by John Moss
“My judgement exactly,” said Elke. “You are very stupid,” she said, addressing their prospective assailant.
“Shut up,” said the man, at a loss about how to deal with two such people who seemed indifferent to their imminent demise.
“Perhaps,” suggested Morgan, “we should simply disarm him.”
“No,” said Elke. “He is a very committed young man. He will have to be killed. That’s all right, though, Morgan. He wants to die.”
“He does?”
“I do?” said the man. “You misunderstand, of course. It is better to live.”
Morgan marvelled at the absurdity of the situation. Elke seemed to be enjoying herself. Perspiration on the man’s face gathered in droplets. With his free hand he rubbed his eyes. Suddenly the door slid open and two girls in school uniforms they had pretty much outgrown trounced in and plopped down opposite Morgan and the man with the gun. Morgan glanced at Elke. She looked concerned.
“So where are you three going?” said one of the girls. They both giggled as if a great joke had been made.
“Piss off,” said the other girl to her friend. “They don’t know each other. This guy clutching his lap, he’s a loner. Those other two, they’re estranged lovers.”
“Estranged?” Her friend giggled. “How did they get estranged?”
“They’re just not right for each other.”
“Why don’t you shut up,” said the man. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Get the fuck out of here, get the fuck out of here.” They both mimicked him. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Go on —”
“Or what? What you got under your coat?”
His hand with the gun twitched.
“He’s wanking, he’s getting off on the blond and her lover’s enjoying it.”
“You watch what you got in your crotch,” said the other girl. “It’s gonna explode. Come on, Crissy, let’s go.”
They left as suddenly as they had arrived. The door slid closed. Morgan, Elke, and even the man with the gun seemed to relax a little.
“You sure you want sixty-six of those?” Elke taunted.
“What, what?”
“Or is it seventy-seven or ninety-nine. Morgan, hold on to your hat.”
“What?” said the man. “What hat?”
“It’s an idiomatic expression, my friend. It means you’re a dead man.” She smiled. She uncrossed her legs and extended one out, admiring the expensive sandal.
“Do you know what that is?” she said to the man.
“It is a shoe. Sit back, sit up against the seat.”
“Or what? You will shoot me? It is a very expensive shoe. Cole Haan. Have you ever heard of Cole Haans? Oh dear, we seem to be slowing. I think we’re coming into Cambridge.”
Her forward leg shot out like a piston and jammed him straight in the groin as she pivoted forward on the other leg, lunged, propelling herself across the carriage, and knocked him off balance as he tried to rise. Morgan swung his arm across the man’s face as the gun clattered to the floor, and the man’s head snapped against the seat.
Elke scooped up the gun and retrieved the sandal that had got tangled in the man’s coat. She sat back, holding the gun on the man, and reached down, putting her miscreant sandal back on, extending both legs to admire her sandals as a pair — which she had refurbished with care after their stint in the Thames.
“So, my friend,” she said. “You lose.”
He said nothing.
Morgan regarded Elke in a new light. She wasn’t a wine expert who had been seconded by an agency or syndicate. She was a pro.
Elke rose and pulled down the blinds. She did not seem concerned with keeping the gun on the man. He knew he was defeated and sat impassively, waiting.
The train lurched to a stop. Morgan glanced at Elke, nodded, and opened the door to the carriage, looking along the platform for police as he stepped out.
Suddenly there was a single explosive crack behind him, as if someone had slammed a carriage door, and then Elke was beside him, taking his arm, and they walked rapidly past the ticket-taker and out onto the street.
“Where’s your wanker friend?” shouted one of the schoolgirls from the window of a car pulling out of the parking lot.
Elke winked.
“Hey, you want a ride? Hey, hey,” she shouted back into the car, “these are my friends, they need a lift.”
Morgan looked away. He knew Elke had executed the man in the carriage. He did not know what his own response was. She was walking briskly with a jaunty gait, the weight of her bag drawing the strap down taut between her breasts. He was horrified, angered, and strangely impressed by her emotional detachment, her clinical efficiency.
“Yes,” said Elke, turning to the car. She clambered into the back seat, drawing Morgan in after her. The driver, the girl’s father, seemed not at all pleased to be alone in the front.
“Where’s your friend?” the girl repeated.
“Where’s yours?” asked Elke.
“Her father met her, we’re both in trouble. We took the day off.”
“The day off?”
“From the Perse School for Girls and Young Women. We went down to London for a one-day sabbatical but Daddy had my uncle meet us at King’s Cross, and the old queen sent us back on the next train.”
“Crissy! He is not an old queen,” said her father from the front. “My name is Pumphrey. Where may we drop you?”
“Hello, Pumphrey,” said Elke.
“Mr. Pumphrey,” said the driver. “I am not the bloody chauffeur. I own this car.”
“Anywhere along King’s Parade would be lovely,” said Elke.
Morgan observed Elke like he had discovered a new species of bug and did not have the specialized knowledge to know what it was. He was amused. He was appalled. She was beautiful and as lethal as a black widow spider.
