Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “I thought as much.” Yang’s telephone rang shrilly. He flinched. The telephone rang again. He took a moment to compose himself, then scooped it up and said in a very quiet voice, “Dr Yang speaking.”

  He listened carefully for a moment and then said, “Yes, certainly. I’ll see you then,” and hung up.

  “My wife. She called to remind me that I am to pick up a bottle of white wine on the way home tonight.” He smiled at Parker. “We are having guests for dinner. Life goes on.”

  *

  At a few minutes past five, the pumps sucked the last of the water out of the pond. Darkness had fallen, and a ring of lights had been set up around the perimeter. Willows borrowed a pair of knee-high rubber boots and joined the search team. Three hours later, all they’d come up with was an empty beer bottle, a number of candy-bar wrappers and other debris, several coins and a soggy five-dollar bill.

  Just as they decided to call it a night, a fireman poking around in the area of the drainage vent stumbled across a brass key frozen in a hunk of ice. The key and beer bottle and money and candy-bar wrappers went into separate evidence envelopes. The search team took off their rubber boots and dispersed.

  It was still snowing as Willows and Parker walked across the street to the unmarked Ford parked in the Starlite Films lot.

  The snow was fresh and clean as it fell from the sky, but turned to slush as soon as it touched the pavement. Willows wondered what the weather was like in Toronto. Cold. He thought about phoning the kids when he got home, and then remembered the three-hour time difference. It was past eleven in Toronto. Annie and Sean would be in bed, sound asleep, dreaming.

  “What’re you looking so serious about?” said Parker.

  “I was just thinking that it’s about time you got a decent job, met a guy and settled down.”

  “You want me to take Sandlack up on his offer, is that it? Marry Tom Cruise?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think it’s been a long day, and we could both use a hot meal.”

  “And a stiff drink.”

  “That, too,” said Parker, smiling.

  Chapter 8

  Billy and Garret’s favourite fence was a skinny bald guy they’d nicknamed Crayon. He was tall and thin and wore skin-tight clothes, but they called him Crayon mainly because his skin was kind of sticky-looking, waxy. Crayon’s real name — or at least the one Billy knew him by — was Dennis. Dennis the Menace.

  The fence lived in a crumbling stucco house on East Seventeenth, directly across the street from a BC Hydro substation. No matter what time of the day or night you dropped by, he always seemed to be home.

  Billy parked his Pinto, got out and slammed shut the door. The chain-link fence protecting the substation was about ten feet high, topped with three strands of barbed wire. There were metal signs all over the place: WARNING! HIGH VOLTAGE! DANGER! KEEP OUT!

  Or fry, and die, thought Billy. He listened to the faint buzz and crackle of electricity. The power station looked and sounded like a set from an old horror movie. He was reminded of Ted Bundy, the serial killer who’d got the electric chair in Texas. Snap crackle pop! So long, Ted. Billy had read everything he could about the guy. Now, as he walked around to the back of the Pinto, he tried to imagine what it must feel like to have several thousand volts tossed through your body. The horror of being there. Did it hurt, that ultimate jolt? Or was the sensation of pain so huge that it drowned out the pain itself, and there was only a kind of vast numbness, as your hair burnt and your eyes popped out of your head…?

  Billy shivered, and it wasn’t the cold that had given him goose-bumps. That was the great thing about Canada. No death penalty. You could wipe out half a city, they’d give you a life sentence but they couldn’t take your life away.

  He unlocked the Pinto’s trunk and pulled out a battered cardboard box full of stolen radios and related electronic equipment. He slammed the trunk shut and, the box held tightly to his chest, jogged across the street and down a narrow, slimy concrete pathway that led around to the side of Dennis’ rotting, neglected house.

  At the back, there was a wide wooden door. Billy bent a knee to take the weight of the box, knocked twice.

  His knuckles stung — the door was the only solid part of the house, and it was unyielding as a rock. He waited. Nothing. His arms ached. The box was getting heavy. He swore imaginatively, pounded on thick wood with the meaty side of his fist.

  Without warning, the door swung open roughly the width of a human eye.

