by Marc Strange
Not Jamaica this time. Maybe just check into a nice hotel for a week. Room service, spa, swimming pool, good bartender, did she mention room service? Forget about packing up Paulie’s stuff. Let Lacsamana and Heatley have a week to go through the place with sniffer dogs if they wanted. They had everything she’d found and if there was any more, they could find it for themselves. And she’d stay away from her place as well, except to pack a bag. Wouldn’t need much, credit cards, maybe she’d do some shopping, buy something, just to be buying something. Mostly just sleep a lot and get massages and watch movies. Sounding better and better.
“You want to come out and get drunk?”
“I don’t drink,” Stacy said.
“You want to come out and watch me get drunk?”
“Sure.”
“You can have the couch — it folds out if you want, but it works okay as is. I’d offer you the bed, but I don’t think I’ve made it up for a month and there may be socks hidden under the blankets. Or worse.”
“This will do fine,” Stacy said.
“I’d apologize for the mess except that it usually looks like this and I’d really be apologizing for what I am. Which is a slob.”
“It’s not dirty, just disorganized.”
“Right. Exact opposite of Paulie. His house, organized; his life, a mess.”
“Your house disorganized, your life . . .”
“Okay, not the exact opposite. But when it comes to the job. Notes, reports, details. I’ve got that shit covered.” She checked the refrigerator. “There’s a Red Bull, a Yoplait and a bottle of water.” She yanked the cork out of a mostly full bottle of Spanish red. “I’ll be drinking wine. Lots of wine.”
“I’m okay for now.” Stacy shifted a stack of newspapers and magazines and sat on the couch.
Adele grabbed a tall water glass decorated with flowers, filled it, had a big slurp and topped it up. She sat across from Stacy and the two women stared at opposite walls for a long moment. “I have a couple of pictures I should probably hang. Spruce up the place.”
“Pictures of what?” Stacy had trouble with the words.
“Oh shit, I don’t know. Scenery.” She had another drink. “They came with the last joint.” They were both laughing. “Getting there,” she said. “You don’t drink at all?”
“My parents were boozers. Both of them. It was a cautionary childhood.”
“My parents were Christers. Probably why I say fuck so much. But I still pray. Sometimes I do both at the same time.” She drained the glass, studied the flowers for a moment. “Grova died of a heart attack, possibly brought on by ‘enhanced interrogation,’ but no direct connection. No prints, no weapon.”
“So no murder charge.”
“ME says he died around 03:30, give or take. The Russians have an alibi.”
“What about the dancer?”
“She has an alibi, too, not quite so solid, but it hasn’t fallen apart yet.”
“They turning her loose?”
“Tomorrow. If they don’t charge her. Why? You want her?”
“I figured I’d give her a lift home.”
“Why not?” She stood up. “Sure you don’t want something? We could send out. There’s a Chinese place a block away.”
“Maybe later.”
Adele came back from the kitchen with the bottle and refilled her glass. There were wine-red brackets beside her upper lip. “Stupid motherfucking bastard. I couldn’t count the number of times I told him to shape up. Fat lot of good that was, save my fucking breath.”
“He must have had some good qualities.”
“Oh yeah. He was a prince.” She slumped in her chair. “Never met a rule he couldn’t bend. Or break.” She sat with the glass at her mouth for a while. “Got my brother off a drug charge a couple of years back. Claimed he was a confidential informant. He didn’t have to do that. Could’ve got his ass in a sling for it.”
“Did it for you.”
“He brought Jamie here and gave him the lecture. Yada yada, you’re going to wind up dead or doing time and the only person on the planet who gives a shit whether you live or die gave up on your sorry ass a long time ago, yada yada.”
“Did it work?”
“Oh yeah. For a while. Jamie was clean for a year, more than a year. He wound up dead anyway.” Her glass was empty. The bottle was empty. “I’m over it now. You have to get past things like that.” She was holding the empty glass in one hand and the empty bottle in the other. “Paulie didn’t have to do it. But he did it. I can’t hate him.” She put the empties on the coffee table. “Question is . . .”
“Is?”
“Do we go out, or do I try to sleep?”
“Long day.”
“Yep. Long day.”
The bar was dimly lit and sparsely populated and within walking distance. The bartender recognized Adele. “Hey, Del. Where’s the big guy?”
“Oh, you know, probably chasing something blonde. Give me a half of the house red and a Perrier for my driver.” She led the way to a table in a quiet corner. “I don’t want to get into it tonight,” she said. “I’ll tell him some other time.”
Stacy had a careful look around. “This a cop bar?”
“Shit no, hookers and dart players. Hate cop bars. Nothing but cops.”
“Don’t like cops tonight?”
“I like working with cops, most cops; don’t like drinking with them. Cop talk. Tonight they’ll be cop-talking about you-know-who and how he fucked up and maybe shot somebody and stole some jewels, got his head blown off, and I’d wind up getting into a fight with some asshole.”
The server put the wine and water on the table and Stacy handed her a twenty. Adele couldn’t locate her wallet. “This is mine,” Stacy said.
