Tommy descended the ladder, already wearing his grimace of concern. Cindy caught it. “How busy is it?”
Tommy folded up the ladder, handing the binoculars back to Cindy. “Looks like four asshole wagons, at least five guys. That newspaper guy never left.”
“The big fat redhead?”
Tommy nodded. “Dad’s here, too. He’s driving one of his crusher wagons.”
Cindy wasn’t fazed by the news that Ernie Friday was on the short list of nearby kill goons. She snapped the binocular case shut. “What’s the plan, Felchfairy?”
Tommy pulled the curtain back just enough to check on Claire-Bear. Her body rose and fell with sleep. He turned to Cindy, the next step already imprinted in the creases of his face.
“Light the match, Supercunt.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sawatski was about ten minutes away from The Guiding Light, assuming light traffic, when he heard the two-way crackle that dropped that estimate to five.
“All units, be advised. Structure fire, Princess Street at Alexander Avenue, The Guiding Light Mission, Winnipeg Number One responding, ladder required, no alarm, 911 call, traffic coverage required, EMS dispatched, call is active, repeat, active.”
“Shit!” Sawatski said as he slammed the Crown Vic into gear and hit the throttle. Rush hour on Main Street was long over, though the opportunities to slip in and out of the lanes easily were few in number. Sawatski interspersed the siren wail with plenty of horn blasts to move the traffic accordingly. He had to jump the pedestrian island curb at Higgins Avenue for a right turn, thanks to a confused older driver who had moved to the right just enough to reduce the size of the lane. Two quick blocks dissolved, leading to the left turn onto Princess Street. The first fire engine was just arriving, tailed by the paramedics and the ladder truck. The Winnipeg Number One station was a mere six blocks from the scene. Sawatski pulled into a fresh spot, vacated a few seconds earlier by a Chrysler 300. He assessed the scene.
Thick smoke was rising from the roof of The Guiding Light. The windows of the second floor gave off the telltale glow of active flames. It appeared that the fire had not reached the first floor, with no smoke or flames present. Sawatski walked over to the engine company captain, a barrel-chested veteran who looked somewhat related to Sawatski. His name tag read Kulyk. The captain shouted above the diesel din.
“I need that snorkel in the air for hot spots on the roof — plenty of old tar up there, so it’s going to go quick. Don’t know how many we’ve got on the second floor, but we’re probably dealing with smoke inhalation, need to get them out before the roof caves.” He scanned the crowd. “Was anyone here inside the building?”
David Worschuk raised his cell phone, filming the scene. “I was, about twenty minutes ago.”
The captain motioned him over as he spoke. “Did you notice anything while you were inside? Did you smell anything burning?”
“Negative,” said Worschuk.
“Do you know if there are any chemicals inside, explosives?”
“Nothing that I saw.”
“Do you work here? Are you a resident?”
Sawatski chuckled aloud. Worschuk looked annoyed. “No, I’m David ‘Downtown’ Worschuk, from the Winnipeg Sentinel.”
The name didn’t register with the captain. “How many people are inside?”
“I dunno. Maybe fifteen, twenty.”
“Anyone in wheelchairs, walkers, canes?”
“I dunno. I’m just —”
“WILL YOU FUCKING IDIOTS SHUT THE FUCK UP? PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP IN HERE, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!”
Sawatski, Worschuk, and the captain turned around to a bearded man in his early fifties, wearing an open bathrobe over an old Domo Gas t-shirt and tighty-whitey underwear that hadn’t seen their original colour in some time. He had just come out of The Guiding Light, but he wasn’t singed; he didn’t even smell of smoke.
“Where’s the fire?” said the captain.
“How the fuck should I know?” said the man. “You’re the ones with the shiny red trucks.” The man was a little hard to understand without his teeth. “You figure it out, Smokey!”
Sawatski stepped up. “Is everyone okay inside?”
The man looked over Sawatski as he tightened up his robe. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Sawatski, police.”
“Fuck you! I’m on parole!”
