The Black Ace

by G B Joyce

  “Walt, there’s only one way you could have known all that,” I carried on. “You would have had to have been behind the station after closing Saturday night and before Derek Jones made the call to the police. And when you get to the RCMP station, which is where we are going from here, you’re not going to have a chance to talk to anybody to set up an alibi or put together some bullshit story about how you know so much about the scene behind the station.”

  Walt stared blankly ahead. Somehow he thought if he didn’t turn his head the walls around him couldn’t come crashing down.

  “And Walt, I should tell you that I have worked as a licensed investigator. I have testified in legal proceedings. That was my job. That was what I was trained for. And Chief here, well, his father was a war hero. He’s a respected figure.”

  I saw no need to tell him that we, the licensed investigator and the respected figure, had spent the night in a holding pen at the RCMP office where we would be taking him once we managed to turn around and head back to town.

  “Walt, the way I see it, you can probably do yourself some favours if you co-operate. I don’t know why you wanted my old friend dead. I really don’t.”

  “No,” Walt said. “He was real good to me.” He closed his eyes and his immediate future came into sharper view.

  To say he was an unsophisticated kid would be an understatement wholly out of keeping with my character. I could have convinced him to trade away his worldly possessions for a bag of magic beans. If he had incriminated himself to someone in law enforcement, a lawyer would have had a shot at bobbing and weaving at trial. He hadn’t done that. He’d only put himself on the scene in a statement to two Not Quite Ordinary Joes, ones without particular standing no matter how I sold it to him. Would it stand up in court? Anyone versed in such things would laugh at you. Thankfully, he wasn’t versed in such things. Thankfully, he had a conscience that was eating him alive. Thankfully, remorse occupied the void where reason would have inhabited a professional criminal or an amateur more talented than himself.

  19

  Window wipers swinging in a low rhythm.

  “I grew up on a Mennonite farm, went to school here in town. I knew that I didn’t want to grow up in the traditions.”

  Tires rolling over the gravel. A massive chest rising and falling behind the steering wheel.

  “I went to school here. High school. I got bullied some by the townies. Maybe I was big enough to look after myself but I couldn’t or didn’t or whatever. I just didn’t know where to start. I gave up on school and dropped out. I still came to town like I was still going.”

  A dome light shining in the back seat. Two bars on a BlackBerry promising a charge for as long as it would take.

  “In school, no, I didn’t do drugs. Not even weed and it was everywhere. When I dropped out, though, yeah, I drank and smoked weed. One day I just didn’t go back to the farm. I stayed away. And the more I stayed away, the worse it got. I did meth. I did a lot of things. I got into her for money.”

  A head dipping. A head bobbing with every bump in the road.

  “Her, yeah. I owed her money. She said I could pay it over time and could work it off.”

  A pickup truck gunning it. A gust of wind veering the car off its straight line.

  “I wanted to work. Not for her. I wanted to do real work. I saw a sign for help wanted at the gas station by the school. I went in and applied for it. I met Mr. Mars later on. He said he tried to meet everybody he hired. He asked me about my family. I didn’t want to talk but he kept talking to me. He said that where I was living wasn’t healthy. He offered to take me in and I said that would be good. And yeah, I told him about her. She stopped bothering me for a while after that.”

  A head turning to look out the window at the endless white blanket. Fence posts inching through the surface yards apart, if at all.

  “My eyes were bad. Real bad. He said he’d look after it and he got me the surgery and after a few days I could see things clearly, clearer than I could before even wearing the glasses.”

  Sleet slashing across the window. A crosswind buffeting the car.

  “I could have stayed there. I wanted to. I don’t know what would have happened.”

  Tires skidding where gravel gives way to a paved road. Big hands turning a steering wheel into the skid to right the line.

