The Thirteenth Rose

by Gail Bowen

  I open my mic and ask for a moment of silence. At that point the cops bring in Kevin O’Hanlon. All hell breaks loose.

  Kevin is not honored to have a police escort. In fact, he is livid. Kevin is a banty rooster of a guy. He’s short. So were Winston Churchill, Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Each of them found a way to make his mark without spewing hate.

  It appears Kevin has decided that strutting and making a lot of noise will buy him a ticket to immortality. He’s red-haired, and tonight his pale skin is flushed with fury. Kevin cannot tolerate opposition. Tonight he can’t stop yelling. He yells at the cops. He yells at me. He yells at Nova. We’re just pawns in the game. Kevin is the king. When he steps into the studio, he makes a fatal mistake. He treats Misty as yet another pawn.

  Henry Burgh enters the control room just in time to witness the face-off between Kevin and Misty. Misty hands Kevin the handwritten letter of resignation she’s been working on.

  “Read this on air, word for word,” she says, and her voice is steel. “No additions. No deletions. Just read what’s written on this page.”

  Kevin skims the words.

  “I’m not going to read this shit. I’m not going to crawl.” His eyes turn to Misty. “I’m certainly not going to crawl for a slut.”

  Henry is in time to hear Kevin’s ugly words. He may be eighty-three years old, but Henry Burgh has been a boxer since high school. He knows the value of the quick move.

  He approaches Kevin O’Hanlon, plants his right foot slightly behind him and shifts his left foot onto the toe. Then Henry turns his body slightly and delivers a left hook that strikes Kevin squarely on the chin and knocks him out cold.

  Henry steps over Kevin and embraces his wife. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  Misty moves closer to her husband. “I’m fine, Henry.”

  Two cops come in and carry Kevin O’Hanlon out. He’s coming to, and he doesn’t look happy.

  Henry kisses the top of his wife’s hair, then turns to me. “What the hell is going on here?”

  I give him the abbreviated version. Henry doesn’t miss a beat. He reads the resignation letter Misty is holding and looks down at her fondly. “Do you want to read it on air, or shall I?”

  “I’ll do it,” Misty says. Her voice is steady. She turns on her microphone. Her message is brief but to the point. “Effective immediately, Kevin O’Hanlon is no longer an employee of CVOX. This station welcomes diverse opinions, but we do not give voice to hate. Tonight we witnessed the slaughter of two women by men consumed by hate. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.’ Tonight, CVOX commits itself to driving out the darkness of ignorance, bigotry and prejudice. Together, the staff of CVOX and you, our listeners and contributors, can work to defeat hate.”

  Nova gives Misty a thumbs-up, but her smile is thin. The tensions of the evening have drained her. “Okay, wrap it up, Charlie. Our listeners are fragile. Give them something to hang on to that will get them through the night.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to get through the night,” I say. Misty and Henry, in a show of solidarity, stand behind my chair. Misty’s hand is on my shoulder.

  “Go to music,” Nova says. “Leonard Cohen singing ‘Suzanne.’”

  I smile to myself. Dolores’s passion for Leonard Cohen is as fervent as a teenager’s. “Suzanne” is Dolores’s favorite Cohen song. Nova makes up our playlists days before the show. No one could have foreseen the horror show that played itself out tonight. Dolores’s date will be over by now. It makes me feel good to think of her safe at home listening to Leonard and drinking the pink wine she always refers to as “vin rosey.”

  I find my Charlie D voice, and when I speak into my mic, I sound like a guy who can make sense of our crazy world.

  “Okay, time for a recap,” I say. “This has been one of the worst nights in the history of the show. But they say it’s always darkest before the dawn. And they might just be right. Misty’s words were a glimmer of light. This can be a beginning for us.”

  I glance into the control room.

  Another cop has just walked in. Her face is pink with cold, and there’s snow on her jacket. She says something to Nova. Whatever she said is devastating. Nova buries her face in her hands. When she begins to sob, my heart sinks. I have a feeling that tonight the darkness will never end.

  Chapter Seven

  I hit talkback. “What’s happened?”

