A half-hour later Carl has completed the few simple preparations, and dressed in a black tracksuit, he’s anxious to get going. I’d prefer to wait until I’ve heard from Bill again but it wouldn’t look good. There’s a half-dozen empty beer bottles tucked in a corner of the duty room and Carl is pacing the small office like a tourist who can’t find the bathroom. He may have figured out what I was after in the filing cabinet and he probably noticed when he left the ranger station that the door was still locked. Regardless of my suspicions, he’s probably wondering if I trust him and may be using this as a test; I don’t know what the passing grade is. And if my suspicions are correct, he’ll want to know for sure who’s using the Lorax as a cover.
And who knows — this just might work.
We take Carl’s Chevy. He drives while I crouch on the floor mat.
“You sure she’s home?” he asks.
“No, but we’ll cruise past first and check it out.”
I inspect the goodies Carl has put together: a small tape recorder, a big 6-volt dry cell battery, speaker wires, a digital watch, duct tape and a block of white doughy material he whipped up in his kitchen. With this, MacGyver could save the world. I’m aiming lower — save myself.
Carl glances over. “That what you wanted?”
“It’ll do.” The truck lurches suddenly. “You okay to drive?”
“I’m just fine.”
“Be careful. I don’t want the cops stopping us.”
The truck slows perceptibly. I attach wires as Carl drives, put the bomb together with duct tape. Carl takes a corner too abruptly, runs over a curb. I bump my head on the underside of the dash, feel like a kid trying to sneak into an X-rated drive-in.
“We’re in front of her house,” he says quietly.
“Is there a Bronco in the driveway?”
“No, just her car.”
“Good. Find a dark alley.”
Carl’s bony hand grips the gearshift. I can smell the beer on his breath. The truck lurches and I bump my head again. We’re turning, the power steering pump whining. Gravel crunches under the tires and we stop. I sit up — we’re in an alley. Without streetlights, it’s much darker here; a sliver of moon turns backyard fences and trashcans faintly luminescent. A block away, a window is lit like a beacon. Music seeps through a wall.
“How do we go in?” Carl asks.
“I’ll go in. You watch the house. Anyone comes, you lay on the horn —”
“No way, Porter. I’m going in with you.”
I shake my head. “She might recognize you.”
“Not with this.” He pulls out a second balaclava. “And I won’t say anything.”
I’d hoped to do this alone, but see there’s no way that’ll happen. It might be good to have some help. We slip on our ski masks and move together down the alley. Carl has no trouble finding the back of the house. The gate creaks enough to make me nervous, then we’re in the yard and I see the dim outlines of a garden shed, a picnic table. And a dog house. I hold up a hand.
“Don’t worry,” Carl whispers. “She doesn’t have —”
A dark shape explodes out of the dog house, barking like a fire alarm — one of those little dogs that look like a floor mop. Its small size does nothing to inhibit its decibel level. The dog reaches the end of its chain, gives a little yelp, then catches its breath and erupts again.
“Shit,” Carl whispers. “She didn’t —”
I grab his arm, yank him back. We crouch in a dark space between shed and fence. The dog is barking so hard it’s hyperventilating. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll pass out. Lights go on. Carmen’s face is framed in an open window, her hair a wild blonde mess.
“Jesus Christ Chi-chi —”
The dog barks louder and Carmen vanishes from the window.
Carl moves toward the gate. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We retreat to the alley and I motion for Carl to wait. Chi-chi’s barking slows to intermittent bursts as her batteries run down. A screen door creaks and we hear Carmen’s murmured reassurances. I run silently across a neighbour’s damp lawn to the front of the house, Carl following a few paces behind, then cautiously along an illuminated walkway to a side door. Carmen is still in the backyard, whispering sweet nothings into her dog’s ear. My plan is pathetically simple. Frighten her just enough to get her to talk and catch it all on tape. Not exactly an admissible confession but I’m not expecting to use it in court. We slip into the house, carefully shut the door.
“We’ll grab her when she comes in,” I whisper to Carl. “Take her downstairs.”
He nods — with his black ski mask he looks fairly intimidating.
“Be careful,” I add. “We don’t want to hurt her.”
When she comes in we wait until she’s locked the door, then grab her. She’s surprised enough she doesn’t fight for a half-second, then holding her is like hanging onto a runaway jackhammer. She screams and my hand goes over her mouth. She’s kicking, using her elbows, and I’m having a hard time holding her. Then she bites my hand — hard, and I let her go. I’m holding my bleeding hand when she kicks me in the shin and I nearly go down. Carl hits her with a quick uppercut and she drops, sprawled on the stairs leading to the kitchen.
“Jesus Christ, Carl —”
“I had to do something.”
She’s not moving and I check her vitals. She’s okay, but unconscious.
“Bring her downstairs,” I tell Carl. “I’ll be right there.”
I use the upstairs bathroom to wash my wound — the same sink I used to wash Petrovich’s blood off my hand. They say a human bite is one of the worst and I wash for a long time, the cold water taking some of the edge off the pain. I may need stitches — forget the dog; beware of owner. Carmen has a first aid kit in the medicine cabinet and I use gauze, bandage my hand as best I can. When I get downstairs, Carl has duct-taped Carmen to an old office chair. Little chance of her getting loose — he’s used most of the roll. And she’s still unconscious.
