by Ron Corbett
“You know what, that awning on your camper is a lot like mine,” he said. “Would you like to see how it works?”
He rose from the table and started walking away. After he had taken a few steps, he turned to stare back at the old man. Who was still seated at the picnic table, not sure what to do.
But Cambino had been quick, the way he needed to be, and he waited patiently for the old man, who eventually stood up, unable to think of any good reason to stay seated.
“Well, I need to figure something out,” he said. “If I have this much trouble every night, I’ll just throw the dang thing away.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to do that.” Cambino placed an arm atop the old man’s shoulder, steering him toward the camper. He turned back only once to see the man’s wife, who held up her playing cards and gave a small wave. She took a sip of her drink. Cambino did not worry about her again. He unlocked the side door of the van, knowing she would be sitting there when he was done.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thirty minutes after the plane landed, Yakabuski was back at Filion’s Field, standing in the harsh glare of headlights turned to the south-side fence. The same panel of fencing where three days earlier the body of Augustus Morrissey had been found.
Unlike Morrissey, Fontaine was naked. His arms and legs were attached to the fence with what looked like chicken wire, with only slight bleeding around the ankles and wrists, which meant he hadn’t struggled, was already dead when he was trussed up. His chest was covered in blood. Twenty-seven stab wounds Newton would say the next morning, some strong enough, wilful enough, to have fractured bones. A savage attack. Not a single cut looked tentative. Not a single cut looked doubtful.
The blood had trickled down his torso but left his arms and outer legs untouched, the harsh glare of the headlights giving sharp relief to the muscles, sinewy and perfectly proportioned, lithe and powerful.
He would have been wary, thought Yakabuski. On his guard. A twelve-inch Bowie knife beneath his lunch counter. Whatever firearms a Traveller would have considered wise to have around on the night of Augustus Morrissey’s wake. He also had the high ground and the North Shore was as familiar to him as a path leading from his back door.
Who could have got the jump on a man like Tete Fontaine, he wondered. Yakabuski stared at the scene before him as though an attentive and appreciative patron at some Renaissance art gallery, the white marble statue with the finely cleaved muscles and tendons lit up like the gallery’s prized possession. Disfigured though it might be.
. . .
O’Toole briefed him at the detachment at four in the morning. The official wake for Augustus Morrissey had been held at Adams Funeral Home, where visitors came to pay their respects to Sean and sign the condolence book. It was a closed-casket wake, which made the length of visit shorter than it may otherwise have been. When the visitors left the funeral home, they were escorted by black-arm-banded ushers to the unofficial wake, which was at the Silver Dollar, only a block away. The nightclub had closed to the public for the day. It had an open bar and a buffet that included Kobe beef, Russian caviar, and lobster flown in that afternoon, after having been caught in tidal pools off the coast of Maine that morning. The tavern tables were covered in white linen and the utensils were English silver. Entertainment was the choir from St. Bridget’s Church and a well-known tenor from Toronto that Sean Morrissey hired the day before, paying three times the artist’s normal rate because of the short notice.
As the sun went down the wake was in full swing, with people swelling and spilling out of the Silver Dollar, drinking and singing “Danny Boy,” making drunken pilgrimages back to Adams to stand in front of the closed casket and curse the North Shore scum that had taken down Augustus Morrissey, a man who — six hours into an open bar — had become the greatest Shiner of all time.
The funeral home closed at nine, and O’Toole told the next part of the story in a start-and-stop cadence, halting and reflective, and Yakabuski knew he had spent a fair part of the night wondering if he could have handled it better. Maybe he had even been asked a direct question or two by the mayor.
“We were ready to shut down Cork’s Town if things got out of hand,” said O’Toole. “What we weren’t ready for was Cork’s Town getting up and heading to the North Shore.”
O’Toole explained he had cordoned off most of the side streets around the Silver Dollar and most of the roads leading into Cork’s Town. He had plenty of cops on scene, including a full tactical team. He even had a mobile command centre. But he didn’t have Belfast Street cordoned off, as this was the main thoroughfare into Cork’s Town, and the mayor said it was premature to cut off all road links to the neighbourhood.
At precisely 9:30 p.m., about fifty cars left the Silver Dollar and headed to the North Shore as fast as possible.
“It all happened so quickly,” said O’Toole. “They just up and split, and we couldn’t stop them in time. When the platoon commanders got orders to reposition, the Shiners were already over there.”
And once they were there, as O’Toole had told Yakabuski in the plane, it was old school. Anyone on the street was assaulted. Cars were set on fire. The townhomes surrounding the high-rises were firebombed, and when the people inside tried to flee, gangs of laughing Shiners gave chase. O’Toole caught the last few minutes of the riot, before he ordered tear gas to be used and people started to disappear in the fog and haze.
“I’ve seen riots before,” he said, looking directly at Yakabuski. “I was seconded for the G8 Summit in Québec City. There were anarchists there that you’d think were right out of a war film. Like they’d just had breakfast with Lenin and were looking for something to burn. Scary people with these vacant eyes that seemed more dead than alive. The North Shore was worse. That was pure hatred. That wasn’t some political philosophy you’d learned in school and wanted to go to the wall for. That was a pack of animals wanting to kill something.”