They were dropped off by the market and cut through to the Parade. Morgan was charmed by the splendour of King’s College set back from the street and the row of storybook shops facing it. During his two years in England, he had seldom been outside London, except to go to the Continent. Looking around at the resplendent tranquillity, he realized London was another country.
They walked along to a shop opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum and ordered tea and biscuits.
“You don’t think they’ll be looking for us?” he said.
“No, why would they? No one saw us together but those two girls. It will be a while before the news gets out. They won’t say anything, anyway. Those two would love to be part of a life-and-death conspiracy. I’m betting they’ll keep it their guilty secret.”
“Are you MI5?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“CSIS?”
“Who is CSIS? Oh, Canadian intelligence. No. And not the CIA.”
“Why are we here?”
“In Cambridge? Or is that an existential question.”
“In Cambridge.”
“To see an old professor of mine.”
“An old professor? You went to Cambridge?”
“Yes.”
“You never mentioned it.”
“Why would I?”
“Usually, people who went to Cambridge let you know. Same as people who went to Harvard. It comes up.”
“Well, I did go to Cambridge. I even graduated.”
“And then you travelled the world and learned about guns and wine.”
“I learned about wine right here. Most of the colleges have wonderful cellars. This professor I want to see, he was my mentor. He is a Muslim but paradoxically he is a great connoisseur of fine wines.”
Morgan looked into her deep blue eyes then let his gaze run over the length of her long blond hair. He took in the fine regularity of her Scandinavian features. He had a hunch.
“In your travels …”
“In my travels?”
“Did you ever go to Israel?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”<
br />
“Yes, I spent some time in Israel.”
“It’s interesting. You say Israh-el.”
“Do I? As I said, I spent some time there.”
“Elke, you carry a Swedish passport. But you are an Israeli. You are Mossad. You are an agent working for Israeli intelligence. You have been trained to kill. You killed the man in the train. One shot. You killed the man under the bridge. Six shots to make it look like panic, calculated for our benefit, because you needed us.”
He paused.
She said nothing.
“I just don’t understand why.”
“Milk?”
“What?”
“Sugar?”
“I take it clear.”
“And so do I.”
Miranda and Clancy slept in. They had not left Walden Pond until four in the afternoon, after having a swim in homage to Thoreau, and it was midnight by the time they crossed the Thousand Islands Bridge into Canada. It was 4 a.m. when they pulled in front of Miranda’s condo on Isabella Street, and the sun was broaching the horizon by the time they got to sleep.
After breakfast in the Starbucks where College meets Carleton at Yonge, Miranda took him up to the office to introduce him around. No one was more surprised to see him than the superintendent. Like most of their colleagues, he could not imagine her with anyone but Morgan, even though he was fairly sure they were professional partners only.
“Business or pleasure?” asked Alex Rufalo, immediately embarrassed by the implication.
“Just being a tourist,” said Clancy. “I’ve never been to Canada before.”
“And what do you think so far?”
“So far, so good, as the man says.”
“Which man?” said Eeyore Stritch, who had been listening from the edge.
“It’s an expression,” said Spivak, who was trying not to show his provincialism by being impressed at talking to an NYPD Captain of Detectives. “You know, Eeyore, ‘the man.’” He broke into a hacking cough.
“Are you telling me it’s black slang?” Eeyore whispered. “How am I supposed to know that?”
“No,” Spivak wheezed with barely stifled condescension. “I mean, the man, a person, someone — jeez, Eeyore, it’s a saying.”
Spivak looked around and realized the others were listening. “So, what are you doing in our jurisdiction?” he said to Clancy in a tone that was both collegial and challenging.
“Like I said, I’m a tourist.”
“You heard what the man said,” said Stritch, allying himself with the American.
“You ought to quit smoking,” said Clancy to Spivak.
“I did. Two days ago. Lungs haven’t recovered from the shock.”
“Perhaps we could talk in my office,” said the superintendent, implicitly inviting Miranda and Clancy, excluding Spivak and Stritch.
Once they got settled, he addressed Clancy, making it clear this was business. “You people know things we need to know.”
“And vice versa,” said Clancy.
“You should know, first, another body’s turned up. In Buffalo. The guy was an illegal, a Frenchman.”
“Let me guess,” said Miranda. “He was a master wine blender.”
“Yeah, something like that. The Americans are sending the file through to us once they get it together.”
“The Americans?” said Clancy.
“The FBI. The guy was dropped from a plane.”
They spent the next hour exchanging information, and when they were finished, neither the Canadians nor the American knew more than they had started with.
“Okay,” said Miranda. “I think the problem here is we don’t know the right questions to ask. We’ve got gangsters and wine, killings, contract murders, explosions, and betrayals. What’s missing? I’d say there have to be drugs in the scenario, big time, to make it all worthwhile.”
“That’s a safe assumption,” said Rufalo. “There must be a drug connection.”
“Agreed,” said Clancy. “But what is it?”
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” said Miranda. “We’ll go straight to the horse’s mouth.”
“Is that a pun?” Clancy asked.
“What?”
“The horse’s mouth. H, heroin, it’s called horse on the street.”
“Yeah,” said Miranda without conviction, “it was a pun.”
