In Plain Sight Read online

  “There were shots fired at the Hammer and Sickle on Sherman. A man is dead. Please hurry. Oh, no!” I hung up the phone, powered it down, then walked into the coffee shop. I spent an hour eating muffins and drinking tea before I decided to turn on the phone again. I pulled out Detective Sergeant Huata Morrison’s card and dialled his cell number.

  “Morrison.”

  “It’s me.”

  “You’re late and I’m busy. But something tells me your tardiness and my working late are related.”

  “Where are you?”

  “You know where I am, you fucker. I’m at the Hammer and Sickle.” His voice turned into a harsh whisper for a moment. “A place I told you about. Some mobbed-up loser bit it, and guess what? None of the three employees who were working in the apparently empty bar here saw a thing.”

  “Sounds like you’re in for a long night of detective work.”

  “Nah, I got a suspect. Just escaped from the hospital. I should be able to tie this up real easy.”

  “So you don’t need any tips?”

  “Tips?”

  “You know, clues to help you solve the case.”

  “Nah, I don’t need tips. I just need to have a talk with the bartender. Seems like he forgot to tell me about a suspicious customer who came in. Some joker with short hair and a beard.”

  “Sounds like leading a witness.”

  “An island boy like me does not know about such things, mate.”

  “That description won’t match the ballistics,” I said. My voice stayed monotone while my mouth turned up into a tight grin.

  “Ballistics?”

  “Yeah, that’s my tip. I know that the crime was committed with a Glock police pistol. I even know where the gun can be found. Serial number is still on it too. No fingerprints though.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “How’s your suspect list now?”

  “You can’t pull that shit on me. I’m a cop!”

  “How long will that last when I tip the papers about the gun?”

  There was a pause, then a sigh. “What do you want?”

  “To stay a person of interest and to keep my prints and picture out of everything.”

  “That’s impossible. There’s a dead nurse in your hospital room. You’re the prime suspect.”

  “Fix it,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re acting like you have a choice. This is a new game. Now we’re fishing in a boat together. You need to do some of that leading with a witness at the hospital.”

  “Leading to what?”

  “Who’s to say I wasn’t a person of interest to more people than you?”

  Morrison caught on. “So you were kidnapped. Probably already dead. Whoever killed that kid in the truck we found you near must have killed you too to keep you from talking.”

  “I stay dead and invisible, you stay Detective Sergeant.”

  “So we’re partners. You got me and I got you.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Can’t be that way forever, mate. Something has to tip the scales eventually.”

  Morrison was right. No matter how crooked, he was still a cop, and no cop would put up with being pushed — they’re too used to being the aggressors. There was no telling the amount of clout he had. He didn’t fear bending the law to keep me from being printed or to get me out of the bed, so someone had to be on his side, someone big. Given enough time, he could spin the shooting at the club or fuck the ballistics reports. What I had on him only had a shelf life of a few days; then the scales would start to tilt in his favour again.

  “Original deal then,” I said. “I’ll get you a fish, and you’ll forget about me. Otherwise, I just cut bait and settle for taking you down with me.”

  There was no answer from the phone. I knew the cop was stuck where he didn’t want to be. He was working with a crook instead of turning the screws. He was off balance. I had to keep him there because as long as he was uncomfortable, I had room to move.

  “Give me a few days and I’ll be in touch. I need one thing though,” I said.

  “What? Haven’t I done enough for you?”

  “I need info on a name.”

  The cop’s voice became serious. He wanted me to lead him to something bigger. Any name I needed was something he could use to get ahead. I had to be careful about what I asked for — too much information could make me useless.

  “What name?”

  “Russian guy. I only got a first name: Igor. He’s not street level. He’s got enough clout to have that fat cop on payroll.”

  “I told you Miller’s no rat. He’s been my partner for years. I trust him with my life every day — he’s solid.”

  “Solid like you? The CPR and the business card you gave me didn’t seem by the books.”

  Morrison grumbled before hanging up, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. I swore under my breath into the dead connection. I had misread the cop. All this time I took him to be as bent as the rest of us, but I got it wrong. He was bent, but he didn’t see it that way. In his mind, he was out for the greater good. He was a cop, and nothing he did was wrong because he was the law. Letting me out of the hospital was justifiable because it meant something worse would come in. Worse still, if Morrison thought he was a good cop, he would never really let me off — it would conflict with his own fucked-up logic. He would string me along until he achieved whatever goal he thought meted out justice, then he would turn on me. I was on the other side, and to a cop that meant I couldn’t get away.

