by Donald Bain
‘I already paid for the beer and—’
Another man seated at the stage apron asked his friend, ‘What’d he do?’
‘He stiffed Monique.’
‘What?’ He leaned across his friend and snarled at Smythe, his words slurred, ‘What are you, a troublemaker?’
‘No, I—’
Smythe was gripped by the sudden tension, and decided to beat a hasty retreat. He didn’t need to become involved in a fracas in such a dive; the thought of the police being called knotted his stomach. ‘Let’s go,’ he told Saison.
Smythe stood, but the Toronto baseball fan clasped a large hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat.
‘Get your hand off me,’ Smythe said.
Saison got between Smythe and the man in the baseball hat and said to him, ‘Imbécile! Ours puant!’
‘What’d you call me?’ the baseball fan said as he got to his feet.
‘Please, Paul, let’s go,’ Smythe implored.
Saison was shoved in the chest. ‘What’d you call me, you fucking Frog?’
Saison shoved back. Now he was confronted by the two customers.
Smythe grabbed Saison by the sleeve and yanked, but the big Frenchman didn’t budge.
‘Son-a-bitch didn’t tip Monique.’
‘Excuse my friend,’ Smythe said, flashing a smile and trying to sound like the voice of reason, a diplomat. ‘He’s had a little too much to drink and—’
The large man in a suit who’d greeted Smythe as he entered the club suddenly appeared. ‘You have a problem?’ he asked Smythe.
‘What? I can’t hear with this music.’
‘The young lady did something wrong?’ the man asked.
‘What?’
The manager turned to Saison. ‘Get out ‘a here,’ he bellowed. ‘You stink to high heaven.’
‘He didn’t tip me,’ the waitress said.
‘That’s right,’ Saison said. ‘My friend forgot to give her a tip, huh?’ He said to Smythe, ‘She wants her tip.’
‘But I already paid her thirty dollars,’ Smythe said. ‘For two beers.’
‘The young lady works for tips,’ the man said.
‘That may be true, but thirty dollars for two beers? That’s outrageous.’
A second man in a suit approached. ‘Problem?’ he asked.
The first man said, ‘He’s complaining about the price for the beers and won’t tip Monique.’
‘Just a mistake,’ Smythe said, a sheepish grin on his face. ‘Everything is fine, just fine.’ He elbowed Saison in the ribs. ‘Let’s go.’
The appearance of the two burly men cut into Saison’s bravado. ‘Some money for her, Smythe,’ Saison said into his ear. ‘Give her some money.’
Smythe handed Monique a five dollar bill, which seemed to satisfy her and her bosses. They stepped aside and allowed Smythe and Saison to leave.
Smythe said as they walked to his car, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. What a way to run a business. Why do you come to a filthy rattrap like this, Paul?’
‘The girls, Smythe, the girls. Hey, what are you now, some sort of sissy boy, huh?’
‘Disgusting,’ Smythe said. ‘Absolutely disgusting.’
‘What is?’
‘That … that place.’
Saison shrugged, leaned against the car, took a swig from his pint bottle and lit a cigarette. ‘So, why do you want to see me tonight?’
‘I’ll drive you home and tell you when we’re there. You’re sure Angelique won’t be there?’
‘No, she stays with her sister overnight. Two witches. OK, we go home and you tell me what’s on your mind, huh?’
They sat at Saison’s kitchen table. Saison poured himself a glass of wine, Smythe declined the offer. He said slowly, in a low tone, ‘It’s time, Paul.’
‘What’s time?’
‘To put our plan into action.’
Smythe pulled an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to the Frenchman. Saison opened it and his eyes widened. ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’
‘Five thousand dollars, Paul. A down payment.’
‘Is all?’
Smythe kept his annoyance in check. ‘Two weeks from this Friday night, August twenty-two, at nine forty-five,’ he said. ‘That’s when you pull the switch, not a second before or a second after. We’ll meet again next week to finalize the plan. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, of course I understand. What do you think I am, some Borné? Some moron?’
‘Of course not, Paul. It’s just that … well, it’s just that this is the most important thing you or I will ever do in our lives. It can’t fail. Everything must be done perfectly, no mistakes, no slip-ups. I’m depending on you, Paul. I have faith in you.’
