The Ambitious City (39 page)

“I think you were both naïve,” MacNeice said. He drank his shot of espresso and slid the cup aside.

“Yeah … maybe. Yeah, I guess so. This was a game too.”

Aziz’s question was direct. “Just for clarification, Roberto—if they had beat up Pat, do you think his head could have survived another concussion?”

His eyes widened as he looked at her. It was clear he hadn’t considered the consequences of a severe beating for a young man who had had to quit the sport he loved because of damage to his brain. “I … didn’t think. No … look, I just didn’t think. Pat was panicking, talking about coming clean. I told him that was easy for him to say but that I was the one with all the risk—my business, my family … I know you’ll think it’s wrong, but … my reputation.”

“The time to consider all those things was the first time you showed up at Pat’s penthouse,” MacNeice said slowly.

It seemed as if the full weight of his actions had just hit him. Roberto covered his face again and sobbed for two or three minutes, gasping because he was crying so hard.

When he finally calmed down, MacNeice spoke. “I can imagine how difficult this has been for you. We have only a few more questions.”

“Were you jealous that Pat was asked to take an executive position at Mancini Concrete?” Aziz asked.

“Jealous? Oh, I see—because I own one-third and my brother two-thirds.”

“And when he stepped down, you’d still only have one-third but Pat would have two.”

“No. Half the time I don’t feel I deserve the third I have. No, I wanted Pat to win … I always wanted him to win.”

“Didn’t he tell you he had no interest in concrete?” Aziz asked.

“Sure. But he didn’t have to tell me—it was obvious.”

“So …?”

“My brother Alberto is brilliant; he knows what he’s doing. Gianni could have taught Pat. It’s a good business and it’s not like he was trained for anything else. That was the idea, and, I think, once Pat grew up a little more, he’d get into it.”

“Once he was finished sowing the wild oats you never had a chance to,” Aziz said.

“Yeah … well, yeah.” Mancini hadn’t missed the biting irony.

“And Gianni Moretti—was he thrilled to be the tutor of a reluctant pupil?” MacNeice asked.

“Not exactly. Pat was a joke to all the guys in the office, but the Mancinis have been good to them. Gianni was the right guy to teach him. Once he did, Pat and I would have been unstoppable building that business together. He had the charisma and I have the money sense.”

“Might Gianni have allowed himself to believe—if only from his years of service—that he would be the right person to assume a leadership role?”

Mancini seemed surprised to be asked the question. “He’s not family. He’ll always have a great job there, but this is about family.”

“What number did Gianni call?” Aziz asked.

He fiddled with his phone and then handed it to Aziz, who wrote
down the number before handing it back to him. The moment Roberto touched it, the phone rang.

“Don’t take that call,” MacNeice said, and Roberto, who didn’t appear keen to anyway, turned the phone off.

“What’s going to happen to me now?”

“It’s a good question, Roberto. Your actions have caused the death of your nephew, disgraced your family and betrayed your brother’s trust in you.”

Mancini flinched and blinked several times.

“The question of charges, however, is a little more complex. You and Pat ignited a tragedy that has destroyed the lives of several individuals, both American and Canadian, and not all of them were violent gang members. As an accessory, you are culpable in all of those deaths.”

“I understand …” he said, his voice betraying fear.

“Roberto, we both respect your decision to dismiss your counsel and speak openly.” MacNeice glanced over to Aziz, who nodded slowly in agreement. “But I encourage you now to call your lawyer and your family—and no one else.”

“And the media? What will you say?”

“The answer to that, and the charges that may arise as a result of your statement, will come from the Crown Attorney. For now, neither of us will be saying anything to the media.”

MacNeice stood up heavily, thinking of the real victims—Gary Hughes, Luigi Vanucci, Sue-Ellen Hughes and her children. Even Pat Mancini.

“What should I do now?” Roberto was weeping again, but this time he just let the tears fall. MacNeice watched them splash on the table and let Aziz answer for him.

