Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  Gary hurried out of the den, leaving the door open behind him. Frank kept his Colt steady on Nash and Peel. The gas flames licked at the ceramic logs. They could all hear Gary out in the hall, whistling cheerfully. He was gone less than a minute and when he came back he was carrying a small automatic, a purse gun, a .25 calibre Star. He drew back the slide, let go. Now there was a round in the chamber. All you had to do was pull the trigger. He ejected the clip into the palm of his hand, tossed the weapon to Oscar Peel.

  “Keep an eye on him, Frank.”

  “You betcha.”

  Frank moved around behind Peel and Nash. He brought the Colt up suddenly and backhanded Nash across the side of the head. Nash dropped to his knees. Frank grabbed his hair and held him upright. “Do it, Oscar.”

  “You got one shot,” said Silk. “Get in nice and close. Stick the barrel right up his ear.” Gary clapped his hands together. “Bang! You got him. See how easy it is?”

  Pat Nash groaned. His eyes fluttered.

  Oscar Peel edged a little closer. He told himself he was five years younger than Pat, that he was married and had a wife and baby and probably since Nash smoked two packs a day the guy was dying of cancer anyway, and he was doing him a favor, putting him out of his misery. None of it worked. He made his mind go blank. Gripping the little gun in both hands, he aimed at the back of Pat Nash’s head, inched close enough to touch the front sight against the top of his skull, where the hair formed a little whirlpool.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “Tell it like it is,” said Gary, and patted him on the back.

  “Fuck the both of you,” said Nash, his voice thick with pain.

  Oscar pulled the trigger. The gun clicked as the hammer fell on an empty chamber.

  Gary reached over Peel’s shoulder, yanked the gun away from him. “You’d shoot your own brother-in-law? You fucking hump!” Gary started hitting him with the edge of the racket. Peel retreated, stumbled, fell back. His arm swept half a dozen trophies from the fireplace mantle. Gary screamed with rage. The racket slammed into Peel’s back, Gary dealing a series of two-handed blows, going for the spine.

  “Pick ’em up! Pick ’em up!”

  Peel scrambled across the floor. Gary kept hitting him as he put the trophies back on the mantle. Peel’s nose had started bleeding again and there was more blood on his temple and behind his ear, angry red welts across his back.

  Gary pushed him out of the way. He went over to Pat Nash, knelt down so they were on a level. He pulled back the Star’s slide, slipped a round into the breech and jammed the gun into the breast pocket of Nash’s jacket. The leather creaked.

  “Your turn now,” said Gary. “Your turn if you wanna take it.”

  Oscar was leaning against the wall, crying.

  At a motion from Gary, Frank took Nash by the arm and helped him to his feet.

  Gary reached up and stroked Nash’s cheek. “Same deal. Either he goes or you both go. And you got three days to get my dope back for me or Frank’s gonna come after you. Kill you, understand?”

  Nash nodded wearily. Oscar was still crying. The way he was going, might never get a chance to stop.

  “I’m gonna take a shower and then go to bed and watch some TV,” Gary said to Frank. “Lemme know when you get back, okay? So I don’t stay up all night worrying.”

  “Okay,” said Frank.

  Oscar started yelling at Gary Silk, but he was crying so hard that Silk couldn’t understand a goddamn word he was saying. It was like baby talk. Gibberish. What the guy needed was an interpreter. And somebody to wipe his nose. Gary handed something to Frank. A wide roll of adhesive tape. Frank grabbed a fistful of hair and held Peel still while he wound the tape around and around his head. Peel was still crying, but silently now, snorting blood.

  Pat Nash was something else again. Gary admired him, the way he was standing there, quiet and waiting, like he was memorizing everything, just taking it all in. For a fleeting moment, Gary thought maybe it would be a good idea to bump Nash off, too. But business was, like they said, business.

  And if he didn’t get the heroin back, wouldn’t it be nice to have somebody handy to pound into mush?

  Pat Nash would do just fine.

