Woman Chased By Crows Part 19

"Meddling old busybody. I'll deal with her, too."

"I think I'd better have a chat with Mrs. Whiffen as well, find out why she was so upset."

"I think you'd be better served dealing with the riffraff in town."

"Mrs. Emery. We try to deal with all our citizens with the same level of obligation and consideration, whether they live on the Knoll or on the wrong side of the ca.n.a.l. Do you have any idea why Mrs. Whiffen was concerned?"

"She's always got some bee in her bonnet."

"Perhaps I could speak to Mr. Emery."

"What do you need with him?"

"I'd like to hear his side of the story."

"It isn't a story, Chief Brennan."

"Of course, I understand, but when a citizen demands that I fire one of my best officers, I'm going to need a bit more than a complaint. At the moment, it's your word against his."

"Naturally you'll be accepting his."

"Well, I'll certainly look into it further, if you think it'll help. Have a chat with the Whiffens, might as well talk to the Conrads, while I'm at it. And your husband, of course." The line was disconnected.

She snaked in across a kitchen sink stacked with pots and dishes and dropped soundlessly to the floor, proud of herself. Giselle never had to handle a pa.s.sage like that. Conflicting sounds were coming from the front room: two television sets, different channels, both with volumes high.

On one screen was a hockey game, on the other, a crime show. She could tell it was a crime show because people were comparing fingerprints on a computer screen. She kept her hands in her pockets.

"h.e.l.lo, Louie. I came in the back way."

"What is that? A wig?"

"How very perceptive of you."

"You got old."

"Not everyone was so lucky." She went to the front window, looked out. "Ludi's dead, Va.s.si's dead, Viktor's dead." She smiled at him. "The list keeps getting longer. And shorter, too, I suppose."

"I thought Ludmilla was in California."

"Sure you did. Where did your son go?"

"He won't be back. I gave him forty dollars. He'll buy a bottle and visit his girlfriend."

"He has a girlfriend. That's so nice. Now there's a man who got old in a hurry." She checked the street again, a reflex.

"So? You're here. Stop sneaking around the room. Sit."

"Where?"

"I don't give a s.h.i.t. Move something."

"So gracious, Louie. I had forgotten how well mannered you are."

"I don't need your bulls.h.i.t, okay? All the time with the smartmouth."

She sat on top of a pile of magazines. "This is comfortable," she said. She lit a cigarette, smoothed the front of her coat, smiled at the troll.

"I think you wouldn't be here if you had anywhere else you could go. Am I right?"

"Don't be silly. I wanted to say goodbye. To you. And to Sergei, of course." She inhaled a deep puff and exhaled a thin stream through tight lips. "You still in touch with him?"

"You think he talks to me? You think we're friends all of a sudden?"

"You have a phone number?"

"Don't be stupid. He moves around. Like you."

"Then I'm wasting my time." She stood. "Goodbye."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Sit down, okay? Let me think a minute."

"Think hard, Louie, because I am leaving the country and I will be taking it with me."

"Where can you go?"

"I can go anywhere. I have a Canadian pa.s.sport, remember? I am legal."

"You think you can sell it somewhere else?"

"Perhaps. I think it is a question of going to the right market, don't you think? Like the Sultan of Bahrain, or one of the Saudis, or some other billionaire? One of them might cough up twenty million, thirty million out of petty cash for one of the great treasures of the world. Don't you think?"

"What do you want?"

"I want to talk to Sergei. How do you get in touch with him?"

"You have it with you?"

"Do not drool, Louie. It is unbecoming." She dropped her cigarette b.u.t.t into a handy beer can. "I will go out the front door this time."

"Can I see it?"

"I will call."

Paul Delisle's apartment in Riverdale overlooked the Don Valley and the two rivers far below. One, grey water choked with silt and abandoned shopping carts, and the other, concrete, the Don Valley Parkway, six lanes north/south, almost deserted, crews and trucks crawling in both directions, closed for the weekend for maintenance. A March wind from the west was rattling the windows. She stared across the valley at the bare trees on the far slope, unwilling to turn around and face the cluttered rooms.

