by Warren Court
“Thanks for letting me in on it,” Temple said.
“It was your work. You tracked down the print in India.”
“What’s he saying?”
“Already giving everything up. Says he did it for the wife’s honour.”
“Bullshit. He’s banging the wife, wanted the husband out of the way. The daughter just got caught in the wrong place.”
“That much he confirms. He’s sorry about that. The father came to him for money.”
“The extra thousand… The price to get Sidduth back was five thousand. He only had four. What are they saying about Rush?” Temple said.
“They’re not touching that one. We’ve been told to just go through the motions. Being written off as a drug deal gone bad.”
“Rush was on drugs?”
“Yeah. Big time. You didn’t know?”
“Nope,” Temple said.
“He was meeting a dealer and got whacked. That’s it. He’s an embarrassment to the force. He’s going to get his big funeral and then we’re done with him.”
“That’s cold, man,” Temple said.
“I worked with him. He was a drunk, a degenerate, and a blackmailer. How else do you think he was able to get away with the shit he did for so long? Everyone in a white shirt down at 40 College is breathing a sigh of relief that that fucker is gone. I personally would like to shake the hand of the guy who did it.”
Temple weighed what Marinelli had said. That Rush’s death in the mayor’s defunct abattoir was not going to further the investigation into the missing Nair girl. That Hogtown wasn’t going to be torn apart in an attempt to find her. He could not say whether he was prepared to drop it or not.
When he’d gotten home after leaving Rush at the pig factory, he had phoned Barbara McBride on her cell and she had answered. She had survived her coupling with the mayor. He had said nothing and just hung up. He had another phone call to make, to Barbara’s father to tell him what his little girl was getting up to. He wasn’t going to let another girl go down the tubes.
“I’ve been called to meet with the SIU, this Tsingtao shooting thing,” Temple said.
“It was a good shoot,” Marinelli said. “I spoke to Moonshine this morning. You’re getting your gun and badge back. Should happen within the week. They don’t want the press reporting that a cop connected to the Tsingtao shooting was suspended for misconduct.”
Temple nodded solemnly. “I gotta go,” he said.
Marinelli stuck out his hand and unknowingly shook the hand of the man who had taken care of a corrupt cop. Temple hadn’t gotten the mayor, but he’d gotten Mendoza’s shooter and had bought some justice for a father and daughter.
Temple was walking back to his car when Marinelli called to him.
“Hey, John. The job’s fucked. You know that, right?”
Temple turned. “Brother, you have no idea. But what the hell else are we going to do?” He gave Marinelli a nod and climbed into his car. Meatloaf’s Two out of three ain’t bad was on the radio. He turned it up and set off for home.
The End
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The Redeemed
Warren Court
The Redeemed
Copyright © 2019 Warren Court
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form (except for brief passages for the purposes of review) without the express written consent of the author
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.
To contact the author send email to [email protected]
Chapter 1
The new life I’d made for myself went all to hell the night Robert Garigue’s body was found. It had been at the bottom of Lake Ontario for five years, and then one day it popped up. “Popped” probably isn’t the right word. Meandered, maybe. Sauntered its way up through the murky depths after ligament or bone finally gave way and released what was left of Garigue from the anchor he was secured to. And up he came, a stinking mass of corruption. Of course, nobody knew exactly who he was at the time; five years at the bottom of the lake does a number on one’s complexion.
The night Garigue made his reappearance I was in the Dakota, a favourite haunt of mine overlooking the lake. Conrad and Mike, members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary crew that had found the body, had just come off shift and were up at the bar pounding back liquor as fast as the bartender could pour it. They were old drinking buddies of mine and I thought about trying to catch up to them, but they had too much of a head start so I stuck with beer. After a while Conrad finally got around to telling me why they were getting so hammered.
Conrad said, “We thought it was a log. It was shiny and black. Then Mike here grabs a pike and pokes at it and it all comes out. The smell.” Conrad was pounding Seagram’s as he talked. Mike was unusually quiet, keeping right up with his skipper, though his tipple was Bacardi dark.
“Jesus Christ!” I said.
“We didn’t know what it was. Then we saw the jeans. It was wearing blue jeans and I said to Mike, ‘Why is a log wearing blue jeans?’”
Conrad works at Pearson Airport loading cargo for courier planes. Mike re-sells toner for photocopiers. They volunteer with the Coast Guard for fun. Most of the time they just tow in broken-down boats or occasionally participate in a search for a missing boater. Stumbling upon the bottom half of a rotting, denim-wearing corpse was not what they signed up for, but that night it was the hand they drew. I felt bad for them, having been a cop myself and seen my fair share of corpses. I got used to it over time, but my first body that was in a good state of decomposition really shook me; the image stays with me to this day.
“Did you pull it on board?” I asked.
