by John Mackie
Hazardous Goods
( An Arcane transport delivery - 1 )
John Mackie
John Mackie
Hazardous Goods
CHAPTER 1
I closed my eyes and inched under the hot spray, careful to shield the six fresh stitches on my forehead. The water thrummed, easing the tension in my neck and shoulders, while clotted blood from my hair sluiced down my side. At my feet, ribbons of red curled slowly around the shower drain.
My first day on the job. I’d be lucky to make it through the week.
Five jobs in my thirty-four years on this big ball of dirt, and every time, the first day had involved the same routine. Rush from one blurry introduction to the next. Murmured references to a project I could help with or a new deal coming down the pipe. Abandoned with a nameless lady from Human Resources and her stack of incomprehensible forms. Go home at the end of the day tired, but humming with the excitement of new challenges.
Five times I’d had that experience. But nothing could have prepared me for my first day at Arcane Transport.
I might never have joined the company, if fate hadn’t intervened. Nearly six months earlier, I’d lost my last position in a “restructuring” affecting “valued but not critical employees”.
I’d been Director of Marketing for an enterprise software company, a decent job with a six figure salary and five staff reporting to me. Not bad for a guy my age. Too bad the company was losing money like a pensioner in Vegas.
But when I started getting calls from recruiters wanting to get me placed and collect on a commission, I found myself putting them off. Fact was, I cringed at the notion of more battles over advertising campaigns, sixteen hour days at trade shows and endless meetings with no real agenda. I needed something tangible, and ironically, it was my mother — the backseat driver of my life — that found it for me, in the form of Arcane Transport.
Clay Jarvis was the founder and President of Arcane — Toronto’s “Premium Courier for Unusual Goods”. Specifically, he was the President of two delivery vans, one beat-up Honda Civic, three full-time drivers, one office clerk, one dispatch-lady who was a Jackie-of-all-Trades, and a couple of part-timers.
Clay was also a family friend. My mother had known Clay and his wife for nearly thirty years, since before my father died. And as it happened, Clay was looking for a business partner — someone to take over the business when he retired at sixty, just a few years down the road.
If I hadn’t spoken to Clay’s banker and several of his customers, I never would have believed it was a successful business. Especially when Clay told me about the “unusual goods” that Arcane shipped for clients.
But Clay handed over his entire customer list, and told me to call anyone on it. So I called a bookstore on Queen Street that looked pretty reputable, a local museum, and a West End art gallery. All gave glowing reviews, citing years of faithful service by Clay and his company. They also verified the nature of those “unusual goods”. Sure, it all sounded a bit strange, but I’m an open-minded guy.
Better yet, the company’s financial statements were spotless. Either Arcane Transport was a thriving venture, or Clay was a master chef when it came to cooking the books.
So I took a deep breath and made the plunge. Over three days, Clay and I worked out the details of our new business relationship. The net result was that I would start as a minority partner, earn a fifty percent interest over three years, then gradually buy out Clay’s interest. It meant a much smaller salary than I was used to, a small upfront investment and a lot of work for the next few years.
It was the most exciting thing I’d ever done.
Despite my efforts in conducting due diligence and a (relatively) open mind, my first morning had been an eye opener. Even Clay seemed to acknowledge it when we left the office just after lunch.
“This afternoon we’ll visit with some of our more mainstream customers.”
I snorted, mulling over the list of deliveries that morning. Celtic Cross Healing Arts? A psychic consultant? The Third Temple of Crocar? What was unusual about any of them? We could have dropped in on the Burning Church of Satan, with naked middle-aged men prancing around a fire wearing dead animal carcasses, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.
When Clay had first told me that Arcane was a delivery service for magic objects, I checked his pupils. No signs of drugs. Now, after talking to a few of the customers and seeing their businesses, I’d come to believe they believed, too. More important, they were paying customers who didn’t seem to be doing anything illegal. So I’d decided to treat it like a courier business for religious artifacts or historical treasures.
And if it turned out there was something to this magic thing? Well, it would be more interesting than sitting at a desk.
I had the wheel for the afternoon route, which took us east along Dundas, traffic lurching along in ten yard bites. Over the next four hours, we worked the van from Etobicoke into Toronto’s Financial District, hitting six drops and four pick-ups. Traffic was the typical Monday mess for Toronto, cars darting in and out of lanes as though competing in an Indy car race for the visually impaired.
Finally, we came to the last delivery of the day.
“Last stop?”
“Yup. Pull over wherever you can find a spot. And grab the package for Sun Consulting, would you?”
I followed instructions and joined Clay at the curb. Clay stared up at me for a moment, one eyebrow raised, before I clued in and clicked the remote locks on the van. It felt as though we were constantly getting in and climbing out, like some giant Whack-a-Mole game.
“Sorry. So, who are these guys?” I waved the package destined for Sun Consulting.
“The brochure says they’re a strategic advisory outfit.”
“Yeah, right.” If I’d learned anything in my half-day on the job, it was that the customers were never what they seemed to be.
