The Specter

by Saul, Jonas

  “Vodka?”

  “He wanted to take me to the police station to report what I know. I refused and made him pull over to let me out. I think he’s on his way to the cops.” She paused. “I just thought you should know.”

  “Okay.”

  The line went dead. Nancy dropped the phone back in her purse and crossed at the lights. She entered the coffee shop and felt the eyes of all six customers on her.

  Take it all in, bastards. You’re the last batch of people who look at this body without buying me dinner first.

  She was done. No more dancing, no more drugs, no more drinking. Most of all, no more hooking on the side to support her habit. She had enough money to settle down for a couple years. She would rent a car and head to Halifax or maybe take the bus so she could read on the way. It had been so long since she’d read a good book.

  In the car, she had been worried when Aaron had asked her how she knew his car. And he wanted to take her to the police station. She couldn’t believe it. Her deal would have been off if she walked through the door to a police station. They had been explicit in their arrangement. No police. Only information. Talk to whoever comes around asking for Joanne. Make sure they’re not cops. Find out why they’re asking and who they are. The man with the money said he would decide how important the information was. Once she talked to anyone, there would be a large payout. Enough that she could retire is what the man had said.

  She sat in a corner booth without ordering anything. The girl behind the counter kept staring at her, but she brushed her away, pointing at the other seat as if she was waiting for someone. Eventually everyone in the coffee shop averted their eyes, trying to be polite.

  She wanted a smoke but everything in Toronto was smoke free now. She could barely smoke in her own apartment, it was so strict.

  Outside, the sun beat down relentlessly, heating the already humid air into the mid-thirties. She thought about the heat that Aaron had brought down on himself by showing up at the strip club. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t. It wasn’t her deal. It had nothing to do with her. All she had to do was tell him a story and then let her new employer know that she did, along with the plate number. As far as she was concerned, her job was done and she hadn’t hurt anybody.

  The man she met at the club three nights before sounded like he had a Russian accent. The man on the phone was curt and to the point, but she could hear his Russian accent too.

  So why did they want me to tell the brother that the guy at the club was British?

  She had no idea what was going on and she really didn’t want to know. Before Joanne and Jan left work that night, they all had been given a story if anyone came asking questions. She was told the next night that Joanne and Jan had quit and moved away after having been paid off for their help. If her brother hadn’t been close to her and didn’t know where she’d moved, it had nothing to do with her.

  A black Mercedes pulled into the parking lot. No one got out. She wondered if it was her ride.

  The driver honked the horn.

  Nancy got up and walked over to the car. The tinted window on the passenger side lowered an inch. She leaned down.

  “Nancy?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Get in. We have your money.”

  Nancy opened the door and slipped into the comfortable leather seat, the air conditioning hitting her like a fridge door.

  “Very nice,” she said.

  The driver pulled out and got on Dixie heading south toward the highway.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “My place.”

  He looked at her and then looked back at the road.

  “Oh, right, sorry … I live two blocks from the House of Lancaster. Easier that way. No need of a car. I walk to work.”

  This little bit of information didn’t seem to impress the driver. He sat rigid, watching the road, not open for a conversation at all.

  There was movement in the backseat. Nancy turned to see who was with them, but her vision went dark as something hit her in the face.

  She slumped down and fell out of the seat, her butt hitting the floorboards as she screamed and flailed at her eyes. A fire of pain flared inside her head as her hands grabbed the object on her face. It felt like two knives were sticking out of her eye sockets.

  Her mind raced and her hand flailed as the pain rose higher to match her screaming. Convulsions hit her body, knocking her hands off the knife handles.

  She curled up on the floorboards of the Mercedes, all ninety-five pounds of her, spilling blood and brain fluid onto the carpet, wondering what happened.

  Chapter 6

  Daniel would call a few of the guys and meet Aaron at the strip club at nine in the evening. Their plan was simple. Aaron would ask to talk to the manager or the owner and make it known that if they were willing to tell them everything, Aaron would leave the police out of it. The boys would run interference if the bouncers tried to get tough again.

  That left Aaron with three hours to kill, so he decided to visit his sister’s apartment, hoping to learn something of her disappearance. Getting inside might be a challenge, so he brought along Smokehead Scotch, the superintendent’s favorite whiskey.

  Early summer flowers around the building’s grounds provided a colorful invitation to the apartment complex. A green pickup truck sat off to the side with gardening tools in the rear. Four people in green shirts and shorts were raking, weeding and cutting the surrounding grass. At least Joanne had found a reputable building in Mississauga. It had twenty-four hour security and was inhabited by professionals. Not bad for almost three thousand a month.