Conrad shook his head. “We just got a rope around it. Kept it close to the boat. Not too close. Mike radioed it in. Took two hours for the cops to get out to us. We stayed in the cabin to get away from the stench. We couldn’t look at it, once we knew what it was. No head or arms, just from here down.” Conrad indicated his waist. He pounded on the bar to get the bartender’s attention for another round of doubles.
“Jesus Christ,” I said again.
I finished my drink and headed out, leaving those two with the liquor and their horrible memory. I was oblivious, of course, to who it was they had found and how my life was about to make a complete one-eighty. At that moment, in the city morgue, examiners were going to work on the body. Garigue hadn’t been searched too well before being dumped; his wallet was in his back pocket. His laminated driver’s license had survived five years down there. They were going to run DNA tests, of course, but those can take weeks. They also had to track down relatives, but no one would be in a rush to admit they were related to Robert Garigue. But with a driver’s license, they were ninety-nine percent certain who it was that had popped up that night.
And then word leaked out.
The news of Garigue’s identification broke the next day. I found out about it at the bar of the Hamilton Harbour Club, where I kept my sailboat. I was down there to rejig the lines with some new rope. After two hours of sweating in the morning sun, trying to feed it through the guides, I needed a break. When I walked into the bar, Marty the bartender wore a devilish grin and he nodded at me. There was a copy of the Hamilton Spectator on the bar and he placed a mug of beer next to it for me.
I saw the article on Garigue. An inch-high column in the bottom right corner – front page. It jumped out at me. Pending further tests, the body found by the Coast Guard Auxiliary has tentatively been identified as one Robert Garigue of Hamilton, a person well known to the police and missing for five years.
“You see that?” Marty said while drying a glass.
I ignored him, tried to remain calm, and flipped to the continuation of the story deeper in the paper.
; “Can you believe it?” Marty said. “Down there for five years. Whoooeee.” He pinched his nose.
“Nothing smells good coming out of Lake Ontario,” I said.
“Yeah, but…”
Two men came in and took stools on the other side of the bar from me and Marty went over to serve them.
I kept reading. The Scalla brothers were mentioned in the article, naturally. They had gotten hauled in for questioning when Garigue first went missing. He was a close associate of the Scallas; he was also a police informant. So, when he went missing, the cops handling him knew what had happened. But there was no body, so no charges. The Scallas were the most likely suspects, though, as Garigue was being paid to inform on their criminal organization.
The Scallas were a two-man wrecking crew of organized crime. Drugs, gambling, women. They were Italian but the traditional Italian mafia families shunned them. So, they’d set up their own crew and chipped out a territory, preying on the weakening of the traditional mafia dons. They were ready to do business with the new breed coming in—the Chinese, the Russians, the biker gangs.
Now there was a body. I wondered if the Scallas read the paper. Didn’t matter; one of their pals on the force had probably called them as soon as they found Garigue’s license in his back pocket. The Scallas had friends everywhere.
I kept reading and then almost shit a brick. My name was mentioned the next paragraph down. How I was suspected of being involved in Garigue’s disappearance. Disgraced ex-cop.
I looked up. Marty was talking to the two guys and he thumbed in my direction. He was telling them who I was. About my connection to the story. They had their own copy of the Spec. I put a five under my empty beer mug and went back out to my boat, leaving the paper on the bar.
The sun was directly overhead now, and the glare off the white fibreglass cockpit blinded me. I put on my polarized glasses and stepped aboard. I’d bought the boat, a 35-foot sloop, after my divorce and renamed her Purpoise. Bad thing to do, I know. I kind of believe in all that maritime lore, including not changing the name of a boat. Never leaving for a long voyage on a Friday. If albatrosses were native to southern Ontario, I wouldn’t even think of harming one. But the boat had been called Jessie’s Girl when I got her. I hate that song.
But I really liked the boat and the price was right, so goodbye Jessie’s Girl and hello Purpoise. It was my own little play on words, combining purpose and porpoise, the purpose being to sail away from Hamilton forever. No one else got it. They thought the boat painter had screwed up.
I went below. The cabin was dank and hot. I opened the breathers and the portholes to get some air in. It was tight down below with gear and supplies everywhere. Cases of no-name spaghetti and ravioli. Gym bags full of wool sweaters, jeans, shorts, T-shirts, underwear. Three cases of Coors and two of liquor; whiskey and dark rum. Where I was headed, the Caribbean, bringing rum would be akin to carrying coals to Newcastle, but I figured I’d finish it well before I got where I was going. I had extra bumpers for the sides and double the number of sails I would need. There were spare chucks, ropes and lines. I had parts for the Evinrude motor, too.
My destination was the spice island of St. Augustine. My bunk was covered in charts, with one for that island on top. I regularly pored over it; I had every shoal and reef memorized. The soundings and approaches to the harbour. I was going to sail down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic and head south, hugging the coast all the way to the Keys. I’d done my fair share of sailing, even a couple of blue-water passages, but this was a momentous journey and I wasn’t going to get too adventurous. I was sure I had plenty of adventure in store as it was.
