Friday smiled, pocketing the automatic. He looked outside at his idling, full-framed box Pontiac. “Yeah, I think I’ve got a workaround.”
Worschuk asked, “So what the fuck am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for you guys to figure this out?”
Tommy turned to Worschuk. “Well, the first thing you need is a new cell phone.” Tommy grabbed a stack of pre-paid phones off the rack at the front of the store. He left two fifties on the counter to cover their rent. “Okay, let’s fire these up and figure out how the speakerphone works.”
Cindy walked up to Tommy. “Tommy, what did Steve tell you?”
Tommy wanted to tell her what had happened, what the voice had led him to believe. Steve was most certainly dead, as well as Gwen, and the cats he called Cat. He decided that his friend would be understanding of the delay in his mourning, considering their current situation. “He said a lotta weird stuff when I went to the house,” said Tommy. “Something to do with all this CIA mind-control shit. Then there was all those water trucks.”
“What water trucks?” said Sawatski.
Tommy laid out what he knew: the water department emergency trucks leaving the federal virology lab, the truck behind The Guiding Light, and the notations in the ledger. He topped it all off with the Coles Notes version of Galecki’s conspiracy theories. “There’s a lotta weird shit going on, and I think we’re about to find out what it’s all about.”
“You know you’re walking into a deathtrap, or worse,” said Sawatski. “This is shit that nobody is supposed to know.”
Tommy smiled at Sawatski. “I think that’s why they call it a government conspiracy. Besides, I’ve got an ace up my sleeve.”
“Bullshit,” said Sawatski. “You’ve got a pair of threes and you know it.”
“Maybe,” said Tommy. “That all depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on whether you feel like being a super cop this morning.”
Sawatski looked at Bosco. “Yeah, I think I’m up to it.” He looked over at Spence. “How about you, partner? Ready to toss your career?”
“On one condition,” said Spence.
“Name it.”
“Promise me that we’re going to blow up some serious shit.”
“Don’t worry,” said Tommy. “I’ve got just the firecracker.” He grabbed the rest of the prepaid cell phones as they headed to their vehicles.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Billy Sangster was fuming. He knew that he had spent too long waiting for Sawatski to emerge from the District Three station. Nathaniel had informed him of the current plan, how the tour of the facility at the Riverview Health Centre would lay everything and everyone to rest. He was pushing his Crown Vic hard on Osborne Street South, a serious rumble emanating from the custom exhaust system under full throttle. He checked the clock on the car radio; it was coming up on 3:30 a.m. It was closer to 3:40. The old Crown Vic’s radio seemed to lose a few minutes every week.
The Clean Sweep protocols had been suspended for the time being. If Tommy and his confederates decided to make a break for it, they would be easy to reactivate. Sangster was dealing with another worry: where was Sawatski? His laptop hadn’t shown any movement of Sawatski’s personal car from the Public Safety Building garage. Then there was the coffee stop at Sal’s, which was starting to feel a little hinky. He didn’t think that Sawatski had the balls to come after him directly. If push came to shove, Sangster figured that he could break his neck in less than sixty seconds, ninety if Sawatski fought hard. It didn’t seem like a fair fight.
Sangster hit the turn signal for the left onto Morley. As he made the turn, he realized that he had to make a detour. An old Chevy boogie van was blocking the right-hand side of the street, flashing its emergency lights, and a big fat redhead wearing a floppy toque and oversized scarf that covered his face was holding up a set of jumper cables in earnest. The left-hand side of the street was clogged with parked cars. Sangster knew that a left turn would put him into a back lane that didn’t meet up with a street until he passed an oversized block. Most of the city’s residential back lanes had become impassable, thanks to reductions in the snow clearing budget. Taking a right turn would lead him down the back lane to Bartlet Avenue. Running parallel with Morley, it would get him to the Centre just as quickly, if not quicker.
~
David Worschuk held the jumper cables aloft a little longer, until Sangster’s Crown Vic had moved far enough down the back lane. As the car turned left, he lowered his scarf from his face to use one of the new prepaid phones that Tommy Bosco had “borrowed” from the 7-Eleven. “He took the detour,” said Worschuk. “He’s heading your way.”