All right, Della, you big stork, don't let the d.a.m.n place overwhelm you. You've been here before, it's not that big - master bedroom, second bedroom with the office, kitchen, bathroom, closets, cupboards, bookshelves, desks, drawers, Christ! The man never met a s.p.a.ce he couldn't cram. Pick a starting spot. Where? Which? First things first; find his d.a.m.n gun. If he left it behind on purpose, it's in here somewhere. Please Jesus it's in here somewhere.

Where? Well, where did she keep her piece off duty? Desk drawer. Which desk? He had three: phone desk in the entrance hall, big rolltop near the balcony window, office desk with his computer and peripherals. Start with the little one by the door; he comes in, takes off his jacket, hangs it in this closet, opens this drawer . . . nope, nothing but takeout menus, junk mail, bra.s.s bowl filled with loose change. Okay, the office. Sit in his chair, clip-on comes off, into this drawer. Locked, but she had keys, all the keys in the world, just a matter of elimination. The phone rang. She hesitated for three rings, not wanting to talk to anyone who didn't already know he was gone. At the fourth ring she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver in time to hear the end of his message, ". . . at home. Leave a thing. (beep)" The other end was immediately disconnected.

The answering machine was in his top drawer along with a box of .38 Specials. Same as .357 for most applications.

"You have seven unheard messages, three saved messages, listen to messages press one."

Four of them were from women. She fast-forwarded through messages from Lydia, Jasmine, Lydia again and Paula. One message from his daughter, "Dad? You there? Pick up, Dad, if you're there. Dad? Call me, okay. It's your daughter, right? Call me." Oh Christ, well, Danielle knew by now, at least I didn't have to break the news. The other two messages were from a man, educated, confident. Some kind of accent. "Delisle, you know who this is." Yeah, he probably knew; she didn't. And him again. "It is Sergei. We need to talk. You should call me. Really. You need to call me."

"Love to, Sergei, whoever you are. Do call again." Sergei? Another d.a.m.n Russian. How many is that?

There were three saved messages. One was from her. "Hey, d.i.c.khead, I had a thought, I have one from time to time, you remember that big dude with the tats on his neck, the bouncer, Gregory? I think we should go back at him. What d'ya think? Get back." And a saved one from ex-wife Jenny, "What am I supposed to do, hire a collection agency? It's three weeks. Your daughter needs clothes, books, call me, before the weekend, you remember the new number? Write it down." And the third saved one was from her old friend, Sergei, fluent English but definitely an accent, Russian, had to be. "Don't let it happen again, Detective Delisle, I am very serious. Her name now is Daniel. That should be easy to remember, yes? Like the name of your child. Anya Daniel. You can find her. I have faith."

Sergei, hunh? No phone number, no last name. But Sergei, whoever he was, was interested in the ballet teacher.

Might as well do the rolltop, get that over with. Where did he get this monster? Behind the sliding cover were slots and cubbyholes and tiny drawers for stamps and paperclips and who the h.e.l.l would organize their lives around stamp drawers and slots jammed with empty envelopes? And in one of the stamp drawers, or maybe it was a paperclip drawer, she found the second ca.s.sette, labelled "Della #2 FYI-only-P." Oh s.h.i.t. And where did I put that stupid little recorder thing?

Now she definitely needed a drink. A shot of something, it didn't matter, tequila, she hated tequila, brandy, she could stomach that, a shot of brandy to ward off the chills of a dead man's apartment filled with the dead man's things.

She knocked back two ounces of Hennessey and took a gasping breath as the heat blossomed in her belly and spread to her heart and head. "Bring it on, a.s.shole," she muttered. Bring. It. On. She pulled the recorder out of her bag; she knew exactly where it was, had listened to the first tape more than once, more than twice too. She put in the new tape and went back to her place by the window, lit by the unexpected appearance of sunshine low in the west. She took another nip of brandy, held the recorder up like a mirror, clicked the b.u.t.ton. Bring it on.

"Hey Della, made it to the joint, right? Being cool about all this, right? Okay, here's the deal: have a look in the freezer, way in the back, ice-cube tray. Careful when you thaw it out, okay?"

She had to chip the tray out of a thick crust of white ice. She knocked the cubes onto a dishtowel and twisted it into a sack, ran it under hot water until she felt the cubes melt away.

