Karaoke Rap

by Laurence Gough

  “I take it you anticipate Mrs. Wismer effecting a withdrawal.”

  “A very large withdrawal,” said Willows.

  Sheridan nodded solemnly. He said, “I’ve tried to imagine what it must be like, to suddenly be snatched off your feet, have your life taken away from you, find yourself utterly helpless.” He shrugged. “I hope things turn out for the best.”

  Willows looked out at the streetscape, divided by the Venetian blinds into parallel strips.

  He wondered what had happened to Orwell.

  A man walked up to the window. He stared at the glass for a moment, ran a comb through his hair and then wandered away.

  Sheridan said, “Happens all the time. There’s a reflective privacy film on the glass. People treat the window as if it were a mirror.” He smiled wryly. “I suppose at times it would be fairly amusing, if I weren’t a bank manager.”

  A few minutes later Parker said, “There she is.”

  Willows leaned forward so he had a better view out the partly opened office door. Joan Wismer was labouring under the considerable weight of three green-and-black tartan suitcases. She looked flushed. Her body was distorted by the suitcases’ weight. Anything was heavy, if there was enough of it. Why should money be an exception to the rule?

  A bank employee held the door open for her. Willows waited until she had stepped outside and then started after her.

  The manager said, “What do you intend to do now?”

  “Thanks for your help, Mr. Sheridan,” said Parker as she followed Willows out the door.

  In the parking lot, Joan slammed the trunk lid on the three suitcases, withdrew her key and got into her car. Parker and Willows walked with all due haste towards the Ford.

  Dan Oikawa and Farley Spears sat in a pale-green Caprice parked nose out in the lane behind the Ford. Oikawa waggled his fingers. He turned and said something to Spears, but Spears didn’t look up from his donut.

  The two unmarked vehicles tailed Joan back to her house. Willows made a U-turn at the end of the block. By the time he’d come around, the Caddy had vanished inside the garage.

  “Now what?” said Parker.

  “We steal the cash, buy a couple of first-class tickets to someplace with a warm climate and easily corrupted politicians.”

  “Don’t even think about it, Jack. Especially not out loud.”

  The green Caprice filled the rearview mirror. Oikawa got out of the car, walked towards them.

  Parker rolled down her window.

  Oikawa said, “You heard about Eddy and Bobby?”

  “Yeah, what happened?”

  Oikawa crouched down, rested his forearms on the door frame. “The van had a leaky muffler. Despite Orwell’s objections, Bobby insisted on keeping the engine running so he could use the air-conditioner. The two of them sucked carbon monoxide all day long, dry-roasted their brains.”

  “But Eddy’s okay?”

  “Terminally embarrassed. Bobby broke his leg again. Neglected to fasten his seatbelt.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Joan Wismer’s Cadillac swept down the driveway, made a hard left and accelerated towards the end of the block.

  Parker started the Ford. She checked the gas gauge. Three-quarters of a tank. She pulled away from the curb. “If this is it, Jack, we’re going to need at least three more units.”

  Willows reached for the radio.

  39

  Three sides of the booth were enclosed by dusty glass panels framed in brushed aluminum. The fourth side faced the oncoming traffic and had a folding glass door. The door was wide open, wedged in place. The bottom hinge was broken. The lower panel of safety glass had been fractured by repeated violent blows. Somebody’s boot, somebody’s head.

  A semi rolled past, filling the booth with diesel fumes and dust, and the rich scent of hot asphalt.

  Cuing the tape, Dean pressed the play button. He watched the counter run down to zero, and then hit the pause button. He tucked the recorder under his arm and picked up the receiver, listened for the hum of the dial tone. He dropped a quarter in the slot, dialled a 1 and then 604 and then Joan Wismer’s seven-digit number.

  Down at the far end of the line, the phone began to ring. Long-distance tolls from payphones were murder. Dean got ready to shovel in the quarters.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Where was she? In the can, most likely. Was this a cop trick? He hung up. His quarter dropped down the chute and he retrieved it.

  Dean lit a cigarette. A more-or-less constant parade of Mercedes and BMWS and Jaguars cruised up and down the highway. He’d learned that there was all kinds of stuff to do in Whistler, even during the summer. You could ski up on the glacier. Play eighteen holes of golf. Swim. Go sailing or hiking or mountain-biking. Man, he couldn’t wait to get back to the city.

