by Warren Court
“Get up.” Temple grabbed Alvarez under the armpit and the drug dealer got to his feet. Temple turned him around. “Mr. Alvarez. Sorry for the intrusion.”
“Policia?” the man said.
“You bet.”
“Let’s see your badge, motherfucker?” the little Latino said in perfect though heavily accented English.
“Here.” Temple punched the cuffed man in the mouth. The blow jerked him back, and Temple pulled him upright again and made to hit him one more time. Blood poured from Alvarez’s mouth.
“You here to rip me off again, fucking pig?” Temple punched the drug dealer in the stomach and pushed him back towards the bathroom. He quickly searched him again, then pushed him into the bathtub and pointed the .357 at his head. Alvarez shrank away, all his bravado gone now.
“Where’s the shit?”
“Under the bed. This case is going to get tossed. Why bother, man?”
“I don’t care about the case. There’s a man coming here. Alexi, or maybe you know him as Diminitrov.”
Alvarez shook his head. Temple whacked him upside the face with the barrel of the revolver, careful to take his finger off the trigger.
“You know him?”
“Sure. He’s coming here. He’s a big man. He’s going to fuck you up, hombre.”
“I don’t want you. I want him. You keep your mouth shut, I take your shit and you get away. Understood?”
“Yeah, sure, Detective. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Now shut up.” Temple shut the bathroom door tight behind him, but left the light on. He shut off the overhead light in the main room and went to the window overlooking the back parking lot just in time to see Diminitrov pull in. He reached down and picked up Alvarez’s gun and put it in his pocket.
Diminitrov sat in his car for a few moments, then finally emerged and, after looking around, headed for the stairs. Temple pulled back from the window and checked under the bed. There was a knapsack. He pulled it out and opened it. There was a bunch of clothes on the top, wrinkled up T-shirts, a newspaper. Temple turned the bag upside down and dumped it out. That stuff was just cover for the drugs. He searched the bottom and found the Velcro flap in the bottom of the bag. He opened it and out came a bundle of white powder rocks. Crack cocaine. Temple threw the clothes and the bags off the bed and set the bags of dope in plain sight on the bedspread. He tucked himself into the corner where he would be shielded by the door when Diminitrov came in.
“Alvarez, this is almost over,” he said quietly. “When this guy knocks on the door you say ‘Come in,’ nice and loud. Understood?”
“Sure, Detective. Fuck.”
Temple didn’t have to wait long for the knock on the door. Temple undid the latch and stood back, his gun at the ready.
“Yeah?” Alvarez said, loud enough to be heard outside. “Come in, man.”
The door opened and Diminitrov walked in. Temple put his gun to the driver’s head and kicked the door closed.
“Don’t fucking move, man,” Temple said.
Diminitrov’s hands reflexively went up and he said something in Russian. Temple used his second pair of cuffs to click the big chauffeur up one-handed, then applied pressure to the driver’s wrist, sending him to the floor. The big man swore. Temple stuck his gun in his belt and finished cuffing the Russian and pushed him to the floor. Temple searched him, came up with his wallet. A bundle of twenties. That was it. No gun.
“You don’t carry?”
“No, man. What the hell is this?”
“You were attempting to buy drugs from a known drug dealer.”
“Do you know who I am?” Diminitrov said, and they could hear Alvarez laugh.
“Yeah, you’re chauffeur and bodyguard to the mayor.” Temple said.
“Yeah, but do you know the fuck I am?”
“You’re also a procurer of pussy and drugs for his Worship. Should I go on?” Temple said. Diminitrov said nothing. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Temple helped the big man up then uncuffed him and pushed him towards the chair. Diminitrov turned around, rubbing the wrist that Temple had almost broken.
“Sit down. We’re just going to talk.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a homicide detective. I’m looking to find out what happened to one of the mayor’s favourite hookers.” Temple pulled out the photograph of Sidduth and handed it to Diminitrov. Temple read the man’s face; he recognized her.
