City of Crime

by Warren Court

  “Probably, if I let him think about it for too long. He’ll get there eventually.”

  “Something like that will take some time to set up. End of the week.”

  “I can keep myself safe for four days.”

  “See that you do. You’ll hear from us.”

  Chapter 41

  I caught Robert Garigue coming out of Bannisters. I was in my car a half a klick back. I could make out his features well enough. His shuffling way of walking. His brown leather jacket. He was walking east on Barton. I tailed him for a couple of blocks until he was well away from the Scallas’ bar. I pulled into a gas station just in front of him and made eye contact. He nodded his head and came up to my car. I lowered my window.

  “Get in,” I said.

  He looked around cautiously then got in.

  I drove him down to the Harbour Club and parked in the lot. It was a quiet, cold fall day. Most of the boats were already out of the water and wrapped in white shrink wrap. I hadn’t put mine up on chocks yet. It was something I just hadn’t gotten around to. And besides, there was a very good chance I was going to lose it in the divorce. Gloria was raping me with her divorce lawyer. At first, I had given in to all her demands. The house, of course, was a goner. I should have fought that. We should have sold it and shared the proceeds. I even brought that up meekly at one of our meetings. She laughed and her lawyer launched right into me. “Disgraced drug addict corrupt cops don’t get the luxury of getting half of everything,” he said. I would be lucky to walk away with ten percent.

  The boat would likely go to her as well. That’s why I was keeping it in the water. She wanted it? Fine. She could deal with paying to have it hauled out of the water. Or maybe she wouldn’t know to do that and keep it in too long and it would get damaged by ice. No one would buy it then. Maybe I could get it back off her for a song.

  I switched the car off and turned to Garigue. He stank. My car was filled with the smell of cigarettes and pot and midday beers.

  “You hear about that shipment coming in?” I said.

  “No,” he said, swivelling his head around. Looking around my car for microphones, no doubt. Never once had I had him in here. We’d always met on street corners or down back alleys.

  He wasn’t smart, but he wasn’t dumb, either. Street smarts, I guess. The guile of a rat. How this guy lived day to day I couldn’t fathom. I had enough stress with Internal Affairs hanging over my head.

  “Everyone’s going to get well,” I said. “At least eight keys coming our way, very high purity. Some Russians got a boatload of cash ready for it. I think we can nab both, but I don’t know the contact in the Russian gang.”

  “And I do?” he said.

  “I want you to ask around. Get a feel for it. Those Russians, they’re no dummies. They’re working out of Montreal. The stuff comes across the border at Sarnia. Purity is off the hook. They’ll step on it and it’s fifty million easy. They’ll be dealing on this load for two years.”

  “All right. I’ll ask around. How’d you find out about it?”

  “Those Colombians we were on to a while back but could never find. We found one and before he died, he spilled what he knew.” My bluff worked. I saw Garigue going over it in his mind; it seemed plausible, and I liked scaring him with the idea of my crew taking someone out.

  “Okay,” he said, and just sat there.

  Then I clued in. I pulled a hundred out of my pocket. “Here.” I started the car. “You can walk back downtown, right?”

  Garigue phoned me a couple of hours later.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You can’t find anything about it?”

  “No. No gang, no drugs.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “Like hell I will,” he said. “I put out any more feelers and I’m going to get whacked. Scallas are already looking at me funny. More than usual.”

  “If that shipment comes through and we don’t nab it, it’s your ass.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “I’ve done what you’ve asked. I did my job—”

  I hung up on him. “Yes, you certainly did,” I said. My plan was to plant a seed of some operation going down. Use Garigue to get the word out on the street. I knew how his network of finks and druggies worked. By now, word of a phantom load coming in would be spreading all the way to Kingston. These hopheads talked to each other like a sewing circle.

  What I wanted to happen, happened two days later. I got summoned by Macintyre. We’d worked a couple of shifts, a few local street-buy busts, but Rico had kept his distance from me. Then all of a sudden when we were in the coffee shop after a shift for a debrief, he pulled me aside.

  “Macintyre wants us to meet him at the gardens. Tonight. Nine o’clock.”

  “Thought we were laying low.”

  “Just be there.”

  I scoped out the gardens two hours before the meeting. I drove by a couple of times and then waited a block down behind a Chinese restaurant watching cars drive by. No one pulled into the parking lot of the Royal Botanical Gardens until I saw Rico’s car go in. It was nine; he was right on time. Then Macintyre’s shiny Cadillac drove past my location in the Chinese restaurant and pulled in. I waited another ten minutes. No other cars. No cars to dump my body in to be taken away and deep-sixed. No heavies loaded down with guns. No Scallas.

  I pulled into the parking lot quick. They were both out of their cars talking, and I at least startled Rico. Macintyre was calm and collected as always.

