by Mike Knowles
“There’s an Albanian mob?”
“There’s an every kind of mob. Wipe that condescension out of your voice. The Albanians are a hard people and they are into some serious stuff.”
“What kind of serious?”
“The mob here is connected to the other Albanian mobs across the border. The New York faction is the most powerful, but Toronto has serious clout with them.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“Exactly what I said. When has anyone been talking about New York organized crime and in the same breath said, ‘You know who has clout in New York? Toronto.’ By rights, it should be Chicago, L.A., or even Boston. Toronto makes no sense.”
Ox laughed. “Always thinkin’, ain’t ya? It’s simple. Toronto pushes a lot of stock across the border.”
“Drugs,” I said.
Ox nodded. “Among other things.”
“Drugs,” I said again.
“Yeah,” Ox agreed. “Drugs.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“We are talking about this because you work for them now.”
All of a sudden, I didn’t feel the heat. “What are you talking about, Ox?”
“Nothing funny to say?”
The look on my face must have told the old man that he was pushing his luck. “That painting you stole for those guys. One of them is connected. The word made comes to mind, but who the fuck knows what Albanians call it. Anyway, the kid is made and the painting you stole was for him. Ipso facto, you worked for him, now you work for the guy he works for.”
I felt my cheek twitch with a grin. “That a fact?”
“It is a definite fact. Right up there with water is wet. I got a call this morning. Early, like two in the morning. Guy on the other end tells me that he is looking for James Moriarty. I knew it was you he was talking about before he gave me the details of the job you did. Who the hell else would use a name like that?”
“What did you tell them?”
Ox turned his head and saw that I was looking at him. The stare spooked him. “Nothing. Nothing! What could I tell him? I told them what I tell everyone. I got a number. I told him I would pass on the message and if you were interested, you would get in touch yourself.”
“How did that go over?”
“The guy wasn’t mad, but he wasn’t happy either. He mentioned something about knowing who I was and what I was about. He was trying to scare me without, y’know, scaring me.”
“It work?”
“I’m here, ain’t I? The guy said they had a job for you. Not wanted you for a job, or had a job in mind. They have a job for you.”
“You give them the number?”
Ox shook his head.
I kept looking at him.
“Wilson, I didn’t.”
“Not yet you didn’t. But meeting me here on this bench means you’re planning to.”
Ox didn’t argue. “You said it yourself — this isn’t a partnership. You didn’t run anything by me. You went off the reservation, not me, and now we’re both in the shit. I’m supposed to just be a middleman. Trouble with the Albanian mob is nowhere near the middle — it’s the goddamn eye of the hurricane.”
“Things are calm in the eye, Ox,” I said.
“Don’t I look calm?”
The old man was lumpy and sweaty.
“Nope.”
“That’s ’cause I’m not. The goddamn Albanian mob called me this morning. They gave me twenty-four hours to get in touch with you and that is what I am doing. I’m not giving you up, but am sure as hell not standing in anyone’s way.”
“They give you a number?”
“No. Nothing. They said they would get in touch with me.” Ox wiped at his forehead with the back of his arm. “Christ, it’s hot. Can we get ice cream or something?”
I nodded and followed Ox’s waddle to the ice cream vendor selling out of a cooler strapped to a mountain bike. The woman moved ice cream with the drive of a sled dog running from the lash. We took our spot in line with mothers and children and patiently waited for our turn. Ox gave the menu board a lot of attention while he shuffled towards the cooler in small increments. Every time the woman lifted the lid, Ox went up onto his tiptoes and tried to get a glimpse at what was left. When we got to the front of the line, I ordered a water and told the sweaty woman already holding the cooler handle in anticipation of an order that I would cover whatever Ox wanted.
Ox’s nostrils flared when he heard me. “After that painting stunt you pulled, I’m getting two.”
I paid for the two cones and the ice cream sandwich Ox added onto the order just before the woman closed the cooler lid, and we started back towards the bench. Our trip was cut short when we saw our previous spots occupied by a young mother and her baby carriage.
“There’s shade over there,” Ox said. He was moving towards the new spot before I could say anything. I followed Ox to a slim patch of grass protected by the foliage of a tree and took a spot leaning against the angled trunk. I watched as Ox unwrapped his first cone while holding the ice cream sandwich between his teeth with the same kind of care a tigress would show a newborn cub.
“God, that’s good,” he muttered as the wrapper of the cone finally came loose and freed up one of Ox’s hands for the ice cream sandwich. Crooked teeth broke through the limp cookie layer in a barely contained frenzy and sent softened ice cream squirting out onto Ox’s hand.
“What do you know about the Albanians?”
“I know to stay away from them.” When Ox spoke bits of ice cream sandwich left his personal space like a rocket ship.
“You brought them to my doorstep. The least you can do is let me know who is knocking.”
“I brought them? I brought them? Who stole the painting on a whim? ’Cause that sure as hell wasn’t me.”