“I’m not here for you, I’m —”
“Yeah, Sawatski, who are you here for?” Worschuk filmed him, waiting for an answer.
Sawatski grabbed Worschuk’s phone, looking directly at the camera lens. “No comment.” Staring at Worschuk, Sawatski snapped the flip phone in half and handed the pieces back to the stunned reporter. He then approached the door to The Guiding Light. Courtesy of the resident they had just awoken, the door was wide open. Sawatski peered up the stairs at the glow of the flames.
The captain grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to make sure everything is okay first.”
Sawatski looked at him, gently removing the hand from his sleeve. “Don’t worry; something tells me it’s very okay.” The captain and Worschuk watched as Sawatski neared the top landing of the stairs. He looked around the room, chuckled, and then headed back down. The captain grabbed his arm again.
“What is it?”
“It’s Christmas,” said Sawatski. “Merry fucking Christmas.” The two watched Sawatski as he exited the building, still chuckling to himself. Worschuk and the captain ran up the stairs.
There was no fire, but there was Christmas, in the old-school sense. The rear wall of the sleeping quarters had a fire-like glow, courtesy of a half-dozen vintage colour light wheels. The wheels were originally used to light up the equally vintage aluminum Christmas trees from the 1950s and ’60s. The wheels were usually a four-colour configuration, though these wheels had been retrofitted with red and orange colour films. The effect on the wall, as seen from the street, was a fully involved blaze, the kind that needed shiny red trucks. At the front of the room, three large smoke machines fed a vent system that was piped to the roof. Half of the residents were still asleep, while the rest were looking out the windows at the commotion below. The captain grabbed his radio, doing his best not to erupt into laughter.
“Dispatch, Winnipeg Number One. False alarm, structure fire, Alexander and Princess. Repeat, false alarm, over.”
The voice crackled back. “Roger that Number One. Call cancelled. Over and out.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Tommy and Freddie the Ford rumbled down Alexander Avenue with two additional, yet unseen, riders. Cindy and Claire were in a forced huddle, mashed into Freddie’s passenger footwell. The room was at a premium, and the tension was starting to spill over.
“You know, we’d have a lot more room if you hadn’t gone for those stupid porn star implants,” said Cindy.
“Shut up, bitch,” said Claire. “Or I’ll start puking on you.”
“No puking in the truck,” said Tommy. “That shit’s hard to get out.”
“Where are we going, anyway?” said Claire. She squirmed as much as she could, searching for comfort. “And some food would be nice.”
“Smaller tits would be even nicer,” said Cindy.
“Fuck you,” said Claire. She punctuated the verbal jab with an elbow to Cindy’s chest.
“Fuck me? Fuck you, you dumb cunt!” Cindy started pulling on Claire-Bear’s hair, and not the way she liked it.
Tommy drummed the top of Freddie’s steering wheel as the old Ford rocked from left to right. The movement was even more noticeable at the next traffic light. “Great way to not attract attention,” said Tommy, fiddling with the radio. No one was reporting the “fire” at The Guiding Light. The firefighters and the police must have realized that it was the falsest of alarms. Two-way transmissions were heavily monitored by the local media, an
d once the false alarm had been verified, there was no need to proceed with the story on the radio, Twitter, or Facebook. Tommy wondered if the big fat redhead, the same one who he’d seen in the Winnipeg Sentinel car, had stuck around to get the lowdown. If he had, he might be planning to communicate the nature of the fraudulent call, as it would certainly be amusing to the readership at large. He scanned Freddie’s mirrors for the vehicles that he identified from his rooftop perch at the Light. It was hard to tell, with the cab still swaying back and forth from the ongoing footwell skirmish. The exhaust fog didn’t help with matters.
Cindy seemed to be getting tired of the scuffle. Tommy noticed she had figured out a hold to restrain Claire-Bear that resembled a half nelson, ever mindful of the possibility of being bitten by her opponent. She gave Tommy a look that simply asked, what’s the plan?
