I took a closer look at the sketch.
“This woman looked like...” I shut up, not sure what else to say.
Gloria watched Sue closely as Charles picked up the thread of the conversation. “Much different hairstyle but the face is identical. There’s a strong possibility...”
Sue shook her head emphatically. “Are you thinking...?”
“It is worth considering, Sue,” Charles said.
I had no idea where all of this was going. Yes, there was a resemblance, but I kept the thought to myself.
What the hell has that got to do with anything today?
Gloria looked at me, and then Charles. “I want you both to keep what you’ve just seen in mind. I think the resemblance is extremely relevant.”
Charles nodded. “Sue looks so much like Elizabeth Rafferty.”
I worked my chin with my hand. “Well, I...”
Sue touched the back of my hand, and sat straight in her chair. “Phil, do you remember the other night when I said that I had experienced strange things around the house?”
“I remember.”
“Well, things have happened inside the house. A few times. There’s been someone, or something, here.”
“In the house... you never told me that, Sue. Damn it!”
My mind raced in a different direction. Has Marco, or some flunky of his been in the house, snooping around when Sue was here? Shit.
“You don’t keep things like that to yourself. That’s a serious problem. Really serious. Whoever it was needs to be tracked down.”
She sighed and shook her head. “It wasn’t a real... what I’m trying to say...not a real person. Each time was something like what happened when you were here. I was starting to tell Charles and Gloria about it all when you arrived the other night.”
“Well, why didn’t you keep talking?”
“I knew that you wouldn’t listen. You would have rejected anything I said about those experiences... completely. But now that you’ve experienced at least a bit of what’s been happening here, I thought you might be more receptive. It’s that simple.”
She touched my hand again. This time she kept her hand there. “You’re not going to like what I have to say next. When it shook us out of bed the other night, Phil, it was angry. It didn’t like you being there. It’s come to my bed several times before. Mostly just standing there, stroking my hair, and rubbing my shoulders. Twice though, it’s touched my body in some very personal ways.” Her face flushed.
This didn’t bother me as much as she thought it would. In fact, I let on it didn’t bother me at all. “Hon, everybody has dreams like that, maybe that’s all they were: dreams.”
Sue wasn’t buying that theory. She just looked over at Gloria. It seemed to me that her friend had measured my reactions to everything, and she was likely the one quarterbacking the meeting. Charles fiddled with his notebook and leaned forward, ready to speak.
With a glance, Gloria stopped him from speaking. She repositioned the pictures on the table. “This presence feels that he belongs in the bed with Sue. That’s what this is about. He thinks Sue is Elizabeth Rafferty.”
“And that,” said Sue. “is the name it whispered in my ear. Elizabeth”
I’d been rattled by what happened the in the bedroom the other night, but I needed a lot more convincing to go along with Gloria’s theory, no matter what name Sue thinks it called her. I had bigger issues to deal with. My thoughts were dominated by the realization that someone, a real someone, might have already been in the house. And that there was the potential for another incident; another intrusion. By a scumbag. A violent, desperate, likely perverted, scumbag.
“I’m not sure we’re on the right track at all.” I said. “Maybe...but I’m just not convinced.”
Gloria smiled and stood. She came around to my side of the table and put a hand on my shoulder. “Well, I think we’ve made some good progress, Phil. But, before we call it a night, I’m going to move things along on this situation, and on your criminal investigation. You have a project for me, don’t you?” You want to find a man, a large man. You have pictures of him with you.”
How the hell did she know that?
I felt for the pictures in my shirt pocket: the ones I’d grabbed at Kotch’s place. And the mug shot of Marco that I’d got from Ernie.
“Give me everything, Phil. We’re playing for the same side you know. I think you also have something that belongs to this man, a memento from a car he used to own.”
I handed her Kotch’s pictures and the key fob I’d removed from his kitchen drawer. I left Marco’s mug shot in my pocket.
Let’s deal with one asshole at a time.
