Ocean Drive, page 20
Cam snared the man’s neck and dragged him back. Choking, elbows flailing at Cam’s ribs, the man went down. Cam felt something sink into his arm, saw the man’s fingers claw at his bicep. Cam thumbed his eye. When the man released his grip, Cam struck him in the throat. He struggled free, kicked the man in the head, lumbered toward Mrs. Garrick’s room.
He saw the other man strike the widow across the face. She gasped and thudded to the carpet. The man bent for the package of money and Cam tackled him, the two crashing through the balcony glass.
In the melee, Cam’s head struck the railing and he felt the money slip through his hands. He was kicked in the chest and stomped and saw the man’s boot come down. His hand went up to shield himself—too late—
* * *
—he woke to a woman’s voice echoing through the house.
Stirring, he saw that the men were gone. So was the money. Mrs. Garrick was on her side, wrist bent at a wrong angle. But breathing.
Pulling himself up and picking out glass, he staggered down the hall, stopping when he heard the voice of Meghan Quick.
I know how it looks, officer…
She’d never believe him.
He lowered himself from the balcony to the roof of the pool room, heard the cop shouting, ignored it, worked on controlling his drop as best he could. Up. Then sprinting across the lawn as she called again, hands up, police, and fired.
The train tracks. The beach. Falling, scrambling up, that nightmare feeling of moving over sand. Onto the grass and the parking lot. Seeing the headlight explode to his right, an additional surge of adrenaline sending him through the lot and back out to the street where he’d parked.
He drove off, turning away from the beach as the bubblegum lights of a police cruiser lit up the opposite end of the street.
Christ, what a mess.
Where to go?
* * *
“You’re not coming in,” his uncle said.
Cam could hear a voice inside—a child’s? He tried to peer over the old man’s shoulder, but Uncle Pete shut the door behind himself, leaving the two on the porch.
“The truck, then,” Cam said.
“Wait here. I’ll grab keys for you.”
Cam inspected the marks on his arm. His attacker’s fingers had left deep bruises, a fingernail embedded in the skin. A small splotch of blood pasted the fabric to his forearm.
Uncle Pete returned, tossing him the keys.
“Not that you asked,” he said, “but you ought to hand yourself over. I could call Meg Quick, have her come out herself. That way nobody gets hurt.”
Cam had already backed off the porch, toward the blue pickup.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said.
The old man nodded and didn’t seem surprised.
* * *
In a drug store, he bought a burner phone and dialed Zoe Prentice’s number. She didn’t pick up and there was no messaging service. Cam dialed Harv’s private number. Waited, then texted, It’s CS, new phone, what‘s going on?
A moment later Harv phoned him back.
“The cops just got through with Sukhi,” Harv said. “Something happen?”
“I don’t know, man. I was picking up something from Mrs. Garrick and the Vipers attacked. They took the package and torched her place.” Cam drove the pickup over a bridge, slowing as he approached the turnoff for the freeway. “The cops saw me there.”
“They’ll be at your place soon, if they’re not already,” Harv said. “You’re gonna need to stay out of sight. You got money on you?”
“Next to nothing,” Cam said.
“There’s a stash at Tito’s, inside one of those green ammo crates. Couple credit cards, too. Enough to get started.”
Cam pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the off-ramp, reversed down to the turnoff that led back to White Rock. The oncoming cars moved too fast to notice a truck cross the rumble strips and make a U-turn.
“Where’m I going?” Cam asked.
“Figure that out once you get the money,” Harv said.
* * *
There was an unmarked car parked up the street from Tito’s house. No hubcaps. Tinted windows. The car screamed police.
He drove on, slouched in his seat. Uncle Pete had left one of his old baseball caps in the truck, and Cam wore it with the brim pulled low. He could feel the fabric against his forehead, greased smooth from years of his uncle’s sweat.
How had his life ended up so damn different from his uncle’s? Did he simply not measure up? Was there a point in the mess of decisions where he’d swerved left, while Uncle Pete would have taken the straight road? Or had the old man simply been blessed never to have to make those types of choices?
Cam thought about Zoe and his money. He’d phone her and tell her to have it ready. Role-playing time was over now. He wasn’t a member of the League of Nations. He was a guy who’d bought himself a second chance and was now entitled to it.
Bullshit, he thought, parking the truck behind the Bay Ridge Elementary soccer field. You’re entitled to nothing. You want that chance? Then it starts with you getting into that basement.
Crossing the field, he wound his way through a figure-eight-shaped pair of cul-de-sacs, down a small chain-link walkway to the alley behind Tito’s home. The yard was as neglected as the rest of the house. A standalone garage was piled with furniture, the lawn both spotty and overgrown. His footfalls crunched against the frozen lawn.
Up the back porch and a little pressure to the door. Why he hadn’t called Tito first he wasn’t sure. Maybe so that if asked, Tito wouldn’t have to lie.
In the kitchen Cam texted him. This is CS. You home?
He heard the shump-shump of stocking feet running downstairs. Saw a shadow pass across the hall, heard Tito’s voice say, “Aw, fuck me.”
A moment later a text came through: Yeah U OK?
