Blood Wine

by John Moss

  “And what do you think you’re going to do now?”

  “I am going to kill you,” said the man, smiling. “First I am going to kill my former employee. You have met, yes. This is Branko. Then you must die, as well, I’m afraid. You are merely a nuisance, Mr. Morgan. But he is a liability.”

  “You know me?”

  “Of course. And you know me.”

  “You are the man with the bloody signature.”

  “Signature? Interesting. I thought of it more as a trademark. You know, then, I am as good as my word. I will kill you both and wash my hands in your blood.”

  “And you know — it won’t end here.”

  “No? Do you think I am afraid your partner will chase me down? She is in New York, she is staying with the lady from the auction house, the one with the dead boyfriend. I suppose they have that in common, they both have dead boyfriends. I know much about both of you, Mr. Morgan. I think she will not be so formidable without you. She may have to die too, of course, but that will not be your concern.”

  As the man clicked off the safety, Morgan lunged away from the chair to the side, toppling the Albanian, who went sprawling in the opposite direction. Morgan rolled in the air as he fell, grasping his gun from the back holster and sliding the action before he hit the cement. A shot rang out. It was his gun; he had fired instinctively, a single shot.

  Mr. Savage stood his ground as if a bullet were of little concern. Morgan held his gun on him as he rose to his feet. Mr. Savage held his gun on Branko, the Albanian. His fingernails gleamed like talons. His lips were pulled taut against his teeth in a menacing smile, the overhead light glistening on his thick black hair.

  “Well, Mr. Morgan, we seem to be in a proverbial standoff. How very quaint. Of course, I have men surrounding the building. If you kill me, they will kill you both. Perhaps we should negotiate.”

  “Negotiate?”

  “Yes. It is Branko I want. You walk out of here. It is over.”

  “And Branko?”

  “He dies, of course. Either way, he is dead.”

  “And what’s your guarantee for my safety?”

  “My word.”

  “Mr. Savage.”

  “Yes, Mr. Morgan.”

  Absurdly, Morgan thought of the childhood rhyme, “Liar, lair, your pants are on fire,” but what he said was: “No deal. Any other offers on the table?”

  “None, not that I can think of. I’m afraid I must call my people.”

  “You do that!”

  “You are not afraid.”

  “No, Mr. Savage. Because you’re here with only one man, the driver of your car. He is outside, yes, and I’m betting he won’t come in. Others are not so oblivious to their own destruction, or perhaps not as committed to your cause. I think if he thinks you’re down, he will quietly leave.”

  “You do not know us very well, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Us?”

  “It is of no concern.” Savage fired his gun, a single shot through the head of Branko the Albanian.

  Morgan was startled. He held his aim directly at Savage. He could execute the shooter, but there was nothing he could have done to prevent the shooting. Savage turned slowly toward Morgan, certain the detective would not shoot first.

  “Now, Mr. Morgan, the equation has changed. There are just the two of us, no?”

  Morgan said nothing.

  “No? Nothing to say.”

  “I do believe I will kill you,” said Morgan. “Whether I die or not.”

  “You may be right, but I think not tonight. I am going to leave now,” Savage said, lowering his gun. “You will not shoot a man in the back and you are not foolish enough to follow me. And you were quite right, Mr. Morgan, I would have shot you had you capitulated. It would have been easy. But, of course, you would not have left him behind. Goodnight, Mr. Morgan.”

  Morgan stood transfixed. After the other man passed through the door, he bent down to confirm that the Albanian was dead.

  He wondered, as he walked out to the car to call in, Is it possible Francine set me up, with Branko the Albanian as bait?

  Sitting in the dark of the car, he wondered if either of them had come all that far.

  13

  Washington Square

  After a day of waiting and shopping, Miranda was outfitted for the fall and frustrated by the apparent lack of progress in the Ivan Muritori shooting. Back in Elke’s loft, the two women busied themselves reading old copies of Vogue and Bazaar, making fun of the models as a plastic androgynous subspecies evolved for the purpose of displaying unwearable clothes.