  Nova’s voice is anguished. “Dolores O’Reilly was murdered tonight. The police had an anonymous tip to go to the old Waverly Hotel. That’s where they found her. Same scenario as the other deaths. Dolores was manacled and raped. Then she was stabbed many, many, many times.”

  The marrow in my bones freezes. “How did the police know to get in touch with us?”

  “Dolores’s wallet had a list of people to notify in case, in her words, she ‘met with tragedy,’” Nova says. Then she pounds her fist rhythmically against the desk. “Shit,” she says. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  I close my eyes and see Dolores holding the rose against her cheek.

  I feel like I’ve taken a body blow. Nova sees my reaction and goes immediately to music. It’s another Leonard Cohen—“Dance Me to the End of Love.”

  As Leonard Cohen sings about dancing with his lover to a burning violin, I look again at Henry and Misty, and I think about luck. Who decides? Who decides that Misty and Henry will find happiness together—a happiness that, against all the odds, will end in the birth of a child who will fill their lives with joy?

  Who decides that on a cold Valentine’s evening, I will hand Dolores a rose that she will wave at a passing SUV and the man who is driving will slow to pick her up? Who decides that Dolores will then thank me for bringing her luck and then go to the hotel room where she will meet her death?

  No matter what, I’ve always been able to slip into the skin of Charlie D, reach for that cool, confident voice and get through the two hours we’re on the air. Tonight the show is almost over. My only job now is to do what Nova calls “the take-away”—the brief segment where I tie up the loose ends and riff about what we’ve learned that night.

  But I can’t do it. I can’t find the words. I can’t find my Charlie D voice. After ten seconds of dead air, the broadcast will automatically kick into a preprogrammed Muzak-type sound. That will be our sign-off. If I let that happen, I can just walk away. But somehow I can’t do that either.

  Dolores deserves one last Valentine.

  Leonard Cohen sings the final haunting line of “Dance Me to the End of Love,” and I open my mic.

  “It’s been a helluva night,” I say, and the voice I hear is my own—unsure and frightened. “Tonight a woman named Dolores O’Reilly was murdered. Dolores was not dealt a great hand in this life, but she played the cards she’d been given with style and courage.

  “She was a sex worker, and her workplace was the neighborhood around CVOX Radio. It’s a rough area, and every night Dolores saw the worst of human nature. She never became bitter or cynical. She never let the darkness destroy her.

  “She was a good friend to many in our neighborhood. If someone was sick or troubled or broke, Dolores was the first to offer help. When a john beat one of the other girls so badly that she couldn’t work for weeks, Dolores took her in and cared for her. Last year, when I had what turned out to be something called walking pneumonia, Dolores brought me chicken soup every night until she decided that I’d recovered.

  “Everybody has bad times. In the eleven years I’ve been doing The World According to Charlie D, I’ve had my share. The worst was when I lost the woman I loved. The night I found out that Ariel died, I walked out of the studio, and it was a long time before I came back. Grief did not make me a better person. I drank. I got into fights. I lashed out at everybody who tried to help. A lo
t of people gave up on me. Dolores never did. She never gave up on anybody. And she never gave up on life.

  “There’s a line in ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ that makes my heart skip a beat. It comes when the lover asks his beloved to take him to a place where he will be ‘gathered safely in.’ I don’t know where that place is. I just hope that tonight Dolores O’Reilly has found it.”

  I hang on until the red light signaling that my microphone is live goes to black. I can leave now.

  A cop in the control room tells us that Kevin O’Hanlon has been taken to an ER. The cop says O’Hanlon was really mouthing off. He was threatening everybody. The cop is sure O’Hanlon will be all right.

  Two police officers lead us down the hall. Misty and Henry walk directly behind the cops, and Nova and I follow along. Nova’s winter headgear is an orange knitted cap with earflaps. She’s carrying her roses and Lily’s teddy bear. I’m wearing my toque and carrying the plastic container that holds Lily’s heart-shaped cookies. We look like members of a bizarre religious group.

