by Warren Court
I went into the washroom and splashed some cold water on my face. When I emerged, the door to the tiny motel room exploded inwards and Rico came in and hit me over the head with his collapsible baton. I went down like a stone.
Chapter 19
I had a sensation of drowning, of being deprived of air; even a split second while you’re unconscious seems like an eternity. Then I was cold and wet. A second dousing and I started to come out of it. A hard slap to the right side of my face brought me around fully.
I saw Rico’s partner standing over me, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his hand poised for another slap. I started to rise, found I couldn’t. I wanted to bring my arms around to defend myself, to attack this man, but found them restrained.
“Relax, Jack,” I heard someone say from somewhere else in the room.
I looked down; I was tied to a chair, much as Cindy had been hours before. The first man backed off. There was a bucket on the floor and water splashed around it. I looked around the room, trying to see Rico. The room had a low ceiling and was devoid of furniture except for the chair I was on. A naked bulb swung in the middle of the room and there were exposed pipes and lots of cobwebs. I was a guest of The Chelsea.
Rico came into view smoking a cigarette. “We upgraded your room, Jack. Hope you don’t mind.”
“This is The Chelsea,” I said. “Thought it was closed down.”
“It was for a while. As you can see, it needs a serious cleaning. But it’s back up and running now. Special occasion.”
“I don’t know anything.”
The man beside him moved in quick with a couple of lightning strikes to my stomach. I tried to flex, to get ready for them. They punched all the way through to my spine. I felt my bladder weaken a little.
“You don’t know anything—right. Heard it before. What about this?” Rico picked up the duffel bag and showed me the contents.
“It’s Emerich Soos’s,” I said. “I need to give it back to him. If you have it, then he’ll come after you.”
“How’s he going to come after me? He’s stone-cold dead. They found his body shot up in the trunk of his Lincoln, along with two other pals of his. Those Lincolns have big trunks.”
I was going to ask about Cindy but kept quiet. “His associates will come for it. What do you want, Rico?”
“I want to know where you were this afternoon. Who’d you go to meet with?”
“Maybe the RCMP? Maybe Internal Affairs? Can’t remember,” I said. I got two more punches to the stomach for that and a slap across the face.
“You trying to tire my man out here, Jack? Little rope-a-dope. My partner here enters the cop-on-cop boxing match every year. Represents the Hamilton force, goes up against the toughest guys in the Toronto force, OPP, you name it. Unbeaten in five years. He’ll use your guts as a punching bag all day long and then do fifty pullups.”
“It was worth a shot,” I said. Rico’s partner smiled and drilled his closed fist into an open hand, waiting for my next smart or unsatisfactory remark.
“Where were you, Jack?”
“I went to see Soos, give him his money. It was part of a trip I had done for him.” There was no point in lying anymore. I didn’t know what lie to make up.
“What trip? What deal?”
“Out on the lake, last night. I did a switch for him. Some guy from the States. We were trading guns for cash.”
“That’s bullshit. Soos doesn’t export. He’s strictly an importer. Who’s going to sell guns to the Americans? That’s like bringing a sack of rice to China.” He nodded at his partner, and this time it was a right cross to my chin that exploded stars across my eyes and sent me out for a while; a few seconds, minutes maybe. I came around on my own.
Rico had pulled up a chair and turned it around and was straddling it.
“Room service,” he said. “You hit Bruno Scalla this morning, Jack.”
I nodded. What were they going to do, use it as a confession in a court of law? No, this visit to The Chelsea was going to end up with me on a slab right next to Bruno and Soos.
“That was ballsy of you.” Rico laughed. “You caught him in his underwear, I hear.”
“Ladies’ underwear,” I said, and we both laughed. “You should have seen him, Rico. It was funny. He came out dancing around and prancing and singing in this high voice. I put two in him.”
“Yeah, it would have been great, but you left the boyfriend alive. Who would have thought Bruno to be a fag, right? But he was, and you left the guy he was banging in the house. They got a description of you. It’s not great, but it’ll do when they tie it in with what happened to your friend Don. I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“It had to be done. That was bullshit what they did to Don. You know why they did it?”
“Don was into the Scallas for a lot of money. They might have thought he’d trade you to the Feds, get the Scallas sent up and wipe out the debt.”
“Trade me for what?”
“For the Garigue thing.”
“He didn’t know anything about it.”
“Well, I guess the Scallas thought he did. Call it a pre-emptive strike.”
“What happens now, Rico?”
“Going to arrange for someone to take you home, Jack.” I saw the look on Rico’s face; he couldn’t lie worth a damn. No way I was going home. Better all around if I just disappeared.
