Mulengro, page 5
Tom cradled the receiver slowly. And with his house burned to the foundation, there was absolutely no way he was going to get in touch with John unless John called here.
“Do you have another rehearsal tonight?”
He turned to find Gillian in the doorway of the kitchen. She was dressed casually in an old sweatshirt and jeans, which meant she was planning to spend the day in the studio working on her new canvas.
“I . . . I’m not sure.”
Gillian nodded. “The fire. I forgot. Have you managed to get in touch with John? You know he’s welcome to stay with us for as long as he wants.” She moved across the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. Holding the pot towards him, she lifted her brows quizzically.
Tom nodded and brought his cup over. “It’s strange,” he said, “but without his home number to reach him at, I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”
“Well, he must have said something to you last night.” She sat down in the kitchen nook with her coffee and brushed a spill of blonde hair back from her shoulders. Some of that color came from a bottle of Miss Clairol—but only enough to touch up the gray hairs that were invading, each year a few more than there had been the year before. As far as Tom was concerned, she needed nothing to remain attractive to him. She looked just as good in an evening gown as when he caught her in the studio, dressed as she was now, with paint smeared on her cheek or brow where she’d rubbed her face, forgetting the paint on her hands. There was something to be said about growing old together. He knew he loved her more now than he had the first year they’d met.
“He didn’t say much of anything,” Tom said as he sat down across from her. “Just up and ran off—like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“I’m sure he just needs some time to himself,” Gillian said. “Lord knows, I ‘d want some time to myself if it happened to us.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“He’ll call, Tom. If not today, then tomorrow for certain.” Gillian smiled, trying to cheer him up. Tom dredged up a weak response that merely touched the corners of his mouth. “In the meantime, I hate to sound callous, but about tonight . . . If you’ve nothing planned, Diana’s asked us over this evening for a few drinks.”
“Fine.”
Gillian regarded him worriedly for a long moment, then sighed. She stood up and kissed the top of his head, then went upstairs to her studio, coffee in hand. Tom sat for a long while, his own drink going cold. When he closed his eyes, he saw only flames. He tried to work during the day, but found he couldn’t concentrate. The music he was preparing for his own new recording sounded flat no matter how often he tuned his guitar, and he couldn’t work on the material for John’s new album because that just started the whole train of thoughts over again, a repetitive run-through from the fire to the somewhat disquieting feeling that perhaps—
There is no John Owczarek.
Why would he have said that—phrased it in such a way? Tom didn’t like puzzles. He hated crosswords, Trivial Pursuit and mystery novels. His mind didn’t work that way. He tended to just bull through problems. Thinking things through merely gave him a headache—like the one he had now. The only thing he had patience for was his music, and today even that wasn’t doing any good. At length he left his guitar in the music room and took a couple of painkillers, then went out for a walk, studiously avoiding the route that would take him by the burned-out shell of John’s house.
There is no John Owczarek.
The phrase left him with an eerie sense of dislocation—as pronounced now as it had been last night. He could remember reading a book once about a man who woke up one morning and found that he didn’t exist anymore. The concept had frightened him far more than any of the horror movies his son Matt had taken him to before he moved out west last year. Today there was no John Owczarek. What if he woke up tomorrow and there was no Gillian? Or Gillian was there, but she didn’t know who he was? Irritated by the turn of thought his mind had taken, he stepped up his pace, determined to outwalk the confusion inside him. He concentrated on going over to the Mitchells’ place tonight and hoped that Ed had laid in a good supply of his office jokes, because he knew he needed something to lighten his day.
John would call before he and Gillian went out, he decided. Or tomorrow morning for sure. Why shouldn’t he? He couldn’t just up and disappear forever. They had a recording date set, material to arrange, a friendship to maintain.
There is no John Owczarek.
God, he hated those words.
six
“You know that guy we picked up this morning?” Will moved forward in his chair and leaned his elbows on Briggs’ desk. “Mr. I’ll-shove-this-broomstick-up-your-ass?”
Briggs nodded. They’d been lucky to find him in the basement when they followed a tip to pick him up, instead of upstairs in his apartment. The last time Briggs had seen a collection of weapons like Yves Chenier had was when he’d been involved in a raid on the West End chapter of the Devil’s Dragon biker gang at the beginning of the summer. They’d found enough arms in Chenier’s apartment to start a small war. A sawed-off shotgun. A .45, two .38’s, a .22 target pistol. Six rifles, including one with an infrared scope. A grenade launcher. He shook his head, remembering. A grenade launcher, for Christ’s sake!
“What about him?”
“I just got word from Jean that he’s out on the street. Bail was set at a lousy two grand.”
Briggs understood Will’s frustration. Sometimes it all just seemed so pointless. The punks were being put back on the street faster than they could bust them.
“And I know he was in on that Caisse Populaire heist last month,” Will added. “It was just his kind of gig. This guy’s sheet reads like an index to the Criminal Code, and he’s back on the street already. I’d like to catch him in a dark alley doing anything—even littering— and maybe fire a couple of warning shots through his head.”
