In Plain Sight (14 page)

They worked fast and by the numbers. There was no sloppiness or rust on Nick or Pete. Whatever Russian military outfit they bounced out of left them with good habits. Good habits made moving on Sergei tough — not impossible, just tough.

We drove down Main Street until it turned into King. We kept on King going out of Hamilton into Stoney Creek. Stoney Creek was famous for ice cream from the Stoney Creek Dairy and for a battlefield where some soldiers mixed it up during the War of
1812
. Around these sights, a town for the upper middle class sprang up. The town was an appendage of Hamilton. If Hamilton was a diseased body, Stoney Creek was the manicured hand.

The Hummer stayed on King until it pulled across traffic to the curb in front of an off-track betting building. I kept my distance, double-parking a couple hundred metres down the street. It was just later than a quarter after ten, and the Jackpot
OTB
looked closed; its patio was empty, and the white plastic outdoor chairs were still up on the tables. Nick and Pete got out of the Hummer, bringing the money and Igor with them. Nick and Pete stopped at the door. Both men scanned the street with their arms just inside their jackets. Satisfied with what they saw, Nick pulled the door open and ushered Igor inside. I drove past the
OTB
, circled back, and parked across the street.

Inside the
OTB
would be at least five people plus Igor. Nick and Pete I saw, but Sergei would have two others at least. They weren't going to kill Igor right away; if they wanted him dead, it would have happened at his house. They brought him back because they were told to do so. When Sergei saw the money, he would send men back to find the rest. They would tear the house apart until they found what I left in the ceiling. Once the money was recovered, Sergei would have Igor killed and disposed of. It would always be money first, blood second.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialled a number I knew never changed. When I finished my call, I called another number I heard on the radio the day before. I was dialling a number I could see on a sign a block down the road when two different men left the
OTB
. I spoke into the phone as I watched them get into a Cadillac sedan and drive away. The two men were in suits. The jackets looked to be a size bigger than the pants, probably to conceal the weapons underneath. Muscle often never thought about tailoring a coat to conceal a gun the way I had done — they just wore bigger clothes. The two men were not like Nick and Pete. Their bodies weren't the same; these men had the bodies of bruisers. Each had to be
250
pounds of muscle. The Cadillac seemed to wince as they got inside and began adjusting the mirrors and seats. Both men were bald by choice; they had shaven their heads completely, leaving nothing but razor burn and glare. Most would think that the two huge men were Sergei's security, but I knew better. The two bruisers were like guard dogs — big and scary animals who kept most people away. Nick and Pete, the real killers, looked nothing like those men, but that was the point. They were sleek like matadors — they let you get in close before they drove the sword home.

I finished my call, then dialled Detective Sergeant Huata Morrison's private number, the one left on the back of his card. He picked up right away but said nothing. I listened to the silence and matched his with my own.

“What do you want?” he asked.

I let a bit more of the silence run down his battery before answering. “It's time to move.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We're done,” he said. “You went too far, and now we're done.”

“What happened?” I asked, knowing the response.

“What happened? What happened is you took a shot at a cop, that's what happened.”

“What are you talking about?” I lied.

“Enough! You thought you could play me with all of your lies, and I'm telling you it's done. You're done.”

“What cop got shot at?”

Silence answered me.

“Morrison, I can prove to you I didn't do it — just tell me what cop it was.”

“Miller,” he said. It sounded like it came out through clenched teeth.

“When?”

“Last night.” I heard teeth grinding in my ear.

“Where?”

“Outside some restaurant downtown, the Secret Garden. Like the fucking Springsteen song.”

“And why do you think it was me?”

“You got a hard on for Miller, and we both know it. You asked about him too many times for you not to be involved.”

“You know what the Secret Garden is?” I asked.

“A shit restaurant and a bad fucking song.”

“It's a front for the Fat Cobra Society. Their drug money goes through it.”

I got no answer.

“Why was Miller there?”

Still no answer, so I repeated the question.

“Traffic stop,” Morrison said.

“That normal for the Lieutenant? Pulling traffic stops? Or did he just feel like going above and beyond the job yesterday because that is the kind of outstanding cop he is? He can't let even the smallest infractions to the law go? Was this upholding of the law a day or night event?”

“Night.”

“Miller work nights in the city a lot?”

Silence answered me.

