Looking for Henry Turner

by W. L. Liberman

  “I'll have your handkerchief laundered and sent on to you, Mr. Gold. Good day to you. Good day to both of you.” She turned her attention back to her broken daughter and forgot we were there.

  “Creepy,” Birdie said as we strode down the walk.

  “Brother, you can say that again.” I lit a Sweet Cap and inhaled it like it was the first fresh air I'd sucked into my lungs in a long, long time. “Don't say it,” I said.

  Birdie shook his head but he smiled.

  Back in the Chevy, I turned to him and said, “What have we got?”

  “Not much, man, not much.”

  And it was true. Henry was still missing. I could still see the red blood on the sparkling white carpet.

  35

  That night, I sat on my sofa with a bottle of Johnny Walker, a glass and the radio for company. I let Birdie be, doing whatever he did when he went on his own. So the Sorenson girl scrambled her marbles. Something had to fracture her personality. I'd seen guys in the war who'd broken down like that. Nerves shattered into little pieces. What or who had happened to her? I felt restless and edgy, couldn't get settled. Ying's sister hid out there somewhere. I thought about taking another slug but set the bottle aside. Where to go from here? And then I had a thought. Occasionally, it happened.

  He wouldn't be happy but sometimes it's safer and more discreet to talk to a cop at home than out in the street. I grabbed my coat, my piece and my keys and headed down to the back lot. I fired up the Chevy and nosed her down the alley. King Street kept fairly quiet that time of night, getting on toward eleven-thirty.

  As I edged out into the street and swung east, I noticed a car with its lights dimmed, pull away from the curb. Looked like a Buick Roadmaster but it hung back far enough to make it difficult for me to see in the rearview. That would be John's boys keeping tabs on me. Another pair of headlights came on facing the opposite direction just as I approached Bathurst Street. The car, a large, dark sedan, possibly a Ford Fairlane, pulled a U-turn and dropped comfortably in behind the Buick. No one seemed to be in a rush. Everyone relaxed and took their time.

  I figured the dark sedan belonged to Tobin. Everybody present and accounted for. I let them tail me as far as Yonge Street. I turned south on Yonge and just as the light changed to red at Wellington, I jack-rabbited through the light leaping west. I turned sharply into an alleyway, pulled over in front of a dumpster and killed the lights keeping my eyes on the side view mirror. The Buick and the dark sedan sped past. I gave them a moment figuring they'd double back. I spotted the Buick go by retracing its route on King. The dark sedan sniffed at its heels. I eased the Chevy up the alley and took a good look in both directions up and down King Street. Then turned west on King moving quickly away from the centre of town.

  I rapped on the screen door. A moment later the porch light came on.

  Callaway glared at me through the screen.

  “I'm in a bit of a jam,” I said.

  “What else is new?” he replied.

  “Can I come in?”

  A voice I knew belonged to Florence, his wife, sounded behind him. He turned and barked something then beckoned me in. He took a quick look up and down the street as he held the screen door open.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “We got mosquitoes in this part of town.”

  “Don't worry,” I replied. “I didn't bring any company.”

  Callaway closed the door and switched off the porch light.

  “Better be good, Mo. Drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  We stood on the threshold of a small living room stuffed with rumpled sofas and chairs. A crumpled newspaper had fallen on the graying carpet. I smelled fried fish. I followed his burly back past the living room, through the compact dining room to the rear of the house and the den. Callaway's private sanctuary, I surmised by the state of it. Hadn't been dusted in months and carried the fuggy smell of cigars and sweaty socks.

  “When's the last time you opened a window in here?” I asked.

  “Remember, I didn't invite you over,” he said and gestured to a cracked leather chair. He plunked his bulk down on to the love seat.

  I pulled out the pack of Sweet Caps and held them out with a quizzical look. Callaway nodded. He reached down to the floor and tossed me an ashtray. Fortunately, it had been cleaned.

  “What gives?” he asked.

