Freddie the Ford avoided the usual vehicular strip search, thanks to the easy bust. As Tommy languished, so did Freddie, in a compound just outside Pembina. It spoke of camera surveillance and guard dogs, though the cameras had yet to be hooked into an endless loop recorder and the resident German Shepherd was at the vet, thanks to Paulie Noonan and some ex-lax–laden peanut butter. Paulie knew the procedure well enough for Freddie’s underbelly, even had the right-sized socket wrench for the dummy tank bolts. The HRs would have assumed that the cash had been found in the bust; it was forgotten money. When the dust had settled, it would help with the upstart fees on The Guiding Light. First, it would pay for Jeremy Bosco’s funeral.
Through a glitch with the Manitoba Public Insurance title department, Freddie the Ford was listed as having two owners: Tommy Friday, aka Tommy Bosco, and his father, Ernie Friday. Freddie had originally belonged to Ernie, an insurance write-off that was fixed on the cheap. The family relation meant that Tommy didn’t have to get the old Ford safety inspected. When Tommy got arrested, it was a safe bet that Freddie would wheel his way to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency–seized property auction in Bismarck, North Dakota. The ownership issue gave Freddie a reprieve. Ernie had a cartage company tow the truck to the Emerson side of the border. When Tommy got back to Winnipeg, his old Ford was waiting for him. Tommy wasn’t ready to part with his rusty steed, though he wasn’t ready to make him a daily driver, either. The next twelve hours would change that.
Chapter Nine
The cabbie took forever to finish, and Claire didn’t exactly have much time. She told the cabbie to drop her at the Anderson Apartments, which was about three blocks south of The Other Woman. The door on the Anderson was seldom locked, even less so during the winter months when the ice jams of slush and grit kept it from being secure till late March. Claire exited the cab, heading up the walk with purpose, fumbling with a key that she wouldn’t need. The cab didn’t pull away, as if the driver was watching her enter, assuring some modicum of safety for her illicit services. She headed up the stairs to the second floor, using her peripheral vision to eye the Diplomat through the stairway glass as it pulled away. She ran the entire length of the hallway, descending the staircase in a flurry that seemed more like a choreographed fall than concentrated steps. The rear door closure had been disconnected for an earlier move-in. Claire hit the door hard and swung into the fender of a soiled Pontiac. The Pontiac started to screech and wail, as most inexpensive car alarms do. Panic, snow, and high heels are never a good mix. Claire made a slippery beeline for the back door of The Other Woman as all the lights came on at the Anderson.
~
Jasmine Starr was busy putting bogus Canadian compliance stickers on a shipment of Chinese dildos when the buzzer rang. She took a drag on her Peter Jackson as she looked up at the grainy video image. Starr was younger than forty but looked way over fifty. The adult store had allowed her to relax in the ways of health and implants. She was now around a size fourteen, which put her in the minority at the plus-sized boutiques, or the “Large Marge” as she would call them. Her website took care of most of the trade, since suburbanites were still too scared to admit that anything but the missionary position was occurring in their cab-over splits. Her makeup was thin; her hair pulled tight and convenient in a French braid. It took her another ten seconds to check the other cameras before she buzzed Claire in. The thermal shock was a welcome sensation. Claire ran straight past Jasmine, dropped the bagged briefcase, and collapsed on a pull-out sofa that looked anything but comfortable.
“Tough day at the office, dear?” said Jasmine as she surveyed the all-too-common fetal position of a distressed Claire Hebert.
“I’m dead,” said Claire, as she tried to pull some magical warmth from the decorative afghan that covered the sofa upholstery. “I’m very, very dead.”
“You look very much alive to me.” Jasmine had already gone back to the label task, assuming this was nothing more than a bad trip or possibly a bad john freak-out episode. Jasmine had the Claire-Bear box set. What could possibly be new here?
“I killed a guy.”
Jasmine looked up, still affixing the label as she aligned her deadpan gaze. “He probably had it coming. Was it anybody important?”
Claire continued her search for warmth. “Jimmy. Jimmy Stephanos.”
Only those who knew Jasmine Starr could have seen the momentary pause. While she was a sort-of friend, Jasmine knew Claire was as good as dead. If it had been a simple case of an adventurous suburban john who pushed his luck, she would have offered the expected support, or at least a proper blanket. There had to be a reason, a really good reason, to invite the full fury of the Heaven’s Rejects. Jasmine noted the roughed-up face. Claire shook with a tremor beyond that of narcotic withdrawal. Jasmine knew it would be at least a Community Row type of ending, if they found her. The question at this point was how much time Claire had to run like hell.
