“A case? We’re on a case? Holy fucking justice, Batman!”
“Call it what you want. You came to me because you were in a bad spot. Now Marco’s dead, maybe it’s over for you. Maybe you want to fade out somewhere and wait to see how the chips fall.”
“And you don’t?”
“I can’t. I still don’t know who killed Franny,” I said. “Or who’s running this racket. Nothing’s over for me.”
“So where to?”
“If you get in the left lane now, you can take Eglinton east.”
“Where to exactly?”
“Jay Silver’s Med-E-Mart.”
“For what?”
“A friendly chat.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it got unfriendly,” he said. “I’m all pumped up with no one to do.”
I knew exactly what he meant. My feet were tapping restlessly, my thigh muscles jumping. My biceps felt as if I’d been working them hard, though I’d lifted nothing heavier than ham steak this morning. Like a pitcher who warms up but doesn’t get into the game, I was juiced on adrenaline that had been building all morning, still taking in the fact that Marco no longer had to die at my hands.
We were taking an eastbound route I’d learned from veteran airport cabbies, making good time with few cars around to imperil us.
“Is the mob in Buffalo that much heavier than here?” I asked Ryan.
“Up until a few years ago, no question: they were the head office and we were the branch plant. Buffalo was a real power, mobwise, all the years Don Magaddino was in charge, and that’s like fifty. You know about the Don?”
“I know his name. I was briefed on his organization when the Ensign sting was being planned.”
“Don Stefano Magaddino was a member of the original national commission that laid out the structure of the organization and assigned territories to the major families. He was up there with Lucky Luciano, Joe Bonanno, Tommy Lucchese, all those guys. A cousin to Joe Bonanno, in fact. Not that it stopped them from occasionally trying to kidnap or kill each other.”
“How’d he wind up in Buffalo?”
“There was trouble in New York and he had to leave. Took a look west and moved to Buffalo. It was a happening place then and he ended up running the town and everything around it, including southern Ontario. Took that over from Rocco Perri, if the name rings a bell.”
“He the one at the bottom of Hamilton Harbour?”
“So the story goes. Everyone after that, including Johnny Papalia and Vinnie Nickels, answered to Magaddino. You want to talk smuggling? This pill business of yours is piddly compared to the booze that used to cross the river.”
“Until Prohibition ended.”
“Nothing ended. Just the commodities changed. Dope going this way, guns going that way. Cigarettes, as you well know, pinball machines, illegal aliens, whatever. When I was a kid, we made runs to Buffalo all the time. I always drove because I was the only one of my gang whose name didn’t end in a vowel. Buffalo and back, a thousand times. At first, we’d just try to bullshit our way across. Sometimes we’d order hockey tickets and dress like assholes and say we were going to watch the Leafs play the Sabres, like I’d cross the street to watch those bums. Once we were established, it got easier. We’d have a friendly border guard on a certain shift and we just had to say Mr. Lewis sent us. That was Vinnie Nickels’ brother Luciano. Uncle Looch knew every bent border guy, what shift he worked, how much you had to pay. We’d get a lane number from Looch, load up our goods and head out on a Buffalo jump.”
“A which?”
“What we called these runs of ours. Come on, we were kids. We had our own code words like everyone else. With us a smuggling trip was a Buffalo jump.”
“It means something else out west,” I said.
“Out west where?”
“Alberta. It was a kill site for Indians.”
“Hey, my kind of topic. What kind of kill site?”
“They harvested buffalo by running them over a cliff.”
“No shit.”
“This was before horses came to the New World. The Plains Indians hunted on foot with spears.”
“Not too productive.”
“No. So they came up with a system for mass killing.”
“The human spirit,” Ryan said. “You just can’t keep it down.”
“They’d fence off runways that led from the grazing area to the cliffs. Then one would imitate a buffalo calf crying in distress. The lead buffalo would move toward the sound and the herd, being a herd, would follow. Then a few guys with capes and blankets would run up behind and start a stampede down these fenced-off lanes. The leader couldn’t see what was in front of him until he roared off the cliff and dropped thirty feet onto solid rock. The whole herd would come crashing down behind him. Any that survived were finished with spears.”
“And they called it Buffalo Jump?” Ryan asked.
“Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, to be exact.”
“Yeah?” Ryan laughed. “We had a few of those too in the old days. Plenty of heads got smashed.”
“But things in Buffalo have changed, you said.”
“Since Don Magaddino passed, there’s been a different class of people at the top. No sense of vision, barely a step above union leaders. Plus half of them are in jail now. Give credit where it’s due, law enforcement has been pasting us lately. You got wiretap technology you never had. You got RICO legislation in the States. You got agencies cooperating instead of pissing up each other’s pant legs. There’s no more Teflon Dons anymore. Plenty of guys are doing serious time. You got more wise guys dying of natural causes in prison than on the street. When did that ever used to be?
