Buffalo Jump (28 page)

Not to be uncharitable, but I hoped he felt worse than he looked.

One of the young studs was pushing a mini-forklift loaded with a skid of cartons; the other was bringing cartons out of the store three at a time on a hand truck. The man with the forklift manoeuvred his load to the rear of the truck and used a control on the handle to raise it to eye level. The name Contrex was visible on every carton through a shroud of shrink wrap. He walked the load into the truck, was out of sight for half a minute and came out pulling the empty lift. I had driven trucks the size of this one in Banff. It could hold at least sixteen skids stacked in rows of four, two over two. And since the goods weren’t breakable, dozens of single cartons could be piled on top of and around the skids.

Where was Jay Silver while all this was going on? Inside the store, powerless to stop it from being pillaged? Or somewhere else, unaware of the situation. Maybe unaware, period.

The next skid held cartons labelled CoRex—the name of Canada’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs. As the man steered it toward the truck, his load slid suddenly forward. He probably wasn’t used to handling a lift and hadn’t pushed the forks all the way through to the end of the skid. He used a handbrake to stop the forklift but the load kept going, toppling forward to the concrete floor of the dock. “Fuck!” he yelled—I could lip-read it through the field glasses as well as hear it. The shrink wrap split along one side on impact and the cartons spilled out every which way along the dock. A few fell down to ground level. “Shit!” the man yelled.

The two men were going to have to slug the cases in by hand, and neither Frank nor Claudio looked ready to help. I jogged back to Ryan’s car, hunched over like Groucho Marx.

“Drop me off around the front,” I said. “I’m going inside. I need to see if Silver’s there.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then I want to see who’s letting these guys clean him out.”

“What if Frank or Claudio sees you?”

“Frank I can take in my sleep, and I think Claudio’s had more than enough of me.”

As soon as I entered the store, I could hear raised voices at the back counter where a dozen people were crowded around a pharmacist, waving slips of paper at him and barking questions. The man was holding up his hands as if to say
It’s not my fault.

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” he said. “We’re having an inspection and we have to freeze the inventory until it’s complete.”

“Why are they inspecting you?” an older man demanded. “What’s wrong with the place?”

“Nothing, I assure you.”

“I want to speak to the owner.”

“I’m sorry,” the pharmacist said. “He called in sick, of all days.”

“What am
I
supposed to do?” asked a woman in her seventies, bent over a chrome walker. “I have to take my medicine the same time every day, that’s what they told me. Like clockwork, they said.”

“We’ve arranged for your prescriptions to be filled at Dotson’s, right around the corner on Eglinton.”

“Maybe Eglinton is right around the corner for you. You know how long it takes
me?”

She flinched as the man with the hand truck banged in through the doors from the shipping area. He wheeled it over to a room to our right, was gone for a moment, then came back out with three more cases, followed by a tall dark-skinned woman with thick black hair in a braid that fell below her belt.

“That’s the inspector,” the pharmacist said. “If you have any questions, please speak to her. I’ve told you all I know.”

The crowd surged toward the woman, who seemed momentarily startled.

“Why can’t we get our prescriptions?” a man called out.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said.
Suh,
in a rich Brahmin accent. “But regulations specify that no products can be dispensed during an inspection.”

I had spoken to her only once on Winston Chan’s speakerphone, but I knew her voice instantly: Sumita Desai, enforcement officer for the Registered Pharmacists’ Association of Ontario. No wonder nothing had come up in Silver’s last inspection. She was in on it. No red flags went up? No shit.

“Why are they taking all this stuff away?” another man asked. “Is it being recalled?”

“Not at all,” the inspector said. “We are conducting a routine inspection to ensure the safety of all medications and the
continued good health of consumers like you. The sooner you allow us to complete it, the sooner business can get back to usual. Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two.”

There was some general grumbling but people started to disperse. “I’ll take you to Dotson’s,” a middle-aged man told the lady in the walker. “My van seats seven if anyone else needs a ride.”