  “They came for me. The football players. Hanley’s son and the rest. They got me when I went on a bathroom break. And they told me to go see her. They told me that I had to settle up with her. I didn’t know what it was about. I went without Mr. Mars knowing. And she told me that he was out to get her. She asked me everything that I knew about him. What he was gonna do. And I told her everything. I told her, I dunno, just whatever it was I knew, and the thing that she kept asking me about was the Mercedes and how he was going to take it to Las Vegas for a rally. And I told her that he was teaching me about how to tune up an engine and how to do the timing and everything. How he liked to do it late at night. To go to one of his stations and work on it.”

  Night falling barely in the afternoon. A light grey giving way to a dark one.

  “And she said it was him or me. Or him and me. She meant it. She said she would do it or get it done. I believed her. I don’t know if you know the people she knows, but I was scared when she got the football players after me. She said they were Boy Scouts compared to what would happen next.”

  An old car with an old man behind the wheel crawling along the road. Other cars lining up in a procession with no chance to pass.

  “She told me that her friends the Loners would give me stuff to put in his coffee, the powder. She said they kept it beside the baking powder in their cupboard—whatever it was they cut the coke or drugs with. She knew that he drank a lot of coffee, especially when he was trying to stay awake for work. She told me it would make him sick. I figured if it was in the cut stuff that’s all it would do. And she told me I was supposed to call her when I’d done it. She told me that I’d better do it real soon. So I did. I went with Mr. Mars out to the station Saturday night. Mrs. Mars took her sleeping pill. She didn’t know that I had gone out with him.

  “Mr. Mars took the cover off the Mercedes in the garage at the house and drove it out. I followed in the Escalade. He left the Mercedes in the bay at the station so one of the guys could look at the AC the next day. I dropped the powder in his coffee and he passed out. She told me it would make him sick. That’s all that I thought it would do. Then the motorcycle guys came out. They dragged him into the front seat of the car and strapped him in and pushed the car around the back of the station. I panicked. I said there were gonna be questions. And one of them said, ‘There are never questions around here. Everyone just looks the other way and you should too.’”

  The first traffic light on the way into town turning red. Cars lining up, idling, exhaust drifting up and then blowing clear.

  “And that was it. When it was over I drove the Escalade back to the house. And the next thing was I heard the phone ringing upstairs Sunday morning. I thought it was just gonna make him sick, that’s all, really.”

  A thumb hitting an End button. The last power bar on the screen turning to a yellow caution rectangle.

  20

  “I have to tell them.”

  “I know.”

  I dialed 911 to get to the Mounties. NO RADIO SERVICE. I was going to have to run him in. The kid was no flight risk. He’d freeze to death out here if he made a break for it. He was going to come away peacefully. He wasn’t going to overpower me.

  I filled in the blanks for him. There was really only one blank. “We’re going to drive over to the RCMP building. If you turn yourself in it will be the best thing that you can do. And if you give up Harmon and the Loners, the court, the jury, the Crown, they’re going to understand that you were at risk of getting hurt or killed yourself if you didn’t follow through. And if you can make the case that you didn’t know it was a lethal dose that you spiked his coffee with, you’re
looking at a reduced charge.”

  I didn’t think Walt was sharp enough at the best of times to put together the fact that ratting out a well-connected drug dealer and two gang members, one already acquitted of double murder, might be hazardous to his health. I underestimated him, I guess.

  “I have to go back and get my insulin and my stuff.”

  “I can do that.”

  Chief shot me a look. “Shadow, we should go straight to the RCMP,” he said. “The kid can tell us what he needs and we’ll pick it up after.”

  “He’ll need his insulin and whatever,” I said. I wanted to ask Walt when the last time was that he’d checked his blood sugar but he was off in space somewhere. “We might not be able to get it to him for a while after he turns himself in.”

  “Shadow, we’ve just had too much trouble in this town,” the Big Man said. “We have a kid who killed somebody and we’re driving him around. The Mounties are gonna drop the hammer on us.”

  “Easy, Chief, next thing you’re going to tell me that they’re trying us together,” I said.

  Chief sighed and looked skyward as if his sunroof were open.

