Death's Last Run

by Robin Spano

  “Of course I’ll go.”

  Clare felt a tiny piece of ice melt inside her. “You will?”

  Noah pressed Clare’s middle toe mound right where it always gathered stress. “Bert wants us back in New York for official debriefing, but I’ll clear a stop in Toronto with him. Then maybe we can go back up for a longer visit.”

  “Why don’t I stop in alone on the way to New York?” Clare said. “A quick stopover to see my dad in the hospital. In case . . . you know. Then maybe we can drive up together, so I can have a real visit with my mom. Not that I want one, but . . .”

  “Trust me,” Noah said. “I understand guilt. Jewish mother, remember? I think you’ve met her once or twice.”

  Clare laughed. She actually liked Noah’s mom — she was smart and she served fabulous takeout from their local Upper West Side delis. But Clare knew why she drove Noah crazy. “You don’t have to stay the whole time.”

  “I’ll stay for as long as you need.”

  Clare wanted to punch him, for being so damn nice. Couldn’t he just pick a personality and run with it? “Thanks.”

  EIGHTY

  WADE

  Wade clutched his phone to his ear. “What?” he said to Chopper. “Seriously, you’re breaking up. Where the hell are you?”

  He stepped away from the bar. Surprisingly, Jana had shown up for work, as scheduled. She said she needed the distraction, and he could sure use the help — the place was still packed with tourists and locals alike.

  “Chopper, did you say Lucy is the undercover?”

  “Yeah. I would have told you this afternoon but I was too busy freaking about finding Norris. Look, you’re going to be fine. Norris is in jail and I’m bailing. They got nothing on you. If they accuse you of anything, deny it.”

  “Are you not coming back?”

  “Not for a bit. I’ll be in touch to keep tabs on the investigation. If they can indict me, I’d rather be in the back country than in jail. If they don’t have anything, I’ll come hang in civilization.”

  “I guess I understand.”

  “Also — listen, I wasn’t going to give this to you, because I thought you were better off without that bar. But I have cash — you can take what you need to save Avalanche. If that’s what you want.”

  Wade laughed mirthlessly. “This place has no value without the possibility of the band reviving. That’s the whole reason I opened . . . you know, if you build it . . .”

  “You’re the creative genius, Wade — you always were.” It was harder and harder to hear Chopper. The signal was fading into nothing. “Screw the bar and play your music. What will it take? Just money?”

  “Yeah.” Of course it was just money, separating Wade from living his dream. Wasn’t that always the case?

  “So here’s my prescription: Go to rehab first. Go somewhere nice — there’s more than enough cash for a month in one of those celebrity havens in Malibu — because trust me, your life will look better with no booze in it. Then, take the rest of the cash that you need to make your music.”

  “Why are you being so generous?”

  “Because if your friends aren’t there when you need them, then what the fuck’s the point? My cash is in . . .”

  Of course the phone cut out. Story of Wade’s fucking life. Whatever. He didn’t need it that night. Chopper would call again soon.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  CLARE

  Clare sat across the metal-legged table from Stu Norris. She was still addressing him as Inspector, though it was mildly ironic on her part. He’d been silent for the last five minutes, refusing to answer Clare’s questions.

  “I know you hate me,” Clare said. “But I think I can help.”

  “You cannot possibly help me.”

  Outside in the parking lot, an RCMP officer was waiting to take her to the airport. On the drive down from Whistler, Clare had gazed out the passenger window at the water and the mountains and the tall pine trees along the Sea-to-Sky highway, piecing together the broken facts. She had arrived at an answer.

  “You’re scared to talk about the man who paid you,” Clare said. “For your family, I’m guessing, since your own life’s shot to shit.”

  Norris’ eyes rolled upward, as if to say, My, how ingenious.

  “The man who said he was DEA. Chopper said you think he was lying, that he’s not DEA, but someone with the Kearnes campaign?”

  “Chopper thinks with his dick,” Norris muttered. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

  “He said it for your sake.”

  “How is that for my sake?”

  “Are you thick?” Clare tapped the side of her head. “If we catch this person who manipulated you into murder, your sentence could be reduced dramatically. If you help us, it could probably even go down to manslaughter.”

  Norris shrugged. “Like you said, my life is shot to shit. I’ll take protecting my family over helping the organization that never gave me a damn chance to shine.”

  Clare gave him a blank look.

  “Are you thick?” Norris tapped his head, imitating Clare’s gesture of a moment earlier. “The RCMP has been treating me like crap for nearly twenty years. Why would I care if they catch their man?”

  “Have you been threatened?” Clare asked. “By this so-called DEA?”

  “What do you think?”

  Clare sighed. The threat was probably empty, but she wouldn’t be able to convince Norris of that. “I know why you thought you had to kill Sacha.”

  “I never confessed to killing Sacha.”

  “You should.” Lucy’s baggy sleeves were bugging Clare. She rolled them up and leaned into the table. “For Zoe’s sake.”

  Norris’s eyes darted to Clare and away again quickly. “Don’t you ever talk about my daughter. Her name on your lips is vile. And it’s Zoe I’m protecting with my silence.”

