The Ambitious City (32 page)

“Okay, ask her to give him this message: ‘Thanks for being there.’ ”

“That it?”

“No. She should also wish him good hunting.”

Vertesi repeated the message verbatim. After he said goodbye, he looked quizzically at MacNeice.

“Tell you later. How’s Wenzel?”

“Aziz has him over in the field, just walking and talking, trying to get him settled down. He’s pretty messed up—in every way, actually—he pissed himself.”

“Another set of clothes is in order. Get him back to the hotel and make sure his minibar is stocked with bourbon.”

“Will do.”

“What about Williams?”

“He’s gone behind the house with two uniforms to dig around for the plastic bag. Oh, by the way, he returned that call—the one that went off in the barn. It was from Ryan. The state police have closed Old Soldiers and taken four members, including the owner, into custody.”

“Perfect. And our surviving biker?”

“He’s over there in the back of the cruiser but he hasn’t said anything. His Quebec driver’s licence says he’s Gérard Langlois.”

“Good. I want him in the interview room in a half-hour.”

“Will do, sir. The guy without a face was Frédéric Paradis.”

“Freddy Paradise …”

“You’re thinking it was Penniman who took him out?” Vertesi asked.

MacNeice met Vertesi’s eye. “As far as our reports go, it was an unknown assailant, likely a rival biker. Understood?”

“Understood, sir. Helluva shot—went right through the wall and killed an all-terrain vehicle.” Vertesi walked off towards the uniforms clustered around the cruiser.

MacNeice went looking for Aziz and Wenzel. He spotted them walking along the treeline. Wenzel carried a stick and was swiping at the weeds that lined the path. They were lost in conversation and
didn’t hear MacNeice coming up behind them until he snapped a twig underfoot. Wenzel jumped out of his skin.

“Sorry, Wenzel, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Ah, jeez, man—I mean sir. That was pretty freaky back there, so I’m like, really on edge, ya know?”

“I do. I thought you showed great courage, Wenzel.”

“Courage? I was so scared I pissed myself.”

MacNeice wanted to tell him there was no shame in that, but he doubted the kid would believe him. Looking at Wenzel’s gore- and urine-stained clothing, he said, “We’ll get you some new gear.”

Wenzel looked down at himself. “Shit … well, I was always a Blackhawks fan anyways.”

“Aziz, you’re okay?”

“I am, boss, I am.”

“Good. In half an hour you and I are going to interview the last of the bikers.”

MacNeice retrieved his jacket from the Chevy and put it on. He took one last look around the place before getting in the car; Aziz was already doing up her seatbelt. He drove slowly past the big men in body armour carrying heavy weapons.

Aziz noticed that several of them stared as they went by. Through her open window she heard one of them say, “That him?” and the answer, “Yeah, that’s him.” Aziz had to admit she was also wondering why MacNeice had taken such a risk.

Hidden hunkered down in the barn, she could barely hear them speaking—there were no raised voices—but she had almost screamed when Paradis shot the young cop, so afraid was she that he’d hit MacNeice. Then she’d heard his voice, just as calm as before. She’d called dispatch again and whispered, “Get that bloody SWAT team out here! Send a goddamned helicopter if you have to, but do not, under any circumstances, call any of the cellphones of this team.”

Glancing at MacNeice, she saw that he seemed lost in reverie, as calm as if he were on a Sunday drive in the country. She shivered, a delayed reaction to how close they’d all come to disaster.

No report had signalled the arrival of the fatal shot. From where she was, she hadn’t even heard it tearing through Paradis’s skull, only the
bang-bang
of it piercing the barn wall, then slamming into the engine block of a new ATV not four feet away from where she was crouching.

As they turned right on the concession road, Aziz said, “Wenzel couldn’t stop talking about you. Apparently you reminded him of Hughes, being so calm and all. He peed himself when you started marching towards Frédéric with your weapon pointed at his head.”

MacNeice stopped at a light and watched as a young woman wheeled a stroller past the Chevy. Had he thought Frédéric would actually execute Wenzel? Absolutely. He was equally certain that Bruni would unload the shotgun into him, though he didn’t want to say any of that to Aziz. Instead he said, “Neither of those men would have backed down, not Frédéric or Bruni.” Even though the light had changed, he waited till the woman and her stroller were safely on the other sidewalk.

