Balsam Sirens
Page 19
The three of us walked back outside again, me still wiping my cheeks. Kate walked toward the carport, then past it and disappeared. She told us later that she had gone to the front of the house to check for rubbernecks attracted by the sound of the plane, found two small boys, and told them there was nothing to see and that they should shoo.
Mike was going to the three men separately, and to each one he said “Stand up.” As each one stood, Mike emptied his pockets. What he netted was one cellphone that now had a badly cracked face, no wallets or ID, but a huge roll of cash that he extracted from the leader’s pocket.
“That’s mine”, he said to Mike.
“Not anymore, Blondie”, and Mike pushed the man roughly back onto his chair.
Mike unwound the roll and looked at me.
“Must be a couple of thousand here. That will go a long way toward covering our expenses for this venture.”
Just then, Mike’s cellphone buzzed.
Mike hit the speaker option. There were some shuffling noises at the other end.
“Mi-Mike? Mike?”
The voice quavered in fear.
It was Andrea’s voice.
Thirty
I grabbed Mike’s arm.
“Andrea! Oh my God! Andrea! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Mark! I was worried sick about you! I was … I was …” and here she broke down.
There was something wrong here.
“Where are you, Andrea? What happened?”
After some sobbing and choking, she brought herself sufficiently under control to say that she was at the Shell station in Rosedale.
“I got away.” She said it in a matter-of-fact way as if the “how” wasn’t important at that point.
“Andrea! I’m coming to get you! I’ll be there in less than five minutes!”
And immediately I turned and began sprinting to my car.
“I’m coming with you!” Kate said behind me.
I raced to Arran Street much faster than was safe, but then I floored it and the tires screamed on the hot tarmac. We rounded the corner at Highway 35 with barely a look to check for traffic. The tires let out another long tortured scream, and this time the speedometer needle was hard against the upper end stop all the way into Rosedale. We screeched around the slight S-bend coming into the village, roared up over the bridge, and the car practically stood on the driver’s side front wheel as I braked and turned onto the access road that led back toward the canal. I stopped in a four-wheel skid in front of the Shell station next to the repair bay, threw open the car door, and ran to where Andrea was sitting huddled on a bench next to the little stone building.
In a thankful embrace, I nearly crushed my wife, my life’s gem, the world’s most beautiful woman, and she dissolved into convulsive sobs. Kate joined us, and the three of us sobbed unashamedly together.
At length, I stood back a bit and looked Andrea over. There were no marks on her face, hands, or arms. She knew what I was looking for.
“I’m okay”, she said, still in a very quavery voice. “He didn’t hurt me. But he was cold, terrifying.”
“Let’s go back to Largs”, Kate said.
And that’s what we did.
During the trip, Kate and I asked Andrea gently how she had got away.
Andrea shivered involuntarily, but Kate had a reassuring arm around Andrea’s shoulders, their heads close together.
“He was holed up … in a rough cabin. It was … south of the canal between Balsam Lake and Cameron Lake.” But then she broke down and couldn’t continue.
The story came out in ragged pieces. At the time, she didn’t know where she was. She realized only later where the cabin was. He had tied her into a Muskoka chair, one that had just been made. The edges of the wood slats were rough and unfinished, and when he went outside to answer his phone she managed to use those sharp edges to cut through the rope. There were two doors to the cabin. She slipped out the other one and went into the bush. She headed for high ground, came across a dirt road, flagged down a farmer in his pickup, and he drove her to the Shell station.
“The man there let me use his phone.”
She lapsed into silence then, wouldn’t say anything more, and Kate caressed her hair.
When we arrived back in our garden, everything was much the same as when we left except that George was now standing by the steps leading to the back door. Andrea and Kate sat next to each other at the picnic table, and Kate comforted Andrea in a long hug. I went into the house and came back carrying a bottle of Metaxa and four glasses. Mike and I chugged our shots; Andrea and Kate both finished theirs in three large sips.
Oddly enough, it was George who broke the silence, directing a question at Mike and me as he walked slowly toward the picnic table.
“Did … did one of … these men kill … kill my brother?”
This surprised me. I had said nothing to George to contradict the story of a boating accident. But George must have guessed from the amount of time and effort I had been spending on the case that something more was involved. I realized now that he wanted desperately to be clear on his brother’s fate.
Blondie answered immediately despite the pain that speech was costing him.
“I didn’t kill anybody!”
Mike looked at him, walked over, and delivered a very hard backhand across his mouth. Blondie rocked back onto the two rear legs of his chair, almost fell over backwards, and winced again at the sudden balancing effort.
“When we want to hear from you”, Mike growled at him, “you’ll be invited to speak. Until then, keep your fucking mouth shut! And that goes for you two assholes as well.”
They all blinked dumbly.
“Have you got that?” Mike roared.
I turned to George.
“We don’t know who killed your brother, George. It might have been one of these guys. It might have been somebody else. But we do know who was responsible.”
“Who is he?” George asked. “Where is he?”
“He’s somewhere nearby. I think we should be able to find him soon.”
George blinked and nodded, but didn’t say anything.