“What cab did you take?”
Claire was starting to calm down. “Indie, White.”
“How?” said Jasmine. “You don’t have plastic.”
“I blew him.” Claire was muffled now, having turned in to the back of the cushions.
“At least you didn’t take the main lines,” said Jasmine. She tossed a wrapped mint at Claire’s head, which bounced off her cheek with no reaction or protest. “Where’d he drop you?”
Claire motioned. “Anderson Apartments, went out the back.”
Simple double-back stuff, thought Jasmine. A grade-school kid could do it, which also meant a grade-school kid, or a Heaven’s Reject, could figure it out. Claire had to disappear, maybe not tonight, but soon. The longer she stayed with Jasmine, the better the chance that someone would come looking. Jasmine finally noticed the bag.
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?” The muffling of the couch was taking on the nuances of a new language for Claire-Bear.
“The fancy bag you rolled in with.”
Claire rolled towards the voice. “It’s Stephanos’s. Girl’s gotta get paid, right?”
Jasmine managed a smirk. She wondered how long she would be amused with her couch surfer.
Chapter Ten
Detective Sergeant Miles Sawatski wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, or tomorrow.
His Robbery-Homicide cell phone had started vibrating on the nightstand around three thirty a.m. Thursday morning, about a half hour after the first marked car in District Three had responded to the 911 call. The detective sergeant was now seated in the leather chair adjacent to the couch that displayed the Stephanos corpse. He had the expected look of cop curiosity as he studied the razor’s final resting place. Every so often, his eyes would cast upwards, following the blood spray on the wall, then back to the razor. Not too many working girls use razors anymore, Sawatski thought. He did remember one from the early two-thousands on Albert Street, when he was working Vice, a Jasmine something-or-other.
Sawatski rubbed his eyes without removing his glasses. He had put on about forty pounds since his divorce last year. The breakup had accelerated the thinning of his hair and the veneer of his good nature. There were two complaints outstanding on him: one from a welfare mother whom he had pushed while looking for her son during a gas station hold-up investigation and one from a desk sergeant at the District Three station. A mix-up had led to the release of a person of interest in a home invasion-turned-bludgeoning of an eighty-eight-year-old Holocaust survivor. Sawatski had thrown the book at him — literally. The Yellow Pages had only glanced off the shoulder of the sergeant, landing on a full cup of coffee. Maybe that’s why the spatter looked so familiar. He had two years left until his twenty-five. Sawatski wished it was two seconds.
A voice bellowed at the open front door. “Make sure you tape off the back yard,” said Constable Gayle Spence, the newest member of Robbery-Homicide and Sawatski’s new partner. She was a ten-year veteran, thick but muscu
lar, with a short bob of jet black hair. Spence had grown up poor and Cree in the Manitoba Housing projects on Dufferin. She had seen her fair share of police tape. She also knew which side of it she would be on if she stuck around. Gayle kept as low a profile as possible until she could enlist in the Canadian Forces. She escaped serious injury when the Gelandewagen she was driving triggered a roadside bomb outside Kandahar. Stitches and light bandages seemed horribly insignificant as she watched the caskets of her two passengers being loaded onto the military transport. It was the one time that she was on record for having wept.
Sawatski continued his gaze unabated as Spence broke the silence. “I wonder how much pressure it actually is,” she said.
Sawatski jumped off his thought train. “How much what is?”
“The pressure,” said Spence, “you know, of blood in the human body.” Spence approached the spatter, being sure to avoid contaminating the blood-soaked items of interest at floor level. “Whaddya think? Five, ten pounds per square inch?”
“I don’t think we have placards on our asses like a car does for tires,” said Sawatski. “Besides, it’s a big artery. Probably runs higher pressure to the brain, especially for all the shenanigans this shit was up to.”
Spence turned in mock disgust. “Hey, Sarge, a little respect for the dead shit please.”
