“What’s this got to do with me, Bob?” MacNeice was staring at the sequence of prints.
“Julia, can you, Ellis and Young leave us for a moment, please.” The mayor waited till they had closed the door behind them. “You’re the best, and I need you. This project is too important to the city for it to be derailed by this kind of drama. Our funding depends on everything going smoothly.”
“Chain of command, Bob.”
“I’m the mayor, for fuck’s sake!” Maybank snapped. “Tell me what you need and I’ll make things happen. Start by telling me what we should do now, for chrissakes. If this becomes a crime scene, the media will be all over us.”
“If it’s a crime scene, it’s their job to be all over you. And if it’s a crime scene you’ll have plenty of cops down here too.”
“I don’t want plenty of cops. I want you.” The mayor leaned towards him over the table. “I’m just trying to do what’s best for this city, Mac, and if that car and some of those columns have been down there for more than half a century, how is turning this into a media circus going to help Dundurn? We’ve been Canada’s armpit all our lives. This project will get us off our knees and back into the game.”
“Quit mixing your metaphors and grab that aerial view of the site.”
When Maybank set the large colour print down in front of him, MacNeice put his finger on a rail line located at the northwest corner of the wharf. “As fast as you can, get City Works to erect a tent, say thirty by fifty feet, right here. Make sure it has sides and air conditioning; in fact, get a refrigeration truck and park it there”—he tapped the image. “You’ll need twenty-four-hour security you can trust, but don’t use the police.” He picked up a pen and drew the rectangles of the tent and the truck. “Use your cranes to lift the columns up onto the carts that run on that track, and roll them into the tent. Put the Packard in there too.”
He put the pen down on the drawing. “One more thing. You’ve already lost the media game, Bob. Every one of those workers grew up around here, or has heard from those who did. They’re the same stories you and I grew up with—about the mob, the bay, the cement overshoes. You’ve cleared them from the site but you can’t clear their heads of what they’re sure is happening here.”
“What do you recommend I do, then?”
“If I were you, I’d ask Julia Marchetti to write a terrific story about how it’s part of the great history of Dundurn—a tough steel city born of the same spirit of daring and survival that two hundred years earlier inspired our country to victory in the War of 1812. Dundurn is our Bronx, or Brooklyn; it was never a quiet, innocent town.”
“You made up that shit just now?”
MacNeice smiled, looked briefly out the window and headed for the door.
“But Mac, you’ll do the investigation for me, right?”
“I can’t promise that. We’re short-staffed, and you know that—you approved the Police Services budget. I can’t give you a commitment. Get that tent up, get those things in there, get a couple of men you can trust with jackhammers, and then call me.”
—
Back at his desk, MacNeice went online to read more about the Hamilton and the Scourge. One of the schooners had originally been British, and as often happened in times of conflict, it had been captured and renamed. Its origin wouldn’t have been lost on the crews, however; the figurehead on the Scourge was its original namesake, Lord Nelson. The Hamilton’s was the goddess Diana, though she looked to MacNeice more like a character out of Pride and Prejudice. The photographs of the shipwrecks were notable for their absence of wreckage. Both ships were upright, their masts still in position, cutlasses, sabres and boarding axes all neatly stowed. While the cannons had rolled about with the impact of the squall, they looked ready to roll back on command.
For the men caught below, there had been no hope. The water had rushed through the gun ports, over the sides and down the hatches, blocking their escape. Those who’d been on watch or sleeping on deck were likely washed overboard, where their only chance for survival was to swim for it or climb aboard the only lifeboat, itself full of water. Some knew how to swim but many others did not, and since the only floating debris was another man struggling to stay afloat, the loss of life was high.
He googled the recovery research that had been done when they were found, and was surprised to learn that the Mary Rose, King Henry VIII’S flagship, was the first reference. When he and Kate were in Britain on their honeymoon, she had taken him to see it, or what was left of it, in an enormous permanent tent. The huge, skeletal remains rested under a perpetual shower of polyethylene glycol, a water-based wax solution. People in yellow rain gear climbed about on scaffolding doing research or checking for further decay, as the visitors looked on, somewhat bewildered, from the dry side of a Plexiglas wall. “She’d be sawdust in no time if they stopped,” a young Australian seaman explained.