  Wow, it felt great to be hated so much. Clare said, “Zoe loves you right now. She’s going to grow up, though, with you in jail for murder. Maybe she’ll get past you murdering a drug dealer. You were a cop; these things do happen. But I doubt she’ll find a way to forgive you for killing a twenty-three-year-old girl.”

  “Shut up. You think I don’t know that?”

  “If you help us find the truth, you can tell your story — how you were led to believe you were working for the DEA, how you thought you were acting for the greater good. You trusted the law, and the law let you down.” This was drivel. Norris had been acting in self-interest the whole damn time. But it was sellable — his family would believe it. Hell, Norris might even believe it.

  Norris held his eyes closed for a long moment before opening them again. “I was an idiot.”

  “So what happened?” Clare kept her voice as soft and as conversational as she could. “Someone phoned you, said they knew you were on the drug dealers’ payroll . . . They said they didn’t want to bust you — they actually wanted to pay you to keep on as you were — and report to them?”

  Clare hadn’t been sure about the payment part, so she was glad when Norris nodded.

  “Some time goes by, everybody’s profiting, you’re reporting to this voice on the phone with some kind of regularity, when suddenly you get the call. He wants you to kill Sacha.”

  Norris shut his eyes again, leaned his head into his hands, his elbows resting on the table.

  Clare wasn’t sure why the Kearnes campaign could have wanted Sacha dead. But she didn’t think Norris knew, either, so she said, “When you killed Sacha, did you still think you were working for the DEA?”

  One short nod. Not an official confession, but Clare didn’t officially care.

  “And your mysterious contact said if you didn’t kill her, they would let you go down as a dirty cop, let the RCMP drag your name through the mud for your family and friends to see, and maybe you’d even do jai
l time.”

  Norris nodded.

  “Jesus,” Clare said. She couldn’t help herself. “When did you realize you weren’t working with the DEA?”

  Norris squinted at Clare like he was deciding what to say. “A few days ago,” he said finally, “I got a phone call that I traced back to Geoffrey Kearnes’ campaign headquarters. The calls were usually blocked, but this one wasn’t.”

  Clare wasn’t sure such a savvy puppetmaster would make such a pedestrian mistake. “Is this the source who gave you my name?”

  Norris nodded.

  “So why did you have to pay for my name? You’d think they would have given that freely. Or taken it out of your next payment.”

  “The money had to be sent to a third party. My source didn’t want the risk of sending it himself, so I had to raise the cash and wire it.”

  “To where? Which bank? Which city?”

  “To a numbered account, obviously. Sorry I can’t give you branch details and the recipient’s home phone number.”

  “Where did your money go? The funds you received from your mystery contact.” Canadian banks had no records of Norris receiving large cash transfers. “Maybe a different numbered offshore account?”

  Norris gave a gesture that was part shrug, part nod. Clare took it as assent.

  “Do you have any cigarettes? We’re not allowed to smoke in here so the tuck shop doesn’t carry them.”

  “I’m sorry,” Clare said. She meant it. She still hadn’t smoked since the previous afternoon, but riding the cravings that morning had been hard. In jail, she wouldn’t bother trying to resist. “Can I ask you about Richie?”

  Norris nodded. His shoulders had relaxed and his tremble had all but gone away. He would soon confess officially. Clare was glad for his sake.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  MARTHA

  “You’re Martha Westlake, right?” A young girl, maybe ten years old, in jeans and a messy ponytail was sitting across the aisle, an in-flight magazine open in her lap, pictures of vacation hotspots bright beneath her small thumbs.

  “That’s right.”

  “What you’re doing — it’s horrible.” The girl rolled her R’s as if imitating someone else saying the word. “Mom joined the Republicans so she can vote for Geoffrey Kearnes. We live in Michigan.”

  “I see.” Martha was taken with this girl. Maybe because the kid was polite, even while saying she hated Martha’s guts. “Would you like to discuss any of the issues?”

  “No,” the little girl said. “We just really hope you lose.”

  The girl’s mother, beside her, leaned over to apologize. “I’m so sorry, Senator. It’s not personal.” To her daughter, she said, “You need to remember that politicians are people. Their feelings get hurt, like yours and mine.”

  “But she’s trying to hurt the country. You said . . .” The girl’s voice trailed off with the silencing glare her mother was giving her.

  “Really,” Martha said. “It’s okay. I wish discussions like this could happen more often. This country would function better if it worked as one giant think tank instead of pockets of elitists making decisions on behalf of the entire population. Is it the drug policy you don’t like? The separation of church and state?”

  The girl seemed not to understand Martha, but the mother — the voter — softened her gaze.

  “My older brother is a drug addict,” the girl said. “He ran away, and we think he’s in Detroit but we’re not sure.”

  “Not an addict — just having problems,” the mother cut in, but the anxious look in her eyes said she didn’t believe her own words.

  Martha inhaled deeply.

  “My mom says your new policy would make it easier for kids like him to score their drugs. That’s why we hate you.”

