by Warren Court
“Dan,” Temple said.
“John. What’s up?”
“Need you to run a query for me.”
“Why? You locked out again?” Dan laughed.
“No. It’s just I don’t want a record of it under my name.”
Dan took his glasses off and started to wipe them with a microfibre towel. Temple waited him out. Dan held the glasses up to his mouth, coughed on each lens, and continued wiping. He looked up at Temple with a sly smile on his face.
When Dan had replaced his glasses, Temple said, “Don’t worry. Nothing should come back on you about it. The place I’m interested in is an apartment building, two hundred units.” Temple had written 2211 Lincoln Place on a sticky note and he stuck it to Dan’s desk. “You can run the one on either side of it too. It’s up at Finch and Dufferin.”
“That’ll bring back a huge number of hits, John. All those units.”
“I know. You can print them out and I’ll borrow them. You can have it back or I’ll shred it.”
“What’s this about?”
“Less you know,” Temple said, and he flashed a look at Moonshine’s office.
“Got it. It’s going to take a while, I think.”
“You want something from across the road?”
“Nah.” Marinelli started working his computer. He was a good friend. He knew what they came up against sometimes with Command, how they had to break the rules. But Temple could only go so far before that friendship would be put in jeopardy. There was a line he shouldn’t cross. But would he cross it for Sidduth Nair, her father, her sister?
Temple crossed the street to triple-seven Bay and went down to their food court. It was after four and the booths were empty. Most of the food places were closed down. Normally during a weekday at this time a steady stream of commuters would be flowing past him on their way to the College Park subway entrance. But on a weekend the place was deserted.
There was a bank of pay phones against one wall between a KFC and a Taco Bell. He took the phone in the middle and fiddled in his pocket for some coins. He came up with a loonie and plopped it in. Not enough money. The call was long distance. Shit. He reluctantly pulled out his credit card and fit it into the slot. He should have thought of that. The phone rang four times then was picked up.
“Yeah.” It was Tony.
“Tony, it’s John.”
“Hey. Where you calling from?”
“Land line, phone booth.” Temple didn’t tell his friend he was making the call against his own credit card. It was the small mistakes that always seemed to trip murderers up. Temple hadn’t killed anyone, just potentially his career, but here he was making small mistakes.
“A phone booth, good.” Said Tony.
“It’s that hot?”
“Brother, you have no idea.”
“So tell me.”
“Operation Carnivore is a multi-force task force investigating the infiltration of government bodies by criminal biker gangs.”
“Wow,” Temple said. Not really meaning it. He’d already run into some criminal biker gang blockage from Moonshine and Wozniak. Maybe that’s what he’d stumbled upon, then, and his fears that Mendoza was selling him out were unfounded.
“That’s not all, dude,” Tony said. “One of the main targets of the investigation is your mayor.”
“No shit,” Temple said. “I voted for that guy.”
“I didn’t delve too deep. I don’t want my name showing up on any requests for information or computer logs, but I talked to a guy in the CBG unit and he said that the province and the TPS both asked someone to step in. We got the lion’s share but the RCMP is even involved. It’s big, John.”
“Sounds like it. Thanks, man. I owe you one, understand?”
“Yes… you do. How’s the house? Fall into the lake yet?”
“It has a slant to it, for sure. How’s Marie?”
“She split.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, she went back to North Bay. Said that living with me was worse than moving back there. I have to agree.”
Temple laughed. “We should get drunk sometime soon.”
“Yeah, for sure. Look, John, this Carnivore thing.”
“I won’t ask you again for anything, I promise.”
“Thanks. I’m trying to get on to that biker gang squad. And…”
“Don’t mention it. We’re cool.” His friend didn’t want anything tarnishing his chances of promotion. Temple understood. He realized at some point that he had lost that same ambition. When had that happened?
“Talk to you,” Tony said.
Temple hung up.
Temple crossed the street holding two coffees. Instead of going back up to the fifth floor, he pushed the button for the fourth. With his hands full, he pushed the ID card dangling from his belt up against the security box with his hip until it buzzed and he was into the fourth floor: sex crimes. He could see Roger St. Denis’s head over the cubicles, his ever-thinning straw blonde hair.
Temple put one of the coffees down on St. Denis’s desk. The detective was sitting on his desk talking on his phone. He picked the coffee up without acknowledging Temple or thanking him for the delivery. What a character.
“No, no, sweetie. Relax. Nothing’s going to happen to you.” St. Denis took a sip of the coffee. Temple could hear a high, squealing whine coming from the receiver. By the sounds of it, St. Denis was talking to an informant.
“Would I let anything happen to you? You’re my best girl. Promise. I’ll get what I can. Okay, sugar. Talk to you.” St. Denis hung up the phone.
“She good looking?” Temple said.
“He is,” St. Denis said. “He’s a cupcake. Just your type, Temple. A little emotional at times. Needs a lot of hand-holding. And he’s got a monster cock.”
Temple nodded at the coffee. “You’re welcome.”