He knew what he’d done was risky, but there was no another strategy that had a chance of saving Wenzel’s life. Had he stayed in the barn with his team to wait for the SWAT vans to arrive, at the very least Paradis and his men would have been down the tunnel and away, leaving two corpses lying in the dirt and no one knowing who’d done it or why, or how they’d managed to escape. If he’d opened fire from inside he’d have initiated a gun battle, echoing battles the farm had already seen. Though the bikers had more firepower, his team might have prevailed, or at least held out until the SWAT team arrived. However, Wenzel and Wosniac would be lying dead in the dirt.

“What made you think they were out there?”

“I don’t know. Wenzel was singing to himself when we went in, and he stopped. He’s a fidgety kid, nervous about being here; he should have been pacing or tossing stones or singing Johnny Cash songs—hearing nothing at all seemed strange.”

“Sixth sense.”

“Just observation.”

“What do you think the biker will tell us?”

“Depends on how rattled he is. What I want to know is why Quebec bikers are riding with D2D. We know that farm isn’t registered to Frédéric Paradis, but he acted like the lord of the manor. Of course, I also want to know if he was the one who butchered Hughes and shot Luigi.”

“That would be grim justice … Frédéric’s face exploding.”

“Yes …”

“You think it was Penniman, don’t you.”

“That shot was at least six hundred yards—I’m certain of it.” He shoved himself up in the seat and reached into his pocket with his right hand. Pulling out the latex gloves, he handed them to her and drove on in silence as she retrieved the shell with the wilted buttercup in it.

She held up the casing, turning it around in her fingers. “What in God’s name is this?”

“I don’t know. It’s a calibre I’ve never seen before. He set it up on the road like a lead soldier.”

“I saw Paradis when they bagged him—there was nothing left, just a hairline and a jawline … and part of one ear.” She stared at the shell. “What calibre do you think this is?”

“I don’t know. Remember Ferguson from last year?”

“The Brit engineer who gave you the name of the Bulgarian assassin?”

“He’ll know.”

“Why not just give it to our forensics team?”

“Because I think Sue-Ellen Hughes has suffered enough.”

Aziz took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, I never expected the day to turn out this way … from Dance to this.”

They were cresting the escarpment. Dundurn stretched out before them, all green and grey under a cloudless sky; the lake and bay lay cool and shimmering in the blue beyond. The view never failed to give MacNeice a small hiccup of joy; it always suggested home and—somewhat ironically—peace. He turned onto the Jolly Cut and dropped the Chevy into second gear, letting it sink slowly into the city.

A
S THEY PULLED
into the division parking lot, Deputy Chief Wallace was on his way out. He flashed his headlights so that MacNeice would stop. Rolling down his window, he said, “Join me for a minute, Mac.” He backed up into the closest spot and waited for MacNeice to appear at his window.

“I’m on my way to Cayuga; the media’s already there, waiting for a statement,” Wallace said, “so give me a statement.”

MacNeice began at the beginning, told him all he knew and what he didn’t know—the long-range shooter, the basement tunnel—and said a cop had been shot in the leg but otherwise there were no other injuries to their side. Not wanting to get into it right then, he left out the details of his standoff with Paradis.

“Okay, where can I find you after this?”

“We’re interviewing the surviving biker upstairs. That’ll take some time.”

“Aziz has that interview—she gonna make it?”

“No, we’ll have to cancel.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll do it, and offer an exclusive on the biker slayings. That it?”

“That’s it.”

Wallace didn’t appear to be in a rage when he returned, but he was. In less than two and a half hours he’d been given three disturbing reports about the events at Cayuga, including the fact that MacNeice had almost got the American kid, a young cop, Williams and himself killed. He hauled MacNeice into an interview room, demanding to hear his version of the events. He didn’t sit down, so neither did MacNeice.

MacNeice insisted that the standoff with Paradis was unavoidable given the circumstances, but that he had done his best to protect Hausman, the cop and his team.

“So who killed him?”

“Unidentified. I was about to fire when it happened. I assume it was revenge.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes—it was a spectacular shot. Paradis probably identified himself as the target the moment he fired into our officer’s leg.”

“My opinion, Mac, is that you could have ended up dead, along with your whole team. I think it was pure luck that it didn’t turn out that way.”

“Luck had a lot to do with it, I agree. But the risk I took was calculated.”

“I saw that fucking tunnel. Tell me how we had Swetsky and his team out there for two weeks and they missed it.”

“I would have missed that tunnel, and so would you. Short of tearing the place apart—which Swetsky had no authority to do—he wouldn’t have found it.”

