by Bob Kroll
Peterson rose from the chair, pulling out the pistol as he stood. “This should get me out.”
Saying it like that, with the gun in his hand, and Tooka twitching at hearing it, sharpened all his senses. He could smell the stink of beer and whisky from the lounge and the girl’s perfume still hanging in the room. The shadows stirred beyond the edge of lamplight, low voices and music seeped through the closed door, and the rumble of traffic on the Strip shivered the window. Tension grew in the space between them. And the urge that had propelled him to this moment slowly unburied its ugliness.
They stared at one another, Tooka sizing up the options, Peterson’s insides clenched with anger.
Then Tooka said, “You won’t shoot me on a childfucker’s say so.”
“That, and two girls you whored out,” Peterson said. “One opened her wrist in the Broken Promise. The other swallowed a Glock 20.”
Tooka held up his hands in mock surrender, trying not to show the sweat. “Nothing points the finger at me about those girls!”
“This ain’t a finger,” Peterson said. A sweat bead ran down the side of his face.
“That’d be ice-cold killing.” Tooka looked frightened. “You a man that can do that?”
Peterson didn’t answer. He just looked down the barrel of the gun into the other man’s eyes.
“I sweet talk them,” Tooka said. “Serve them dinner when they hungry and horny. Pimp them out too, man. You know what I’m saying? Candy don’t make them run away from home. Those girls are already broken in pieces when they come to me. I’m just using the garbage people like you throw out on the street.”
Peterson’s thoughts took him someplace else for a moment. The gun in his hand lowered a bit.
Tooka saw the chink in Peterson’s resolve. “You know what I’m saying,” he said. “I got ears to the Strip. I know about the cop that drinks his face off. Yeah, the one standing right here with a sorry-ass look that says he put his own trash out on the street.”
Tooka’s hand on the desktop inched closer to the open drawer. “You dumping down on me for what you fucked up. But it wasn’t me that shut the door on your girl’s coming home.”
Peterson raised the gun, his finger on the trigger. His mouth was dry and his hands were wet.
Tooka swallowed, moved his hand back, and dropped his cool-ass swagger.
“Life fucks us up, man. Before long we working the only jobs the man let us do. We don’t even get to drive the trash truck. Why else we pimping whores and selling whatever else we sell on the street? Ain’t me that put me here.”
Peterson felt not an ounce of sympathy. “I cap you now, you’ll die in wet pants.”
Tooka’s eyes widened, unblinking as he watched Peterson’s finger on the trigger.
“Misunderstood street rat is just sucking wind to my ears,” Peterson said. “Make it self-defence.”
Tooka choked off a cry and moved his hands farther away from the open drawer.
“You shoot me, they come for you,” he said.
“Not if the gun that drilled you belongs to Andy Miles.”
Peterson raised the gun a half-inch higher. The trigger felt good against his finger. Even better was the sight of Tooka across the barrel, covering his face with his hands, his voice squeaking like a child who’s been forced into a corner.
Peterson’s smile broadened as he backed up to the lounge door. With the hand that held the cat’s paw, he reached behind for the doorknob.
Tooka looked dumbfounded.
“You’re just well-dressed scum and not worth the bullet it would take to kill you,” Peterson said. “Besides, I like knowing someone else will make a bigger mess.”
He cracked the door and called into the lounge. “Danny!”
“I’m here,” Danny called back. “Everybody’s sitting tight. But the one on the floor still hasn’t moved. Bernie kicked him, and he didn’t budge.”
“What the hell is she doing here?”
“Partners,” Bernie called back.
Peterson snickered and backed into the lounge, and the three of them backed out the front door. Peterson gave Danny the digital recordings before they separated in the parking lot, Peterson making for the Jetta and Danny and Bernie for a Ford sedan. Peterson hesitated before opening the door, looking hard across the parking lot to the passenger in the green Chevy truck. When he’d got Dickie Palmer’s attention, he nodded at the front door of the Flame. Then he climbed into the Jetta and drove away.
Chapter
FORTY-SIX
Peterson drove straight home. Danny and Bernie paid Bettis a visit and found him crouched in a corner beside the sideboard with his hands over his head. The Colt was where Peterson had left it.
By 10:00 a.m., Bettis had signed a lengthy statement based on the digital recording Peterson had given to Danny. The lawyer at his side had advised him against it, told him that the recording would not stand up in court. Bettis signed it anyway. He wanted it over and was relieved that it was. His lawyer bargained on Bettis’s behalf, agreeing that his client would turn Crown witness in exchange for a lesser charge of sexual assault.
The story went viral on the internet a couple of days before making it to the CBC and CTV nightly newscasts. Local and national newspapers ran it over the following week. There were no names at first, but within a few days, they made the front page. There was much from the hard drive the broadcast media didn’t show, and much that it did. The internet was less discriminating. A police investigation found Bettis’s pals had hard drives with the same content. Within a week, the RCMP laid charges against David Heaney, Richard Pratz, and Dr. Karl Bettis: sexual assault, sex with minors, unlawful confinement, and a dozen others. It took another two days for the RCMP to confirm DNA results. That’s when they charged Senator James Williston with murder.
