A Lesson in Love and Murder (15 page)

“What are you doing here?” Tony slurred.

“Wondering how you have money for drinks and games while I had to give the last dollars I had to your wife and son.”

Tony slammed his fist on the table. The chips, cards and tankards rattled.

“You're finished here then, Valari?” a man seethed. “You were in over your head anyway.”

Tony eyed his hand possessively. “I am not finished. I just have to… take care of something.” He tossed the cards on the table. “Deal me out next round but save my spot.”

Tony was uneasy on his feet. His bloodshot eyes bored into Ray as they stepped through the doorway and out to the street: a symphony of wolf whistles, automobile horns, horse's hooves, and drunken laughter.

“Glad I found you,” Ray said, leaning against the side of the tavern and appraising Tony. The man looked even worse in the moonlight than he had under the garish lamps of the bar.

“You bring that detective girl with you? Found yourself a looker, Ray. Even I can appreciate that. All the guys could. Forbes, especially. Liked the way she was built.”

“Do you want me to drive my fist into your teeth?” Ray said lazily. “You don't have anyone here to back you up, and you know I am much faster than you.”

“I'm complimenting her.”

“You're the lowest kind of… ” Ray chewed his lip to stall himself. It wasn't worth it. “Stop drinking your money in there. You're already in the hole. Take care of the family you abandoned.”

“I can provide for my own family.” Tony scraped at the dregs of his pride.

“This is ending, Tony. I hate the way you treat my sister and Luca. I won't do it anymore. I won't sit and watch you hurt them and leave them to starve while you drink and gamble. You keep horrible company. You—you smell like a fish. Who knows where you go to
work
every day.”

“I make a good income.”

“Listen,” Ray said. “Let Viola and Luca go. You're never home anyway. It would be no great loss to you if they were with me in Toronto.”

“She is mine. She belongs to me and with me. The boy too.”

“You're talking about her as if she's a tugboat. She's my sister. I will provide for her and Luca and take care of them, and then you are free to do… well, whatever it is you do.” Ray took a step and grabbed Tony's lapel. “But no longer at the expense of my family.”

“It's funny you're telling me this, Ray.” Tony coughed as Ray tightened his grip. “To go home to my wife and family. When here you are a thousand miles from home. And what does your pretty wife think about that?”

“She has friends who can take care of her,” Ray snipped. “Viola has no one.”

“But she has you,” Tony mocked. “Of course she has you. It's so convenient for you too, isn't it? You can hide behind Viola. You can use her for an excuse when Toronto gets too hard and you realize you're failing as badly as I am.”

Tony's instincts had slowed, and when Ray flung him back, he toppled over, spitting and cursing. “I have a game to finish. Stay out of my life.”

“Gladly. But I won't stay out of hers. And I won't stay out of Luca's.”

Tony fingered his bleeding lip. “You haven't changed. Controlling everything. Needing to be perfect. Needing her to worship the ground you walk on. You need to… ”

Ray didn't stay to hear the end of the sentence.

He stalked away, his eyes low. What he really needed was a place to spend the night and enough money to see Viola and Luca through whatever Tony was losing of theirs back at the gaming table. He swept the immediate vicinity with intent eyes, finally settling on the least intoxicated man in the alley. “Any idea where I might find work?”

“Hedgehog,” the man said hazily. “Terror of a man at Burnham Harbor. Look for tugboats four and ten.”

“Four and ten.”

The man nodded drunkenly and then slurred, “And a right fancy Benz truck. Hedgehog numbers his fleet.”

One of Ray's talents lay in blending into a situation and pivoting it to his advantage. It was what made him such a good journalist. He belonged in any manner of congregations of the destitute or working class. So when he eventually found Hedgehog
^‡
and his men, reeling in a dinghy from the bopping waves, he knew how to fit in. He turned up a full smile, and with a poor grasp of English and a twinkling eye, he offered himself to their shady enterprise.

“I could always use manpower,” Hedgehog said. “Got several fellows who sound just like you. Make you feel at home.” Ray was aching to ask what work he would be doing, what they were transporting, but this ragtag crew seemed the type that would lift and haul anything for a few bucks.

So, under a sky brightening with stars, he joined men with haggard, unhappy faces as they moved cargo from a tugboat and onto a truck that seemed worth far more than any of these “workers” could afford.

“Fancy automobile,” Ray sneered to a tall, wiry man.

“Boss here, Hedgehog, says in order to be legitimate you have to look legitimate.”

Ray yawned. He'd barely slept on the overnight train from Toronto, he'd spent the night before on a bench, and as the hours ticked by, it looked less and less likely that he'd find a bed before dawn.

“There's one more!” a man from the deck of the boat called. Ray saw that the men who pulled shift after shift of this grueling work night after night—probably without even as much as a nap before their next job—were groaning and yawning.

Winning easy admiration, he jogged over and stole up the ladder swinging from the side of the bobbing vessel.

The man was standing on one side of a long rectangular box. “Bit
like a coffin!” the man joshed. “Probably jam or something, mate. No need to worry.”

Ray wondered why jam would need to be undocked in the cloak of darkness, but he merely smiled and prepared for the count-off.

