“Sir, did you bring your piece?” he asked as MacNeice climbed in.
“I did. Start talking.”
Vertesi tore down the hill. Putting his red grille flashers on, he sped along Mountain Road to the Queen Elizabeth, heading for Niagara. He told him about Penniman and Wenzel, the confrontation on the service road, the run to the border, and Penniman flashing his army ID to the American customs agents, many of whom were vets. If anyone had asked him to wake up his passenger it would have been over right there, because the kid was covered in blood, his eyes blackened and his nose broken.
“Where are they now?”
“The honeymoon suite of the Niagara Paramount.” Penniman had told the desk that his wife was coming in by train and he wanted to get ready for her. The suite was the only room left in the hotel. He retrieved Wenzel from the underground garage and took him up fourteen flights of stairs.
MacNeice looked off to the distant escarpment, a ridge of black against the blue-black night. “Has it occurred to you, Michael, that we’re living a miniature War of 1812?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Troops crossing the border and fighting it out for territory over here—where troops crossed the border and fought it out two hundred years ago.”
“Happy anniversary, you mean?”
“More or less. My best guess: things got out of hand. Bikers were hired as muscle in case something happened, without anyone knowing that the other side had done the same. After that, it spun out of control.”
37.
IT WAS 1:49 a.m. when Mark Penniman opened the door to room 1421—the Shangri-La Suite—for them. They shook hands and stepped in. Penniman remained in the doorway to see if anyone had followed them.
Shangri-La was red from top to bottom, except where the mirror on the ceiling reflected the bed. The walls were flocked, red on red, in the floral patterns of the belle époque; under their shoes was a hot-pink shag carpet.
“You boys are wonderin’ where they get this shit from, aren’t you.” Wenzel stood up from the long burgundy sofa, smiling at the two detectives as they stood there with dropped jaws.
Penniman closed the door. “Wenzel Hausman, this is Detective Michael Vertesi, and his commanding officer, DS MacNeice.”
MacNeice offered his hand to Wenzel and studied his face. The eyes were ringed in black, his nose was swollen, the nostrils still bloody.
“I know, I look like shit, sir. This face’s seen better days.” Vertesi sat down on the sofa, took out a digital recorder, switched it on and placed it upright on the heart-shaped Plexiglas coffee table. Wenzel sat in front of the recorder and leaned forward as if he was unsure it would pick him up from a distance.
“Before we begin, as a foreign national, you can refuse to speak to us,” MacNeice said. “But should you agree to provide us with information concerning the death of Sergeant Gary Hughes, you will be considered a witness and we’ll do all we can to protect you. You won’t likely be able to return to New York State if the presiding judge determines there’s a risk in your doing so. Is that clear?”
“I told Wenzel that might be the case,” Penniman said, pulling up an upholstered chair, its back also shaped like a heart.
“Yeah, I understand,” Wenzel said. “But shit, I got nothin’ to go home to now. If I did, they’d finish what they started on that road … for sure man, for sure.”
“Sergeant Penniman didn’t bring you across the border against your will?” MacNeice watched the young man for any hesitation in his voice or manner.
“No, man. Shit, if it weren’t for him I’d be suckin’ dirt in a ditch. Those fuckers wouldn’t stop till I was done.”
“Wenzel, what was your former rank and unit and where did you serve?”
“Private Wenzel Hausman, rifleman with the Army’s 2nd Division, stationed in Iraq. Honourably discharged.” He smiled as if he had passed a test; his teeth were still rimmed with blood.
“And the sergeant you served under?” Vertesi asked.
“Sergeant Gary Hughes.” Wenzel took a sip from a miniature bottle of Coke—it was clearly painful to do so.
“I understand you learned that Hughes had left the army and was living in Tonawanda,” Vertesi said.
MacNeice watched the young man’s face. Battered though it was, he still showed an innocence that had likely always made him vulnerable.
“Yes, sir. Like, most of the time I was out of it—I mean, West Virginia’s out of it by definition, and I had no prospects there. I stayed at home a lot. But one of the guys in town, he’d been overseas too, and he told me Sarge was back, and man, I was outta there. I called Sarge when I got to Tonawanda, and he picked me up at the station.”