“A thousand pardons, milady.” Sawatski enjoyed having a female partner, his first since his rookie days in Traffic. He was starting to mellow, maybe even starting to enjoy her company. He still hadn’t decided if a friendly drunken sex romp was out of the question. That would take time and an eventual near-breakdown by either party, resulting in a late-night phone call, a short drive, a sympathetic ear, and half a box of condoms. There was plenty of precedent for it, even if most of that precedent came from a Hollywood scriptwriter.
“Steph’s bodyguard was pretty helpful. Hooker’s name is Claire Hebert.” Gayle said, then looked at Sawatski. “Is that the Claire Hebert?”
“AKA Claire-Bear,” said Sawatski. He put on gloves to examine the coat left behind by the alleged murderess. Fur hadn’t exactly been in vogue for a decade or more, and yet, this particular mink had held up exceptionally well. It was ruined now, soaked with Stephanos’s blood. Sawatski checked the inner pockets. No bills, parking stubs, or receipts. Clean, just the way a pro lived. The Reiss Furs tag showed its wear, continually being scrubbed by hair or clothes during the winter months. He tried to casually sniff for a scent of perfume. Spence caught him.
“Miles’s got a girlfriend, Miles’s got a girlfriend.”
“Fuck you, partner.”
“Not without dinner and a show.” Spence turned back to her task of feeling around in the cracks of the sofa cushions, looking for anything that might have fallen in during the melee. Stephanos’s corpse occupied the centre cushion while she worked. She provided Sawatski with the play-by-play.
“Hmmm . . . popcorn, pen, smokes, a lot of soiled rubbers.” There weren’t any rubbers, Spence was just looking to get a reaction out of Sawatski, who had started jotting down items of interest: the obvious struggle, the severity of the wound, the bloody footprints leading to the basement door, and an equally bloody handprint on the door casement. There was Stephanos’s cell phone, still cycling through its screen saver of green code from The Matrix. Beneath the scribbles, Sawatski wrote one word in block letters: WHY.
“Where the fuck are those techs?” Spence had started to grow restless. There was still a raft of photos to take, measurements to measure, swabs to be soiled. “We’ll be lucky if we get out of here by seven.”
“More like eight.” Sawatski had risen, stretching out his back muscles with a dramatic groan. “They have to do the basement, plus the backyard, and the lane. Maybe more like nine.”
“Well, that’s just fucktacular,” said Spence, as she mimicked the Sawatski Stretch.
Everyone in Robbery-Homicide knew the Stretch. It had started when Sawatski had requisitioned a new desk chair for his back trouble. The more red tape he had to cut through, the more dramatic his groans would be in the squad room. It used to piss him off something fierce when fellow members would do their impressions of the Stretch. These days, Sawatski would judge the impromptu competitions with genuine delight. It felt good to have colleagues who considered his presence important enough to rib.
The silence was broken by the vibration of Sawatski’s phone against his car keys. He reached into his pocket and checked the caller ID. “Shit.”
“What is it?” said Spence.
“Tyrannosaurus Ex.”
“Oh.”
“Give me a minute.”
Spence smiled. “For you Sawatski, I’ll give you five.”
Sawatski turned towards the door, answering the phone as he hit the stairs. There was enough activity around that no one would be listening in too intently. “Sawatski.”
A male voice responded. “Are you there now?”
“Yeah, some hooker named Claire-Bear, old pro. Stephanos is as dead as disco.”
“He isn’t my concern,” said The Voice. “Was his briefcase with him?”
Sawatski did a quick mental picture. No case, no gun, no ID. “There was nothing in the house. I’ll check with the bodyguard.”
“Good. I’ll call you in two hours.”
“Lucky me.”
Sawatski turned in the direction of the bodyguard who smoked nervously next to the driver’s door of his ivory Denali. A fresh-faced rookie was running his driver’s license for wants. Sawatski made a beeline for him, his jacket open, right hand on the butt of his Glock.
“Step away from the car!”
The bodyguard bristled. “What the fuck for?”
Sawatski repeated, with gusto. “Step away from the fucking car now, asshole.” He remembered his recent transgressions. “Please and fuck you.”
The staged drama caught the attention of the rookie constable, who quickly exited the Crown Victoria. He moved up to Sawatski quickly, mimicking his gun butt stance. Sawatski gave him a quick nod. “What’s your name kid?”
“It’s Steiner, sir.” Christ, thought Sawatski. The kid’s voice sounds like a fucking squeak toy. That should come in handy for domestic disputes.
“Steiner, did you search this shit sandwich?”
