The Ambitious City (44 page)

The pain in his leg was starting to bother him. He had a strange feeling that the wound was leaking blood, but when he checked, the bandage was holding. He distracted himself by thinking about Swetsky’s proposition concerning the money from the oil barrel. MacNeice suspected that military death benefits would serve only to keep Sue-Ellen Hughes comfortably poor. Two hundred thousand would give her the breathing room she needed to create a new life for her family.

But it troubled him. If it was the right thing to do, then why do it on the sly? Then it hit him—the money was dirty, but the gift of
it didn’t have to be. He smiled, poured himself another grappa and grabbed his cellphone off the table.

“Bob, it’s Mac.”

“Christ, it’s late!”

“I know.”

“Did you watch the press conference?”

“No. Why?”

“Wallace lavished praise on you and your team, SWAT team too. He’s turning into your biggest fan … Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I am. Are you?”

“You mean with the Mancinis?”

“To begin with.”

“I got a call. They’re very grateful to you and wanted me to tell you. Apparently Roberto Mancini even acknowledged you and Aziz, though maybe to save face somehow—and that’s not going to happen.”

“He and Pat had no idea of the consequences.”

“Good thing you were able to get that girl and her kids out of there tonight …” He could hear the mayor yawning.

“It was lucky.”

“So what the hell are you calling about, Mac?”

“Sorry, were you in bed already?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t matter now … What’s going on?”

“We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Fuck off and tell me! Otherwise I’ll be awake all night wondering what’s going through your mind now.”

“Swetsky discovered over eight hundred thousand dollars in an oil drum out at the barn in Cayuga. It was the stash Frédéric Paradis came back for.”

“A lotta money … So?”

“You remember Sergeant Hughes’s wife, Sue-Ellen.”

“Of course.”

“Well, we’ve just released the body of her husband—with the hands and feet—to officials from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. They’ll give her Gary’s death benefits, but for the past two years she’s been living on handouts from her parents and whatever she could scrape together from welfare for her and the kids.”

“What’s your point?”

“No one but you, me and Swetsky know what was in that oil drum. Take two hundred of the eight hundred and give it to her. The rest can go into the city’s budget, or to the
Hamilton-Scourge
Project—I don’t care.”

At least half a minute passed before the mayor responded. “How could we even do that?”

“Take out the two hundred, turn it into U.S. currency and give it to her when we return her husband’s wedding ring—it was still on his finger when his hands were discovered buried in the garden—”

“For chrissakes, stop with the gore! You’ll give me nightmares.”

“I want you to say yes. And we won’t do it unless you do.”

“Can I decide tomorrow?”

“No, we’re into it now—decide now. Make this woman’s life easier, Bob. You’ll never be able to tell anyone but you’ll know we did the right thing.”

“You’ve been drinking that grappa shit again.”

“I have, yes, but my mind is clear … I’m waiting for you.”

“You’re nuts, you know that! Okay, skim off two hundred—I’ll back you. Now can I get some sleep?”

“And Bob—nightmares aren’t so bad. I have them all the time.”

“Goodnight, Mac. Thanks for what you did out there, and I’ll see you at the ribbon-cutting down at the dock. It’s gonna be a really big deal.” He hung up without waiting for a response.

MacNeice sat looking out the window at the twinkling lights of Secord. Suddenly two small, round silvery mirrors turned his way from a branch midway up the closest maple tree. MacNeice gasped.

Like that, the disks disappeared, then reappeared again. Standing up, he limped over to the window in time to see a barn owl glide away through the trees. He imagined he could hear its wings as it set off—
va-whumph, va-whumph, va-whumph
—but he knew its true power was that it hunted silently. He kept watching till it was swallowed by the night. More wing than bird—he wished it had stayed. The grappa had helped with the pain, but MacNeice’s leg was still throbbing.

He started humming an old song, letting his breath form a fog circle on the window. When he came to the chorus, he stopped humming and spoke the lyrics out loud: “What a long, strange trip it’s been …” Tears filled his eyes and spilled down his cheeks as he turned away from the window. He coughed to clear his head, finished the grappa and went to bed.

