Finders Keepers (11 page)

She broke for lunch around two, grabbing a dry roast beef sandwich and a carton of milk from the vending machines down the hall. While she nibbled she made a few phone calls, notifying relatives about the accident. Most of them wanted to come in right away, but Kate advised them to wait until tomorrow, repeating what Dr. Sutcliffe had told her about the sedation. The last call she made was to her boss. Former boss.

“Panther Courier,” Morris said. “Mo Brooks speaking. How can I help you?”

Kate almost hung up. She didn’t know how to play this, hadn’t really thought it through. Morris was going to need some stroking, and Kate’s tail didn’t fit so well between her legs.

“Panther Courier,” Mo repeated, getting ready to hang up.

“Morris, it’s Kate.”

“Kate. Say, how you doing? You’re the talk of this place, let me tell you. Like a movie star or something. Glad to see you haven’t forgotten your friends.”

Friends, right.
“Do you really consider us friends, Mo?”

“Hell, yes. I mean, being the boss and all, it’s up to me to maintain a certain distance, you understand. But yeah, I always considered you one of my favorites.”

Lying little shit.
“I’m glad to hear that, Mo, because…I need my job back.”

Dead silence.

“Mo?”

“You’re shitting me—right?”

“I’ve never been more serious.”

“Okay, gimme a minute here, okay? You and your old man, you just won ten million big ones, tax free—and you want your eighteen-buck-an-hour
job
back?” He snorted. “You got a weird sense of humor, Kate, I’ll give you that.”

Kate took a deep breath and told him what happened, the whole story, hearing nothing from the other end of the line but silence; she could feel it’s weight around her neck, like a yoke made of wet cement.

Finally, Mo said, “Oh, that’s rich. Little miss millionbucks waltzes in here five minutes ahead of her shift on the busiest day of the week and announces she’s quitting. So long, Morris, go screw yourself. But hey, now she’s broke, just like the rest of us, and what—I’m supposed to feel
sorry
for her? Hand her her job back on a silver platter and maybe kiss her ass while I’m at it?”

“Mo, I—”

“Listen, Kate, bottom line, I need people around here I can depend on. The job’s been posted, you’re welcome to reapply. When you get back from Disneyland drop in and fill out an application. In the meantime my pregnant wife is running your route.”

He hung up.

Kate cradled the receiver and thought:
Shit
. Then she returned to her father’s room.

* * *

What Steve wanted was to go back to the hospital. At least this time he had an excuse, news of his progress on the theft. His mother’s friend Gord Brown in Fraud had set up a sting with the security people at the Lottery Corporation, fixing it so that nobody could cash in the ticket now without being detained, forcibly if necessary. He wanted to tell Kate about it and see her smile, feel her fingers warm on his arm as she thanked him.

Instead, he stopped off at the Queen Street Blockbuster and picked up a movie: James Cameron’s
Titanic
. It was a long mother and he’d seen it twice already, but it would keep him occupied, maybe even help him sleep. Good excuse or not, he knew that showing up at the hospital again today would be pushing it. Kate would want to be with her father and his presence would only be an intrusion.

He’d drop by tomorrow. Early.

Steve rented a loft apartment on Pine Street in Toronto’s east end, something he’d lucked into through one of the guys he met at police college. The guy’s father owned the building and charged him a very reasonable rent, considering the size of the place and its location, so close to the downtown core. The catch was, starting in the fall he had to coach a junior A hockey team the father sponsored, something he enjoyed doing anyway. The place was huge and hard to heat, clunky old rads and a high ceiling crisscrossed with I-beams and dusty air ducts, spider heaven up there. But the floors were hardwood, laid in by the previous tenants who’d used it as a dance studio, and the walls were sandblasted brick, nice and rustic. Steve loved the place. He had a small gym—free weights and a heavy bag—set up in a corner walled with mirrors, again compliments of the dancers, an oversized poster bed he’d picked up at a fire sale, a sturdy pine kitchen he’d put in himself, a huge bathroom with an antique tub deep enough to snorkel in, and enough space left over for a comfy living area and a regulation size pool table.

