A short but steep flight of narrow enclosed stairs led to a battered metal-clad door that had been propped open with a wooden wedge. The door opened on the lobby, which was unusually large but lacked furniture. The original front desk, made of oak and marble, had been torn out years ago, for salvage. The replacement desk was made of plywood and Formica, and was surrounded by a chicken-wire cage to protect hotel staff from thieves and hypes and angry drunks. Pinky Koblansky put down his bottle and waved hello to Parker from behind his metal safety net.

  Willows glanced at the body. The victim was a white male in his late teens or early twenties.

  A couple of paramedics engaged in a heated discussion with a uniformed officer quieted down as Willows and Parker approached them. The taller of the two said, “We lost him.”

  “But not until he hit,” cracked his partner. Laughing at their little set piece, the two men gathered up their equipment and walked away.

  To the cop, Parker said, “Were you first on the scene?”

  The cop nodded. He looked so young that, had she met him in a bar, Parker would have demanded picture ID. He was a rookie, the number plate on his uniform identifying him as a recent graduate of the academy.

  Parker said, “What’s your name?”

  “Broadhead.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. I meant, what’s your given name?”

  “Kenneth.” The cop almost blushed. “Ken.”

  “Tell us whatever you can tell us, Ken.”

  “Uh … Me and my partner took the call, got here at twenty past twelve. The body was right there, as you see it. The desk clerk was behind the wire, refused to come out.” Broadhead shifted his gaze to Willows and then quickly back to Parker. “The kid was dead when I arrived.”

  “You checked his vitals?” said Willows.

  “Yeah, right away.” The victim’s skull was split wide open, but Broadhead decided not to mention it to the detectives. Let them find out for themselves. He said, “The night clerk said he heard shooting, that the victim had a room on the top floor …”

  “Shooting?” said Willows.

  “Shouting. Did I say …?” Broadhead reddened. “He was staying in room 517, with his girlfriend. I went up there, didn’t see anybody. The door to the room was shut.”

  “Locked?”

  “Yeah, it was locked.”

  Willows was careful of the jagged lines of blood as he closed in on the corpse. A rear pocket bulged. Willows fished out a black wallet made of a coarse, woven synthetic fabric. The wallet had Velcro closures. Willows hated Velcro, because the sound of it made him think of a Band-Aid being ripped off a painful wound. He opened the wallet as slowly as he could, but all that accomplished was to extend his agony. The victim had died poor. Broke, in fact. Willows found a taped razor blade in one of the credit-card slots. The kid had provincial ID, and a social-insurance card.

  His name was Nicholas Partridge. He was a local boy, born on January 2,1981.

  Parker crouched down beside Willows. “Got anything?”

  “Not really.” Willows showed her the picture ID. “Could that be him?”

  “Yeah, that’s him. Look at the eyes.”

  Willows nodded his agreement. A line of blood radiating away from Partridge’s downside ear was smudged. The splash pattern was classic — elongated teardrops of blood fanning out in a stadium shape from his shattered skull. Close in, the drops were smeared. Willows pointed out the disturbed blood to Parker.

  She said, “Think he’s been moved?”

  “Looks like it. Or he could’ve spasmed.” Willows wanted to move the body but had to wait until it had been sketched and photographed. He glanced at his watch.

  Parker, reading his mind, said, “Mel Dutton’s on the way over. He should be here any minute.”

  Willows nodded. At first glance Nicholas Partridge’s injuries were entirely consistent with a sixty-foot vertical drop onto a tiled floor. But had he fallen, or had he been pushed? Willows wondered if the blood work would indicate the ingestion of drugs or alcohol. Partridge wore a sweater and long-sleeved shirt, so Willows couldn’t check for needle marks. Too bad the girlfriend hadn’t stuck around. If she was a junkie, she’d have a natural aversion to cops, and he could understand her vacating the scene. From her point of view, where was the attraction in meeting a whole bunch of pushy, overly inquisitive people in black uniforms?

  Willows stood up. His knees creaked. He glanced over at the front desk. “Pinky looks kind of left out and lonely, don’t you think?”

  Parker nodded. “Maybe we should have a talk with him.”

  “Good idea.”