I leaned in towards Ox and spoke through my teeth. “You sell yourself as a middleman. A guy who gets paid to make sure that one hand has no idea what the other is doing. But the second you get your hand caught in the cookie jar, you show up looking to lay blame and offload guilt.”
Ox licked what was left of the ice cream sandwich off his hand and started in on the cone. “Alright, I’ll cop to some of that. Yeah, I panicked when I got the call. But what do you want from me? You want me to go toe to toe with the Albanian mob on principle?”
“I just want to know what you know, Ox. That’s it.”
Ox put the remaining two-thirds of the ice cream cone into his mouth at once. When he finished chewing, he pointed at the mother walking away with her baby in tow. Ox hustled over to the vacated spot and took a seat. By the time I sat down, he had already gotten into the second cone. He let the wrapper fall to the ground and took a huge bite out of the chocolate-covered top of the frozen treat. I took a seat beside the broker and felt a slight breeze come in off the water. The view of the lake was spoiled by the sound of the smacking lips beside me. I had to wait until Ox was licking his fingers before he started to tell me about Pyrros Vogli.
The story started off the same way every other gangster story started out. Pyrros was an up-and-comer with an aptitude for making money by breaking the law. Blah, blah, blah, he puts in his time and makes all the right moves. Eventually, he fills a power vacuum caused by his predecessor’s arrest and later deportation. The information wasn’t linear; Ox would say something only to backtrack a few years to add some minor detail that didn’t seem all that important. I gave Ox, and his story, just enough attention to retain what I had heard. The bulk of my concentration was focused on how I would deal with the new gangster in my life.
There was a small bit of my mind, a portion that had been shaped by years of repetition and physical reprimands, that ignored everything, the auditory input coming from Ox and the questions about the Albanians, and obsessed only with my physical sur
roundings. I had learned at a young age to never let my neck get comfortable. The way young drivers are taught to check their mirrors every quarter of a minute was the way my stationary life was also constructed. I checked around me and spotted three men twenty metres out. Their faces were as anonymous as any other in the park, but I noticed them because of how they stood out against the backdrop of the park. They didn’t mesh with the family-friendly atmosphere around them. Two of the men wore T-shirts: one something sleek and designer; the other shirt was so big it could have doubled as a circus tent. The two men were a study in contradictions. One was clean-cut and handsome with a swimmer’s build; the other looked like a rhinoceros trying to pass for a human. The two men were flanking the third like pack animals following the alpha. The big man was obviously uncomfortable in the heat; he wiped at his wide brow with the back of his hand and dragged the moisture across the pockets of his pants. If the one with the movie-star good looks minded the heat, it didn’t show. The man leading the trio was short — just a few inches over five feet. He wore a short-sleeved button-down red Hawaiian print shirt without an undershirt. The yellow flowers on the shirt were accented with colourful birds fluttering near the stamen. His pants were a light-weight cotton; the ash-grey fabric hung like only designer clothes could. His grooming, or lack thereof, contrasted with the short man’s impeccable clothes. Above his nose were eyebrows that meshed together to form an almost solid band of hair across his face. He could have passed for a regular middle-aged guy out for a walk in those clothes, but his eyes gave him away as anything but regular. Under the unibrow were two eyes that resembled the dark coal of a snowman’s pupils.
The two men saw me looking in their direction. I saw the recognition in the shoulders of the much bigger man. There was a split-second build-up of tension that rolled up the steep slopes leading to the thick neck and then down again like a wave.
Ox didn’t even bother to look. He knew what I had seen. The older man looked at his feet. “I’m sorry, Wilson. I had no choice.”
“You had choices, Ox. But only one involved free ice cream.”
The men were coming from the path that ran behind the bench, making the gun at my back inaccessible. If the three men saw me draw the gun, they would have a serious advantage standing behind me. I ignored the gun in favour of the knife in my pocket. I had the folding knife out at fifteen metres. I put the knife down on my thigh and let my palm rest on top of it. Ox was too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice what I had done. His preoccupation was a good thing. If he had seen the knife, he would have given it away with some nervous glance that one of the three men would have surely picked up on. I could feel the hard metal switch that would flick the four-inch blade free from the hilt, and I took a slow breath in through my nose as I prepared for what I might have to do.
The small man left the path and walked towards the bench with the other two men close behind. He stopped a few feet in front of us and put his hands into his pockets. The two larger bodyguards took up positions on opposite sides of the older man. “So you must be James,” the man with the black eyes said.
“Only people I work with call me James,” I said.
The small man smiled with everything but his jet-black eyes. “James it is then.”
The man’s voice was pleasant and contained the heavy stain of an accent I couldn’t place. The bodyguards eyed the hands I had been sure to keep in the open. I spread my fingers slowly and kept them that way. I could see that the two men noticed the gesture, and that I showed no weapon. They kept their own hands empty, but they showed no sign of relaxing their vigilance. The park wasn’t crowded, but there were enough people to make drawing guns a terrible idea. We were far enough from the parking lot to make escaping without someone getting a decent description a chore. Also, the number of people with cameras on their phones combined with the shift in public consciousness towards digital voyeurism made the idea of escaping without a video ending up on YouTube almost impossible.