Morning came too early. Wallace was the first to call, letting MacNeice know that Aziz was going to be on
Jane in the Afternoon
, a local interview program broadcast live to network television and beamed across the country. Its success rested on the shoulders of Jane Tierney, a smart, attractive, engaging and insightful former foreign correspondent. Jane had been slated to host the program Aziz had missed because of the shootout in Cayuga. This would be a one-on-one along the lines of the cancelled “Psycho” segment.

Stalling as he tried to wake up, MacNeice asked if the events in Aldershot would override William Dance as a story. Wallace said no, though apparently Jane’s producers had told him they were going to approach Melanie Butter for a feature interview. “This is exactly what the producer said,” Wallace recounted. “ ‘Speaking for our audience, the bikers got what they deserved, but the hairdresser and her kids—now there’s a story.’ ”

“I’ll call Aziz.”

—

MacNeice went over to the whiteboard to stare at the ugly reality of one case and the sad remains of the other. Looking over at Aziz, he asked, “Are you ready for today?”

“I think so. I’ve studied all my notes several times.”

“Where are Vertesi and Williams?” he asked.

“Michael brought me in this morning, then he went over to Montile’s to retrieve the Vanucci papers from the BMW. They’ll be here shortly.”

Feeling weary from the night before and in constant pain from his leg, MacNeice went into the servery to make coffee for himself and Aziz. He was resisting the task of writing up the events in Aldershot. The actions and images weren’t likely to fade anytime soon, and he was reluctant to reinforce them in his mind with words.

MacNeice sat down with the espresso and studied the printout of Dance smiling up at the security camera. He wondered why he had strayed from his schedule, but was grateful he had. He hoped that the young man was hunkered down because he knew every cruiser in the city had onboard photographs of him, the motorcycle and his mother’s Camry. Though the three women his team had identified as potential targets were still under protection, it didn’t mean they were on Dance’s list, or that his list didn’t include more. And then there was Aziz.

She was at her desk, transcribing speaking points for her interview. He looked at his watch. “In approximately two hours,” he said, “you’re going to be on national television. Is there anything you need help with?”

“I’m just trying to clear my head of last night and yesterday afternoon with Roberto Mancini … I’m okay. I think I’ll just reiterate what I believe to be the case—that William is a desperately sick individual who should surrender immediately.” She put her pen
down and turned to him. “Why? Do you have anything you want me to say?”

“Just be careful, Fiza.”

“I’ll be fine, Mac, but thanks.” She smiled and went back to her notes.

Vertesi and Williams wandered in together carrying the boxes from Buffalo. Williams sat down theatrically, flinging his arms out in both directions. Vertesi went to make himself a coffee. When MacNeice announced Aziz’s upcoming live interview with Jane Tierney, Vertesi said, “Yeah, tell me about it. In the span of half an hour I heard about it three times on the radio, and it was on television this morning, following the news about last night.”

“Network’s driving traffic to it,” Williams said. “They had a shot of Fiz from the first press conference with the headline—are you ready?—’Hunting a Serial Killer: An Exclusive Interview with Dr. Fiza Aziz, Criminologist and Detective.’ ” Williams emptied his box onto the desk, put it in the corridor and returned to empty the second one. “How are we playing it today, boss?”

“You and I will escort Fiza to and from the interview. Michael, I want you to return the sergeant’s wedding ring to Sue-Ellen and let her know that the Veterans Affairs agents collected his body for burial in the States.”

“Okay. That it?”

“No. You’ll take two hundred thousand dollars to a currency exchange in Niagara and have it wired to her account. You’ll need to call her to get her account information.”

“Whoa! Did we do a collection?” Vertesi asked.

“In a manner of speaking—it’s a gift from Frédéric Paradis. When Swetsky gets in, he’ll tell you where to get it converted.”

“This on the up and up?” Williams asked.

“Approved by the mayor himself.”

“What do I tell her?”

“Insurance was taken out on Gary for doing that job. We were able to collect it for his beneficiaries. However, the payment needs to remain confidential and she should not speak about it to anyone.”

“No problem. Whose idea was it?”

“Swets.”

“W
HAT ARE THE
plastic sleeves for?”

“Authenticity. What do you think of my design skills—convincing?” He held up a colour output:
KT COURIERS
, in huge red letters with a black drop shadow above a bogus phone number.

“Cool, but what for?”