Inside, though, the building was pure Bay Street. The security guard at the front desk, not so much. He looked like he would fit in well at a tailgate party, scruffy beard and a gut that slouched over his belt.
The two of us marched across a football field of marble just to get to the elevator banks, with me trailing behind. Clay was just a little guy, maybe five seven in new shoes and a buck fifty on the scale, but his pace was daunting. I’m a half inch over six feet, but I still had to do a quick hopstep every ten yards just to keep up with my new business partner. Probably didn’t help that I was carrying ten extra pounds of Molson muscle.
As we walked, I inspected the packing tube in my hands. Same size as a poster tube, but heavier. Maybe a big pewter candlestick holder. Or an enchanted blade used in sacrificial offerings. I weighed it in one hand. Nah. Candlestick holder.
The label said “Mr. Emory Quinn, Senior Analyst, Sun Consulting.” The box labelled “contents description” was empty.
“They didn’t fill in the contents description.”
“Not everyone does. No insurance if the contents aren’t specified, but a lot of our customers don’t care. Hard to put a value on some of this stuff.”
“You don’t run into customs issues?”
“Don’t deliver outside the country.”
“What about the cops? How do you know you’re not transporting drugs or stolen goods?”
Clay stopped dead in his tracks, causing a stern-looking lady carrying a stack of file folders to nearly run him over. She directed a nasty look his way as she passed, but Clay ignored her.
“Good question.” He shook his head, smiled, then resumed walking, but at a slower pace. “I have no interest in breaking the law. The delivery contracts are clear. We don’t transport stolen goods, drugs, any of that stuff. I sit down with every new cu
stomer and make them initial that clause. If I get a bad feeling, we decline the account. I can’t say for sure that it never happens. Never had any issues to date, but if I ever got to thinking a customer was working the system, I’d drop them real fast.”
“Never had any issues with the cops?”
“No, though I try to stay out of their way. Not sure what they’d think of our business.”
No kidding. I wasn’t even sure what I thought of the business.
“So, what do you think this is?” I curled the tube like a dumbbell, trying to judge its weight.
A sly grin crossed Clay’s face and he grabbed the tube from my hand.
“Let it go, kid. It’ll drive you nuts.”
Sun Consulting was on the forty-third floor, a longish elevator ride that caused my ears to pop. There was good news, though — the woman at the reception desk looked like she modeled swimsuits in her spare time. Long blond curls, perfect teeth and lots of curves. She smiled at me, and Sun Consulting moved onto my list of favorite customers.
Clay introduced me, and I turned on the charm. At least, I thought I did. I am definitely hit and miss with the ladies, a fact that my brother Ted reminds me of more-or-less daily.
After a brief chat, it was back to business. I passed over the packing tube along with my handheld, for the receipt signature.
“Kara said you also had a package for us?”
“That’s right. I’ll get one of the mail room guys to bring it down.”
While Clay waited with her, I wandered the office lobby. What appeared to be an original painting by Canaletto hung above a cream-colored leather sofa. I’d seen several paintings by the Venetian landscape master at the National Gallery in Ottawa, but was more than a little surprised to see one hanging in a downtown office. Considering Sun Consulting’s apparent link to the world of the occult, I might have expected a Picasso with skewed eyes and arms in the wrong places. Either way, it seemed to be an original. Muchos dineros in the consulting business, apparently.
Seated in a chair to one side was a fellow in an immaculate pinstripe suit that likely cost as much as my first car. He barely glanced in my direction, seemingly hypnotized by the screen of his cellphone. Addict.
When I circled back to the reception desk, Clay was comparing an entry on the handheld with the label on a package the size of a toaster. He smiled, and handed the box to me to carry.
“We’ll see you soon.”
“Thanks.” The blonde smiled in my direction. “Nice meeting you.”
“You too.”
In the lobby I winked at Clay.
“She likes me.”
Clay snorted.
“Nice try, kid.” For Clay, everyone was a kid. His wife, my mother… age appeared irrelevant. “She’s married and has a newborn daughter.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
They stepped into the elevator and Clay hit the button for the ground floor.
“I’ve seen her every week for the past few years. You get to know little things about people.”
“Hmph. Well, seems you don’t know her well enough to recognize when she’s fallen for someone.”
He snorted again.
The seconds ticked by as the elevator cab descended, until our smooth ride came to a stop at the eighteenth floor. No surprise there. I can’t remember ever having made it all the way to the ground floor in an elevator without some damned person interrupting my ride.
The doors opened, and we began shuffling to the back of the car to let a man in. It took a lot of shuffling. At first all I could see was a leather bomber jacket so big it must have required a whole cow hide to make. I just caught a glimpse of the floor behind the intruder — a jumble of plastic sheets and ladders. Maybe the big guy was in construction.
The fellow stared at us as he entered the elevator, and continued to do so as the elevator began its descent. Not a good sign, in my mind. No one does that, even if it means turning your back on a glamourous model in thigh-high boots and a low-cut top.
“Help you?” Clay was that kind of guy.
