The Filthy Few: A Steve Nastos Mystery (9 page)

“No. I never had a chance. I asked her about detox and she freaked. She grabbed her purse and headed out the door. She was going to hook for as much money as she could get and take a bus as far away as she could get, then do it again town to town. I chased her down the hall, we were shouting at each other. She was so scared.”

Jacques asked, “Is that when you got the scratches on your arms?”

Nastos looked down and saw that Karen had a red gouge along her left forearm. There were scrapes on her other wrist. He didn't know why he didn't notice it before, other than that he had been preoccupied with her emotional state and trying not to get dragged too far in. When a cop sees arm injuries he thinks defensive wounds.

“Yeah,” she said. “That was at the elevator. I tried to pull her out as the doors closed. It was the last time I ever saw her. She was so mad at me, I had such a bad feeling, but it's like she had Oppositional Defiant Disorder. You couldn't reason with her and you couldn't force her to do anything, even if it was for her own good.”

Nastos reached out to Karen. “Can I see your cellphone?”

She brought it out of her purse. “Why?”

Nastos took out the battery and
SIM
card. “The phone stays here in a garbage can. You don't reinstall the
SIM
card until these guys are in police custody. There's an apartment over Carscadden's office. If that's not good enough you can get a hotel. If it wasn't for Josie you could stay with me.”

She nodded. “No need to explain, I understand.” She turned to Carscadden. “I'll take the apartment, if that's okay?”

Jacques straightened up from his position of leaning on the car. “Well, I'm going to get back into work. I've already asked my boss to give me the Falconer case. It might come off as a little suspicious that I asked for a jumper, but when it comes down to it, they have to assign it to someone so it may as well be the idiot who volunteered. I'll keep you guys up to speed. Doesn't look like the bus camera caught anything. There's no traffic cameras along there and like I said the witnesses have spread to the four winds. If you want to kill someone, broad daylight isn't the worst option in Toronto.”

Nastos and Carscadden shook hands with Jacques and left with Karen. She opened her purse and searched for something. She was beginning to get frantic when she opened a side pouch and exhaled long and hard.

Carscadden asked, “What is it?”

She leaned forward from the back seat. “Everything I have on Falconer, the video interviews, the stories I've started developing, I have most of it here. The rest I already uploaded to a secure server and the password is in a text file in the main folder.”

Nastos said, “You're thinking of work? At a time like this?”

“You're one to talk. And if I'm going to be holed up in an apartment for god knows how long at least I can get the story together. All I need is to get to a store to buy a new laptop. Ann tossed mine over the balcony.”

The drive to the office was silent. Carscadden and Nastos dropped Karen off outside, watching as she safely walked up the steps and disappeared through the door. Nastos said, “Too bad she's crazy and wanted by two dangerous murderers.”

Carscadden offered a quiet wolf whistle. They drove in silence for most of the drive up to Frankie's. Nastos tried to decipher what it was about the case that had become so maddening to him, what felt like a thorn gouging into him.

He tried to talk it out with Carscadden the way he would have with Madeleine or Dr. Mills. “I wanted to be a cop since as far back as I can remember.”

“Oh, yeah?” Carscadden looked over.

“That people who wore the same badge as me could be doing these awful things, killing innocent people, for what, money? Something as petty as money?”

“You think it's money?” Carscadden asked.

“What else can gangsters offer? After the settlement I have all the money I could ever want. And I'd give it back in a second if I could have Maddy here with me. She was totally innocent. Now we have cops killing innocent people, the most vulnerable people in our society? Walker and Falconer weren't worthless throwaways.”

“No one said they were.”

“Just because no one loved them doesn't make them worthless.”

Carscadden seemed confused. “No one said it
did
make them worthless.” His voice trailed off. “Why, is that how you feel? With Maddy gone? Like no one loves you, so you're worthless.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Hey, I know it's not what you meant to say, but it
is
what you said.”

