by Jack Batten
Trevor’s face flushed medium red.
“Light starting to go on, Trev?” I said.
“You and this Goddard’ve got the cocaine,” Trevor said. His voice had gone raspy.
“I thought we were talking hypothetically.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“I’m a son of a bitch?” I said. “You’re the guy who was talking a minute ago about having me locked up. Accessory after the fact and all.”
“How much do you want?” Trevor asked.
“Money? Now I know we’ve left hypothetical behind.”
Trevor’s hands were making clenching movements.
I said, “What I don’t get, Trev, is why you haven’t made peace with Big Bam the easy way. Just give him back the money he paid you up front for the missing four K. Apologize. Tell him it was a deal that happened not to pan out. He seems to be an understanding guy. Potentially anyway. How come you’re annoying him this way? Not returning Truong’s calls? Avoiding the guys?”
Trevor said, still raspy, “The money had been spent. This is none of your business, Crang, but I apparently have to deal with you. The money I earned from the deal, all the money, was on the way out the instant I received it. I have very heavy financial obligations.”
“Sure, I get it, the high lifestyle,” I said. “But, jeez, how long’d you think you could steer clear of Big Bam and his minions?”
“I don’t need to discuss this, Crang.”
“Just wondering.”
“As long as it took to get together enough money to repay him. Or to find that damned four kilograms.”
“And now here I am with the four K.”
“Here you are,” Trevor said. His voice had lost most of the rasp, and his skin colour was closer to normal. No more fist-clenching either. Trevor was a guy with a temper that’s usually called hair-trigger.
He said, “Let me repeat my question, Crang. How much do you and Goddard want for the cocaine?”
“Not a sou, Trev.”
Trevor took a moment to adjust to the answer.
“What,” he said, “is your intention?”
“My game? My angle? My edge? My—”
Trevor interrupted.
“Get the fuck to the answer,” he said. His temper was making a return engagement.
“All you have to do,” I said, “is show up at Big Bam’s place around eleven tonight, the booze can over by Western Hospital, and I’ll make sure the four kilograms are on the premises.”
“Just like that.”
“I’ll be there too.”
“How wonderful of you.” Trevor was displaying his talent for sarcasm. “You’re telling me I should walk into the place of business of a man who has reason to be angry with me, all on your word you’ll rectify the situation. Your word.”
“I already told Big Bam you’d be coming.”
“Lord, Crang.” Trevor wasn’t showing anger or sarcasm any more. Closer to helpless resignation. “You really have invited yourself into my life, haven’t you.”
“Circumstances invited me,” I said. “But, coast on this, Trev, I’m the only guy can ease your woes.”
“If you’re telling the truth about the four kilograms.”
“Check out the reasoning,” I said. “How else would I know about the stuff being hidden in the lining of Dave’s saxophone case? You didn’t have that information, right? If Fenk’d told you, you wouldn’t be in your current pickle. And Darnell Gant arrived up here after the fact, after the four kilos were gone from the saxophone case.”
Trevor went into a deep-think look. Maybe I’d fed him too much. The part about Gant might be skimming close to the danger zone. I couldn’t be absolutely sure big Darnell hadn’t told Trevor anything about the shipment arrangements for the four kilos. Was I getting too risky? Probably not. No, definitely not. Trevor had been genuinely surprised when I told him about the coke in the saxophone case, and Gant seemed to be giving me the straight goods when he said he didn’t trust Trevor and hadn’t uttered a word to him about the coke in the case.
I said, “I’m not just your best bet, Trev. I’m your only bet.”
“What do you get out of this?” Trevor’s question was in the spirit of a tough cross-examiner.
“You don’t believe it’s the generosity of my spirit?”
“Look at my face, Crang. I’m not laughing.”
“In the long run,” I said, “what I’m doing ought to help save my client. In the short run, too, with any luck.”
