My shots had been every bit as well placed as his, all bunched within a fist-sized area near the heart. “I was in the army,” I said.
“Get out,” he said. “I thought the army was strictly for jugheads who flunk out of shop.”
“I didn’t say the Canadian army.”
“American?”
“IDF.”
“What?”
“Israel Defense Forces.”
Ryan whistled. “Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“They got a rep, don’t they? Being tough. Take-no-shit types. So what, you volunteered?”
“Yes.”
“Why there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“So give me the condensed version.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering how much I could tell him. Wondering why I felt like I could tell him things I had never told my own brother.
“I was living in Banff,” I began, “teaching skiing in the winter and working construction in the summer. I was seeing a Jewish girl from Winnipeg. She wanted to go to Israel for the summer and work on a kibbutz.”
“A what?”
“A collective farm. Kind of a Marxist model the early Zionists brought from the old country.”
“Jewish Commies? Talk about two strikes against you.”
“I went with her but things between us didn’t work out. She left. I stayed.”
“Let me guess. You met another woman.”
“No, I met the woman. Dalia Schaeffer.”
“Israeli?”
“Nope. You believe in coincidence?”
“No. I have no use for it.”
“She was from Toronto. Grew up maybe ten blocks from me in Bathurst Manor. We even went to the same elementary school, except she was two years behind me and who pays attention to younger kids at that age. So we meet in Israel. She has this wild hair—jet black, piles of it, totally untamed—and the most amazing blue eyes. First time I look in them I’m gone. I am pinned to the mat. And her mouth, Ryan, you couldn’t be in the same room as it and not want to kiss it. And stay kissing it.”
“Jesus, you had it bad.”
“No, I had it good. I had it so good. This was the woman I was going to be with for the rest of my life. Make babies with. Curly-headed babies.”
“Like Pacino in Godfather I,” he said. “He meets Apollonia and everyone says he’s been hit by lightning.”
“That’s exactly what it was like. I was so dazed, so in love. Like never before. And never since.”
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“Israel happened.”
Our kibbutz was called Har Milah. It was in the far north of Israel, on a finger of land that jutted up like a peninsula, surrounded by occupied southern Lebanon on one side and Syria on the other. We grew oranges, olives and avocadoes. Pressed our own olive oil. Grew grapes for a neighbouring kibbutz that made wine: surprisingly rich Chardonnay, grassy Sauvignon Blanc and a deep, spicy Shiraz that could have come from Australia.
The sabras, the native-born kibbutzniks, were cool to outsiders; they knew most of us weren’t there for the long haul. But if you worked hard enough and stayed long enough you could gain a certain measure of acceptance. After a while they stopped calling me G’veret—Hebrew for Missus—and settled on Yoni, short for my Hebrew name, Yonah. It was tough work, up at four in the morning to get a full day in before the heat became too oppressive.
“One morning,” I told Ryan, “I’m gathering up fallen oranges in our grove when a fat one drops on my head. I look up in the tree and there’s Dalia with the sun behind her, this wild hair in silhouette. She says sorry to me. Sleecha. Okay. I go to pick up the orange and she says to a friend in Hebrew that ‘the new American has a nice ass.’ Little did she know Mama Geller had paid for years of Hebrew school. I look up and tell her I’m Canadian, not American, but that’s okay because she has a nice ass too. She threw another orange at me, lost her balance and just about fell into my arms.”
I stayed long past my planned departure date—almost two years longer. Dalia and I became inseparable. Stuck on a waiting list for a private room at the kibbutz—unmarrieds slept dorm-style—we made love every chance we had, sneaking into the orchards at night to find privacy, lying in fragrant grass amid the smell of citrus blossoms. I was so smitten I kept dreaming about eggs: eggs frying on the hood of my car, hard-boiled eggs spilling out of my pockets, a street busker juggling half a dozen. I would tell Dalia about these dreams and she’d laugh and say I wanted to make babies with her.
