Slow Recoil

by C. B. Forrest

  The super’s eyes were stretched wide now, and the line of blood had dribbled down to his chin, dripping like melted chocolate ice cream onto this undershirt. He shook his head slowly. “Why’s everybody want to know about video cameras?” he said.

  Kad said, “Everybody?”

  “Cop was around here asking the same thing. You mind telling me what the fuck is going on here? You come in here kicking my goddamned door—”

  Kad leaned over and slapped the super across the face, hard. The sound rang in the silence of the apartment. The super’s cheek went scarlet. Kad stared into the man’s eyes until he looked away.

  “Focus,” Kad said. “What cop? What was the name?”

  The super was shivering now, his body unable to process the overload of adrenalin, the shock. It happened, Kad knew. It was nothing to be ashamed of. Grown men pissed their pants, or worse, shat themselves in that moment of challenge. Fear stripped even the bravest of their dignity.

  “I got his card,” the super said. “Over there, on the kitchen table.”

  Kad walked over to the grungy little kitchen. The stove was splattered in thick globs of white grease built up from years of frying bacon. The fridge was plastered in work orders and to-do lists, coupons for take-out food. The table itself had no open space available, stacked high with invoices and rental applications, empty beer cans, old tabloid newspapers folded in half. Kad spotted the business card on top of the pile of paperwork and slipped it into his pants pocket. He paused, regarding something else on the table, then he picked it up and turned back to the super.

  “What is this?” he said, and held out a rental application form with a photocopy of two cheques.

  “Well, that’s your friend’s cheque, her first and last. A copy of it anyway. The cops…well, come on, man, read it for yourself.”

  Kad folded the paperwork and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “That’s my only copy,” the super said. “Head office’ll need that for income tax purposes. Give me a break, will you?”

  Kadro looked over to the kitchen table and saw something else. He got an idea. “Here,” he said and threw the pornographic magazine.

  The superintendent caught the magazine on instinct, the pages curled from being thrown. His face reddened further, and his lips began to quiver as his mind attempted to decipher the strategic plan at work here. His eyes darted between the intruder and the cordless phone receiver on the cluttered coffee table.

  “Won’t make it,” Kad said. “Relax, please. Everything will be okay.”

  Kad reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced the eyeglasses case to which he had transferred the syringe that Turner had supplied. He had intended its use solely for his official targets, but there had been complications, and if he had learned anything from war, it was the need for adaptability, decisive action under fire. The barrel was already loaded with a quarter CC of the clear juice. His fingers worked nimbly while the superintendent struggled over his shoulder to see what the intruder was fiddling with. Kad tapped the barrel with a flick of his middle finger and used his teeth to slip the safety cap. As he turned back, Chinaski surprised him by making a bolt for the phone, but the super was at a serious disadvantage, as he first had to swing his raised feet to the floor and pull himself from the chair, a rush of momentum he was never quite able to manage. It all happened so very fast, he hardly felt the needle dart in and out of the back of his neck. It was milder than the fast and clean sting of a wasp.

  “What’d you do?” he said, his hand moving to the back of his neck.

  And then it was upon him—as though a pair of vice grips were squeezing his heart. The pain was acute, a knife’s thrust, and his eyes rolled back in his head, one leg stabbing at the air. The superintendent eased back into his recliner, his eyes already half closed.

  “She’s Bosnian,” Kadro said, holding the man’s head as the chest pumped once, twice, then failed to re-inflate. There was a soft sigh, the rattle of a last breath.

  Kad set the man in the recliner with his pants undone, the magazine on the floor as though it had dropped there. He took a couple of the empty beer cans and arranged them around the chair as well. A drunkard is prone to bruises and all sorts of cuts from cupboards, and doors and other objects which suddenly lunge from nowhere. It was a loose end, perhaps, but best managed as though it was something the superintendent himself had dealt with. Kad went to the bathroom, which was even filthier and more cluttered than the kitchen. There were multiple pairs of threadbare boxer shorts balled up on the floor near the tub where the super had slipped from them for his presumably weekly shower. Kad picked through the medicine chest until he found a box of bandages. He cleaned the small cut on the man’s forehead with a wet tissue then applied a Band-Aid, something used for shaving cuts or slivers. He took the bloodied tissue and went to the kitchen, opened a cupboard door, and smeared a bit of blood on the sharp corner. He left the wrapper from the Band-Aid on the counter in the bathroom, which seemed in keeping with the man’s character. The bloodied tissue he put in his coat pocket to take with him.