“The funny thing is I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove I belong to this thing,” he said. “To their thing. Lamenting the fact that my father was Irish. That I couldn’t be made because of his name. That I had to remain an associate. Given the dirty work. The outsider’s work. Now I look around and wonder why. Why do I want to belong to this? Why did I ever? Half of them don’t have the brains God gave a sheepdog and the other half are just plain dumb. And for this so-called family I’m losing my real family, my wife and my boy, who give me more in ten minutes than Marco and his crew could in ten years. I’ve heard all their jokes. I’ve heard every war story. Do I need to hear again who they beat, who they shot, who they fucked and how much it cost?”
Ryan eased a cigarette out of his pack, lit it and opened his window a crack to draw out the smoke.
“I’m going to tell you something, Jonah Geller, on the understanding that if you repeat it to anyone, ever, I’ll hunt you down and kill you like the dog you are.”
“Some lead-in.”
“I was watching The Lion King with Carlo yesterday. And there’s a part when the king dies, right, and the little guy, Simba, thinks it was his fault. He’s calling, ‘Dad, Dad …’ He’s apologizing, getting desperate, tearing up, and I suddenly picture the same scene with me and Carlo, him finding me dead somewhere. Tears start filling my eyes and going down my cheeks and I wipe them away and more keep coming. I haven’t cried in thirty years. My stepfather used to beat me for sport and I never cried once. But here I am watching a fucking cartoon, for Chrissakes, and I’m blubbering like a schoolgirl who just got dumped.”
He drew on his smoke and stared intently ahead.
I said, “If you need to cry some more, I won’t judge you.”
“Shut up.”
“You can let that side out with me.”
“Shut up.”
“Your vulnerable side.”
“You’re this close, Geller.”
I crooned, “Put your head on my shoulder …”
“This fucking close.”
“Whisper in my ear …”
“I’m warning you.”
“Bay-bee …”
“I’m gonna throw you out the sunroof in one fucking second.”
“Okay, Ryan.”
“Won’t even slow down.”
/>
“I said okay.”
“I never should have said a word to you. In my hour of sensitivity, you turn into a cheap-joke artist at my expense.”
“It’s the Jewish way,” I said. “Laugh your way through the pain.”
“I’m Catholic, I’m armed and I’m pissed at you,” he snarled.
“So maybe we’ll do it your way,” I said.
CHAPTER 37
We were past Yonge Street and making good time when Jenn called my cell. “Where are you?”
“On the road.”
“On your way in, I hope.”
“Not directly.”
“Are you nuts? Clint’s already mad at you.”
“I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
“Shouldn’t keeping your job be a priority?”
“He’s that pissed?”
“Have you ever seen his betrayed look?”
“Oh, God, not the one where he looks like a hound dog?”
“An abandoned hound that’s been beaten with a stick.”
“I’ll call him,” I said.
“It’s your ass.”
“I know. Listen, how busy are you?”
“Manageable.”
“See what you can find on the Vista Mar group and Steven Stone. Check what year he got his MBA at Western. See if it overlapped with either Jay Silver or Kenneth Page, both spelled the way they sound. And if there’s anything Stone has written in the business school quarterly, download it. I bet it has to do with supply chain improvements or using Internet sales to broaden commercial reach.”
“Aren’t you a biz-head all of a sudden,” Jenn said. “Should we expect a suit and a buzz cut?”
“Not this quarter,” I said.
Backed up to the loading dock at the Med-E-Mart was a half-ton truck. It was twice the capacity of the one I’d seen last time and the same size and model as the two I’d seen parked on the Aspromonte lot—with an empty space between them. I could see at least three men near the rear. We kept driving past a larger loading dock that serviced Silver’s closest neighbour, an office supplies depot. We parked behind a trailer that had been uncoupled from its tractor and left on struts. I sidled up along it, knelt behind a tire bigger than I was, and looked at the dock through my field glasses.
There were four of them. Frank was directing two young men in slacks and nylon sport shirts as they loaded the truck. Claudio was holding himself stiffly with his elbows close to his sides. The eye I had jabbed was a puffed-up red and purple mess.
Not to be uncharitable, but I hoped he felt worse than he looked.
One of the young studs was pushing a mini-forklift loaded with a skid of cartons; the other was bringing cartons out of the store three at a time on a hand truck. The man with the forklift manoeuvred his load to the rear of the truck and used a control on the handle to raise it to eye level. The name Contrex was visible on every carton through a shroud of shrink wrap. He walked the load into the truck, was out of sight for half a minute and came out pulling the empty lift. I had driven trucks the size of this one in Banff. It could hold at least sixteen skids stacked in rows of four, two over two. And since the goods weren’t breakable, dozens of single cartons could be piled on top of and around the skids.
Where was Jay Silver while all this was going on? Inside the store, powerless to stop it from being pillaged? Or somewhere else, unaware of the situation. Maybe unaware, period.
The next skid held cartons labelled CoRex—the name of Canada’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs. As the man steered it toward the truck, his load slid suddenly forward. He probably wasn’t used to handling a lift and hadn’t pushed the forks all the way through to the end of the skid. He used a handbrake to stop the forklift but the load kept going, toppling forward to the concrete floor of the dock. “Fuck!” he yelled—I could lip-read it through the field glasses as well as hear it. The shrink wrap split along one side on impact and the cartons spilled out every which way along the dock. A few fell down to ground level. “Shit!” the man yelled.