Saison grinned at the compliment. ‘Hey, Smythe, you can count on me. You know that, huh?’
‘Yes, I know that, Paul. You have to be sure that you’re scheduled to work that night, change your schedule if necessary. I also suggest that you not drink.’
Saison adopted an exaggerated look of hurt. ‘Why you have to tell me that, Smythe? What do you think, that I drink too much?’
‘No, not at all, Paul, but you’ll have to be thinking extremely clearly that night. Just that night, Paul. Once you’ve shut down the plant you can leave Toronto, go to Montreal or Paris, go anywhere in the world you want to, drink and make love to pretty women, enjoy your life. But on Friday night, the twenty-second, you must be sober. Understand?’
‘OK, OK, Smythe.’
‘Good.’ Smythe pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket, wrote on it, ‘Friday, August twenty-two, nine forty-five pm,’ and handed it to Saison. ‘Just a reminder,’ he said.
The hulking Frenchman tucked the paper in his shirt pocket, refilled his glass, and started to pour into the empty glass in front of Smythe. ‘Come on, Smythe, drink up. We celebrate.’
Smythe stood and said, ‘No, I have to be going.’ As he headed for the door his cell phone rang.
‘Smythe? It’s Dom Martone. You called?’
‘Oh, yes. Thanks for getting back to me. I, ah, I really can’t talk now.’
‘That’s OK, pal. I want you to come to the restaurant.’
‘The one we met in before?’
‘That’s the one, pal. A half hour. Can you make it?’
‘Yes, I’ll be there.’
Saison laughed after Smythe had ended the call. ‘A lady calls you, huh?’
‘Ah, yes, Paul, a lady. I’ll be in touch again soon.’
THIRTEEN
Smythe arrived at Martone’s restaurant at a little before nine. The pizza parlor in front was virtually empty; only two tables were occupied. As Smythe came through the doors the faint sound of a tenor voice singing an aria from a familiar opera came through the brick back wall. Smythe tried to identify the opera but couldn’t come up with the name. The pizza parlor manager approached. ‘A table?’ he asked.
‘No. I’m here to see Mr Martone. He’s expecting me.’
The manager went to the rear door and knocked. Hugo answered. The manager whispered something to him. Hugo squinted at Smythe to verify that he was a familiar face. He motioned, and Smythe entered the back room where the music was now louder. Hugo shut the door and retreated to the corner where his skinny partner sat.
Martone was seated at the table. A white napkin was tucked into his shirt collar, and he sang along with the recorded aria. Smythe took the second chair.
‘You know this opera of course,’ Martone said.
‘Oh, sure, of course I do.’
‘Rigoletto,’ Martone said. ‘Verdi. La donna e mobile.’ He picked up where he had left off and accompanied the tenor in a voice that surprised Smythe. He sounded as good to him as anyone he’d heard sing at the musicales at the house. The aria ended and Martone laughed while surreptitiously dabbing at one eye.
‘So, what’s up?’ Martone asked.
‘I’m ready to move with our project.’
&n
bsp; ‘Good, good, like to hear that.’
Smythe looked back at Hugo and his colleague before saying to Martone, ‘Could we talk someplace more private?’
‘These are my associates, Smythe. Don’t worry about them.’
Smythe nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘The date is set.’
‘Good. What is it?’
Smythe extended his hands palms-up, like Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
Martone grinned. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, ‘You want the money.’ He abruptly stood and waved his two bodyguards from the room.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now we get down to brass tacks as they say. You have the date the lights go out. I have the million bucks for that information.’
Smythe corrected, ‘A million, two hundred fifty thousand.’
Martone laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t shorting you, Smythe. A million two fifty less the fifty Gs I gave you.’
‘Of course. I haven’t forgotten that. Do you have the money with you?’
Another laugh from the Mafia boss. ‘Oh, sure, Smythe. It’s in my pocket. You know what I think?’
‘What?’
‘I think that you may be some sort ‘a genius, setting up this blackout and all, but you’re also dumb as hell.’
Smythe said nothing.
‘You know how big a bundle a million bucks makes? I’d say it’s around four cubic feet.’ He gestured with his hands to indicate how high and wide that was. ‘It maybe weighs twenty, twenty-five pounds. You think I walk around with a fucking wheelbarrow filled with hundred dollar bills?’
