In Plain Sight Read online

  “Ottavio, I have a funeral to attend. The funeral of those Russian animals. I’m working under cover, and I want to blend in, so I need you to get rid of the bulge here, and here,” I said pointing to the guns.

  “You are police, eh? Oh my God, you had me worried. I thought you were Russian for a moment and you were going to kill me for what I said. Of course I will help you get those animals. Anything for the police. My zio, my uncle, was a police inspector back home in Palermo. He made my family very proud.”

  “So you understand how important it is that the suit fit well and that it conceals everything?”

  “Of course, officer, the suit is no problem. It will hide everything.” Ottavio winked when he said the word everything; his version of the word seemed more pleasant than mine. “I once tailored for a magician. No one ever saw where he kept his doves. Only I know his tricks, eh?”

  The rest of the fitting went quickly. Ottavio made adjustments for an hour while I drank espresso and ate a few biscotti. I left a few hundred lighter, with the suit in a garment bag. I kept the Colt on, under the coat, close to my body.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I wasted a day waiting for the funeral. I spent the entire time in the motel room watching local news, shitty daytime talk shows, and sitcoms. I ate greasy pizza and Diet Coke I bought nearby and waited.

  The next day, dressed in my new suit carrying the new Colt and the revolver I took off Igor, I left for Dodsworth and Brown. I left the Glock inside a vent I managed to unscrew in the cramped motel bathroom. I couldn’t risk having to fire it; the ballistics would ruin everything I had set up and create a window for Morrison to escape through. He could prove his gun was stolen and put me back on his leash.

  The funeral home had a viewing from eleven to two. After that, the body was being laid to rest at a Russian church on Sanford, just down the street from the Russian hall Morrison told me about. St. Peter’s Church was a large building housing a huge cemetery for the city’s Russian population.

  I parked three blocks away from Dodsworth and Brown and waited. There were other nondescript cars waiting closer to the funeral home, and in them men sat with telephoto lenses pointed in the same direction. As long as I parked behind them, I wasn’t in danger of getting on film.

  I could barely make out the faces of the people going in and out of the funeral home, but it didn’t matter — I was waiting for the drive to the cemetery. I spent three hours waiting. At 2:15, the long procession of high-end European cars began. From my spot, I saw inside each of the cars as they passed me. In the twelfth car, a bright yellow BMW, were Igor and Tatiana. Neither noticed me as they slowly passed. They sat silently in the car, smoking. No other yellow cars passed by with the procession — the rest were modestly coloured expensive vehicles. I waited for the line of cars to end, and for the three unmarked police cars to follow, before I drove to St. Peter’s.

  At the church, there were no spaces in front of the building at all. I did two drive-by’s and saw none of the three unmarked police sedans that followed from the funeral home. I snaked through the nearby side streets for a few minutes until I came across the three cars. All three were abandoned, their engines still ticking. The cops would be trying to set up at the entrance and near the grave site so that they could get clear head shots of everyone coming and going. I drove two streets over and parked in a court that had a footpath leading towards the church. The path was wide enough to drive through, and I parked the car in a spot on the road that would allow me access to both the street and the path. If I had to leave fast, I wanted options. I jogged back to the three unmarked cars two blocks over. I looked around and saw no one on the streets. My hand went inside my jacket and came out with the folding knife. I put the blade into six passenger side tires. Not even the squirrels turned their heads to look at the quiet hissing I left behind as I walked away.

  I headed back to the church and scanned the street corners. I found the first cop two streets up with his lens pointed towards the church entrance. Outside the entrance, eight men and two women stood, all smoking in the sunlight. If they noticed the cop, they never let on. I stayed on the opposite side of the street, away from the lens, as I walked past the church. Around the corner, I spotted Igor’s yellow BMW. The car looked to run about sixty grand — forty if you tried to re-sell it yellow. It was a vehicle that screamed, “Look at me! I have money and fine things, but they’re useless unless you look at me.”

