“Once. I took it to a gun club while I was still in the States and fired it at a paper target. To tell you the truth, it scared the crap out of me. I’ve never used it since. But when you told me about George and his connection to the gang, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have it along. And I was right.”
I look at him. He reminds me of Billy Rosewood, Judge Reinhold’s character in Beverley Hills Cop, and I start laughing all over again. Brad has taken my place; now he is the one offering protection and carrying a gun.
“So before you brought it out, did you clean it and load it with fresh ammo?” I ask.
“No, I didn’t have time.”
“Man, you have got to hand that sucker in to the police. You’ll kill yourself if you try to use a gun that hasn’t been touched in, what is it, fourteen or fifteen years.”
The thought of him firing that weapon has washed the laughter out of me.
“Brad. Thanks for what you did back there. You saved my life. They were going to kill me, for sure.”
“Hey. No prob. The three amigos, remember.”
And I do. Kevin, Brad and me: three completely different characters, joined at the hip.
We are silent for the drive over the Burrard Bridge and, now drained of all emotion, I think of my last moments with Roy.
As if sensing my thoughts, he says, “Those bastards killed your father, didn’t they?”
I told Brad about the DNA results on the way to the hospital. Brad never met Roy and it sounds strange to hear him refer to Roy as my father. Strange, but good, it somehow helps fill the void of Roy’s death.
“Yes. And they’re going to pay for it.”
“Good.”
We relapse into silence until we get to Brad’s apartment. As he pulls into his parking spot, he says, “I want you to keep the gun, clean it up and all that, and if you get a chance, blow that Blond bastard’s head off with it.”
I shake my head and hand it back. I want to see Blondie rot in a high-security prison for the rest of his life, not get a quick bye to the next world.
And I start thinking about how I’m going to put him there.
52
Cal
Another stakeout. This one in an office above a ritzy clothing emporium, right opposite the target. At least I am not hampered by a full bladder but there is plenty to worry me. Steve has done well. The senior members in the VPD authorized him to pull out all the stops on this one and, only two and a half days after our meeting at the junk yard, we are supposedly ready to move in.
That’s one of the things worrying me. It’s too fast, way too fast. One false move, one illegal search, one thing out of place, one detail missed and any case we build against George and his gang may get thrown out of court. Hell, it may never get into court in the first place. To my amazement, Stammo has been with me on this, he also thinks we are being precipitous, not that he would use that word, but Steve and the bosses are gung-ho, adamant that we do it sooner rather than later.
And that’s not all. Everyone wants to nail George the drug dealer to such an extent that my priority, George the murderer, has ceased to be a consideration.
But as much as the cop in me thinks it’s too fast, the father in me is impatient. If we can arrest George today, Sam will almost certainly not take Ellie off to Toronto tomorrow. There will be nothing for her to run from… except, perhaps, from me.
The boredom of the stakeout exacerbates my worry.
I look through the window.
They look like any other young couple in love, laden with festive, designer-styled store bags, taking time off work to do their Christmas shopping together on Robson Street. An echo of Sam and me when we were first married. Except that this couple only stay within one block, sometimes on one side of the street, sometimes on the other. We can see them window-shopping from our vantage point across the road. They have been doing this for the four hours since the stakeout began and I am worried that someone in the foreign exchange store will notice them,
As if in response to this thought, a young-ish man wearing a red ski-jacket leaves the store. Close beside me, Lena, the tech on the stakeout, takes a photo, then another. She’s very cute but unfamiliar with the concept of deodorant.
The man is a new face; he did not walk into the store during the time we have been here so he cannot be a customer. He looks up and down the street. I watch him like a hawk. If his eyes seek out the window-shoppers, they will have been made and any deliveries to the store will already have been canceled. But his gaze does not linger on them. He takes a package of cigarettes from his pocket and strolls down the street in the opposite direction, ignoring the displays in the shop windows which he must have seen a thousand times before.
Steve’s high-tech encrypted radio squawks, “Target black BMW approaching from West.” We have a list of possible cars, including Blondie’s Mercedes, George’s Bentley and the black Chrysler I smashed into a police cruiser a week ago, but they are using the same vehicle they used three days ago.
The couple stop admiring the high-tech wonders in a window two doors down and make their way to the target. They enter the store just as the BMW double-parks outside.
Then comes the first glitch.
When I staked it out on Tuesday and members of Steve’s team staked it out on Wednesday and Thursday, it was always the hulking Goliath who dropped off the leather briefcase. He has been identified as Guy Chang, a man with a string of drug related convictions and with known ties to gang activity. An easy link for a jury to accept. But today it is a different guy wielding the briefcase; a face I’ve never seen before. The change of routine makes me even more uneasy. Did someone spot Steve’s men doing the stakeout yesterday? Will the gang have made a switch and filled the briefcase with innocuous papers rather than incriminating bundles of cash? Lena is taking a stream of photos.
He enters the store and within thirty seconds he is out and sliding back into the passenger seat. This time she gets several shots of his face. The driver pulls ahead, not knowing that he is on his way to Stammo and another team, waiting opposite the foreign exchange store on West Hastings. Similar teams are posted around the eleven convenience stores which have so far been identified as owned or franchised by Walsh Investment Corporation.
