City of Crime

by Warren Court

  The shoreline finally came into view. I was practically on top of it. I motored in even closer until I could see trees and the cliff face.

  It was six am and the sun was fully up. I had to get the Wave Dancer back to its berth soon or someone would see me drive it into the harbour. I was close enough to the shore to hear waves breaking on a dark brown beach. I continued westward along the coast, looking for an inlet. There was no sign of the cigarette boat, but I couldn’t take a chance. If they had radar on that boat, I hoped that I would just be lost in the clutter of the shoreline. The wind had died down but the waves were still choppy. A fine mist lay on the lake, dropping visibility to half a mile. It was incredible how fast conditions could change on the Great Lakes. Soon it would be a lot smoother and the cigarette boat would regain its advantage of speed. Once this fog was burned off, I wouldn’t be able to escape them.

  I found what I was looking for: an inlet of sufficient size to shelter Dancer. I checked the depth meter as I drove into it. The numbers descended quickly from twenty feet to five of water under my hull. I brought the boat to a stop and brought the nose around so it was pointing back out to the lake, then cut her engines. Dancer would still be visible from the lake, but only if someone was looking directly into this inlet. If the cig boat did spot her and came in fast, I could always jump overboard and scramble up the side of the cliff.

  Yeah, sure I could.

  I heard gunfire, and a round cracked off a tree up above my head. I threw myself prone onto the back deck and quickly reloaded my Browning Hi-Power, ready to either fight or dash. Then the firing increased. Automatic rifles. Dozens of them. The sound was coming from above, but nothing was hitting the boat. I looked up and saw a flagpole on the top of the cliff with a Canadian flag flying on it. Below it was a red flag with a black square in it. It was the Canadian Army Reserves firing range, and I was in the lee of it. A restricted space. I was in no real danger other than from spent shells that might miss the earthen backstop of the range. I retreated into the cabin to wait.

  I retrieved the hockey bag from the rear deck and set it down on the cabin floor. I stared at it for a long time, listening to the staccato rhythm of the weekend warriors having an early morning shoot. Then I opened it. My god. There were dozens of bundles of money. All American bills; Jocko wouldn’t have accepted Canadian funds. I took out one bundle of twenties. I knew from my days on the force that a brick this size was a thousand bucks. I counted out twenty such bricks—200 grand. Enough for me to start a comfortable life in the Caribbean if I could live long enough to make it there.

  I had no illusions about taking the money back to Soos. He would accept it, of course, and then tear me limb from limb. No, the money was mine now. I felt justified; they’d tried to whack me out, after all. But I didn’t want to walk off the dock with this bag over my shoulder.

  The firing stopped and I heard the sound of whistles from up above. I went out onto the foredeck with the money bag over my arm. I climbed over the railing and jumped down into the lake. It was only three feet deep and I could see that Wave Dancer’s stern was nestled gently in the silty bottom. The cliff face was not as steep as it had appeared from the water, but it was still a slog to get up in among the trees and find a suitable hiding spot for the money. I judged this to be immediately below the flagpole, which would help me find it again when the time came. I took my KA-BAR and dug four fresh gouges at the four points of the compass into the tree that was closest to my prize. My pirate adventures over, I re-boarded Wave Dancer, throttled up the engines and made a dash for home.

  Chapter 12

  The fog burned off and the cig boat was long gone. The lift bridge was up and I coasted right in. I surveyed Wave Dancer. She was a mess. Her front hull was peppered with bullet holes and her port running light was completely shot away. It was still early morning but the harbour was full of small dinghies racing. They would be replaced later on by the bigger yachts racing for bragging rights and a free drink at the bar.

  I put Dancer back into her berth. On the way there I tossed everything I’d touched overboard. Tossing the Glenfiddich over the side was the hardest. I then found a rag and wiped down every surface I thought I’d touched except the engine bay. I figured any lawyer I might need could argue that those were prints I’d put down when I owned the boat. It would be my way of subtly telling the lawyer who was renting her I thought he was a cunt for not looking after this fine lady.

  I stowed my gear into the watertight bag and walked off the dock as casually as I could, hoping the hat I had pulled down over my forehead and the sunglasses I wore might shield me from the cameras or prying eyes. No one said anything. Luckily, I didn’t have to enter a PIN into the gate to leave.

  There was a club coordinator standing where the dock was attached to the shore. He looked up at me for a second and then back down at a clipboard he was holding. As I passed, I saw him look up again and give me a good once-over. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head, but he didn’t call after me.

  I didn’t bother going back to my boat; I put the gear in the back of my truck and after a quick glance under the vehicle to check for bombs, I roared out of the club’s parking lot. I stopped off at a drive-through sandwich shop and got some food. I was a wanted man. I was thinking I should take the two hundred large and run like hell.

  Could I cross the border? I knew that American border guards were now hyper-alert to people trying to cross the border with illegal intentions. What if they pulled me over and found Soos’s cash? It dawned on me that I’d stored the cash on a restricted army base. That meant I’d have to either get at the money by sea or find a way onto the base. That was going to present a problem, but I had far bigger ones at the moment, so I pushed the thought aside. I sat in the back parking lot of the sandwich shop and ate my food. The adrenaline of the previous half day had suppressed my appetite, but it was back now and I scarfed it down.