Then an unnamed source leaked more information about a criminal ring that trafficked young women back and forth across the country as sex slaves. That brought the RCMP farther into the act, had whores and pimps ducking for cover, and had the brass in cop shops in every big city in every province scrambling to crack down.
Vindictive was how Overton had described Tooka. Hot tempered. Quick to get even. Peterson had expected Tooka to hit and hit soon. When he still hadn’t after a week, Peterson figured he had dropped out of sight to avoid the pressure. Still he stuck close to home, the Sig Sauer on his hip or well within reach. At night he roamed the dark house, peeking from the windows. Danny and Bernie came by regularly, keeping watch.
Peterson stayed clear of Anna. He couldn’t face her after what he had felt while threatening Tooka, the urge to see the man’s face melt like gum on hot pavement. Tooka could have gone down without him going face to face. But he needed it then, the way he needed it now. He needed to freeze that moment with the gun in his hand, pointed at Tooka’s head. That was his life.
It was another grey afternoon with a coming storm darkening the sky. Peterson spent it raking leaves. Then going inside for a beer. One beer. Weaning off. Dozing in the recliner.
His head filled with faces, girl’s faces. Ones with false smiles on the street and others fear-stricken among the shadows. He saw them all at once, turning tricks in alleys and in fleabag rooms with unmade beds and wallpaper peeling away. He saw them hustling the passing traffic. He saw them as wet leaves kicked along the gutter.
Then Anna slipped into his thoughts. She was standing across from him in her kitchen. “I won’t live your life,” she was saying. “I won’t let myself. Do you understand?” Then she turned from him and left the house, on her way to some place he knew he could never go.
He sank deeper and dreamed of blisters of coloured lights and splintered planks boarding up empty warehouses with graffiti-scarred walls. He heard the wind rattling the window and his cell phone ringing somewhere far away. His mind drifted back to where he was dozing in the recliner
. He opened his eyes. The phone was still ringing. He reached for it.
“Daddy!”
His breath caught at the sound of her voice. Tears flooded his eyes, and his voice squeaked. “Katy!”
After a long silence, she said, “I want to come home.”
“Yes! Oh God, yes.”
“Open the door,” she said. “Daddy, open the door. I want to come in.”
He looked across the living room to the front door.
“Daddy! Daddy, please!”
He scrambled from the chair and was across the living room and at the door. Opened it to the wind and to a young girl in a grey hoodie.
“Katy!”
The girl lifted her head. Her dark eyes were empty. Then she raised a .22 calibre Smith & Wesson and fired.
The first shot caught him in the chest and drove him backward into the house. The second blew apart his left knee as he hit the floor. The third pounded into the ceiling, as Danny slammed the girl face-first into the doorjamb.
Danny ripped the gun from the girl’s hand and threw it aside. Then he rocked her head against the jamb again and flung her into the house, where she crumpled to the floor.
He whipped out his phone, told the dispatcher a police officer was down, and where. Then he dropped to his knees beside Peterson and hugged him, begging his friend to hold on. He heard Peterson mumbling his daughter’s name, felt his friend’s choppy breaths, and listened for the sirens.
Chapter
FORTY-SEVEN
He watched leaves floating down a slow river, then swirling around a big rock into a deep pool that lay beneath a branch. A boy was gripping the branch, afraid to let go. Afraid of his shadow on the water, afraid of what lay hidden beneath it. His mind slipped away.
He sensed a shape beside him. Felt a hand in his hand, fingers stroking his. A voice calling him back from where he had gone.
He opened his eyes. There was no one there at his bedside, just an IV pole haloed in white light.
After surgery, he was two days in ICU with an endotracheal tube down his throat and a ventilator whooshing air in and out of his patched lung. Another pump sucked residual air and blood from his chest cavity. Then the tube in his throat was gone and the whooshing stopped. He could hear voices but sensed they were not speaking to him.
He was two more days mostly in a cloud of thoughtlessness, but thankful for Danny and Bernie’s three-minute visits, which a nurse timed to the second.
“She waited with me during surgery,” Danny said.
They had moved Peterson from the ICU to a semi-private. He was still groggy on painkillers, but clear-headed enough to know who Danny was talking about.
“She visited a couple of times when you were in ICU. Prayed over you, like you had a soul or something. I had coffee with her. A funny duck. She likes you, Peterson, but I’ll be goddamned if there’s anything in it for you. This whole mess, the Broken Promise, you getting shot, the whole goddamn thing, has screwed her up. She said she was going back to the convent. How do you deal with that?”
Peterson turned his head away.
The next day the nurses had him sitting up in a chair. He was fussing with a bowl of soup and a chicken salad sandwich when Danny and Bernie came in.
“You look a hell of a lot better than when I left yesterday,” Danny said.
Peterson forced a smile. “I heal fast. Nothing but scars, inside and out.”
“I could have gone easier with news about the nun, but when the hell did we ever hold back?”
“Skip the hearts and flowers. Who’s the shooter?”
Danny looked at Bernie, and Bernie said, “A seventeen-year-old junkie working the street.”