“What did you think he could do for you?” Vertesi asked.
“I didn’t know. But he took care of us for two years, and I thought I could get a start-over with him.”
“Any idea what that would look like?”
“None.” He laughed, and then had to cough.
“That sounds nasty, Wenzel,” MacNeice said.
“Shit”—he took another swig of Coke—“that’s nothin’, man. I thought that fucker’s second punch tore somethin’ …” He pointed to his stomach just below the ribcage.
“We can bring in a doctor,” MacNeice offered.
“Naw, I’ll be okay.”
“Did Hughes introduce you to the Old Soldiers roadhouse?”
“Other way round. I got a furnished two-room in the basement of a house off the service road, about a half-mile from where Sergeant Penniman found me. Mostly I’d call Sarge like once a week or so, but he was with his family. So’s I got to walkin’ down the road for a little beer ‘n’ bourbon, and before long, like, I’m there most of the time—day, night, weekends. I’d play the machines and shoot the shit with the guys.”
“You knew it was owned by a motorcycle gang?”
“Yeah, oh yeah. But I thought, like, they’re army too. So, no big deal.”
“Why did you introduce Sergeant Hughes to the roadhouse?”
“Once I found out they were doing security jobs, you know, I asked if they wanted a couple guys—you know, thinking I’d score a job too. Well, they laughed at me. So I told them about Sergeant Hughes an’ how the brass in Iraq kept shoving him forward like he was Rambo or somethin’—shit, way outta the box. So they say, ‘Bring the fucker in here; we wanna meet him.’ ”
“Was this security for rock festivals and drag races?”
“Yeah, but other shit too. Business stuff. They never talked much about it around me.”
“So Hughes became a regular.” Vertesi wasn’t asking a question, merely confirming for the recording.
“Sort of, but, ya know, he’d sit at the bar with me, like we were separate from those guys—the Old Soldiers Motorcycle Club, I mean.”
“Did he work security for them?”
“No, that’s the thing I was tellin’ Sergeant Penniman on the way here. They led him on with promises of the bigger stuff and never came through.”
“How long did they string him out?”
“Not all that long, but when you’re showin’ up and drinkin’ and waitin’ it seems long, man. Sarge wasn’t happy.”
“What happened then?”
“So a guy in a suit shows up—big fat guy, Eyetalian lookin’.”
MacNeice noticed Vertesi smile.
“In he goes to the office, and after a while Sarge gets called in. He grabs me and we get to the door—boom. Jake—he’s the OSMC leader—slams his hand on the door frame, wham! I stop, think I’m goin’ to piss myself. Hughes takes Jake’s hand and peels it off the door, like some weird Jap Jedi move, you know—the guy’s almost crying—and Sarge says, ‘Wenzel’s with me. We’re a team.’ ”
Wenzel’s eyes welled up and he grabbed the Coke to take a swig and cover the tears, but it was empty.
“Got it,” Penniman said. He went over to the minibar and retrieved another miniature Coke.
Wenzel cleared
his throat. “So, yeah, then we’re in the room.
There’s a couch and a desk and some chairs. The guy in the suit looks at Sarge, then at me, and just nods to Jake behind the desk.”
“What’s his full name?” Vertesi asked, pen poised over his notebook.
“Don’t know. They just call him Jake …”
“And the guy in the suit?” Vertesi asked.
“Luigi. No last name, just Luigi.”
“What happened then, Wenzel?” MacNeice asked.
“So the job is security for Luigi is up here in Canada, some kinda business. There’d be twenty members of OSMC; I’d ride with them and Sergeant Hughes would go in a car with Luigi. This meeting was on a Wednesday and we’d ride that Friday.”
“Ride where?” Vertesi asked.
“Shit … somewhere past Niagara, a town down that queen’s highway. I can’t remember the name.”
“St. Catharines?” Vertesi suggested. Wenzel shook his head.
“Grimsby,” MacNeice said.