St. Denis smirked and took another sip. “What’s up, Chief?” he said, a moustache of milky coffee across his upper lip.
“Need to talk.”
“Boardroom okay?”
“Sure, big shot.” Temple followed St. Denis into a large room. “How you doing?” he asked as they walked.
“Busy. How ’bout you guys?” St. Denis said.
“Spring is here, murder is in the air,” Temple said.
“No doubt. Supposed to be a hot summer,” St. Denis said.
“Great,” Temple said, the derision in his voice evident. The hotter it got the busier both of them would be. Temple closed the door.
St. Denis put his rear end on the gleaming conference table. “What’s up, John?”
“I need to find a working girl.”
“Okay. Why the secrecy?”
“It’s a hot one. I’m getting pressure to back off a case. I don’t want to involve you any more than I need to. Just need to know where to start.”
“We talking street or call girl?”
“I don’t know yet. She was being run by the Villains motorcycle gang. Indian girl.”
“Indian.” St. Denis put his hand to his open mouth and patted it.
“No. Not that type of Indian.” Temple put his finger to his forehead and tapped it.
“Hmmm. That’s unusual, but I guess it’s a sign of the times. The Villains run mostly call girls. Street girls are beneath them—too messy. They used to run walkers on Emerald Street. Man, I remember one time two of them were going at it with this john and we had to pull them apart. I got scratched right across here…”
“How do you find one of their girls?”
“Websites. Search for one called TO Vixens. That’s theirs for sure.”
“Wozniak told me the Villains are all washed up.”
“As motorcycle gangs go, yeah, pretty much. They were trying hard to get noticed by the big international gangs, eh? But I guess they got smashed up pretty good. There’s still some of them around.”
“Ever heard of a guy named Coconis? Supposed to be a Villain.”
“Yeah, I heard of him. Say, how is Wozniak these days? He still with Sylvia?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Come on, man. She plays around, I hear.”
“What’ve you heard?”
“There was this guy down in traffic, of all things. He was poking her for a long time. She met him when he pulled her over.”
“She’s not like that,” Temple said.
“You kidding? Man, I wouldn’t mind a piece of that. She’s alright.”
“You’ve been in sex crimes too long, Frenchie.” Temple used a nickname he knew St. Denis, a native of Montreal, did not like. He saw his friend bristle. “You’re hormones are on overtime. Why don’t you go call your cupcake there?”
“He’s got friends. We could double,” St. Denis said.
Temple rolled his eyes and left the room.
Back on the fifth floor, he saw Mendoza at his cubicle. He was on the phone but turned and nodded as Temple returned to his own desk. After he’d logged back on, Temple brought up a browser on his screen and went to Google. He knew that all internet searches from TPS computers were recorded, but being a cop he had full access to the internet and a legitimate right to access certain sites. He quickly found TO Vixens—Toronto Vixens. A plethora of girls’ photos popped up on the screen. He could click on each one for a more in-depth bio that included measurements, what they were into, and contact information. There were also more photos of the girls. Some of them were nudes. There was a standard disclaimer on all of them, that they were not getting paid for sex but rather that a customer was giving them a donation for their time and company. What a bunch of legal horseshit. It was legal in Canada for a call girl to arrange for sex in the privacy of a home or a hotel room. What was illegal was living on the avails of prostitution, which would extend not only to the girls but to the guys who were running them.
He noticed that the girls on this site only did out-calls, and only to hotels in downtown Toronto. That told him two things: first, that they weren’t independent contractors who allowed johns into their homes. That would make it harder for their pimps to collect money off them. And second, that they only plied their wares in the downtown core—again, a control thing. That was probably the Villains’ turf in the pussy wars of Toronto. Another gang would control the sex trade around the airport.
He spent the next half hour scrolling through pages trying to find Sidduth Nair. He found only a couple of Indian girls; they were certainly in the minority. Most of the girls were white, with the next largest groups being black or Asian.
“What the hell?” he heard Mendoza say behind him. “Looking for a good time, fella?”
“Funny,” Temple said. “Trying to track down a family member of our murder victims. Where were you?”
“Etobicoke. I got a feeler out on our shooter from the Burn Squad. Sixteen-year-old kid name Washington. Turner Washington. Thought he turned up but it didn’t pan out. He’s in hiding but we’ll get him soon.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You find anything?” Mendoza nodded at the screen.
“No. This is the website the Villains run for their whores, but the missing Nair girl isn’t on it. Maybe she removed herself. Or got removed,” Temple added.
“You try the Wayback Machine?”
“What’s that?” Temple said, and smirked. It sounded silly.
“Here. Let me show you.” Mendoza bent down and pulled Temple’s keyboard toward him and grabbed the mouse. Temple pushed back on his chair to give him room. Mendoza’s hands flew over the keyboard. Temple was impressed. It used to be that a proficiency at typing got you slotted into administration but now it was a requisite to becoming a detective. Temple could type all right, but at forty he was considered old school. A dinosaur. Mendoza brought up a website called the Wayback Machine.
“This site can show you old webpages. Everything is stored out there—you just need to know how to retrieve it.”
