by Mike Knowles
CHAPTER THREE
When the adrenaline receded I became suddenly aware of the pull from under my gown. The catheter line was taut, and the pain radiated into my core. I had no idea how the plastic line was forced into me, and I learned the hard way, after one painful pull, that there was some sort of anchor inside my bladder holding the tube inside me. However the tube was locked in place, the bag couldn’t come with me. I pawed Igor’s pockets looking for a knife but found only car keys. I used the sharpest key to saw at the tube just above the bag. It took thirty seconds for the dull key to wear down the medical plastic. I threw the bag in a medical waste disposal box and gave removing the tube one last try. The catheter retracted with my pull, and I grunted as each centimetre of the tube came free. When the catheter was all of the way out, I saw that the anchor that once held it in place was now a flaccid balloon tinted pink with a sheen of blood and urine.
Free from the catheter, I wasted no time stripping Igor. Within minutes, I was wearing his fashionable jeans and leather jacket. I also felt the bulge of his wad of cash in the pants and the weight of his revolver under my new belt.
Igor was unconscious in my gown. I bent at the waist and picked him up. It wasn’t pretty; I kept the Russian face down, using his waist and a handful of hair to lift him, to avoid any more blood on the clothes. I flopped his slackened body on the bed and roughly turned him over. I closed the cuffs around his wrists until I felt bone stop the mechanism. Killing Igor would bring too much heat down from both the cops and the Russians. Hurting him would have to do. The beating wasn’t severe enough to do him any serious harm; the further damage to his psyche was another story altogether.
I checked the nurse’s pulse and found her to still be soundly out. I left her where she was and creaked the door open. The halls were dark and empty save the sound of two women talking somewhere down the corridor. I tilted my head out, but I couldn’t see the owners of the two voices. I looked back at the nurse on the floor behind me and watched her stillness. It wouldn’t last forever. If she made enough noise coming to, or anyone peeked in and saw her — the hospital would be in lockdown fast.
“Fuck,” I said under my breath. I pulled the gun from under the coat and gripped the barrel. I walked over to the nurse and looked at her closely. She was beaten up, but she would live. I dragged her body behind the other side of the bed so that no one would prematurely rouse her from her concussed dreams either.
I turned off the lights in the room, eased the door open again, and saw that the hall was still clear. I walked down the corridor, away from the voices, and took the first stairwell I saw. I took the stairs down to the main floor and found another set of stairs leading to the parking garage. All at once the steps were concrete and coated in chewed gum and grime. The light fixtures followed suit and became suddenly more sparse and cheap, offering light only on each landing. I took the first exit into the parking garage. The lot reeked of urine and mildew, and I breathed deep, enjoying the scent of the city. Even in someone else’s clothes and wanted by both sides of the law, I couldn’t shake the nostalgic smell of the city. Fuck freshly baked bread, it had nothing on the city air.
I walked through the rows of cars, down the ramps, to the exit. There were no security guards, only an electric arm to guard against anyone trying to sneak out without paying for parking. I didn’t even break pace, just ducked under the arm and strode to the crosswalk. St. Joseph’s was just outside downtown and close to everything. It was a short walk down St. Joseph’s Drive to James Street. The road was busy with young people making their way into the downtown core for fun on Hess Street or in the dozens of pubs located on every other block.
The streetlights were on, and I was sure that the stars were out above the layer of constant pollution in the sky. I put a kilometre of distance between the hospital and myself before stopping on the curb. I waited two minutes for a cab to come down the mountain access, past the hospital, on its way to drunken downtown fares. I stepped out in front of the cab and got in the back while the cabby got over his shock.
“You can’t jump in front of cars like that! You’ll get hit!”
“Take me to the north end of Wentworth.”
“Seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“Drive to Wentworth, or I step out in front of another cab.”
“Fine, asshole. Whatever.”
As we drove, the cab driver ran through the list of pedestrian-initiated accidents he had seen. I didn’t participate in the conversation. Once I saw that his dashboard clock read 11:38, I just kept my eyes peeled for an open store and for Ave Maria. As we clocked down Wentworth, I saw empty storefront after storefront. I almost missed Ave Maria; its old dark brick camouflage blended into the city too well. I let two streets go by before telling the cabby to turn off the road onto a quiet side street. We made two right turns before making our way behind Ave Maria. I watched the alleys and side streets as the cab got closer to the Volvo. One hundred metres away from the car, backed into an alley, I saw it. There was a dark sedan parked in the shadows. A small orange glow pierced through the dark and gave away someone sitting inside. I knew someone would be watching the alley. Before my hospital stay, I had killed two people there and maimed another. Someone would have noticed my work, and they would have eventually picked up on the Volvo collecting dust just down the street. I was sure it had been searched, but that didn’t bother me; the money was well hidden. No one doing a fast street search would find it unless they knew exactly where to look. There was a chance the car would be conveniently “stolen,” but if that happened, no one would be able to get a look at the owner. Whoever was watching the car was looking for some face time — probably the bloody kind. The watcher in the car was a low-level grunt, either cop or robber. Whoever they were, they would need to be dealt with if I was going to get back what was mine. And I was going to get what was mine.
