When the Killing Starts Read online

  "I'm not sure. I don't think he was, either," she said with another synthetic smile. "The only thing was, he was acting so contemptuously about Canada that I got the impression they would be training here. He said that this was a dumb country and people could get away with anything here."

  I didn't say anything. We have the liberties and the geography to make that statement true, except for the dumb part. I didn't like the sound of young Michaels.

  "Two questions," I said at last. "First, are you sure he's done what he said, or is he just trying to scare you? Second, did your detective make any progress in tracing them?

  "Yes. And no. Yes, he left a note, but no, Mr. Broadhurst didn't have any success. At least he hadn't by four o'clock today."

  "And is he still looking?"

  She looked me square in the face. Her eyes were gray, almost colorless. Since knowing Fred, I'd learned something about theatrical makeup, and I could see that she went heavy on the mascara, trying to take away the chill in her eyes. "He's getting three hundred dollars a day. Yes, he's still looking. But I don't think that's enough."

  "What would you expect me to do that was different?"

  She cleared her throat. "I was hoping you'd apply police techniques to the search. And if you found the men, you would talk to them. From what Mr. Fulwell told me, when you talk, people listen."

  Fat chance. Her son wouldn't. He would dismiss me as a washed-up over-thirty copper. He wouldn't know I'd traveled the same road, only legitimately, leaving Canada to join the U.S. Marines. There was a lot of it going on back then, in the late sixties. It was almost fashionable for an angry kid from an ugly mining town in the bush.

  "I don't think they will, but what makes you think I'll drop everything and do it? I'm on vacation."

  "I can pay you," she said, and although she was still nervous, she was regaining her confidence. Paying was something she was good at. "His safety is very important to me, to his whole family, Mr. Bennett. I could pay you twenty-five thousand dollars."

  "That sounds like a lot of money for making a few phone calls and talking to your son. What else did you think this job would entail?" I'm a little old to believe in Santa Claus.

  She gave me another of her no-nonsense looks. "I imagine these are hard men. You could run into some arguments or something, perhaps worse."

  Perhaps a lot worse, I thought. Perhaps I'd find myself arguing with a bunch of tough ex-SAS men from Britain, and a few automatic weapons as well. I would need a lot more than a golden tongue to get out of that one without having somebody hand me my head.

  I sat and considered the offer. Twenty-five thousand was a lot of money, almost as much as Fred stood to make from her movie part. That was its biggest attraction. I didn't want to be the poor partner in our relationship. If I could salt a few dollars away, it would prop up my poor bruised ego. I'm chauvinist when it comes to having my girl earn more than me.

  "And if I say I'll do it, when do you plan to pay me?"

  A man would have said, "Right now," and reached into his pocket. She said, "Would you?" and the tears glinted in those icy eyes.

  I said nothing for a moment, still thinking. The job didn't appeal to me. It didn't ring true, and part of me resisted being in debt to this woman. The money meant nothing to her, but once she had paid it out, she would figure she owned me. "I might," I said at last.

  She reached out her hand impulsively. It was her left hand, and I caught sight of her wedding ring, a nugget of gold set with big diamonds. She had money and didn't mind people knowing it. "Please say you will." She whispered it. "This means so much to me. Jason is very important to me."

  "All right. I'll try," I said.

  She reached into her purse. It was on the seat next to her, a battered-looking leather thing that had probably come from Italy and cost a thousand dollars. She dug into it for a moment and came out with a check.

  "You had a check already written out?"

  "Yes," she said, surprised I was asking. Very few people ever said no to her.

  "You seem like a woman who's used to getting her own way."

  She paused with the check in her hand. Then she tried a little laugh, only it came out sour. "Is that a judgment, Mr. Bennett?"

  "An observation. Most people would have waited before putting those kinds of figures on paper."

  She shook her head. "Money is just that," she said. "Just figures on pieces of paper. I want my son back. I'd do anything to have that happen." She paused again and looked at me levelly. "Anything," she repeated.

