It was starting to get dark. Corrigan's head lolled back and he felt himself falling. His last thought was:
I'm fainting like a girl.
Maybe it was to save him the embarrassment. Maybe it was the way they always worked. Or probably it was just where they happened to track him down. They'd probably been to the station, questioned, seized; maybe the bank as well. They rang the bell, spoke to his wife, then she called up the stairs that there were two Internal Affairs guys here to see him.
Stirling's mouth was dry. He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He'd drunk quite a bit. It was the wrong thing to do with the convention underway, with Morton trying to blend in down at the hotel, with Corrigan missing and possibly dead, and Madeline the reporter waiting to meet them all underneath Skylon Tower, but he couldn't help it. He had come to the sudden realization that people were dying all around him and he wasn't coping with it. He shouted that he'd be down in a minute, then began to pull on his uniform.
Internal Affairs.
He was a police officer and a gentleman, and he would deal with it as such.
Or perhaps not.
He had a good idea what they had on him, and he knew he was finished.
Or perhaps not.
Sometimes you have to make choices.
Stirling's head throbbed. Maybe they weren't Internal Affairs. Maybe they were the Old Cripple's men, come to murder him. He was scared and he was regretting everything and anything. Since when was the biggest criminal conspiracy in history any of his business? He was about parking tickets and mugged tourists, not the Sicilian Mafia. He had his gun in his hand. Other cops, in this situation, other cops he knew, would have blown their own fucking heads off rather than face Internal Affairs. And now they were downstairs making small talk with his wife and taking everything in, everything that looked new and shiny, like his wife. And she didn't have a clue. They were being warm and friendly and charming and preparing to stick the knife between his ribs, metaphorically perhaps, actually maybe. What could he do?
He checked his weapon. He laughed. He was a policeman. He wasn't going to shoot them. Not unless they pulled guns first, in which case he'd be entitled, and even then he doubted if he'd pull the trigger.
Of course they weren't going to kill him.
They were here because someone had tipped them off that his wife had a rapidly diminishing two hundred thousand dollars in her bank account. And she had no idea where it had come from.
They'd take him back to St Catharines, or Toronto, and throw the book at him, several books, the complete set. He'd tell them about the convention. They would steal his thunder and lock him up. He stood up. He was wearing his holster, but he left it empty; he tucked the gun into the back of his trousers. They would see it empty and relax. If they were going to kill him, they'd be thinking fish and barrels. Good. Let them. He was confused. Before, everything had been black and white, and mostly just white. Internal Affairs were drinking coffee in his front room and thinking
why, that's an expensive brand of coffee.
It was time to go. His wife had called him three times already. He took a deep breath, then left the room and walked slowly down the stairs.
'Mark,' his wife beamed up, 'these nice men have come all the way from Toronto to see you.'
Morton spotted Stirling crossing the car park outside the Skylon Tower. He was in uniform, but he was twirling his keys nervously round. And of course he was. So was Morton, and not just from running out of small talk with Madeline, sitting opposite him in the café.
He came through the door, ignoring the looks of the tourists, wondering what a cop wanted. He pulled out a chair and sat down. He nodded at Morton. Ignored Madeline.
'What's up, Brad?' Madeline asked.
'Everything,' said Stirling, ignoring the barb. 'Internal Affairs. They called by the house.'
'What did they want?' Morton asked.
'Coffee. What do you think?' He put his head in his hands. 'I don't know why the hell I got into this.'
Morton, sipping his coffee, put down the cup. 'You got into it because Frank Corrigan's your friend.'
Stirling peered out from between his fingers. 'Who told you that?'
'C'mon,' said Morton, 'what did they say? It couldn't be that bad if you were able to walk in here. Internal Affairs haul ass first, ask questions later.'
'They're outside. In the car.'
'You brought them with you?'
'I brought them with me.'
'What for?'
'Coffee. What the fuck do you think? I just needed time to think.'
Madeline laughed. 'You said, pull over here guys, I need to go think over a cup of coffee.'
'No. Not quite.'
'It's the not quite bit I don't like,' said Morton.
'They started coming on all heavy.'
'Don't tell me this, Mark.'
'Threatening and pushing and sticking fingers in my face.'
