“Where’s the fucking coke, you thieving cunt?” Claire pulled the ear open, to make sure Jasmine heard. She did, and responded with an old steering wheel club that had been left under her desk. The club hit Claire square in the jaw with the business end of the lock assembly. The key was long lost, and the arc of the motion sent the top portion of the Club flying, destroying a glass display shelf next to the couch. A few of the newly freed dildos switched on as they hit the floor, vibrating on the broken glass. The women panted as they made the necessary physical and mental checks that occur with recent injury. Jasmine assessed her ear, looking at the amount of blood on her hand. Claire rubbed her jaw, concerned with the possibility of a fracture. It didn’t hurt too much to open. She flicked her tongue around her mouth, checking for loose teeth. She found two, spitting them to the floor in unison. This was not the first time the two had fought; it was simply the first time that they had fought each other. Jasmine stared up at the flickering fluorescent fixture.
“Stupid lights,” she said, as she brought herself up to sitting level, still with laboured breath. “Hydro wants me to change them.”
Claire brought herself up slowly, still checking for errant teeth. “Is that the Power Smart shit? Like on the billboards?”
“Something like that. Save the planet or something.”
“That flickering is annoying.”
“You’re annoying.”
Jasmine’s dig caught Claire off guard, enough that a laugh seemed appropriate. In a life coloured by far worse, the melee had all of the lasting damage of a suburban pillow fight. Jasmine picked up the briefcase and slammed it into Claire’s chest, just hard enough to get her attention and knock out a puff of air. “There’s no coke, and I didn’t take anything out, except for that.” She pointed to the ledger, still resting on the floor, still open to the page Jasmine had been reading. Claire rubbed her jaw and groaned. She looked at the ledger. She knew it was the wrong thing to have.
“Oh, shit!”
“You’re damn right, oh shit.”
“I was just looking for coke and cash!”
Jasmine picked up the ledger, flipping nonchalantly through the pages. “These are the worst things to get your hands on. Some coded bullshit that any eleven-year-old could crack.” Jasmine kept flipping, not seeming to be looking for anything important. “The HRs must know you’ve got it by now, and they’ve probably put an all-points bulletin out on your ass. You should go to the cops.”
Claire’s bravado was returning. “Oh sure, go to the cops. Gee, I wonder how that chat will go. Oh, hi Mr. Policeman, I found this book written by a borderline retard badass.” She grabbed the ledger from Jasmine, performing an amateur ballet dance of sorts, finally turning to face her for the grand finale. “Oh, and about the retard — I stuck a razor in his neck, just like Jasmine Starr taught me.”
Jasmine stood in front of her, arms now crossed, like a disapproving mother. “Well, you can’t stay here — you or your stuff. Somebody wants that back, and I want nothing to do with it.” Jasmine rubbed her temples, unable to maintain her composure anymore. “Fuck! Why didn’t you just root through the bag while he was draining out?”
Claire was back on the fold-out now, her head in her hands. “I don’t fucking know!”
Jasmine kept up her volleys. “I know. I know exactly why you didn’t. Because you’re a fucking cokehead, and you don’t fucking think!”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck me? Fuck you!”
“Cunt!”
“Hosebag!”
The pair erupted into laughter that lasted a good minute. The laughter ended when Claire opted for tears. Jasmine wasn’t sure whether it was an emotional release or the withdrawal symptoms from Claire’s unofficial fifth food group. She walked up to her slowly, Claire rocking back and forth on the corner of the fold-out, a low moan sustained throughout her motions. Nobody ever cried sexy, Jasmine thought as she held Claire’s head to her side, stroking her hair as maternally as she could. She restated the facts as softly as she could. “You can’t stay here, Bear. They’ll find you and they’ll kill you.”
Claire wiped her eyes and nose with her cashmere sweater, showing little concern for the garment. “Can you help me get outta here?”
“No,” Jasmine whispered as she stroked her hair. “But I know who can.”