  I turned to Walt. “Not a word to Mitzi, okay?”

  He nodded. He was ruined with guilt. He was no threat to anyone.

  I didn’t want him confessing to Mitzi. I didn’t want him around when I broke the news to her. Those options were too complicated. The Big Airing Out was something I was planning for after Walt was safely checked in with the Mounties. It had to be that way. That was My Exit Strategy.

  On the drive I started to think of other complications, though. I could see myself on the hook here if anything went down less than smoothly. If any of this landed in court I might be called out to Saskatchewan again. If it came down that way I could count on the most inconvenient time. It wouldn’t be the off-season. It was bound to be a time that conflicted with my work. Maybe it would even be at the time of the draft. And then it was going to be my ass that would be in the crosshairs of Harmon, the Loners, and their scumbag confederates.

  Fifteen minutes later Chief pulled his Jeep into the driveway. I looked at Walt. His head was down. “Don’t say anything and I’ll distract her,” I said. “We’ll be in and out. I’m going to tell her that we have to go out and pick up a couple of other things for dinner.”

  He nodded. Vacant stare, the puddle on the floor mat out of focus, the prospect of the rest of his life in high def.

  Walt and I got out of Chief’s Jeep. The Big Man stayed behind the wheel and nodded off.

  We could hear Mitzi busying herself in the kitchen and smell the onions Roth was chopping when we came in the back door. It wasn’t locked. I stood on the landing, just inside, while the kid went to the basement. Mitzi came to the top of the stairs.

  “Brad, I’m glad you’re back. It looks awful out there. Did you get the pork chops?”

  “No, there was a bad accident at the top of the road to the colony,” I said. “We turned around and came back. I’ll go to the supermarket. Walt’ll come with me. He has to go to the drugstore. He’s out of his prescription.” It was the best excuse I could come up with.

  I looked downstairs. I saw Walt go first to his bedroom to gather a few things and then walk into the bathroom. He went into the cabinet. He pulled out his diabetes works, his toothbrush, his razor. He shut the door to do his business. Bodily functions don’t take any of these occasions into account.

  “It’s rotten out,” Mitzi said. “We could just call the drugstore and get them to deliver.”

  “No, that’s okay. I have to get a charger for my cellphone too.” It was an easy line. It was true. Playing the recording for Daulton and company was the first thing I was going to do once they had the kid in custody.

  Seconds passed. The wind howled. Mitzi was out of sight. I could hear her in the kitchen, the clatter of getting plates out of the cupboard and knives and forks out of a drawer. I got lost in thought. Do I tell her to set one less place for dinner? Before we eat off those plates, I’ll be telling her how her husband was killed. I’ll have to fill in all those things that he left blank.

  “How is Walt? I’m so worried about him,” she said.

  Mitzi had come to the top of the stairs to the basement. I hadn’t noticed.

  I had no snappy comeback. I had known that I was going to be asked a lot of questions over the next couple of hours, most of them with a Mountie firing them at me with professional skepticism and taking notes. I hadn’t counted on anyone voicing concerns about the emotional well-being of a kid who turned out to be a murderer. Especially when the voice was that of the victim’s widow.

  I heard a thud in the bathroom. I thought the kid was hugging the bowl, tossing his cookies. That would have been par for the course. Even I had lost my appetite.

  Mitzi didn’t wait for me to answer. “It’s been so hard for him,” she said. “I have to let him know that I’m fine with him here, no matter what happens.”

  I heard another thud in the bathroom. I listened harder but Mitzi kept talking.

  “I know he’s a damaged kid. He’s got no one there for him. The only decent thing would be to care for him. It would be good for both of us, I guess.”

  No sounds from the bathroom.

  “Walt,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  No answer.

  I looked downstairs. At the bottom of the bathroom door a dark puddle.

  I took the stairs two at a time. The puddle was gathering.

  I threw my shoulder and hip into the bathroom door. The lock didn’t budge. Not the first time, not the third. Finally, the screws in the hinges gave. I was standing in the puddle.