'Mark, please.'
'What else could I do?'
'What else did you do?'
'They're in the car.'
Morton's mouth dropped. 'You didn't. . .'
Stirling followed the drop, then suddenly smiled. 'C'mon . . . whaddya think I am . . . ?'
Morton sighed. 'Christ, Mark, I thought for a minute you. . .'
'You think I'm crazy? No, they're in the car. Or in the trunk, to be more precise.'
'Fuck,' said Morton.
'Hands are cuffed.'
'Fuck.'
'Mouths taped.'
'Fuck.'
'I know. I kinda thought that while I was doing it. But I'd no choice.'
'You'd plenty of choice.'
'I know, but none I could live with, but this one.'
'What are you going to do with them?' Madeline asked.
'What are
we
going to do with them?' Morton said. 'I guess we're in this together.'
Stirling nodded appreciatively. Madeline rolled her eyes. 'I suppose,' Stirling said, 'that we have several options. I take the car and sink it in the river. I tell them it's all been a huge misunderstanding and let's be friends. Or we can leave them where they are until we bust the biggest criminal conspiracy in the history of the world and then they'll climb out and thank us. What do you think?'
Morton examined his fingernails for several moments, and then looked sheepishly up. 'How deep's the river?' he asked.
They walked down to the basement to wait. Usually there was a bustling amusement arcade down there, but it had been closed for refurbishment for the past three weeks and the manager had kindly lent Stirling the store room down at the back. Kindly, for fear of being locked up over his unpaid parking tickets.
They endured thirty minutes of scuffing their shoes in the dust and thinking no one was going to turn up. And then they did, almost as one, as if they'd arrived in an air-conditioned bus like the rest of the tourists. Maybe thirty of them, shuffling down the stairs, then nervously crossing the floor of the arcade, casting suspicious glances at the lifeless computer games and the pellet guns on string and the bumper cars lying idle. Stirling waved them through the open doors of the store room. They were all volunteers, but they came through them like they'd been tipped off about the showers at Belsen.
Stirling knew most of them. Three brother cops –
but for how long? –
a barman, the guy that took the tickets at the House of Frankenstein, the guy from the drugstore who'd sold him the condoms that had split (he now had twins), Corrigan's pal Maynard Dunn from the
Maid of the Mist.
They took their seats where they could, perched on cardboard boxes and wooden crates and upturned bumper cars. They chatted quietly among themselves, then fell silent as Morton closed the doors and looked expectantly at Stirling. Stirling looked expectantly at his audience. The audience looked expectantly at him. There were a lot of expectations in that room – high, low, mid-range – and then there was Madeline with no expectations at all but the lens of a video camera poking out of her handbag capturing it all just in case.
The information they'd been given had been so vague as barely to qualify for the word vague, or indeed the word information. They thought it had something to do with community service. Volunteering to lay a treasure trail or mend a fence or provide transport for a fancy-dress parade. Stirling looked at their soft faces and fat, pink bodies and shook his head. He wasn't looking for any of that. He was looking for heroes.
Or suckers. It didn't matter much as long as they'd do the job or die in the attempt.
Stirling raised his hands for quiet, though there was no need. 'I expect you're all wondering why I called you here under such, ahm, unusual circumstances.' There was a nodding of heads. 'Well, thing is, this is kind of unofficial. As you all know, there's been a lot of trouble in the town over the past few days. Murders. My friend and colleague Frank Corrigan lost his wife.' He looked at their pink faces for a hint of sympathy, but none was immediately apparent. No matter about the rights and wrongs of it, once you were arrested, you were as good as guilty. That's the way it worked. Always had, always would. There was curiosity there, maybe a little embarrassment, but no sympathy. He looked down the room to Morton, standing with his back against the door and his arms folded. He got the thumbs-up. Stirling nodded. 'You may have heard a lot of things. I know how news gets around. Maybe you saw it on TV.' He glanced at Madeline, who glowered back. 'I just want to put you straight, and then tell you why I've asked you all here this evening. First off, Frank didn't kill his wife. Truth is, we don't know yet who did, or why. But what we think, what we really think, is that her death is somehow tied in to the convention that's taking place in town right now.'
