by Ross Pennie
The Honda looked so derelict that Jesse figured it wouldn’t be locked. He was wrong. He’d have to stash the camera and battery somewhere on the outside of the car. He bent down and examined the two wheel wells that faced the street. The back half of the car was rusted so badly there were numerous peepholes that would do nicely for the camera. He massaged a wad of adhesive putty and pressed it onto the inner surface of the right rear wheel well. Bits of metal crumbled under the pressure, and the hole got larger than he would have liked. But he figured he could make it work. He pressed the camera into the putty, secured the battery pack in a similar fashion, and stood back to examine his handiwork. Unless you knew the camera was there, you wouldn’t see it. The battery was completely out of sight.
He turned the Mazda around and drove back to the playground at the south end of Elgin Street. It was a good bet the Honda was a permanent fixture the neighbours had stopped noticing, but they’d be quick to spot an unfamiliar vehicle parked behind it. He killed the engine, opened his Dropbox account from his phone, and called up the live image from the camera. The lens angle needed adjustment. It was aimed too much at the sidewalk and not enough at number 2029’s front door. He also needed to make the angle oblique enough that he would be able to read the license plates of passing vehicles. If Darryl had a reason for writing Dr. L’s address in secret code, other than his penchant for cryptography, Jesse might not be the only one keeping Dr. L’s place under surveillance.
He locked the Mazda and walked back to the Honda while appearing to be texting on his phone like any other twenty-something with nothing better to do. Again, he checked the windows, roadway, and sidewalk for prying eyes. Satisfied that the street was still deserted, he put his hand inside the wheel well and adjusted the camera’s aim until he liked the image he saw on his phone. Anyone observing him would think he was assessing the condition of the bodywork and posting photos of the rusted parts on Facebook or Instagram (well, he hoped so).
He could see on the screen that behind him 2029’s front door was opening. He turned and leaned against the car as casually as he could and made a show of thumbing furiously on his phone. He hoped he looked as if his attention was focused a million klicks from everything and everyone on this street.
A thirty-something man with dark hair stepped out through the door and called to someone inside as he left. His voice was sharp and tinged with anger, and the words didn’t sound like English. When the guy turned to walk down the front steps, Jesse stepped in front of the IP camera, not yet satisfied he’d hidden it perfectly. He stole a look at the man’s face. Above a luxurious black moustache, a pair of grey-blue eyes gaped in terror.
Chapter 44
At one thirty, Hosam locked the front door behind him and walked to Barton Street. As directed, he turned right at the Beer Store and kept walking. His shoes felt as if they were filled with the sands of a thousand deserts.
The note through the mail slot said the Caliph had one more job for him. It told him when and where to meet then said: You will be released from your obligations if your performance on a final job is satisfactory. But if you choose not to show up as directed, your family will pay the price. None of you will be spared.
At first, Leila had warned him not to go. But when she read the note for herself, the consequences of defiance were too much for either of them. Buying their freedom with one more act of petty thievery seemed like a reasonable offer. But was it foolish to think that after this final demand the Caliph would leave them alone?
Across Barton Street, the Detention Centre did not look as intimidating in the pale sunshine as it did at night, but he knew the Caliph was still playing with his head by forcing him to walk past it. Up the street, on the far side of Ferguson Avenue, was a Tim Hortons. A car would be waiting.
When he reached the Tim’s, Hosam scanned the parking lot. He had no idea what sort of vehicle to look for. A small grey Ford, a Focus, flashed its headlamps. Behind both the wheel and an oversized pair of sunglasses was his chauffeur. He breathed a sigh of relief. He had been down this road before and knew more or less what to expect.
Saramin lowered the Ford’s passenger window and told him to get in.
“We do not usually meet in the daytime,” he said as he buckled his seatbelt. “Or in such a modest vehicle.”
“It’s fully paid for. That’s what matters.”
“Is it not a little small for a job?”
“We’re not going on a job,” she said.
“No?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me guess. I am about to receive an offer I cannot refuse?”
“Keep quiet and let me drive.”
She turned to the right out of the Tim’s onto Barton Street and then left at the second street, Victoria. Ahead of them, two complete city blocks on either side were taken up by the Hamilton Centre for TLC. Once a trauma centre, it was now a chronic-care institution run by a Christian church he had never heard of before, the Mennonites.
Behind the institution’s main building, a multi-storey parking garage rose from the industrial lands around it. She steered left into its entrance and took the ticket offered by the machine. When the gate went up, she drove sedately to the fifth floor. She parked in a lonely spot and turned off the ignition. Only three other vehicles were in sight, and they were a long way off.
“Okay,” she said, flipping her iron-straight locks behind her shoulders. “Here’s the deal. The Caliph needs you to take Mo’s place.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“The Caliph is always serious. Anyway, I haven’t told you what the job is.”
Should he tell her he had already guessed that Mo was the Caliph’s man with a pistol? No. The less he said the better.
“Okay, I am listening.”
