Live Bait Page 4

  "I first of all checked out all the contractors on the job, to see if any of them were shady. They're not."

  "Are they all Toronto companies? Nothing from Montreal with mob connections?"

  Fullwell nodded and went on, ticking them off on his fingers. "All based here, but they're a mixed bag, like on any building project in town. I checked that out too. We've got a couple of Italian outfits, including the earthmoving people whose stuff was hit. Two others run by old-country Scots, a couple of Greeks, and a Jewish electrical firm."

  "But they're all Canadian?" It sounds a dumb question but for years our government was so big on multi-culturism that people push their heritage without reminding you that they're Canadian first.

  "All of them, except for the people putting up the money for the building. It's a Hong Kong outfit." He checked his notes. "The Heavenly Lotus Corporation." We grinned at that but he gave me the hint that made some sense of the attacks. "They're a very businesslike outfit. They've already got the building rented for occupancy next July and their major customer has got a penalty clause in their construction contract. If they're late it's going to cost them around twenty grand a day."

  I whistled. "Then they don't need any aggravation this early in the construction cycle. Maybe they're getting shaken down by somebody."

  "Makes more sense than anything I can think of," Fullwell said. We discussed the possibilities for a while, then he asked me, "Did you come up with anything?"

  I told him about Tony and he called a contact at Police Headquarters and asked for information, giving my description of Tony and the license number of his Cadillac. It all took about a minute, during which he said "Uh-huh" a few times and scribbled over the complete backs of two envelopes. He thanked the person at the other end and hung up.

  "Tony Caporetto, age thirty-eight, lives at a fancy apartment in the West End." He gave me the address and I wrote it down on the back of a parking slip I had in my wallet. "He's never done time but he's been arrested four times. Twice for bootlegging, once each for assault and trespass. Got off every time. The witnesses wouldn't press charges, said they couldn't identify him properly. That's all. Oh, and his car is registered to Calabria Enterprises, same address he lives at."

  "Well, on the face of it, I'd say he was trying to squeeze some extortion bucks out of these Hong Kong people," I suggested. "Maybe I should go lean on him some more."

  "Good idea." Fullwell said, "But not tonight. Why'nt you head home, start again tomorrow after some sleep."

  I yawned and nodded. Right now I was winding down. It would be better in the morning, when both the world and me were brighter. Fullwell stood up and led me out to the reception desk. Sam scrambled beside me, his nails clicking on the vinyl tile. "It could pay off. Tony will've heard more about you by then, he may be scared enough of what he hears to talk a little."

  I shrugged. "From what I've seen of him, he's too small a fish to be running anything so complex as an international racket. He's a nickel and dime loan shark. Maybe I can get the name of the next guy up the ladder from him. Then we can go to the boys in blue."

  Fullwell cocked his head, doubtfully. "That's the way I'd like to do it, but this guy Willis outranks me here."

  "Then don't tell him, just go by the book and call the police. I would have done that last night, left to me. I figured that's why I was here, to catch these slugs. Then to let them go like that, that was crazy."

  "Agreed," Fullwell said. He dropped me at the front desk and I walked out past a pretty little Bonded Security guard. She was sitting with a pile of schoolbooks in front of her but she was reading a paperback with a cover that reminded me of the boonies in Nam.

  I went out and drove up north to my sister's house on one of the side streets full of sixty-year-old maples, the kind of place you see only in Toronto or in Andy Hardy movies. She used to be married and lives there with her two kids. She insists I stay with them when I get into town and doesn't mind the odd hours I come and go, but she woke up when I got home and called out "Reid?" in a voice that was only a little nervous.

  I called back to her, "Okay, Lou, it's me. See you in the morning," and headed for bed, grateful not to be standing around the construction site again. I guess I was there an hour before the phone rang in her bedroom. Louise answered and called me. I padded down to the kitchen, pulling on my pants as I went. It was Fullwell, sounding wide awake. "Can you come back in, Reid? We've been hit again."

