Tampered

by Ross Pennie

  “I not make mistake. I see your face every night. In my dreams. Five years I dreaming. And then I see you. At Camelot Lodge. Pretending to be nephew. How can you be nephew from Portugal? Your English, it is perfect. Not like anyone in ESL classes.” He punched Joe in the belly. “You Canadian. You Gloria’s son. Corporal Jayson Dasilva.”

  Horvat let the accusation sit for a minute, then nodded to Nick who uttered an obliging grunt, grabbed Joe’s right arm, and sliced through the sleeve of Joe’s ski jacket with his switchblade. Horvat ripped Joe’s shirt open. He exposed the man’s bicep and examined it. He couldn’t have looked more satisfied if he’d found the Holy Grail. “There. I am knowing. It say Jayson Argylls Forever.”

  “That’s my cousin. We’re buddies.”

  Horvat swatted Joe’s cheek. “Liar.”

  “Please, I’m Joe Medeiros. Never been in the Canadian Army. I’m from Portugal.”

  Horvat shook his head. “One day I see you. The face of my nightmares talking to Gloria, my best customer. She smile at you like son, not like nephew. Give you sandwich, call you Jayson. You frown, look nervous. I stay quiet, send for your birth certificate. Easy to do on Internet. You born in Cambridge, Ontario. Mother is Gloria Dasilva. Father Sergio Dasilva. Gus Oliveira is second husband, I am guessing. You not have his name.”

  The vodka was making Joe bolder, his eyes wider. “Some other guy’s birth certificate doesn’t prove nothing.”

  “Army told me about tattoo when you escape from Sarajevo barracks in 2003. They promise find you. Send to court martial.” Horvat’s face filled with disgust. “After six months, Army give up. I beg on graves of wife and daughters, but Army bigwigs doesn’t care. Now, I thinking Canada knows you hiding in Portugal, but is easier to leave you there. No trial. No expense. No more embarrassment for Argylls.”

  Horvat jammed the vodka bottle against the young corporal’s teeth, and Nick whacked him in the belly until Joe opened his mouth and gulped like a force-fed goose.

  Out of nowhere, Natasha was slammed by two violent sneezes. The cat shot across the floor in front of Horvat, then raced out of sight.

  Viktor Horvat whipped around, his face a stew of anger and surprise.

  Nick looked up, his switchblade poised for action. “What the hell?”

  For a second, Natasha felt buoyed as she watched Colleen’s eyes fill with fire. A moment later, the world began dissolving. Colleen’s fire had turned to stone-cold fear.

  CHAPTER 39

  As soon as Max realized he was being left behind at Grandpa Art’s place, he began creating an unholy scene. Good thing Hamish was waiting in the minivan and didn’t see it. Max yelled and screamed and refused to take off his jacket and boots. Zol braced for a standoff in the middle of Camelot’s common room under Phyllis Wedder-spoon’s cold gaze. It was clear she saw no reason for a small boy to squawk when left to the care of a gaggle of grey-hairs. Things got ugly when Max threw his arms around Zol and screamed, “Don’t leave me here. Daddy please, don’t leave me. That old lady is grinding her teeth again.”

  Phyllis stood with her arms crossed in rigid judgment, oblivious to vacant-eyed Alice sitting on the sofa pulverizing her molars with robotic determination.

  Art tried a few of his old standbys at the piano, but none caught Max’s attention. Of course not. What kid had an interest in Stephen Foster and show tunes?

  Then Art played the intro to Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”

  Stunned by the syncopated reggae notes floating through the air, Max went silent. He stared open-mouthed at the old man’s hands working the instrument. Zol was stunned too. He felt Max’s grip loosen from his waist. Moments later, off came Max’s jacket, and he crept to the piano in his stocking feet.

  Reggae was Max’s favourite music, by a long shot. He’d memorized every note of Ziggy Marley’s “Dragonfly” and “Love Is My Religion.” He’d played the CD so many times it was a wonder there was anything left of it.

  Two minutes later, Zol gunned the minivan out of Camelot’s driveway while the going was good.

  At the Queen Street summit, light snow was churning in the icy wind at the top of the Niagara Escarpment. As Zol drove westward along Mohawk Road, just shy of Horvat’s pharmacy, the snowflakes got thicker and wetter, as they do in March when the sun begins to strengthen and Canadians fool themselves into thinking winter is over.