“And perhaps there’s more,” Trevor said. “In exchange for returning the four kilos, you expect me to keep silent about your connections with this musician.”
“Hadn’t crossed my mind, Trev,” I said. “Anyway, the master of homicide you and Cam keep talking about, the Stuffer, he should be able to put me and Dave together. Eventually he should, if it matters.”
Trevor let that one lie.
I said, “What is it, Trev? In or out on the gathering at Big Bam’s?”
“As you say, my range of options is limited.”
“Let’s call it eleven o’clock.”
Trevor nodded in an abstract kind of way, and his teeth were clenched. Not his hands this time, his teeth.
“At the booze can,” I said.
Another of the same nods. Also the same clench of teeth. I couldn’t tell whether Trevor was working toward another release of temper or just woolgathering.
I said, “You don’t have other pressing engagements tonight?”
“Crang,” Trevor said, “if you’re horsing around with me, if you don’t deliver the four kilograms, if you put me in a worse jam with Big Bam, if anything goes wrong, I’m going to come down on you from a great height.”
“Incredible, Trev,” I said. “The way you said all that without unclenching your teeth.”
Trevor stood up. The slippery seat didn’t hamper him this time.
“The first thing,” he said, “I’ll rip out your tongue.”
Trevor started to walk away. I stopped him.
“That client of yours upstairs,” I said, “the blonde with the freckles and the Uzis, she doing it for the Sandinistas or the Contras?”
“Neither,” Trevor said. “There’s a third force building down there.”
Trevor left the speedy-service place.
A third force? Did Ollie North know about this?
30
I STEERED CLEAR of people for the rest of the daylight hours. Not just Cam Charles and Darnell Gant and Big Bam and everybody connected to the whole gruesome Fenk case, but people in general. Mankind. I went down to the waterfront and took a ferry across Toronto harbour to Centre Island.
In July and August the island is jammed with tourists, sun worshippers, and anyone else looking for a quick escape from the city. By early September the traffic slopes off, and on this day I shared the place with a small and manageable bunch of other strays. I walked all the way across the island to the Lake Ontario side, sat on a bench, and looked out at the waves.
Trevor shouldn’t be let off the hook. The argument I used on Cam was mostly bull. Necessary, but bull. Get Stuffy Kernohan to lead the raid on Big Bam’s place and he’d be in position to grease Trevor’s way out of his jackpot. That worked as an argument to Cam. Show him why it was in his best interests to have Stuffy on the job. That was his best interests. I was thinking of my best interests. I needed the cops’ help at the big confrontation that night.
But allow Trevor to take a walk? No way. I had to cook up something that’d send him down the tubes with Big Bam and company. Not nail Trevor for Fenk’s murder. Just for his cocaine offenses. It must have been Big Bam who did the murder. Or ordered it done. I wasn’t clear on how to prove Bam was responsible, despite all the assurances I fed Cam about his certain guilt, but there was bound to be some way of pinning the killing on Bam. Maybe getting one of the underlings to spill the beans. Cut some kind of deal. Let it all come out in the wash. Out in the wash? Darnell Gant was right. It was a fe
eble approach.
A hot-dog stand was open near the island’s ferry docks. I bought two dogs and a soda water, and carried them back to my bench. No nutrition, but out in the air, the sun, the breeze off the lake, the lunch tasted good in a sinful sort of way.
What about Darnell Gant? He was a needed part of the charade I was staging at Bam’s place. Gant would show up with the four kilos of coke, and that’d stir Bam and Trevor into a revelatory exchange of views and insults and other spicy things. That was Gant’s role.
But what else about Darnell Gant? Well, he seemed a nice guy for a dope dealer. And he had other irons in the fire, he said, Beverly Hills irons. I wouldn’t worry about him. A guy with his muscle and wit could take care of himself in a pinch. Even in a police raid. On my list of matters to be resolved, Gant didn’t figure. My main concern was to get Fenk’s murderer under wraps, thereby freeing Dave Goddard of any suspicion in the dirty deed. Gant wasn’t in Toronto when Fenk took his last breath. That put him in the clear. My inclination was to leave Gant on his own. Fenk’s last breath? That must have been an ugly sight.
