Cape Diamond
Page 25
He hit play and watched as the boy took a diamond ring from the wooden box. Rolled it in the palm of his hands. Held it to the light.
“She left this for me,” he said eventually.
“Hold on, Sean. That’s an expensive ring you’ve got in your hand. Hell, that ring could be cut into a dozen expensive rings.”
“I would never do that.”
He said it with such conviction Augustus was taken aback. You could see it on the tape. A twitch of the big man’s body. A straightening of his head.
“You got a thing for diamonds, do you, Sean?”
“I do. I think they’re beautiful,” and he closed his fingers over the ring, slid it into the pocket of his pyjamas. “Like my mother was — before she left us.”
Augustus stared down at the boy with a rage so palpable, so immense, any viewer of the tape would have thought the next thing to happen would be a blow from the father to the son. Instead, the boy smiled sweetly and said, “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s just for safekeeping. I’ll give it back to you one day.”
. . .
“I’ll give it back to you one day.” He chuckled. He had not known Sean Morrissey had a sense of humour. Nor that he enjoyed the issuing of veiled warnings. This was useful information. He did not know what he would do with the first, but men who took joy from the issuing of warnings, from being prophetic, these were men easy to defeat. Often, you needed to do little more than convince them their deaths were heroic and destined.
It was a pity, in a way, that they must become enemies. He could not blame the son for avenging the death of the mother. It was the killing of the father that was unnatural. That could not be accepted.
He thought of what he must do. Wondered, briefly, if his course of action would be any different if he had never seen the video. Never paid the price requested by the dying Shiner — enough money to pay off a grandson’s drug debt. Would he have taken his cut of the diamonds and gone home? Would he be sitting in Heroica today, having left half the bounty of Cape Diamond in the hands of a Shiner from Springfield?
Cambino thought, not for the first time, about the motives of men. How often they are kept secret, he marvelled, revealed only in early-morning dreams, or the darkness of empty streets, or at the commencement of great battles, with the sun not fully risen and mist swirling around the feet of men whose future could be measured in hours.
The motives of men. Perhaps it assumes too much. Perhaps it is one more false thing. When the truth is, we all do nothing more than play the cards we found waiting for us.
Cambino closed the laptop. Went back to the driver’s seat of the campervan and started the engine. Around the first corner, he passed a roadway sign saying, Springfield, 92 kilometres.
About the Author
RON CORBETT is an author, journalist, and broadcaster living in Ottawa. He is the author of seven non-fiction books. His first novel, Ragged Lake, the first book in the Frank Yakabuski Mystery series, received rave reviews and was a finalist for the Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. A father of four, he is married to award-winning photojournalist Julie Oliver.
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Jeff Nichols — a man strong of conviction but weak of character — is fresh out of the Don Jail, looking for work — any kind of work — and a way back into Ann Ryan’s good graces. She waited for his return from prison but is quickly running short on patience. An ex-inmate and friend gets Jeff a job at Ted Bracey’s used car lot, selling cars for commission only. But it’s not enough to keep him and Ann afloat in mid-80s Toronto, and the lure of easy money soon gets Jeff involved in smuggling guns from upstate New York. With that sweet Poughkeepsie cash, now he can keep his promises to Ann; he even buys them a house, but conceals the source of the money. As Jeff gets in deeper and deeper, everyone around him learns how many rules he’s willing to bend and just how far he’ll go to get on the fast track to riches. That he’s a guy who doesn’t let lessons from past mistakes get in the way of a good score.
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Copyright
Copyright © Ron Corbett, 2018
Published by ECW Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Michel Vrana
Author photo: © Julie Oliver
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Corbett, Ron, 1959-, author
Cape diamond / Ron Corbett.
(A Frank Yakabuski mystery)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77041-395-5 (softcover).—
ISBN 978-1-77305-241-0 (ePUB).—
ISBN 978-1-77305-242-7 (PDF)
I. Title.
PS8605.O7155C36 2018 C813’.6 C2018-902541-7 C2018-902542-5
The publication of Cape Diamond has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.