Temple folded his arms. He could only take so much of being schooled by his junior partner. Mendoza typed in the URL of the TO Vixens and clicked on a few radio buttons that were gibberish to Temple. The screen then showed a list of links.
“We got sites going back two years.” He clicked on one about halfway down the list. It had a date listed next to it from the previous summer. Some of the girls were the same; Temple recognized them right off. But most were different. They found Sidduth on the second page.
“Ain’t that her?” Mendoza said.
“Son of a bitch. Yes, it is,” Temple said.
It listed her name as “Joy.” They clicked on her bio and there were more pictures. Temple compared them to the high school graduation photo he had.
“Yeah, I’d say that’s her,” Temple said.
“This ad was listed last June. Doesn’t say when it was taken down but we can find out approximately by going through all those link. See when she first appeared and then when she disappeared from it.”
“Out of sight,” Temple said. “So she’s no longer in the Villains’ stable.”
Mendoza finally straightened up. “What do you think that means?” he said.
“Either she quit or she got dead. I think the latter,” Temple said.
“So what was her father doing negotiating? If that’s our theory.”
“It is. Either they were playing him along, trying to collect money for a dead girl, or maybe they were just trying to negotiate for a funeral. He retrieves the body and pays for it.”
“That’s cold-blooded.”
Temple said nothing. He was staring at the picture of Sidduth Nair on the website and his heart dropped. He couldn’t help wondering if his sister had ended up on something like this. She would be forty-four years old now. Temple could see what he would be doing in his spare time for the next week, month, year. Scouring these websites for her. Then he shook his head at the foolishness of it. Find Sidduth, he thought, and bring a bit of his sister Dawn back home.
“So what do we do? We can’t go after Coconis,” Mendoza said.
“How do you know that?”
“I was there in the car with you, when Wozniak pulled us off him.”
Temple eyed him suspiciously, trying to determine if Mendoza was double-dealing him to Wozniak and Moonshine. He couldn’t tell. “We never had Coconis, just a hunch on where he might be. Anyway, we could try and track down Sidduth or one of her friends from this site. These girls usually stick together, they form friendships. Try to help each other.”
“These girls aren’t exactly out walking the streets,” Mendoza said.
“No, they’re not.” Temple paused, thinking. “We could get a room. Call a couple of them up, ones who have been working with the Villains since last year. They might know her.”
“Okay. Who pays?”
“Homicide has a slush fund. I figure two hundred for a room. Couple hundred for the girls. We could call two or three of them and have them meet up there one after the other.”
“They show up with pimps. I worked sex crimes for a time. Mostly street-walker stuff.”
“They have chaperones, escorts. Low-level guys who check the rooms out. I could stay in the hall and you could text me when the girl’s chaperone has left. I pop in and we question her.”
“I could just leave my phone on. Wait, why am I doing this?”
“You don’t look like a cop.”
“Wow, thanks, John. Fuck you too.”
“Not what I meant. I look old, sad, coppish. You look like you can still be out there. A player.”
“Guys who have to pay for it aren’t players. They’re losers. You’re saying I look loserish?”
Temple laughed. “Whatever, kid. It’s a fun assignment. You think Dalupan can pull it off?” He nodded at their partner, who was on the phone speaking in Tagalog to someone and using an emery board on his nails. He saw his partners looking at him and he smiled and flipped them one of his finely manicured middle fingers.
“No,” Mendoza said.
“No, I don’t think he could pull it off.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
23
Temple put the room at the Sheraton on his card and kept the receipt. Homicide had a fund for expenditures like this. The girl behind the counter didn’t bat an eye at two adult males renting a room in the middle of the day, unencumbered by luggage. She gave them two plastic key cards. The room was standard: two double beds and a view of the twin towers of City Hall across the street. Before coming down to the hotel, he had gone to Cathy in admin, withdrawn three hundred dollars in twenties, and marked it down as payment for confidential informants. He was hoping that a little cash would get the girls to talk.
Mendoza, the whiz at the keyboard, had worked the Villains website and come up with three girls’ names and their contact information. All three had shown up on TO Vixens at the same time Sidduth’s picture was on the site last summer and all three were still active, or at least they were still advertising their services on the website. One of the girls looked familiar to Temple but he couldn’t place her. He assumed he’d run into her while he was working other cases. Like in all cities, prostitutes were a key source of information for the police on criminal activity. They saw and heard everything and they liked collecting “get out of jail free” cards by helping the police.
“What’s the plan?” Mendoza said.
“You make the calls on the hotel phone. Tell them you want an immediate visit. We’ll do them one at a time an hour apart.”
“And when the girl gets here?”
“You let her escort check the place out. Stay cool, sit at the desk. He’ll leave before money is talked about. Keep your phone on the desk. I’ll be down the hall at the ice machine listening in. You call me when you hear the knock at the door. After the chaperone is gone I’ll slip into the room with my key and we’ll go at it. These are professional girls: they’ll be cool. We’re just going to ask if they know the girl, where she is.”