Death of a Hired Man

by Eric Wright

  Wilkie turned to Copps. “They’ve found two white three-quarter-ton welding trucks. Only two. I guess it’s a silly color for a welding truck. Anyway, one is accounted for, been working for a week welding steam pipe in a factory installation near Burlington. The other one isn’t. It’s sitting in a driveway of a house on Eastern Avenue. They’ve checked it out. The owner—the welder, I guess—let a guy named Gruber borrow it last Friday. There was someone else with him, guy named Dougal. They took the truck Friday morning and brought it back early Saturday morning. Now I have to go into Toronto.” He read the second message. “Jesus Christ! I hope I’m in time. Look after Sproat until I get back.”

  When Pickett returned to the hospital, Gruber was lying with his head slightly propped, staring at the door, looking as if he was ready to take on all comers.

  “I’ll talk when I thee a lawyer,” Gruber said, revealing that the loss of his remaining teeth had produced a lisp that came oddly from the battered face.

  “Fine,” Pickett said. “I’ll arrange to have you shipped up to Sweetwater this afternoon. I just drove down for a chat, but if you don’t want to talk, I’ll go back. But that’s it. From now on, I’m going to do everything I can to nail you.”

  Gruber said nothing, waiting for more explanation. He tried to speak, but had to clear his throat, swallowing several times. “What givths?” he asked finally.

  Pickett said, “You killed the wrong guy. I’m alive, but the guy you assaulted is dead. The only problem I have is to know why you did it. Not that it matters much.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Christ. Listen,” Pickett said. “We’ve got you driving around Larch River on the night a guy was killed. You’re identified, you know that, but you’re still hanging around like the asshole you are, waiting to be picked up. Why?”

  “I’m not thaying nothing.”

  Pickett said, “I’ve been thinking while you were passed out. Wanna hear? Here’s what I’ve been thinking, then. I forgot there were two of you in the pickup. But I remember you told me it wasn’t your truck. I assumed you’d borrowed it then, but I think now it was his truck. He just needed you to drive. So I wondered why would that be? Maybe he didn’t have a license. But he had a truck. Maybe his license was void. Probably. Why? Then I realized this guy’s on parole; he’s surrendered his license, hasn’t he? He can’t risk being stopped without a license, so he gets you, everybody’s stick boy, to take him up there. And you did all the inquiring. He killed Thompson, but no one saw him or knows who he is. How’s that?”

  “I’m not thaying nothing.”

  “You admit you were driving around Larch River that night, but it’s a coincidence that a man was murdered, you say. Now we’ve got you, and we know about the other guy, we know why you and he were together, don’t we? He needed you to drive him up to Larch River to kill me. Right?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I’m inclined to believe you didn’t. Otherwise, you would have been very surprised when I caught up with you the other night. You’d have fainted probably, because you’d have known I was a ghost. I mean, if you’d killed him, you’d have known, right? So I think it’s likely the other guy killed him. Maybe not. Be patient, Connie. This is all coming clear in a hurry. Maybe you did a run-up, a kind of reconnaissance, for him. Then, thinking the place was empty, you took a look around to see what you could steal, and you found some money, a lot of money. Then you got interrupted by the guy you thought was me and defended yourself, as your lawyer will say, killing the guy in the process.

  “The next bit is tricky, but I think something like this happened. Your pal tried to blackmail you. Yeah, he knew about the money and tried to blackmail you. He knows how smart the police are these days, and he knew that you would have left a fingernail or a piece of snot behind, something we could identify you from, so he blackmailed you. Told you he wanted the money or he’d turn you over to us, as is natural with you guys. So you said yes, then you had a think. You saw how you could turn it all around. See, you said to yourself, ‘He’s the one with the motive. He’s the one who wanted Pickett dead.’ You were just the driver. That was the way it was supposed to be, wasn’t it? So you thought, ‘Why don’t I tell him to stick his threats up his ass? Better, why don’t I blackmail him? Well, maybe not quite blackmail, but something similar.

