by Marc Strange
Darryl had a brief glance, pushed it away. “What about them?”
“You know either one of them?”
“Not especially.”
“Not ‘especially.’ What does that mean, exactly?”
This time he helped himself to a drink. “Because this is like the main guy I stayed away from, know what I’m sayin’? Whenever he showed up, I made myself scarce.”
“Which one?”
“That big black fucker.”
Stacy folded the brown bag and put it in her pocket. “I guess they had private business to discuss,” she said.
Darryl leaned across the counter and drummed his finger on Dylan O’Grady’s image. “You know this guy, right?” His tongue was already thick. “Used to be one of you guys. Carried a badge. His fucking passport to whatever the fuck he wanted to do. Wave it under my nose. Making jokes about people he’d ‘disappeared.’ Not funny jokes. Got this loud voice. ‘Hey Darryl, how’d you like free room and board for about seven years at the Crown’s expense? I can arrange it anytime you say. Heh heh heh,’ and then he flips his coat open so I can see his gun again like I haven’t seen it fifty times already. A real asshole.”
“Was he here a lot?”
“Couple times he wasn’t around for a year, then he’d be showing up once a week, middle of the night, private meeting, here’s ten bucks, fuck off. Two o’clock in the fucking morning. In fucking December. Where the fuck am I supposed to fuck off to?”
“Right. And where did you fuck off to?”
“Depends. Not too late I’d go next door. Have a few beers. Wait for him to leave.”
“If it was too late?”
“I’d let myself into the store. Stay down here.”
“Sure,” Adele said. “Have a look, Stace. In here. Doesn’t look too bad.”
Stacy joined her at the open door. The back room had a saggy couch with a blanket thrown over the back. There was a coffee maker and a small refrigerator, two chairs and a table covered with magazines and comic books. The magazines featured huge-breasted women, the comic books had superheroes on the covers. “Looks comfortable,” Stacy said. “And listen to that. I can hear the TV upstairs.”
Darryl pushed his way between them and flopped on the couch. He didn’t spill a drop. “My girlfriend. She’s cleaning up, moving in. Probably.”
“That’s nice,” said Stacy. She pulled up a chair and sat close to him. “So you’d be sitting down here, reading your magazines, drinking coffee, or beer maybe, waiting for the big man to leave.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So. So come on, Darryl. You can tell us.” She poked him teasingly. “Come on. You were listening, weren’t you? You could hear what they were talking about.”
Adele pulled up the other chair. “I bet you could sure as shit hear what the big asshole was saying, couldn’t you?”
He looked at the two women, from one face to the other. They were hemming him in, but they were also listening to him. “Think they’re so fuckin’ smart.”
“Who does?”
“All do. Louie and his secret meetings. Big frickin’ deals.”
“So you were eavesdropping.”
“Don’t give a fuck. Looking out for my interests. That black prick threatens me one more time he’ll get a big fuckin’ surprise.”
“Oh yeah? That’s great. Because we’d like to surprise him too.”
“Like to surprise his ass into the gas chamber. Strap him to a fuckin’ gurney and shove some serious shit up his arm.”
“We don’t have the death penalty.”
“Yeah. That’s a crying fucking shame. People like that. Prick bastard. Deserve to fucking die.”
“Why?”
“You wanna know what really makes me laugh? I just fuckin’ crack up?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“They send me outta the room like I’m some kid gets on their nerve. Ah, he doesn’t know shit. Fuck off for a while, Darryl, let the big men do some business. Fuck ’em. Whatta they think I do? Disa-fucking-ppear?”
“Of course not. You come down here and listen in. What is it, an air vent or something? Lets the sound come down?”
“Better.”
“Better?”
“Oh, way better.”
“Come on Darryl, we’re on your side here. If you can provide us with any ammunition . . .”
“Ammunition. Fuck. I’ve got a nuke-ular frickin’ missile. I’ve got a weapon of fucking mass de-fucking-struction.”
Adele touched Stacy on the shoulder. Pointed to the cassette deck sitting on the shelf above the coffee machine. “Holy shit, Darryl. You’ve got them on tape.”
They went to Paul Delisle’s apartment. They had six cassettes — JVC, Sony and 3M. None were dated. “He’s got a cassette deck somewhere,” Adele said. “Maybe two. He always liked having a backup.” She stood in the middle of the living room looking lost. The place was still a jumble of half-packed boxes, half-read report files. “Plus there’s coffee. We’ll probably be up late.”
Stacy saw it. “Right up there. Top shelf. The silver thing. Can you reach it?”
“One thing I’m good for.”
It was a Sony unit, CD/cassette/AM-FM, with speakers. Stacy cleared a space on a side table and found a place to plug it in. “Hated doing that,” she said.
“Doing what? Taking his property? We gave him a receipt.”
“Enabling. Getting him drunk. Al-Anon would not approve.”
“Give me a break. You figure we blew his last chance at sobriety?”
“Not the point.”
“No. I get it. Too close to home, right?”
“They used to send my brother out to buy for them. Fake ID. He wasn’t old enough.”
“Yeah. That sucks.”
