Live Bait (3 page)

But he was. He was a mass of fear and I used it, shoving him a little tighter against the dew-misted metal of the earthmover.

"Who sent you?"

He tried to turn, surprised at the question, but I kept the pressure on and he burrowed his face against the metal in front of him. "Who sent you to slash the tires and hurt the kid?" I repeated, tonelessly.

"If I say, will you let me go?"

"Talk fast," I told him contemptuously. "Right now I'm supposed to be kicking your head in."

"His name is Tony." It came out in a half scream. "Honestagod that's all I know. Tony."

I spun him by the wrist so he turned around with his back to the machine. I stood back a pace, clear of his feet. Sam growled, low and savage. "That's not good enough. Tony who?"

He shook his head, scrubbing the back of his skull against the metal. "I don't know, and that's the God's truth. He was just Tony. He knew Kennie. We was havin' a beer at the Millrace, down on Queen Street near the track. This guy comes in and him an' Kennie get talkin' an' he asks would we like to make a double sawbuck."

"Was that for cutting the tires, or hitting the kid?"

"For both. We was s'posed to make trouble." He paused a second and when I didn't respond he gabbled on. "But I never touched the kid. That was Kennie. You seen him t'night with that two-by-four. He would've killed ya."

It all rang true. This guy was just bluster and belly. He'd charged me because he'd thought I would catch him if he didn't. But he had no guts, and no deep meanness in him.

"Tell me about this Tony. What's he look like?"

Now his hands sprang to life, drawing a picture in the air. He sketched a height with his left hand, perhaps five-ten, then wide-apart hands for wide shoulders. "Biggish guy, dark, moustache, good dresser. Wears a suit. No bastard else in the Millrace ever has a suit on, never."

"How old?"

"Thirty, thirty-five, you can't never be sure with Eyetalians." This was a slip and he bit off the word as soon as he realized what he had said.

"Does he sound Italian?"

He shook his head. "No, Canadian as you 'n' me."

"Then what makes you say he's Italian?"

"He's got one of them, you know, Jesus on a crosses, on a chain round his neck. An' with bein' called Tony an' all."

I switched the questioning. I had what I wanted, now I needed some insurance. "Where're you living?"

"Around." He said it without embarrassment. "I been in a room on Shuter Street since Friday. Before that I stayed with Kennie at his mother's. She's in an apartment up on Woodbine, close to Gerrard."

"What number?"

He told me, and gave me her name and the fact that she was a widow and worked at a dry-cleaner's on the Danforth. Then he got fearful, covering himself against my following the story down.

"You won't say nothin' to her, eh. I mean, she don't know Kennie's up to nothin'. She thinks he's workin' at the car wash with me."

I got the name and address of the car wash and the fact that he and Kennie had just been released from Burwash where he had served most of two-years-less-one-day for rolling drunks.

"Okay, I'm going to let you go. We're going to walk to the roadway nice and easy and you're going to run to the corner. Run every step of the way or the dog will get you." I patted Sam on the head and he snarled, on cue.

Hudson nodded eagerly and I ushered him past me and walked him to the gate. I opened it and told him, "Run!" and he did. I didn't even stop to watch, just turned away with Sam, back to the trailer.

Willis was writing in a notebook. The little man looked up from the floor and licked his lips. I could tell he had been talking and didn't want his partner to know. He dropped his eyes and waited until Willis snapped his book shut and asked.

"You kick the other guy's ass good?"

"Good." I nodded and he grinned.

"Fine. I was just having a little chat with Kennie here. Now it's his turn, just wait while I show him off the premises."

"That'll be my pleasure," I said. I still didn't trust Willis. But he didn't object. "Just don't put him in the hospital," he said and laughed. I beckoned to Kennie and he came towards the door, head down as if there were cameramen outside, ready to take photos and show them around the store where his mother was respectable.

We walked a few paces and I told him, "Stand there," and he did, as promptly as a Marine grunt under a drill instructor, except that he turned his head towards me, suspiciously.