Steve beckons to the uniform who is the forth member of our stakeout team. “Let’s go, Tom.” I follow them to the head of the stairs and Steve turns.
“Not you Cal. You’re not a member, we can’t risk civilian lives here.”
I am floored by this. I brought this to him, I’ve been included in the operation from the start, I’ve even sat in some of the meetings with the senior staff and now he’s excluding me? Plus the plans for the next phase of the operation make his excuse about risk ludicrous.
“Come on Steve—”
“Sorry Cal, not negotiable. Stay here with Lena.”
He and Tom dash down the stairs and I wonder if Steve has another agenda here? Does he worry that I am getting too much of the glory? Or is there something else?
I look at Lena and she shrugs. So I follow them down the stairs.
I enter the foreign exchange store fifteen seconds behind Steve. The window-shopping couple have worked fast; their badges are clipped to the front of their coats and the woman has her weapon drawn. The store’s employees are lined up along one wall and the male officer is frisking them, removing their cellphones. There must be no outgoing communication from anyone in any of the locations where arrests are being made.
Steve is at a desk behind the thick glass of the secure area of the store, examining the leather briefcase. I walk through and he glares at me, then cuts a look at the restrained suspects and decides not to make an issue of my presence here.
Inside the briefcase are wads of used notes of all denominations. I cannot begin to guess how much, but it is certainly thousands of dollars. He fetches a large paper evidence sack from one of the couple’s shopping bags, and slides the briefcase into it.
The employees are now a
ll cuffed with plastic ties. They are strangely silent; no one is objecting or questioning what is going on. It speaks to their guilt; innocent people would be voluble in this situation. Or is there another reason? Were they perhaps expecting this raid? The unease in my gut ramps up another notch.
As the female officer goes into the back of the office to open the emergency exit and let in the uniforms who are stationed in the back alley, I see, out of the corner of my eye, the front door opening. The employee in the red jacket, back from his smoke break, steps part way through and takes in the scene. It takes him less than a second to know exactly what is happening. He spins around and runs.
I shout, “He’s getting away,” as I dash across the front area and out through the door. I see a flash of red as he runs east on Robson and I give chase. If this guy gets away, with one phone call, George will know what is happening and go to ground. With his resources, he will be out of the country in an hour. We will never be able to track him down and, worst of all, I will be back on the hook for Kevin’s murder.
Red jacket looks back over his shoulder and sees me. He starts to run faster but I am still gaining on him. Heroin may be bad for the body but cigarettes will slow you down more. The crowds on the sidewalk are getting heavier as we approach Burrard, impeding us both. I shout, “Stop. Police.” It feels like a cliché but it gets the attention of the pedestrians in front of me some of whom move out of my way. I am gaining on him even faster. I shout it again.
As he turns the corner on to Burrard, I see that he has pulled out his cellphone and is trying to dial as he runs. Willing all my strength into my legs, I accelerate towards the intersection and as I turn the corner, I am faced with another pedestrian horde lacking one thing: a red ski jacket. I look ahead and there is no one running.
As I slow my pace, I almost trip over the jacket, discarded on the sidewalk, a potential prize for one of downtown’s many homeless. I scan the crowd ahead for someone without a jacket but can see no one. Somehow he has eluded me and is probably right now on the phone to his bosses. I have been nervous about this stakeout from the start and here is the glitch that will ruin the whole operation. I let him through my fingers and I dread telling Steve and Stammo.
As I turn back towards Robson, the screech of brakes draws my attention and I see my quarry. He has run the gauntlet across six lanes of traffic to cross Burrard and is less than thirty yards away. But now it is my turn for a lucky break. The traffic lights are changing and as the vehicles grind to a stop, I weave my way between them. He is on the other side of the street and thinks he has escaped detection. He moves into the doorway of a high fashion shoe store and dials his cellphone. I break into a sprint, I have to reach him before the connection goes through.
As I swing into the doorway, he is opening his mouth to speak. My arm jabs out and I dash the phone from his grasp and clap my hand over his mouth. Before he can break free and shout a warning to whomever he has called, my foot comes down hard on the cell which breaks into several pieces.
He goes limp and, from force of habit, I reach behind me for handcuffs which, of course, are not there. I pull out my own cell and call Steve.
It feels amazing to be acting like a cop again. I am standing straight with a big smile on my face, for the first time believing I can find a way back into the department, permanently.
I can’t live without this job.
When Steve arrives, he cuffs the perp and checks his watch. “OK, Cal. Phase two,” he says. I open Roy’s cellphone and dial.
Now my previous unease becomes plain, old fashioned fear.
Not as much for what we have to do, as for where we have to do it.
53
Cal
I have to agree with Steve that tactically and psychologically this is the right location, but it makes my skin crawl with trepidation. Even before making my very first heroin buy here, I have always feared this alley and so far my fears have been prophetic: it was here where I woke up a month ago on the morning that Kevin was killed; it was here where Blondie and his crew beat the snot out of me and put me in St. Paul’s. It could have been here where they dealt Roy the blow that proved fatal. The early evening darkness does not mask the horror of the place; it heightens it.
