Finders Keepers (6 page)

“Thank God,” the girl said, her eyes drifting out of focus. “Thank God…”

Mitch stuck his head in next to Steve’s. “Rig jockey’s dead.”

Steve said, “Limo driver, too.”

The ambulance could be heard in the distance now, a dismal wail, approaching fast.

“Here we go,” Mitch said, leaving to greet the paramedics.

“It’s the ambulance,” Steve said to the girl. “It’s almost over now.” He started to back away but she caught him by the sleeve, her cold fingers finding his hand, holding on tight.

“Don’t leave…”

“Okay,” Steve said, feeling strangely at peace. He began stroking her forehead, calming her. “I’ll wait right here with you.”

* * *

They got the girl organized first, freeing her from the wreckage, then loading her into the ambulance in a cocoon of blankets, a sling on her fractured arm and a collar around her neck. Steve found her ski jacket and leather handbag in the limo and brought them to her in the ambulance, sitting with her while the paramedics readied her father for transport: starting IVs, applying a cervical collar and splints to his broken legs. In spite of the morphine they’d given her, she didn’t seem to want to let go of his hand. Steve didn’t mind. His heart went out to her. She must have been terrified out here in the cold, wondering if her dad was dead and whether she was going to end up the same way. It was a good thing she’d managed to call it in herself because the highway had been closed for the past hour. The tanker and the limo must have been the last vehicles to make it through before the barricades went up.

And that van with the bum headlight
, Steve thought.

One of the paramedics climbed into the front seat, startling Steve. She got something out of the glovebox, then simply sat there, blowing warm air into her cupped hands. In the stark light of the cab Steve thought she looked a little anemic. He asked her how long she’d been on the job.

“That obvious, huh? I’m a second year student.”

Steve said, “Rough night?” and the girl nodded. He said, “I know how you feel.”

She unwrapped the bar of chocolate she’d taken from the glovebox and took a big bite. “We haven’t had time to eat, I got dizzy…”

“Take it from me,” Steve said, “you’re better off with an empty stomach.” He glanced at the girl on the stretcher, sleeping soundly now. He said, “So what’s the plan for these folks?”

“We’re gonna meet the air ambulance in Barrie. From there they’re gonna airlift them to Toronto.”

“Whereabouts in Toronto?”

The paramedic said, “North York Trauma,” and Steve said, “Yeah? I live about ten minutes from there,” but the girl was gone.

He looked out the rear doors and saw her run to help the other two hoist the stretcher out of the ditch. He disengaged his hand from the girl’s and started for the open doors; it was time to get out of the way.

“Thanks…” the girl said, the word almost inaudible.

Steve hopped to the ground and looked back at her, giving her a boyish grin. “Good luck, ma’am,” was all he could think of to say.

The paramedics slid her father’s stretcher in next to hers and hopped aboard.

The girl said, “It’s Kate—” but the big doors closed on her words.

Steve thought,
Kate
, and watched the ambulance roll away, dome lights flashing in the freshening squall.

––––––––

FOR KATE THE trip to the trauma center was a surreal blur. Superimposed on a mild concussion, the morphine they’d given her tipped her into a restless twilight, punctuated at intervals by brief hallucinations. During the transfer from the ambulance to the waiting helicopter she roused in the scouring wind and thought one of the paramedics was the police officer who’d held her hand in the limo; Kate grinned at him shamelessly and told him he should call her sometime, even recited her phone number. Later in the air, she became convinced Tom Cruise had optioned one of her screenplays and began to fret over what she’d serve him when he came over that night for dinner. During one giddy episode she got the crazy idea that she and her dad were millionaires, but the notion was shattered by a sudden flurry of activity around her father, whom she caught only glimpses of stretched out beside her, looking so still under a green oxygen mask. “Where are we?” she said, and heard a strange voice bark in alarm, “Hand me an airway.” People in orange jumpsuits surrounded her father then, obscuring her view, and her last awareness before a curtain was drawn and she slipped into the twilight again was of that same frantic voice: “Get me some atropine over here…” Twenty minutes before the chopper touched down on the trauma center helipad, she thrust herself against her restraints and began sobbing in a child’s voice, “The Grinch stole all our gifts…”

Later, as the morphine began to wear off and the pain re-awakened, Kate’s impressions became more solid. They’d had an accident, she remembered that, and her father had been badly hurt. She tried to ask someone about him but things were happening so quickly now, silent men whisking her out of the helicopter in a tight bundle of blankets, the brisk stretcher ride to the ER, someone asking her about drug allergies then a doctor saying, “Let me know if this hurts too much.”

