Buffalo Jump (20 page)

“Do we have that much now?”

She couldn’t say they did.

“No one saw me,” Barry said. “I was in and out in a few minutes. It was pouring rain the whole time. Everyone was inside.”

“I want it out of here in two days tops.”

“Agreed.”

“And we don’t leave one trace of evidence it was ever here.”

“Except for massive piles of cash,” he grinned, throwing his arms around her.

“This is a one-time thing, Barry Aiken. Understand?”

“Of course it is, babe. Even if I wanted to do it again, I wouldn’t know where to get more.”Amy booted up the computer and looked up every drug in their possession on MedlinePlus.gov, noting what it was for and who among their circle might need it. Then she spent half an hour surfing websites of major pharmacy chains to find the average current retail price of each product, which ranged from five dollars a pill for the more familiar ones to more than thirty for cancer
and anti-rejection drugs. They had more than a hundred thousand pills. Even if they sold them for a fraction of what they were worth, she could buy all the painkillers and anti-inflammatories she’d ever need. They could enroll in a VIP health plan with every benefit imaginable. They could travel somewhere warm, escape the Buffalo winters that made her joints ache and swell. She could free her mind from the worries that had shrouded her since Barry was laid off.

“Five bucks a pill minimum, fifteen for the expensive stuff,” Barry argued.

“Three dollars,” she said. “And the cancer and transplant drugs are free to anyone who needs them. I won’t make a penny off them.”

“But Ames—”

“The higher the prices, the longer it’ll take to unload, and the more people we’ll have coming through here. I want this kept to the New Fifty group and friends we can trust to keep their mouths shut.”

Barry agreed and went off to start making phone calls, starting with Marty Oliver.

“Why him?” Amy asked.

“He’s the closest thing I have to a lawyer.”

Listening to Rich and Barry giggling in the front room now, Amy wondered, not for the first time, whether Barry’s lifestyle was finally catching up with him. All the dope he had smoked, the acid and mushrooms he had tripped on. Was he finally coming unhinged? Taking a chance like this: was it a sign that his moorings were slipping, easing him out from shore into water whose colour warned of hidden depths?

Amy had fallen hard for Barry the first time she saw him on campus. He was studying fine arts; she was majoring in piano, unaware that her own immune system would one day turn on her so badly she’d barely be able to play Chopsticks, let
alone Chopin. Barry had black hair straight down his back like a Native American in those days. He was lean; he could wear those skinny black stovepipe jeans without looking ridiculous, unlike Rich, whose pear-shaped body demanded something more forgiving even in his youth. Barry had enjoyed considerable acclaim as a student, winning a faculty award for works inspired by Frank Stella’s minimalism, discrete blocks of bold colours separated by thin lines Barry scraped across the canvas with his thumbnail. Then he’d gone post-modernist, influenced by Andy Warhol and his celebrity portraits, only Barry didn’t know any real celebrities, so his work lacked the connection between subject and style that Warhol exploited. Then it was on to Robert Rauschenberg’s emerging pop-art sensibility, Barry screening archival images onto canvas in jarring contexts, trying to confront society, as he then explained it, with society’s own face. And that was Barry, Amy eventually realized. Talented enough to soak up influences and talk the talk, but always riffing on someone else’s style rather than developing one of his own. He went only as far as his modest talent and even more modest work ethic could take him, and that had not been very far at all.

Amy, on the other hand, had made the most of her musical gifts, always working as hard as, if not harder than, other musicians she met in schools or competitions. It wasn’t until her last year that she could see other students pulling away from the pack and realized a concert career was not to be.

Neither Barry nor Amy wound up at the forefront of an artistic revolution, as they’d once hoped, Buffalo being several hundred miles northwest of said forefront in New York. But both found work that made good use of their skills, Barry in graphic design, Amy as a piano teacher and rehearsal accompanist for musical theatre, ballet and dance companies. They liked their jobs and lived well. They had great friends, most of whom they’d known since college. But what had it all amounted to,
Amy sometimes wondered. What impression had they made on the world? They had never had children: supposedly a mutual decision but it was Barry who had never been ready, Barry who always ended the discussion, Barry who wouldn’t have unprotected sex with her unless the time was safe.