Chapter Fifteen
Sawatski kept his right hand over his collar as he walked briskly east on McDermot Avenue. He would usually walk down King to Bannatyne, if it wasn’t for the north wind that greeted him as he exited Vice. He was early, about fifteen minutes before The Line Up opened for the lunch crowd. Spence had offered up a generous portion of her homemade Greek salad, which Sawatski had refused with a bogus claim about his constitution and feta cheese. He hoped that the slight curvature of the buildings on Albert Street would offer a windbreak as he turned north, only to be greeted by an equally insulting blast of winter chill. The door at The Line Up was locked, as it should have been. Sawatski saw one of the kitchen staff cleaning the grill. He pulled out his badge, tapping on the glass with the city crest. The worker seemed to be engrossed in his task, even as Sawatski punctuated the beats. He turned momentarily to see Sawatski and called to someone in the back.
A heavy-set woman appeared, fumbling with her hairnet as she approached the door. She was in her mid-fifties and had a sunken face from a habit of two packs a day minimum for forty years. She raised her head, recognized Sawatski, then turned on her heel as quickly as she could, with a hint of humour in her gait. She was on her third step of retreat when she turned back and headed to the door, a sly grin firmly affixed to her standard looks.
“We’re closed,” she said, pointing to an invisible watch on her left arm.
Sawatski pleaded. “C’mon Deidre, it’s only seven minutes. And it’s a police emergency.”
“Is that so,” said Deidre. She folded her arms in front of her, revealing poorly done tattoo sleeves. “What kind of police emergency?”
Sawatski exhaled the chilled vapor from his lungs, resting his nose against the glass. “I’m the police, and I’m freezing my fucking ass off, so it’s an emergency.”
“No, I think it’s an ass-clown with a badge who doesn’t know how to tell time.” Deidre unlocked the door as Sawatski leaned against it, almost dumping him onto the floor. He cursed expectedly. “Fuck!”
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?” Deidre had moved behind the counter, checking the fryers. Sawatski was too busy to comment, shaking his glasses in a vain attempt to remove the foggy film. Deidre dumped the haddock into the fryer. “Breakfast of champions, I presume?”
“You presume right,” said Sawatski, leaning against the guardrail that directed customers around the counter. “I gotta hit the head.”
“I’ll bring it out to you,” said Deidre as she adjusted her hair net and threw in the fries, violating at least a paragraph in the health code. “And turn on the fan this time!”
Like most buildings in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, The Line Up was a mix of two buildings, assembled long before a building code existed, or at least before it was being enforced. A steep stairway with an overhead metal sign announcing its descent opened up into the larger eating area, about four feet below street level. The windows were oversized, making it a great spot to people watch. There wouldn’t be anyone there until the lunch crowd started trickling in around 11:30. Sawatski enjoyed the quiet time, for solitude and other things.
The single-stall men’s room was roomy enough. It was never clean when the door first opened for the day. Sawatski figured that it was the job of Deidre’s indifferent co-worker, so it probably wouldn’t get re-spooled with the cheapest of toilet paper until eleven. From the toilet tank, he lifted out the Ziploc bag, shaking off the excess water before removing the white envelope within. It was folded in a way that spoke of the size of currency. As with the times before,
five crisp hundreds presented themselves. Sawatski pulled out a few paper towels to dry the bag that he would take with him; no sense giving an indifferent bathroom attendant something to wonder about.
His fish and chips were waiting, with extra tartar sauce and a large coffee in a takeout cup. He took a swig, watching the windows, wondering when the show would start.
Chapter Sixteen
Tommy awoke to the sound of the morning rush. Cindy had already joined the ladle scuffle. He could hear her shouting orders at both kitchen staff and patrons. That can’t be right, he thought as he looked up at the time on the sunburst clock on the cracking plaster. Tommy had managed three hours of sleep, more than expected. It was almost like a lazy Sunday sleep, the kind he had once enjoyed at the Boscalow. He rubbed his eyes as he swung himself off the bed, grabbing the nearest clothes. He would help with the breakfast and see if anyone needed his counselling. There would be the usual calls to the suppliers of freebies, be they clothes or food, and the look-the-other-way friendlies in the various branches of city and provincial health inspection. What could be pushed off, what needed to be hidden, and how much it would cost to make it go away for another sixty days. There was also The Mail.