“See this heavy-duty double-sided tape? Well, one goes on each side of the bike’s gas tank and the other on my backpack. We’re in the courier business. Nobody ever checks the names, and we’re as common as dogshit.”

“KT—Knights Templar—and the Third Reich colours …”

“Nice you noticed. Nobody will get that either.”

When he was alone, Billie almost never smiled, but the thought of people missing the significance of “KT” and the colours made him grin. “Most people miss most things—that’s our greatest advantage.”

“Dude, the Knights Templar logo was two guys on a horse—but
I guess that looks a bit gay.”

“Yeah, it worked a thousand years ago, but now it would just make people laugh.” He took off the taped-together sunglasses and beat-up Yankees cap.

“I don’t know … MacNeice is a piece of work. I mean, look at that blowout last night—he’s pretty sharp. You really think you can beat him?”

“He looked smart last night, sure. But even a broken clock gets the time right twice a day. So, yeah, I can beat him.”

“Where were you?”

“You mean, when I went out dressed like a poor person? I took a bus ride.”

“No shit. Where’d you go?”

“Scouting. The whole city’s buzzing about the blown-up bikers, and MacNeice and his detectives are getting all the praise. It couldn’t be better even if I had planned it.”

“Better how?”

“They’re all distracted, worn out after the big game! And our little brown Muslim is going on television this afternoon. She’ll be a superstar after this. It’ll be really tragic—cut down, ‘gory in her glory.’ ”

“What are those drawings you left on the table?”

“The floor plans for division headquarters. Amazing what you can find on the Internet if you know where to look.”

Billie picked up a small blue metal cylinder the size of a mouse—a mouse with two wire tails, one white, the other red. “Surprised you haven’t asked me about this.”

“You had three of them yesterday …”

“True. But I’ve already deployed two of them.”

“Where?”

“Oh, that’s a surprise.”

“What about this one?”

“Not going to need it. We’ll leave it here—a keepsake.” He tossed it onto the table next to the silver helmet. Its reimagined swastika had been covered by a two-inch square of paper sporting the red and black KT.

“And this?”

“That’s part of the surprise. The red wire receiveth and the white taketh away. And this transponder”—Billie picked up the silver remote control—“this is their god.” He put it in his pocket and finished installing the black tank on the chassis of the Yamaha. When he was done, he stood back to admire the look of it.

“It’s beautiful, in an ugly kinda way.”

“You sort of read my mind. It’s ugly, in a beautiful kind of way.”

“They’re not going to let Aziz just go walking around the city like she’s a tourist.”

“I know, I’m counting on that. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so much fun.” He tapped his pocket theatrically.

Across the street from the two-storey house was another house identical in every way, except for the old man sitting on the concrete porch. As always, he braced himself when he heard the Jap motorcycle crackle to life. He knew it would be only a few seconds before the guy tore out of the narrow laneway and down the street to the intersection a hundred yards away. From there he would hear the bike all the way to the bridge that crossed into Dundurn, six blocks away. Each time the guy left he thought about calling the city to complain about noise pollution—
Can’t I have some peace and quiet, for chrissakes!
He never called, but after almost five decades of shift work on the steel company’s pickling line, all he wanted was his peace and quiet; he was owed at least that. He didn’t own a television, a radio or a computer. He didn’t read the
Standard
or the
Globe
—he didn’t want to know about the state of the economy or the war in Afghanistan. He subscribed to
Hockey News
and
Reader’s Digest
, which gave him all the excitement he needed.

Maybe, he told himself, as the engine crackled menacingly in the laneway, it was because he lived in a suburban dead end of four identical wartime houses and they created what was referred to as a canyon effect when it came to noise. Two were owned by retired factory workers like himself, forgotten but for mail and bills and garbage. His neighbours, however, never spent time in town during the summer, preferring the cool breezes of lake this or lake that, so the newcomer wasn’t a problem for them. Maybe, he thought, Harold Crescent’s being anchored to the main road by two vacant one-storey industrial units made it a sound canyon for the motorcycle. As his mind drifted to wondering who the hell Harold was, it dawned on him that, with his neighbours up north and both corner buildings sporting
FOR LEASE OR SALE
signs out front, he was alone on the block with this motorcycle man. While he described himself with pride as a hermit, his heart quickened and he felt anxious about his solitude for the first time.