Cape Diamond

by Ron Corbett

  He stumbled out of his car before Yakabuski got there, broke into a big grin at the sight of his teammate, and said, “Well, this is going to be fun, ain’t it, Yak?”

  Then the man took a swing at him. He missed, but followed up with a kick to Yakabuski’s shin that connected well, and then the two men were rolling on the ground, punching each other, the driver laughing and saying, “That the best you got, boy?”

  When Yakabuski had the man in the back of the squad car, he started to apologize.

  “Sorry ’bout the tussle, boy. Didn’t think you’d be any good. Bit of fun though, eh?” Three days later, the man phoned Yakabuski and asked for a drive to that night’s hockey game.

  “You still got my car impounded,” he explained. “I ain’t telling you what you gotta do, Yak. I wouldn’t do that to any man. But the way I see it, you’re sort of obligated.”

  That was Springfield. Yakabuski had yet to decide if he liked the city. Thought some days he might, other days that he needed to get back to the bush as quick as possible. But if you were a cop who liked to stay busy, you couldn’t do much better than this hopped up mill town on the southern skirt of the Great Boreal Forest.

  . . .

  When he was twenty kilometres east of Springfield, Yakabuski stopped at a trailer park, closed for the season. He unlocked the gate and drove to his ice fishing hut, up on blocks by the river’s edge. He had begun to wonder if he was going to use it this year. When he was a boy, he helped his dad put out his fishing hut every year right after Halloween. Always the first week of November, and they probably could have put it out earlier, but the first week of November was tradition. That was High River, granted, but Springfield wouldn’t have been much different.

  When he unlocked the door to the hut, he found Jimmy O’Driscoll sleeping on a chair. When the boy was asleep, not awake and jumping around with his addictions, his debts and his fears, his forearms bleeding, that’s just what he looked like: a boy.

  Yakabuski shook his shoulder. O’Driscoll awoke with a start. Tried to jump out of the chair, but Yakabuski pushed him back down.

  “Easy, Jimmy. You’re all right. You’re in my ice fishing hut. You remember coming here?”

  The boy’s eyes twitched a few times. Then he gave his head a couple quick shakes and looked around the hut. “We’re fishing?”

  “No Jimmy, the hut is still on the shore. You’ve been asleep.”

  “How long.”

  “Day-and-a-half.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You needed some rest. Any idea when you slept last?”

  O’Driscoll rubbed his eyes, looked around the hut again, at the bait buckets and manual auger, the gasoline cans and fishing equipment that Yakabuski stored in the hut when it wasn’t being used. He yawned and said, “I’m not sure. It’s been a while.”

  “I talked to your grandfather.”

  “How did it go? Do we have a deal?”

  “We do. You need to come with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Ridgewood.”

  “Hold on, that’s not the deal. You need to protect me. You need to get me someplace deep underground, where the Popeyes can’t find me. Fuck, they’ll know I’m at Ridgewood the day I check in.”

  “They probably will. And they’ll leave you alone.”

  “Ahhh man, this was a mistake. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  O’Driscoll rose from his chair and Yakabuski pushed him back down a second time.

  “Jimmy, you need to get yourself right-thinking again. Ridgewood will do that for you.”

  “I’ll have my throat slit in the middle of the night. The Popeyes probably know half the people staying there.”

  “Which is why you’ll be safe. Ridgewood is part of a court diversion program the Popeyes use all the time. They won’t fuck with it.”

  O’Driscoll didn’t say anything right away. Kept rubbing his eyes and yawning, looking around the hut as though it hadn’t come to him yet. How he got there. “What’s the program?”

  “Hundred days.”

  “No fucking way. I can’t do that.”

  “Your granddad thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “Then get him to do the hundred days.”

  “Do you think he’s got a hundred days?”

