Blood Wine (15 page)

The remaining mourners had wandered off, some to spend a contemplative hour among the graves, complimenting themselves on being alive, reading tombstones and monuments, enjoying the flowers and trees, most to pursue the daily details of their lives.

“How's your partner?” asked Frankie. “I heard Vittorio was the second murder on her watch in a week.”

“Yeah, plus two down in the Niagara Peninsula. You know about them?”

She looked up at him and smiled at his apparent naiveté. There was a hard line between gossip and business — especially gossip that concerned the execution of her husband. She did not answer.

Morgan for the first time noticed the rawness around her eyes and recognized her genuine grief, obscured by her composure and the elaborate funeral rites she had orchestrated.

“Let's meander for a bit,” she said to Morgan, taking his arm.

They walked along a winding pathway up out of the mausoleum quarter and into more modestly occupied terrain, talking quietly. The six pallbearers followed in a cluster behind them at a discreet distance.

“Do you hear from Lucy?” she asked.

“My Lucy? No.…” The two women had met at university, where all three of them shared a class in forensic psychopathology. Morgan and Lucy did not get together until after they graduated, after Morgan returned from nearly two years in Europe, finding and losing himself, and had briefly enrolled in graduate school, before dropping out, taking a diploma in criminology, and joining the police force.

When he and Lucy were married, they received a sterling silver tea service from Vittorio and Francine Ciccone, which they returned with a conciliatory note. Ciccone was still on his way up then, and a newly remarried widower. Jarvis Collegiate and their Cabbagetown childhood were a long way behind both David Morgan and Francine Ciccone. Lucy had grown up safely in Scarborough.

From time to time, he and the gangster's wife crossed paths — not that they were in the same social circles. They were always polite and quite formal with each other, meeting in the foyers of theatres, amid the bustle of significant public events — and invariably there was an exchange between them, flashed in a glance, that acknowledged they might have been lovers, might have been married, had things been different. Even in grade nine, there was chemistry between them. Morgan was a loner — that's what she found attractive — and she was poised for success, and he found that exciting. But what attracted them to each other was what kept them apart.

She talked about her stepchildren. She and Vittorio never had any of their own. That would have been an insult to his first wife. When Frankie explained this, Morgan was baffled. She said it matter-of-factly and went on to claim that was the only way he held back. She had never felt, otherwise, anything but the best — she was his absolute true love. It was her he wanted to spend eternity with, in their mausoleum. He had no desire to join his first wife in Arezzo.

“I must leave in a minute. There is a reception at the house.”

She stopped, drawing Morgan back in mid-stride. Reaching into her purse, she withdrew a card and handed it to him.

“It has my number on it. Call me.”

“Unlisted, I imagine.”

She looked up at him and smiled, and then her eyes turned hard. “I can't help you on this, David. But you can help me. I want Vittorio's killers. I know who they are. I want them dead. Then I will be a Rosedale widow, which in this world is not such a bad thing to be.”

“The Albanian connection?”

“Nothing, David. I can say nothing more.” She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “You may not be a great man, David Morgan, but you are a good man.”

She released his arm, turned, and walked over to her burly entourage without looking back. He watched as they disappeared among the rows of tombstones, down into the valley of the dead, where the mausoleums were clustered side by side, as close as houses in suburbia.

Back at his desk, Morgan found himself ruminating about what Frankie Ciccone had said. He was not sure whether to feel insulted by her compliment, with its implied limitations, or flattered by what some might take as an insult, coming as it did from a mobster's widow.

No
, he thought,
I have never aspired to greatness. God knows I am a humble and sensitive man
. He chuckled to himself.
As for being good, I think that's something someone does, not what someone is. By that measure, sometimes I'm good, sometimes not so good.

The telephone rang. It was Miranda.

“How's New York?”

“Fine, they want us around for a bit.”

“Doing what?”

“Waiting, mostly.”

“You still at the Best Western?”

“No, I've moved in with Elke. She lives in the Village, a loft. She's doing all right for herself.”

“You sure that's a good idea?”

“You mean, her life might still be on the line?”

“Yeah, that too. I meant maybe you're too close for your own good.”

“I don't think she's in any danger. The wine scam's over and done with. Anyway, I'm off duty, remember.”

“And living with a prime suspect.”

