by Warren Court
“Let’s see it.”
She took a folded sheet of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Temple. He unfolded it. He knew it would only be a list of phone numbers, but he wanted to see it for himself.
The phone calls were just a couple of minutes here and there; no long, deep conversations. There were outbound from her land line to Tim’s cell and vice versa. The phone calls stretched back a good six months before Sylvia had killed herself. He knew the date she’d died, of course, but not the exact time Tim had found her. But he could find out. Police had been called to the scene and would have taken down what he told them.
Could he take this to Karen? Maybe. But he wanted more. He tucked the report away.
“What are you up to?” he said.
“Taking a door on a warrant, two streets over.”
“How many going in?”
“Half a dozen. We’re short staffed.”
“You should get some of our guys to go along on these.”
“We tried. They turned us down. Seems your drug guys are busier than ours.”
“Is six enough?”
“You wanna come in with us? You could take the door; I got a spare vest in the car.”
“No thanks,” Temple said. “I’m out of practice.”
“Come on, for old times’ sake.”
“I might trip and shoot myself in the foot. You be careful,” he said.
“Thanks, pal. Watch the news tonight.” She closed the door and he watched her go back to her colleagues.
Temple drove along Highway 7 on his way back to 40 College. It was like his car was on autopilot; it went automatically past Carmen D’Souza’s house. There were no vehicles in the driveway, but as he drove past, the garage door started to open. He drove on another hundred feet and pulled over. Same position more or less he had been in the first night he saw Tim come by for a dalliance. A silver Kia pulled out. Temple could see Carmen behind the wheel. She pulled onto the street, headed right at him. He looked down at the passenger seat as she drove by, then started following her.
She took him back out onto Highway 7 and down Brock Road into Whitby. He had no idea where she worked. He vaguely remembered their brief chit-chat that one time he’d met her. She was a veterinary assistant or something like that, he recalled. Temple let a car get in between him and her; this was an easy tail.
She pulled into the parking lot of an animal hospital. Afternoon shift. Great, he thought. He now had her work location. He was already formulating a plan of next steps in his head, but for now he would let her get on with her day.
31
There was a group of protestors outside the American Consulate. When they saw that Detective Temple wanted to enter the secure parking lot, they made to block him; a squad of security guards moved in quickly to intercept and stop them. One of the guards hurriedly waved Temple through. He was stopped at a guard booth, but was allowed to park after showing his identification. A large steel gate topped with barbed wire was rolled back and he drove slowly through.
The rest of the security around the consulate was subtle. A few of the cameras were visible, but Temple suspected there were many more unseen. There were large concrete planters at the edge of the sidewalk. Temple knew they were steel lined and filled almost to the brim with concrete to stop a suicide bomber in a car or truck. Only a thin layer of dirt on the surface and some plants for aesthetics disguised their true purpose.
Except for the gate he had passed through, there was no barbed wire along the twelve-foot-high wrought iron fence that ringed the rest of the perimeter. Instead, there were vicious-looking metal prongs and spikes along the top of it. No one was going to get over that. All of the glass fronting University Avenue was bulletproof.
Except for the protestors, the embassy was open to the public. People from countries other than Canada came here to apply for visas. Canadian citizens did not require them to visit the US. Not yet, anyway, thought Temple.
Inside it was cool and well lit. Temple identified himself again and asked to speak with Agent Donaldson. The man said nothing. He made note of Temple’s name and badge and directed him to a waiting area.
Temple sat for an hour checking emails; finally, he was approached by a middle-aged man with a good physique in a brown suit and tie straight out of the G-Man catalogue. Donaldson greeted him and led him further into the embassy, past the line of visa applicants that never seemed to get any shorter.
They went up two flights of stairs, with security cameras everywhere, and into an office that Donaldson shared.
“This is mine over here,” he said.
“What’s that one, CIA?” Temple said.
Donaldson cracked a fake grin.
“Inspector Munshin says to say hello,” Temple said as he sat down.
“How is he?”
“He’s good. Overworked, though. Stressed. You know… the norm. You’re an FBI agent?” Donaldson nodded. “First one I’ve ever spoken with.”
“I liaise mostly with the RCMP and senior officers at Toronto Police.”
Temple understood the gist of that comment. The Fed didn’t appreciate being called on by a lowly homicide detective. “No, I don’t imagine you get too many pop-ins from cops in the field like me.”
“How can I help you?”
“I have two phone numbers here.” Temple had written them down and he handed them across to Donaldson. “The one on the top is the State Department, Washington DC. The other one is the Pentagon.”
“Okay,” Donaldson said, skeptical.
“I have a person who is tied in with a murder case I’m following. Maybe you heard of it—the shootout in Chinatown. Five people dead.”
Donaldson shrugged.
“Anyway, one of the dead men phoned those two numbers a couple of days before he died. I want to know why.”
“You saying he was an American?”
“Canadian citizen.” Temple paused. “But he was born in Vietnam.”
“Okay, so what?” Donaldson said. Temple gauged Donaldson to be about 55. Too young to be a Vietnam vet, but he probably knew plenty of them.
