“Herbert, get up here,” Leon said in a low voice.
“Herbert’s not here.”
“Well, good Christ, who is?”
“Hymie. I’m Hymie.”
Leon didn’t know quite what to say. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d check the scene out.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, come here.”
Judge Singh said, “Mr. Robinovitch, I sense some difficulty.”
“No problem, your honour.” He tugged Hymie by his collar, brought him to his feet, and urged him toward the aisle. “I’m asking that this go over another month.”
Orff — or Hymie — continued to ogle the court reporter. Her eyes widened with something akin to alarm. Leon feared he’d overdosed on those drugs Kiehlmann had given him.
Singh granted the month remand. Outside court, Leon checked to see whom he was speaking to. “Hymie?”
“I really like that chick in there.”
Leon remembered: Hymie was the one who was fond of women. Bit of a lady-killer.
Leon didn’t know what to do — should he drive him home? But Hymie didn’t seem to need his help.
“Herbert’s got the day off. I think I’ll go visit Mrs. Pinkerton’s house. See if Dottie’s in.”
“Your girlfriend.”
“Sort of. Well, more Franz’s. I have to take him there, you know, every once in a while, so he can do his thing. Anyway, it’s embarrassing, not something I wanna discuss.”
Leon wasn’t quite following this. “I’ll drive you to Mrs. Pinkerton’s.”
“No way, three’s a crowd. Hey, I think Herbert would like some more of those pills, he’s only got about ten left. Do you think you can get that shrink to give him more?”
“If he’ll come to see Dr. Kiehlmann tomorrow.”
Hymie lowered his voice. “Herbert, he doesn’t want to come. He’s afraid he’ll learn stuff he doesn’t want to know.”
“Then why don’t you bring him? And Franz, and everybody else.” What was that line from Casablanca? Round up the usual suspects.
“I’ll talk it over,” he said.
***
Oliver McAnthony, overcome with curiosity, seated the young police scientist in a stuffed chair. He wondered what was in the big leather case he’d brought with him.
“You’re Sergeant Theophile . . . is that how you pronounce it?”
“Theo. Theo O’Doull, sir.” A Maritime accent, a lilt. He had intelligent, confident eyes.
“And what brings about your presence here? You said you wanted to meet in camera — had you meant secretly?”
“I think in camera is appropriate.” O’Doull unsnapped his case. Some kind of miniature projector. A video camera, too. O’Doull headed up the RCMP electronics lab; McAnthony had heard he had his Ph.D. “If you’ll take that painting off the wall, I can shoot it up there at eye level.”
“Movies?”
“I think you’ll get a bang out of this.”
O’Doull helped him remove the painting. They set it in a corner, and O’Doull plugged in his equipment.
“I knew Harold Mitchell from Newfoundland, worked on a major file with him there.” O’Doull switched on a Newfoundland south-shore accent. “We were out bustin’ a bunch of the b’ys.”
So this was about McAnthony’s dubious friend, Inspector Mitchell. McAnthony was prepared for anything.
“Bunch of happy-go-lucky Newfie sailors. Pot smugglers, for sure. Mitchell wanted them busted. He supplied fifty tons of hemp, a ship to carry it in, and even hired a crew. All he forgot were the rolling papers. Straight blatant entrapment.”
“I recall reading about it. Things rather blew up in his face, didn’t they?”
“They are about to again.”
McAnthony surmised O’Doull had no love for the inspector.
“He has a bunch of hard-nosed sons of bitches in his special unit,” O’Doull said. “Operation Sweet Revenge. They’re like a bloody secret society.”
“I, too, have that impression.”
“But sometimes they have to reach out for a helping hand. That’s where I come in. As head of the lab I get to see things.”
“Sergeant, if this is about the listening device in the prop loft —”
“Listening device? We lent them a goddamn remote camera.”
He lowered the room lights. On the wall, an image appeared with a clutter of movie props in the background.
“Special wide lens I developed, so it’s a little distorted around the edges, but it covers a lot.”