  A Mercedes zipped past and then a low-slung black BMW convertible flashed its turn signal, pulled off the highway. The Mercedes stopped in a cloud of fine grey dust that rolled away from the car and into the booth.

  The car had a vanity licence plate — SNOCONE. The driver was in her early twenties, a lissome blonde. She wore black sunglasses, a black tanktop, and skimpy black shorts. Dean couldn’t help wondering how she got all that leg into that little car.

  She slid the sunglasses down her pert nose. Her lipstick was pink, her eyes an offshore green, her teeth white as uncut cocaine.

  Dean thought she was nothing less than coronary-gorgeous. Struggling to maintain a degree of objectivity, he decided her teeth were too flawless, but otherwise she was perfect.

  She said, “Are you going to be long?”

  Dean gave her a king-size leer. “Long enough, sweetheart.”

  Still smiling, she spun the wheel and goosed it. The BMW’s rear tires spat a wheelbarrow full of dust and gravel into the close confines of the phone booth. The woman gave Dean a good look at her middle finger. Scarlet nail polish. No ring.

  Coughing and gasping, he staggered out of the booth. He lit a cigarette and stood there in the patchy sunlight, Waiting for the dust to clear. An RCMP cruiser rolled by, but the cop behind the wheel paid him no mind.

  Dean checked his watch. He’d fallen almost six minutes behind Ozzie’s ridiculous tight-ass schedule.

  He thought about Steve, in the freezer.

  He trotted back inside the dust-choked phone booth, and redialled Joan’s number.

  There was a short pause, a series of distant clanks that sounded like somebody in a suit of armour falling down an escalator. Finally Dean’s ears were filled with a ringing sound.

  Joan’s phone rang and rang.

  And rang.

  And rang.

  Where the hell was she?

  A sick feeling blossomed in the pit of Dean’s stomach, crept furtively into the highways and byways of his intestinal tract.

  Ring ring ring.

  Dean lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last.

  Ring ring. Ring.

  Ring.

  Where in hell was she?

  Ring ring ring. Ring ring ring.

  He hung up. His quarter dropped. He stepped out of the booth and walked blindly towards the rented van.

  Somehow, he could still hear the telephone ringing. How could that be? He started the van’s engine, turned in a tight circle and cut across the solid double, to the northbound side of the highway.

  His stomach churned. Man oh man. Was Ozzie going to be pissed? He was going to be royally pissed.

  A black BMW convertible with a blonde at the wheel overtook him at speed, sassily cut in front of him with no more than a few inches to spare. Dean’s heart soared, but only for a moment. Identical-model BMW. Identical-model blonde. Wrong plates.

  Dean flicked his cigarette out the open window, lit another. He’d never be able to forget the white-hot look that had raged across Ozzie’s eyes a moment before he’d dumped Steve in the freezer.

  No way Ozzie was dumping him into that freezer.

  Or Melanie either, Dean decided on the
spur of the moment. Starting to see himself, not a moment too soon, as one of the good guys. A guy who’d crunched a few toes but was finally learning how to dance.

  He leaned back against the rental’s bench seat. Who was he fooling? Nobody, not even himself. He was rotten to the marrow, doomed to stay rotten until the day somebody put him out of his misery. The ugly truth was that the caper had started to go wrong and he was looking for a way to bail out.

  In his opinion Harold was nothing but a couple of hundred pounds of undercooked steak. But Melanie was different. The girl had looks and brains. Maybe if he told her he wanted out and was willing to take her with him, she’d take him by the hand and lead him to an exit.

  40

  It was a nice day, and it was going to be a busy day. A day that was just packed. How many nice days could be left to a man Jake’s age? Not so many that he could afford to waste one. Not so many that he felt comfortable pondering the math.

  Acting on Jake’s instructions, Marty dialled an Italian deli on Broadway that Jake owned a piece of, as a result of a quick bet on a slow horse. Marty told the owner, Luigi or Mario or whatever the guy’s name was, that Jake was in the mood for a deluxe wicker picnic hamper for two hungry people, and that it better be ready in ten minutes.

