No Pain, No Gaine

by Edwina Franklin

  Sandy followed him along a side corridor, down a flight of stairs, around a couple of corners and through a plain wooden door into a medium-sized classroom equipped with a portable blackboard, easel and overhead projector.

  “Have a seat, Miss,” Wegner offered with a polite smile. “Sergeant Gaine will be with you in a moment.” Sandy nodded vaguely, then suddenly realized that he was on his way out of the room.

  “Oh, Sergeant!” she called abruptly. He spun around with a questioning expression on his face. “As Sergeant Gaine’s partner, are you investigating the Parmentier case, also?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sandy licked her lips and pinned on a smile. “Then will you be coming back, as well…to interview me?”

  “No, Miss,” he said, his pleasant tenor voice tinged with regret. A moment later, the door closed behind him, and she was alone.

  Like a prisoner exploring the boundaries of a new cell, Sandy walked around the classroom, studying every stick of furniture, every piece of equipment, every square foot of stark, painted wall. Her restlessness increased with each minute that straggled past—and there were quite a few of them.

  Suddenly the door opened behind her.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said tersely, impatiently, as though he was the one who’d been cooling his heels, not Sandy.

  Dry-mouthed, she forced herself to turn around slowly. Sergeant Gaine was wearing the same suit as yesterday, with a crisp white shirt and a gray tie that looked like silk. From the neck down, he looked cool and businesslike. From the neck up, however… His brows were drawn tightly together, tension whitening the little weathered lines she hadn’t noticed before at the corners of his eyes. A storm was brewing in those eyes. Sandy could feel its chill breezes halfway across the room.

  She’d been right, she thought with a shiver. Today was going to be much worse than yesterday.

  Ted saw her chin wobble and immediately felt his resolve do the same. His superiors wouldn’t approve of what he was about to do. Ted wasn’t altogether sure he approved of it himself. But he had to do something. Since yesterday, for reasons he preferred not to examine too closely, he’d found himself thinking often about this woman’s safety and coming again and again to a single conclusion: Alessandra mustn’t die as Bert Waldron had done.

  For a moment, he let silence stand between them like a wall of glass. Then he spoke, deliberately sharpening each word and loading it with disdain. “You seem to think that solving murders is some sort of game we play here, Ms. DiGianni. It isn’t. It’s serious, it’s dangerous, and it’s not for amateur detectives like you. You also seem to think that having a press card gets you into the game. It doesn’t. All it does is turn you into an obstacle and a hazard to the trained personnel carrying on the investigation. You think you’re special? Think again. You’re one of a thousand scheming reporters in this city, all climbing over one another to get a scoop. You’re just another fly on the dung heap, Ms. DiGianni.

  “The only difference between you and the rest of them is that they’re going to live a lot longer because they know what they’re doing,” he went on grimly. “You’re in way over your head, lady. If you want to play hardball with the big boys, you’re going to have to make all the right moves just to stay alive. One mistake, just one, and you end up like your unfortunate colleague, Bert Waldron.”

  Her spine straightened at the mention of that name.

  “Are you making a threat, Sergeant?” she demanded.

  “Take it as a warning, Ms. DiGianni. An example not to follow.”

  “You’re not going to frighten me off with macho noises!” Her chin was jutting a challenge at him…and trembling at the same time.

  Ted sighed inwardly.

  “Frighten you, Ms. DiGianni?” he echoed wearily, strolling between the desks toward her. “Perish the thought. I said it because it happens to be the truth. Bert was a seasoned professional with years of experience. You’re a rank novice with everything to learn. But you do have a few things in common. Bert played detective; now you’re playing detective. Bert was investigating Mr. Vanish; now you’ve shown an interest in Mr. Vanish. Bert is dead. I want you to think about that.”

  Think about it? He wanted her to have nightmares about it!

  “I want you to think about it,” he repeated emphatically before she could recover her balance, “and I want you to do the following: Stop playing detective. Stay away from the Parmentier case. And forget about investigating Mr. Vanish.”