“In the end he got just as messed up as they were.”
“It bother you when I have a drink?”
“Nope. It just scares the hell out of me that I might have a genetic predisposition to go down the same road. I’d like to avoid that if possible.”
“Well, give yourself a pass on this one, partner. Did it for the greater good. We nail Dylan O’Grady’s ass to the wall, it’ll wash away all sins.” She gave Stacy a rough one-arm hug and pushed her toward the kitchen. “Make coffee.”
“Place stinks.”
“That’s Dylan,” said Adele.
(unintelligible)
“You know that? Stinks? Like rotten marmalade.”
“Kid won’t wash up.”
“What kid? He’s over forty! Jesus! Your legs broken? You can’t turn on the hot water tap? Have a little respect for yourself.”
“Make an appointment; I’ll get a Molly Maid.”
“That’s Louie?” Stacy asked.
“Probably.”
“Never any place to sit around here.”
“Move some stuff.”
“No place to sit, nothing to eat or drink. You run a class operation.”
“You want food, look in the fridge.”
“Have you looked in your fridge, Louie?”
“There we go. It’s him.”
“You know what’s in there? You’ve got creatures living in the pork fried rice.”
(long break in conversation, sounds of things being moved, dropped to the floor, television turned on, Jeopardy audible in the background)
“Jeopardy. 7:30 to 8,” Stacy said. “We might get the date from the episode.”
“Yeah right: when did they ask the two-hundred-dollar question about Nairobi?”
“No. Seriously. That’s the College Championship. You could track it down.”
“You watch that show? Probably get all the answers, don’t you?”
“Mostly.”
(long silence)
“Wh
at the hell are they doing?”
“Watching Alex Trebek.”
“Fuck, how many hours of this we have to wade through?”
“You had a visitor, last week.”
“Here we go.”
“Yeah, it’s a store. People come in.”
“You had a visitor up here.” (chair being moved) “My partner dropped by for a chat, didn’t he?”
“Whoa. This is at least seven years ago,” Adele said. “Dylan’s still a cop.”
“You got this place under surveillance now?”
“No. He told me. We’re partners. We share information.”
“Sure you do.”
“Says he came by to ask about a pawn ticket from a crime scene. Pawn ticket for gold badge or something.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Well?”
“What about it? I didn’t have it. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. I said check my records.”
“Did he?”
“He looked. What’s he gonna find?”
“Listen close. He had a pawn ticket. It had your name on it. It had a date on it. You lent that Abramov shit twenty bucks for a piece of jewellery.”
“Vassili.” Stacy was making notes.
“That thing. Wasn’t jewellery, a little badge or something.”
“What happened to it?”
“He came around later, said he wanted to sell it outright. I gave him another twenty.”
“So where is it?”
“It’s nothing to do with your thing.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s safe. It’s put away.”
“One more time. Where. Is. It?”
“All right. I’ll get it. You don’t have to start acting like King Kong.”
“Say what?”
“Just wait a minute, take it easy, wait a minute.”
(more silence, more Jeopardy)
“He didn’t like the King Kong reference.”
“Sounds like a dangerous man.”
Adele stopped the tape. “So this is at least seven years back.” She was working it out. “After the DOA in the park. After Paulie picked up the diamonds, went back the next day and got the blue one and the pawn ticket.”
“Which led him to Louie Grova.”
“And didn’t tell his partner about it until after.”
“And Dylan isn’t happy about it.”
“Why tell him at all?”
“Get him thinking, maybe?”
“Paulie’s suspecting Dylan already. Of what? Killing Abramov?” She started the tape again.
“What are you doing out there, Louie? Fighting with the garbage. You’re gonna lose.”
“I’ll be there. Gimme a minute.”
(more noises, aspect change, Dylan has moved away from the mic.)
“Is that it?”
“What’d I tell you? It’s nothing.”
“You dumb shit.”
“What? Couple of grams.”
“Eighteen carat?”
“Fourteen.”
“Probably eighteen. And what’s this? Little crest. See that? You know what you got here. Sure you do. This is part of the chain. Any more pieces?”
“Vassi needed some cash.”
“Vassi, is it? Old pals by now. Worked out a secret handshake yet?”
“He wanted to go away.”
“Yeah, we’ll that’s too bad. He never made it out of town.”
(long silence)
“What do you care about a little pin? You got the biggest share.”
“Oho!” Adele liked that one.
“What’s the matter with you? I don’t care about this piece of crap. My partner smells misconduct. He’s on the trail, asshole. He’s a hound dog.”
“What’s to find out?”
“There’s nothing to find out unless you do something dumb, like get caught with any of this stuff around. Where’s the rest of it?”
“I don’t have any more.” (sound of slap, yelp) “I don’t have any more. I wish I’d never seen any of it. From the start. What did I ever get out of it?”
“You did all right. You got your share.”
“Fucked my life is what it did.”
“I’m taking this.”
“Aw Jesus, Dylan . . .”
“Okay, O’Grady’s identified, for the record.” Stacy made another note.
“. . . give me a break. At least give me the forty dollars.”