  It had been years since I had met anyone who saw the world in sides. Simple logic made for dangerous people; they were easy enough to predict, but they brought chaos down all around them. Morrison had blinders on; he took an oath and wore a badge, and he figured everyone else felt the way he did about being a cop. He couldn’t swallow the fact that one of his own people worked off the books for the Russians. He defended Miller twice when the evidence pointed to the contrary. That kind of myopia was like deep-seated racism; the kind that was bred into kids from the moment they took in air. His beliefs wouldn’t wash away, and he would always be at their mercy. Morrison was blind and determined. He wouldn’t forget about me, and he would trail that fat cop and the Russians along behind him until they could take their own shot. More people were going to get hurt before Morrison was done. I figured it was best that I was the one doing the hurting — I already had a head start.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next morning, I went for breakfast at a Greek restaurant near the motel. Greece on King was too nice for the neighbourhood, and I took advantage before management clued in and decided to relocate. I slid into a booth that contained a discarded morning paper and leafed through the news. I was into the front-page story about a shootout at a local bar and the supposed links to the Russian mob, when a young woman approached the table. She was tall, about five-ten, with dark skin and dark hair. She wore little make-up and a black shirt and pants. The woman radiated beauty. I almost had to look away when she smiled and asked me if I was ready to order. I regained my composure, ordered steak and eggs, and got back to reading the paper. I didn’t let my eyes wander to her ass as she walked away. I learned to shut out my pants long ago. It was always a fight, but I wouldn’t let myself lose focus on a job.

  I got to the end of the article, and twelve words floored me. I read them over and over again. The twelve words made me realize that I didn’t need any help from Morrison to find Igor. The paper told me everything I needed to know: The funeral will be at Thomas and Dunne on King and Wellington. My feelings of stupidity for missing something so obvious were interrupted by the waitress pouring me a glass of ice water.

  “You don’t look happy,” she said.

  “I just realized I lost something.”

  “Not your wallet?” She looked concerned.

  “No, not my wallet. The upper hand.”

  “Which glove is that? Left or right?”

  The waitress waited for an answer,
but I got back to reading the article — looking for anything I might have missed. The food came five minutes later with a side order of cold shoulder. I ate and thought about what I had said to Morrison. I asked him to find Igor. I gave no description, just the name and position of a man. It was possible that Morrison would be unable to put a face to the name right away. There might have been more than one powerful, mobbed-up Igor in the city, but it wasn’t likely, and I knew it. All I could hope for was that the upcoming mob funeral would take precedence over everything else. Cops would be running security and surveillance to make sure they kept everything safe and on film. It would be a dangerous event despite the police presence. The cops would use the guise of security to plant themselves right outside the graveyard, and every Russian with a gun and a scar would be brazenly walking across the grass to the gravesite. Every member of the Russian mob, hopped up on anger and chemicals, would be daring the cops to touch them. Funerals were often places where wanted criminals had no problem showing their faces. The cops never touched them out of fear of the backlash from the rest of the made funeral attendees in front of the greedy camera lenses. I would have to join in the throng of media and police onlookers to find Igor and follow him home. I was on a cramped timetable, Morrison had a lead on me, and I had a lead on Igor. We all couldn’t be in the lead forever.

  I finished the steak and eggs, paid up, and checked out the waitress one last time. She caught me and flashed a glare that made it easier to look away. I nodded goodbye to the cook and left the restaurant with the newspaper under my arm.

  * * *

  I picked up the car from the motel parking lot and drove into the city, keeping an eye out for the kind of store I needed. The men’s shop on Ottawa Street North wasn’t a chain but a decades-old independently run business. The sign out front looked as though it had weathered a quarter of a century out on the street. I drove down the street looking for a place to park, only to be sent back the way I came. This part of Hamilton housed fabric and textile wholesalers. The clothing here would be plentiful and cheaper than anywhere else in the city. The tailor would also have put enough time in to have seen everything at least twice.

  I finally found a spot in the parking lot of a retirement complex. As I walked to the men’s shop up the street, I checked behind me to make sure I was clean. I didn’t see a tail behind me, only an army surplus store. Something about the Ottawa Army Surplus registered in my mind. I had heard the name before from people in my line of work. I turned around and walked into the store.

  An old bell announced my arrival, but there was no one around to notice. I walked the aisles looking at the peacoats and heavy work boots until I heard the shuffle of old feet. A grizzled man came out of the back room to meet me. He was the age that had no age. He could have been seventy as easily as he could have been ninety. Under a worn blue vest, he wore a faded red plaid flannel shirt and green pants pulled up to just below his nipples. Black suspenders locked the pants in place just in case they tried to make a break for it. The guy was too old to be working. He had to be some kind of serious broke to be behind a counter at his age. I knew I was in the right place; money would get me anything I needed. I just hoped the old man had the kind of anything I wanted.

  “Sorry ’bout that, son. I was in the crapper.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Hell you do, boy! At my age, nature calls all the fucking time. Haven’t been fishing with my buddies in years ’cause I have to piss so much. It’s not natural.”

  I said nothing.

  “Whachoo need?”

  “I’m looking for holsters,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Two guns. A Glock and a small Smith and Wesson revolver.”

  “Where you want to carry these guns?”

  “I need a shoulder rig for the Smith and Wesson, and a belt holster for the Glock.”

  “Who told you to come here?”

  I didn’t know the old man, or how far he crossed into the wrong side of the law, so asking about holsters was a good way to feel him out. His demand of a reference told me that I had asked the right guy. I played along. “Friend of a friend,” I said.

