Clean Sweep

by Michael J. Clark

  The nicotine pause was long enough to bring the oncoming headlights close enough for Ernie to yield as Tommy Bosco’s beaten Econoline rumbled past. Ernie knew it was Tommy, with the cockeyed headlight and the Guiding Light lettering on the side. He floored the throttle of the Caprice to find traction for the icy takeoff. He managed to catch up to Tommy as the two slowed for the traffic light for the entry into St. Norbert. He stayed back half a car length. This wouldn’t be a “Hey, son, how you doing? Let’s get a coffee at Timmy’s” kind of deal. This wouldn’t be anything at all, just like their relationship had been for years.

  Unlike most of Ernie’s contemporaries, Tommy was encouraged to enter The Life instead of legitimate pursuits. Tommy’s mother had died in a drunk driving accident when Tommy was two. Discipline occurred, though only for getting caught. The last belt-lashing happened at age twelve. Ernie bought Tommy a car for his sixteenth birthday after he successfully stole his twentieth car. It was far from Father Knows Best, but it seemed to work until Tommy fell in with the hard-drugs trade. Like an old Mafioso in an old Mafioso movie, Ernie believed there were just some things you didn’t do. Killing was okay, if there was a valid reason. Pimping was allowed — it was the world’s oldest profession. Soft drugs weren’t as big of a deal, but cocaine, heroin, and the new synthetics, like fentanyl, would bring in overdoses and unwanted attention. Ernie used to say that it upset the natural balance of honest crime. That’s what he believed in then. He still believed it now.

  Tommy going straight had caused the rift between them. He couldn’t turn a blind eye, nor could Ernie expect him to. They tried the Tim Hortons coffee chats for a while, but there just didn’t seem to be anything to talk about anymore. Ernie wasn’t exactly politically correct when it came to the redemption of failed criminals. He saw them as dumb cons without discipline. “Nobody ever has to get caught,” he would say to Tommy during a game of catch with stolen gloves from a truck heist. “You always choose. And it’s usually some stupid bitch who gives you away.” Shortly after their last Timmy’s meeting in 2012, Tommy officially changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name. He had been using it as an alias for much longer.

  Chapter Seven

  In the north end of the city, a veteran of the red-light district was using an old screwdriver to pry open the catch of a Pritchard Avenue basement window. Claire Hebert was pushing thirty-five, an age when most hookers would be considering a much-needed retirement. In the sex trade since fourteen, Hebert, or “Claire-Bear” as the johns knew her, had risen through the ranks of local prostitution, from the Higgins Avenue low track to the fur coats and hush-hush escort services of Albert Street. In a town known for wholesale, Claire Hebert didn’t come cheap. $1,000 got you three hours, anal, if that was your thing, and a squirt show that could rival whatever you could download off the internet. Add another thousand, and she’d bring an equally adept friend.

  Claire wasn’t sure about her background. Her Ukrainian-Scottish mother referred to her absentee father in terms reserved more for his character, though it was obvious to any mirror that she had aboriginal blood in her veins, the kind of Métis mix that a white-run advertising agency would use for a marketing campaign. She pushed back and forth on the old basement window, using it like a snow shovel to clear away the crisp white powder, just like the high-grade cocaine on the mirror upstairs, with the rolled-up Borden, next to the body of the freshly late Jimmy Stephanos.

  Claire wasn’t a fan of the underworld john. The pluses of ready cash, quality drugs, and a relatively safe working environment could just as quickly erupt into violence. Most of them could hold their liquor and coke and wouldn’t cross the line with a fist or a gun. Every five years or so, a Claire-Bear wannabe would turn up, usually face down on Pipeline Road or the outer reaches of Community Row. Dentals and prints were the identifiers, as the faces were usually beaten to a bloody mash. The last one was a girl that Claire had stood alongside on Albert Street, near the Duke of Kent Legion. An HR recruit took her ecstasy-laced comments about his manhood too personally. After strangling her, he took her to a wood shop and introduced her to an industrial planer. Claire couldn’t remember if her name was Sarah or Sandy.

  Stephanos’s blood flow had slowed from his neck, the razor still embedded just past the left carotid slice. In his final moments, he had tried to dial his new bodyguard, who was idling unaware in front of the well-kept bungalow. Stephanos was known to complain about his cell phone at executive meetings of the Heaven’s Rejects. “I gotta figure out how to use this speed-dial bullshit,” he would mutter as he tried to remember the phone numbers of key associates. Most of them wouldn’t keep numbers like that stored for fear that a lost or confiscated phone would give Vice or Robbery-Homicide key information on open cases. Stephanos figured he didn’t have to worry. Misguided or not, he was the president of the local chapter.