“So you got Miller doing a traffic stop at night, in the city, outside a Chinese drug front, and you think I shot at him? You think I'm dumb enough to make enemies of the Chinese and the cops? You're a fucking detective, look at the facts and detect something from them. 'Cause if it looks like fire and smells like fire, it's probably a fat crooked cop.”

“Why did you call?” Morrison asked.

“We made a deal. I'm giving you something, but you'll need to do some detecting. Can you handle that, Columbo?”

“Tell me.”

“I told you about a name — Igor.”

“I remember.”

“You need to get to his place right now. It's right by . . .”

“Bayfront Park,” he said, finishing my sentence. “I'll know the place because there will be a yellow car parked out front.”

Morrison was even faster than I had thought he was. He was stalking me using the one clue I let slip, and he was now just a step behind. If I had taken any longer, he would have found me staking out Igor's house. Then the game would have changed to something bloodier. “You've been there?” I asked, knowing he hadn't.

“I just found out about his house last night. I planned to go there today.”

“You need to get there now. Inside you'll find two men, drug money, and a body. If you put your thinking cap on, Holmes, you might get a good lead out of the two men.” I hung up the phone and looked at the man approaching the
OTB
with his arms full. The pizza I had ordered was right on time.

T
he Pizza Pizza delivery guy showed up eighteen minutes after I called with three sets of twins and an order of wings. Sergei was on the hook for $
78
.
34
. It took two minutes for the body of the delivery guy to come bouncing out the door. Nick had thrown him out with one hand; the other held a slice of pizza.

Pete threw the full boxes of pizza and wings at the delivery guy and walked back inside with Nick. The pizza guy picked himself up, flipped off the window, and walked away from the mess on the sidewalk. He made it three steps away before Nick was outside again. He screamed at the delivery guy and started towards him. The pizza guy put two hands up in appeasement and walked back with his head low to clean up the mess. He worked fast under the watchful eye and foot of Nick.

The mess was gone, and Nick was back inside when Pizza Hut arrived with ten medium pizzas. Sergei owed $
124
.
18
to the Hut and its teenaged, acne-scarred, red-hat collection agency. The kid didn't even get in the door. Nick and Pete opened the frosted glass door before he could put down the pizza and open it himself. The door came at the kid fast, and it knocked him on his ass and sent pizza everywhere.

I had the window down just enough to hear the commotion.

“Who sent you here?” Nick demanded. He had an accent that was unmistakably Russian. “Who?”

The kid crab-walked back from the door and the blond man, scrambling to get to his feet. Pete passed Nick and planted his right foot on the kid's chest. The kid fought against the foot, but Pete just put more weight on him. The kid gave up and fell to the pavement, cracking his head.

Nick picked up each box and lifted the flap. When all he found was pizza, a rain of bread, cheese, and sauce fell on the kid. This happened nine times. Nick pulled a slice from the last box and let the cardboard fall to the ground. He told the kid to clean his shit up, and the kid nodded as best he could while still cradling the back of his head. The crack against the pavement had cut deep, and blood seeped through his hair and fingers. Nick and Pete went back inside, leaving the kid to clean up the mess one-handed. When he left, his hands and shirt were red from the sauce and the blood. I could see his confusion as he looked from hand to shirt trying to figure out how much blood he had lost. He stumbled away never knowing what was his and what belonged to Pizza Hut or why he had to give up either to the pavement.

By the dashboard clock, it was eight minutes until Domino's showed up. This time it wasn't an acne-speckled kid, it was a middle-aged man with a thick moustache. He wore a light blue golf shirt adorned with black-and-white checkerboard sleeves, navy shorts that gave everyone a view of his inner thigh hair, and old Velcro-strap running shoes. The untrimmed moustache, the clothes, the shitty job all led me to believe that this was a guy who was a joke to everyone he met. He wasn't in on the joke, and he never would be. Worse, he was in front of a door that led to two men with zero sense of humour.

Fortune smiled on the man with the moustache. Nick and Pete met him at the door and told him “No” too many times to count. The delivery guy pointed to his receipt, proving that he was in the right, but Nick and Pete didn't move. They shook their heads until Nick exploded in moustache's face. He screamed, “No, not ours! Now get the fuck out of here!”

The delivery guy saw the Russian was serious and backed away. Nick and Pete didn't watch him go like they did with the others, they just turned their backs and went inside.

I got out of the car and caught up to the Domino's guy on the street. The thirty bucks in my fist would cover the
$24.18
bill with enough for a good tip.

“Hey! Hey, Domino's!”

He turned to face me, and I put on what I guessed to be my best apologetic face.