  “The fashion industry is dominated by the male homosexual sensibility,” observed Elke. “Gay men design the clothes and clothe the models, they do the make-up, the hair, the layouts. Page after page of shiny pubescence. Have you ever seen so many boy-chests on girls, little wee breasts tucked out of the way in folds of fabric. And girl-chests on boys, bony and hairless, with collagen lips. God, it’s amazing.”

  “You are disturbingly articulate on the subject,” said Miranda. “You think about this a lot, do you?”

  “Yes, of course. I read Vogue regularly. I subscribe. And I pick up Bazaar almost every month, or Elle. I am fascinated. So are you.”

  “Yeah,” said Miranda. “I guess it’s like watching the Olympics to pick up pointers for a walk in the park.”

  “You are quite cynical, then, where I am amused.”

  “Are you?”

  “I am objective. I think the fashion industry is unhealthy.”

  “You’re saying homosexuality is an illness.”

  “No, the illness is that other people submit to the gay aesthetic.”

  “Which itself is okay?”

  “Not if it means denying their own.”

  “Yeah,” said Miranda. “Maybe we should all wear burkas.”

  “And bend to an even more sinister tyranny!”

  “Sinister?”

  “Yes, don’t you agree? Christians and Jews and Muslims fear women’s sexuality, but Muslims fear women the most.”

  “You’re in a feisty mood! We were on safer grounds talking about fashion.”

  “Miranda, there is nothing we cannot talk about if we are reasonable.”

  “Let’s be reasonable and talk about nothing.”

  “Back to Vogue, then.”

  They chatted easily together, but Miranda was aware of a shift in their relationship. Here, Elke allowed a slight Swedish accent to preen in her diction, while before it had been suppressed to a negligible cadence. She was at home in the worldly milieu of Manhattan. On her own side of the border, Miranda had been dominant. Here it seemed uncertain whether she was Elke’s custodian, or Elke was her host in a city where Miranda had little status or power of her own.

  They decided to go out for dinner, and while they were getting ready the phone rang. It was Captain Clancy. He wanted to come over and talk but agreed to meet them at an intimate restaurant he suggested in Greenwich Village, not far from where they were staying.

  Both took time with their minimalist make-up, and both wore skirts. Miranda decided to break in her Cole Haan sandals. They had cost a couple of day’s pay and their workmanship was both subtle and striking. Although they were flats they made her feel taller. Both women were self-conscious after their cultural analysis of Vogue and its kind, so they were dressing up fashionably casual. The irony amused Miranda, and the paradox seemed a challenge for Elke, if only in a minor key.

  As they walked through Washington Square, Miranda gazed about her in wonder. This was the version of America she admired the most, this was New York as the imaginary place in her mind where romances bloomed and were broken and clever people shared ideas with bitchy and self-deprecating wit. An urban garden embraced by converging streets lined with handsome low-rise buildings, with a backdrop of skyscrapers hovering amidst the foliage overhead, and the din of traffic, the overheard conversations, the strident cheerfulness of the park denizens, all made her think an evening like this m
ust be special.

  Morgan would like Washington Square, she thought. The world has many centres, and this awkward park, smaller than a farmer’s meadow, was among the most vital. A triumphal arch and a dog-poop compound, stone chess boards, and a fountain pool meant for wading, benches and grass and flowers. George Washington seemed more comfortable here as two modest statues than on Mount Rushmore or embodied in the gargantuan obelisk in the city bearing his name. It was here he seemed most human, and his dreams for a new order most accessible. For a moment she thought of herself as American.

  She was looking forward to dinner. She was looking forward to going home, to getting back to work.

  Clancy was waiting at the bistro, at a table on the sidewalk under an awning. Miranda had teased Elke on their way that she and Clancy would make a good couple.

  “Come on,” Elke had said, slowing to an ambling pace. “You’re not serious?”

