City of Crime

by Warren Court

  I headed down the laneway. My adrenaline was pumping but I was trying to look casual in case I ran into our guy on the way back. Would he recognize me from that night on top of Jackson Square? Would I be able to resist the urge to lay him out? This was not how we wanted to get our revenge. We wanted to take our time with him, send him to the hospital for a good long while.

  I got to the end of the laneway where it opened up into a six-car parking lot. It was half full. No Trashy. I went to the far end and saw a hole in the fence down at ground level.

  I ran back to the laneway and shouted at Coolie. “He’s gone through the fence. There’s a hole in it.”

  “I checked that—didn’t see it.”

  “Let’s get in the car, circle around.”

  We headed back to Coolie’s car at a jog. There was a parking enforcement officer starting to write Coolie a ticket.

  “Sorry, sweetie, we’re working,” Coolie said, and flashed his badge.

  “What?” the lady said as we hopped in and gunned it. I couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face as we roared away. Coolie almost clipped her car.

  “Okay, take it easy,” I said, and Coolie smirked and gave me a look. Once again, I had forgotten who outranked whom. But this was so far from a police operation that I didn’t give a damn. Now that I’d seen our guy, I wanted more than ever to put the hurt on him. I wasn’t going to kill him, that’s for sure, but Trashy was going to the emergency room today. Oh, yeah.

  Chapter 27

  “There he is,” I shouted.

  “Easy. Easy,” Coolie said.

  My voice had cracked and reverberated off the windows. I was pleased with myself. My first surveillance operation since joining the force and it had been blown, and I had personally saved it. I had to admit Trashy was easy to spot on the street. Guys who were dressed like him, shambling along, caught one’s eye. There he was, as good as gold, shuffling up Main Street. He’d must have gone through that fence and headed north through a series of back alleys and parking lots and apartment building laneways to get there. Pretty sneaky, that little shit.

  Coolie slowed down to match our target’s speed. Trashy looked back and cut across Main, Hamilton’s busy five-lane, one-way thoroughfare, at an angle and then headed up Locke.

  We got to Locke and paused and peeked around the corner. Our target was five hundred yards up now, and we followed.

  “Get out on foot,” Coolie said. “Keep with him. I’ll go past and circle around.”

  I hopped out and quickened my pace until I closed the distance with Trashy to a couple of hundred yards. He looked back once over his shoulder, but there were several pedestrians on the street and he didn’t focus on me. Coolie surged forward past me and then past Trashy on up to Aberdeen Avenue, where he made a right turn. He’d position himself up there and wait, and then start to circle back if he didn’t see us.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do. Damn, I thought. We should have brought radios. But radios would have required signing them out, leaving a paper trail of our activities. Some guys on the job were using the new mobile phones, but they were big and bulky and beyond our price range. We should have had more guys on this. We could have put Trashy in a box. I knew a bit about surveillance: you get a guy in a box and rotate the guys out, either on foot or in vehicles, and you stay with him. This following on foot with just two guys was grossly inadequate, French Connection stuff.

  Trashy went down a small side street that I knew took us into a less than well-off neighbourhood. I got to the corner but kept going straight, picking him up in my peripheral vision. When I was sure he wasn’t looking at me, I stopped and then followed after him.

  He made one more turn on to another side street, further into the warren of old prewar homes, street parking, graffiti and garbage cans. It was garbage pickup day in this survey and the trucks were further down, guys in soiled coveralls jumping off them and hauling bins of garbage up to the compactor.

  I hustled a little and made it to the street Trashy had turned down. I caught sight of him going up the steps of a large two-story home. There were a couple of vehicles in the driveway next to it. I stopped and waited. I backed up a bit, hid my body as best I could behind a concrete light pole and waited. I waited there half an hour before Coolie’s car came to the top of the side street and I flagged him down.

  “He went in a house up this street. Left-hand side. Went up the front steps like he belonged there,” I said when I got in Coolie’s car.

  “Might be a halfway house,” Coolie said.

  I said, “There’s usually a lot of guys in those.”

  “Yeah, some who might recognize me or even you. They’ll certainly smell cops if we stick around here too long.”

  “That stuff you sold him. The heroin. Where’d you get it?”

  “You don’t want to know. Probably best you don’t ask.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “We’re both on shift tonight. We take a swing out here and pick him up.”

  “And after that?” I said.

  “We wing it,” Coolie said, and grinned.

  Chapter 28

  I was due on at midnight. That gave me the rest of the day before having to get cleaned up and head down to the station to get changed. I had a locker down there where I kept three sets of clean and pressed uniforms plus all my gear.

