City of Crime

by Warren Court

  One phone number interested Temple the most. It was a local number to a cheque-cashing place downtown. One two-minute call was placed there five days before the Nair father/daughter duo had disappeared. He scanned backwards and found a similar call, a minute in duration, a week prior to that. Both phone calls, after being fed into PowerCase, had been automatically tagged with yellow markers. The computer program’s algorithms had made the connection and alerted the investigator.

  Temple clicked on the yellow marker of the first call, which had happened two weeks before Prajoth and his daughter disappeared. The file that popped up indicated that the registered owner of that number was suspect. The person associated with the cheque-cashing place was Steve Coconis, a known member of the Villains, a local biker gang. Interesting, Temple thought.

  Coconis’s name was highlighted in blue and Temple clicked on it, bringing up the suspect’s criminal file. The mug shot showed a droopy-eyed white guy with long stringy hair, a scraggly salt-and-pepper goatee, and a tattoo on his neck of an eagle spreading its wings. A sweet-ass neck tattoo. “Gotcha, you fuck.” Temple murmured. Tattoos weren’t just the property of sailors and ex-cons anymore—teenagers were getting them in droves—but neck tattoos were hard core and still fairly rare.

  The case was getting major traction now, he thought with satisfaction. Local businessman places calls to a small business, a cheque-cashing and payday loan place, a business that, on file, is connected to a known criminal biker. There were scores of cheque-cashing places all over the city, and if Nair needed bridge loans to get his restaurant by from week to week, he would go to a regular bank, not one of those clip joints that charged outrageous interest. For now, though, Temple had no solid proof that Nair had called the cheque-cashing place to talk about his daughter, but his theory was growing stronger by leaps and bounds—that the restaurateur’s daughter had turned to drugs, been caught up in prostitution, and was somehow connected to a biker-owned business in the downtown core. They did not have enough for a warrant on that business, not yet. Temple would delve into Coconis’s life and see if there were other connections.

  He clicked on another link and opened Coconis’s file. Coconis was twenty-nine years of age, with two arrests since turning twenty-two. Temple suspected there would be more charges as a juvenile, but for now those were sealed. Of the two visible charges, one was for assault. Coconis had been arrested at Pandora’s Box, a strip club down on Dundas Street just west of Yonge. Temple knew the place. He had attended a bachelor party there once. Like most strip joints, it had its ties to organized crime. In addition to a formal notice of the charge and the conviction and sentence, the file showed that Coconis had got one year’s incarceration in the Don Jail and two years’ probation. The notes from the investigation were attached. Coconis had been working as a bartender at the club. Bouncers were normally given a lot of leeway in how they handled drunks, but in this case Coconis had gone too far: witnesses’ statements said that he had thrown a man in his early twenties out of the club, physically picked him up and tossed him out. The man had landed on the pavement and sustained a serious concussion. The witnesses then went on to describe how Coconis had kicked the unconscious man repeatedly in the ribs, shattering three of them, until he was pulled off by other staff. He could have killed the guy. There was no description of what happened to the man afterwards; he’d likely been forgotten about in the system.

  The second charge was for narcotics with intent to distribute, which was dropped. Temple clicked on the case file. There was a question of ownership of the drugs; it was murky and the crown attorney had chosen not to pursue the case. The arresting officer was Karen Kindness, who was then a sergeant with 55. Temple did not rush to any judgment on that: he knew that for all her sexy clothes and arrogant attitude, Care and Kindness could pull down pinches with the best of them.

  Temple next clicked on a feature in PowerCase that expanded into a chart. There was a graphic representation of Coconis in the middle and red lines running out from his name to red circles. Some of them were small circles, others larger. Temple could click on each of these. Some represented people: drug dealers, prostitutes, bar owners with criminal records. Others represented incidents. All information of a criminal nature related to Coconis was connected together, allowing an investigator tremendous opportunities to make the connections that cracked cases wide open. It was a fantastic tool for someone like Temple to have at his disposal.

  Temple kept clicking and reading. Coconis was pulled over after a drive-by shooting in the west end. Another person in the car was a member of the gang thought to be responsible for the shooting. Coconis was not charged, not even brought into the nearest station. Instead, he had been questioned at the scene and the information written down on a card by the PC who had pulled the car over. That officer had filed the information and now it was available on PowerCase. None of this meant anything specific to Temple, but it was interesting: it showed the wide range of criminal associations that Coconis had. What did matter was that there was a connection, however flimsy, from Prajoth Nair to the Villains biker gang that may have pushed Sidduth Nair into prostitution. There was something in the wind here, and Temple could feel that jolt of excitement he always felt when a real lead presented itself.

  Temple clicked on the icon representing Coconis and a flood of data popped up on the screen. He saw that the man had had several cell phones registered to him in a short span of time, a couple of years. This was typical of the criminal underworld. Temple knew that if Coconis had half a brain in his head, he would have several more cell phones that were registered in other people’s names but were used by him.

  Temple looked at his watch. Christ—he’d forgotten about meeting with his OPP buddy Tony up in Vaughn. He shut PowerCase down and left 40 College at a run.