Then came the rockets.
Hezbollah fighters operating in southern Lebanon launched a barrage of Katyushas against civilian targets in northern Israel, in retaliation for an Israeli helicopter strike that killed six Lebanese civilians. More than six hundred Katyushas fell over three days, mostly in and around Kiryat Shmona. Hundreds of homes were burned or destroyed. Thousands more sustained some degree of damage. Schools and daycare centres were hit. So were factories and other industries. One housing development was hit eight separate times.
Two hundred thousand people were evacuated from Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area. Dozens were injured, mostly by shrapnel and flying glass, and many more were treated for shock. They said it was a miracle only one person was killed.
The rockets that fell on Har Milah came on the second day of bombardment as people were setting out for work and for school. One rocket hit the shed where we packed avoca-does, sending thousands of dark green chunks into the air. I remember Zvi Dalphen, a skinny New Yorker, saying, “Guacamole, anyone?” and getting a good laugh.
Another one hit our chicken coop. Hundreds of birds blew into a fountain of red and white flesh, blood and feathers. No one had anything funny to say about that.
Late that afternoon, a Katyusha hit an electricity pole on the road outside our quarters. It blew chunks of concrete the size of bowling balls in every direction, smashing windows, breaking through walls, damaging furniture. One piece of concrete tore into Dalia’s right leg, just above the knee, as she stood just outside the door, trying to get a signal on her cellphone so she could tell our families in Toronto we were fine.
She started to bleed. And bleed. They told us afterwards her femoral artery had been severed. Even if we had had phone service, even if we had had electricity, even if the roads had not been blocked by damaged cars, even if most of the people who could have helped had not already been evacuated, she never would have made it to a transfusion site. She would have bled out no matter what.
We should have left, but Dalia had not wanted to leave the animals, the chickens, the crops. They were our livelihood.
So only one person died during the bombardment. Some fucking miracle.
About five weeks later, I reported to the IDF recruitment centre in Jerusalem and volunteered for the army as part of a program called Mahal, under which non-Israeli Jews could sign up for a fourteen-month tour as long as they had not yet turned twenty-four. I made it by just a few months and began training for the Bar Kochba Infantry.
And that’s as much as I told Ryan on the drive back.
The rest is between me and my dreams.
CHAPTER 31
When Ryan dropped me at the office, I made straight for the parking lot and stowed the gun and ammunition in the trunk of my car, inside a storage tub that held jumper cables, candles, matches, a blanket and other necessities of life on Canadian roads.
The office was a hive of activity, with most of the worker bees beating a path to and from Clint’s office, accepting or reporting on assignments relating to Franny’s murder. Just as Darrel Mitchell came out with a thick sheaf of pink file folders under one arm, one of two other investigators standing outside the door went in immediately; the other moved closer to the doorway to keep his spot.
Clint paged me at my desk about ten minutes later. Unlike the other bees, I was asked to shut the door to his office and sit.
“So,” he said. “Sergeant Hollinger thinks it�
��s you they wanted, not Franny.”
“That’s what she thinks.”
“And you? The truth this time: have the Di Pietras made contact with you?”
“No. Why would they? The Ensign case is over and they’ve left me alone so far.”
“The bruise on your face, Jonah.”
“I’m telling you, Marco Di Pietra did not leave these marks on my face.”
“And I’m telling you this is not the time to go off-grid on me. You’ve been a team player from day one. And I need a team now like I never have before, not even when I was a cop.”
“Clint—”
“At least all the cops under me acted like professionals. They never left unannounced or showed up looking like a john who got rolled.” The look on his face started moving past disappointment, headed toward disgust. “All right,” he said without making eye contact. “If you’re through leaving me in the lurch for today, get busy on this.” He handed me five bright yellow folders thick with documents. “These are Franny’s cases for the last year. Cross-reference any and every location he mentions, no matter what the circumstances, and note what company owns it. See if you can find any link at all to the crime scene.”
