MARRY, BANG, KILL

by Andrew Battershill

  “Sure, kids are nuts for sugar.”

  “Right, boss, right. Kids go mental for it. And nobody says it, but it’s because they’re getting fucked up. When you’re a kid, you plan it, like getting fucked up, and then you get really high and you pass out. At least, I remember it like that. It’s a shame you outgrow getting high on sugar. Because you don’t have that thin kid-blood anymore.”

  “What?”

  Glass Jar looked up at Richmond like he’d just expressed ignorance of the Holocaust. “Kids have thin blood. Then you get older and it gets thicker. Yeah . . . kids have thin blood, that’s why they’re not supposed to fuck or lift weights or nothing. Because of the thin blood. Aren’t you a cop? Like, you should know that for first aid or whatever.”

  “Enough, Glass Jar. What do you have for me?”

  “I have a rumour.”

  Mike glowed internally with pride as he turned his nose up and away from the news, like it was an unexpected smell. “Rumours. You’re giving me rumours.”

  Glass Jar rotated his neck in a sickening fashion. “One rumour. It’s a big-un, though. Maybe the biggest un you’re ever gonna get. So stand me up, take these cuffs off, and let me keep my shit.”

  Mike yanked Glass Jar to his feet, wiped the vodka-­permeated sweat off his hand, and undid the cuffs. He wagged his finger. “Keeping the stuff depends on what you tell me.”

  Glass Jar smiled, and instead of rubbing his wrists he shook them loosely, as if messing around with two tambourines he didn’t quite know how to play. “So I guess you mighta heard about the money-stash robbery. Down in Vicky-toria. Dumb fella did it got the whole outfit and law after him. You mighta heard?”

  Glass Jar paused as he cautiously and systematically loaded his valuables back into his truck before remembering his initial intention to take them inside. He fished a cigarette out of a long-forgotten pack on the floor.

  Mike took a long, stilted breath. This was, indeed, somehow a big one.

  Glass Jar swung himself unevenly onto the corner of his truck bed and after six tries got his cigarette lit. Trying to look like a man with a lot to say, he took a long drag and flipped the end of the cigarette theatrically. No ash fell.

  15 Victoria, British Columbia

  Greta had, at various points in the last few years, been made aware of a number of common-sense crime maxims that she felt certain did not apply to her. Her thinking was that most of these rules were meant for criminals who looked like criminals, men with scars through their eyebrows and upper lips, giant elevated calluses on their lighter thumbs. Thick ethnic white guys with phlegm in their throats and jackets slightly too thin for the wind.

  Speeding was a big one. As a general rule, when one has two unregistered handguns and a switchblade on one’s person, not to mention a shotgun, some blow, and a jam jar full of GHB in the trunk, one is not supposed to blast down a crowded highway at an average speed of about 145 km/hour, weaving between trucks and trailers and small cars driven by old men whose necks are too stiff to let them shoulder-check. The speeding rule didn’t apply to Greta, not only because she was totally confident that she could talk her way out of any ticket, but more importantly because she would never be pulled over.

  People Greta’s age were growing fond of complaining, after a couple drinks, that they’d been raised to think they were special and were now finding out that they weren’t. It was a complaint with which Greta could no longer remotely empathize, because she didn’t feel that she had been raised to believe anything in particular and, more importantly, because she was special. If she didn’t want a ticket, she wouldn’t get one. If she needed someone dead, she killed them. Ever since Karen had showed her the ropes and referred her to Sergei and she’d shot that defenceless teen who’d ratted to the cops, Greta had stopped knowing or caring about struggle. There was no struggle, just different stages of a plan, spiderwebs of coincidence branching off life’s neat flow chart.

  Greta wanted to buy herself a new work jacket before hitting the highway, so she did. She’d wanted to make the seven o’clock ferry onto Quadra, so she drove the Island Highway in two hours flat, and she did.