He gave the thumbs-up signal to Cindy and Claire, who were watching the scene from behind the velvet-covered bucket seats.
~
“Roger that,” said Spence, who was at the end of Bartlet Avenue in Freddie’s cab, looking on as Tommy Bosco and Ernie Friday readied the Parisienne, which Friday had already reported as stolen from his Bowman Avenue address. The cheap prepaid phone was smart enough to have a web browser, which allowed Spence access to the police service GPS tracker. Sangster’s laptop was an official police unit, and she could see the Crown Vic moving west on Bartlet, with an IT department code in place where the badge number would normally have been. She hoped that Sangster wouldn’t see the badge number she was using, the one from the laptop that Sawatski had borrowed from the desk of Constable Herridge at District Three. “Are you guys ready? He’s coming down the street. Gotta kill the phone!”
Tommy Bosco’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Just let me put on the Clubs.”
~
Ernie Friday was at the back of the Parisienne, holding the rear axle aloft with an old floor jack from Freddie’s truck bed. The rear tires were in a steady state of forward rotation. According to the speedometer, the elevated Parisienne was travelling at a speed of about sixty kilometres per hour, with the cruise control engaged. He watched as Tommy attached two steering wheel locks to each side of the three-spoke steering wheel, each positioned to hit the windshield of the Parisienne if it tried to turn left or right. Tommy tilted the wheel as far upwards as it could go, pushing the ends of the respective Clubs against the glass for tension. He gave the thumbs up to Friday, jumping over the snowbank to a safer position. Friday gave the jack a harsh counter-clockwise twist. The Parisienne fell, grabbing the ice hard with its old-school studded winter tires. Like most city streets, Bartlet Avenue was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the city graders to remove the heavy ice ruts that ran the length of the street. For the Parisienne, the ruts had transformed it into a 4000-pound slot car.
Friday watched as the Pontiac picked up speed. All its lights were dark. He knew that the timing would be a simple stroke of luck. If Sangster spotted the Pontiac in time, he might have the opportunity to take a side street detour to avoid it. If the ruts weren’t too deep, Sangster could simply move out of the way. These possibilities assumed that Sangster would be paying the utmost attention to the road ahead.
~
Something appeared to be wrong with the street lights on this section. The problem was Miles Sawatski. With a pair of vise-grips and a set of insulated wire cutters, Sawatski had spent the last ten minutes opening the inspection panels on the light standards and cutting the power to four of the Bartlet Avenue street lights, which had recently been changed over to the new LED style. He didn’t even feel an electrical tingle in his fingers when he made the snips. He saw Sangster fly past at Fisher Street, where he had parked the Winnipeg Sentinel Cavalier for his part in the clandestine operation.
Sangster was the last to know what was coming. He was giving half of his attention to the glow of the laptop, hoping for a hit on Sawatski. The chances of traffic at this hour on a residential side street were minimal at best. For a moment, he was distracted by what appeared to be a police signature at th
e end of Bartlet Avenue, which disappeared just as quickly. It was the distraction that Sawatski had been hoping for. Sangster didn’t see the square-box Pontiac until it was ten feet away from the Crown Vic. He jammed the brakes hard, but they were of little consequence. The force of the crash obliterated the front sheet metal of both cars, while the rear end of each car rose about three feet in the air on impact before crashing down. There was no Hollywood-style explosion; the only smoke that rose from the wrecks was the steam from the fractured cooling systems. The sound wasn’t enough to rouse the neighbours; they probably thought it was the snowplows that had finally arrived to carve down the ruts.
Sawatski went to check on Sangster. Like most cops, Sangster would seldom buckle up; it was a carryover behaviour from the days of uniform patrol, when gun belts and bulletproof vests were deemed bulky enough that the police service members got a free pass on mandatory seatbelt use. Sangster was crushed by the force of the intruding firewall, the buckled floorboards, and the steering column. The air bags had blown on impact, though their effectiveness was tied more to the use of the seatbelts. The airbag was effective at one thing: prolonging the misery of Sangster’s final exit. He was still breathing in gurgled spurts when Sawatski peeked through the shattered passenger side window. “Hey, Bangster, you’re not looking so good. Need a Timmy’s?”