“I'm sorry about the boys. We bring a lot of cash in in the mornings, and they get too protective sometimes.”

“They didn't have to yell. I don't appreciate being yelled at. I wanted to work things out, but they wouldn't let me speak. That's not how you treat a delivery guy. I just go where they tell me. When people don't pay, I gotta prove it was a crank call, or my boss will think I screwed up. Then I gotta eat the cost myself.”

“Let me make it up to you,” I said, showing him the money. “I'll take the pizza. How much is it?”

Domino's looked around. “We're not really supposed to do it this way. Store policy is very clear. I'm not supposed to sell the pizza on the street. Business should only be transacted at the customer's place of work or business.”

“We can go back to the store if you want. I'm sure the boys will be nicer this time.”

He thought about it for a second. “No, no, no. I'm just saying for next time. Next time you should pay at the door. It'll be twenty-four eighteen.”

I gave him the thirty dollars and told him to keep the change. I waved him goodbye and watched him get into his Ford Taurus. When he was out of sight, I put two of the boxes down and pulled the .
45
from my jacket. I zipped up the coat so my shoulder rig was invisible and put one of the pizza boxes over the gun. The Colt was in my hand, under the flat bottom of the box, invisible from view so long as I kept the box tilted forward.

I left the other two boxes on the ground and walked, bill in hand, towards the
OTB
. I didn't just walk straight up to the front door — that had gone badly for the three other delivery men. Nick and Pete saw them coming and never let them get inside. I waited for a few minutes, three stores down, until a city bus came down the street. Traffic was slow enough that the bus crept along the street in the right lane. When the light turned red, the bus blocked the
OTB
's view from at least half of its windows. I walked into traffic along the side of the bus facing away from the storefront and hooked around the back bumper jogging as though I was trying to cross the street before the light turned. I rounded the front of the bus and jogged straight in the front entrance.

I got five steps inside before Nick and Pete blocked my way. The
OTB
had an area with several windows for business as well as a bar surrounded by tables underneath huge mounted flat-screen televisions. This wasn't a walk in, walk out, kind of place; it was a gambler's paradise.

“No, no, no, no. No pizza. We order nothing. Leave now!” Nick yelled. Pete said nothing.

“Whoa, whoa, guys. Let's look at the order,” I said, pulling out the Domino's bill. “One medium pizza for Igor.”

“No pizza. No!” Nick screamed. His breath was warm in my face.

“Igor?” Pete asked. I marked him as the smart one, Nick as the violent one. Nick looked at him, confused, then looked back at me after he figured it out. “Did you say Igor?”

I checked the bill and nodded at Pete.

“Who told you that name?”

“No one told me anything — it's on the bill along with the cost. You owe me thirteen forty-nine.”

Nick closed the distance between us, taking over the conversation again, ready for violence. “You will tell me who told you that name.” He slapped the pizza box, trying to knock it out of my hands, but it didn't fall. He grabbed the box and tried to wrestle it away from me, but it stayed in my hands. We locked eyes for a second as he groped for the pizza and I grinned; Nick didn't understand. He got it a second later when the .
45
took his knee off his leg.

The big slug scrambled patella and cartilage and sent Nick to the floor. His scream was silent at first, but he found his voice fast. I turned on Pete, but he was already running towards the bar. Pete didn't waste any emotion on his partner. He was surviving, just like he had been trained to do.

The .
45
spat loud, obscene shots at him, but they all came up wide. Each spasm of the gun was just a little off. Pete jerked up, down, left, right, making him a hard target. He threw himself over the bar, and I moved in his wake. I heard the metallic crunch of a shotgun loading. Pete came up with the shotgun levelled at his shoulder ready to shoot through whatever cover I took, but I wasn't where he thought I was. I was like him — a survivor. I had been shot at before, and it didn't spook me anymore. It scared me as much as it always did, but I stored the fear away while I worked. The .
45
was in my hands, three metres away from where I had been standing when Pete went for cover. Pete caught sight of me, out of the corner of his eye, and realized that he had misjudged where I would be. He turned at the hips to correct his aim as I pulled the trigger. The first bullet hit Pete in the left shoulder, spinning him and the shotgun away from me. The second shot punched a dark hole into his back. Red hit the bottles behind the bar as the lead ripped through the wiry flesh. Pete went down behind the bar, and I heard the shotgun hit the floor, I heard it for a second, then a bullet ripped through my right ear.