“I need to get to a Shoppers Drug Mart. One of those huge twenty-four-hour stores. You know where one is?”
“As long as you promise not to get hit by a car in the parking lot.”
“I promise, Mom.”
“Mom! Listen. I’m just trying to do my civic duty. I see too much stupid crap night after night to stay quiet. But you, you don’t care. So do what you want. Lay in the street if you feel like it. I don’t care anymore.”
“The street would be quieter.”
“All right, pal. I get it. You don’t want an earful from me on your dollar. Just make sure you don’t end up getting a bumperful, okay?”
“You wouldn’t have hit me,” I said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve already gotten my surprises for the day. Three in a row, God ain’t that funny.”
The cab driver made a confused grunt, then shut up and drove in silence. The Shoppers was on Main. It was one of the old-school stores that used to be a Big V before it was bought out. I paid the cab driver to wait out front while I went inside. The $400 I took off Igor would pay for everything I would need.
The store was a ghost town. The cashier, a fat woman with short blond hair and several moles, said, “Hello,” without looking up from her magazine, and I grunted a matching response in the direction of the greeting. I walked through the aisles, skimming through all of the logically assorted items until I found what I was looking for in the small home improvement section. I picked up a roll of duct tape and an exacto-knife. A gas can also caught my eye, and I put it under my arm. A few aisles away, I found a thin baby blanket, a duffel bag, and a black baseball cap.
I paid in cash for everything I picked up and added a Nestea from the refrigerator beside the register, a package of mixed nuts, and a Three Musketeers to my purchase.
Back in the cab, I put on the hat and loaded the duffel bag while we drove back to James Street. When we pulled to a stop across the street from where I was first picked up, I paid the cab driver.
“Now you watch out for pedestrians.”
“Me? Me? It i
s you who should be watching out. You walked in front of me right over there. Remember? I almost . . .”
I shut the door and walked back to the hospital. Instead of going to the parking garage I came out of, I walked to the front of the hospital. The lot was half full of cars despite the late hour. The cars were empty, and I saw no sign of anyone leaving the building as I approached. The half-empty lot meant that no one had found Igor or the nurse yet. There was an attendant in a booth collecting tickets, but no other security backed the lone worker up. The lot had no outdoor cameras mounted to protect the cars either. The hospital must have thought that the presence of a human being would cancel out the temptation of a new BMW alone out in the open. Whoever was in the booth was old hat at the job. I could see him leaning back in a chair with a newspaper spread in front of his face. The attendant never noticed me walking across the lot into the decorative foliage on the other side of the concrete. I took a spot between two large evergreen trees and ate the mixed nuts and candy bar. I didn’t take a sip of the iced tea; I left the glass bottle of Nestea at my feet.
I waited and ate until sirens began approaching from all directions. The parking lot attendant saw the rapid approach and raised the wooden bar for the cops. Five squad cars raced into the lot and took the handicap spaces. I picked around for cashews while the five cars shed their uniformed occupants. Eight cops in all ran into the hospital. The door was held open for them by an out-of-shape security guard who knew that the police presence meant it was time for him to get off his ass. He held the door and looked official until the men passed, then he just looked put out. I had finished the cashews and moved on to Brazil nuts when another car showed up. The car was not a squad car, it was a police sedan. It had no markings to establish its credentials, only the generic Ford features that let everyone know what kind of car it really was. As the car passed me, I saw the safety barrier for transporting suspects. I also noticed that Detective Sergeant Huata Morrison was driving. He paused in front of the entrance and put the car in park, but a security guard opened the door, pointed at the no stopping signs, and waved him away. Morrison put the Ford into gear and drove into the lot to find a spot.
I left my spot among the trees and walked onto the lot. From his booth the attendant couldn’t see me moving out of my spot in the shadows. His back was to me, and his eyes were on something in his hands. He was probably on a cell phone — texting someone about the action.
Morrison found a spot in the middle of the lot and pulled in headfirst so that the car faced the hospital entrance. I was ten metres away when he opened the door. I sped up my pace and closed the gap as he put one foot on the pavement. Morrison put down his other foot and got out of the car dragging his suit jacket along with him. His back was to me as he put the jacket on. His broad shoulders made it difficult, and he had to raise one arm high in the air to slide the jacket over his shoulders. His stance was wide, and just as his suit jacket slid on, my foot connected with his groin. Morrison had no time to scream because my arm was around his windpipe before he hit the ground. My right hand found my biceps, and my left hand went behind the big man’s head. The rear naked choke was textbook; the kick to the balls left the cop defenceless, and it let me get in tight. His powerful frame surged against the choke for a few seconds, but the hold won quickly. Some people can fight a sloppy choke for as long as they can hold their breath, but a good choke doesn’t attack the airway. The flesh and bone vise around Morrison’s neck cut off circulation, not oxygen, and no one can hold out against a loss of blood to the brain for more than a few seconds. I kept the choke on for another fifteen seconds before letting it go in favour of a grip under the sagged shoulders of the big cop. I backed into the car first and pulled Morrison into the driver’s seat.
