The Ambitious City (28 page)

“Was this security for rock festivals and drag races?”

“Yeah, but other shit too. Business stuff. They never talked much about it around me.”

“So Hughes became a regular.” Vertesi wasn’t asking a question, merely confirming for the recording.

“Sort of, but, ya know, he’d sit at the bar with me, like we were separate from those guys—the Old Soldiers Motorcycle Club, I mean.”

“Did he work security for them?”

“No, that’s the thing I was tellin’ Sergeant Penniman on the way here. They led him on with promises of the bigger stuff and never came through.”

“How long did they string him out?”

“Not all that long, but when you’re showin’ up and drinkin’ and waitin’ it seems long, man. Sarge wasn’t happy.”

“What happened then?”

“So a guy in a suit shows up—big fat guy, Eyetalian lookin’.”

MacNeice noticed Vertesi smile.

“In he goes to the office, and after a while Sarge gets called in. He grabs me and we get to the door—
boom
. Jake—he’s the OSMC leader—slams his hand on the door frame,
wham!
I stop, think I’m goin’ to piss myself. Hughes takes Jake’s hand and peels it off the door, like some weird Jap Jedi move, you know—the guy’s almost crying—and Sarge says, ‘Wenzel’s with me. We’re a team.’ ”

Wenzel’s eyes welled up and he grabbed the Coke to take a swig and cover the tears, but it was empty.

“Got it,” Penniman said. He went over to the minibar and retrieved another miniature Coke.

Wenzel cleared his throat. “So, yeah, then we’re in the room.

There’s a couch and a desk and some chairs. The guy in the suit looks at Sarge, then at me, and just nods to Jake behind the desk.”

“What’s his full name?” Vertesi asked, pen poised over his notebook.

“Don’t know. They just call him Jake …”

“And the guy in the suit?” Vertesi asked.

“Luigi. No last name, just Luigi.”

“What happened then, Wenzel?” MacNeice asked.

“So the job is security for Luigi is up here in Canada, some kinda business. There’d be twenty members of OSMC; I’d ride with them and Sergeant Hughes would go in a car with Luigi. This meeting was on a Wednesday and we’d ride that Friday.”

“Ride where?” Vertesi asked.

“Shit … somewhere past Niagara, a town down that queen’s highway. I can’t remember the name.”

“St. Catharines?” Vertesi suggested. Wenzel shook his head.

“Grimsby,” MacNeice said.

“Fuck, yeah! Shit, I remember now, thinking,
Grimsby—that’s grim!
To live in a town called
Grim
-sby … they can’t have happy teenagers there, man. I mean, Iraq was Grimsby—big-time Grimsby.”

“Did Luigi ever say who he was working for?” Vertesi was trying to refocus him.

“Not when we were in there, but the money was great, man. They were going to give Sarge ten thousand and I was gonna get fifteen hundred. Here’s the thing about him: He says to them, ‘How much are the other soldiers getting?’ And Jake says, ‘Three thousand.’ So Sarge says, ‘Wenzel takes the same risks; Wenzel gets three thousand.’ ”

“What was the job?” Vertesi asked.

“So, there’s a quarry near
Grim
sby owned by American Eyetalians. Then there’s Eyetalians from Dundurn and more
Eyetalians they thought might show up—I don’t know where from. Luigi was there to make a deal. The thing is, we don’t know which ones Luigi’s workin’ for. I was sober as shit in that room, so I know what I know. Luigi looks at Sarge and says, ‘Your job is to stand beside me, and your job’—he’s looking at Jake—’is to spread out and cover the meeting.’ ”

Vertesi pressed him. “Again, he didn’t mention the names of the people he was meeting?”

“Negative. But we stop in Niagara, on the Canadian side, in the underground parking lot of a hotel, and these guys come out and we load up with firepower and ammunition, so I know we’re not goin’ there to play checkers.”

“Do you recall which hotel?” MacNeice asked.

“I was too shit-scared to notice. But I wonder if that was where we lost Sarge and Luigi. We were supposed to be right on their tail, not an hour behind. I think that was when they got so far ahead of us, when we stopped to get the guns.”

“What happened at the quarry?”

“Nothin’—absolutely nothin’. We all pull up like the cavalry an’ there’s no one there. We roar around the site and there’s no sign of Luigi and Sarge.”

“And then?”

