Tumblin' Dice (20 page)

More kids from the high school — black, brown, Asian, white, everybody a visible minority in this neighbourhood — spilled out across the street, walking into traffic like it wasn't even there.

McKeon looked at Janielle and said, “Did Amaal spend Wednesday night at your house?”

Yeah.

Price was staying out of it, watching the two women — the woman and the girl. He and McKeon had gone over it, after the woman they spoke to at Children's Aid gave them the background on Amaal Khan, how she'd been running away for months, fighting with her father, staying at friends' for days at a time, dropping out of school then going back, going back home. The usual. Then the guidance counsellor at the school told them that this Janielle was probably the closest friend Amaal had, and then Price and McKeon had to figure out if it was better to let Price talk to her, using the black thing they had in common or let McKeon take the lead, using the female thing.

The minute they saw Janielle coming down the hall in a group of about five girls they didn't even have to say anything and McKeon took the lead.

Now McKeon was saying, “When was the last time you saw Amaal?” and Janielle was smoking and shrugging and looking anywhere but at McKeon.

“Was it Thursday morning? Did she go back home?”

“She didn't go — he took her home.”

“Her father?”

Janielle looked at McKeon and said, “Her brother?” Everything a question from these kids.

McKeon said, “What's his name?” sounding like she knew it but just forgot it for a second, and Janielle shrugged and said, “Jamal?”

“So,” McKeon said, “Jamal came to your house and got her?”

Janielle shook her head no, and said, “He was waiting right there,” she pointed just past the bus stop, the driveway into the school parking lot. “Said he wanted to talk to her. I told her not to go.”

McKeon glanced at Price and he nodded.

“So,” McKeon said to Janielle, “her brother came here and took her back to her house?”

“He told her she could pick up some clothes.”

“Did this kind of thing happen before?”

Price watched this Janielle think about it, and he was pretty sure he saw red rings around her eyes like she'd been crying, and he figured that made sense, her friend killed, she'd probably been crying for days but she was holding it together pretty good now, trying so hard to be tough.

She said, “Amaal, back in grade seven, she started coming to my house on her way to school and changing — she borrowed my jeans.” She looked at McKeon and said, “They almost fit her then,” Janielle now about a foot taller than Amaal had been. “She'd change again on the way home, put her own clothes back on, put the headscarf back on, go home. But sometimes her brother saw her. He didn't go to our school, but sometimes he saw her, and they'd fight.”

“So this went back a couple of years?”

“Yeah.”

“And did he ever come and pick her up before, take her home to pick up clothes?”

“I never saw that. Sometimes Amaal stayed at . . .” She paused, looking at McKeon, and stopped before giving anyone else's name, and then said, “Other places.”

McKeon said, “We might need to talk to some of them,” and Janielle said, “I don't know who,” and McKeon kind of waved that off, something she could come back to later, and said, “Okay, thanks. Good talking to you.” Janielle looked at McKeon and shrugged. “Am I dismissed?” Price thinking for all her tough bitch act she was still a kid dealing with teachers and guidance counsellors and now cops — always someone she had to ask permission from.

McKeon asked for her address and phone number and Janielle told her and that was it, and she started to walk away.

But then she stopped and looked back, and McKeon said, “Yeah?”

Janielle hesitated, didn't want to come right out and say it but then she shrugged again and said, “You should try shopping at Winners, Value Village, like that? And then just pick up a couple of really hot accessories, spend the money there, make the whole thing look good. You could pull it off.”

McKeon said thanks, and Price was thinking it sounded sincere, and he watched Janielle smile a little and go back to her friends.

Walking to the car McKeon said, “We better pick up the brother soon, before he gets on a plane,” and Price said, “You think he's going anywhere?”

McKeon said, yeah, why would he? “He doesn't think he did anything wrong.”

They got in the car and Price started it, waited a second before putting it in gear, looking at McKeon looking at all the kids still spilling out of the school.

Ritchie said, “Dale, man, where the hell have you been all week?” and Dale said, “Around.”

