Black Wolf Rising (Prequel to the Bernadette Callahan Mystery Series)

by Lyle Nicholson

  She continued walking, head down, concentrating on walking on the icy sidewalk.. If she was lucky, whatever they just received from the car was more important than her.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” one of the boys said.

  She heard their footsteps running across the street. They stood in front of her. Leo stood tall, his lower lip showing attitude, dominance. He crossed his arms to show he wasn’t about to let her pass.

  Bernadette stopped, eyeing Leo and the other boy. “I need to get to class; please get out of my way.”

  “Ha, you can’t take on Susie, how you gonna take me on us, you little shit?”

  Bernadette eyed both the boys. There was no talking to them, and there was no way she could outrun them.

  She rooted herself, making her stance square with her palms raised. Her eyes flicked over Leo as he approached.

  “Oh, my, I’m so scared,” Leo said. He looked at his sidekick. “She got some kind of Kung Foo, or Hai Karate moves, don’t she, David?”

  David smiled and nodded. “I heard she’s been studying some new moves. Maybe she’ll show you some?”

  Bernadette focused on David for a second. His eyes were glazed, his pupils large. She looked back at Leo. His were the same—she knew the look, she’d seen it on the Cardinal boys: they were both stoned.

  Her best guess was marijuana would make them slower. She was going to find out.

  “I ain’t scared a’ no Kung Fu horse shit,” Leo said, walking towards her, his right hand balled into a fist.

  She waited for Leo to get into her striking range. She deflected his fist with a left arm block. His swing brought him in close. Her hand had already gone into a chambered position. It came out like a tight corkscrew rocket connecting with his nose. A loud crack of bone was followed by a scream of pain from Leo.

  “Jesusmotherfuckingchrist!” Leo yelled as he hit the ground.

  “Wow, you like, broke his nose,” David said.

  “You want to be next?” Bernadette asked. She went back into her stance. She was balanced, rooted and ready for anything David threw at her.

  “No, no, no,” David said.

  “Then grab your friend and get the hell out of here. I got classes to get to, and you two are a pain in the ass,” Bernadette said.

  David grabbed Leo’s arm to pull him up and move him out of Bernadette’s path. A stream of blood from Leo’s nose made bright patterns on the snow.

  Bernadette walked past them. Her knees were trembling; she walked as fast as she could, favouring her right leg and trying not to show her limp. Never show a predator you have an injury, she told herself, it could give the stoned David an idea he could try to attack her.

  She got to class just before the test started. It took her a few minutes to focus before she could begin. Math wasn’t her easiest subject, but with the help of Melinda in the past month she was able to get the gist of variables and exponents in algebra.

  The clock on the wall seemed to race by as she struggled to make her mind focus on math problems over the fight she’d just had in the street. Would Leo and David come after her later? Sure they would. Would Susie take offense to this…what was she thinking? She’d just declared war on their gang by beating up Leo.

  A simple punch in the nose was all it took to drop Leo. A knee in the groin had dropped Tommy. Her simple one-act strikes were getting her into deep trouble.

  The teacher called, “Time’s up,” and the class turned their test papers over. Bernadette turned hers over and hoped she’d been focused enough to give the right answers.

  Even if she had to make a run for it to avoid the Cardinals, she didn’t want to leave with bad test scores, as sooner or later she needed to get back to her schooling. She filed out of class and found Travis waiting for her.

  “Hey, Travis,” Bernadette said, not trying to sound head over heels infatuated with him.

  “Hey, Bernadette,” Travis said, taking her by the arm and leading her to the edge of the hallway so the students could pass by, “I just heard the strangest rumour. Someone said they saw you punch Leo in the nose. Is it true, or has somebody been smoking something?”

  Bernadette hated the look on Travis’s face. He was disappointed. She’d promised him she wouldn’t get into any fights and always wait for him to escort her anytime she left school.

  She shrugged and looked down at the floor. “Yeah, it’s not a rumour. I went to see officer Myers today…on my own…sorry, and Leo and David tried to stop me from getting back to class.”