So unlike his father. Amy had adored Norman Aiken; she found in him a warmth and unconditional love she had never felt with her own parents. He loved classical music and was as knowledgeable about it as she was. He had a baby grand in the living room and often asked her to play—something Barry would never do unless it was old Beatles songs or faux-classical crap by pretentious old buggers like Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman. When Norman died and left them the house, Barry had wanted to sell it and bank the profits. Amy insisted otherwise. She was ready for a real life, a real house. Her arthritis was already evident and she wanted out of their semi on Franklin Street, with its thin walls and warped doors that let in the frigid air of winter. If they were going to live the rest of their lives together without children, she wanted a home that felt warm and safe and solid.

She heard more laughter from the den and then a swell of music, the opening chords of “Let It Be” ringing like a church bell.

“Barry?” she called. “All done.”

Footsteps clumped down the hall and Barry and Rich joined her in the kitchen. She handed Rich two plastic shopping bags. “This one is yours,” she said. “And this is for Marty. Twenty-four hundred all together.”

“A steal at twice the price!” Rich’s eyes looked bloodshot and his tongue was sticking to his mouth. Barry had obviously rolled the good stuff, the indoor weed he bought from a thin black guy named Crawford, who lived on Hampshire down by Grant.

Rich pulled a thick wad of bills out of his pocket and began thumbing hundreds and twenties into a pile. When he
was done, Amy recounted it, despite the rolling of Barry’s eyes, and put it into a box of Tide she had emptied out.

They were going to need more boxes.

“Before you go, Richard, there’s something I must show you in the den,” Barry said.

Amy sighed. She knew what that meant:
Let’s roll another joint.
It was always time to roll another one. Goddamn Barry sometimes. Goddamn him and his appetites and impulsiveness. Goddamn the rut he’d gotten himself stuck in sometime between the Summer of Love and Woodstock. Guys his age still running out to smoke behind the garage, acting like eternal adolescents even as their bodies began to crumple and fail. The heroes of 9/11, the ones who brought down the plane in Pennsylvania: “
Let’s roll”
had been their rallying cry. It was Barry’s too, the cry of a big gangly kid who once told her he smoked too much dope because he had never been breast-fed.

The doorbell rang. Amy didn’t hear Barry move to open it, even though he was at the front of the house.

“Barr?” she called. He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t want to put off rolling his joint.

“Jesus,” Amy sighed, and left the kitchen. At the front door, she looked out the glass panel. A delivery man stood there holding an insulated vinyl pizza-warmer.

“Barry?” she called. “Did you order a pizza?”

No answer. The music in the den was louder now. Some shrill rock classic: Nazareth or AC/DC.

“Barry?”

Of course he had ordered a pizza. That’s what arrested adolescents do when they get the munchies after a toke behind Mother’s back.

She opened the door to a pleasant-looking young man with Cupid’s-bow lips and a face as round as the moon.

N
o morning that starts off with Percocet and a stool softener bodes well for the rest of the day. But I needed both and in equal measure.

The mood at the office was sombre when I arrived. Clint’s office door was closed; shadows visible through a pebbled glass panel suggested he was meeting with at least two people. Throughout the workspace, colleagues were clustered in groups of three and four, asking one another about the investigation, funeral services, Franny’s family, which of his ex-wives would make the biggest scene, Vicki or Mireille.

Jenn and Andy were in our cube patch drinking coffee. I got a subdued welcome. Andy barely looked up and whatever he said was unintelligible. Jenn smiled weakly and nodded at a third coffee on my desk. “I brought that for you just in case.”

I thanked her and took off the lid. Wisps of steam rose briefly into the air before disappearing. I stared at Franny’s desk, at his dark computer monitor. He hated the thing. I could picture him sitting there, cursing the computer, the keyboard, the mouse, the software and the entire nerd universe that made them possible.

At nine on the dot, Clint emerged from his office. Behind him were Detective Sergeant Katherine Hollinger and the
knuckle-dragging redhead, McDonough. He smirked when he saw me. Hollinger smiled. I smiled back, only it came out more like a goofy grin. I reminded myself I was on Percocet and to mind my manners.

