Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  To emphasize her desire, she hits the horn four times and the security guard comes jogging out through the doors with a colleague; it must be change of shift.

  “One last question,” I ask. I have to get the answer before the guards come and drag me out of the car.

  She is struggling to hold her temper in. “No, Cal,” she says calmly.

  The rent-a-cops are three cars away. Last chance.

  “Please, Sandi. It’s really important. Why are—”

  “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING CAR!” she explodes.

  I’ve got all I’m going to get from her for now, so I open the door of the car and face the security guards, right there, looming above me. I raise my hands to them, palms outward, in the universal signal for compliance, and get out into the rain, then turn and walk briskly through the downpour and out of the parking lot.

  So Brad was right. Kevin was going to cut me off. Although I can understand why Kevin would want to do this, my understanding does nothing to ease the feeling of betrayal. My only friend from my old life was about to abandon me. But before I can start feeling sorry for myself, my unanswered question returns to my mind.

  If Addi-ban killed her brother, why the hell is Sandi still working at QX4?

  45

  Cal

  I’ve always hated stakeouts—the boredom, the length of time spent for one minute of evidence—but this one is different. This one is personal. Everything hangs on it: the proof that George is Kevin’s killer; peace of mind for a dying man in a mansion in Shaughnessy; exoneration for me and, with George out of the picture, maybe, just maybe, there will be a chance for me to regain my family.

  I have not left Brad’s Toyota in seven and a half hours. I have avoided eating and drinking but my bladder is full and I cannot keep it in check much longer. A few hours ago I fixed myself up, masked by the pall of rain shrouding the car. I am praying that nothing happened while I was on the nod.

  In another couple of hours the store I am watching on Robson Street will be closing. What if I am wrong? What if it is all circumstantial, just coincidence. Will I come back and do it again tomorrow, then the next day and the next? And for how many days will Brad let me have his car?

  As the minutes drag by, the pressure on my bladder becomes unbearable. If I have to come back tomorrow, I will bring an empty juice bottle with me but, right now, I have to risk it. It will take three minutes max but, in a stakeout, it can all happen in three minutes. Three stores away from my stakeout target is one of Vancouver’s ubiquitous Starbucks. I can wait no longer; I get out of the car and run through the rain hoping I don’t have to beg a barista for a washroom key.

  Three minutes later, I burst out onto Robson and stop dead. There is a black BMW 7 series double parked in front of the target, right between me and the Toyota. I cannot see the driver but my old buddy Goliath, looking out of place in a thousand dollar business suit, is getting out of the passenger door.

  I freeze.

  If either of them sees me, they may very well stop their activity and I will not get the evidence I need. They might even turn their attentions on me and decide to take me down.

  I’m only thirty feet away from them and any unnatural movement will draw their attention. If I turn towards them, they will see me. If I turn away, I will miss seeing what goes down. If I just stand here like a statue, one of them is sure to spot me. I decide to just cross the sidewalk and head over to the other side of Robson but this means crossing right in front of their car… and that’s when I see my salvation: a tourist in full rain gear peering at his plastic covered map. I stroll across the sidewalk to him.

  “Can I help you?” I ask. Out of the corner of my eye I see Goliath limping through the rain into the store. He has an expensive leather briefcase clutched in his huge paw.

  “Oh, ja. Thank you. I am looking for Stanley Park. It is not far?” The accent is distinctly Scandinavian: a hardy Swede or Norwegian seeking a walk through the park in a downpour.

  Keeping him between me and the windshield of the BMW, I tell him, “Just keep going along Robson in this direction and the park is at the very end.” I point to Lost Lagoon on his map, “You’ll be right here. It’s about a fifteen minute walk.”

  “Thank you so much,” he says and, without any warning, strides off down the street leaving me naked to the view of the driver.

  A trolley bus has pulled up behind the double parked Beamer and its driver is not impressed; he gives a blast with his horn which elicits an obscene gesture out the car’s window. In the hope that my adversary has his attention distracted for long enough by the bus, I stroll casually across Robson and walk into an expensive clothing store.

  I can watch the street unobserved through the window and within seconds, I see Goliath back on the sidewalk, hands empty, no briefcase in sight.

  It was a drop off.

  My heart rate is up; it’s the thrill of the hunt. How I’ve missed this. How could I have lived without it for the last two and a half years. It’s better than heroin. Heroin is no longer a high, it’s a need. This is a high.

  But before I can enjoy the high, the low sweeps in: Brad lent me his camera so that I could document the evidence, the same camera that I left sitting on the back seat of the Toyota. I’ve seen what I hoped against hope to see but it might as well not have happened; I have zero proof, zip, nada.

  Accompanied by a second horn blast from the trolley bus, the BMW takes off down Robson. Now I’ve blown it. No photograph, no evidence. Unless…

  I dash out of the store and holding my hands extended, palms outward, I stop the slow moving traffic as I dash across the street and scramble into Brad’s Toyota. The driver of a red Corvette hits his horn as I pull out from the curb and cut in front of of him. There are five cars and a trolley bus between me and the BMW and I can’t see my quarry.