  Although she’d never heard it as a set-down rule, Greta was pretty sure that if you ran it by them, most wise criminals would tell you not to shimmy out the sunroof of your car with two handguns on your person (plus a shotgun, some blow, and a jam jar full of GHB in the trunk), and roll sideways to the ground on a crowded ferry. But in recent years Greta had come to appreciate her physicality. She liked to flex her flexibility whenever she could, just to feel it, like when cats dig their claws hard into carpets and then just let go.

  After dismounting from her car, Greta straightened her clothes, swept the hair out of her eyes, and leaned on the ferry’s guardrail, feeling the cool summer breeze against her skin, and looking out as the mouth of the strait opened into a wider part of a much bigger strait.

  Greta didn’t believe in struggle, but she did believe in luck, so she’d have no trouble admitting she was lucky her reflexes didn’t take over and that she didn’t instinctively deliver a crushing knee to the head of the five-year-old child who brushed against her leg as she looked over the water. Instead she flinched, controlled herself, and said “Whoa, now.”

  The child’s hair was the kind of blond that doesn’t get past the first two weeks of puberty. He nodded up at her, and then looked straight down at his feet. Greta looked briefly around and saw the boy’s father leaning against a nearby minivan. He smiled and nodded at Greta. Nobody ever thought she’d kill anybody, it never even crossed their mind. Greta spoke to the top of the child’s head.

  “Hello. How are you today?” The kid dug the ball of one foot into the top of the other. Then he lost his balance a little and went back to standing normally. “Are you on vacation?” His shoes were still more interesting to him, and now that Greta saw them, they did have a large anthropomorphized truck on them, so that seemed fair. She tried one more time. “Do you go to school on the island?”

  The boy finally looked up, holding Greta’s gaze. His eyes were the colour of the ocean in a painting that doesn’t quite have the light right. He spoke, a halting, high-pitched voice. “No. I had a rash on my whole body.”

  Greta would have laughed if the boy didn’t look so serious. “Oh.”

  “I had a rash on my whole body and I wasn’t allowed to be around kids at school. I had a rash on my whole body.”

  The boy’s father arrived and gathered the child around his leg. He had long, thick, dark eyebrows that wrapped almost around to his temples, and he seemed kind enough to be embarrassed for everyone all the time. “I’m sorry if he bothered you.”

  “No, no. I don’t talk to kids much, it’s cool.”

  “Sure, sure, sorry.” He guided the boy a pace in front of him, then turned around, his head cocked to one side. “And, uh, yeah. I . . . He never had a rash. I don’t know why he said that.”

  Greta indulged her long-standing habit of leaving people hanging, socially. Eventually, the man turned around and got back in his car, carefully buckling his son in. Greta turned to look at the ocean again as it disappeared behind the stand of trees around the bay. She waited until the man behind her honked before she got in her car and drove off the boat.

  16 Quadra Island, British Columbia

  After leaving Glass Jar and anonymously returning the scallops, Mike returned to the office to find a note from Reubens sending him right back out the door on one more distasteful errand, disposing of a rabid dog that had been haunting the seafood plant and that some cranked-out night worker had kicked to death.

  Mike pulled up, and the circle of identical men in identical coveralls identically unbuttoned and draping from the shoulder split to accommodate him. The dog was splayed across the ground, its neck twisted sideways, head caved three ways in on itself, a long, thick line of foamed-out ­saliva sitting oddly on the ground, like surface runoff. Mike took a knee beside the body, craning his head wearily to the side as he
examined the head wounds.

  The young cop looked up and saw a broad, grim-looking man who was not wearing coveralls but rather a short-sleeved button-down with a pocket protector. Mike stood and motioned to his truck and the supervisor followed. Once they were out of earshot the pocket protector reached to awkwardly shake Mike’s hand and said three first names to introduce himself before beginning an apology. Richmond shook his head until the pocket protector stopped talking. He hadn’t taken in any of the three first names.

  “Okay. So, listen . . . sir. Listen, in normal circumstances, and I’m sure you know this, in normal circumstances we’d be shutting your plant down until public health came up here and checked all your guys for bite-marks and workman’s comp came up here to check on the conditions and your hours and all that. Since we’re a boat ride from the nearest health unit, and it’s five p.m., you’d be down for four days minimum. We both know all that, right?”