  “So you say to him ‘No.’ You say, ‘Stay away from me or I will turn you in.’ Maybe you even go down the road a little, start to act it. ‘Why did you kill him?’ you say. ‘You shouldn’t have killed him. I mean, not after you’ve been blowing all over about how you’re going to get Pickett. You should’ve waited.’

  “Then he’s stuck. He don’t trust this little bastard who’s been chauffeuring him around. I mean, how could he? Trust Gruber? So he knows that his secret’s not safe with you. We’re gonna believe you more than him, given a choice, because he’s the cop-hater, not you. He’s the one we want tucked away for the rest of his life. So he sets you up, finds a way to get you alone in the alley—who helped him, Connie? Some hooker offering a two-dollar blow job? And now he’s got you in the alley, and you’re about to go under. Then the Indian patrol comes by and that’s that, for the time being. You’re in the hospital, and he’s waiting for you to come home. I told you I didn’t understand that bit. But now I just realized he didn’t know we’d identified you, you hadn’t had time to tell him, or maybe you did but he believed you when you said you hadn’t ratted on him. That being the case, there was still time to kill you and keep it that way.

  “He didn’t think we’d look too hard for whoever did it, because usually if you scumbags can kill each other off, it saves us a lot of trouble. And the public doesn’t mind. The headline says that four bikers die in a shoot-out. ‘Good,’ says my cousin who keeps a pet shop in North York. ‘Maybe they’ll all kill each other off.’ But you’re different. You kill civilians. ‘Get that guy,’ my cousin says. ‘He hurts people.’ What do you have to say for yourself, Connie?”

  “I didn’t kill the guy.”

  “That’s exactly what he’ll be saying, Connie. ‘I didn’t kill him; it was Gruber,’ he’ll say. I wish I could tell you we don’t mind, could share it out between you. Fifteen years apiece. But we do mind, Connie, we do mind. You’re a punk, a punk with just enough brains to be useful without knowing you’re being used—but him, he wanted to kill me. We’d much rather have him than you. So tell us. Who is he?”

  “I’m thaying nothing until I thee a lawyer.”

  “Fair enough,” Pickett said. “They’re a bit short of space up in Sweetwater, so we’re going to have to leave you here for a few days. Next time we meet, you’ll be in leg irons.”

  Gruber’s eye swiveled back and forth between Pickett and the wall while he tried to absorb all he had just heard.

  “That was very good, Mel, old son. Like an aria. No, like one of those long bits between the arias when they have to keep singing even though they have no tune.”

  Pickett looked up to see Wilkie standing in the doorway, not smiling, and wondered where to go next. He was caught, as he knew he would be, without any exit, involved in a serious breach of the law, not to speak of the personal offense of not telling Wilkie what he was up to. And he had been warned. An enemy could throw some serious charges at Pickett; at the very least, Wilkie would no longer drop by for a chat, but it would probably be more than that, just to cover Wilkie’s ass.

  Now Pickett said, grabbing at the possibility of lightheartedness behind Wilkie’s simile, “I was rapping. You know?”

  “That what it was?”

  Flinching under Wilkie’s scrutiny, Pickett said, “You didn’t seem to be taking it seriously, Abe. Have you been listening to me for long? It is serious. I have to take it seriously. How did you know I was here?”

  Wilkie unbent an inch. “Give me some credit, will you? Give me some fucking credit, for Christ’s sake. I’ll take it anyway. Just so you’ll know, I’ll tell y
ou what’s been happening on the other side of the mirror, shall I? We don’t need an audience, though. Leave this—” He gestured at the bed. “He isn’t going anywhere.” He turned to the guard. “If he sits up, handcuff him to the bed.” He turned back to Pickett. “Come down to the cafeteria.”

  They proceeded in silence to the basement, where they bought coffee and took up their positions.

  Wilkie said, “First, a fact of life about us, a fact you seem to have forgotten. I asked my dad. He was amazed that you thought you could get away with conducting your own secret investigation. Thought you hadn’t retired a day too soon. See, old cops, ex-cops, retired cops, former cops, don’t rate. When you’re finished, you’re finished. Even with your old pal Marinelli. Sure, he’s still your old pal, but he’s a cop and you’re not, and that comes first with all of us, remember? So when you ask Marinelli about Gruber and company, he feels a personal obligation to you, but a professional obligation to me. See, as you know, I already realized what you might think, and I’d already asked Marinelli if you had any enemies, so when he called me right after you first walked into his office, I was ready for it.”

