by Ted Wood
I stood up, and Anderson ran past me to stare down at Wallace.
"Jesus Christ, look what you did!" he said, pointing at the fishing spoon.
Werner laughed. "Fishin' as well as huntin'. Quite a morning, Reid."
"The boat hit him in the head," I said. If this case hadn't involved Fred, I would have gone along with Werner's joke, but I wasn't finding anything funny.
Kennedy knelt and fingered the gash on the back of Wallace's head. "Pretty solid thump he took," he said. He thumbed back Wallace's eyelids and stared at his pupils. "No difference in the size of the pupils, though. Maybe he's going to come around soon."
"Did you call the ambulance?"
"On its way. I guess we should get the son of a bitch inside," Werner said. "Keep him warm."
"Right. But in the meantime, he's left a car somewhere, maybe at the Marina. This is one of their boats. Someone should check there. You might find Dunphy waiting for this guy. And close off both ends of the Harbour. We'll need four cars. One each on the highway, one each on the side roads north of the lake. He might try to duck out the back way."
"I'll get on it," Kennedy said. He turned to Fred. "One more time doing our jobs for us, huh? This guy don't marry you, he's crazier'n I thought."
"I'm going to," I said. "You're invited. Now let's get this guy inside."
Werner and Kennedy scooped up Wallace while I picked up the shotgun and opened the house door. They carried him in and laid him on the couch. Fred went upstairs and brought down a couple of blankets and a clean towel to go under his head. Then the other three took off. Anderson lingered on the step to get the last word in. "There'll have to be a full inquiry."
"See you there. Now go check if you can find Dunphy. You know what he looks like?"
He didn't bother answering that one, just turned away, rigid and righteous.
Fred stood looking down at Wallace. "Will he make it?"
"I think so. It takes more than a bump on the head to finish off a Georgia cracker as tough as this guy. Look at his right hand. Fingers missing, but he was still holding the motor with it, firing with his left."
She bent and lifted his right hand out of the blankets.
"Lord, that's right," she said. "You know, I didn't even notice the bandage when he grabbed me. But he was holding a gun as well. It must have been hard for him."
"Tough," I repeated. "Don't worry about him." She stood, lowered Wallace's injured hand, and faced me. "Honestly, Reid, I don't know how much of this I can handle."
I put my arms around her, and after a moment she softened, and we kissed very gently.
"But you will marry me?" I asked.
"Yes," she said, and we kissed again.
Behind us Sam whined. Fred let go of me and turned to him. "Don't worry. You're part of the deal." She laughed shakily and bent down to fuss him.
I knelt down and did the same thing, rubbing the scorched hairs on the back of his neck. "You're a part of a family, old son." I told him. "No more me and you against the world."
Fred was looking down at me, and she suddenly gave a little gasp. "You're burned," she said. "I thought you looked different, but so much was going on I didn't think about it. You're burned. Your eyebrows have gone."
"They'll grow back. I'll be my usual gruesome self in a couple of weeks, in plenty of time for the wedding," I promised. And then Wallace groaned.
We turned and saw his eyes fluttering open. He lay for a moment, and then his hands came up to the hooks in his cheek, and he whimpered.
I crouched beside him. "The ambulance is on its way. You'll be fine. They'll get those hooks out in no time."
He swore and closed his eyes.
Fred said, "Shall I make something, coffee, tea?"
"Tea, please." I grinned at her, trying to distract her from Wallace's pain. "My old man was a Limey. He made me a morning tea drinker."
Wallace groaned again, and I turned back and found he was touching the back of his skull. He took his hand away and looked at the blood on his fingers and swore again.
"The boat came around in a circle and clobbered you," I told him.
"I was in the water?" His mouth was distorted by the pull of the hooks in his cheek, and his voice was strained.
"You could've drowned."
He tried to grin but grimaced with pain and said, "You're gonna be sorry you pulled me in, cowboy."
"In the meantime, I'll still go to bat for you if you tell me where Dunphy is?"
