Savage Rage (8 page)

Leo didn't look so good. Blood was flowing thickly from a nose no longer exactly centred on his face. Jesse could appreciate how much it must hurt, touching his own poorly healed nose.
Fucking cop. Shoved my face in my breakfast and for what?

The stranger tapped Leo on the forehead with the stone. “This is so everyone will know who did this to you.” He gripped Leo's neck and pressed the stone — slate, Jesse thought it was called — to the pimp's forehead. When Leo began to struggle, the stranger planted a knee in his chest, pinning him to the dumpster. The stranger drew the tip of his stone knife down Leo's forehead unhurriedly, ripping open the flesh with the stone's cruel edge.

Leo screamed. The stranger ignored him, ignored the blood gushing freely from the jagged tear in Leo's flesh. Jesse knelt on Leo's legs to keep them from bucking. Jesse was enjoying this immensely.

The stranger finished the first cut, a vertical gash not quite down the centre of Leo's forehead. He bore down twice more with the stone as Leo screamed and writhed beneath Jesse's knees. Jesse smiled, elated. He imagined he could hear the stone grinding on Leo's fucking skull as he was carved up.

After the third cut, the stranger stepped back, admiring his work. At first, Jesse couldn't make out the mark torn into Leo's flesh; there was too much blood. He snagged a crumpled ball of newspaper from the ground, wiping cruelly. Leo groaned hoarsely, swatting ineffectively at Jesse with his good hand. Satisfied, Jesse tossed the bloodied wad of newsprint aside. Now he could see what the stranger had written with his stone: the letter K.

Jesse looked questioningly at the stranger.

The man, a stranger no more, smiled grimly. “It's my mark. My name is Kayne.”

“Enforcement 51 in foot pursuit! Northbound Bleecker from Wellesley!”

Jack stepped on the gas as Brett flicked on the lights. A heartbeat later the siren started ripping through the quiet residential streets. The scout car skidded around a corner, the four lanes of Mount Pleasant Avenue ahead of them. Jack let the car fly.

A good start to the night.
Jack and Brett had just climbed into the car and cleared, then headed for the first coffee of the night.

Foot pursuits and serious medical emergencies involving a child were the two calls any decent officer would bust his or her ass to get to. Not that the lights and siren didn't start blaring for other calls, but kids and foot pursuits always upped the urgency. The only call higher in importance was an Assist PC. A copper calling for help trumped all else.

The radio was alive with 51 units responding to the foot pursuit. Brett waited for a break, then quickly added them to the list. “5302 heading down.”

“Units responding, stay off the air,”
the dispatcher ordered, her words a calm contradiction to the pumped-up officers racing to help one of their own.
“Enforcement 51, keep up your location.”

“Northbound . . . Bleecker, passing . . . 325.” The words spurted out between ragged breaths and Jack could hear the pounding of boots, a rhythmic thumping. “Male white . . . black hoodie . . . possession cocaine.”

“10-4 on that. Northbound from 325 Bleecker. Male white wearing a black hoody wanted for possession of cocaine. First unit on scene advise.”

“Fuck, that sounds like Manny,” Jack hissed as he swung into the oncoming lanes to dart around a slow-moving Toyota, the driver too deaf or stupid to get out of the way of the police car with flashing lights and siren. Jack deked into his lane and blasted under the railway tracks that marked the northern boundary of 51. Trees flashed by them as Mount Pleasant dipped into a shallow valley, forested parkland on both sides.

“That the guy we met for coffee the other night?”

“Yeah, Manny's a good guy.”

“If he's an enforcement car, then what the hell is he doing getting into a foot pursuit by himself?” Brett was reclining as best he could in the passenger seat, but Crown Victorias were not designed for those in the six-and-a-half-foot range. He was sipping at a coffee, letting the hand and arm holding the cup sway with the motion of the car between sips. Brett didn't get excited over much and after his time in 14 Division, foot pursuits were old news.

Jack laughed. “Manny could get into a foot pursuit sitting behind a desk.”

“Ah, one of those.”

The scout car caught a moment of air coming out of the valley and Brett would have lost his coffee had the lid not been on.

