Slow Recoil (29 page)

He went to the phone and dialed Hattie's number. She answered on the fourth ring. The line was immediately filled with background sounds, voices and music.

“Hattie?” he said.

“Sorry,” she said in a loud voice, and he heard her walking away from the sounds, trying to find a quieter spot. “We stopped in at this pub. Place is packed. Everybody's sucking the last few drops out of the long weekend.”

He wanted to ask her about the “we” she was referring to, but he had no right. He pictured Anderson sitting there with his platinum hair and some fruity drink with a goddamned umbrella.

“Davis Chapman works for the government,” Hattie said, reading his thoughts. “That's all I know. There's a level three security block on his ID. Must be a heavyweight of some sort.”

“Does Detective Kennedy know about Chapman?” McKelvey asked. He held the note from his fridge and tried to think of a way to let her in on this. He had kept one too many cards against his chest, and now he was backed into a corner.

“What's to tell? The guy might as well not even exist in any system. He could be RCMP, CSIS, JTF2, anything.”

“Peter Dawson, the executive director of the resource centre, he'd have Chapman's address on file,” McKelvey said. “It might not be the correct address, but he must have something. Christ, even a phone number.”

“So give Peter Dawson a call,” she said, and McKelvey understood by her tone that he had managed to reach the end of Hattie's patience, perhaps her goodwill, likely even her trust or belief in him.

“Listen, Charlie, Kennedy gave me something about a half hour ago. I think he expects me to pass it on to you. Maybe he's hoping it means something, I don't know. But this is definitely on the down-low. The media has been blocked out on details. Leyden and Kennedy are working this murder in the fashion district now, on top of the Donia Kruzik case.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You haven't seen the breaking news?”

Jesus,
McKelvey thought.
I haven't had time to take a piss or
eat a sandwich, let alone watch the news.

“Victim was found this afternoon in his office. Guess he was in there doing some catch-up work while the place was closed. The dead man, Bojan Kordic, was Donia's boss. He ran the garment factory, which was her last known place of employment. It's hazy, but there's obviously some sort of connection forming here. Kennedy and Leyden are swamped right now, but I'd expect their attention to swing right back to you in the next twenty-four hours. I won't be able to help you when that happens.”

McKelvey felt something give way within his core and drop to the bottom of his gut. He needed a white board and a marker, to start drawing the lines and the players back to a nucleus. The way they used to do it on the force. Not rocket science, just throwing everything up on the wall and standing back to see the full spectrum.

“What was the piece of information Kennedy wanted me to hear?”

“They found a note pinned to the dead guy's shirt,” Hattie said. “It said something along the lines of: ‘My name is Bojan Kordic. I am guilty'. And then his signature. Question is, guilty of what?”

“Did he say if the note was typed or printed or anything?”

“Hand-written. Block letters,” she said. “Like a kid trying too hard to be neat, his words exactly.”

McKelvey looked down at the note in his hand. “What a fucking fiasco,” he muttered.

“Sorry,” she said, “it's so loud. What'd you say?”

“Forget it,” he said.

“Hey, listen,” Hattie said. “I'm out of this now, okay? I mean really out. I have my interviews for Homicide this week, Charlie. Talk to Kennedy, for God's sake. He's a good cop. Leyden too.”

“Have a good time,” he said and hung up.

He stared at the phone, willing it to ring. The doorbell sounded instead. It broke McKelvey's concentration, and he started. He walked quietly to the door and leaned in, squinting through the spyglass. He did not recognize the man who stood there looking up and down the hall, then down at his shoes as he waited. Could be anybody, McKelvey thought. But what were the chances? This thing he'd stepped into. He looked around. He wished he had a gun he could slip in his pants under his shirt. But that had been part of the agreement after the shootout with Duguay. A clear case of self-defense—Duguay had broken into his home armed with a .45 Browning automatic, after all— had been made somewhat complicated by the fact McKelvey defended himself with an unregistered .25 pistol he'd kept locked in his garage for more than a decade while a friend sorted out the licensing during a tumultuous divorce. Rather than charge a recently retired officer for defending himself against certain death at the hands of a biker, the cops and the crown had agreed to seal the affair on McKelvey's word that he would not own or operate a firearm for a period of one year. It seemed reasonable at the time.