He looked at me without speaking and then closed his eyes. I waited, and when he didn't speak, I gave him a prod with my finger. "Last chance for any kind of break, Wallace. If we don't get Dunphy, you're going away."
He spoke now, whispering sardonically out of his twisted mouth. "When I get out, you're dead."
I didn't bother getting into his verbal shoving match. He was beaten, all the ways there are. If brave talk was a consolation, he was welcome to it. There aren't many other comforts in jail.
Fred came to the door and made a little cup-and-saucer drinking gesture, not speaking. I nodded, and she turned back to the kitchen.
"You want a hot drink?" I asked Wallace.
"Got any bourbon?"
"You're in shock," I said, and he grunted out a laugh.
"An' I'm gonna be inside. No bourbon there. 'T kinda guy are you?"
"Canadian," I said. "I've got some good rye."
"Just so's it's eighty proof."
Liquor is the wrong thing to give an injured man, but I knew he was right. There would be no booze for him for the next few years, and besides, it might induce him to talk to me. I went out to the kitchen, leaving Sam on watch, and poured an ounce and a half of Black Velvet.
Fred frowned. "I didn't know you were a morning drinker."
"This is for Wallace. His last chance for a drink. He's going inside."
"You know that's no good for him?" We both knew it wasn't, but she's too strong to bother arguing with me. She just laid out the facts.
"It may not be, but it may be good for the investigation." She shook her head doubtfully. "He's a bad person, but you shouldn't do anything to harm him any more."
"I know," I said, and took the drink back to him.
He looked at the glass and licked his lips, then grimaced with pain from his cheek.
"Pretty cheap ain'cha? What's this, an ounce?"
"That's fine for a start. They're going to want to do tests when they get you into hospital. Booze won't help."
He accepted the glass with both hands, holding it in his left and steadying it with his right as he tilted it gently into his mouth and lay with the whisky unswallowed for half a minute. Then he sank it and sighed. "'F I tell you where Dunphy is, do I get seconds?"
"How will I know you're telling the truth?"
"You won't." His voice was harsh again. "Listen, don't jerk me around. This is my last drink for a while, anyways. Dunphy's in Toronto."
"Tell me where and let me make a call and I'll give you a double," I promised.
Now he opened his eyes and held the glass out to me. "Drink first."
I didn't take the glass, and he lowered it to his chest. "Okay, it's your liquor. He's in the big hotel near the museum. You know it?"
"What name is he registered under?"
He groaned. "I don' know. Jus' make the call and bring me that drink."
I picked up the telephone from the little occasional table next to my chair and dialed the homicide office in Toronto. My lucky day. Elmer Svensen was in.
"Hi, Elmer. Reid. Dunphy is registered at the Park Plaza under a phony name."
"Hold on." I heard him turn aside and issue a couple of crisp orders; then he came back on. "Good work. I've got some guys heading over there. Who tipped you off?"
"Mr. Wallace," I said, and then I had to give him a quick summary of the morning's efforts, edited down so that Wallace wouldn't get bitter.
"He singin'?" Elmer asked disbelievingly. "In return for certain considerations, Mr. Wallace
is assisting me in my inquiries," I said. It sounded like something out of Agatha Christie, but I needed Wallace working for me.
"I'll follow this up. Call me if there's anything new. The cadet here will pass messages."
"Go get him," I said, and hung up.
Wallace turned his head toward me, the red-and-white spoon dangling like some pagan ornament from his cheek. "Drink," he said.
"Right there."
I poured him a solid double and took it back. This time he tried to sit up but fell back, swearing feebly. "Head feels like it's fallin' off," he said. He sipped the drink and swallowed, lingering over it pleasurably.
I waited for about a minute and then asked him, "What's the tie-in between your outfit and young Michaels?"
He opened his eyes and blinked at me slowly. "I can't say for sure. Him an' Dunphy was thick when I joined up with 'em. Way I figure it, the kid's old man had made some kinda deal with Dunphy. Wanted the kid toughened up, off'cer material, Dunphy called it."
He sipped and then spoke again. "In the boonies, training, the kid was a candy ass. Couldn't run, couldn't hump, couldn't shoot. I could see he's the kind would fall apart when the killing starts."