“Staying with! And she's not a suspect.”

“About as close as you can get, come on.”

“Morgan, there's more than you know.”

He backed away. He trusted her judgement, especially in matters like this. If she knew things he didn't, then her call was okay.

“Is the NYPD aware you're on leave?”

“Yes and no. My friend, Captain Clancy, he's running the investigation on the ex-boyfriend's execution. He knows. Everyone else in New York assumes I'm working.”

“And he doesn't think it's strange you're staying with Elke?”

“Like I said, there's more than you know. He thinks I'm acting as her bodyguard until we can head back. He's grateful.”

“Did you say execution?”

“When?”

“Just now. You said the boyfriend was executed.”

“That's part of what you're not caught up about. I told you he was gunned down outside his brownstone, and that Elke wasn't implicated, that I covered for her. Well, we figured the ex was picked off by a sniper setting off a police barrage — it was a major shootout, no one would have paid much attention to a guy with a smoking gun. But the dead man never fired a shot. He was riddled like a sieve — by the time they got him to the morgue most of his blood had drained out, even without a heartbeat. The medical examiners had a hell of a job sorting out the slugs in the guy's body, but they found one that didn't match.”

“It was a professional hit.”

“Looks that way, for sure.”

“And Elke? They buy that she wasn't the hostage-taker?”

“No reason not to. I'm the only living witness. Elke and I had time to talk and, Morgan, I'm convinced the ex-boyfriend was behind her abduction and the attempt on her life.”

“You're doing a lot of that these days.”

“What? Talking?”

“Being a witness. I just came back from the Ciccone funeral.”

“How was it?”

“Big.”

“Vulgar?”

“Extravagant. I'd say opulent bad taste. I was talking to Francine Ciccone.”

“How's Frankie?” said Miranda, who was acutely aware Morgan had known her in high school.

“She's holding up well. It becomes her, being a widow. She was born to grieve with a smile. She's doing fine.”

“Morgan, I can tell. You never told me! You used to date, didn't you? It's in your voice. Didn't you?”

“No way. But we thought about it. That was a long time ago. She's okay, I like her.”

“Talk about dangerous company.”

“So when are you coming back?”

“Clancy wants us to hang around. Did it register, what I told you? I think the ex-boyfriend set Elke up to be killed.”

“Yeah, I've been thinking it over. Who would want to take out a high-living accountant? He must have been on the Mafia's payroll.”

“You're on the right track, Morgan. I didn't believe it at first. His face didn't show enough character to be a bad guy. Turns out he did the personal tax returns for a bunch of mobsters. Nothing illegal. He moonlighted doing the accounts for some very tough people. He wasn't breaking any laws. But he screwed up; he tried to sell some wine he had received as a legitimate payout. He sold it the wrong way. Big trouble. His ex-girlfriend, Elke, was about to expose the scam.”

“Blow it up.”

“So to speak. He thought he could squeeze out of it by offering up Elke as a sacrificial lamb. Some lamb! She had already broken off the romantic side of their relationship when she discovered whose taxes he was doing, and because he was, in her words, shallow as a mirror and dull as a dildo.”

“Very precise. I wonder why she took up with him in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, she didn't associate the confusion about the ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape with his mob connections, she took him at his word that it came from an estate his insurance company was settling. When she couldn't sort out the provenance, she went north on the ex-boyfriend's insistence to track it through your friend at Millennium Wines. She never got beyond their parking lot. By the time she did her escape back to New York, she had it figured out. She was not happy with the guy, Morgan. He had set her up to be killed. She didn't flinch when he died. It hardly seemed to register.”

“I want to tell you about the funeral. There was no one
not
there.”

“That's appropriately cryptic.”

“No, there's something going on. It wasn't a hit by the mob, I'm sure of that, and it wasn't our guys, but it was a professional job.”

“Do you think the elusive Mr. Savage is involved? You once suggested Ciccone might have deadly enemies in the wine trade.”

“Yeah, you're not the only connection between Philip Carter and Vittorio Ciccone. Since the mob in New York has a lethal interest in the Ninth Chateau, almost certainly the Ciccone family does as well. Mr. Savage is pivotal. But he seems to be independent from either New York or Toronto. Bonnydoon, maybe that's where I should be looking, in the ashes, sifting the debris —”

“I?”