“What's your location, Enforcement 51?”
the dispatcher prompted when there was no update from Manny.
“Enforcement 51, what's your location?”
A hint of concern rippled her detached calmness.

“5101, we're on Bleecker. What was his last location?”

“Northbound from 325 Bleecker.”

“We don't see him out front of 325,” the 51 unit advised. “We'll head up to Howard.”

Other cars were arriving, fanning out to search.

“Fuck, Manny, where are you?” Jack muttered.

“Where is this Bleecker?” Brett crumpled his empty cup and let it drop. A foot pursuit was one thing; an officer not answering his radio was a whole lot different.

“St. Jamestown,” Jack explained. “Like Regent Park but with taller buildings.”

Brett nodded. Even though he had never worked in 51, he knew of the park and its reputation. A sprawling government housing project, it was an infamous cesspool of drugs and violence. Brett knew that if St. Jamestown was anything like Regent Park, it was not a good place for a lone officer to disappear from the airwaves.

The road was dipping again, to slide under Bloor Street. If Jack drove under Bloor, he would have to go south, then north again. If they went under Bloor.

“Hang on.” Jack hammered the brakes, dumping speed before cutting across the northbound lanes of Mount Pleasant. There was no off ramp
to
Bloor from Mount Pleasant, but there was an on ramp coming down
from
Bloor. Do Not Enter signs really didn't mean much compared to an Assist PC and the moment Manny failed to answer, the foot pursuit jumped to an assist.

Jack flew up the ramp and, if it had been a movie, would have screamed onto Bloor, the scout car dramatically skidding sideways before tearing off to the rescue. But this wasn't a movie and throwing the car blindly into traffic, especially when coming the wrong way out of a one-way, was a damn good way to get into an accident. And once you were in an accident, you were shit useless to the officer who needed your help.

Jack reluctantly came to a stop at Bloor, a main four-lane artery running east-west through the heart of Toronto. Even at night, the traffic was heavy and drivers didn't seem inclined to make way for the police.

“Move, you fuckheads!” Jack yelled, adding his anger to the siren's wail. He pushed the scout car forward. Fuck it. If people weren't going to stop for him on their own, he'd make them stop. Manny's continued silence told Jack he had no more time for politeness. He tromped the gas pedal. If he hit a car, they'd have to wait for him to come back.

“Basketball court! North of 325!” an officer yelled over the radio. The officer didn't say if anything was wrong, but the urgency in his voice said whatever was happening wasn't good.

When Jack hit the intersection of Bloor and Sherbourne, luck was with him: the light was green. He hammered the brakes to dump speed, then wheeled into the turn, foot on the gas as the car straightened out. A pedestrian who must have figured he had the right of way over a police car hauling ass jumped out of the way as the cruiser brushed by.

“Idiot,” Brett muttered.

Jack threw the car into the turn onto Howard Street, a small one-way leading out of St. Jamestown, then one more turn and Jack and Brett were on Bleecker Street.

St. Jamestown was a gathering of a dozen and a half or so apartment buildings for low-income and government-assisted families. Like Regent Park, its notorious cousin to the south, St. Jamestown kept the 51 Division coppers busy with drugs, weapons and domestic violence. Unlike Regent Park, which boasted only two high-rises, St. Jamestown was all towering thirty-something-floor apartment buildings. Parking lots, play areas and walkways swirled around the tower bases, serving the good residents by day and the assholes by night.

Bleecker Street was the unofficial western border of the complex. There were apartment buildings on the thin stretch of land between Bleecker and Sherbourne Streets, but Jack never considered them part of St. Jamestown. Two high-rises, 325 and 375 Bleecker Street, often received police visits. The street was northbound only, two unmarked lanes wide. Four scout cars, their roof lights slashing the darkness with strobes of red and white, were stopped between the buildings, two on the street, two on the boulevard, their powerful takedown lights targeting the playground.

Skeletal trees waiting for the kiss of spring encircled the playground in concrete bunkers. A weary-looking jungle gym stood forgotten in a sea of sand, its faded plastic and rusted steel casting gigantic twisted shadows in the takedowns' unforgiving glare. Past the sandbox and jungle gym was the basketball court, its concrete surface home to the nocturnal parasites who preyed on innocence and desperation.