  I passed the car and walked down the road. Each driveway had a car or two parked in it. I had to pass four Japanese imports before I found an empty driveway. I followed the brick path to the backyard, where a wooden fence separated it from the church property. Through the slats, I watched the cemetery and a long procession of men and women walking behind a casket. I put my hands on top of the fence and hoisted myself over. No one noticed me landing inside the cemetery grounds — all eyes were on the casket. I quickly made my way to a large tombstone and bent, pretending to clean off the dirt and debris on the stone. There were still two cops somewhere with cameras, and I would be in their sights unless I was careful. The cops wouldn’t be allowed inside the church grounds; the funeral was private, and that meant the law too. They would have to find a spot somewhere nearby that offered a good view of the funeral. I scanned the trees on the other side of the cemetery until I saw a beam of light reflect off glass in the foliage. Inside the dense trees one of the cops was getting a great straight shot of the whole guest list.

  I kept my head low and walked along the property line away from the funeral. I moved off the lawn and into the trees of the small forest bordering the cemetery, following a path probably formed by the feet of hikers and kids on their way to bush parties. Back in the trees, I made my way around to the spot where I’d seen the glint of the lens. I had to go slowly to avoid making any noise; the ground was littered with beer bottle and pop can landmines. It took five minutes to work my way to the photographer I had noticed. The police paparazzo was in front of an old fire pit standing with a large camera to his face. He didn’t know I was behind him until the .45 pressed into his neck.

  “Put the camera down,” I said.

  “I’m a cop, asshole.”

  “Put it down, now.”

  “Are you fucking crazy? I’m a cop.”

  I pushed the .45 hard into his neck, forcing him to bend. Instinctively, both his hands held on to his camera to protect it from falling to the ground. My left arm jerked back, then drove forward into the cop’s side. The blow was sudden, and I timed it to the cop’s exhale. He had no way to protect himself from the sudden impact. I heard a crack like a pop from a campfire and then a sharp intake of breath before the cop dropped his camera and fell to his knees. No one in the funeral procession one hundred metres away looked towards us. I pulled the cop’s gun and threw it into the forest, then holstered the .45 and freed the cuffs from the cop’s belt. The cop offered little resistance while I shackled his hands behind his back. He lay gasping, trying to get his wind back, while I clicked through the stored pictures in the digital camera. There were a couple hundred shots, but I moved through them fast. I saw a shot of a yellow BMW and deleted it. I got rid of another few close-ups of Igor too. The new stitches on his face from where I yanked his cheek open made him easy to spot. When I was through all of the shots, I sat up the cop, who had managed to start breathing normally again.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Broke my ribs, you fucker.”

  “Cracked maybe, but not broke. Name?”

  “Bill.”

  “All right, Bill. I need to know a few things, then I’m gone. No one will ever have to know about this. You do it fast, and you can get shots of the rest of the funeral.”

  “I’m gonna find you, and I’m gonna . . . Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Erasing your work. Tough to explain why you came back with nothing to the brass. Might get you bumped off this little task force. Maybe put back in a car on nights.”

  “Stop, stop
.” Bill was whining.

  “You going to play ball?”

  “Fine, fine, what do you want?”

  “I’m going to click back through the shots. You tell me who’s who. Names, rank, territory, everything.”

  “I don’t know everybody.”

  I turned the camera and took five rapid shots of the cop cuffed in the dirt.

  “Hey, what are you doing? Stop that!”

  “I’m gonna hand this off to one of the other cops and let them deal with you. You’ll be a real hero.”

  “Shit, don’t do that.”

  “Then stop jerking me around. You’re not working the entrance. You’re set up to get shots of the big players. They don’t give that job to someone who doesn’t know all the faces.”

  “All right, all right. I’ll do it.”

  I clicked through each frame and listened to Bill tell me who was who. There were a lot of faces, and I asked about each. I didn’t care about any of them, but I didn’t want Bill to know that. When Bill assigned Sergei’s name to a picture of a man at the front of the procession, I listened closely.