  "The money will be sufficient," I said, and dots of white appeared on either side of her nose. She was angry, but she handed me the check. I read it over. Everything was in order. She'd put the proper number of zeros on it, my name was spelled with two Ts.

  "Thank you. Consider me hired," I said. "Now let me ask some questions."

  We sat and went over everything I could think of. Who were Jason's friends? Where had he gone to school? Had he found himself a steady girlfriend? I was hoping that somewhere in the plush fabric of his life there might be a thread that would lead to where he was, someone he had boasted to, something.

  The picture that emerged was of a spoiled, rich loner. No friends of any consequence, girls or boys. No real interests. If he had liked to play trombone or shoot pool or even listen to one kind of music, it might have led me somewhere useful, but there was nothing like that. He had hung around the house most of the time, lying in bed until afternoon, watching TV. At night he had drifted out, she didn't know where. He sounded like an ideal candidate for an outfit like Freedom for Hire, or the Moonies.

  "Any idea what your detective has done so far?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "No, he only said he had been trying to find the group. I'm not sure what that entails." Neither was I. There are some ethical private detectives, but I have a policeman's suspicion of them all. He may have decided to spin out his three yards a day by taking his time, moving so slowly that the boy never did turn up.

  "Have you offered him any kind of bonus for finding your son?"

  "I was going to, but then I got impatient with his lack of progress and decided to find someone else. That's when I found out about you."

  "All right. Now I'm on the case. Do you have a photograph?"

  She dug into her purse and brought out a three-by-four-inch color shot. It showed a dark, lean kid whose face looked bland until you realized he had his mother's eyes. They didn't fit with his dark hair, which was overlong and pulled back behind the ears like a foreign movie actor's. He was sitting in the stern of a yacht, a big one. Poor little rich boy.

  "How tall is he?"

  "Quite tall, five foot ten," she said. "Of course, his father is tall, the same height as you, I'd say."

  "And he hasn't changed since this was taken? Not gone punk and died his hair orange, anything like that?"

  "No, he's cut it a little shorter, it just covers his ears, but that's about it." She was embarrassed at having to discuss the boy with me at all, angry that he wasn't quarterbacking the university football team or curing cancer or any of those wonderful things we expect the next generation to do for us.

  I finished my beer, and she pointed to the glass. "Could I get you another?"

  "No, thanks. I've got some thinking to do. Maybe next time. Who knows, we might even have something to celebrate."

  "I hope so," she said, and her eyes misted again. It was hard to read her. Sometimes the woman broke through the wealth and power.

  I leaned back and said, "I've got a few contacts who might be able to find out more about this group of his. I'll do some asking around. Can you give me the phone number of Mr. Broadhurst so I can check with him, and your own? I'll call if I learn anything."

  She nodded. "Here's Mr. Broadhurst's card. My own number is unlisted. Will you write it down on the back of the card?"

  "Sure. Can I borrow your pen, please?"

  She handed over a gold pen, and I wrote her number on the back of Broadhu
rst's card, which read "Insight investigations. Discreet inquiries." I imagined his income came mostly from jealous husbands. Then I stood up, putting the card into my billfold. "I don't suppose I'll be calling before Monday. It's too late to get much official information today. The guys I want to talk to work office hours. But I'll do what I can."

  She stood up with me, picking up her purse and holding it in both hands as if it were heavy. "I hope you'll be able to do something sooner than Monday, Mr. Bennett. It could be too late. He could be gone out of town by then."

  "Believe me, I'll try my hardest," I said. "You're paying me a lot of money."

  "It's worth it to me," she said. "And, of course, if you run into any expenses, I'll be glad to pay them.

  "Thank you. I'll let you know." I nodded to her, and she did another of her tight little smiles.

  "Please try," she said. "I'm counting on you."