  Pinky saw them coming. He fitted a smile onto his face as if it were a painfully tight shoe.

  Parker said, “Pinky …”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Is there a way out of there, or do they toss your meals over the wire?”

  Pinky jerked a fat thumb at the heavily barred, steel-clad door behind him.

  “Come on out,” said Willows.

  “I’d prefer not to, actually.”

  Parker said, “Pinky, we’re not going to bite. So do all three of us a favour and come on out.”

  “I got a bad cold.” Pinky conjured up a sneeze. “Ah-choo!” He wiped his hand on his pants. “Believe me, it’s much better for you if I stay right where I am.”

  Willows smiled. He said, “You hiding something in there, Pinky? A bottle, or a couple of joints, or a line or two, to help ease you through the long, dark night? We don’t care. But we’re not going to talk to you through the wire. If you don’t haul your ass out of there, you’re going to end up with something a lot worse than a head cold.”

  Pinky’s bulging eyes swivelled towards Parker. “Is your friend threatening me?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Pinky chewed nervously on his pendulous lower lip. He risked another quick glance at Willows. Man, the guy looked hot enough to melt. He sat up a little straighter on his stool. “No way I’m unlocking that door. You don’t like it, maybe you should talk to my lawyer.”

  “Have you got a lawyer, Pinky?”

  “Well, no.”

  Bolt-cutters. Willows reminded himself to never leave home without them.

  Chapter 12

  Jake had a private room in St. Paul’s. For most of the city’s sick but knowledgeable citizens, St. Pauls might not have been the first destination of choice, but Jake’s thugs gave it a five-star rating. If his time to die had come, it seemed like the right place to get the job done. Anyway, Marty had arranged for a private room, and seen to it that Jake had his own nurse, and his down-filled comforter and cozy flannel sheet sets and pillows et cetera had been brought to him straight from his opulent Point Grey mini-mansion.

  Jake took great comfort in these familiar things. A hospital was a hospital was a hospital, so it was nice to be able to enjoy a few of the creature comforts. Marty had even thought to provide him with a DVD player that played shiny little discs. He had sent a couple of punks down to A&B Sound to pick up some inspirational music, and a couple of dozen movies, including the complete Godfather series and a movie called Heat, which Jake had incorrectly assumed was a prequel or maybe a sequel to one of his all-time favourites, an old Cagney film called White Heat. Turned out to be a completely different story line, but he enjoyed it anyway, his fevered mind sometimes superimposing Cagney’s bulky face and memorized lines over A1 Pacino’s excellent performance, with predictably confusing results.

  Jake was passively watching the film’s lengthy shootout when the action suddenly froze. A cop grimaced as he clutched his bloody chest. Flame spouted from the muzzles of assault rifles. An unbound chain of ejected cartridges looped through the air. Shattered glass hung suspended above a corpse-strewn sidewalk.

  The sudden way it happened, all that violent, wonderfully choreographed action coming to an instant halt, against all the laws of nature, at the exact moment the noisy soundtrack plunged into a void of silence, made Jake think …

  Jake thought the silence and freeze-frame effect meant that his time on earth had come to a grinding halt, and that the Great Creator had pulled the plug on him, preparatory to a big escalator opening up in the floor. A down escalator, naturally, that would convey him straight to Hell.

  Something touched his shoulder. He was too weak to move his ancient head, but he could still get shifty-eyed with the best of them. Peering down and to the side, he spied a quartet of long, thick fingers and a thumb. He strained to rotate his eyeballs another degree or two. The diamond pinky ring he’d given Marty on his first double-digit birthday came slowly into focus.

  “Mahty … dat you … kid?”

  Marty said,“Yeah, it’s me.” As if there was another human being on the planet who’d dare risk uninvited physical contact with Jake. “How’s the movie?”

  “Not … ta … shabby.”

  Marty stepped back, so Jake could see him more easily. He said, “I hate to bother you, but we got a problem I thought you should know about.”

  “Aside … from … da fack … I’m … pullin’ … back … my … leg … ta … kick … da … can?”

  Marty said, “Cut it out, you’re gonna be fine.” His voice broke. He took a moment to collect himself, and then said, “Think about this, Jake. If the good die young, aren’t you bound to live forever?”