  “You promised me, Bernadette, you said I’d be the one to look after you…”

  Bernadette looked up at Travis, he wasn’t mad; there was a tear in his eye. He’d been scared for her, concerned. “Oh, my god, Travis, I’m just so sorry…I…”

  “It’s okay,” Travis said. He rubbed her shoulder, and somehow she fell into a hug from him. It felt wonderful.

  She looked up at him and kissed him on the cheek. “I will always be sure to enlist my valiant knight Sir Travis, before I sally forth to do battle with the dragons outside these walls.”

  “You’d better,” Travis said. “We knights work hard for our wages.”

  “Wages? Just what payment are you expecting, fair knight?”

  Travis bent down and planted a warm kiss on her lips. “Just this, fair maiden.”

  Bernadette’s knees almost buckled. Her first kiss from a boy—well, a real boy, and not some little kid planting a pretend smooch on her in fifth grade.

  “Ah, handsome knight, it is a fair bargain for your services. Feel free to exact the same wages at any time,” Bernadette said when she finally caught her breath. She was about to get him to repeat the kiss when she saw something.

  She saw a face that startled her. For a moment she thought she saw Peter Cardinal. She pulled back from Travis and stared down the hall.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you all right?” Travis asked.

  “I thought I saw somebody I knew from my village up north,” Bernadette said.

  “A good somebody or a not-so-good somebody?” Travis asked staring into her eyes.

  How could she lie to him about the Cardinal boys? He wanted to protect her, and he needed to know about them. “I think I need to fill you in on a few things,” she said.

  18

  Peter Cardinal got into the car’s back seat. Tommy and Stephen were in the front. The car was twenty years old, a 1973 two-door Chevy Malibu that Peter helped steal from behind Gus’s store.

  Tommy said it wasn’t stealing as the keys were always in it, so how was that stealing, and besides, Gus drove it in the summer. He wouldn’t miss it until spring.

  But Peter knew Gus would see a barren spot with snow all around it where the car had been. Gus would know Peter had taken it. Peter’s heart had sunk the moment they’d got in it and left for the city.

  Peter did the books for Gus’s store. His work made him proud, gave him satisfaction. It wasn’t much, just add up the figures at the old store at the end of the day and do inventory once a month, but Peter secretly loved it. He’d fallen in love with numbers; they made him feel safe. It removed him from his cousins—he felt like he was his own person at Gus’s place. Like he mattered.

  Tommy and Stephen were pulling him along; he was always the weaker one, doing whatever they said, as if he had no will of his own.

  He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to finish high school, take the required college courses to become a certified general accountant, and then work for a large oil company in the city. Maybe he’d even get transferred overseas. In Dubai or Saudi, he’d be just another brown person. He could disappear.

  He felt like disappearing now. He stared out the window, his breath making a fog and blocking his view.

  “Did you see her?” Tommy asked.

  “Yeah, we saw her. She was with some really big white dude,” Stephen said.

  “Did she see you guys?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. What do you think,
Peter, you think she saw us?” Stephen asked.

  Peter looked up from his fogged window; he barely understood the question. “No…I don’t think she saw us,” he finally said.

  “Good, ’cause we warriors are on the prowl, we gonna kick that little half-breed’s ass. When they find out she’s disappeared, nobody will fuck with the Cardinal boys. Ain’t that right,” Tommy said.

  “Damn right,” Stephen said.

  Peter looked out the window. His sigh completely fogged the back window.

  19

  After Bernadette came clean with Travis about the Cardinal boys, he was even more vigilant. He made sure he or one his wrestling team walked her home. Not just to pick up the girls at their school, but right to her apartment.

  When she had karate practice, there was a bodyguard; when she took the kid to the pool or went to shop for groceries, there was a shadow with her.

  Susie and her gang kept their distance, there wasn’t another Cardinal boys sighting, and Bernadette was spending a lot more time with Travis. She was, in his words, “Paying him handsomely with kisses,” which were making her young heart almost “fluffy,” if she could find a word for it.