  With only four numbers keyed, Stephanos’s final spasm hit Send. The “call cannot go through” chatter had ended, along with the fast busy. There was nothing but dead air. Dead Claire-Bear would be next. It was only a matter of time till the bodyguard checked in; he would find the body, the hooker missing, and Stephanos’s briefcase gone. That would happen in about two hours, twenty minutes past the three-hour maximum.

  The Pritchard house was known as the HRs’ Fuck Palace amongst Winnipeg Vice, and the rear door had been barricaded to combat possible raids, making the basement window Claire’s only exit. As tiny as she was in frame, the pratfalls of breast augmentation made the exit difficult.

  “Stupid fucking tits,” she said as she finally shimmied out of the opening. Her coat was busy, soaking up blood on the living room floor, along with her burner phone, which had fallen during the melee. The thin cashmere sweater she was wearing wouldn’t provide comfort for long. The briefcase was another issue. It was one thing for a Native-looking girl with a fresh shiner and no jacket to be walking down a North End street. The $400 Jack Georges leather briefcase would look out of place to a patrol car or a neighbourhood low-life looking for an easy mark. She pulled a half-full green garbage bag out of the AutoBin in the back lane. The inside of the bag was fresh with the funk of spoiled foodstuffs. After emptying the bag’s contents, she stuffed the briefcase inside the North End suitcase, tying a double knot to secure it. She hoped that it held enough drugs and cash to get out of town.

  The back lane was tricky for three-inch-heel boots. The house was mid-block, with McGregor Avenue the best bet for a bus or cab. The cold helped to numb the pain of the shiner. A cap had become dislodged from an incisor. Claire couldn’t remember if it had been spat or swallowed. She didn’t remember much of the rage that had occurred, only that it seemed out of place for Stephanos. When she arrived, he was a different kind of edgy; not the expected emotion from the cocaine, but the “something’s up” kind. Still, there were no crimson red flags. Claire had taken a hit offered by Stephanos. Feeling the buzz, she kicked out her legs in appreciation, knocking the coffee table hard. The jostle sent the briefcase over the other side. That’s when Stephanos snapped. The sucker punch found her right eye, then a left-bound haymaker to the jaw. Community Row, she thought as Stephanos put his hands around her neck. She reached into her boot for the razor. It was a reflex. She had heard cops talk about how they had never pulled a gun in twenty years on the force, but they knew that they could if called upon.

  A veteran working girl from Albert Street had given her the razor and had taught her how to use it. “You want to be able to retire one day,” said Jasmine Starr as she explained the need for protection in the Blue Note Café. “Not as a picture in the missing persons section of the Sentinel.” Jasmine had successfully retired about seven years earlier. She had put her previous work experience to good use, opening a sex shop on Main Street called The Other Woman. She had never pulled the razor, as far as Claire knew.

  Claire had pulled the razor and had swung it hard into Stephanos’s neck. She didn’t know what she had
hit, other than the obvious main line to his brain, as the telltale sign of the blood spatter on the wall would illustrate to any crime scene investigator. The speed of the upwards slice caused the razor to lodge in the jawbone. Claire watched for a moment as Stephanos bled out. He tried to reach for her, but there was no blood available to move the extremities. The gasps were almost amusing. With each one, the razor handle would quiver as it followed the movements of his jaw. He tried to speak.

  “Y-y-you f-f-fu-fu-fu-cking c-c-cunt,” he said as he felt his tank reaching empty. Then he was quiet. Even though Stephanos’s driver hadn’t seen the skirmish through the blackout curtains, Claire knew that time wasn’t on her side. Just enough time to grab the bag, lose her jacket, jam her clutch in the front of her jeans, and bolt towards the basement.