  That seemed to wake him up. And because it did, Yakabuski had the momentary belief that he wasn’t wasting his time with Jimmy O’Driscoll. That buried deep in his addictions, his fears and his mania, there was a part of the boy that had woken up and paused for a second. Saddened by the knowledge his grandfather would die soon.

  “He wants to make it to spring,” O’Driscoll said quietly. “He told me that the other day. Spring. He’s counting what he has left in seasons.”

  “He’s probably tough enough to make it. How tough are you?”

  A salesman’s close. Yakabuski felt a twinge of guilt for using it, for being that obvious, but he was at the start of what was going to be a long day, and what he needed right then was to be driving Jimmy O’Driscoll to Ridgewood.

  “I’m plenty tough,” said the boy, a note of hostility in his voice that did not worry Yakabuski, buoyed him, rather, because the boy needed to be a fighter now. Not a pleading, down-on-his-knees junkie.

  “Then let’s get going, Jimmy. We both have a busy day ahead of us.”

  O’Driscoll sat in the chair a minute longer, no longer yawning, no longer rubbing his eyes, thinking it through, one hundred days of sobriety, in a locked-down old house on the banks of the Springfield, miles from any bar, roadhouse, or street corner, the sweats and stomach cramps coming for him probably later that day, when the meth and Oxy began seeping out of his blood, the chemical mix about to go way wrong for him. His body shuddered at the thought of it.

  Then he gave his head a surprised shake, looked up at Yakabuski, and said, “Why, what do you have to do today?”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The funeral for Augustus Morrissey was held at St. Bridget’s Basilica. Belfast Street was shut down for the service and there were patrol cars positioned on the side streets for a six-block radius. There were more patrol cars up on the North Shore. About fifty men who would have been attending the funeral were still in hospital, or still being questioned by police, but they weren’t missed. Television stations later estimated the crowd inside the basilica at eight hundred, with another thousand on the street outside.

  Sean Morrissey wasn’t picked up on the sweep of the North Shore, and Yakabuski planned on questioning him as soon as the funeral was finished. It seemed an unnecessary provocation to pick him up beforehand. He stood in the back of the crowd that had assembled on Belfast Street, not surprised by the number of people who had come, as Augustus Morrissey was about as well-known as a man could be in Springfield, and the Shiners were legendary. People gathered to catch a glimpse of his son, or some of the Shiners they had been reading about for years. Men like Harry LaChance, who once stole a shipment of gold on its way to the Bank of Canada, right off the tarmac at the Springfield Airport. Or Peter O’Reilly, tried in court three times for three different murders and acquitted each time. Came to see the out-of-town guests who had flown in for the funeral. Billy Adams, head of the Irish mob in Boston. The Derry brothers from Buffalo, a couple of psychopaths who ran a human smuggling operation so brutal it made Latin American cartels seem like finishing schools.

  It wasn’t just Irish. Italians from New York came. Latinos from Miami. They all came to say goodbye to Augustus Morrissey, King of the Shiners, a man many of the funeral guests had once envied, a gangster who ruled not a street, not a neighbourhood or a city, but an entire region. Held dominion over lands the size of New England. Augustus Morrissey had ruled a frontier and taken advantage of all the opportunities that offered — secret meth labs, secret transportation corridors, secret flight paths. Every man
inside St. Bridget’s had made money with Augustus Morrissey. Every man had envied his swagger, his success, his lumber-baron mien, which was part hedonist, part carnivore, a rapacious throwback to the days of gangsters like Bugsy Siegel and John D. Rockefeller.

  The service was broadcast on speakers set up outside the church. A choir sang as the invited guests filled the church, then there was the reading of passages from the Old Testament and a benediction from Bishop Charles Guiges, a small grey-haired man who had travelled from Montreal to preside over the funeral service. After the benediction, the parish priest for St. Bridget’s, Father Adam McCleary, spoke about Augustus, choosing to reveal only a fraction of what he knew to be true. He spoke of the generous donations to St. Bridget’s. The faithful attendance on Sunday mass and his firm belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the Power and the Glory.