Bowling sounds. Anne Murray on a radio. In the foreground, a table. Two men packaging heroin in condoms: Hiltz and Perez. A voice: “That first hit was kinda chippy. Too much buff.” Normie the Nose Shandler.
McAnthony hadn’t realized he was bending a pencil between his hands until it snapped.
“How did you get this?”
“I made a night raid, found the tape, made a copy.”
McAnthony assumed the camera had been hidden in a wall. The Nose strolled in front of it, a syringe in his hand. “Reason you guys might wanna unload quick is ’cause Billy Sweet might think you’re cuttin’ him out.”
McAnthony watched Normie disappear into a washroom, re-emerge, step toward the door, and then go sprawling as the door was kicked open into his face.
McAnthony, horrified by the following images, knew he mustn’t avert his eyes, and he saw Hiltz and Perez being expertly executed by Jerszy Schlizik.
“I’m just the tester!” Normie screamed from somewhere.
Schlizik was searching for him among the crates and wardrobes as André Cristal calmly entered, gun held loose at his side.
Schlizik wheeled, and pointed his gun.
“Vouz avez du visou.”
“Talk my language.”
Cristal did so, firing casually from the hip, and Schlizik staggered back toward the camera and collapsed.
McAnthony then watched Cristal adjust the position of Schlizik’s body and place his own gun into Perez’s dead hand. He watched Normie the Nose slither toward the back door. He watched Cristal calmly walk out the other way.
Then O’Doull turned off the machine. McAnthony was utterly confounded.
“I can’t believe Mitchell would withhold this.”
“He had a receiver unit outside. He just sat there and smiled and watched these characters shoot each other.”
“I’d like to know what the hell he thinks he’s doing.” McAnthony picked up the phone. “Get me RCMP narcotics.”
***
In the smoke-filled back room of Lavanderie Woznick, with all the action finished for today’s card at Blue Bonnets, Big Leonard was able to concentrate on this final critical rubber of bridge. He began chortling with glee as his nervous partner laid down the dummy.
“You’re gonna kill me, I only got three points.”
“But you got the king of clubs, you sweet baby.”
Woznick stood up, leaned across the card table, and planted a kiss on his partner’s forehead. Then he spread out his cards in triumph.
“Laydown! Eight diamonds, three aces, and a void! Doubled and redoubled! God finally smiles on Leonard Woznick.”
As he raised his arms in ecstasy, the door swung suddenly open, and a man in a ski mask disembowelled Woznick with two blasts from a sawed-off shotgun.
23
Carrie was about to leave the office for the day when André Cristal phoned, in unusual distress. She couldn’t make out what he said at first.
“Repeat?”
“They ’ave kill Big Leonard.”
“Big Leonard? Oh, God, André . . .”
“The filt’y bastards.”
“I’m coming right over.”
***
RCMP Superintendent Kenneth Sm
ith, realizing Operation Sweet held serious potential for scandal, had hurriedly conferred with Ottawa before inviting McAnthony and Mitchell to join him on an RCMP launch moored at the Toronto Island Airport. They made themselves comfortable on the aft deck as the launch purred along the inner rim of the islands.
Smith observed that Mitchell was very red of face, breathing hard. McAnthony had obviously taken the whip to him.
“We’re off duty, gentlemen,” Smith said. It was a way of announcing that what was about to be discussed was classified. No one would be taking minutes.
He pulled a bottle of single-malt from his valise, and passed shot glasses around. “This is the real thing. Can’t get it at the LCBO. Have it flown in. Just a small still, really, in the hills of Kincardine. Doesn’t sell anything under twelve years.”
“Superintendent, there’s just been another murder,” McAnthony said.
“Oh?” said Smith. “Anyone important?”
“Fellow named Leonard Woznick, Billy Sweet’s man in Montreal. It has implications. He was close to André Cristal.”
“A thug, then? Terrible just the same. Too many guns, that’s the problem. Like America.”
“Thanks to Mitchell here, they’re on a killing spree.”
