by Lee Lamothe
“Then I do intel, wide, and he comes back as a migrant smuggler, they think it was him that left those Chinese folks, last winter, in the river. He was working with some of Tiger Truong’s bunch up in Canada, running what they call a pig train, and something went wrong and they all drowned. That’s last winter. He hasn’t been seen doing anything since.
“His name next pops up three months ago when his ex-wife, Julia Gurr, our blondie, is found wandering in Spicetown, badly tuned up. Someone went at her with a baseball bat, but she ain’t saying dick. But she’s a currency manipulator and that might have had something to do with it. Maybe a ripoff. Maybe her husband. Anyway, she calls Markowitz. He comes down, signs her out. They split for a while, they come back, she shacks up with him at his place in Stonetown. Then she moves out and we don’t know where she’s set up.”
“Maybe she’s with him, with Preston. We have an address on him?”
“Homicide has one that’s pretty fresh. In the Annex, near the university. They were up on him for a while because two of the migrants were recovered on our side of the river, makes them city homicides.”
“If this Preston guy is down on the dope trade, why’s he meeting with Markowitz last night?”
“That’s the question, mon ami.” She stacked a piece of chicken on a piece of biscuit, dragged it through the congealing white gravy and popped into her mouth, feeling like she was betraying France because she enjoyed it a lot. “But we know they’ve known each other a long time, we know they had a meeting in the middle of this problem of Markowitz’s, we know Preston’s a border rat, we know his wife’s a currency manipulator, and Marko’s dough needs a lot of manipulating to move it. Put ’em all together and that spells Mother.”
Ray Tate thought about it as he mopped the white gravy from his plate with a crispy corner of biscuit. It was logical. There were three ways to drill in: through Markowitz, through Preston, through Julia Gurr. They could sit all day watching Markowitz do the whore tour and hope he led them to the stash, or they could try to track down a roof to put over Julia Gurr. Or they could confirm Bobby Preston’s address, then set up on him, see if he reconnected with Markowitz.
He sneaked looks at Djuna Brown. She was in profile, looking sadly and a bit angrily out the window at two Native men sharing a bagged bottle on the corner of the parking lot. The men were filthy and had their arms around each other’s shoulders. They rocked toward balance.
Natives were her weakness, her cause. She’d worked at the State Police detachment up in Indian Country and had fallen in love with the mornings and the rituals and the laughing children and even the tragedies that they somehow bounced back from. As he loved the city streets, she loved the crisp crunching dew of autumn morning under her duty boots, the silver rivers of fish you could walk across. She loved that the seasons were sharp and defined, and often sudden to arrive and slow to leave. With dread and a bit of relief, Ray Tate realized their dream of Paris might be jeopardized. He wouldn’t make her unhappy. He thought of the logistics of him working in the city, she in the north, putting together long weekends and two-week sojourns a couple of times a year back to Paris, having the best of their worlds. They could love each other anywhere, but in Paris it was sweet.
“Djun’? What are you thinking?”
“Those guys.” She looked away from the now scuffling Natives, the bag now at their feet and liquor running out of it. There were tears in her eyes and she looked down at her plate. “You know, up in Indian Country there’s a healing circle that helps them cope, that takes them in, restores them. A support system from within the tribe. But they’re down here where they get treated like drunken animals, where they let themselves be treated like human junk.” She looked up at him. “How come they don’t go back up? They know there’s love up there for them, there’s help, there’s family. I just want to scream at them. Go fucking home.”
It was her heart, he knew. It was her heart that would decide whether they were in Paris together or making a life of scheduling shiftwork and long drives. He decided to leave it up to her. It was nothing to do with him as long as she wasn’t gone from him.
The address from the homicide squad file was on a leafy street. They cruised the block in the 500, counting the numbers backwards until they spotted Bobby Preston’s house. They didn’t slow.
“One-way street,” Ray Tate said. “Bonus. We can do it in one car. Unless he legs it.”