  I took a good hit on the fag and quickly summed up what we'd found in terms of the Chinese girl–nothing basically. I told him Jake's tidbit and Callaway flinched. Then I mentioned Eli and his particular circumstances. “You sure you want to stay part of that family,” Callaway said when I'd finished.

  I shrugged. “Hard to divorce your family. Jake, I got no time for but my kid brother, well, he's a schmuck but for some reason he thinks he's the old man. He's not a bad guy, just reckless and stupid. Anyway, if what Jake says has any truth in it, then the only way to find the girl is to find the cop who has her.”

  “So you came to me thinking I would finger the guy for you?”

  “Ying was your snitch. That means, you have a connection, almost a responsibility to the guy. I know what that means.”

  Callaway sighed and ran thick fingers through his hair digging the nails into his scalp. “Yeah. Some guys might feel that way.” He paused, chewing something over in his own mind. “I been looking at some old case files,” he said. “Trying to cross reference the ones connected to John and the cops who worked them. See which names kept cropping up. Maybe then I can find the guy who ratted out Ying.”

  “Any luck?” Jake mentioned that John Fat Gai had his hooks into the force and given the pay scale, it wasn't a surprise some guys would be interested in a little extra dough for dropping a hint or making a phone call. You don't get rich if you're an honest cop.

  “That's the problem,” Callaway said. “Too many names. If I'm right then half the precinct is on the pad, one way or the other.”

  “So what have you got?” I asked.

  “Could be any one of about eight guys or maybe all of them. I don't know,” Callaway said. “There's no evidence, at least, not yet. I can't do this on my own. If the Super found out, he'd have my badge.”

  “His name's not there, is it?”

  Callaway shook his head. “Not yet,” he smirked.

  “Let me and Birdie take a look. We'll keep you out of it so there's no blow back.”

  “I don't know,” Callaway said.

  “Listen, I've got three days until we find Eli's body parts or the girl. I'd rather it was the girl.”

  “John won't let her live, you know that,” Callaway said.

  “We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. First things first. Gotta find her or…”

  “Or what?”

  I looked at him carefully. “You don't want to know,” I said. “I can't let John hurt him. You know what that could mean.”

  “The War's over,” Callaway said quietly.

  “Maybe it is and maybe it isn't,” I replied. “Let's see what you've got.”

  Callaway sighed again but finally nodded. His knees cracked when he stood up. He went over to the sideboard, took out a small key ring, found the one he wanted and unlocked it. A stack of files lay where there should have been bottles. He shifted the files, dropped them on to the coffee table in front of me and shut the sideboard back up.

  “I hear your old man disappeared again. Took Tobin by surprise.” He smiled thinly.

  “Yeah, Jake is nimbler than I thought. Say, what's the case Tobin's working on? What's Jake go to do with it?”

  Callaway's face sprung open in surprise. “You mean you don't know?” I shook my head. “Jake is Tobin's star witness. He's supposed to be testifying for the Crown against John Fat Gai in a racketeering case. Gambling and loan sharking plus some prostitution. Your old man fronted one of the joints for John, one that catered to a white clientele and rumour has it they split the profits between them. Then Jake got pinched on the manslaughter beef and the Crown wants to put him away fore
ver but your old man cut a deal.”

  “Well, Jake kept his business to himself. I didn't want to know about it.” I thought for a moment. “Swell. With Jake and the girl missing, Eli is as good as dead. He probably thinks he can save the day, the schmuck.”

  “That's only if you look at the bright side,” Callaway said and smiled grimly.

  I started leafing through the first file. “One of those joints John ran. There wasn't one down by the docks called Blackstones by any chance, was there?”

  Callaway grunted in surprise. “Was and is. The place is still open for business.”

  “Where is it?”

  Callaway shrugged. “Not sure. Down by the waterfront, off Cherry Street somewhere.”

  I wanted to find this place–Blackstones and I wanted to find it pronto. We spent a couple of hours going through the case files. As I went through them, I made notes to take away and mull over. Then it hit me. I snapped my fingers. I knew who could take me to Blackstones.