“I’m on it,” I said.
“I’ll be working late,” he said. “In case a sudden urge to tell the truth comes over you.”
Heading home that evening, I was reasonably certain no one followed. There were plenty of dark SUVs on the road, but none seemed to contain gunmen of any size or shape. The greatest threat they posed was the drifting attention spans of drivers trying to juggle cellphones, cigarettes, lattes, CDs, makeup, road maps and, every once in a while, a function actually related to staying in one lane.
I parked in my garage and sat with the windows down, my mind numbed by arcane details of real estate transactions. I knew a lot more about how companies could make money by flipping properties but was no closer to knowing why the Erie Storage warehouse had been chosen as the place to kill Franny—or me, as it were.
I listened for the scrape of a sole on concrete, the intake of breath through an oft-broken nose. Nothing. I knew I should take the Beretta upstairs—load it, rack it, keep it handy—but I wasn’t ready to admit it to my home. The garage seemed empty, but there were alcoves and doorways on the way to the elevators, places a gunman could hide with a pistol held down along his leg. The curse of Jewish imagination, where enemies lurk behind every pillar and post. I left the gun in the trunk, waited until a van was exiting the garage, and walked out beside it, looking around as I made my way up and around to the front lobby. There was an ambulance pulling out of the circular drive: not an unusual sight in a heat wave, with so many older tenants afflicted by heart trouble and other ailments.
I was walking down the hall to my apartment when I saw Ed Johnston’s door was open. I could hear a man’s voice and it wasn’t Ed. I slowed down and stayed close to the wall. I stopped outside his door and listened. Heard the man’s voice again. One of Marco’s men? The voice was neither angry nor threatening. Then I heard a woman’s voice, soft and low, and knew Ed was okay. He just had company.
Then I heard the woman begin to cry. I reached the threshold and looked in. Two men and a woman: Ed’s daughter, Elizabeth, whom I recognized from photos in the apartment, and two men in sport jackets. There was blood on the parquet floor and bloody footprints leading out the door. The prints hadn’t shown up in the dirty grey hallway carpet. The men looked like plainclothes cops.
“Can I help you?” one of them asked me. He was heavy-set, with the mournful face of a basset hound.
“I’m a neighbour,” I said quietly. An ugly thought hit me then: it had been Ed in the ambulance leaving the building. “What happened? Is your father okay?” I asked Elizabeth. She was older than me with dry blonde hair cut in an unflattering bob and pale blue eyes that were red-rimmed from crying. She looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t.
“Someone beat him up,” the basset said.
“How bad?” I asked.
“To a pulp.” Ed’s daughter sobbed as she heard this. “Sorry,” the cop muttered. “He has head injuries, possibly a fractured skull. Broken fingers. Broken ribs. Broken jaw.”
The daughter fished a tissue out of her purse.
“Can we get your name, sir?” the cop asked.
“Geller,” I said. “Jonah Geller.”
Elizabeth stopped wiping her eyes and looked at me coldly. “You’re the investigator.”
“Yes.”
“Dad talks about you all the time,” she said sourly. “He said you made life around here more exciting. So what was this? Some excitement you brought home with you.”
“What kind of investigator are you?” the basset asked.
“The licensed kind.”
“Got it on you?”
I got my ID out of my wallet and handed it to him.
“Beacon Security, eh? That’s Graham McClintock’s outfit, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“They’re legit,” he told his partner, who looked East Indian but not Sikh: no turban or beard. “Clint was on the job thirty years, all of them good. You know who would want to hurt Mr. Johnston?” he asked me.
“No.”
“The only thing they stole was his camera. Plenty of other stuff around. A laptop right there on the dining room table. His wallet, his watch. Even the tripod, I’m told, is worth money. But one camera’s all they took. Know why that would be?”
Sooner or later, someone would tell him about the fight in the park and how Ed had taken photos of it. His hound dog ears would pick up my name soon after that. Between the ballplayers, sunset watchers and other onlookers, there had been dozens of witnesses. More than enough would know me, if not by name, as that guy who lives in that building—Ed’s building.
