Torque

by Glenn Muller

  That left one item. A clear plastic sleeve about three inches wide contained a die-cut piece of vinyl the thickness of a fridge magnet. The shape, known as a butterfly, was basically rectangular. On one side, thin black and white stripes ran diagonally across the ‘wings’. The other side had backing paper over a layer of adhesive. Reis needed only a second to realize what it was.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  She threw the empty wallet against the windshield then froze when she heard a rattling of keys beside her door. It was the coroner—Collins? Collard?—getting into the car beside her. He’d seen the piles of bills on the seat. His look of disapproval said ‘typical lawyer’, but the voice penetrating the glass said, “That spot is for hospital staff only. No exceptions!”

  The blow of percussion from the heavy door of his Lincoln rocked her car, then with more acceleration than was necessary he left her sitting next to an empty space. Before the sedan’s taillights had blazed a path to the exit, Reis had the wallet re-stuffed and into her briefcase.

  She snatched up Aird's keys as the lid fell and flipped through them. The doctor might not approve but Roger Aird now belonged to her. More specifically, she now owned his stake in their joint venture. The last few hours had required some deft maneuvering but she’d always planned to cut Aird loose when the time was right. And the black and white patch suggested that the timing of his death, while premature, was not as inconvenient as she had first thought.

  There was still work to do, and some elements would be harder to accomplish now he was gone, but she’d come too far to be stalled by a dead fat guy.

  “You may have checked out, Aird,” she said, carefully selecting one key from the others. “But you owe me and you’d better believe that you’re going to pay me.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Roger Aird’s address was that of a one-storey pigsty in Hamilton's industrial North End. Its neighbour was a mere two metres to the east. There were train tracks to the west and a bottle factory across the road. Fifteen minutes after leaving the hospital Reis parked street-side and toggled the BMW's alarm. It was five paces from the curb to the front door and the first key she tried unlocked it.

  She flicked the hall switch and a bare bulb revealed that the place had changed little in the past two months. Habitual neglect was still the theme though now it had the added air of disposal. The living room had the usual trappings of the bachelor pad; overstuffed recliner chair and matching leather sofa, multi-component entertainment centre with monolithic speakers, and dust on all surfaces save for those that had been recently sat on or brushed against.

  Her eyes were drawn to the pressboard bookshelf against the back wall. It still held a few paperbacks and hardbound volumes as well as a smattering of unrelated items: mug, screwdriver, and an empty shoebox. But something was different. There was a bare shelf where a computer monitor used to sit. The processing unit had been in the closed storage area beneath and a keyboard kept on top of that. All were absent, and that was too bad. Computers were good sources of information.

  Stepping over trash on the floor she crossed to the kitchen and gave it a perfunctory glance. Dirty linoleum. Dirty counter. Dirty sink. Dirty window. She never could understand how the guy, who had been trained to work in a sterile environment, could choose to live like this. She turned her attention to the rest of the house.

  Across the living room, on the opposite wall, an empty doorframe left no doubt as to where the bathroom was. The missing door, now a makeshift table on top of two kitchen chairs, held a grease-stained pizza box and a scattering of dog-eared magazines with the theme of either science or sex.

  The small bedroom had grimy walls, an unhinged closet door, and a soot-covered window overlooking the tracks. Above the unmade bed a large brown watermark stained the ceiling. Naked, her clothes scissored to shreds, she’d once spent several hours watching that ugly stain swirl and morph into shapes both grand and grotesque while Aird’s narcotic cocktail had made her pliable to whatever his perverse imagination had come up with. That had been part of the bargain. Bargain was not the right word—agreement. He hadn’t been cruel, but the memory of that session made her shudder and she turned to leave.

  Her spiked heel caught the corner of a sheet lying on the floor. She looked down and spied the monitor of the missing computer half-buried by a pile of dirty clothes beside the bed. An odd place for it to be, yet it sat on the processing unit and the whole setup whirred to life when she hit the power switch.