“Tell me about it.” Briggs gathered up the reports and file folders on his desk and made a neat stack out of them. He knew Will had been busting his ass on the Chenier case. They’d both figured that they’d come up with a real break with this morning’s tip, but now the owner of the Mac’s Milk claimed he couldn’t pick Chenier out of the lineup—more like wouldn’t—and the judge had been forced to turn him loose on bail. He was still going to go up on the weapons charges, but it wasn’t going to be the same.
“What did you think of MacLean?” Briggs asked to change the subject. Andrew MacLean was the man who’d found Wood’s corpse in the alley last night and—surprise, surprise—actually called it in. They’d interviewed him again this morning after they’d double-checked the statement he’d made last night.
Will sat back in his chair and shook his head. “Sometimes I think you’re like a hound dog, you know? You just don’t let go.”
“He lives in Alta Vista. You don’t go clear downtown for a walk in the evening—not in that area.”
“No. But it’s the right place to have a few drinks with the boys after working late and maybe getting a blow-job in an alleyway—if you’re not too particular about what kind of diseases your old wanger’s going to come in contact with. Ten-to-one he was going in there with a hooker, but there’s no way he’s going to tell us that. Let’s just be happy he took the time to call it in. What we found wasn’t pretty. Just imagine what it would’ve looked like if a few rats had been gnawing away at it for half the night.”
“I suppose . . .”
Will laughed. “You don’t fool me, Paddy. It wouldn’t surprise me if you found out that he was once given a kick in the ass by a Gypsy when he was five years old and now he’s decided to pay them back. Just dig back far enough. Me, I’m packing it in for today. Sharon’s got the night off and we’re going to have a nice quiet dinner at home—together for a change. You want a lift?”
Briggs patted his stomach and shook his head. “Think I’ll actually walk and shock some weight off the old system.”
Will grinned. “Hey. Just say the word and I’ll see what I can do about having the Inspector put you back on a beat for a month or so—just to get in shape, you know what I mean?”
“Do the words ‘fuck off’ mean anything to you?”
“I don’t know. I’ll look ‘em up when I get home.” He stood up to return to his own desk. “Take it easy, Paddy.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
Briggs headed for the stairs with a wave of his hand. He mounted one step at a time, thinking of the appropriateness of keeping the General Assignment Unit tucked away downstairs with Morality Control, the holding cells and the Morgue. It reflected the attitude of the public, if not that of the Chief of Police. Sweep it away and pretend it doesn’t exist—except for the juicy bits you can slap on the front pages of the daily paper and the tube. Here one day, relegated to limbo the next. Because of the residential outcry when the location for the new police headquarters was announced, four-fifths of the new building was underground so that it wouldn’t “overpower the site.” The General Assignment offices were too close to the holding cells for Briggs’ liking. Everything might smell clean now—except for the Morgue downstairs which was maybe too clean-smelling like a hospital—but give it a couple of months and you wouldn’t be able to mistake the stink of the winos’ vomit as it drifted down towards their offices. Not that the guys upstairs had it much better. They didn’t have windows either. But at least they knew they were above ground.
When he reached the street, Briggs stood a moment, adjusting to the change of temperature. That was the worst thing about working in air conditioning—the moment you stepped outside and the heat hit you. Your body was still attuned to the cool, if somewhat stale air, and was saying, “Nope. I don’t want to be out here.” And just to make the point absolutely clear, it’d turn on the sweat like a kid playing with a new faucet. Lovely. At least it was supposed to cool down again tonight.
Turning south on Elgin, he crossed under the Queensway to walk the ten blocks to Fifth Avenue. Another three blocks west brought him to Rupert Street where he rented the middle apartment of a three-story red-brick building. He was sweating profusely by the time he got home, but hadn’t wanted to take off his jacket because he was still wearing his shoulder holster. The Chief wasn’t big on his plainclothes officers sporting their pieces in public. Didn’t do a whole lot for the image.
It was quiet inside his apartment, and too warm. He took off his jacket, hung it by the door and removed his holster. Carrying it into the living room, he sat down and laid it on the battered coffee table that still had last night’s dinner dishes on it. Briggs sighed as he leaned back on the sofa. He was tired. Not because of the lack of sleep from getting called out last night. Rather it was a deeper, more disturbing weariness. The endless parade of victims and perpetrators, like the almost headless stiff last night and this morning’s punk with his arsenal, wouldn’t leave him. Their faces and the knowledge of the crimes they’d either committed or were victims to left him alternating between anger and exhaustion. They were like ghosts that lived inside him and never stopped their haunting. And their number count never let up. A day, Christ, an hour didn’t go by without someone getting it. A purse snatched, some little five-and-dime getting hit. A gas bar. A hit and run. A knife job. Something like last night. Or Chenier being out on bail already. . . .