“Okey dokey,” said Adele. She lifted the carafe and slopped some on the table. Stacy took it from her, filled her glass neatly and wiped the table with a napkin. “I’m getting there,” Adele said.
“You’ve probably worked it out for yourself, you don’t need me rubbing it in.”
“Go ahead.”
“If I was building a case, if I wasn’t teamed up with you and getting involved in your version, if I was coming into this cold, I’d be looking at Paul.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“He had the gems, his gun might be the murder weapon, he was at the Beaches crime scene. He took diamonds from there.”
“All that. I see all that. Only thing in his favour, he wasn’t in Montreal in 1982 because in 1982 he was playing college basketball in Syracuse.”
“Right. Good place to start. When did Paul and Dylan team up?”
“Dylan quit football in 1982, broken toe I think. Went to the police academy. Got his shield twelve years later. ’94. His first partner retired in ’96. In January ’97, Dylan is teamed up with Paulie in the homicide unit.
“They called them the ‘Jock Squad.’ Basketball star, six eight, two hundred pounds; Argos defensive tackle, six five, two seventy. I saw them in action a few times when I was in uniform. Impressive team. The kind of dicks you really don’t want going through your laundry and bothering your customers. And you definitely didn’t want to piss them off.”
“Scarier than you and me?”
“Not as polite. Nobody fucked with them.”
“They got along?”
“Closed a lot of cases. Paul didn’t talk too much about it. I know he had to cover for Dylan a few times. Par for the course, right? I was always covering Paulie’s ass. But I got the impression it was more than that. Paulie wouldn’t rat out his partner, but there were plenty of rumours around the division. Things went missing, defence witnesses didn’t show up when they were supposed to, not everything got turned in. Once in a while Paulie would let something slip, like some guy we busted who had a suitcase full of cash. Paulie said, ‘Put D
il’s twenty percent in a separate bag.’ It was a joke, but later he said, ‘Forget I said that.’”
“How about when you were with Paul? Was he straight arrow?”
“See, that’s the weird part. We were together five years and seven months, and he never once made a sleazy move. He was always bending the rules in his favour, and he got raked over the coals plenty for how he got results, but I never saw him take a bribe, or a free lunch, or even hint that we could get something extra if we wanted to.” Adele picked up the carafe and swished it back and forth a couple of times. She put it down without refilling her glass. “Possession of stolen jewels? Out of character.”
Stacy leaned closer. “So I’m thinking, if the Russians didn’t mess up the pawnbroker and likely cause his heart to explode, and if his son didn’t do it, and if the dancer lady didn’t do it . . .”
Adele took a moment to work her way through what Stacy was talking about. “There’s somebody else out there. Who we missing?”
“There’s the brother. The other Grova.”
“Montreal Grova? Nope. They called him at home. He’s pushing eighty. He’ll be here tomorrow to collect the ashes.”
“Releasing the body already?”
“They hurried it up. The Grovas are Jews. They don’t leave dead bodies around if they can help it.”
“That’s nice. You should talk to him anyway.”
“Not my case. I’m staying clear.” She looked at the empty glass. “What’s he going to tell us?”
“Who knows? Maybe who else might be involved. They were doing stolen jewels in Montreal, too.”
“That they were. But what, twenty-five years ago?”
“Which is when the first smuggler got herself killed.” Stacy pulled out her notebook. “Ludmilla Dolgushin. That’s one dead body your partner didn’t have anything to do with. Then there’s the second dead smuggler.”
“Nimchuk. The jury’s still out on that one.”
“Not him.” She turned a page. “That would be . . . Vassili Abramov. He’s the dead guy in the Beaches with the diamonds in his pocket. Eight years ago. Another one your partner didn’t kill.”
“Probably.”
“I’d say pretty sure. So add it up, somebody has been knocking off the smugglers one by one, and you can’t stick it all at your partner’s door. Because if he didn’t do the other two, if he just did Nimchuk, then that’s a really big coincidence.”
“Seriously.”
Seven
Sunday, March 20
Orwell was a late-night house roamer. He often fell asleep in his little office under the stairs and woke with a crick in his neck and a need for a small bite of something sweet. After an hour of foraging, checking the weather, looking for the Fancy Fowl magazine he’d misplaced, making certain that the house was secure and all who should be home were home, he would take himself to bed. Only to be up again long before dawn, fussing with paperwork and fretting about inconsequentials just to have something to occupy his mind. Erika was by now accustomed to her husband’s odd routines. She had tried on many occasions to ease him into a “normal” schedule of sleep, plying him with hot milk, Ovaltine and cocoa. But while he was happy to have a warm drink in the evening, especially if a couple of sugar cookies were on the saucer, he tended to fall asleep in a chair as easily as in a bed, and rarely spent more than three hours in any one location.