  TWO

  I don't like apartments at the best of times. Especially in big buildings. They make me feel like a folder in a file cabinet. For the first time since coming down to Toronto, I missed the house I rented at Murphy's Harbour. Not that I stayed indoors much, anyway. On a day like this, up there I would have gotten into my canoe and headed out with Sam in the bows and my fishing rod between my knees, trolling the deep weed beds for pickerel. It's the world's best way of getting your brain into neutral so that good ideas can float in without hindrance. Stuck in Fred's Toronto apartment, I did the next best thing, pulling a chair out onto the balcony, opening a Labatt's Blue, and sitting looking down on the treetops of the quiet streets below me.

  Fred has a portable phone, so I took it with me and called the detective agency. I reached the answering service, and a woman told me she would give Mr. Broadhurst my message. Fine. So I wouldn't be able to save any steps. I'd have to go the whole distance on my own steam. Question: How?

  The next thing I did was to start making like a policeman. Our national police force, the RCMP, has split off a security force, mostly ex-Mounties but some new men, including a detective I knew faintly when I was a detective myself with the Metro Toronto police. I dug out the little phone book I usually kept in my desk at Murphy's Harbour and rang his office number.

  "Inspector Lenchak here," he said. Bingo. Fate was smiling.

  He sounded laid back. I guessed the long-term pressures of keeping Canada safe from subversion were lighter than the old grind of robberies and homicides he'd worked on in the Metro department. I introduced myself, and he said, "Hey, Reid, nice to hear from you. You're a big deal in the papers."

  "Great," I said. "Maybe I can get my old job back in Fifty-two Division."

  "You wouldn't like it," he promised. "All those old slums have been painted pink and filled up with yuppies. The only excitement you ever get is domestics, some trendy whacking his boyfriend with a squash racket."

  We laughed and reminisced, dredging up the few cases in which we'd both been involved. Then I put my question to him. "In your new job, do you keep tabs on mercenary outfits?"

  "Sure," he said. "Thinking of heading down to Nicaragua or somewhere for some fun in the sun with a gun?"

  "Nah, but I'm trying to do a favor for some woman. Apparently her kid's joined up with some bunch of Limeys call themselves Freedom for Hire. That ring any bells?"

  "Y'ask me, that's a scam," he said. "Yeah, they popped up about a year ago. Their spiel is they train you, then send you on an assignment. Only thing is, they take the price of your training out of your pay, which comes to them, anyway, not to you. Kind of like being in hock to the Mob. You never get out of debt, the way I hear it. Only you don't know until you come back from getting your ass shot off and find you still owe them money. They pay your airfare and maybe give you a week's training. Then they keep your ten grand or whatever. Big profit margin."

  "And it's running out of Toronto?"

  "Not exactly. We're just one of their fishing holes. We don't like it, you can guess, but there isn't anything illegal, as you know. They just assemble a bunch of misfits and ship them out. Personally, I think it sucks, but since when did a copper have any say in the way things are run?"

  We agreed on that one, but I had other questions to ask. "Any idea where I can find them?"

  "We don't have an address. The guy in charge, he usually calls himself the Colonel, by the way, his name is George Dunphy. He was a sergeant with the British paras one time. A sergeant, not a colonel. They court-martialed him for brutality to a guy in his outfit. I don't have the details, only that he got a year in the brig, or whatever they call it over there, then he was dishonorably discharged."

  "Sounds like a rounder," I said.

  "For sure. We saw a psychological profile on him. He's a head case. Sadistic, ugly. But he's also cute as hell. Never takes a permanent address. When he's in town, which he is maybe every two months, he moves to a different hotel every day, no forwarding address. Checks in at night so we can't search his room while he's out or anything sneaky. Carries his gear with him."

  "A moving target. The Brits train their guys well. Tell me, does he have any kind of circuit, any pattern?"

  "It's not a circuit," Lenchak said. "He hits the bars, loser's bars mostly. You won't find him at any place there's a wealthy clientele. At least not until he's found a pigeon. Then he usually wines and dines the guy, taking him to better places than he's used to, you know how it goes."