“Fuck, yeah! Shit, I remember now, thinking, Grimsby—that’s grim! To live in a town called Grim-sby … they can’t have happy teenagers there, man. I mean, Iraq was Grimsby—big-time Grimsby.”
“Did Luigi ever say who he was working for?” Vertesi was trying to refocus him.
“Not when we were in there, but the money was great, man. They were going to give Sarge ten thousand and I was gonna get fifteen hundred. Here’s the thing about him: He says to them, ‘How much are the other soldiers getting?’ And Jake says, ‘Three thousand.’ So Sarge says, ‘Wenzel takes the same risks; Wenzel gets three thousand.’ ”
“What was the job?” Vertesi asked.
“So, there’s a quarry near Grimsby owned by American Eyetalians. Then there’s Eyetalians from Dundurn and more Eyetalians they thought might show up—I don’t know where from. Luigi was there to make a deal. The thing is, we don’t know which ones Luigi’s workin’ for. I was sober as shit in that room, so I know what I know. Luigi looks at Sarge and says, ‘Your job is to stand beside me, and your job’—he’s looking at Jake—’is to spread out and cover the meeting.’ ”
Vertesi pressed him. “Again, he didn’t mention the names of the people he was meeting?”
“Negative. But we stop in Niagara, on the Canadian side, in the underground parking lot of a hotel, and these guys come out and we load up with firepower and ammunition, so I know we’re not goin’ there to play checkers.”
“Do you recall which hotel?” MacNeice asked.
“I was too shit-scared to notice. But I wonder if that was where we lost Sarge and Luigi. We were supposed to be right on their tail, not an hour behind. I think that was when they got so far ahead of us, when we stopped to get the guns.”
“What happened at the quarry?”
“Nothin’—absolutely nothin’. We all pull up like the cavalry an’ there’s no one there. We roar around the site and there’s no sign of Luigi and Sarge.”
“And then?”
“Well, there’s a security shed with an old man who’s so scared, man, seein’ all these crazy fuckers … and two of our guys go in his shed for five minutes, maybe less. Then they come out wavin’ a piece of paper and off we go. I ask the guy I’m riding with—he was the brother of the one who split my nose—where we were going, and he says, ‘Shut your hole, Weasel.’ ”
“Can you describe the landscape?” MacNeice asked.
“Oh yeah, like we were heading up this ridge and up there it’s all flat country—farms an’ shit—and after a half-hour we’re parked in the trees near a huge farm with a shit-high fence …”
“You were on the escarpment,” MacNeice said softly.
“Sir?”
“It’s called the escarpment,” Vertesi explained. “What did you do while you were waiting near the farm?”
“Jake’s on his cellphone walking along the road and the guys are takin’ leaks and drinking shots of somethin’—they didn’t offer me none. Then Jake comes back and says, ‘We’re going in hot.’ And these guys are pulling Uzis and sawed-off shotguns outta their saddlebags and I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, man, I’m not into this … ’ ”
“Was the gate to the property closed or guarded?” MacNeice asked.
“Neither—and that scared the shit outta me too. I’d seen enough in Iraq to recognize a setup.”
“So you went into the property ready for a firefight,” Vertesi clarified.
“I wasn’t ready! Nobody even gave me a piece. I’m just meat on the back of a Harley.”
“And then?” MacNeice asked.
“Yeah, well, there’s like a house there and a couple of barns—new ones—and we get almost to the house and the shit hits the fan. All the fire’s comin’ from the doors and windows of one of the barns—but we were goin’ so fast we’re committed. Two guys went down right away; the rest of us blew past the house and the barns. There’s only like, eighteen bikes now and we’re spraying the side of the barn. Then my biker gets hit, so the bike is skidding around in a circle ’cause he’s cranked the accelerator—we both get thrown off. His neck’s opened up. I pressed hard on it, but I got no bandages—nothin’—and there’s still people shootin’.”
“So you’re down beside a dying man,” Vertesi said.