“For now, Roberto, just let this interview sink in. If you accept the extent of human suffering you’ve contributed to, then you’ll find, I hope, some way to take responsibility for what has been done
to your family, your nephew, your brother’s family, and the others whose lives have been ruined. You are not a victim in this tale, so don’t allow yourself the luxury of thinking that you are.”

He was wiping his eyes with his shirt cuff, trying to say something. They both stood silent, waiting. Mancini shook his head a few times, coughed and at last got it out. “I’m so, so profoundly sorry for all of this.… I know something else too—I could have stopped Pat, that first night. I could have. He looked up to me, thought I was where he was not.” He wiped his face and blew his nose with the last of the tissues. “I didn’t, because it was just … just … so wild!” He shook his head. “And I wanted to have that too, you know, to be a wild boy like Pat … just once.”

MacNeice offered his hand. “Thank you for your honesty. If you’re smart, you’ll take Detective Aziz’s words to heart.” They shook hands and MacNeice left.

The door opened again and a uniform appeared. Aziz waited while Roberto pulled himself together, then followed the two down the hall to the elevator. Mancini stepped in and turned to face her. Maybe it was the steely blue lighting, or perhaps it was just the end of a gruelling afternoon, but he looked decades older. The elevator doors closed and Aziz stood for a moment, watching the sliver of light between the doors descend, before walking slowly back to the cubicles.

“R
YAN, YOU’VE BEEN
a bit neglected in all this,”

MacNeice said, sagging wearily into his chair.

The young man looked over his shoulder and smiled. “I do have something that just came in from Forensics on the Dance case.” Ryan opened a file on his computer and a scan appeared of one of the pieces of mail left at the Dance residence. He tapped the keyboard and the envelope filled the screen.

“What is it?”

“Addressed to William Dance, Senior, and it’s dated”—with his cursor he circled the postal cancellation—“last November 14. It’s from Chedoke Health Centre—you know, the private health centre where executives go for exams and treatment. So I called Chedoke and asked for the head of the accounts department. And I said—sorry, sir—that I was a detective working on a case involving the Dance family.”

“That kind of thing could end up costing you your job, Ryan.”

“I realize that, sir. That’s why I said my name was Detective
Inspector Michael Vertesi.” Reading MacNeice’s smile correctly as approval, he cut to the chase. “In the end they sent me—or rather, Vertesi—two documents, sir.”

Ryan clicked the keyboard again and was suddenly in Vertesi’s email. “The first is a letter from Charles Pepper, the CEO of Chedoke Health Centre, and the second is a copy of an invoice for magnetic resonance imaging scans of Dance’s chest and stomach. The MRI bill is $7,074.21, and it has a bold line of type indicating that Mr. Dance’s next series of scans would be in April—long after he died.”

“Must have been serious if he wasn’t willing to wait in line with the public for his MRI. And the letter?”

Ryan opened the letter onscreen and enlarged a paragraph so MacNeice could easily read it:

MacNeice sat back when he was done. “November. Not much traffic in Muskoka, and on a clear day a Land Cruiser idles at an intersection, waiting to turn onto the highway until the exact
moment a speeding truck is approaching. It suggests that Dance’s father had no intention of undergoing chemotherapy.”

Ryan nodded.

MacNeice gave him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “Good work. Print out the letter and the invoice.” He was taping them up on the whiteboard when Aziz returned.

“What’s that?”

“Dance’s father may have committed suicide in Muskoka.”

“Lord—if he did, he took his wife and the driver of that truck with him. Are all the males in the Dance family crazy?”

The telephone on MacNeice’s desk rang and he slid across to pick it up. “MacNeice.”

“Mary Richardson. I have two representatives of the U.S. military here. They have the necessary documents required for me to release the Hughes remains, but they want copies of the DNA and pathology reports that were completed here. I want your approval before I release them.”

“Is a member of the family with them?”

“No, they came alone. They are, however, bona fide bureaucrats—though I should keep my voice down. Junior is entertaining them. He’s been trying to reassemble the pieces of the young man blown up on the bridge.”