“Okay, fine. Look, to be honest with you, I’m really just
wondering if you have a death wish.”

“Actually, I don’t.” MacNeice said it as if he’d considered the point—and realized he had, more than once.

“Well, there’s an officer nursing a leg wound in Dundurn General who thinks you might. He described you as ‘freaky cool, but freakin’ crazy.’ ”

MacNeice shrugged.

Wallace began pacing. “I’ve already been told what the headline is for tomorrow’s
Standard
. Interested?”

MacNeice studied the Deputy Chief’s face, which seemed a lot calmer.

“ ‘Mysterious Sniper Saves Six Lives.’ ” Wallace was nodding as if his head had come loose. “How d’ya like that?”

“I don’t mind it—it’s true. And an alliteration like that isn’t something you see every day.”

“You’re still saying you don’t know who the shooter was?” Wallace was leaning against the wall, his eyes levelled at MacNeice.

“I am. Whoever it was got away clean. They had to be somewhere out by the road when they took the shot. Once the shooting started, we were too preoccupied to find out where the sniper was.”

Wallace pushed himself off the wall and walked over to the two-way mirror. He looked at his reflection and groaned, rubbed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair several times before he turned back to MacNeice. Pulling out the chair Langlois had used, Wallace sat down heavily. “Okay, tell me what you got out of that biker.”

When MacNeice walked back into the cubicle, the detectives and Ryan all stopped what they were doing.

“We cool?” Williams asked.

“Yes.” He turned to Aziz. “Have you filled them in on the Langlois interview?”

“I didn’t. First, I think you should see what Williams found behind the house.”

Williams held up a plastic Baggie that at first looked empty. But then MacNeice noticed something round and solid weighing down its corner: a simple gold band—Gary Hughes’s wedding ring. “It was still on his finger, boss. Everything but his face and forearm flesh was there—hands and feet, and this too.” He picked up a larger bag and took out Hughes’s wallet and passport, then another, with another wallet and passport. “Luigi Vanucci, of Buffalo, New York,” he announced.

In Hughes’s wallet there was twenty-three dollars; in Vanucci’s, two hundred sixty-five, in American currency. No Canadian—but then, they hadn’t come for the shopping.

“Strange they didn’t boost the cash,” Williams said. “Maybe they’re superstitious about blood money.” From the wallet he pulled out a snapshot of Hughes with his family. It was difficult to look at—everyone smiling at the camera from a picnic table. All these artifacts had been shrink-wrapped together, then stuffed in a garbage bag and buried five feet under the vegetable garden. “The tomatoes above it were doing really well.”

When MacNeice asked how he’d found it, Williams smiled. “I found a metal detector on top of some larger equipment in the barn.” He had gone looking behind the farmhouse and, in less than five minutes, the wedding ring triggered the detector. When he got back to the division, Williams had tried to find out if Vanucci had any family, without success. He scanned the driver’s licence and passport and sent them down to Buffalo Homicide.

Vertesi had taken Wenzel back to the hotel with his new gear. He was feeling better and running up room service and movie rental charges.

“Okay—Gérard Langlois. Fiza, take us through it.” MacNeice consulted his notebook and on the whiteboard wrote the names
Langlois had given them—Quebec bikers—under the heading
Jokers MC
. He put a vertical line next to them and added
Luigi Vanucci
and
Gary Hughes
.

He drew another line and printed
D2D
. Aziz described how the Jokers and D2D were partnering on security jobs across Ontario and Quebec, based on the notion that two clubs were stronger than one, but also to eliminate any conflict between them. Presumably it also gave them better odds in competing against the larger clubs.

Langlois had started riding with Jokers MC six months after the first shoot-out at Cayuga, the one with the Old Soldiers in which Hughes and Luigi had been killed. He missed the second one because he’d gone home for his mother’s funeral in Dorval; he even provided the name of the funeral home in case MacNeice and Aziz didn’t believe him. He’d said Frédéric Paradis was ruthless and ambitious, the “grand marshal.” His leadership had begun long before the first shootout. Langlois remembered Bruni once telling him how he’d cut the face off an American and fed it to the pigs. When Langlois asked him why he’d done that, Bruni said the guy had killed four D2D bikers—it was
un cadeau
from Frédéric to D2D. Langlois believed the story and said that Frédéric would have had to order it; Bruni would never have done it on his own, because “that big
bête
didn’t have a brain.”