  We step through the front doors into snow. The snow is falling gently in the fat, theatrical flakes that land on the hair of lovers in date movies. Henry and Misty’s shining Rolls-Royce is pulled up to the curb at front. The driver is standing by the passenger door, at the ready. Henry and Misty greet him.

  When Misty and Henry walk to their car, Nova and I walk with them. Henry offers to have their driver take us wherever we want to go. I look at Nova. She’s a trouper, but even troupers have their limits, and Nova has reached hers.

  I touch her cheek. “You go ahead,” I say. “How many chances are you going to get to ride in a Rolls-Royce?”

  Henry’s voice is gruff. “As many as she wants,” he says. “Misty and I are very grateful to you both.”

  “You were both pretty amazing too,” I say. I turn to Nova again. “Time for you to go home,” I say. “Tuck Lily’s new bear in with her so she can wake up to a surprise. I’m going to hang around here for a while.”

  Nova and I know each other well. Her eyes meet mine. “You’re going over to Dolores’s corner, aren’t you?”

  I look down the street. The place where Dolores solicited customers is a prime location—a busy intersection with plenty of traffic. It won’t be long before another girl takes it over.

  Dolores liked the corner because it had a streetlight. Enough light to give customers a glimpse, she said, but not so much that they can see the sags and wrinkles.

  “I’d like to pay my respects,” I say.

  “I’d like to pay my respects too,” Nova says. She turns to Misty and Henry. “Be sure to let us know when the baby is born. I never asked. Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy?”

  “It’s a girl,” Henry says. “We’re going to name her Grace, after my mother. Our daughter will be Grace de Vol Burgh.”

  I repeat the name. “Grace de Vol Burgh. That’s a strong name, and a beautiful one.” My eyes travel between Henry and his twenty-five-year-old wife. Their love for one another stings my eyes. “Grace will have a good life,” I say.

  Misty embraces Nova and me. Henry shakes our hands. They get into the Rolls. Nova and I watch as the shining car disappears into the snow. Then we turn and walk down to Dolores’s corner.

  Nova places her roses on the place where Dolores stood when she was drumming up business. She looks down at the teddy bear in her arms. “I wonder if anyone ever gave Dolores a teddy bear,” she says.

  “Don’t go there,” I say. And then I kneel in the snow and say the prayer that my mother and I said together every night until the night when I told her I no longer believed in God. Nova kneels beside me, and together we watch the snow fall on the red petals of the roses. Only when the roses are buried do Nova and I stand up and begin the long walk home.

  Chapter Eight

  It was June when Dolores O’Reilly’s murderer was finally arrested. The first scorching heat had come. The hookers were wearing short skirts, midriff-baring tops and strappy stilettos. The drug dealers were sporting mirrored sunglasses and wife-beater shirts that showcased the tattoos on their thin, pale arms. Summer in the city.

  Henry and Misty Burgh came down to CVOX to break the news. It was half an hour before The World According to Charlie D went to air. Late for a baby to be up and about, but Grace de Vol Burgh was never far from her parents’ adoring eyes. Grace was a beauty. As Henry said, when it came to looks, his daughter had the good sense to choose her mother’s genes.

  That night, was when the Burgh family arrived, Grace was sleeping in her baby carrier. The control room was brightly lit, so we walked through to the dark quiet of the studio. As Henry gave us the account of what had happened, he kept his voice low. We all drew close to him.

  It turned out that Dolores had been wrong about one thing. The police in our neighborhood were her friends. In fact, police all across the country had mounted an extensive undercover operation to learn the identity of the men who had killed Dolores and the other two women on the night of February 14.

  The operation had been lengthy and expensive. The undercover agents approached men whom they suspected had ties to O’Hanlon’s Warriors. It took months, but finally an undercover agent in our city gained the confidence of a man named Joey Shuba.

  Joey was not smart, but he was powerfully built. He had two fatal flaws. He was a braggart and a heavy drinker. When Joey was drinking, he boasted about his exploits. One night he bragged to the wrong man. As soon as Joey began telling his tale of how he had killed a whore at the old Waverly Hotel, the undercover agent reached for his smartphone.

