Hitmen Triumph (8 page)

“Radar?” she said quietly. “What is it?”

Mothers pushing strollers walked toward us. In the background, elephants walked around doing what elephants do. Eating. Drinking. And...well, you know. The one I watched as I looked away from Mercedes could have filled a wheelbarrow. Things like that impress guys. Usually not girls. I kept my admiration to myself.

“Radar?” she repeated.

“He's not betraying me,” I said. “He's betraying my parents.”

She frowned. “But he told me your parents are...”

“Dead,” I said. “Gone. You don't need to tiptoe around it.”

She nodded. “How is he betraying them?”

“We grew up outside Vancouver,” I said. “Dad was a cop. In grade five, that's all we knew about his job. Later we found out he was an undercover cop.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“A few years after he died, we learned he was trying to work his way into a biker gang that was moving drugs throughout the Lower Mainland.”

“Really dangerous.”

“Yeah,” I said flatly. “It killed him. And my mother.”

“But Nate said—”

“That a cement truck hit their car?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It did. What he probably didn't tell you was that the driver had a criminal record and was known to be part of the gang that Dad was trying to crack.”

“It wasn't an accident!”

“No,” I said, “but no one could prove it. The driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter and spent only six months in prison. Back with his friends in no time.”

“Oh,” she said very quietly.

“You understand now?” I said. “Nate's working for the same kind of losers who killed our parents. That's what hurts me.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“Not your fault,” I said. “His choice.”

“I'm sorry for you.”

“Don't feel sorry for me,” I said.

“I don't feel sorry
for
you. I'm sorry
with
you.”

She was looking straight into my eyes. I believed her.

“I called you to tell you I'll help you with your documentary,” I said, “but only if you leave Nate out of it.”

“He's part of it,” she said. “You can't change that.”

“Yes, I can,” I said. “That's why I want to make you a deal.”

“Deal?” she asked.

“I can get you more information,” I said. “Use it to nail the people behind this. The people who are using Nate. But you can't use it to nail Nate.”

“But if he's part of it, how can exposing this keep Nate out of trouble?”

“Because I'm going to use the information to force Nate to quit before you finish your documentary.”

“I see,” she said. “Once he knows you can prove what he's doing, you're going to make sure he stops.”

“Something like that,” I answered.

We had been walking as we talked. Now we were at the tiger cage. The tiger was sleeping. Like it had no cares in the world. Wished I could sleep like that. No worries about hockey. No worries about my brother.

Mercedes interrupted my thoughts. “You're going to do your best to help Nate. Even after
he betrayed you. Even after he betrayed your parents.”

“Yes,” I said. “No matter what, he's still my brother.”

The next evening, Mercedes and I sat in her Volkswagen near the back of the parking lot of a downtown pizza place where Nate had stopped to buy dinner. We heard him order a pepperoni with extra cheese.

“Cool,” she said. “It works.”

After practice I had hidden my fm in Nate's Calgary Hitmen backpack. I had a pack just like it, and I knew he took his everywhere. If he found the FM, I could just tell him that I'd accidentally mixed up our backpacks.

At Radio Shack, I'd found electronic components to rig my processor to send signals to a battery-powered speaker that was now on the dash of Mercedes' Volkswagen. The processor had an attachment port on the bottom that made this possible. It meant that we could hear what was going on in the pizza place. Mercedes also had a digital recorder to pick up the conversation for her documentary.

I could still hear Mercedes' voice through the built-in microphones of my processor.

“Cool,” I said back to her. But really, it wasn't. I was spying on my brother. About an hour earlier, with the fm already in his backpack, I had heard him make a phone call setting up a meeting at the pizza place. From Nate's end of the conversation, it sounded like the person he was meeting was involved in illegally copying DVD's. That was why I'd phoned Mercedes.

In the pizza place, Nate spoke. We both heard him. “Max, thanks for coming.”

“Snuck through the back,” a deep male voice answered. “You know we shouldn't be seen together.”

“I know,” Nate said. “It's about my brother.”

“Radar,” Max said.

Tiny snakes of electricity raced up and down my spine. I locked eyes with Mercedes. She didn't say anything.

“He's been following me,” Nate said. “I think he suspects something. We need to do something about it.”

“Not good,” Max said. “Not good at all.”

In the background, we heard something metal—maybe a knife—drop on the floor. When someone puts a knife in your back, like Nate was doing to me, it isn't nearly as loud. Except for the noise you make when you feel a sudden sharp pain.

“Thing is,” Nate said, “I don't want to quit.”

“You're good,” Max said. “And it seems to be going good.”

“So can I tell him?” Nate asked.

“Dangerous,” Max said.

“Radar can handle it,” Nate said.

“Think he'll want to be part of this?” Max asked.

“I don't want him part of it,” Nate said. “I'm not sure he would want to be part of it either. He's knows why our Mom and Dad died and who killed them.”

Good thing my hands weren't around Nate's neck. The word
SNAP
came to my mind, I was so angry at him.

“I'm cool with that,” Max said. “Tell him what you need to tell him. Just make sure you don't get caught. We need to make sure, one way or another, that he's completely out of this.”

“Completely,” Nate said. “I'll take care of it right away.”

It sounded like a chair's legs scraping the floor. Was Max standing up?

“That's it then, right?” Max said.

“Except for the money,” Nate said.

There was a short pause before Max spoke.

“Fifteen hundred dollars,” Max said. “A lot of guys wouldn't do what you're doing.”

“I'm not a lot of guys,” Nate said.

No kidding, I thought. Give up your
brother to a biker gang after bikers were the ones who killed your parents?

Then silence. Max was leaving.

I tapped Mercedes' shoulder.

“The back door,” I said. “Max came in through the back door. He'll probably leave through the back door. Let's follow him!”