Sumita Desai was heading back to the exit door when I moved into her path. Her hair was a dark glossy marvel, her eyes every bit as black. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can I ask why you’re inspecting these premises?”

“I’m sorry,
suh.
Our process is completely confidential.”

“I had a prescription filled yesterday,” I said. “How do I know it’s safe?”

“Take it up with your pharmacist,” she said.

“Have you spoken to Mr. Silver today? Informed him about the inspection?”

“He couldn’t be reached,” she said. “I am told he is ill.” Her voice didn’t sound warm and tropical anymore. It was clipped and precise and very, very cold.

“
T
hey’re saying he called in sick,” I told Ryan.

“But you think it’s worse than that.”

“Ryan,” I said.

“What?”

“You didn’t—”

“Didn’t what?”

“Take the initiative.”

“Get the fuck out. If something happened to him, it wasn’t me.”

“The
emmes?”

“The who?”

“The truth?”

“Look, Geller. I know I’m a low-life to you,” he said. “You’ve made that perfectly clear.”

“Oh, come on.”

“But I didn’t kill anyone today. Yet. Check my BlackBerry, you don’t believe me. You’ll see, nobody killed this week. No men, no women, no kids.”

“Okay, okay. I believe you.”

“Like I give a shit.”

“Don’t get your feelings hurt again.”

“How about taking responsibility for your words?”

“This from a hit man?”

“Quit harping on that. Quit defining me only by what I do. What I’ve done. I’m more than one dimension but you don’t see it. Despite everything I’ve told you, despite the other sides of me you’ve seen, you still don’t consider me a whole person.”

“Okay,” I said. “When this is over we’ll go into couples therapy. For now, we have to stall that truck for an hour.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to Silver’s house.”

“What?”

“If something’s happened to him, I need to know. And if nothing has, I’m going to make him tell me who we’re up against.”

“I told you we can’t contact him.”

“Not when Marco was alive, we couldn’t, because he’d know it was you who told. That’s not the case anymore.”

Ryan pondered that for a moment. “You said an hour?”

“His place is fifteen minutes each way—if I pretend I’m in
NASCAR.
If he’s there, another half an hour maybe to get the truth out of him.”

He flipped me the keys to the Dadmobile. “Promise me one thing: if his house is a crime scene, you don’t even stop. You’re driving my car, don’t forget.”

“Agreed.”

“So the challenge you present me, as I understand it, is to delay that truck for at least one hour without arousing suspicion.”

“That’s right.”

“Not a problem.”

“No?”

“It’s a pharmacy,” he said. “They got rubbing alcohol and whatnot on the shelves?”

“Sure.”

“They got a sprinkler system?”

“One would think.”

He took out his slim gold lighter, flipped open the top and rolled the flint wheel until a steady flame appeared. “Then I got everything else I need.”

I sat in Ryan’s Volvo watching Laura Silver through my field glasses as she pulled weeds from a bed of pink and white impa-tiens in front of her house. Lucas was on the same multicoloured tricycle I had seen in Ryan’s surveillance photo, riding up and down the mutual drive between the Silvers’ house and their neighbour’s. Laura was wearing jeans and a light denim shirt, a worn straw hat perched atop her hair. Her work gloves were muddy, so whenever sweat began to run down her face, she wiped it away with her bare forearm.

She stopped to take a long drink from a bottle of spring water and then called Lucas over. “Come have a drink, honey.”

He pedalled up the drive toward her, helmet askew atop his dark curls, bare tanned legs pumping as fast as they could, making
vroom vroom
sounds with his mouth and sounding at least as good as my Camry. When he reached Laura, he got off the tricycle and drank greedily from her bottle until water spilled down his chin and the front of his shirt.

I got out of the car and walked slowly, casually, toward the house. Lucas was squatting beside Laura as she pulled up a clump of spiny weeds, digging a trowel into the earth to make sure she got the roots.

“What are you doing?” I heard him ask.

“Getting rid of weeds.”

“Why?”

“Because they won’t let the flowers grow if I leave them there.”

“They look cactusy.”