Then her own voice screaming, the sound seeming to rip itself from her throat as the doctor yanked on her broken arm.

“Better sedate her,” were the last words she heard.

* * *

Marty Small crawled into the city at midnight. By that time the storm had reached full throttle, a drop in temperature turning the wet flakes into icy shrapnel, high winds buffing the roads into skating rinks. Driving was a nightmare, every asshole and his cousin out on the roads, and for the hundredth time Marty cursed his piece-of-shit van. The defroster couldn’t keep up, so he had to lean out at every stoplight and scrape a peephole in the rippled sheet of ice that crusted the windshield. When he finally pulled up in front of the Fantasia Club, he was fried.

There were a couple of creeps Marty recognized standing in the club’s recessed doorway. He’d seen them around the strip before, a pair of dreadlocks-wearing white boys, smoking reefer and freezing their asses off with style, shifting from foot to foot with a kind of fogged-out reggae rhythm. They were thieves, Marty knew, and before leaving the van he threw a blanket over his loot. They were probably the dinks who’d jacked his floor mats.

He got out, locked the van and headed inside, trying to look as bad as he could for the criminals in the doorway.

As usual the Fantasia was hoppin’. The place was classic sleaze: blaring, ass-grinding music; a haze of smoke so thick you needed a seeing-eye dog to find the shitter; a stable of bored-looking lap dancers making the rounds; a red-carpeted runway featuring a smeared brass fuck-pole that saw more snatch in a week than Marty’d seen in his entire life; and, completing the picture, row upon row of gawking shitfaces, sucking beers and adjusting their hard-ons. No shortage of degenerates in the big city.

Though Marty was a regular, he didn’t see himself in that light. Earlene worked here, and as soon as he managed to convince her to come crib with him, he could give a shit if the place burned to the ground. Except for Dane, of course. Dane was the bartender and Marty had a special kind of relationship with him. The supply and demand kind.

Before straying from the doorway Marty scanned the crowd. There were a couple of hardcases he owed money to and there was no way he wanted to run into one of them tonight. Not that the shitbirds scared him or backed him down. If push came to shove Marty could be pretty handy with his fists, and he always carried a switchblade, six inches of Brazilian steel he was ready to use. He just didn’t feel like parting with any of this score. Not that way. It was lucky money and he didn’t want anything throwing a hex on it before he had a chance to take a run at Earlene.

Satisfied the coast was clear, Marty made his way to the bar.

“Marty Small,” Dane said when he spotted him. “The usual?”

“Tonight, my man,” Marty said, “make it a triple.” He unzipped his jacket and slid onto a stool, glad to be someplace warm.

“My, my,” Dane said, dipping two big fingers into a pocket on his red silk vest. Dane was a South African giant, six-foot-six-inches of burnished ebony and a smile that dazzled the eyes. “Did Martini finally score?”

Marty smiled. “That he did, Dane-o. That he did.” He watched Dane’s hands, trying to see how the man pulled off this next little trick.

Dane drew a draft in a frosted mug and slid it across the bar. Marty paid him with three crisp hundreds from Keith’s wallet. Concealing the action with his body, he raised the mug off the bar and palmed the three flat pouches of cocaine tucked underneath.

“Damn, man,” he said. “How do you
do
that?”

Dane gave him that smile, all pink gums and polished ivory. “Magic,” he said and moved off down the bar.

Sipping his brew, Marty turned to face the room. It took a few moments, but then he spotted her by the far wall, pantomiming a blowjob for a sweaty bald guy having a stag party.

Earlene.

* * *

Six blocks south of the Fantasia Club, Detective Sergeant Alister Raybould cruised Yonge Street in an unmarked car, wipers working hard against the weather. He pulled up to the curb next to a bus kiosk, a pair of hookers in there huddled in cheap furs, and powered down his curb-side window. The ladies stepped into view, open for business, their stock fuck-me expressions vanishing the instant they saw who it was in the salt-bleached sedan.

Trish, a tall black girl in a red wig, stuck her head through the window and did her best to smile. “’Evenin’, detective. Just lookin’ tonight or buyin’?”

