Matanzas

by Garry Ryan

  Lane looked around. The other women were on their feet and gathered in a loose circle around them. He turned to Anita and waited.

  Anita turned to Neville, who said, “We heard you are looking for Brett Livingston.”

  Lane nodded. “That’s correct.”

  Aunt Rose used heavily accented English when she said, “That evil shit killed my mother!”

  One of the other women waited for a nod from Rose before she said, “Our grandmother died at Floral Gardens. They said it was a heart attack.”

  Another said, “She was born in China and could speak only a few words of English. Before she died she was nervous and upset but wouldn’t talk about it. After she died we found this.”

  Anita handed over a note. Lane looked at the column of characters and handed it to Nigel.

  Aunt Rose said something that sounded like a curse to Lane. He only recognized gwai lo.

  Anita frowned. “The note says that my brother was broke and in jail in China. He didn’t want to tell his parents about it so he was asking my grandmother for money.”

  Neville said, “After she died there was fifty thousand dollars missing from her bank account.”

  “Brett the pig killed Ayah!” Aunt Rose said.

  “When Anita asked her boss about it, Brett disappeared and it all got swept under the carpet by Ms. Mancuzi,” Neville said.

  Anita put her hand on Aunt Rose’s shoulder. “Mancuzi said we had no proof, that Brett was gone and it would only upset people. She said we had to learn to accept that Ayah was dead and that accepting death is difficult sometimes. I found out later that Mancuzi gets a bonus every year if the Gardens stay full. She’s afraid she’ll lose her bonus if word gets around that Brett killed Ayah and stole her money.”

  Aunt Rose held up three fingers. “Three wars! Ayah live through three wars, then die in Gardens!”

  Neville said, “Ayah worked her entire life. Raised two kids on her own after her husband was killed when the Japanese invaded. Got them out of China when Mao had his Cultural Revolution, brought them to Canada and put them both through university. She was a remarkable woman.”

  Anita put her arm around Aunt Rose’s shoulder. “If you find this Brett Livingston, we want to know what he says happened to Ayah.”

  Lane nodded and looked back at Rose, who refused to blink. He handed his card to Aunt Rose and Neville. “If you think of anything else or discover where Brett Livingstone is, contact me right away.”

  Ten minutes later, as they drove down Blackfoot Trail with the fairgrounds in the foreground and the city centre in the background, Lane asked, “What was Aunt Rose saying?”

  Nigel smiled. “That she didn’t think the police would be any help and Brett would get white justice.”

  “White justice?”

  “She thinks you and I are crooked because we’re police. The police she’s used to dealing with were almost always corrupt.”

  Walter Riley sat in his wheelchair in the sunroom at Bowmont, a seniors residence where those who’d managed to hold onto their minds lived on the main floor and those who hadn’t lived on the second. There the doors and elevators had key codes to keep all the lost minds in one place.

  Green and yellow budgies in a cage about three metres away were happily chatting in the sunlight. Walter looked at the cafeteria clock and saw it was an hour until dinnertime. He patted his stomach with the palm of his right hand, the only hand he could move with any kind of accuracy even though the fingers were slow to obey him.

  A woman screamed on the second floor. It was a wild, haunting sound. Walter saw heads turn and look up at the balcony. He thought, One good thing about being deaf is that I can barely hear the howling anymore.

  The new nurse in flashy royal-blue top and pants walked past. His name tag said Brett.

  Walter’s reaction was immediate. His bowels clenched as if some mighty hand had reached into his abdomen, gripped his large intestine and squeezed. That was followed by shortness of breath as his diaphragm pressed against his lungs. He heard Kaye, his ten-years-dead wife, say, “How do you know? How can you possibly know that?” And he would try to explain that after his first fifteen years of teaching, his body had recognized the signs from a person’s body language. He just knew. The words from Macbeth came to him like a fish rising lazily to the surface of the lake to swallow a duckling: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Even though he was deaf, had lost almost everything but his mind, his sight, his memories and his appetite, he knew that Brett was a predator.