I pulled on the ropes; there was a bit of give. There was a sharp edge on the back of the chair, a piece of metal sticking out. All the while I had been talking to Rico, I had been working the ropes across this metal. Every time I got hit, I moved forward and dragged the rope across it. The rope was parting now; I could feel strands of it hanging down on my hands. Those idiots should have used handcuffs. Guess they didn’t want any telltale marks on my skin showing up for a coroner to spot.
Rico and his partner left the room. I rubbed the rope furiously until I felt it give, then pulled on my hands and it came apart. I gathered the rope in my hands so I still appeared to be tied up. Rico. I called out. The door opened and Rico came back in. I let the rope fall to the ground, stood up and brought the chair up and over my head as hard as I could right down on Rico’s, sending him to the ground screaming.
The chair hit the ground and I used its bounce to bring it back up and smashed Rico in the face, knocking him out cold. I kicked the door closed, then pulled Rico’s gun and racked it, just to be safe. A fresh round popped loose and sailed across the room.
“Silvestri,” I called. “I got his gun. It’s against his head. Bugger off now. Get lost.”
There was some scuffling coming from the other room. I checked Rico’s pulse; he was out cold but would be fine. I took his cuffs and secured his hands behind his back. Took the keys. I took his badge and wallet too. The extra clip on his holster went into my pocket.
I went to the door, opened it slightly and stood back, gun at the ready. There were no shots. I threw it open and quickly swept the room. It was empty. A chair had been knocked over. My bag of money was gone. So was the Browning Hi-Power. At least I had Rico’s. What was he going to say—that I stole it off him down at The Chelsea? I was sorely tempted to go back in that room and put one in his head, but that’s not my style—shoot a man in the face while he’s unconscious.
I got to the ground floor and out the door. I had no idea where I was, but I saw the escarpment rising in the distance and then the tops of the skyscrapers downtown and could roughly place my location.
I had never been to The Chelsea before, either as a guest or one of the cops bringing someone there; I had not climbed into that elite group of corrupt cops on the force. The Chelsea was a shared secret among maybe a dozen policemen. But now I knew. It was located in a deserted part of town, surrounded by a few small closed-down factories with parking lots full of weeds and broken cinder blocks and encircled by rusting cyclone fences. A burned-out car sat on the street.
I took stock of my situation. I figured Rico would, at some point,
stumble out. His partner would have gone for reinforcements and when they got back, the bunch of them would be after me.
I started to jog. I ran three blocks, zigzagging at every intersection. It took a couple of streets signs to get my exact location; it wasn’t good. I was a couple of miles from the yacht club and my boat. I checked Rico’s wallet. He had a couple of hundred in twenties and credit cards. I looked at his badge; it was a gold one. Detective.
About five blocks from The Chelsea I found what I was looking for: a late-model Chrysler New Yorker parked on the street. It was beat up but it had valid plates. I checked its doors; locked. I took the barrel of the gun, smashed the window a bit and opened the lock. A dog barked. I had to work fast. Luckily, the car was not alarmed. I got under the dash and found the right wires and pulled on them. I cleaned off two ends of wire with my teeth and tied them together. Sparks flew and the engine turned over. I finished the job and drove away slowly. A block away, I pushed out the rest of the glass with the butt of Rico’s Glock so it looked like the window was all the way down. It was a warm night; the car smelled of marijuana and cigarettes and cheap wine. A party car. I looked in the back in case there was a sleeping person, but it was empty.
I drove slowly by the dock; there were no cops. I saw the silhouetted figure of the security guard in the main office. The clock in the car read 2 am. I drove past the yacht club and back across town. There was a payphone in the parking lot of a strip mall outside a convenience store. Having no coins on me, I used one of Rico’s credit cards to make a call. They’d be able to trace that for sure. And video surveillance somewhere was probably picking me up with the stolen car.
I dialled the memorized number, and after six rings a very sleepy and annoyed Imelda answered it.
“This better be good.”
“It is the best ever.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jack.”
Imelda became instantly alert. “Where are you?”
“It’s a secret. I’m around.”
“We have to meet,” she said.
“Where do you live?”
“I don’t want you coming here.”
“It’s the only way. I’m not walking into any more setups.”
“Setups?”
“Yeah. I just spent some time down at The Chelsea. You know what I mean?”
“Thought they closed that down. You got out?”
“Yup. And funny thing is, no one got killed in the process. Your address?”
She gave it and I memorized it.
“See you in ten,” I said.
“No. Wait—”
“Ten minutes. No time to get anything ready for me. This is the way. Oh, and I’m armed. Just so you know.”
“What’s that mean?”
I hung up.