11

Nastos and Carscadden sat in the idling restaurant delivery van that Viktor had donated. Viktor wasn't a smoker but whoever usually drove this truck was. There were nicotine stains on the roof, a burn hole in the sun visor. The white padding behind the vinyl was beginning to darken from exposure to the elements. They were pulled over to the side of the road at Bloor Street near Dufferin in Bloordale Village. The last time Nastos had been in this part of town was for a street-level robbery where the suspect made off with a man's briefcase and wallet. For some reason the suspect returned specifically to blow the victim's face off with a shotgun. It was never solved. Since then the area was desperately trying to rebrand itself as an up-and-coming arts community. Most of the native languages, Italian, Portuguese, Ethiopian and Hindi, had now disappeared, and the hole-in-the-wall authentic restaurants were being replaced by Subways, Tim Hortons and Popeyes franchises.

There was one holdout against the community's modernization, the Big Red Tattoo Machine. Carscadden and Nastos had watched Radix and Morrison casing the place for two hours. Carscadden passed time flipping through the photographs that they had from Jacques. “So Morrison is the taller one. He looks younger. Where'd you put the other pages?”

Nastos torqued around to the back seat and handed them over. He noted a black pouch on the floor behind the passenger seat. “I'd like to pull out the binos to see what they're waiting for but don't want to take the chance that they'd catch the glint.”

Carscadden grunted a response as he read the Morrison and Radix bios. He put the pages aside and brought out his BlackBerry. After a few minutes of Googling he turned to Nastos. “I'm getting a sandwich from the back, want one?”

“I can't believe you.”

“What?”

Nastos shook his head. “You're missing the whole point of stakeouts. You're not supposed to pack a lunch. You're supposed to have to live on the fly. Duck into restaurants to take a leak, scarf down street meat while driving the wrong way through traffic. It's supposed to be about the stories from the stakeout, not the stakeout itself. What kind of story will this be one day if all we do is eat gourmet sandwiches and sit in an air-conditioned truck with plenty of legroom? You're depriving yourself of the very excitement you always complain about missing.”

Carscadden paused for a moment considering what Nastos had said. “Hopkins used a sweet heat, Dijon mustard on rye bread she bought from the Portuguese bakery. And it's real turkey, not the processed stuff.”

Nastos winced. “Better get me one too.”

Carscadden slipped between the seats into the cargo area. Back there they had overalls, reflective safety vests and traffic cones, supplies for any contingency. Carscadden came back to the cab, bringing with him a hard plastic lunch bucket and two Coke Zeros dripping with water from the back cooler. “If we're here any longer we should put out the traffic cones.”

“That works both ways. If we had another team I'd be all for it, then when the rabbit car takes off we can just stay here and they can run the tail. If they see us everywhere else they go today they are going to know that they have attracted heat.”

“They don't
seem
heat conscious”

Nastos considered it. “No, they seem nervous, like they know they are being followed but doing it anyways, as crazy as that sounds.”

Carscadden cracked open the lunch box and doled out the sandwiches. “So when cops do surveillance —”

“We call it spin.”

“Right, spin. Do they use cellphones? Like if they were worried about being followed, what would they do?”

“Like counter-surveillance? What do the professional criminals do? This smells so good.” Nastos opened the wrapper, breathed in the Dijon mustard and took a big bite. He hadn't been so hungry until Carscadden recited the ingredients.

Carscadden choked down a big bite. “Yeah.” He asked, “What would high-end drug dealers or organized crime guys do to thwart a surveillance team?”

Nastos didn't have to think to answer. “First they have scanners hidden in their dashboards, hooked up to the car radio to listen to what's going on out there. Spin teams use either Pig Latin or a deep level of jargon.”

“Pig Latin?”