  4

  Constables Paul Lambert and Chris Furth were having a good shift. Late August, and you couldn’t ask more of the weather — blue skies and light winds. It was early, just a few minutes past seven. The temperature was already in the low seventies, but the commuters hadn’t started to clog the streets yet, and the air was still fresh and pure. They’d worked their way almost to the end of shift, and hadn’t yet been assaulted by a drunk or a whore or a lunatic. None of their arrests had thought to toss his cookies in the back seat of the squad car. And better yet, they’d had a long, emotionally satisfying discussion about baseball in general and the fate of the Blue Jays in particular.

  All in all, a more or less perfect shift.

  Except of course for the usual argument about where to eat breakfast.

  “I want some McNuggets.”

  “Nobody eats McNuggets for breakfast, Lambert.”

  “I do. With sweet and sour sauce.” Lambert’s hard leather handcuff case was digging into the small of his back. Sometimes he truly believed that the police uniform with all its cumbersome and unwieldy equipment had been designed primarily to improve the force’s posture. He sat a little straighter in his seat.

  “Let’s eat at Juanita’s.”

  “They don’t open until eleven.”

  “For us, they will.”

  Furth made a face. “Tacos for breakfast? Forget it.” Juanita’s was a Mexicalifornian fast food joint. Lambert was renowned for his voracious appetite and ability to eat anything, while Furth had a notoriously weak stomach.

  “Why don’t we flip for it, let Lady Luck decide?”

  Furth gave Lambert a suspicious look. “My coin or yours?”

  “Whatever.”

  Furth searched his pockets and found a quarter. He balanced the coin on his thumbnail, which was bitten to the quick. “Call it in the air.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Furth levered the coin into the air. It hit the roof liner and ricocheted to the floor.

  “Tails,” said Lambert.

  Furth retrieved the coin, scowled.

  At Juanita’s, Furth hadn’t been able to bring himself to eat anything except a few taco chips and a taste of salsa. But that left all the more for Lambert, who patted his stomach, burped heartily, sipped his Perrier and wished he was a detective so he could drink beer on the job without anybody knowing about it.

  Lambert glanced around the restaurant, taking in the decor. There was a great big happy sun that bulged out of the wall. The sun was made out of plaster painted bright yellow. There was also a pale blue fingernail moon and a bunch of shiny silver stars made out of jumbo paperclips that had been bent into shape.

  Everywhere you looked, there were groupings of tiny papier mâché figures with pink faces and small black eyes. The figures were comical, but somehow very human. Lambert admired the artists’ ability to fashion the characters so they were primitive and sophisticated all at the same time. He waved at the owner, a dark, grossly underweight man with a black moustache shaped like wings, and eyes that never stopped smiling.

  “What d’we owe you, pal?”

  The man made a gesture of dismissal. “Nothing, not a single peso. Your company is my reward.”

  “On the house, you mean?” Lambert frowned. “I can’t let you do that, it wouldn’t be right.”

  “True,” said Furth.

  Lambert glared at him. Furth stared unblinkingly back. Finally Lambert reached for his wallet. He flipped it open, studied the contents with astonishment. “Jeez, I thought I had a twenty. Mind if I catch you next time, amigo?”

  *

  Furth unlocked the blue and white Aspen, got inside and reached across to let Lambert into the car. Lambert worked his mint-flavored toothpick.

&nbs
p; “Why do you do that?”

  “So I won’t get cavities.”

  “No, I mean why do you always go through that charade with Juanita, or whatever the hell his name is. He’ll never get a dime or a peso or a goddamn bus token out of you, and you both know it.”

  “Mexicans are a very polite people,” Lambert said. “You have to respect their customs.” He spat a fragment of green pepper out the window, burped noisily and sighed with pleasure.

  Furth drove the Aspen east on Robson, past the trendy boutiques and expensive men’s wear shops, multitude of ethnic restaurants and the weird little places that sold cookies by the ounce. The Art Gallery. Law Courts and Robson Square. He hit Granville and turned right. It was quarter to eight. The sun was higher and it was getting hotter, traffic was thick. Lambert rolled his window up, fighting the diesel fumes. They turned right on Davie and then left on Howe, cut into the inside lane and dipped down past the Howe Street access ramp to the Granville Street Bridge, the main access route from the south side of the city to the downtown core.

