Stranglehold

by Rotenberg, Robert

  She took his hand and led him to his bedroom, kicked off her shoes, pulled the sheets back, and lay down with her head on the pillow. He took his shoes off and lay beside her.

  The blinds were not all the way down, and light drifted in from the streetlamp outside.

  She turned to him and ran the back of her hand across his cheek. “Who was Jennifer having the affair with, do you have any idea?” she asked.

  “No idea at all.” He closed his eyes.

  She pulled her hand back and nuzzled her head into his neck. He put his arm around her shoulder. “Whoever it is, the guy has to be your prime suspect.”

  “Of course. But she was incredibly careful in the way she covered her tracks.” It seemed a bit extreme, he thought, for a woman who was having an affair.

  “What’s that make you think?”

  He stroked her hair. “That it was someone who didn’t want their identity known either.”

  “I miss her.” She yawned again. Louder this time. “I haven’t slept in two days.” She curled her legs over his thighs. Her voice sounded sleepy.

  He pulled the sheets over them.

  “I’ve got to leave in a few hours,” he said. “We’re doing some surveillance. You can let yourself out. You don’t need a key, both doors lock behind you.”

  “Who are you doing the surveillance on?”

  He thought about it. She might be upset to know they were still suspicious of Raglan’s husband. “I’ll tell you if something comes of it,” he said.

  “Just hold me,” she said. “That’s what I need.”

  In seconds he felt her whole body go slack as she slid into sleep.

  He lay still so as not to wake her, his eyes wide open. He stared at the ceiling as his mind raced. Wondering about Jo, about Howard Darnell, and about Jennifer Raglan. Who had she really been? And who had been her lover?

  28

  “HAP! HAP! HAP!”

  The late-night crowd that filled the banquet room at the Hilton Airport Hotel was chanting and clapping and whooping it up. On the balloon-filled stage a huge monitor was playing highlights from the career of the chief-of-police-turned-mayoralty-candidate in an endless loop. A big electronic timer, counting down the days to the election, hung under a long banner that read in big purple letters: HAP: TAKE BACK OUR CITY!

  The room was so packed Greene could hardly move. He eased himself over to the a spot on wall near where a ramp led to the stage. Charlton had e-mailed him a few hours earlier and asked him to stand there.

  “Mayor Hap! Mayor Hap! Mayor Hap! Mayor Hap!” people screamed in glee.

  From the wings of the stage, a man with a shaved head, wearing a T-shirt that read HAP AIN’T PRETTY BUT HE’LL TAKE BACK OUR CITY, ran up to the microphone. The crowd burst out in laughter and applause.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Roger Taylor. Most of you know me as the host of my TV show O, O, Toronto.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “You’ve heard of me. Right?”

  “Yes!” the crowd shouted.

  Greene smiled. He knew more about Taylor than his fawning fans did. The TV personality had been arrested three times as a “found in” at bawdy houses, a polite Canadian legal term for whorehouse. Each time he’d managed to wiggle out of the charges and keep the news out of the press. Very convenient, given that on the set of his highly rated show he sat at a desk on which photos of his blond wife and athletic kids were prominently displayed.

  “Are you all as excited as I am?” he asked the crowd. “This is Hap’s first big campaign rally!”

  More wild cheering.

  This was classic Charlton, Greene thought. Stage his first big event late at night to get maximum exposure on the morning newscasts. And instead of doing this in a downtown hotel the way every other candidate always did, do it out here in the burbs to underscore how unconventional his campaign was going to be, and how much support he had in the outlying areas.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, what a great honour it is for me to introduce the great man who will soon transform our city. The man who will get the perverts and thugs off our streets. The man who will banish the bureaucratic waste at City Hall, clear the panhandlers and the litter from our streets, get rid of the graffiti that’s spreading like weeds on steroids. The man who is going to take back our city!”

  “Hap! Hap! Hap!” the audience began to chant.

  “Okay, everyone, let’s count down together,” Taylor screamed. “Ten, nine, eight.”