“The worms are dormant now, but they’d spring to life like maggots on a carcass if it stopped rainin’ in there.”
MacNeice shut down the computer. He had no interest in thinking about his honeymoon.
As he drove home along Main Street and up the narrow mountain road to the stone cottage, thoughts of his past ricocheted around his brain. As quickly as he’d hunt one down and banish it, another would appear. Parking in front of the cottage, he suddenly remembered making love to Kate on an island in Georgian Bay. Her flesh had seemed so alive to his touch and so smooth against the moss, lichen and grey rocks. Under cedars where the lower branches were dead and the bark was flaking off, she was whole and fresh and white. He could see the shadows of the branches tracing lines across her stomach and down her legs, and how she used one arm to shield her eyes from the sun. They’d just been swimming, and droplets of water beaded her lower belly—he’d kissed those first. He remembered her groan, coming from somewhere deep inside …
He worked hard to turn these memories off. When such images appeared, it helped MacNeice to think of a dark, crusty scab. It’s never easy to let nature take its course during healing. You’re always tempted to ease the itch and pick at the edges, but you can’t stop till it’s bleeding again—and then it takes even longer to heal. In his kitchen he opened a bottle of wine and sat down at the table so he was facing the fridge, fearful that if he were to look out to the forest that sloped away behind his home, those northern images of Kate would flood back and he wouldn’t get to sleep. Or if he did, the all too familiar nightmares would wake him again.
MacNeice had hidden or removed everything in the place that reminded him of his dead wife, but there was no place to hide from the memories born of his relentlessly acute talent for observation. He recalled the smell of the sunblock on her skin as he leaned down to kiss her belly … He tried thinking about the sunken ships and drowning men, and that helped, and so did Charlie Haden singing “Wayfaring Stranger” on the stereo in the living room. At last the music slowly took the images of Kate away, leaving him weary enough to head to bed.
The call came at six in the morning.
“MacNeice.”
“It’s Bob. Just wanted you to know it’ll all be in place by noon. I’ll stay away, but I want regular reports.”
“I take it you’ve spoken to the Deputy Chief?”
“Yes. Wallace told me how busy you guys are. I’ll say this only to you, Mac, but if you need any additional resources to help on this, ask me and I’ll deliver—that’s a promise.”
“You might wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Just clean this up.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
He sat up in bed, yawned several times and realized that he’d dodged a bullet by not dreaming of Kate. Swinging his feet to the floor, he thought about calling Swetsky to ask for Vertesi back, but if the car and the columns were just discarded trash, there’d be no need. He’d just have to check it out.
2.
MACNEICE WAS PARKED at the south end of a large party tent. Its sides were down and three
burly guys in mock cop uniforms stood outside staring at him. Two of them looked like bouncers from the Boogy Bin, moonlighting for some extra cash.
His phone rang, and when he answered, DC Wallace said, “So, who do you need down there?”
“I don’t know yet. This may be nothing but decades of extreme littering.”
“What are you into the mayor for?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir, but I’m about to find out.” MacNeice climbed out of the car as he was speaking and opened the trunk, retrieving a pocket Maglite and a Sony digital camera from his battered briefcase.
“Let me know—I mean, if it’s safe for me to know. I’m just as happy being ignorant.”
“I’ll call.” He put the camera and flashlight in his jacket pocket and shut the trunk. As he approached the tent, two of the guards stepped forward to tell him it was a restricted site.
MacNeice pulled out his shield and said, “Detective Superintendent MacNeice. I’m looking for Howard Ellis.”
“Right. He told us to expect you.”
The man looked as if he spent too much time in the weight room. But then, if he was what MacNeice thought he was, his job was mostly about intimidation, and in that he succeeded. His partner looked more like a hockey player than a weightlifter, so solid in his uniform that if he sneezed, he’d blow the seams. The third guard was leaning against a rail cart talking on his phone. His stomach rolled over his belt and sweat had taken over his shirt. He glanced blankly towards MacNeice as he approached the entrance, then looked away.