“He runs, or ran, a Vietnamese restaurant. I want to know what provoked a sixty-five-year-old to call two high-level numbers like that. It doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re thinking Vietnam war? Was he a refugee?”
“Boat person, if that’s the right term,” Temple said. “Reached Australia in eighty-one then came up here in eighty-two.”
“Why not just stay in Australia? Certainly is warmer,” Donaldson said.
Temple detected a slight southern accent. The weather in Toronto was probably not to his liking. Toronto might be the FBI’s version of manning a radar station in Alaska.
“You find it too cold up here? It’s better than Ottawa.”
“You got that right,” Donaldson said. “You have his name?”
“His name is Kiet Du, with a U on the end.”
Donaldson wrote it down. “I don’t know what this will come back with, but I can try.”
“Inspector Munshin said he would personally be very grateful for your help.”
“I see.”
“Here’s my card.”
“Tell Moonshine I said hello.”
“You call him that too?”
Donaldson grinned. “There’s a guard outside. He’ll show you out.”
“Cheers,” Temple said.
32
“Hey,” Temple said when Mendoza answered his phone. “You still at Forty?”
“I’m down at Metro Hall,” Mendoza said. “Girl I know was able to get some info on Taylor, that real estate developer. She didn’t want to email it.”
Sure, Temple thought. I’ll bet she didn’t. “I’ll pick you up on the way back to College.”
“All right. I’ll be outside.”
“See you in five.”
Temple pulled up in front of Metro Hall, a support building for City Hall, one of many. Mendoza got in.
“What did
she give you, besides a hand-job?” Temple asked as he pulled back out into traffic.
“It’s not like that. She’s nice.”
Temple sighed.
“That contractor, Taylor. Guess who he’s in bed with?”
“The mayor,” Temple said.
“No. Well, probably. Taylor Construction is a partner with Stas Kumarin.”
“It said that in a file at Metro Hall? Picture of Taylor and the Russians in the file?” He paused on Queen despite having a green light. A car behind him blew its horn. Temple ignored it.
“No, not as blatant as that. But Taylor is on the board of Westgate Properties. And Westgate has that lawyer for Kumarin on the board too. They use him as their proxy.”
“It’s thin, Mendo.”
“I got this friend—she’s a reporter. Covers crime and corruption for the Sun.”
“Yeah? A friend?”
“She wrote an article about Westgate Properties overbidding on city work but getting the contracts anyway.”
“Payoffs.”
“Yes, and she was harassed for six months. She finally had a breakdown and had to go to Europe to chill out. She said it even continued over there—guys following her. Catcalls, whistles everywhere she went. Phone calls to her hotel room in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe she’s just crazy or paranoid. I know the type of women you run around with.”
The horns were now half a dozen behind them and Temple moved forward slowly.
“No, she’s cool. She is good looking, but she’s really shaken by it. And she did mention Stas Kumarin in her article. He must have not liked that.”
“Okay, so Taylor might be hooked up with the Russian mob. Not an impossibility. And at least one Russian shooter hit the restaurant. So why take out the owner of the Beautiful City? Because he signed a petition to stop his building from being torn down?”
Mendoza sank back in his seat. “I don’t know, man. Just letting you know what I found out.”
“Okay, okay. Relax. It’s a good lead. Only one we got to go on. I went to the States today.”
“How? We were together just two hours ago.”
“The consulate. It’s American soil. You kill someone there you’ll get extradited.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“No. I saw no need. I spoke with an FBI agent, gave him Du’s name and those numbers he called.”
“Cool.”
“He said he’d get back to me. Not counting on it.”
Both of their cell phones chimed simultaneously but Temple let Mendoza grab them as he negotiated traffic.
“What is it?” he said. Mendoza was mumbling, reading the text out loud. Temple had noticed that about him; he couldn’t read silently. It was funny.
“What is it?” Temple said again.
“Someone on the job bought it. Got shot.”
“Who?” Temple said.
“Hold on.”
Temple waited ten more seconds.
“Who was it?”
“Some broad out in Oshawa. Drug squad.”
Temple gripped the wheel. Mendoza scrolled down.
“Yeah. Claire Barron, Oshawa drug squad, killed in the line of duty this morning on a drug raid. You know her?” Mendoza said, not looking at Temple as he kept scrolling his phone. “Twelve years on the job. They have a picture.” Mendoza flashed it to him but he didn’t look. He knew it would be a photo of Claire in her dress uniform.
Mendoza continued. “Nice looking. Little too old for me.”
Temple reached across and squeezed Mendoza’s arm. “I knew her.”
Mendoza was silent the rest of the way back to 40 College. So was Temple.
33
TPS Headquarters was quiet as a church when Temple and Mendoza got there. Every cop who was able was out on the streets. It was the usual reaction after a fellow officer had died in the line of duty, even one from a neighbouring service. The killer had not been apprehended. Informants and finks were being shaken, haunts and denizens were being raided.
If the ground-floor lobby was a church, then the fifth floor was a cemetery. It was completely empty. Even Team Three, who would just be rolling on and getting back to work on their active cases, were out. Munshin was probably briefing with Intelligence and Command on the seventh floor on how his team were responding to the murder of a police officer.
