The Ambitious City

by Scott Thornley

  PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

  Copyright © 2012 Scott Thornley

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in 2012 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

  www.randomhouse.ca

  Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Thornley, Scott

  The ambitious city / Scott Thornley.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-35930-8

  I. Title.

  PS8639.H66A43 2012 C813’.6 C2011-908140-7

  Front cover image: Shin Sugino

  Cover concept and art direction: Scott Thornley

  Cover design: Kirk Stephens

  Cover imagework: Mark Lyle

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Wesley Gordon Woods, OBE (1915–2008)

  Classical scholar and linguist, Anglican priest,

  bomber navigator, British cultural attaché,

  artist and birder—my uncle and mentor.

  “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy.”

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  PROLOGUE

  REFERRED TO LOCALLY as The Grave, the steel company’s dock dropped five storeys to the thick muck of the harbour below, its nickname a less than subtle nod to Dundurn’s history. Or at least to the history of a myth that had arisen shortly after the dock was completed back in 1926. Competing mobs in the city, it was said, were dropping their cemented dead into the harbour off that dock. Over time, as the bay grew more polluted with human waste and industrial runoff, no one would willingly venture into the water to check it out. The police were happy to simply call it a myth.

  Sheltered from the noise of several suction pumps that had been running night and day for four months, Howard Ellis, principal engineer for the Hamilton-Scourge Project, sat in his “room with a view”—the only trailer of six at the dredging site whose windows faced Dundurn Bay. The others looked out onto the red-brown chaos of cranes, elevators and an ever-changing parade of mud-caked men and diesel-belching heavy equipment hauling the day’s sludge away to God-knows-where.

  The city hadn’t seen a project of this magnitude since the completion of the Sky-High Bridge in 1958. And before that, you’d have to look all the way back to the industrial development of the waterfront in the early 1900s. Three books lay fanned out neatly at the end of the long worktable dominating Ellis’s trailer. One contained architectural renderings, another, construction tendering documents—the largest of the three—and the last was the one Ellis would flip through the way he used to flip through the Eaton’s catalogue, longing for his parents to get him the blue CCM bike. This last volume brought the project to life in a way the drawings and dock-bottom scans couldn’t. He’d studied it so many times he had committed the opening paragraph to memory:

  It was just after midnight on Sunday, August 8, 1813; the schooners Hamilton and Scourge—dangerously top-heavy, overloaded with men and munitions—were anchored miles offshore of Forty Mile Creek. They were part of an American squadron assembling to engage the British fleet, lying off Burlington, the next day. Men were asleep on deck and below, propped up against cannons, shot boxes and barrels of gunpowder, when a sudden squall tore through the otherwise still night. In less than five minutes, both ships sank, carrying all but a dozen to a watery grave, where they remain to this day—three hundred feet below the surface of Lake Ontario.

  Ellis stared out over the bay again, trying to imagine the day when the two warships, raised from the depths, would arrive on his site. The fireboats would spray great plumes of water, the freighters and tugs would sound their horns, bunting would fly from the Burlington Bridge and the steel company’s rusting cranes, and the Royal Dundurn Yacht Club’s sails and powerboats would fill the bay. Mingled with the horns and ships’ whistles would be thousands of cheers and huzzas from the crowd. And he’d be right there to guide the schooners in.

  Maybe, he thought, if the bigwigs got off their butts, they’d even have a fleet of tall ships—a grand escort flotilla of sail. Certainly it’ll be a historic day for Dundurn, he thought, but it’ll also be a day of unprecedented glory for Howard Ellis …

  As he took the Thermos of coffee out of his briefcase, a young man from the tech trailer burst through the door. “Here ya go, Mr. Ellis,” he said, handing him a large manila envelope, and left as quickly as he had come. Once a week Ellis received outputs that gave him an accurate picture of what was beneath the toxic soup that had lain undisturbed for almost a century off the harbour’s eastern wharf. It was so dense that their scanning equipment could penetrate only three feet or so beneath the surface. He’d managed to find a place on the wall for all the grainy, gridded printouts, and he looked them over now before opening the envelope of new scans.

  Ellis filled his mug and sat back to enjoy the first coffee of the day while he studied the latest printouts. What he saw caused him to spill his drink. He bolted out of his chair, grabbed the scans, and ran to find the engineer, two trailers away in number four. If he was going to believe it, Ellis would have to see what was on the computer monitor for himself.

  1.

  “BIKER SLAYINGS—SEARCH INTENSIFIES in Cayuga.”