  Lambert tried to force another burp. He adjusted his seat belt so it wasn’t pressing so hard on his belly. Four enchiladas and two large orders of refried beans on top of all those tacos and salsa plus a handful of the mean as hell little green peppers they served free to get you to drink more beer had encouraged him to down three muy frio bottles of Perrier, and now his stomach felt as if he’d swallowed an iceberg big enough to sink the Titanic.

  Furth turned left on to Beach. They were directly beneath the bridge now, in deep shadow, the bridge’s massive concrete support posts on either side of them. Furth turned right. They cruised slowly towards the water.

  “Where we going?” said Lambert.

  “Nowhere in particular.”

  “Why don’t we get back in the sun, enjoy it while we can?”

  They hit a pothole. The Aspen shuddered and Lambert belched loudly, gave a little gasp of pleasure.

  “Only intelligent thing you’ve said all day,” Furth remarked.

  Lambert ignored the insult. A pale blue Pontiac had smashed into the last of the huge concrete pillars on their side of the water. Furth spun the wheel. The Aspen’s radials crunched across a span of waste ground, a field of unrecognizable chunks of metal and fragments of colored glass.

  The back door on the driver’s side was wide open but the car was in shadow backlighted by sun-streaked water; it was impossible to see inside.

  Furth parked beside and slightly behind the Pontiac. He switched off the engine. He could hear a shrill squealing above the dull thunder of traffic a hundred or more feet over his head. He got out of the car and looked up.

  The complex of steel girders supporting the bridge was lined with thousands upon thousands of raucous Japanese starlings. During the 1940s, several hundred of the birds had been imported to eradicate some insect or the other. Now they numbered in the thousands. The birds were hardy enough to stick around during the city’s notoriously mild winters, and although work crews with sandblasting equipment were sent out every spring to obliterate their nests, they continued to multiply.

  “You coming?” Furth said to Lambert, and slammed shut his door.

  Lambert climbed out of the Aspen. The roof of the Pontiac and the ground all around him was splattered with what looked like gobs of whitish-yellow paint. He put on his hat. Better to soil his uniform than the top of his head.

  The Pontiac was big, a four-door model from the late sixties. The key was in the ignition, and there were at least a dozen or more other keys on a chrome ring the size of a handcuff. Furth reached out to try the front door on the driver’s side.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Lambert.

  Furth looked across the roof of the car at him.

  Lambert was standing by the open rear door. His hand was on his gun.

  “What’ve you got?” said Furth. Something wet and viscous splattered on the metal roof of the Pontiac. He flinched, jerked his head sideways.

  “Take a look.”

  Furth went around to the far side of the car, glass crunching under his shoes. Lambert stepped away from the open door and Furth leaned into the car, careful not to touch anything. First the smell of blood hit him, and then his eyes adjusted to the dimness and he saw how much of it there was, sprayed all across the dashboard and steering wheel, the inside of the windshield. He stepped quickly away from the car, went back to the Aspen and used the Motorola to call in a possible homicide. Only then did he pop open the Aspen’s glove compartment and begin a thorough but unsuccessful search for the package of Tums antacid pills he’d left behind at the end of the previous day’s shift.

  Gone. Furth slammed shut the Aspen’s door. Christ, but cops were a bunch of goddamn thieves!

  5

  Jack Willows was halfway through his second cup of coffee and most of the way through his Saturday morning copy of the New York Times when the telephone rang. He turned the page, a scatter of toast crumbs falling from the paper to his lap. The phone kept ringing. A revival theatre was being torn down and Woody Allen was out with a picket sign. He studied the photograph of the crowd in front of the theatre. Woody must’ve had his back to the camera.

  The ringing stopped.

  Willows picked up his coffee cup, a big ceramic mug with an orange cat on it, the cat’s fluffy tail wrapped around the length of the handle, big green eyes staring fixedly at a family of mice.

  The phone started ringing again. It sounded much louder than before, startled Willows and made him gulp his coffee. He put the mug down on the table and pushed back his chair and went into the bedroom.

  “Willows.”