  He parked in visitor’s parking, grabbed the Smokehead off the car seat and walked up to the building’s intercom. A little square digital window sat above a series of buttons. He located the superintendent’s number and dialed.

  “Hello?” answered Dewanda’s friendly voice. “Can I help you?”

  “Hello, I’m looking to see if there are any apartments for rent.”

  “Hold on, please.”

  He waited, tapping his foot, looking over his shoulder at the grounds crew. When he turned to the front windows of the lobby, Dewanda walked by, keys in hand. She opened the inner door and motioned Aaron inside. As far as he could tell, she didn’t recognize him yet. The last time he’d been to Joanne’s apartment was early March, more than three months ago, but he hadn’t seen Dewanda since Christmas time. He’d bought her a bottle of Smokehead then too.

  He stepped in beside her, and her eyes met his. A flicker of familiarity crossed her face and then she smiled wide, wrinkles forming across her aged temples.

  “Aaron, you bad boy,” she said, her smile moving to her eyes now. “You tricked me.”

  Dewanda was in her seventies, weathered from too many years outside, and losing her hair. She had never gotten a driver’s license. Aaron had asked her last Christmas how that was possible these days. She explained that her husband had taken care of everything when they were married young. She had four kids, all grown up and moved on. They had taken the job of superintendent as a couple in their late forties when the building was built and never left. Her husband had died from a severe stroke a dozen years ago, but Dewanda still plugged on, taking care of the building as only she knew how.

  She leaned in close. “What have you got there?” she whispered, as if what he carried was to be discussed in hushed tones.

  “Smokehead.”

  “Oh, really?” a conspiratorial smile creased her lips. “And what is that for? I didn’t think you drank alcohol.”

  “It’s for the sweetest superintendent in the building.”

  She played it up, always the character. Her head tilted back, both hands going to her chest. “Oh, my, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I want to talk to you about my sister,” Aaron said, his tone taking on a serious note. He handed Dewanda the paper-bag-wrapped bottle of whiskey. “Do you remember the last time you saw her?”

  Dewand
a took the proffered bottle and motioned him to follow her. “Come to the office. We’ll talk there.”

  Aaron followed her down the first floor corridor and into the small office. He took a seat opposite her desk and waited for her to shut the door. She set the bottle on the floor behind the desk.

  “Joanne has been a model tenant,” she said. “We never get any complaints and her rent is always on time. You two come from good stock.”

  Aaron nodded, a pained feeling in his stomach. It was hard to hear someone else praise his parents, the same stock that walked away eleven years before setting in motion years of pain for him and Joanne, more so for Joanne.

  “But three nights ago I received my first complaint about apartment 802.”

  Aaron leaned forward in his chair. “What kind of complaint?”

  “Noise. But that’s not all.”

  “What else?”

  “The next day we had water seeping into apartment 702, directly below your sister’s apartment. After repeated efforts to contact her, I had to gain access to her apartment.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Someone had left the bathtub running on full. It was coming out so fast that it flowed over the top of the tub and soaked the whole apartment, eventually leaking through minor cracks in the walls and out onto her balcony where it continued to the apartments below hers. The damage was minimal, but we haven’t seen her since that night, so I still haven’t told her that I entered her premises.”

  “Can you tell me anything else? What kind of noise were the complaints about? Anything specific?”

  Dewanda shook her head. “No, just yelling, or more like screaming. It lasted five minutes and was so intense that a neighbor called down to me. Then it ended.”

  “What time did this happen?”

  “Two in the morning.”

  That would have been after the strip club closed. So whoever the British guy was that she left the club with must have brought her to her apartment. Maybe she thought she could have a quick bath, they argued and then left without turning off the water. It was starting to sound like she wasn’t kidnapped. If whoever she was with had brought her to her apartment, it would have been to collect her things or to stay the night.

  “Wow, that’s late,” Aaron said. He was out of questions. There wasn’t much else to ask. Maybe she left the message on his machine from her apartment. She sounded afraid. She could still be in trouble. Or she could be in Britain for all he knew, about to call him any day to say that she’s traveling Europe for a while.

  Dewanda frowned and fidgeted with her fingers.

  “What is it?” Aaron asked. “Something bothering you?”

  Dewanda nodded.

  “Tell me.”

  She stared at him. In her eyes, he saw that she struggled with a decision.

  “I’m not supposed to show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “Come with me.”