“We. The death of Vittorio Ciccone. Would you believe I've been assigned to the case?”

“You're kidding.”

“No, before I left for the funeral, I had a talk with the superintendent. You're on it too, when you get back.”

“I'm being reinstated?”

“Yeah, you're not a suspect in Philip's death. You're a victim.”

“You're telling me.”

“He was just playing it safe.”

“Who?”

“Rufalo.”

“Okay. Gotta go, pizza's arriving. Elke just got out of the shower. She's waving at you. Take care.”

Click.

Morgan stared at the phone in his hand. He was strangely lonely without Miranda around.

The phone rang again, startling him so that he nearly dropped it.

“Morgan, it's me. You don't think it was a Mafia hit, right?”

“That's what I figured from the mob presence at the funeral, that's what Francine was trying to tell me.”

“So, Morgan, what if the sniper who killed Ivan Muritori wasn't working for them either? Why would the mob bother killing a hapless accountant? For blowing a counterfeit wine operation by accident?”

“If not, then, who?”

“We'll have to think about it. Bye-bye, gotta run, pizza's getting cold.”

Click.

The Warehouse

A
n
hour later, Morgan was still sitting at his desk when Spivak and Stritch asked if he wanted to join them for a hamburger. As he rose to his feet, another detective, a large man with close-cropped hair, nudged Morgan as he walked by. It might have been friendly, possibly not.

“Hey, Morgan.”

“Bourassa.”

“We're going for a burger, want to join us?” said Spivak to the other man.

Bourassa looked at Morgan and shrugged. “No, I'm busy.”

He started to walk off, then turned and faced Morgan squarely, an arm's reach away. “Your partner — too bad about Ciccone, I guess if she was bought, the sale fell through.”

Morgan looked up at the big man, his face expressionless.

“So, Morgan, the necrophilia thing.”

“Shut up, Bourassa!” Spivak snarled.

“You got a corpse in your bed, that's what they call it.”

Spivak glanced at Morgan. Stritch walked around beside the larger man, anticipating trouble, surprised at Morgan's apparent passivity. No one had openly spoken about Miranda being a witness for the defense. Most felt she had no choice, no one envied her position, and most shared her relief that the Ciccone murder let her off the hook. Bourassa was not known as a dishonest cop but he was a moral simpleton. Morgan knew that. He stood still, transfixed by the other man's appalling ignorance.

“No guts, Morgan?”

Morgan pursed his lips in a tight smile and narrowed his eyes. A personal insult was not about to set him off. Why give Bourassa the power?

“Myself, I'd rather have the black guy here than a fucking skank for a partner.”

Morgan's fist shot out straight into the man's face, smashing his flesh against the bone of his skull. Bourassa's head snapped back, but his huge body remained upright. A small stream of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth. Blood filled his nostrils and sheeted over his upper lip, dripping across his chin and down the front of his shirt. His eyes glazed and he blinked as he tried to bring Morgan into focus.

“I am a sensitive man,” said Morgan as he turned and walked away. Over his shoulder, he added, “I have a good partner, and so does Spivak. We both have good partners.” And as he walked through the doorway, while rubbing his knuckles to bring back the feeling, he repeated, more to himself than to an audience, “I am a sensitive man.”

Bourassa remained immobile. Spivak glanced at Stritch, who was staring in the direction Morgan had gone with amazement, then he looked over at the superintendent's office and caught Alex Rufalo quickly averting his gaze to the papers on his desk.

When Morgan returned to his desk with a coffee, the superintendent called him into his office. Morgan approached unapologetically, not sure how much of his spat with Bourassa had been observed.

“He's a good detective,” said the superintendent, skipping the preliminaries.

Morgan shrugged.

“You think he's dumb and a bully.”

Morgan shrugged again.

“He's uncomplicated, Morgan, and he's tenacious. If he was a dog, he'd be a bull mastiff. You want him on your side.”

“Isn't he?”

“That's the point, Morgan, he is. The man would take a bullet for you — you know why? Because you're a cop.”

“Yeah.”

“After your little debate out there, he saw my door was open. He came in covered in blood and told me it was his fault. He won't tell you that, he'd rather push your face in it, but it's over.”

“Hey,” said Morgan, “this is why you get the big bucks. We're cool.”