"That's why you were on his case? I heard some of it when I was hiding up there."
"Boot camp I was s'pposed t' be running. 'Stead of that it was a goddamn kindiegarten. Yeah, I got on his case. Tried to give him some balls."
"What happened when I turned up? Did he tell you?"
Wallace tightened his left hand around his glass. "Yeah." He smiled, then winced with pain. "I had him doin' push-ups, an' he couldn't finish. So then he broke down, bawled like a baby. I told him to smarten up, his mommie wasn't gonna get him out of this. And he said she was. Just angry, like a little kid. So I worked on him a little, an' Dunphy wanted to turn the guys out to find you, only I didn't go for it. I figured you'd come in from the end of the lake. Went down there on my own and found your pack and waited."
He scowled and finished his drink. "Would've had you dead to rights only for that goddamn Indian."
"You brought the kid up here with you to find George?"
"Yeah." He extended his left hand wearily and let the glass drop to the floor. "The kid was feelin' bad about my hand an' all. So I said we should get back up here an' put things straight."
"And he came?" I had a dozen questions. How had they got in touch with Jason? Why had he gone along with them? Why had his father's girlfriend tried to get him out if the father wanted him in Freedom for Hire? And why did the father want him in the outfit, anyway? And had Wallace committed the two murders?
I came at the questions obliquely. "One of your Mexicans told me Dunphy had come north. That's why I headed up here. Why would he have said that?"
"Fuckin' spicks," Wallace said. "Should'n'a said nothin'."
And that was it. He closed his eyes, and when I tried to talk to him, he growled. "I'm tellin' you nothing. Pretty soon you'll have to tell me what I'm charged with an' read me my rights an' get me a lawyer. Until then, you've had all you're gettin'."
"I'll get around to all of that when you're in the hospital," I promised. "Right now, rest, but don't go to sleep. You have to stay awake."
He opened his eyes again and sneered. "I've been hit before," he said. "In the Tet offensive. Got blown up, shot, hit with mine fragments. I know about wounds."
It was an opening, and I took it. "I was there, too. Were you infantry?"
It didn't work. He looked at me for about thirty seconds and then rolled his head away from me and said nothing.
Fred brought in the tea, and I told Sam, "Keep," and went back to the kitchen with her.
"Did he tell you anything? I mean, like why he was trying to take me away in that boat?"
"Revenge," I said, and the ugliness of the thought burned me. "He wanted to get at me, not you. If it hadn't been for me, none of this would have happened."
She sat and drank her tea, not looking at me, and I raised one hand helplessly. "I'm so sorry about this, Fred. I've been alone for a long time, and I didn't expect what I do would affect anybody else. I've got to get out of this line of work."
She set her cup down and said, "Not for my sake, Reid. But how much longer can you keep on being lucky? When will somebody like him hurt you? Maybe kill you."
"It isn't like this very often," I said.
She pursed her lips and stared me down. "I've heard you say that before," she reminded me. I sat helplessly, returning her look as gently as I could.
"I'm sorry, babe, it's the only way I know to earn a living."
Then she got up and came over and put her arms around me. "I love you, Reid. I don't want some policeman knocking on my door telling me that somebody like that man in there has hurt you."
I held her tight, patting her back with my fingers. It was good. I hadn't realized how much I wanted someone like her close to me.
I kissed her hair, and slowly she turned her face, and we kissed properly. And then I heard the rushing of wheels on the gravel outside. We let go of one another and stood up and looked out the window. An ambulance was pulling in with an OPP cruiser behind it.
Fred opened the door, and I beckoned the guys inside. The ambulance men were carrying the stretcher, and when Wallace saw it, he snarled. "I can walk, dammit. You call this a wound?"
The ambulance driver was thirtyish and macho, chewing gum as he spoke. "It's your ass," he said.
Wallace swung his feet down off the couch and tried to stand. He buckled, and the second ambulance man tried to help him, but Wallace shoved him away. "I'll do it."
