Ocean Drive, page 9
“He was just here last weekend,” Mrs. May said. “We did chicken. I wrapped up the leftovers to send home with him. He still has my Tupperware.”
Meghan comforted them as best she could, walking Mrs. May to the point of acceptance, and comforting the husband, who now wept silently, his hands pulling ropes of mucus from his nostrils.
Bob would have known what to say. We’ll catch the bastard that did this, or something they could hang onto in their grief.
But she had nothing for them.
* * *
May’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from Five Corners. The three-storey low-rise looked out on the back alley of the Price-Low, its view of the water now obscured by the skeleton of Panorama Tower.
Meghan huffed up the stairs, passing dumb graffiti tags, Joz Lix Azz, Fuk Pigs and the like. Grey steel boxes of rat poison placed on each landing. She keyed the lock of apartment 311, finding it swung open to her touch.
Stepping inside, she saw the flash of an arm—felt something strike her head—
Then she was sprawled on the vinyl floor of the kitchenette.
Someone in black kicked her and tried to move past. Meghan reached out, her circumstances coming back to her. Cinched her arms around the fleeing leg and twisted.
Her attacker landed on the floor in front of her. She felt boots kick out at her. A heel smacked into her eye. Her vision watered. She heard crawling toward the door.
Meghan’s sidearm was trapped under her. She freed her ASP, the expandible baton, and swung at the figure aiming for his head.
The attacker turned over and she saw his face. Frightened eyes, a goatee and sideburns with dark blood matting the hair. Tequila Narwal.
He kicked again and her wrist snapped back, going numb. The ASP fell. Tequila crawled forward and Meghan lunged, landing on top of him, striking at his nose and eyes.
His hand shoved against her neck. Tequila was slender but wiry, motivated by desperation. She reached to pull his fingers away from her throat and his other hand shoved her off-balance, tipping her off him, sending her head hard into the bifold door of the closet.
A blink of darkness. Meghan held her numb arm close to her body, keeping her sidearm secure.
She heard feet patter across carpet. A door gently click shut. Then she was alone.
Seven
The basement of Tito DaSilva’s house was an unfinished room. Tufts of fibreglass insulation poked out from rips in the kraft paper. Empty ammunition crates, rusty knives, beer cans overflowing with ash. Tito called it The War Room.
Cam was led downstairs by Ivan. He’d already prepared a story in case they’d somehow heard about his interview by the White Rock cop. Easy enough to play dumb about the murder she’d been asking about—he was dumb. He’d known Alexa Reed from around town, from a distance. That was it.
The cop sensed something was amiss, though. Meghan Quick was smart. More tuned in than the Surrey officers who’d questioned him after the warehouse attack. He’d have to be more cautious next time.
Down the stairs he saw Brad and Tito seated on overturned crates. Tito looked anxious, shifting around on his seat. Cam soon saw why: a man and woman that he didn’t recognize stood in the far corner, spreading papers on a work bench.
Both were South Asian. The woman was maybe twenty-four, short, pretty and scowling in response to her surroundings. A thick quilted Gore-Tex coat that must have been hers was folded on a nearby crate. Her T-shirt, black with the glitter League of Nations logo, was thin enough to show the nubs of her nipples through the fabric.
The man was dressed like the manager at a car stereo store—white sleeveless dress shirt, red tie, black pants blemished with War Room dust. Handsome, hair swept back and gelled in place. His beard extended his chin to a fierce point. He smoked and fiddled with a gold-plated Ronson lighter. A bundle wrapped in black plastic sat on the floor near the bench.
“This is the guy we told you about,” Ivan said. “Cam Shaw. This is Harv and that’s Sukhi.”
Cam nodded. Sukhi eyed him with no particular emotion. Harv didn’t look up from the paperwork on the desk.
“If that’s everyone,” Harv said, making no attempt to hide his impatience. “We‘ve got a situation at the docks. There’s a container that’s been there since last week, that customs thinks has something in it.”
“Which it does,” Tito said. Trying to add to Harv’s speech, play the good lieutenant. Harv winced and then ignored him. Cam saw who was in charge.
“There’s a risk involved,” Harv said, “but anyone that helps will be looked after.”
“I’m bored,” Sukhi said.
“In a minute, babe. Now, you’ll need to know the container number, which is”—Harv shuffled papers—“AKSKA 9938. The first eight rows of shoeboxes are just that—there’s shoes inside. After that you’ll find what we’re looking for.”
“So what’s our plan?” Tito asked.
“That’s up to you,” Harv said. “Because it’s being watched, I’d suggest going in quick. You could probably get ten or twelve boxes out of there before security gets smart.”
“You mean take it right off the dock?” Brad asked.
“Well the container isn’t going anywhere, so you tell me,” Harv said.
“Pull up alongside, break in, hand-bomb it off and zip out,” Tito said, nodding. He turned to Cam. “Up for that?”
“What is it exactly?”
“You don’t need to know that,” Harv said.
“Can we go now, Harv? Chilly as shit in here.” Sukhi shivered and sat on a bottom stair, crossing her arms.
“I do need to know,” Cam said.