Tommy gave the rear-view mirror a scan. “You two better calm down,” said Tommy. “We’ve got a marked car two cars back in the curb lane.” His passengers stopped tussling. The police car was a ruse, one that neither Cindy nor Claire-Bear could confirm or deny. The possibility of capture calmed the moment. Things stayed quiet for the rest of the trip to the only safe house that Tommy felt was worth the risk.
He headed towards the library.
~
Beneath the Riverview Health Centre, a certain Emerson respirator had become a far busier cocoon. The frail figure within listened intently to the emergency channel chatter, hearing none of the news he so desired. There was no need to call Nathaniel; if there had been developments from the front lines on the whereabouts of the ledger, it would have been reported. The time had come to inform those who had even more to lose than the polio-stricken man in the polished breathing tube. He pressed the patient call button three times, paused, then pressed again. Unseen speakers warbled the telltale tones of an outside call being placed. It was answered on the fourth ring.
“Jus-just a moment,” said the answerer. Voices heard in the background were quickly muffled by the placement of the answerer’s handset against their chest. The voices were getting quieter, replaced by the sounds of singular breathing in the background. Something large and door-like made its signature closing sound. There was creaking now, the type that was normally reserved for a well-worn office chair. There was a little more breathing, then a concerned exhalation. “Please identify,” said the speaker-bound voice.
“Chancellor, Morley, Peterson.”
“Date of birth, please.”
“Four, sixteen, thirty-one.”
“Code level.”
“Black.”
The breathing seemed to stop for a few moments, wherever the well-worn office chair was. “Please confirm code level.”
“Black, as the Ace of Spades.”
The office chair creaked with the response. “Please observe protocol, Mister Chancellor.”
“We are past the point of protocol, Mister Finch, far past it.”
“Have you confirmed with all operatives?”
“Confirmed.”
“Are secondary assets in place?”
“Multiple.”
“Confirmed sightings?”
“None.”
“Grid?”
“Central.”
“Formula?”
“Clean Sweep.”
The chair creaked a few more times, coupled with sounds that could only be described as keyboard inputs. “Chancellor, Morley, Peterson. Four, sixteen, thirty-one. Confirming Code Level Black, Central Grid, Clean Sweep.”
“Confirmed, Mister Finch. Oh, and one more thing.”
“Please observe protocol, Mister Chancellor.”
“Mr. Finch, please make yourself available for a discussion regarding our recent transactions. My aide-de-camp will contact you with the particulars.”
“Good day, Mr. Chancellor.” The line went dead before Morley Peterson Chancellor could respond.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sawatski was relieved to see that the number on his call display was known. Spence was finished at the Health Sciences Centre, looking to get picked up. He collected her at the Sherbrook Street entrance, using his visor lights to get the taxicabs to move out of the way.
“They’re both pretty cooked,” said Spence as she fastened her seat belt. “The laundromat guy was already dead, no smoke inhalation. The inside of his lungs was about the only thing that had any pink left. Puncture wound in the base of the neck probably helped that.”
“What about the Other-Woman woman?” said Sawatski.
Spence looked up, noticing that the visor lights were still going. She switched them off as she spoke.
“She was the one who set it off,” said Spence. “There was a Bic lighter fused to what was left of her hand.”
“Suicide?” said Sawatski. He knew full well that it wasn’t. Spence didn’t catch it.
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone blew something up because someone blew up about who blew someone,” said Spence. “Just seems weird that they find them in completely different parts of the building. Most lovers’ spat-icides happen in close quarters.” Spence checked her notebook. “The M-E says that Laundry’s neck wound was probably a pro. Most amateurs don’t angle the ice pick up high enough to scramble the brain. Usually comes out the front of the neck, hits an artery, big bloody mess.”
Sawatski changed the subject, and the direction, away from the Robbery-Homicide division and towards Tommy Bosco’s mission. There were no city video cameras near The Guiding Light, though Sawatski figured that at least one business might have recorded the alleged escape. He relayed the Christmas-lights ruse and the smoke machine system to a wide-eyed Spence. “Whether she was there or not doesn’t even matter at this point. His eminence Pastor Bosco and his girlfriend set the thing up, and they’re in the wind, probably with Hebert.”