“What now?” he asks.
I check her vitals again. She seems okay but concussions can be tricky.
“Did you have to hit her so hard?”
“This was your idea,” he says, annoyed.
I find smelling salts in the medicine cabinet upstairs, hold them under Carmen’s nose. She coughs and sputters, raises her head and looks at us, confused. There’s a thin trickle of blood coming from a cut on her lip. I hope Carl didn’t break her jaw.
“Are you okay, Carmen?” I hold up a few fingers. “How is your vision?”
Her vision seems fine. So does her jaw. “What do you perverts want?” she asks.
“Don’t flatter yourself. All I want is a little information.”
She struggles against the duct tape. “Untie me and get the hell out of my house.”
She’s pretty brave, given the circumstances, which isn’t good. She has to be frightened for this to work. “I’m going to ask you a few questions —” I speak slowly, change my voice enough I hope she won’t recognize it as belonging to Asper Hassenfloss of the Insurance Underwriters of America. “The questions are simple. If I get the answers I need, then you’ll be just fine.”
“And if you don’t?”
I show her the bomb.
“You’re bluffing,” she says.
I make a production of setting the timer — fiddling with the digital watch — and carefully place it under her chair. “That bomb is C4 plastic explosive — the same stuff your boyfriend used to kill Ronald Hess. It’s set to go off in ten minutes. I’m going to ask questions for about nine minutes and if I get the answers I’m looking for, I’ll reset the timer for the morning, let the bomb squad diffuse it. If I don’t get the answers I’m looking for, I’ll just leave.”
“How do I know that’s a real bomb,” she says.
She’s sizing me up. Her face is flushed, hair plastered to her forehead.
“You don’t,” I tell her. “But you could find out.”
There’s a fairly long pause as she considers this. Blood is starting to seep through the bandages on my hand. Carl stands behind her, arms crossed.
“Who the hell are you?”
“The Ghost of Christmas Past. Why did you help Brotsky kill Ronald Hess?”
She glares at me. Behind her, Carl clicks on the mini-cassette recorder.
“You’re wasting time, Carmen.”
She glares at me, still more angry than scared, and I’m thinking all I’ve accomplished is exposing myself and Carl to needless risk when Carl walks to a basement wall and, as calm as an inner city kid with nothing better to do, lifts a spray can and starts to scrawl graffiti on the wall. But it’s not just graffiti — what he writes in red tree-marking paint causes my scalp to tighten. A single, terrifying word.
LORAX
The way he does this seems so natural, like he’s done it before. He pops the cap back on the can of paint, ambles to his position behind Carmen and looks at me. I can’t see his face — just his eyes, and force myself to concentrate on Carmen. She’s staring at the wall. This may work after all.
“We’re not impressed that someone is using our name.”
She swallows, looks up at me.
“To cover up their dirty laundry,” I tell her. “We’re very unimpressed.”
She mumbles something. Carl moves the recorder closer.
“Speak up Carmen, I can’t hear you. And you’re nearly out of time.”
“Okay ...” she whispers. Then louder, “All I know is that they were going to have a talk with this Hess guy, convince him it would be better to shut up about the union. We’ve had union problems before and they were just going to talk to him, convince him that it would be best for everyone if he just dropped it. But Al said something went wrong — that Zeke got carried away. Al wouldn’t get carried away — he’s a soldier. But Petrovich is crazy —”
Carmen trails off, a look of anguish on her face, slumped against the restraints.
“So Brotsky put Hess in the machine and blew it up, then blamed it on the Lorax?”
She nods.
“Speak up Carmen. I can’t hear you.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “But it wasn’t my idea to use your name. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Whose idea was it?”
She won’t look at me.
Carl leans toward her, speaks harshly into her ear. “Whose idea was it?”
She flinches and I give him a cautionary glance — his voice will be on the tape and she may recognize him. But I’m wearing a balaclava and it’s a little hard to communicate with facial expressions. Carl continues to press her, nearly shouting.
“Who gave the order? Who told them to go after Hess? Was it Whitlaw?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not good enough —”
“I don’t know,” she wails. “He never told me.”
I look hard at Carl, shake my head. “Carmen, tell me about Zeke Petrovich.”
“He’s crazy,” she says, looking at me again, her eyes wide. “Like a bad dog. He got in a fight a few years ago and nearly killed a guy. Everyone is afraid of him, everyone except Al. He thought this guy would be afraid of him too — that would be enough.”
“But Ronald Hess wasn’t afraid of him was he?”
“No ... I don’t know. Maybe he was too new.”
“When did Brotsky decide to kill Petrovich?”
She looks away, like a kid caught in a lie. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Carmen. I know you helped set it up. I know about the file.”
She looks stunned. “All I did was move a few things around for Al —”
“But you knew, didn’t you.”
She shakes her head. “No — I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about that. Al just told me this guy was going to come around, looking for Petrovich’s file. When he did, I was supposed to slip in this work record, then take it out again after I called the cops. That’s it. I swear to God.”