  All by itself, Sandy’s head began to shake no. He was telling her not to do her job; he might as well instruct her to resign from the magazine. She had already accepted philosophically that the Parmentier case was out of bounds for reporters, but rebellion ignited inside her at the very thought of giving up Mr. Vanish.

  “As long as I don’t interfere with an ongoing police investigation, you can’t order me not to make inquiries about someone your own department says does not exist,” she informed him.

  The gray eyes narrowed. “But what if they’ve guessed wrong? That would mean there’s a ruthless, highly intelligent killer on the loose. As long as there’s even a remote possibility of danger, I won’t allow a woman to tackle him alone.”

  “You won’t allow?” she repeated incredulously as a storm of indignation swept away all her remaining uncertainty. “Let me tell you something, Sergeant. I’ve been on my own since I was twenty-one. And like most women, I can handle a hell of a lot more than most men think I can.”

  He stopped and inhaled deeply before continuing, his chiseled features settling into an even harder mask than before. “All right,” he said, “since you’re so sure you’re up to this, let me tell you what we already know about Mr. Vanish—assuming he exists, of course. The name first came up ten years ago in connection with a rash of execution-style murders in several large cities. Nothing definite, just a lot of unsubstantiated rumor. And in case you’re wondering, none of those cases has been solved yet.

  “We call him Mr. Vanish because nobody knows what he looks like, or what he’s going to look like. The few street people who aren’t too terrified to admit that they’ve heard of him tell us he’s a master of disguise. So he can get close to his victim, make the hit at his convenience, and then disappear. And we can’t even start looking for him. That’s Mr. Vanish’s edge, his protection. And a man like that, assuming he exists, would go to any lengths to hang on to it. He would kill anyone who’d witnessed one of his hits, and then go after anyone the witness might have spoken to, just in case.

  “Maybe Bert Waldron was one of his victims. Maybe Mr. Vanish knows that you’re interested in him, too, Ms. DiGianni. Maybe he’s just waiting for you to make another move in his direction so he’ll have an excuse to pop you as well.”

  Ted saw a flicker of fear cross her eyes and then fade as her features set with determination. Too late—the seed was planted. He’d wanted to throw a real scare into her, one that would keep her awake at night and glancing over her shoulder during the day, but it appeared he would have to settle for just gnawing doubt. Considering how stubborn and independent she was, perhaps doubt would accomplish the same thing—make her think twice about pursuing a story. He could only hope it would keep her out of risky situations.

  “All right, Sergeant,” he heard her sigh, “you’ve made your point. I’ll tread very carefully, and I’ll try to keep my fingers out of your pies.”

  She still wasn’t making any concessions. Ted could feel his jaw muscles flex as he replied in as neutral a voice as he could manage, “I’ll settle for that for now, Ms. DiGianni. But be advised that if I catch you interfering with any police investigation whatsoever, I’ll arrest you. And if you continue to endanger your life by hunting for Mr. Vanish, I’m going to treat it as attempted suicide—which happens to be against the law—and arrest you. Do we understand each other?”

  Her l
ips pursed momentarily. “I’m afraid we do, Sergeant. Please don’t bother seeing me out.” And she spun around abruptly and headed for the door.

  Frank Leslie had already gone home for the weekend when she returned to the magazine’s editorial department. Good. Sandy dropped her handbag into her desk drawer on the way to Frank’s terminal.

  Every staff writer was assigned a password to protect his or her work prior to publication. When Bert died, his official password would have been deleted and his work-in-progress reassigned; but Sandy was betting that Bert had put a copy of his secret file under another password, one that nobody else knew about.

  Ted Gaine had tried to frighten her out of continuing Bert’s investigation; Paul had ordered her to leave it alone. How could a true investigative reporter ignore a double challenge like that?

  Then Sandy gasped as it suddenly hit her—Ted Gaine knew that Bert had been investigating Mr. Vanish. Paul swore that he and Bert had kept the file a secret, and yet Sergeant Gaine knew. And if Gaine knew, others might.