He came in late that afternoon with an armload of parcels and a few bags of groceries, enough to carry him through the holidays. Once he’d put everything away he took a stroll through the loft, at first to get reacquainted with the place, then picturing Kate in it… Tucked in beside him on the worn leather couch, watching movies together, trying to come up with quotes to stump her father. Standing next to him at the chopping block in the kitchen, watching him dice onions for a late-night omelet maybe, or pop corn in a pot with a tablespoon of oil, the way Aretha taught him. Kate leaning over the pool table in a pair of tight jeans, smiling at him over her shoulder before taking her shot, hustling him, beating the pants off him. Literally.

Stretched out next to him on his bed…

He got into his sweats and hit the weights, the exercise easing the pent-up tension. Afterward, he showered and cooked himself a meal, then popped the movie into the player. He lay on the couch in the drafty lot, laced his hands behind his head and watched the movie without seeing it. He kept imagining Kate’s face, replaying bits of the conversation they’d shared, wondering if when she said, “Will I see you again?” she meant in a professional sense—he was a cop, after all, and there was a fortune at stake—or more personally?

He hit the sack early, exhausted but unable to sleep. Something fundamental inside him had shifted, some basic navigational tool gone awry. The plan had been simple: no serious entanglements for twelve months. Date, sure, if the occasion arose, but beyond that, stow it until the end of his probationary year. How hard could that be?

But Kate had blind-sided him, striking him like a meteor out of that cold winter sky. He had no precedent for a situation this, nothing to measure it against. It all seemed so adolescent, stumbling around like a smitten teen. He’d had girlfriends before, plenty of them, even believed he was in love with one or two—but he’d always been able to call the shots. Turn it on or turn it off.

What was it about her, anyway? Sure, she was attractive. Those green eyes, like summer moss. Nice facial features. A snug athletic body. That blond hair, the real thing. But he’d never gone for blonds, he’d always lusted after those smoky brunettes with the curvy figures and olive skin. And shit, they’d barely exchanged a hundred words. If he thought about it hard enough, he could probably jot them all down. And he knew practically nothing about her, could almost hear her telling him as much: “Steve, don’t be silly, you don’t even know me.”

But there was no escaping it. Whatever it was he’d already committed himself to seeing it through. He was involved now and that felt like the right way to be.

When he finally slept he dreamt of the boy in the Spiderman pjs, saw himself chewing the kid out for showing up at hockey practice in his pajamas.

* * *

IA Detectives Hicks and Mayer sat in darkness a hundred yards down the block from Raybould’s brick-faced apartment building, Mayer at the wheel of his wife’s gray Volvo with the engine running, Hicks hunched next to him, staring up at Raybould’s third-story window through a pair of police-issue binoculars. The lights were on up there and from time to time Raybould’s shadow could be seen passing the curtained window. Raybould’s car was parked at the curb in front of the building, not going anywhere. According to the dash clock—fluorescent green digits with a colon that flashed off the seconds, driving Mayer crazy—it was twelve minutes past eleven in the PM. Mayer’s ass was numb, he was hungry, tired and bored, and his wife, Donna, was going to slay him. He’d told her he’d be back two hours ago.

It was time to pack it in.

He said, “Rodney, what say we call it a day? It’s late and I gotta take a leak. Tomorrow’s another day.” Hicks lowered the field glasses but said nothing. He pressed his knuckles into his eyes, rubbing them. Mayer said, “I’ve got it all set up with Perry for the morning, bright and early. The least I can do is show up rested so I can pay attention.” Perry Campbell had been Mayer’s partner when he worked surveillance. After getting the go-ahead from Howson, Mayer had told Perry what they were into and Perry said he had just the thing, a state-of-the-art miniature transmitter with a five hundred yard range. He also said if they fucked it up he’d personally shoot them both. A good shit, Perry, but quirky. “Rodney?”

“Let’s give it another few minutes,” Hicks said. “He might still go out. The guy never sleeps.” He took a quick squint through the binoculars, the lights still on up there, then looked at Mayer. “Midnight, okay?”

“All right, midnight, but not a minute longer.” Mayer shifted in his seat, grimacing. “God damn, my ass is numb.” He reached across Hicks’ lap, opened the glove box and took out a bag of salted sunflower seeds, saying, “Ah, that’s my girl.” He held the bag out to Hicks, who shook his head. Mayer scooped out a handful for himself, dropped the bag into the V of his crotch and cracked the window an inch, popping a seed into his mouth and crunching it. “Donna, she’s like a chipmunk, always munching on these things.” He spit the shell into his fingers and flicked it out the window. “Tasty, but it’d take a year to make a meal out of ’em. I wish we’d picked up some sandwiches or something. You gonna be this much fun ’til midnight?”

