Street Legal

by William Deverell

  Lachance had waited to see if they’d send a couple more victims his way, but it seemed the enemy had been scared off, so he just dragged the bodies out of the law office and sped down the stairs and out the back.

  If they were in retreat, he would just have to pursue.

  But first he ordered a glass of white Bordeaux, and as he relaxed he thought of Carrington. Finally he had found a woman worthy of him. The others had been bagatelles, bland, uninteresting. Carrington Barr was different, special. Une bonne botte.

  The cocktail bar inched around its axis and all the lights of Toronto passed by him, shrouded by rain, and the blackness of the lake went by, and the sky devoured him, the tumultuous sky and its tentacles of lightning. He felt powerful here, perched on top of the world. He had a sense of impending victory against the enemy.

  28

  Speeder was soaked right through to his skin, uncomfortable as shit, dripping all over the seat. He couldn’t see anyone’s faces, because the interior lights were out and there was no streetlamp or anything in the alley.

  Speeder could hear their steady breathing, Shadow with one half-stuffed nostril, sounding like a baby’s rattle. Vinnie Eng back there beside him. And he could make out Billy in the back, too, where the cologne was coming from. Speeder couldn’t believe it, Billy was here, armed — it was like the old days, he was back in action.

  “You’re getting me all wet,” Tommy Bogue complained. He was the wheelman for tonight.

  “Well, fuck you. I been on an intensive reconnoitre and I almost died of the elements —”

  “Shut up,” said Billy.

  “Okay, I shut up.”

  Billy sighed impatiently. “Tell us what you observed.”

  “Her car’s in the garage so it means she’s gotta be home. There’s no lights on anywhere except one upstairs, which I figure it’s a bedroom, facing the front, and she’s probably in it. Nobody can hear nothin’ in this torrent, so I say we just go in through the back way where there’s a couple of windows we can jimmy.”

  “And you don’t think anyone else is in that house?”

  “Who? The guy she’s fucking? He’s a mile up the CN Tower. This is the time we got to do it, Billy. I’d say we got half an hour leeway, maybe forty-five minutes. Grab her and hustle her outa there.”

  Speeder checked his jacket pocket to see if the crankers had got soggy, but they were protected by Zip-loc. Whizbangs, the chemist called them, with a little coke and a little junk added, a sort of medicine cabinet.

  “I’ll do the interrogation, Billy, I think I got her number — gotta pull her down first from her heights.”

  “Do you want to be alone with her?”

  “That’s the best way. Tie her up first.”

  “Do you like her, Speed?”

  “Whatta you mean? She’s a whore.”

  “I think you like her. I think you just want to make out with her, and that won’t encourage any questions to be answered.”

  “Aw, Billy, come off of it.”

  “Or do you wish solitude with her for other reasons? You wouldn’t help her escape, would you?”

  “Billy, when I hear stuff like that from you, I get kinda pissed off, you wanna know the truth.”

  “Speed’s okay, Billy,” Vinnie Eng said, who’d been around from the start, before Speeder’s time. Speed was happy for the recommendation: he couldn’t figure out why Billy was always on his case.

  “What do you think, boss?” said Bogue.

  “Tommy remains at the wheel. The other four of us go in. We get her.”

  We? Speeder didn’t see Billy exposing himself this way. But it was like he wasn’t expecting much of nobody else any more. Billy and his You wanna do something right, you fucking do it yourself. The Crown Prince of Paranoia, but he could still get into that kind of control thing he was capable of. Speeder hoped it wasn’t just a skin-deep thing but was the old Billy Sweet back in form.

  “Flashlights and weapons, gentlemen,” said Billy. “Everyone has gloves? Ensure your silencers are on. This is to be timed for a maximum of fifteen minutes.”

  And the car doors opened and the four of them got out into the rain, Speeder leading them single-file down the alley to where there was the lawyer’s big semidetached house, with a garage behind it, a brick patio, a narrow walkway to the street out front.