“Yes, you are,” the superintendent said. “Go home.”

“Okay.”

“And oh, you're on the Humber River shooting, you and Quin.”

“We're doing Ciccone.”

“We found the car where your blond friend said it would be. Lots of prints, turns out there's a Ciccone connection. Dead guy wasn't on the payroll, but he sometimes worked for Vittorio. She may have killed him in self-defense, but there's more to it than that. We need the whys and wherefores.”

“Yeah, they're elusive little buggers.”

“What?”

“The whys and wherefores.”

Rufalo smiled. Morgan had the feeling that the superintendent believed he had handled the Bourassa situation the best possible way, with cool forbearance and the surgical use of force. That's how he had, in the preceding few minutes, come to assess his own behaviour.

“We've got the RCMP and CSIS involved for jumping the border, the Provincials on board for the two deaths at the winery, the local fire marshal for the way the old lady died. The American border people. The NYPD. Maybe the FBI if Elke Sturmberg was really abducted. Maybe New York State Troopers, maybe the CIA, who knows. You up to it?”

“Yeah, they won't get in the way.” Morgan played tough when it was politically expedient or ironically amusing.

“Yeah, well, don't cross Spivak and Stritch, they have the lead on the dead guy in Miranda's bed. Did you talk to her? She wants to play it low-key down there. She'll bring the Sturmberg woman back without an extradition warrant once they're finished with her. So, go home, get some rest.”

“You too, boss.”

So Morgan went home, made himself a sandwich supper, cracked open a bottle of authentic Châteauneuf-du-Pape that he had picked up on the way, and settled back to read for awhile. He usually read non-fiction. You can't make up stuff as interesting as real life, he figured.

Part of him recognized the absurdity of that. He had read the great novels in university and in small ways they had changed him. He read facts now, and they changed nothing. Still, he was at a place in his life, not old, no longer young, where he wanted to fill out his mind, not discover new parts of himself in parallel worlds.

He picked up Francine Ciccone's card from the coffee table where he had dropped it when he emptied his pockets. She was one of the few links to a childhood for which he harboured little or no nostalgia. They both grew up in Cabbagetown, both were from the sub-class known as the working poor, families with sufficient income to pay rent, sufficient stamina to hold menial jobs, and sufficient diversions, mostly beer, tobacco, and television, to keep them humble amidst the affluence surrounding their small and sometimes brutal lives.

When her name appeared in the social columns, or when her husband was featured in stories relating to drug wars and crime syndicates, Morgan would remember the times they walked home from public school together, not talking, but perfectly in tune, like two reeds vibrating in the wind. And when they got older, they sometimes gossiped or kidded about, both of them knowing romance was a dead end, both of them determined to get out of the ghetto, knowing they would get in each other's way.

At university, they occasionally had coffee, and as scholarship students they sometimes worked together at Robarts Library. Mostly, they avoided each other. It was better like that.

When the phone rang, he knew it would be her. Still, he waited until she spoke to be sure.

“David?”

“Francine.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, not at all. Is your reception over? You must be completely worn out.”

“David, I am going to give you an address. It's a warehouse in the east end, off Queen Street. I want you to go there.”

“Frankie, what are you talking about?” he asked, but he knew. “You found him?”

“Listen to me, David. You go to this place, do it tonight.” She gave him directions to the warehouse. Her voice sounded crisp and efficient, but strained from the exhaustion of entombing her husband, of losing a man who must have seemed immortal and, in spite of the trial, untouchable.
There are certain things
, he imagined,
you have to believe. Suddenly, he's gone. She's a woman of immense resources or she wouldn't be where she is, but it must be tough.

“David,” she paused. “You're not disappointed in me?”

“We do what we do, Frankie. Are you disappointed in me?”

“For being a cop?” She laughed. “I always thought you'd end up a professor. They're the best at disguising their past. No, I admire you. I read about you sometimes, I hear things. I think you're living the life you always wanted, even when you didn't know it.”

“You too, Francine.”

“Go now, and call me sometime.”

“How'd you find him?”

There was a moment's silence while she considered whether to answer. “He was afraid of the border. He was trying to drive west, I suppose to Vancouver, or around into Minnesota, but once you get north of Superior, all roads converge. The fool, he thought wilderness spaces would give him refuge, but the north made it easier to track him. We know people up there.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes, Morgan, or there wouldn't be a rush, would there?”