“What happened to her?” Temple said.
“I remember this one. The mayor liked her.”
“A little too much?”
Diminitrov sighed.
“She’s dead?”
Diminitrov nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where do you put the bodies? I figure you take care of that.”
“You’ll never find them.”
“There’s more than one?”
“I don’t know the other girl’s name. They were just whores, you know? Worthless. He didn’t mean to do it. It just happened.”
“Where do you dump the bodies?” Temple asked again. He was oblivious to the grinding sound his teeth were making. His heart was pounding in his chest.
“His place.”
“Goddammit, just tell me.”
“Hogtown.”
“Huh? Where’s that?”
“That’s what he calls it—his factory. Where he used to cut up the pigs.”
Diminitrov meant the mayor’s former abattoir, his now-defunct pork processing plant out in Etobicoke. Temple swallowed down a wave of nausea.
“Where exactly in the factory are they?”
“Man, I don’t want to say anything without a lawyer.”
“Fine.” Temple didn’t need to get the exact location out of him. They would go in with cadaver-sniffing dogs and find them that way. If they ever got Diminitrov in front of a judge he’d make a deal, lead them straight to them. That is, if he got in front of a judge.
“Let me ask you something,” Temple said. “Eight years ago you were pulled over—drunk driving. You were driving a city car. The cop who pulled you over let you go.”
“What? I don’t know. Sure, I guess.”
“He let you go. Was the mayor in the car with you?”
“Yes.” Diminitrov said. “How do you know that?”
“Computer records. Was there a cop there?”
“Yes. Allen always travelled with a cop then. For protection—more protection. There were a lot of threats back then. People did not like the mayor.”
“This cop. Was it a woman?”
“Huh? No, it was a man.”
“Really? You remember his name?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Right,” Temple said. “Take your cell phone out.” Diminitrov looked puzzled. Temple gestured impatiently with the .357 and he complied.
“The mayor’s private number. Dial it.”
“Why?”
“When he answers, I want you to tell him this: he knows about Hogtown, about the girls there. That’s it.” Temple knew that Diminitrov could not have killed Zurawska and Wade: he had been by the mayor’s side both times—he had checked it online. Allen had been out of town on a two-day mayoral conference in London, Ontario. What Temple wanted to do now was draw the mayor’s killer out.
“Put it on speaker,” Temple said. The ringing coming from the phone was loud. Then a gruff voice sounded on the other end.
“What?” It was the mayor. He sounded winded. Maybe he had just rolled off Barbara McBride. The thought made Temple’s stomach clench again.
“Boss, it’s me.” Diminitrov said.
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“Just want to tell you something.” Temple pointed the pistol at Diminitrov’s head and the driver gulped hard.
“He knows. About Hogtown. About the girls. He’s going there now, to Hogtown.”
Temple moved in closer and put the muzzle to Diminitrov’s forehead. The driver cringed in the chair.
; The voice coughed. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who knows?”
Temple took the phone away from Diminitrov and listened.
“Jesus Christ,” Allen muttered, and clicked off.
“Good,” Temple said, and tossed the phone back to Diminitrov. The driver looked at Temple in puzzlement, and then quietly put the phone back into his pocket. He seemed relaxed now, waiting for this crazed cop to let him go so he could phone his boss back and tell him about what he’d just been through. What this cop had forced him to do. How stupid could this pig be?
“Can I go now?”
“No, afraid not. You’re not leaving this room.”
“Why not? Because of a couple of dirty whores? Who the fuck cares, man?” Diminitrov spat on the carpet.
“No, you’re not leaving because you got killed in a drug deal gone bad.”
Diminitrov’s eyes widened in terror. He tried to stand up and in his rush almost lost his balance. Temple brought the Beretta out of his pocket and shot the driver twice in the chest. The rounds were powerful and well placed, and the big man fell back and rolled off the chair onto the floor.