“You’re a dead f-f-f-fuck,” said Sangster. He tried to move what was left of his shattered arms to reach his Glock. His arms didn’t respond to his requests, nor did his legs. “I c-c-c-can’t feel my f-f-f-fucking legs. You put me in a f-f-f-fucking wh-wh-wh-wheelchair.” Sangster was coughing up blood now. The broken ribcage shards were doing their damage.
Sawatski had zero sympathy to offer. “Listen, Bangster, I’m going to pay our former boss a visit. Any pointers you’d like to give me before you check out? We haven’t had the pleasure of a face-to-face yet.”
“You’re g-g-g-gonna burn in th-th-this, Miles,” said Sangster, his breathing even more laboured.
Sawatski noticed the flicker first, from underneath the mangled hood of the Parisienne. The impact had severed its fuel line, allowing the gasoline to trickle onto the hot exhaust manifold. The flame that ignited caught the dust-packed sound insulation under the Pontiac’s hood. Sawatski looked down; he saw the gasoline that was pouring out from the Crown Victoria’s fractured fuel system. He looked in at Sangster and smiled, then turned his head to acknowledge the flames.
“Yeah, about that . . .”
Sawatski turned back to Sangster. His eyes were wide open and still. Sawatski checked the laptop that illuminated Sangster’s death stare. The police-issue bracket had held up better than Sangster. Sawatski pressed the power button for a count of five, using a microfibre cloth as a fingerprint shield. The interior of the Crown Vic went dark. The wrecks burned slowly as Sawatski pulled away in the Sentinel Cavalier.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Tommy checked the time on Bouchard’s phone; it was 3:57 a.m. Three minutes left until the expected meeting with the nameless man, a man who was about sixty seconds away from his temporary side-street base of operations. He knew it was a sucker play; Johnny Unknown didn’t sound like the kind of person who was going to let anyone walk away from this. Wheeled away on a crime-scene gurney is more likely, Tommy thought. If it was just Tommy in the body bag, that would be one thing; the problem with the current four a.m. arrangement was that Mr. Unknown was expecting Tommy, Cindy, and Claire-Bear to be in the front seat of Freddie’s cab, along with the ledger. Tommy had no gun. Spence and Sawatski had each offered up their backup pieces, but Tommy had refused. He knew that Mr. Unknown would be clearing them and Freddie’s cab for any form of weapons before a deal was struck for the ledger. Tommy hoped that there was one thing that Mr. Unknown didn’t know about: Freddie’s custom fuel tanks.
As instructed, Tommy steered Freddie down Churchill Drive, towards the service access road for the Riverview Health Centre. Cindy and Claire-Bear sat quietly in the cab. There had been little discussion as to how the events would unfold once inside the complex. “Listen, ladies,” Tommy said, “the truth is we simply don’t know what we’re walking into here. They might just cap us the second we’re inside. Or maybe, and it’s a big-ass-Lotto 6/49 maybe, we give them this stupid book and then we all go for pancakes.”
“Fat chance of that happening,” said Cindy as Tommy turned Freddie into the hospital property.
Tommy had few options to consider for their route. The rear service portion of the newest hospital building was cordoned off by a locked metal gate. The service road continued past the gate, towards what looked like a steel storage building. Tommy followed the tire tracks to the building, stopping in front of an industrial galvanized steel overhead door. There was no need to honk. The door started to rise automatically, as though a sensor had been tripped when Freddie the Ford rolled up. Tommy pulled into the building, which appeared to be a storage shed for the landscaping equipment. He pulled up to the rear wall, surprised at how minimal the depth of the building seemed to be on the inside. Tommy went to turn off the ignition key to the Ford, but the storage shed had other plans. The wall in front of them started to descend into the floor. Even the gardening hand tools attached to the wall went along for the ride. Beyond the wall was a concrete ramp that descended below the surface in a gentle slope.