  The set was so ancient it had a slot for the original 8” floppy discs. Alphanumeric code scrolled pedantically down the green screen as the CPU processed a memory check and boot operation. Reis slipped off her jacket, grabbed a pillow from the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor to wait. The floppy drive whirred and lines of a simple Autoexec.bat file appeared. Soon, the flashing cursor came to rest at a C:> prompt. There were no user-friendly icons. Not even a mouse to navigate the screen. All input would have to be via the keyboard, which Reis put on her lap.

  It had been eons since she’d last typed DOS commands, but remembering the fundamentals she keyed DIR /P and, after a moment, a short list of simple programs for creating documents, spreadsheets, and simple databases appeared. It was unlikely that Aird would have used this relic for lab work, but some file dates were within the past month and could shed light on what her ex-partner had been up to.

  There were income and expense details, including bank transactions from the previous week. The numbers would make more sense if she had a bank statement printout and Reis remembered there were documents in the living room. She made to get up but instead of pushing off the hardwood floor her hand settled onto a moist crusty mass. With a cry of disgust, she ripped the blanket from the bed and quickly rubbed the sickening mess off her palm.

  “I'll have you buried in a cesspit, for that, you bugger!” She cast her anger at the ceiling watermark then threw the blanket across the room. She rose carefully and tiptoed her way to the open-concept loo. Apart from a sliver of soap and cold rusty water, the bathroom had little to offer. The medicine cabinet held only a bottle of diabetic medication, a tube of hemorrhoid cream, and a toothbrush. No toothpaste.

  She picked her way to the kitchen and helped herself to a beer from the dead man's fridge. Standing in the doorway, hand on hip, Reis took a long swig and surveyed the living room once more.

  The bookcase had a drawer crammed with utility bills and miscellaneous chits of everyday life. Among them, two bankbooks, several pay stubs, and a series of cancelled cheques. She dumped them into the shoebox and went back to the computer in the bedroom. The cheques were all for rent payments and nothing in either the bank statements or pay stubs would have raised so much as an eyebrow with an auditor, yet Reis knew more than two hundred thousand dollars had been funneled Aird’s way.

  And he hadn’t spent it on redecorating. So what had he done with it?

  She adjusted the pillow and over the next two hours delved deeper into the computer’s list of files. One directory held a timetable with dollar amounts that coincided with the payments Aird had been given to develop the patches. Another had a text file that described bonding values of chemical combinations. The most intriguing reference, however, was to the catalogue number of a compact disc, and its storage location at Simedyne Corporation. Simedyne was the Hamilton-based research facility where Aird was employed.

  Obviously, the old computer had only been used as an electronic scratchpad. Any serious work—company-approved or otherwise—Aird would have stored on the compact disc. The vinyl patch proved the product was production-ready but the formula was the cornerstone of the project. With both, she could market the concept to any crime syndicate that controlled the street drug trade. From what Aird had told her, some of the West Coast groups had state of the art labs.

  Reis stood up and stretched. Retrieving the disc would take finesse. Simedyne would have tight security, and to extract even a small object would be difficult. Not impossible, though it woul
d certainly require some advance planning.

  As executor of Aird's estate she could drop by, flash her business card, and sign out Aird’s termination papers in person. It would be a perfect opportunity to scope out the place.

  She crouched down to disassemble the computer and her knees and back protested the hours spent on the floor. She carried the equipment to her car but there was still one riddle left to solve.

  The patch from Aird’s wallet had to be just one of a batch. The fat man had obviously run off prototypes and decided to test market them in the doorways and back alleys of Hamilton. That explained the small wad of low-denomination bills. He’d sold a few then having worked up an appetite had gone into a nearby mall for the meal he never ate.

  Even the most naive pusher would only carry a portion, so there had to be more, somewhere. Reis opened her briefcase and went through the slips of paper from Aird’s wallet. A chit from a parking lot on Bay Street had been stamped about two hours before he died. The make, model, and plate number of his car was on the ownership. Something else that she hadn’t noticed the first time around was Aird’s security pass to Simedyne.