“Give you a couple of broken thumbs you get me jammed up. My partner comes around to see you again, you keep your mouth shut.”
“Don’t you guys work together any more?”
“Mind your own business. He shows up again, you let me know. Don’t wait for me to find —” (tape ends)
“Damn. Nothing substantive,” Stacy said.
“Maybe not, but interesting shit. Paulie was playing Dylan seven years ago. He tracked down Louie. Connected him to Abramov. Dylan had it right: Paulie was a hound dog. If he smelled something, he wouldn’t let it go.”
Stacy printed “#1-seven years ago?-O’Grady/Grova” on the label and set it aside. “Ready for another one?”
“Maybe we should send out for a pizza.
Eleven
Thursday, March 24
Around 3:30 a.m., Adele went into the bedroom, took off her cop shoes and crashed. Stacy stayed awake for another hour, cataloging and labelling, making notes and approximate timings, fast-forwarding and rewinding her way through the four ninety-minute cassettes. Six hours of random sounds, half-audible hockey games, reality shows, laugh tracks, long stretches of relative silence punctuated by bodily noises, tires squealing, sirens passing. The actual conversations (banal, vulgar and at least sixty percent unintelligible) totalled eighteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. Several of the main players were clearly identifiable: Louie Grova, on all tapes; Dylan O’Grady (all except 6); Sergei Siziva (tapes 3 and 5) and Yevgeny Grenkov (briefly, in the background on tape 3). The problem was that, in addition to being an inept audio engineer who had evidently hidden his microphone under a couch cushion wrapped in a sock, Darryl had neglected to number or date the recordings. Stacy had no way of pinning down whether the reference to Viktor Nimchuk on tape 3 took place before or after the reference to what might have been Paul Delisle’s handgun on tape 4, or when the meeting between Dylan and Sergei Siziva on tape 6 happened. Evidently Darryl hadn’t been on the job the night his stepfather had died, or for that matter, the day Sergei Siziva took possession of Paul’s .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. Those tapes might have tipped the balance. Sadly, either they didn’t exist, or Darryl was saving them for dessert. With what they had so far they could allege motive, indicate opportunity, deal with denials and interpretations, but without physical evidence, without a murder weapon, a blood trail, fingerprints, or something they could hold up for a jury to gaze upon, they’d have a hard time getting a conviction.
“You up all night?” Adele helped herself to a slice of cold pizza.
“I got a few hours on the couch. There’s coffee.”
“What d’you think? Anything we can use?”
“What we have is a steaming pile of circumstantial, conjectural and conditional, and not one shred of irrefutable.” Stacy poured a cup of coffee for Adele, turning her head to avoid the whiff of pepperoni and cold tomato sauce. “Hard to build a murder case when all the prime witnesses are either dead, or have guilty knowledge.”
“Not quite the ‘nuke-ular weapon of mass de-fucking-struction,’ is it?” Adele went to the window, sipped coffee and chewed leftovers, watched the southbound traffic building on the Don Valley Parkway below. A cruiser with lights flashing was weaving through the traffic flow, chasing someone. Adele watched until it disappeared from view. She snorted. “Darryl’s gonna need
a month at Betty Ford before we can put him on the witness stand.”
“I don’t think we’d make it that far,” said Stacy. “We’ve got recordings, illegally obtained, from a questionable source, and who knows what’s been done to them? Any half-decent lawyer gets them tossed pretrial.”
“Well fuck! Just for my own pathetic amusement, partner, give me the highlights.”
Stacy checked her notes, plugged in a cassette, reset the counter to zero and hit fast-forward. “This would have been good but the television’s on in the room so some of it you can’t hear.” She hit stop. “Dylan and Louie. I get the feeling it’s in the stairwell because of the echo.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Keep it wrapped . . . want . . . your fingerprints on it.”
“. . . it yours?”
“Do what . . . all right? Hide it . . . your shithole.” (sound of feet clumping down the stairs to the street) “Shut your fucking mouth, forget all . . . when I want it back.”
“Like when?”
“Mind your own fucking . . .” (traffic noise, door closes)
“Okay, okay, I’m just saying . . . Motherfucker, Jesus, fuck fuck fuck.”
Stacy stopped the tape. “Sounded like Dylan was handing over Paul’s gun.”
“Yeah, well we know it sounded like that, but like you say, worthless.”
Stacy popped in a new tape. Found the spot she was looking for. “This is Dylan and Louie again. Talking about where Nimchuk was staying. Maybe.”
“Where on the Queensway?”
“It’s a motel. All he gave me was a number.”
“Give it to me.”
“He just wants to talk.”
“I’ll call him.”
(aspect changes, another room, unintelligible exchange, door opening, voices faint but clear)
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Nothing to be afraid of. What’s he holding? He say?”
“He just wants enough to get away from here.”
“No problem.”
(outside door slams)
“So that happened before he stashed the gun with Louie, right?” Adele asked. “He had the phone number. No trick for an ex-cop to find out where it came from. He pays Nimchuk a visit at the motel, maybe picks up some jewellery, pops him, then comes back here to hide Paulie’s piece. Does that add up?”