  “Yes, I am. You’d be beautiful together.”

  “You think so, really? He’s a policeman.”

  “And? What are you saying?”

  “You and Morgan are different.”

  “Me and Morgan! Morgan and I, we’re not a couple.”

  “You so much are.”

  “No.”

  “You wait, sooner or later.”

  “No. Not.”

  “You like him.”

  “What’s not to like. Morgan is good-looking. If you like strength of character in a man’s face, he’s personable, kind of shambling and a little unkempt. He’s very bright, he has an undisciplined but exciting mind, and he can be silly. He can be very sweet. He’s tough, in a good sort of way.”

  “Not that you’ve thought about this.”

  “No.”

  “And you think Clancy — we don’t know his first name — you think we’d make a striking couple, is that it? Black and blond, the nymph and the stallion.”

  “Interesting you think about yourselves that way.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “You do.”

  They were walking slowly now, strolling.

  “He doesn’t wear a wedding band.”

  “You noticed.”

  “So did you. What about you with him? Both cops. But that wouldn’t be fair to Morgan’s future. No, I’ll have to take him.”

  When Clancy stood up as they approached the table, Elke’s first words were to ask his name.

  “Clancy, like I said. Solid Irish.”

  “Do you have a first name, we were wondering?” said Miranda.

  “Yeah,” he answered as the two women sat down, giggling like teenagers.

  “What is it?” said Elke.

  “I don’t use it much.”

  “Is it Harold?” asked Miranda.

  “Harold, no, why Harold?”

  “I’ve never known someone called Harold before, not in real life.”

  “You still don’t. It’s Seymour.”

  Both woman laughed. Laughter is the best way to relieve and express sexual tension, Miranda recalled having read somewhere as she tried to rein in her glee.

  “That’s why I don’t tell people my name,” said Clancy.

  “It’s a perfectly nice name,” Elke assured him. “Seymour.”

  “Yes?”

  “No, I was just saying it, ‘Seymour.’ It’s an interesting name.”

  “I take it you two have had a good day.”

  “Yes,” said Miranda, collecting herself. “We have had a very good day. What about you. What kind of progress?”

  Clancy held his hand up casually, indicating they should eat first, then catch up on business. “Try the moules. Very savoury. I assume you want wine. I held off until you got here. Let’s have a bottle. You name it — red or white? Lets have white, a French Chardonnay, Chablis, it goes with the moules.”

  “Nothing like a take-charge guy,” said Miranda. “Are you married?”

  Her question threw him off stride. He glanced from one to the other, knowing he had been the subject of conversation between them, possibly the object of a joke.

  “Not presently,” he said.

  There was an awkward hush at the table, none sure whether they were still playing or if somehow things had become serious.

  “No,” said Miranda, “I’m not either.”

  They both looked at Elke.

  “Never,” she announced, as if it were a point of pride. Then realizing they both knew about her recent love life, she added, “Nearly, but ... I’ve made some mistakes.”

  Now the mood at the table was solemn, confessional.

  “Haven’t we all,” said Seymour Clancy.

  The conversation switched to families. Elke described her childhood in Stockholm and her siblings who still lived there. She came from a family of doctors who spoke English in the home, partly to nurture their worldliness and partly as a game, because it was both useful and fun. Her parents had died in a boating accident in northern Sweden, at their cottage near the border with Finland.

  Miranda talked of growing up in small-town Ontario. A village, actually, but only a mile across the Grand River flats from the town of Preston, now Cambridge. To her, saying she was from Waterloo County had the same emotional resonance as being from Stockholm or New York. Yet somehow her childhood seemed less authentic. Perhaps it was the inborn parochialism of Canadians as a legacy of Empire. Perhaps it was personal.

  Seymour Clancy described Queens and being black in a mixed neighbourhood. He spoke proudly of defending his peculiar name, half Jewish, half Irish, yet anger crept into his voice as he described its origin in the traditions of slavery. Being Jewish, being Irish, those are religious ethnicities, he explained. Being black in America, that’s history.