  The traffic crawls eastward and the bus turns left onto Burrard but the BMW is gone. I glance up Burrard to my right and it is not there. There is no sign of them ahead. I have only one hope. If I’ve lost them, I will be back again tomorrow and the next day and the next, until they decide to do another drop off.

  I accelerate along the short block, hang a left onto Hornby and my breath comes out in a long sigh as I see them stopped at the traffic lights at Georgia.

  Keeping several cars back, I follow them down Hornby to West Hastings. A couple of blocks along, the driver parks illegally and Goliath takes an identical briefcase into an identical store but this time I capture it all in the camera’s memory. Within seconds he is back in the car and they are off along Hastings, away from the glossy high-rises of downtown to the rat infested edifices east of Main.

  Just as I hoped, the BMW pulls into a parking spot. On this section of Hastings there are two or three convenience stores on every block. The denizens of this neighbourhood are, in the main, either drug users or poor immigrant families, neither of whom have much money to squander on the inflated prices of convenience store merchandise. Until now, I have always wondered how they manage to stay in business. Now I know.

  I have parked a few spaces ahead of the Beemer and in the passenger side mirror, I see my buddy go into a dingy store, the barred windows covered in faded posters advertising various items of junk food. This time Goliath goes in with a bulging envelope in each hand; I turn and fire the camera’s shutter, click. In less than sixty seconds he is out, minus one envelope, and limping through the rain in my direction. Click. He walks right past me and goes four doors ahead to an even sadder, more fly blown emporium. Click. He is out in an instant, hands empty. Click.

  This is great. God, how I wish I were a cop again. This would be a career maker. Maybe it will be a career re-maker. I laugh at the irony. If I worked for the department now, I would not be able to do this stakeout: I am doing it as part of an investigation into Kevin’s murder and, as far as they are concerned, the Kevin Wallace case is solved.

  I put the camera down on the passenger seat and the movement catches his attention. For a
n instant we are locked eye to eye and then recognition dawns on his ugly mug. He is less than twenty yards away and he breaks into a lumbering jog in my direction, yelling something to his buddy in the car. If they can take me, I’m going to be found dead in an alley, another victim of a heroin overdose.

  I start the engine, put it in drive and give a quick glance in the driver’s side mirror. Good, the street is clear and better, the BMW driver has got out of the driver’s seat. He is fat where Goliath is massive. He waddles past the parked cars towards me. I have to time this just right.

  Wait…

  Wait…

  The driver is level with my back bumper just as Goliath yanks open the passenger door.

  “Get the fuck out!” he yells.

  One more second and I crank the wheel and hit the gas. On my right, the passenger door handle is snatched from Goliath’s paw and on my left, his fat friend, who had just pulled level with my window, is nudged off his feet by the car as it swings out in front of him. Serves him right. If he had waited in his car, he could chase me and there is no way Brad’s Toyota could outrun the 535 horses under the hood of the BMW.

  I have bought myself the time I need. I hang a right and lose myself in the side streets of Strathcona.

  I’ve got what I wanted. But is it enough?

  46

  Brad

  Cal is like a force of nature. Once started, there is no stopping him. He’s got a great mind, always did have; not like Kevin—Kev was a bona fide genius—but what Cal has is this amazing intuition.

  Despite my skepticism last night, I did some digging and I have to admit that he is on to something and it could be a way out for me.

  I hand him the half-used bottle of penicillin that he asked me to bring. He nods his thanks and, without looking at the instructions, washes three capsules down with a gulp of his beer.

  “So, what happened?” I ask.

  The question brings a big grin on his face. Something’s happened, for sure. “You first,” he says.

  No way. I want to find out if he has discovered anything concrete before I open up about what I know.

  “Come on, Cal. You’re the one that has been doing the stakeout; what happened?”

  He takes a maddeningly long time to chalk up his cue and break. A striped ball goes in the side pocket. He pockets two more, then misses an easy shot. Why are we doing this?

  “I was right, wasn’t I, Bradley?” he ignores my question and he knows it irritates me when he calls me Bradley. “What did you find out?”

  I miss the green ball completely. I hate this game. I know Cal’s stubborn streak; he’s going to make me talk first.

  So I do. Why fight the inevitable? “I talked to George today. He told me that he wants to diversify Walsh Investments’ portfolio and felt that he has too much invested in QX4 stock. He says he’s found an institutional buyer for seventy-five percent of his shares.

  “You were right. He knows that QX4 is toast over the long term and he’s going to get out as quick as he can. If he can pull it off at a decent price, he’ll walk away with about eighteen million bucks.”

  I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. If QX4’s shares collapse, I will lose everything and be in debt to George to the tune of half a million dollars. As fast as I can, I’ve been selling my QX4 shares in small blocks that won’t attract attention. If I can sell most of them before they collapse, at least I will be able to pay George back. If Cal’s suspicions about him are true, he’s not someone I want to owe money to. Maybe I’ll even have a little left over for myself.

