Blood Wine

by John Moss

  “I’m listening.”

  “There are people who want me put away.”

  “Many,” Miranda responded. “Are you surprised?”

  “Besides cops, besides the righteous. There are very bad people, they want me out of the way.”

  “Why not kill you, it couldn’t be that hard.”

  The man in the shadows laughed again. “Because then there would be much bloodshed, it would not be pleasant. You know about vengeance. It is a tradition. Many would die. And worse, there would be publicity. It is bad for business. It is easier to have it done legally — well, not so legally. Those two cops trying to take me down, they will be looked after, I am sure, one way or another. It is easier to have the state do the dirty work.”

  “So, what are you telling me, Mr. Ciccone?”

  “Call me Vittorio, Miss Quin.”

  “Call me Detective, Mr. Ciccone.”

  “These bad guys, they have already tried to, shall we say, remove you from the process, destroy your credibility.”

  She was not surprised he knew about Philip. People like him have a way of knowing what happens whenever it concerns them, whether leaked in the courthouse or the confessional. But the same question she asked Morgan came to mind.

  “Why not kill me, why kill my …” she paused, “my friend?”

  “In spite of what you might think, I do not know everything.”

  Miranda squelched her response and edged away from the car.

  “Miss Quin,” he called, trying to restrain her with sincerity. “Detective Quin, we each have our codes of honour, and I, like you, in my own world I am an honourable man.”

  She wanted to ask him how many addicts had died for his honour, how many prostitutes, how many derelicts, what human detritus crawled the streets for his honour? But she said nothing.

  “I am here to thank you,” he said. “I am here to warn you. This is not a threat. I am on your side, even if you are not on mine. There are people who will try to get at me through you. They have tried already. They will try again. I have a bodyguard posted.” He leaned forward into the light and nodded toward a car parked on the other side of the street.

  Miranda looked across, incredulous. “You are having me guarded?”

  “Just until my trial is over. Then you’re on your own.”

  “No, Mr. Ciccone. That isn’t how it works. Gangsters don’t cover cops. I am on my own right now. The guard detail goes!”

  “You hurt my feelings, Miss Quin.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You put me in danger.”

  “No, Mr. Ciccone, you put yourself in danger.”

  “I do not expect to die in prison. It is you who will keep me out.”

  “No one expects to die in prison, that’s what crooks have in common, the smartest, the dumbest, you’re all going to beat the system. But you know, Mr. Ciccone, the prisons are full of people like you.”

  “Goodnight, Miss Quin. I will call off my guard. I am sure you do not have a death wish, and you will be careful; forewarned is forearmed. You will be wary, for my sake.”

  “For my own, Mr. Ciccone. Good night.”

  Miranda buzzed herself in and walked slowly up to her apartment on the third floor. When she got there she walked through to her bedroom without turning on the lights and looked surreptitiously out her window. A man got out of the car in the shadows across the street. He walked over to the limousine and bent down to converse with Ciccone in the back seat. She saw the flash of a cigarette lighter, then the driver of the limousine got out and, without turning to address the guard at the rear window, walked along Isabella toward the glaring lights of Yonge Street.

  It all seemed strange to Miranda, some kind of an impenetrable play being enacted three storeys below.

  The guard returned to his own car across the street, climbed in, and drove away. The limousine sat there, stolidly filling the loading zone in front of her building. She turned and got ready for bed, using only table lamps, as if she did not want to draw too much attention to herself from the vantage of an observer on the street.

  Before she crawled onto her bed, sliding the top sheet to the side because it was too warm to be covered, she glanced out the window again. The limousine was still there. Vittorio Ciccone was not taking any chances; he would stand guard himself. The trial was set to resume in the morning. He wanted her there.

  Miranda woke just before dawn, as she often did when she had a lot on her mind. There was a flashing red light pulsing through her room. At first she thought she was dreaming and closed her eyes tight, trying to make the light disappear. She rolled over slowly onto her back, then opened her eyes again and tried to assimilate the significance of the light coming through her window from outside.

  Must be a cruiser on the street, she thought. It’s June, no snowplows, wrong colour light.

  She got up and looked out the window. The police car was parked behind the black limousine. The flashing lights filled the street with surreal activity as buildings wrenched into waves of garish red struggled vainly to retreat into the shadows.

  The scene was exactly the same five minutes later when Miranda emerged from her building, dressed but dishevelled.

  One of two uniformed officers got out of the cruiser as she walked around the limousine, but when Miranda flashed him her ID he recognized her and said nothing. The window on the far side was open. She bent down and could see Vittorio Ciccone sitting in the shadows. She took a flashlight from the officer and shone it into the car interior.

  Ciccone stared straight through her. He had a single bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. It was like a third eye weeping a small strand of blood.

  The other officer got out of the cruiser and walked over to them. “I’ve got a make on the limo,” she said.

  “It’s Vittorio Ciccone,” said Miranda.

  “Yes,” the officer said, doing a double take, then recognizing Miranda. “Detective Quin. You live here? It is Ciccone. At least, it’s his car.”