‘No, Dom, I—’
‘But forget about me walking down the street with a wheelbarrow. What about you, Smythe? What the hell are you goin’ to do with a pile like that? What do you think, pal, that I’ll give you an envelope full ‘a ten thousand dollar bills? Ha! You know the biggest bill we got here in Canada? A hundred. Used to be there were bigger bills but no more. Hundreds. That’s the biggest bills we got. So how many of those bills do you figure you’ll be hauling around? Do the math, Smythe. Ten thousand hundred-dollar bills. Four cubic feet of greenbacks, twenty, twenty-five pounds. So tell me, Smythe, what the fuck are you goin’ to do with that? Take it to some bank? Forget about it. Anything over ten Gs they report it to the feds. You gotta launder it, Smythe. Not that it’s my business. Hell, I give you money and you’re on your own. What the fuck do I care what you do with it? But I like you, Smythe. I just figured that I’d give you some free advice.’
‘And I … well, I appreciate that, Dom.’
‘I got another question. You intend to hang around Toronto once this thing goes down?’
‘No, I—’
‘But you got a wife, a nice lady, loves opera, does a good job with the COC. She know what you’re doing?’
‘Oh, no, of course not. The truth is that once I have the money I plan to leave, go someplace far away. You see, Dom, our marriage isn’t a happy one. Cynthia is a—’
‘You’ve got problems with her?’
‘Yes, I suppose that you could say that.’
‘She’ll make trouble for you once you split?’
‘Oh, yes, I mean she will … make trouble for me. But I’ll be far away and—’
Martone reached across the table and placed his hand on Smythe’s arm. ‘I gotta admit something to you, Smythe. At first I had my … well, what you’d call my reservations. I mean, you come off like a nice guy and all but I thought you might be a little … a little whack-a-ding-hoy.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nuts. It’s a Chinaman’s expression. Not all there. Anyway, I’ve got a different view of you now. I like you, Smythe, almost like you were family.’
‘That’s really nice, Dom. Thank you.’
‘And because I like you like family I can take care of your wife if you want.’
‘Take care of her?’
Martone winked. ‘Look, pal, sometimes things have to be done because things have to be done. Capisce?’
‘Are you suggesting that—?’
Martone raised his hand as though to signal that Smythe should stop talking. ‘All I’m saying is that since you won’t be hanging around to let your family enjoy the money – and you know how much I believe in family – that your wife might be in a position to make it tough on you, maybe even testify against you. That wouldn’t be good for you Smythe – or for me.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’
‘Get off your high horse, Smythe. Just think about what I said. I know some people who take care of this sort ‘a thing, and it don’t cost much, ten, fifteen Gs tops.’
Smythe worked hard to calm his frazzled nerves. When he felt that he had, he said, ‘I was going to ask you, Dom, to make sure that no one is ever hurt in our joint endeavor, no one physically hurt that is. If I thought that that was even a possibility I—’
Martone stared at Smythe.
‘No offense,’ Smythe quickly added, ‘but it is important to me that the only damage done is monetary.’
Martone’s face softened into what passed for an understanding grin, which calmed Smythe. The Mafia chieftain stood, came around the table, and placed his hands on Smythe’s bony shoulders. His fingers dug into them, and Smythe winced against the pain. Martone leaned over and said into his ear, ‘You got to stop worrying, Smythe. Tell you what. You tell me where to deliver the money tomorrow. I deliver it and you give me the time and date. How’s that sound?’
‘That sounds fine, Dom.’
Martone released his grip and went to the door. ‘Where do you want the loot delivered?’
Smythe gave him the address of his rented office.
‘Two o’clock,’ Martone said. ‘I won’t personally be there. My associates will deliver it. Anybody asks, you say it’s books in the package. When my associates deliver the money, you give them a sealed envelope that has the date and time inside. We understand each other?’
‘Oh, yes, we do,’ Smythe said, standing. ‘It sounds like a good plan.’