  “You’re next. Tell me all.” Now it’s my turn to find out what he has been up to today.

  He pockets two balls with one shot, lucky bastard, then misses a tricky long shot. He looks at me, a big smile on his face, then takes a long drink of his beer. He’s playing the showman here and it is bugging me. He sees it in my face.

  “OK, OK,” he says. “I was right. George’s retail operations, the ones that you said were not making any profits, are one great big money laundering machine.”

  He tells me about his stakeout.

  “If I take this to the police,” he says, “they can take him down for money laundering. We always guessed that the only way we would get to the guys at the top would be to bust them for money laundering or tax evasion.”

  “So how do you know they are money laundering?” I ask.

  “Their drug profits are all in cash, so clever old George has bought a bunch of retail outlets that traditionally take in cash. Foreign exchange stores and convenience stores take in a lot of cash and can easily change it into non-cash items like money orders, travellers cheques and cheques written to phony suppliers. It’s brilliant.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I’m terrified that if he brings down George before I can get rid of my shares, I’m toast. I can’t positive-think my way out of that.

  “Are you guys fucking playing or what? There’s people waiting for this table.” He’s a short guy, dressed like a biker and he looks tough as nails.

  Cal looks like he’s going to make a big issue of it. “We’ll—”

  I cut him off fast. “Sorry man. We’re finished, you go ahead.” I take Cal’s cue, rack both of them and hustle him away from the pool table to the bar.

  “What are you going to do?” I say. “About George?”

  “Nothing for the moment.” Thank God for that. “I want to get George for Kevin’s murder but right now, all I’ve got is circumstantial evidence. I need to find solid proof. Right now the police think I did it.”

  “What? You? Why?” This is a huge. I thought they had ruled it suicide.

  “Someone—I’m guessing it was Sandi—told them that Kevin was planning to cut me off from going to his place on Saturday mornings, like you told me. They figure that’s good enough for a motive. I was at Kevin’s house just before he was killed and to top it all, they found his blood on my jacket.”

  “How did you get Kevin’s blood on your jacket?” I can feel my heartbeat.

  “I didn’t,” he says defensively. “It was my street jacket. I left it lying on the bed in the spare room at Kevin’s, with my other street clothes, while I went over to see Ellie. George must have known and smeared blood on my jacket to frame me. Anyway, my old partner tried to arrest me, or at least, take me in for questioning, but I escaped.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday morning.” He looks more than a little sheepish.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this last night.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have. I just didn’t want anything to defocus you from the idea of George being the killer.”

  “Cal, if you want me to help you bring George down for Kevin’s murder, you can’t hold out on me like that; you have to keep me in the loop on everything, OK?”

  “Yeah, absolutely. It won’t happen again. I promise.” It had better not because it’s non-negotiable.

  We sit in silence for a while.

  “I found out some other stuff about George, too,” I volunteer.

  “What?” he really wants to know.

  Now it’s my turn. I take two slow swallows of the last of my beer and order another couple from the barman before answering.

  “After last night, I looked deeper into George’s business portfolio and you were right. Take the airline. It’s a charter airline and it’s very profitable. All the aircraft are hybrids, they have cargo space and passenger space. But what’s really interesting are the destinations. He has contracts with the Canadian and US governments to fly people and supplies to and from Afghanistan.

  “Think about it. You take some people—they could be security people, aid workers or politicians or whatever—and a bunch of supplies to Afghanistan, all in the same plane. On the return journey, you maybe bring back some other people but you are not likely to be bringing any supplies back, so the cargo hold is empty. So…”

  I leave it hanging. I don’t need to tell Cal that the biggest cash c
rop in Afghanistan, to the tune of four billion dollars a year, is the poppy from which the highest grade of heroin is made.

  But I’ve not finished.

  “What makes it such a sweet deal, is that his planes usually fly in and out of Canadian Air Force bases, which means he probably circumvents the normal customs processes.

  “And that’s not all. His airline also has contracts with several Canadian and US mining companies which have properties or joint ventures in South America. He ferries people and supplies from here directly to the mine sites. On top of that, he has big investments in a number of coffee plantations down there. It’s the perfect cover for importing cocaine.

  “I told you he was a business genius. He’s got a vertically integrated drug business. It’s a criminal business hidden inside a legal business and it doesn’t pay a penny in tax or make charitable donations or do anything other than make money for George.”

  I thought Cal would be delighted with this—it rounds out his theory about George to perfection—but if anything he looks puzzled. He is shaking his head.

  “What?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. He’s holding out on me again.

  “OK, Cal. What’s up here? I thought you’d be all over this.”

  “No, it’s great. It’s just that there’s one thing bothering me about George. Something that just doesn’t fit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why would a big time drug dealer invest millions in a company that is working on curing addiction and potentially putting him out of business?”

  I can’t help laughing out loud. Cal’s a super-bright guy and a great cop but he doesn’t understand how a businessman like George thinks.

  Now it’s his turn to be irritated. “What are you laughing at?” he demands.

  “What does a wealthy business do when a small competitor comes along?” I ask.