Death On a No 8 Hook (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Gough, Laurence

  The woman was lying on her back. Spears could see her face. She was Japanese.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Yokóte,” he said softly.

  Inside the house, a telephone warbled.

  The man continued his steady rhythm. The woman’s hands slid down his back. She gripped his buttocks and squeezed hard. Spears watched the index finger of her right hand disappear between her partner’s cheeks. The man began to move a little faster. The telephone warbled musically. Sweat glistened on the man’s back. Misha Yokóte slowly lifted her arm, withdrawing three feet of gaily coloured silk scarf from the man’s anus. Spears’s mouth gaped open. The man bucked and lurched. His knees thumped on the tiles. He cried out, and Misha laughed.

  The man rolled off her, on to the hot tiles of the patio. He still had an erection. Spears saw to his surprise that he wasn’t Japanese at all, but that he had a very deep tan, that he was tanned all over, every last inch of him.

  The telephone hadn’t quit. Misha jumped lithely to her feet and padded into the house.

  No visible scars, thought Spears. Terrific legs. The phone had stopped ringing. His thigh muscles ached. He shifted his stance and a handful of pebbles rattled down the slope and fell to the narrow strip of lawn between the face of the cliff and the pool.

  Misha came out of the house and said, “It’s Felix. He wants to talk to you.”

  Junior nodded. He scratched his groin and strolled into the house.

  Spears watched Misha walk along the edge of the pool towards him, climb up on the diving-board and test the spring of it. She stood in profile, perfectly still, as if listening. Spears stared at her breasts. She flexed her knees and began to work the board, got some altitude and arced cleanly beneath the flat pink surface of the water.

  Spears’ foot dislodged a few more stones, larger ones this time. He was too busy watching Misha to notice.

  Chapter 32

  Junior was watching Misha too, as he picked up the telephone. “Hi, Felix. What’s happening?”

  “You tell me,” Felix snarled right back.

  Junior wondered if Misha’d answered the phone with that soft and lazy post-coital voice she liked so much to use. He turned his back on the pool, giving Felix all of his attention. “Well,” he said, “I got up about ten, swam a few laps and had some breakfast. Spent maybe an hour washing and waxing the car. Took a shower and watched part of an old John Wayne movie on the TV.”

  Felix was breathing hard. “Is that it, Junior, or are you saving the best part for last?”

  “Thought I might get around to mowing the lawn this afternoon, if it cools down a little.”

  “Leading a pretty quiet life, are you?”

  “You could hear a bullet drop.”

  “How’s Misha?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Voice sounded a little throaty, like she might be coming down with a cold.”

  “No, she’s fine.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Felix. “Mannie should’ve called by now.”

  “I drove by his place a couple of times last night,” said Junior. “His car was parked outside, but he wasn’t showing any lights.”

  “Something’s gone wrong, I know it.”

  “Why the hell you ever hire the guy, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I owed his father a favour.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “It happened long ago, Junior. Before your time.”

  Junior found that sometime during the conversation he’d turned so he was facing the pool again. Misha was jumping up and down on the diving-board. She saw him watching, and waved.

  “You want me to go back, take a look around, kick his door in?”

  “I don’t know what I want.” He sighed heavily into Junior’s ear. “You get Misha on the next plane out of there, okay? Tell her I miss her, tell her anything you want. Just get her packed and on her way.”

  “Whatever you say, Felix.”

  “As for Mannie, maybe you ought to hang in there a little longer. Give him some room.”

  “He ain’t gonna phone,” said Junior flatly. “Not if he fucked up. And he must’ve fucked up or he would have phoned by now.”

  “You think so, eh?”

  “I’d bet my life on it.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Felix quickly. “It’s bad luck.”

  “I know the guy,” said Junior. “He’s gonna spend the next six months sitting in his crummy little house, hoping we forgot about him. But we can’t afford to do that, can we Felix?”

  “I guess not,” said Felix slowly. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. He’s a liability.”