  Three First Names didn’t nod; he took one step back and spoke. “And what do we need to do to make this not a regular situation?”

  “Answer my questions and do what I ask, that’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  “So this is the dog? Right? This is the one you’ve been calling about?”

  “Never saw it myself, but that idiot who called it in, couple of the other guys have confirmed it, yeah.”

  “Nobody’s ever seen two, right? Just the one dog, which is the dead dog over there.”

  “That’s right. Yeah.”

  “Now, this is the key spot, and seriously, seriously, seriously, you’ve got to tell me if you know who did this. Somebody kicked that dog to death, which means somebody put their boot on a rabid dog’s face. We’d need to check that guy.”

  “Listen, we ran it down before you got here. Everybody’s saying no, and I believe them. I’ll check the night shift for bite marks as soon as they come in. Everyone else is getting a physical, ASAP. I just need to have the plant open while I do it. I can’t close. I need this place open, please.”

  “Hey, I understand. Sounds good. So here’s what went down: I got out here and the dog’s body wasn’t around anymore. Wow, weird, right? Because somebody double-bagged the body and buried it at least a foot into the ground, right?”

  “Sounds like what happened to me.”

  Mike let out a long breath. “If you see another one, tell them to just call it in, all right?”

  “I’ll tell them, yeah.”

  The guy didn’t seem quite relieved enough. Mike took a hard look at him. “Anything else on this? Do you know who did it? They won’t get in trouble, just have to check ’em.”

  Three First Names chewed his lip for a second and then shook his head. “It’d just be speculating anyway. I’ll take care of it. This is handled.”

  Had it been the sort of thing that could benefit him personally, and had he not been otherwise occupied, Mike might have pushed a little harder, tried to get whatever the guy was holding back, but it was, after all, just a dead dog. So instead of pressing the manager or talking to any of the other workers, Richmond nodded, got back in his truck, without another look at the dog, or the men, or the long, lovely tunnel of forest leading straight to the sea.

  As he drove back to the station, the young cop wasted a good amount of mental energy beating himself up for not just taking the easy win. Using the drug stuff Glass Jar had given him, taking the good note in his service jacket, and moving on. If he’d done that, he could have finished his stint on Quadra and left with a decent chance at a halfway decent posting. The way things were going in the RCMP these days, it wouldn’t be enough to guarantee him anything; even with the busts, he’d likelier end up giving out speeding tickets in Moose Jaw than land on a task force.

  But, Mike firmly reminded himself by pounding an imaginary table with his canned-ham fist, he hadn’t taken the quick, easy flounder. He’d landed a big fish, and he hadn’t really meant to, but once it’s on the hook you have to pull it in. This was a career collar. If he could book Tommy Marlo, if Tommy Marlo even showed up on Quadra, he’d be fast-tracking it to inspector, and after that as high as he could go.

  Nothing was for sure, though, and this uncertainty plagued both Mike and the wet and increasingly frayed collar of his shirt as he chewed it. Glass Jar didn’t really know anything. He’d heard that the club had one hitman they wanted on it; everyone else was supposed to stay away from Marlo and off Quadra altogether. It was a sensitive situation, and they didn’t want anyone going off half-cocked. They wanted the money and the computer found, and they wanted Tommy Marlo dead, and they wanted both done cleanly and quietly.

  Hours into his research, his eyes bleary from the screen, and his focus ragged from the legalese and jargon and pointless known-associates reports, Mike finally did the math. Two plus two. Marlo’s whole history started when he skipped bail in Montreal. To skip bail, he had to make bail. To make bail, he had to have money, or, more likely, a blood relative with money. What Mike finally figured out was just whom Marlo was coming to see on Quadra. What he didn’t know was how the club could have guessed. But they had, and their hitter was on the way.

  As he drove home, and as he once again allowed the shirt-collar to drop out of his mouth and land stickily against his chest, Mike realized that he was in over his head, and he was alone. He couldn’t ask Reubens, who’d just take it from him, run it up the chain. Plus, Mike would have to explain how he got the information, and he was nervous enough already about leaving Glass Jar loose. What he needed was off-the-books help from someone with big-case experience, and as he’d reconfirmed towards the bottom of a huge internet sinkhole, there was one person like that on the island.