She’d shaken off the Indian blues. She dialled in on the freddy and got the Green Squad dispatch to run the address for taxes, hot calls, motor vehicles, and water and power utility. There were no hot calls. Taxes were paid by an absentee. Power and water came back to Robert A. Preston, second floor. The DMV returned to an address in the Grid, licensed driver, but no vehicles, no insurance.
“He rents,” Ray Tate said. “Taxes paid by the owner, but he sticks the tenant for utilities.” He rounded the block, a grid of one-ways, and went past the house again. There was a vacant parking spot a half-dozen houses south and he jammed the 500 into it. “Let’s have an eye.” He triangulated the mirrors and racked his seat back. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Ray. Just the blues. Those guys at the biscuit place. You know, they were warriors once, respected, feared. Now …”
“Look, we do what we can, right? After this is down, one way or the other, we go back to Paris for a few weeks, then decide. We can make it work here, get some more pensionable time in. I can do my thing down here, you can go up north, we’ll hook up as much as we can.”
She put her hand on his. “You’d do that?”
“Do I gots a choice?”
“We’ll talk about it. Maybe on the rue Dominique. Charcuterie.”
Ray Tate’s eyes skipped around the mirrors as they spoke. He said, “Second floor window. There’s a woman up there. Blonde. Looking out.”
“Gurr?”
“Can’t tell. Same colouring. Pale and blonde. Like she’s looking for someone.”
“Then we should wait, too.”
Chapter 14
Julia Gurr spent the day cleaning the apartment. She felt deep guilt. It was her lifestyle and Bobby’s and Marko’s that put her daughter in danger. It was her own greed that put her in the hands of the Ibrahaims in Spicetown. It was Bobby Preston’s greed that killed the family of migrants in the river. The only goodness around them was Zoe. Something good would have to come out of it all or they’d all destroyed their lives for nothing, for chasing a buck, for carrying on their own parents’ tradition as outlaws.
The day was interminable.
She looked out the window and saw a boxy blue car had parked down the block. She watched it for a while and worried. Deciding that Bobby would need help moving the money, she found his stash of cold phones and began making calls. Some of her contacts hadn’t heard from her since Spicetown; some were a little remote, as if she’d let them down, others were pleased that she was back in business. When she sounded her people out, she was general, taking temperature.
By the time Bobby Preston tapped at the door softly so as not to startle her, she’d made decisions.
He was wet from the shower. He had some insect bites around his neck and his shoes were by the door, mucked and wet. She followed him down the hallway into the kitchen. He began working a corkscrew into a wine bottle. He only drank wine since he’d drunkenly left the Chinese to die in the river. He’d been drunk on Canadian Club when Young Truong wrestled him to the ground when he tried to go in and save them. Wine was okay. He could control wine.
“Bobby? How was it?”
“Fuck. Me.” He shook his head. He had a huge grin on his face. “Ohhhh, fuck me.”
She took wine glasses from the counter and held them while he poured. “Tell me.”
“I dunno. I probably shouldn’t.” He felt playful and coy. “I definitely shouldn’t.” She loved money, always had. Even dope money. Money, she told him, had no smell. Wisdom from the Romans when they put a tax on public toilets.
“But there’s lots of it, right?”
He began laughing.
“Can you move it?”
“There’s a lot of bulk, no question. It’ll be tough.”
“What if you boil it down?” She stared at him. “What if I boil it down, if I do the boiling?”
He looked back at her, no longer smiling.
It was tough, going outside, even with him. She stepped onto the porch, then backed up against the door and asked him to get the gun.
“Jools, it’s okay. We’re just going to the end of the street and back. It’s cool, lots of people down there.”
“Bobby?” She was licking her lips and staring out into the dark shadows. Her eyes were huge, unblinking. The porch light was harsh and her cheekbone looked deeply caved-in, worse than it actually was.
“Okay.” He went off the porch and up the alley to the back of the house and retrieved the gun. He hated having it around, but she was showing that she trusted him and he wanted to reassure her.