  The size of a credit card, one side had a black magnetic stripe and the embossed name of its owner. Reis turned it over and smiled. A sticky note on the back of the card held a series of dates, each with a unique set of digits. Like employees everywhere, Aird had found it was easier to compromise the company’s security than to memorize a new PIN code each month.

  The last was dated ten days ago so, unless the facility’s administration was above average in efficiency, it could be valid for another couple of weeks. Since they wouldn't yet know of his death, Reis could consider the timing of her notification.

  It was now past midnight and her energy began to fade. Rather than grab another beer from the grubby fridge, she opted to go home for a change of clothes. And maybe a pinch of magic dust. Cocaine and other samples of Aird’s trade had been a perk that made partnering with the fat perv livable.

  A few hours ago his death had appeared to be a catastrophic event. But, the patches had been her idea, and she’d recruited the sponsor for the seed money and the black market supplies that Aird had needed. That he’d landed on a slab while circumventing her, at this stage of the game, was almost poetic justice.

  Okay. Freshen up then find his car, clean it out, and remove the plates. She looked around and wondered if the house was worth coming back to. The rent had been paid with post-dated cheques, the next one not due for three weeks. If she left money in his account to cover the amount the place might come in handy as a bolthole. Of course she’d have to sanitize it.

  Yeah. No. Well, maybe a can of gas and a match.

  There would also be paperwork to process and forms to file. Luckily, she didn’t need to be good at forgery, which she wasn’t. She just had to be a legal secretary. Which she was.

  CHAPTER 4

  Monday, October 5th

  The high school parking lot was peaceful between periods. The wind bore the discordant notes of a music class, and the occasional whistle from a gym session mimicked a blackbird’s call. Chas Fenn pulled a memo from his binder and skimmed over the message. It was just another impersonal note from Head Office reminding all instructors that, when involved in an accident, the driving school signs must be detached immediately and placed in the trunk of the car. Must was underlined. Immediately, typed in boldface.

  No problem, thought Fenn. I’ll just pull my bleeding carcass from the wreckage and do that.

  The memo had some worth, however. The back of it was blank. Virgin empty space. The white gold of the mobile office.

  Still in the passenger seat though his student had left, Fenn folded the page into two columns and began to list his assets and liabilities. On the positive side he jotted down a full tank of gas and thirty dollars from last night’s poker game. The apartment rent was paid for the month, and there might be a TV dinner or two in the fridge. Plus, he was due to get paid for last week’s lessons. Unfortunately, most of that was pegged for his car lease and insurance, which he noted on the negative side along with the phone bill. Adding cat food and litter for Mogg, to the expenses, brought his net worth down to zero but at least the sheet balanced.

  A car with a roof sign matching his own entered the lot and rolled into the adjacent parking space. A set of white teeth, one with a gold rim, beamed at him from below a pair of NASCAR style sunglasses. The driver released his seatbelt and got out. Fenn did the same and shut the door quickly as the wind whipped up a mini dust devil.

  “Hey, hombre! Long time, no see,” said Joe Posada.

  Posada was another veteran of the road. Most instructors burned out after about three years. Posada and Fenn were both into their ninth and shared a friendship born of time and common experience.

  “Buenos dias, Amigo,” replied Fenn, smiling back. “What’s new?”

  “Not much since the Union meeting. How about you?”

  “Well, if you must know,” said Fenn, “my car now has an ejector seat.”

  Joe looked suitably impressed. “Could be useful. What triggers it?”

  “Melinda Tate, and the biggest bug you ever saw.”

  Posada weather-vaned to light a cigarette. Fenn stationed himself upwind and watched two seagulls flapping wildly over a bread crust by a garbage can. He figured the birds had about six minutes to squabble before the school doors burst open and a flood of youth came spilling out.