“Where was Morrissey when all this was happening?”
“That’s a good question. I told you last night he was up there, but now we can’t say. He wasn’t picked up. He’s not on any surveillance tape I’ve seen so far.”
“How many did you arrest?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“All Shiners?”
“All Shiners. We have twenty-two more in hospital. Six of them are Shiners, the rest live on the North Shore. A few of the people from North Shore are in critical condition with first-degree burns, but I’m told they’ll pull through. So we only have the one death. Which seems like a miracle to me.”
“Did anyone see Fontaine last night?”
“No one we’ve interviewed. He closed his brasserie early. Like he was expecting trouble.”
O’Toole became silent. Several minutes passed before Yakabuski said, “That’s not what you’re thinking about though, is it? Where was Fontaine? Where was Morrissey?”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“So what am I thinking about?”
“The cars.”
O’Toole stared at him a long second before saying, “So you see it too?”
“Sure. How did that happen? All those cars leaving the Silver Dollar at the same time. Everything about last night seems like a drunken, spontaneous riot. Except for those cars.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Donna Griffin had set her alarm for 5 a.m. and was sitting at her kitchen table ten minutes later, drinking instant coffee and staring at her laptop. She had asked the staff sergeant in Major Crimes if she could use the encrypted passcodes she had been given to work at home, and the staff sergeant had said he didn’t know. Griffin was the first one to ever ask that question. Later in the day, he came and told her it would be all right.
“First one ever.” Griffin had heard the phrase so many times she no longer felt insulted by it, as she once did, or proud, as she onc
e stupidly did. Her teachers used the phrase often. So did her parents, who always added the word Griffin to it, as in: “You’d be the first Griffin in four generations not to go to university, Donna.” Or: “You’d be the first Griffin to ever think that was a smart idea.” One night, in a heated argument she and her parents soon came to regret, it was: “That would be a first, Donna. A Griffin walking a beat. Have you lost your mind?”
Her parents were what people called “old money,” which meant they didn’t work for it and their parents didn’t work for it. The family money went back to her great-grandfather, who had started a shipping company in New Brunswick. That didn’t seem all that old to Griffin, but that’s all it took to be old money in Rosedale, and old money was what every auto dealer, pediatric surgeon, and business grad in the neighbourhood wanted to be. Donna Griffin, middle child tucked between two boys, never understood the cachet of old money. It embarrassed her slightly that her parents didn’t work. That when other children’s parents were rushing to work in the pre-dawn of a new day, hers were still in bed. And if it were a typical day, when they awoke the most pressing decision they needed to make would be tennis or mimosas?
Griffin had a utilitarian streak her parents couldn’t understand, and they were just as embarrassed by their only daughter. Embarrassed when they arrived to pick her up at her riding lessons to find her mucking out stalls that had nothing to do with her, as though she might actually work there. Embarrassed by her desire for a part-time job at a clothing store, and most embarrassed by her fascination with police work, which started when Griffin went on a ride-along with a community police officer when she was fourteen. She started volunteering with Crime Stoppers the same month.
Griffin couldn’t fully explain it, either. It wasn’t an act of rebellion. She loved her parents, and she didn’t have any shop-worn theories or philosophies on why their wealth should be despised. They subsidized the rent on her apartment, after all. No, the fascination had something to do with how much work a police officer could pack into an eight-hour shift, how useful and needed they could sometimes be. There were many ways to describe what old money did to a person, but if you wanted to be fair and accurate, somewhere on your list of adjectives would be the world indolent. And indolent was something Donna Griffin could never be, even if most of her parents’ neighbours had set that as their life ambition.
She stared at her computer screen and began scrolling again through the names in a Springfield city directory for 1974. She went through the Ms for a second time and then pulled up the directory for 1975. She was hoping to start on the provincial marriage registry before she left. With any luck, she would have something to report to the senior detective in Major Crimes by the time she got to work.
“Katherine Morrissey,” she muttered, tightening the robes of her dressing gown and leaning closer to the computer screen. “It looks like you don’t want to be found. Now why is that?”
. . .
Griffin was at Yakabuski’s office at 6:45 a.m., his door open and a desk lamp turned on, although when she got there she found him lying on a couch with a parka over his head. She stood there a minute, wondering what to do, before walking quietly into the room and shaking his shoulder. On the second shake Yakabuski raised his right hand and slid the parka off his face.
“Two hours,” he said, after he had sat up, arced his back, and looked at his watch.
“I’m sorry.”
“Two hours’ sleep. If I’m going to keep this up, I’ll need a better couch.”
“I’m sorry. Should I have let you sleep?”
“No.”
“What all did happen on the North Shore last night?” she asked, and Yakabuski told her about the riot and the killing of Tete Fontaine. Griffin had heard on the radio that someone was killed, but didn’t know it had been Gabriel Dumont’s cousin.
“Hanging him on that fence seems like a pretty obvious message,” she said.
“Too early to say what it means. So, Katherine Morrissey, what have you found out?”