“Keep your trash-mouth shut ’til I tell you to open it,” Raybould said. “Where’s that cocksucker, Swain?”

“I seen him outside the Strand ’bout an hour ago.”

Raybould accelerated away from the curb, almost taking Trish’s head off. “Bitch motherfucker,” she yelled after him, then prayed he hadn’t heard.

* * *

Swain stood in front of the Strand Hotel, coat hanging open to show a little skin, propositioning a pair of teenage boys who looked like they’d rather beat him to death than sample his favors. He was walking a fine line with these two—a couple of mean looking shave-heads, not sure which way they wanted to go yet—but his last fix was hours behind him and if he didn’t score soon he was going to be one sick little puppy.

“I’ll give you the kind of blowjob you’ll never get from the prom queen,” he told them, teeth chattering in the cold. He didn’t notice Raybould’s car rolling up to the curb behind him or he’d’ve shut his trap. “How ’bout it, boys?”

“I wouldn’t let you suck my dog’s dick,” one of the kids said, then high-fived his friend.

Raybould gave a short blast on the siren and the teenagers pulled a quick fade. Knowing better, Swain buttoned his coat and waited, trying not to betray his fear. The last time this psycho hassled him he ended up with three broken ribs.

Raybould got out of the car fast, put Swain in a wrist lock and slammed him face-down across the hood.

“What’s wrong?” Swain said. “What did I do?” Blood leaked from his nose, salty and hot on his lips.

Raybould cuffed him in silence, ratcheting the cuffs tight around Swain’s slender wrists. He pulled Swain up by the scruff of his neck and shoved him into the front seat, then got in behind the wheel and sped away from the hotel.

“What did I do?” Swain said again and Raybould slapped him in the mouth.

“You speak when you’re spoken to, Swainy. You know the rules. You fucked up this time, boy, so don’t gimme any of that ‘What did I do?’ horseshit. I’m tired of carrying your faggot ass. This time you’re going down.”

“Please, Detective Raybould,” Swain said, tears spoiling his mascara, pulling it down his gaunt face in runny smears. “I can’t go to jail. Was it that bitch, Ernesto? I’ll never buy smack from him again, I swear—” 

Raybould slapped him again. “Speak when you’re spoken to. Don’t make me tell you again. And quit that weepy shit. You’re fucking up my concentration.”

Swain did as he was told and within seconds Raybould seemed oblivious of his presence. It didn’t take long to figure out they weren’t headed for police headquarters, at least not right away, and Swain thought maybe he could squirm out of this yet, with only a few bruises and maybe a quick back-alley favor. He became almost convinced of this when they pulled into the underground lot of a Regent Park apartment complex. The detective just wanted his rocks off.

Raybould wound deep into the multi-level lot, giving Swain the impression he knew exactly where he was headed. He backed into a shadowy corner slot across from an elevator and switched off the ignition. His gaze touched on a sporty champagne-colored Mercedes, parked near the elevator, then shifted to Swain.

“Okay, Swainy, look,” he said. “Maybe I was a bit harsh.” He motioned for Swain to show him his hands. Swain complied and the cuffs came off. Raybould slipped them into his overcoat pocket. “It’s been a long day, and when I saw you hitting on those kids—”

“The little shits were trying to sell me a hot stereo.”

Anger flared in Raybould’s eyes and Swain shrank against the passenger door, but this time the detective restrained himself. Swain was certain now he’d have to suck this bully off.

“Like I was saying,” Raybould said, “it’s been a long day. I’m sorry, okay?”

Swain nodded noncommittally.

“The real reason I looked you up…” He reached into his pocket and came out with a ziplock baggie of heroin. To Swain it looked pure, at least a half G’s worth. His mouth flooded with saliva. “I’ve got a job for you.”

“What kind of job?”

Grinning, Raybould said, “Not what you’re thinking.” He pressed a finger to Swain’s painted lips, smearing them. “Though that is one pretty cake-hole you’ve got there, Swainy.” He tucked the heroin into Swain’s clammy palm. “I need you to eyeball somebody for me. Tell me if you’ve seen him around the clubs. Two minute job, then you walk. And I don’t bust your skinny ass. Agreed?”

“I can do that.”

Raybould said, “I knew you could,” and smiled, a warm smile that made it all the way to those black eyes. Swain even found himself relaxing a little.