  The headline was terse and grim, the story short on details because the crime scene on the farm in Cayuga was locked down until the full extent of the mayhem could be uncovered. So far the police had found seven dead bikers, two from a shotgun blast to the face and one from a less messy gunshot. Three were dead from
blunt-force trauma or broken necks, and one had his throat cut through to the spine. MacNeice’s colleague Detective Superintendent John Swetsky had been given the lead, and within hours he had seconded most of the available homicide detectives in the city. Most, but not all. Swetsky and his team had been at it now for two weeks, and MacNeice had decided it was time to see if there was anything he could do to help.

  The cruiser blocking the driveway moved aside when the uniform inside recognized the heavy Chevy approaching. Driving slowly down the long lane, MacNeice counted three more cruisers, two police buses and four unmarked cars, one of which belonged to Michael Vertesi, the young detective inspector who reported to him. Behind the farmhouse there was a large black trailer—a mobile forensics unit borrowed from the Mounties and fitted out by Dundurn’s own forensics team. And beyond that, the city’s only EMS-CS, a cold-storage van known irreverently as the ice cream truck. As MacNeice parked the Chevy, Vertesi and his other report, DI Montile Williams, emerged from the farmhouse.

  “You know, for bikers, they keep a very tidy house,” Vertesi said, peeling off his latex gloves. “What brings you out here, boss?”

  “Just wanted to see if I can help. Swetsky’s emptied the division—I thought I heard crickets in there this morning. Where can I find him?”

  “In the barn, checkin’ inventory,” Williams said. “They got more equipment than Dundurn Streets ‘n’ Sanitation.”

  As MacNeice headed towards the barn, he could see two lines of cops walking the open field, looking for evidence. So far the daily reports had said they’d found almost four hundred spent rounds from a variety of weapons, mostly in and around the buildings and on the driveway.

  The bodies had been buried between the barns, piled like cordwood six feet down, each sealed in plastic. Forensics was examining them for DNA, after which they’d be shipped to the coroner’s lab. He could hear the high-speed hum of the forensic unit’s exhaust fans. As he hadn’t eaten anything, he decided to avoid going near the trailer.

  Three rows of equipment filled the massive space inside the main barn—everything from recreational 4×4s to Bobcats, tractors and posthole diggers—and that was just what he could make out while standing on the threshold. He heard the big man coming before he actually saw him; Swetsky emerged from the farthest row carrying a clipboard.

  “Mac! What brings you to Sherwood Forest? Have you been pushed into this one?”

  “No, but since you’ve cleaned out the department, I thought I’d offer a hand too. How are you doing?”

  “It’s a serious mop-up. I gave ’em each a floor of the farmhouse and put Palmer in the basement, where he belongs.”

  “Have you worked out who the Damned Two Deuces were at war with?”

  “No—so far all the bodies are D2D. The rest cleared out after they buried them. I heard there was a Quebec gang down here, but I haven’t seen any evidence to prove it.”

  “I’ve read the reports. Other than the shrink-wrapped bodies, the place seems pretty clean.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re cataloguing all this shit”—Swetsky nodded towards the tractor beside him—“and there’s more in the other barn. Believe it or not, some of it’s legit. We’re also making sure we have all the bodies.”

  MacNeice’s cell rang and he looked down at the call display. “I have to take this.” Back out in the sunlight, he answered.

  “Mac,” a familiar voice said. “Jesus, it’s been a long time. Are you okay?”

  He could hear gulls calling and wind buffeting the microphone on the other end. “I’m fine, Bob. Where are you?”

  “What do you know about the Hamilton-Scourge Project?”

  Driving back to the city, MacNeice recalled that the last time he’d seen Bob Maybank, Dundurn’s popular mayor, was at Kate’s funeral. It seemed that not a day went by when he didn’t see the mayor on television or in the papers, but in the flesh, the last time had been at the cemetery. MacNeice was impressed that he had made the trip up north to watch her ashes being interred. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the mayor—he did. They’d grown up together, played on the same teams and at times dated the same girls. He even admired what Bob was doing for Dundurn. But four years was a long time between calls. There were friends of his and Kate’s who had made themselves scarce after she died, and Maybank was one of those. The urgency in his voice had been palpable—he’d called today because he needed something.

  Weaving swiftly through traffic as he descended the mountain, MacNeice thought about the waterfront regeneration project the mayor had mentioned. In 2012 the country would mark the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, and if Maybank could pull this off, it would inject new revenue into the city, both through construction and afterwards, when the tourists arrived. Specifically what it was going to be MacNeice wasn’t sure. Like many people in Dundurn he’d been skeptical that the feds and the province would invest heavily in a city known nationwide for its dead or dying manufacturing sector. Industry, it was understood, was the city’s only reason for being. In the much sought after “new economy,” it seemed to be accepted that Dundurn would be collateral damage.