  Chapter 6

  This time it wasn't the construction site. It was a warehouse out on the northeastern fringe of Metro Toronto where new subdivisions and industrial land gradually give way to fields of cattle corn. By the time I arrived there were five cars inside the front gate and a uniformed policeman was keeping people out. He made an exception for me when I explained my connection with Bonded Security, pointing out the timekeeper's office where Fullwell and a couple of detectives were talking.

  Fullwell did the honors. I shook hands then nodded and followed him out under the overhead conveyor system to a green wall where the fire alarm stood.

  The wall was blackened with blood still fresh enough to show red on the concrete floor where it had dribbled down. There was a lot of it. I asked, "Will he make it?"

  Fullwell gave a respectful little flick of his head. "He's a tough old East Indian guy, used to be in the army out there. Lemme show you what he went through."

  He meant it literally. Around the corner was an internal office with a frosted glass wall that had been shattered. Fullwell stopped and pointed. The trail of blood started on the floor inside the ruined window. "The police say he was run down by a forklift with the platform raised half way. He ducked under it and the whole thing went through the wall, pushing him in front of it."

  I whistled. "Any idea what happened then?"

  Fullwell led me back, pointing out the blood trail. "They think the attacker left him there and went back to the loading ramp in bay 12. It held a trailer of liquor for shipment south. It's gone now."

  "How much was that worth?" I was beginning to think this job was unconnected with the hits on the construction site. Liquor is a prime prize for any thieves.

  "Haven't seen the manifest, but the detectives guess around a hundred and fifty grand, retail. Maybe a quarter of that sold illegally."

  The bloodstains on the trail we were following became smears instead of splotches. I bent to examine them. Fullwell said, "Yeah, they figure he collapsed here and dragged himself to the fire alarm. The department called us and the police. When they arrived the big doors were open, they came in, gave our guy oxygen and hustled him to Scarborough Centennial Hospital. I got here about ten minutes after."

  "Is anybody standing by him at the hospital?" I've seen a lot of bloodstains in my time and by the size of these I didn't give much for the guard's chances.

  "Willis, from our company, he's up there, along with a member of the police ethnic squad. He speaks Urdu and this guy's language is Hindi but he's got a recorder so if he says anything at all we can get it translated later."

  "Good thinking. He must be in poor shape. He won't be saying anything in English, if that's his second language, not for a day or two, if ever."

  We walked back to the timekeeper's office where one of the detectives was talking on the phone. The other one asked, "Find anything we missed?" He smiled, but there was an edge to his voice, cops anywhere have no time for amateurs.

  "Didn't expect to," I assured him. "But we have a policy." It relaxed him enough that he told me, "Looks as if the guy, or guys, came in through the washroom window at the back. For some reason it's not wired with the alarm. I guess they thought it was too small for a man to get through."

  I snorted a sympathetic laugh along with his. "Anything bigger than a mail slot, right?"

  He nodded, wearing his smile like yesterday's carnival mask. "Yeah, so anyway, they came at him with a two-by-four, we found it alongside where the forklift is kept at night. Then he must've gone for the phone and th
e guy started the lift and ran him down with it."

  "Could turn into a homicide," I said. "He lost a hell of a lot of blood."

  The detective sniffed and dropped his smile completely. "I sure hope not. I'm s'posed to be taking my young lad fishing tomorrow."

  Fullwell had names to take and other rituals to perform before he was free of the police. I spent the time going over the scene again. Whoever had done this was small enough to get through a window no bigger than the jacket of an LP. I wondered if Kennie, perhaps with Hudson alongside him, had earned some more of Tony's money tonight.

  There was nothing else to check and when Fullwell was free I took him outside to my car and we worked out our next move. He had already given the police the names of Kennie and Hudson. There was a parallel in the choice of weapons that suggested they might be involved here. But he had not mentioned Tony. His involvement was all too nebulous. Tony was our suspect, not theirs.