  At the traffic light at Rice Avenue, two blocks short of Steeltown Apothecary, Hamish tensed and grabbed the dashboard. He closed his eyes and started some sort of ritualistic breathing — in through his nose, out through his mouth.

  “No need to get uptight, Hamish,” Zol said, after Hamish had taken a few of those strange breaths. “I’m going to cruise past the strip mall first. See which cars are in the lot. If Colleen and Natasha are there alone, we just have to knock on the door and get them out of there. No problem.”

  “There’s a rear entrance, you know. Through the derelict print shop.” He mimed quotation marks with his fingers. “Leads from the back alley off Magnolia.”

  “I know.” Colleen had shown Zol the converted garage on the narrow lane behind the buildings fronting Mohawk Road. “We’ll cruise along the lane before we make a move. See if Horvat’s there. Art gave you his licence number?”

  “Starts SJJ. Black SUV.” Hamish fiddled with his coat buttons. “I don’t like that high hedge. Cuts the place off from the buzz of Mohawk Road.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stop. But keep your eyes peeled.”

  The light changed, and Zol eased past the strip mall on their left. Natasha’s Honda and Colleen’s Mercedes were easy to spot. There were two other cars in the lot, a black Silverado opposite the pizza place and a gold Lexus between the dollar store and the dry cleaner’s. Zol turned left onto Magnolia and saw Horvat’s SUV as soon as he turned left again into the narrow lane. The SUV was parked on an asphalt pad next to the converted garage behind Steeltown Apothecary. A dusting of snow had collected on the vehicle’s roof but there was no snow on the hood. The engine was still warm.

  “Change of plan,” Hamish said. “No way we can walk in there.”

  Zol swallowed hard and forced himself to slow right down to get a good look at the building and the vehicle.

  Hamish’s face was white. “Get us out of here.”

  Zol eased on the gas and dodged the deepest of the alley’s potholes while pondering what to do. About fifty metres along, he crept past two guys, late thirties, parked in a silver Cadillac SUV. Smoke and rock music — the Tragically Hip — spilled through the front windows. Since the tightening of the smoking bans, the only place a couple of buds could sit and smoke was in their car. These guys had decked their vehicle out like a rec room on wheels — leather seats, walnut panelling, booming woofers, and a flat-screen TV. They probably had brewskies in a cooler and a few joints under the seat. They nodded and waved as Zol drove by. In the rear-view mirror a moment later, Zol saw the guy in the passenger seat answer his cellphone. The man’s eyes narrowed; his face tensed. Bad news. Or maybe just a summons from the wife to get the heck home and take the kids off her hands.

  Zol turned right at the first intersection and parked at the curb.

  Hamish already had his BlackBerry out.

  “Who you calling?” Zol asked.

  “The police.”

  “What’re you going to tell them? That a petite private eye and the health unit’s whiz-kid epidemiologist broke into a pharmacy storeroom and are now engaged in a tête-à-tête with the owner?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Probably not. But let’s walk back, maybe listen at the door. Colleen’s a professional. She would’ve heard him coming and got herself and Natasha hidden. Horvat’s not going to stay there long. If I’d just lost my son, I sure as hell wouldn’t hole up in a windowless storeroom. Unless . . .” He couldn’t complete the thought.

  “What’s he going to do with Joe? Lock him up there? Kill him on the spot?” Trust Hamish to pu
t it into black and white.

  “I’m not dropping Colleen and Natasha in it without taking a closer look first,” Zol insisted. “Five minutes, that’s all.”

  The flurries cleared and the sky brightened as they walked along Mohawk, the weakening sun in their faces. They approached the front of the pharmacy and peered through the windows. No movement in the dimly lit store. The place was obviously closed. The wall clock said twenty past six. On the right of the building, a wooden gate led through the cedars. Zol peered between the slats and saw Horvat’s SUV still parked in the small backyard. Zol looked at the sky. It would be dark in half an hour, maybe less.

  He opened the gate and took one step inside. Hamish followed and let the latch down silently. They both listened. No voices, no screams, no crashing of furniture. Zol padded toward the door on the side of the garage. The fresh snow was silent under his feet. At a balmy three degrees Celsius, snow didn’t crunch under your boots. Emboldened by the silence in the yard, Zol crouched at the door. He beckoned Hamish to join him. Hamish hesitated, his face a mixture of annoyance and fear, then he tiptoed forward. They cupped their ears and listened.