“Here you go, Gloria. I’m looking for this guy.”
Chapter 24
Gloria came back fifteen minutes later. She placed Kotch’s picture and key fob back on the table, looked at me, and shrugged.
“I don’t think you’ll be talking to him, if that’s what you want...He’s dead.”
No great revelation there, but I was impressed by the conviction in her voice.
“I’m sure you’re right, Gloria.”
“You should be able to find him,” she replied. “I picked up that he’s in a confined space. The trunk of a car to be exact. There’s a red jerry can and something that looks like a car jack by the spare tire well. No spare tire. He’s in or near a large, multi-level concrete structure with constant engine noise. My guess, an easy one: the noise is aircraft engines. He’s near an airport. I hope that helps, Phil.”
Even though the body in the trunk scenario is almost cliché, I didn’t want to be a jerk, and she seemed so confident. What the hell, I didn’t have much else to go on.
“Thanks, Gloria. That gives us something to work with. I’ll be getting some airports checked out right away.”
She held out her hand, palm up. “Now you can give me the other picture you have.”
I nodded. She was something else! I put Marco’s mug shot on the table in front of her. I’d snipped the name from the bottom of the shot earlier. Sue and Charles, paid little attention to the photo. They watched Gloria.
Gloria leaned over the table, absorbed. She didn’t touch the mug shot. After a good twenty seconds, her eyes closed. She lifted her hands from the table and exhaled. Her shoulders dropped.
“He’s a very dangerous man...and not far away.”
I wasn’t sure how much her reading of the mug shot was staged for dramatic effect. But in the short time I’d known her, I’d determined that no matter how far off the wall her theories were, as a person, she was straight up. Her assessment of Marco Ranez was bang on.
Sue got up to make us coffee. I put the mug shot back in my shirt pocket and picked up Kotch’s pictures. I excused myself for a few minutes. I went to Sue’s upstairs office to make two calls.
The first call was to the Special Squad at Toronto International Airport. I gave an RCMP Duty Constable the basic details, plus the registration and description of Kotch’s vehicle. I asked him to organize a search of all the airport’s parking areas. Then to touch base with the appropriate PDs, and have the Hamilton and Buffalo airports checked. He offered to contact some of the smaller regional airports if the majors were negative. Next, I called into my unit at “O” Division and gave them the details. I didn’t mention my source. There was no sense in provoking the wise-ass comments just yet. I simply leaned on the tried-and-true: information from a reliable source. Well anyway, Sue and Charles thought Gloria was reliable.
I’d call Roy Jacobs in the morning to fill him in, but I’d skate around the psychic reference as much as I could. I’d give Gloria her credit if the search of airports paid off. But without the corpse, giving Roy the info I had would seem pretty damn lame. I caught myself crossing my fingers. I hoped something turned up quick. I really didn’t want to come across as a flake to Jacobs.
It was time to wrap the session up. I thanked Charles and Gloria and asked them to keep me in the loop about thei
r research on the house. Even though I was still skeptical, they both seemed confident that I would eventually be convinced. So did Sue. We’d see.
I wanted a quiet and undisturbed night. Maybe Sue would go to bed early, I just wanted to slip under the covers with her. I wouldn’t sleep, and, I wouldn’t get too cuddly. I’d need to keep my wits about me, and keep her close. Just in case we had an uninvited guest.
Soon I would have to tell her that a dangerous fox named Marco could be sniffing around her house. I prayed that he hadn’t started already. I wondered how telling her would change things between us. Would she think that if I knew something about Marco’s whereabouts without telling her, I’d been using her as bait?
She rested her head on my chest. Fortunately, she was asleep quickly. I kept my guns within easy reach. They were both on the floor beside the bed, my fingertips dangling above them, my senses trained on the room, the house, and the night. I trusted our team, but without a tail on Marco, he might slip through the observation points.
Chapter 25
Marco made a call to the diner from a smoke shop pay phone. After the other end rang a few times, he hung up and waited for five minutes. When the smoke shop pay phone rang, he picked up.