  “That’s the man in charge, Sergei Vidal. He runs the whole Russian mob in Hamilton and Niagara.”

  “Why Niagara?”

  “The casinos and the circus. He uses the Russian circus to get his people into the country. The casinos are the next step; they’re already full of crime and money — Sergei used the Russian imports to muscle his way in, then to keep what he took. It only took a few years for the Russians to become major players. The other gangs just couldn’t stop them; it’s impossible to put fear into the Russians. They’ve all made their bones under some of the meanest gangsters in the world, and most have done time inside prisons that make puppy mills look like a Hilton. The Russians make a killing off the casinos and use the circus to launder the proceeds. It’s a good system. The books are easily fudged, and everyone in the circus is on the payroll, or their family back home is used as blackmail.”

  “Who guards him?”

  “Always five or more men.”

  “But who guards him? Used to be a big guy, Ivan, but he’s gone. Who took his place?”

  “Those two on either side of him are his personal security. They’re former Russian military. Served in Afghanistan and Chechnya.”

  “Names?”

  “Nikolai and Pietro. Nick and Pete to everyone. I don’t know their last names, too many V’s and backwards letters. Mean motherfuckers. They killed four Cambodian kids last year when they took a run at Sergei in a nightclub. The kids used machetes and tried to swarm him. They ended up cut to pieces themselves. No witnesses of course, only stories.”

  We went through thirty more shots until we got to the cars. I asked detailed questions about everyone who seemed important so that Bill would have no insight into what I was really after.

  “Where is the third camera?”

  “What?”

  “I saw one out front, you in the trees, where is number three?”

  Bill was over caring about betrayal. “Parking lot,” he said.

  “Keys are behind your back, Bill, your gun is ten metres that way,” I said, pointing in the wrong direction.

  Bill began fumbling behind his back while I walked away down the path. He grunted as he lost his balance and rolled over onto his side. I heard him gasp and swear under his breath as his damaged ribs made contact with the ground.

  I left the trees and climbed the fence without looking behind me. I came down over the fence without anyone watching from the funeral procession.

  “Nice suit.”

  Shit, I thought. I turned, already shrugging my shoulders, as Morrison’s meaty fist collided with my head. I shrugged enough to take most of the blow with my shoulder and trapezius muscles. I brought my hands up, but a second punch never came my way. Morrison closed the distance between us in two steps and took the lapels of my coat in both hands. In a fraction of a second, he pivoted below me and used his hips to get me airborne. I felt his back, like a heavy tree stump, rise, lift me, and throw me. I landed three feet away from the beefy cop. The wind was out of me, but I had been there before. I saw his feet approaching and rolled off my stomach onto my side, my hands already reaching for the foot I knew was coming. Morrison took a big soccer kick at my ribs, but it never connected. My hand blocked the kick, and I rolled away. I put my hands out again, ready to block another kick, but it didn’t come. Morrison dove onto my back and looped an arm around my neck. Instinctively, my jaw pressed into my chest, protecting my windpipe from his forearm.

  “Back home, I was a national champ in judo, mate.” His breath was hot in my ear. “I’ve twisted bigger and better than you. Only this time, there’s no ref to make me let you go.”

  Most people fight a choke in a blind panic. They strain at the threat — pulling at whatever obstructs the airway. Not me, I learned all about chokes in my teens.

  * * *

  As soon as my uncle took me under his wing, I never had a moment’s rest. If my back was to my uncle or my guard was down, he was on me. It didn’t matter what the task was; doing dishes, taking out the trash, even brushing my teeth might be met with a barrage of sneak attacks.

  One August morning, my uncle came into the kitchen arms full. He was carrying a load of dry cleaning he said was for a job, and he stumbled over a chair I left pulled out. I cringed at my stupidity, knowing I would pay for it, and bent to pick up the clothes. A plastic dry cleaning bag went over my head as I came up with my arms full. I could see the blurred kitchen through the bag as I groped for the counter to hold myself upright. My uncle pulled me to him, with two hands, as the bag fogged with more and more hot air and spit. After thirty seconds, I gave up on the counter and pulled at the hands around my neck. I was exhausted and panting as panic set in. I went to my knees, scratching at the hands, but the clear prison never let up. Blackness took me seconds later.