“So who, where?” said Rufalo.
“Why not ask the bad guys?”
“Such as?”
“Well, the Sebastianis are reorganizing right now to cover for the loss of Carlo, so I imagine we should talk to someone in the Ciccone family.”
“I don’t think they’ll have much to say,” said the Superintendent. “They’re still dealing with Vittorio’s … passing.”
“What about Frankie?” said Miranda.
“Morgan knows her? Maybe when he comes back.…”
“When is that? Has he caught up with Elke Sturmberg?”
“It would be hard to say,” said the superintendent. “Our contact in London seemed a bit addled.”
“Addled. As in, not all there in the head?”
“He was very pleasant. A secretary of some sort who put me through insisted both Morgan and a blond woman met in his office, but then he completely denied it.”
“They’ve gone undercover,” suggested Clancy.
“It seems likely,” said Rufalo.
“What do you mean ‘they’?” said Miranda. “I thought you sent Morgan over to haul her ass back to this side of the pond.”
“Do I sense antipathy?” said the superintendent.
“A whole lot of antipathy.” She turned to Clancy. “How did she know the Sebastianis? Tell me that!”
“Maybe she really is one of ours. If she’s working on the drug angle, maybe she’s a good guy.”
“Well, I don’t know whose,” said Rufalo. “We’ve checked with the FBI, with the RCMP, New Scotland Yard, INTERPOL. Nothing comes up from prints or pictures. According to them, she doesn’t exist.”
“Of course,” said Miranda, “if she is covert, whoever she’s working for wouldn’t claim her as theirs, not if it risked blowing her cover.”
“But why would Carlo Sebastiani want to protect her?” said Clancy. “And who from? From whom?”
“Mr. Savage,” said Miranda.
“Or she could be working for Savage,” said Alex Rufalo.
“In which case, she is a very, very dangerous person to be with,” said Miranda. “And she is!”
“Somebody killed Sebastiani,” said Clancy. “We can assume it was the same people who wanted to kill you and Elke. The same people who wanted Carlo to call a meeting of the bosses.”
“What meeting, what bosses?” demanded Rufalo, realizing he was missing some pieces.
“That was what got Sebastiani blown up. It was supposed to be a mob safe-house,” Miranda explained. “He was supposed to call a meeting of mob bosses.”
“With Savage?”
“We can only assume.”
“Okay, Miranda. You’re back on the job. Catch up with Spivak. Good meeting you, Captain Clancy. Enjoy the rest of your stay.” With executive flair, Rufalo rose and casually backed them out through the door of his office. “Take care,” he said and closed his door behind them.
They sat down near Spivak and Stritch, Clancy at Morgan’s desk, Miranda at her own, which seemed alien territory. The three men chatted about sports, but she tuned them out and started riffling through the accumulated papers on her desktop. There was a letter from the medical authorities. She was clear of HIV. Thank God for big mercies, she thought. She switched on her computer. There was an email from the Medical Examiner’s office.
“I wondered when you were going to get to that,” said Ellen Ravenscroft, who had approached from behind and was reading over her shoulder. The others glanced up but kept on talking about the Jays, Leafs, Raptors, or Rock.
“Just passing by,” said Ellen. “Thought I’d check out the action. Thing
s are dead over at the morgue, love.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Who is he? I want to meet him? I mean, Miranda, I want to meet him. Is he yours?”
“I brought him all the way from New York.” Miranda smiled coyly. “No, he’s not mine.”
“His name is Clancy,” said Clancy. “Seymour Clancy.” He rose to his feet and walked around the desk. “And you are? You’re not police, no, I’d say you’re a lawyer, no, a doctor. And very serene in a flushed sort of way. I’d say you are a medical examiner. Am I right?”
“You have astonishing powers of deduction, Mr. Clancy.”
“I overheard your crack about the morgue.”
“You have astonishing powers of hearing, Mr. Clancy.”
Miranda’s telephone rang and as she picked it up the two new friends moved away from her desk to continue in animated conversation. Ellen winked at Miranda over Clancy’s shoulder. Miranda winked back.
“Is that Detective Quin?” said the voice on the phone.
“It is.”
“This is Francine Ciccone.”
“Yes, Mrs. Ciccone —”
“Francine.”
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
“I tried to reach David Morgan.”
“He’s out of the country.”
“I know where he is.”
“You do?”
“I’m sorry to impose.”
“Not at all. What can I do for you?” It struck Miranda as almost comical. This seemed more like the exaggerated formality between upwardly mobile matrons soliciting each other for charities, not a gangster’s widow and a detective.
“We’ve met.”
“Yes, briefly. What can I do for you?”
“You were very kind to my husband.”
“Please accept my condolences, but no, I was not kind. It had nothing to do with kindness, Mrs. Ciccone.”
“Frankie.”
“Yes?”
“Someone is going to kill me.”
“Mrs. Ciccone. I do not mean to be presumptuous, but I believe you have your own people. I’m not sure what it is you think I can do.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“In person.”
Miranda did not respond. For a few moments the two women listened to each other breathing.
“I can tell you about the winery.”