  I fired up the Chevy and found my way to Caledonia and the Callaway kid's house. He pulled away from the curb as I drove up, manhandling a clapped out Edsel that belched black smoke every time he changed gears. I turned around and followed him. He drove west on St. Clair then hooked a left on Old Weston Road heading south toward the industrial section of the west end. As he continued, the houses became smaller and meaner and run down–they turned into slums, each decaying building had a sad, sick air. Gradually, the houses cleared out taken over by factories.

  The traffic had faded now. I kept a block back and dimmed the headlights. Rance turned down a laneway and I rolled to a stop. I slid out of the Chevy and clicked the door shut and locked it. I headed down the laneway keeping to the shadows. I unholstered the snub .38 I'd brought along for company. I didn't like laneways particularly because bad things often happened in them, especially late at night. I crept as close as I could.

  A truck sat hunched in the laneway. The back doors had been lifted off and set along the side of the warehouse while the canvas tarp had been rolled back a bit. It was a warm night and I could imagine the inside of the back of the truck must have been sweltering. Nothing like canvas to keep the air close and dank.

  Birdie and I lived in a canvas tent for almost three years and nothing about it was enjoyable. In the winter, you froze your nuts, in the wet, you slept in sop and in the summer you couldn't breath and the canvas stank. Only in the cool, clear weather of autumn were the damn things tolerable. And that didn't last long before conditions turned miserable again. Army life. Couldn't beat it, man.

  I heard the murmur of voices and some smothered laughter. Rance and another guy hauled cases and loaded them on to the truck. The loading door had been lifted and the cases stood over six feet high and plenty deep. I didn't see the Edsel so the Callaway kid must have stashed it somewhere. As the kid hefted a wooden case onto the truck's tail, I heard the pinging of glass and I knew what they were loading.

  While Rance could only manage one case at a time, his buddy carried two. And that's because he was a big sonofabitch and he looked damned familiar. I wracked my brain staring at them through the gloom. I recalled the low whistling as he came up his walk carrying a lunch pail jammed under his arm, and remembered the lupine features and the wary eyes. I remembered the fear in her voice when she spotted him and how quickly she fled inside the house. I saw the grey yard and the sagging line of laundry. A big guy with a hairy chest and a cruel expression. I pegged him now–Steve O'Rourke–Rochelle Dodson's man.

  I zipped across the lane to the other side so I could get a better angle and saw a lot of cases had yet to be loaded. In fact, Rance climbed into the back of the truck and began shifting them further to the front to make more room. That told me they'd be a while.

  I remembered a phone box about half a block away and slipped into the darkness to make a call. Walnut 4-2134. Birdie's contact number. I dropped a dime into the slot. I told the guy on the other end where Birdie should have the cab drop him off and how far he had to walk in. I checked my watch and suggested he tell Birdie to make it snappy. The guy on the line said, okay, he'd pass the message along and the line went dead. I hung up and went back to my listening post. Well, well. Steve O'Rourke. This got better and better.

  Just about 30 minutes later, I felt his presence before I saw him. Birdie moved like a cat, sure-footed and silent. By the time I looked over my shoulder, he had crouched down beside me.

  “Quick enough for you,” he whispered.

  “Sure,” I said. “Didn't think you'd want to miss out on this. Take a look.” Birdie peered into the gloom for a long moment.

  “Who's that with the kid,” he muttered. He could only see O'Rourke from the back as he handed up wooden cases to Callaway's nephew. The kid grunted each time he hefted one, bending at the waist as he disappeared toward the front of the truck. Finally, the penny dropped.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he intoned. “God is merciful, merciful indeed.”

  I almost expected him to break out in a round of hand clapping and hymns but he didn't. “You see,” I said. “Good things happen to those who wait.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  We watched them hefting cases for another hour. Rance huffed and sweated but O'Rourke merely mopped his Neanderthal brow with a kerchief he'd tied loosely around his neck. He'd stripped down to a singlet and I could see the muscles bunch tightly under his hairy shoulders as he lifted the cases upward. He stopped and lit a fag but otherwise kept moving like a machine with a full tank of oil. As stevedores go, he made a good one. I wondered about the destination of the cargo.