  Junior felt a tingle of anticipation. He started making plans, his brain awhirl.

  “Be careful,” said Felix. “And when you’re finished with him, take a minute to look around. Make sure he didn’t leave a love note to his lawyer tucked away in the sugar bowl, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” said Junior.

  “I hope so,” said Felix. He hung up without saying goodbye, but Junior wasn’t offended. It was a style thing, was all. Nothing personal. He put the phone down and went back outside, into the sunlight and the heat. He jogged across the patio, dived into the pool and kicked hard, touched bottom and came up on the far side.

  Misha was sitting sideways on the board, painted toenails dabbling at the water. She smiled down at him and said, “What did Felix want?”

  “He wanted me to make up his mind for him.”

  “About what?”

  “Mannie Katz.”

  “Really? What’d you decide?”

  “Time to say goodbye.”

  “No wonder you look so sad,” Misha joked.

  Junior reached up and pulled her shrieking and giggling into the water. He held her close, so their faces were only inches apart. “The reason I’m sad is because you didn’t come,” he said.

  “I never do,” she said. “And I never will.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because I couldn’t handle the guilt, that’s why.”

  Junior wanted her to try to explain it to him, even though he doubted he’d ever understand. Misha saw the questions coming, deflected them by putting her smooth brown arms around him and kissing him on the mouth.

  Junior pulled away, but not too far. “Felix wants you on the next flight out of town,” he said.

  Misha kissed him again. Her lips tasted faintly of chlorine.

  One for the road, thought Junior.

  Chapter 33

  Junior got into the car, slammed the door shut. He put the key in the ignition and turned it part-way, so the dashboard lights came on, phosphorescent and green. The quartz clock said fifteen minutes to ten. Five hours ago he’d driven Misha out to the airport, and he could still smell the scent of her perfume, musky and warm. At the terminal she’d treated him like a fucking taxi-driver. Got out of the car without a word and just walked away, hips swinging. Not waving or even bothering to turn at the wide glass doors to take a last, lingering look.

  Well, fuck it.

  Junior punched the orange button on the remote and the garage door swung open. He put the remote device back in the glove compartment, wedging it under his Colt revolver. Started the engine, drove slowly down the slope of the driveway, turned right on Greenbriar and goosed it.

  The city lay far below him, millions of individual lights conspiring to turn the night sky a sickly whitish colour, like the underbelly of a dead fish. Junior had no time for the view, however. He was driving hard, with all the skill and nerve he could muster, his eyes on the blur of asphalt and the red needle of the tachometer. At Southborough he made a left without signalling, taking the corner in a controlled drift that left curving black smears of rubber on the road. It was crazy, driving like this with murder on the agenda and an unregistered and totally illegal handgun in the car. But Junior was frustrated, in a real bad mood, and he knew it was crucial that he get everything out of his system and cool right down before he too
k on Mannie Katz. The guy had at least a couple of notches on his belt; Junior had to take him seriously.

  He passed under the Trans Canada Highway, sound of the twin exhausts bouncing off tons of dull grey pre-form concrete.

  Why had Felix wanted Misha back in California? What was the big rush? The man had a nose on him like a bloodhound, was there something in the air Junior didn’t get a whiff of? No, probably all that happened was Felix took a little nap and woke up and rolled over, found there was nobody in bed but him. He was lonely, that was all. His bones were cold. If anything serious had gone wrong, Junior’d have been the first to know about it. At least that’s what he told himself, and believed, as he turned left off Taylor Way on to Marine Drive and the approach to the Lions Gate bridge.

  In the middle of the bridge, stalled in traffic, he thought about how he was going to kill Mannie. Park on the street right in front of the house, so the guy wouldn’t get the idea Junior was sneaking up on him. Use the car telephone, tell him what? That Felix was worried and wanted to know what the hell was going on. Did he take care of Carly, grab the videotape? Mow him down with questions, confuse him, keep him off-balance.