  The bright beam of a flashlight played across his face, blinding him.

  “Billy.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You’re supposed to be here at seven.”

  Billy held up his left hand. He tapped the crystal of his watch, a Seiko he’d boosted, brand-new and still in the gift box, out of the backseat of an Audi. The beam of the flashlight settled on his wrist. He said, “That’s what time it is, Dennis. On the nose.”

  “Just hold on a minute, okay. I got somebody with me, I’m runnin’ late.”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Fuck you,” said Billy, but not too loud. He put the box down on the damp sidewalk and pulled out a crumpled pack of Viceroys. In the brief flare of the match, his face was all bone and shadow. He flicked the dead match over the fence into the neighbour’s yard, stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the house. It was the coldest winter of his short life. He wondered if it was going to snow again. His mind drifted back to Ted Bundy. In Texas, you murdered somebody, there was a good chance you’d go to the chair. But at least it was warm all year round, you wouldn’t freeze your ass off. Billy had never been to Texas, but he knew about the state’s weather from watching Dallas on his mother’s television. A guy could learn a hell of a lot, sitting on the couch with a cold beer, watching TV.

  He held his left wrist up close to his face and sucked hard on his cigarette. In the quick orange glow of the burning end, he saw that it was almost ten past seven.

  Jesus Christ but Dennis was an asshole. The way he operated, it was amazing he managed to stay in business. About the only place in the whole world Billy could think of where the service was worse was at the chain take-out chicken joint down the block from his mom’s.

  The door swung open.

  “Sorry about that,” said Dennis.

  Billy twitched guiltily. It was as if Dennis had been reading his mind. “Hey,” he said, “no problem.”

  Dennis stepped aside and Billy went through the open door and into the basement. The fence slammed the door shut, secured it with an inch-thick steel deadbolt and a pair of metal bars as thick as Billy’s wrist. The first time he’d done business with Dennis, Billy had figured all the steel was to keep the cops out. Dennis had thought that was pretty goddamn funny. He’d explained that when your customers were thieves, you had to worry about securing the premises against theft. As for cops, well, cops were like roaches — if they wanted in, there was no fuckin’ way you were gonna keep them out.

  Dennis pointed at the cigarette. “No smoking down here, kid. You know that.”

  Billy dropped the Viceroy on the concrete floor, ground it to a pulp under his heel.

  “Whatcha got for me?”

  Billy slid the box on to a heavy wooden counter just inside the door.

  “Five Blaupunkts, a couple Alpines including a CD player, and an MEI deck with a set of Pioneer speakers. Also a real good Sony power amp.”

  “MEI?” Dennis used the tips of his fingers to play a little tune on his scalp. It was as if he was trying to access information, get at the brain that lay beneath the surface of taut, shiny pink skin. He said, “Never heard of it.”

  “Mobile Audio Systems. It’s a shuttle deck. Real nice piece of equipment. Dolby, Music Search. Retail, cost you five, six hundred bucks.”

  “Retail,” said Dennis. “What the fuc
k is that? I never heard of it.” He went over to a bookshelf by the wall, looked through his catalogues, shook his head.

  Billy pulled the radios out of the box, lined them up on the counter. A shuttle deck was designed so the radio slid in and out of a compartment mounted in or under a car’s dashboard. The owner could remove it in seconds, take it with him or lock it away in the trunk. On the other hand, if the guy left it in the car… No wires to cut, just push a button and pop it out. Shuttle decks were a lazy thief’s dream.

  Dennis came back to the counter thumbing through his Blaupunkt and Alpine catalogues. He started to look up the prices.

  Billy stuck a Viceroy in his mouth, then remembered the no smoking rule. He dropped his lighter back in his jacket pocket.

  “Still working with that red-haired pal of yours, Garry?”

  “Garret.”

  Dennis shrugged. “Whatever.” He licked his thumb and turned a page. Billy had a fast mouth, was always knocking his pal, putting him down. He saw himself as a tough guy, but somehow Garret worked it so Billy was the one who played delivery boy, took the risks. And Garret always gave Dennis a call later, to see how much he’d paid… Keeping tabs on Billy without letting him know about it. Garret had the brains, no doubt about it. Probably Billy’s IQ was about the same as his shoe size.

