“Prostitution. Gambling. Porn. Some kiddie porn. Even some snuff features.”
Mitch stiffened, his loathing rising.
“He uses girls...little girls, sometimes, for his snuff features. I know there’s at least one suite of rooms set aside for that stuff in the warehouse. And when he’s done with them, he uses their parts, their organs, for sale on a black market that’s established for such items.”
Mitch’s head was spinning. “What’re you talking about?” It seemed to be moving too fast for him now. He had heard it, but a part of him was refusing to let it register.
“There’s big money in it. Corneas, livers, limbs, hearts, kidneys, bone marrow, even testicles...”
It must be true, but Mitch couldn’t believe it. He hid his shock from the Archangel’s man.
“That way, he gets to salvage as much as he can from producing a snuff feature. Nothing is wasted.”
Mitch managed to ask, “Isn’t this all small potatoes, compared to the dope dealing?”
“He likes to diversify. Says it’s good business. Says it demonstrates that a man has vision, that he won’t be surprised by the future. He thinks the market for human organs will be one of the biggest in another decade. I’ve heard him talk about it. He wants to establish the market, so to speak, to be in on the ground floor. I think he sees himself kind of like the Al Capone of his era: the first, biggest, and most enterprising in new fields. Vision. It’s one of his favorite words.”
Nothing rang false for the Barking Dog.
“That’s why I’m telling you all this, don’t you understand?”
“No. Explain it to me.”
“Your daughter. Your wife. Can’t you see now what he could do to them? Can’t you see it?”
Mitch felt himself expanding internally like a volcano about to burst and spew ashes and lava across the countryside and far out onto the lake. “You incredible fucking scum,” he said.
The man’s face froze.
Mitch raised the Sanyo to shoulder level and fitted it tensely in the crook there; then he aimed it deliberately at the figure on the ground in front of him. The man had been going to die tonight anyway, eventually. All he had done was hasten his certain demise.
His plan had backfired. It had been the wrong thing to say to Mitch Helwig.
The last wrong thing he would ever say to anyone.
As a gust caught the man’s hair and whipped it backward, Mitch saw his eyes in the wan moonlight: the man knew that he had played the wrong card and that there were no more hands to be dealt.
The bolt of steel-blue light leapt from the laser and the stranger’s face disappeared into the hole that began between his eyes. Five seconds later Mitch released the trigger, blinding himself momentarily with the sudden plunge from incandescent brilliance into the black of the October night.
The image of what the man had suggested still floated like a specter in his mind. Mitch knew he would have to act tonight. There could be no more waiting. Not after this.
Not after what he had heard.
tHREE
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art”
Our life is frittered away by detail...
Simplify, simplify.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
33
At 11 p.m. Arcangelo Scopellini thought about Helwig, his own personal dogged lone wolf, for the first time in two hours. That was how long it had been since Eveline had arrived and taken his mind so mercifully and skillfully away from the mundane nuisances that naturally befell a man in his position. She lay naked beside him now, curled in the pink satin sheets, smiling contentedly, her large eyes closed, her long-tipped fingers softly caressing his thigh. He sat propped up against the pillows and smoked a dark cheroot, recalling fondly the sensual passion he had just experienced.
Mewing, she snuggled closer, reaching up to cup him between his legs. The Archangel tensed under the pleasure of her expert ministrations, reaching down to run a hand across the smooth, soft skin of her shoulders. To his amazement—and delight—he found himself becoming hard again, found the memory of Mitch Helwig flashing off and on sporadically until it vanished completely as Eveline, sweet Eveline, brushed the covers from his lap, teased him with the feathery tips of her long fingers, and let her dark hair trail electrically along his thighs as she shifted to engulf him in her exquisite mouth.
He inhaled in a silent gasp as he reached over to extinguish his cheroot, clenching his teeth as his mind began to bob about in its own private pleasure pool. He tripped the switch beside the heavy, molded ashtray that activated the tinglers attached to the small of his back and to Eveline’s breasts.
They moaned simultaneously.
As he put his head back into the lavish softness of the pillows, the Archangel’s mouth opened and his eyes shut, and he thought of Mitch Helwig no more that night.
34
At 11 p.m. Mitch Helwig parked his Chevrolet on Glen Manor Drive in the Beaches and strode up the walk to the darkened house. Without hesitation, he pressed the doorbell and waited.
A light blinked on in a second-story window; thirty seconds later, a hall light was switched on inside. And then an overhead light on the porch illuminated him fully to whomever was within.
Karoulis was standing in his bathrobe and pajamas and corduroy slippers when he finally opened the door. For a moment, neither of them said anything, waiting for the other to begin. Then the captain’s rank took over.
“Come in, Mitch.” He stepped aside.
Nodding his acceptance, Mitch entered and closed the door behind him.
They studied one another in the vestibule of the stately old home. Karoulis stared at the scorched hole on the chest of Mitch’s jacket, his own eyes widening; then he looked at Mitch’s face and into his eyes, noting the steely calm there.
“What is it?” Karoulis asked.
“I want your help.”
Another moment passed in silence.