  My options were limited. Two hundred thousand could start me up in a new life somewhere else. The farther away the better. Could I get to the Caribbean? Again, I thought I should go get the money and just take off in my truck. If I made it over the border, I’d be home free. Forget the Caribbean; I could go to Costa Rica or Honduras. Soos’s money would go even farther there. But my truck could get me picked up. I had to at least get a new, clean vehicle. I threw the sandwich wrapper and brown paper bag into the back of the truck’s cab and started it up.

  I took it easy going over to Don’s place. My eyes were constantly scanning for cops. I drove past two of them having a nose-to-rear conversation in a parking lot, but they ignored me. I was still jacked up from the experience on the lake. My teeth were rattling in my skull. I could use a drink; Don would have one and a clean car for me, hopefully.

  Don’s Corvette was in the parking lot and I pulled in beside it. I knew something was wrong the instant I got out of my truck. I put my hand on the Corvette’s hood. It was ice cold and the car was covered in water beads. It had been there all night. That was unheard of; Don would have at least pulled it into the garage if he was working late. He loved that car. I pulled out the Browning Hi-Power out and held it at the ready. I checked the safety.

  “Here pup!” I called for Don’s dog. Nothing.

  The double doors on the garage were closed. I could hear music on the other side. It was loud and sounded like thrash metal. I pushed open the office door with one hand. Don was sitting in his office chair. His head was thrown back. He was dead. A large drill was stuck in one of his kneecaps and the other kneecap was a bloody mess of cartilage, torn jeans and blood. There was a huge pool of blood on the floor and other wounds on poor Don. They’d gone over him good. That’s why the music was up so loud—to drown out his screams. Don was a tough guy, but even he couldn’t have taken much of what had been dished out.

  With the Browning Hi-Power held out in front of me ready to fire on anything, I looked quickly into the garage. I saw the rear end of the dog, which was lying on its side, its br
own fur matted with blood.

  I wanted to kill somebody right then and there. I didn’t care who it was. I backed out the way I came in, careful not to touch anything. I’d say a prayer for Don later. That image of him in the chair would be burned into my brain for a long time to come.

  I knew who had done this to him. By the state of the blood on the floor and the fact that Don had never gone home, I knew it was the Scallas. While I was out with Cindy, they were putting a drill through Don’s kneecap. But for what reason, I asked myself as I drove up the Hamilton Mountain? It was tied to me, for sure. If they wanted to take Don out for a separate reason, they wouldn’t have done it the same night they had engaged Doc Soos to handle me. They were linked. I’d make sure to ask Bruno Scalla just before I put a bullet through his head.

  Chapter 13

  I knew Bruno’s house. It was one of those expensive places lining the escarpment, that 300-foot-high table that runs around Hamilton. Residents have always called it the Mountain. Enzo still lived in a small house downtown in the old neighbourhood where his father used to hang out and collect protection money. There would be no chance I could get him there; that area of town was like a fortress. But with Bruno I’d have a shot if he was home.

  He was. I saw his souped-up Monte Carlo in the driveway. I cruised by his house slowly. It was a beautiful place; two stories, probably five bedrooms. Huge double-car garage and nicely manicured lawn. There was a sign for the service company that looked after it.

  I parked on the street about ten houses away and then waited. I was still engulfed in rage but I wanted to do this right. Doing it right meant that Enzo and his crew would know who did it but that the cops wouldn’t be able to pin it on me. I’d worked enough murder scenes to know the usual foul-ups.

  After a few minutes, I walked slowly up to Bruno’s house. There was a concrete path parallel to the driveway that went up along side the garage. Bruno’s Monte Carlo looked nice in the sun; it was silver and gleaming. The T-tops were off and I could smell the vinyl interior.

  I approached the gate to the back yard and could hear music. Not thrash metal, like what had been playing down at Don’s garage, but poppy tunes. Something like Lady Gaga or Katy Perry; I couldn’t tell which. Maybe he had people over, like some girls or something. Did he have kids? I couldn’t remember. I knew he was married. Maybe his wife’s car was in the garage.

  I reached over the gate, lifted the lock and walked in. There was a door to the back of the garage with a window in it. I looked in. No car.

  Bruno’s backyard was paradise. A huge kidney-shaped pool surrounded by an expensive stone deck and magnolia trees, long since shed of their blossoms. Next to that was an ivy-covered pergola sheltering a wrought-iron patio table and chairs for eight people. There were pot lights and tiki torches around the whole scene. It must have lit up nice at night. There was a double glass door entrance from the rear of the house, then three steps down to the pool deck. I moved up along the side of the house. I had the Browning Hi-Power out, both hands on it.