  Squinting from the first wisps of smoke, Posada perched himself on the hood of his car. “So, was Melinda driving?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it driving, but we were approaching a red light when this winged-thingy, about the size of your thumb, buzzed past her nose and smacked into the mirror.” Fenn gestured to simulate the flight. “It lands in her lap and starts spinning around on its back.”

  Fenn saw a grin surround Joe’s cigarette and lowered his voice. “We're still moving, mind you, when she screams ‘Oh, fuck! A bee!’ whips off her seatbelt, and jumps out of the car!”

  Caught in mid-drag, smoke burst from Joe's lungs.

  “One second I've got a student, the next thing I know the car is driving itself.”

  More smoke followed a croupish laugh as Joe raised yellowed fingers to his lips and diminished the cigarette.

  Half-seriously, Fenn said, “You do know those things can stunt your growth, Joe.”

  “Bees, or smokes?” Barely taller than his car roof, Joe often ducked under that joke. He cast an appraising eye over Fenn’s car. “Any damage?”

  “No. The other drivers had already slowed for the light, and a longer look at Melinda’s ass in tight jeans. I just knocked the gear stick to Neutral and used the safety brake to stop.”

  “Miss Tate sounds like quite a distraction.”

  “You don't know the half of it.” Fenn scanned the lot. “A month ago, she showed up for a lesson in a skintight, see-through top—and no bra.”

  “Did you …?”

  “Did I what? Start to sweat?”

  “Did you take the hint? C'mon buddy, tell me you took the hint.”

  “She's only seventeen for crying out loud.”

  “Oh, man. That is so unfair.” Joe drew tobacco down to the knuckle mark, dropped the filter and erased it with the sole of his shoe. When he looked up the mirth had faded somewhat.

  “So, what's your take on the proposed Instructor's Union deal?”

  Fenn cast a glance at his watch. “Here’s the short version; Head Office claims that enrollment is down and can’t afford to increase our pay. The flip side is that after you and I pay expenses we barely make minimum wage.”

  “And for that they get a teacher, a psychologist, and a stuntman. They could at least give us danger pay.”

  Disparity was a hot topic among the instructors, lately, but Fenn didn’t have time to get into the nuances. “I’ve got to take off, Joe. My next appointment is across town.”

  Posado raised a hand in farewell, and then call
ed him back. “Hey, did you hear that Ron Jenner gave his notice today?”

  Fenn turned around. “I heard he was moonlighting as a bouncer at Toppers.”

  “He quit that, too. Said something about a family business. Maybe an inheritance. Some guys are lucky that way.” Joe chuckled. “If it wasn’t for charm and good looks I’d be a poor man today.”

  “That’s a different kind of wealth,” replied Fenn, knowing Posada’s self-deprecating humour was somewhat true. Something about Joe seemed to attract freshly licensed young ladies. All of consenting age, mind you. Nonetheless, Joe’s brand of luck had prompted a Head Office memo that stated the dating of students was against company policy. Fenn had scribbled a grocery list on the back of it.

  == == ==

  The name on the client card was Myrtle Stafford and the address was that of a compact brick house. The front garden had a flagstone path and, beside it, on the cracked asphalt driveway was a mint-green Dodge that appeared to have spent most of its life in the garage behind. The ten year old car gleamed like Sunday’s silver tea service and told Fenn something of his client.

  Women tend to outlive their husbands and Myrtle’s generation was one of widows with cars and no chauffeurs. Fenn’s reputation for empathy, and success, brought more of this demographic into his schedule each year. It was a mixed blessing. Retirees were flexible for lesson times and generally good for several sessions. Unfortunately, their advanced years often put the goal out of reach. Not the type to nurture false hopes, Fenn had to deliver the unwelcome verdict all too often, and such news was not always accepted with complete grace.

  Still, give the old girl a fair shake, he reminded himself as a small elderly woman in a camelhair coat and matching wool cap emerged from the house. He stood at the end of the walk and ushered her into the passenger seat.

  “Nice to meet you, Myrtle,” he said. She appeared to utter something as he closed the door but the tempered glass muted her words. Fenn slid behind the wheel and opened his binder.