Big Ugly looked six five at least, maybe three hundred pounds. That gave him a four inch height advantage on me, and a big weight advantage. Clay must have felt like a Hobbit.
Nicotine-stained teeth, thin sneering lips, a nose broken more than once, and stringy black hair greased back from his forehead. He had a pseudo-beard, the unshaved look that seemed so popular in Hollywood twenty years ago, and wore a black shirt open most of the way to his navel — a considerable distance. But it was his eyes that caught my attention. Small, steel grey eyes.
“Who is this?” Big Ugly said. He had a definite accent, drawing out the e’s. It came out ‘hoo eez dees’. “I thought you worked alone?”
The question was directed at Clay, but Clay looked as mystified as I felt. What the hell was this guy talking about?
“Never mind.” Maybe Russian? Whatever the accent was, I was struggling to understand him. “As they say in your country, this is a stick up. Give me the package.”
I was ready to tell him where he could shove the package, but Clay’s calm voice cut in.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are, but our client provided us with a destination, and we’re going to deliver it there. If you have any issues with that, take it up with the client.”
A nice, reasonable response by Clay. Unfortunately, the big guy wasn’t listening.
“You want to know who I am? My name is Niki Kuzmenko. The Bull.”
He said it in a way that suggested one of us should recognize the name, but I drew a blank. From the look on his face, it seemed Clay had too.
“Sorry. We have a contract with the client.”
“I don’t care about your client. Give me the package.” Big Ugly turned slightly and hammered his fist into the Stop button, bringing the elevator to a halt.
“No.” Clay was getting angry, his jaw jutting out slightly and his shoulders drawn back.
I took a deep breath, trying not to lose my temper. Most days, it was just a flickering pilot light. But this guy…
The big man stepped forward, clearly intimidating Clay by his sheer physical presence. My pilot light flared, and I stepped between the two men.
“Cool your jets, pal-.”
That’s when Big Ugly reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun.
A few things to point out. First, like most Canadians, I’ve never seen a handgun up close. Hunting rifles are one thing, but most Canadians have only seen handguns on American TV. They’ve also seen what handguns can do to Americans on TV. My presumption was that handguns have the same effect on Canadians.
“Okaaay.” I shifted a half step to my right, shielding Clay. Last thing I was going to do was let this goon threaten a man nearing sixty.
“You don`t listen.” The big man shuffled his feet, the gun now above me and pointing down at my skull from an awkward angle. “Give me the box.”
A ping sounded, and the elevator began descending again, the display counting off the floors.
“Man, what’re you doing? Armed robbery? Christ, there’s a bank downstairs-.”
“Shut the hell up.” Now the barrel of the gun was pressed against my forehead, and two bloodshot eyes were right in my face. The big man’s index finger twitched and I tensed, bracing for the bullet that would plow through my forehead and leave nasty bits all over the elevator.
Clay inched forward and offered the delivery carton to the man. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Clay’s face, red with anger. Big Ugly took the package in his meaty hand. Plain brown wrapping paper, destination marked on the label, one of Arcane’s standard overnight stickers in plain view.
Then a muscular arm lashed out and cracked me on the side of the head with the pistol. I fell to one knee, unable to distinguish up from down. There was an angry shout from Clay, and I tried to hold my position between the other two men. It didn’t help that I could feel my lunch working its way back up my throat, and the lights
seemed to be flashing on and off in the elevator.
At the ground floor the elevator lurched to a stop, making the spinning worse. I heard the doors slide open and tried to get back up, but my hands and feet weren’t following commands. Clay was hunched over behind me, but only I could see our assailant as the man turned and looked right at us.
“I’m thinking you guys are in the wrong business.” Even stunned, I could hear the word “business” come out as “beeznus”. I tried to reach out, but just stumbled forward into the panel of the elevator, everything spinning.
Big Ugly smiled and set off across the lobby while I slid to the floor.
“Jesus. Are you alright?”
I was flat on my ass, the head-spins still out of control. Somehow I’d stuck a leg out to stop the doors from closing, probably the only reason the security guard from the front desk even came over.
“Some guy mugged us. Check on my boss.” My double vision was brutal, and blood was dripping freely from a cut on my forehead. Clay was slumped over in the corner of the elevator car.
“Clay, are you okay?”
The guard knelt before Clay, and I could hear him whispering. Clay gasping out a response, and the guard’s face paled. He turned and mouthed to me: “I think he’s having a heart attack.”
CHAPTER 2
I wanted to call for an ambulance. Call the cops. But despite the pain, Clay was stubborn. He asked me to flag a cab, and minutes later we were in the Emergency Ward at Toronto General. After they heard his symptoms, Clay went to the front of the line.
The waiting area in Emergency was quiet by inner-city standards. Amongst the wailing kids and drunk university students, a kid wearing a crop top and low cut denim shorts was slumped in a chair, the tracks on the inside of her arm visible from across the hall. Opposite her sat a businessman, a guy in his fifties wearing a rumpled suit with his tie tugged loose. He was cradling his left hand, a large pair of scissors buried to the handles into his palm.