  The old man grumbled and walked through the doorway to the back room. When he turned, I caught sight of a hard hump under the back of his vest. Below the hump was another bump — one much more deadly.

  The old man came back a minute later with several shoulder rigs, a belt holster, and a metal case.

  “Most of the shoulder rigs I got are too big for a small S and W. What barrel length are we talking about? Two inches?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s no good. You need something better?”

  Igor’s gun wasn’t reliable, and I couldn’t risk using the Glock again. “What do you have?” I asked.

  The old man opened the case and turned it around on the counter so that I could see inside. Three guns were nestled into custom foam pockets. There were two fat black revolvers — a four-inch barrelled model 36 Smith and Wesson .38, and another Smith and Wesson .38, but this was the model 40. The other gun was a cheap Saturday Night Special. The guns were all bigger than Igor’s small revolve, but none of them was in any condition that looked reliable.

  As if sensing my thought, the old man spoke up. “They’ll all fire. Tested them myself.”

  “What’s behind your back?”

  The old man frowned and harrumphed to himself. “What’s behind my back?” He reached behind himself and strained to twist the gun out from under his vest. His bony, blue-veined hand came back holding a large black shape. The gun was heavy and ugly. There was no mistaking it.

  “How much for the belt holster, that black shoulder rig there, and your Colt?”

  “The .45 ain’t for sale. It’s mine. What’s in that case there is all I got for you.”

  “Five hundred for the Colt and the two holsters,” I said.

  “Five hundred, hah! Thousand.” And just like that, the Colt was on the market.

  “Seven fifty and you hand it over with a spare magazine and a box of ammunition.”

  “Eight,” he said.

  “Done.”

  “Hee, hee, son, you made a fine purchase. Colt like that got me through Korea alive.”

  “Let me see it,” I said, ignoring the mention of Korea. The old man wanted to sell the gun with a story; I had no time for old gun battles half a world away. I had my own gun battles a few streets over to deal with.

  The old man stopped guffawing and got serious again. He slid out the magazine and passed me the gun.

  I worked the slide and dry fired the gun. The trigger created an obscene snap like a loud “Fuck you.” The gun was well oiled and in good condition.

  “Wrap it up,” I said.

  The old man’s humour returned at once, and he hustled behind the counter for a bag. He put the Colt in the shoulder rig and put everything in the bag. I peeled off the money and laid it on the counter. The old man snatched it faster than I would have bet he could move and laughed out loud.

  “Pleasure doing business with you, son. And just so you know, the gun will have to be reported stolen. If you get caught with it, I’ll call you a thief, and I’ll press charges.”

  “I get caught with the gun no one will notice you. The gun will get swept under whatever rug they hide my body under.”

  The bell showed me out to the street, and I walked to the tailor. There was no bell to let anyone know I entered the men’s shop. The sales floor was one large room lined with suits, shirts, pants, and ties. I walked along the racks inside the warm shop and smelled the pungent aroma of espresso being brewed. I spent a few minutes like that until I heard a man singing. The song wasn’t in English — it was sung in a deep, rich Italian. The voice belonged to a man in his fifties with a full head of white hair who walked out from behind a curtain. His skin was olive, and his eyes had the type of puffy bags that sleep could never erase. He was dressed in an expensive black cashmere sweater and a pair of cho
colate brown pants. His shoes were a shiny dark leather, and they went long past the toes into a narrow tip.

  “Buongiorno — How can I help you?”

  “I need a suit — light-weight, black, white shirt, and a tie. It will need to be tailored immediately.”

  My demands didn’t faze the man. “Bene, bene. This can all be done. What suit you like?”

  I found a middle-of-the-road suit and handed it over. He nodded at the suit and ushered me behind the curtain he came out of to a change room. Inside, I put on the shoulder rig and belt holster while I spoke through the door.

  “You see the mob funeral coming up?”

  “Russians, pah. They act like animals. They don’t know how to behave like people. My family came to this country with nothing. My father scrimped and saved until he could buy us a house. Then he brought his sister and her children over and let them live with us. It was cramped, and some nights there was no food for the table, but he never once acted like those animals.”

  Through the door I replied, “But your people are no strangers to crime.”

  “You talking about the mafia? Some men went that way, yes, but not my father. Not my family. But even those who did, they never acted like those Russians. There was a code, there was honour. The mafia helped build this city; they helped protect immigrants who would have starved in the street. Immigrants less proud and less fortunate than my father. We are different.”

  I could have spent the better part of the day showing this man how every mob is the same. There’s no honour. There’s only a desire for money and power. Every mob kills for it — they bleed to keep it and cut to take it.

  I kept my mouth shut and opened the door. I got what I wanted. I understood where the man stood.

  “You look good in that suit, but the way it hangs. It’s . . . it’s . . . What is wrong there? Come here.”

  The man’s hand felt the jacket. His touch was gentle as he felt over the fabric. He grunted when he felt the Colt in the shoulder harness.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “It’s . . . my name is . . . I am Ottavio.”