For now, I said nothing. Giving up Marco’s name wouldn’t help Ed. The goons who beat him wouldn’t have left anything behind to incriminate the bastard.
I was also starting to hatch a plan of my own to deal with Marco Di Pietra and the police would have no part to play.
CHAPTER 32
In a film canister in one of my kitchen cupboards was a tight bud of British Columbia’s finest pot, curled around its own stem like a serpent around a caduceus. Kenny Aber had left it the last time he’d visited, his way of trying to excavate me from my down mood. “When the going gets tough,” Kenny said, “the tough get ripped.” I toyed with the idea of rolling a little joint but abandoned it quickly. I needed a clear head to decide what to do about Marco—at least as clear as I could be on Percocet.
I sat in front of the TV a while. The heat wave was still the top story, because Torontonians love nothing better than complaining about our weather, which is generally too hot or too cold; it’s all too rarely just right. I watched footage of hardy swimmers cooling themselves in the foul waters of the eastern beaches; two men squabbling over the last upright fan in an appliance store; people crowded around a refrigerated truck in Kensington Market, relishing the cold air wafting out of it.
Then my mind stopped drifting. It stopped somewhere very specific. I switched off the TV and called Dante Ryan’s cell. When he answered, I asked if he had plans for dinner.
“You haven’t seen enough of me today?” I could hear loud cartoon voices in the background, and a boy’s high-pitched voice saying, Daddy, look what SpongeBob’s eyes just did.
“You’re at home?” I asked.
“Yup. All this shit going down with the Silvers, I needed to get rid of the creeps I feel. Spend a little time with my kid. After I dropped you off I phoned Cara, asked if I could help put him to bed.”
“I need to talk to you but not on the phone.”
“You don’t sound so good.”
“A not-so-good thing happened.”
“To you?”
“My neighbour. The photographer.”
“Fuck,” he sighed.
“We really need to talk,” I said.
“J
ust a minute, honey.”
“Don’t honey me, you rogue.”
“I was talking to my wife, wiseass. Hang on.” He covered his mouthpiece and spoke to someone else, then came back on the line: “We’re putting Carlo to bed in an hour. I’ll come by after that on one condition.”
“What?”
“There a decent pizzeria near your place?”
Ryan arrived with a Barolo—a 1999 Ornato, he said. “Didn’t want to take another chance on the plonk you keep in that closet.”
I had sworn off wine because of the Percocet but that was before a Barolo arrived. I swirled the garnet-coloured wine gently in the glass, inhaling its rich dark cherry aromas. It tasted even better than it smelled.
The pizza I’d ordered had hot Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and onions. “They call this combination Calabrese,” I said. “What do you think?”
“First of all, I’m only half Calabrese, on my mother’s side. Second, I’ve never been there. But from how my mother cooks, I’d say it’s authentic enough.” He dealt with a long string of cheese coming off his pizza and wiped his chin. “Where my mother was born was some rugged place, what I hear. The people too. No one you want to mess with. A lot like Sicilians. Calabria’s right across the straits from Sicily and the one thing they had in common? The government up in Rome was always screwing them both. Screwing them or ignoring them. That’s why the Mafia wound up running things in Sicily and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria. Someone had to.”
Ryan finished his first slice and washed it down with wine. “If my dad had come from there too, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” he said. “I’d be a made man, a lifer, and that would be that.”
“What discussion are we having?” I asked him.
“Hey, you asked me to dinner. Said you needed to talk. How about you tell me what the discussion is, then I’ll tell you if we’re having it.”
“Here goes,” I said. “I don’t care so much that Marco tried to cut me in the park. That he sent goons chasing me around East York. But beating up an old man who couldn’t defend himself … Ryan, they cracked his skull, his ribs, his jaw. At his age, he’ll never be the same. If he lives through the night.”
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