As Jack bounced the scout car over the curb and slid to a stop on the winter-dead grass, an excited but relieved voice announced, “5102, all in order. One in custody. No more units required.”

Jack and Brett were climbing out of the car as the dispatcher advised any units not yet on scene to disregard. Jack wouldn't have given the all-clear quite so quickly.

Clustered between the sandbox and the basketball court Jack saw a crowd of maybe two dozen people. He was behind them, but he could feel the hostility. When Jack and Brett were within earshot, Jack heard angry words and outright threats sparking on the cold night air.

It's another fucking house party
, Jack thought. Only this one had considerably more deadly possibilities.

He and Brett pushed into the crowd, breaking its unity and disrupting its violent potential, at least momentarily. People moved aside or were moved aside. Jack and Brett broke free of the mass and Jack breathed easier, relaxing the forearm he had clamped against his gun as he and Brett pushed through the crowd of onlookers. With a quick glance at the coppers on the basketball court, Jack knew all was good.

Manny, looking winded but unhurt, was standing over a prone prisoner and Jack turned to the crowd. “All right, everyone! Time to move on,” he bellowed, telling them the show was over and letting the coppers, who either had their backs to the crowd or were searching the cracked concrete, looking for dropped drugs and a possible court card, no doubt, know they should fucking turn around.

A harsh, raspy voice began snapping orders and soon four cops joined Brett and Jack. Within moments the crowd was breaking apart and people were drifting away as if they had been part of a fog bank dispelled by a sudden heavy wind. Soon only one lone straggler was left, huddled in an army surplus jacket that looked as worn thin as its owner. He had the gaunt, wasted look of a long-time crack addict and when Jack caught him staring, the straggler quickly dropped his eyes. There was something familiar about the face and the sunken eyes above jutting cheekbones and a nose that had obviously been broken, but Jack couldn't place him.

Someone sure took a dislike to his face and rearranged it.

But a single crackhead posed no threat and Jack wanted to check on Manny.

Manny's prisoner had already been searched and hauled off by other coppers to a scout car: no sense Manny walking the guy all the way back to his car. As Jack walked up, Manny was brushing at the dirt on his pants.

“That's what you get for chasing someone on foot and not in the car.”

“Jack!” Manny gave his pants a final, useless swipe and stood up. “I didn't know you came down to help out.”

“Someone's got to keep you out of trouble,” Jack replied as they shook hands. “What are you doing chasing someone when you're working alone?”

Manny shrugged. “What could I do? He was lighting up his crack pipe right on the street. I just hope I didn't mess up my hair with all that running.” He swept a hand along his clean scalp and grinned. “Listen, Jack, I gotta head to the station with the body. Meet up later for coffee?”

“Sure thing, moron. Try not to get into another chase on your way back to your car.”

Manny laughed and mimicked running. Jack shook his head. He really wasn't joking about another foot chase.

“Warren, when are you going to stop pretending you like it up there and get your ass back down here where it belongs? God knows, you spend enough time south of the border as it is.”

Sergeant Rose — call her Rosy and she'd punch your lights out — was the owner of the raspy voice that had dispersed the crowd. She was a big woman with short, spiky black hair and a temper shorter than her hair. A self-professed bull dyke, she didn't give a shit what anyone thought about her on the job. As she was known to state, she wasn't here to make friends or hold anyone's hand. Jack thought she liked him, although it was hard to tell with her in-your-face attitude.

“Hey, Sarge. What happened to the blonde hair?”

“The new girlfriend didn't like it,” she grumbled. “So? When you coming back?”

“Wish I could, Sarge,” Jack said wistfully. “But I can't. After all the shit that happened, my wife would kill me or at least divorce me if I transferred back.”

“Better make up your mind soon, Warren. That open invitation from the inspector won't last forever.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Sergeant Rose started toward her car but turned back to offer a final piece of advice. “Time to grow some balls, Warren, and tell your woman how it's gonna be. Now get your ass out of my division.”