  Finally, O'Rourke nodded and Rance jumped down from the tailgate. His face and neck ringed with grime and sweat. O'Rourke lifted the doors and slotted them into the back of the truck ramming the pins home. From his pants pocket, he drew out a padlock and clipped it through the pins to hold them in place. Those old GM trucks bounced a lot. I remembered from the War, the doors could shoot right out of the slots and hit the ground behind. Then the cargo was fair game. Clearly, O'Rourke didn't take any chances.

  The kid lit up and went around to the passenger side of the tarp truck. I tugged at Birdie's sleeve and we faded back out of the alley to the Chevy. We got in and I turned the engine over leaving the lights off. I backed out the way I came and parked around the corner with the engine idling. We didn't have to wait long. The truck chugged slowly through the laneway poking its nose out into the street. Its springs had seen better days and with the load it carried, the undercarriage rode halfway down the wheel wells. Not only that but it listed badly to the passenger side. I knew that the maximum speed on a truck like that was maybe 60 miles per hour but with the cargo in the back, O'Rourke would be lucky to get it up to 50 and that would be pushing it. The truck made a right turn and trundled off down the street. I let it go for almost a block before I pulled away from the curb.

  “Heading for the lakeshore,” Birdie murmured.

  “Looks like it.”

  The truck meandered through city streets before turning down Dufferin Street near the entrance to the Exhibition grounds and gunned it. At least, I heard the engine strain as O'Rourke pushed the pedal but it didn't seem to make much difference. At this rate, he might blow a gasket. We passed the occasional cabby or patrol car. I dropped back as far as I could while still keeping him within eye contact.

  I rolled down the window and sniffed.

  The water in the harbour resembled a dank, murky oil slick from all the ships and boats that passed through. Yet, every summer, residents flocked to the beaches in the east and west ends and on the islands, parking white bodies on grit, putting their toes in the frigid lake. I smelled the distinct odour of wet rot from driftwood washed up on the shore, dead fish, weeds and surface scum mashed into a sickly sweet perfume. Throw in the barley and hops from the Molson's brewery and the air stoked into an unmistakably potent mix.

  We headed east on the Lakeshore passing under the steel and concrete overpass of the Gardiner Express
way. At Parliament, the truck turned right heading closer to the lake. Gulls shrieked over the water. I pulled over and let it go for a moment, watching its taillights fade into the dusk then followed. The air grew thicker here and I rolled the window back up. The truck took a left on a dusty dirt track. I stopped at the corner and shut off the engine. “We'd better go on foot from here,” I said.

  We stepped out of the car and closed the doors quietly. Sound carried at night and carried even better over water. Along the dirt track we spotted two rows of low concrete buildings. We kept close to the walls and traversed going from one to the other. I looked for the truck. After the fourth building, I spotted a sign, Warehouse 14. I peeked around a corner and saw the truck backed up to a loading dock. We stood still in the shadows.

  “Let's get a mite closer,” I said. Birdie nodded and we shimmied along until we positioned ourselves opposite the loading area. In front of us sat a wide metal bin for dumping trash. We crouched behind it. It didn't sound like they wasted any time. I heard low voices and the clinking of glass. More than two voices this time, quite a few more. Then he came around the front of the truck walking slowly, keeping a look out. He cradled a machine gun in his arms casually. As he lit a fag, the flame caught his face. I had pretty good night vision and unless I was sorely mistaken, it appeared to be my good friend from John's little gang. Birdie nudged me.

  “It's your second best friend,” he hissed. I nodded and grinned. The fact that John seemed mixed up in this didn't surprise. The surprise came in the form of Callaway's nephew and O'Rourke being part of it. I didn't like the thought of having to spill the news to Callaway. He wouldn't take it well. As for O'Rourke, it just gave Birdie another reason to hate him and he'd plenty of incentive already.

  “Let's go,” I said.

  “What?” Birdie was surprised.

  “Nothing more we can do here.”

  “But…”

  “In case you hadn't noticed,” I said. “They have machine guns.”

  “So?”