Toronto, January 16
Four years earlier, Helman had spent a month in Toronto on “standby”. Power plays influenced by criminal organisations from the predominately French city of Montreal had threatened the stability of a Toronto family’s control over a Canada-wide development industry. Helman, and he believed, at least five others in a similar line of work, had been brought to Toronto as a show of force and as insurance, in case the conflict spread from Montreal and obstacles had to be removed.
As the situation had developed, a carefully orchestrated accident involving a well-known political figure occurred in Montreal. The details surrounding the accident were enough to destroy the politician’s career. He had immediately seen the possibilities and capitulated that same evening. Certain elements of the planted evidence were removed from the scene of the accident and when the story broke, even the newspapers were sympathetic to the politician in their reporting.
The politician’s future was secure, important concessions had been made, and five days later a fire bombing in a Montreal night club eliminated the final holdouts to a settlement. The threat had been contained and Helman and the others were free to leave Toronto, paid well for their month of waiting.
Helman had heard that two years afterward, an investigative reporting team came across disturbing evidence that a concentration of ‘hired guns’ had existed in Toronto for that month. The reporters explained it away by saying it was part of an attempt by motorcycle gangs to consolidate their control over drug trafficking in the area.
Helman had never been sure if that story showed that the Canadian police and press could be bought off easily, or if it had just shown how stupid they were. Either way, he had not liked his stay in the city, and he did not like the fact that it was going to be his killing ground for the closing of Adrienne St. Clair.
Customs clearance and baggage claim took minutes. Helman walked out of the enclosure directly to a wall of pay phones. This was the first chance he had had to be alone since he was picked up in Times Square. After his briefing, Mr. King had again reached up to Helman’s neck and Helman had been unaware of anything until he woke up in a car in the LaGuardia airport parking lot. Mr. King, who was beside him, accompanied him to pick up his ticket, and then saw him off in the departure lounge. Finally Helman was free to call his sister.
He put through a collect call. The phone was answered in the middle of the first ring and he heard Miriam accept the charges.
He said hello and Miriam began to cry.
“He said you were all right but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Who said I was all right?” Helman had to press his hand against his other ear to hear what his sister was saying. “Who were you talking to?”
“The man who called the night before you left.” Miriam’s voice was tinny and sounded far away. Helman realised a tap was on her phone. Either it was an old, unsophisticated, direct link that was drawing far more power than it should from the line, or it was purposely designed to interfere so that Helman would know that his every move was anticipated. The group in New York had reached out to him again. If he told his sister to take her children and run, he doubted if she would make it out the door. She was the group’s insurance, and their assumption was correct. He would do anything before he would let harm come to them.
“Well, he was right,” Helman yelled into the phone. “Everything’s just fine. I should be back in a couple of days. How’re the boys?” Desperately he thought of something he could say to her. Some way to warn her, to tell her to run. But he had never involved his sister in his work, except for that first time. He had no codes to tell her, no plans had been worked out in advance.
They were all of them locked into the fate of Adrienne St. Clair. Her death alone would buy their freedom.
The rest of the conversation was brief and meaningless. Miriam sounded calmer when she said goodbye, relieved that Helman was alive and soon to be home. She had no idea of the part she was playing. For that Helman was grateful. If anything happened to her or her family, Helman knew he would destroy the group in New York, no matter what the cost.
A man in a long, black leather coat came up to Helman at the hotel’s registration desk, and Helman knew immediately the man was his contact from New York.
He was tall and slender and had the same perfect teeth that King had shown. He must have been waiting outside for Helman’s arrival because his hands were startlingly cold when he reached out to shake, as though they were two business associates about to conduct a meeting.
That close to the man, under the bright lights in the high ceiling of the lobby, Helman saw an out-of-place discoloration on the man’s shirt collar. It was make-up that had rubbed off the man’s neck.
“Good evening, Mr. Osgood,” the man said, using Helman’s ‘drop’ name and pumping his hand. “I’m Mr. Rice. I’m sure your office told you to expect me.”
Helman nodded. Mr. Rice’s face was covered in make-up. Not effeminate, not as a new men’s fashion, but like theatrical make-up, accentuating what tone and shadow already existed. Helman was sure the man wasn’t wearing it as a disguise, but could think of no other reason.
In the more subdued light of the elevator, the evidence of the make-up was impossible to see. Rice looked as if he might be a brother to King or in some other way related. But Helman did not question him. The less they thought he knew about them, the more likely he was to be left alive when he had finished their work. If they had not already made up their minds to kill him,
Helman tipped the bellhop and the two men were left alone in the room. It was the typical North American box design: bathroom on the right forming a small entrance hall to the rectangular area with two double beds, two chairs, and an assortment of chests and tables. In the summer, the room would be more expensive because of its sliding glass doors onto a balcony which overlooked the outdoor pool three floors below. But the pool was covered in tarpaulins and the balcony adrift with snow.
Rice spoke first. He threw his attaché case on the bed. “These are the final details, assassin. We will study them.”