  Axel wondered if he could come along for the ride. Smiling up at Marty with his gap-toothed, snaggly teeth, he said, “May I please come along for the ride, Marty?”

  Marty said, “No.”

  He took the Land Rover, detoured en route to a liquor store to buy a case of Amarone Recioto Della Valpolicella-Massi. The ’88, Jake had told him. The old man was awfully particular, for a guy whose taste buds were worn to a nub. Not that Marty blamed him. Jake was a liar and a fornicator and a thief and a killer. So, why shouldn’t he enjoy himself to the best of his limited abilities, given he didn’t have much time left in this world and chances were totally excellent that he was going straight to hell the minute the paramedics gave up on him?

  Marty paid cash for the wine, tucked the receipt in his wallet. At the deli, there was no bill to pay, unless you counted being fawned over by a guy who’d apparently spilled a bottle of cheap aftershave all over his face.

  Home again, Marty wheeled the Land Rover to the top of the driveway and found Axel and Jake waiting for him in the backseat of the Bentley, Jake’s scrawny body huddled under several cashmere car blankets. Axel was trying to trim his fingernails with a pair of wire-clippers. The Bentley was idling, the heater on full blast.

  Marty put the wicker picnic basket on the seat beside him, ran the seatbelt in and out of the curved handle, so the basket wouldn’t take a run at the burled walnut dashboard, in the event he had to slam on the brakes or crash a roadblock. He told Jake he was kind of warm. Feverish, actually. Would it be okay to turn down the heater?

  Jake said no.

  Crack a window?

  Forget it.

  Axel sat there next to Jake, rigid and silent, the thick, tight-curled hair on the expatriate’s muscular arms matted with sweat. A slick wet sheen on his bleached and bony face, a waterfall of sweat tumbling off his nose.

  Marty told himself, don’t worry about it. Jake was tense. A little joke coagulated in his brain. He smiled into the black sleeve of his suit. Jake was beyond tense. He was almost past tense.

  Who could blame him for being a little distraught, with eight extra-large hanging in the balance, the miserable crumbs of his life on the line.

  Jake said, “Ya got dat Motorola ya bought offa Danny?”

  “Yeah, Jake. Right here.”

  “Gimme.”

  Jake fumbled with a crumpled scrap of paper. His arthritic murderer’s trigger finger dialled Joan’s cellphone number one digit at a time.

  Axel said, “You vant a hand wiff that, Jake?”

  “Shaddap!”

  Joan picked up on the first ring.

  Jake said, “Hey, babe. It’s me. Ya got my fuckin’ cash?”

  “I think so, most of it,” said Joan. “I can’t tell, exactly, I haven’t had time to count it, but ...”

  Jake cut her off. “Ya skim a fiddle offa da top, ya gonna wish ya wasn’t quite so clever. I’m assumin’ da cops know Harry’s gone missin’?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Ya got cops parked outside ya residence, sittin’ in unmarked cars or delivery vans or whadever, drinkin’ col’ coffee outta paper cups, smokin’ cigarettes and blowin’ the smoke outta they noses?”

  Joan knew a rhetorical question when she heard one.

  Jake said, “Ya got my cash, put alia dem dollars inna trunk a ya Caddy dat’s a yea’ old, I unnerstand, and lookin’ kinda lame?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Okay, what ya gotta do now, ya gotta get inna car and drive away from da house, follow dis map I woiked out for ya.” Jake rested the phone in his lap. He sniffed the air. “Chicken?”

  “Roast beef,” said Axel. “Good red meat, und plenty of it.”

  Marty glared at him.

  Jake lifted the phone to his mouth. He said, “Ya inna car, Joan?”

  “I’m just starting the engine.”

  Jake heard the roar of the Caddy’s motor. He put his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Ya get da wine?”

  Marty said, “Yeah, I got it.”

  “A nice bottle of Scharzhofberger Riesling Spatlese would haff been so vunderful tasty,” said Axel.

  “Shaddap. Dere’s a full bottle in da basket?”

  Marty nodded.

  Jake leaned forward, patted Marty on the shoulder. Marty felt a sudden surge of warmth. He told himself not to get emotional, to stay calm. This was crazy, what they were doing.

  Jake said, “Joan, ya onna road?”