  Christine was waiting with Indiana and Sam when Lane got home. “I need to go for a walk.” She handed him a sandwich in a plastic bag.

  “Can I lose the tie and put on my other shoes?” Lane hung his jacket in the closet.

  Christine frowned. Lane took a long slow breath, then grabbed the leash in one hand and the sandwich in another. He waited as she grabbed the diaper bag and Indiana. Lane followed her out the kitchen door and onto the deck where she snapped Indiana into the stroller and stuffed the bag into the carrier under the baby. Lane put the leash on Sam and kept the sandwich out of the dog’s reach.

  They walked along a street with single-family homes on either side. Every so often a metal container stood out front of a house being renovated. Lane still had a mouthful of tomato, lettuce, cucumber and soy cheese (becoming a mother had transformed Christine into a health food advocate) when Christine said, “Dan is sad because of what happened at the wedding. He’s worried about his dad.”

  Lane covered his mouth with his fist. “Where is Dan?”

  “Asleep. He’s back working on the golf course. Starts at five tomorrow morning.” Christine looked under the stroller’s visor to see that Indiana was checking whether his toes would fit in his mouth.

  “Lola isn’t going to change.” Lane stuffed the remains of the sandwich in his mouth and the bag in his pocket.

  “He knows that!”

  Sam turned his head and looked at Lane. Don’t worry, you won’t need to run and hide.

  “Dan would like to have a relationship with his dad, that’s all.”

  They turned a corner and headed west toward the Rockies. The mountains were hidden behind rows of two-storey houses. “He could go downtown to meet his dad for a coffee some afternoon. Dan gets off work at two, doesn’t he?”

  Indiana began to fuss. Christine stopped, fished a bottle out of the bag and handed it to the baby. “Is coffee your solution to everything?”

  “Did you bring me on this walk to talk or to fight?” Now you’ve done it!

  Christine’s face turned red. Sam darted left to escape and nearly yanked Lane off balance.

  “I’m just worried about him,” Christine said.

  “John likes to golf. Maybe they could go golfing. That way they can talk and relax at the same time.”

  Christine looked ahead and waved.

  Lane followed her gaze and spotted Donna sitting in a lawn chair in the shade at the mouth of her garage. A playpen was next to her and an infant was visible through the mesh. It lay on its back attempting to roll over. “Pull up a chair and join me for a lemonade?”

  Christine looked at Lane, who said, “Sure.” Anything to stop the interrogation. I have no idea how to fix Dan’s problem with his parents.

  Sam followed them past Donna’s pickup and into the shade of the garage where her Harley was attached to a sidecar with a baby car seat strapped inside.

  “You let the baby ride in there?” Christine asked as she picked up Indiana, cradled him in her right arm, then sat next to Donna in a lawn chair.

  “Not yet. Maybe at the end of this summer or next. I just want to be ready when she is.” Donna had her brown hair cut short. She reached over and poured lemonade from a jug into a pair of glasses. She handed one to Christine and another to Lane. “What’s new? Haven’t talked to you two since before Lisa was born.” She raised her glass.

  Lisa? Wasn’t that the name of your sister who was killed in
Afghanistan? Lane took a sip. “This is delicious. What’s your secret?”

  “Fresh lemons and raw sugar.” Donna smiled.

  “I got married last week in Cuba.” Christine flashed her new white-gold wedding band.

  Donna reached over to inspect the ring. “Very nice. How was Cuba?”

  “The beach was amazing. The wedding was . . .” Christine glanced at Lane.

  “Christine looked fabulous as always. Her sister managed to get there even though she lives in the States. Indy wore a tux.” Lane inched closer to Sam, who groaned and sat.

  “My mother-in-law thought it was all about her. Then my uncle got tangled up in a murder investigation.” Christine shook her head.

  Donna smiled. “Sounds like a wedding to remember. When do I get to see the pictures?”

  We’ve been looking for Brett while we should have been looking for the women Camille talked with.

  Christine said, “How about if I bring them around tomorrow after supper?”