  “He called you?”

  “Just to leave a message for you.”

  “I never got a message.”

  “I know, because it was really a message to me. Point is, you didn’t tell Marinelli not to call me, did you? So his calling me with a message for you lets me know what you are up to without him being too disloyal to his old pal, see? After that, I had you on radar, every move you made—the undercover man, the little chat with Sergeant O’Dowd in headquarters, all of it.”

  “But why didn’t you move on Gruber?”

  “I did. I have. I’m here, aren’t I? Even though I knew you were wasting your time. I’ve had an idea for a long time who killed Thompson. Someone a lot closer to home. I arrested him this morning. Then I got the message that you were talking to Gruber. Again.”

  “You’ve actually got the guy?”

  “I’ve actually got him.”

  “So what’s with Gruber?”

  “You’re right. He’s the chauffeur. Know who for?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”

  “The name Dougal mean anything to you?”

  After a few seconds, Pickett said, “God Almighty. He’s the worst.”

  A nurse appeared at the table. “Are you two the policemen here about the patient on the fifth floor? He’s asking for you.”

  19

  Pickett said, “Colin Dougal. I put him away. Convicted of assault. He beat up a pal of his and left him for dead. It was the second offense. He got seven years. When he came up for parole, after he’d served about three weeks it seemed like, they asked me, and I recommended he should serve every day of the rest and then some, but they must have let him out a little early. He’s a menace, out of control, and he’ll wind up a lifer sooner or later, after he’s killed a couple more people. I suppose when they did what I recommended, he found out who had suggested it, and because of me, he stayed inside for a few more years than he might have. So when they let him out eventually, he came looking for me. His parole officer is a fed so he didn’t report to the Bail-and-Parole Unit. That’s how I missed him, missed noticing he was out.”

  Wilkie said, “While we’re still here, let me tell you the rest of my story.” And he told Pickett about Sproat’s confession. “I thought I had it wrapped up, but this Dougal sounds like a loose cannon.”

  “We’d better hear Gruber’s story,” Pickett said.

  “You do it, would you? You seem to be on his wavelength.”

  They entered the room to find Gruber lying at a slight incline, his functioning eye still bright red but marginally more open now. The area around the eye, however, like much of the rest of his face, had turned deep black and purple.

  Pickett and Wilkie sat beside the bed, and Wilkie reminded Gruber of who they were.

  “I know who you are, for fuck’s thake. I told them to fucking get you,” Gruber said to Pickett.

  The lisp nullified the aggression, making the swear words sound childish.

  “Uh-huh. Why?” Pickett asked.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “What?”

  “About why I wath up there near that fucking cabin.”

  “Oh, that, sure. We know that. You drove up a guy who wants to kill me, right?”

  Gruber’s head twisted from Pickett to Wilkie as he took this in. “You want to know who?”

  “We know that, too. Colin Dougal,” Wilkie said. “Now, if you’d told me that in the beer parlor, it might have been worth a couple of years off your sentence, but we’ve found out—the hard way—so you’ve missed your chance. The best thing you can do now is tell us everything else, just in case there’s something we missed.”

  “He fucking knowth.” Gruber indicated Pickett. “Ask him.”

  “I know you went up there looking for me,” Pickett said.

  “I wasn’t looking for you. I was jutht the fucking driver. He didn’t want to risk the highway patrol. He’s on fucking parole. So, I drove him up there.”

  Pickett said, “Connie, a couple of points—”

  “I told you. I had nothing to do with it. Nothing.”

  Pickett said, “You drove the guy who was trying to kill me. You call that nothing? I’ll tell you what I call it. Being an accessory. And if you don’t want to have a sudden relapse, you will start cooperating, like acting polite, okay? You stupid prick. They tell me you couldn’t even play hockey. All you were ever good for was spearing the real players, the ones who could skate. You were a ‘policeman,’ they tell me, a thug, hired to beat up the good players on the other team. ‘A goon,’ the term should be. And you still are. Goddam stick boy for the bikers. Now. You agreed to take Dougal up to Larch River so he could kill me. Right?”