  After Father McCleary, the choir sang another hymn, a beautiful song that came clean and clear through the speakers, which were expensive and positioned perfectly on pedestals so the sound didn’t fade away but bounced back from the buildings across the street, so the people on the street were surrounded by the fine high rise of the verses, the swell of the chorus, a mid-December day with a hot white sun and not a cloud in the sky. It was almost possible to forget the choir was singing in praise of the most ruthless killer and bandit to ever live in Springfield.

  . . .

  After the song was finished, there was silence from the speakers that lasted for several minutes, which seemed to confuse and startle the crowd on the street. People shuffled their feet in impatience. Stared at the reporters by the front steps, wondering if they might know what was happening. Stared at the floral tributes in a roped-off area by the front door, dozens of them, some as large as a grown man, looking for some sign of movement.

  Eventually, they heard the voice of Sean Morrissey. He spoke for about five minutes, repeating some of what Father McCleary had said and emphasizing how pleased his father would have been, to see how much he was respected. He was sure his father was looking down upon them right then, and he knew his father was happy. To see his old friends. To know how much he was loved. To know that his death would soon be avenged.

  There was a long pause after that, although this time the people on the street felt certain they knew what was happening inside the church. The son of Augustus Morrissey would have been casting his gaze across the pews, across the assembled tough men, the out-of-town gangsters, the cutthroats and bandits who had assembled beneath the gilded domes of St. Bridget’s, letting each know that this problem — the killing of the King of the Shiners — would be handled the way Augustus Morrissey would have handled it. With speed. With clarity. With resolve.

  “Enough said,” Yakabuski muttered, and he continued to crane his neck and scan the crowd on the street, looking to see if anyone seemed like more than a curiosity seeker, a reality-TV watcher, more than an office worker taking a late lunch so they would have something interesting to say at the dinner table. More than a cop, scanning the crowd and asking the same questions he was.

  Bishop Guiges gave the final homily, speaking in a reedy voice that seemed as thin and weak as strands of milkweed. The bishop praised Augustus Morrissey for his “great achievements in the community,” and his “many successes,” then he gave a final benediction and the choir started singing “Danny Boy.” The song continued, through repeated verses, as Morrissey’s casket was brought outside, left on the front steps of the basilica for a minute so photographers could take photos, then taken down the steps and placed in an idling hearse. The procession that followed the hearse must have been nearly a hundred cars, ushered into place by workers from Adams, who wore yellow vests and waved the cars down Belfast Street as though they were landing planes on an aircraft carrier. The choir sang through all of it, only stopping when the last car had left and altar boys started removing the floral tributes.

  . . .

  Yakabuski’s sister came to see him before joining the procession to the cemetery. Tyler Lawson kept his distance, waiting in front of the church for a valet from the funeral home to bring around his BMW 430i.

  Trish had met Lawson when she was in university and working as a hostess at the Baton Rouge, one of the more expensive red-meat-and-Scotch restaurants in downtown Springfield. Lawson was employed by a Chicago law firm that did work for the Shiners, and he arrived at the Baton Rouge one night stumbling drunk. Trish’s boss told her he couldn’t be thrown out, so she spent most of the night slapping away Lawson’s hands and making sure he didn’t fall on anything sharp.

  He came back to the restaurant the following week, sober and apologizing for the “bloody fool I was the last time I saw you.” He went on to explain the Clemson Tigers had been awarded a bowl game that very day, and Clemson was his alma mater, and then he shrugged his shoulders, ran his fingers through his already tousled hair, and flashed Trish a smile she had not noticed the week before. When he insisted on giving her a one-hundred-dollar tip “to make up for being such an ass,” she didn’t protest long.

  They dated off and on for the next two years, until Augustus Morrissey suggested Lawson quit the Chicago firm and move to Springfield. He promised the young lawyer enough work to bankroll the opening of his own law firm. Lawson married Yakabuski’s sister within a year of moving to the city.