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26

  chapter 10

  “I’m trying to get a hold of Lisa. You have a message from a Gloria.” Lori held up her hand with a written note. Lane grabbed the note as he walked past her desk and into his office. He sat down, picked up his phone and dialed.

  “Hello?” A woman’s voice asked.

  “It’s Paul Lane.”

  “Thank you for calling me back. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

  “Go ahead.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “I would like to give my baby a proper burial. I know it’s an unusual request. You’re the only one who has any understanding of the situation and might be able to tell me where to start or who to ask.”

  Lane winced at a childhood flashback of his mother taking the belt to him. “Was it a homicide?”

  “Yes. My mother admitted that she smothered my baby.” Her voice was as empty as a rain barrel in the middle of a summer drought.

  “I need you to come in and do some paperwork. Then I’ll contact a friend who may be willing to do the exhumation.” How come you sound so clinical? Gloria has been living with this as long as you have. It has left a stain on both of our lives. “I’m sorry. Could we discuss this over a cup of coffee? How about tomorrow morning, early?”

  “Where and when?”

  He told her and hung up.

  Lori stood in the doorway and waved a piece of paper at him. “I’ve got a name and number for you. From now on you contact Lisa through me. She’s taking a week off. She can’t shake the shock of the shooting that happened outside of her building.” She handed the note to Lane. “Christy Mackenzie called. She says she was friends with Camille.”

  Nigel took time to track down background information on Christy Mackenzie, who lived at the ever-expanding southern edge of the city and worked downtown within five blocks of Lane’s office. They walked east along 6th Avenue to The Bow. Fifty-eight floors of crisscrossed steel, curved glass and concrete in the shape of a bow. “She works for Encana.” They rode the elevator to the eighth floor and asked the receptionist to see Ms. Mackenzie.

  They sat in plush comfort for five minutes until a woman dressed in a pale-blue jacket with matching skirt and navy-blue heels came to fetch them. “Christy Mackenzie.” She reached out her hand and shook with a wiry grip.

  “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice.” Lane followed her down the corridor. He watched her shoulder-length blonde hair swing from side to side as she walked. She stopped in front of an open door, then held her left hand out for them to go in first. She shut the door behind them.

  “I heard about what happened to Camille.” She sat down behind a glass-topped desk, crossed her left leg over her right and straightened her skirt. Christy raised her brown eyes and looked right back at them.

  She definitely has the no-nonsense approach down pat. “We understand that you might be able to provide some background on Brett Mara.”

  Christy nodded at the detectives. “Camille was my cousin. We went to the same high school.”

  You must know about the FKs as well.

  “We’re trying to contact her husband,” Nigel said.

  Christy leaned her head to the right and studied the younger detective. “That son of a bitch Brett killed her, didn’t he?”

  That façade sure left in a hurry. Lane said, “He is a person of interest in the investigation into her death. We are trying to locate him.”

  Christy shook her head and made a backhanded swipe at her eyes, then reached for a tissue. “We knew it. Brett was a gangbanger from way back, and she wouldn’t listen to any of us when we tried to tell her what he was like.”

  “It happened in Havana,” Lane said.

  “I saw her a week before she left. She was looking forward to the trip. Said she was thinking of leaving him. There was this new guy. She said she had stuff on Brett that made him easy to manipulate.” Christy dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

  “We would like to talk with Brett,” Lane said.

  The sound Christy made was somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “Good luck. The only way Camille and I could stay in touch was when she would call me once every two weeks or so. Her phone number always came up as unknown. That’s how I would know it was her. We would always meet at the mall or a restaurant, never at her place.”

  “Do you have the name of the new guy?” Nigel asked.

  Christy shook her head. “She did say it was a friend of Brett’s, but she wasn’t worried because she could blow the whistle on Brett’s latest scam and then he would end up in jail. In fact I think she was planning to do exactly that.”

  “Did she give you any information on the scam?” Lane asked.