  I woke up on the floor to find the dry cleaning gone. My uncle sat at the table, expressionless in his chair, eating cantaloupe.

  “You still ain’t ready, boy.”

  I coughed and sucked air deep into my strained lungs. “Bag was a dirty trick.”

  “Oh, you think so? You think there’s a fucking rule book out there? You think there’s a penalty box for people? Forget that shit and tell me what just happened.”

  “You choked me out,” I said.

  “Tell me what you did about it.”

  “I tried to stay on my feet. Then I tried to get your hands off my neck. You were too strong, and I ran out of air.”

  “Why didn’t you tear open the bag?”

  I sat there dumbfounded.

  “It’s a plastic bag. You could have opened it with your finger. Why did you care about the counter or my hands?”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “CIA uses clear bags. People tear open black ones, but the clear ones — no one touches those. It’s psychological, I suppose. You panic and your mind goes into a primal sort of thinking. You can see through the bag, so your brain doesn’t register it; it focuses on the hands and body first. That shit doesn’t matter though. Dead is dead no matter what your mind-set. You have to think clearest when you’re dying. That’s when you have to keep your head, or else someone else is going to take it. What good is thinking if you forget it when you need it most? School’s out for today. Get to the gym.”

  I walked out with my head low, the lesson burning in my cheeks. There were other tests after that, but I never lost my head again. I stayed calm when I needed to, and I stayed conscious — most of the time.

  * * *

  Morrison’s forearm worked under my jaw. He rotated the bone back and forth using his whole body to pull his limb against my windpipe. I ignored the pain, and the arm, choosing instead to dig a thumb into his eye. He screamed in pain, and the hold loosened a fraction. My other hand found his balls, and I squeezed hard. The choke came loose, and I rolled away. I was on my feet before he was; Morrison wasn’t using his hands to
stand — they were holding his face and his crotch as he tried to get up. He saw me coming, and he covered up as I had, but I circled around his guard and pounded a kick into the base of his spine. He yelped, and his hands left his front in favour of his back as the impact shot up my leg. I saw his eyes focus through the pain and knew he wasn’t done. We both drew on each other at the same time.

  “Noise isn’t what you want,” I said.

  “Fuck you. You don’t know what I want,” Morrison said as he got to his feet one shaky foot at a time. In his fist, he held a snub-nosed revolver.

  “Using your drop piece?” I asked.

  “Seem to have misplaced my service issue. Where’d you pick up the .45?”

  “Yard sale. Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to see the players. I love it when shit doesn’t go their way. I had to take a personal day just to get here.”

  “You let them see you?”

  “Nah, I’m not suicidal, mate. Rubbing it in is bad business. I’d end up on the business end of a drive-by if I rubbed it in at a funeral.”

  “So you saw me and . . . What the fuck happened to your eyebrows?”

  “Fucking tape you put on my head took off my eyebrows. I had to fill ’em in with a make-up pencil. It’s big laughs at the station.”

  I chuckled, but the gun never shook. “So you saw me, and you figured it was payback time?”

  “That’s right, fuckwit.”

  “You’ll just be a dead cop next to a cemetery full of suspects.”

  “Not if I shoot you first.”

  “Then you’re an off-duty cop using his drop piece on his personal day next to a cemetery full of police cameras and Russian gangsters. How many questions would come out of that?”

  Morrison thought about it.

  “Climb back over the fence and watch the rest of the show. You can see everything fine from behind the tombstones. You stay here, it’s gonna get loud,” I said, dusting off my suit with one hand; the other kept the .45 aimed at centre mass.

  “We ain’t done, mate. We’re gonna settle up somewhere private. Just you and me.”