Griffin sat on the chair in front of Yakabuski’s desk. “It’s a bit odd,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to see you right away. I tracked down four Katherine Morrisseys in Springfield and have ruled out all of them because of their age. Three of them are younger than Sean Morrissey, the other one would have been eight the year he was born. I can’t find any record of Augustus ever having a wife and Sean seems to be his only child. That’s a bit odd for an Irish crime boss, wouldn’t you say?”
Griffin waited for the laugh that never came. Clearing her throat, she continued, “Sean Morrissey was born May 24, 1974, so, forty-four years old. Every document I’ve seen has Augustus listed as his only parent. There’s never been another name.”
“You’ve checked his birth certificate? Gone through the provincial registry office?”
“It’s not there. Clerk says there was never one filed.”
“What about school records?”
“Going all the way back to Mother Teresa’s. So, grade school records. Only parent ever listed is Augustus.”
Yakabuski stood up and re-tucked his shirt. Ran the problem through his head. “What about the rest of the family? Does he have any aunts or uncles we can interview?”
“No aunts. He would have had two uncles. One was killed and the other one went missing thirty years ago.”
“I remember that. Augustus was charged for the killing, wasn’t he?”
“He was. Brother’s name was Ambrose, three years younger than Augustus. A good-looking man.” Griffin took a black-and-white photo from the file folder on her knee and handed it to Yakabuski. He looked at the mug shot, dated 1985, which explained the white dinner jacket and pastel T-shirt. He was indeed a handsome man, looked a bit like John Dillinger, right down to the slicked-back hair and the dimples. “His body was found in the woods off Mission. Augustus was charged with first-degree murder, along with Paddy McSheffrey and Ricky Green. All three were acquitted in 1987. Weak link in the case was motive. State didn’t have one. Just a lot of circumstantial evidence.”
“Like the brother’s blood in the trunk of Augustus’s Caddy, if I remember the case right.”
“Yes, that sort of circumstantial evidence.”
“What happened to the other brother?”
“Baby brother Austin. No one knows. He went missing during the court case. Hasn’t been seen since.”
“That’s it for the family?”
“For the direct family. Augustus had cousins — that’s the Tommy Bangles connection — but there’s no Katherine Morrissey among any of them. I’ve also checked news sites, run searches on Augustus Morrissey and all known associates. I’ve run searches on the year 1974 and Springfield, to see if anything pops, but I can’t find her.”
“Well, Sean Morrissey has to have had a mother.”
“You would suspect.”
This time Griffin’s comment was rewarded with a small laugh from Yakabuski. Encouraged, she went on, more animated this time, although she tried to calm her voice after a few seconds, thinking her enthusiasm might be too much for a man who had just awoken on the couch in his office.
“I can find this woman, Detective Yakabuski, I know I can. But I’m beginning to think computers won’t be enough. We need to go back to primary sources. Hospital records. Church records. We need to find that birth certificate and I probably need to knock on a few doors to do that. How far do you want me to go with this?”
Yakabuski rubbed his eyes and considered her question. A thin red line had appeared on the eastern horizon, and he knew the sun was about to show. It was already hot in his office. He thought of Tete Fontaine’s mutilated body lit up at Filion’s Field like it was the statue of Champlain in the French Quarter, and the body of Augustus Morrissey tethered to the same fence three days earlier, his eyes cut out. The North Shore Travellers and the Shiners were apparently about to g
o to war, and he had no idea why.
“I don’t think you can go too far,” he said finally. “Do whatever it takes. You need to find that woman.”
. . .
The sun was throwing a glare across Highway 7 when Yakabuski left the detachment, the highway busy now with morning commuters on their way to downtown Springfield, or to one of the sawmills upriver. He merged with traffic and headed east. On the radio, a DJ said the December heat wave was now in its twelfth day of record-setting temperatures, this after an autumn that never had a storm, never had bad winds of any kind, and never had a night that fell below freezing. It was like the seasons had stalled, the way an old car will stall and suddenly you’re stranded by the side of the road, wondering if you should kick something. It was beginning to feel like that in Springfield.
The city had started as a mill town, cutting square-timber pine and floating the logs to Québec City. After that came the sawmills and the pulp-and-paper mills, the shake factories and the matchstick factories, so much sulfur in the air once in Springfield the bass leaves were always covered in yellow goo and any open flame would crackle and fizz and set off small, shooting sparks. You couldn’t smell sulphur anymore, and the city had grown to 750,000 people, but Springfield still seemed a mill town to Yakabuski. It was loud and bawdy and the police were kept busy every Friday and Saturday night. It was also home to the Shiners and the Popeyes and many career criminals who loved the city, the Northern Divide being one of the few places left in North America where cutting a phone line and racing down a back road might actually work for you.
In many parts of Springfield, there was almost a laissez-faire attitude toward crime. Probably half the men working in the mills and truck yards had a criminal record. That didn’t get you shunned the way it might some other places. Yakabuski remembered first arriving in the city, working patrol for nine months, then one night pulling over a car weaving its way out of Cork’s Town. The driver was someone he knew, a mill worker who played on his beer-league hockey team.