  “I’m just starting down the driveway. Now I’m turning on to the street

  “Okay, good. Dere’s some one-way streets. I’m gonna send ya down ’em da wrong way, but if ya drive careful, ya’ll do fine. Ya see any cars followin’ along behind ya, dat ya recognize as been hangin’ around ya street?”

  “Yes, a green car, a large green car.”

  “Ya gotta nice voice, Joan. Real womanly an’ smooth. Do like I say so I don’t gotta mess ya up.” Jake summoned up all his charm. He smiled into the receiver, and said, “Okay, Joan?”

  “Okay,” said Joan.

  Jake glanced up, saw Marty watching him in the mirror. He put his hand over the telephone and gave Marty explicit directions as to where to drive and how to get there. Marty nodded. A red tide crept slowly up the back of his neck and vanished into his haircut. All those sweaty, painful, expensive hours he’d invested in tae kwon-do, karate, kick boxing and tai chi. The thousands of dollars he’d spent on combat shooting and related courses in the bitter cold hills of Montana and Utah, the snake-infested swamps of Georgia and Alabama. And for what — so he could wear plain black shoes and a cheap black suit and a white polyester shirt and a peak cap with a shiny brim, so he could grow up to be a fuckin’ chauffeur?

  Jake said, “Joan, get on King Edward, an’ head east.”

  “Yes, all right. I have to turn around ...”

  “Take ya time, honey. Ya only gotta do dis once, so do it right. We don’ wanna hafta do dat machete t’ing, do we, baby?”

  Jake spread his palsied fingers wide. The phone dropped into his lap, making the blankets sag. He told Axel to get out his humidor full of Cuban cigars that would have cost him twenty dollars apiece, if he’d had to pay for them like a normal person. Axel used the wire-cutters to clip a cigar, sparked his lighter. Jake sucked in a lungful of smoke, exhaled. Marty was enveloped in a cloud of aromatic second-hand smoke.

  Axel thought that was pretty funny.

  The telephone squeaked.

  Jake picked up.

  Joan said, “I’m going east on King Edward.”

  “Okay, good. Take a right on Arbutus. Drive ta Forty-first an’ take anotha right. Lemme know when ya hit Granville.”

  Jake sat there, smoking his cigar and looking out the gr
een-tinted bulletproof window at his green-tinted world.

  Marty shifted in his seat. Leather creaked. He said, “You really think she can lose the cops, Jake?”

  “We haff no problems!” hissed Axel.

  “Da cops got no choppa or we’d a seen it. Cars ain’t no problem, I don’t care how many dey got. Plus, me’n’ Joan got a deal woiked out, based on I’m gonna kill her, she fucks up.”

  Marty nodded. Sure thing, Jake. No chopper, no problem. Did Jake have any functioning brain cells left in his wizened old head? One or two, maybe. But definitely not three.

  41

  Joan had lived in the city most of her life, but she drove like the ultimate tourist; a stranger in a strange land who was unsure as to where she was going and how she ought to get there.

  If there was anything at all about her driving that was consistent, it was her remarkable inconsistency. The Cadillac would keep pace with the flow of traffic for a few blocks, suddenly accelerate, navigate several abrupt lane changes and then an unsignalled left or right turn onto a side street, slow to a crawl or even come to a full stop.

  Joan’s police escort consisted of a single unmarked car on each flank, a third car keeping pace ahead of her and two more behind. From time to time the lead car would drop back, exchange places with one of the flanking or following vehicles.

  After half an hour of this, Joan pulled into a full-service bay at the Forty-first and Granville Esso. She had the Caddy’s tank filled with premium, the glass cleaned, the fluid levels and air pressure in all four tires checked.

  Parker said, “Looks as if she’s planning a good long run.”

  Willows agreed.

  The Caddy burnt rubber just as the traffic light changed, narrowly missed the startled gas jockey, and ran the red against seven lanes of surging south-and northbound traffic. Brakes squealed. Glass shattered. Metal crumpled. Horns blared.

  Willows blipped the siren as Parker drove up on the sidewalk, back onto the road, over bits and pieces of high-impact plastic and clouds of crunchy safety glass.

  Oikawa’s green Caprice filled Parker’s rearview mirror.