  A man’s voice boomed through the door but Zol couldn’t make out any words. The tone held either anger or terror, he couldn’t tell which. Maybe both.

  And then he heard them. Colleen’s distinctive South African vowels. Calm and assertive, but tinged with a strange anxiety. Zol could distinguish her cadence, but had no idea what she was saying. He put his hands on his stomach and took slow breaths against the bile scorching his throat. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

  He knew he’d heard enough. Horvat had Colleen. And Natasha. And probably Joe from Camelot.

  Hamish mouthed, “Let’s go,” and signalled their retreat.

  Zol reached for his cellphone. They’d call the police from the safe bustle of Mohawk Road.

  Two paces short of the gate, it opened in front of them. All Zol could see were the dark coats of two men approaching. The lengthening shadows obscured their faces.

  “Stop right there,” the shorter man barked.

  The latch clanged as the taller one pulled the gate shut.

  Zol found himself composing an innocent excuse for their presence in the yard.

  Then he saw the gun.

  “Hands in the air,” the shorter guy said.

  The tall one told Hamish to toss him his BlackBerry. The guy caught it and turned it off, then looked up, and his eyes met Zol’s. A flicker of recognition passed between them. Zol pictured smoky blue haze and walnut trim. This was the driver from the Cadillac SUV, a gorilla standing six foot five and two hundred seventy pounds. “Your phone too, Mr. Piece-of-Crap Minivan.”

  “Turn around, both o’ youse,” ordered the short guy with the gun. “Now over to the door, the one you were snoopin’ at.”

  They’d only taken a couple of steps before a young man in handcuffs stumbled out through the door. The man swayed and fell to the ground. Colleen and Natasha shuffled out behind him, hands tied behind their backs, their feet shackled with some sort of twine. Colleen’s hair was a mess. She’d put up a fight. His heart ached at the sagging defeat in her posture. Natasha’s bloodshot eyes loomed with terror and were brimming with the tears he knew damn well she was struggling to suppress.

  A stocky man with a large Slavic head came out next. Zol recognized him from his photo in The Spec, in which he’d seemed a fierce opponent to the Mexican judicial system. Viktor Horvat’s face was bloated, his back stooped, his eyes wary. On his tail was a tall man with a shaved head. He was holding a knife and seemed to be threatening Horvat with it, but Zol couldn’t be sure. Maybe he just had it at the ready. The guy glanced nervously around the yard as he exited the door and pulled it closed behind him. Zol saw who it was. Camelot’s cook, Nick.

  “Hey boys,” Nick called to the two enforcers behind Zol and Hamish. “What you got there?”

  The short guy waved his gun. “Got your hands full too, eh buddy?”

  “We can handle it,” Nick said. “Plenty of room in your Caddy.”

  Shorty jammed his weapon into Zol’s spine. “Anybody bleeding? You know how much I hate getting blood on my Moroccan leather.”

  “Not yet,” Nick told them. Zol pictured the scabby tattoo under Nick’s jacket, the menacing thunder of Niagara surging down his right arm.

  “Come off it,” Colleen said. “You really think you can silence six witnesses?”

  Horvat straightened up, glanced around the yard, then stepped away from the group by the door. “Only five.” He sneered at the man crumpled on the ground in handcuffs and hoofed him twice in the gut. “Or maybe four.” The man moaned but didn’t move.

  “Sorry to tell you, Viktor,” Colleen continued, “the Family doesn’t take kindly to loose ends. And you’re as loose as the rest of us.”

  Before Nick had a chance to acknowledge or refute Horvat’s favoured-member status, Horvat forced a nervous smile and pulled a revolver from beneath his jacket. Spittle oozed from his lips as he aimed the weapon at the man on the ground. His eyes seethed with festering hate. He shook his head and spat in the man’s face, then pulled the trigger.

  The yard roared with the thunder of three shots.

  Shorty’s gun dug deep into Zol’s spine, the searing pain nearly buckling his knees. He knew if he went down, that would be the end of him. Horvat would dispatch him too. And the others.

  “What you doin’, asshole?” Shorty called to Horvat. “Want the whole neighbourhood to know you can pull a trigger?”

  Nick put out his hand to Horvat. “Gimme the gun.”