“Yeah...talk to me.”
“I’m here for you, man. What’s up?” Lemon said.
“All right, listen to me,” replied Marco. “You and Jasper have a job to do tomorrow night, Thursday night. You got that?”
“Yeah, I’m all yours...whatever you need.”
“Jasper will fill you in tomorrow morning at ten. Be there at the diner, all right?”
“Yeah, solid.”
“I don’t want any of your asshole friends hanging around your place for a while,” Marco said. “Jasper’s going to give you a few hundred bucks for fun money so your buddies can split for four or five days. And after the jobs over Thursday night, he’s going to give you five hundred for your trouble. You can join them...Are you listening?”
“Yeah, I hear you...That’s cool.”
“Here’s the rest of the deal, Lemon. After you’ve met with Jasper tomorrow, you tell your friends to screw off to Wasaga Beach, and you’ll meet them up there later. Tell them you’ve got a big cottage rented near the strip, lots of action. Jasper will give you all the info, the keys, and a map. All you need to tell your fucked-up friends is that it’s rented to the end of next week, and they’d better stay the hell up there. Let them know a bunch of bikers are using your place for a while, and they don’t want anyone around. Give the goofballs some cash. Tell them to head up to Wasaga and start having a good time. Got that?”
“Sweet! That’s great, man.”
“One more thing: there’s a beat-up RV, a trailer. It’s being towed to your place after your meet with Jasper. You be there when it arrives, and make sure it’s parked at the very back of the lot by that grove of big trees.
“There’s a tarp inside the door. As soon as it’s parked, you cover the damn thing up with the tarp. Make sure you use the padlock that’s with it. There’s an access flap in the tarp, and the lock goes on it. Jasper knows the combo. Once it’s done, you stay clear of the trailer, or else.”
“I hear you. I’ll look after it.”
“Jasper’s going to tell you about the other job, for tomorrow night. When you’ve finished that, you’re off the hook with me, and we’ll make sure you’ve got what you personally need for the next two months. Fair?”
“No problem, man. Thanks.”
“Don’t screw it up. And don’t do anything other than what you’re told to do. I’ll mess you up real bad if you jerk me around on any of this, Lemon.”
“Consider it done. Just as long as I’m looked after. You know.”
Marco hung up the phone and grinned. There were rooms booked in Wasaga Beach for Lemon’s friends, but there was no room booked for Lemon. He wouldn’t be needing it.
Marco’s thoughts returned to the woman.
See you soon, lady. Wear something pretty.
After leaving the smoke shop, Marco grabbed a hamburger at a greasy spoon and returned the car to the lot. He took a lunch bucket out of the trunk and started to walk in towards the harbor and the steel mills.
The darkness he needed hadn’t quite set in. By the time he reached his destination it would have. There was a job to be done; baggage to shake off. Tonight, his biggest business partnership would come to a sudden end.
Staying ahead of people who had a stake in the game and knew his patterns was always an issue with Marco. Gus, Arturo, and the boys had been key players in his scheme. Now their utility was over. They were a bigger threat than the cops.
Cops he could stay ahead of. They needed specific information, and all they knew about him was general shit. His partners knew specifics about him and they were getting whacked before they posed a risk. With Gus and the boys out of the way, he would have a clear path to the jeweler’s stashes. He had planned a couple of ways to work around the cops and get to the woman. If the one scheduled for tomorrow panned out, he would have his stuff soon. And he would keep every damn stone.
Marco knew that Gus ran a lean ship at Lustre. He had a crooked bookkeeper, who reported to an accountant who was even more corrupt, a file clerk who only knew how to separate the legit files from the shady ones, a bitch of a receptionist, and a dumb fuck office boy who picked up coffee and sandwiches to keep everyone happy. None of those people were of any concern to Marco: they knew shit about him. They were lightweights. Gus, Arturo, and his enforcers, Vince and Paulo. Those were the pieces Marco had to remove. He was going to eliminate all four at once.