  Trish had blinders on when it came to Tyler Lawson. Not that she was deceived about her husband being a mob lawyer. Just that she didn’t let that play a major part in their relationship. They had two children — Jason and Sarah — that they both doted on. When Lawson wasn’t working in his office, he spent most of his time at hockey arenas and dance studios, or tending the gardens around their home, a large Tudor on Mission Road.

  If you let yourself forget it was Shiner money that bought the house and paid for the dance lessons, you could almost go skipping over the moon with Tyler Lawson.

  “Frankie, how are you doing?” his sister asked when she was standing in front of Yakabuski.

  “Just peachy, Trish. How do you think I’m doing?”

  “I know. It’s horrible what happened on the North Shore last night. A man was killed?”

  “A man was killed. You want to know more, go ask your husband.”

  “Frankie, let’s not do this right now. Work is work, and family is family. We’ve agreed. Even dad has agreed.”

  “Dad would go over Niagara Falls in his wheelchair if you asked him, Trish.”

  She laughed a perfect little laugh, the sort of laugh that might be allowed on the front steps of a church after a funeral. Then she squeezed her brother’s arms and said, “We should get together soon, Frankie. I worry about you. Dad worries about you. It’s just a job, you know?”

  Then she turned and walked to her car. The valet was holding open the passenger door. Lawson was standing beside the driver’s door. Before he drove away, Lawson gave a small wave to his brother-in-law, then jumped into the car so quickly he wouldn’t have had the chance to see if Yakabuski waved back.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Cambino enjoyed the rhythm of a journey. It did not matter how he was travelling or where he was going. Every journey came with the soft hum and vibration of mechanical movement, with a world passing before his eyes like a tape that never looped back. He drove through the centre of North America, marvelling at a sky that never seemed crowded, even when filled with cumulus clouds. He passed within fifty miles of a reservoir that on his GPS looked larger than an inland sea and thought briefly of detouring so he could see it, then thought of his schedule and continued his journey north.

  It was not only the schedule that kept Cambino on task. The journey had had complications. This needed to be acknowledged. The perfect journey would not have had an Arkansas state trooper with too much time on his hands. Would not have had an elderly couple that knew the admission price for the Chicago zoo. The perfect plan would have had a dead escort girl in a s
ugar beet field outside Corpus Christi and nothing else.

  It was even possible, although unlikely, that a smart cop had linked the three crimes. The possibility did not overly worry Cambino — he had little respect for police agencies in the United States — but there had been complications, and he needed to acknowledge this fact and focus on his work. He turned his attention back to the two men from the North. To weigh and measure a man’s future was a serious matter, and Cambino had been taught to take his time about it. He thought again of what he knew about the two men, for he did not know them well, business partners from afar who had come to him with tales of riches and schemes of betrayal.

  They were both leaders of a criminal organization. Their gangs had existed for centuries. They were smart and daring and had the loyalty of their men. Cambino had done the research and knew this to be true. They were tough and brutal and in the old ways, with blood on their hands, no enemies they allowed to live, driving cars with trunks the size of storage sheds.

  Those were the similarities. As for the differences: one of the men could spend many weeks in the bush. One would not attempt such a thing. One was a nomad, who appeared and disappeared. One was fixed to his village like a tree. He thought about his dilemma while the sun set to the left of him, a long, drawn-out strand of golden thread, fluttering and falling to earth.

  After a while, Cambino tried tackling the problem from the other direction. Forget the two men from the North. What did Cambino abhor? He bore down on the question, slowing his breathing, repeating a mantra he had chosen earlier in the day. What sort of man could the planet do without? Covetous men. Weak men. False men.

  He stopped and repeated what he had just said, this time moving his lips and saying it aloud, a soft whisper in the darkening cab of his vehicle.

  “False men.”