Temple turned on the television in the corner and switched to a news channel. They were on scene at the house in Oshawa. Temple recognized the van and the cars. One was up on the front lawn. There were cops everywhere. Yellow tape was being strung up. The female television reporter, the one both he and Karen Kindness had had relations with, was outside the house.
“Durham Regional Police have released few details on what went wrong,” the reporter said. “It is believed that the Durham Police drug squad executed a search warrant on this house behind me. There were several people in it. Shots were fired by both sides, and one person was seen fleeing. After the shooting stopped, it was discovered that Detective Barron had suffered a fatal wound to the head. She was a fifteen-year veteran of Durham Police and had served three years on the drug squad. We are expecting a statement from the Durham chief of police at any minute…”
Temple turned the set off. Munshin and Daniel Maranelli, lead detective for Team Three, came out of the elevator and headed straight into the inspector’s office. Maranelli gave Temple a quick glance and nodded, grim-faced.
Temple nodded back and let out a deep breath, trying to keep his thoughts about Claire from consuming him. There would be time later for grief and rage. Right now, he still had a case to close and things were moving. To stop now and go off on some hunt for Claire’s killer would jeopardize that.
34
Maranelli came over to Temple’s desk. “The Beautiful City restaurant has been released,” he said. Temple pushed back from his desk and stared up at Maranelli. “Munshin gave me the order.”
“It’s my case.”
“Said he couldn’t get a hold of you. Chief called him, wanted it done.”
Temple knew the score; Nallartnam or maybe Taylor had pull with Command. He wondered if they knew Taylor was in bed with the Russian mob. That scene should not have been released without his or Wozniak’s OK.
Temple was going to ask about the bodies being released and stopped himself. Neither Taylor nor his pal the city councillor cared about the bodies; they just wanted to get to tearing that block down. The fact that the man in the morgue might not be the restaurant owner was unknown to them, however. Temple intended to keep it that way until he could prove his theory. And to do that he would have to find the restaurant owner, alive and well.
Temple’s phone rang. It was Karen Kindness.
“Need you up here,” she said. Not Can you come up or Would you mind?
“You’re in your office?”
“Just come up.”
Temple swiped his card in the elevator and pressed the button for the seventh floor—Command. It was a long hallway with two offices across from each other for the two deputy chiefs and one larger door for the chief at the end. There was a double desk for secretaries near the elevators, and a water fountain in the middle of the hall with water slowly trickling out. The hallway had muted artwork and pictures showing the chiefs going back to the 1920s.
Kindness’s secretary was not there, so Temple walked on through to Karen’s office.
“What’s with the fountain?” he asked. Even two rooms away, the sound of running water permeated her office.
“That thing is freaking annoying. Belongs downstairs. It was a gift from the Chilean national police.”
“Chilean?”
“We’ve been sending advisors and coaches down there for a couple of years. I wish they’d just given us a case of wine instead.”
Temple sat down in front in of her desk, remembering the night when they’d first gone at it, right there in her office. He could still remember her smeared makeup, the sheen of sw
eat on her skin and the taste of booze.
As if she could read his mind, she said, “Drink? You’re rolling off today, right?”
He said, “You’re making them? No thanks.”
She laughed and pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich and two glasses.
“Relax. I wouldn’t pull that here,” she said and poured him two fingers. He watched her carefully, saw no white powder or other liquid go into the drink. He snatched his scotch up.
“What does the chief keep at his desk?” he asked.
“The cheapest rot-gut whisky. Suitable for people familiar with boxcars and trainyard campfires. Buys it by the case when he’s in Florida. It’s from Idaho, I think. Who ever heard of a whisky coming out of Idaho? But you have to drink it if he offers. Career-limiting move to do otherwise.”
Temple sipped his scotch.
“Speaking of career-limiting moves, I’ve saved you one and released the Beautiful City crime scene.”
“I heard. From Maranelli.”
“Don’t worry. You’re still on the case … for now,” she said.
Temple shrugged. “Pull me off. What do I care? Chances of finding the killer and making any kind of case are almost zero.” He was bluffing. If she got Munshin to pull him off the case, he didn’t know what he would do, but it would be career limiting. Quite possibly career ending.
Karen studied him. Could she read his lies? She had never spent time in homicide and had done only limited time in patrol. She had been a divisional detective in name only before becoming deputy chief. How good were her lie detector skills?
“But you have a good lead?” she asked.
“I’ve come up with a theory.”
“Sure it’s not those same old blinders you homicide guys get?”
“The shot-up gang-bangers in the corner? Misdirection. It was a professional hit on the restaurant owner.”
She scoffed. Good; let her not believe him. That would mean she wouldn’t stick her nose in to try and get credit for it.
“I need something from you,” he said.
“You need … from me?” she said. “You forget our arrangement?”
That night on the desk she had appeared drunk, loose, out of control with sexual hunger. But she had been working him. While they were coupling, she had encouraged him to slap her around. Temple had obliged. He’d left red marks on her face, ones that had probably been covered up by makeup afterwards as she’d had to attend a charity dinner. But they would have shown up well in photographs before that makeup was applied.