Harv held a finger up toward Sukhi and turned to Cam, scowling. “No, you fucking don’t. You don’t need to know anything. Just that there’s cash involved if you want it.”
Cam picked up the jacket and walked it over to Sukhi, who nodded thanks but didn’t reach for it. Instead she leaned forward. Prompting him to drape it over her shoulders. He did.
“Merry fucking gentleman,” Tito muttered.
“I don’t care what the shit is,” Cam said to Harv. “Only how it’s packed, how heavy, that sort of thing. Can we carry it? Is it flammable? Does it smell? If it’s in ten-foot boxes or gallon drums, that changes things. We want to do this right, don’t we?” He looked around the room. “Because if we’re gonna half-ass it, no way. I’m not ever going back inside.”
Harv’s face went from deepening anger to puzzlement, and finally to a shrug. He looked at Cam as if Cam had just entered the room. Evaluating him anew.
“P2P,” Harv finally said. “Phenyl propanone. It’s packed in jugs, each jug packed inside a box.”
“How heavy?”
“Twenty-two kilograms each.”
“How much is that in pounds?” Ivan asked. Seeing how Cam’s question impressed Harv, he was trying for the same thing. Could get jealous, Cam thought. Have to watch out for Ivan.
“Just under fifty pounds,” Harv said. “There’s a hundred and fifty boxes of it.”
“Marked any special way?”
“No,” he said. “But they’ll be behind the first eight rows.”
“Any clue about what kind of surveillance?”
Harv unwrapped the black plastic bag, producing a mobile phone and what looked like a clip-on ID tag. He turned the phone on, showed them the screen. Photos of the dockyard. A video, someone walking through endless aisles of shipping containers. Cans were something Cam understood.
“We’ve got a friend who works there,” Harv said. “There’ll be a couple of guards on that night who’ll check the other lanes. But there are cameras up, maybe one aimed at the container.” He shrugged. “That’s what we know so far.”
“Total fucking heat score,” Brad said.
Cam was studying the video. “No chance they’d let us drive right in? Take the whole can?”
“A rig would never fit down those lanes,” Harv said. “You’d need to operate the crane and move it.”
“And the can is on the ground?”
“Where the fuck else would it be?”
“They stack them,” Cam said. “If it’s up ten cans high, no chance of us getting to it.”
Harv nodded. “It’ll be on the bottom.”
“If it is,” Cam said, “there’s no reason we can’t get all hundred and fifty.”
* * *
Harv’s last comment bothered him. How did he know it was on the bottom? Maybe the League had a crane operator in their pocket. But if so, why not have that person move the can and ship it out entirely?
Total fucking heat score.
The other possibility was the one that bothered him. That it had been deliberately put on the ground by customs, knowing there was a chance the League would try something like this.
Cam turned the idea over in his head. Ivan and Tito would call him, coming up with suggestions. Take it away in boats. Paint over the code number and hope the can got lost. Tito’s suggestion was to take the place over by force. “Captive labour to do the lifting,” he said.
Two nights later Cam had it.
He called Tito and said he needed to see Harv. Tito phoned back twenty minutes later saying okay, someone would swing by for Cam in about half an hour.
Cam was waiting outside, not expecting to see a Porsche SUV with Sukhi behind the wheel, Harv himself in the passenger seat. He rolled down his window and beckoned Cam to approach.
“I need linesman’s gear,” Cam said. He’d written out a list of the materials.
“You can use all this?”
“Used to work for my uncle.”
Harv nodded, took the list and handed it to Sukhi, who drummed impatiently on the steering wheel. “When are you planning to do this?”
“Soon as I get the tools.”
“That case, we’ll see what we can do.”
* * *
The next morning the gear was left on his doorstop. Climbing tools, impact socket, side cutters, demolition driver. Even a tool belt, the worn leather looking oddly familiar.
Cam carried it all inside. He held up the tool belt and ran his hand over the underside, looking for the owner’s initials.
PS. His uncle’s.
* * *
They’d need as many hours of darkness as possible. The port workers usually went home at dinner. Cam waited until ten, watching the place, the three orange cranes like the necks of skeletal dinosaurs, sitting above the high black gate, beyond the rows of containers.
He walked past the place, the fenced-in parking lot. The road itself was empty save for one van with tinted windows, no hubcaps on its wheels. A surveillance car.
Dressed in overalls, with the lineman’s belt cinched around his waist, Cam walked into the parking lot. At the far end it bordered the water itself, a barnacled outcropping of coast leading straight down to black water. He chose a segment of fence and, working quickly, cut his way inside the yard.
Flood lights burned above the cans, leaving the lanes under odd shadows. Cam walked past calmly, confidently. He belonged here, was attending to something. The decal on his hard hat read BC Hydro. Clipped to his overalls was a decent-looking approximation of an ID card. He’d hated to use his own photo, but it had seemed the only way.
He passed a security guard, nodding at her. Then when she was three metres or so away, he turned around and coughed.
“Got myself lost,” he said sheepishly. “Where’s the electrical room?”
She pointed, swiping her finger left. “Around the corner. Late, huh?”
“This rate I won’t get home till midnight.”
“That’d be early for me,” she said. “I’m on till four.”