Check yr back door, Cam typed. Then crouched and waited as Tito walked past him through the kitchen, tapping him on the shoulder and whispering, “Surprise, motherfucker.”
Tito screamed and dropped something that smacked off the tile. A pistol. He turned and embraced Cam. “Scared me, asshole.”
“Shhh. Harv told me to grab something from the War Room. You alone?”
Shaking his head as if waking himself up. “Yeah, dude, everything’s fine.”
Something in Tito’s eyes—shame, the same look he’d had coming out of the forest after abandoning Cam and the others—told him things were not fine. That Meghan Quick or someone else had talked to him. Tito had weighed things up and made a choice.
Cam looked down at the gun, a long-barrelled target pistol, probably a .22.
Tito’s hands swept down for the gun but Cam kicked it, spinning it into the bottom of the cupboard. Their bodies collided and Tito grabbed his forearm, close to the bruises, and sensing the pain it caused, embedded his fingers in the flesh. Cam howled and batted at Tito’s face, and as they fell, reached for the gun.
Tito’s arms were longer. His middle finger rested on the handle, snaked it closer to his palm. Cam clamped down his hand on Tito’s arm, freed his left and elbowed Tito in the eye socket. Cam grasped the trigger guard, felt a kick land in his stomach. The gun slid underneath the lip of the oven.
Tito panicked and Cam struck him in the face. Pulled out the oven drawer and launched it at Tito, crumbs and aluminum cake pans scattering across the floor. He bent and retrieved the pistol.
“Who,” he asked, his breathing starting to return to normal.
“No one,” Tito said. “Let me go. Please, brother.”
“Did Harv tell you I was coming?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Was it the cops?”
“No. Swear.”
Cam gestured with the gun and Tito stood up. Walked to the basement door and started downstairs. At the bottom, Tito turned, watching Cam’s hands, licking at the blood that trickled from his mouth.
“Face down on the concrete,” Cam said.
Tito complied, shivering when his cheek brushed the floor.
Cam found the crate and loosened the top. Dug out the money and cards wrapped up with what looked like a gram of cocaine. Leaving the coke, he told Tito to sit up.
“Why the fuck did you do this?”
“I didn’t,” Tito whined. “I just got scared, the cops were here, I don’t—”
“You told them I might be coming back?”
Tito shook his head but didn’t meet Cam’s stare.
If he were a true outlaw, he would’ve shot Tito there. Part of him wanted to. Could imagine the cowardly shit’s look of surprise and pain.
“Stay,” he told Tito. “If I hear you breathe, the next five minutes, I don’t care what happens to me. Down.”
Tito embraced the cold concrete.
Cam ran up the steps, heard front-door knocking, dashed through the kitchen. Saw the back door burst inward. Turned, saw the play of a flashlight over the front entrance. Cam went left, into the living room, smashing at the window with the butt of the pistol. Knocking out the glass shards and stepping onto the ledge, dropping down, landing with a woof on his knees in a gravel bed.
His hands pawed the concrete walkway as he pushed to his feet. Confusion from inside, the bubble lights out front. Diving over a neighbour’s fence, dragging down some sort of vine that snared his right leg. Patting his pockets to make sure he still had the phone.
He could get back to the truck.
Running crouched across the property, motion lights flicking on. Into the alley, the walkway, scraping the chain-link, rattling the bushes. He darted down the centre of a cul-de-sac toward the school.
Leaning against a beige power box in a darkened corner of the street, he dialed Harv.
“You get it?” Harv asked him.
“Tito sold me out.”
“We’ll deal with him later,” Harv said. “You still got wheels?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s a big house on Blackburn, backs onto the Ravine. A little shack behind there. Entry code is triple eight, triple six. Do not come if anyone’s following you.”
“Understood,” Cam said.
“And no more calls on this line.”
Cam tossed the phone and bolted across the field.
* * *
He ditched the truck in an alley behind the row of beachfront houses, working his way on foot up the ravine to the address Harv had given him.
The house was a three-storey postmodern castle, staggered to create multiple verandas and bent at a right angle to wrap itself around the curve of the hill. Cam struggled over the gate and followed a rambling brick path to a two-floor cottage that looked built from a kit.
The code worked. The interior was wallpapered and floored with vinyl. A steep staircase rose from the middle of the kitchen. Battered appliances sat on the Formica counter. Garbage overflowed from a green bag on the floor.
Cam went up the stairs without turning on the lights. The small room at the top held a pull-out bed and a bookshelf. A bottle of Johnny Walker Black sat on the ledge of the window that looked out over the ravine.
Not a bad place to lie low. Cam helped himself to a drink from the bottle. He cleared junk from the bed, sat on the mattress, not meaning to sleep, but finding his head reclining.
He awoke to prisms of light. There was no clock upstairs. His arm was aching and hunger rumbled his stomach. He went back downstairs and found a box of old granola bars, chewed one with a cup of water from the small bathroom. Then he cleaned the blood off his forearm. Showered, had another granola bar, thinking he’d be here for a while.
It was a lot of trust to place in Harv, but he didn’t have a choice.