“Let’s go inside.” Karoulis turned and made his way through the oak and glass doorway into the living room. Mitch followed.
“Sit down.”
“No. Thanks.”
Karoulis shrugged. “Have it your way.” Then, in a lower voice, “You usually do.”
“Sorry to wake you up, Captain.”
“You didn’t wake me. I don’t sleep the way I’d like to anymore.” He looked at Mitch. “Do you?”
“No. But I’m trying to do something about that.”
Karoulis opened an Oriental cigarette box on a Victorian end table and took out a cigarette. “I’ve been trying to quit this, you know.” Placing it between his lips, he faced Mitch. “Lately I seem to get the urge whenever I confront you.” His brow wrinkled. Pulling a book of matches from the pocket of his robe, he lit up, inhaling deeply, then expelling the smoke slowly. Finally, he said, “What can I do for you?”
Mitch paused, then asked, “Are you alone, Captain?”
“I am this week. Helen is in Montreal, visiting our daughter. She’s in school there, at McGill. And I’m too old to chase other women. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You know what I’ve been doing, don’t you?”
Karoulis hesitated before answering this time. “Yes. I think so. Not all of it. But I think I understand.”
“Why haven’t you done anything about it?”
Karoulis took another drag on the cigarette. “That,” he said, “is the million-dollar question. It’s what I’ve been asking myself fifty times a day since I talked to you in my office that day.”
“It’s because you can see that I’m cutting through the bullshit. It’s because you’re swamped in a sea of bullshit, from morning till night, and you’re tired of the taste. It’s because, after thirty years of walking the line, after thirty years of wading in the muck, you’re close to retiring, and you’re not sure you’ve made a difference. You becam
e a politician instead of a cop; it was forced on you. And because you’re a decent man, you did the job in a decent way. But it isn’t working, and you know it. That’s why you left me alone. That’s why you didn’t jerk my rope back. Because your way had failed. You knew my way couldn’t be any worse. In fact, you knew, in your heart, that it was the only real way to gain ground—that it all goes beyond politics. It boils down to common sense, and what’s right and wrong. It boils down to trusting yourself, and a few others, and operating accordingly.”
“I won’t turn you in, Mitch.”
It was the truth.
“I want more than your neutrality. I want your help. I want your endorsement.”
“For what? For you to cruise around after hours exterminating small-time scum? You don’t need my help or endorsement for that. All you need is my neutrality. You’ve got it!”
Mitch was breathing heavily now. “Suppose I told you I was onto something big. That what I wanted to do was in another dimension from exterminating small-time scum. That I could make a difference. That you could make a difference.”
Karoulis looked at him skeptically.
“Suppose I told you that if you helped me tonight, my way, you could accomplish more than you have in the last decade. Suppose I told you that?”
Karoulis licked his lips. “What have you got?”
“I’ve got the Archangel. Do you know who he is?”
“I know who he is.”
Mitch undid his jacket, let the Barking Dog gaze at the captain. Karoulis’s lips tightened.
“You’re not on his payroll, are you?” Mitch asked.
Anger flared in Karoulis’s face. But he saw the Dog and understood. “I thought we were talking trust.”
“This is my life we’re talking about. I have to be sure about this.” Mitch added, “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m not on the take from him.”
The truth.
“But I have my suspicions about a few others. Others who live much better than I do.”
Mitch relaxed, let his jacket fall over the Dog’s eye.
“Honesty doesn’t amass much of a fortune,” Karoulis said.
“And playing politics doesn’t let you sleep well. So where do we saw it off?” Mitch remembered wanting to kill this man. He remembered wanting to kill the hideously insincere beast that had hovered between them, walling them off from one another forever. Dishonesty, he now understood, was a form of death, if never apologized for. It walled you apart as surely as if one of you had died.
As surely as he was walled off from Mario.
Karoulis, he was sure, had felt it all, too. It was why Karoulis had let him roam. It was why he was listening to Mitch now. It was his way of apologizing, of not wanting to wall himself up, of dealing with his own hurt, from whatever sources. The Barking Dog had unmasked this man twice now, and Mitch respected what he saw. And he wanted this man to respect himself, because he was worth an army of Archangels and politicians.
“I have the Archangel,” he repeated.
“Did”—Karoulis hesitated, then asked it—“did the Archangel kill Mario?”
Mitch’s eyes suddenly hollowed. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.
And then Mitch told him about what he had—about the six thousand lasers, about the guns, about the tons of dope, about the trafficking in kids and porn and human organs and stolen automobiles and God knew what else, and Karoulis finished the cigarette and went on to a second and then a third as he and Mitch continued talking, and soon it was midnight.
35
At 11 p.m. Elaine Helwig finally accepted that Mitch might not come home tonight. Where he was, she had no idea.
How, she asked herself, had all this happened? How had it all gotten out of hand? Try as she might, she couldn’t pinpoint a definite turning point in their relationship. It had seemed to unravel imperceptibly, thread by thread, row by row, until the entire pattern needed reweaving, almost from scratch. Mario’s death, she knew, had been perhaps the largest single factor in Mitch’s dramatic personality change; after that, he had been quieter, less impulsive, and yes, less attentive to her and to Barbie. That had provided the most severe derailing; the other factors were small snags in comparison. But taken together, they had sent the two of them on their separate ways.