“That’s why Mama wears gloves, honey. So those little thorns won’t prick me.” Lucas picked a small trowel from a
set of coloured plastic tools and began copying his mother’s movements.

“Mrs. Silver?”

She twisted around, still on her haunches, a startled look on her face.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

She stood up and placed herself squarely between me and Lucas. She had sea-green eyes and smooth tanned skin and a light spray of freckles across her nose. “What is it?” she asked.

“Is your husband home?” Not the single smartest question, perhaps, to ask a woman standing alone with her child.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Jonah Geller. I’m a private investigator.” I held out my photo ID for her to look at. She glanced back at Lucas, then took off one glove and came close enough to reach for my card. After examining it, she handed it back and asked again what I wanted.

“Just something I need to discuss with Jay.”

“Does he know you?”

“We met the other day.”

“I’m afraid he’s not feeling well.”

“I know. They told me at the store.”

“And you came anyway? What’s so important that you’d disturb a sick man at home?”

“That’s between me and your husband.”

“I don’t think so. Tell me what it’s about or get off my property.”

Her steady gaze told me two things: I wasn’t going to get past her; and she might be the right person to talk to. Someone who might make Jay come clean better than I could, and without having to punch him in the mouth.

I plunged in. “In the course of a recent investigation, I came across information that suggested there was a threat against your family.”

Any hint of pleasantness left her features. Her brows lowered and her mouth tightened into a thin line. “What kind of threat? To harm us? Is this some kind of … of blackmail?

“I’m trying to save your lives.”

“From what?”

“It involves your husband,” I said, which drew me an even darker look. “Anything more, I’ll just have to repeat to him, so why don’t the three of us sit down for a minute—or stand out here if we have to—and I’ll tell you what I know.”

She backed away from me, holding the trowel in front of her. Clumps of black soil dropped from it onto her deck shoes. “Lucas,” she said. “Go ring the bell and ask Daddy to come out. And tell him to bring his phone—can you remember that?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Call Daddy.”

“And?”

“Ask him to bring his phone.”

“Good boy,” she said. “Then you can watch a show if you want.”

His little face lit up with delight. “Already?”

“Honey, you’ve been such a good helper, you can watch an episode of
Thomas.
”

“Yay!” he cried and skipped up the walk to the door.

“Let me see your licence again,” Laura Silver said, holding out her bare hand; the other still gripped the trowel. I handed her my ID and she looked at it intently, checking my face against the photo. When she gave it back, she said, “I’ve memorized your details, Mr. Geller, and I’m warning you: if this is some kind of sick attempt on your part to generate business, I will have your professional association
and
the police all over you.”

“Laura,” I said, “it’s nothing like that.”

She was startled by my use of her first name—which was why I had used it. “Well, what is it?”

I said the one thing I thought might get her past the idea that I was the one posing the threat.
“Tikkun olam.”

“What?”

“Oh. I thought you’d know—”

“I know what it means. But what does repairing the world have to do with my family?”

Jay Silver chose that moment to make his entrance at the front door, a cellphone in one hand and a golf club in the other. He started fast down the walkway.

“Hon? What’s going on?” he called. “Lucas said I should come out with my phone. Who is this guy? Is he bothering you?”

“I’m not sure,” Laura said.

“Get away from my wife, you.” He sounded sterner than he had on the loading dock of his store, when Frank had slapped him for talking back. I moved away from Laura and held my hands up in a surrender position, trying to appear non-threatening.

Silver was wearing a loose sweatshirt and baggy khakis and hadn’t shaved. He might well have been ill. His eyes were red and puffy and his skin had a sallow cast to it. He shaded his eyes with his hands and looked me over.

“Wait a second. I know you,” he said. “The loading dock. You knew my name.”

“Lot of good it did me.”

“I was afraid—I thought—”

“You thought Claudio got rid of me.”

“He said he knew you, Jay,” Laura said. “That you met at the store.”

The simple fact that it was true seemed to throw Silver off.

“What is going on, Jay? Who’s Claudio?”