Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) (7 page)

The office was airy and spacious. A computer rested on a large mahogany desk by the window. There were oak filing cabinets ranged along the far wall. A small bar occupied the opposite wall. Sandlack leaned a slim hip on the edge of an oak desk that was big enough to land a small airplane.

“Can I get you a drink? Coffee…”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“I presume you’re here because our building overlooks the gardens.”

“We were hoping you, or one of your employees, might have seen something unusual.”

“Sorry, can’t help you. Cynthia and I talked about it. She probably already told you, the two of us were the only ones here on Saturday, and we were both gone by four. So the place was empty from then until eight o’clock Monday morning — and by then you guys were already on the job.”

“Does Miss Woodward usually work on weekends?”

“Mrs Woodward,” said Sandlack.

Willows nodded. “Right. Does she usually work on weekends?” Sandlack’s tan turned a shade darker. “No, certainly not. I’ve been working on a pilot for a new series, and I had a deadline.”

Willows said, “I understand there’s a janitorial service?”

“Sundays, from about ten. You want their number?”

“Please.”

“Cynthia’ll give it to you, she’s got it on the Rolodex.” Sandlack waggled a manicured finger at Parker. “I been trying to work out where I saw you before. You had a bit part in a
Wise
Guy
episode a few years ago, am I right?”

“Not me,” said Parker, smiling back.

“Something else?” Sandlack frowned. “Help me out, refresh my memory.”

“I used to work traffic. Maybe I handed you a ticket.”

“Jesus, that’s sure as hell a possibility. A silver Rolls, you remember the car?”

“Not really.”

“So you’ve never done any acting, huh. Interested?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Tom Cruise, the name ring a bell?” Sandlack’s Rolex had slipped sideways on his wrist, but in his excitement he didn’t notice. “Tom’s ninety percent signed to do a flick called
Ultimatum
. Ten million budget. He plays an oceanographer. But Tom’s also, and the twist is that the greedy bastards who pay his salary don’t know this, a very committed ecologist. What happens, there’s an oil spill, see, and…” Sandlack grinned. “We could run a screen test, fit you in somewhere…”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Think about it, okay?” Sandlack went around behind his desk, opened a drawer, scribbled a number on the back of a rectangle of stiff cardboard. “My private number. You change your mind, just give me a call. In a six-week shoot, you’d make more money than a cop earns in a year.” He smiled. “And if anybody shoots at you, it’s blanks.”

Parker slipped the card into her purse.

“If you think of anything…” said Willows. He gave Sandlack one of
his
cards. It wasn’t made of expensive white bond, but it did have nice gold and blue lettering on it.

Sandlack slipped the card in the breast pocket of his shiny gray silk suit without bothering to look at it. He made a complicated, expansive gesture with his manicured hands. As if he had something else to say but didn’t know how to put it. Or maybe he just wanted to show off the Rolex and the thick gold chain on his left wrist. He said, “If I think of anything, I’ll have Cynthia call you right away. We can schmooze, take a lunch.” He grinned. “In the meantime, am I free to leave town?”

“Of course,” said Willows. Thinking,
just
do
me
a
favour
and
don’t
come
back
.

On the way out, they stopped at Cynthia Woodward’s desk and were given the number of the janitorial service that had the contract to clean the building.

Willows said, “We’re going across the street for a few minutes. Okay if we leave our car in your lot?”

“No problem,” said Cynthia. “I mean, why spend money on the meter when you can stay with us for free?”

On the way across the street, Parker said, “I liked his jewellery.”

“You did, huh?”

“His chains,” said Parker. “I’ve always had a thing about men in chains.”

“Put him in a pair of cuffs, he’d be perfect.”

“Solid gold, of course.”

The fire department had put several pumps to work, and the water level had fallen drastically, resulting in the collapse of large areas of ice. Willows estimated it would be another couple of hours before the pond was pumped dry.

He and Parker visited Dr Yang in his office. The doctor was not in a good mood.

“The closure of the gardens for a day or two is tolerable,” he said from behind his desk. “But all this negative publicity. My telephone never stops ringing! The world is full of ghouls!” Yang removed his glasses and angrily polished them with a paisley-patterned handkerchief. “This world is unique — the only classical Chinese gardens outside mainland China. I have a sacred trust! And do you know, I suspect Mr Lee’s body was put in the pond because racist elements wish to damage our reputation!”