  Normally I would take a bit of a nap in the early evening, but seeing as this was the start of my shift, I was raring to go. Plus, the anticipation of getting some payback on Trashy had me all geared up. I was like a kid on Halloween. I needed to be with someone; otherwise, I would just be pacing around my apartment.

  “How was your trip?” I said when we sat down for dinner. This time Gloria and I were in the Bombay Palace.

  “It was nice to get away,” she said. She paused and sipped her Kingfisher beer. “Did you miss me?”

  “Nah,” I said, and smirked.

  A cop car with its lights and sirens on went zooming past. I strained my neck to watch it go by.

  “Hello,” she said, and laughed. “I’m still here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re that into the job?”

  “Don’t you go bananas when an ambulance goes by?”

  “I don’t even hear them,” she said. “I used to live right across from the hospital. It was a great commute—forty-five seconds. But my god, the ambulances at all hours of the night. Kept me up.”

  We chatted for an hour. Ate chicken curry and some sort of hot fish dish that burned the roof of my mouth. I ordered my second Kingfisher and then realized I had to go on in two hours. I was going to be sweating out curry and spices all night. I sipped only a little of the second beer; being with Gloria had so absorbed me that I’d forgotten about my shift. More importantly, I’d forgotten about the plans we had for Trashy.

  When I remembered what I was planning on doing tonight, it sickened me. I felt shame. Then I shook my head, took another sip of beer.

  “What was that?”

  “I shouldn’t have ordered this,” I said, raising the glass of beer. “I have to go on tonight.”

  “Oh,” she said, and I recognized disappointment.

  “Why? Were we going to move beyond ‘too soon’?”

  She laughed and blushed and looked out the window, then turned back to me and nodded quickly.

  “I live not too far from here,” I said.

  “A quickie for our first time?” she said.

  “I’m on for ten hours. You could stay at my place and I could crawl back in bed with you by nine.”

  “Tempting offer, but. . .”

  “But not what you had in mind.”

  She got all serious. “Get the cheque.”

  She got up and headed to the bathroom, and I snapped my fingers at the waiter, something I never do, but I was in a hurry. I was going to get laid.

  The clock ticked over 11. I should already be down at the station by now, I thought. Then I vocalized it.
>
  “I have to get going,” I said as Gloria came back to the table.

  The sheets on the bed were a mess and the window unit air conditioner was going full blast. It hadn’t been just a quickie; we had managed to squeeze in two.

  I got up and went to the shower. Gloria got in behind me and started washing my back.

  “Gloria, I can’t,” I protested. “Really—I don’t want to be late.”

  “Oh, relax. I’m just washing the perfume off you.”

  After we dried each other off, she sat on the bed naked and watched me get dressed. She grabbed her clothes and started putting them on.

  “Not staying?”

  “No,” she said, and we said in unison, “Too soon.” We laughed and kissed and I walked her to her car. She had followed me over to my place. When she was gone, I bolted for my own car and flew down to the station.

  Man, I’d never gotten into my uniform so fast in my entire career. I slipped into the last position in the inspection lineup just before the duty sergeant started the roll. He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “Hot date, Crouch?” he said, and everyone laughed.

  After inspection and fallout, I went over to the duty sergeant.

  “Where’s Coolie?” I said.

  “He got called in early. Homicide in the west end.”

  “Oh, right. I saw some guys going past with the roof lit up.”

  “Some junkie drug dealer bought it good—strangled, neck broken.”

  I swallowed hard but said nothing and headed to my car. Imelda was my partner tonight and I only made a bit of small talk with her as we got the car ready and drove out of the station.

  Our patrol should have taken us down to the east end past the stadium and steel plants, but when I headed in the opposite direction she reacted.

  “Where are we going?”

  “This homicide—I want to check it out.”

  “Jack, you trying to get us written up?”

  “Don’t worry. They might need help down there anyway. Crowd control. Canvassing.”

  “You a homicide detective now?”

  “Don’t you want to see a dead body?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said. “I’ve seen plenty already.”

  We could see the flashing lights of multiple cruisers playing across storefronts on King Street from four blocks away. I flicked ours off; no need to add to the light show. The road was closed down and everyone was avoiding it. We pulled up behind a police van and got out.

  There was a crowd at the tape and we pushed through. Curtis, a guy we knew on our shift, was at the tape. This was his area of the city and he was surprised to see us.

  “What the hell are you two doing here?” he said.

  “Got called in. They need us to go door to door.”

  “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Just lift the tape, would you?” He did and we ducked under. “Where’s Coolie?”