“Yeah, sounds like gibberish, especially when you use it on the jargon codes, although some targets actually hear it so much they decipher it. The rabbits get familiar with even just our voices. Pretty soon they begin to wonder why a Pig Latin speaking construction crew with one-mile-range radios seems to always be driving within range of their car. Doesn't take a genius for them to figure out that they have heat. Most targets do a lot of U-turns, wrong-way streets, stuff like that. They wait on left-turn lights and don't go until the last minute. Chase cars have to run reds to follow, so if these guys are checking their mirrors and keep seeing guys driving like freaks behind them, they kinda notice. Once I was on a team following two bikers. At every red light the passenger would get out with a video camera and record all of the cars stopped in traffic behind them. They'd obviously check the tapes later and look for repetitive faces. Professional criminals are paranoid narcissists so they can be impressively self-preserving.”

Nastos checked the time on the truck's dash. He wondered how much longer they would have to sit there. He cracked open the tab on his Coke and it foamed up over the brim. He had to slurp the top to prevent it from spilling into the cup well.

They ate in silence other than Nastos slurping from his pop can. Carscadden asked, “If this is a Hells Angels tattoo parlour, why don't the cops just get a bylaw
to
shut it down?”

Nastos took a large bite. “Too busy. They
might
have it wired, who knows.”

“You don't think our guys are —”

“No. These guys have no idea what they're doing. They stand out. If they're doing this it's on their own time. Whatever the hell it is they're actually doing.”

Carscadden leaned into the back to put down the lunch box then took a long slug of his drink. “In the bios these guys only have a couple years on.”

“Yeah. I'd love to know what the hell is going on in their minds.” Nastos raised a finger. “Check that out, it looks like they're arguing.”

Carscadden leaned forward, squinting. “How long do these morons think they can keep their business under wrap?”

Nastos turned the radio on, listened to about a second of music then turned it back off. “Everyone has cell cameras with
HD
video. The internet can track the phones, tell you who owns them and where they are. Facebook has
GPS
feeds. The days of secrets are over.”

Carscadden glanced at him then turned away. The sound of a siren became louder, eventually an ambulance drove by, the medic in the passenger seat was surfing the net on his phone, his foot up on the dashboard. “Not all of the secrets are over. You're still holding back a few whoppers.”

Nastos perked up. “Like what?”

“You know perfectly well like what, Nastos. You've still never told me where you were the night at Cherry Beach when the dentist had his brains smashed in. I guess you forgot your alibi on the most important night of your life?”

Nastos leaned his head back, looking up at the nicotine stains.

“Earth to Nastos, where the hell were you?”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Yeah, well, unless you responded via brain waves, you didn't
answer
the first time. Come on. Spit it out. If you had given me an alibi, the whole trial could have —”

“Karen. I was with Karen.”

Carscadden stared back, his mouth open. He remained silent.

Nastos shrugged, “Hey, it was
my
fault, not hers.” He paused, picking up his can of pop. It was still sweating with condensation. “It wasn't exactly the kind of thing I could go public with. I kept my mouth shut and you pulled me out of the fire anyways. Just like you did with Viktor Kalmakov, the Russian philanthropist and mass-murdering gangster.”

“Shouldn't say that about a guy nice enough to lend us his van.” Carscadden shrugged. “I was lucky with Viktor.”

“It would make a hell of a read.”

“Yeah. I'll devote an entire chapter to him when I write my memoirs.”

Nastos remembered back to the first time he met Viktor, in Carscadden's office shortly after he had been released on bail. He seemed humble and caring, nothing like the man portrayed in the news as a multiple gangland killer. “You know I always wondered what the truth is about Viktor. Did he do half the stuff they said in the news? How did he make all of his money?”

“Confidentially, I can't tell you much. What I can't say is whether he committed crimes in Canada, but in his own country he's known as a Robin Hood. He took on and, in some cases, took down some bad dudes. He dispersed the money to the people and eventually had to take off. He came to Canada, became a success and has been sending money home ever since. He was tracked down, and he took care of it. That's all I can say.”