This thing was not going to be swept under any rug, Smith realized. McAnthony was a real problem, a proud man who played by the book. Dangerous because he was honest.
“I’m almost as much in the dark as you, counsel. When Harold came to me with his Operation Sweet, I’m afraid I told him to spare me the details. His show. My mistake. I should have sat on him. No idea shit would happen.” He spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “Shit is what happened. Worse if it hits the fan.”
“No one knew anyone was going to be shot in that loft,” Mitchell said.
“I find that astounding,” said McAnthony. “You must have known the heroin had been stolen from Billy Sweet. Why did you think Schlizik was on his way up there? To pin medals on those fellows?” His voice was raised, resonant. “You had a camera in there, you mindless bugger, and you didn’t make a move until it was all over, and then you continued the game! For the last two weeks! And I was its dupe! I! The prosecuting attorney!”
“Easy on, old fellow,” said Smith. “Things went awry. Didn’t exactly have a SWAT team in attendance. Nobody hurt but some gangsters. Human garbage. Traffickers. Hit men.”
“I may sound pious,” said McAnthony, more softly, “but it is the system that got hurt. Our much-maligned system of justice.” Then he asked Smith: “How do you propose to handle this?”
“Normally in these situations we look for someone to blame.”
***
When Speeder Cacciati walked out of Terminal One at the Toronto International Airport, the limousine was at the curb and, lo and behold, Billy Sweet himself was sitting there in the back seat, Billy who almost never dared poke his head out of his own house. At first, Speeder figured he was here to thank him for a job well done, because Billy likes a guy who is enterprising.
But the boss, holding a little tape-machine in his lap, looked kind of grumpy. What did he do wrong?
Speeder started in fast. “Had to do it myself, Billy, no one else I could trust on this job, took the little runt down with a shotgun, easy as pie.”
Billy’s tight, hard voice: “I didn’t tell you to eliminate Big Leonard Woznick!”
Speeder began chewing his gum faster, talking at the same time. “Billy, I know I work for you, but I got a little leeway in using my initiative. That was the general plan, right? Off Big Leonard.”
“And did you think the Frenchman wouldn’t find out?”
“Not yet, word don’t get out that quick.”
Billy played a tape from the bug in the lawyer’s office. Speeder could just barely make out Cristal’s telephone voice, shouting, angry.
“They ’ave kill Big Leonard.”
“Big Leonard? Oh, God, André . . .”
“The filt’y bastards.”
“He was screwing Leonard’s daughter! You brainless bedpan! He’s got information for sale! You’re going to meet him tonight, you think he’s going to be in a nice mood to co-operate?”
“Sure, Billy, we let him know we mean business, scare him into talking.” Speeder knew this sounded lame. Here he tries to do the right thing, surprise Billy, make him happy, and he gets this shit dumped.
Billy leaned toward Speeder, and hissed. “We have got a spy. You heard that lawyer dame on the phone. A narc, a copper, a finger. A fish that is swimming in our pond. This is who we want to know about. First find out from the Frenchman whom he is. Then you waste the Frenchman. Got it? You got the right order?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“You blow this, and I’ll feed your testicles to the Dobermans.”
“Well, they ain’t gonna enjoy that meal, ’cause I got Deeley, Humphries, Elvis, and Izzie watchin’ my back, and we’re gonna pick up Cristal and we’re gonna take him to a quiet place we know and we’re gonna use some exotic forms of interrogation.”
“Deeley, Humphries, Elvis — how reliable are they, Speed?”
“Deeley, I don’t know, he’s brainless, but I don’t think he’s a snitch. Elvis has only been around a year. Humphries, he’s dumb, too, but okay.”
“I need loyal men around me, Speed.”
“Like who?”
“Vinnie’s flying up from Medellin. Tommy Bogue from Amsterdam.”
Good choices, Speeder figured. Vinnie Eng, half Chinese or Korean or something, he’d been around with Billy from the start, years ago, and now was heading up the South America end. Tommy Bogue did the overseas stuff, used to be Billy’s main man in the old days.