He was about to deposit the granola wrappers in the garbage when he noticed something sticking out of the bag. An aluminum canister, Premium Stove and Lantern Fuel. Red oxidation speckled the lid. Liquid still sloshed inside the can. It smelled pungent, like kerosene.
He didn’t have time to consider what it meant.
When the door was kicked in, his hands flew up. He felt the cold kiss of a shotgun barrel against his neck. Cam didn’t resist as he was thrown on the ground.
Sixteen
Pete Shaw chain-smoked American Spirits and drank two cans of Pabst as he told Meghan how he’d come to be the biological father of Elizabeth Garrick’s son, and what lengths he’d gone to keep that a secret.
“Liz and Roger tried for a long time. You know how proud he was—the thought of her going to one of those sperm banks, of people in town knowing the kid wasn’t his—that would’ve ate at him. Her, too. They had this image back then of being perfect.”
“I remember,” Meghan said.
“She’s pretty, of course, Liz. But I always thought there was something sad about her. ‘Magine having all that, and still not being happy? It’s a cruel world that way.”
He cracked a fresh can and offered Meghan another cigarette, which she accepted. From inside, Max opened the door of the pantry and began pulling out bread and peanut butter. Pete watched for a second, smiling in that misty way that parents do.
“Anyway,” he said, “Liz was on the phone with her doctor, one day, talking about it while I was doing some work. And she remembered I was there and asked me not to say anything. I told her, of course, her business is her business. You overhear a lot of strangeness working in peoples’ homes. I’d lose customers out the ass if they thought I was spreading their secrets around.”
Meghan watched Max for a second. The child had some of the porcelain beauty of his mother. His hair was darker, though. Like Pete’s, she thought. Or Cam’s.
“’Bout a week later, Liz lays it out for me. How she’s reaching the age where soon it’ll be impossible, and Roger doesn’t need to know. And if I wanted her, we could do it like that.”
He grinned, seeing the look on Meghan’s face. “’Magine a homely bastard like me turning down a woman like that. I told her I wouldn’t feel good forcing her, but if she wanted a donation, I was willing. So we set it up with her lawyer. Drew up a contract and everything. Here.”
Her smoke had gone out. Pete took it and chained it off his own, then lit a fresh one for himself. His attitude to the events was more bemused than anything else.
“Soon after that, Roger got killed. I didn’t see much of Liz after that. Me being Cam’s uncle maybe put her off seeing me.”
“So how’d this happen?” Meghan asked, gesturing toward Max’s sandwich-making in the kitchen behind them.
“Small town, and we just kept running into each other. One day we were both in line at the post office. We say hello and get to talking. I asked how Max was doing. She said why don’t I come over and see? The kid and I took to each other. Now, time to time, Liz asks me to look after him. My age, there’s not much else I have going on, and the kid’s pretty happy here.”
“He looks it,” Meghan said. “I’m glad there’s people in his life like that. And yours.”
“We‘re lucky,” Pete said. “You lose people but you still have others. That’s got to be good enough, else you go crazy. I don’t think Cam ever reckoned with that.”
“You worried for your nephew?”
Pete smoked, looking thoughtful. “My brother bought it when Cam was young. His momma left him with me. Lord knows where she ended up.”
“Doesn’t answer the question,” Meghan said.
“I’m all he’s got. But he’s not all I got. He wants my help to make a change, I’m here for him.”
Her phone shook. Amanpreet Brar texted that a tip had come in. Cam was on en route to Tito DaSilva’s.
“I’ve got to go,” Meghan said, deciding not to share the news.
Pete nodded. “Stays between us, right? What we talked about?”
Meghan made the zipper motion across her lips.
* * *
Arriving at Tito’s house, she found Amanpreet standing on the lawn. Ted Sommers waited with Tito on the front step, taking the gangster’s statement. Meghan noticed the broken window along the side.
“DaSilva says Shaw pulled a gun,” Amanpreet said. “Would’ve shot him if we hadn’t arrived.”
“Any idea where Cam is headed?”
“None. And he won’t speak about his other associates.”
Meghan nodded. “A man of principle.”
“Had to be one somewhere, I guess.”
* * *
She went home to check on Trevor. Her son was sprawled on the couch, asleep in front of the TV. Meghan took the easy chair, muted the volume, and allowed herself to nod off.
She awoke to Trevor standing over her, holding out her phone.
“You had it on vibrate,” he said.
“Thanks, sweetie.” The number on the screen was private. “Who’s this?”
“A friendly citizen.” The voice was male. “The dead girl and boy you’ve been looking into? The killer’s name is Cam Shaw. He killed a man last night, too. He’s just out of prison for killing someone else.”
“You don’t say. Where can I find him?”
The voice gave her an address, a laneway cottage on the side of Duprez Ravine.
“Make sure you get a warrant. You’ll probably find evidence there, too.”
“Anything else?” Meghan said.
“Have a Happy New Year.”
* * *
Meghan led Ted and Katy Qiu down the back alley. Her vest made her sweat despite the cold. The shotgun was heavy, built for the dimensions of the average male, like everything else in this fucking job.
The door of the shack had a code lock instead of a key. They battered it open. Inside, Cam was shirtless, standing in the centre of the tacky little room.