  The door to the back porch had a kind of flimsy lock, and Vinnie Eng, who brought a small pry-bar, just wrenched it until it gave. The French doors to get into the house proper were even easier. Maybe they were making a lot of noise, but the weather was co-operating to the point Speeder could barely hear the scritching of metal and the popping of wood.

  The French doors led into a large kitchen which was in total darkness, no lights anywhere downstairs. Billy gave whispered orders to them to fan out with their flashlights, and they covered all the rooms on that floor, and met again in the living room.

  Shadow had the rope with him and the tape for her mouth, and he was assigned along with Vinnie to go up to the bedrooms. A couple of minutes passed, and Speeder couldn’t hear any noise from upstairs and he figured it was going okay and he did a couple of his whizbangs. Billy wasn’t saying nothing, all that could be seen of him was his wrist, the illuminated dial of his watch — Billy checking the time.

  When Vinnie came back with Shadow, he said: “She ain’t here. One of the bedrooms has a light on but she ain’t in it.”

  Without seeing him, Speeder could tell Billy was blaming him as if it was his fault. Now they had to probably split fast from here. Speeder didn’t want the Frenchman walking in on them, he was kind of crazy and dangerous.

  “Well, Billy?” said Vinnie. “You want we should check outa here, or what?”

  The phone rang, and Speeder almost jumped out of his skin, the crank taking effect faster than he expected. It rang two more times, and then they could hear a voice with a French accent on the answering machine going, “He didn’t show up.”

  “It’s Cristal,” said Speeder.

  “Shut up,” Billy whispered fiercely.

  “. . . no ’urry, so we can meet in the morning and decide the next move. I will come to your office at nine. Have nice dreams.”

  A click.

  “We just bought some time, Billy,” Speeder said.

  “Yes. We will wait for her.”

  Speeder felt the cartwheels spinning wildly in his head.

  ***

  Constables Chip Fogerty and Ann Wilcox, fresh-faced recruits in the Metro Police, had been paired off for the last two weeks, mostly pressing the bricks, but tonight they’d got a forthwith from head office and with it an unmarked car and an easy job. Surveillance — for no specified reason — of the home of Carrington Barr, barrister and solicitor. All they had to do was run a make on anybody hanging around.

  They’d had trouble finding a parking spot, and were three houses up from the Barr residence. It was pounding rain. Chip Fogerty was in the passenger seat, reading a sci-fi thriller under the dashboard light. Behind the wheel, Ann Wilcox was half-turned, squinting at the Barr house through the rear window.

  “Looks pretty dead. Aren’t we supposed to take a little stroll around the neighbourhood once in a while?”

  “I’ll take a rain check,” said Fogerty, not raising his nose from his paperback. “You go ahead.”

  Later, Wilcox decided. She turned and slouched into her seat. There were no sounds but the rain pelting the car roof and the sonorous voice of the police dispatcher. All units to keep all eyes open for the Midnight Strangler. That would be a collar.

  ***

  With one of his gloved hands, Speeder silently scratched at his elbow, the cartwheels making him itchy all over, there was always some damn side effect. His bladder was burning, too, he had to take a major leak.

  Billy and Vinnie and him were in the darkened k
itchen, with Shadow waiting inside the front door. Billy was acting nutty again, but the wheels were making Speeder like a fucking giant, he wasn’t scared of him no more.

  “She went to the cops, didn’t she? That’s why she’s not here. You aren’t leading us into a trap, are you, Speed?”

  “Lay offa me, Billy.”

  “Gentlemen, you heard that tape. The Frenchman said I will be very shocked to find out whom exactly is our spy.”

  “Yeah, Billy,” said Speeder, “except what he said was you’ll go crazy when you find out. You’re halfway there, you want my opinion.”

  “I oughta have you taken out right now.”

  Vinnie Eng to the rescue again: “Hey, Billy, get off his case. He’s onside.”

