“You’re sure it’s the same car?”
“Yes, sir. Even parked in the same place.”
The Archangel frowned. A complication. He didn’t like complications.
“Thank you, Daniel.” He paused in thought. It was the fifth time the tail had been spotted. What was going on? What did he want? A lone cop, off-duty...And all he did was follow him home, then disappear into the night. They hadn’t been able to make sense of it yet.
“Same thing tonight, then, Daniel. You and Charles follow in separate vehicles. Just surveillance. Don’t alert him to your presence. If he tries to stop me, or come anywhere within any kind of threatening distance, intercept and apprehend. Don’t harm him, if possible, but use your good judgment. Be prepared to eliminate him if necessary. But you know what I want...I want to know what he’s up to. Does he represent the police, or some other group, or is he acting alone? Follow him home, if he leaves me as he has done before. Stake out his apartment. Bring me all and any information that you have on him by noon tomorrow. All right?”
“Yes, Mr. Scopellini.”
“Good. You know what to do, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Archangel lifted his finger from the console button he’d been holding down, still frowning. They had gotten the man’s name after they had spotted him the first time: Mitch Helwig. He was, so he understood from Otis and Purdon, the subject of a growing file folder, which the Archangel hoped would be complete by tomorrow noon.
But he didn’t like it. None of it. It stank of a kind of fanaticism that mere money might not be able to salve over. He thought of the number of cops, judges, court and city hall officials that were on his payroll, about the tentacles he had into all aspects of the city and its enforcement and judiciary systems, about how he had nothing to fear from anywhere. People had only things to gain by allowing him large and gracious elbowroom; there was nothing to gain by harassing him—unless the harasser was impervious to the common sense of personal gain.
And it was this last thought that worried him. He knew that such people—such righteous, inflexible, shrill, and idealistic bantams—-did indeed exist, but his path had not crossed with theirs. Not to date, anyway.
But he had known there was always the chance—indeed, the probability—that it had to happen eventually. But this lone wolf, this, this...Helwig...was not what he had pictured. Not at all.
A muscle in his neck knotted. His hand rose slowly and patiently and massaged it, knowing that all such knots could be exorcised by careful, patient manipulation.
He considered Mitch Helwig such a knot.
His fingers pressed firmly into his flesh. He rotated his head carefully, waiting for the cramp to subside.
It was still there when he went down to his car at six o’clock.
30
Mitch spotted his tail shortly after following Arcangelo Scopellini onto the Don Valley Parkway: the sleek, dark blue Buick, three cars back. He was sure of it. What he wasn’t sure of was whether it was the only one, or what it planned to do about him.
A half-grin of wry satisfaction appeared momentarily, then vanished. It was what he had been waiting for. Finally, he thought. They were beginning to show themselves. For the last three evenings, he had performed the ritualistic tracking of the Archangel to his lair, waiting to flush out someone who might be of use to him. He had considered it virtually without question that he would be spotted soon. The surprise was that it had taken them so long. Or, he mused, perhaps they were better than he thought they were, and they’d had him under surveillance since the beginning, and he had just noticed them. And although the idea gave him no comfort, he did not discredit it completely. He was dealing, after all, with consummate professionals, not back-alley punks.
In style, anyway, he told himself.
Elaine had wanted to talk to him tonight, he knew, when she got home from work—which would be any time now. And he wouldn’t be there, Again. He didn’t know what to do about that part of his life. I’ve got to deal with it, he thought. It’s slipping away, disintegrating. His mind pictured a sand castle after a wave had receded, melting into formlessness, ebbing out with the motion of the water.
It was his marriage. Then, in an instant of coldness, the follow-up occurred to him: it’s my life.
The wide Cadillac ahead of him changed lanes, forcing his mind back to the present, clearing his head to the hard shapes and pressures of the slippery world about him. He glanced out his side window at the car on his left, noting the driver briefly, struck with his ordinariness. The automobile world surrounding him at this instant, gliding in purple darkness and white quartz headlight beams at one hundred kilometers an hour, was an analog of the world in general, he thought. Most of us are only concerned with going home after putting in our time for someone else, loosening our collars, pouring the preprandial drink, watching the news, closing the door on the outside world, chatting with our mates, with our kids, eating a meal with people who aren’t merely utilizing us for the greater good of the Company.
Ordinary.
And in the midst of this mundaneness, there are predators like the Archangel and his cohorts behind me, he thought. Camouflaged; invisible. Gliding smoothly with the urban flow at twilight, unnoticeable to the untrained eye, blending into the picture unassumingly. They even blink properly when they change lanes, he thought. Trying to appear ordinary, like the others, on the surface.
And there is me, he knew. But I’m the only one like me. I, too, can blend. Because I’m alone.
He changed lanes, too. Glancing in his rear-view mirror, he saw the dark blue Buick slide laterally as well—signaling courteously and safely, of course.
Beside him, on the seat, were the two laser pistols—the Bausch & Lomb and the domestic one he had taken from the punk in the alley that night.
Blending. Flowing...