Jackie said, “There are a couple of cool museums in town, and we stayed at a great B&B.”

Ritchie said, “They gave us each our own room,” and Jackie said, “Yeah, what's up with that?” and Ritchie didn't say anything but he was thinking, yeah, just another on the long list of fucked up things about this tour.

Then Jackie said, “How's it going?” and Ritchie said, “Oh you know, the usual, Cliff's banging the housewives, Barry looks like he's going to kill someone, and Frank Kloss is here getting his dirty hands on all the money.”

Dale said, “Did Barry kill that guy in the parking lot?” and Ritchie said no. Dale said, “You sure?” and Ritchie said, yeah, “I saw it happen — the guy with the gun wasn't as tall as Barry,” and it was only then that Ritchie really started to see what he was in the middle of, what was going on all around him, and he looked at Dale, sitting down behind his drums, and he thought, what the fuck?

Sound check, and of course, it was just Ritchie and Dale. And Jackie.

And some kid, maybe twenty-one, sitting behind the mixing board looking surprised anyone had shown up. He told Ritchie that Cheap Trick were playing a private gig, some corporate party in Waterloo and they'd show up ten minutes before they went on — they'd emailed him the specs.

Dale said, “Like Chuck Berry,” and Ritchie said, “Hey, that was something.”

The kid said, what?, so Ritchie told him how when they were, “just kids,” just starting out, not knowing a damned thing, “about your age,” they'd opened for Chuck Berry.

The kid said, “He's the duck walk guy, right?” and Dale laughed and looked at Ritchie, who was shaking his head and saying, “Yeah, the duck walk guy.”

Ritchie had strapped on his guitar and he played a Chuck Berry opening, “Johnny B. Goode,” so the kid would know it, and he did. Then Ritchie said, “We got booked to open for him in Belleville, by the air force base, but when we show up the promoter says we also have to be his backup band.”

Behind the drums Dale said, “We were thrilled.”

“Onstage with Chuck Berry, come on,” Ritchie said. “So we ask the guy when do we rehearse?”

And then Dale said, “And the guy says, ‘You don't rehearse, you just play old Chuck Berry songs.' It was hilarious.”

The kid didn't get it.

Ritchie said, “So after we play our set, and we left out ‘No Particular Place to Go,' and the Hendrix-style solo,” and he wailed a little of that, “and then we wait around for a while, and finally Chuck shows up with his guitar, nobody else, no entourage, nothing. He doesn't say a word and walks out on the stage. We rush out after him and he just starts playing — we have to figure out what song he's playing and jump in whenever we can.”

“I think Barry just played the same bass line for all of them.”

The kid said, “I think Chuck Berry played here last year. I forget who opened for him.”

“Well,” Dale said, “I hope it was some kids getting the thrill of their lives,” and Jackie said, “You think kids still play Chuck Berry?”

Ritchie said, “You can't play guitar unless you can play Chuck Berry,” but then he wondered if that was still true, if kids still started out with “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Maybelline,” or if things'd changed.

They ran through the sound check quick, Ritchie playing Barry's bass and using all the mikes to set levels. The kid was good and he was gone before the echo of Ritchie's wah-wah faded.

Then Ritchie stood on the stage, looking out at the empty auditorium, a decent-looking room, really, with better sound than ninety percent of the places they'd played back in the heyday of the High, and he strummed and picked out a riff and strummed and it was working pretty well. He went through it again and he was liking it.

When he stopped Jackie said, “Wow, Ritchie, you writing a new song?”

He hadn't even realized she was still there, sitting in the front row looking up at him, and he was going to make a smartass remark, a Ritchie comeback, but then he said, “How do you know it's new?”

Jackie looked at him and said, “I know your songs, Ritchie — all of them.”

Ritchie strummed some more, picking out the chords, and then he said, “Yeah, it's new. I haven't written anything in a while.”

“It's good.”

Ritchie laughed and said, “It's Keith Richards from
Sticky Fingers
.”

“My sister had the album with the real zipper on it, had to drive to Buffalo to get that.”