“It requires only a steady hand.” She looked at his hands. “You’re a surgeon, so your two will do nicely. I have seen them at work, remember.”
“What . . . what does the Caliph have in mind?”
“A quick job. At close range. With a special instrument.”
“What instrument?”
“I think you can guess.”
The terrible scene in the barbershop overtook him. He could see the doctor’s son crumpled on the floor. And Marwan’s carotid artery saturating the towels faster than Hosam could change them.
“I am not hacking anyone to death with a knife. No matter what, I will not do that for anyone, not even the Caliph.”
“Not a knife, for God’s sake.”
“Then, what?”
“A Glock.”
He felt the sweat streaming down his temples. “I have never used one.”
“It’s easy. You get close to the target, and you pull the trigger. We’ll take you somewhere to practise. And we’ll arrange for you to get close to him.” She threw him a steely look. “Extremely close.”
Putain! They had their plan laid out and ready to go. And had placed him at the centre of it. “Who is the target?”
“You don’t need to know that yet.” She touched the side of her nose. “Safer for you that way until we are given the final go-ahead from our colleagues. They’re verifying credentials.”
Credentials? They must be watching him. He took a deep breath and plunged in. “Why do the Scarpellinos not hire their own hitman? Are they testing your partnership?”
She looked affronted. “We don’t need testing. We’re their equals in every way.” She paused for a long moment as if wondering how much she was prepared to tell him. Her face relaxed. “It’s a business decision on their part.”
It seemed the Caliph was offering hitmen at a discount. How much would the Scarpellinos pay the Caliph for a Syrian refugee to knock off a Michelini and begin to even the score? A lot less than they would pay an Italian, Hosam was certain of that. And it was a safer tactic. Refugee Syrians were as low on the social scale as you
could get, and those who spoke English could hide in plain sight. And, as Mo’s accident had proved, they were expendable.
But how, Allah have mercy on us, was he going to get out of this and keep his family safe? He pictured the lethal cocktail of anesthetic agents he had stashed above the bathroom ceiling tiles and bemoaned the limits of its effectiveness. The drugs might neutralize Saramin on a dark night, but the two of them were never completely alone. He would be discovered immediately, and killing her was unthinkable anyway. The real threats to his family were the Caliph, his henchmen, and the Scarpellinos. To neutralize all of them, he needed a militia, not a bag of medical tricks.
Chapter 45
Hosam’s “appointment” with Saramin, though it left him with a leaden heart, did not last long. He returned directly home, and by four o’clock that afternoon, he and Leila had gone through all the supplies in her clinic searching for possible breaks in her chain of sterility. Transmission of microbes between dental patients was a well-known problem, especially in low-income countries during desperate times. Doctors and dentists had transmitted HIV, Hepatitis C, and other infections via contaminated needles and medications. But Leila used disposable, single-use needles and syringes for every injection. The local anesthetic she favoured, generic lidocaine, came in small plastic vials from a respected Canadian pharmaceutical firm. She opened a fresh vial for each patient.
“I never double dip,” she told him. “To save money, some dentists use what is left from previous patients. But I always open a new vial.” Her eyes filled with tears at the accusations hanging over her like the yellow flag on a plague ship.
The metal amalgam she used for her fillings was manufactured in Israel and arrived by Canada Post. Again, she used single-use packets to avoid cross-contamination. The packs always arrived intact and came from a distributor well respected in dental circles.
The mouth rinse and dental floss she purchased in Hamilton at Walmart. The company offered the best prices, and if their products were carrying Parvo-W, Hosam figured the polio problem would not be limited to the City of Hamilton. There would be dozens, maybe even hundreds, of polio cases worldwide. The long arms of Walmart reached into the far corners of several continents.
“Now, we must look at your instruments,” he told her. “Maybe your autoclave is not achieving the proper temperature.”
“It always gets extremely hot when I run it,” she said.
“Is there a temperature readout?”
She pointed to an analogue gauge on the side of the autoclave. “That is it, right there.” It looked surprisingly crude for something made in the digital age. “The arrow moves to the green side every time we run it,” she said. “My girls know to check for that.”
“And they write it down with the date and time?” In Syria, before the war, his hospital had kept a detailed log of the temperature and pressure achieved each time the autoclaves were put through their sterilization cycles. Every tray of instruments sent for sterilization included an indicator strip that turned colour if the proper microbe-killing conditions were achieved. Of course, once the war hit, the strips became unavailable and many other safety measures were tossed aside. Sometimes, something as simple as bringing a pan of water to the boil had been impossible.
A guilty look overtook Leila’s face. “They wrote everything in a notebook when we first started. But then we got busier than I ever expected.” Her cheeks flushed as she added, “Sometimes, we have to cut a few corners to cope with the pace in here.” She stared into his face and her anger flared. “Do not look at me like that. You of all people know that everything cannot be perfect all the time. But I promise you, we never do anything that puts our patients at risk.”
“What about the indicator strips? Do they always turn the proper colour in the autoclave?”