  I sent up a pile of gravel on the dirt parking lot as I came to a stop, and a cloud of dust washed over my car. When I got out, I fingered the butt of my Glock one more time. I could feel the cold steel of the Browning down the crack of my jeans, nestled between my butt cheeks. I approached them slowly but confidently. Never let them see you sweat.

  “You got some nerve,” Macintyre said.

  “Wanted to see if you were followed,” I said.

  “So that was you down the road? Where do you get off pulling counter-surveillance on me?”

  “I get off on not going to jail.”

  “So what it is it?” Macintyre said. “About this Russian thing?”

  “I heard it’s big. Supposed to be eight kilos coming through tonight. Going to be holed up at a house outside of town. They’re changing cars there. They’re headed to Montreal with it.”

  “Bullshit,” Rico said. “I ain’t heard anything.”

  “My contacts are better.”

  “Who’d you get that from?” Macintyre said.

  “Garigue.”

  “How many guys?” Macintyre said calmly.

  “Don’t know, but it’s one car. Probably two, no more than three. They wouldn’t want to attract attention.”

  “Where’s this house?”

  “Simcoe County.”

  “That’s a hell of a side trip when you have eight keys of blow,” Rico said.

  Macintyre turned and headed to his car. “You lead,” he said to me over his shoulder. “Rico, you’re after him. No less than three cars between each of us. I even smell a setup and I’m dropping you two pricks, stuffing you in a hole and claiming delayed stress.”

  I laughed. “Wouldn’t be far from the truth,” I said under my breath. Macintyre stopped and looked at me funny, and then he smiled. That smile communicated a hell of a lot, but it was in a different language. I would spend the next five years figuring it out.

  We had no tails. Macintyre raced ahead of us on the QEW and then slowed down so I could pass. He was trying to sniff out a surveillance box. There was none. I’d told Imelda that there was no way there could be surveillance on us. She’d reluctantly agreed.

  We pulled up into a school parking lot five miles away from the farmhouse. I pointed out the location to Macintyre and Rico on a map.

  Rico popped the trunk of his car and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun.

  “That’ll wake someone up for sure,” I said.

  “This goes tits up, I’m blasting my way out,”
he said.

  We got in my car, me behind the wheel. Rico was next to me, his shotgun laid across his lap, the barrel casually pointed at my thigh. Macintyre was in the rear.

  “Do you mind?” I said, and nodded at the shotgun.

  “Sure, pal,” Rico said, and pointed the barrel towards the floor of the car.

  Chapter 42

  It took ten minutes of winding through some side streets until I got on the country road that led to the farmhouse. Imelda and I had gone over the ground earlier that day, and I knew where she was going to set up. At first, she had been reluctant to tell me where she and the troops were going to position themselves, but I said it was a no-go unless I knew exactly where they were.

  She’d shown me a stand of trees where she and at least seven Internal Affairs officers were going to be stationed. I figured a tactical team, probably from the OPP, was going to do the takedown; they would be scattered around in various places. Snipers would be set up in bushes and trees, cameras trained on the house.

  There was no signal for Imelda and her crew to leap into action. I wasn’t wearing a wire anyway; I would not be in contact with her. All that was required was for Rico and Macintyre to walk into that house. That would show intent of conspiracy and that would get the ball rolling.

  Though she hadn’t shared her game plan with me, I figured Imelda and her higher-ups would go to work on Rico, hoping he would roll on Macintyre. That and my testimony would be enough to get Macintyre and the Scallas, and even throw in Emerich Soos.

  We came up to the hill just before the entrance to the farm. I slowed down to a stop.

  “It’s just over this hill, I think.”

  “You think?” Rico said.

  “I’ve never been here before. I’m just going on the info Garigue passed me.”

  I realized that Macintyre, since he’d got in my car, had not uttered a word.

  “There are masks in the glove box,” I said.

  Rico got out three balaclavas and passed one to me and one back to Macintyre. I’d never seen Macintyre with one on; he never went on these trips.

  I drove over the hill, stopped and turned my lights off. There it was: a small farmhouse on the left-hand side of the road about two hundred feet back from it. Behind it, a barn stood tall and dark, silhouetted against the night sky. A silky curtain of fog covered the fields, making it look like the house was floating on a cloud.

  I started down the road slowly, our tires making a hell of a lot of noise on the gravel. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Only thing louder was the blood pounding in my ears.

  “Go for it, man,” Rico said. “Come on!”

  “Shut the hell up,” I said. We reached the entrance to the farm. There was a light on inside. Two cars out front. I caught a glimpse of a yellow New York license plate. Nice touch from Imelda.

  I took a deep breath and tromped on the gas, speeding past the house, sending up a kick of gravel.

  “What the fuck, dude?” Rico said.

  “Didn’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “A glint of glass in the trees behind the house.”