  Maybank had given quirky instructions on how to find the trailer: “Go past the blast furnace, past all the long rows of rusty red buildings, all the way to the end of life as you know it—and then turn left.” MacNeice pulled up next to the shiny black Lincoln Town Car and looked out to the bay, where the cormorants were diving for lake fish dumb enough to come through the canal. Stepping out of the Chevy and walking over to the wooden steps of the first trailer, he noticed the fusion of smells, dominated by oil and chemicals and topped off with marine decay—it wasn’t unpleasant. But then, the wind was blowing the sulphur fumes from the steel plant up over the city and not over the water.

  The door to the trailer swung open and Mayor Bob stepped out with his winning smile, firm handshake and shoulder clasp. “Mac, welcome to the future—the Museum of the Great Lakes. Come on inside; it smells like rat shit out here. In a couple of years, though, it’ll be all candy floss and coconut oil, I promise you.”

  “Stop campaigning, Bob. I’m here, and you’ve already won the election.”

  “Ah, but the secret is—to never stop.” He smiled broadly and opened the door for MacNeice.

  Waiting for them inside were three people introduced as Julia Marchetti, Maybank’s head of communications, Terence Young, the project architect, and Howard Ellis, the project’s principal engineer. MacNeice shook their hands and looked back at Maybank for an explanation.

  “We have a great opportunity with this project, Mac. We have the support of all three levels of government, as well as the United States Congress and Senate and the U.S. Navy—they’re responsible for marine war graves. They all know this will be unique in North America and in the world.”

  “Raising the two ships and gifting them to Dundurn was signed into law decades ago,” Young said enthusiastically, “but the technology to do it didn’t exist back then. What’s keeping those ships and everything on them in mint condition is the temperature down there—it’s just above freezing year-round. Bring them up, and in a few weeks they’ll disintegrate right before your eyes.” He moved his hands as if to say poof. “Today we have the technology to refrigerate them, from the bottom of the lake to their arrival here. Imagine a huge aquarium—one-inch-thick plate glass, shrouded in blue light. To be precise, they’ll be in the same conditions as now, but on view forever.”

  As Maybank slid an aerial site view across the table and opened the architectural renderings, MacNeice said, “Excuse me, but I’m a homicide detective. You need to get to the point, Bob—what am I doing here?”

  For a moment the mayor looked angry. Then he smiled and said, “Okay, Mac, here’s the point. In a routine check of the scans showing the bottom of the wharf, Ellis discovered something.” He nodded to the engineer.

  Ellis came over to MacNeice. “Once we’d dropped the wall on the bay side and began pumping the water out, we started ma
king weekly scans of the progress: bird’s-eye views of the dock. That wall behind the mayor represents scans from the past four months. As you can see, there’s nothing unusual.”

  MacNeice looked over at the wall. The soft blue-grey scans all looked the same.

  Ellis began laying prints on the table. “These are the latest scans—the time frame is seven days.” He laid them down in sequence. The first two looked the same as those on the wall, but numbers three to five were different. “You can see forms emerging here, here, here, here and here.” He put another print down and pointed to a rounded lump. “We’re pumping sludge day and night; this was yesterday morning and that form is getting clearer. I mean, it’s still below the surface but it’ll be dry on the bottom by tomorrow.” He put the last output on the table with a modest flourish. “This is from this morning.” MacNeice could feel Maybank’s eyes on him, waiting for a reaction.

  The scan revealed four long columns lying on their sides, two circular and two square. They could now see that the rounded lump was an automobile—an old automobile. MacNeice picked up the print and studied it closely. “Looks like it’s from the thirties.”

  “Very good, Mac,” said the mayor. “I’m told it’s a 1935 Packard 120 sedan.”

  “Those columns are what, seven or eight feet long?” MacNeice asked Ellis.

  “The square ones are concrete—six feet, six inches, by scale to the output. And the round ones—where you can just make out a spiral pattern—those are eight-foot Sonotubes filled with concrete.”

  “Sonotubes … like poster tubes?”

  “Exactly. They’re used as formwork for concrete columns. However”—Ellis pointed at the end of a round-sectioned column—“construction columns are reinforced with steel rods, but these appear to be solid concrete.” He moved away to let MacNeice draw the conclusion that everyone else in the trailer had already reached.

  MacNeice looked over at the mayor, who nodded. “Howard thinks the square columns may have been down there for half a century or more. But the Sonotubes are recent. If you look at the one on the right, the wrapping is unwinding in that gunk.”