It is teeming with life: crack-heads on the pipe, heroin addicts on the nod. Like me. Just like me. My feelings of being a cop reborn are eroded to nothing here.
A group of aboriginal youths wander past smoking pot. An emaciated girl asks me if I want to party, desperate for ten bucks for another rock of crack.
And the smell of decay pervades all.
A man walks into the alley. His face is not familiar but his look is: hard and vicious. As soon as he sees me standing by the green dumpsters, he stops and opens his phone. He talks for no more than three seconds, then closes the phone and waits… and watches.
My phone vibrates. It’s probably Steve telling me that they are arriving but I do not answer it in case it spooks the watcher.
The headlights come first. Then simultaneously two cars pull into the alley, one at each end. They crawl slowly towards me, pitching on the pothole riddled surface.
With the innate sense of the hunted, the addicts fade out of the alley, except for two heroin addicts on the nod and two ragged bundles of clothes that conceal sleeping drunks. But I see them differently with my newly regained cop eyes.
The cars stop about thirty feet on either side of me and the occupants get out. It is old home week: Blondie, as well dressed as ever; Goliath; the man in black, his elbow back in a sling; the hard faced guy whom I stuck with a needle not twenty feet from where I’m now standing; two others who contributed to my beating and my guards from the SeaBus terminal, including Schwarzenegger. But the guy who dropped off the cash today is absent. They approach and stand around me in a semi circle, at a radius of ten feet.
“So, Rogan,” Blondie says, “what do you have to tell me that is so important that I’m going to let you go after you’ve told me?”
The paddy wagons should be screaming into the alley right now. With a sudden rush of fear, I wonder if I should have answered the phone when Steve called. Maybe there is a problem or a change of plan. Then, with a flash of terror, I have the thought that Steve is going to abandon me to the gang, let them kill me and then have them cold for murder. And in a warped way it makes sense: he collars Blondie and the gang and does not have to prove that I murdered Kevin. He’s the judge, Blondie’s the executioner. A cold trickle of sweat flows down my back.
My heart accelerates when Blondie’s response to my silence is to bring up a gun and level it at my chest. My mind is screaming at me to look up to the roofs of the surrounding buildings for evidence of the SWAT team that may not be there. They should stay concealed but a part of me would like to catch a glimpse of them, just to know for sure that they are there, that I have not been abandoned.
With a spine tingling rush, I know why I have always feared this alley: it is the end of my story; someone else will have to finish it from here.
“Well?” he asks.
“I know all about your operation,” I extemporize. “the money laundering, everything.”
“In that case, I should just kill you right now and let the knowledge die with you.” To underscore his point, he raises the gun until it is pointing between my eyes. It gives me some cold comfort: a head shot is more difficult to make.
“Except that I have written it all down and placed it with a lawyer.” I am starting to sound like a TV show from the eighties. “If I don’t call him he’ll deliver it to the police.”
Blondie’s laugh is genuine, he is not buying this. “Is that all you’ve got?” he chuckles.
My mind races to come up with something. When he stops laughing, he is going to start shooting.
“GO!”
The voice is coming from high above me.
Simultaneously I see Blondie propelled backwards and hear the sound of the sniper rifle that shot him.
With screami
ng sirens, two paddy wagons block the alley. SWAT team members in body armour, with bulletproof shields, march towards us. I am in the crossfire. I pull one of the dumpsters away from the wall and crouch behind it.
“DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND LIE FACE DOWN, ARMS EXTENDED.” A voice says through a bullhorn.
There is the sound of running feet then silence. I venture a peek from behind the dumpster. The gang are all lying face down on the filthy surface of the alley surrounded by armed cops. Blondie is lying with his back against the wall, a blood stain spreading out across the front of his designer shirt. Two of the ragged bundles, who were pretending to be drunks, are standing on either side of him, their guns trained on him; one of the ‘heroin addicts’ is talking into his radio.
I come out from behind the dumpster; I came through this alive. Blondie’s eyes lock on mine and I smile broadly, then give him a big wink. Big mistake. With the last of his strength he raises his gun.
I see the muzzle flash and hear a fusillade of shots so close together that it is difficult to distinguish them. As I start to spin, I see his body twitching under the impact of the bullets. I didn’t get my wish for Blondie; he got his quick bye to the next world.
I slam into the wall and collapse to the ground. The pain in my chest is excruciating and I am having to fight for every breath. Hamlet’s words run through my head: A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven. For a dying man, his aim was superb. He got me in the chest, to the left, a heart shot. I feel the strength draining out of me.
The concerned faces of the SWAT team members, running towards me, fade to black.
My last thought: Thank God for Kevlar.
54
Cal
It is a tight fit in the back of the Lincoln Town Car. With Stammo on my left and Steve on my right, each turn of a corner makes me ache from the huge bruise on the left hand side of my chest and I’m feeling claustrophobic. It reminds me of being in the back of the gang’s Chrysler. The comfortable leather seating and the accompanying smell are no compensation.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set) Page 29