  Kad studied the scene before leaving. It seemed quite plausible. He was certain the man’s reputation was widely known among the building’s tenants. Sad end to a sad man’s life. Too much drink, too few vegetables. He paused to inspect the door and its frame to ensure his boot had not caused any visible damage. It was clear. He opened the door and moved his hand down the edge to wipe away any residue of the man’s forehead cut. He waited a beat and scanned the hallway before stepping outside.

  When he got back to the car, Donia asked him if the superintendent was upset with them for leaving the way they had, in the middle of the night.

  “He’s not overly suspicious, is he?” she said.

  “He understands completely,” Kad said.

  He turned the engine and sat there for a long moment. She understood they were at a crossroads. The school teacher, her loose end. She wanted to tell Kad that nothing would come of this, that Tim Fielding would try calling her, would most likely scratch his head at the situation then move on, none the wiser. No, she thought. Who was she kidding? She was breaking the man’s heart. This gentle man who had lost his wife. Their shared bond. Her dead husband and his dead wife, the ghosts of their past. And that was the magnet that had pulled them together that first stupid night she’d broken her rule and gone for a coffee after class.

  “Where does he live?” he said. He did not look at her. He stared straight ahead.

  “It’s not necessary,” she said. “There is no need for—”

  He turned and looked into her eyes. And she saw darkness there, always the darkness, but something else as well, yes, something new that made him a stranger to her. For the first time since they had devised the plan, created the missions, drawn up the roles and responsibilities, for the first time since they’d gathered at that kitchen table in that farmhouse those years ago, she doubted his stability.

  “I’m not going to hurt him,” he said. “We need to talk, is all. For me to explain you are my sister, and you had to go back home, and thank you very much, here is an address where you can send love letters. No loose ends. Remember.”

  “Promise me,” she said. “This man doesn’t know anything, he doesn’t deserve this. He is a good man, a school teacher. He is innocent.”

  “Innocent? Who is innocent?” Kad said.

  “Promise me,” she repeated.

  “I promise,” he said.

  She told him the address, and Kad pulled the car into the stream of traffic.

  ELEVEN

  Maxime Auteuil adjusted himself in his economy seat on the KLM flight from Lyon to Toronto, quite thankful for once that he was five foot seven, for it was obvious the airlines were maximizing the ratio of space to passengers these days. He doubted a man of any significant height could make the transatlantic journey without serious discomfort, cramping, perhaps even the affliction of blood clots you read so much about these days. There
was an especially corpulent man a couple of rows up, and when Maxime had passed him as they boarded, he’d felt a rush of sympathy both for the man and those who would be seated in his proximity. He himself would rather sit near a mother with a newborn baby than spend eight hours leaning to one side as a stranger made vain attempts to contain their excess flesh.

  He was as comfortable as he could be, having finished the somewhat decent meal of chicken Kiev and a good cognac, and now he was reading a book about the meaning of names, their roots and their histories, their imagery and connotations. He was about to become a father, no simple undertaking at the age of forty-six. He was a young forty-six, people were always saying, with his jet-black hair that was only now beginning to trace with grey, the lack of wrinkles that was a family trait, and he was slim and wiry, compact. And anyway, it had taken him a long time to find the right woman, or any woman, that is, to convince him to settle down and, well, even to consider reading books like this about baby names. His had quite literally been a love at first sight. Well, if not literal first sight, then within hours. He had met his wife, Angelique, at a large chocolate exposition in Paris, the largest event of its kind in the world. It drew the top chocolatiers, who performed miracles, these white-clothed magicians who turned raw slabs of cocoa into works of art. This was their instant connection—for he himself came from a long line of chocolatiers and hoped one day to own his own shop, and she, the copper-haired Angelique, had recently graduated from France’s top school for the culinary arts. While she was currently working as a sous chef in a Lyon bistro, she too had aspirations to create magic from chocolate, to deliver that very distinct smile to the faces of her customers that came only from that first taste of the unexplainable, the mysterious, this gift of the gods.