Saturday night and pre-dawn Sunday were even more unstructured than usual. Detective Stacy Crean’s lengthy phone report had dragged him from the dinner table just as dessert was being served and had lasted until dishes were being put away. By the time Stacy had finished giving him the high points of her excursion, his family was scattered to who knows where and he was reduced to eating dessert alone at the kitchen table, a not entirely unhappy occasion (an ample slice of Erika’s mixed berry crumble, an unfinished Saturday crossword to wrestle with) but not as agreeable as it might have been with all family members present for the weekend recap and projections. He never did get to hear how close Patty and Gary were to pinning down a date (sometime in June if possible), or how brilliant Leda was in rehearsal that afternoon, or how Diana’s meeting with Georgie went, if in fact she was inclined tell him.
04:30 Sunday morning found him back under the stairs checking his murky aquarium for signs of fish and replaying Stacy’s verbal report in his mind. Sounded like an exciting trip, even though Stacy was prone to gloss over the bits where she beat people up. The retrieval of the missing handgun was satisfying. The possibility that it had been used in a homicide was unfortunate. The unspoken awareness that the murder might very well have been committed by a member of the Toronto police force was troubling. But however you looked at it, the excursion had been a success. Stolen gems were recovered, suspects were arrested, a missing woman was located. All parties had been processed, interviewed, and their overnight accommodations arranged. Stacy had done everything expected of her and more. She really was too good to be stuck in Dockerty for an entire career. As much as he would hate to lose her, if he could help her move on, he would.
“Anybody alive in there?” It was Diana, in the doorway, pointing at the aquarium.
“Oh. Well. Oscar’s fat and sullen, as usual, but I thought I saw a fishlet lurking in the weeds at the bottom.”
“A fishlet?”
“A little Molly or Platy or some kind of hybrid minnow critter. Oscar ate all the grown-up live-bearers but mayhap there’s a tiny survivor in there.”
“Stay out of sight if he knows what’s good for him.”
“You’re up early.”
“Beat some of the traffic back to Toronto. You want coffee, Dad?”
“Oh sure, I’ll make some.”
“It’s already made.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “When I make coffee in the morning it wakes up the whole house.” He sat at his end of the table and watched her fix him a cup. “You and Georgie come to any arrangement?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s all raring to go.” There was amusement in her eyes as she watched him struggle to appear disinterested. “It’s okay, Dad. I haven’t even spoken to our client yet.”
“Our client.”
“That’s assuming Carey-Michelson & Carey will turn me loose to work with Georgie.”
“Is there a possibility they won’t?”
“They’re touchy about image. They might not think it’s in the firm’s best interests.”
“And if they say you can’t?”
“Then I’ll have a tough decision to make. I’d be walking away from a good spot with a very classy outfit.”
“You’d do that?”
“As I said, tough decision.”
The stars were still out when they walked to her car. A first-quarter moon was falling in the west. Horse noises from the barn, clomping and blowing.
“What’s today? The twentieth?”
“Sunday.”
“Tomorrow’s the equinox,” he said. “Start of spring.”
“Damn cold for spring,” she said.
“Nevertheless,” said Orwell. “Your mother’s snowdrops are up. They know what time of year it is.”
She got behind the wheel, cinched up, checked her mirrors, aware that he was making sure everything was done properly. “Listen up, Dad, if my getting involved in this is going to cause you any grief, I won’t even consider it.”
“Somebody has to defend the poor bugger.”
“Doesn’t have to be the police chief’s daughter.”
“Ha! That does make it more . . .”
“Complicated.”
“I don’t mind complicated,” he said. “As long as we observe the rules we’ll be okay.”
“Who knows if I’ll even be involved?” she said. “They could tell me to forget it.”
“Anything you decide is okay by me, sweetheart.” He patted the roof of the car. “Drive safe.”
She had red hair like her father, and the fair freckled skin and bright blue eyes that went with it. She was locking her bike in the rack at the condo entrance. Adele felt a melancholy flutter — the wide mouth, tiny creases at the corners, so much like Paulie’s. “Danielle. Hi. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, you know.”
“How’s your mom holding up?”
“She’s okay, too. She’s sorry it happened, you know, she cried, a little bit.”
“How about you? You cried?”
“Sure. Of course I did. We were supposed to go away for March break. He said we’d do something special. He was always saying stuff and then it never happened. I was used to it. I figured he forgot.”
Adele collected Paulie’s mail and jammed it into her coat pocket. “I’ll deal with it. I’ll deal with it,” she muttered. “Just not. Right. Now.” The elevator doors opened. Danielle took a step back. “We don’t have to go up,” Adele said. “This can wait.”
“It’s okay.”
It didn’t look like Lacsamana and Heatley had even been in the place. The cups from Sunday morning were still on the coffee table, the rolltop desk was shut up tight, the room hadn’t been searched.
Danielle went first to look at the framed photographs covering most of one wall. Many of the pictures were of her. “I’ve only been up here two times,” she said. “Mostly we’d go to a movie.”
“He loved you a lot.”
“Oh sure, I know.”
“He wants you to have his pension and insurance and whatever else there is. He wanted to make sure your . . . that it went to you. Only you. So he asked me to set up some kind of trust or something, I don’t know shit about stuff like that. I’ll get a lawyer to work out something. He figured you could use the money to go to school, university. You planning on going to university?”