“Christ, Mary!”

“Sorry, gallows humour. Would you like to speak to one of these chaps?”

“Yes.” He turned and looked at the army portrait of Hughes.

“Detective MacNeice, it’s David Farrody, senior claims agent for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Is there a problem with releasing this information and the remains of Sergeant Hughes?”

“None whatsoever. Will the remains be returned to his family for burial?”

“The remains will be housed in a local mortuary until the date can be set for a proper funeral.”

“When Sergeant Hughes’s hands were discovered, his wedding ring was still on his finger. Shall I send a patrolman down with it?”

“Ah, no. Our task is to retrieve the body and return it to the States. Anything else should be dealt with directly by the deceased’s family.”

“Thank you. Can you put Dr. Richardson back on, please?” “Certainly.”

“Release the remains, Mary, and give them copies of whatever paperwork they’ve asked for.”

“Shall be done.”

MacNeice put down the phone and picked up his jacket.

“You heading out, boss?” Vertesi asked.

“Just home for a workout to clear my head. I’ll be back. Are you okay for an hour and a half?”

Aziz answered first. “I’m fine. I’ll write up some observations on the Mancini interview.”

“If you decide to take her back to the hotel, Michael, make sure you take her right to the door, and check the room before you leave.”

Aziz didn’t bother to insist that she’d be okay getting back on her own. She just smiled at Vertesi.

“Jeezus, I’d almost forgotten about our psycho,” Vertesi said.

“I haven’t. He’s overdue.” MacNeice left the cubicle.

Merging with the traffic streaming by on Main Street, he replayed the interview in his head. The look on Roberto’s face as he spoke about being wild—
just once
—had been, for MacNeice, the most revealing and raw moment of the session. It was like chaos theory: a harmless flutter of butterfly wings that ends up consuming so many people. That small moment of giving in had consumed both
Pat and his favourite uncle, leaving their families to sift through the ashes looking for explanations.

Cresting the last rise before home, his heart quickened when he saw a vehicle waiting in his driveway. This time it was a black Porsche Cayenne with black-tinted windows and Quebec plates. As he pulled in beside the SUV, he unhooked the straps restraining his weapon. He lowered his passenger-side window, turned off the ignition, drew out his sidearm and pointed it at the SUV’s window. Seconds passed, but he kept the gun levelled at the black glass.

Eventually the window slid down to reveal a large, smiling face looking back at him. Before MacNeice could say anything, the barrel of a shotgun slid into view, and the driver’s smile broadened to a toothy grin.

“Get out of the vehicle,” MacNeice said.

The driver pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. He gestured with the sawed-off piece for MacNeice to turn around. As he glanced to his left, MacNeice saw the barrel of a handgun six inches from his ear on the other side of the window. The person on the end of it tapped it twice on the glass. MacNeice looked back to the driver of the Porsche, who smiled again and nodded slowly up and down. There was a sharper tap on the Chevy’s window. MacNeice laid his weapon on the seat and got out of the car with his hands up.

He stood facing a short, wiry man with slicked-back hair that was greying at the temples; he was wearing a turquoise linen shirt open at the neck and baggy black linen pants. A small fleur-de-lis tattoo sat high on his right cheekbone; little blue dashes trailed down to it from just below his eye, presumably suggesting a falling French tear. MacNeice heard the heavy thump of the SUV’s door and the crunch of big boots on gravel.

A huge man with dark, wavy hair appeared from behind the Chevy, wearing loose black denim jeans and an untucked white
cotton shirt. MacNeice realized he must be looking at Bruni’s older brother. No longer smiling, the man carried his weapon angled loosely over his shoulder. He motioned for MacNeice to walk to the entrance of the cottage; the smaller man led the way and opened the door as if he lived there. MacNeice followed him inside.

He found their boss sitting comfortably in the living room with a glass of MacNeice’s grappa. The bottle, with a second glass, sat on the table next to a nickel-plated handgun identical to Frédéric’s.