Steiner adjusted his stance, in search of cop bravado. “Yes sir, nothing on him.”
“Did you search the vehicle?” Sawatski looked at Steiner. He knew he hadn’t. What threat could the bodyguard have posed? He was the one who’d made the 911 call, an expected occurrence when a high-profile member of the gang had been murdered. Why would he suddenly reach in, grab a gun, and start laying waste until he was taken out?
Sawatski looked at the bodyguard with conviction as he barked at the rookie. “Steiner, I want you to take this witness into protective custody. Cuff him and put him in your car while I search this vehicle.”
“Fuck you,” said the bodyguard. “You got no reason to search shit.”
Sawatski tilted his head like an inquisitive dog. “No reason? You’re telling me I’ve got no reason? There’s about a gallon of your boss’s blood soaking through the floorboards in there. Maybe you set this whole fucking thing up. Maybe you killed him and made the call and put this bullshit story together about some ninety-eight-pound-soaking-wet skank taking him out.” Sawatski pulled the Glock halfway out of his holster, keeping it visible only to the bodyguard and the wide-eyed rookie. “If I was you, I wouldn’t give me any more reasons.”
The bodyguard relented. The rookie led him away as Sawatski opened the driver’s door. An overflowing ashtray was starting to spill out onto the carpet, already marked from previous burns. Sawatski popped open the console: a few party packs of weed, the remnants of an eight ball in full view. He closed the console and reached under the driver’s seat. He felt the barrel of a 9 mm automatic, not enough to brand it
. The back seat was empty, save for the fast food bags of a week’s lunches. There was a sawed-off in a compartment under the cargo floor. No briefcase. Sawatski closed up the Denali and instructed the rookie to turn the bodyguard loose. Sawatski glared at him as he passed. The bodyguard grinned.
“Don’t you fucking smile at me,” Sawatski growled.
“Sure you didn’t find anything, Sipowitz?”
Sawatski moved in closer to emphasize his opinion of the bodyguard. “Nothing important, nothing I can’t find again.” He felt the need for composure swell, even if it was as fake as a twenty-dollar Fabergé egg. “Thanks for your, uh, cooperation. Have a nice day.” The bodyguard watched him with a quizzical look as Sawatski walked back to the house. He was almost at the steps when he heard the double-honk. He turned in time to see the driver’s door open on the Winnipeg Sentinel Cavalier and the suspension rise two inches as its occupant exited. Here comes the fucking circus, thought Sawatski.
The circus had a name: David “Downtown” Worschuk, the Sentinel’s crime reporter. He had been covering the crime beat for about seven years, an appointment courtesy of an awful lot of drinking with the newspaper’s publisher. Worschuk had first appeared on the pages of the Sentinel with a freelance series dubbed Barbed Wires. He had been working for almost a decade with a large fencing firm, which had been tasked with maintenance on fences at correctional institutions throughout Manitoba. Prisoners with sunny dispositions were chosen to assist with the work. Casual conversations turned into posts on Worschuk’s Facebook page, then a blog, then the column. After a think piece aired on CBC Radio One about the column, the Sentinel’s publisher, Kyle Morgan, decided to cozy up to the ingenue, inviting him to the drinking parties with the press operators during the nightly run. He took an even bigger shine to Worschuk after sampling his uncle’s moonshine, a mix that still bubbled on the family farm near Komarno. Morgan reciprocated with his drug of choice: cocaine. On one such bender, Morgan told Worschuk to show up at the City Desk on Monday. He had to yell the directive at Worschuk three times, thanks to the mandatory ear protection that they were wearing. After Worschuk had switched careers, word had filtered down through Manitoba Corrections that he had been under investigation for smuggling drugs into Milner Ridge. Remnants of empty drug chargers had been found near various fence locations at the facility on dates that corresponded with his visits. No one was sure how many chargers Worschuk could carry at one time. At six feet and a scale tip of at least 375 pounds, he certainly had plenty of cargo space. It also meant that he went commando, or had the loosest boxer shorts imaginable to direct the chargers out the bottom of his pant legs. The complaint had come from a serial fraudster incarcerated at Milner Ridge. It died quickly, after Kyle Morgan threatened the corrections department with a series on inmate suicides. It had been rumoured that some of the “suicides” were actually the result of illegal choke holds by overly aggressive guards.
Clean Sweep Page 5