“That’s his trailer on the other side, isn’t it?” He looked across at the trailers gleaming white in the morning sun and then at his watch: 8:43 a.m.
“Yeah, the one at the end. But he’s been waiting for you in here.”
“You’re a bouncer at the Boogy Bin, aren’t you.”
“Yeah, Pete Zaminsky. Do I know you?”
“No.”
“This is my day job—Donny’s too.” He nodded in the direction of the guard standing to MacNeice’s left.
Zaminsky pulled open the flap and MacNeice was hit by a wave of cool air. It was like walking into an immense, bright white bubble. The scale of the tent made the columns on their rail carts look tiny. They had been pressure-hosed and were gleaming like bones, the paper from the Sonotubes gone. The Packard, now clean, showed signs amid the rust of its original black paint finish. Towards the rear of the tent, on the left, was a refrigeration truck with its motor running; a hose ran from the truck’s exhaust under the tent’s curtain to the outside. The lettering over the cab read leblanc bros. fish company. MacNeice smiled—Maybank had discovered that the city’s only mobile body cooler was full of bikers in Cayuga. Luc and Patrick LeBlanc were friends of his and Bob’s from high school; he wondered what Maybank had promised them to get the use of the truck.
“That’s Ellis over there by the car, the guy with the white helmet.”
“Who’s that beside him?”
“Don’t know his name, but he arrived about an hour ago with an acetylene torch.”
As the bouncer turned and walked back through the opening, Ellis came towards him like a kid eager to get on with an Easter egg hunt.
“Tell me, Mr. Ellis,” MacNeice asked, “has anyone touched these things beyond getting them in here and cleaned?”
“No, sir. We pressure-hosed the muck off them, but that’s it. The Packard’s trunk is welded shut—that’s why he’s here.” He nodded in the direction of the torch operator. “He’s a firefighter. There’s something in the back seat—hard to tell what through the windows. I’ve been waiting for you.”
The car was still remarkably intact. Even the windows, though fogged with slime, were unbroken. “Apart from the flat tires, I’ve seen cars in worse shape on the street. How would you explain that?”
“When we did our first sampling of the bottom, we discovered roughly ten feet of gunk—a substance somewhere between coal tar, oil and axle grease. Back in the middle of the last century, the old freighters would discharge their bilge here. It was illegal, but the environment wasn’t a concern back then. This car’s been encased in that stuff for more than seven decades.”
“But doesn’t oil rise?”
“Yeah, sure, but with all the crap floating in here and the bay pushing in more … Well, after a while it turned into this really heavy gunk.”
“Like dinosaurs in the tar pits.”
“Exactly.” Ellis seemed impressed by this imaginative leap. He was much more animated than he’d been the day before with the mayor.
MacNeice looked down at the licence plate. He could see that someone had been rubbing at it with a rag.
“Massachusetts 1936,” Ellis said.
There was a pop, and the torch lit up with its blue-needle flame. “Good to go,” the torch operator said.
“So go,” MacNeice said.
Within minutes the trunk lid was loose. The operator shut the valve on the torch and lifted the lid away from the body of the car. For a moment the trunk’s contents were difficult to decipher.
“Rags?” Ellis asked.
“No. Clothes on a body, or bodies. Look here.” MacNeice pointed to a hand, lying near the wheel well. He pulled out his Maglite and shone it on a shred of leathery white flesh and pale grey bones frozen in a death grip. He took out his latex gloves and put them on. Before he touched anything, he took several photos of the contents of the trunk. As the torch operator moved around to ensure the doors would open, MacNeice said to him, “You’ve been briefed about what you’ve seen here?”
“Yep, I haven’t seen a thing.”
After he left, MacNeice said, “Mr. Ellis, can you get me as much clean tarpaulin as you can find?”
“No problem.”
“Bring it to me and then leave me alone. I’m going to be a while.”