  "I think the best thing we can do, is for you or me to have a word with Tony, see if we can find out what's going down," Fullwell said. "Although, he's already made you for a plant, you'll have to do something more direct than just chat with him."

  I thought about it for a minute or so, sniffing the good country smells of the cornfield that backed on to the warehouse parking lot, listening to the rushing roar of the traffic on the 401, even at this time of night, glad to be back in Toronto and working on a real case again after the quiet months at Murphy's Harbour. At last I said, "The only place that guy would feel pressure is in the pocket. I think I know how to apply some, without even bending the law."

  "That's a relief." Fullwell exhaled his tensions in a big, gusty sigh. "I don't need to know anything except what he tells you."

  Chapter 7

  Fullwell's comment bothered me as I drove back to Louise's house. Was he really expecting me to get rough with Tony? Had the fear of Willis robbed him of his good nature? I know how business pressures can bend a man. But I hoped he was just tired. I had liked him from the first time he came to Murphy's Harbour on the investigation. I'd taken to him as I might have done with another policeman, but now he was coming on like Willis. I put it down to the fact that he had two of his men in hospital, one of them perhaps terminally. He was operating out of weariness and anger.

  I went back to bed but got up in time to have breakfast with Louise and the kids. They're boy, girl, with the same age difference there is between me and Louise. I guess there's not much glamour in sharing bowls of cornflakes with a ten- and eight-year-old, not for anyone with a pair of their own to worry about, but I like it. My wife was too busy selling computers and building herself the kind of career thay write about in Cosmopolitan to want children. I was her one indulgence, the ex-Marine policeman too restless to finish university. We got on almost excessively well in bed but the rest of the time we mostly wondered where the other one of us was coming from. She left when the going got tough, when I was acquitted of manslaughter in the death of a couple of bikers. The media wouldn't let go of it, and Amy just let the thin little thread that bound us together snap under the pressure, so I'm a bachelor uncle and it's no hardship to get up after two hours' sleep for the kind of action most men my age walk through every morning.

  Once the others had gone, I called my connections in the police department. None of them had anything to add to the dope Fullwell had gotten the night before. Tony just wasn't enough of a wheel to have any legends sprout up around him. That made it certain to me that he was not the guy behind an intercontinental extortion racket.

  At seven I was back in the Millrace, sitting in front of the same two beers, not bothering to read the racing page this time. Tony was on to me. All I wanted was contact, not cover. I sat and watched a game show on TV. The sound was too low but it didn't matter, you could tell who had won by the way they jigged up and down and kissed the MC, who looked like a lecherous cadaver.

  At seven-thirty the door opened. I was primed to expect Tony but this wasn't him. It was Svensen and a younger, smaller guy whom I took to be his new partner. Svensen came in, swinging his shoulders like the cop in an Agatha Christie play, looking around with the kind of amused superiority that gets policemen a bad name. Then he saw me.

  He ambled over, swinging his legs and laughing out loud. "Well, goddamn. Not you again." He sat down across from me, not taking his hands out of his coat pockets, still chewing his gum. "How's it going, hero?"

  "Not bad, Elmer, yourself?"

  He dropped his smile, letting the corners of his mouth sag for a couple of beats before he took up his chewing again. "Okay, until you turned up." His partner came over and joined us. He was young and dark and eager but he looked embarrassed by Svensen. I guessed he'd smelt the rye, too.

  I nodded to him. "Hi, I used to work with this guy. My name's Reid Bennett."

  He stuck out his hand, serious. "Tom Lenchuk. I've heard about you. I hear you kicked a lot of ass."

  It wasn't true. Except for one episode in my Toronto career I'd never done anything violent. Then I won a fight in which I might have been killed, staying alive by using a lot of Marine Corps tricks that most Toronto policemen never learn. But I had no chance to explain; Svensen took over, beaming like the game show host on the silent TV screen in the corner. "Right on, Tommy. Reid Bennett, the one-man destruction team." I could feel the other customers turning to look and I felt the anger creeping over me. What was Svensen trying to do? "So, who're you here to clobber tonight?" He cocked back on his chair, tilting the two front legs off the ground. He looked like a rodeo rider on a Brahma bull.