Another incongruity. Rice’s voice was different now that they were alone. It had gone from a nondescript flat accent to the drawn-out hissing whisper of King and the group in New York. Were they subjecting Helman to a particularly sophisticated form of subliminal conditioning? Planting any number of false clues, seemingly related suggestions that would lead nowhere, in case he were captured? Or were they actually that strange?
Helman slipped off his coat and pulled a chair over to the corner of the bed. The attaché case was cheap plastic, embossed to look like grained leather, and brand new, as if Rice had never had use for an attaché case until he was told to deliver material this evening. Even so, Helman didn’t touch it. “Is there a certain way to open it?” he asked.
Rice reacted with impatience. “We have no need to play the games that you do, assassin. If we do not wish to have documents looked at, then they are never placed in a situation where they can be looked at. Our briefcases don’t explode.” He opened the case. There was one large brown envelope inside. Except for a manufacturer’s tag looped around the inside pocket closure, there was nothing else.
Rice opened the envelope and slid the contents out. The top item was an eight-by-ten, black-and-white photo of a woman. It was a copy print of what Helman took to be an old passport photo. The woman’s hair was dark and swept up in a stiff style popular years before. Probably the early fifties, thought Helman.
“This is the woman, Adrienne St. Clair. Study the image carefully. You will not be allowed to keep it. Or any of this,” Rice said, indicating the rest of the material on the bed, “except for the map.”
Helman held the photo close. The woman was attractive, despite the awkwardness of her hair. Her chin and mouth were small, her eyes a bit too far apart, and her face was stretched by either flat cheek bones or puffiness around her eyes. He couldn’t tell which. Something about her made him think she was British.
He was sure he could recognise her when he saw her, but her hairstyle was old fashioned.
“It’s a clear photo for identification, but it looks about thirty years old. What does she look like today?”
Rice sighed. “The photo is much more recent than that. Her hairstyle and make-up were applied for a particular assignment she was to carry out. She looks much the same today. Her hair is red when it is not disguised, and cut short.” Rice picked up a sheet of paper that had been beneath the woman’s picture and read from it. “The woman is about thirty years old, five foot five inches in height, weighing approximately 100 pounds. She is ambidextrous, and, as you were told by my associates in New York, trained in a variety of the so-called ‘martial’ arts. If you get within arm’s reach of her while she is conscious, I should not expect you to live more than a few seconds.”
Helman nodded, he had been told that. If she had gone through the same training as King, with his ability to paralyse within seconds, Helman could believe it too.
There were many questions to ask.
“You mentioned that her hair is sometimes disguised. Do you know if that is the case now?”
Rice shook his head. “No, she thinks she is well-protected, and has not taken any steps to alter her appearance.”
“What does well-protected mean?”
Rice dug into the pile on the bed. He handed two more photos to Helman. The first was of an oriental male. He was wearing dark rimmed glasses and Helman could see a scarf around his neck just above the picture’s cropping. A cloud of exhaled breath streamed away from him. The background of the photo, an open courtyard, or something similar, with some small bare trees, was compressed, showing it had been taken with a telephoto lens.
“That was taken a month ago. He is Doctor Christopher Leung. He is on staff at the University of Toronto Medical Facility. The woman is staying with him in his house in the city.”
The second photograph, from a reflection in the corner and some blurriness, obviously a shot from a moving vehicle, showed a row of five townhouses. They were four stories high, very narrow and modern looking. Half of a much older, larger house showed at the edge of the picture, indicating the townhouses were built in an older neighbourhood.
“Dr. Leung’s is the middle one.” Rice paused. “Tell me your plans, assassin, and I shall tell you anything additional you need to know.”
Helman stared at the photos of the doctor and the woman. They seemed an unlikely pair to have such attention paid to them.
“What is the woman’s relationship with the doctor? Are they lovers?”
Rice looked indignant, “That is quite impossible.”
“How do you know?” Another anomaly presented itself.
“You will take my word for it, assassin. I am only to tell you what you need to know to carry out your work.”
Helman took care not to raise his voice in the thin-walled hotel room. He pointed to the photograph of the house. “Look, these top rooms are most likely bedrooms. If they’re lovers, I’ll only have to penetrate one room with an explosive or a gas. If they’re not, I’ll have to attack several rooms at once.”
“I see your point, but they will have separate sleeping accommodations, you can be sure. The woman will most likely be in a basement room.”
“And again, you won’t tell me why. I’m just to accept it.”
Rice smiled. “That is correct, assassin. Accept it.”
Helman sat back in his chair and rubbed his face. He tried again. “What is their relationship?”
Rice sighed again. Helman wondered if he always did that before he gave his most dubious answers.
“We believe that the woman has contracted a rare disease. Most likely tropical. Not fatal. Disruptive at best. Paralysing at worst. We believe she has made an arrangement with the doctor to begin treatment. Each evening she accompanies the doctor to a research facility at his university. When the disease is controlled, she will be free again to work against us.”
Helman was sure Rice was lying. “So while she’s here, with the doctor, she is not actively working against you?”