  Then I heard singing coming from inside. It sounded like a woman but it was a falsetto. It was a man singing in a high voice to the music. It grew louder. I crouched down and waited. The glass door slid open and out came Bruno wearing a mauve bra and panties. He was carrying a tray with two tall Collins glasses full of yellowy drinks on it and some snacks.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He spun around quickly. The tray went flying. I pointed the gun at him. He went from gay and easy to scared and then into full-on Bruno mood in an instant. It was amazing to watch. I looked at him there in his bra and panties. The feminine act he’d been putting on melted away and he was just a guy in women’s underwear. It was all I could do to keep myself from laughing. For a second, I seriously considered not shooting him and instead taking a picture with my phone and sending it to his brother.

  Then he spoke and that notion went out of my head.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I’m supposed to be dead, right? Guess you didn’t get the call.”

  A realization came over Bruno that he was standing there in women’s underwear, his dark, curly chest hairs poking over the top of a sexy lace brassiere.

  “Going somewhere, sweetie?” I said, enjoying this control I had over him.

  “You are so dead.”

  “Yes,” I said. “From about yesterday onwards, I would suspect, when you asked Soos to take care of me. Trouble was, he sent a landlubber to do a sailor’s job.”

  Bruno took a step forward and I put a round through his sternum. The Browning Hi-Power jumped in my hand and the sound cracked the stillness of the neighbourhood. Bruno crumpled to his knees and looked at the sharp little hole in his chest and then at the blood. He gasped in air and looked up at me, a truly helpless look on his face. Probably the first one he’d had in ages, I put another round in his forehead and he fell back into the shallow end of the pool, arms and legs spread wide. I went up to the edge and watched him move slowly out and down into the deep end, the blood blossoming outwards.

  After what he’d done to Don, he’d gotten off easy.

  Chapter 14

  I was back downtown in minutes. I knew where Enzo lived but it didn’t even cross my mind to go there. It would be too difficult. And going to their shop on Railway Street—forget it. I was lucky to get in once and catch them off guard. That wouldn’t happen again.

  If I was going to get Enzo, put him down for Don, then I’d have to catch him in the open. I knew the other spot where he might be, one he’d show up to eventually. I had to act fast. It didn’t look like word on the failed hit on me had reached the Scallas. There was always the possibility that Soos had acted on his own in taking me out. I was always walking a tightrope with him anyway.

  There would be a gap of time before Enzo found out about his brother; once he did, he would go on a total war footing, with me as his sole target. Then he would be impossible to get at. Shooters from the surrounding counties and Toronto would be summoned to hunt me down.

  Then I had a frightful thought. Who had Bruno been all dressed up for? There had had to be another person in that house with him. Probably slipping into his own feminine negligée to join Bruno for drinks down at the pool. Bruno had had two glasses on his tray.

  Bannister’s Gentlemen’s Club in the north end is a real shit hole. I’d been in there countless times and always felt like I needed a hot shower afterwards to clean the seediness of the place off me. I knew they ran underage girls there. Girls from Eastern Europe, occasionally China and the like. It had been busted once when it was called the Ballroom. Now it had been re-opened under its new name. The same owners, the Scallas, continued to run it with a couple of cut-out dummy companies claiming ownership. The Scallas got their girls off Soos. So much for money transcending hatred. Don’s final lesson to me in life was proving to be a serious one. I should have listened to him.

  Bannister’s parking lot was half full. It was a weekday morning and the bar hadn’t even opened up, but they served a breakfast for the punters who were waiting to see girls take their clothes off at eleven in the morning. I knew from past experience that regulars also got served booze this early as long as it was kept quiet.

  I saw Enzo’s Caddy. Great. It wouldn’t be long before the cops got the word about Bruno floating in his pool. A little while later, that news would trickle down to Enzo.

  My rage over Don was weakening a bit. I realized I didn’t have the guts to go into Bannister's and start blasting at Enzo. If I had come here first, I might have done just that. That would have been the end of me; there were several of the Scalla boys in there at all times, very well armed. They would have cut me down easily.

  What I was expecting was that when Enzo heard about his brother, he’d bolt. He’d go somewhere and I would follow him and cut him down at a red light or something like that. But like I said, my rage over Don was starting to lessen and doubts about my plan were starting to creep in. But I was pa
st the point of decision now; I was committed.

  I pulled into the far corner of the parking lot to wait. The Browning Hi-Power was filling the cab of my truck with the smell of cordite and gun grease. I rolled the windows down and took a rag and started to wipe it down. I checked the mag; only eleven bullets left. Enough to do the job on Enzo and anyone with him. After that, who cared?

  I watched cars come and go from the parking lot. There was still an hour before the bar opened and the lot was starting to fill up. I saw a late-model, four-door car pull in and recognized the driver. It was Rico, my ex-partner. He was alone. The car he was driving didn’t strike me as a cop car; it was probably his own vehicle.

  I watched Rico park and enter Bannister's. He was probably going in for his weekly payoff. I doubt he was delivering the news about Bruno in person. Enzo had no use for homosexuals. I wondered whether Enzo knew about his brother. I figured probably not. If he did, he wouldn’t have brought him up in his organization. Others would see that as a weakness in Enzo.