“Thanks, Frankie. Is there a gun?”

“It's with him. You'll get a conviction. I want him surrounded in the penitentiary, night and day, by people loyal to Vittorio. Every minute of every day for the rest of his life, they will make his life hell. He will be glad when he dies, that's what I want.”

Morgan felt a chill run through him.
Frankie Ciccone is a woman used to getting what she wants. In this case, it's the same thing I want
, he thought,
although the flaying of the shooter's flesh until the meat of his body shrivels in the sun would please her most, and for myself, it is enough the man gets taken off the streets
.

“Frankie, thanks.”

“For what? I've forgotten already why I called.”

Click.

Morgan stopped in at Police Headquarters on College Street for a car. He picked up his Glock semi-automatic from the gun locker and tucked it into a sheath-holster against the small of his back, which he regretted when he got into the driver's seat since it dug in and forced him to slouch while he drove. He did not tell anyone where he was going. The superintendent had gone home and Spivak and his partner were not around. Bourassa was at his desk, working late, possibly working on an alibi to explain to his wife why his face looked like a tub of poutine. Morgan would have preferred to have Miranda with him for backup, but she was hanging out with her friends in New York.

He turned into a dark side street by the warehouse. There was a bare bulb gleaming over the small door to the side of the loading docks. There was a light on a pole casting shadows against brick walls and a tall wire fence. The night sky formed a canopy of brackish illumination overhead. But the impression was of darkness, not light.

He could see a dull glow in the transom over the entry. When he pulled open the door his eyes were met by a sea of gloom, highlighted in the centre by a man sitting in a chair with a lamp shining on him powered by a long extension cord running off into the murky shadows.

Morgan stood still, listening.

The man seemed aware of him, although he was blindfolded. Morgan took a few steps forward and the man shrank into himself, trying to hide in plain view. He was terrified. He must have thought Morgan was one of the Ciccone people, coming back to finish the job.

Or to torture him. Morgan could see he had been brutally beaten. Dried blood was scabbed on his face, and brownish-red stains had seeped through his clothing and congealed on the surface. There was a plastic bag taped across his lap with a gun inside, the gun he used to kill Vittorio Ciccone. From the pool of blood under the gun, Morgan suspected he had been castrated or had his penis cut off. His mouth was bound with duct tape. He was struggling to breath through his nose.

Morgan knew when he ripped off the tape what he would find. The man gagged and spat out the end of his penis, coughed and vomited over himself.

Morgan saw a hose attached to a tap on a wall. He walked over and uncoiled it, turning on the tap. He walked back and hosed down the man in the chair.

He lifted the blindfold away from the man's swollen face.

“This is your lucky day,” he said.

The man looked at him without comprehending.

“You speak English?” Morgan asked.

The man looked frantically about but said nothing.

“You're Albanian, right? Al-bay-nee-yah, right?”

No answer.

“You're going to need help, buddy. Help, hospital, yes?”

The man's eyes registered an indeterminate response.

“So you do speak English. Okay, I'm police, polizia, guardia, cop, you understand?”

The man shook his head, and Morgan could see he nearly blacked out from the effort.

“You do understand, good. You killed a bad man, yes? In this country we do not kill, even people who kill people. Even bad men like Vittorio Ciccone.”

The man taped to the chair flinched violently at the name of the man he had murdered.

“Relax! I'm one of the good guys.”

The man blinked quizzically.

“You are a professional, right? Right.”

The man acknowledged with a nod.

“Well, you screwed up, my friend.”

There was no response.

“We need to talk,” said Morgan. “It's better here. Too many people downtown. Police. Friends of Ciccone. Lawyers. You don't have many friends, my friend. You need a doctor, understand, doctor, hospital. Better we talk a bit first, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You understand. Good. I'm your only way out of this mess.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, good.”

“
Si
.”

“Okay, my friend. My goodness, you do look dreadful. A professional hit man. I'd expect better.”

“I wear Armani, Giorgio.”

“Not tonight, my friend. You look like a bucket of shit. But enough with the chatter. What I need to know is, who hired you?”

“Hired me? Paid me money?”

“Yes.”

“I do not know.”