Rocks Beat Paper

by Mike Knowles

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  I heard the car coming. I couldn’t tell if it was Elliot; the snow had been falling on me for a while and the wind had helped it do its job faster. Buried in a shallow grave of snow, I had no way of telling how long I had been laying there, but I wasn’t cold anymore and that meant it had been too long.

  The car stopped next to me and the door opened. It was time to see if Elliot was as clever as he said he was. It’s a scary thing relying on someone else to be exactly what you think they are; especially when what you think they are is a cold, calculating murderer. If Elliot was any other kind of murderer, he would get to be one again really soon. But if he was the kind of killer I thought he was, he would know that it would be a terrible idea to shoot me. A gunshot would announce his presence and put anyone inside on guard. If it was Elliot, and he was clever, he’d leave the body alone, but he’d check it.

  He kicked me first. The snow did little to protect me, but the cold had made everything numb. I heard the kicker grunt and then felt rough hands pull me up by my jacket.

  “Heh, looks like someone did my job for me,” Elliot said before he dropped me. I heard another grunt as he straightened up. “Let’s see what they left me.”

  I listened to Elliot’s boots as they trudged through the snow. I counted the steps waiting for thirty. At twenty-five, I opened my eyes and looked to my right. The car was still there and it was still running. I risked a look towards the garage and saw Elliot’s heavy frame against the side of the building.

  I tried to sit up, but my arms and legs didn’t respond; at least, not right away. What should have been a sit up was more of a spasm. I tried again and got my knees under me. Elliot was no longer visible when I got to my feet. The five feet separating me from the tan Nissan Sentra took half a minute to traverse. It was impossible to lift my legs more than a few inches off the ground, so I had to work at driving my shins straight through the snow. I tried to open the car door, but my fingers wouldn’t respond to my brain’s commands. I tried again and again, but got nowhere. When I heard the first shot, I gave up on the handle. I lifted my arm, pivoted my hips, and drove my elbow into the driver’s side window. My arm bounced off the glass, and I fell onto my ass.

  I heard another shot as I climbed to my feet. I looked at my hands; the cold had left them limp and useless, and I didn’t have time to do anything about it. I braced myself and leaned back as far as I could without falling. When I reached my limit, I leaned forward taking my weight on shaky legs. I repeated the motion, building up shaky momentum as I moved back and forth. When I had enough momentum to make up for my lack of strength, I gritted my teeth and drove my body forward — hard. My head collided with the window and made a hole the size of my forehead in the glass. The window pebbled where I struck it and the glass fell into the car. I put two hands against the car and fought to stay standing. Ignoring the stars I was seeing, I tried my elbow again. The hole had weakened the glass enough for me to knock out a larger hole with my elbow. I clumsily jammed my arm through the hole and began searching for the handle; it was the feeling that was the problem — I couldn’t feel anything. I used my elbow to knock out the rest of the glass and then forced my torso into the window. Gravity was the only friend I had in the world, and she pulled me the rest of the way in.

  I had to wriggle through the window, and the awkward motion spilled me onto the body in the passenger seat. Diego was slumped forward against the dashboard with a neat hole in the side of his head. I ignored the body and focused on the dashboard. The dials said heat was coming out of the dashboard vents. I slapped my palms against them and held them there while I positioned my foot on the gas.

  I heard two more shots, and then, seconds later, another bang came from the garage. My hands had begun to hurt, but they had also started moving. I tested moving the gearshift and found I could get the Sentra into drive. I put both hands on the wheel and waited. Someone was going to leave the garage, and I was ready for them with the only weapon available — a Japanese import with worn snow tires.

  As minutes ticked by on the dashboard clock, my body began to shake uncontrollably as it fought to regain the heat it lost. My guts ached, but my hands weren’t yet ready to explore the wound. I needed more time before I attempted anything that required fine motor skills. I looked beside me at Diego #1 and wondered where Elliot had left his brother’s body. I took a hand off the vent and pawed at Diego. I didn’t think Elliot would have left anything of value on him, but I had to be sure. I didn’t find anything useful on Diego, but while I was going through his pockets I noticed a duffel bag in the back seat. I tried to bring the bag forward, but it was heavy and the effort put a strain on my stomach that sent a searing pain through my torso. I checked the garage; the only thing I could see was light spilling through the open door and onto the snow. I wiggled my fingers and watched as they painfully responded to my instructions. I didn’t waste any time lifting my shirt. It was dark in the car, but I didn’t need the light; the bullet hole wouldn’t tell me anything, but the placement would speak volumes. The closer the hole was to the centre of my body, the worse things would be. I leaned back and grunted through the pain. I wiped away the blood with the edge of my hand and saw a small circle that was darker than everything else in the car — it was three inches above my hip bone. I laughed and it hurt, but I kept laughing. The bullet wouldn’t kill me; at least, not right away. Ahead of me, the light on the snow flickered as a black Toyota nosed out the door. Everything that needed to be settled with bullets was done, and it was finally time for the getaway.

  Almost.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Elliot had chosen wisely. This car was small, but the snow tires were good. The Sentra’s wheels spun for a second and then it began to rapidly pick up speed. The back end began to swing to the right, but the small change in direction didn’t matter when I was so close to the target.

  The Toyota was halfway out the door when my Nissan hit the passenger’s side and drove it into the side of the garage door. I had been aiming for the tire, but I settled for the T-bone. For a split second, I saw the driver’s form react in surprise to the oncoming Nissan, and then the impact drove whoever it was into the side window.