“One… ” the other man said as Ray fit his hands over the sides of the crate. “Two… ”

On three they heaved up, but in doing so, the damp wood creaked and the bottom fell through with a thud. Ray and the man flung the beams and planks away to discover a heavy canvas bag.

Bile rose in Ray's mouth. He knew what he would find inside. The tell-tale shape and weight meant one thing.

He looked up at his companion, and they shared a solemn nod.

They pulled back the canvas to reveal a gray corpse, its stench overpowering them, the features bloated from days on a boat. Ray's companion emitted a string of curses before finally ending in a hasty, pleading prayer for the poor dead fellow and leaving Ray with the body while he reported it to the foreman.

Ray tried to see it as Jasper or Merinda would. What a story this would make, he thought, adrenaline pumping. Then he recollected himself and looked over the corpse's bulky, veined hand, hard to make out in the dim light.

It was when he turned away to call for help from the docks that a tiny piece of something caught his eye in the spreading light. It must have toppled out of the canvas. He leaned down and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.

A piece of something that was all too familiar.

He slipped it into his pocket, looking around to see if the slight action had been noticed. But no one seemed to care about the body at all. Ray looked beyond the corpse's greenish-gray face and over his stiff limbs down to bare feet. Near the right foot something glistened, and Ray reached over, flinching his fingers a bit before grabbing it. It was an empty, sticky bottle. Syrup, by the looks of it. The label was faded, but he could still make out the logo—he'd seen it a thousand times.
Spenser's.

Ray hid it under his vest and looked over the lake toward the horizon. This crate was from Toronto. The bottle came from Spenser's Department Store. Ray could have laughed if the entire thing wasn't so dreadfully morbid. He came to Chicago to help Viola and stumbled upon a Toronto news story instead.

Ray wanted to see what they did with the body. More still, what they were importing that could possibly come from Spenser's Department Store. It could, of course, have been a fluke, but with all of the corruption he was accustomed to in his city's hierarchy, he wouldn't be surprised if the trail led here.

Hedgehog's voice came from behind him. “Job is done for the night,” he said, pressing a few greasy bills into Ray's hand in a wad. “But I'm impressed by you. You're wiry but strong, and you didn't even bat an eye at that poor bloke, which means you've got the temperament I'm looking for.”

“I figure what isn't my business isn't my business. As long as I get paid.”

“Good man. You might be who I am looking for. Tomorrow night. Pays a little more. Slight chance of a run-in with the coppers, but I've already paid off the right ones. Any interest?

Ray rubbed the back of his neck. “I could use the money,” he said honestly, while his brain added
and the story
. Every paper counted.

“Good man. Here's the address.” Hedgehog scribbled a street number and time on a slip of paper. “Figure we should meet proper if we'll do business together. I'm Hedgehog.” The man's hand was all knobby knuckles, scars, and grime. “And you are?”

“I'll shake your hand, and I'll do good work. But my name is my own.”

Hedgehog's eyes narrowed, and his grip on Ray's hand tightened slightly. Ray stared him straight on, unblinking, wondering how he might react.

“Fair enough” was the man's eventual response.

Ray pocketed the piece of paper while having a sudden thought and mentally calculating the distance between Toronto and Chicago.
“If I had a trustworthy friend, interested in the same kind of payout, would he be welcome?”

“Another nameless chap like you?”

Ray shrugged. “Big, though. Strong. Unafraid of hard work.”

“Bring him along. Some of my regulars are serving time, and I can always use another body.”

Back on the main road, a smile curved Ray's cheek as dawn touched the horizon. He fingered the dirty bills in his hand and decided on his next destination. First a boardinghouse, and then a drugstore on Michigan Avenue. He needed to make a telephone call.

*
Ray wondered how the man could find it nice and comfortable when the slight breeze from the window did little to dispel the invasive heat.

†
When Jem proposed to him in a most unladylike fashion at the Winter Garden theatre, he had pressed it into her hand in lieu of a ring.

‡
Ray had no trouble deciphering the origin of his name. His small close-set ears and wide head were a sure giveaway.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

There is no room for the slightest mistake when in pursuit of your prey. Be it hare or caribou, the most obvious tell to your prey is to waver from your pursuit and path. Even if your compass spins without true north or your map is lost, the earth around you is your guide. There is no margin of error when you rely on your instincts, no matter where they lead you.

Benfield Citrone and Jonathan Arnasson,
Guide to the Canadian Wilderness

J
asper couldn't keep his hands from shaking. Almost twenty-four hours later, he kept revisiting the site in his mind's eye. And once he followed that trail, he couldn't help but think of the trolley explosions. All of those lives lost, and all he had to show for it was a tiny wire, tied with precision and care. He studied the latest of the knotted wires discovered on the pavement near Osgoode Hall after the automobile explosion.

He was sick of looking at Skip's rather impressive photographs capturing the first moments of panic and disarray. They were almost—and here Jasper paused—too talented a look at the immediate aftermath. He had always been relatively impressed by Skip's skill with a camera, but the man seemed to know exactly where to shoot and when. He was always first at the scene these days.

He was just making a few rudimentary notes when the telephone on his desk jangled.