Towards three, the sun got hotter. I took off my jacket, bunched it into a pillow, and stretched out on the bench. Two hours later, the late-afternoon chill woke me out of a drowse. I unbunched my jacket and road the ferry back to the city.
At home, the phone didn’t ring. No call from Annie. On the other hand, I only stayed around long enough to change into jeans, a blue work shirt, grey wool sweater, and my Rockport Walkers. Also long enough for one vodka on the rocks. Just right to steel the resolve, but not to fuzz the brain.
I dawdled the ten or twelve blocks to the booze can’s neighbourhood, picked up a container of take-out chow mein, and settled in to reconnoitre. From the outside, Big Bam’s place looked like any other homely warehouse. The double steel door with the peephole was on the side of the building. To get to it, people would have to pass through the gate in the chain-link fence and walk down an alley that was about ten feet wide. That was on the east side of the building. On the west, there was another ten-foot gap between the building and a second warehouse that was the same height. The neighbouring warehouse was equally homely. And definitely empty. Unless it was another booze can with even better security than Big Bam’s place.
My reconnoitring kept me in a lane next to a house across the street. The house was painted in a shade close to chartreuse. Over at Bam’s, all was quiet until ten o’clock when two guys came out through the steel door and took up position at the gate in the chain-link fence. I didn’t recognize the two guys, but I recognized their style in shirts, worn outside the pants, hanging loose. Yo, guys, I know what you got under there. Maybe, though, if these guys were doormen or greeters or bouncers, they were packing something else besides walkie-talkies. Weapons maybe. Something to keep interlopers at bay. That wouldn’t be my worry. Might be a concern for Stuffy and his cops.
Five minutes went by, uneventful, before a car stopped at the gate. It was big and American, probably a Lincoln, and the driver waited while three people got out. A man and two women, mid-thirties, dressed to party. One woman had on a satiny red dress that would stop traffic. So would her figure. Buxom and hippy.
“Want me to order you a drink?” the guy with the two women called to the guy at the wheel of the Lincoln. “What? Scotch?”
The answer was muffled.
“I’ll be on the dance floor, honey,” the woman in red shouted to the guy in the car.
Ooh, ooh, her on the dance floor. That I had to check out.
The Lincoln pulled away, presumably to find a parking spot, and the two guards on the gate swung it open and let the happy threesome through.
“We the first?” the guy in the group asked.
One of the guards nodded his head.
“I’m gonna get in there and shake,” Red Dress said with a little yip in her voice.
Go to it, big gal.
The three frisked down the alley to the steel door. They turned in profile to me, and I couldn’t monitor exactly what was going on. But, at a guess, I’d have said someone was examining them through the peephole. It didn’t take long. The three seemed to be regulars. There was a quick splash of light as the door opened, and the guy and two women disappeared into the booze can. The quick splash of light disappeared too.
Thirty seconds later, another couple arrived, both in silks and leathers. Then a party of six, likewise chic. Did nobody ugly or shabby patronize the joint? Then a guy alone, probably the Lincoln’s driver and Red Dress’s honey back from parking the car. Then an erect, silver-haired gent who could have passed himself off as any country’s president except he was escorting two girls who could have passed themselves off as Lolitas. Then a group, all guys, who had haircuts like Leonard Cohen’s. Then a grey stretch limo with a TV aerial on the back. The limo released too many people for me to catch in a fast count. All I knew for sure was that the last person out of the back seat had on a clown getup. Just come from a masquerade? Maybe going to a masquerade.
The flood was on. People streamed in, all of them with the looks of a prime-time crowd. The gate’s guardians gave the arrivals a close once-over and turned away no one. Neither did the guy on duty at the peephole. In fifteen minutes, by a rough estimate. I clocked about sixty men and women into Big Bam’s booze can.