  If it was a boy, he was thinking Gabriel. A girl, perhaps Latetia after his dear mother, rest her soul. Names were not unique, yet they meant everything to their owner. So did titles. He had learned that lesson while on the police force in his hometown port city of Marseille, working the underground gangs and arms and drug traffickers, all of his cronies anxious for promotion, to earn that extra stripe. The back-stabbing and careerism had been a genuine shock to him, for he himself believed that what was earned, what was due, would come in time. How naïve to think this way, to believe such a cumbersome, goliath civil service machine could ever apply the principals of rightness to any degree of accuracy.

  And so he had retired from the cops at age forty, burned-out and jaded, and with his eyes set on taking over the chocolate shop on Rue du Paradis in Marseille that had belonged to his grandfather then his father—called simply D’Or, of gold. But life is life, and it didn’t work out that way. While Maxime came to the end of his last year on the force, his mother got sick, and his father, to whom the wife meant everything, let the store fall into debt and disrepair. While Maxime toiled eighty hours a week on too many cases, his family business went down the proverbial toilet. The most loyal of customers stopped coming as they grew tired of the shop either being closed at the wrong hours or in a state of disarray, the father unshaven, dark-eyed and surly from his late-night vigils at the hospital. It was to be Maxime’s greatest regret to carry, that he had not paid more attention to his parents as they floundered through this trying time—it was, quite simply, unforgiveable, and in the end he felt he deserved the taking away of this personal dream, this family heirloom. The shop was bankrupted, and Maxime stood on the curb across the street while the men removed all of the equipment from inside, the counters and displays, sinks and signage, everything gutted for auction, stacked it in a white van and carried away. His mother gone to heaven, and his father long since retreated in exile and shame. A friend asked Maxime why he would do that to himself, stand there and watch the dismantling of the family dream. All he could think to say is that he wanted to make sure the movers were gentle, that they did not break anything, that they performed the operation with dignity and grace.

  Requiring a paycheque and some sort of meager pension, Maxime had spoken to friends of friends and made the move to Lyon, to the glass and stone museum-like headquarters of Interpol. These days his title was very long indeed, as evidenced by the five lines taken up on his business cards:

  Maxime Auteuil

  Specialized Officer—Criminal Intelligence

  Crimes Against Humanity Branch

  General Secretariat

  Lyon, France

  Maxime’s background in undercover work cracking international drugs and arms traffic through the port of Marseille had been of particular interest to his superiors as the organization developed a specialized unit dedicated to the investigation and persecution of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They were looking for candidates with experience in the milieu of conspiracy, tracking multiple points of origin to one nucleus, able to think for themselves in the field—those less inclined to sit behind a desk, to shuffle the endless papers of the bureaucratic mill. In Maxime they had found just the right candidate, for the work offered him the best of both worlds— the freedom to operate at arms length, to the extent that this was possible within the matrix, but most importantly the knowledge that the mission was righteous. It was, in fact, the highest calling an officer of the law could receive—to track and investigate and bring to justice those who had perpetuated some of the most heinous, most cowardly acts imaginable to the human psyche.

  Now he set his book of names inside the seat back, stretched his feet and closed his eyes. He would need his rest for the days ahead, of that he was certain. This was to be the last of his adventures, the tying of a final knot, before he was to announce his retirement from the strange work they called international policing. Yes, if he had thought the force in Marseille was mired in the complexities of bureaucracy and careerism, well, Interpol was a world, perhaps even a universe, unto itself. There were so many lines, so many levels, so many jurisdictions, so many codes and always, in the forefront, the awareness of one’s actual authority in the mix. Interpol dealt primarily in intelligence-sharing and high-level cooperation with police agencies representing sovereign nations in the pursuit of justice. But right now, on this flight from Lyon to Toronto, Maxime Auteuil had all the authority he would need—an Interpol Red Notice: to seek arrest or provisional arrest of wanted persons with a view to extradition—as issued by the Secretariat General.