  “No.”

  Only sound Macintyre made was a grunt as he cleared his throat.

  “I saw something flash, like a pair of binoculars or maybe a rifle scope.”

  “The hell you did,” Rico said.

  “Trust me, man. It’s a setup.”

  I roared over the next country hill at a hundred kilometres an hour. I kept that up for another half klick before Macintyre finally spoke.

  “All right, slow it down before you kill us. Pull over,” he said.

  There was a widening of the road up ahead, and I pulled over to the shoulder and got out. I was breathing hard. Macintyre and Rico climbed out and came around the car.

  “Sorry, guys. I saw it. Something flashed in those woods. It was a setup.”

  “Who’s setting us up?” Rico asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Macintyre said. He looked at me.

  Wait for it, I thought. Before I draw down on them, wait for it.

  “Right. Garigue. That asshole,” Rico said.

  “That little rat,” I added for good measure. My ruse appeared to have worked, but Macintyre wasn’t stupid; maybe he was playing me. I could picture Imelda fuming back at the farmhouse.

  I was like a coiled spring on the way back to the school where the other two cars were. I kept expecting to feel the cool metal of a muzzle up against my head and then nothing, just blackness. Maybe that’s why I kept the pedal almost all the way down. Go ahead. Shoot me. Maybe you’ll die yourselves in the ensuing crash.

  I came to a quick stop at the school and was out the driver’s door in a half second. My two partners in crime got out and looked at me across the top of my car. Rico looked scared. A loud souped-up car, just kids, came roaring by and he whirled around in anticipation.

  “Relax,” Macintyre said. He was rock steady.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Rico said.

  “I don’t want to hear from you guys any time soon. Lose my number,” Macintyre said, and he walked to his car. Rico practically ran to his. He was so jittery he dropped his keys on the tarmac.

  When the sound of both of their cars departing had faded, I got in my own and headed for home.

  Chapter 43

  I decided to sleep down on my boat. The notice had come in from Gloria’s lawyer that I had to sign it over to her, but I wanted one last memory of Wave Dancer before I had to give her up. It took half the bottle of rum to calm me down and let me sleep.

  When I woke up, it was dark and cold down in Wave Dancer’s cabin. The heater made a lot of noise and had a burning smell to it, so I hadn’t bothered to turn it on. I went up on deck to take a piss and saw a car turn into the parking lot. It roared down at me and came to a sudden stop at the foot of the jetty. I felt my belt. My Glock was gone; it must have slipped out on to the floor of the boat. I’d put the Browning Hi-Power safely away down in the cabin.

  The car was huge; it looked like a Cadillac but I couldn’t tell for sure. The high beams blinded me. I saw both doors open and out popped Bruno and then, with a greater effort, the massive form of Enzo emerged. And me here staring at these two killers with no weapon to help me.

  Bruno leaned back into the car and shut the lights off. Enzo motioned for me to come to him. I had to comply.

  I knew they would assume I was armed and I might be able to bluff my way out of this. I approached them slowly. “Hey, guys. I was just heading home.”

  “Your boat gassed up?” Enzo said. Bruno just stood there, his arms crossed in front of him. Enzo came closer. The wind snatched at his voice.

  “Yeah, sure. Too late to go out, though. Too damn cold.”

  “Come here.”

  I followed Enzo to the back of his Cadillac, but I kept five feet away.

  Bruno came around the front of the big car and came up behind me. It was like a pitcher of ice water had been poured down my spine.

  Enzo opened the trunk and I looked in. My heart sank at the sight of Garigue, bound and unconscious.

  “We got a rat here,” Enzo said.

  “He’s been a rat all along,” I said, playing along, just like I had with Macintyre and Rico.

  “Help Bruno here get him out. We’re taking a trip.”

  “Come on, guys. I can’t do this.”

  Bruno was in close to me now and I could smell the booze on him.

  “Shut your mouth, cop. Grab his legs.”

  Enzo led the way back down the jetty, his massive frame twisting it this way and that. He almost put Bruno, Garigue and me in the water.

  Enzo stopped at my boat and climbed on board. He knew exactly which one it was. Then Bruno, walking backwards as we carried Garigue, slowly swung my informant’s legs over the gunwale and I followed after him. We dumped the poor soul on the deck and he groaned.

  “Get her going,” Enzo said.

  I pushed past him and unlock
ed the door to the cutty cabin. Bruno came after me. I saw the black butt of my Glock and kicked it under the bench.

  Enzo took one of the captain’s chairs. I switched on the engines and they both came to life, and then I went back outside. Bruno was already up on the foredeck untying the line at the cleat on the boat instead of on the dock. I was about to say that was the wrong way to do it, but he got it free and flung the rope onto the dock. Idiot. I went to the stern and jumped onto the dock.