I turned to look at Andrea and Kate, caught Kate’s eye, and gave her a head gesture indicating the back door. Kate nodded.
“Come on, Andrea”, Kate said softly, “let’s go inside”, and she led Andrea to the back steps, grabbing the Metaxa bottle on the way past. I turned to George and indicated that he should go with them. He hesitated, and my next gesture to him made it clear that it hadn’t been a request. He hurried after the two women.
When the three of them were inside and the door was closed, I took Mike aside and we walked back behind the picnic table.
“I need to find out where Dickson is”, I said to Mike. “There’s no way I’m just waiting around for him to show up. You with me?”
“All the way, brother.”
We returned and stood again in front of our three captives. Mike’s expression had turned unspeakably nasty.
“Okay, you three bastards”, he said. “It’s now your turn to talk. Let’s start with you, Blondie”, and the smile that Mike beamed down at him was utterly evil.
“Would you like to begin?” Mike asked me, as though inviting me to be first to try the potato salad.
“Yes”, I said. I walked to the drawer that was fitted under one end of the picnic table, poked around in the drawer for a moment, then came back to stand in front of Blondie.
“Do you know what a ganglion is, Blondie?”
He shook his head, not knowing what was going on, but sensing that whatever it was, it was far from good.
“There are two answers, but the one I’m interested in is simple. A ganglion is a bundle of nerves. We have them at various places in our bodies. Each of us has one just behind his nose, at the bottom end of that structure, near the nostrils. That ganglion is perhaps the easiest one to access. If anything pokes into it, its owner experiences pain like nobody can imagine.”
“If I poke this screwdriver up under your upper lip and then jab upwards, it will dig right into that ganglion. Now, I don’t want to do that, because I don’t like pain, either experiencing it or causing it. I expect that you don’t like experiencing pain either, although you’re probably a lot less concerned about causing it than I am. But just to give you an inkling of what that ganglion pain would be like, if I heated up this screwdriver to dull red using this torch, then stuck it up your dick, that would be like a feather tickle compared to the ganglion pain I’m proposing.”
Short dramatic pause here.
“Now then, you can avoid all that pain, if you tell me everything you know about your boss. We know him by the name Carl Dickson, but that’s not his real name. So, start talking anytime, within the next fifteen seconds, that is, and don’t stop until you’ve told me every last fucking piece of information you know about your boss! Do you read me?”
My tone remained calm and quiet throughout this speech, and my hope was that it conveyed to them the careful, systematic, and totally unemotional approach of the professional torturer.
“He found me. Through my contacts. That was five days ago. He called me in Toronto and asked me to meet him. Said he needed me and two others for a job. Needed to find something. Told me his name was David Tiverton. I don’t know if that’s his real name.”
Blondie was stumbling over his words, couldn’t get them out fast enough.
“You were staying in a cabin rented from Rick Stinson in Coboconk. Where else did you stay?”
“There was a place in Bobcaygeon, and we met a few times in a vacant office building in Toronto.”
“Addresses”, I demanded.
He rhymed off the two addresses and Mike wrote them down.
“Very good. Now, where will he be right now?”
“I don’t know”, Blondie said, just a little too quickly.
“Oh, now, and we were doing so well”, Mike said, moving toward Blondie and feigning terrible disappointment.
I brought the screwdriver up to Blondie’s face and rested it against the tip of his nose.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?”
“No! He’ll kill me! You don’t know him! He’s a vicious bugger!”
Blondie had either seen how casually Dickson could resort to violence (had he seen the execution of the three men behind the hotel near Lindsay?), or he had recognized instinctively what a violent psychopath Dickson was and the extreme danger he posed.
“You have a point there. He’ll kill you. But I won’t. On the other hand, when he kills you, it likely won’t hurt at all, or at least very little. But the pain you’ll get from me will be unbelievable, and it will go on and on, for a long, long time. But the choice is yours.”
We waited. Blondie was sweating buckets by now and was evidently in agony about what he should do.
“Grab his head, Mike”, I said.
Mike went round behind Blondie, and clamped his head in what looked like the jaws of death.
“Last chance”, I said. “No? Okay.”
I took Blondie’s upper lip between my left thumb and forefinger, and began sliding the screwdriver blade slowly up along Blondie’s upper gum.
“No! No! Stop, please! Okay! Okay!”
I stepped back, doing all I could to conceal my feeling of massive internal relief.
Blondie began talking and, as I had seen happen during my police days, once he began he sang like a lark.
At the end of twenty minutes, we had just about everything we needed. Mike and I went into a huddle. He agreed to my plan but asked me if I was aware of the risks. I said I was and I asked if he was comfortable with them, but Mike just smiled, patted my cheek, and then he went off to call on, once again, his reliable local man Chuck.
Then we sat down to wait.
It didn’t take anything like as long as I thought it would.
Thirty-one
We were counting on Dickson, or Tiverton, or whatever his name was, figuring that he would always be the brightest guy in the room. Both Mike and I had had some experience with his sort. They’re not the kind of guys you want to come across often. They are generally very bright, are superb planners, can detect weaknesses in individuals intuitively and with ease, are ruthless, and are not limited by the constraints of empathy, conscience, or remorse. They can be exceedingly dangerous.