‘One other thing. I already started contacting business associates of mine about buying in. One of them – he’s a big man in Philadelphia – wants to personally meet my partner. Same with a business associate in Baltimore. I told them no problem. We can do it in one day, day after tomorrow.’ He laughed. ‘This time it’s me who gives the time and place. Keep the date open. I’ll be in touch. Oh, by the way, pal, COC is having another fundraiser tomorrow night. Maybe you’d like to drop by and donate a few grand. Be sure to get a receipt. It’s tax-deductable.’
Smythe stopped by his rented office on the way home. Gina had sent an email in which she gave him the name and contact information of her ‘banker friend’. She assured Smythe that her friend had many contacts, and could be trusted to deposit any monies sent to him for their joint account. Smythe emailed back, thanked her, and signed off with a string of endearing phrases.
As he got in the car and headed home he thought about his meeting with Martone. The Mafioso’s suggestion that Cynthia be hurt in some way was worse than unsettling, but he was confident that he’d made his point about no one being physically injured. He then thought about tomorrow when a million dollars plus would be delivered to him. That thought spawned giggles, and he had to fight to maintain control of the car.
Dominick Martone was also giddy as he sat in the rear seat of the Town Car driven by Hugo and his second ‘associate’. He’d already more than covered his investment with Smythe through pledges from compatriots in Buffalo, Boston, and Detroit. In fact, he was already into a profit – almost two million above what he would pay Smythe. And with many more cities to pitch, including Baltimore and Philadelphia where he would travel with Smythe in two days, that profit would grow.
Of course, it all depended upon Smythe coming through with the blackout as promised.
If he didn’t …
FOURTEEN
Clarence Miller III sat in his white panel truck with ‘Miller – Electrical Contractor’ written in large re
d letters on the sides. He had two such trucks to use when on a case. The other was painted black and its white sign read ‘Miller – The Happy Exterminator.’ A nondescript black sedan was parked next to the truck. An employee at Miller Discreet Investigations had left it there to give Clarence a choice of vehicles to use should he choose to continue following his subject, Carlton Smythe.
Clarence had inherited the private investigation agency six years ago from his father, who’d died with his boots on so to speak. The elder Miller had been wearing the sort of chest waders used by trout fishermen while conducting surveillance on a contractor suspected of polluting a river. He’d suffered a mild heart attack, which wouldn’t have been fatal had he been able to seek medical assistance. But the sudden pain in his chest and left arm caused him to lose his footing and to fall into the stream. The waders soon filled up and, as the death certificate read, he’d died of drowning.
Clarence’s older brother had wanted nothing to do with the agency – he considered himself a poet and novelist and had fled to Hawaii – leaving the agency, which was quite successful, to the younger Clarence.
He was parked in the parking lot in front of the building in which Carlton Smythe had rented a temporary office. It was one in the afternoon. He’d seen Smythe enter the building a few minutes earlier. Now, he would wait until his subject reappeared and would follow him to wherever he went next. He didn’t mind the long waits while conducting surveillance. Other private detectives he knew hated that aspect of the job, but Clarence considered long stakeouts to be time for reflection, to keep up with his reports, and to play Angry Birds on his iPad.
On this day he wrote in the log he’d started when taking on the Smythe case. He’d promised Mrs Carlton Smythe and her mother that his reports to them would be detailed and frequent, and Clarence Miller always kept his word.
He’d commenced shadowing Smythe late afternoon on the previous day. His notes from that day, with times and dates accurately recorded, as well as weather conditions, read:
Entered office rental building at 2:27pm (obviously rents space there, will check) – exited building at 5:11pm – got in car. I followed. Subject drove to shopping center near Power-Con electric utility – parked in front of Panda Gardens, Chinese restaurant – waited 15 minutes before a large man with greasy hair and beard stubble came from restaurant and got in subject’s car. Subject drove for 15 minutes before turning into parking lot in front of a strip club, Bubs. Subject and unidentified male (check identity) entered club, came from club 29 minutes later – took telephoto of both men while standing outside subject’s car – seemed upset – left parking lot and went to a rundown 3-story apartment building in French section – went inside – checked names in lobby. Observed them through window on 3rd floor – only name with apartment on 3rd floor is Paul Saison – subject exited at 8:20pm – drove to Martone’s pizza restaurant on St Clair in Italian section – exited 24 minutes later – drove to office rental building – was inside 17 minutes. Subject left and drove home – weather partly cloudy with occasional breaks of sun.