  “It’s him,” said Miranda. “I do live here, yes. Third floor. And yes, he was visiting me.”

  “Visiting you!” said the first officer incredulously. “Aren’t you involved, you know, in the big murder trial?”

  “Yes, I do know. Yes, I am. Was. The trial’s over. The jury, it seems, is redundant.”

  “Yeah,” said the second officer. “It’s more efficient this way.”

  Another cruiser pulled up, then an ambulance, which immediately called for the coroner’s black maria. A third cruiser arrived. The superintendent got out and walked over to Miranda, who was sitting on the cement step of the walkway leading into her building. The uniformed officers had been deferential, but wary. They knew she was connected to Ciccone; they knew she and her partner were clean.

  “Superintendent,” she said, looking up.

  “Detective Quin.”

  “Glad you could make it.”

  “I was still in my office.”

  “Sorry about that,” she said. There were rumours he and his wife were having problems. He had been working odd hours, sometimes not going home at all.

  “Ciccone was here to see you, was he?” he asked, ignoring her sympathy.

  “Yeah.” She rose to her feet. “I mean, why else would a gangster be parked in front of my place in this part of Toronto, dead or alive.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “You look like hell, Alex. You should go home.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to look after me.”

  “Look after you?”

  “I was a valuable commodity. He had a guard posted to keep an eye on me. I think it was the guard who killed him.”

  “What makes you think that? Where’s the driver?”

  “You’ll never see the driver again. The shooter let him walk.”

  “You actually saw this happen. The guy’s been dead six or seven hours.”

  “At least. More. We talked. It was late evening. Just get
ting dark. It was dark by the time I got upstairs. Say, nine thirty. I looked out the window.”

  “And you saw him get shot.”

  “I saw the so-called guard walk over, and they conferred. There was a flash, I thought it was a lighter.”

  “Vittorio Ciccone didn’t smoke.”

  “Yeah, I know that. Clean living. No drugs, only the best wines, a gourmand. I didn’t think of that at the time.”

  “This was nine thirty. And you were going to bed?”

  “Yeah, Superintendent, like you I keep odd hours.”

  He did not respond, so she clarified. “Alone, to read, watch a bit of TV, whatever. I didn’t keep looking out the window. I saw the shooter’s car drive away. The limo stayed. The driver walked. I slept.”

  “And he was worried about your safety.”

  “He was worried about going to prison. He didn’t like the irony, doing life for something he didn’t do.”

  “Well, you’re off the hook. Someone’s done you a favour.”

  “That’s what he said, that I was doing him a favour.”

  “Were you?”

  Miranda felt herself rise in fury, then she relaxed. Alex Rufalo knew her better than that. He was being rhetorical, trying simply to make a connection.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Check my Swiss bank account.”

  He grinned at her, which surprised him. Since being promoted to superintendent he tried not to smile in public.

  Morgan took a while to assimilate what she was saying. He was just getting up when she called, before going back to bed. He was groggy; he had stayed up reading but he couldn’t sleep in. There was too much on his mind, a mixture of arcane information about the world distribution of rare wines and facts about the mysteries exploding around them without a coherent pattern of demolition.

  “This does not make life easier,” was his initial response after a series of barely audible groans.

  “It does for me,” Miranda responded.

  “No trial.”

  “No more bodies in my bed. Ciccone confirmed your suspicion that I was, in fact, the target, not Philip.”

  “To keep you from testifying?”

  “Yeah, or at least to destroy my credibility. Killer-cop love-nest, cop exonerates crime boss, a simple equation — bad cop, crime boss goes down.”

  “There’s still the wine connection,” said Morgan.

  “Not if Ciccone was the ultimate target.”

  “Especially if Ciccone was the target.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your man Carter, he and his friends at the Ninth Chateau —”

  “The what?”

  “ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape.”

  “That would be the pope’s new palace.”

  “Or his ninth. Anyway, he’s the link.”

  “The pope?”

  “No, Carter.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Carter didn’t seduce you for nothing.”

  “No, he didn’t. Seduce me. For nothing.”

  “There’s too much coincidence, Miranda, to be a coincidence.”

  “Go on.”

  “Carter was after something. You were a project. Sorry, but you were. It was all too elaborate for a sordid seduction scenario. He was after something big.”

  “You’re the last of the Romantics, Morgan.”

  “And what did you have worth the effort? Sorry, this isn’t personal.”

  “Well, of course it’s personal.”

  “Let’s just imagine he was after something else, in addition to …” He let his voice trail off, then started up again. “What would that be? Answer: Vittorio Ciccone.”

  “Let me think about it, Morgan. Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m getting up, you’re the one going back to sleep.”

  “Okay. Meet me in an hour. Starbucks?”

  “Tim Hortons.”

  “Which one?”

  “Near the Summerhill subway.”

  “Yeah, in an hour.”

  Morgan got there before Miranda. He liked going to Tim Hortons. His father used to talk about hockey in the old days, when Horton was a star. Ordering a double-double and a honey cruller made him nostalgic for a past he never knew. It also made him feel like a bit of a rebel. If Miranda had arrived first, he would have ordered coffee with milk and maybe a cinnamon bagel, or bag-el, as they insisted on calling it.