As they strolled, he counted off cars parked on the long block and identified three as suspicious. Two had out of state plates, Ontario and Michigan. They were busted-back sedans with bald tires; student cars. The third was a blue Ford 500 without a street-parking permit. At the rear of the vehicle Preston noted there was no dealer identification on the licence-plate holder. He didn’t like that much. They continued on, their heads close together.
“You come clean yesterday?” He leaned close to her, their steps matching. “I think that blue one back there’s bad.”
“I don’t think so. I was careful. Two taxis, the bus. The blue thing showed up this afternoon. Maybe it was you?”
“Last night when I met Marko I think he’d brought somebody with him. I dumped them, but they maybe got the plate. But the guy I got it from won’t say anything. I had nobody on me before I met Marko or when I got home.”
“So, it’s me?”
“We’ll see. Let’s just be careful, okay? I have to do a lot of things very quickly and we can’t draw heat.”
At the end of the street they merged with throngs of people wandering the student cafes, music shops, patios, and clubs. Buskers had their corners, panhandlers had their doorways. It was loud with car stereos.
“Did you talk to Zoe?”
“Yeah, she says she’s good. They had her in a jail cell, then the capitano came and took her to a car. A Mexican guy was waiting, she said he mentioned Marko. She’s someplace with a pool. She doesn’t know where.” He looked into her eyes. “I have to put Zoe aside for now, okay? I have to be logical about finding a variation.”
It was a cool late summer evening, but not cold enough to have shut down the outside patios. Couples and groups wearing light sweaters or thin jackets sat around tables eating and drinking. They passed along the street looking for a free table. After a few blocks, they crossed the street and came back. At the Calliope Café they saw a couple leaving a patio and went in and sat down. Music leaked from the blues bar across the intersection. The waiter cleared the table and took their drink and food orders.
Julia Gurr wanted details about the stash, but she brought him up-to-date first on her moves. “I’ve made some calls. So, we’re a go for a bunch of it. We’ve got people on standby.”
“You shouldn’t get into this,” he said. But he was glad she wanted to get to work, that they could spend some time together. They’d busted badly, hadn’t given it a chance. Between his failed run across the river and her time in Spicetown, he felt they’d never thrashed things out, hadn’t given themselves a real shot. But he had to be square with her. “This could go real bad real fast.”
“Bobby, I’m in. Whatever you’ve got to move, you’re going to have to boil it, right? I can’t sit around hoping things work out for Zoe.”
Preston read the street, thinking. It was like old times, except that it was drug money and their kid was in the switches.
She locked her eyes on him. “So, tell me? How was it?” She made a dirty smirk to help him along. “Did you get hard?”
“Well, it was okay, I have to admit. If it wasn’t the kind of dough it is and with so much at stake, I’d’ve been in heaven. Jerry drove me up, put me through pretty good. When we got there, me and Marko got into his plane and he gave me a ski mask to put on backwards, so I couldn’t see. We flew for a little while. He tried to make me barf, looping around, or maybe, I guess, he was just scrubbing himself.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yep. I think he’s starting to get a good read on Jerry. Anyway, we land off a sinking dock and I take off the mask. He angles the plane to the dock and out we get. Rundown place, we flew about maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, but we could’ve been anywhere. There’s a log house with a collapsed roof, but we didn’t go there. We go up a path and around a bit.” A fond smile appeared on his face. “Marko’s become quite the outdoorsman. Here, bear shit, see it? There, a moose been chewing on that tree. Like a kid. So there’s a steel shed with trees right up to it, pretty new, no windows, one door, big lock. We open it up and, man, inside is —” He stopped and sat back. “We have any cigarettes? I could use one.”
“C’mon, Bobby. What’s inside?” She appeared to have stopped breathing.
“I better go find a shop, buy a pack.” He edged his chair back, teasing. “Back in a few minutes.”
“Jesus.” She turned to the couple smoking next to them and asked the man for a cigarette. He gave her one and lit it. She thanked him sweetly and handed it to Preston. “So, inside, what?”