  He drifted off as the lights inside the cabin dimmed and his fellow passengers settled to sleep as best they could, and his mind played through the work that lay ahead, the snaring of The Colonel.

  TWELVE

  Hattie dropped McKelvey off in front of Union Station beside a line of yellow cabs. The drivers were standing outside their cars in front of the iconic station that owned a full city block with its grand arches and pillars. It was sunny and warm again, and the drivers were smoking and talking in a dozen different languages, waiting for trains and subways to bring them business on a slow Sunday morning.

  “I’d drive you up to Tim’s myself,” she said, “but I’ve got this pesky job thing going on. The triads were busy last night turning over the booze cans in Chinatown. I’ve got to go by and pick up Anderson, see if he’s out of bed yet, the little pisstank.”

  McKelvey had met Stu Anderson a few times. He was a kid on the Hold-Up Squad, the new breed. He had seen way too many cop shows on TV. He was thirty years old if he was a day, and he wore his blond hair spiked with gel, a snarly-lipped rock star. He was single, and he was still hitting the clubs to dance and troll for women, dragging his ass into work with bloodshot eyes, always smelling of that strong cologne he apparently bathed in. Anderson was always toying with his facial hair, growing these razor-thin lines across his jawline, or these goatees and handlebar mustaches, fads that lasted a few days at a time. McKelvey wasn’t prone to jealousy, but this morning the thought of Hattie and Anderson driving around together rubbed him the wrong way. He knew the sorts of conversations that took place between partners working long hours together, sharing all these
soul-deep secrets about life. Fortunately for him and Caroline, his partners had been for the most part chubby men with dandruff and bad breath. At least until Hattie came along. There had been sparks there from the beginning, the first time they’d worked a case side by side. How his stomach flipped a little when he was around her. Like now, how his hands were getting sweaty. Some pimple-faced kid at the high-school dance, for God’s sake.

  He opened the door and put a leg out, his hand up on the roof. He turned and smiled, but he didn’t say what he wanted to say—which was something along the lines of “come over, I want you, I need you”—because he saw it there on her face and in her green eyes. She was pulling back, cutting herself a little space, doing some figuring. Okay, he thought. Fair enough. Forget Stu Anderson and his fucking spiked hair. Hattie was a big girl.

  He got out of the car, then leaned back in. “Don’t work too hard,” he said and immediately felt like an idiot, some dolt standing on her step with a bouquet of wilted daisies and a string of clichés.

  “Charlie, listen,” she said. “I’m serious. Don’t let this thing, whatever it is, get out of control. They’ve got this neat system now; you pick up the phone and call the police for help.”

  “Right,” he said. “What’s that number again, I can never remember.”

  “You got a pen?” she smiled.

  He pretended to flip open a pad and click a ballpoint.

  “Nine-one-one,” she said, speaking slowly as though to a child.

  “Got it.”

  He nodded, still smiling, and closed the door. Hattie hit the gas and was gone. McKelvey stood there and felt the good morning sun breaking through, warming his battered face. He looked across at the grey façade of the Royal York hotel with its long-coated doormen on the sidewalk at the ready. Hot dog vendors were setting up their carts on opposite ends of the arches to the train station, the smell of their boiled dogs and grilled onions already filling the air. A great Sunday for a baseball game, for a walk along the beaches, for a pint on the patio of the Bier Markt down on The Esplanade, just to sit there under an umbrella and watch the beautiful women walk by. He thought briefly of popping a half tab of the pills, but shook his head—they were gone anyway, and good riddance. He had responsibilities, no time for a rocket ship ride to the moon. Tim Fielding, he thought. Why hadn’t he just told the kid to call the cops? What an asshole, Charlie. You and your goddamned pride.