Danny added, “I broke her cheek bone. A kid. What the hell’s a seventeen-year-old girl doing with a handgun? City Hall brags about it getting better, about the crime rate going down. If they only knew. If they only fucking knew.”
“What’s her name?”
Danny lifted a package of crackers from Peterson’s tray and opened it.
“Michelle MacKinnon,” Bernie said. “Mickey Mac.”
Peterson heaved a breath and the pain brought him up short.
“I thought that would make it hurt,” Danny said. “Tooka went after your weak spot and used a shooter you’d never expect.” He pulled out a cracker. “What’s the long-range forecast on you?”
“Big hole, popped lung. I won’t be on the dance floor any time soon. They want another go at my knee.”
Danny looked out the window to a courtyard where several patients were walking about. He turned back to Peterson, a big grin on his face. “Miles got called on the carpet. No hard evidence, but there’s enough innuendo to keep him sitting behind a desk until he retires.”
Peterson scowled.
“Yeah, I know,” Danny said. “But I heard auditors are screening his accounts for large cash deposits. Maybe something will turn up.”
A nurse entered the room, saw Peterson had visitors, and said she’d be back.
“Should I tell him?” Bernie said to Danny.
“Be my guest,” Danny said.
“There was a fire at the Rendezvous while you were in ICU,” Bernie said.
“Somebody muscling in,” Danny added. “At least that’s what’s on the street. Everyone’s guessing, but nobody knows who they are.”
“Nothing but ashes,” Bernie said. “How timely was that?”
“What do you mean?” Peterson asked.
“It came two days after somebody busted up the Flame,” Danny said. “They did a number on Tooka’s boys, but no one’s talking.”
“What about Tooka?”
“He wasn’t there,” Bernie said, “at least not when the police showed up.”
“An undercover thinks whoever busted up the place took him for a ride,” Danny said.
“I’ll bet they did,” Peterson said.
“My guess is they’ll dump him where he won’t be found. But who’s looking? No one’s reported him missing, and it’s not a homicide until a body washes up.”
Peterson toyed with the soup. “And you’re not looking.”
Danny smiled. “Budget cuts.”
They held each other’s eyes, both thinking the same thing, both unwilling to compromise the other by saying it.
Chapter
FORTY-EIGHT
In his mind, the knee brace and straight-legged walk made him a cripple. The cane made him look old. The two young women who cleaned his house once a week made him feel even older. Ushering him from one room to another while they worked. Then talking to each other as if he wasn’t there.
His doctor had said he’d lose the cane in a week or two, and the brace once the deep healing was done and his leg muscles strengthened. A couple of months. Maybe more. It depended on his dedication to therapy and willingness to exercise. “That knee won’t bend the way it once did,” the ortho doctor had said, “and you won’t be running any marathons, but you should obtain a full recovery with some minor restrictions.”
Driving was out of the question until he regained some flexibility in the knee, and that felt like a prison sentence. Taxis were a pain in the ass. So was asking for help. Self-pity made him want to drink, and wanting it and denying it put the lid on his self-imposed confinement, turning it into a tomb.
On Saturday morning, Danny dropped by with a cold case file for him to have a look at, strictly on the Q.T., boosting Peterson’s spirits. But he kept it to himself and shrugged off Danny’s gesture.
Danny knew the game, but he was too tired and overworked to play it. His face showed it. His slumping shoulders did too.
Peterson nosed at the file. “Is this a fee-for-service deal, or am I working off an IOU?”
“If you’re going to be a smartass, I’ll take it back,” Danny said.
Peterson
pulled the file to his side of the dining-room table.
“Crack it and I’ll get you another,” Danny offered.
“Who does the leg work?” Peterson asked.
“Billy’s coming by to juice up your computer. Bernie said she’d help. That’s the best I can do. Besides, you got legs. Use them.”
“I can’t drive.”
“Take a bus. You’re pensioned off. On Tuesdays old people ride for free.”
Peterson let it go and opened the file, a sixteen-year-old male, Nicholas Rafferty, shot dead in a public park. High school basketball player taking a shortcut on his way home after practice. The thick file was a few months old, lots of interviews, no suspects.
Danny dropped a legal size envelope on the table. “I got a call to pick this up for you. Can you imagine hand delivery in the age of instant messages? It’s from the once-a-nun friend of yours.”
Peterson kept his eyes on the murder file.
“Bernie got her the girl’s full name and the town she came from in Newfoundland. Closure, right.” Danny rolled his eyes. “So your friend went up there and talked with the girl’s mother. She called it a summing up before she went back into the convent. There’s a letter in there for you.”
Peterson glared at Danny.
“What?” Danny threw up his hands in feigned protest. Beaming. “I’m a detective. I’m supposed to be nosy.”
Peterson went most of that day without opening the envelope from Anna Gray, pretending he was uninterested, but his curiosity thickened by the hour. It was mid-afternoon when he set aside the Rafferty murder case and opened the envelope. He emptied the contents on the dining-room table: a note addressed to him and nearly a dozen photographs. He poured himself a Coke and settled at the table. He read the letter first.