Clint called for everyone’s attention and got it fast. “People, I’d like to introduce Detective Sergeant Hollinger and Detective McDonough. They’re leading the investigation into Franny’s death. I’ve asked them to give you an update, then we’ll talk about how you can help. Sergeant?”

Hollinger stepped forward with a black notebook in hand. “I can’t give out certain details, for reasons you people understand better than most, but here’s what we know. The deceased was found in his car on Commissioners Street, behind a warehouse owned by the Erie Storage Company. Based on evidence gathered at the scene, that is where the murder took place. Not a dump site, in other words. The deceased—”

“Franny,” someone called out behind me. “Please.” It was Darrel Mitchell, an older investigator, long divorced and one of Franny’s drinking buddies.

“I’m sorry,” Hollinger said. “Franny had multiple gunshot wounds in the head, face and neck from a smaller-calibre weapon, probably a .22 with a sound suppressor, which is why it attracted no attention until this morning. Preliminary time of death is between midnight and two a.m. Obviously we need to know what the deceased—what Franny was doing at the warehouse. Was he meeting someone? Was it in regard to a case? We’re tracing the owner of the warehouse, obviously, but it’s a numbered company and we haven’t yet tracked down an actual person. We’re canvassing the area, speaking to watchmen who were on duty last night. Asking for video footage from neighbouring companies with security cameras. We hope to pin down the exact time Franny drove down Commissioners, and see who preceded or followed.

“We’re going to speak to everyone here who knew him. We’re counting on you to provide us with leads. There might
be questions you don’t like. Did he gamble, was he a doper, was he seeing someone’s wife? But you know we need to ask them and you need to answer. We’ll look into his ongoing cases and any enemies he might have made in the past.”

“Start with his ex-wives,” Darrel said, and got a good laugh, easing some of the tension in the room.

“We’ll be using the conference room for interviews,” Clint said. “Stay at your workstations, please, until we call you. If you need to leave for any reason, let someone know where you’re going and keep your cell or pager on. No exceptions. Jonah?”

I looked up.

“We’ll start with you.”

The four of us sat at a rectangular cherry wood conference table, McDonough and Clint at the heads, Hollinger and I across from each other. She wore an olive-coloured pantsuit today, with a white blouse underneath. Her hair was bunched at the back of her neck and held there by some combination of leather and chopsticks. No jewellery again, save for her ear studs. Definitely no wedding ring or tan line showing she had worn one any time recently.

Not that I had the urge to observe McDonough that closely.

Whoa, boy,
I told myself. The Percocet has clouded your judgment and lowered your inhibitions—a deadly combination in the male of our species. I told myself I was in the presence of a woman who not only might prove immune to my charms but was armed and trained in the use of deadly force. Then I hoped I had told myself this silently.

“If it isn’t the cupcake,” McDonough said.

“You know each other?” Clint asked.

“We met yesterday,” I said.

“Regarding?”

“A case we’re working,” McDonough said. “Your man was asking about a victim named Kenneth Page.”

“Why?” Clint asked. “I thought you were helping Franny with his nursing home inquiry.”

“Just a long shot I was checking out for him,” I said. “Nothing came of it.”

“Big surprise,” McDonough said. “So, come on, cupcake, show us your highly tuned powers of observation. Crack the case open. Drop it in my lap like they do on TV.”

“All right,” Clint said. “There’s no need for that.”

“Sure,” McDonough said with a mirthless smile.

Hollinger said, “Tell us about the case you were helping the victim with.”

I told them what I knew about Meadowvale and the Vista Mar Care Group, starting with the Boyko interview and ending with a much abridged version of the melee that took place at the end of our visit.

“Let me get this straight,” McDonough said. “These scuzzballs are stealing pills from old ladies so they can turn around and sell them elsewhere?”

“I can’t prove it, but that’s what I think. Jenn will agree.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll talk to her next.”

“What part of the case was Franny working?” Hollinger asked.

Man, how to answer that one? As far as I knew he hadn’t done a damn thing other than entertain LaReine.