  Miranda came breezing in, dressed casually, carrying a large bag. “Why here?” she said when she got a coffee and dutchie and joined him.

  “Hockey,” he murmured. “My dad.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You’re looking,” he looked at her appreciatively, “very nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, flashing an uncharacteristically demure smile.

  “So,” he said, warily, “let’s talk business.”

  “Okay,” she responded. “I’m going to New York.”

  “City?”

  “Where else?”

  “Elke Sturmberg?”

  “Of course.”

  “You know what I don’t get? If they were prepared to blow up the whole operation at Bonnydoon because she knew too much, then why not just kill her too?”

  “Morgan, even with a felony of this magnitude, people don’t arbitrarily kill people. They don’t just leave a trail of bodies.”

  “No? I count four so far. How many constitute a trail?”

  “Let’s say Elke was on to them, and she was brought back to Mr. Savage. At Bonnydoon.”

  “To be interviewed. Then why not toss her body in the vat with the ring man?”

  “Good point,” said Miranda.

  “Maybe they knew the man in the vat would be found, even after the explosion, maybe they wanted him to be found.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” said Morgan. “But let’s say they did. And let’s say they did not want to have Elke’s body found.”

  “If in fact they wanted to kill her. Maybe she’s part of the conspiracy.”

  “You don’t think that.”

  “No. It wouldn’t make sense,” said Miranda.

  “Then, somehow, she ended up at your place. Now she’s disappeared. Maybe they’ve got her again.”

  “No way. You saw the surveillance video. She looked straight into the camera. She was in control.”

  “Then why go back to New York?” Morgan asked.

  “Because.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Maybe I identify with her,” said Miranda. “I know how she thinks.”

  Morgan gazed at her across the table. When she glanced away, his eyes did a quick inventory. He drew in a deep, appreciative breath. He did not like to acknowledge she was a woman, but he was always aware.

  “That only goes so far, you know.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she’s a cold-blooded killer and you’re not.”

  “You mean the dead guy in the river? Why cold-blooded?”

  “Six bullets.”

  “I’d say that’s hot-blooded, an expression of panic or passion.”

  “And I’d say it shows clinical detachment, more like a gangland execution.”

  “Just because she had the gun doesn’t mean it was her.”

  “Well, let’s go way out on a limb and say it was. Then she’d know we’d be after her. Then she’d run away. So, my question is, where does a woman like that disappear to? She’s high-profile. With her looks, her credentials, her experience in international trade — people like her don’t just vanish.”

  “No, Morgan, they go to New York.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was joking or affirming her mission.

  “I think if she’s haunted by what she can’t remember,” Miranda continued, “she’d return to home base, she’d go back for security. She knows people there. I’m betting she’s not even hiding.”

  “Call her.”

  “What?”

  “Call her.”

 
; “Where? In New York?”

  “That’s right. At her job. Beverley Auction House. Or at home, she’ll be listed.”

  Miranda took a cellphone from her bag, dialled New York information, dialled again, and asked for Elke Sturmberg.”

  “I’m sorry,” was the response, “she hasn’t been in for a few days. May I take a message?”

  Miranda rang off. There was no point trying her apartment, but she tried anyway.

  “Hello,” said a familiar voice on the answering machine. “This is Elke and I am not able to come to the —” The voice was cut off by another version of the same voice, laid over the first message: “Mine is alive, you will know where I am.” Then a pause, then a beep.

  “Good grief,” said Miranda. She called the number again and held the phone up for Morgan to listen.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “That’s cryptic.”

  “Her boyfriend, her ex. Remember she called him from Headquarters by mistake, or so she said.”

  “She hung up when he answered.”

  “Exactly — her ex-lover is alive. Mine is dead. That message wouldn’t mean much to anyone but me.”

  “So he’s your contact. You don’t know his name.”

  “But I will. I have to get going to catch my flight. Be a good friend, track down his number from last night. I’ll call you when I get to the airport.”

  “You sure you’re allowed out of the country?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell. As far as you know, I’ve retreated to the family homestead in Waterloo County. There’s no phone.”

  She stood up, leaned over, and kissed him on the forehead with a mildly patronizing flourish so that he wouldn’t think she was being too intimate. She walked out, heading for the subway. She hadn’t noticed his double-double or commented on the cruller.

  9

  NYC

  Morgan was not surprised when Miranda didn’t call from Pearson. Catching commuter flights is always a hassle, and he thought how easy it would be to lose track in the wait-and-hurry of airport protocol. Still, she would have to get in touch sooner or later, since he knew where she was going in New York and she did not. He had had no trouble tracing the ex-boyfriend’s number. His name was Ivan Muritori. Spivak had already been in touch with NYPD and passed on his address, along with the request that Elke Sturmberg was wanted for questioning. There was not yet a murder warrant, since the superintendent hoped to keep things on a courtesy level. She was to be picked up and strongly encouraged to return to Toronto of her own accord. If she failed to cooperate, the complicated procedures of arrest and extradition would begin. At this point, Elke Sturmberg was still a free agent.