“I’d advise you not to share those thoughts with the media,” said Willows.

“It won’t last,” said Parker. “Reporters have a short attention span. Give it a day or two, they’ll be gnawing on some other bone.”

“Yes, well. I certainly hope so.”

There was a
bonsai
— an artfully clipped miniature pine tree — in a carved stone pot on Yang’s desk. Yang reached out and touched a branch with the tips of his fingers. It was a strange gesture, delicate and somehow vaguely erotic.

“You have finished questioning my staff?”

Willows nodded.

“Were they of any assistance?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I thought as much.” Yang’s telephone rang shrilly. He flinched. The telephone rang again. He took a moment to compose himself, then scooped it up and said in a very quiet voice, “Dr Yang speaking.”

He listened carefully for a moment and then said, “Yes, certainly. I’ll see you then,” and hung up.

“My wife. She called to remind me that I am to pick up a bottle of white wine on the way home tonight.” He smiled at Parker. “We are having guests for dinner. Life goes on.”

*

At a few minutes past five, the pumps sucked the last of the water out of the pond. Darkness had fallen, and a ring of lights had been set up around the perimeter. Willows borrowed a pair of knee-high rubber boots and joined the search team. Three hours later, all they’d come up with was an empty beer bottle, a number of candy-bar wrappers and other debris, several coins and a soggy five-dollar bill.

Just as they decided to call it a night, a fireman poking around in the area of the drainage vent stumbled across a brass key frozen in a hunk of ice. The key and beer bottle and money and candy-bar wrappers went into separate evidence envelopes. The search team took off their rubber boots and dispersed.

It was still snowing as Willows and Parker walked across the street to the unmarked Ford parked in the Starlite Films lot.

The snow was fresh and clean as it fell from the sky, but turned to slush as soon as it touched the pavement. Willows wondered what the weather was like in Toronto. Cold. He thought about phoning the kids when he got home, and then remembered the three-hour time difference. It was past eleven in Toronto. Annie and Sean would be in bed, sound asleep, dreaming.

“What’re you looking so serious about?” said Parker.

“I was just thinking that it’s about time you got a decent job, met a guy and settled down.”

“You want me to take Sandlack up on his offer, is that it? Marry Tom Cruise?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think it’s been a long day, and we could both use a hot meal.”

“And a stiff drink.”

“That, too,” said Parker, smiling.

Chapter 8

Billy and Garret’s favourite fence was a skinny bald guy they’d nicknamed Crayon. He was tall and thin and wore skin-tight clothes, but they called him Crayon mainly because his skin was kind of sticky-looking, waxy. Crayon’s real name — or at least the one Billy knew him by — was Dennis. Dennis the Menace.

The fence lived in a crumbling stucco house on East Seventeenth, directly across the street from a BC Hydro substation. No matter what time of the day or night you dropped by, he always seemed to be home.

Billy parked his Pinto, got out and slammed shut the door. The chain-link fence protecting the substation was about ten feet high, topped with three strands of barbed wire. There were metal signs all over the place: WARNING! HIGH VOLTAGE! DANGER! KEEP OUT!

Or fry, and die, thought Billy. He listened to the faint buzz and crackle of electricity. The power station looked and sounded like a set from an old horror movie. He was reminded of Ted Bundy, the serial killer who’d got the electric chair in Texas. Snap crackle pop! So long, Ted. Billy had read everything he could about the guy. Now, as he walked around to the back of the Pinto, he tried to imagine what it must feel like to have several thousand volts tossed through your body. The horror of
being
there
. Did it hurt, that ultimate jolt? Or was the sensation of pain so huge that it drowned out the pain itself, and there was only a kind of vast numbness, as your hair burnt and your eyes popped out of your head…?

Billy shivered, and it wasn’t the cold that had given him goose-bumps. That was the great thing about Canada. No death penalty. You could wipe out half a city, they’d give you a life sentence but they couldn’t take your life away.

He unlocked the Pinto’s trunk and pulled out a battered cardboard box full of stolen radios and related electronic equipment. He slammed the trunk shut and, the box held tightly to his chest, jogged across the street and down a narrow, slimy concrete pathway that led around to the side of Dennis’ rotting, neglected house.