The Cadillac veered off at York Mills, heading east. Just a man going home, thought Mitch. After a hard day at the office fencing stolen lasers, stolen cars, distributing dope, making stolen handguns and sundry assault weapons available to the needy, eliminating anyone who was inconvenient enough to slow down business in general...
What else, he wondered, went on in that warehouse? During his limited stakeout, he hadn’t been able to determine all of the multi-faceted nature of the business. What he had determined was the scope of the traffic and trade: it was vast. He had seen tractor-trailers and semis from most provinces and dozens of states unload and load. The distribution and movement of goods—whatever they were—were not merely local, but international and large-scale. This man, the Archangel, was no trifler, Mitch knew. He was worth hunting, worth bringing down. He was big. Big.
All of which had made Mitch wonder on occasion how and why he had been permitted to operate so brazenly and profitably for so long, without any sort of pressure from authorities. Surely it was known that he was here, that he was operating.
Mitch thought he knew the answer, though; and he didn’t like the answer. Fear and money. That was the answer. How many people were afraid of him? How many people had he bought?
How many people had a vested interest in seeing the Archangel protected, at almost any cost?
And how many would do almost anything to eliminate Mitch Helwig, if they had even the most remote idea what was playing about in his head?
Mitch felt himself alone again in the flowing traffic.
The Cadillac turned onto the Archangel’s street. Mitch let it precede him at a safe distance, then followed around the corner. A block later, he glanced in the rear-view mirror to assure himself that the Buick was coming. It was. A block farther, he caught what he thought was a second set of headlights turn the corner, from the same direction. Coincidence? he wondered. Perhaps. But don’t think of it that way, he told himself. Think the worst. Be prepared.
The Archangel glided into his driveway. A minute later, as he was getting out of his car, Mitch Helwig drove by silently. The Archangel stood, carefully, behind
the door he was still holding open, watching, as first Daniel Otis and then Charles Purdon a minute later, slid by and faded into the night, their quarry in sight. Watching the three sets of red taillights disappear, the Archangel smiled briefly, then turned and went into the house.
Tonight, he thought, I feel like having a woman. He thought of Eveline, his favorite, of her smooth white thighs, her long legs, her perfect breasts, her exquisite mouth. Inside, he poured himself a rye and water, removed his gray jacket, unbuttoned his vest, and sighed down onto the leather sofa. He took a sip, placed it carefully on the coaster on the smoke-glass end table, and picked up the phone.
She’ll be here, he thought, by nine.
Mitch made a right at the next stop sign, then another right, and eventually made a left onto York Mills Road, heading west, back to the Don Valley Parkway. The two sets of headlights that were stalking him disappeared smartly from his rear-view—further evidence, thought Mitch, that these were pros. They didn’t make the obvious mistakes of amateurs by insisting on keeping him in sight at all times, at the risk of exposure. They knew how to play the odds; to them, it was evident that he was following a familiar pattern—the one he had already established: he would likely head home, as he had done previously. Also, he reflected, there was a chance that the surveillance was even more extensive than he imagined. Right now, for instance, he could be being monitored by someone standing in the darkness on one of the lawns about him, who was in turn keeping the two mobile tails informed of his movements. He knew that he could discount nothing.
Only briefly did the notion that the tails belonged to anyone other than the Archangel occur to him. He remembered his conversation with Karoulis a week ago. Karoulis had not yet summoned him to resume their dialogue. True, he had been off for three days. Nevertheless, the next-day conversation Karoulis had alluded to had not happened. Had Karoulis put a tail on him? Mitch played with the idea fleetingly, as always, unwilling to discount anything. It was possible. But this didn’t feel like Karoulis. Nor did the cars resemble the tails he was familiar with. The Buick was much too new, much too elegant and luxurious to be a part of any traditional police work.
And he had his hunches, his instincts. They all told him he was under the Archangel’s watchful eye.
About a mile south of York Mills on the parkway, he picked up the Buick again. Straining, he thought he spotted the second car farther back, judging from the rhythms of speed and lane-shifting that accompanied his own travel. Still, he couldn’t make out the type of vehicle; he needed to be much closer for that.
The adrenaline began to pump more freely through his body. He punched on the radio, letting some pulsing, white-hot megachords snap at the stale air in his car, not merely tolerating the sounds that he found so alien, but quietly losing himself in them. Through his front windshield, he became hypnotized by the steady river of red eyes that flowed ahead of him into the dark, serpentine distance. And the left side of his face lit eerily with the shifting shadows of the white beams that streamed like an electric current along the dry riverbed of highway conducting people homeward in the opposite direction.
All those ordinary people, he thought. And then there’s us.
What surprised Otis, in the dark-blue Buick ahead of Purdon, was when Helwig continued on the parkway past both the Eglinton exit and the O’Connor Street exit, either of which would have taken him home to his Thorncliffe apartment.
Where’s he headed? he wondered. The evening had suddenly twisted into quiet life for him, stirring itself from the somnolence that had gripped it so predictably.
He felt his own adrenaline begin to sluice through his strong frame, sensed his night vision sharpen, and smiled a tiny saurian smile. Pressing the button on his intercom, he said, simply, “He’s headed downtown.”
The metal voice responded: “You’re both in sight.”
Otis released the button and settled back for the cruise ahead.