  I kicked the door. My boot left a tread mark beside the knob.

  The door crashed down. It landed on the kid’s legs. They were splayed. He was flat out and felt nothing. An X-Acto knife was on the floor beside him, where it had fallen out of his hand. So was a note. The last pints of his blood were leaving the vessel. His eyes were open but saw nothing. His stare was empty, unfocused, fixed upward at the bathroom’s low panel ceiling, as if angels were dancing there.

  “Call an ambulance,” I yelled upstairs to Mitzi. I picked up the note before it floated out on the rising tide of the red sea. I jammed it in my pocket of my jacket, leaving a stain that I’d only notice a couple of weeks later.

  The ambulance could have been idling in the driveway and it wouldn’t have mattered. There was no hope of the ambulance coming soon enough. Two minutes before would have been two minutes too late. I tried to tie tourniquets around his arms above the slashed wrists. They covered me in blood but that was about all they did. I pulled myself away and saw Mitzi standing there with her mobile phone in her hand. Her look was as frozen and faraway as the kid’s. She seemed to be looking for the same dancing angels and coming up just as empty.

  The ambulance made it in five minutes and the boys in the crew would have done a service if they had attended to Mitzi rather than what was left of the kid downstairs. When they piled downstairs I was standing in the bathroom doorway. I didn’t try to explain anything. I didn’t know where to start. Whisper’s death. This kid’s role in it. How I had pieced it together. How I had let the kid talk me into making a pit stop on the way to the Mounties’ headquarters. How I had screwed it up completely.

  21

  I thought Mitzi had been a mess when I arrived three days earlier. That was nothing compared to the smoking crater of a woman left asking why as a pool of blood blackened at the bottom of her stairs.

  I had all the whys but one. I knew why Whisper had kept his life’s story and his brother a secret, even from the woman closest to him. I knew why the kid had killed Whisper, and that doubled back to why the kid had taken his own life. I even knew why Whisper’s brother had owned up to a crime not his own and sought refuge in a place where others are desperate to escape. I had all the whys except the last one, why I should tell her.

  I don’t pride myself on having a conscience. Hard to do when you m
isplace it a lot of the time. Or misplace them. I’ve always felt like I had more than one conscience. Two obvious ones: one on the ice and later in business, the other with family and friends. There’s another, I hate to say, with the women in my life, and that’s just the awful runoff of so much gone bad, of what someone else would call damage. I guess there’s a fourth, one common to all but cold-blooded bastards who would lean down to a dying man either to save him or at least have him leave a little less alone. The list is probably longer than that. If you were objective you’d say it’s conscience of situation. If you were judgmental or cynical, it would be conscience of convenience. I don’t buy that. I’ve never found conscience convenient.

  I wasn’t going to tell her. Not a thing more than she already knew. Life’s a lot simpler on a need-to-know basis. There’s no holding your cards too tight. Tell only those who need to know and only when they need to know it. Nothing more. It’s all about outcomes. Yeah, maybe someone could make the case that Mitzi had the right to know about Whisper’s death, murder as it turned out, but it wouldn’t have made anything better.

  22

  Mitzi drifted off. She was still sitting on the living-room couch, slouched over on her right side. The sedative had taken hold. I pulled off her slippers and raised her legs so she was stretched out. She didn’t make a sound when she slept. I had to look hard to see her breasts heave to make sure she hadn’t OD’d or given up all hope.

  While I was sitting shiva I thought about Swift Current. About how those who had at least suspected or even known the coach was a pedophile and decided not to get involved. About those who denied the town’s and the team’s role in the bus crash that killed the four kids or owed their families a debt beyond hanging their pictures in black frames in the lobby. And about those who should have known that the surviving players needed professional help after the crash, rather than letting the coach run the show so that his secrets didn’t get out. So many stood by in silence, waiting for a Good Samaritan or crusader to step up and none did. They looked on, a mute choir.