Mike and I had a long conference call with Chuck, and we passed on to him all the information we had extracted from Blondie. Chuck was no dummy either; he knew the kind of danger someone like Dickson posed, he had a very healthy respect for the risks psychopaths can present, and he asked many penetrating questions.
“The basic question here, Chuck”, I said, “is this: are you comfortable with what we’re asking you to do?”
Chuck delayed a moment.
“Yes, I am. If I feel that things are getting out of hand, I’ll just back away. But I think you have the right strategy. At the end of the day, it’ll be you two guys who’ll be running the greatest risks.”
“Okay, Chuck. Keep in regular touch. Let us know when you make your first contact.”
Chuck signed off, and we waited.
We bound our three landed fish to their chairs, then went inside. I wanted to talk to Andrea.
The four of us, Andrea, Kate, me, and Mike sat together. Mike and I explained what we were doing. Andrea objected right away. It was too dangerous. Let the police handle it. You’re putting everything we have at risk.
I began trying to answer her points, but after only a couple of sentences Mike held up his hand and stopped me. He explained the problems and risks in going the police route. He explained how slippery and ruthless Dickson was. He talked in a low, quiet, competent voice. He answered Andrea’s questions. She had more questions. He answered them as well. This went on for the best part of half an hour.
In the end, it was Kate who carried the day.
“They’re right, Andrea. I saw it today out there on the lake. Dickson had just manoeuvred us all into that situation where he held all the cards. If it hadn’t been for Mike’s resourcefulness, not to mention yours in getting away from Dickson, I don’t know what might have happened. Let them do this. You and I will go to my place in the plane. We’ll stay in touch with them right down the line. But we have to let them take out this son of a bitch.”
These were strong words, coming from Kate, and Andrea sat pondering.
Kate cleverly moved away from the whole topic.
“Mike, how did you know where Mark would be?” she asked.
“It was a guess, but a reliable guess. The only way to get the treasure is to go out there in the lake and … well, get it. It was clear that Dickson didn’t know just where it was, although he had a general idea. Otherwise he would have recovered it already. They had crossed their Rubicon by kidnapping Andrea and then kidnapping Mark, so however it played out it would be only a matter of time before the police became involved. The clock was ticking, so Dickson’s best path was to find the treasure and disappear.”
“But why just now?” Kate asked. “Why is it that Dickson seems to be suddenly in such a hurry? Surely he’s known about this for some time.”
“I think”, Mike began, “it’s because the field seems to have become crowded all of a sudden. First there was Harold. Then the crew who had gone out there in the lake a few days ago. We thought they were Dickson’s men, but it looks like they were running their own rogue operation. Dickson dealt with them all ruthlessly. I think he was concerned that some information on the treasure had got out into the world, and he didn’t want to take the chance that some other bunch would try their hand and possibly pull it off, whipping the treasure out from under his nose.”
“And the rogue group”, Kate began, “how did they find out about it?”
This time it was me who answered.
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“I’m guessing it was them who tossed Harold’s apartment. They probably got the basic information they needed that way. Then Harold was doubly unlucky to run afoul of Dickson’s crowd out on the lake.”
Kate nodded and thought about that. It sounded plausible. My bit was speculation. I didn’t know how much of Mike’s explanation had been invented on the spot.
“What would have happened to us, to Mark and to me?” Andrea asked, and it was clear that the nightmare was still bright in her mind.
“I suspect”, Mike began, “that they would have taken you to two isolated spots and let you go.”
Even though Andrea appeared to buy that line, I didn’t. Not even for a second. As soon as Dickson had got his hands on the prize, we would both have been dead meat.
Kate jumped in again, regaining the conversational initiative.
“How did you know what Mark would do?” she asked Mike.
“I didn’t”, Mike said. “But I knew that he knew I wouldn’t be just sitting around waiting for the phone to bring joyous news, and I knew that if they took him out to the reef, he would find some way to disable their boat and give himself a better chance to get away. He’s a fantastic swimmer, both on and below the surface.”
“When did you have time to collect those rocks, Mike?” I asked.
“He didn’t”, Kate interjected. “He asked me to bring as many large stones as would fit in a five-gallon pail when he called me asking for air support. Said we might need them.”
I nodded at this, notching up my already great respect for Mike.
“There’ll be more time for all this later”, Kate said as she stood. “Grab whatever you need, Andrea, and let’s get back to the plane.” They both turned to go to our bedroom to collect some fresh clothes for Andrea.
“One suggestion, Kate”, I said, and they turned back to look at me. “When you leave, take off to the south then swing a long way west. He’s less likely to see or hear you. Dickson is probably somewhere to the east of us. He won’t want to have the large expanse of Balsam Lake between him and us. I don’t know what he knows. He might think you’re here, either or both of you. But if he doesn’t know just where you are, then that could be one more slight advantage we have, another area where he could assume wrongly, make a mistake.”