  With a mounting sense of urgency, Sandy logged on and began trying out passwords: the obvious ones first—anagrams of Bert’s name, and vanish, hitman, secret—then the less obvious.

  Password Not Found, the computer kept saying.

  Finally, with a small, exasperated noise, Sandy swiveled Frank’s chair away from the terminal. What if Bert had drawn on some personal memory, some private facet of his life, for the password? Clearly Sandy would have to find out more about him before trying again.

  “You’re thinking about a man.”

  Her mother’s triumphant voice snapped Sandy out of her reverie and brought a guilty flush to her cheeks. “Don’t be silly, Mama. I’m not even seeing anyone,” she mumbled, and stuffed a forkful of lasagna into her mouth.

  “I didn’t say you were seeing a man—I said you were thinking about one,” her mother pointed out, her words sharpened by a slight remaining Italian accent.

  Sandy shrugged defensively, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed. “All right, I was thinking about a man. I think about lots of men. It’s no big deal.”

  “You can’t spend your life thinking, cara. You don’t earn a living by thinking. You don’t put a meal on the table by thinking. You don’t get a man—”

  “Mama!” protested Sandy.

  Her mother smiled benignly and sank a fork into her own serving of lasagna. “I read in the paper the other day, there was a stabbing. A young woman, your age, in an apartment building a few blocks away from yours.”

  Angela DiGianni was several inches shorter than her daughter and generously proportioned—“built along traditional Italian lines”, Sandy’s father would often say with a smile of indulgent pride. But Signora DiGianni’s figure wasn’t the only thing about her that conformed to Italian tradition.

  She had opposed Sandy’s decision to move to her own place six years earlier and still refused to let the matter rest. Each time the family got together, as now, she would revive the issue with fresh arguments. And Tommy, Sandy’s younger brother, would sit as he was sitting now, eyes and ears wide open, glancing bemusedly back and forth like a spectator at a ping-pong tournament.

  Sandy sighed with exasperation. “She surprised a burglar in her living room and attacked him,” she explained to everyone at the table. “It was a foolish thing to do.”

  “She lived alone. It’s dangerous for a woman to live alone in the city, especially in that neighborhood,” declared her mother heatedly.

  Sandy felt the edges of the fork handle biting into her clenched fingers and forced them to relax. They’d had this argument many times before. “I don’t want a roommate, Mama.”

  “And I don’t want to read about you in the newspaper!”

  With a sigh, Sandy glanced across the table at Uncle Hugo. He sat placidly munching black olives, apparently oblivious to the tension in the air.

  Hugo Savarini was her mother’s older brother, taller than Angela and with white hair instead of gray. He’d stepped in with financial assistance after Papa was killed, and always sat at the head of the table whenever they had a family meal. But that was as involved as he was willing to become with the DiGiannis.

  The result was that Tommy’s adolescence had been stormier than most. Hugo could have made it easier on them all by giving Tommy a strong father figure to measure himself against; instead, he’d reinforced the emotional wall between himself and his nephew and let the boy find his role models elsewhere.

  “So, tell us about this man,” coaxed Angela.

  Sandy shrugged uncomfortably, wondering how much she could safely tell her mother about Ted Gaine. “He’s just a police sergeant I’ve met a couple of times, that’s all. I wrote an article about the Parmentier murder and he was one of the investigating officers on the case. He insisted on talking to me about it.”

  “He insisted?” echoed her mother, her eyes widening anxiously. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

  “No, Mama,” Sandy sighed, adding silently, not yet, anyway. “It was just standard procedure.”

  Angela digested this for a moment, then remarked, to nobody in particular, “A policeman would be a good choice for a roommate.”

  “Mama…” warned Sandy.

  Her face a picture of slandered innocence, Angela slid her chair back and got to her feet. “Alessandra, per favore, the dishes?”

  This was it, Sandy thought. Mama only needed help clearing the table when there was something she wanted to discuss in the kitchen. Or to continue to discuss, in the kitchen.