  “I need you,” said Claire Parker. “Can you come over and see me?”

  Willows could hear a siren in the background, the static of a car radio.

  “Where are you?”

  “North end of the Granville Street Bridge, down by the water.”

  “Twenty minutes,” said Willows.

  “Just enough time for me to change into something comfortable,” said Parker. The siren rose to a shrill scream, died.

  At the foot of Granville there was a turnaround with a raised circle of river stones in the middle. Behind the turnaround there was a gravel parking lot surrounded by a chain-link fence with an open gate. There were half a dozen cars in the lot. Narrow access roads led down to a second, lower parking lot. The ground was fairly steep. The two lots were separated by a four-foot drop, sloping ground covered with a scrim of wild grass and weeds. The road on the right was gravel, but on the left there was pavement. Willows turned left, drove down to the second parking lot, past a third lot that was empty except for several large power boats that were up on blocks.

  There was another chain-link fence, an open gate that provided access to a coffee shop and the waterfront.

  Willows eased the front bumper of the Oldsmobile up against a NO PARKING sign, dropped his sun visor so his POLICE VEHICLE notice was in plain view, got out of the Olds and shut and locked the door.

  The lower parking lot was in the shape of an inverted T, and the bottom of the T butted right up against one of the huge concrete columns that supported the deck of the bridge, a hundred feet or more above him. Willows walked past a rusty orange dumpster. Knee-high concrete barriers had been placed around the perimeter of the parking lot, and one of them had stopped a pale blue Pontiac from making the ten-foot drop into the harbor. Willows heard a shrill twittering. He glanced up, frowned.

  There were three cars in the parking lot: the squad car and the Pontiac and a brown Oldsmobile Cutlass. The Cutlass had been backed right up against the concrete tower leg. It was a four-door, and the right rear tire was flat. As Willows drew nearer he saw that the car was covered in bird droppings and fragments of undigested red berries. The car had no licence plates. The bird droppings were so thick he couldn’t see through the windshield.

  He turned his attention to the Pontiac. It was straddling one of the cement barriers and the barrier itself had been p
ushed badly out of alignment by the force of impact. It looked as if someone had tried to run the car over the barrier and into the water. The attempt had failed, but not by much. The Pontiac was balanced like a teeter-totter, the nose of the car out over the water. A little more speed and momentum would have carried it over the barrier and into the depths.

  Willows looked down at the calm, milky-green surface of the water. An iridescent abstract of oil lay quietly on the surface. A foam coffee cup spun slowly in the breeze. Willows fished a bright new penny from his pocket, flipped it into the water. Visibility was five or maybe six feet. He wondered how deep the water was. If the car had vanished beneath the surface, would it ever have been found? He heard the crunch of gravel and glanced up and saw Parker walking towards him. She smiled. He nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “Morning, Jack. Hope I didn’t get you out of bed.”

  “Is that what I look like, as if I just climbed out of the sack?”

  “How would I know?” said Parker. She gestured towards the Pontiac. “While you were enjoying your nap, somebody got shot to death.”

  Willows stared at the car.

  “I think,” she amended. Then added, “All that’s missing is the body.” She glanced past Willows, out across the water.

  Wooden stanchions and bright yellow crime scene tape kept away a gathering crowd of construction workers from a nearby building site, people who worked on the docks or lived in the nearby condominiums. Willows looked for Mel Dutton and saw that he had already positioned himself up on the slope and was using a telephoto lens to discreetly snap candids. Willows tipped one of the stanchions and stepped over the tape, held the tape down for Parker. He followed her to the Pontiac. The passenger-side rear door was open. He tucked his tie into the breast pocket of his jacket to keep it from getting dirty, leaned into the car.

  There was blood on the front seat, more blood on the steering wheel and dashboard, blood splashed across the radio and glass of the instrument panel, clots of blood and something else, bone or gristle, sticking to the windshield. There was a lot more blood on the door panel, down low. He could see from the pattern that it had impacted with force. It looked like someone had been shot, all right. But you never knew. Knives were always a popular item. If a major artery had been severed, the effect would have been similar. He said, “Who owns the car?”