The two men were going to have to slug the cases in by hand, and neither Frank nor Claudio looked ready to help. I jogged back to Ryan’s car, hunched over like Groucho Marx.
“Drop me off around the front,” I said. “I’m going inside. I need to see if Silver’s there.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then I want to see who’s letting these guys clean him out.”
“What if Frank or Claudio sees you?”
“Frank I can take in my sleep, and I think Claudio’s had more than enough of me.”
As soon as I entered the store, I could hear raised voices at the back counter where a dozen people were crowded around a pharmacist, waving slips of paper at him and barking questions. The man was holding up his hands as if to say It’s not my fault.
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” he said. “We’re having an inspection and we have to freeze the inventory until it’s complete.”
“Why are they inspecting you?” an older man demanded. “What’s wrong with the place?”
“Nothing, I assure you.”
“I want to speak to the owner.”
“I’m sorry,” the pharmacist said. “He called in sick, of all days.”
“What am I supposed to do?” asked a woman in her seventies, bent over a chrome walker. “I have to take my medicine the same time every day, that’s what they told me. Like clockwork, they said.”
“We’ve arranged for your prescriptions to be filled at Dotson’s, right around the corner on Eglinton.”
“Maybe Eglinton is right around the corner for you. You know how long it takes me?”
She flinched as the man with the hand truck banged in through the doors from the shipping area. He wheeled it over to a room to our right, was gone for a moment, then came back out with three more cases, followed by a tall dark-skinned woman with thick black hair in a braid that fell below her belt.
“That’s the inspector,” the pharmacist said. “If you have any questions, please speak to her. I’ve told you all I know.”
The crowd surged toward the woman, who seemed momentarily startled.
“Why can’t we get our prescriptions?” a man called out.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. Suh, in a rich Brahmin accent. “But regulations specify that no products can be dispensed during an inspection.”
I had spoken to her only once on Winston Chan’s speakerphone, but I knew her voice instantly: Sumita Desai, enforcement officer for the Registered Pharmacists’ Association of Ontario. No wonder nothing had come up in Silver’s last inspection. She was in on it. No red flags went up? No shit.
“Why are they taking all this stuff away?” another man asked. “Is it being recalled?”
“Not at all,” the inspector said. “We are conducting a routine inspection to ensure the safety of all medications and the continued good health of consumers like you. The sooner you allow us to complete it, the sooner business can get back to usual. Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two.”
There was some general grumbling but people started to disperse. “I’ll take you to Dotson’s,” a middle-aged man told the lady in the walker. “My van seats seven if anyone else needs a ride.”
Sumita Desai was heading back to the exit door when I moved into her path. Her hair was a dark glossy marvel, her eyes every bit as black. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can I ask why you’re inspecting these premises?”
“I’m sorry, suh. Our process is completely confidential.”
“I had a prescription filled yesterday,” I said. “How do I know it’s safe?”
“Take it up with your pharmacist,” she said.
“Have you spoken to Mr. Silver today? Informed him about the inspection?”
“He couldn’t be reached,” she said. “I am told he is ill.” Her voice didn’t sound warm and tropical anymore. It was clipped and precise and very, very cold.
CHAPTER 38
“They’re saying he called i
n sick,” I told Ryan.
“But you think it’s worse than that.”
“Ryan,” I said.
“What?”
“You didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?”
“Take the initiative.”
“Get the fuck out. If something happened to him, it wasn’t me.”
“The emmes?”
“The who?”
“The truth?”
“Look, Geller. I know I’m a low-life to you,” he said. “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”
“Oh, come on.”
“But I didn’t kill anyone today. Yet. Check my BlackBerry, you don’t believe me. You’ll see, nobody killed this week. No men, no women, no kids.”
“Okay, okay. I believe you.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“Don’t get your feelings hurt again.”
“How about taking responsibility for your words?”
“This from a hit man?”
“Quit harping on that. Quit defining me only by what I do. What I’ve done. I’m more than one dimension but you don’t see it. Despite everything I’ve told you, despite the other sides of me you’ve seen, you still don’t consider me a whole person.”
“Okay,” I said. “When this is over we’ll go into couples therapy. For now, we have to stall that truck for an hour.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to Silver’s house.”
“What?”
“If something’s happened to him, I need to know. And if nothing has, I’m going to make him tell me who we’re up against.”
“I told you we can’t contact him.”
“Not when Marco was alive, we couldn’t, because he’d know it was you who told. That’s not the case anymore.”
Ryan pondered that for a moment. “You said an hour?”
“His place is fifteen minutes each way—if I pretend I’m in NASCAR. If he’s there, another half an hour maybe to get the truth out of him.”
He flipped me the keys to the Dadmobile. “Promise me one thing: if his house is a crime scene, you don’t even stop. You’re driving my car, don’t forget.”
“Agreed.”
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