The route down was a winding one, though it didn’t seem as though it was heading too deep below ground. Tommy approached a large red arrow painted on the wall of the next curve. Additional lettering accompanied the arrow in white script: STOP AHEAD IN 10 METRES. Freddie the Ford let out a squeal from his power-steering pump as Tommy rounded the corner. Another roll-up door appeared, this one painted with additional lettering: PREPARE FOR SCAN. As Tommy applied the brakes, Freddie and his occupants were bathed in a strange purple light, with an even stranger buzzing noise accompanying it. The light wasn’t overly intense; it felt like natural light. After fifteen seconds, the light and the buzzing ceased, and the door began to rise.
The underground facility was a busy hub of activity. The walls were constructed of thick limestone blocks. Four of the emergency water department vans were parked at some form of loading bay, with long umbilical cords of intertwined cables attached to truck-mounted equipment, accessed through the sliding side doors. Tommy had not seen anything beyond the front seat of the van that had been parked at the rear of The Guiding Light. The vans were being attended to by water department employees, if their uniforms could be believed. In the mix were other employees, smartly dressed in crisp white lab coats. Their shoes gleamed like patent leather, their shirts, slacks, and haircuts looked freshly pressed. Two of them were even wearing bow ties. Tommy couldn’t read any names on the lab coats, but he did make out an embroidered patch of a buffalo on their sleeves.
“Tommy! Brake!” The warning came from Cindy.
Tommy had almost run into one of the lab coats, who looked slightly annoyed as he walked past Freddie’s driver’s side door. Tommy read the badge as he went by.
“Manitoba department of weights and measures,” said Tommy. “Funny — I don’t see any scales anywhere.”
As Tommy inched forward, he noticed a silver Chrysler 300 parked next to one of the vans. Next to the Chrysler was a 2009 light-green Ford Escape Hybrid. It came from an era when one of the best ways to identify a hybrid vehicle was to splash it with a green that should have been left on the leaves of the trees that inspired it. Most of the early-generation hybrid and electric vehicles in the province were used by government departments. This Escape had the Manitoba provincial markings on the doors, as well as the current interpretation of the mighty buffalo. There was no government department listed underneath.
Tommy wasn’t quite sure of where to park the old Ford, until he saw the man with the ponytail. He didn’t have a gun in his hand, though Tommy could easily make out the bulge and the straps of his shoulder holster under his sport coat. He motion
ed Tommy to park next to the Escape. Tommy whispered to Cindy and Claire, as clearly and as purposefully as he could. “All right, ladies, just follow my lead, and don’t forget the ledger.”
Cindy opened the passenger door; she waited at Freddie’s tailgate for Claire and Tommy. She assessed the threat; Mr. Ponytail was fit, armed, and righteously sure of his abilities. He stood with his hands clasped in front of his belt buckle, a few hints of old tattoos peeking out from his shirt cuffs. He wore dark blue jeans, a crisp white shirt with no tie, and two days of stubble. He was definitely tired. Cindy wondered how much sleep he had lost trying to find Claire Hebert.
“Good morning, Pastor Bosco,” the man said. “I am Nathaniel Goodwin. On behalf of the Department of Weights and Measures, I would like to welcome you and your party to our King George facility.”
“King George?” said Claire. “Even I know there’s no King George anymore. It’s Queen something-or-other.”
Nathaniel chuckled. “You are correct, Miss Hebert. The King George facility refers to the original structure, the King George Hospital.” He pointed to the blocks of prehistoric limestone. “As you can see, the original foundation has held up extremely well. Now, if you could all please follow me . . .”
“Aren’t you going to search us?” said Tommy.
“We already have, Pastor Bosco,” said Nathaniel. “It was when you and your party stopped at the entrance door to the loading area.”
“That purple light,” said Cindy. “What was it?”
Nathaniel smiled at Cindy. “Think of it as a quicker version of an MRI machine, Ms. Smyth, without all that annoying claustrophobia.” He turned to Tommy. “Pastor Bosco, I see you have the ledger. May I?”
“Have at ’er,” said Tommy, tossing the ledger at Nathaniel. He caught it with one hand, without the slightest hint of a fumble or flinch. Nathaniel flipped through the ledger to ensure that none of the pages had been removed. It was completely intact. “Everything appears to be in order. Now, if you could all please follow me.”
Clean Sweep Page 23