  19

  Temple texted Tony while driving a hundred and forty klicks, looking up every few seconds to avoid slamming into another car or the guard rail. He made it to Vaughn, a suburb bedroom community twenty minutes north of the city, in record time. He pulled into the parking lot of the Tim Hortons across the street from a massive shopping mall. In the far corner of the lot he saw the dark blue OPP stealth patrol car waiting for him. He pulled up to it, nose to rear, and lowered his window.

  “I was just about to leave,” Tony said.

  “It’s a bitch getting out of the city at any hour these days,” Temple retorted.

  “What’s this about?”

  “Need a favour. I need you to find out what you can about an operation.”

  Tony sipped a coffee. He had three sergeant stripes on his arm.

  “When did you get cranked?” Temple said, using cop slang for a promotion.

  “Last year.”

  “Fuck—really?”

  “You’d know if you called me.”

  “Been busy, pal.”

  Tony grinned. “What’s the name of the operation?”

  “Called Carnivore. I don’t have any details.” There it was: Temple had now committed a serious offence. He discarded any sense of guilt or shame he had in an instant.

  “Who is this for?”

  Temple said nothing.

  “Why should I get this for you?”

  “’Cause without me you wouldn’t be wearing those stripes on your sleeve. You never would have made it through Aylmer.”

  “Yeah, you helped me through Aylmer, but I got those stripes all on my own, fuck-stick.”

  Temple laughed. “Call me when you find out something.”

  “I didn’t say I would.”

  “Of course you will. We’re pals.”

  “You still seeing that Asian broad? The one who works in forensics?”

  “No.”

  “I want her number.”

  “Don’t think I have it. And you couldn’t handle her.”

  “I’ll call you when I know something. Meantime, find that broad’s number.”

  Temple pulled out of the lot and headed south back toward
s Toronto. He cut across the top of the city on the 401 and down onto the Danforth. The Sobeys parking lot was half full. The spot where the Lincoln Town Car had been was empty. Temple parked and got out. He looked up at the security camera and judged where Curt, the security guard, would have stood. It was just in front of the cart return. That’s why he was able to stand there and not get run over. That had bothered him about it, how could Curt pull that off?

  He looked back towards where the Lincoln Town Car had been. In the apartment block on the other side of the tracks he could see a girl running on a treadmill. Temple checked his watch; it was the same time that Curt would have stood there. He knew Curt wasn’t on shift: he’d phoned the Sobeys beforehand from his car.

  He watched the girl run for ten minutes, and then she got off and went into another room and flicked off the light. That has to be it. He’s watching the girl. She was cute and very fit. Probably a strict exercise routine: a turn on the treadmill at the same time every night.

  Temple got back in his car and headed west along the Danforth until he got onto the Don Valley Parkway. He took that north to the 401 and then cut across the top of the city eastbound to Morningside Avenue. His house was in Guildwood, a sleepy hamlet of 1960s homes nestled in big bad Scarborough, Toronto’s eastern-most borough.

  He put his car in the garage of his three-bedroom bungalow and went inside the house. He pulled a 100th Meridian lager out of the fridge and went out onto the back deck, which looked out over Lake Ontario. Guildwood was situated on the Bluffs, a stretch of cliffs that ran for miles along the eastern edge of Toronto. The sun was down now and a brisk wind was moving striations of clouds out over the lake. He brushed some dead leaves off an Adirondack chair and sat in it watching the lake and sipping his beer. He would wait a while before going back out.

  He looked over at his neighbour’s house and noticed some orange tape across half of his deck. He knew his neighbour was trying to sell. He was asking 1.2 million. In today’s crazy Toronto housing market that didn’t seem unreasonable, though he had had it on the market for three months now. Endless open houses. Part of the problem was the Bluffs themselves: the very thing that afforded this wonderful, enviable view of the lake threatened to take down the houses that lined it. The Bluffs had been eroding for years, perhaps centuries. The loose sand blew down with the wind and rain, and the cliff’s endless march towards the houses could not be stopped. Temple’s property alone had lost two feet of back yard since he’d moved in five years ago. He had no fence facing the lake—no one did. That was the point. You’d just have to tear it down or watch it topple over the cliff face eventually. His neighbour’s in-ground pool was hanging over the edge. He had wisely drained the pool and put a wood deck over it, but now there was tape. Temple knew he could get high eights for his own place, but would anyone be willing to take the gamble that the city’s erosion control measures would actually work?

  Temple finished his beer and tossed the bottle into a blue recycling bin next to the chair. It clanked against three other bottles already in there. He went into his bedroom and changed out of his shirt and tie and into a pair of faded jeans and a grey sweatshirt with a pouch in the front of it. He took his gun out of its shoulder holster and transferred it into one with a clip that he attached to his belt. He pulled the sweatshirt over the holster. He had cut out a hole in the pouch so he could reach through and bring his Glock out through it. The folds of the sweatshirt obscured the bulge of the gun. Over the sweatshirt he donned a black, blazer-style leather jacket and slipped his badge and BlackBerry into the inside pocket.