  Billy didn’t say anything for a bit, then went, “All right. It ain’t . . . isn’t getting us anywhere. Ten minutes more.” Speeder could see the dial of Billy’s watch again. “Speed, I want you to go out back and tell Tommy we’ll be longer than expected.”

  Billy sounded like he was getting back on base, thank Christ. “Yeah, okay, Billy.”

  But in the darkness, Speeder couldn’t find his way out to the kitchen, and he banged into a wall and knocked down a picture in a glass frame that broke into pieces.

  Billy blew up again. “What kind of drug salad have you been doing, garbage-head? You wanna leave evidence? You want the neighbours to hear?”

  Speeder turned on his flashlight to try to find his way out.

  “Turn that light off!”

  Speeder did, and felt his way to the kitchen and out through the splintered back doors to the bricked-over patio, into the sea of rain.

  Tommy Bogue had snuggled the car right up to the garage so it looked like it was just parked there empty if anyone came. Speeder told him to just hang tight because the dame wasn’t home yet.

  Coming back across the patio, he stumbled into something metal, a barbecue stand, he realized. It fell with a clatter you could hear even with all the rain, and suddenly there was this dog making an uproar from over the fence and, just as Speeder was finding his way to the porch steps, it came out of nowhere, a little mutt but yapping like hell.

  And then a light came on next door, and he almost pissed himself as he went down flat on the bricks.

  A lady’s loud voice: “Bingo! Bad dog! Bingo, come here!”

  Shit, he thought. He was worried more about Billy than anything else — he was gonna have a total conniption.

  “Bingo, goddamnit!” A man’s voice now, and sounding as if he was in the back yard next door. Speeder scrambled up the porch steps as the dog kept barking and the voice came closer: “Bingo!”

  The dog turned tail just as Speeder made it through the door. The faint light from the next house disappeared.

  “You doorknob, I oughta kick your head in . . . Did they see you?”

  “Naw, Billy.”

  “Did you want them to see you?”

  “Jeez, Billy. Listen, I gotta take a leak.”

  “You’ll stay here!”

  “I gotta real bad.”

  “Vinnie, accompany him upstairs to the facilities.”

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake, what’s he gonna do, hold it for me?”

  “Don’t let him go near any windows.”

  ***

  As her taxi crept through the black streets of west Toronto, she saw there’d been power outages — whole districts were in darkness. Too spooky, she thought. But her own street was lit, thank God.

  Where were her watchers, the surveillance team McAnthony had promised? There, up ahead. She told the cab driver to cruise past her house, and they drew abreast of their car: a man and a woman in uniform, short-haired rookies.

  Carrie rolled down her window. The officer behind the steering wheel rolled down hers. Her companion quickly closed a book and slipped it into the glove compartment.

  “Hi. I’m Carrington Barr.”

  “Oh, hello,” the policewoman said. “Nothing to report. Don’t even know what we’re looking for. Is it something to do with the Midnight Strangler?”

  “You watch for any unexpected visitors. Want to come in for a coffee?”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Barr, but we have a thermos. I think our orders are to stay outside.”

  “You’re here ’til . . . ?”

  “Just to dawn, and then we get relieved.”

  “Well, thanks, I’ll sleep better knowing you’re here.”

  “We’ll take a boo around your yard after a while. Have a good night, Mrs. Barr.”

  And Carrie braved the rain, dashing back down the street and up her steps. Home sweet home, and wait by the phone.

  As she fumbled for the light-switch inside the door, she heard a raspy breathing sound.

  A gloved hand grabbed her wrist.

  She was caught in a bear hug from behind that took her breath away.

  Before she could scream, a sticky, thick tape was rolled across her mouth, and she was dragged toward the living room.

  She kicked backwards, and nicked her captor’s shin with her heel, and he grunted in pain and threw her to the carpet.

  In near-hysteria, she kept flailing, but her legs were pinned, and now her arms, a knee painfully thrust against her lower back. She heard a soft, clammy voice.

  “Tie her up quickly, and let’s go.”