  Horvat didn’t budge. He stood over the body, the gun wobbling in his hand. He looked disappointed, as if the killing hadn’t settled whatever bitterness had been rotting between them.

  Natasha was staring too, shoulders heaving.

  Colleen sought Zol’s face with her unblinking gaze. Without a coat, she was shivering. Natasha too. Colleen tightened her lips, but Zol could see they were quivering. The crinkles around her eyes said she was sorry, she’d miscalculated, she should have stayed out of Horvat’s hole. Tears welled in her eyes.

  Another wave of bile stung Zol’s throat. His arms felt like lead above his head. He forced down the bile and did his best to flash Colleen a forgiving wink. They couldn’t die with unresolved regrets.

  Nick fixed his scowl on Horvat and raised his knife. “I said, give me the gun.”

  Horvat studied the revolver, turned it over in his hands. Then he nodded as if he’d come to a decision. Cold indifference masked his face, a look more frightening than anger and hate. He hooked his finger on the trigger and aimed at Nick’s chest.

  Shorty whipped his gun out of Zol spine. Zol’s relief was instantaneous, but replaced by the terror of two guns poised for action. He braced for the gunfight no one would win, and fixed his eyes on Colleen’s.

  A vehicle lumbered up the alley. Everyone stiffened and turned to the approaching sound, a throaty engine with a hole in the muffler.

  Horvat lunged at Colleen, threw his left arm around her, and pressed the gun into her back.

  Nick scowled hatred at Horvat and palmed his knife.

  Shorty rammed his revolver against Zol’s spine.

  A moment later, a white Lincoln pitched into the yard and ground to a stop beside Horvat’s SUV.

  “Not a word out of any of youse,” Shorty said, “or Mr. Minivan here gets a hot lead souvenir.” He turned to his mate. “Get rid of them.”

  The gorilla guarding Hamish told him not to move a friggin’ muscle, then strode to the Lincoln’s front passenger window. The tinted glass rolled down, and an old man’s face appeared.

  In a loud, clear, speaking-to-the-elderly voice, the gorilla said, “Lost, aren’t youse?” He smiled honey into his face and pointed to the alley behind the Lincoln. “If youse return the way youse came and turn right, you’re gonna find Mohawk Road. Can’t miss it.” He swept the scene with his eyes. Zol thought the thug couldn�
��t have helped realizing how incriminating it all looked. The thug scratched his head, pawed the ground, then made a show of checking his watch and looking surprised at the time. “We’re, like, um, rehearsing a movie here. Need to get through this scene. One more time before dark. So if you’ll excuse us . . .”

  “We’re not the least bit lost,” Phyllis called sharply, climbing out of the driver’s seat.

  No one moved. They all watched her stride in front of the Lincoln.

  “I know this neighbourhood capite ad calce,” she continued. “Used to live two blocks south, so I know these back alleys head to toe.” She approached the gorilla. “Of course, a fellow like you never saw the inside of a Latin class. You’d have favoured detentions over declensions.”

  “What the —” the gorilla said.

  Phyllis stabbed the air with her bony forefinger. Her hat feather waved fearlessly in the wind gusting through the yard. “Yes, I dealt with your type every day at North Hamilton High.”

  Shorty twisted slightly so that Phyllis couldn’t see his gun digging into Zol’s spine. “Ma’am, I really must ask you to leave.” He looked at the darkening sky. “We’re up against a deadline here.”

  “And what sort of deadline involves Mr. Horvat over there?” Phyllis asked, her finger thrust toward the pharmacist. “The arrival of another shipment of phony pills?”

  Phyllis crossed the yard. She stopped in front of Horvat, who was still holding Colleen. “Unhand her this instant.”

  Horvat’s face remained impassive. Beside him, Nick stood tense and rigid; he had no idea how to respond to this brash old woman who sent back his overdone broccoli and refused his lukewarm soup.

  “In plain English, Viktor,” Phyllis said, “let go of her.” She reached out with both hands and grabbed Horvat’s left arm.

  His right arm swung out. His gun fired.

  Phyllis collapsed at Colleen’s feet.

  The blast tore through Zol’s ears. The sharp smell of cordite bit at his nostrils.

  No one moved.

  And then a voiced boomed from beside the Lincoln.

  “Two down. How many to go? Six? Seven? Eight?” Art Greenwood was out of the Lincoln and leaning on a cane. “Still plenty of us left at Camelot. Going to finish the job there as well?”