Temple stepped into the middle of the room. There was a thumping sound from the bathroom and then Alvarez came barreling out of it, crashing through the cheap door, his hands still cuffed behind his back.
“Fucking asshole!” he yelled, and Temple shot him in the chest once then spun as the drug dealer fell into him. Temple stepped aside and let him go down, like Ali letting Foreman collapse in that ring in the Congo. Perfect.
Temple wiped the small gun on the corner of the bedspread and then removed his handcuffs from the drug dealer and checked his pulse. He was dead. He put the small pistol in the drug dealer’s dead hand. He didn’t need to check Diminitrov’s pulse; the driver lay on the floor, his eyes wide open and the colour already draining from his face. He retrieved the driver’s phone and wiped it down on the bedspread as well. He left the bags of heroin on the bed and wiped the doorknobs down with a handkerchief on his way out.
42
Temple stood outside the chained gates of the Toronto Meat Packers plant, which the mayor called Hogtown. A cold wind swirled a sheet of newsprint down the dead street, and a cat poked its head out the door of a coffin factory that was diagonally across from the abattoir. Beyond that building lay a row of small one-story postwar houses, and beyond that stood condo towers silhouetted by the glow from downtown.
On the other side of the fence, the plant was dark and silent. It was one long building with multiple doors on the two sides of it that Temple could see. There were a couple of weak bulbs on inside and one directly over the fence, so there was power still running to the factory. Probably for fire control systems, Temple thought. The owner of the place still had a responsibility to make sure it didn’t burn down and cause other properties around it to catch fire.
Though it had been shut down for three years now, it still stank of the millions of dead pigs that had been processed here. The plant had been in operation for almost a hundred years and had handled six thousand pigs a day. Temple remembered reading about the protests that had surrounded the mayor when he ran and won his first term. Animal rights groups and vegetarians had bombarded one of his press conferences with tomatoes. Piglets had been let loose at one of his town halls. Things had calmed down eventually, though, and the mayor had closed the plant down—not because of pressure, he asserted, but because the operation was no longer profitable and the land could be put to better use. Funny that that better use of the land had not yet come around, Temple thought ruefully. And now, with one, possibly two dead bodies lying in there, it might never get torn down. The mayor didn’t want some excavator uncovering his murderous past.
Temple’s phone buzzed. There was a text message from Sub-Inspector Krishnan in India, with the results of the print run from the latents they’d found on Prajoth Nair’s car. He smiled and shook his head slowly, then forwarded the file on to Marinelli with a brief explanation. He couldn’t do anything with it himself, not without his badge.
He saw the lights of a car coming down Tecumseh Street. It cruised through the four-way stop without slowing and came up alongside Temple. It was Bill Rush’s four-door Buick, his own work car. How he’d managed to get a work car assigned to him with free gas and all the other perks when all he did was drink at a bar and dispense wisdom was beyond Temple. What he must have on his higher-ups to squeeze that out of them…
“John, what is this? Drag me all the way out here,” Rush said. Temple could smell the booze coming off him from five feet away.
“She’s in there,” Temple said.
“Who?”
“The missing Nair girl. She’s buried in there. The mayor killed her, and his driver said he put her in there.”
“I’ll be damned. You believe this guy?”
“It’s true. All makes sense.”
“So what are we supposed to do here? Why don’t you call it in? Why call me?”
“Because he’s coming.”
“Who is?”
“The guy who shot Mendoza. The mayor’s trigger man. I thought it was the driver, Diminitrov or Zukov or whatever his name is. He’s dirty but it ain’t him. I checked on it—Allen and his driver were on the other side of town when Mendoza got shot.”
“How do you know he’s coming?”
“Because the mayor knows that I know about his little secret. His guy should be here to stop me. I’m setting him up.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going in there, wait for him to come to us. I needed backup.”
“I ain’t climbing that,” Rush said, indicating the rusty ten-foot-high cyclone fence with the strands of concertina wire running its entire length.