  This wasn’t solving her problem with Ace. She needed a plan, something to take out Ace and implicate Susie and then, somehow, to keep herself out of the reaches of the Cardinals.

  The more she wracked her brain, the more she understood she needed to bring in some much needed assistance. Her best choice was Melinda. She wasn’t good in a fight; it was because Melinda was a brain, an honest-to-goodness genius. An honors student who had already decided she’d go into pre-med and then pursue a career as a cardiothoracic surgeon. Bernadette had to look the term up. It was heart, lungs, and all the good stuff that made the human body function in the chest cavity.

  Bernadette caught up with Melinda in study hall. “Hey, Melinda,” she said as she plunked her books down beside her.

  Melinda brushed a wisp of her fine blonde hair from her perfectly blue eyes. “Hey, Bernadette, I hear you’re kicking it with karate classes. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to protect the wrestling team.”

  Bernadette smiled. Melinda’s humour was bone dry, but it was good. “Yeah, I’m the new karate queen.” She leaned forward across the table and lowered her voice. “Listen, Melinda, I got this sticky situation. I need to kind of record someone without them knowing about it. You know anything about how I’d go about it?”

  Melinda looked up at Bernadette, pushing her glasses to the bridge of her nose. “Are we talking entrapment here?”

  “Whoa, you’re lightening fast, girl.”

  Melinda shifted in her chair and adjusted her glasses again. “You have to be straight with me, Bernadette, I’ll help with anything, but I just need to know what it’s all about.”

  Bernadette’s shoulders sagged; she leaned forward, took Melinda’s hand, and told her about Ace, his drug deals, his bothering her aunt and the Cardinal boys. When she’d finished she’d felt like she’d gotten off a psychiatrist’s’ couch—or imagined what it felt like if she’d been on one.

  Melinda squeezed her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me? My older brother, Jason, has a digital recorder he uses for his classes at university. I’ll get it from him. Sounds like we got to get a persona for you this Ace will believe.”

  “A persona?”

  “Yeah, a role Ace will believe. Look, you can’t go in there as you. You got to go in there and get in this guy’s face, you know—be someone who will draw his attention, some hyped-up bitch.” Melinda put her hands over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “You’re onto to something, Melinda. I need to draw out the black wolf in Ace.”

  “You’ve lost me. What’s the black wolf?”

  “It’s the angry one. I get his attention and get him mad, then he’s saying things to incriminate himself. I record it, give it to the police, and he’s done,” Bernadette said.

  Melinda shook her head. “I don’t know if that works.”

  “Why not? We got his voice on a recording. If I get him to admit he’s selling drugs at our school and using Susie as his network, then why can’t the police use it?”

  Melinda chewed on her pen. “You know, my brother’s best friend is a second year law student at the university. I could call him and find out what he thinks, see if we’re going in the right direction.”

  She took a piece of lined paper from her binder and took notes. “Okay, we check on the legality of the recoding, then we find a place to do it.” She tapped her pen on her chin. “Right, we need surveillance.”

  “Surveillance?”

  Melinda pointed her pen at Bernadette. “Yes, we need to track this Ace guy and find the best place to approach him.”

  “Ah. He hangs out at my aunt’s tavern…how about if we just watch the place?”

  “Good choice. I’ll have my brother and his friends put a tail on the place,” Melinda said.

  Bernadette put a hand to her forehead. “Melinda, you put a tail on a person…never mind. Now, just how are you going to get your brother’s friends in on this?”

  Melinda smiled. “My brother is a computer science major, all his buddies are geeks. When they’re not in the computer lab, they watch Mortal Kombat for hours and something called Doom. I tell them I’ve got this cool stake out, and they’ll be on it with cameras and recording devices.”

  Bernadette rolled her eyes. “Great, we’ve got a geek squad up against a bike gang and drug pushers—should be good.”