  She was on McGregor now, trying to keep from breaking an ankle on the poorly plowed sidewalk. There were no convenience stores with a phone nearby. About the only friendly public spot would be the fire hall at McGregor and Redwood, though she would probably be kept on the other side of the door, thanks to a couple of firefighters from the Maple Street Engine Company who in the past had been caught with Higgins Avenue working girls in the storage shed behind the station. The best bet was a cab, if it was the right company. Jimmy’s Taxi was the largest fleet, which meant it carried most of the hooker trade, placing it in deep with the criminal element. Buddy’s Cab wasn’t much better. What she needed was an indie, and there were only four left in the city. She scanned the traffic for a roof-mount lamp. Traffic was brisk, with plenty of the cabs she didn’t need. Then she saw the white Dodge Diplomat. White Taxi, the oldest independent in town, with the oldest cabs. There were only six cabs in the White fleet, with the average driver age in the low seventies. Their only innovation was their no-cash policy, which kept knives out of backsides. The drivers would call in the credit card number before the cab rolled. Claire pulled out her clutch to flag him down. The cabbie pulled up at the cut-out to the back lane and rolled down the passenger window.

  “Evening miss,” said the darkened gravelly voice. “Little cold for sweater weather, isn’t it?”

  Claire nodded. “I need a lift.”

  “Sure thing,” said the cabbie. “Remember, we don’t take cash, just plastic.”

  Claire didn’t have a credit card, or a debit card, or even a bank account, one of the drawbacks to living life off the grid. She did a quick scan of the cabbie. Not too big, no Virgin Mary figurine on the dashboard, and a well-worn wedding ring on his left hand. Perfect. She pushed back her hair, hoping that her impromptu snow wash and the old man’s eyesight would miss any sign of her recent facial carnage. She mustered up the bravado.

  “How about a hummer?”

  The cabbie grabbed an old paint stirring stick, with a u-shaped indent on the end. He flipped up the passenger door lock. Claire entered as he picked up his two-way.

  “Cab twenty-four to Dispatch.”

  “Go ahead, twenty-four.”

  “Going to stop for coffee at Robin’s on Redwood.”

  “Gotcha twenty-four. Out.”

  The Diplomat pulled away from the curb. Claire breathed.

  Chapter Eight

  Through all of this, Freddie the Ford slept.

  Freddie was cold steel, just like the lathes and drill presses that took up the adjacent space in the century-old machine shop on Jarvis, near the north ramp of the Arlington Bridge. If Freddie could hear, it would be the cacophony of the Canadian Pacific rail yards, the squeal of massive brakes, the low register of diesel locomotives, and the soul-jarring impact of train cars being coupled. Freddie heard none of it. Freddie slept.

  It had been at least a year since Freddie drew breath. Tommy would visit on occasion, with the keys and a freshly charged battery. Keeping the truck was becoming more of an involved process. Freddie was stored in Jaime Bachynski’s machine shop, and space was becoming a bit of a premium. Jaime had just purchased an industrial drill press, a relic of the over-built 1950s American military complex. It had served at a Midwestern university, constructing all manner of world-ending components. Jaime wasn’t one for computer-controlled systems; he was an old-school machinist. He had the touch needed to operate the oversized beast, mostly for specialty pieces for Manitoba Hydro projects. The new-old press meant a short trip for Freddie, to the east wall of the shop. The 1989 Ford F-150 XLT Lariat was covered with miscellaneous debris; a few tow straps, some scraps of angle iron, and an old set of booster cables rested on the hood. The old Ford was too ugly to catch anyone’s eye; it looked like the definition of an old piece of wheeled junk.

  Freddie wasn’t junk; Freddie had history. Most observers would see a weathered light-blue pickup truck, equipped with top-down paint peel, rusting panels, and a cracked windshield. Three patches of lubricants were evident at floor level; engine oil, transmission fluid, and differential sweats. The signal switch was broken for left-hand turns. Tommy would have to hold it in place to make the blinkers fire. Freddie certainly didn’t look special. No one would have ever thought that this old Ford was a millionaire ten times over.

  In his prime, Freddie the Ford had been an important link in the chain that was cross-border smuggling. Freddie and Tommy had made bi-weekly runs to Minneapolis, having to stop much more regularly for fuel than a proper dual tank half-ton Ford should. Tommy was running a semi-legitimate business on the St. Paul side of the Twin Cities, selling air bag suspensions and custom wheels. Most of the customers were in the drug trade, and the nicer the ride, the better the drugs, as well as the size of the territory that they maintained in the metro area. Tommy had never been a full-patch member of any gang, though he was a level-one friendly of the Heaven’s Rejects. One errand grew to two, then three, then bankrolls for fronts. Tommy’s Winnipeg operation did custom bike work — performance modifications and elaborate paint jobs on Harley-Davidsons — plus automotive wheel repairs. The money from the local criminal operations would flow into the Winnipeg shop, where it would be stashed in the dummy fuel tank and head south. On the return trip, Freddie’s dummy tank would carry new cargo — cocaine, heroin, and the occasional supply of gun parts, such as conversion kits for full automatic firing.

