visit clients when he was a lawyer.

  “That last visit Dewey beat her up real bad,” Kennicott said. “She snuck in some cigarettes for him and apparently he burned the baby finger on her left hand with it.”

  “He sounds like a lovely young man,” Greene said, shaking his head. “So she takes up with Jet. Same old story. Guy goes to prison and some other guy moves in on his girlfriend. First guy is pissed, big-time.”

  “It’s even worse. Jet isn’t just some guy. The three of them grew up together on Pelee Island, down in Lake Erie.”

  They turned onto Elm Street. The TV hosts were getting ready for their live reports at the top of the hour. The men were having their makeup applied, the women were putting on lipstick.

  “That would make Dewey even angrier,” Greene said. “You should be able to get Suzanne’s phone and cell number from the Tim Hortons people. Set up a tap on it.”

  “I’ve done it,” Kennicott said.