It took me closer to twenty minutes to find her house in Ancaster. It was off Lime Kiln Road, which I assumed backed up on to an old lime quarry. It was a dead-end street, lined on both sides with very nice upper-middle-class two-story homes. A smattering of nice cars filled the driveways.
I knew turning on your cop buddies and joining Internal Affairs meant a boost in salary, but I had no idea it would lead to this lifestyle. If I’d known, I would have gone over to the other side earlier on in my career.
I found the number and drove past and checked it out. I stopped in front of her neighbour’s house and watched Imelda’s place in my rear-view mirror. There was a light on in the living room. I heard thunder coming from down below the mountain and the sky lit up for a second.
I got out and went to the door. I kept hand on my hip, a mere two inches from the butt of Rico’s service firearm. I knocked lightly, then again, and I heard her coming.
“Who is it?” she said. I could imagine the barrel of a similar Glock pointed approximately where my head was.
“It’s me. Jack.” A chain was undone and a couple of deadbolts, and the door opened a crack, then fully.
She was dressed casually, her hair undone and down around her shoulders. She was in jeans and a McGill University sweater despite the pressing humidity. I felt a blast of cold air hit me. An aircon lover; a woman after my own heart. She looked good without what little makeup she’d had on when we’d first met down on my boat.
“You going to invite me in?” I said. “Or do you want to discuss the downfall of a bunch of corrupt cops here on your front porch?”
She didn’t grin, no expression change at all, but she let me in.
The air felt so nice. I hadn’t realized that my arms and legs had gotten sunburned, probably from my illicit jaunt on Wave Dancer.
“Where’d you get the gun?” she said, and I realized my shirt was still riding up above the butt of the gun tucked down the back of my pants. She could easily have disarmed me as I’d walked past her, but she hadn’t.
“Better you don’t know,” I said.
“It’s a Glock; they couldn’t have let you keep yours.”
I grinned and put a finger to my nose. I walked into the living room and collapsed on a plush white leather chair. It was heaven. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep this terrible day away.
“Sure. Make yourself at home.” There was a side bar with a half dozen liquor bottles in it.
“What do you want?”
“Anything cold and strong,” I said. She poured two fingers of dark rum into a glass and handed it to me. It was only slightly cooler than room temperature, but it hit full marks on the second part of my drink order. The rum burned the back of my throat beautifully.
I nodded at a picture of her with a black lab on the fireplace mantel. “Where’s the hound?”
“Put him down last winter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He had a good run.”
She made herself a drink and sat opposite me. Her sweater was well worn and gapped a little at the top, exposing her pale skin above her breasts. I thought for a brief second that she might be wearing a wire, but what difference would that make? I was here to confess, to rat on fellow officers to cover myself. If I was willing to rat to her in this informal session, I’d probably be willing to do it later.
“You’re not going to write anything down?”
“I want to hear what you’re selling first.”
“What I’m selling are dirty cops.”
“Which you used to be.”
“I know my own,” I said.
“Let’s hear it.”
Where to begin. I sipped the last of my run and rattled the iceless glass. “Another, please, and with ice this time.”
PART TWO
Chapter 19
I slammed the trunk of the cruiser tight.
“Easy, boy,” the civilian mechanic in the garage said.
I looked at him with half an eye that said, I’m in uniform. Respect it. The mechanic just smirked. He was wiping his greasy hands on a rag.
My coach officer, Sergeant Burt Coolie, came out of the staging area adjusting his belt and burped. He was fat around the middle but otherwise solid as an oak door. He came down the steps to the garage where I was prepping our car. It was my first time.
“Sergeant, I checked everything on the list. I think we’re ready to go.”
“Really,” he said.
He took the clipboard out of my hands, and for the next twenty minutes he made me go through it again. Fire extinguisher? Check. Spare tire, jack, crowbar? Check. Not that we would ever change a tire by the side of the road. A cruiser with a flat would call in a tow.
I’d stood in formation not an hour ago, my uniform still stiff and itchy, my equipment belt heavy around my waist. The power of the gun on my hip was seeping into my bones already, and I was high as a kite with power and scared shitless of what I was about to do: go on my first patrol.
Coolie said very little while I dashed around the car and rechecked everything. Then we both sat in the cruiser, me driving and him in the passenger seat. The wrinkled and cracked vinyl made a pleasant sound as I adjusted
myself. Driving with all this stuff on would take some getting used to. Then my coach let out a tremendous fart and laughed. The car wasn’t started yet and the windows were up, so I had to take it.
“Check the MDT,” he said.
I powered it up and it immediately connected to home base. We’d trained on the Mobile Data Terminals for hours at Aylmer, the police academy in Ontario. I punched in a few commands and was able to access different elements of the computer application. Then we checked the radios. I did a formal radio check with dispatch.