There were five stones on the towel. Four of them were diamonds, she didn't know much about gems but they looked to be engagement ring size, if your fiance drove a Bentley. The other stone was bigger. It was blue. A sapphire, she thought, probably, a big one, a very big, very blue sapphire.

"Get 'em? Nice, eh? Yeah, they're stolen, but stolen long long ago and far far away, so knowing what to do with them is a real problem. I mean, who the h.e.l.l can you give them back to?

"What the f.u.c.k, just hand them into the department, 'recovery of stolen goods, details unspecified,' before your time anyway, well, most of it. Anyhow, at this stage, who gives a s.h.i.t, right? I'll understand if you can't deal with it.

"Here's the thing -" His voice was rambling - a bit drunk, maybe very drunk, he handled it well but when he drank, he drank. She could hear him, almost see him, cruising the apartment, b.u.mping into things, settling finally into a chair that whooshed, the big leather one. She heard him take another drink, heard ice tinkle against gla.s.s, his lips sounded wet. "It was all a big accident, the first two were anyway, the two big diamonds, that was an accident." He laughed, a laugh she'd heard before, his "Isn't life some weird s.h.i.t?" laugh. "I got a call, some guy dead in the Beaches, shot in the head. DOA. Had them in his pocket, well they weren't in his pocket, they were on the gra.s.s just outside his pocket, like he'd been pulling them out when he got shot. So, long story short, I palmed them. What? It was a reflex. Dylan was already there cruising the perimeter with a flashlight looking for tracks or bra.s.s, or maybe more jewellery, who knows, pitch black, the uniforms were at the car, calling in the cavalry, the d.a.m.n things were under my hand when I bent down to check him out, and I palmed them, reflex, easy as pie. Shouldn't have. Know that. I'm sure Dylan would have. Maybe that was it. Save him from himself.

"I checked all the reports, stolen jewels, nothing like these two, these were big baby, big. I didn't even think they were real at first. I had a guy I know check one of them out, he says, oh yeah, that's the real thing, maybe fifty K worth. So there you go. My first step off the straight and narrow. Okay, maybe not the first time, but the first time I didn't get right back on. None of that matters now anyway, does it? Not if you're listening to this, not if I've got a tag on my toe, then who gives a s.h.i.t how it happened, right?

"So anyway, I've got my hands on an easy fifty K worth of unreported, unclaimed, anonymous ice. Nice, hunh?"

She stopped the tape, put the recorder on the coffee table. No, she thought, not nice.

Six.

Sat.u.r.day, March 19 She slept in his bed, in her clothes, her face buried in his pillow. She could smell his hair on the pillowcase, his body on the sheets. She woke three times during the night, woke from dreams in which she was crying, woke to find his pillow damp. Three times she washed her face in his bathroom without turning on the light, sat on the commode to blow her nose and dry her face with a fresh towel that still contrived to smell of him, remind her where she was. The stars were visible and the sky was an hour from turning grey when she gave up on sleep and sat at his office desk, listening to the wind whistling across the balconies. The gems were in a brown envelope, unsealed, contents listed on the flap - "1 blue stone (possibly sapphire), 4 white stones (probably diamonds), evidence as yet unreported due to the death of the investigator." The list was signed, "Adele Moen, Detective." The envelope wasn't dated. Not yet. Not just yet. Not until she had an hour to think things through.

What's to think about? Turn them in.

And the tape?

Destroy it.

Well, why not? She could do what she wanted with it. Toss it, squash it. It wasn't evidence. It was a personal message, not a confession. What she did with it was up to her.

Listen to the rest of it.

"Okay, so there we are, there I am, hanging onto something I shouldn't be holding onto. But then I start wondering, who carries loose diamonds around in their pocket? And the DOA, he's got no ID, nothing personal, and I'm wondering if it belonged to the vic in the first place, or if he just happened to fall down dead on fifty K worth of gemstones. Seemed unlikely . . . walking in the park, on his own, with a couple of big diamonds in his pocket? That's odd."

She heard liquid poured, a bottle cap replaced, wet lips again. His voice thicker, slurring certain words, but still articulate, still forming clear lines of thought, his brain still operating like a cop's brain, looking for answers, searching for an explanation.