“Well, there’s a security shed with an old man who’s so scared, man, seein’ all these crazy fuckers … and two of our guys go in his shed for five minutes, maybe less. Then they come out wavin’ a piece of paper and off we go. I ask the guy I’m riding with—he was the brother of the one who split my nose—where we were going, and he says, ‘Shut your hole, Weasel.’ ”

“Can you describe the landscape?” MacNeice asked.

“Oh yeah, like we were heading up this ridge and up there it’s all flat country—farms an’ shit—and after a half-hour we’re parked in the trees near a huge farm with a shit-high fence …”

“You were on the escarpment,” MacNeice said softly.

“Sir?”

“It’s called the escarpment,” Vertesi explained. “What did you do while you were waiting near the farm?”

“Jake’s on his cellphone walking along the road and the guys are takin’ leaks and drinking shots of somethin’—they didn’t offer me none. Then Jake comes back and says, ‘We’re going in hot.’ And these guys are pulling Uzis and sawed-off shotguns outta their saddlebags and I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, man, I’m not into this … ’ ”

“Was the gate to the property closed or guarded?” MacNeice asked.

“Neither—and that scared the shit outta me too. I’d seen enough in Iraq to recognize a setup.”

“So you went into the property ready for a firefight,” Vertesi clarified.

“
I
wasn’t ready! Nobody even gave me a piece. I’m just meat on the back of a Harley.”

“And then?” MacNeice asked.

“Yeah, well, there’s like a house there and a couple of barns—new ones—and we get almost to the house and the shit hits the fan. All the fire’s comin’ from the doors and windows of one of the barns—but we were goin’ so fast we’re committed. Two guys went down right away; the rest of us blew past the house and the barns. There’s only like, eighteen bikes now and we’re spraying the side of the barn. Then my biker gets hit, so the bike is skidding around in a circle ’cause he’s cranked the accelerator—we both get thrown off. His neck’s opened up. I pressed hard on it, but I got no bandages—nothin’—and there’s still people shootin’.”

“So you’re down beside a dying man,” Vertesi said.

“He’s gone. I back away to the treeline and hide in the bush. The shooting goes on for about another five minutes and then it just stops. I can see three of our men down; a couple more are hit, one
holding his arm, the other his leg—but the shooting fuckin’ stops. Then it was so weird. A couple of our guys pick up the three bodies and they all ride out to the gate, where all of a sudden there’s an eighteen-wheeler waiting.”

“Jake’s cell call,” MacNeice said.

“Yeah. Six guys come out of the barn. They watch OSMC loading up bikes and bodies at the end of the road until they all drive off in the truck. I stay in the woods till dark. I can hear, like, a saw or somethin’ in the barn, but I’m so scared I sit there and wait it out.”

“What did you think was happening?” Vertesi asked.

“Shit, I don’t know. But it went on for a while. Then two guys come out and back up a van, and four others go into the other barn. That’s when I seen it. They drag out a big body—it was all wrapped in plastic, but it was Luigi. I recognized him ’cause he’d been wearing these freaky shorts and socks and a fuckin’ loud, bright shirt when we left Tonawanda, and you could see it through the plastic. They threw him in the van.” Wenzel took a swig of Coke. “Then, I don’t know, they bring out another body. But I’m like, eighty yards away—I can’t make out what’s wrong with it. It looks weird; through the plastic you could see it had no feet. But it was Sergeant Hughes, for sure—I could see his black jeans and T-shirt. They throw him in the van. Then a guy comes out with a garbage bag and walks around behind the house. The two guys drive away. The three left at the barn turn out the lights and lock the door, and they’re carrying weapons, two each at least. And then it’s quiet, like I’d dreamed the whole thing. I wait till they go in the house and then I skirt along the treeline till I find a culvert that goes under the road we came in on. I washed the blood off my hands in the water there.”

“Did Hughes have a weapon?” Vertesi asked.

“No, sir. He refused to carry a weapon.”

“How did you make it back to the States?” Vertesi asked.

“I hitched a ride with a family from Ohio. They were heading
home from up north. I told them I’d gotten lost on a bar tour with some vets and was stuck with no money, only my driver’s licence.”

“They took pity on you,” MacNeice suggested.

“Yessir. I lucked out, because their kid was a marine in Afghanistan. They told the border officer I was their son and I’d lost my passport when my canoe tipped on some lake.”

“How did you square your reappearance at Old Soldiers?” MacNeice asked.

“I told them the truth. And that I came back to tell them that Luigi and Sergeant Hughes were both dead and that Sarge had been cut up somehow.”

“Did they buy that?” Vertesi asked.