"We can do this two ways," I explained. "Either you can talk or we can do what the Inspector promised and get my dog to tear you up. Which way's it gonna be?"

"Waddya want?" There was a tight, frightened vibrato to his voice. I could see his buddy had been right. He had been brutalized in the pen and the memory lived with him, night and day. I kept my voice calm as I asked him, "Who sent you to hit the kid and mess up this site?"

He sighed a big theatrical sigh and said, "What kid?" but I hissed at Sam and he growled, moving closer, his teeth gleaming in the light from the roadway. Kennie covered his crotch with both hands, "Okay. It was Tony."

I went through the same routine of questioning but he knew no more. I wasn't surprised. Only cops and judges and hockey players have last names for guys like Kennie. Everybody else is known casually. Tony was Tony, no last name. The only extra information I got was that Kennie had done jobs for him before. "Takin' care of guys who owed him money," he said proudly. He was small for the job but maybe Tony's clients were even smaller, or maybe they rolled over when they came up against his mad-dog ferocity.

When I'd got all the information he had I told him, "The guy in the shack wants your head on a plate. So you yell, and you run, got that?"

He had and he did, leaving the gateway in a ripple of footsteps with a long, fearful yell. I watched him go, still unsatisfied. We should have gone by the book and charged them both with attempted assault. Maybe the Crown Attorney would have got information out of them in the morning, when they started plea bargaining. Or maybe they would just have gone back inside for breach of parole. Either way, the law would have been served.

I shook my head and went back in. Willis was standing hunched over the table, shoulders rounded as he studied the Sunshine Girl in the paper. "I just love that young stuff," he said happily. Then he closed the paper impatiently and turned to me, airing his smile again. This time it looked more relaxed and genuine.

"Well. Did your play-acting work?"

"Yes. I got the name of the guy who sent them, no idea why they were sent, just the guy's name."

I expected him to press me for details but he didn't. Instead he raised both hands to shut me up.

"Listen. I like your moves, Bennett. What I want is you should follow this guy up on your own. Don't mention Bonded Security. If there's any questions, tell people it's a criminal thing from your own jurisdiction, anything. But keep us out of it."

I must have looked surprised. He made a placating little gesture. "Yeah, I know that's not the way I came on when I got here but I've been thinking." He took off his hat and rubbed his hand over his slicked down black hair, then settled his hat back on, the way a soldier does, tipping it forward first, then easing it back. "I've been thinking. You're a pro in this kind of stuff. What I am is something different. I'm a guy who sells our company's services. You're the investigator, so investigate, and I'll do my job. Stick at it for a week and if you get results we'll double that five yards, make it a grand."

"How far do you want me to go?" It was a deliberately clumsy question. I didn't understand him or his offer. His mouth was talking peace and logic, but his eyes were still full of anger. I watched him for body English as he answered, checking for any convulsive movements, sublimated blows that would mean he wanted me to hurt people.

He put both hands flat on the grimy table. "I want you to find out who set us up, that's all. The authorities can take it from there."

I nodded, agreeing. "Fine. In that case, I'm going to need a few bucks for expenses."

"Our limit is fifty a day," he said instantly. "Come into the office in the morning and draw a hundred. But I want receipts or it comes out of my hide."

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

T
hey don't give receipts in places like the Millrace. It's cash and carry. All your cash, if possible, for more beer than you can carry. That's why the floor is covered in gray vinyl tile that can be slopped over with a wet mop when the need arises. As Ontario beverage rooms go, it's close to the average. Until the 1960s it was illegal to allow the public outside to see into any place where people were drinking. This means that most old beer parlors are in windowless basements. And Canadian breweries aren't allowed to promote, so the gloom isn't cut with neon beer signs like they have in cheerful corner bars in the States.

Like most places in town, the Millrace had a cocktail lounge up on the main floor but I didn't bother going in there. When guys like Hudson talk about a bar, they mean the beverage room. Beer is cheaper down there, and that's the name of the game. They aren't looking for atmosphere. In any case, I knew Tony wouldn't be up there. His kind of operation goes on at the despair level of civilization, which is a pretty fair summation of the basement at the Millrace.