  “She said something about old people and their grandchildren. She started to explain the last time we met. Then her phone rang and she had to leave. She said she would fill me in when she got back. There was something she wanted to take a look at in Cuba, a property, I think.”

  “Do you know anyone who might be able to help us locate Brett?”

  Christy looked at her cell phone set to the right of her keyboard. She picked it up and pressed a button then flipped through two pages of apps. “Carlo.”

  “Carlo?”

  Christy turned the phone so they could see it. There was a picture of a truck with Carlo’s Calzones written across the top. “Talk with Carlo. He contacted me and was looking for Brett.”

  Carlo’s truck was glacier blue. The blue Lane had seen just once at Moraine Lake a thirty-minute drive away from the more famous Lake Louise. Thankfully he didn’t put a calzone on the truck. It would have looked —

  “Obscene. The calzones are supposed to be so good, it’s —” Nigel looked at the face of his phone. “The guy scores ninety-five percent on customer satisfaction.”

  Carlo’s name was written in green above the open windows. Below that, a horseshoe of mountains cradled a glacier. It is Moraine Lake.

  A voice from inside the truck asked, “What’s your pleasure, gentlemen?”

  “Two calzones. Two coffees.” Lane handed over a twenty and got back a toonie and two loonies. He dropped a loonie in the tip cup and pocketed the rest.

  “Name?” the voice asked.

  Lane saw the shadow of a person inside. How does a guy that size move around in there? “Lane.”

  “Ten minutes.” A hand the size of a spaghetti bowl handed over a napkin. Lane stuffed it in his pocket.

  Nigel handed one coffee to Lane. He stepped aside to open the way for the next in line and said, “I’ve been wanting to try out this one. It’s becoming a bit of a legend around town. Some of the complaints from the established restaurants have gotten louder. They say the food trucks are hurting their business. Now we can find out for ourselves.”

  Lane watched the lunch crowd checking their watches and phones, rolling up wrappers, grabbing pop cans then lining up to drop the recyclables in their proper containers. Nigel leaned closer. “Think we look like cops?”

&
nbsp; Lane smiled, looked at his right hand and spotted a note written in black on the napkin. “He’ll meet us after the lunch crowd leaves. Christy must have called him.” Lane sat down across from the cast sculpture of the chess player who stared forever at the pieces on the table.

  “Think he’s winning?” Nigel sat next to the statue.

  “No idea. I’m not much of a chess man.”

  “That’s funny. Sometimes you make me think you’re working several moves ahead.”

  Lane shook his head. He turned as a diesel pickup parallel parked a couple of cars ahead of the calzone truck. The engine clattered off, the doors opened and a pair of alligator boots was followed by Wrangler jeans, a leather belt with a Stampede belt buckle, a white shirt with silver buttons, a black cowboy hat and a tanned face with a five o’clock shadow. The driver came around the front of the truck, stepped up on the curb and put his hands on his hips. He was dressed in black from cowboy boot toe to crown. He slapped his friend on the back. “Hey, Ronnie, let’s get us a calzone.”

  Nigel heard the accent, spotted the white outline of Nova Scotia on the rear window of the pickup, then said just loud enough for his partner to hear, “East Coast cowboys.”

  Lane shook his head as the pair sashayed their way up to Carlo’s truck. Ronnie reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a fifty and said, “Couple of calzones for me and Blair.”

  The fifty disappeared; the massive hand reappeared with the change. Ronnie said, “Thanks, pardner.”

  Nigel chuckled. “It’s fuckin’ ridiculous what people from the rest of the country think they know about this town.”

  Lane smiled as he watched the East Coast cowboys stand with hands fisted on their hips. The cowboys kept checking to see who was watching.

  “Lane!” A man appeared at the passenger door of the food truck. His hair was black, his face was angular and he filled the interior of the cab.

  “How does that guy move around inside of that truck?” Nigel asked.

  Lane shrugged, got up, walked to the open door, took the paper-wrapped calzones, thanked the man with biceps the size of cured hams and returned to the chess man. He handed one of the calzones to Nigel.