  The crowd caught up to him and yelled in unison, “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

  “Here he is,” Taylor shouted. “The next mayor of Toronto. Jumping Jack Hap. The chief. Hap Charlton!”

  He pointed to a door a few steps past Greene. The Rolling Stones song “Jumping Jack Flash” blasted over the loudspeakers as the door swung open and a spotlight shone right on Charlton.

  Greene smiled. Zachary Stone, the veteran Toronto Sun reporter, had given the ever-energetic Charlton the nickname decades ago and it had stuck. Now it seemed to be the perfect theme song for his campaign.

  Charlton burst into the packed hall, bouncing up and down, clutching his big hands above his head like a prizefighter who has won the championship of the world.

  The crowd began to jump up and down too. A group in front surged forward, but a phalanx of off-duty policemen held them back. The roar was louder than ever.

  Greene kept his position and his back to the wall. With all the cheering and stomping, he could feel the floor vibrate through his shoes.

  Charlton lowered his arms and began shaking hands with everyone on both sides of him. TV crews pushed supporters aside, holding their cameras aloft to capture their footage.

  Charlton spotted Greene and reached for his hand. Greene shook it, but much to his surprise, Charlton pulled him closer to whisper in his ear.

  “Ari, there’s a little shithole bathroom in back of that room.” He jerked his head toward the door he’d just exited. “Once I’ve done this fucking stupid speech and all the press crap, meet me there. We’ve got to talk.”

  “Sure,” Greene said.

  “About this Jennifer Raglan thing.”

  Despite the rising heat in the room, Greene felt a chill on the back of his neck. Before he could say a word, Charlton was swept back up in the crowd.

  This was how Charlton always worked. The swearing and the bluster, the little secrets. Always wanted to let his inner circle know that despite the trappings of power, he was still one of them.

  Greene watched him mount the stage. Despite his considerable bulk, the now-official candidate for mayor was still quick on his feet.

  “Thank you, everyone, thank you.” Charlton waved to the crowd as they cheered for about a minute, until he raised his hands like a preacher before his congregation, and they fell silent.

  He flashed his toothiest smile. “You know, folks, for thirty-five years as a proud member of the Toronto Police Service, it’s been my life’s work to serve and protect the citizens of our great city.”

  Spontaneous applause erupted, but he silenced it with a quick wave of his hand.

  Charlton wasn’t really speaking to the crowd, but to the TV cameras. He was the master of a good clip to make the top of the newscast. “But I just couldn’t sit by and watch the Toronto I love decline. That’s why I’m running for mayor. To take back our city!”

  The audience started chanting “Take it back, Hap!”

  Charlton was loving the attention. Always had. Always would.

  Greene had met him the first week he joined the force, twenty-five years earlier. Back then, it was unusual for a Jewish kid to want to be a police officer, and Greene was older than most of the other recruits. Charlton was his first staff sergeant and he saw something in the greenhorn. Became his mentor, his rabbi.

  “Take back our litter-filled streets from the criminals who are terrorizing our neighbourhoods,” Charlton said, pausing to let the roar of approval roll over him.

  Charlton got Gree
ne into the Major Crime Unit early in his career, then the undercover drug squad, then had him made a division detective. When Charlton became chief, he picked Greene for a secret assignment that took a year out Greene’s life. When that was over, he sent Greene to Europe for another year to recover. When Greene came back to Toronto, he had his own office in the homicide squad.

  “Take back our City Hall from the wasteful bureaucrats,” Charlton said, sweeping the crowd along with him.

  For years Greene had watched Charlton manipulate politicians and the press with a Svengali-like ease. Now, stepping into his first election campaign, he looked like a natural.

  “Take back our parks. Our community centres. Our pride.”

  The Jennifer Raglan thing, Greene thought. Thing. In the long days since the murder, the ache of losing her, missing her, wanting her, had drilled a silent hole inside him.

  “Take back all those extra taxes that have been piled on the citizens and the businesses of Toronto. I want you to take home more of your hard-earned money.”