  Her wrists were bound, then her ankles. Her brain was seething with fear, but somehow she summoned everything that was in her, and commanded herself to think clearly. They worked for Billy Sweet. She was being kidnapped. They would torture her and they would murder her. How could she alert those police outside? But they were too far from the house.

  The same voice, now coming from the area of the staircase. “Wait for them to come down. Why is a simple piss taking so long”

  The only sound was of falling rain. A faint radiance from a streetlamp outside gave only dim detail of the men inside the living room.

  The phone began to ring.

  Leon’s voice on the answering machine. “Carrie? If you’re in bed, hey, get up . . . Carrie? You there? Listen, the Strangler isn’t Herbert Orff. I have absolute proof. That leaves Moodie. I just talked to Jock and he has a line on him, someone recognized him from his picture. But something else, Carrie — look, I’m meeting Chuck and we’re coming over there even if we have to drag you out of bed, because this is important — we had two men murdered outside our offices today, apparently a couple of thugs —”

  “Murdered?” someone said. “Shit!”

  A flash of lightning painted the room in sickly white tones and Leon’s voice suddenly died. The panel light on the answering machine died with it. The radiance from outside, too. Power outage.

  Carrie had vaguely made them out: a middle-aged man standing rigid in a suit and raincoat; an older man, in his sixties, a brute. Two of them, and others upstairs.

  Carrie tried to wiggle her hands, bound behind her back, but her bindings bruised and cut.

  A flashlight coming down the stairs. This voice she recognized. A squeaky voice. Speeder Cacciati.

  “Billy? You there?”

  So the leader was Sweet himself.

  “You imbecile, don’t mention names! We have a guest.”

  The beam of Speeder’s flashlight caught Carrie’s supine body.

  “Oh, yeah. Shit, sorry.”

  “Turn that off!”

  Sweet, having been unmasked by Speeder and his flashlight, seemed to be losing control. His voice was under strain, cracking. “Where the fuck is Vinnie? Didn’t he come down with you?”

  “He was right behind me.”

  “Someone look for him.”

  Another flashlight blinked, and Carrie saw the older man climbing the stairs, and again there was absolute darkness. And an ominous silence. Where were those cops? Damn them!


  Then Billy’s voice again, brittle now, like breaking glass: “What did you do with Vinnie? Are you the rat? Those guys in the law office — did you tip off the bulls? Are you our scummy rat?”

  Suddenly he seemed to be almost hysterical, and Carrie sensed that the danger to her life was the more immediate.

  “That’s bullshit,” said Speeder, sounding rattled, too. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “She’s going to talk!” Billy barked. “Right here! Now!”

  He was nearly on top of her now, and she felt something blunt and hard at her temples, the barrel of a revolver.

  “You scream, you die,” said Billy, pulling the tape from her mouth.

  “I won’t scream.” Be in control, she told herself. Think. Be smarter than they.

  “Who’s the fish? Who’s the squeal? Spill it!”

  “I’d be suicidal to tell you.”

  “You have five seconds or your brains are all over your shag carpet.” Sweet’s voice rose: “Do you hear me? Five seconds!”

  Carrie chose a new tack, and talked fast, but Sweet didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Don’t you see what they’re doing? They want you to kill me . . .”

  “Four . . .”

  “. . . I know too much, they’ve set this whole thing up . . .”

  “Three . . .”

  “Damn it, listen to me . . .”

  “Two . . .”

  “. . . They bought the only man who can make a perfect case against you.”

  The countdown stopped. Sweet repeated her words: “The only man who can . . .”

  “If you kill me, he’ll be the star witness.”

  A flashlight was now coming fast down the stairs. Carrie saw it was the old guy, and he was in a hurry. She decided, without knowing why, that this moment must be seized.

  “Because he’s right beside you, Mr. Sweet.”

  “Beside me?” Sweet’s voice went faint. “Not . . . Speeder.”

  The other man was with them now, his voice hushed, scared. “Billy, we got a real problem . . .”