“What about Shadow?”
“He’s coming out of retirement for me. I trust Shadow.”
He’s been Billy’s bodyguard from the start, a guy who thought the sun shone from Billy’s asshole. The boss was getting serious.
Speeder looked at his watch. “I’m gonna be late.” He popped a bubble, pulled the gum from his lips.
“And what if he doesn’t show up, Speed?”
“Then we chain him to his fuckin’ bed and cut him ’til he talks.” They had the address, from the bug in the lawyer’s office.
“There’s a fish in the pond, just deliver me his name. I don’t care how.” Billy went kind of zombie-eyed, the neurotic thing that kept happening to him these days. He kept repeating, “Hook the fish, Speed. Hook the fish.”
“You’re goddamn right I will. I ain’t scared of this clown, Billy. He’s an amateur.”
***
Carrie and Cristal were standing outside on his penthouse deck, staring across the golden city, bathed in a sun two hours from falling. She had accepted his offer of wine this time, Chablis in a chilled glass.
Cristal was stiff, holding the railing with clenched hands, his face set, his eyes motionless. Carrie didn’t know what to say, but she kept glancing at him. She had seen him angry before — but this was different, a silent rage.
Carrie looked out toward the islands, where Leon lived. The tree-shaded walkways, the busy little airport, the boats in the bay.
Beyond the islands was the unbroken horizon of Lake Ontario, and, directly in front of her, the vertical slash of the CN Tower, the so-called tallest self-supporting structure on earth: it reminded Carrie of a huge hypodermic syringe. She thought of Trixi. She thought of other ruined lives. Leonard Woznick. Poor Lenore, his daughter.
“How did you hear about it?” she said finally.
“I just ’appen to make a call to Montreal. To a friend.”
“To Lenore.”
“And it . . . she . . . well, she was hysteric, a man in a ski mask, she kept saying that. A shotgun.”
Lenore . . . From her bag Carrie pulled out the photograph of Woznick’s daughter, the snap
shot he’d given her. The sunny, smiling young woman in her graduation gown.
She offered it to Cristal. “He gave me this. He was proud of her, wanted her to be a lawyer.”
But Cristal just glanced at it, looked away again to the horizon.
“I don’t think you should go to that street carnival tonight, André.”
He swung around, an odd, bright, biting light in his eyes.
“Merde. I’ll go.” Then, softly: “No one will stop me now.”
“From what? What are you talking about?”
“They are garbage. Garbage that ’as to be taken out.”
“Taken out? You mean killed? You’ll do no such thing!”
He remained silent for a while, then turned and walked back into the apartment without a word to her. She followed, watched him reach into a bag in the closet and pull out a revolver and a shoulder harness.
“Where did you get that?”
“The gun is a gift from Big Leonard.”
“The harness?”
He didn’t answer. He placed the gun on a bureau and strapped on the holster.
“You are a professional killer, aren’t you?”
Cristal shrugged.
She thought: this man is dangerous. Also, he isn’t thinking straight.
As he reached for his jacket, she hesitated, then quickly grabbed the revolver and ran out to the patio with it. By the time Cristal reached her, she was holding the gun over the railing.
“Please give it to me, Carrington.”
“I’ll throw it on that rooftop, no one will get hurt.”
Cristal checked his watch. “It’s seven o’clock, I want to be there by eight. Before it is dark, Carrington, for another reconnaissance.”
“You were there already?”
“This morning. I went into the hall, checked the exits. Nothing will happen to me, Carrington. I am very capable for what I do.”
“They want to kill you, André. Think about what you’ve done, for God’s sake, you’ve created a paranoid monster. Billy is sick with it. You went around spreading that story about a spy — that’s why he killed Big Leonard, he probably thinks the spy is you, he . . .”
She went into verbal stall, rendered mute by the thought that had struck her and by the truth that was in Cristal’s stone-cold eyes.
Street Legal Page 26