  Mousey’s driveway was as long and scenic as the entrance to a national park, and Mike took the drive slowly, looking up at the treeline against the light blue glow of the early night sky. Mike stopped, turned off the truck and stared absently at the mossy bluff under Mousey’s house. He relaxed, and in his floating, computer-screen-raw vision, imagined his future house, and future wife, but he imagined them as one of those houses you see on the back of a truck, speeding down the highway. He imagined looking at his wife again, her reading something, hands drumming against the edge of her lip, not thinking about him watching her, the side of the highway slipping past, framed in the window behind her. Mike imagined his hands empty, watching the thinness of her dress, and the easy, green-brown blur of ditches and fields and trees that she also wasn’t thinking about.

  When he heard the gunshots, Mike’s first instinct was to duck, but the seatbelt arrested his movement and kept him propped up in his seat. Another two shots echoed around the trees surrounding the driveway. Mike mashed his hand against the seatbelt and finally unbuckled and dove out of the car. The young cop flattened himself against the truck and scanned the area around him as he reached for his gun and, attempting to un-holster, dropped it. Mike froze in his crouch for few seconds that felt like waiting for a few tectonic plates to move a few inches, then he reached down, picked up the weapon, and moved in as low and quick a crouch as he could manage towards the source of the sound. Mike reached the rippled metal siding of Mousey’s house, braced himself, and spun around the corner.

  Mousey was sitting in a lawn chair precariously wedged between two uneven rocks, a huge set of puffed-out 1990s ear protectors bulging out from the sides of his head, legs stretched all the way out, one hand holding a smouldering joint, the other sighting a small revolver at an empty whiskey bottle hanging off a tree branch. Mike cursed and dropped to his haunches as he tried to get his breathing back on track.

  The old cop placed the joint in his mouth and held it there without dragging as he tried to steady his swaying aim with a two-handed grip, and squeezed off four shots that didn’t even move the bottle, splintering the bullet-ridden trunk of the tree in a loose group. Mousey sighed earmuff-loud, re-engaged his safety, and replaced the gun in his Serpico-era ankle holster, hauled on the joint, and finally caught sight of Mike. Mousey did a
pretty good job of bluffing off his surprise while finishing and then coughing out his hit. “From what I hear about small towns, it’s best not to roll up on someone after dark.”

  Mike was breathing normally now, but his hands were tingling. He forced a smile across his face. “It isn’t dark yet.”

  Mousey laughed, clearly home-for-the-night stoned. He hopped out of the chair, almost fell down the rocks, and righted himself, somehow keeping the joint wedged in the corner of his mouth. He pulled the joint out and wagged it at Mike. “You got me on the technicality, counsellor. You’re the one wants to be a lawyer, right? Yeah, of course you are. You’re not the fat one.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Still laughing, Mousey tucked the joint back between his lips and loosely pulled his wrists together, offering them to Mike. “You got me, officer. I surrender.” Mousey reached up and grabbed a small portion of Mike’s quivering, tense shoulder and shook it companionably. “Sorry, sir. I’ll cool it on the gunplay for a few weeks.”

  Mike gave him a gentle push backwards, towards the house, and Mousey play-stumbled theatrically before performing a technically solid triple jump onto his elevated back deck. Mike shook his head. “Mousey, there’s a range in Campbell River, it’s not even far.”

  Mousey considered the joint in his hand, then he carefully pinched the ember off and put the roach in his pocket. “I mean, I’m going for a different sort of, uh, phenomenological experience with it here, but yeah, you’re right. I appreciate your cutting me a break like that. It’s a party-foul, I know. You want to come in?”

  “Yeah, something I want to talk to you about.”

  Mousey waited for the young cop to climb the stairs. Mike watched impassively as Mousey moved first to put an arm around Mike’s shoulders then reconsidered and slipped the arm around Mike’s waist. The stoned middle-aged man took on a serious air. “Is it about girls?”