  Temple drove back up Morningside Avenue towards the 401. He came up on Kingston Road, a major thoroughfare in Scarborough. This was where he did most of his shopping, Guildwood having only a small strip mall. There was a new shopping plaza and strip malls on three of the four corners. Behind these malls were high-rise apartments. They were rundown, low-income housing. There was a patrol car from 43 Division out in front of a stretch of townhouses, a common sight. Most of the residents were black and poor, and Temple knew it was a high-crime area. That was typical of Toronto—very nice neighbourhoods next to crack-den ghettos.

  The light turned green and Temple passed through the intersection. He saw a massive Lincoln Navigator coming towards him, its black paint gleaming in the street light’s glare. A large man in a suit and tie was driving it. In the rear seats, someone had the reading light on and Temple caught a glimpse of the mayor of Toronto looking down at something as they passed each other. Temple didn’t think anything of it; there must be some sort of civic function out this way tonight.

  Temple liked Mayor Allen, despite his controversy and failings. He was a rotund man, with a head of thick blond hair that Temple suspected was enhanced by over-the-counter hair products. Maybe a weave or a toupee.

  The mayor was hyper-aggressive and a bit of a bully. He didn’t take shit from anyone and came off as someone who was not as smart as he thought he was, but in Temple’s mind he was a good mayor. Temple had voted for him; he was a conservative candidate for sure, and he appealed to Temple’s take on right and wrong and had promised to support the police. He was a cop’s mayor.

  Allen owned the Associated Foods Company, and was a multimillionaire. One of the reasons Toronto was nicknamed Hogtown was the proliferation of hog butchers in the city at the turn of the twentieth century. Allen himself had owned an abattoir in the west end, which had been started by his grandfather after World War I. The mayor had closed its doors three years ago, bowing to public pressure from the local residents in the surrounding upscale condos and massive brick houses, who had not appreciated the smells and the constant traffic of large trucks coming in and out. It was assumed that the mayor would eventually develop it into condos and make a fortune.

  Temple got on the 401 westbound and floored it, quickly getting his Buick Regal up to 140. He put himself in the fast lane and stayed there, blasting past slower-moving traffic. He had Sirius satellite radio in the car and switched it on to 70s on 7. Hall and Oates’ “Rich Girl” flooded the compartment of the car, and Temple banged his thumbs on the wheel in time. His phone went off and the Bluetooth connection put it through the car’s speakers, cutting out the song. The phone number and Sylvia Wozniak’s name came up on the dashboard navigation screen.

  “Hey Syl,” Temple said, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. She was not supposed to phone him.

  “John,” she said.

  “How’s Tim?” Temple heard a car go by through the speakers and knew she was outside having a smoke.

  “He’s inside watching the game. Leafs are losing. He’s pissed.”

  “How was your dinner?”

  “Cut the shit,” she said. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “Look, Sylvia…”

  “When are you coming over?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of busy at the moment.”

  “See, that’s avoiding me.”

  “Come on, babe. We were going to end it anyway.”

  “Over the phone?”

  “You called me.”

  “What if I don’t want to end it?”

  “I think you should think about that some more.”

  “I want to see you tomorrow.”

  “For what?”

  “You know what.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “I wouldn’t shut me off if I were you.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Sylvia.”

  “Just make time for me. If not tomorrow, then the next day.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” He ended the call.

  Temple took a deep breath and tried to prepare himself for when this thing with Sylvia went bad. He ran down all the possibilities, the best one being that she took their breakup okay and Tim never found out. He knew that was the long shot, though: everything else was bad news. He was committing a cardinal sin, diddling another cop’s wife. It had been done before, scores of times, within the TPS—within every police f
orce. But his was extra bad: Sylvia was his partner’s wife. He had to contain it.

  Hall and Oates were gone and now he was listening to “Laughing in the Rain.” He hated that song and put on another channel. The Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes” replaced it. Great. He chuckled to himself at the pickle he was in. He pushed the voice activation button on the steering wheel. The automated voice asked what he wanted to do. He said “Dial,” then “Wentworth.” The number to the Wentworth Tavern appeared on the NAV screen and the cabin was filled with the sound of a ringing phone.

  “Wentworth.” It was Tracy. Shit.

  “Hey Trace, is Bill there?”

  Tracy said nothing and he heard the sound of a woman laugh. Then Rush came on the line.

  “Yeah?”

  “John. What’s shaking?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “I can read Tracy’s mind.”

  “When are you going to get a cell phone?”

  “Those things cause cancer of the head. Should I tell Tracy you say hi?”

  Temple laughed.

  “Where you at?” Rush asked.

  “On my way downtown, working this Indians-in-the-trunk thing. Do you know where the Villains hang out? I mean the biker gang.”

  Rush laughed at the joke. “Yeah. Last I heard they owned the Steely Dan on King.”

  “That shit-hole? That figures.”

  “Watch yourself in there.”

  “You don’t want to come with me?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “My little friend there tonight?”

  “The one you pummelled last time? Heard about that. Good job.”

  "Thanks for your help.”

  “I abhor violence,” Rush said.

  “I figured,” Temple said.