She bit her lower lip and looked away.
“What?” he said.
When she still didn’t answer, he said, “Ya Rab, Leila. Tell me.”
She sighed heavily as if he had no business putting her on the spot. “They are on order.”
“Since when?”
“I do not remember. Six weeks?”
In his head, he counted back six weeks. The timing hit him like a mortar shell. “You have not been using indicator strips since March?”
“I told you, the temperature gauge always goes into the green.”
“But it could be faulty.”
“The machine is still new. You said it was a good one when you ordered it.”
“Yes, but equipment can always go wrong.”
“Do not raise your voice at me.”
She was right. He was almost shouting. He did the same in the operating theatre when he was losing a patient on the table. “I have been reading about parvoviruses,” he said, taking care to lower his voice. “They can survive higher temperatures than other viruses. If your autoclave is not working properly, we may have found the problem.”
“But where did the parvovirus come from in the first place?”
He threw up his hands. “Your patients come from the four corners of the Earth. Any of them could have cursed us with that virus.”
There was a firm knock on the outside door.
Leila looked at her watch. “That must be Mr. Zadran. He is booked for four o’clock. He didn’t answer when I called to cancel his appointment. Perhaps he was running his saw and didn’t hear the phone.”
“You cannot let him in here.”
“I know that, Hosam. You do not have to tell me.”
“What will he bring us from his shop today, do you suppose?” Last time it was a leg of lamb with the bone removed. Before that, three roasting chickens. He had the best halal meat in this part of the city.
“Whatever it is, I must give him some cash. If I cannot work on his teeth, I cannot accept his offerings without paying for them.”
Hosam told her not to reward the butcher too generously and walked toward the inside door that led to kitchen. “I am going to Omar’s room. There cannot be a worldwide shortage of autoclave test strips. Surely Amazon can deliver us a box of them by the weekend. I will not sleep until we get this issue settled.”
“I may never sleep again,” she said softly then she threw cold water onto her face from the hand basin and dabbed at her bloodshot eyes.
Chapter 46
Zol left the house on Thursday morning feeling guilty about leaving Tasha to her morning sickness. She’d shooed him out the door and told him not to fuss, reminding him that she’d perked up yesterday by ten o’clock and put in more than a full day’s work. She had indeed. She’d calmed the women’s fears at their lunch cooperative and confirmed that, in addition to Blessica Velasquez, three polio cases had been treated recently by a female dentist. According to Bhavjeet, she worked out of a garage attached to a townhouse. In what part of the city she plied her trade was still anyone’s guess.
Anxious to know what Jesse had discovered from Darryl Oxman’s employer — and frustrated that he’d received nothing more from the kid than a brief text saying he was working on a lead — Zol was doubly disappointed that Jesse was nowhere to be seen when he arrived at the office at eight o’clock. Young people never answered their phones. And getting a young man to respond to your text message with more than five cryptic words was like . . . well, it was like pulling teeth.
Shortly after nine, Jesse rapped on Zol’s office door, a large messenger bag hanging from his shoulder. The earrings were back. Well, just one — a Long John Silver hoop through his left earlobe.
“Hi, Dr. Zed. Is this a good time?”
“Where have you been? We’re supposed to be working as a team, you know.”
He looked hurt for an instant, then recovered quickly. “Sorry I haven’t been at my desk. But when I show you what I’ve got, I think you’ll be —”
Zol pointed to Jesse’s bag. “Is that your laptop?
What’ve you been up to?”
Jesse flushed. “It’s best if you don’t ask too many questions, Dr. Zed.”
“Show me what you’ve got. And then I’ll decide about the questions.” Zol pointed to the chair beside his desk. “Have a seat.”
Jesse made himself comfortable and pulled a notebook and a small daily planner from his bag. He showed them to Zol and told a complicated story about Darryl Oxman’s root canal, the first five hundred prime numbers, the Fibonacci Sequence, a doctor called either L or Elle, a crossword puzzle clue about stolen marbles, two streets in the city’s central core, and a surveillance camera he’d hidden in a rusted-out Honda Civic.
How sure was the kid that overnight someone hadn’t stolen his camera and the video footage? Parts of the North End could be rough. “When will you have something on video to show me? Or is that where you’ve been, retrieving the tape?”
Jesse laughed. “There’s no such thing as tape anymore, Dr. Zed. Everything is digital.”
“All the same, are you sure your camera hasn’t been stolen or tampered with?”
“It’s got a built-in SIM card.” Jesse paused to see if Zol was following, which he wasn’t completely. “Like a cellphone. It connects directly to the internet and sends video images in real time to an account I have in the Cloud.”
“You mean you’ve got something to show me? Right now?”
Jesse pulled the laptop from his bag and beamed from earlobe to earlobe as he set it on Zol’s desk. “You bet.”
With a few strokes on the keyboard, Jesse brought up an image of a row of townhouses. It was difficult to tell whether it was a still or a video image because nothing was happening.