“He’s gone. I back away to the treeline and hide in the bush. The shooting goes on for about another five minutes and then it just stops. I can see three of our men down; a couple more are hit, one holding his arm, the other his leg—but the shooting fuckin’ stops. Then it was so weird. A couple of our guys pick up the three bodies and they all ride out to the gate, where all of a sudden there’s an eighteen-wheeler waiting.”
“Jake’s cell call,” MacNeice said.
“Yeah. Six guys come out of the barn. They watch OSMC loading up bikes and bodies at the end of the road until they all drive off in the truck. I stay in the woods till dark. I can hear, like, a saw or somethin’ in the barn, but I’m so scared I sit there and wait it out.”
“What did you think was happening?” Vertesi asked.
“Shit, I don’t know. But it went on for a while. Then two guys come out and back up a van, and four others go into the other barn. That’s when I seen it. They drag out a big body—it was all wrapped in plastic, but it was Luigi. I recognized him ’cause he’d been wearing these freaky shorts and socks and a fuckin’ loud, bright shirt when we left Tonawanda, and you could see it through the plastic. They threw him in the van.” Wenzel took a swig of Coke. “Then, I don’t know, they bring out another body. But I’m like, eighty yards away—I can’t make out what’s wrong with it. It looks weird; through the plastic you could see it had no feet. But it was Sergeant Hughes, for sure—I could see his black jeans and T-shirt. They throw him in the van. Then a guy comes out with a garbage bag and walks around behind the house. The two guys drive away. The three left at the barn turn out the lights and lock the door, and they’re carrying weapons, two each at least. And then it’s quiet, like I’d dreamed the whole thing. I wait till they go in the house and then I skirt along the treeline till I find a culvert that goes under the road we came in on. I washed the blood off my hands in the water there.”
“Did Hughes have a weapon?” Vertesi asked.
“No, sir. He refused to carry a weapon.”
“How did you make it back to the States?” Vertesi asked.
“I hitched a ride with a family from Ohio. They were heading home from up north. I told them I’d gotten lost on a bar tour with some vets and was stuck with no money, only my driver’s licence.”
“They took pity on you,” MacNeice suggested.
“Yessir. I lucked out, because their kid was a marine in Afghanistan. They told the border officer I was their son and I’d lost my passport when my canoe tipped on some lake.”
“How did you square your reappearance at Old Soldiers?” MacNeice asked.
“I told them the truth. And that I came back to tell them that Luigi and Sergeant Hughes were bot
h dead and that Sarge had been cut up somehow.”
“Did they buy that?” Vertesi asked.
“More or less. They were always suspicious of me after that, but not worried, ’cause they thought I was a cripple or stupid and maybe that I’d be good for somethin’ someday. Plus, I paid my bar bills.”
“Why would you go back there, Wenzel?” MacNeice asked.
“For starters, I had nowhere else to go. But I was too scared not to go back—they woulda had me down as a snitch, and hunted me down.”
“OSMC lost three men that day?” Vertesi asked.
“Yessir. Two others injured, but not bad.”
“What did they do with the bodies?”
“Nobody ever told me and I didn’t ask. Either they got them over the border somehow or maybe they buried them at sea in the lake.”
“Any idea of how many casualties on the other side?” MacNeice asked.
“No. I know some were hit, but they had the cover. If they kept going they’d have cut our men to pieces. For some reason they stopped and let them clear the field.”
“Why would they do that?” Vertesi asked.
“Fucked if I know. Maybe not wanting a larger war … I remember thinking it was like the Indian wars or something, you know, where there’s a moment when you collect your dead? The war’s still on but you clear the field of battle.”
“Did you get paid?” MacNeice asked.
“Fuck, no, man. I don’t know if anybody got paid.”
“And you didn’t think to call your sergeant’s wife, or the authorities …”
“No way—I’d be dead. I’m only talkin’ now because I know they were going to kill me anyways.”
“Were you part of the raid a few weeks ago?” Vertesi asked.
“No, man. I didn’t even know that was goin’ down. I mean, it got weird around the bar, but nobody said anything. Two guys never came back to the bar, is all I know.”
Looking at Penniman, MacNeice asked, “Have you told Mr. Hausman what happened to Sergeant Hughes?”
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