The Mail had been devised to help those in need of transition from being identified, by police or the criminal element. While the Winnipeg Police Service had legitimate means of acquiring both cellular and landline phone taps, the Heaven’s Rejects had their connections, usually on the cellular side. Few known-to-police types had cell phone contracts, unless they were tied to semi-legitimate businesses, which were usually monitored by the law and the unlawful. The practice was highly illegal in the eyes of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission, though almost impossible to enforce, especially with an equal amount of legitimate enquiries by police agencies. Even payphones were not immune. In fact, they were easier to monitor with the onslaught of the modern wireless phone. The police service had a special name for the tactics: an anonymous tip.
Tommy hit the power switch on the computer tower, which still carried the sticker that identified it as government surplus. The rounded CRT screen flickered to life, along with a start-up screen for a bootleg version of Windows XP. He struggled with the old mouse, finally opening the browser. The home screen for Kijiji appeared, with Saskatoon as the location. He clicked on the Personals link, changing the search parameters to the newest ads. What came next was the usual collection of bored husbands and housewives, looking for a fling, a three-way, or a might-be-gay. It was too hard to use a regular tag line, such as Bored and Hot in Suburbia or Adventurous Couple Seeks. There was a pattern that Tommy was looking for. It was the third ad from the bottom.
“Exotic, discreet, and I NEED it bad! Married 23-year-old female wants too talk dirty first, Get Me off and maybe more! 36/24/36, blonde, no tats, laying my cards Out on the table. Married OK. Email for pix.”
For those looking for that sort of thing, the ad seemed normal enough. For Tommy, it was the string of words and their placement within the message that spoke to him. The NEED was the first clue, capitalized for emphasis. The spelling error: too talk dirty. The dirty talk had no bearing on the message; it was the incorrect to that was the tip. All that was left was the Get Me and the Out. The Mail had been delivered.
The use of the email method was concerning. Most of Tommy’s passengers to the after-the-life weren’t being pursued with such fervour. Paulie Noonan simply strolled in. He could have probably avoided detection for a month or two, until he got lazy, assuming that the HRs hadn’t somehow forgot about him. He would have made his way back to a regular haunt, where a well-placed Borden with an underworld informant who knew how to dial would be all that was required for an Ernie Friday, or one of the Pauls, to collect an easy two grand.
Tommy’s concentration was broken by the Winnipeg Sentinel dropping onto his desk. “Looks like your ex had a busy night,” said Cindy as she pointed at the front page.
Tommy looked at the headline. “Blood Pool on Pritchard, Heaven’s Reject Prez Slain.” The headline was laid atop a picture of the body pick-up team from the medical examiner’s office as they rolled the gurney down the sidewalk. In the picture, a crime technician, in full protective gear, was exiting the front door, carrying what appeared to be a blood-stained fur coat. Tommy knew the coat. So did Cindy. Cindy also saw the open Kijiji page.
“Did the stupid bitch already put up an ad?”
Tommy highlighted the ad. “Yep. Came in around seven this morning.”
“Shit!” Cindy took the front section from the rest of the paper, flipping inward for the rest of the story. She found it on the third page, next to the headshot of David Worschuk and his Downtown 24/7 column. Tommy knew that Worschuk had something resembling an entourage, a group of Remand Centre guards, beat cops, and provincial sheriffs who would meet up at the Black Stallion on Kennedy Street, near the Law Courts Building.
They would drink themselves into oblivion, telling exciting lies about their work day, then drive home, successfully evading their badged brethren. About once every three months, Worschuk would do a lifestyle write-up on one of his cronies. It was the kind of thing that was treated to a fine custom frame by the subject in question, and the entourage patiently waited for their respective turns at the spotlight — so patient that they would often leak information to Worschuk on ongoing investigations. Cindy read the key words aloud to Tommy.