“More or less. They were always suspicious of me after that, but not worried, ’cause they thought I was a cripple or stupid and maybe that I’d be good for somethin’ someday. Plus, I paid my bar bills.”

“Why would you go back there, Wenzel?” MacNeice asked.

“For starters, I had nowhere else to go. But I was too scared not to go back—they woulda had me down as a snitch, and hunted me down.”

“OSMC lost three men that day?” Vertesi asked.

“Yessir. Two others injured, but not bad.”

“What did they do with the bodies?”

“Nobody ever told me and I didn’t ask. Either they got them over the border somehow or maybe they buried them at sea in the lake.”

“Any idea of how many casualties on the other side?” MacNeice asked.

“No. I know some were hit, but they had the cover. If they kept going they’d have cut our men to pieces. For some reason they stopped and let them clear the field.”

“Why would they do that?” Vertesi asked.

“Fucked if I know. Maybe not wanting a larger war … I remember
thinking it was like the Indian wars or something, you know, where there’s a moment when you collect your dead? The war’s still on but you clear the field of battle.”

“Did you get paid?” MacNeice asked.

“Fuck, no, man. I don’t know if anybody got paid.”

“And you didn’t think to call your sergeant’s wife, or the authorities …”

“No way—I’d be dead. I’m only talkin’ now because I know they were going to kill me anyways.”

“Were you part of the raid a few weeks ago?” Vertesi asked.

“No, man. I didn’t even know that was goin’ down. I mean, it got weird around the bar, but nobody said anything. Two guys never came back to the bar, is all I know.”

Looking at Penniman, MacNeice asked, “Have you told Mr. Hausman what happened to Sergeant Hughes?”

“I have, sir. He knows what I know.”

“If I knew what was going down in that barn, sir, I swear on my mother’s tears I woulda found a way to go in for him. I swear—”

“I believe you would, Wenzel. I believe you would.” MacNeice said.

“What happens to me now?”

“We’ll take you to Dundurn and put you up in a hotel under twenty-four-hour protection. The American authorities will be informed in the morning”—MacNeice looked at his watch—“about four and half hours from now. I expect the local forces will pay a visit to Old Soldiers. We’ll get someone in to look at your nose and chest and get you a clean set of clothes. Sergeant Penniman will go home in the morning and report for his deployment back to Afghanistan,” MacNeice said. “Right?”

Penniman, who was opening a tall tin of Guinness, didn’t look up.

A
ZIZ WAS WEARING
a pale-blue blouse with her black suit. Her shoes had heels, modest compared to most, but nonetheless they gave her an additional two inches. However, it was her eyes that were most transformed—they were highlighted with brown-black liner. She looked more dramatic than MacNeice had ever seen; the line extended a quarter-inch from the outside corner of each eye, curving slightly upwards—as erotic as it was exotic. Though he knew he shouldn’t be thinking that way.

As they walked across the parking lot to City Hall, Williams trailing them to cover their rear, MacNeice glanced so frequently at Aziz that she asked, “What, is it too much?” Concern flashed across her face.

“No, certainly not. I’m just adjusting.” He changed the subject and spoke about the order of the presentation. He would recap what they knew about William Dance, from the Yamaha to the Camry, from his work with BDI to his disappearance following the death of his parents. “I’ll review the attacks and the damage done
and finish by saying that we’ve launched a province-wide manhunt involving hundreds of police.”

“Not strictly true, is it, boss. I mean, I haven’t seen anyone,” Williams said from behind them.

“Electronically speaking, it’s true,” MacNeice said. “Then I’ll turn it over to you, Fiza. Have you considered what you’ll say?”

“You know I have.” Aziz smiled briefly and he saw the real genius of the makeup. Her lips and eyes smiled together, as if the curves in the corners of both were in harmony—though he didn’t think there was much to smile about.

Outside the rear entrance to City Hall were more mobile news units than he could remember ever seeing, and through the doors, more flat black power cords snaking to the media room than there was space for walking. Approaching the double doors, MacNeice could see that it was standing room only, and he steered Aziz to the anteroom from which the mayor made his entrance. Inside, the mayor’s communications officer, Julia Marchetti, nodded at MacNeice and Williams but studied Aziz curiously.

“Mayor Maybank,” Marchetti called, and the mayor, who’d been speaking to Wallace, spun around with his
Vote for Me
face on. His jaw dropped, but he recovered quickly. “My goodness, Detective Aziz, don’t you look lovely.”