The supervisor looked at the hooks in his cheek. "Got yourself good," he said cheerfully. "Third time this week I've had guys with hooks in." Wallace ignored him and stood up.
The assistant hovered behind him as he walked out to the ambulance, and I briefed the OPP man. "His name's Wallace. He's charged with abduction, attempted murder. He hasn't been cautioned, and he's tough. Go with him and stay on your toes. He's bad news."
The constable was young. Most of his experience so far had been picking up pieces of people after highway accidents. He whistled in surprise. "Who'd he try to murder?"
"Me. Fired a couple of shots at me from a handgun. He was in the act of abducting this lady at gunpoint, and I turned up."
The guy swung toward Fred like a flower turning to the sun. "When did this happen, miss?"
"Minutes ago," she said. "Shouldn't you be out there with him? He's dangerous."
He wanted to impress her, so he started to unbutton his shirt pocket to take out his book. I reached out and held his wrist. "Your detectives have already seen him. Just caution the guy and watch him. We're making a statement later to Sergeant Kennedy or Sergeant Werner."
He recovered and said, "Yeah, sure," then to Fred, "You sure you're all right?"
"Perfectly. Thank you." She paid him off with a gorgeous smile, and he backed out of the doorway, beaming.
Fred stood next to me, and I put my arm around her as we watched the young cop climb into the back of the ambulance and sit facing Wallace, who had given up now that his gesture had been made and was lying on the stretcher. The assistant slammed the back door, and the ambulance left. Fred turned to me. "You didn't finish your tea," she said.
"Sounds good." I gave her a squeeze and then let her walk ahead of me into the kitchen. She threw out my part cup and refilled it from the pot.
"What now?" she asked as she handed it to me. She said it briskly, but I was sad to see how her usual buoyancy had been punctured. I felt guilty and angry at Wallace.
"I'm going to phone Toronto and tell Elmer Svensen all the details; then I guess we should go over to the hospital at Parry Sound and make statements. Then it's over and we can go on with our holiday."
"Promise?" she asked solemnly, and I nodded.
"Promise. I don't care if the police station burns down, we're going to take off on a trip, anywhere you want to go."
"Anywhere except Saskatchew
an." She laughed. "I've never seen so much damn sky in my whole life. Not a tree, not a building, just flat land and sky forever."
I patted the couch beside me, and she came and sat, carrying her own teacup. "So what happened? One minute I'm talking to you and everything's fine, the next thing they've folded. What fell apart?"
"It was the producer's fault. He was so damn anxious to get the film under way that he took somebody's word that the extra money was going to come in."
"A verbal promise isn't worth the paper it's printed on," I reminded her, and she laughed.
"Yeah, I've heard that before. It's a Goldwynism, right?"
"Accurate, by the sound of it." I reached out my left hand and took hers, and she gave me a squeeze. "I'm sorry about what happened. I didn't think you were anywhere close."
"Forget it," she said. "It's good to be back despite the welcoming committee."
She was relaxing again, and I watched her with pride, as if I'd been responsible for it. She's a woman in a thousand, an actress who didn't bother dramatizing an event most people would dwell on forever. She would have made a hell of a good policewoman.
We sipped our tea companionably for a moment, and then the phone rang, shattering the mood. I set down my cup and took the phone. It was Elmer Svensen.
"Reid, glad I caught you. Is Wallace still there?"
"No, the ambulance just took him away, up to Parry Sound Hospital."
"Damn." Svensen clicked his tongue against his teeth. "I want to ask him some questions."
"He likely wouldn't answer. He clammed up tight after he told me about Dunphy. Any luck finding him?"
"No. A guy answering his general description was registered at the Plaza under another name, Brady. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, he checked out this morning. Paid in American dollars. I've got a couple of uniforms up there, but I don't expect to see him again."
"Wallace probably knew he'd gone. Listen, one big piece of news. The kid's father, Michaels, he's tied into Dunphy some way. You should talk to him."
"Tied in how?" Svensen asked, and he listened carefully while I gave him what Wallace had told me, about the training and turning the son into "officer material."