  Dewanda got up and left the room, Aaron on her heels. Down the hall at the end, a door marked Maintenance Room opened to the right. Dewanda entered it and then opened another door immediately to her left. The second door had no sign.

  A man in a security uniform leaned back in a leather office chair. He nodded at Aaron. Aaron nodded back. He counted ten television screens in a row, all showing different parts of the building’s grounds, inside and out.

  “Wow, this is something.”

  “We keep it pretty private. We have security guards walking the premises night and day, but we always have someone down here monitoring the grounds.” She motioned for the man to type something. “Bring up camera six from three nights ago.”

  The man in uniform typed on the keyboard. Camera six was clearly marked below its screen. Aaron’s stomach turned at the thought of what he was about to see.

  The camera blanked out for a moment and then back on, showing an image of the main lobby and the intercom system he had just used to call Dewanda.

  “At 2:13 a.m., you will see your sister with two men. Watch closely.”

  Aaron leaned in. The camera counted down the five seconds to 2:13 a.m. Then Joanne entered the screen. On either side stood two men wearing expensive suits. She didn’t look happy, her face a scowl, her hair unkempt.

  The security man hit a button on the screen, pausing the image.

  Everything to his core felt sick. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Have you called the police?”

  “No. Why would I? This only shows Joanne leaving with two men. There was a noise complaint from her apartment, but we don’t report things like that. It could’ve been an argument with her boyfriend and then they left with her still upset.”

  “Have any police officers been by to talk to you or enter her apartment?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “I reported Joanne missing two days ago. She left a message on my cell phone. She sounded scared. She asked for my help but the signal was weak. I couldn’t make out much.” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “As far as I can tell, so far the police have done nothing.”

  He headed for the door. He needed to tell Folley what was going on. Something had to be done. He also needed to meet Daniel and the boys back at the strip club later because he had to talk with the dancer who helped him out earlier. She said Joanne left with the British guy and yet his sister is on camera leaving her apartment building after two in the morning.

  “Aaron, wait,” Dewanda said. “Do you think those men are bad men?”

  Aaron paused at the door, another thought hitting him. “Please, can I ask you to make me a copy of that bit? I need to take it to the police.”

  Dewanda nodded to the security guard.

  “It’ll only take a minute,” the guard said.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Aaron replied as he studied the two men on the screen.

  It was the same two men who grabbed Gary Weeks that morning at the Toronto Island airport.

  Chapter 7

  Clive Baron tapped the end of his cigar lightly in the marble ashtray to save it for later. He still had over three hours before he landed in Moscow on his private 747. He listened to the engines as they thrust the craft through the night sky at 837 kilometers per hour, according to the TV screen that folded down from the ceiling in his private conference room.

  Born in London, Clive had made his money in alcohol in his early twenties. His motto had been, work hard to make your money, then get your money to work hard for you. And work it did. In the eighties, he had invested in various dot com companies that shot up like a penny stock that struck gold. Later he invested in various golds and metals, while still building his alcohol retail and distribution business, giving it a more international presence.

  The first time he killed a man was in the mid 1980s. He didn’t have to kill the man. The guy had just pissed Clive off. And Clive had loved it. The power behind the ability to silence someone … forever. It held a certain lust that he hadn’t been able to shake since.

  Alfred Johnson, an American, had come to London to discuss import and export options. His ideas were too simple for Clive, almost elementary-school simple. He told Alfred that he had wasted his time. The next day, Alfred came back with allegations of tax fraud against Clive. He claimed to have discovered that Clive was importing vodka illegally into Russia. Whether that was true or not, Clive couldn’t have people running around sullying his reputation.

  So he invited Alfred to a meeting that evening to go over the idea of re-opening their talks, which he thought was Alfred’s play from the beginning. Alfred accepted. An hour before their meeting, Clive coolly walked in the back door of the hotel, climbed the stairs to Alfred’s room on the eleventh floor and picked the lock. He entered the room without being seen or making a noise.

  Alfred was in the shower. Clive waited out of respect. He wore gloves and a hood to do his best to contain hair and other items that mad
e a forensics team salivate. He reasoned that evidence of his presence would amount to nothing as he had joined Alfred in this very room two days previous to collect his jacket before they took a stroll along the walking streets of London.

  Clive quietly opened the balcony door in preparation.

  When Alfred stepped from the shower, Clive still waited. He needed Alfred dry for what he was about to do. Wet would only make him more slippery when he tried to manhandle him.

  Alfred exited the bathroom, a towel wrapped about his waist, and shouted in surprise at the sight of someone in his room.