Time for me to join them.
31
THE TWO LADS on the gate patted me down. That hadn’t happened to anyone else. Must have been my jeans. And the voice that went with the eyes at the peephole asked my name. I answered truthfully. The peephole snapped shut, and twenty seconds went by before the steel door pulled open. A guy inside ran a metal detector over me.
“What’s this about?” I asked. The guy might have been one of the lookouts from the afternoon at the Pits.
“It’s about seeing if you got a gun. A knife,” the guy said. “You never been here before.”
“Big Bam’s expecting me.”
“I know,” the searcher said, stepping back. “Have a nice night.”
“I’ll try.”
I was shouting. The music from the giant speakers in the corners poured out at high volume. It was music that was heavy on repetition. Lot of bass guitar. Synthesizers. Overdubbing. It pounded through the huge space.
The busty dame in the red dress didn’t mind the racket. She was on the midnight-blue dance floor shaking her formidable person. Her partner was the guy in the clown costume. They didn’t have the floor to themselves. Eight or nine other couples were doing whatever was current and frantic in disco land. Did dances have names any more? What happened to the Twist? And was it necessarily a guy in the clown outfit? Did Red Dress care? Not from the expression on her face. Ecstatic.
There was room for another three hundred celebrants in the booze can, but the early arrivals were making enough whoopee to give the place a Hieronymous Bosch flavour. Half of the crowd was bellied up to the long bar, and behind it a dozen bartenders, all young guys, darted among the bottles. “Drinks six dollars!” signs over the bar read. “Cash only!” I had the distinct feeling not even Karl Malden could use plastic at Big Bam’s.
I laid out six bucks for a vodka, and watched a woman in a tight spangled dress at a table near the bar. She was wearing one earring in the shape of a miniature Eiffel Tower. She leaned over the table, put a small straw in her nostril, and sniffed up a thin line of white powder from a small mirror. As she sniffed, the Eiffel Tower bobbed softly on the table top.
A black woman in a long white fur coat came through the steel door.
“Maisie!” some guy screeched at her.
The two rushed into each other’s arms. The guy was one of the Leonard Cohen haircuts. The other haircuts were right behind him. They fell on Maisie.
Old-home week at Big Bam’s.
The comings at the steel door—no goings—were regular and brisk. And the body count in the room rose steadily. So did the noise and the temperature. I was ready for a more settled ambience. I deposited m
y empty glass on a table next to a man’s Gucci handbag, and pushed through the throng to the far end of the bar, where I knew I’d find the door into Big Bam’s inner sanctum.
The door was in a pool of darkness, and I didn’t see Tran until he straight-armed me in the chest.
“No one allowed in here,” he said, tough, peremptory.
“Hey, Tran, loosen up,” I said. “Remember me? Guy that cracked open a couple of Sprites with you the other afternoon?”
“Oh yeah, you.”
It wasn’t in a class with the embrace the haircuts gave Maisie, but it was an acknowledgement. Tran was dressed the same way he was the day before, same short-sleeved white shirt hanging outside the trousers. Same muscles too. He raised his arm in a gesture that told me it was permitted to proceed through Bam’s door.
I opened it and caught the full blast of the Big Bam bonhomie.
“All right,” he said, standing up from his chair. “Crang, my man, let’s get down.”
He reached across the desk and gave me a complicated handshake. I fumbled it. Truong stayed seated at his desk. He didn’t look like he wanted to get down with me.
“Love your outfit,” I said to Big Bam. He had on something in one piece, a jumpsuit maybe, dark blue, with lots of pockets and zippers.
“You don’t get this off the rack,” Bam said, looking down in admiration at his own stylish self. “Made to damn measure.”
He rubbed his hands together and moved around the desk.
“Gotta have us a taste,” he said to me. “Owner’s prices.”