He turned on the TV and went into the kitchen, wishing he’d picked up a pizza on the way home. He pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer without even looking to see what kind it was and thrust it into the oven. A second trip to the fridge got him a beer. Popping the tab, he went back into the living room and stretched out on the sofa. One of those “real-honest-to-God-people-do-these-things” shows was on and the announcer’s eager voice was an irritating buzz even at low volume. He got up, turned the channels until he found a documentary, then returned to his seat, watching the screen with the sound off. The beer was just what he’d needed. After dinner he’d take a shower, but right now he just didn’t want to move.
Part of the reason things got to him so much was that, outside of work, he really didn’t have much else. Most men his age were married, had a couple of kids, were living out in the suburbs like Kanata, or Alta Vista, or somewhere by now. Working around the house, in the garden, when they got home from work. Puttering. He glanced around his shabby apartment. Maybe he should get into puttering. The place could certainly use it.
Oh, he’d had plans . . . once. He was going to get married, have kids, go the whole route. Her name was Francine Gillard—a pretty French Canadian from the Hull side. He still had a picture of her on the fake mantelpiece across from the couch. A five-by-seven that was dusty and didn’t look right anymore. He couldn’t imagine the young woman in the photograph as a lover or wife now. He was old enough to have daughters her age. . . .
It was his own fault that things hadn’t worked out. She’d been a waitress when he was still a rookie patrolman—no taller, but in a hell of a lot better shape. They’d talked about marriage. She wanted it right away, but he wanted to wait until he was making enough to support her properly. No wife of his was going to work, by God! And no family of his was going to be raised in anything even close to the poverty he’d been raised in.
Briggs sighed. He didn’t need to be thinking like this. What he ought to do was put Francine’s picture away and get on with his life—even if it was twenty years too late. She sure as hell wasn’t coming back. Not that he was waiting for her to. He didn’t know what he was waiting for anymore. He wondered if she was happy with her car salesman. If they had a house in the suburbs and children. If her husband puttered around the place on the weekend. . . . He stared at the picture. He really should get rid of it. Instead he went into the kitchen and took his dinner out of the oven.
He was in bed by ten-thirty and bleary with sleep when the ringing of the phone finally roused him. He stared at the luminous dial of his alarm clock. Five to twelve. His hand found the receiver and blessed silence cut across the room as he lifted it from its cradle. He grunted into the mouthpiece.
“Paddy? Will here. We’ve got another one.”
Briggs sat up. The room was dark—a perfect backdrop for the image that flashed through his mind. He didn’t think he could face another body with its head half-severed from its neck. Not tonight. Not ever again if he could help it.
“Where?”
“In the Market again. They called me when they got an ID. Cooper ran the victim’s prints and came up with another Gypsy so he gave me a call. You coming down?”
They didn’t need this, Briggs thought. He could see the headlines if the media connected tonight’s victim with last night’s. “GYPSY KILLER ON THE LOOSE!” From time to time you’d get a string of four or five of these before the maniac got scared or, less often, got caught. It was the kind of thing the newspapers loved. The kind of thing that brought the pressure from the brass upstairs down hard on the men trying to deal with the case. Not to mention the poor fucking victims. . . .
“Was it the same as last night?” he asked into the receiver.
“Yeah. Happened in another alleyway about two blocks from the first. Cooper’s still working on the autopsy. He says it’s shaping up like the other one.”
“Great.”
“Got a couple of witnesses this time.”
“They saw it happen?”
“Not exactly.”
“I’ll be down in fifteen minutes,” Briggs said and hung up.
The operating room was brightly lit and stank of chemical soap. Briggs stared at the body on the surgical table, at the sheer damage of the corpse’s neck and forearms highlit under the merciless lights. The room itself was neat and orderly. Sterile. The corpse had brought its own horror into the room with it. One of Cooper’s assistants was preparing slides at a side table. Cooper had nothing to add to the quick briefing that he’d given when Briggs had arrived.
“Did you find anything we can use?” he asked.
Cooper shook his head. He indicated the defense wounds on the victim’s forearms. “He put up a better fight—better than the other fellow did last night—but it didn’t help him much in the long run.”
“And you still say there wasn’t a weapon involved?”
“I don’t know, Briggs. As soon as I get anything . . .”
“Yeah,” Briggs replied wearily. He stared at the corpse for a long moment, then looked away. “Well, I’ve seen enough. You coming, Will?”
Briggs’ adrenaline was working overtime and he wanted to get upstairs to follow what leads the victim’s arrest sheet might give them and to talk to the witnesses. There was nothing they could do down here. He hoped that the witnesses could give them something, because he knew that anything they got from the victim’s sheet would eventually run them up against a dead-end. Tonight’s Gypsy wasn’t going to give them anything more than last night’s had. They just didn’t exist on paper the way a normal man did. No credit cards. No anything that wasn’t registered under an alias. But they had to give it a try.
“What did you say the victim’s name was?” he asked as they entered the stairwell.
“The driver’s license he was carrying was in the name of Arnold Smith,” Will said, “but ceepik matched his prints with one Ingo Shandor. At least that was the name at the top of the list.”