'The horticultural convention?' Maynard asked from the front row.
'Yes, Maynard, the horticultural convention.' There were mur-murings, nudges. Stirling drank it all in. He wanted to
shout
his plan out loud. Raise his fist and call them to arms, lead them into battle. But he didn't. He sucked on his bottom lip and kept it calm, because his only chance was to win them over with
calm.
'Except it's not a horticultural convention. They're drug dealers. The biggest dealers in the world. They're TOCs.'
'That's TCOs,' Morton said from the back, and began to walk down between the upturned fruit machines to the front. 'Transnational criminal organizations.'
'TCOs,' said Stirling. 'The Mafia, the Yakuza and a dozen others you never even thought of. This is James Morton from the FBI. You may recognize him from the Empire State Building siege in New York. He's here to help us.'
'Us?' said the man who sold tickets at the House of Frankenstein.
'Yup,' Stirling said ebulliently, 'we're going to form a special citizens' task force.'
Murmurs.
'Uh, Mark,' said the ticket taker from the House of Frankenstein, his head bent to one side as if he'd a sore bolt in his neck, 'isn't that the kind of thing the police should be doing? We, uhm, don't know much about, you know, murder and drugs 'n all.'
Stirling was considering his answer when Morton, nodding vigorously, stepped in to fill the vacuum. 'Yes, sir, that would be the ideal solution. Unfortunately it is not an option. The people who are running this convention are, how shall I put it,
extremely
influential. The police have been bought off.'
One of the cops at the back jumped to his feet. 'Ain't nobody bought me off!'
Stirling waved placatory hands. 'We're not saying that, Bill, we're saying higher up. In Toronto. That's why we've been flooded with out-of-town cops this last few days. You gotta admit that's a bit strange.'
'If I remember right, Mr Stirling, you called them in.'
'It was the right thing to do at the time,' Morton said.
'I called in officers from outside this district because my superior officer was suspected of a crime. He was subsequently cleared of any involvement in that crime. You all know Frank Corrigan. He's a good guy.'
'I heard he killed a whole bunch of people back in Ireland,' the pharmacist called.
'And his wife was pregnant,' said one of the other cops.
'How many of these drug dealers are we talking about ?' Maynard asked. 'You want us just to walk in there with a couple of shotguns and arrest them?'
'About a hundred and fifty,' Morton said.
'Jesus!'
'I know . . .' Stirling said, waving his hands, 'I know . . .'
The guy who sold tickets at the House of Frankenstein jumped up. 'Those guys from the convention – and they ain't all guys – they're in my place every day. They don't look like drug dealers to me. In my place they were talking about flowers.'
'Believe me,' Morton said, 'they
are
drug dealers.'
He looked at Stirling. Stirling shrugged. Morton rubbed at his brow, then he launched into an explanation of what transnational criminal organizations were. He tried to keep it short and to the point, but the less he said the more ominous they sounded, and in trying to clarify and soothe he made them sound even worse. He was losing it. In his heyday it had been no problem inspiring the troops, because generally they
were
troops and up for it. Now he was trying to inspire hick cops and people who sold tickets at tourist attractions and it clearly was not working. As he talked, their jaws slowly dropped and a grey pallor seemed to descend over their pink faces. When he'd finished there was an ominous silence.
'Fuck it, Mark,' Maynard said, ignoring Morton, 'you don't need us. You need like . . . like SWAT teams . . . or Mounties . . . I mean, if what you're saying is true, you've got to be able to take it higher up. Somebody will listen.'
'Maynard, I told you, they've been bought off.
I've
been bought off, for Christsake.' He let out a sigh, looked to the ground. He told them about the money that had appeared in his wife's bank account and the bullshit about a legacy from a distant relative she'd never heard of and the visit of the Internal Affairs guys. 'Same thing happened to Frank Corrigan. He's had his house up for sale these last few months, nobody interested, then suddenly he gets an offer he can't refuse. Turns out the buyer is a police inspector from Toronto. Narcotics division. Quite innocent on the face of it, but look a little closer . . .' He shook his head. 'We have $200,000 in our account and nobody's asked me to do a thing for it. But they will. And that's why I can't call in a fucking SWAT team.'