  I backed up and floored the car into the Toyota a second time. This time, the Nissan didn’t drift — it was a perfect line drive. The airbags exploded violently in stereo like a sudden savage magic trick and obscured what I could see of the other car. I put the car in park and slipped past the already deflating bag. I reached in through the shattered passenger window and opened the door. My hands had baked long enough on the vent to accomplish the task on the first try. Whoever had been driving wasn’t visible behind the airbags, but I saw the two duffel bags on the passenger seat. I took the bags and put them in the back seat of the Nissan. On my way back to the Toyota, I ran my eyes over the interior of the garage. Miles wasn’t on the floor anymore — Elliot had taken his place. I changed my heading and walked to the pudgy body on the concrete and the pistol still in his hand. I picked up the gun before I looked over the body. Elliot had two holes in his chest that were making a wet sucking sound. A little while ago, our roles had been reversed and Elliot made the clever decision to leave me for dead — I was tired of being clever. I pointed the gun at his head and stole what little time he had left on this earth.

  I walked back to the Toyota and looked inside. The airbag had deflated, and I could see Monica low in the driver’s seat. She was alive, but unconscious. She had settled her score; I pointed the gun and settled mine.

  “You going to kill me, too?”

  I stepped back and opened the rear door. Miles was on the floor with his belt wrapped around his leg just above the knee. “You going to make it?”

  “I’ll make it to trial if you leave me laying here.”

  I put the gun away and held out my hand. When he was out of the car, Miles steadied himself on my shoulder and looked inside at Moni
ca. “You didn’t have to kill her,” he said.

  “Would you have done it?”

  Miles shook his head.

  “Then yeah, I did.”

  “She wasn’t a bad person; she just couldn’t get past what happened to her.”

  “The past was the problem. She was a getaway driver who couldn’t get away.”

  “We brought her back too soon. She wasn’t ready for this.”

  I shook my head. “What happened changed her. She wasn’t part of our crew anymore. Monica was just another player on an already crowded board. She was playing her own game with her own set of rules and her own stakes.”

  Miles groaned as he adjusted his weight. “So this is what winning feels like?”

  “You think winning should make you feel like you want to go to Disneyland.”

  Miles shrugged the shoulder that wasn’t resting on me. “It shouldn’t feel like this.”

  “That place is for quarterbacks who win games with rules and referees. That isn’t any kind of place for people like us. The games we play are never fair and they never end clean. They just end.”

  “I guess that’s something.”

  “It’s enough. Are you ready to walk away from this?”

  Miles looked at his leg. He laughed and then he groaned. “I won’t be ready to walk for a while, but I’m ready to go.”

  I tightened my grip on Miles and turned him towards the Nissan. I opened the door and Miles managed to get himself inside. When I got behind the wheel, he was pulling his leg into the car.

  He slammed the door and leaned back against the headrest. “Y’know, there’s nothing that says we can’t go to Disneyland.”

  I backed the car up and experimented with turning the wheel. The tires responded the way they should have. “You want to go to Magic Kingdom?”

  “We won. I think it is a natural progression. Plus, there are thousands of people in and out every day. It’s the perfect place to lay low.”

  “You really think you’d blend in at the happiest place on earth?”

  Miles went quiet and closed his eyes. I thought he had dropped it; then he spoke without looking at anything. “Where do we go? Where do guys like us go after we win?”

  “Forward,” I said. “We go forward one step at a time. We’ll start with a doctor and then find Donny.”

  Miles laughed. “Do you really think that little shit is going to help us after what you did to him?”

  “We’ll find out,” I said. “We have enough carats to deal with a ton of bad blood.”

  “And if he’s not moved by our haul?”

  “We can find someone else,” I said. “Or I could shoot him again.”

  Miles sighed. “You think it will come to that?”

  “No. We have something better than cash to a man like Donny.”

  “Rocks beat paper,” Miles said.

  “They do. They also forgive a multitude of sins. If you have enough of them.”

  “Rocks or sins?”

  I looked at Miles and then at the bags in the back seat. “Take your pick. We’ve got plenty of both.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MIKE KNOWLES lives in Hamilton with his wife, children, and dog. His Wilson mystery In Plain Sight was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. Rocks Beat Paper is the sixth book in the Wilson Series.

  TRY ANOTHER GREAT READ FROM ECW PRESS...

  The Hell of It All “A stylish noir.” — The Globe and Mail on The Drop Zone

  Retired detective T.J. Peterson is working the table scraps that his former partner, Danny Little, sometimes throws his way. One of them has Peterson hearing from a snitch about a body buried 30 years ago, the same time a drug kingpin went MIA. Peterson is also ducking an ex-con with a grudge, a hitman who likes playing jack-in-the-box with a 12 gauge. Then a former lover re-enters Peterson’s life and begs him to find her daughter, an addict who knows too much about the local drug trade for her own safety. The search for the girl and the truth about the 30-year-old corpse takes Peterson down into the hell of it all, deep into the underworld of crack houses, contract killing, money laundering, and crooked professionals doubling down on their investments of black money.

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  Copyright © Mike Knowles, 2017

  Published by ECW Press

  665 Gerrard Street East

  Toronto, on M4M 1Y2

  416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Knowles, Mike, author

  Rocks beat paper / Mike Knowles.

  (A Wilson mystery)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77041-101-2 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-77305-030-0 (PDF)

  ISBN 978-1-77305-029-4 (ePub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Knowles, Mike. Wilson mystery.

  PS8621.N67R63 2017 C813’.6 C2016-906386-0 C2016-906387-9

  Cover design: David Gee

  Cover image: © Logan Zillmer/

  Trevillion Images

  Interior image: blood spatter © itchySan/iStockphoto

  The publication of Rocks Beat Paper has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We also acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,737 individual artists and 1,095 organizations in 223 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.