“But you figured it out.”
She looks miserable. “When it was over, I started to wonder.”
I hope we have enough because I’m getting nervous. Time to get out of here.
“Okay, Carmen —” I reach under her chair, wrap a wire from the bomb around a chair leg. “The timer is set for six hours, plenty of time for the bomb squad to do their thing, but there’s a catch so listen carefully. You gotta sit perfectly still. The bomb is wired to the chair and if you move you’ll set off a mercury switch. Can you sit still that long?”
She nods carefully, as if even this might set off the playdough.
“Good girl. Sit still and you’ll be fine.”
I’m nearly to the stairs when I turn. “One more thing, Carmen. When the cops get here, you tell them just what you told me. You tell them about what happened to Ronny Hess and how you helped Al. You tell them that and they’ll probably give you a deal. You make sure you do that because we’ll be watching the papers and we’ll know —”
“I can’t,” she says, pleading. “He’ll kill me.”
“We’ll be watching the papers, Carmen.”
Carl is a step ahead of me on the stairs, looking down. Looking at me.
“And you tell them,” he says, “that the Lorax never intended to kill anyone.”
Craig Whitlaw doesn’t sound impressed at being woken this time of night. He’s going to be even less impressed in a hurry. Carl and I are back at the ranger station. Whitlaw is on the speakerphone, routed through the answering machine, which is now recording.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Mr. Whitlaw.”
“Who is this?”
“Spiderman, the Toxic Avenger — it doesn’t really matter. What matters is safety.”
“Look, I don’t have time for pranks —”
“What you did to Ronald Hess was no prank.”
There’s a long silence — Whitlaw deciding if he should hang up. I can hear him breathing, a little faster than normal. Stumbling out of bed in the middle of the night can do that to you. So can a guilty conscience.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“Of course not.” I’m looking at Carl, who has an expression close to rapture on his face. “Plausible deniability Craig — which is why you had Brotsky do the dirty work for you. But killing Hess because he was talking union was a very bad decision.”
A forced chuckle. “You should read the papers.The Lorax killed Ronald Hess.”
“Nice try. Did Benji dream that one up for you?”
“Look, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Four hundred accidents — that’s what I’m talking about. How many fingers and toes does that come out to? And running off those employees after the court told you to take them back — that’s not going to look good when people find out Ronald Hess was talking union.”
“That’s a very creative theory,” he says. “Who did you say you were?”
“I didn’t. But maybe you’d like to take a guess.”
He’s not into guessing tonight but for an innocent man, he’s remained on the line a long time. Me — I’d have hung up by now. Like a porno line, he’s waiting to see if there’s anything really good coming. I don’t want to disappoint him and give Carl a nod. He’s seated next to the answering machine — the announcement tape replaced with something a little more topical.
Carl presses a button and Carmen’s tearful voice fills the room.
— all I know is that they were going to have a talk with this Hess guy, convince him it would be better to shut up about the union. We’ve had union problems before and they were just going to talk to him, convince him that it would be best for everyone if he just dropped it. But Al said something went wrong — that Zeke got carried away. Al wouldn’t get carried away — he’s a soldier. But Petrovich is crazy —
I stop the tape. There’s a few seconds of Whitlaw’s heavy breathing.
“That’s interesting,” he says. “Good acting —”
“There’s more Craig. Would you like me to play it on an open phone line?”
A longer silence. Then, “What do you want? Money?”
“It’s always about money, isn’t it?”
“We should get together,” he says, earnest now — Craig the businessman.
“That won’t be necessary. We don’t want money.”
There’s a pause. I’ve stumped him.
“Look, don’t fuck with me —”
I hang up, wait a few minutes before calling back. He answers on the first ring.
“Temper, temper, Craig. No need for such language.”
“Okay —” He’s a little more subdued. “What do you want?”
“Justice Craig. Just a little fucking justice.”
A heavy sigh from the ether — he’s clearly disappointed he can’t buy me off.
“This is how it’s going to work. I know you gave the order to talk to Hess, to persuade him not to push the union, but I’m willing to bet you didn’t mean for it to go this far. So you go to the cops and tell them about Brotsky and Petrovich. Tell them everything. Consider this your one chance to redeem yourself. You do that and I forget about the tape.”
His reply is very quiet. “And if I don’t?”
“Then the tape goes for you — to the cops or the newspapers, I haven’t decided which first. Think about it Craig — the truth is going to come out anyway. It might look better if you came forward voluntarily, filled with remorse, and told the Mounties you never intended it should go this far. That you couldn’t live with yourself anymore. Or do you think it would look better if they came after you? Think of the headlines — this is juicy stuff. Mill owner covers up murder of employee. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get on The Fifth Estate —”
“Okay —” he says. “When am I supposed to do this?”
“When? Right now, of course.”
“Right now?” He sounds uncertain.
“Don’t screw with me, Craig.”
“Give me an hour,” he says quickly. “To get my affairs in order.”
I look at Carl. We’re grinning, can’t believe this is working.
“Okay, Craig. One hour. We’ll be watching.”