“While the Public Information Officer for the Winnipeg Police Service did not offer any information on the identity of the assailant, sources close to Downtown 24/7 have revealed that the killer was most likely a prostitute, due to the use of a straight razor in the killing.” The ink on the page seemed to transfer easily onto Cindy’s fingers. Worschuk was known for his last-minute press stops at the Sentinel.
Tommy had already started responding to the ad. To acknowledge the receipt of the message, all Tommy had to do was reference light, be it lunch, a bulb, anything at all. That was the cue for the subject to deliver themselves to The Guiding Light as discreetly as possible. Cindy put her hand on his right shoulder as she watched him type. “This one’s going to be tough.”
“I know.”
She leaned in closer. “Then why do it?”
Tommy glanced to the left of the computer screen, where a simple frame held a picture of him and Jeremy at Rae and Jerry’s Steak House, on Jeremy’s fourteenth birthday. “Because she asked me to.”
“Even after she fucked you over? Even after she —”
“She didn’t do that, Cindy. I did.”
“But if she hadn’t . . .”
“It still would have happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
Tommy exhaled. “Neither do you, Cindy.” He hit the enter key. Cindy looked away to hide her quiet weeping. Tommy heard it just the same. He rose to embrace her, but Cindy would have none of it. She headed for the door, fighting the tears. “I’ve got to get lunch started,” she said. “And you’ve got a delivery coming.”
Chapter Seventeen
Claire Hebert sat in front of Jasmine Starr’s laptop screen. Jasmine had told her to refresh the page every fifteen minutes or so, checking for an email response to her Kijiji ad. Fifteen had become ten, ten had become five. Now it was down to every sixty seconds.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you about a watched pot?” Jasmine was standing over the sink, dabbing her wounds with moistened paper towel. She had removed her earrings, which had not fared well in the attack. She could see Claire in the reflection of the mirror. “And you owe me some earrings, bitch.”
Claire didn’t answer. She was more interested in the message that had just popped up. “I got something!” she blurted.
“Don’t respond!” Jasmine shouted as she approached, still dabbing the torn ear. “We’ve got to make sure it’s him. What’s it say?”
Claire squinted at the screen. “It says,
‘Hey baby, how you doing, blah-blah-blah —’”
“The blah-blah is important,” said Jasmine. “Read the whole thing, word-for-word.”
Claire looked annoyed, but complied, slow and heavy on the punctuation of the text. “‘Hey baby, liked your ad. I’m six-foot-two, twenty-four, work out, tongue stud . . .’” Claire stopped. “This is just some horny fuck!”
“That’s how it’s supposed to look,” said Jasmine. “Read it. Don’t leave anything out.”
Claire continued. “‘I like to give/receive oral. Can go all NIGHT till the morning LIGHT. I like to —’”
“Right there!”
“Right where?”
“The light. It’s him.”
“Why? Just because it’s in caps?”
Jasmine squinted at the screen. “EXACTLY because it’s in caps.”
“Bullshit!”
Jasmine looked at Claire with harsh eyes. “It’s not bullshit, Bear, it’s a system. A system that works. It’s a system that those fuckers at the cell phone companies can’t monitor, and it’s a system that’s going to save your stupid ass.” Jasmine pushed Claire aside and started to type the response. She motioned to the closet. “Pull out a couple of old sleeping bags from there.”
Claire winced. “Sleeping bags? Where’s the hideout, a campground?”
Jasmine kept typing. “They’re not for camping; they’re for comfort.” She hit enter and closed the laptop. “How are you with tight spaces?”
Claire smirked. “I fucked a guy in a Smart car once.”
Jasmine returned the smirk, chuckling slightly. “Then you’re gonna love this.” Jasmine walked over to the closet where Claire had just removed the sleeping bags. She pulled out a few more garment bags, revealing a plywood panel. The panel was held in place by four storm-window latches. Jasmine opened the latches, dislodging the panel. She passed it to Claire, who immediately noticed the rough hole cut through the cinder block wall. Jasmine huffed as she backed herself out of the passage. “Grab your shit,” she panted. “And don’t forget that fucking bag and book. I don’t want that coming back on me.”
Clean Sweep Page 8