“Well, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s …” He made his face dreamy. He was having a little fun. He’d badly missed her, missed business gossip and chat. “Fuck …”
“Money, right? Lots and lots of money.” Her eyes were bright and she licked her lips. The image of it distracted her. She forgot she was out after dark. In the space around their little round table she felt safe, useful. Zoe was safe, at least for now. “Like, how much?”
Preston made her a picture. “It’s dark in there, trees growing right up to it. Stinks. Ten ems, he figures, about. He’s got the place sealed right up. There’s money in old metal garbage cans, there’s money in old-school lockers he got someplace and welded the vents. Some old wooden boxes with hasp locks on them. Bags and bags of it. All, all of them, Jools, full of dough. Some squirrels or something must’ve got in, there’s shredded bills around. There’s rat traps with rats in ’em, there’s mouse traps with mice in ’em, and they’re all rotting away.”
“Ten ems.” She closed her eyes, imagining the money, skipping over the unpleasantness of deteriorating rodentia, passing on the scents and gases. “Wow. Fuck. Wow.” She glowed.
The waiter put glasses of wine in front of them and told them their food would be along shortly. Preston, sitting facing the street, watched a couple pass by for the second time, a cute athletic-looking black woman with spikey black hair and a zany skirt and batik top, and a slim bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt and a hacked leather jacket who looked like a jazz musician. Neither looked at the patio, their heads close together, chatting. Maybe cops, maybe street hustlers. He kept an eye on their whereabouts.
“Bulk, how’s the bulk?”
He made a small disbelieving laugh. “Oh, it’s bulk all right. In all, the numbers are like this, and this is rough because Marko just let things get right out of hand and he doesn’t even know what he’s got. Maybe three em in hundreds and fifties, five em in tens and twenties, a quarter million in five dollar bills, tons of singles, no idea how much, and a quarter million in various Canadian, mostly fives. That’s just wild. All mixed up. A lot of it is just stuffed loose and mixed into bags or boxes. And, believe it or not, he’s got about nine thousand in coins. There’s probably some returnable beer bottles in there, too.”
Julia Gurr used a knife to scoop melted Brie onto a slice of apple. She frowned prettily as she computed. “I figure, what, half-a-million individual bills? Weighs about what? About?”
&nbs
p; “If his math’s even close, I worked it out to just about seven-hundred thousand individual bills. With the grime and the elastics in the bundles, figure on fourteen, fifteen hundred pounds. I’m still working on the cube size, but I’ve got to tell you, it’s going to be heavy and cast a big shadow.”
She computed. “If it was in new money, new bills, without the elastics that’s … about two hundred feet tall, stacked up.”
“Once it’s all bundled. I told Marko there’s no way I can waste time counting and bundling. He’s getting a crew working with some counting machines. He figures it’ll take two days, tops.”
“How we going to do it? I mean, not how, but, like … how?”
“Well, if you’re sure you’re in, it’d be nice to cut the bulk. Even changing all the singles and fives into hundreds will bring it way down.”
Across the street the black-and-white couple chatted with each other on the sidewalk, then crossed Nicholas Street and entered a café with an outdoor patio, exactly opposite. They took seats that gave the jazzy man a clear view of the Calliope Cafe patio over the black woman’s shoulder.
Julia Gurr said: “How much time have we got? To boil it?”
“Probably not much, but I’d like to do some of it. Moving a shipment that size really restricts how many options I have. The plan is that Marko’s going to get some labour up there to box it up and get it out. There’s a road that runs about a quarter mile from the stash house. How he gets it down, I don’t care. If I’m lucky, Jerry Kelly’ll take him off, put one in his head and swing with the money.”
“Doesn’t help Zo’ though.”
“I know.” Across Nicholas Street a waitress brought coffee to the couple and the man held up his hand to stop her from walking away and paid her. Ready to dash. Cops, more and more likely, so assume cops. “I don’t think he’s got it all figured out yet. I told him the best scenario is after he gets it counted and ready to go, he moves it down here, someplace in the city where we can get at it. He controls the timetable and what moves I make. I’m going to have to fix that. I can’t have him jerking me around.”