  Billy leaned a blue-jeaned hip against the counter, glanced casually around the basement. Dennis’ main thing was fencing stolen property, but he also bootlegged beer and hard liquor after hours at a hundred percent mark-up. Not that out of line. Restaurants had the same profit margin. Dennis preferred cash but would barter if he had to. One end of the basement was like a clothing store — long wooden racks stuffed with jackets, most of them leather. Billy tried to imagine being hard up enough for a drink to sell the shirt off his back. He couldn’t picture it.

  “Forty each for the Alpines,” said Dennis. “Except this one, I’ll go fifty. For the Blaupunkts, I’ll go sixty apiece. Twenty for the MEI shuttle. I don’t like the look of all those little buttons. Hit ’em hard enough, they might fall off and then where would I be?”

  “No fuckin’ way,” said Billy.

  “Add it up, kid. Six hundred and fifty bucks. Not bad wages for kicking the shit out of a few car windows. Something you’d probably do for nothing, anyhow.”

  “I don’t do nothin’ for nothin’,” said Billy.

  Grinning, Dennis started to put the radios back in the box.

  “I’ll do it,” said Billy. “You might drop one, and then where would I be.” He took a Blaupunkt from Dennis and put it in the box.

  Dennis rubbed his jaw. He needed a shave, and in the quiet of the basement, Billy could hear the dry, scratchy whisper of the bristles under his palm. He shrugged and said, “Okay, let’s make it seven hundred.”

  “Eight,” said Billy.

  Dennis dug around in his back pocket and hauled out a wad of fifties, folded in half. He counted off fourteen bills, slapped the money down on the counter so each bill partially overlapped the one that had gone before it.

  “Seven. Take it or leave it.”

  Billy grabbed the MEI and stuck it under his leather jacket. The money went into his jeans.

  Dennis stared at him for a moment, then nodded and said, “You got a bad attitude, kid. I like it. You’re gonna go far, you don’t get nailed.”

  Billy laughed. “How the hell’s anybody ever gonna catch me, when I can hardly keep up with myself?”

  But driving home in the Pinto, scrubbing at the windshield because the heater didn’t work and the glass kept misting up, Billy was so angry he wanted to smash something, or burst into tears.

  Seven hundred bucks for a whole goddamn week spent skulking around back alleys, parking lots, rich people’s garages. And he owed Garret half which left him with a lousy three-fifty. Billy added it up. Three hundred and fifty times four was… one thousand four hundred dollars a month. Times twelve… The numbers got all scrambled around in his brain. It was hard to think and drive all at the same time… Something like sixteen or seventeen grand a year. Wowie.

  He flicked the butt of the Viceroy out the window, lit another. Sixteen grand a year. Fuckin’ cigarette money. And he’d already, though Dennis didn’t know it, gone down twice, spent time at the Willingdon detention centre. Couple more months he’d be eighteen years old. No more juvie heaven, with his record. Dennis had given him something to think about — getting caught. Next time it’d be adult court. Two years less a day in Oakalla, that pigpen. Big time. Hard time.

  And all for what? Three-fifty a week, barely enough to stay afloat. He couldn’t live with his goddamn mother forever, could he?

  For a long time now, Billy had been thinking that he had to get into another line of work. Something riskier, and better paying. Not banks. The average take was less than a grand and he’d heard the cops’ clearance rate was seventy percent. Real bad odds. He had to figure out a better way. Some way of making a lot of money without hanging his ass too far out into the wind.

  What kind of success could Dennis ever hope to be, when he didn’t even know his own product line? Fucking dummy. Billy rolled down his window and chucked the MEI shuttle deck on to the road. The radio cartwheeled across the pavement, hit the curb and disintegrated. A waste. But the thing was, he’d wanted to make a point. Dennis had to be made to understand the way things were.

  It was Billy who ripped people off. Not the other way around.