  Sandy stood up and began scraping and stacking plates as her mother brought in a huge bowl of fruit for dessert. Noticing Tommy’s sullen expression, Sandy could guess what her mother wanted to talk to her about. Lately, most of her Friday evenings had been spent in serious sisterly discussion with her wayward younger brother. He’d made a couple of new friends a few months earlier, two kids named Vito and Dooley who called themselves “the Knights of the Night”, and Mama was certain they would all three go to prison, if they didn’t end up in hell first.

  Sandy had seen Tommy with the Knights a couple of times, had watched from a distance as her brother slipped easily into the swaggering gait and threatening manner of a street hood looking for trouble. She’d scarcely recognized him then. Mama was right to worry, Sandy thought, but without Hugo’s involvement there was little either woman could do.

  “Okay, Mama, what’s wrong?” Sandy sighed, setting down the pile of plates and cutlery on the tiny kitchen counter.

  Wordlessly, her mother turned and showed her a blue gift box from Birks Jewellers. Inside, resting on a bed of black velvet, sparkled a gold bracelet set with rubies.

  “Tommy gave me this. For all the birthdays he missed.” Snapping the case shut, Mama dropped it on the counter as though it had burned her hand. “He has no money, Sandra. I can’t give him allowance. In February he was fired from his job after school. How would he buy such a thing?

  “I ask him and he looks at me with eyes like stones. But he listens to you. Per favore, cara, talk to your brother. Find out what he has done. Please!”

  Sandy took a steadying breath and walked back into the living room. Behind her, her mother was making a nervous clatter with the cutlery. Twilight was sifting into the little apartment through the yellowing slats of the venetian blinds, along with the reassuring growl of traffic from the street below. The smell of tomatoes and spices still hung in the air, or perhaps the delicious cooking aromas had permeated the walls and furniture in the eight years that Angela and Tommy had been living here.

  Tommy had wedged himself into a corner of the sofa and was reading a car magazine. It was hard to believe he was seventeen already, and in his final year of high school. But Sandy could see the dark shadow of whiskers on his lower jaw, and his shoulders and chest were filling out. When Tommy stood up, he was inches taller tha
n his sister. He wouldn’t be a boy much longer. Would she still be able to get through to him when he was a man?

  Or would he interpret her interest in his life as unwarranted interference and throw it right back in her face?

  Suddenly Sandy felt a sharp cramp deep in her stomach. For the first time in her life, she had indigestion from her mother’s lasagna.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday, June 9

  The next day, Sandy trotted down the steps of her duplex, emerging from the cool shadow of the entranceway into the cheerful warmth of a summer morning. She flinched and pressed her sunglasses firmly up the bridge of her nose, then began walking purposefully toward the bus stop at the corner.

  The discussion with Tommy the previous evening had been strained and futile; and now, after her second sleepless night in a row, her senses felt bruised. Her eyeballs ached, and her tongue tasted like cotton wool dipped in vinegar. Normally she would be back in her apartment, in her pajamas, with the color comics on her lap and a cup of Earl Grey within easy reach. Instead, she had thrown on a pair of blue cotton slacks and a seersucker shirt and was on her way to the Lucky Shot Video Arcade to have a serious talk with its manager, Uncle Hugo.

  A fresh breeze stroked her face, and as she lifted her head to enjoy the unexpected coolness Sandy noticed the man standing at the bus stop across the road. He was average-looking, wearing a casual denim suit and a Blue Jays baseball cap, and he was staring at her with almost mesmerizing intensity. No, she decided, trying to ignore a sudden sensation crawling just under her skin, staring wasn’t the right word. He was studying her, with emotionless eyes, like a scientist examining a specimen…or a collector about to capture one. All at once alarm bells were going off inside Sandy’s head, and she knew that she didn’t want to cross the road, didn’t want to ride the bus with that man, whoever he was.

  Eglinton Avenue stretched between them and the light was still red. Sandy veered left across Bayview and strode briskly toward Yonge Street, still feeling the pressure of those eyes between her shoulder blades. Was he following her? Did she dare turn around to look? She quickened her pace, nearly breaking into a jog.