  No, fuck that. Keep it simple. Just park and walk right up to the house, get inside. Then what? Pull the Colt and let him have it. Fast. No speeches, no getting cute, no fooling around. Mannie was quick as a snake with those knives of his. Fucking cutlery department on wheels. Don’t give him a chance. Just stick the front sight in his stomach and bang away. Knock some low-grade hamburger patties off him.

  Junior smiled, seeing the look of shock in Mannie’s watery blue eyes, feeling the kick of the gun, hearing the explosions, watching him go down.

  The traffic started moving again, a slow crawl. He pushed a Lionel Ritchie tape into the deck, turned the sound right up and leant back in his seat. His rear view mirror was full of lights. He had no way of seeing the chocolate-brown Ford Fairlane keeping pace three cars behind him.

  Chapter 34

  It was two minutes to ten when Willows heard the faint drone of the garage door motor. He saw the backup lights of the Trans Am flash on, and sprinted for the Fairlane. The starter was grinding away, Parker muttering under her breath as she twisted the key. He jumped inside the car and slammed shut the door. The engine caught, faltered, steadied. They pulled out of the driveway and started down Greenbriar. Two blocks below them, the Trans Am’s brake lights vanished around a corner.

  Parker turned on her headlights.

  “He turned left,” said Willows. He fastened his seat-belt.

  “Wherever he’s going, he sure is in a hurry.”

  “Let’s not lose him.”

  “Do you want to drive?” said Parker.

  “No, you’re doing fine.”

  “Thank you.”

  The close-set eyes of an animal standing by the side of the road glared bright red. A German Shepherd, black and tan. Parker’d had a Shepherd once, when she was a kid. Sheba. The dog had bitten the milkman when he’d yelled at her mother about an overdue bill, and from then on they’d bought their dairy products at the local Safeway. Parker remembered missing the glass bottles.

  “Did you get a look at him?” Willows said.

  Parker shook her head, no. The darkness, the Trans Am’s tinted windows. She hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of whoever was behind the wheel.

  Southborough Drive. Vast expanses of manicured lawn, flowering shrubs that masked the stink of chlorine from the big Olympic-sized pools. The Capilano Golf and Country Club over on the left, the greens and fairways dark and deserted.

  They followed Junior down the asphalt-encrusted slope of the mountain, over the Lions Gate bridge and its necklace of lights, along the winding three-lane causeway that bisected the thousand acres of Stanley Park. Past Lost Lagoon and its gaudy illuminated fountain. Parker stayed on Junior’s tail as he made his way through the downtown core, down the Mall and over the Granville Street Bridge and straight up Granville to King Edward, east past Cambie, south on Ontario. Willows looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes to eleven. They’d been driving for a little over half an hour. Junior had averaged about forty miles an hour, but had hit seventy and eighty in the stretches, weaving in and out of traffic like a madman. At first they thought he knew he was being followed, but after a little while they began to realize it was just the way he liked to drive, with reckless abandon.

  The Trans Am turned left on East 30th. The street was flat and narrow, hemmed in on both sides by modest one-storey stucco houses. Nat Bailey stadium was less than a block away; there was a baseball game on and the streets were jammed with cars.

  Parker tapped the brake pedal. The Fairlane crept slowly through the intersection. “If I get too close, he’s going to spot us. But if I stay too far back, we could lose him.”

  “Use the lane,” said Willows.

  Parker drove past 30th and turned down a gravel lane. She turned off the Fairlane’s headlights. The car bounced from one pothole to the next, past crumbling garages, abandoned appliances, shapeless piles of junk, rotting mattresses.

  “He’s slowing down.”

  Willows nodded. In the narrow gaps between the houses he was able to follow the progress of the Trans Am as it cruised along on a course parallel to their own.

  “He stopped.”

  “Circle around and move in on him,” said Willows. He picked up the Phillips microphone and called 312 Main for a back-up.