  Chapter 9

  Mrs Lee lived in the Oakridge district, two blocks from the children’s hospital. Parker drove south on Oak to Thirty-third, turned right. It was a solid, middle-class neighbourhood; the houses were large and in good repair, the gardens spacious and well-tended.

  “What was the address again?” said Parker.

  “Eighteen twenty-seven.”

  The house was a sprawling rancher with a shake roof and dark-stained cedar siding. It was on the north side of the street, near the end of the block. The snow had been shovelled from the pink-coloured concrete sidewalk that wound from the street up to the house.

  Parker pulled the Ford in tight against the curb and turned off the engine.

  “How’re we going to handle this?”

  Willows shrugged. “I guess the main thing is, let’s try not to give her a heart attack.”

  “Good thinking, Jack.”

  “I’ll ask her a few questions. We’ll see how she reacts. If it doesn’t seem to be going very well, I’ll back off and you can take over.”

  “And in the meantime, don’t steal the silverware, right?”

  “Or grab all the cookies on the plate, or slurp your tea.”

  There was a doorbell. Willows punched the button. Chimes sounded inside the house.

  The door swung open immediately, as if the girl on the other side had been waiting for the knock.

  Willows introduced himself, and Parker.

  “Come in, please.” The child extended her hand in a curiously formal gesture. “I am Melinda Lee.”

  Melinda Lee was thirteen years old, with the slim, compact body of a ballerina. She had a tiny face; her delicate bone structure set off by large brown eyes. Her thick black hair was cut very short. She wore a white blouse and a dark blue pleated skirt, shiny black patent-leather pumps. She offered Willows her hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he took it. Melinda Lee’s palm was cold and damp. She turned to Parker, nodded and said, “My mother is waiting in the living room. Please come this way.” She offered a tentative smile. “Because her English is not very good, I will stay and translate, if you like.”

  “Please,” said Parker.

  The living room was to the right of the entrance hall. Mrs Lee was sitting in a reproduction antique oak rocking chair in front of the fireplace. She wore a thick, bulky black sweater, and her lower body and legs were covered by a fringed black shawl. A photograph of Kenny Lee stood on the mantel. Parker noticed that everything in the house looked new — the carpets and furniture, even the paint on the wa
lls. Mrs Lee’s eyes were closed — she might have been sleeping. Her daughter spoke softly to her, and she raised her head and gave the two detectives a little bow.

  “Sit down, please.”

  Parker chose an ornately carved wooden chair by a writing desk near the window. No draft — double glazing. Willows sat in a wingback chair on the opposite side of the fireplace from the widow Lee.

  Willows took out his notebook. “We’re sorry to have to bother you at a time like this, to intrude on your grief. Hopefully, this won’t take long.”

  “The main thing is to find the murderer,” Melinda whispered dramatically. A bad actress delivering a bad line. Parker stared at her, and she blushed.

  “Our main problem,” said Willows, diving right in, “is that we don’t have a motive. Was… Did your husband keep large quantities of cash in the bank?”

  Mrs Lee hesitated. Melinda spoke softly to her in Cantonese. She shook her head, and Melinda said, “We have discussed this. Except for the money required to run the household, all the profits went back into the newspaper.”

  “We understand your father gambled, is that right?”

  “Mah-jong,” said Melinda promptly.

  Mrs Lee burst into tears and buried her face in a linen handkerchief.

  Melinda ignored her. “He belonged to a society, and he was an excellent player. I have seen him play. He won far more often than he lost. Otherwise he would not have enjoyed the game. But in any case, the stakes were not large.”

  “Could you be a little more specific, please?”

  “He told me that during an entire evening, it was not possible to lose more than five or ten dollars.”

  “How often did he play?”

  “Once a week. Wednesday nights.”

  “And that was the extent of his gambling? Did he, for example, frequent the track?”

  A look of confusion fluttered across Melinda’s face.

  “Play the horses,” explained Parker.

  “No, never. Of course not. Except for the mah-jong, father was not a gambler. Neither did he smoke, or drink alcohol. The newspaper took all his energy. He was a very hard-working man.”