“Oh, nice. Enjoy that.”
“Fuck yourself.”
He continued on, following her directions, spotting the shed with the door marked with a lightning bolt shooting through the outline of a man. Keep Out.
The door was locked. Cam brought the key ring out from his pocket and flipped through, finding the one Harv had made for him.
Inside, he looked around and found the one-line diagram. Traced it to locate the panels for the lights, for security and for the gate. Once the gate was retracted, he switched off the panels, shutting off power to the yard.
Blackness. He worked quickly, turning on his headlamp, fumbling a little with gloved hands. Unspooling the red cord of the breaker lockouts. Attaching the teeth to one side of a panel, stretching the cord across and padlocking it in place. To turn the power back on, someone would have to cut the locks.
The security cameras would have battery backup, but without the lights, hopefully the picture would be blurry and no good. A chance he was taking.
He felt his way to the door and outside. Sprayed the key with contact cement and inserted it, locked the door. Struck the end with the demolition driver until it broke off in the lock.
Clouds obscured the moon, and the street light only carried to just inside the gate. Cam felt along the side of the containers, following the map he’d memorized. Lane C, spot four, bottom can.
There. He flipped open the burner cellphone he bought and told Ivan to drive in.
He’d hated to bring Tito along, since the man seemed erratic. He was likely to bolt or give up halfway through. But it was Tito’s crew, not his. Not yet.
When he outlined the plan, he sold Tito on the role of driver. Tito liked that, envisioning a quick getaway. Dreams of movie car chases. Cam let him dream. It would keep him cool.
If the plan went off, they’d be able to saunter out at their own pace.
* * *
Cam heard them enter through the gate, the white van with BC Hydro on its side. They’d painted it to resemble the work trucks, but inside the seats and cage had been ripped out, leaving nothing but a handcart.
He located the right staging area and examined the container ID, then bit the knuckle of his gloved hand. Wrong numbers. Searching around, he double-checked that he was in the right lane, the right spot. No AKSKA 9938.
A fucking set-up.
Who—
And then he looked up and bit down harder. Their can was second on a stack of three. The dolly would be useless.
The purr of the van down the wrong lane. Of all the fucking things. Cam waved them over, waited as Tito backed the van up to the edge of the lane.
Cam opened the back door and let out Brad, who carried the bolt cutters. “Let’s do ‘er,” Brad said.
“Where’s Ivan?”
“Something came up.”
Cam took a breath, wondering if it was better not to just say fuck it now and walk away.
Which would leave him where? Another leg breaker, no closer to what Zoe wanted from him, nothing going for himself but a cop looking to pin a woman’s murder on him.
You need this.
Be honest with yourself. You want this, too.
“Boost me,” he said.
Clambering on top of the van with the bolt cutters, Cam clipped the seal off the door handle. The lip of their container overhung the bottom can by a few centimetres. A lucky break. Wrenching the handle down, he pried the opposite door open, feeling the stack wobble. Just his luck if the whole fucking thing came down on him. At least he wouldn’t feel much.
Inside, the shoeboxes had been stacked side to side, but with about a half-metre along the top. Cam heaved out boxes, hearing them fall to the concrete. Between that and the creak of the door, he was already making more noise than he’d planned. But that couldn’t be helped.
Climbing in, shoving the boxes aside, he counted the rows, six, seven, and came to a wall of merchandise that wouldn’t shift when he touched it. He lifted one of the larger boxes, heard it rattle. A jug of some sort inside.
Carrying it out, he kicked more of the shoeboxes away, then crouched and passed the larger box to Brad.
“Fucker’s heavy,” Brad said.
Cam was already crawling back, thinking, only one hundred forty-nine to go.
* * *
It was slow, and Brad was as liable to drop them as Cam was to fumble the pass. He worked as quickly, as accurately as he could. Passing them down one at a time. Cam reached thirty-seven when he heard the car.
Stopping, he moved to the edge and looked down at Brad, who stared up at him, equally clueless. They waited in silence.
High beams played over the lanes. A truck of some kind.
Below, Tito started the van’s engine. The running lights peeped on. Idiot, Cam thought, don’t give away where we are.
In a pinch he could make a run down the aisle, sneak out the way he’d got in. Race for the break in the fence. If the road was blocked he could hazard the water. He hadn’t swum in years, had no idea where he’d go or how cold the water was in mid-December—
A white truck passed along the far end of the lane. The path of the light wasn’t interrupted. Cam relaxed. It was Hydro, the actual electricians, come to restore power.
Good luck. They’d need at least an hour just to hook things up, let alone repairing the gauges. And that was if they could get in.
Cam scrambled back into the can and began hauling out the boxes.
Once the van was three-quarters full, Cam told Brad to strip off the cardboard and jam the jugs anywhere there was space. They filled up the passenger’s seat, and he ordered Tito to move his seat forward. By now the van sagged, overburdened, but by Cam’s count they’d rescued one hundred and seventeen of the jugs.
Chemistry was beyond him, but that much would make a fuck-ton of something.
He debated sealing up the container, replacing the scattered boxes. But by then his own nerves were almost done. He closed the van’s back door and told Tito to go.