He had no pistol, no means to defend himself, and it was a terrible feeling. His eyes darted around the room quickly, then settled on the kitchen. He took a serrated steak knife from the drawer, slipped it carefully into the back pocket of his pants then went and opened the door a few inches.

“Yes?” he said.

“Excuse me,” the man said. “I am looking for Mr. Giambi?”

The man spoke with an accent, pronouncing the name
Geeam-
bee.
French perhaps, and fancy.

“First floor,” McKelvey said.

“Ah yes,” the man said, and smiled. “Please, excuse me.”

McKelvey closed the door. He returned the steak knife and went back to the living room. He sat on the sofa and stared at the phone, thinking of Hattie and how she would end up working in Homicide, and he thought about old Giuseppe's remarks from out of the blue.
That woman, she's too young for you.
Was it really so out of the blue? Perhaps McKelvey was guilty once again, as Caroline had often charged him, of living his life with blinders on. He was using Hattie, her youth and energy to fend off the inevitable slow shuffle to the nursing home. He was certainly using and abusing her position on the force. But he thought perhaps it was mutual, that they were using each other. McKelvey had not pressured her to live with him, though there were times when he certainly would have preferred it. As long as she was considered to be “with” McKelvey, Hattie didn't have to deal with her own version of his and Caroline's unfinished business. She had an ex-husband out on the east coast who still fished for lobster in the spring and early summer, who still, McKelvey knew, had hooks in her of one kind or another.

When he grew tired of endless mental masturbation, he went to the phone and dialed 411 for directory assistance.

“English,” he instructed the automated attendant.

“English!” he yelled again when it did not immediately click in. “Residential listing. Dawson, Peter. Toronto.”

TWENTY-FIVE

K
ad stood in front of the mirror in the tiny bathroom of the east-end safe house and stitched his scalp beneath the dim glow of a single forty watt bulb. It was not the first time he had stitched himself. Or someone else, for that matter. In the war, they were all medics. Basic first aid was learned in the field, under fire. If a man's limb was not entirely severed, then anyone on the line was expected to jump in and help. The thing was to stop the bleeding. Try to keep the wound as clean as possible, which was not an easy task under the circumstances. Mitigate the effects of shock on the human body.

The wine bottle had come as a surprise, a missile from the corner of his eye. Oddly enough, the bottle itself had not broken. It was intact, sitting on the spare kitchen table right now. The act made him like this policeman, this detective McKelvey, all the more—this absence of fear, this willingness to charge across a busy street in the name of vengeance. He could understand that variety of internal drive, the mechanism at play. Still, he would have to kill the man in order to close the circle entirely. He leaned into the mirror. The broken glass from the imploding window had stuck in a few places above his left ear. He pulled the jagged bits free with a pair of tweezers then washed the wounds with tap water. Only one of the gashes was large enough to require stitches, and even then it required only four quick loops with needle and thread to keep the flap of skin closed. It was a good thing he had little more than stubble on his scalp; it made this job all the easier.

He dabbed the wounds on the side of his head with some toilet tissue and turned off the light. He was bare-chested, and he pulled his shirt back on as he walked into the kitchen. He was hungry, but there was little other than canned soups and beans stocked in a cupboard, and he couldn't be bothered heating it up in a saucepan. He selected a can of tomato soup, opened it, and sat down at the table. He picked up a spoon and ate the concentrated mush straight from the can. For the first time since he'd landed in this country, he allowed his mind to move beyond the operation.
What happened after this?

There was no “after this”. Not in his original thinking. He supposed he had planned all along for his inevitable demise. Perhaps it was his heart's wishful thinking. To complete his task and to die over here, thousands of miles removed from his homeland, a body with no traceable identification. He would be John Doe. And why not? He
was
John Doe.