At the back, there was a wide wooden door. Billy bent a knee to take the weight of the box, knocked twice.

His knuckles stung — the door was the only solid part of the house, and it was unyielding as a rock. He waited. Nothing. His arms ached. The box was getting heavy. He swore imaginatively, pounded on thick wood with the meaty side of his fist.

Without warning, the door swung open roughly the width of a human eye.

The bright beam of a flashlight played across his face, blinding him.

“Billy.”

“Yeah, right.”

“You’re supposed to be here at seven.”

Billy held up his left hand. He tapped the crystal of his watch, a Seiko he’d boosted, brand-new and still in the gift box, out of the backseat of an Audi. The beam of the flashlight settled on his wrist. He said, “That’s what time it is, Dennis. On the nose.”

“Just hold on a minute, okay. I got somebody with me, I’m runnin’ late.”

The door slammed shut.

“Fuck you,” said Billy, but not too loud. He put the box down on the damp sidewalk and pulled out a crumpled pack of Viceroys. In the brief flare of the match, his face was all bone and shadow. He flicked the dead match over the fence into the neighbour’s yard, stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the house. It was the coldest winter of his short life. He wondered if it was going to snow again. His mind drifted back to Ted Bundy. In Texas, you murdered somebody, there was a good chance you’d go to the chair. But at least it was warm all year round, you wouldn’t freeze your ass off. Billy had never been to Texas, but he knew about the state’s weather from watching
Dallas
on his mother’s television. A guy could learn a hell of a lot, sitting on the couch with a cold beer, watching TV.

He held his left wrist up close to his face and sucked hard on his cigarette. In the quick orange glow of the burning end, he saw that it was almost ten past seven.

Jesus Christ but Dennis was an asshole. The way he operated, it was amazing he managed to stay in business. About the only place in the whole world Billy could think of where the service was worse was at the chain take-out chicken joint down the block from his mom’s.

The door swung open.

“Sorry about that,” said Dennis.

Billy twitched guiltily. It was as if Dennis had been reading his mind. “Hey,” he said, “no problem.”

Dennis stepped aside and Billy went through the open door and into the basement. The fence slammed the door shut, secured it with an inch-thick steel deadbolt and a pair of metal bars as thick as Billy’s wrist. The first time he’d done business with Dennis, Billy had figured all the steel was to keep the cops out. Dennis had thought that was pretty goddamn funny. He’d explained that when your customers were thieves, you had to worry about securing the premises against theft. As for cops, well, cops were like roaches — if they wanted in, there was no fuckin’ way you were gonna keep them out.

Dennis pointed at the cigarette. “No smoking down here, kid. You know that.”

Billy dropped the Viceroy on the concrete floor, ground it to a pulp under his heel.

“Whatcha got for me?”

Billy slid the box on to a heavy wooden counter just inside the door.

“Five Blaupunkts, a couple Alpines including a CD player, and an MEI deck with a set of Pioneer speakers. Also a real good Sony power amp.”

“MEI?” Dennis used the tips of his fingers to play a little tune on his scalp. It was as if he was trying to access information, get at the brain that lay beneath the surface of taut, shiny pink skin. He said, “Never heard of it.”

“Mobile Audio Systems. It’s a shuttle deck. Real nice piece of equipment. Dolby, Music Search. Retail, cost you five, six hundred bucks.”

“Retail,” said Dennis. “What the fuck is that? I never heard of it.” He went over to a bookshelf by the wall, looked through his catalogues, shook his head.

Billy pulled the radios out of the box, lined them up on the counter. A shuttle deck was designed so the radio slid in and out of a compartment mounted in or under a car’s dashboard. The owner could remove it in seconds, take it with him or lock it away in the trunk. On the other hand, if the guy left it in the car… No wires to cut, just push a button and pop it out. Shuttle decks were a lazy thief’s dream.

Dennis came back to the counter thumbing through his Blaupunkt and Alpine catalogues. He started to look up the prices.

Billy stuck a Viceroy in his mouth, then remembered the no smoking rule. He dropped his lighter back in his jacket pocket.

“Still working with that red-haired pal of yours, Garry?”

“Garret.”