  The side streets in the Twin Cities would do quick and consistent damage to oversized custom wheels. The trade required specialized equipment, much of which hadn’t been built for decades. Custom paint colours and air brushed accents ensured repeat business with the Twin Cities customers, along with a well-timed act of arson against the only wheel-repair shop in St. Paul. The tale was plausible for the go-ahead nod from Customs agents at the border crossing — a truckload of repaired wheels heading south, an equal load of broken ones heading north. Tommy would sometimes have to purposely damage new wheels on the U.S. side to top off Freddie’s load.

  The dummy tank still held gas, though the quantity was considerably less than the owner’s manual specifications. The filler neck flared out as it entered the tank, much like the profile of a chemist’s beaker. A casual sniff at Customs wouldn’t tip the hand; even a swipe of a wooden test stick would draw out enough fuel to send Freddie the Ford out of the inspection bay. Getting the money together involved numerous Heaven’s Rejects soldiers, shady currency houses, even a few legitimate banks asleep at the switch. Cash loads averaged between one hundred and two hundred thousand dollars, depending on what was getting bought for the return trip.

  Underneath, Freddie’s underbelly still looked factory. The fuel lines, supply hoses, even the corrosion on the lines looked correct for the vintage, thanks to one of the airbrush artists who worked on the Harleys at the Winnipeg shop. The release mechanism for the contraband cargo hold was incorporated into the straps that held the tank to the undercarriage. When the straps were unbolted from their factory holes, hidden hinges concealed inside the tank allowed it to swing down for access. The trick was making sure that the bolts keeping the tank closed were properly tightened. On on
e of the initial runs, the vibrations of Highway 75 loosened the bolts free. The dummy tank flopped wide open at about 109 kilometres per hour. Two thirty-nine-cent lock washers made sure that Tommy wouldn’t have to fish bags of contraband or cash out of the ditch.

  And so it went. Five years, three months, and sixteen days’ worth of successful cartage, as Tommy pulled into the Emerson–Pembina border crossing on January 17, 2009. There was no tipoff, just a non-threatening request from the officer on duty to proceed to door two of the U.S. customs inspection garage. Tommy had just finished placing Freddie into park, when he felt the Glock pistol muzzle, its handler pushing the imprint hard into his left temple. A lot of yelling and screaming accompanied the proceedings. Every face was hoping that Tommy would do just one thing; flinch. That was the problem with many U.S. customs officers. Only one in five ever saw service in the military, and that was usually on the home front in the highly classified areas of the motor pool and the mess hall. Please, they all seemed to mouth. Please give me a reason to blow out the side of your skull. Please.

  Then, the leader of the U.S. customs posse reached in behind the bench seat, removing a brick of hashish duct-taped to the vinyl. He threw it at Tommy’s head.

  “What the fuck is this?” asked Officer Posse.

  Tommy sniffed at the package. “Some guys save up balls of string. That’s a brick of your Mom’s pubes.”

  Tommy would have thrown in Merry Ukrainian Christmas for good measure, if not for the Winchester butt that slammed into his face. Even before the gun butt sent him for a nap, he had already figured out the chain of events; it was the woman scorned. This was why most of Tommy’s circle settled on the young and the dumb, the girls with fake breasts, painted-on rubber dresses, and an appetite for partying. Tommy started a relationship with the one woman you never should: a hooker. Claire Hebert liked it rough, and often, as did Tommy. She also liked the free cocaine that circulated amongst the HRs’ inner circle a little too much for Tommy’s liking. It was fun at first, though after a baker’s dozen rescues from the penthouse balconies of various apartments, Tommy had had enough. Unfortunately, Claire hadn’t, and a combination of unwanted detoxification, a bag of hydroponic weed, and a week of steady hits of vodka led to a revenge brick of hashish taped to the backside of Freddie’s bench seat. Tommy bet it had been stashed in her apartment so long that it was starting to resemble an unwanted fruitcake. There was no sense in screwing someone over with anything good; it just had to be illegal.