Mitch steadily and inexorably led them down the city’s central artery, down into its neon and smoke-filled heart.
31
It was 6 a.m., according to the bedside digital, when the V-phone had beeped that morning.
“Jesus Christ.” He rolled over and clawed at the bedding, surfacing from a deep level-seven dream. The air outside the covers was cold. Goddamn superintendent, thought Mitch. Saving money for some faceless corporate group of fucking moral eunuchs. You can bet nobody turns down the fucking heat in their apartments without a memo typed out in illuminated script and suitably notarized. Jesus.
“What’s that?” slurred Elaine.
“Phone.”
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Jesus.”
“My sentiments exactly. And it better be somebody as important as Him on the phone.” Swinging his feet over the side of the bed, he sighed loudly, ran a hand through his disheveled hair, and reached across the bedside table to where the phone had gotten shoved sometime in the last week, and then forgotten. He thought he could see his breath in the room, but wasn’t sure. It was still too dark.
“Hello.” He left the video screen blanked out.
“What do you call people who use the rhythm method for birth control?”
In spite of himself, Mitch found himself beginning to smile. He snorted a half-laugh into the cool, plastic transmitter in his hand.
When that was deemed the only response by the listener on the other end, the answer popped out in Mario Ciracella’s inimitable manner: “Parents.”
Mitch hooted.
Mario laughed delightedly on the other end.
Elaine propped herself up on one elbow, a perplexed look on her face. “Who is it?”
“It is Him. Jesus Christ!”
She smiled tolerantly.
“Where’s Jesus Christ?” Mario felt one had been slipped by him.
“Where he’s always been. On the dashboards of all your relatives’ cars, asshole.”
Elaine plopped herself back onto her pillow, smiling more broadly now, even in the darkness. Mitch bantered with only one person that way. She awaited the announcement.
“Do you, uh, by any chance, have any news for us, garlic breath?”
“God, you’re witty, Helwig. So fast. So inventive.”
“Did you hear about the Italian on trial for armed robbery? The foreman came out and announced the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’ The little curly-headed paisano leaps to his feet and shouts, ‘Wonderful!’ kisses his fingers, then turns to his attorney and asks, ‘Does this mean I can keep the money?’”
Elaine continued to smile as she listened. Mario could be heard chuckling in the distance, his chortle muted tinnily.
“Boy or girl?” Mitch asked finally.
“The world,” announced Mario, “has been blessed by the arrival of Anthony Joseph Paul Ciracella, about an hour ago, weighing in at eight pounds, six ounces. They gave it to me in metric, but I forgot.”
“A boy!”
Elaine sat up and asked, “How’s Angela?”
“Everybody okay?” Mitch translated.
“Everybody’s beautiful! He’s more handsome than I am, if you can imagine such a thing.”
Mitch nodded and smiled at Elaine; then he said into the phone, “The mind boggles.”
“And I got more news for you, jackass!”
“You’re donating your testicles to the Smithsonian Institution, to provide a suitable match for John Dillinger’s weapon.”
“Not a bad idea. The world should know what strides among them like a colossus.”
“So what’s the news?”
“You’re gonna be the godfather. Elaine’s gonna be the godmother.”
Mitch suddenly had no retort for this. The seriousness of the concept filtered through to him, along with the honor. “I’m overwhelmed,” he said, truthfully.
“I know you’re overwhelmed. You damn well should be. And you do agree, right?”
A cou
ple of thoughts occurred to him, like flashes in the night, and they spilled out of him. “I’m not a Catholic, Mario. Isn’t that important to you?”
“No.”
“But won’t it be important to the priest, or to the family at large, or to somebody?”
“We won’t tell them.”
“Suppose they ask!”
“We’ll lie.”
Mitch was perplexed. “Is this really what you want?”
“Fuckin’ right, it is.”
“And Angela, too?”
“Her, too.”
Mitch felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to Elaine. “We’re going to be godparents to Anthony Joseph Paul.” He smiled.
Her eyes widened with delight. “Wonderful!”
“Elaine approves,” he said into the phone.
“Good girl. Good sense. No stupid questions like you.”
“Mario?”
“Mmm?”
“Are there any saints’ names you left out?”
“Yeah. Polycarp, asshole. Oh yeah, and Mitch. Saint fuckin’ Mitch. Good Vatican name, that. Jesus. I ride with a religious lightweight. No culture. No tradition.”
Mitch laughed. “You’re not smart enough to have a son. I told you all about it, remember?”
“I’m donatin’ my balls to the Smithsonian, after I’ve finished with ’em, remember? Check in on ’em.”
“When’ll that be?”
“In about a hundred fuckin’ years.” It was his turn to hoot. Mitch had to hold the phone away from his ear.
“Listen, Mario—congratulations, really. It’s great.”
Mario accepted the congratulations with modest silence this time.
“And we’ll be down to see Angela and Anthony this evening. Is that okay?”
“We’ll all be there. But listen, Mitch, when you address my son in future, I think it best you stick to his real name.”
“What’s that?”
“What else? Tony!”
“Of course! What else?”
Mario was silent again. Then: “Mitch?”
Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Page 14