Ritchie strummed.

Jackie said, “That's not from
Sticky Fingers
,” and Ritchie said, “Inspired by Keith — it's the rhythm, the kind of acoustic sound and his weird tuning. Don't get him started, he'll talk your ear off.”

“Addictive personality.”

Ritchie said, yeah, “That's what this is about, I think.” He played some more and looked around and said, “Where's Dale?”

Jackie shrugged and said, “Bathroom. He's got prostate issues.”

Ritchie laughed and hammered a couple of chords and said, “Well, he's the right age,” and Jackie said, “So are you.”

“Can he make it through a whole set?”

“There won't be any drum solos.”

“That's too bad.”

Jackie said, “He'll be fine,” and Ritchie said, oh yeah, course, I didn't mean anything, and Jackie said, that's okay, and then she said, “What's the song called?”

“I don't know yet. I'm having trouble with the words — I've got a few lines but that's all.”

“Maybe that's all you need.”

Ritchie said, “Yeah, sure, just the same couple of lines over and over.”

Jackie said, “It's what happens when guys get older.”

“They repeat themselves?”

“Well, yeah, but that's not what I meant.”

Ritchie looked at Jackie, thinking this right now and the two minutes they talked on the bus when she told him Angie was going to be here was probably the most they'd talked to each other in . . . well, ever, and he was thinking maybe when she wasn't pissed off there was more to Jackie, so he said, “What do you mean?”

“I just mean, well, when guys start writing songs they write a lot of words. They just pack them in, cram the whole song — look at Dylan.”

“Yeah, but he was the voice of his generation — he had a lot to say.”

Jackie ignored that and said, “And Springsteen, those first couple of albums, that
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
is practically a book.”

Ritchie said yeah.

“And Bowie.” Jackie smiled up at Ritchie and put her hand over her heart, and Ritchie remembered how Bowie was always Jackie's favourite, and she said, “That wild-eyed boy from Freecloud sure could go on and on, but later it was just, let's dance.”

Ritchie said, yeah, “Now that you mention it.”

“It's the same with a lot of songwriters.”

“Well,” Ritchie said, “it's probably just growing up, you know? When they started out they were kids — they were probably trying to convince themselves as much as they were singing to the audience.”

He strummed a little more and played the riff and strummed. It was sounding a little “Wild Horses” but he liked it.

Then he said, “I guess when you get older you don't need to convince yourself so much. You've got some experience, not so unsure.”

Jackie said, “So you're not so unsure,” and Ritchie laughed and said, “I get more unsure every day.”

“You were so much older then,” Jackie said, “You're younger than that now.”

Ritchie laughed, “Yeah, that's it.”

And then Jackie said, “So, how's it going with Angie?” and Ritchie nodded, strummed a little, nervous, and said, “Good, it's going good.”

“Glad to hear it.”

And Ritchie didn't come back with a smartass remark, he just smiled.

Younger than that now.

• • •

Price hung up the phone and said, “Jamal's here with his lawyer. Looks like he's the one with bleach on his hands,” and McKeon looked up from the computer monitor on her desk and said, “Shit.”

“And get this,” Price said, “his lawyer is Stuart Kennedy.”

McKeon said, “Did Jamal win 6/49?” and Price said, “Let's find out,” and they headed downstairs to the interview room, where the desk sergeant had put Jamal and Kennedy, but the lawyer was waiting for them in the hall.

Price said, “Did Mr. Khan call you?” and Kennedy shook his head and said, “Detective Price, good to see you,” and he turned to McKeon and said, “Detective McKeon,” and Price said, “It's not good to see her?”

Kennedy said, “The not-so-subtle pressure the police force has been putting on the Khan family has been felt by a whole community,” and McKeon said, “Not quite as much as the not-so-subtle pressure he put on his sister's neck.”

Kennedy looked at McKeon for a moment but then turned to Price and said, “Mr. Khan will make a statement and clear this up,” and Price said, “Sure he will.”