  Greene knew why Charlton wanted to talk to him in the washroom. The chief loved to know every detail of any major crime investigation. What had happened with the wiretaps on the husband? Any other suspects? Who was Jennifer’s secret lover?

  But there was no way Charlton could have found out about his affair with Raglan. Was there?

  “Best of all,” Charlton said, his voice rising in a crescendo, “when I’m mayor, Toronto, the largest city in Canada, the most multicultural city in the world, will be ours once again. We are going to take it back and make it shine!”

  This sent the crowd into rapturous applause. Charlton, who knew how to keep an audience panting for more, and how to make sure the press had enough time to file their stories, raised his hands again in triumph and headed off the stage.

  29

  SURVEILLANCE WORK WAS ONE OF THE MORE THANKLESS TASKS FOR ANY POLICE OFFICER. IT was like being a navigator in a long car race, Kennicott thought. There were lengthy stretches of boring nothing-to-do time, punctuated by urgent action. No one noticed if you did your job right, but if you made a mistake it left egg all over your face.

  As the lead homicide detective, he didn’t have to be sitting in this unmarked car, parked across from Howard Darnell’s home, at ten minutes after midnight. But if he was going to be in charge of this investigation, he knew it was important for the other cops to see him putting in the hours. Besides, he wanted to do it.

  Right now the moon was out, giving a soft light to the quiet street. The wind had died down to a breeze. There were no lights on in the Darnell home. Nor was there any noise inside. It was sad and uncomfortable listening in on Raglan’s family and disconcerting to hear the children cry and their father try to console them. There was clearly friction between Darnell and Aaron. Earlier, as they were getting ready to drive to the funeral home in Welland, they’d had a huge fight when Aaron insisted on wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was complaining about his new school, where he was already in trouble because he’d been late every morning except for the first day of classes. He said he hated the place and was threatening not to go back unless his father got him the new iPhone to replace his BlackBerry, which he claimed was “a piece of shit.”

  The judge who had issued the warrant, aware of this extreme invasion of privacy, insisted it had to be renewed every four days. Kennicott knew that if they didn’t get something incriminating on tape soon, it would expire. Part of him hoped that would happen.

  He lowered himself deeper in the driver’s seat.

  “Drago, you hear anything?” he asked, speaking quietly into the microphone that dangled from his right ear.

  “Not a peep,” said the sound technician in the delivery van parked at the top of the block. He was a Serbian guy named Slavko Dragic, who insisted that everyone call him Drago.

  “I’ll check with you in fifteen.” Kennicott had set up a system of quick calls every quarter hour to make sure they were on top of things. It would also keep him alert. He was tired. The dull fatigue that comes from days and nights of getting short snatches of sleep, eating strange food at strange hours, and feeling the constant alertness of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  Last night, after Jo had fallen asleep on his chest, he had shut his eyes too and eventually drifted into a light sleep. Because he’d signed up for this shift, he’d set the alarm on his cell phone for eleven o’clock. He’d managed to grab it and turn it off before it woke her up. But he’d had to hurry.

  In the kitchen he took the blue Pastis water pitcher that Andrea had brought him from Paris, and put it into a top cupboard out of sight, then he started writing Jo a note.

  Very late

  Jo

  Had to get back to work on the case. Glad you stayed.

  He stopped. What to write next? You’re welcome at any time? That sounded ridiculous. How about Anytime you miss the last ferry there’s a spare room? That was worse. And very late? That seemed self-congratulatory.

  He balled the paper up and stuffed it in his back pocket and tried again.

  Jo

  Had to get back to work. Door is always open.

  Horrible. Clichéd. He ripped the page in half, then into quarters, and stuck them into the same back pocket.

  He looked at the clock above the stove. Shit. It was 11:18. He had to be out the door in twelve minutes. And he needed to grab a shower.

  Jo

  I put some fresh grounds in the espresso machine, help yourself.

  D.