Dennis shrugged. “Whatever.” He licked his thumb and turned a page. Billy had a fast mouth, was always knocking his pal, putting him down. He saw himself as a tough guy, but somehow Garret worked it so Billy was the one who played delivery boy, took the risks. And Garret always gave Dennis a call later, to see how much he’d paid… Keeping tabs on Billy without letting him know about it. Garret had the brains, no doubt about it. Probably Billy’s IQ was about the same as his shoe size.

Billy leaned a blue-jeaned hip against the counter, glanced casually around the basement. Dennis’ main thing was fencing stolen property, but he also bootlegged beer and hard liquor after hours at a hundred percent mark-up. Not that out of line. Restaurants had the same profit margin. Dennis preferred cash but would barter if he had to. One end of the basement was like a clothing store — long wooden racks stuffed with jackets, most of them leather. Billy tried to imagine being hard up enough for a drink to sell the shirt off his back. He couldn’t picture it.

“Forty each for the Alpines,” said Dennis. “Except this one, I’ll go fifty. For the Blaupunkts, I’ll go sixty apiece. Twenty for the MEI shuttle. I don’t like the look of all those little buttons. Hit ’em hard enough, they might fall off and then where would I be?”

“No fuckin’ way,” said Billy.

“Add it up, kid. Six hundred and fifty bucks. Not bad wages for kicking the shit out of a few car windows. Something you’d probably do for nothing, anyhow.”

“I don’t do nothin’ for nothin’,” said Billy.

Grinning, Dennis started to put the radios back in the box.

“I’ll do it,” said Billy. “You might drop one, and then where would I be.” He took a Blaupunkt from Dennis and put it in the box.

Dennis rubbed his jaw. He needed a shave, and in the quiet of the basement, Billy could hear the dry, scratchy whisper of the bristles under his palm. He shrugged and said, “Okay, let’s make it seven hundred.”

“Eight,” said Billy.

Dennis dug around in his back pocket and hauled out a wad of fifties, folded in half. He counted off fourteen bills, slapped the money down on the counter so each bill partially overlapped the one that had gone before it.

“Seven. Take it or leave it.”

Billy grabbed the MEI and stuck it under his leather jacket. The money went into his jeans.

Dennis stared at him for a moment, then nodded and said, “You got a bad attitude, kid. I like it. You’re gonna go far, you don’t get nailed.”

Billy laughed. “How the hell’s anybody ever gonna catch me, when I can hardly keep up with myself?”

But driving home in the Pinto, scrubbing at the windshield because the heater didn’t work and the glass kept misting up, Billy was so angry he wanted to smash something, or burst into tears.

Seven hundred bucks for a whole goddamn week spent skulking around back alleys, parking lots, rich people’s garages. And he owed Garret half which left him with a lousy three-fifty. Billy added it up. Three hundred and fifty times four was… one thousand four hundred dollars a month. Times twelve… The numbers got all scrambled around in his brain. It was hard to think and drive all at the same time… Something like sixteen or seventeen grand a year. Wowie.

He flicked the butt of the Viceroy out the window, lit another. Sixteen grand a year. Fuckin’ cigarette money. And he’d already, though Dennis didn’t know it, gone down twice, spent time at the Willingdon detention centre. Couple more months he’d be eighteen years old. No more juvie heaven, with his record. Dennis had given him something to think about — getting caught. Next time it’d be adult court. Two years less a day in Oakalla, that pigpen. Big time. Hard time.

And all for what? Three-fifty a week, barely enough to stay afloat. He couldn’t live with his goddamn mother forever, could he?

For a long time now, Billy had been thinking that he had to get into another line of work. Something riskier, and better paying. Not banks. The average take was less than a grand and he’d heard the cops’ clearance rate was seventy percent. Real bad odds. He had to figure out a better way. Some way of making a lot of money without hanging his ass too far out into the wind.

What kind of success could Dennis ever hope to be, when he didn’t even know his own product line? Fucking dummy. Billy rolled down his window and chucked the MEI shuttle deck on to the road. The radio cartwheeled across the pavement, hit the curb and disintegrated. A waste. But the thing was, he’d wanted to make a point. Dennis had to be made to understand the way things were.

It was Billy who ripped people off. Not the other way around.