She started the Volkswagen and moved it closer to the back. Sure enough, a big guy in jeans and a leather coat came out. He had long black hair and a beard. He walked straight to a green pickup truck.

“I don't think he saw us,” Mercedes said.

I gave her a thumbs-up, and we began to follow.

She did a great job. Judging by the way he drove, it seemed like he had no idea we were following.

Five minutes later, he stopped, parked and got out of his green truck.

At the last place I would have guessed.

A police station.

We parked down the street from the police station.

“Now what?” I saw Mercedes say.

I shrugged. My cell phone rang. Actually it vibrated.

I looked at the number. It was Nate.

I held the phone over my processor, not against my ear.

“We need to meet!” Nate said.

“Need to meet,” I repeated. “Where?”

He named the pizza place we had left only five minutes earlier. But I wanted to make sure he had no idea that I knew where he was.

“You're cutting out,” I said into the phone. “Bad signal. Text me, okay?”

I hung up. Thirty seconds later, another short vibration of my cell phone. His text message was simple:
Meet me at Pizza Palace right away
.

I explained everything to Mercedes.

“Not much use spying on a police station,” she said.

“I wrote down the license plate number to the truck,” I said. “Just in case that helps.”

She nodded and drove back toward the pizza place.

Just as we made it to the parking lot, I saw Nate. He was standing in the doorway with the two big bikers who had put me on the train tracks, Tattoo Biker and Bent Nose Biker.

What had Max said to Nate barely ten minutes ago?
Tell him what you need to tell him. Just make sure you don't get caught. We
need to make sure, one way or another, that he's completely out of this.

And what had Nate replied? Completely. I'll take care of it right away.

Sure, he'd taken care of it right away. In about as much time as it took to call in the bikers and as much time as it took to call and set me up.

Mercedes pointed. She saw the bikers too.

“Keep driving,” I said. Had she guessed what I had guessed?

“I hate him,” I said to Mercedes.

“He asked you to meet him so that the bikers could really take care of you,” she said. So she had guessed.

“Slow down,” I said. “Don't get out of range of my FM.”

There were plenty of vehicles on the street. She zipped in and parked ahead of a truck that hid us from the pizza place.

That's when we heard one of the bikers growl at Nate. It came through very clearly, although my fm was buried in his backpack. It was the biker with the deep, deep voice.

“Let's go,” Tattoo Biker said. “For a ride.”

“Where?” Nate asked. “Why?”

“Shut up,” we heard Tattoo Biker say through the speaker on Mercedes' dash. “Trust me. You'll find out. And when you do, you won't like it.”

They pushed him into a white van.

The one they had used to drive me away from Chinatown.

We followed. From downtown, the van went east on Memorial and then turned off onto Zoo Drive. There were a few other cars on Zoo Drive, and it was dark. I doubted the bikers knew we were following them.

We passed the lights of the Calgary Zoo. The day before, I thought I'd had plenty to worry about at the zoo. Now, as we passed by it again, I realized things were much worse.

“You're an idiot,” Tattoo Biker was saying to Nate. “You really thought you could fool
us by pretending we needed to scare your brother away?”

“Don't know what you're talking about,” Nate said. My fm was doing a great job, sending the conversation to my processor. At the same time, the processor sent sound to my spider and to the speaker on the dash. Where Mercedes was also recording it.

“We've got a videotape that proves otherwise,” the second biker told him. “You sent your brother into Chinatown the next day to snoop around. He was in disguise, but when you run the tape, you can see him hiding something. He's deaf, right? It was a listening device he hid in there. He left it there when some girl went in to ask questions and buy a pirated DVD. And you know who the girl is? The daughter of a guy who owns a bunch of movie theaters.”

“You guys are crazy,” Nate said. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“No?” came the question from Bent Nose Biker. “We've had someone watching you since then. Tonight he went into the pizza place and sat in a back booth. Our guy saw
you have a meeting with the undercover cop. Explain that, why don't you?”

Undercover cop! That's why the black-bearded guy had gone to the police station. He was a cop! Just like our dad.

“Some guy stopped at my table because he knows I play for the Hitmen,” Nate said. “If he's an undercover cop, I'll take your word for it.”

“Nice try,” Tattoo Biker growled. “If that was just coincidence, want to tell us how your parents died?”

Nate didn't answer.

“Your dad was an undercover cop too,” Bent Nose Biker said. “Worked the Lower Mainland near Vancouver. A cop who pretended to join a biker gang to try to nail drug dealers.”

Nate still didn't answer. My hands were fists. I was beginning to figure things out.

“Yeah,” Tattoo Biker said. “We heard one of the bikers in the Vancouver gang was driving a cement truck one day. You know the rest, don't you?”

“I have nothing to say,” Nate said.

“We've put two and two together,” Tattoo Biker said. “You're some kid trying to get payback. But guess what—you lost.”

I thought back on some of what I'd heard Nate say at the pizza place.
He's been following me...We need to do something about it...So can I tell him.

I remembered Max's answer.
Tell him what you need to tell him. Just make sure you don't get caught. We need to make sure, one way or another, that he's completely out of this.

This meant that Nate had called me to meet him at the pizza place because Max had given him permission to let me know what was going on. Nate had not called in the bikers. They'd captured him. And now I knew why.

Nate wasn't betraying me. Or our parents. He was doing what Mercedes was doing. Trying to find a way to stop the bikers.

And now he was in trouble for it. Because of me
.

The white van crossed the Bow River and headed toward Blackfoot Trail.

“You know what happens to guys who mess with us?” Bent Nose Biker said. “They have accidents. And since we've only got a few minutes left, let me explain. Up ahead is a drowning machine. You're going to take a long ride.”