But Garigue’s reappearance added something I wasn’t prepared for. Danger. Deadly, shot in the back of the head and left in a ditch kind of danger. I’d thought of Garigue down there at the bottom of the lake for all those years. Now the son of a bitch had come back; he was going to get his revenge. Would his list include me?
I retrieved the binoculars from under a folded-up survival suit, grabbed a couple of hot beers held together by the plastic rings and went back up top.
With the binos I could see her, tied up at her moorings, bobbing in the wake of a massive motor cruiser heading out into the harbour. Wave Dancer. My old boat, lost in the divorce. Gloria still owned it but rented it out. She knew I loved that boat. She probably also knew I’d buy another one, put it close to Wave Dancer so I could see her and know that a progression of renters were using—abusing—her. I knew where this hatred had been born. I put the binos down and cracked a beer.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Don.
“You see it?” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
“It’s him.”
“Sounds like it, but who knows. Lots of people go missing in the lake. They gotta run tests to be sure.”
“It’s him, Jack. With your luck lately, it’s him. What are you going to do?”
“Hey, I didn’t kill him and I don’t know who did,” I said for anyone listening in. “I need to see you.”
“I figured. Be careful.”
Don was right. I had to be careful here. The Scallas would come see me eventually. Maybe just for a chat, maybe for something more. Don was one of my best friends, one of the only ones who’d stuck by me through my troubles. The man had integrity. Loyalty. I’d recognized that in him when I arrested him for driving a stolen car fifteen years ago, back when I was new on the force.
I looked past Wave Dancer to the Burlington Skyway Bridge that crossed the mouth of the harbour. The sky down south, out over the lake, was turning purple. Thunderheads were on the way. Hamilton would be getting a good soaking in an hour or two. I fired the empty beer cans down into the cabin and grabbed the keys to my truck. The smart thing to do would be to head north and hole up somewhere until the Scallas were picked up again. They would put people out to find me and would probably torch my boat, but I’d survive a while longer.
That was a last resort, though; right now, I had some time. The Scallas weren’t impetuous. They had a belly full of rage on a whole manner of things, but they planned out their work meticulously. They had some moves to make before they came for me.
I had some moves of my own.
Chapter 2
Don’s shop was on the other side of town, tucked in behind the public golf course and a CN train yard. He did small engine repair and some welding. His sweet-looking ’73 Corvette was in the yard, and Wally, his German shepherd, came up to my truck to greet me when I pulled in. I rubbed his ears and ran my hand over his snout, and he reversed the move, running his yellowed teeth over my hand and squeezing playfully. He released me and ran towards the office portion of Don’s shop. I stepped into the office and looked at the Miss Snap-On calendar from three years ago on the wall.
“Nice tits on that one,” Don said. He had come in behind me. I spun around.
He was wiping his hands on a rag and he laughed when he saw the wild look of terror in my eyes. I had thought for a split second that I was going to get whacked.
“Relax,” he told me. “It’s a little too early for that. But good to know you still have your reflexes.”
When I was a rookie cop, I’d pulled Don over for a traffic violation and smelled pot; then I ran the car and found out it was stolen. When I gave the car a thorough search, I came up with two kilos of weed. It was a good bust for me.
Don had a record and was looking at a little jail time even if he pleaded. He didn’t plead. Wouldn’t say a thing about where he got the car or the weed, which was enough to put him in for intent. It didn’t seem to faze him; he was prepared to do his bit, but he didn’t seem like one of those stupid idiots who love going back to jail.
I found out through a friend of his who knew my brother that jail time was going to mean the end of Don’s business. It was all he had. He’d built that business up with his own hands and practically lived down in the garage. So, a guy with that work ethic shipping weed in a stolen car—that had
puzzled me.
When it went to trial, I was purposely vague on what had happened during the bust. To this day I don’t know why I did that. It was just instinct. A feeling I had about Don. The judge threw the case out and Don walked. My mistakes on the stand were chalked up to inexperience.
It wasn’t until a year later that he came up to me in a bar. I was drinking with my cop friends, including my partner Rico, who had gone to high school with Don. Don bought me a beer and we started talking. We never brought up the trial. Afterwards, when Don had gone, Rico told me a bit about him. How he was a stand-up guy. How he had been brought in as a material witness on a robbery and a vicious assault but never said a thing. Never even came close to rolling on the guy the cops knew had done it. Even when the cops took Don to a basement apartment and went to work on him with a phone book. I knew about that apartment, the ones the robbery detectives had off the books, where they took people in the game who wouldn’t talk. They called it “The Chelsea.” If you were pulling scores in Hamilton and got caught and the guys who caught you said “take him to The Chelsea,” you were in deep shit.