  It was the beginning of the end for Kevin O’Hanlon. Joey didn’t know much, but he knew just enough to lead the police to the guy who had recruited him for O’Hanlon’s Warriors. After that, the police simply followed the daisy chain. Each Warrior’s only connections were to the man who had recruited him and his own recruit. It was painstaking work, but the police finally found Kevin O’Hanlon’s first recruit. In return for certain considerations, the recruit was all too willing to blow the whistle on Kevin.

  When Henry Burgh finishes, he sits back in his chair. “I realize that there’s nothing to celebrate here,” he says. “But this has been an ugly chapter in many lives. I’m glad it’s finally closed.”

  Misty reaches for her husband’s hand. “So am I,” she says. “It’s been a difficult time for all of us.”

  Hearing her mother’s voice, Grace de Vol Burgh opens her eyes. When she sees me instead of her mother, she hollers. Misty picks up her daughter and murmurs reassurances. When Grace is calmed, Misty turns to me. “You two need a chance to get acquainted,” she says. “Why don’t you feed Grace, Charlie?”

  “I’d love to,” I say, “but aren’t you feeding Grace the old-fashioned way?”

  “I was,” Misty says, “but I had to stop.” Misty’s blue eyes travel between Nova and me. “We haven’t told anybody yet, but Henry and I decided we didn’t want Grace to be an only child. We’re expecting another baby in February.”

  I clap Henry on the back. “Way to go, Dad,” I say. When I see Nova’s frown, I pat Misty on the back too. “I guess you had something to do with this,” I say. “Way to go, Misty.”

  Nova and I walk the Burgh family to the CVOX entrance. The place where Kevin O’Hanlon’s picture once hung is empty. Misty is trying out a number of guest hosts. A pleasant young woman whose parents emigrated from China shortly before she was born has the inside track. Julia Wong is smart and gentle. She’s also a lesbian who’s especially good with young people questioning their gender identity. Nova and I are both rooting for her.

  We stand in the doorway till the Burghs’ Rolls-Royce turns the corner. Nova and I are not usually physically demonstrative with one another, but as we walk back down the hall, I drape my arm around her shoulder. “What do you think of Henry and Misty’s n
ews?” I say.

  Nova grins. “I think it’s terrific,” she says. “I wish it were me. Lily’s almost three. Seeing Grace has given me a bad case of baby lust.”

  I squeeze her shoulder. “I know what you mean. When I was feeding that little girl, I felt really happy for the first time in a long time.”

  Nova stops dead and gives me her no-bullshit gaze. “Is this something you and I should have a serious talk about?”

  “It is,” I say. “But the discussion’s going to have to wait. Right now we have a show to do.”

  “We’re not getting any younger,” Nova says. “After the show let’s go to Chubby’s. We can drink milkshakes, eat onion rings and decide on our next move.”

  I kiss the top of Nova’s head. “I think we’ve already decided on our next move,” I say. “But I’m always up for Chubby’s onion rings.”

  The Thirteenth Rose is Gail Bowen’s fourth title in the Rapid Reads series, all featuring late-night radio talk-show host Charlie D. The other titles in the series are Love You to Death, One Fine Day You’re Gonna Die and The Shadow Killer. Winner of both the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award and the Derrick Murdoch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Crime Writers of Canada, Bowen has been recognized as one of Canada’s best mystery writers. For more information, visit www.gailbowen.com.

  For more titles in the Orca Rapid Reads series, please click here.

  For a complete list of reading guides in the Rapid Reads series, please click here.

  The following is an excerpt from Love You to Death,

  another exciting Rapid ReadsRapid Reads novel by Gail Bowen.

  978-1-55469-262-0 $9.95 pb

  Someone is killing some of Charlie D’s favorite listeners.

  Charlie D is the host of a successful late-night radio call-in show that offers supportive advice to troubled listeners. Love You to Death takes place during one installment of The World According to Charlie D—two hours during which Charlie must discover who is killing some of the most vulnerable members of his audience.