They went into the interview room, and Price saw Jamal Khan sitting at the table. The guy looked up, and Price didn't think he looked scared at all. Or even worried.

Kennedy opened his big briefcase and took out two sheets of paper, handed one each to Price and McKeon, and said, “This is Mr. Khan's statement.”

McKeon said, “This is it?” She smirked at Jamal, then looked at Kennedy and said, “Who's paying you?”

Kennedy ignored that, of course, and said, “As you can see by the statement, Mr. Khan was concerned for his sister's safety away from the family home.”

“That's where the danger was?”

Price glanced at McKeon, wondering how far she'd push this, and then thinking, might be interesting to see it play out, but he knew the chances were slim a pro like Kennedy would ever fall for it. Guy represented Turgeon and his wife, couple of serial killers, and he never ruffled.

And now he was saying, “Mr. Khan's sister was staying out all night by herself, or staying at friends' houses that had little or no adult supervision. Mr. Khan went to meet his sister at her school to bring her home.”

“Yeah,” McKeon said, “he did.”

Price was looking at Jamal Khan, seeing a guy going through the motions, sitting while his lawyer read his statement, knowing full well when that was done he was going to stand up and walk out.

Looked like so many of the bikers and mobsters Price had interviewed in this very room, looked just like Boner waiting for his lawyer, not about to co-operate at all, not seeing any reason to.

Kennedy was saying, “Unfortunately when Mr. Khan returned home with Ms. Khan she was more agitated than he had expected, and by the time they were in the house she was out of control. A danger to herself and others.”

“Herself, at least.”

No reaction from Kennedy and, Price noticed, nothing from Jamal.

“When Mr. Khan senior tried to restrain Ms. Khan from hurting herself a struggle ensued.”

Price said, “And Jamal here was upstairs, hiding in his room?”

Jamal shook his head, not worried at all about Price, who figured Kennedy must have briefed him good.

“Mr. Khan junior was upstairs in the family domicile with Mrs. Khan and Mrs. Khan's mother.”

McKeon dropped the statement on the table and said, “And then when Mr. Khan strangled his daughter to death, young Jamal here ran away?”

Price watched Jamal's eyes narrowing, looking at McKeon, knowing enough not to react.

Kennedy said, “Mr. Khan didn't realize the situation was so dire and he left for work.”

McKeon said, “Dire?” and Price said, “Okay, so that's it?”

“And Mr. Khan would like to express his heartfelt regret,” Kennedy said, “that his sister's injuries were so serious.”

McKeon said, “Why don't you fuck off?” and Price got a hand on her arm right away and said, “We'll be back,” and pulled her out of the interview room.

In the hall McKeon said, “That fucking prick is going to get away with it.”

“Let his old man take the fall.”

“Guy will be a hero. They both will.”

Price took a couple of steps, turned around, looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor, wanted to punch something. Someone.

Then McKeon said, “What if this was a gangbanger or a biker, what would we do?”

“He came in all lawyered up?”

“But we knew he did it.”

Price shrugged. “If he was a pro there'd be something to hold him on — some past warrant, something we found on his person, a weapon, drugs, something.”

“And we throw him in the Don.”

“Sit him in a cell, where Boner is right now.”

“And we're trying to build a case. We might even send in an undercover, try and get a confession.”

“Not likely with someone like Boner.”

“No,” McKeon said, “but with someone like Jamal.”

Price said yeah, and McKeon said, so why don't we? “Why don't we throw him in the cells and see what we can get?”

“He didn't have a weapon, Mo, doesn't have any warrants.”

“No, but we were looking for him while he was scrubbing the blood off his hands.”

“You want to hold him for obstruction?”

“Yeah, why not?”

Price nodded, said, yeah, “Be worth it just to watch Kennedy's head explode.”

McKeon started back towards the interview room saying, “As if that guy really gives a shit.”

And Price followed thinking that was doubtful as long as he's getting paid, but McKeon was different. He'd have to make sure she'd be okay when this exploded in their faces and Kennedy and Jamal sued them.

Oh well, that's what the union's for.