He’d baited the trap with his phone call to Vince. The time and place gave Marco all the advantages he would need. It was always the same with those four; they thought they were smart, mixing things up and meeting in the shadows. That was their Achilles heel. With them, paranoia over photo and audio surveillance took precedence over safeguarding other vulnerabilities. They might be smart enough to know that Marco wouldn’t use the same car twice, and might even guess that tonight he’d be on foot. But their biggest mistake was thinking that together they were nasty enough to keep him in line. That mistake was going to cost them everything.
Marco carried the metal lunch box and walked along the broken sidewalks of Burlington Street near Industrial Drive. It was the same area he’d scouted out previously. There was plenty of industrial wasteland bordering the vast, noisy steel works. This was the perfect place for the job at hand.
He turned up Wilcox, crossed a set of railway tracks, and slipped through a hole in a tall chain-link fence that leaned out over the sidewalk. The vacant lot that faced him was thick with industrial clutter and patches of tall weeds. It was a good place to conceal bodies, at least for a few days.
He had good sightlines to nearby roads, pathways, and sidewalks. As he made his way to the darkest part of the lot, his eyes adjusted to the light conditions. He chose his spot, placed the lunch box on the ground, took the .45 from his belt, and attached the silencer.
Two shadows came through another hole in the fence. They walked into the lot about twenty feet, stopped, and swiveled in the darkness looking for him. Marco took out his lighter, flicked on a flame, and held it head high. After he did this several times, the shadows started to move towards him.
Vince and Paulo stopped about five feet from him. They were the same distance from each other. Vince crouched over the lunch box. “You got it all here?”
Marco nodded. “It’s all in there, Vince.”
“I’ll check it out in a minute,” said Vince. “But, they’re gonna ask about the rest of the stuff?”
“Another three days, tops. I knew you wanted to get this load put away safe and sound. And I want Gus to know that everything’s on the up and up.” Marco backed away from the lunch box. “Check it boys, a beautiful haul. Go ahead.”
Vince stayed put.
Paulo bent down and threw his windbreaker over the box. He pulled out a small flashli
ght, shielded it from view under the jacket, and started inspecting the contents of the box. He stood, clutching a small sack in his hand.
“Oh yeah.” Paulo handed the sack to his partner. “You gotta check this out, Vince... fabulous.”
Marco’s grin widened in the darkness.
Dumb pricks couldn’t tell shit from caviar.
Marco moved forward a few paces, the .45 concealed under his windbreaker. “You got my cash for this lot, Vince?”
“Arturo’s got it. He’s coming in with Gus. I’ll call them over. Vince turned the flashlight on and off twice, pointing it at a spot about twenty feet from the hole in the fence.
Marco slipped the gun out.
Time to flush the crap.
Chapter 26
Mid-morning on Thursday, Jack Duggan pulled into the motel parking. He was in a rental car. Ernie and I drove in right after him. He yelled at us to get in his car. Duggan skipped the chitchat. “Got a situation developing. We’re going to check things out. We might have caught a break, guys.”
Ernie let out a sigh. “Could use one, Jack. What’s going on.”
Jack shifted the car into drive and headed towards Hamilton. “Last night, there was one Metro surveillance team that didn’t have a target assigned. Intelligence asked them to try and pick up some of the Sure Clean crew for our project.
“They got lucky, spotted Vince Tangello and his sidekick, Paulo. They were just leaving the Sure Clean office. The surveillance team had eight cars, so the coverage was adequate. They weren’t burned and followed them all the way to Hamilton.
“The crew backed off to perimeter status when the car entered an industrial area near the Stelco plant. They didn’t want to spook the targets, so they just made sure all the roads in and out were covered.
“After ten minutes, they sent in one car for a quick look around. Paulo’s car was parked in a lot at the end of Wilcox Street. They saw two guys walking up Wilcox. They used their binoculars. It was Vince and Paulo. Maybe heading for some kind of meet.
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