Rice leaned forward, seething. “Her existence works against us!” The chair arm his hand was gripping cracked suddenly. Helman felt his own chair arm. It was solid.
Rice sat back. “Think, assassin. How shall you rid us of her?”
“I’ll need a day. I need to see the townhouse. Possibly the lab they go to. Make contact. Check the neighbourhood. For myself.”
“If a day is what you need, then by all means take it.” Rice stood up, and went for his coat. “The townhouse address is marked on the back of the photograph. The university building also. You may keep the map of the city. I shall take back everything else.”
Helman removed a standard folded map from the pile and checked the address on the photo. Rice gathered the rest of the material together and placed it back in the cheap plastic case.
“I shall see you tomorrow evening. I trust you shall have your plan ready by then so we are not forced to turn to someone else.”
Helman said nothing. Rice took the case, and left.
Helman stood under the shower for half an hour, alternating between steaming hot water and straight cold. Too much had happened to him in the last forty-eight hours. The package and phone call in New Hampshire. The useless cat-and-mouse game ending in New York. And now the two briefings by the oddest people he had ever dealt with--and the most dangerous. Men who wore unobtrusive make-up for no particular reason. Black-masked people who were addressed as ‘Lord’. His mind swam with the confusion of it.
Finally he lay back on one of the beds and thought about the closing. Demolishing the house with explosives would be ideal in any other situation, but not appropriate for Adrienne St. Clair. The conditions must be met exactly! they had told him. One way or another, Helman was going to have to get himself close enough to Adrienne St. Clair to decapitate her.
Sleep, when it came, was not easy. And it ended in screams.
Chapter Ten
SILENTLY, IT HAD slipped up through the open stairs and wrapped wetly around his ankles. In that instant of transcendent terror, the darkness below him vanished and he saw clearly what waited for him in the basement.
Their masks fluttered from their faces like black flying things. Their make-up rippled and dripped like melting wax. They were all together, waiting for him, down there. They were smiling at him and he saw …
It was his own screaming that woke him.
Helman thrashed at the sweat-soaked sheet wrapped up and twisted around his feet, and sat upright, trembling. He was in the delicate transition between sleep and consciousness. His brain held the secret of King and Rice and whispered it to him. He shook with the knowledge of it.
But the sun was streaming through the slightly open curtains and traffic noises growled somewhere near. The knowledge fell away like dust, leaving only its warning, its feeling of dread.
Helman showered again and dressed. He had one more phone call to make. His broker, Max Telford. The person the people in the masks had referred to, but never named. The anomaly must be checked.
Two months ago, after the Delvecchio closing, Helman had told Telford his decision to retire. Telford had taken it well. Helman felt the old man had a type of fatherly feeling toward him. On one hand, he had complained about how short-handed Helman was leaving him; how difficult it was to recruit professionals instead of lads who had seen too many movies and wanted to be hit men—‘torpedoes’ Telford called them, disparagingly. Telford thought they’d be better off being mercenaries in Africa or Central America, so they could blast away to their hearts’ content and never have to worry about witnesses, or killing civilians. Yet, on the other hand, Helman felt Telford was glad to see him quit the business alive. Telford had handled twenty of Helman’s twenty-three closings. Helman had no precise statistics on the rest of Telford’s crew, but he felt his success rate was a record. Even so, Helman had learned long ago that feelings were not to be trusted. Pe
rhaps three months ago, Telford did feel like a father to him. But Helman knew how quickly situations could change in his business. Telford might have felt pressure from one organisation or another, and as a result, turned over his ‘insurance’ on Helman to representatives of the group from New York.
Everyone in the business had ‘insurance.’ A secret cache of information, names and dates, that would implicate and endanger as many associates as possible in the event of an untimely, unwarranted death. Telford kept it on each of his crew. Helman kept it on Telford. It was an accepted and acknowledged fact of the business. And necessary. An assassin without insurance represented a final, easy-to-take-care-of loose end. An assassin without insurance was a dead man.
Helman sat on the edge of a bed in his hotel room and placed a long distance call to a restaurant in Miami. Telford owned several seafood restaurants there, and operated his ‘brokerage’ from the offices at the back of the largest one. Tourists came and went as Telford plotted murder above the kitchen. If Telford had released his insurance about Helman, an action usually taken by lawyers upon a client’s untimely death, Helman would see to it that the release had not been unjustified. Feelings were not to be trusted. He would have another closing to attend to after he finished with the St. Clair woman: Max Telford.
The phone rang five times. Helman heard the receiver being lifted. On any other phone line into the restaurant, a voice would identify the restaurant by name and ask what the caller wanted. On the line Helman had called, the voice said only, “Go ahead.”
“This is Mr. Bryant. I want to make a reservation for next Wednesday at 8:45, for nine. Actually, there will be at least six of us. We may be joined by up to five more. However a reservation for nine should be about right.” Helman waited for the voice to respond with the second phase of the signal.
“Our pleasure, Mr. Bryant. Is there anything else the maître d’ may prepare for you?”
“I’d like it charged to my card, number 416—”
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