  "Just these two beers and a little time," I said evenly. "How about you?"

  "Business." He slapped one hand down on the table, making my beer glasses jingle. "Just here to talk to a citizen about some hassle out at Finch and Warden last night."

  "Just a hassle? That guard didn't die?" I kept my voice low. It seemed that everyone in the place was listening to us, straining as they had never strained for the TV show.

  Svensen laughed another of his showbiz laughs while he did his best to stare through me. "No, he's gonna be all right. He'll live to punch more time clocks." When I didn't comment he bored on. "Naah, that's not the problem. Thing is, the outfit he works for hired some nickel and dime investigator from the sticks to follow up on it." He stopped and had a laugh, looking around to check that everyone was in on the fun with him. "Like, I mean. Some guys are fine for putting the blocks to bikers. But investigation, that takes brains."

  His partner cracked a brief, pained smile but said nothing. I could tell he was new to plainclothes work. Life was still a game of cops and robbers. He hadn't realized yet that most of the time the robbers have all the laughs. He should have grabbed this opportunity.

  Then Svensen rocked his chair forward and leaned over the table, his eyes cold as pebbles. "Get the hell back to Hicksville. We've been put on to Tony. It's a police case now, so leave it to the professionals."

  He leaned back on his chair. With a lift of my toe I could have sent him sprawling but I didn't dislike him that much. "You go ahead and investigate," I told him. "Me, I'm having a beer."

  He stared at me. I could see the pores in his nose, smell the mint on his gusty breath. "Good." He almost whispered it. "On account of this is a departmental investigation. If you get underfoot I'm going to have your ass for obstructing police. You got that?"

  I said nothing but after a reasonable wait I lifted my beer and took a good sip. Svensen breathed hard, through pinched nostrils and said, "I don't want you bothering Tony."

  "It's no bother. This is business, I'm all tapped out and payday isn't till next week."

  For a moment I thought he was going to laugh again. His mouth winced at the corners but then he pushed away from the table and stood up. "Just remember what I told you."

  I put one hand on my heart. "Forever," I promised and turned my eyes to the TV where a pretty blond girl was hanging around the MC's neck, jumping both feet off the ground in rapturous little
hops.

  Svensen nodded to his partner and they left, lightening the mood of the whole room. I drank my beer, ordered another and sat waiting and watching "M*A*S*H" where all those cut enlisted men fed straight lines to the doctors. I wondered what Alda and his crew would have done in some of the field situations I'd been in. But meantime, I waited and finally, half an hour later than the previous day, Tony showed up.

  This time he saw me at once and didn't bother with the visiting statesman entrance. He and his bodyguard went together to the corner table. The waiter rushed them their drinks but there was no tip. There were a few words—about me, I judged, from the hissing the waiter did—then they waved him away and opened their store.

  The first customer was a mechanic by the look of his fingernails. They had that mourning band around them that handsoap won't touch. He was around forty, a little heavy and lost-looking. I'd seen him soak up six beers in half an hour and he had the paper under his arm, folded to the race page.

  He spoke to Tony and was handed over to George, who paid him and made out a note. He took the cash and was heading for the door when I stood up and intercepted him. "You wanna watch that guy," I said, conversationally.

  He wasn't expecting anybody to speak to him before the clerk at the betting window took his money. He stopped, openmouthed. I pushed on. "If you're behind with your six for five, he'll have his goon slam a car door on your hand a time or two, with the fingers in the hinge side."

  He jolted his head around to look at Tony, then back at me.

  "Wa'd you say?"

  I repeated it, word for word and added, "You won't be able to fix cars so good after that, will you?"

  He soaked it in, then narrowed his eyes and asked me, "You a cop?"

  "You might say. Put me down as a friend." I grinned at him, a narrow-mouthed, vaguely threatening grin. I could see Tony and George bending their heads together but I'd been prepared for that.