Despite knowing Viktor for almost three years, Nastos found him a mystery. Nastos had no reason to disbelieve Carscadden but still could not trust Viktor. He balled up the cellophane wrap from his sandwich and tossed it in Carscadden's lunch bucket. He felt a nudge on his shoulder and followed Carscadden's extended finger. It pointed to the cops in their pickup truck. “Check out our heroes.”

Morrison was pulling a ski mask over his face. Radix, in the driver's seat, started the truck.

Nastos shook his head. “This is
not
happening right now.”

“It's like they want to get caught.”

Nastos pulled out his binos and zoomed in on the truck. “The driver has a police radio with him. He knows the cops aren't nearby. That's what they've been waiting for.” He checked his watch. “The afternoon shift hasn't started yet and the day-shift guys could all be tied up with radio calls.” Nastos glanced sideways at Carscadden. “What do you say you get the camera out?”

Carscadden rummaged in the back of the van, turning back as he took the camera from the pouch.

They watched as Morrison hit the gas aggressively, screeching to a halt in front of the tattoo parlour. Radix bolted from the passenger side and raced for the business brandishing a shotgun. He kicked the door open and charged in. Nastos checked his watch. He timed it that Radix was in the shop for less than two minutes. When Radix came out he had a bag in one hand, the shotgun in the other. Morrison kicked open the passenger-side door, Radix banged into it and scrambled inside. Then they peeled away, fishtailing around the corner.

Nastos and Carscadden exchanged shocked glances then turned back to the now-vacant parking place.

Nastos asked, “I don't suppose you got much of that?”

“Nope. They moved pretty fast. I should have put it on video. I took a few shots with my cellphone. I think it worked better.”

Nastos pointed to a black
SUV
parked ahead of them on the same side of the street. “Did you see anyone get in or out of there in the last half hour?”

“No. It's right in my line of fire here. I would have noticed.” Carscadden scrolled back a few photos. “It's in the background of a few of the pictures here. I think I got the plate.”

The windows were tinted but Nastos caught a glimpse into the front passenger seat as the
SUV
pulled away and made a right turn. Nastos did a quick check for traffic then sped out onto the road to follow. He took the corner slowly then floored the engine. The black
SUV
had gone straight and was still in front of them. “Did you see a cellphone in there?”

“Yeah.” He picked up his phone and scrolled through its pictures. He held the phone over to Nastos. “Check that out. I got the plate with my phone too.”

Nastos took the phone into his hands and flipped through a few pictures. “We'll run the plate. It's a rental, I can tell you that right now.”

“Run the plate through Jacques?”

“It would be faster but no. If it turns out to belong to a police surveillance team he wouldn't be able to explain why he checked the plate. Call Hopkins and get her to do it through the Ministry on our
PI
licence.” Nastos checked the time. “We might not get the reply today.”

“And how do you know that it's a rental car? There's no sticker, no marking.”

Nastos knew from various drug interdiction courses that he had taken. “It's a new vehicle, within this year, with no dealership decals on the back, nor any licence plate borders from where it was bought. No modifications like tint. It's a rental or a company fleet vehicle.”

Carscadden shrugged. “I'll send Hopkins a text. If she faxes it over we might get lucky.”

Nastos kept his eyes on the
SUV
ahead of them. “I wonder if it's a police spin team following our guys. Let's see where this takes us.”

They maintained some space, allowing three random cars between them and the
SUV
. South on Dufferin to King Street, to Bathurst to Lakeshore Boulevard, traffic was active with cars jostling around in a way that gave good cover. Nastos fell back a few lengths then drew closer at times, riding out the ebbs and flows of traffic.

When it was obvious that the
SUV
was going to
BMO
Field, Nastos drove north on Nunavut toward the Ricoh Coliseum, parked and took out the binoculars. He said to Carscadden, “Professional Standards wouldn't drive here. They'd go right to work and show the video to their bosses. They'd all high five then start planning their promotional parties.”

Carscadden tried peering over Nastos. “See anything?”

“Yeah, I do. Morrison is walking into a bathroom along the outside of the building. He's carrying the bag with him.”