There was a casual crowd in there when I arrived at seven the next evening, most of them truckers or mechanics from the transport company down the block. They looked tired and dirty but were yukking it up before going home. I did the routine thing, holding up two fingers to the waiter and dropping a fin on the table. He dropped my two glasses of draft and three-eighty in change, I slid him a quarter and he stuck it in his tips pocket, all without a word.

I'd brought the evening paper with me and I folded it open at the racing page. The trots were being run at Greenwood racetrack just down the road and I figured Millrace patrons would be horseplayers and the paper would make good camouflage.

The names and data made no sense to me but I sat and looked them over and chewed a toothpick while my head played with the idea of who Tony might be. From the description I'd got, he figured to be a loan shark. Probably he had a circuit on race nights. First he would hit the Millrace and a couple of other bars where the hopefuls were gathered, dreaming of the big win. Then he'd go down to the track to lounge around in his suit with the crucifix gleaming while a stream of contacts brought more hopefuls to him. The only thing that didn't fit in was why he was hiring muscle for construction site sabotage.

The easy connection to make is to talk about The Mob, and it exists in Toronto, just like any other city, but most of the Italians in town are good people. They work like dogs and went crazy the day Italy won the Soccer World Cup, but aside from that they spend all their time at home making wine and turning their tiny gardens into showplaces. Maybe Tony was an import from Buffalo, that's where most of the heavies in this region hang out.

After a while the guard changed in the room. The workies went home and were replaced by gray-faced older men who had been back to their rented rooms and washed and changed and eaten TV dinners and were looking for beer and company while they watched whatever crud came in over the big TV at the end of the bar. As the tables filled, one of them came and sat opposite me, going through the same ritual I'd performed then sitting staring dead ahead, smoking Export cigarettes. He looked as if he was replaying his day, giving himself all the zingers he hadn't delivered when the foreman chewed him out for being too long in the john.

It was quarter to eight before Tony arrived. There was no mistaking him. He was the way Hudson had described him, thirtyish, five-ten, running to pudge, wearing a pale summer suit. His crucifix had company tonight, a gold shark's tooth and a medallion on a gold chain that could have held an anchor.

He sauntered in, cracked a joke with the waiter who laughed fit to bust, then turned away stone-faced to serve his next table. Tony went to a corner table. A couple of guys were already there but they took their beers and moved, leaving him the space. He sat down with his back to the wall and cocked one leg over a vacant chair. The waiter hurried over with a Perrier and twist. That surprised me. You can get anything in a beer parlor these days but Perrier in this end of town is a rarity. It seemed Tony was a big wheel in the Millrace.

He threw a blue five dollar bill on the table and waved the waiter away. The guy bowed and disappeared the bill into his tips pocket. Tony lit himself a cigarette from a soft pack, an American brand, and sat surveying his empire. Half a minute later another man came in, heavy-set and surly. He sat halfway down the room where he could watch Tony, ordered a single beer but didn't touch it. I assumed he did the collecting on Tony's delinquent debts and spent the rest of his time making sure some disenchanted borrower didn't try to take an empty beer bottle up alongside his boss's head.

I watched for a while, over my paper. Men came to Tony, stood and talked and were waved away to the other guy who did tricks with a wallet. Then they left, confident that some horse was going to save them the problem of repaying six bucks for five on payday. After about twenty minutes Tony took a token sip from his drink and stood up. So did his partner. I made my move, dropping my paper on the table and scooping up my change. As Tony lounged towards the door I cut him off. I didn't have any formal plan. You can't accost citizens of any stripe and ask them how come they're setting up bashings. So I dropped into my most comfortable undercover role, the inarticulate French Canadian. I do it well. My mother was a Dupuis before she became a Bennett and I speak farm-country French like a native and can do a good "haccent" when I have to disguise my background.

"I guess you mus' be Tony," I said, leaning on the second syllable of his name.

He stopped to study me as if I were a noxious insect. Up close he was not handsome. His face was getting fleshy and his skin was cratered with ancient acne. "What's it to ya?"