  "I see the picture. Yeah. So if I wanted to contact him, I should start making a circuit of the rough spots, down around Queen and Sherbourne, and out Queen West."

  "That's it." Lenchak laughed. "I figure you'd better start at the redneck places. Anywhere they play country music is a good bet."

  "Don't be hard on us rednecks; I like country. Anyway, what's this guy look like?"

  "Not big, around five nine, one seventy, but it's all muscle. He moves like a soldier. And he usually wears a leather coat. He's thirty-eight this year, short fair hair, blue eyes, little brush of a mustache. Like when he calls himself Colonel, guys believe him."

  "Should stand out in a redneck bar, among all the ponytails," I said. "But his recruiting sounds a bit hit-and-miss. Don't these outfits usually advertise in Soldier of Fortune?"

  "No, those ads were outlawed some time back. But what Dunphy does is hit the help-wanted ads in the Toronto papers. "Wanted: strong, capable young men who want to earn big money. Strictly legal."

  "And there's a box number, what?"

  "No, a phone number. It's different every time. We've checked it; it's always a pay phone in a bar. He has different guys answering it; he calls them and picks up names and arranges the contacts."

  "Have you shaken any of these guys down?"

  "Losers, all of them. One's a guy in a wheelchair, another is a veteran of the big war, around sixty-five, heavy boozer. He's always half-corked, doesn't know anything. Says the colonel comes in early in the evening and buys his beer all night to take the phone."

  He didn't have any more to add, so I thanked him and hung up. A scam, he'd said. The name of the outfit suggested that. It was the kind of thing you'd expect a TV series to be called, something to appeal to the average misfit sitting in front of the set with his cigarettes and his dreams. He would need to be pretty unsophisticated to bite, but that isn't a requirement that will exclude many young men. No, it looked to me as if Lenchak was right; young Michaels had gotten himself into deep trouble.

  I wondered what their training would consist of. Not much, probably. A few lectures on field stripping weapons, firing, learning how to use captured weapons. Some nod in the direction of fitness, just enough to make the guy feel he was being subjected to discipline, not enough to do him any good.

  That was what reminded me that it had been two days since my last run. Living with a woman after years spent mostly on my own had cut into the workout ritual I've built for myself. I dug out my running gear and headed out with Sam at my heels.

  It was hot on the street, the slow, soaked-in heat of late afternoon
when the sidewalks smolder with stored warmth. Beautiful weather to be on vacation with your girl. Ah, well. Fall for an actress, plan to spend a lot of time on your own.

  I didn't push too hard but kept it down to three miles in twenty-five minutes. Sam enjoyed it. City life didn't suit him. He was happy to be moving, clicking along behind me as if we were tied together.

  I got back and showered and then fed Sam and made myself some supper. Fred had been doing most of the catering, running a lot to salads and things in woks. I was relieved to find she had a can of Fray Bentos bully beef in the cupboard, and I parboiled some potatoes and fried up a solid meal of corned-beef hash, heavy on the onions. Why not?

  Broadhurst hadn't returned my call when I finished eating, so I went out to start searching, taking Sam with me. Toronto's a law-abiding city, but I was on an ugly hunt, and I might need some backup. If Sam was within whistling distance, he'd provide it.

  He settled comfortably on the front seat, and I opened all the windows and left the car outside one bar after another on my circuit. In every place I did the same thing, first checking for the colonel, who was never there that I could see, then looking around for anyone who might be his answering service. It was like following a very slight trail over very stony ground, but it was all I could do. I'd checked the newspaper, and there were no ads that might have been placed by Freedom for Hire. I'd even dug through back issues of the Sun for the past two days, as far back as I could find on a Saturday evening, when both the library and the Sun office were closed. Nothing in any paper to guide me, so I kept slugging around, leaving a single draft beer going flat on all the bars. Even one beer in each would have slowed me down too much for my own safety if I did run into the Freedom for Hire boys.