MacNeice turned back to the Packard. He took several more images of the car, the licence plate, the trunk and its contents before putting the camera back in his hip pocket. Just as the mass of cloth before him was beginning to reveal its shape—the zigzag of legs, the folded torso—his cellphone rang.
“MacNeice.” He stood up and looked over at the columns resting on the rail carts.
“Williams, sir. Wallace called to say you might need Vertesi. He’s pretty tied up in Cayuga, but I’m downtown today. Can I help?”
“Yes. I’m at the end of the eastern dock of the steel company. There’s a large tent with a private security team outside. Tell them you’re here to see me. How quickly can you make it?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Perfect.” MacNeice dialled Mary Richardson’s number, but before the connection could be made, his cell rang again.
“Mac, it’s Bob. Tell me what we’ve got.”
“I don’t know about the columns yet, but there’s a body in the trunk of the Packard, maybe two. I’m going to bring in Mary Richardson.”
“Who’s she again?”
“The city’s pathologist.”
“Is that a good idea? I mean, I want to contain this if I can.”
“You can’t, Bob. We don’t contain homicides.”
“Can you give me some time, though, before this blows open?”
“I can’t speak for the pathologist.”
“Then keep me posted. And, please, Mac, keep it as quiet as you can.”
When he got through to Mary Richardson, she agreed to come alone.
Ellis returned, carrying a bright yellow tarpaulin. He dropped it on the concrete and wiped his shirt several times, though MacNeice couldn’t see any evidence of dirt or dust. He paused, perhaps waiting to be invited to stay. MacNeice turned his focus to the trunk, and in a moment he heard Ellis sigh as he walked away.
When Williams arrived, he stopped just inside the tent, put his hands on his hips and looked about in amazement. MacNeice was leaning on the rear fender of the Packard with his arms crossed.
Williams scratched his head. “Where are we, boss? And what are we d
oing here? Nice wheels, but it could do with a new coat of paint and some tires.”
“A Packard 120, lifted off the bottom.”
“What’s it got to do with us?”
“Absolutely nothing. There’s a body or two in the trunk, but they’ve been down there, nestled in the muck, since this thing was new.” Seeing that Williams was still confused, he went further. “Those columns over there—there might be bodies in them too.”
“No shit.”
“The concern isn’t about the square columns. The two round ones at the end are more recent.”
“Okay, I get it, this is a crime scene. But we’ve got our own pack of evildoers, so why are we here?”
“It’s a favour, for now.”
“Favour? ‘Pick up my dry cleaning’ is a favour. ‘Come and check out these dead bodies we found in the bay’? Man, that’s takin’ some liberties in favourland. What do you want me to do?”
“Put your gloves on. Let’s roll out the tarpaulin.” MacNeice had gotten used to the young black detective’s sense of humour; he accepted it in part because he found him to be intelligent and intuitive. MacNeice took one end of the bright yellow nylon tarp and Williams took the other, spreading it out flat on the pier.
Both men took off their jackets, folded them neatly and laid them at the far end of the tarp. Then they rolled up their shirt sleeves as they walked over to look in the trunk.
“Nice suit. Pinstriped, I think,” Williams said, looking inside.
MacNeice took the right side, where the hand was, while Williams cradled the zigzag legs. “On three.” It was surprisingly light but difficult to lift, the bones shifting and moving within the fabric. The left foot, still in its shoe, came off and fell back into the trunk.
Williams looked over at MacNeice. “Sorry, I lost the foot.”
“No problem, I’ve lost his head. And look—he wasn’t alone.” He nodded back at the trunk, where another skeleton lay.
They laid the body gently on the yellow tarpaulin, still in its fetal position. The bones sagged with a soft clacking and then were silent. They went back to the trunk. The man’s skull was lying against the frame, its jaw wide open. There was no skin or hair, just sad grey bone. MacNeice lifted it out, laid it in the correct position above the body and returned to the car. Williams had retrieved the foot and shoe and laid it beside the pant leg.
The Ambitious City Page 2