“I don’t know you,” I said. I nodded at the two men flanking him. “Or them.” The inclusion of the two bodyguards caused the big man to take a step towards me. The small man in the expensive pants stopped him with the raise of his right hand.
“You did not know that I was coming?” This was said to Ox more than to me.
“I, uh, I thought it best that you make the introduction, Mr. Vogli,” Ox said.
“Did you?”
“If he knew that you were coming, he would have —”
“Not been here,” I said.
The same soulless smile showed up again; this time it didn’t pass the cheeks. “Maybe it is all for the best then.”
Ox was sweating more than he had been a few minutes before. His right hand had crushed the wrapper that had been around the waffle cone of the second ice cream into a tight ball. Residual chocolate had oozed out of the crevices and stained his hand a sticky brown. If it came to it, Ox would have more oozing to do before this impromptu meeting was over. I looked at the man’s fat sweaty neck and made a mental note of where I would put the blade. I could get the knife off my knee, open, and into his carotid artery in under a second. The knife would release a geyser of arterial blood on the way out that I would aim at the three men in front of me. The shock would buy me time to get over the bench and behind the hefty body of what would then be my former broker. After that, I would have time to draw the pistol from behind my back and thin the herd.
“May I sit?”
“You can have my seat,” I said.
The small man snorted. “You are funny, James. A real joker — like me. Can I tell you a joke, James? I love jokes. I know so many. Can I tell you one?”
He was into the joke before I could say anything.
“A little boy is sitting in class and the teacher asks the students, ‘Five birds are sitting on a wire. A farmer fires his gun and four of the birds fly away. How many birds are left?’ The boy raises his hand and says, ‘Zero. Four flew away and the farmer killed the last one.’ The teacher smiles at the boy and says, ‘The answer I was looking for was one, but I like the way that you think.’ Well, later that day the boy walks up to the teacher and says, ‘I have a question for you. There are two women on a bench eating ice cream cones. One lady is licking the cone while the other shoves the entire cone into her mouth. Which lady is married?’ The teacher thinks about it and finally decides, ‘I guess I would have to say the one who shoved the whole thing in her mouth.’ The boy smiles at his teacher and says, ‘I was looking for the one wearing the wedding ring, but I like the way that you think.’”
The short man jerked a hand to his stomach and barked out a laugh. The two bodyguards, obviously used to being the audience for the man’s jokes, laughed hard and loud.
“You see, James, like the boy, I like the way you think. That is why I wanted to meet you. I liked what you did for my nephew and how you did it. You were able to think on your feet — something that my nephew could not do. I have need of a man who can think on his feet.”
“I’m not looking for a job right now.”
“No?”
“Nope.”
“I think you are lying, James. Either to me, or to yourself. From what I hear, your man Ox did not know that you took on Ilir’s job until after it was over. And from what Ilir told me about his dealings with you, you took the job knowing that you had only a day to steal something that had already almost been stolen. That is dangerous work, and yet you took the job on. A man like that is reckless, and when I meet a reckless man I know that he is either reckless by nature, or bored. You are too old, and the job was too well orchestrated, for you to be reckless by nature. That leaves only boredom.”
This Pyrros Vogli saw something in me and I didn’t like it. I had not analyzed why I took the job. That in itself should have been a red flag, had I been looking for one. My whole life had been based on careful execution. I thought moves ahead an
d never let my gut overrule my head. Except, it seemed, when it came to Ilir and his two partners. I could have walked away. I should have walked away the second the consultation turned into a job offer. Instead, I stayed in that coffee shop. I sat there waiting for them to say anything that I could twist into a reason for doing the job. Reckless was a good word for it.
“How did you get Ox to give me up?”
Hearing his name caused the broker to slouch his shoulders even further. He was sharing the bench with me, but he wasn’t the only visitor. The broker’s discomfort seemed to occupy physical space on the bench as well. His shame hung around his body like bad cologne.
Pyrros’ smile came back a little bigger than before. “Don’t be mad at the man. Who he is and what he does is no great secret. Ox does not go to great extremes to hide his existence from those on our side of the law. I believe he spends more time worrying about the police being able to arrest him than the criminals trying to find a way to locate him. We have used Ox in the past. He came highly recommended, but I still had my people look into his business before we used his services. Information, like cockroaches, does not die. I had my people pay a visit to him yesterday to ask about you. He protested, but not for long.”
If Ox objected to being spoken of as though he were not right next to Pyrros and me, he didn’t say a word about it. His large head just retracted further into his shoulders like a turtle shrugging away from a predator.
“No money changed hands?”
Vogli laughed. “Why pay for what is obviously available for free?”