  Jake lifted a finger, acknowledging the logic. He made a kind of low-pitched wheezy sound that might have signified high good humour. It took a lot out of him. When he’d regained a modicum of strength he said, “So … wha’s … up?”

  Marty snapped his fingers. The blonde in the skintight parody of a nurse’s uniform stopped crossing and uncrossing her fishnet legs and glanced up from her copy of Playgirl. She gave Marty a sultry and enquiring look, shifted her wad of spearmint aside and said, “Yeah, what?”

  “Take a short hike, babe.”

  “The name is Tiffany.”

  “Take her with you,” said Marty politely. He added, “Shut the door behind you, please.”

  Tiffany nodded and stood up, or rather, uncoiled. Marty hadn’t ogled a pair of legs that long since New Orleans, and it had turned out the girl was wearing a pair of stilts.

  Jake waited until the door was shut and then said, “Now … there’s … a … dish … that’d … be … best … tasted … hot.”

  Marty smiled. Jake’s appetite for women was limitless, and legendary. Up until the last few months, his enthusiasm for sex had made Hugh Hefner look like a low-energy eunuch. He claimed to have fornicated his way through the entire alphabet, first names and last, from A to Z and back again two complete times before his nineteenth birthday. Maybe it was a pack of lies, but Marty doubted it. How far poor Jake had fallen, in such an infernally short time! Tears welled up in his gangster’s eyes.

  Jake had informally adopted Marty at the tender age of eight, shortly after his father, Martin, who’d also been Jake’s right-hand thug, had been felled by a lethal aneurysm. Well, that was what Jake in his wisdom had told him at the time. Only a year or so ago, Marty learned that his father had been riddled by Marty’s jealous mother, Isobel, who’d discovered that her husband had a cheatin’ heart, not to mention at least one other recklessly wandering organ. She’d emptied Martin’s revolver into his back, then attempted to take her own life, but failed due to a lack of ammunition. She had fled the country, but Marty never learned her ultimate fate. Just as well.

  Jake’s right arm trembled, and then rose up and fell on his chest. His palsied fingers wormed towards his nose. He fumbled weakly with the clear plastic lines through which oxygen flowed into his hairy nostrils and thence to his lungs and brain.

  Marty itched to help, but Jake’s watery eyes told him to keep his distance. Marty couldn’t seem to find the strength to take his eyes off Jake’s fumbling, clumsy fingers. Those five rheumatism-riddled digits seemed completely at odds with each other, like the venal, bottomlessly ambitious characters Marty remembered from a dark piece of work by a guy named Shakespeare. Jake was still at it, his discombobulated digits poking and prodding ineffectually at his purplish, grossly swollen nose. It was kind of like watching a baby chick try to peck its exhausted way out of the shell. Just get it over with!

  Finally Jake had the plastic lifelines adjusted to suit him. He glanced up at Marty and said, “So … wha’s … da … pro’lem?”

  Marty glanced cautiously towards the door. Take no chances, take no prisoners. He said, “We got a shipment coming in from Paul Mulhouse.”

  Jake tried to nod. His wattles trembled.

  “We’re talking ten million in U.S. currency,” whispered Marty, so low he had to strain to hear himself. The cash was destined for Moscow and environs. There was peripheral CIA involvement, in return for a favour owed that Jake didn’t need to know or worry about. The spooks were interested in further destabilizing the Russian economy. Marty had asked his contact why, and the agent had given himself a hernia and a three-day migraine in his futile attempt to come up with a half-plausible reason.

  Jake said, “Da … point … ya’s … gettin’ at … is?”

  “I don’t know if you remember, but the money was on its way to the house last night when you took sick, Jake. The local cops swarmed the neighbourhood as soon as word got out that you were here, in St. Paul’s. Probably they figured the Italians and Russians would move in, try to rearrange the pecking order.”

  Marty blushed red as a fire truck. Jake took note and idly wondered why.

  Marty said, “I think you know the guys we hired to move the money, a couple of freelance slumps named Carlos and Hector.”

  “We … used …”

  “’Em before? Yeah, two or three times. Never when this much cash was on the line, though. But like I said, I couldn’t let them near the house, because the cops were crawling all over the place.”