  He yanked the handle off his machine, quickly rinsed out the old grounds, dried off the basket, and poured in fresh ones from the airtight jar he kept on the kitchen counter. He pulled out a drawer. Where was the tamper? Damn. Just use a spoon, he told himself. He grabbed a soup spoon and pushed down hard on the grounds, making a concave dent and spilling bits over the side. This is crazy, he thought as dug back into the drawer, trying not to be too loud. There it is. He grabbed the tamper, poured in more grounds, made sure he pushed them down firm and flat, flicked some specks off the rim, and shoved the handle back into position. He rushed to the shower, wishing he’d written a note that didn’t sound so cold.

  Too late now, Kennicott thought as he kept watch on Darnell’s house. It was still dark. The street was quiet. He tried not to yawn.

  A light came on in the front room on the second floor. The master bedroom.

  “A light’s on,” he said into the microphone, sitting up. “Drago, what do you hear?”

  Drago was parked too far away to see the house, so Kennicott was the eyes, Drago the ears.

  “Feet on the floor,” he said. “Wait. I hear footsteps. Someone’s in the bathroom.”

  Kennicott watched the lighted curtain in front. Darnell probably had to pee. Most likely he’d be back in bed in a few seconds, and the light would go out again.

  “Person is back in the original bedroom. Sounds like someone is getting dressed,” Drago said.

  “How can you tell?” Kennicott asked.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time. Now someone’s going downstairs. One set of footsteps. Pretty heavy-sounding. Wouldn’t be a child.”

  “Light just came on on the ground floor,” Kennicott said. “He’s probably going to the kitchen to get something to eat or drink.”

  “I heard the light switch. Wait. What’s that? Fridge opening. Closing. He’s pouring something into a glass. Sitting down. Now nothing.”

  “Okay,” Kennicott said. The mike wouldn’t pick up the subtle sound of someone drinking.

  “A faint sound. Something clicked. Scratching.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Drago was silent for a few seconds. Then he chuckled. “He’s writing something at the kitchen table. I heard him tear a sheet of paper, like he was ripping it off a pad.”

  “You’re good at this,” Kennicott said.

  “Thanks. Wait. A door opened and shut. Wait. Wait. Damn, now there’s nothing.”

  “Ho
w could there be nothing?” Kennicott asked. In a few seconds he had his answer. Darnell was walking toward his garage and a light came on through the side window. They hadn’t miked the garage, so there was no feed from inside. I won’t make that mistake again, he told himself.

  What was Darnell doing in there? Kennicott thought about how he’d got up in the middle of the night. Wrote something on the kitchen table. Was it a suicide note to the kids? It wouldn’t take long for him asphyxiate himself sitting in the van with the windows open and the garage door closed.

  Before Kennicott could get out of his car, he heard a loud rumble. The garage door opened. He could see Darnell silhouetted by the inside light bending down and lifting something very heavy then bringing it out to the driveway. It took Kennicott a few seconds to realize it was a canoe.

  Darnell punched some numbers into the keypad by the garage door and it unfolded back into place. He went to the side of the canoe, bent deep down, slipped one hand under the near side, and reached for the far gunnel with the other. Using a confident rocking motion, he one-two-three hoisted it onto his shoulders in a swift move and started walking down the street. Kennicott sank lower in his seat as he passed, which was probably unnecessary since Darnell had a canoe over his head. As a boy, Kennicott and his older brother, Michael, had spent every summer at his parents’ cottage. He knew a lot about canoes, and he could tell Darnell did too.

  He waited until Darnell got well down the moonlit street before getting out of his car. It was almost comical to watch Darnell look left and right, and let the all-night Queen streetcar pass, before he portaged across the road. Kennicott started walking and called the officer in the unmarked squad car parked near the lake. He told him to come back to keep an eye on the house.

  It was easy to follow the canoe, keeping to the shadows. Two blocks south of Queen, Darnell entered the bucolic park by the lake. Kennicott hid in a stand of tall bushes. The moonlight danced on the dark water.