Smiling a little, Hicks said, “Sorry, Bryan. It’s just, sitting here, brings back a lot of bad memories.”

Mayer said, “How long we been friends? Close, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Four years and change?”

“Yeah. Four years. And in all that time we’ve never really talked about this. Why you got it in for this guy. What I know is what I’ve heard around the shop and I don’t trust that kind of information. Never have. Now, this thing we’re doing; you’re my friend and I’m glad to lend a hand. But I gotta tell you, I’d feel a lot better about this hearing it from you. I mean, I know the guy. I see him around. I know SIU’s on his ass right now over that crackhead he dropped a few months back and I also know he’s squirmed out of that kind of situation before. He’s a shooter and a smart one. Rumor has it they might bag him this time, but hey, they might not. I know he and your wife—”

“I trusted that fucker, Bryan. That’s all you need to know. I trusted him.”

Mayer crunched another seed, the silence in the car suddenly dense. He glanced at the clock, that flashing fucking colon—11:19—and jumped when Hicks said, “Sally was addicted to cocaine. You probably heard that around the shop, too.”

Mayer had, but he said nothing. He’d met Rodney’s wife only a few times before she split on him and Rodney came over to IA from Morality, where he’d been partnered with Raybould. Their association prior to that had been limited to bull sessions at Franklins’, the police bar down the street from headquarters, and the occasional police function, Hicks always showing up alone. Hicks was a private person and Mayer respected that.

Hicks said, “When I caught them at it I couldn’t believe it. In our own fucking bed.” Not looking at Mayer now, not looking at anything. “Even now, after all this time, I still can’t believe it.”

Mayer listened to Hicks tell it, watched him relive it…

* * *

Hicks blinked and saw his wife’s naked back, the look she’d given him on that muggy August afternoon four years ago, languidly turning to see who it was. That stoned, amused grin. “Why don’t you come ahead in, Rodney.” Breathy, coked-out. “See how a real man does it.”

He could see the mirror on the bedside table, the neat white lines that had nearly ruined their marriage a hundred times already, ranked in readiness across its surface.

It took Hicks a moment to credit what he was seeing—his wife in their bedroom in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, naked and more stoned than he’d ever seen her, riding an enormous erection.

“Sally, what…?”

To this point he hadn’t been able to see the face of the man she straddled. All he knew was the fucker was dead. Sally had been clean for sixteen months, a feat that had taken seven years and as many treatment centers to achieve, never mind the heartache. And whoever this dead man was, he’d gotten her started again. He’d gotten her stoned and then fucked her. And under the law according to Hicks, that was a capital offense.

He drew his sidearm and jacked a round into the chamber. That was when the man’s head came up off the pillow. It was Raybould, his partner of three years. Smirking at him.

“Rodney. I thought you had a dentist appointment.”

“Tomorrow,” Hicks said, jamming the muzzle into Raybould’s cheek. He shoved his wife off Raybould, whose erection was unflagging. “My appointment’s
tomorrow
.”

Raybould raised his shoulders off the bed in an impish little shrug. Hicks could see the puckered scar on his chest where he’d taken a bullet. “Oops.”

“I can’t believe this,” Hicks said, the tendons creaking in his trigger finger. He glanced at his wife, back on the bed now, stroking Raybould’s cock. “Sally, stop—”

Then pain detonated in his wrist as Raybould seized it and twisted, the gun dropping to the floor like a hot coal. Raybould swung his legs off the bed, continuing the merciless pressure, forcing Hicks to his knees as Raybould rose to his feet.

“Never hesitate,” Raybould said, punctuating his words with agonizing pressure on Hicks’ wrist. “You know that, Rodney. Three years with me, you haven’t learned a thing?” He toed the gun under the bed. “Now normally, when someone points a gun at me, I kill him. But you and me, Rodney, we’ve got history. We’ve…bonded. And you’re going to let this coke-head cunt fuck all that up?”

“How
dare
you,” Sally screamed. She launched herself across the bed at him and Raybould backhanded her hard, knocking her to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. She didn’t get up.