  “Right in the middle of it,” he said, and pointed at a large group of cops, both uniform and plainclothes, standing on the sidewalk a block up from the tape.

  “Stay here, Imelda,” I said, and went over to Coolie. He was on the other side of the group talking into a radio. He saw me and put his radio down.

  “Is it him?” I said.

  “Go see for yourself.”

  I stepped over to the body, a man lying on his back. Greasy hair covered most of his face, but I could tell it was Trashy. His head was at a funny angle and I could see a jagged piece of bone poking at the skin where his neck had been broken. I could see the dark red lines where someone had strangled him. He was pressed up against the side of a building, his mouth still open in surprise.

  “Someone choked the life out of him, broke his neck. Must have been a strong son of a bitch,” Coolie said. “Oh, well. Another dirtbag off the streets.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  Coolie rolled his eyes. “Look, this guy was a player. Ripping everyone off. Someone who wanted to hurt him more than us got to him first. Whoever that was did us a favour, if you ask me. Now we don’t have to sully our records with him.”

  My thoughts were too horrible to express. Not only that, but they would definitely have been career limiting, because what I wanted to say was that Sergeant Coolie of the Hamilton Police had had this guy executed. Or, at the very least, had given the information on Terrance’s whereabouts to those who did want him dead.

  I looked at the body for a while.

  “Don’t you have an area to patrol?” Coolie said.

  “I’m going to call you later.”

  “I’m a busy guy,” Coolie said, and he walked way. I looked at the group of homicide detectives who were standing around discussing the case and spotted Detective Mike Macintyre. He was sipping a cup of coffee and staring right back at me. I walked back to Imelda and we left for the other side of town.

  The rest of the night Imelda and I spent in the east end in our regular zone. Only call we had was a fight at a house party that spilled out onto the street. Imelda and I and two other teams of two constables each responded and weighed in on them. I grabbed one burly guy in a TiCats football jersey and hauled him off another guy whose head he was trying to ram into the cement. We rolled around and I landed two punches on his nose, which dazed him. His hands went back, limp, and I grabbed his head and lifted it and rammed it once into the ground.

  “How you like that?” I said. I was lifting the guy’s head again when Imelda pushed in and started rolling the guy over.

  “Hands!” she yelled at him, even though he was dazed and his hands were free, the fight gone out of him. She was doing it for the onlookers. Our bodies were shielding what was going on from the partygoers on the sidewalk.

  I let her push me off him and she quickly rolled the guy over and cuffed him. He was starting to come around and spitting up blood, and she put his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke. Then she looked at me in anger, shock, at what I had done. I got up and secured the other people and pushed the crowd back. Though the partiers were loaded and stoned, they looked at me with horrified eyes and I struggled to return their gaze.

  We arrested three, including the guy I’d worked over, and after finishing up the paperwork I went out back for a coffee and a smoke. Imelda followed me.

  “What the hell happened back there?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were going to kill that guy; I could see it in your eyes. You really freaked me out, Jack.”

  “I don’t know. Just got tired of it, annoyed by him. I hate the Tiger Cats.”

  “Hometown team.”

  “I could care less. Look—thanks. For what you did. You saved my ass.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Crouch!” someone from inside yelled.

  “Out here,” I shouted back through the open station door.

  It was the duty sergeant calling for me. He came out back.

  “There you are. Here.” He handed me a brown envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “You’re getting bumped. Drug squad, starting Monday.”

  “Congrats,” Imelda said, and she shook my hand.

  “It’s a big chance. Don’t fuck it up,” the duty sergeant said.

  “I didn’t even apply,” I said to Imelda after the sergeant had gone back inside.

  “Someone is looking out for you,” she said, and she dashed out her smoke and went in.

  “Yeah,” I said to myself, staring at the envelope. “But who?”

  Chapter 29

  The wheels of the Transat chartered flight from Cienfuegos, Cuba, touched down, jarring me awake. After seven days and nights of partying and lovemaking, I was exhausted. I’d slept the whole ride home.

  “We’re home,” Gloria said, and she touched my hand. I smiled and put my other hand over hers and felt the sharp edges of the engagement ring. Then I rubbed my finger along the smooth sides of the wedding ring next to it.

  “Still believe it’s real
?” she said. “That it really happened?”

  “You mean that we really went through with it?”

  “How romantic,” she said.

  We’d been married less than a week. Only a small circle of our friends had attended our wedding down in Cuba. Too expensive for most. Gloria’s parents had reluctantly come. We were only at a four-star resort, and they never missed an opportunity to let me know it wasn’t quite up to their standards.