“I can pick the lock. I’m getting good.”
“Show me, Junior.”
Temple already had the lock open. He pulled the chain out. “There, picked it,” he said, and both detectives laughed. He pushed the gate open and it creaked.
“Oooh, spooky. This place gives me the creeps,” Rush said as they walked towards the main slaughterhouse. The stench of death grew stronger. “They should just tear this place down,” he said.
“Can’t. The developers will find the body. That’s why he hasn’t sold it.”
“That’ll never hold in court,” Rush said. “You’re going to try and get a warrant on that? Good luck.”
“No. But if the shooter shows up and we get him, then maybe we get one.”
“You’re suspended.”
“And you’re a drunk who works from a bar, but we’re still cops.”
Rush stopped momentarily then smiled. “Well, lead the way, boy,” he said.
The interior of the abattoir was even more ominous. The main room was largely devoid of machinery; it had probably all been sold off. There were a few offices and other rooms on either side. In the middle of the room was the killing floor. The concrete flooring sloped into the middle, where there was a metal grate that ran the entire length of the two-hundred-foot space.
“Jesus, I don’t think I’m going to eat pork chops ever again,” Rush said, and he put the back of his hand to his nose.
“We don’t handle pig murders. That’s why we’re not used to the smell,” Temple said. He found a bank of light switches just inside the door and pushed the handles up. There were enough fire lights still active to cast a yellow pall over the place.
“So what’s the plan?” Rush said.
“We wait. I figure he’ll be here in a while.”
“You strapped?”
“Nope. They got my gun and badge—remember?” Temple said.
“So tell me how you know this girl is buried here.”
“It makes sense. The mayor likes his ladies. He likes to get rough with them. Choke them out. Went a little too far with this girl and had to get rid of her. Maybe he chopped her up here.”
“Maybe he had her put into the food?” Rush said.
“Cou
ldn’t have done that. They stopped operation here three years ago. If we dig into this place, tear it down, we’ll find her.”
“Fucking hell,” Rush said. “What else you got?”
“Mendoza knows the shooter. He almost told me at the hospital, but Kindness pulled me off him. I’m the only he’ll tell if I can get in there again.”
“And he won’t tell Kindness because…”
“He knows she’s dirty, I guess. Or he’s just scared, doesn’t know who to trust other than me.”
Rush turned away from Temple. “I don’t know, John. You’re good, I’ll give you that.” He reached in his coat, spun around with his nine-millimetre, then froze. Temple was pointing the black .357 right at his friend’s face.
“Drop it,” Temple said.
“What? John, what are you…?” He had his pistol pointed at Temple’s midsection. Not a kill shot, not like the one Temple had on him. If he raised his gun, Temple would fire. He swallowed hard.
Temple cocked his .357. The sound of it echoed in the empty building. “I know about you too, Bill. You were on special detail for the mayor the night Mendoza pulled him over, eight years ago. You had to get rid of Mendoza because you knew he might catch on about the mayor and the whores and put it together.”
Rush nodded. “The kid didn’t want to do it. Alexi was so drunk. He wanted to take him in.”
“You were all drunk. The mayor is cleaning up his past. You’re the broom.” I only called you, no other shooter is showing up. Temple gestured with his gun. “I said drop it, Bill. Last chance.”
Rush sucked in a breath and twitched his hand. “Guess what we have here is a Mexican stand—”
Temple pulled the trigger. Rush’s head rocketed backwards and a blast of blood and bone shot out. He dropped to the concrete. A geyser of blood ran out of his head and down to the drain in the middle of the killing floor. Temple squatted down beside him. He reached out and held his friend’s hand.
43
Temple leaned up against his Subaru and watched two uniformed officers escort a cuffed but defiant Ravinder Nair out of the Best Cabs company office. They were followed by a number of plainclothes detectives, led by Detective Marinelli. Marinelli saw Temple and made his way over.