I dove left and hit the floor hard. The wind went out of me as I hit the floor rolling. A second bullet whizzed over my head from Nick's direction. Pete had moved so fast that I never got the chance to put Nick all the way out. I crawled behind the bar and saw Pete's prone body. He had managed to roll himself over. His hands covered the hole in his shoulder and the exit wound on the front of his body. I crouch-walked closer and pulled a pistol from his belt — a
9
mm Heckler and Koch
USP
. I put the gun in my coat pocket and kept moving.

“He is hard to kill,” Pete said to me, nodding over the bar towards Nick.

“Aren't we all.”

I grabbed one of the bottles that hit the floor when I shot Pete and lobbed it over the bar. It landed with a crash. I lobbed a second and a third. With the third bottle came a grunt — I knew where Nick was. I picked up the twelve-gauge Mossberg and put my back against the wall. I put five more bottles in the air; each landed with a crash near the spot that produced the grunt. As the fifth bottle left my hand, I stood with the Mossberg and pulled the trigger. I racked the slide and shot again as I stepped away from the bar. The bottles I had thrown landed near the dining area where Nick had taken cover. The shotgun was aimed low, and it caught the edge of a table and the back of a chair as it let loose. None of the spray from the shotgun caught Nick; he had sensed what was coming after the bottles and had managed to drag his mangled leg across the floor. The barrel of the Mossberg followed the trail of blood on the floor towards the booths on the wall where Nick had taken cover from the bottles. Nick had burrowed in like a tick behind the vinyl in a spot that might have offered him a chance at surprising me if there wasn't a crimson trail ratting him out. I racked the slide again and shot at the furniture hiding Nick from me. The twelve gauge punched a hole through the back of the booth and toppled the table.

“Okay, okay,” Nick screamed.

I put another shot in Nick's direction.

“Stop!”

Two hands came up from behind the aerated seat, empty. I walked towards Nick and saw a matching H and K pistol two feet away from his body. His face was pale under his sweaty blond mop.

“Put your hands on your leg before you bleed out,” I said.

Nick nodded and sat up. He groaned with the effort and screamed when he put his hands to his leg. His eyes were looking glassy, and I figured shock was setting in. He didn't even flinch when I put the butt of the shotgun between his eyes.

The
OTB
was suddenly quiet. I looked at my jacket and saw blood soaked into the sleeve. I took a handful of napkins from a dispenser on one of the tables still upright and put them to my ear. The sting took me by surprise, and I closed my eyes for a second. My ear didn't feel right under the napkins — the lobe hung too low. The napkins came away red and damp, so I pressed them harder to the side of my head again. I managed to pack the tissue paper around my ear, using the blood to hold the thin white material to my head. The rest of the napkins were used to wipe down my coat. The waterproof material kept the blood from absorbing, and the napkins soaked up the beaded fluid and became heavy. I put the napkins in my pocket and took the shotgun down a single hallway leading away from the betting windows and bar. At the end of the hallway was a small backroom with an office and an emergency exit. The exit had a sticker on the door explaining that if opened the mechanism would set off an alarm. The deafening silence told me that no one had used the door.

The office door was closed, and when I tried the lock I found the handle didn't move. I crossed to the other side of the door, closer to the exit, and knocked. No one answered.

“Nikolai and Pietro are down and bleeding to death as I speak.”

“I care not,” a voice I remembered as belonging to Sergei Vidal said.

“See if this makes you care. I got the shotgun from behind the bar in my hands. You don't give me what I want, I'm going to fire through the walls. Twelve gauge like this should spread enough to pulp everything. You know what pulp means, Sergei?”

“I know pulp. What do you want?”

“Send Igor out. That's all. Send him out, and we leave.”

I heard a hushed conversation and a few loud “No's” from Igor. I racked the slide on the gun for effect and let a shotgun shell fall to the concrete floor.

“Ten seconds, Sergei, then I just let the shotgun sort it out.”

“Nine, eight, seven, six, five . . .” I shouldered the gun and got ready. If I bluffed once, Sergei would find a way to exploit it. At three, the door opened, and Igor walked out with his hands up. When Igor was beside me, I pulled him away from the doorway. I looped the shotgun under his chin and snaked my left arm around the barrel. My left hand found the back of Igor's head, and the choke compressed. The hard metal gun on Igor's throat clamped his carotid artery, and blood stopped flowing to Igor's brain. Igor left his feet as I arched my back. Eight seconds later, he was unconscious.