  Over coffee, the conversation shifted to Clancy’s case.

  “Do you know was he a real Mafioso?” Elke asked.

  “His day job with Confederate Union was completely legit,” said Clancy, who went on to reaffirm what they already knew, that he did tax returns for some of the New York mob. By the time the numbers reached him, and the paperwork, everything had been laundered. He did nothing more than confirm the arithmetic and provide a stamp of approval, his signature the proof of his clients’ participation in responsible citizenry.

  “There has to be more,” said Miranda. “Assassination? I mean, there are easier ways to punish an accountant for screwing up.”

  “It isn’t the books he screwed up,” said Clancy, “it was the wine operation.”

  “Now, here’s the problem,” said Miranda. “The wine thing, it was a boutique swindle. A few million dollars and some connoisseurs with their noses out of joint.”

  “Did you try it?” Clancy asked.

  “The ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape? I thought it was good, actually — but what do I know about paying the price of a Broadway show for a bottle of wine?”

  “What’s your point, then, Detective?”

  “These guys, they’re into big money, measured in the hundreds of millions. Why get so upset over the small change?”

  “Yes,” Elke agreed. “It’s not just him, they wanted to kill me, they blew up the old lady, there’s a lot going on.”

  “And they killed the man with the ring.”

  “And the man in your bed!”

  “Wait! Let’s run through it all again,” said Clancy. “Don’t forget your partner, they tried to kill him.”

  “What! Who? Morgan?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “What? Tell me, what are you talking about?”

  “Have you been talking to your partner today?”

  “Yes, this morning. He called me at Elke’s to see if I was okay. My cellphone is shot. He called her number. I told him I was fine. He sounded relieved. I liked that. He was worried. I told him not to worry, and that we were on our way out the door, heading for Saks. He said, ‘Why not?’ And that was it. So, what did he forget to tell me?”

  “He was set up for a hit, that’s what his boss told me. Someone called Alex Rufalo,
you know him? Very polite, sounds overworked.”

  “Yeah, he’s our superintendent in Homicide. What happened?”

  “In a warehouse. Mexican standoff. The shooter got away. After killing the guy who killed Vittorio Ciccone.”

  “Mexican standoff, what’s that?” asked Elke.

  “Two guys with guns on each other,” said Miranda. “There’s no way out. They both die.”

  “But Morgan’s okay, you talked to him,” said Elke.

  “Yeah, well so is the other guy,” said Miranda, relieved that Morgan survived but angry at being kept in the dark.”

  “But the Albanian who shot Vittorio Ciccone, he’s dead,” said Clancy.

  “The Albanian?” Miranda was perplexed.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder about your boyfriend?” said Clancy, shifting to address Elke, bringing the conversation back to familiar territory.

  “Ex, he was my ex-boyfriend. About what? His standard of living. He had a good job. I knew he did contract work on the side. We weren’t living together. My place is nicer than his. I wouldn’t have given it up.”

  “You didn’t like him very much, did you?”

  “He was clean-cut and expedient. Sometimes that’s what a girl wants, Captain Clancy.”

  “When she’s too busy for love?”

  Elke stopped. She seemed to be considering the implications. He looked at her gently.

  “No,” she said. “You’re never too busy for that. I am not shallow, Detective, I am a reasonably attractive blond in a city enthralled with blonds, and he kept the wolves at bay.”

  “Yes, you are,” he responded, “at least —”

  “At least what?”

  “Reasonably.”

  “Attractive? You can say it, Detective.”

  “Yes.”

  “Excuse me,” said Miranda. “I’m here.”

  The other two sat back and gazed at her as if she had burped.

  “Pardon?” said Clancy.

  “You too,” said Elke, “in a brunette sort of way. Very, reasonably. You are.”

  “Thank you,” said Miranda. “Back to business?”

  “Yeah,” said Clancy, still turned toward Elke. “He wasn’t what you’d call a high flyer?”