  “Yeah, I …” Jake’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and then came down again. “I … heard … ya … da foist … time.”

  “Sorry,” said Marty, genuinely contrite.

  Jake made a dismissive snuffling sound.

  Marty sat down carefully on the side of the bed and took Jake’s palsied hand in his. For the first time in years, he let another human being see the love that was inside him. He said, “I really want you to get better, Jake. Not just for yourself, but for me.” Jake’s hand was hot and dry, his skin brittle and scaly. Marty held on so tightly that he might have hoped their flesh would merge. He said, “You been a father to me ever since Mom popped the original. I was a helpless little kid, and you took care of me, showed me the ropes. You gotta know I love you like you were my own father, except even more so, ’cause he was so fucked up.”

  Jake smiled. He shut his rheumy eyes so poor deluded Marty couldn’t see what he was thinking. Not that Marty’s love was unrequited. But, jeez, there were certain things real men didn’t talk about. Especially if one of them was dying. Hell, especially if one of them was dying. Jake gathered himself. He said, “Da … fuckin’ … point!”

  “Yeah, well …” Marty wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, sluicing away the grief. He took a deep breath, inhaling more oxygen at a single gulp than Jake had pulled in all night long. “What I was wondering, should I let Carlos and Hector hold on to the money until we get ourselves organized, and the cops back off? Or should we take delivery of it now?”

  Jake frowned. He hoped his inability to hold a train of thought was due to all the pharmaceuticals they were pouring into him. Man, he was, uh …

  Marty said, “Jake?” He waited and waited.

  Finally Jake said, “Kill ’em.”

  Marty was so shocked he almost let it show. Had he heard Jake correctly? What rhymed with “Kill ’em”? “Spill ’em”? In the parlance of the trade, that was basically the same thing. How about “Grill ’em”? Yeah, that must be it. Jake wanted him to question Carlos and Hector. But about what?

  He said, “Jake, did I hear you right?” He made a gun of his fist, and then drew his trigger finger across his throat. “You want me to kill Carlos and Hector?”

  “Yeah … sure. Why … not?”

  “Bump them off,” said Marty. “Squib ’em. Put ’em down, snuff or waste ’em. Is that what you want?”

  Jake’s liver-spotted hands curled into a pair of pistols. His rheumy eyes sparkled. “Ka-pow!” he shouted. “Ka-pow! Ka-pow!” He showed the whites of his eyes. His head snapped from side to side. An alarm sounded.

  Marty dropped to his knees and prayed to a God he desperately wished he believed in.

  Chapter 13

  Willows turned to Parker. “Call the fire department. Get a hook-and-ladder over here.”

  Pinky Koblansky lunged forward. His pudgy tobacco-stained fingers gripped the wire mesh. “What’n hell ya callin’ the fire department for?”

  “They have two pieces of equipment we need, Pinky. One, a fire hose. Two, a big pair of bolt-cutters.”

  Pinky’s eyes bulged. “What ya gonna do with a fire hose?”

  “Clean the wax out of your ears,” said Willows. “Why don’t you ask me what I’m going to do with the bolt-cutters?”

  “Never mind, I’m coming out.” He turned and unlocked the steel-clad door behind him.

  Parker said, “Don’t even think about making a run for it, Pinky.”

  “You kiddin’? Take a look at me. I couldn’t outrun an asthmatic tortoise. A couple nights ago, I’m limping to the bus stop, I pass under a streetlight and notice I can’t even keep up with my own shadow.” He opened the door, stepped through it and shut the door behind him.

  Willows said, “Our witness just vanished.”

  “Bolt-cutters and a fire hose?” said Parker. “If he skipped, I don’t blame him.”

  A door that had “STORAGE CLOSET” sloppily painted on it in pale-green letters swung open, and out stepped Pinky. “Okay, what can I do for you guys?”

  “Tell us what you saw and heard, Pinky,” said Willows.

  “No problem.”

  “Just what you saw and heard,” said Parker.

  “No hallucinations, is that what you’re saying? Lemme think a minute.” Pinky assumed the pose. The seconds dribbled past. He pointed over Parker’s shoulder. “Who’s that?”

 

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