“Do we have another vehicle for Bosco?” Spence started the search on the Crown Vic’s laptop.
“Already got it,” said Sawatski. “It’s a blue Ford half-ton, ’89, regular cab, Gordon Thomas X-Ray, eight two eight. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
Spence nodded. “Ford POS — that Bosco certainly has a type.”
~
The Two Pauls had seen a marked increase in the amount of freelance thugs on the street. Ernie Friday had noticed it, too. He hadn’t received any new messages as to the whereabouts of Claire Hebert, with the same being true for the Paul contingent. Ernie’s estranged son had done an admirable job of keeping Claire hidden, at least for the time being. The cover of night would help. Freddie the Ford would be easier to spot during daylight hours, assuming that a vehicle switch hadn’t already occurred. Ernie was convinced that they would be in a safe house of sorts till the following evening. He found a working payphone flanked by two broken ones in the Robin’s Donuts parking lot on Salter Street. There was nothing to report at the Biggs safe house. Ernie wasn’t entirely convinced that Biggs was out of the hole-up racket, though he knew that a finder’s fee for Biggs would easily be twice what he would make for a couple of nights hiding Claire Hebert. He took a swig of rye from his flask before a refresh of his cigarette. The Two Pauls watched him from inside the donut shop. They had both decided that if they stared at Friday without flinching, they could better combat his perceived ninja assassin powers.
~
Nathaniel watched the three from the front seat of his idling Chrysler 300. He had just received the Clean Sweep order from Morley Peterson Chancellor. In his five years with the Chancellor organization, there had never been a need to initiate the directive. Nathaniel knew that the Clean Sweep search system was multi-tiered, the ultimate in all-points bulletin. Phone surveillance was a primary pillar of the Clean Sweep system, both landline and wireless. Nathaniel knew that burner and pay-as-you-go phones would be a problem. It usually took up to forty-eight hours for new pay-as-you-go activations
to be logged into the search engines. The burner phones were trickier to flag, though even their clandestine electronic signatures would eventually become identified, especially if the burner was in communication with a known phone. There was still the continuing street-side component of the hunt, plus additional digital assets that had been activated. For now, there was plenty of video.
Nathaniel watched a tile display of grainy video screens on his laptop. The screens were a combination of traffic camera locations, crime prevention pillars, and a selection of private business units that had been easily commandeered, thanks to their wireless nature. The tile of screens cycled through what appeared to be a random sequence. Within the randomness was a search algorithm, tailored to locate the Ford’s GTX 828 license plate, as well as any general weirdness, such as 911 calls, internet traffic, and security alarm signals from businesses that should have been closed up tight for the night. Facial recognition markers were also in force, with police mugshots of Tommy Bosco, Claire Hebert, and Cindy Smyth in view on the right-hand portion of the screen. He toggled back and forth between the Clean Sweep screen and the Winnipeg Police Service’s Be On the LookOut updates, the same screen that would be appearing on the city’s police unit screens. Hebert was wanted in connection with the Stephanos homicide, with Bosco and Smyth sought as persons of interest. City utility trucks had also been notified of the BOLO alert, a practice that had worked well in speeding up the apprehension of wanted fugitives. If a BOLO vehicle or person was spotted, the utility vehicle driver would advise the location of the sighting through the secure police channels.
The next step was to advise the killers-for-hire. Nathaniel checked another screen on his laptop. There were at least ten quality hitters still in play on the Claire Hebert job, though Nathaniel knew that he had already chosen his short list. When the location confirmation came, he had his pick of the litter as to whom he would send it to. He quickly sent secure messages through a variety of systems to those who had been instructed to stand down. And then there were three: Ernie Friday, the Two Pauls, and Nathaniel’s own lieutenant, the one responsible for Claire Hebert’s roommate, Jasmine Starr, and the laundromat owner who was in the wrong vagina at the wrong time. Nathaniel was scanning the video feed when the call came in through the car’s Bluetooth system.
Clean Sweep Page 17