"And what was Dylan doing at the crime scene twenty minutes before I got there? Why didn't he pick up the stones? Not like Big Smoothie to overlook something like free jewellery lying around. So I went back to the park, on my own, just to have a long look around in the daytime.

"Don't know what I figured I'd find, big park, you can come at it from ten directions, weave your way toward where we found the body a hundred different ways. No way to search the park completely without a big team on foot, dogs, metal detectors, a hundred sets of eyes. On my own? Not a chance.

"The vic was found shot in the back, about a hundred and fifty metres into the park, facing the lake, a long way from the beach, so you can make some basic a.s.sumptions from where he was found, right? The way he was pointing, how he was dressed. I decided he probably came down from Queen Street, quartering in from northwest to southeast. What was he doing there? Middle of the night, jacket, pants, street shoes, not a jogger, not a dog-walker. Another a.s.sumption: maybe he was there to meet someone. And if it was a planned meeting, there'd have to be specifics. You don't go out in the night without knowing where you're going. So there's a phone call, something, where should we meet? By the big tree in the middle? Nope, a hundred big trees in the middle, something more specific.

"The park's got this big gazebo bandstand thing where they have concerts. Kind of an obvious meeting place. And since he got shot maybe a hundred metres past there, what do we a.s.sume now? That he met whoever, and they continued walking, and then whoever shot him. In the back. It could have gone down that way.

"So he's meeting someone in the middle of the night, he's either very sure of this person, or he's very nervous about this person. Let's jump and say whoever he's meeting scares him. What does he do? Takes some precautions, right? He's got two loose diamonds in his pocket. He's there to meet someone carrying two loose diamonds? That's not how you carry gems. Diamond merchants fold them up inside a piece of paper. That's all. They fold a piece of paper and put the stones in a little folded package. So either the guy gave them to whoever he met, or, if I was going to do it, I'd take a sample to show, but I'd stash the rest somewhere. Where, somewhere?

"I tell ya, Stretch, I'd'a made a h.e.l.luva crook if I hadn't become a cop. I've got the devious instincts. You know it. I'm a porch-climber in my heart. Just following my nose, thinking like the crook I could be if I felt like it, and so what do I find? Well, you got them too now. Wrapped up in a piece of paper, folded into a square and stuck under the bandstand steps. The big blue one, a couple more diamonds. And the piece of paper. Even better. It's a p.a.w.n ticket. I'm on a roll . . . d.a.m.n! Battery light's blinking. I'll get back to . . .

Paulie, Paulie, you t.i.tanic a.s.shole. What the f.u.c.k did you get yourself into? Russian crown jewels? Are you kidding me? Tell you one thing, dummy, there is no way I am sinking my career to cover your a.s.s. And what exactly would I be protecting? Your reputation? h.e.l.l, the time for that's long past, don't you think? Pension? Life insurance? Whatever. Your daughter loses some money coming to her, tough, sure, but not the end of the world. So why would I bother? You're already up to your neck, pal, the question is, how deep is the s.h.i.t? You go under, you go under on your own.

What's the big deal? Turn it in. Some jewels were found, he didn't have time to write up a report before he was killed. I know nothing about them except they don't belong to me.

You'd think a woman her age would know how to make coffee. What kind of a person lives almost forty years without picking up that rudimentary skill? Paul had all the gear, grinder, whole beans, coffee maker, espresso machine, one of those French plunger gizmos; he prided himself on his coffee. She was okay as long as it was hot and had enough caffeine to wake her up. Not Paulie. He liked his lattes and his cappuccinos and teeny cups of bitter brew. d.a.m.n! Not one lousy little jar of Nescafe in the joint.

There was coffee dust in the grinder. She filled it with beans but couldn't find a switch to turn it on. The phone rang. She lifted the receiver before the second ring ended, held it to her ear without speaking.

"Yes. I thought someone was visiting."

She recognized the voice. "You must be Sergei. Got your messages. How you doin'?"

"I saw a face at the window."

"Really? Where were you, up a tree?"

"I was in the parking lot. Briefly. I'm not there now."

"How sweet. You've got the place staked out."

"How many of you are up there?"

"Just me, Sergei. Come on up, I'm making coffee. We should talk."

"We are talking."