It took under two minutes to tape Morrison into the car. He was straight up in the seat, duct taped to the headrest. The tape covered his forehead and eyebrows; another section of tape secured his throat to the seat as well. Both of the cop’s hands were attached to the steering wheel at ten and two. I turned out all of Morrison’s pockets and put his phone, wallet, and gun on the dashboard in front of me; then I drank the Nestea and checked the lot. No one else had shown up, and no one had left the hospital. The lot was quiet; the only interruption came from the cell phone. Morrison’s phone was on vibrate, and it marched across the dashboard like an angry bee buzzing in an out-of-control fit. The phone call was expected; I figured the first response cops were waiting for Morrison to show up and take control of the situation. He was late to the party, and someone wanted to know why. I took one last swig of iced tea and dumped the rest into Morrison’s lap. He came to slowly at first, then all at once. His eyes went wild, and he strained against the tape. I let him pull and yell for a minute, then I let him feel his gun against his neck.
“You! What the fuck are you doing? I’ll get you for this. I’m gonna lock you up and fucking eat the key. Hey, what are you doing?”
I put two pieces of tape over his mouth and nose and watched him struggle. He pulled so hard at his bonds that the steering wheel started to creak.
I pulled the tape off with one quick motion and heard a huge gasp of air.
“That Maori medicine is no fun, eh, Detective Sergeant?”
“I’m a cop,” was all he could get out.
“And here I thought you were a fisherman looking for the big catch. Or was that all bullshit? You just let me think I was supposed to be working for you while you tipped off your boss. Way I figure it, you were the only one who knew who I was. You don’t even really know that, but you got ideas about me that aren’t far off. So you tip off the Russians, and you earn yourself a bonus giving me up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The only thing I can’t figure is why you left me a handcuff key. Have the Russians got something on you? You’re into them for some big numbers, and you thought I might kill whoever is holding your bill and end your troubles?”
“No idea, mate. I have no idea what you are going on about. What Russians? I got called back here because they found you gone and a nurse dead in your room.”
“Dead? How?”
“Someone cut her throat.”
“Hard for me to do in a gown.”
“Heh, you seem to be managing,” he said.
“If you didn’t tip the Russians, who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who knew I wasn’t a cop killer like you said?”
“No one outside of me and Miller.”
“That fat cop?”
“Yeah, but he’s straight.”
“Well, two people knew I was there, and you said it wasn’t you who gave me up. It’s got to be him; probably made the call on one of his smoke breaks.”
Morrison said nothing. If he was telling the truth, and my gut told me he was, then it was Miller who was crooked. The fat cop made more sense; no one would give me a way out of the cuffs if I was worth more dead than alive. Miller must be the one on the take. Once he was off guarding my unconscious body, he told the Russians about me, hoping I was someone recognizable, to make a little extra. He figured since they found me outside Domenica’s, and his boss was having me guarded, I must be worth something. So Miller reached out to Igor. He had to work directly for Igor in one form or another because anyone else would have sent the information up the chain to Sergei Vidal. Had Sergei found out, I would have been safe. The head of the Russian mob and I still had an understanding. I had enough evidence on him to send him away for life. I figured our deal was still in place because if Sergei wanted to end it he would never have sent Igor to punch my ticket. Sergei would have dispatched someone closer to the top with orders to kill me. I’d gone up against Sergei’s best before — they would have done better than Igor.
Morrison was quiet and motionless in the seat beside me.
“You still want your fish?”
“You’re the fish now. You have to pay for that nurse.”
“Use your h
ead, Morrison. I didn’t kill anyone. I got a visit from a Russian, someone who knew me and wanted to settle up old debts. He tried to kill me, but I talked him out of it — with my hands. When I left, he was on the bed, and the nurse was very much alive. If you check the bed, there will be blood from the Russian to back up my story.”
“Bullshit.”
“You know it sounds right. Why else would I be here now?”
“So what do you want?”
“Same deal. I get your fish, you forget about me.”
“Which fish?”
“That’s up to me, but I can tell you they’ll be cold water fish from up near the Black Sea.”
Morrison tried to nod his head in agreement, but he stopped when he realized he couldn’t move. “It will have to be one big fish to square everything.”
“Let me worry about that. I just need some information from you.”
“What?”
“Where do the Russians go these days? The only place I knew was the Kremlin, but it’s probably gone.”
“Yeah, someone shot that place up a few years back; killed a bigwig.” A thought came to Morrison; I watched it form in a series of facial twitches. “That was you. That’s why the Russians showed up tonight. Word on the street was that was some kind of internal cleaning thing.”
I ignored him. He had a real cop’s mind. He listened, and he remembered. I had to make sure I gave away nothing because even taped to the seat this cop was dangerous. I repeated myself, “Where do the Russians meet these days? Where do all the big names end up at the end of a long, hard day of crime?”
Morrison thought about it. “There are three places,” he said. “There’s a hall on Sanford, a restaurant on St. Claire, and a bar on Sherman where it meets Barton.”
“All the big names congregate in these places?”