In the darkness of their bedroom, she opened her eyes, but could make out only dim forms of the familiar objects surrounding her. Smiling sadly, she recalled her reference to Plato’s Cave that night she had dined with Don. And she remembered the night she had slept with Don.
Yet she felt no happier. She had had her passion, her risk, and she was no happier. The emptiness that had come with this realization had scared her deeply, suggesting as it did that there was no easy fix for her sense of alienation.
She remembered the lunch with Don the next day, and how she had felt soiled. It hadn’t worked. It had not been the answer. Don was not the answer—certainly not Don, with his wife and two children and home in the suburbs. What future was there for them? She as his mistress? Or as the Other Woman who might eventually lead them both to lawyers, alimony, and inexorably to therapy and exhaustion?
And he hadn’t even minded when she said they shouldn’t see each other that way anymore, that it had been a one-time thing; in fact, he had looked partially relieved and handled it with grace and ease. Almost too much ease, she had felt, confirming her feelings that she was doing the right thing. Life was full of distractions. Donald Barbour had been a major distraction, arresting her at what she now perceived as a particularly vulnerable juncture.
Her eyes wandered across the ceiling over her head, seeing nothing.
Had Mitch found out about them? Was that why he wasn’t here, now?
Impossible.
Then where was he?
Was he with another woman? She had to admit, it was the most likely conclusion. And there was the matter of the missing money from their joint account—which she had never confronted him about. Instead, she had soothed her hurt, exacted a misdirected and ultimately unsatisfying retribution with Don Barbour.
She rolled onto her side, her eyes still wide in the dark.
She didn’t want to end up like Jan Prudhomme—separated, a single parent. But then, who did? Jan hadn’t wanted to either. These things just happened.
Didn’t they?
She had to admit, she didn’t know how they happened. What I want, she thought, is for it to be like it was, like when we were married, ten years ago. That’s what I want.
That’s what everybody wants, she knew. But it doesn’t happen. We get older. We change. Things change. People leave. People appear.
People die.
And people are born.
She glanced through the door into the hall, lit feebly by the bathroom night-light, and thought of Barbie.
The first thing I can do, she thought, is get myself back on track—establish some priorities. I’ve already agreed to see Jan tomorrow night after work, but after that, more time at home with Barbie, with my own daughter. That’s where it has to start. For the three of us.
Around dawn, sleep claimed her. But when she awoke to the alarm soon after, she was still alone.
36
“Did you hear Huziak talkin’ this mornin’?” Mario was pulling at his moustache as they got into the cruiser.
“No. What about?” Mitch got in on the passenger side and closed the door.
“They arrested some lady—forty-eight years old—who’d worked at the Inn on the Park for six years. Her place is full of stuff she’s stolen from the hotel. She told them she was goin’ to start her own hotel.” He chuckled, starting the car.
Mitch smiled and raised his eyebrows. “What’d she have?”
“According to Huziak, five crystal chandeliers, five hundred towels, about fifteen hundred knives, forks, and spoons, a hundred ashtrays, sixty pounds of butter—”
“Sixty pounds of butter?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Where does one keep sixty pounds of butter?”
“In the freezer, asshole.”
“Of course.”
“Like I was saying—”
“Sorry.”
“Twenty coffee percolators, ten kettles, a folding bed, a toilet seat...”
Mitch began to giggle. “No toilet paper?” he asked.
“Huziak didn’t mention it. Maybe inventory isn’t complete. Maybe she used all the toilet paper she lifted.”
They both laughed.
“It could happen, you know.”
“Who am I to say it couldn’t?”
“Exactly. Anyway...”
“There’s more?”
“A bit more that I can remember. Sixty or so pounds of sugar cubes—”
“A lot of sixties.”
“Maybe she’s a numerologist. Maybe she’s a conservationist.”
“Maybe she’s nuts.”
Mario hooted. The cruiser eased up the ramp from the underground garage, swinging east.
“Also had around a hundred mugs, flowerpots, about a billion of them little soaps...And you know, nobody even noticed the stuff was missing.”
“How’d they catch her then?”
“Two other cleaning ladies saw her dumping a bag of stolen goods in an incinerator and mentioned it to the manager. That was the start.”
“Gonna start her own hotel, huh?”
Mario shrugged, still smiling. “Huziak says she’s already got a lawyer, and the guy claims that she’s suffered two broken marriages and stored the stuff away to gain a sense of security.”
“All except the toilet paper.”
“Maybe it was the quality of the security that she was searching for.”
“Or maybe she just had to use it.”
“You’re so crude. So unrefined.”
“Just think, Mario. If you were insecure, all the finery you could lift from Station 52 to shore you up.”
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. About a million fuckin’ paper clips I could have. And all the fuckin’ elastic bands I could ever dream of!” He shook his head. “And what do I do? Pass it up. Can you believe it?”
“No. I can’t. You’re incredible.”
Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Page 17