  Martha still could not get over how confident this kid was. It was refreshing.

  “Oh, please,” said the man in the seat in front of Martha. “Drug reform is long overdue. Colombia and Mexico have been pushing for reform like this for years. And it’s not because they like the cartels or the street violence, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Thank you,” Martha said to the man.

  “For what? I’m not voting for you. You had years to listen to those guys — Zedillo, Gaviria, Cardoso — and you didn’t. Now suddenly your daughter dies and you’re a champion for intelligent thought? You should do the right thing because it comes naturally to you, not because you’ve been pushed so hard you can’t justify the wrong thing anymore.”

  Martha lifted her eyebrows.

  “You might as well make prostitution legal,” said a white-haired woman across the aisle. “It’s no worse than drugs. You’d get the pimps off the streets and collect taxes to boot.”

  Martha wasn’t sure if the woman was joking or serious, so she asked.

  “Oh, a bit of both,” the old woman said, before shouting at the flight attendant for another gin. “But your campaign is a bit of a joke, too, isn’t it?”

  Martha focused on the girl, because she felt her mother’s vote was winnable. “Do you know that my daughter has recently died? And police think it’s drug-related?”

  The girl nodded. “Mom thinks you’re angry. You lost your own daughter, so what do you care about the kids in America?”

  “Oh.” Martha searched for the simplest language she could find, the kind that would make sense to a ten-year-old. “The opposite is true. I don’t want anyone else to ever go through this. The man up ahead is right — it took my daughter dying for me to realize what the right thing was.”

  The man grunted. “You’re not going to flatter my vote out of me.”

  “Nor will I try,” Martha said. “But I will try to help this young girl’s brother.”

  The girl wrinkled her mouth. “How would legalizing drugs make the problem better? Doesn’t that mean that everyone will have them?”

  “Everyone already does,” Martha said. “Right now, America is suffering more than it ever has from gang violence. Drug cartels — those are the people who bring the drugs into the country — and gangs who sell on the streets are powerful, mean organizations. To legalize the drug is to take away their power. Does this make sense?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Okay, take your brother. You love him, right? But he’s doing drugs, and he’s run away.”

  The girl nodded.

  “If drugs were legal, they wouldn’t be associated with crime, right?”

  “I don’t know. They’d still be bad.”

  “Right. But they’d be bad like alcohol, or tobacco, or Krispy Kremes — they’d hurt your health, but they wouldn’t make you a criminal.”

  “I guess.”

  “You wouldn’t be segregated from polite society — to the point where you had to run away and hang out with criminals. And the gangs would not be able to pull young people into their fold — people like your brother — to act as dealers or prostitutes to fund their addictions.”

  The girl’s mother wrapped her arm around her daughter. Her eyes had hardened again. “That’s enough, please, Senator,” she said to Martha. “I’m worried sick about my son. You’re making it worse.”

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to scare you. But I think plain talk will get us to the solution faster than anything else.”

  “Okay. But not around my daughter.”

  Martha understood. “How about if I talk to your son myself?”

  “We don’t know where he is.”

  “You say you think he’s in Detroit. Finding him should not present a challenge if we get enough manpower on it.”

  “How would you . . . ?”

  “I’d use my blog,” said Martha. “I’d post your son’s picture and ask for help. And when we find him, in addition to making sure he gets the counseling he needs, I would fly to Detroit — or wherever — a
nd talk to him.”

  The woman’s jaw fell. “You’d do that?”

  “Of course. To solve America’s drug problem, we need to start by helping one child at a time.”

  And, said the politician inside Martha, it would be incredible PR.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  CLARE

  Outside of Arrivals at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Clare spotted Roberta’s blue pickup immediately. She climbed up into the cab and slammed the passenger door shut.

  “I got you a coffee.” Roberta nodded to the two extra large Tim Hortons cups in the center console.

  Clare picked up the one closest to her. “Thanks.”

  Roberta pulled out of the snowy airport driveway onto the highway that would take them north. Clare sipped her coffee and wondered why she felt so homesick.

  “I hope my dad finally kicks it this time,” Clare said.

  “Really?” Roberta shot Clare a quick glance. Her thick red ponytail had more flecks of gray than the last time Clare had seen her.

  “Really,” Clare said. “If he’s not going to choose to live, I wish he would go ahead and die.”

  “He is dying. Not much will save him except the impossible.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re fooling yourself, kid. You’ll be gutted when he goes.”

  Clare blinked to keep the tears behind her eyes distinctly hidden. “We’d kill a horse if he was in less pain than my dad’s in.”

  “Don’t tell your mother that.”

  “Don’t worry — I’m not interested in watching a waterfall cascade down her face.”

  “Hey, my own eyes haven’t been dry through all this, either.” Roberta shifted into four-wheel drive to account for the terrible weather. “When I was a single mother, your dad gave me a job I was no good at — purely so I could pay my bills by working daylight hours. He taught me how to troubleshoot car problems with the right combination of logic and intuition until I was not only competent, but great at the job. Without him, I’d probably still be on overnights at Pauly’s Diner.”