He ate the cold soup and thought of these last details to be put in place. The final phase of the plan depended on timing and the orchestration of set pieces. He would organize for McKelvey to meet him and Turner at a scheduled time the following afternoon. This would provide him with sufficient time to kill the second target, Mitovik, then gather all of the players together in one room. The school teacher and the policeman would necessarily be eliminated. As for Turner, well, he was to ensure Kadro's safe exit from the country. But Kad did not trust Turner. He expected Turner had similar plans in mind for him—this elimination of all loose ends.

He contemplated the car's broken window and the requirement of a new vehicle. This would be the third. It wasn't worth the phone call to Turner, the admonishments, the wasted time. Besides, the weather was beautiful. It would be an easy thing to drive around for another day with the window rolled all the way down. Yes, it seemed there was little to do now but set the final plan in motion. He put the can of soup aside and belched. It echoed in the empty, lonely apartment. It was during moments such as this that Kadro truly wished he had died in the war like so many of his contemporaries. It was so much more complicated to be a survivor. The dead had already fulfilled their duty and their obligation. What was his duty now, to remember?

How could he forget?

He thought of Krupps and the day he had died. How Kad had insisted they check this one last house where he swore he had seen two enemy soldiers ducking in. Krupps wanted to move the group, to keep on going, but Kad had told him of this instinct he had, this gut feeling. Krupps had relented. And so he had followed Kad into the house through a back door, stepping quietly on the toes of their combat boots, and they found the two soldiers in the midst of raping a lone teenage girl. The girl's father and young brother were dead, their bodies sprawled in the hallway.

Kad and Krupps came into the living room as they had been trained, one aiming high, the other crouched low, and they each shot one of the soldiers, who both died with a look of surprise and guilt on their faces. Kad kicked their bodies off the girl. He looked down at her and told her to put her clothes on. The girl was wild-eyed, maniacal. Kad stepped out of the room to make sure their gunshots had not attracted reinforcements, while Krupps set about checking the dead soldiers for weapons and papers.

And then a gun fired.

Kad ran back, expecting
to find that Krupps had killed the girl for some reason. But no. She sat there in her heap of clothes, one of the soldier's handguns pointed at Krupps' body. Kad remembered these details: the girl's hands were shaking badly, and a tendril of smoke curled from the end of the gun. Krupps was on his side, and Kad could see the pool of blood spreading beneath him. Kad ordered the girl to put the gun down, but she was insane. He levelled his rifle at her. She held the pistol, her hands shaking, then slowly turned it on herself. She slumped backwards, and the gun hit the floor. Every sound was hollow. Kad remembered that scene as though it were a tableau made up of actors or statues—the two dead soldiers, his dead squad leader, and even the girl they had tried to save…

All dead.

“I turned my back on her,” was all Krupps could say. In fact, these were his last words. “I turned my back on her...”

Here in the safe house, Kad could not say whether a minute or an hour had passed. He blinked and looked around the kitchen. He got up and began to rifle through the drawers. He supposed it was his wish all along, that he would complete his mission and die in the process. But first he had an obligation to clean up all loose ends to ensure that none of this came back to the Colonel, or perhaps more importantly, anyone from his village who was involved. Yes, he supposed all along this had been his desire, to die upon completion of the mission. There was no life beyond this, there was only the anguish of remembering, from time to time, who they had been, who they might have become.

He found a corkscrew. He set the wine bottle between his knees and removed the cork with a sharp popping sound. He poured a couple of inches of the dark burgundy wine into a coffee mug. It looked like blood. He raised the glass and smelled it, then he closed his eyes and drank to Krupps and the other dead from his unit, and he drank to himself, too, for he was among them.

TWENTY-SIX

G
arrity's was busier than usual, due to the fact the liquor and beer stores were closed for the holiday. It was almost nine o'clock, and McKelvey was sitting at the bar with a pint of draft beer. His third. He didn't know where else to go or what else to do. He had walked a few blocks down towards the water then found himself drawn to the promise of relative companionship like a magnet pulled to its centre. He had no idea how he would make it across the span between today and tomorrow since the call had come. Sitting there for four hours staring at the phone. When the phone finally had rung, he'd snatched for it like a lonely teenager waiting for an invitation to the prom.