  “He said he jutht wanted to find out if you were up there.”

  “How did he know I had a cabin there?”

  Gruber tried to shrug.

  Pickett said to Wilkie, “Make sure the door’s closed.” He turned back to Gruber. “Come on, for Chrissake,” he roared, his face six inches from Gruber’s. “We have to find your pal before he kills someone else. We haven’t got all goddam week. How did he know?”

  “He overheard it.”

  Pickett continued to shout. “Where?”

  “In the lineup at the Bail-and-Parole Unit.”

  “So he told you what he’d heard and said, ‘Drive me up there so I can kill him,’ and now you try to tell me that you didn’t have anything to do with it. Why, you goddam bag of pus—”

  “He didn’t have a gun or anything.”

  “Try this, Connie. The OPP—Sergeant Wilkie here—doesn’t give a shit about Dougal. No one saw Dougal, see. They saw you. Half the town saw a broken-down has-been of a hockey player driving around asking where I lived. The sergeant here doesn’t need Dougal. He’s got you.”

  “I didn’t even go in the cabin,” Gruber squawked. “I waited in the truck in the road while the guy went walking along the road and went into the cabin. The light came on in the cabin and I got out of the truck and went to thee what wath happening, and a few minutes later, thomeone was beating on my horn. When I went back to the road, Dougal wath thitting in the truck waiting to go.”

  “He killed Thompson?”

  “When I looked in the window, I could thee Thompthon lying on the floor.”

  “Dead?”

  “I didn’t go in. He wasn’t moving.”

  “So. Mission accomplished, then. If we hadn’t identified you right away, you might have got away with it. What happened next? How come Dougal tried to kill you?”

  Gruber looked away.

  Pickett said, “Bill Sikes’ dog, that’s what you were. Still are. Find the dog and you’ve found Sikes, right? Sikes tried to drown the dog, just like Dougal tried to kill you. You were stupid, as usual. You made the mistake of telling Dougal we were on to you, probably r
ight after I talked to you in the beer parlor. Probably you even told Dougal you hadn’t said anything about him. So he knew he still had time to shut you up. What a pathetic asshole you are. Did you think Dougal would be grateful?” Pickett turned to Wilkie. “How long will he get, Sergeant? Fifteen years? Twenty? If he tells us where to find Dougal, he might cut it down to twelve maybe?”

  “I fucking told you everything, didn’t I?” Gruber whined, coming back to life.

  “A little late, though. There’s one thing you can do yourself some good with. Where is Dougal now?”

  “He stays in a house on Eastern Avenue, near Broadview. Look for an old white pickup.”

  “We know where he stays,” Wilkie said. “And we know the truck. What we want to know is if he’s not there, where might we find him?”

  “He drinkth at the Stairway,” Gruber said. He looked to Pickett. “Where you firtht picked me up.”

  Pickett said, “What’s made you change your mind, Connie? First you were scared to tell us, now you’re scared not to. You concerned about Dougal killing someone else?”

  “Fucking right. Me. I’m next. I just realized I’m under arrest now, right? I sure hope tho. But that won’t thtop Dougal. See, he doesn’t know you know it’s him you’re after. That’s the fucking stupidity of it. When you came after me firtht, in that bar, I told him afterwards that you didn’t know anything about him. Chritht. So he figures that if he kills me, he’s thafe.”

  “Two birds with one stone. Stops you identifying him, and stops you blackmailing him.”

  “I didn’t try to blackmail him,” Gruber said automatically. “But when he came after me, I told him I hadn’t said anything. All the more reathon to kill me now, he said.”

  “He doesn’t know you haven’t kept quiet since, though,” Wilkie said.

  “But he’s still got nothing to looth by killing me, has he? If you know he killed the guy in the cabin, it’s no worse if he kills me, too, just in cathe you don’t know. It’s a win-win. And he’ll step on that hard-on you’ve put on guard like he’s a cockroach.”