  “Now,” Melinda said, “we’ve got to get you a cell phone.”

  “A cell phone, whoa girl, those things are expensive; I can’t afford one.”

  Melinda raised her eyebrows. “Not a problem, my father is a surgeon. He has like three cell phones. He keeps telling me he wants me to have one so I can keep in touch. Well…now’s the time. While we’re at it, we’ll get two, and a pager so you look like a real drug dealer.”

  Bernadette shook her head. “I had no idea how connected you were. Your dad’s a doctor, and you’re going to this school?”

  Melinda shrugged. “My dad doesn’t believe in the private school system. He never went to one and figured a tough school would one day make me a tough surgeon.”

  Bernadette looked around the room at the other students. A few looked like they’d just been sprung from jail. “Yep, your dad knows how to practice some tough love. When do we implement this battle plan?”

  “I’m going to get on the phone the moment I get home. I’ll have the cell phones, plus a list of times my brother’s friends will be doing the stake out, you’ll of course supply Ace’s description, and we’re good to go.”

  “You’re amazing, Melinda, I had no idea you were this good,” Bernadette said as she got up from the table.

  “Hey, I’ve watched hours of 21 Jump Street. I love it. I watch it after my studies are over.”

  Bernadette walked out of the study hall. She wondered how close their actions would mimic the television show. She remembered some people got shot in the show.

  20

  Three days later, Melinda met Bernadette in the school corridor; she lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows. “It’s a go.”

  “What’s a go?”

  Melinda cast furtive glances around her. “I’ve got it all in place. We need to meet right after our last class. I’ve asked my brother and his friends to meet at my house. Can you make it?”

  Bernadette had to think it over; she picked up Amber and Abigail after school, but her classes finished early and so did Melinda’s. “As long as I’m out of there by three-thirty to pick up my cousins I’m fine with it…and what do we tell Travis and the wrestling team?”

  “I got it covered,” Melinda said. “I checked detention hall, and Susie, our gangland queen, is in there until five.” She let out a low chuckle as she said, “Apparently our little mobster got caught smoking in the girls’ washroom. And Travis and his team are in a late afternoon practice. I tol
d him we’d be in study hall together.”

  “Yeah, but what about her gang?”

  “Are you kidding, her gang won’t take you on with what you did to David and Leo—you is one bad mother frugger,” Melinda said.

  Bernadette shook her head. “You don’t quite have it right, but then…no, it’s good. Let’s go.”

  The walk to Melinda’s place was long. She lived on the good side of town. Passing the small bungalows and low-level apartments, they crossed a big avenue and entered into a gated community. An expensive stone fence with brass lettering announced the neighborhood’s name. Making it abundantly clear that only those with money or big incomes could afford to live here. Bernadette felt herself growing smaller as they passed the massive homes.

  Melinda walked up to her house, punched her security code, and ushered Bernadette inside. The place looked opulent to Bernadette. Hardwood floors were scattered with expensive carpets that had tables and chairs with good taste sitting on them. Fine art adorned the walls. Custom curtains on large windows let in light with an expensive glow.

  Bernadette followed Melinda as they moved from room to room. She realized the home was a big as the entire fifteen-suite apartment building she lived in. She shook her head, taking it all in, realizing she’d never seen rich before. This was it.

  Sitting in the kitchen were four young men who could be taken for boys. Three were dressed in baggy jeans and sweatshirts, with hair in different styles of disarray. One looked like he’d stepped out of GQ Quarterly and was merely slumming with this motley crew.

  “Jason, Chad, Craig, and Aaron, this is Bernadette,” Melinda said.

  “Hi, Bernadette,” they said in unison once they washed down the nacho chips they were stuffing in their mouths with swigs of coke.

  “We hear you got a situation you want this geek posse to look after,” Chad said with a smile. He was dumpy in a cute sort of way, Bernadette thought. His hair was a mess of black curls, an oversized sweatshirt covering his large body, and he hunched over the counter as if he needed to hold onto it and keep it stable.