  Parker accelerated through the potholes towards the far end of the block. She swung left on James Street and then left again on 30th. The Trans Am was parked in front of a small brown house with a scruffy front yard and a white picket fence that had been smashed flat. Parker waited until they were about fifty feet away and then turned on her brights, washing the interior of the Trans Am in light.

  Junior had the air-conditioner on full. The blast of processed air across the dashboard made the jumble of paper animals vibrate frantically. He squinted and shielded his eyes with his hand as the car moving slowly towards him suddenly crossed to the wrong side of the road and flashed its brights. It occurred to him that Mannie might have been waiting for him, expecting him, that the sneaky son of a bitch had set him up. He flipped open the glove compartment, grabbed his big Colt .357 Magnum.

  Parker stopped the Fairlane thirty feet away from the Trans Am. She put the transmission in Park.

  Willows saw the Trans Am’s door swing open, a man step out of the car. He was at least six foot tall, muscular, heavily tanned. There was no resemblance at all to the description given by the elderly Chinese woman from the grocery store. He reached for the mike to call off the back-up.

  Junior thumbed back the hammer of the Colt. He brought his right arm up, bisected Parker’s forehead with the blade front sight and calmly squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand and the rear window of the Fairlane blew out. Both doors swung open. Junior got off a second shot. He had an idea he was shooting wild, but how the hell was he supposed to correct when he didn’t know where the fuck his rounds were going? Night shooting was a bitch. He’d have to look into it, see if he could get his hands on some tracers.

  Willows fired three times as quickly as he could pull the trigger, not taking the time to aim properly, simply returning fire. All three shots hit the Trans Am’s radiator, the standard-issue 358 grain wadcutters fragmenting on impact. A triangular chunk of copper jacketing sliced through the Trans Am’s fuel line an inch from the pump. High octane gasoline spurted across the engine block, dribbled down on the manifold.

  Parker had bailed out of the Fairlane, using her open door for cover. “Police!” she shouted. “Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head!”

  Junior aimed at the car door and fired twice. The Fairlane’s windscreen turned frosty white. He cocked the gun and turned his attention back to the other cop, the shooter.

  The gasoline puddling on the manifold finally ignited. There was a searing flare of orange, an explosion that rattled windows up and d
own the block. The bonnet of the Trans Am spiralled straight up into the air on a column of smoke and flame.

  Parker, lying on her stomach on the road, aimed and fired.

  The bullet sent Junior spinning sideways into the car. The sleeve of his shirt caught fire. There was blood on his chest. He dropped the Colt and fell to his knees. He could smell something burning. His hair.

  Willows sensed a movement to his left. A man wearing tan slacks and a pale green or blue polo shirt was standing uncertainly on the front porch of the house with the ruined picket fence. Willows had never seen the man before, but he recognized him instantly. He started across the road towards the sidewalk and Mannie ran for it, scooting around the side of the house into darkness. Willows glanced behind him. Parker was moving cautiously in on Junior, a fire-extinguisher in her left hand, her revolver in her right. Junior was rolling around on the asphalt, screaming.

  Willows went after Mannie.

  Mannie had run into darkness and now he was running towards the lights and noise of the stadium. He reached the end of the lane and cut diagonally across Ontario towards the gravel parking lot at the rear of the stadium. His first thought had been to slip inside, do some mingling. Buy himself a hot dog and a paper cup of beer and kind of blend in with the fans. But as he trotted towards the empty turnstiles he realized that the stadium, brightly lit and easily sealed off, was a trap. Veering away from the entrance, he made his way through the ranks of parked cars on a zig-zag route that would take him into the deep shadow of the right field fence, cover him all the way to centre field, where he could cross Midlothian Avenue into Queen Elizabeth Park

  The park was a hundred acres, more or less, and it was shaped roughly like a huge ear. There was a lot of open, grassy area, and a network of access roads. But there was also plenty of natural cover — broken ground, stands of deciduous trees, dense thickets of shrubbery.